Mad Libs was my favorite thing to buy at my elementary school book fairs, if I had any money. I haven’t done much with them since. I remember introducing them to my children, and somehow they didn’t take to them well. Kids these days.

Mad Libs creator Leonard B. Stern, 88, has died. He has kicked the bucket, breathed his last, headed to the last round-up. Mr. Stern has resumed room temperature. He has cashed in his chips, dropped his oxygen habit, and is permanently out of print. I didn’t know until reading this article that Mr. Stern was one of the men behind Get Smart, Operation Petticoat, and The Honeymooners. In fact, it was while writing for The Honeymooners that he had the idea for Mad Libs.

The Wall Street Journal quotes Stern from 2003, saying, “If we knew the shows were going to become classics we would have written them better.”

Researchers Jean M. Twenge and W. Keith Campbell tested thousands of college students with statements like “I insist upon getting the respect that is due me,” and “I think I am a special person” to discover a 30% rise in narcissism from 1982 to 2006.

By 2006, 51% of 18- to 25-year-olds reported that “becoming” famous was an important goal to them—nearly five times more than those who said “becoming more spiritual” was important to them.

Some of us are famous for very good reasons, of course. Take myself, for example.

Joseph Epstein writes on boredom in Commentary: “Some people claim never to have been bored. They lie. … ‘I have discovered that all evil comes from this,’ wrote Pascal, ‘man’s being unable to sit still in a room.’” (via Books, Inq.)

My posts for the next few weeks are likely to be shorter than usual, as I’m handicapped by a hand cast.

And that’s just one of my injuries.

It was a memorable weekend.

First there was Story City, IA, and its annual Scandinavian celebration. I didn’t take any pictures down there, because they would have been pretty much the same as the previous years’. Good food, nice people, gracious hosts. Sam was there with his Viking boat. Consistency is nice.

It was windy though. As Denny and I were setting up our Viking tent (a rather old one belonging to the club), a gust caught it, and we lost our grip. It fell and sort of exploded. The ridge pole broke, the frames split, and part of it fell on my head. The result was a trip to the local clinic, and three stitches.

(By the way, my brother once found a record that our grandmother, who was born in Story City, had her appendix removed in the hospital there, about a century ago. I’m confident it was a different building, but I felt a bond.)

I left a couple hours early on Saturday, to participate in a distant relative’s 100th birthday party, about 20 miles away. I walked in on them in full Viking garb, and managed to get away unscathed.

Sunday was Danish Day in Minneapolis, pictured above. Good weather, good crowd. At the very beginning of my very first fight, I got clouted on the right hand, breaking my index finger. The pain hasn’t been too bad, but this one-handed keyboarding is a nuisance.

And maybe a pushcart too, but it’s definitely a conversation starter. You can put about 80 books in the Bookinist, the mobile chair for the ravenous reader. (via SB)

I’m looking forward to this movie, but it doesn’t appear to be coming to my area.

Stop what you’re doing, and listen to this report. An American woman has dental surgery done and possibly has a mini-stroke while being sedated. When she wakes up, her speech pattern is so affected she sounds as if she’s from Britain. She has a rare form of brain damage called foreign accent syndrome. You have to hear the radio report. Jane Greenhalgh states:

There have been only about 100 known cases of the syndrome since it was first reported in the 1940s. The most famous case was a Norwegian woman who was hit by shrapnel in World War II; she developed a German accent and was ostracized as a result.

The annual Danish Tivoli Fest in Elk Horn, Iowa is history now. I fear it won’t be remembered as one of the best. The combination of a bad economy and rainy weather kept the crowds well down from last year.

As you may guess from this picture (though all the tents aren’t shown), our Viking encampment was also smaller. Which isn’t to say we didn’t have a good time. I’d say we had a very good time. We had a big battle on Saturday, and although I failed to survive any of the skirmishes, I wasn’t physically hurt at all, which is a fairly rare thing. The crowd for the fighting was large under the circumstances, and they were enthusiastic.

I didn’t sell many books.

Still, I consider it a success because I finished getting the footage I wanted for my Epic Book Trailer. Now I’m in the throes of learning film editing on the job. The big challenge will be sound—lots of wind noise in the outdoor shots, which was most of the shots.

I don’t think there’s an audio editor in Windows Live Movie Maker, except for music, though I’ll have to look again.

If I’m distracted for the next few weeks, it’ll be because I’m pondering my challenges as an auteur.

File this under: Super Cool Old Stuff. Old streets, rooms in medieval buildings, and ancient Roman sewers are being opened under Jerusalem for tourist use adding a new sub-level of antiquity to an already ancient city.

South of the Old City, visitors to Jerusalem can enter a tunnel chipped from the bedrock by a Judean king 2,500 years ago and walk through knee-deep water under the Arab neighborhood of Silwan. Beginning this summer, a new passage will be open nearby: a sewer Jewish rebels are thought to have used to flee the Roman legions who destroyed the Jerusalem temple in 70 A.D.

To our fallen. I don’t say it enough, but I owe you guys.