It doesn't take much to send my mind on a swirling adventure. It can happen when I see something as simple as an instructional sign:
I read that and I wonder:
You know how "We've Only Just Begun" began as a commercial jingle and then got turned into a breakout hit by the Carpenters? (Click here to read a post about that.)
Well, "Kicks," by Paul Revere and the Raiders, took the same road, only in the opposite direction.
Reaching Number 4 on the national charts, "Kicks" was the group's first Top Ten hit and led to them being taken under Dick Clark's wings as the house band on his teen-oriented TV series, Where the Action Is.
Never being the kind of guys who would turn down a money-making opportunity, they accepted a proposal to take the anti-drug song, "Kicks"...
...and turn it into a rockin' commercial for a cereal brand popular with children:
P.S. The first and third paragraphs above are actually true.
P.P.S. Yes, I know the "silly rabbit" is the mascot for Trix, not Kix. Let me remind you that this is ALMOST the Truth.
What if Walt Disney had been a science fiction fanboy?
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Starship Willie - Mickey's first starring role as a swashbuckling intergalactic captain.
Snow White and the Seven Ferengi - ♫♪ "Whistle while you floss..." ♪♫
The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Spock - Audiences found this one "fascinating."
Alice in Alderaan - "Curiouser and curiouser. It's getting quite hot. In fact, I think this place is about to explo--"
Davey Crockett: King of the Final Frontier - Fess Parker stars as the famous frontiersman wearing a tribble as a hat.
Peter Pandora - ♫ "What makes the blue man blue?" ♪♫
Transporting Beauty - An evil fairy's curse renders Auroa unable to stay in one place for more than two minutes without being beamed to a different location.
The Lightsaber in the Stone - "Whoso pulleth out this lightsaber of this stone and anvil and can get the blame thing to turn on is rightwise king, born of Darth."
The Mechanical Mermaid - Ariel the Android runs off with a silverware manufacturing unit.
Beauty and the Transformer - ♫♪ "Gosh, it disturbs me to see you, Megatron, with such a big dent in your rear. Every guy here wants to be you, Megatron, even when stuck in first gear." ♪♫
A-way back in the middle of last month, Beloved and I took 10 days to drive to, around, and back from the 44th state of the union, Wyoming.
In spite of the fact that Wyoming was the first state to take the progressive step of giving women the right to vote, it is mostly an old-fashioned, hard-core center of GetOffMyProperty individualism.
But that did not keep us from observing some decidedly absurd things during our visit.
Take, for instance, the following storefront sign that refuses entrance to any humans:
Or this confusing bit of mislabeling:
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There was one sight that, while being absurd, was certainly not humorous.
We toured the Heart Mountain WWII Memorial Japanese Relocation Center near Powell, Wyoming. It shed light on a shameful, but mostly forgotten, chapter in the history of the United States...when thousands of Americans of Japanese descent - most of whom were U.S. citizens - were taken from their homes, stripped of any possessions that wouldn't fit in a single piece of baggage, and imprisoned in thrown-together towns of wood-and-tar-paper barracks surrounded by barbed wire and equipped with armed guards.
One of the most surprising sights at the site was this editorial cartoon, depicting Japanese Americans as potential saboteurs. What was so surprising about it, you ask? The fact that it was drawn by Dr. Seuss!
Green Eggs and Propaganda?
