News of the Week: Spring Thoughts, New Books, and Cookies from Out of the Sky

In the news for the week ending May 7, 2021, are flying cookies, singing Monkees, revamped mascots, and more.

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Random Notes

Things I jotted down during a rainy first week of May:

To paraphrase the famous line from Love Story, not being on social media means never having to say you’re sorry.

I just saw back-to-back commercials with Martha Stewart, one for a new kind of kitty litter and one for a gourmet food delivery service. If you’re ordering, make sure you don’t get those two things mixed up.

The surviving Monkees, Mickey Dolenz and Michael Nesmith, have announced a farewell tour for this fall. In related news, it amazes me every time I’m reminded that Nesmith’s mother invented Liquid Paper.

What would George Washington look like if he was a politician today? Well, like this.

It was only two weeks ago but I’ve already forgotten who won at the Academy Awards.

If there’s one thing I hope doesn’t come back after the pandemic it’s ball kids at tennis tournaments having to handle the gross towels the players use. This has always been odd to me and there’s no reason to go back to doing it.

Two minutes after typing that Love Story line above I saw Ryan O’Neil on an episode of Leave It to Beaver and I swear I didn’t plan it that way.

Read This!

We have Amazon’s picks for fiction and nonfiction in the new issue of the Post, and here are six more books I think you might want to buy. No, seriously, drop what you’re doing and go buy them!

The Devil May Dance by Jake Tapper. This sequel to the CNN anchor’s first novel, The Hellfire Club, has Charlie and Margaret Marder involved in a mystery in early ’60s Los Angeles. Frank Sinatra figures into the plot.

How Lucky by Will Leitch. This literary mystery, hailed by Stephen King as “fantastic,” centers around a young man in a wheelchair who witnesses a possible kidnapping. (Full disclosure: Will is a friend of mine, though he never sent me a copy of the book. The jerk.)

Great Circle by Maggie Shipstead. This novel is described as “the unforgettable story of a daredevil female aviator determined to chart her own course in life, no matter the cost.”

King Richard by Michael Dobbs. The subtitle of this book is Nixon and Watergate — An American Tragedy, and that says it all.

Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. From the author of The Martian comes this tale of an astronaut who awakens on his ship millions of miles from home. The rest of the crew is dead and he has to save the Earth from destruction … only he can’t even remember his own name or what he’s supposed to do.

My Remarkable Journey by Katherine Johnson. This is a memoir by the NASA mathematician who helped land men on the moon. She was played by Taraji P. Henson in the Oscar-winning film HIdden Figures.

Drone Cookies

Due to COVID, sales of Girl Scout cookies in the usual places — schools, door-to-door, and grocery storefronts — are down, so the organization teamed up with Google to have the cookies delivered in Virginia from out of the sky. This will take place until the end of May, and who knows, maybe it will catch on (Amazon is already testing drone delivery) and we’ll have beer and McDonald’s delivered this way too.

The Noid Is Back!

And now he’s going after the new driverless pizza delivery vehicles that Domino’s will soon have roaming our streets.

Uploaded to YouTube by Domino’s Pizza

There has to be a way Domino’s can team up with the Girl Scouts for a dinner and dessert combo deal.

Headline of the Week

“Teen Accidentally Moves into Retirement Community”

RIP Olympia Dukakis, Bobby Unser, Jill Corey, Helen Murray Free, Tommy West, Billie Hayes, and Nathan Jung

Olympia Dukakis won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Moonstruck and also appeared in Steel Magnolias, Working Girl, Look Who’s Talking, and Mr. Holland’s Opus, as well as TV shows like Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, Bored to Death, Search for Tomorrow, Center of the Universe, and Dr. Kildare. She died last week at the age of 89.

Bobby Unser was a member of one of auto racing’s most famous families. He won the Indianapolis 500 three times. He died Sunday at the age of 87.

Jill Corey gained fame in the ’50s as a teenage singer of standards. She appeared on several TV shows, including her own, and was on the cover of Life. She died last month at the age of 85.

Along with her husband, Helen Murray Free invented the paper strip that makes diabetes testing a lot easier and more accurate. She died Saturday at the age of 98.

