“When you think about it, why don’t you see carcasses more often of most small (sparrow) to medium-sized (pigeon) birds? The answer is that most are cryptically colored (blends in to the background) and that decay processes and scavengers clean them up quickly. In Atlanta, from April through October, blowflies and ants can reduce a dead sparrow to a pile of loose feathers in a few days. In winter, opossums, raccoons, rats, cats, dogs, skunks, foxes, coyotes, crows, and Turkey Vultures clean up the dead. These same scavengers operate in the warmer months too, but blowflies often beat them to the punch…. Yes, the world would be a lot smellier without nature’s cleanup squad (including the smallest and most important decomposers — — bacteria and fungi)!”
 — Here’s your answer to the age-old big city pigeon conundrum.

“Most people consider Oktoberfest to be the biggest drinking celebration in Germany. Often overlooked are the country’s Father’s Day celebrations, which involve oddly dressed men pulling wagons filled with beer into parks and drinking until they pass out.”

The Oddball 80s Magic Of “Battle Of The Video Games”

by Paul Freitag

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imKBN9RDIHc

Back in the early 80s, the boom in arcades and entertainment made icons of the likes of Pac-Man, Donkey Kong and Q*Bert. The popularity and novelty of video games was great enough to produce a fair amount of peculiar cultural runoff. If you grew up then, you may or may not remember watching cartoon series based on the likes of Kangaroo and Space Ace, or raunchy arcade-set comedies like Hollywood Zap and Joysticks (“More Fun Than Games!”). Some dubious efforts to translate the excitement of playing video games into different mediums also happened, as seen with the ill-conceived board game above.

There was even a game show based on the concept of watching people play video games: the TBS-produced “Starcade.” The whole concept behind the show was, basically, “hey, kids, how’d you like to have the feeling of hanging around an arcade without actually getting to play?” Yet somehow for video game-obsessed kids like me it was worth ditching cartoons for at least a half-hour on Saturday mornings to watch. But as a relic of that time, nothing may be as odd and mesmerizing as “Battle Of The Video Games,” a one-time special featuring Heather Locklear, Scott Baio and a bunch of other 80s stars. If for nothing else, it deserves recognition for leaving us with footage of Lynn Redgrave playing BurgerTime.

This was also the time when celebrity competitions like “Circus of the Stars” and “Battle of the Network Stars” were at the height of their popularity. On these shows, well-known TV performers would perform weird stunts, trapeze tricks and race kayaks in front of the cameras in order to raise money for charity, promote their shows and amuse millions. These shows were distinct from the celebrity reality shows of today in that (a) the actors actually had current shows at the time, and (b) they were specials, not series. So instead of watching Tempestt Bledsoe attempt to lose twenty pounds over an entire season, you’d just admire her as she did a quick tiptoe across the tightrope, and voila! Done!

Given the popularity of video games and shows like these, it’s not surprising someone decided to combine them to make “Battle Of The Video Games.”

This one-shot special was, in essence, the celebrity version of “Watch Someone Else Play a Video Game.” Produced by Los Angeles’ KTLA (Channel 5), it aired once, on a late summer evening in 1983 before the fall brought such gifts as new series like “Jennifer Slept Here” and “Bay City Blues.” Thanks to the magic of archiving and file sharing, however, the show has lately emerged for a brand-new audience to view with awe and amazement.

In style and format, the special was like a more youth-oriented version of the “Battle of the Network Stars” specials, gathering together a wide group of actors and celebrities to compete. But because KTLA was a local station and not a nationwide network, many of its stars were notably more second-tier than “Battle of the Network Stars” might have featured.

While set on a cheap-looking soundstage, the show was well-funded enough to have three (!) hosts: “Happy Days”’ Anson Williams (Potsie); model Jayne Kennedy (who would have been familiar to viewers because of her appearances on “NFL Today,” if they weren’t aware of her popular exercise videos or Playboy spread) and future game-show host Marty Cohen (“Super Password,” “The (New) $25,000 Pyramid”). Technically, Cohen was billed as the “commentator” rather than a host, as three hosts would have been silly, but the difference in roles seems to have mainly been that, as commentator, Cohen got to tell more bad jokes.

