March 2007 Archives

During a casual glance at a map today my eyes fell upon Luzon, the main island of the Philippines. When I was growing up in Detroit, my grandmother's telephone was often given as "LUzon-5-1864" (or whatever the digits were; I'm sure my mom remembers). I never knew what it referred to. I also recall that "LOgan" was another common alphabetic prefix (and, admittedly, I might be mixing this up -- grandma's phone number may have been LOgan-something, but LUzon was definitely popular, too).

I got to thinking: what was up with the alphabetical prefixes? I assumed it had something to do with mnemonics, but was it a formal program supported by the phone company or was it just a popular practice amongst its customers?

According to a horrifying report, Fremont's two existing statues that pay homage to historical monsters -- V. I. Lenin and the Troll -- will soon be joined by a third:

J. P. Patches.

A clown.

A terrifying, blood-red-nosed, swollen-lipped, corpse-skinned clown.

Says one person responsible for this proposed horror: "If you didn't grow up in the Pacific Northwest, it's hard to appreciate the impact he had on our lives.... He was there when you got up in the morning. He was there when you came home from school. .... That was something you never forgot."

I'm sure it is hard to forget a masked man leering at you in bed and hanging around your house after school. In my neighborhood, we called them freaks and we had them arrested. We didn't go around immortalizing them in garishly-painted bronze.

Sometimes I just crack myself up.

I just learned that my old colleague from Wisconsin, Kevin, is expecting his fifth child. Kevin and I used to trade in obscure references to literature, film, and Warner Bros. cartoons. I wrote him to congratulate him on his impressive feat of virility. In his response, he observed that since this will be his fifth child, he might name him (if it is a him) Henry, after Henry V.

I replied that thinking of Henry V in the context of making a baby gives new meaning to the line "Once more into the breech, dear friends, once more!"

Thank you, thank you. I'm here all week. Make sure you try the veal.