Oh man, I’m useless tonight. I’m kind of worried, because I didn’t see my renter at all yesterday, and today there’s a message on the answering machine, asking why he didn’t show up for work.

You might pray that he’s OK. His name is John.

Talking of early television, that’s a subject I can discuss with some authority, being one of the first kids to grow up with the thing. And I’m not going to tell you how it blighted my mind. Television and my grandmother were about the only good things in my life when I was a kid. TV was the only friend I had that didn’t beat me up. Television got me interested in history and in Shakespeare.

For those of you old enough to appreciate it, or just curious, here’s a YouTube clip of the opening of the old Howdy Doody Show, one of the delights of my early life. Buffalo Bob Smith (the guy, unaccountably, in a pith helmet in this clip) was one of the great pitch men of the medium. He pushed Hostess Cakes and Wonder Bread and Tootsy Rolls, and a whole mess of other products, to gullible kids like me, and our parents hated it, but on the other hand the show kept us quiet for a while.

All those great kids shows died when the government “for the sake of the children” passed legislation forbidding characters on children’s programs from endorsing products. Almost immediately there were no more national or local children’s shows, and the programming space was filled with loud, violent, badly animated cartoons.

Thanks a lot.

Buffalo Bob’s real name was Schmidt, by the way, and most of his life he was a Lutheran, though he seems to have ended up a Presbyterian, for some unaccountable reason.

Note to anyone from WWTC Radio in the Twin Cities who happens to be reading this: The background jingle on that carpet commercial you’re running just now is a vile earworm, and probably toxic and dangerous to the general public. If it runs much longer I may have to take unilateral action. And nobody wants that, do they?