The contestants were about as random of an 80s grab bag as you could ever dream up: soap actors, Dynamite cover regulars and Lou Ferrigno. During the introductions, some performers were judged to be well known enough to be identifiable without a TV show credit (Scott Baio); some got the name-hint of their TV show being read after their name (Mindy Cohn from “Facts Of Life,” Todd Bridges from “Diff’rent Strokes”); and others, like Jenilee Harrison (Suzanne Somers’ replacement on “Three’s Company”), just got the vague “TV Star” descriptor. Watching it now, the actor whose presence seems most random is Lynn Redgrave, who was then hyping her (soon-to-be-cancelled) TV series “Teachers Only.”

Here’s how the battle worked: The celebrity players were divided into four teams of three. Across three rounds, a player from each team would come out to play a different video game (Ms. Pac-Man, BurgerTime and Frogger). After the third round, the two teams that had scored the most points sent up their best player for a rousing round of head-to-head Pac-Man.

Some highlights!

Scott Baio explains to his “Happy Days” co-star Anson Williams that he enjoys Ms. Pac-Man, but then quickly corrects himself, saying that he meant Pac-Man. Because Ms. Pac-Man is a girls game, silly!

Mindy Cohn (Natalie!) explained that she doesn’t date so it “doesn’t end up in the papers.” She placed a distant second behind Ms. Pac-Man hustler Philip McKeon (aka the kid from “Alice”).

Heather Locklear edged out Jenilee Harrison in Ms. Pac-Man. In her interview she talked about juggling roles on “T.J. Hooker” and “Dynasty” at the same time.

One would think Lou Ferrigno would be better at BurgerTime, but he placed last.

Deney Terrio, host of “Dance Fever,” talks about his new movie Ladies’ Night (later renamed A Night in Heaven.) He also kicked ass at Frogger, dominating the round.

Redgrave did amazingly well, and ended up playing BurgerTime, placing third! But in the final round, Todd Bridges faced off against Philip McKeon. McKeon, it turns out, was a bit of a ringer, as evidenced by his Ms. Pac-Man game, wherein he clearly had patterns memorized.

The McKeon vs. Bridges finale has to count as the most tense match-up between two sitcom stars playing a video game that the world has ever seen via videotape.

The show also featured a brief behind-the-scenes look at the making of a BurgerTime machine, in the Midway plant in Chicago, which served as an excuse to cut away from the single-set stage. Unfortunately, it was about as exciting as a 3M industrial film — who could have guessed?

It’s impressive that a local station like KTLA talked a dozen working actors into appearing on a show about video games, even if it turns out that watching people play arcade games isn’t exciting even when they players are B-list celebrities. But sadly, if I found a dozen more shows exactly like this, only with, say, William Conrad, Ricky Schroeder and the girl from “Whiz Kids” playing Donkey Kong 3, I’d watch them as well.

Paul Freitag writes regularly for Fine Print Magazine and Daily Grindhouse. He also owns a working Vectrex, and knows far too much about the cast of “Three’s Company.”

Frozen Food Critic Disappointed By Garlic Dipping Sauce That Comes With Digiorno Pizza Dipping Strips, For Which He Had Surprisingly High Hopes

“I am going to take, first, this garlic dipping sauce. And I’m going to take this strip, I’m going to dunk it, really coat it. And let’s see how this tastes.”
 — The verdict: “Huh.” I think I could have told Freezer Burns host Gregory Ng (a.k.a. “The Frozen Food Master”) that it wouldn’t be very good. Just from having seen the commercials.

“We’re not going to back away from tactics that work,” says @MikeBloomberg on stop&frisk.

— Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum) May 18, 2012

It’s your Friday morning fun time with Mayor Mike on the radio, and he’s serving it up hot as usual today. And he’s not doing any favors for the presumable next mayor, Chris Quinn, who wants to know about how banks treat poor neighborhoods before the City keeps its money there.

Harsh words from @MikeBloomberg on Quinn’s banking bill: “city going into regulatory business of banking sets probably a new low for idiocy”

— Mike Grynbaum (@grynbaum) May 18, 2012

“We need to stop looking at these animals as static entities. They’re evolving.”
 — Roland Kays, a mammalogist at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences in Raleigh, reminds us that the coyotes that have been exploding in population across the Northeastern United States of late, spreading as deeply into urban areas as Central Park, are not your great-great-grandmother’s coyotes. These are a coyote-wolf hybrid, 50 percent larger than the coyotes of yore, highly adaptable and well able to hunt and take down animals as large as deer. They’re getting bigger and faster and stronger and smarter. And they are coming for you. Joni Mitchell never lies.

E-40 continues to astound. At age 44, with his 23-year-old son following in his footsteps (that’s him, Droop-E, on the second verse) the Vallejo rapper is making some of the very best music of his entire, 22-year career. This is from the The Block Brochure: Welcome to the Soil 3 album. The beat was made by Droop, seemingly by banging on an empty garbage dumpster.

“Facebook’s debut is not just a market event. For the millions of Americans who have no intention of ever buying or selling a share of Facebook (although the mutual funds in their 401(k) may have other thoughts), the trading on Friday is the the [sic] equivalent of a must-see Super Bowl Sunday showdown for people who don’t ordinarily watch a football game,” opines the New York Times. It’s “a pop culture spectacle”! I sure wish they’d said “spectacular.” So basically, the Facebook IPO is “The Hills” but with more money. It’s so important that we watch the manipulation of a market and a company’s share price! Meanwhile, everyone’s got a list of things that you should know. Will you stay glued to the computer-TV from 9:30 a.m. till 11, when real trading will commence? Or will you be too busy sharing pictures of your cats? Let us know on your Facebook!!!

by Vince Grzegorek

This is me — circa age six, sporting double popped collars, rainbow suspenders, more denim than is acceptable in public, and a smile. I was seemingly happy, making more money than I will ever earn again, and — look at that pose! — brimming with confidence. I was a child model. You could look just like me for $43.99 plus tax. I was pulling $55 an hour to show you how.

These pictures are from a first audition of sorts I had with David & Lee, a big modeling agency that had an office in Cleveland years ago. Getting to this point meant they liked my look enough to put together some professional shots. Kids modeling works a lot like what you may know about adult modeling: The best of the best from this series ended up in my book, which was then passed on to folks who wanted to hire stunning kids to wear stunning clothes. Mom trotted me to this audition when I was five. l vaguely remember the ordeal — big escalators, lots of wardrobe changes, and a day off school, the latter being clearly the biggest upside. There were short short-shorts and an ensemble that somehow involved a fake ice-cream cone, a headset, and a sweater. And the blurry one up there, which shows my considerable emotional range. I call it: “When Mom and Dad ask, you and Uncle Terry were just wrestling. Right, slugger?”

I did a fair number of shoots per year, but it was far from a weekly thing. And though the jobs were scheduled during the day, I missed school no more often than any kid with a moderately performing immune system, so it was easy to keep my secret life, well, secret.

I hardly mentioned it to any of my friends at school. I was already sequestered in a special academic classroom, and it’s tough enough trying to bond with the cool kids when you’re only shuffled out to mingle at recess, like a leper monkey at the zoo. I wasn’t going to proclaim to the kids — all bigger, more popular, with girlfriends, and sporting, even as second-graders, what I remember as full mustaches — that a pretty woman wanted to take my pretty picture because of my pretty hair and hey, do you like my new suspenders?

As for the girls? The only time I was scoring some hand-holding action based on my looks was when a photographer made a girl do it.

