“Here Comes Foster!” There Goes Al Michaels

by Kevin Burton    I love me some Al Michaels. Our sportscaster-sports consumer relationship goes back more than 50 years.    How much do I love Al Michaels?  Well, I watched the entire unwatchable Raiders-Chargers game Thursday because he was calling it. I didn’t even have any fantasy players involved.   And I’ve been watching …

Chef Boyardee And Midweek Culinary Capers

by Kevin Burton    Got re-acquainted with an old boyhood pal last Wednesday and I had lasagna for dinner.    Sounds like glad tidings, yes?    Well maybe not so much. The “lasagna” came out of a can.    This all started with an e-mail from the Interesting Facts website, that alerted me to the …

Closing Credits For TV Icon Norman Lear

by Kevin Burton    The television shows produced by Norman Lear were a cultural backbone for 1970s America.  In this case, the backbone was connected to the funny bone.    When I read that Lear died Tuesday at 101, my mind went immediately to that instrumental piano-driven song that played over the closing credits for …

The Story Of Pringles From Cradle To Grave

by Kevin Burton    Without this great big clue you would never guess this, or even think of it. With the clue you surely won’t miss.    Guess where and how the ashes of the late Fredrick Baur, inventor of Pringles, are buried?     Yep, in a Pringles can.    Ah but ain’t that America? …

How Long Is A Jiffy Exactly?

by Kevin Burton    Last month on Page 7 we looked at words such as several and handful that defy exact definition. Here’s another: Jiffy.    How long is a jiffy?    Merriam-Webster says a jiffy is “a very short period of time: moment, instant.” The Cambridge dictionary lists synonyms “flash, heartbeat, instant, split second.” …

Gotta Love Breakfast To The Moon And Back

by Kevin Burton    What’s for breakfast?    Good question. Fun question. Breakfast means morning and morning means a new day. A new start. A little surge of hope. And breakfast means fuel for the journey.    So, what’s for breakfast?   The topic takes me back to Saturday mornings in the days of Cap’n …

The DJs Made Old-Time Radio Come Alive

by Kevin Burton    Music fans who go back as far as the 80s and especially before, badly miss the old days of radio.     You had music historians, actual musicians and others who loved music, choosing what records hit the airwaves. It was a wacky, fun time for listeners across musical genres. It was …

What’s Stranger Than Fiction, AND Truth?

by Kevin Burton    All the cool band names are taken. Trust me. Record label names too.    When last we gathered, I spun a fictional account based ever so loosely goosely on a true story. It was about a band called the Palindromes that made it big in Bermuda.   The true part of …

“Backward And Forward” And My Memories

by Kevin Burton     I guess there’s a reason why melody and memory aren’t far apart in the dictionary. They go together like peas and porridge.     And, for those who think there is something pejorative in the term “one-hit wonder,” well what about all those no-hit nobodies?    We’re all doing our best then, …

Clear Channel (iHeart) Killed The Radio Star

by Kevin Burton    In the old days we turned on our radios for music, for news, for sports and weather forecasts, and we got all those things.    But what we really loved, and what kept us coming back for more, was the way those things were delivered, something that was woven throughout the …