"Does Watching The News Give You Anxiety?"

                                "Does watching the news give you anxiety?"

Recently, Marash Girl noted the above headline on an email advertisement, a headline which reminded her of the fact that years ago, her father used to have trouble getting to sleep at night.

His doctor asked him, "Are you watching the news on television before you go to bed at night?"

Marash Girl's father answered in the positive.

"Well," the doctor replied, "no need for sleeping pills.  Simply stop watching the news before you retire, and you should have no problem sleeping . . . . "

The doctor, as it turned out, was absolutely correct.

RICHIE RICH?

President Obama commented on "Richie Rich" in a recent news telecast. Who knew that President Obama has read the Little Lulu comics? Little Lulu?

Big Brother Bob Emery and the Lowell Avenue Kids

 Big Brother's photo from the internet

One of our favorite TV shows as kids (television had just come into our homes) was Big Brother Bob Emery's FAMILY FUN!  And even more fun was the fact that Big Brother Bob Emery lived in Newton, Massachusetts, within a 10 minute bike ride from our houses on Lowell Avenue in Newtonville!!!  One summer's day, we kids decided to take advantage of that fact and all of us, cousins and young neighbors, gathered and headed to Newton Highlands in a cavalcade of bikes.  We had an idea: we wanted to be on Big Brother's television show and we had an exciting plan for the show, "Family Fun".  We kids used to make our own puppets, fashioning the heads with paper mâché which we painted when dry, and creating the outfits from roughly sewn cloth cut from our outgrown clothing.   We would then put on puppet shows of our own creation.  The puppet shows themselves were not of interest to Big Brother, but he loved the idea of three families gathering to create the puppets used for the kids' puppet shows.  And so it was.  Our three families, moms included, appeared on his show, all lined up from the beginning of the process. . . clipping newspaper into small bits to be used in creating the heads of the puppets with home-made paste from flour and water,  drying the heads, painting the dried heads of the puppets,  and cutting and fashioning the puppet clothing from our no longer wearable hand-me-downs!  The show was a big success and we kids never got over the fact that we had been on Big Brother Bob Emery's FAMILY FUN television program for all to see!

The Old Howard, Scollay Square, Beyonce and the Super Bowl

Sunday night's Superbowl half-time entertainment brought to mind a favorite joke of Marash Girl's dad (though the circumstances under which the joke was told are lost in the mists of time):

Father to son, "Don't ever go to The Old Howard in Scollay Square".

Son to father, "Why not?"

Father to son, "You'll see things that you shouldn't be seeing."

As is wont to happen, the son goes to the Old Howard in Scollay Square, and as predicted, he saw something he shouldn't have seen. . .  His father!

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"The Old Howard, Boston’s most famous (some would say notorious) theatre, opened in 1846 and evolved from legitimate theatre to vaudeville to burlesque and finally to striptease" so risque that it kept the Boston vice squad busy, and led to an indecency hearing which eventually shut down the Old Howard in 1953." [From the internet]

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We might as well have been at the Old Howard on Sunday night, as the family gathered around the telly to watch the Super Bowl and [sandwiched in between the halves], supersex, but no vice squad appeared on the screen to shut down the lurid dance of Beyonce, Beyonce hailed by Tris McCall of The Star-Ledger as  "a beacon of femininity!"  

A beacon of raw (raunchy?) sexuality, perhaps, but certainly not femininity!

Obama, Medvedev, a Hot Mike, and Big Brother Bob Emery

Driving to WBUR at 6 AM on Tuesday morning, on her way to volunteer at the WBUR fundraiser, Marash Girl heard tell of Obama's comments to Medvedev, unintentionally aired over a mike that was still live.  It brought Marash Girl back to the 1950's and early television with Big Brother Bob Emery and his show, Family Fun, a locally broadcast program meant for young families.  Big Brother Bob Emery, a native of Newton, Massachusetts, always ended his show toasting the President of the United States  (who was then Eisenhower) with a glass of milk, "Big Brother's Favorite Drink".  "A toast to the President," he would say, as he raised his glass of milk to the picture of President Eisenhower, and sipped.  The show always ended there.  But one day, soon after his toast to the President, Big Brother Bob Emery was seen by families all over the Boston area pouring himself a "drink" (of something other than milk) and cursing at "the little bastards" (or some such nefarious phrase)!  Needless to say, not only was the mike hot, but the camera was hot as well, and Big Brother Bob Emery was never heard from again on Boston area television.