But my friends in the neighborhood knew, mainly because my mom told their moms. She was proud, of course. Lots of parents hear the “Your kid should be a model!” routine; for hers, it was true. Other moms (and plenty of hairdressers) told her how gorgeous my red hair was. Turns out that hair could not only be admired but monetized. In fact, I’m pretty sure that it was my most positive attribute in the eyes of the modeling agency: my ability to chromatically match up well with red- and orange-colored products.

Years later, when I was 19, some ten years after my last gig, my sister pulled a bottle of Ocean Spray from the fridge and said, “Hey, Vince, isn’t this you on the bottle?” It was. Some agency had somehow and for some reason dug up a decade-plus-old photo of me and plastered it on every Ocean Spray bottle to pimp a computer giveaway. The juice was red, my shirt was red, and my hair, of course, was perfectly red. A shade more perfectly cranberry red, apparently, than that of any other redhead born in years in between. I didn’t get any big payday — the contract said David & Lee could do whatever they wanted with the picture once it was taken, although I still think I should have at least gotten a computer out of the deal.

For a few months, it became an ice-breaker at parties during college, a go-to when any girl was mixing a vodka cranberry from a bottle with my face on it. But it rarely proved effective. Probably something to do with implausibility and awkward delivery, the disparity in cuteness from the person on the bottle to the person standing before them, or maybe just the oddness of having my kid self grinning out at them while my older self was grinning earnestly and goofily beside it.

What was it like? I did gigs for Higbee’s and a slew of other department stores, beamed out on flimsy paper in the Sunday circular to tens of thousands of people around northeast Ohio. Photographers, evincing none of the patience and tact that Sears family portrait shooters have to show, would point and direct and flex and cajole and manipulate me into any number of non-natural contortions. Smiles quickly fade as you fail to do exactly what they’re telling you to do even though you’re doing exactly what they told you to do, like jogging in place while smiling and looking athletic but without a strained look on your face or breaking into a sweat.

Sessions could be as quick as an hour, or much, much longer, all depending on how many shots were on the schedule and how easily I was able to give the photographers what they wanted. It was easy to tell when they were frustrated, and the stress tornado could spiral quickly. I remember getting cranky and tired — though a cookie break could save it all.

This was the late 80s. Usually, I was pimping the latest and greatest in denim-wear. Sort of the Oshkosh lifestyle on steroids. And way more polo shirts than I was comfortable with even then and which was probably the germination moment for my lifelong aversion to collared shirts. Also: hats. Hats, hats, hats — always oversized, always plopped ridiculously askew or backward or at a 180-degree angle.

But for that pay rate? Sure. I didn’t know it at the time — it was all sequestered away in a savings account I was rarely allowed to touch and the balance of which I was clueless about — but I was fully funding my first two years of drinking in college.

From ages five to seven, I enjoyed a steady stream of work, and then the well dried up. Nothing. No calls. Looking back at the halcyon days of rainbow suspenders and jean jackets now, it’s a depressing realization to know you hit peak attractiveness before you turned eight. A buddy of mine has a theory that your peak year should be 32. Some people would put it older; some, much older. Not me. For me, it had happened by age six. I have proof. It’s right there.

I did get one last job after years on the bench. I was nine. It was a Halloween ad for CVS precursor Revco, a gig which is basically the made-for-TV Lifetime movie level of modeling, and my part couldn’t have been more metaphorically appropriate. That’s me as the clown.

Vince Grzegorek hates smiling and having his picture taken. He’s a staff writer at Cleveland Scene who exploits his Polish heritage and knowledge of obscure Cleveland sports figures on Twitter.

“The history of science has plenty of examples which teach us that our present truths are provisional. But in my opinion the present evidence shows that tarantulas do not produce silk by their feet.”
 — That’s what University of the Republic in Uruguay entomologist Fernando Pérez-Miles says. But other people who do experiments with spiders and look at their feet through high-powered microscopes disagree! People like Stanislav Gorb and Claire Rind disagree. Who is right, who is wrong? We don’t know. But you probably wouldn’t want to sleep over any of their houses.