TV’s ‘Captain Kangaroo,’ Bob Keeshan, dead

(CNN) — Television’s Captain Kangaroo, Bob Keeshan, died Friday morning in Vermont, a family friend told CNN.

“Captain Kangaroo,” a children’s show, featured the walrus-mustached, bowl-haircut Keeshan entertaining youngsters with his gentle, whimsical humor. Among the show’s other characters were Bunny Rabbit, Mr. Moose and Mr. Green Jeans (Hugh Brannum).

The show ran on CBS from 1955 to 1985, and then moved to public television for six more years.

Shows were frequently interrupted with silliness, such as hundreds of ping-pong balls dropping from the ceiling or Mr. Moose’s knock-knock jokes, but the mainstay was Keeshan, who chatted with Brannum and told stories. [CNN.com]

I remember those ping pong balls. As a little kid, Captain Kangaroo was one of the shows my mom would let me watch. I can still remember all kinds of things about it now. I find it kind of amazing that I can still remember the other shows I watched around then. Shows like Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, and Electric Company (which was still my favorite). I think I’ll take some time today to get in touch with my inner child. Maybe I can find a bunch of ping pong balls to dump on someone.

My friend Jeff passed me along this news release on whitehouse.gov. Here’s a snippet.

Remarks by the President to the Press Pool

Nothin’ Fancy Cafe
Roswell, New Mexico

11:25 A.M. MST

THE PRESIDENT: I need some ribs.

Q Mr. President, how are you?

THE PRESIDENT: I’m hungry and I’m going to order some ribs.

Q What would you like?

THE PRESIDENT: Whatever you think I’d like.

Q Sir, on homeland security, critics would say you simply haven’t spent enough to keep the country secure.

THE PRESIDENT: My job is to secure the homeland and that’s exactly what we’re going to do. But I’m here to take somebody’s order. That would be you, Stretch — what would you like? Put some of your high-priced money right here to try to help the local economy. You get paid a lot of money, you ought to be buying some food here. It’s part of how the economy grows. You’ve got plenty of money in your pocket, and when you spend it, it drives the economy forward. So what would you like to eat?

Q Right behind you, whatever you order.

THE PRESIDENT: I’m ordering ribs. David, do you need a rib? [Whitehouse.gov]

This post is a bit old, but I just read it for the first time todaytoday, thanks to welcomerain. A list of 213 Things Skippy is no Longer Allowed to do in the U.S. Army.

Once upon a time, there was a SPC Schwarz stationed with the Army in the Balkans. SPC Schwarz was either very clever or very bored; but probably both, since he managed to attempt or be warned about 213 things he wasn’t allowed to do. He collected those things into a hillarious list and posted them to the web. The site hadn’t been updated in a couple of years and has since gone away; but the list is classic, so I saved it. A couple favorites: 2. My proper military title is ‘Specialist Schwarz’ not ‘Princess Anastasia’. and 191. Our Humvees cannot be assembled into a giant battle-robot.

1. Not allowed to watch Southpark when I’m supposed to be working.
2. My proper military title is ‘Specialist Schwarz’ not ‘Princess Anastasia’.
3. Not allowed to threaten anyone with black magic.
4. Not allowed to challenge anyone’s disbelief of black magic by asking for hair.
5. Not allowed to get silicone breast implants.
6. Not allowed to play ‘Pulp Fiction’ with a suction-cup dart pistol and any officer.

[Avalanche Company]

Wired reports on the poll that the American Family Association posted online last month. Here’s a bit from the article.

But the AFA never counted on the power of the Internet. And once the URL to the poll escaped its intended audience, everything went haywire. As of Jan. 19, 60 percent of respondents — more than 508,000 voters — said, “I favor legalization of homosexual marriage.” With an additional 7.89 percent — or 66,732 voters — replying, “I favor a ‘civil union’ with the full benefits of marriage except for the name,” the AFA’s chosen position, “I oppose legalization of homosexual marriage and ‘civil unions,’” was being defeated by a 2-1 ratio.

“We’re very concerned that the traditional state of marriage is under threat in our country by homosexual activists,” said AFA representative Buddy Smith. “It just so happens that homosexual activist groups around the country got a hold of the poll — it was forwarded to them — and they decided to have a little fun, and turn their organizations around the country (onto) the poll to try to cause it to represent something other than what we wanted it to. And so far, they succeeded with that.”

Of course, no such poll can be said to represent an accurate picture of popular opinion. But, clearly, the AFA had hoped Congress would take the numbers it planned to produce as exactly that kind of evidence.[Wired Magazine]

So they put a poll on a public website, and are surprised when the public takes it. And then when they don’t get the results they wanted they just throw the whole thing out. How childish.

(And I won’t rant about online polls being unaccurate (IMHO) to begin with).

Edith Wharton: “If only we’d stop trying to be happy we’d have a pretty good time.” [Quotes of the Day]

I must say, I am quite happy that Hikaru no Go is in Shonen Jump now.

Posted without comment.

You Deserve a …..

McDonald’s erotica.(01-16) [Cruel Site of the Day]

[JCD]

This is quite cool. RSS for iTMS.

iTunes Spreads via RSS?

iTunes Music Store RSS Generator

“I learned from Bill Bumgarner that the iTunes Music Store now has RSS feeds.I’ll withhold comment on….” [More Like This WebLog]

This is the kind of thing I’ve been waiting for from Apple. They’ve got a good community built up around iTunes, but they’ve done a poor job of connecting and exposing it. I’ll have to play around with this to see what it really means, but it would be great if I could find iTunes users with similar tastes in music and then subscribe to their feeds.

On a side note, here’s yet another reason for full RSS feeds. I can’t get to the More Like This site right now, which means I can’t read the rest of the post OR get to the link. Incredibly frustrating.

[The Shifted Librarian]

I now have feeds for the last 100 New Releases and the last 100 Just Added. Very handy, now let’s see how well it is updated. (And I still want one for the Quicktime Movie Previews that tells me when new things are added.

Bandai has a poll up on their site asking “Which of the following plushy options would you like us to make for the upcoming Wolf’s Rain Limited Edition?” The choices are Kiba (Human Form), Kiba (Wolf Form), and Kiba (Wolf Form ‘SD’). It’s right on their home page.



From AnimeNation news:

Live Action Witch Hunter Robin Confirmed

Mr. Joe Menosky, writer and producer for TV series including Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager, and The Dead Zone, has contacted AnimeNation with confirmation that last Friday, January 16th, the Sci-Fi Channel closed a deal with Sunrise Studios of Japan to remake Witch Hunter Robin as a live-action American television series. Mr. Menosky will write the series and executive produce along with Mr. Roy Lee (who licensed the remake of “Ring”) and his business partner Doug Davison.

According to Mr. Menosky, “There may or may not be an announcement in the Hollywood tradepapers — which tend to wait until a pilot script is completed, greenlit for production, with director and actors attached before they consider a television series worthy of mention. But given the focus of AnimeNation, I thought you might find the project of interest.” [AnimeNation News]

I’m really not quite sure what to think about this. But it does seem to scare me some. I could see it really sucking. We’ll see.