Tommy West co-produced many of Jim Croce’s songs, including “You Don’t Mess Around with Jim” and “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and was half of Cashman & West with Terry Cashman. He wrote songs for The Partridge Family and Anne Murray and sang background vocals for such artists as Frank Sinatra and Connie Francis. He was one of the singers on Coke’s “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing.” He died Sunday at the age of 78.

Billie Hayes appeared in many TV shows and on Broadway and is probably best known for playing Witchiepoo on the children’s TV show H.R. Pufnstuf. She died last week at the age of 96.

Nathan Jung was a character actor who appeared in such shows as Star Trek, Kung Fu, and Magnum, P.I., as well as movies like Big Trouble in Little China, Surf Ninjas, and The Kentucky Fried Movie. He died last month at the age of 74.

This Week in History

Amtrak Launches (May 1, 1971)

Did you know the name of the company is actually the National Railroad Passenger Corporation? Neither did I.

First Three Stooges Short Released (May 5, 1934)

Woman Haters was the first time Moe, Larry, and Curly appeared together onscreen as The Three Stooges. It’s all done in rhyme and music, and is one of the very few shorts where their characters don’t have their real names.

This Week in Saturday Evening Post History: “Vroom! Vroom!” (May/June, 2011)

May/June 2011

I don’t usually post covers from issues this recent, but this is eye-catching. Domino’s new delivery vehicles should look like this.

National Herb Week

It ends this weekend, so if you want to celebrate you better hurry.

The Herb of the Year for 2021 is Parsley (side note: there is an Herb of the Year every year). It’s full name is Petroselinum crispum, which is also the name of my favorite Star Wars character.

Here’s a recipe for Parsley Pesto Pasta from Budget Bytes, and here’s one for Garlic Swirl Rolls. Taste of Home has this Steak with Chipotle-Lime Chimichurri, and Food52 has these Eggs in Purgatory with Capers and Parsley. Food52 also has Roberta’s Parsley Cake, and I bet you didn’t know you could use parsley in a dessert.

If you’re not into any of these recipes, you can always celebrate this Herb.

Next Week’s Holidays and Events

V-E Day (May 8)

This marks the day of the Allied victory in Europe in 1945.

Mother’s Day (May 9)

It’s this Sunday, so I hope you’ve already bought her something. And I don’t mean something at the last minute from CVS.

Featured image: iravgustin / Shutterstock

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Comments

  1. I didn’t even know the two surviving Monkees were doing a Farewell Tour. Good for them even though Nesmith was always my least favorite member. Thanks for the link on his mom, and her inventing Liquid Paper. Mike did a good job in the commercials for it. I’m sure he helped bolster sales, not that it really needed it then. I’ve used it for years and still do, depending on what I’m doing. I love the fix it white ‘correction tape’ too. I don’t know what the name of it is beyond that. That’s a description not a brand name, right?

    ‘The Devil May Dance’ and ‘King Richard’ are the two books listed here I’d like to read. I listened to a little of the audio portion of the latter. I didn’t know Nixon was a Herman Wouk fan, but it’s not surprising. I’m sure he enjoyed both ‘The Winds of War’ and ‘War and Remembrance’ 80’s mini-series by Dan Curtis.

    So the first ‘Three Stooges’ short was released the same month Bonnie and Clyde ended. Interesting. Definitely not a woman hater, I enjoyed it anyway. It’s extremely clever, and definitely takes me (or anyone) back to 1934. Thanks for the link, and the one on the Domino ‘Noid’. Not sure how that will work out.

    Thanks for running the AMAZING May/June 2011 cover, Bob! It’s recent compared to most, true, but it’s a vintage classic all the same. I thought the cover was so neat when it was new I bought a newsstand copy with just the product code interference, still much smaller than the address label.

    It was also a cool coincidence that the final (encore) album by The Cars, “Move Like This” was released in May 2011. A lot of people still don’t know about it. If you love the first album and ‘Candy-O’ from ’79, you’ll love this one too. Very clever fusion of the classic Car’s sound updated for the 21st century. Give ‘Blue Tip’ and ‘Sad Song’ a listen now.

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