Let me start this by saying none of this stuff is as entertaining as my office neighbor, H&R Business Editor Scott Perry, singing “CAMELOOOOOT!!”, which he did all last week when the name of the Broadway show (which played Millikin University’s Kirkland Fine Arts Center over the weekend) came up.
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If you missed Rep. Phil Hare’s appearance on “The Daily Show” earlier this month, you can see it here. There’s a nice joke at the expense of the Decatur “We Like It Here” campaign as part of the setup.
Be warned – by my experience, the Comedy Central Motherload media viewer is balky and has a tendency to stop. I still haven’t been able to get more than halfway through the interview, and I get really sick of the Playstation ads that proceed it.
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Look, if you don’t have the Boing Boing blog in your reader already, get it in there. They’ll promptly point you to daily delights like this one, a movie trailer mashup called “A Hard Day’s Night of the Living Dead.” Zombies! Screaming girls!
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Also from Boing Boing: I never knew about The Mad Gasser of Mattoon, even though there’s a 2003 book about him. Events surrounding the gasser’s case took place in 1944, and the Herald & Review has run a few stories about him, but not for a while. (And while I’d guess I would have had to have read those stories when they ran, I have no memory of them.)
From our sister paper in Charleston, an extract from a story that ran on April 1 last year:
In September 1944, several Mattoon families reported feeling sick after smelling an odor in their homes. Although some witnesses reported seeing a suspect near those homes, no one was ever charged in connection with the incidents. Throughout the years, it has been suggested that the whole ordeal was a case of mass hysteria.
Scott Maruna and Loren Coleman wrote a book, “The Mad Gasser of Mattoon,” concluding that the Gasser was Farley Llewellyn, “an outcast and recluse” who never “fit in.” Llewellyn had studied chemistry at the University of Illinois, which the authors believe gave him the knowledge needed to carry out the gassings.
March 26th, 2007 at 7:39 am
I am just sure that a few weeks ago you said that the Geico caveman was played by a guy named Jef Daniels. Yet this past weekend in the Sunday paper Parade magazine, the caveman is played by an actor named John Lehr. Care to comment?
March 26th, 2007 at 8:23 am
I saw that. Clearly, the Internet sources I was using were incorrect. I still can’t find any references to Lehr other than on his Web site, but it’s clearly him on his site.
Jeff Daniel Phillips and Ben Weber were the names that kept coming up in my original research for my entry three weeks ago.
It’s interesting that while Geico keeps using this campaign to apparent great success (going so far as creating a Caveman’s Crib Web site), there’s very little record of who’s playing whom in the commercials. I didn’t realize until today that it’s Talia Shire (Adrian from the “Rocky” films) playing the therapist, for example.
March 26th, 2007 at 9:15 am
Perhaps you werenot exactly incorrect, perhaps there is more than one. Suggestion — now that yor “favorite Pothole” blog is gone (too soon, I too was going to vote for the crater in the turn around area in Fairview Park that has been there for years and is only getting bigger — how much does a pile of rock cost to fill it in? But I digress), how about creating a “My favorite abandoned building in Decatur ” blog? I would like to start it off with the brick building that was once apts. behind the old pizza place (Godfather’s?) at the corner of 22nd and Rt. 36 . The dead tree in front only adds to its pathetic state of outstanding abandonment and disrepair.
March 26th, 2007 at 12:52 pm
Rather off the subject but since it was brought up —- I cringe every time I see the little looped area slightly southeast of the pavilion in Fairview Park. There are SEVERAL huge and growing potholes there, not just one. Ihave had gravel put down in my driveway twice now and I was pleasantly surprised that it was much cheaper than I thouhgt. Around $200, much cheaper than most people’s Ameren electric bills. Probably cheaper than the cost of the plants that were put in around the refurbished duck pond (now sprouting weeds including THISTLE, an illegal noxious weed, because they were not kept up and taken care of after they were put in). Certainly cheaper than extending the bicycle path used by less than 7 percent of the population by 100 feets. Certainly cheaper than closing off Lincoln Park Drive, the last good through street on this west side. So simple a caveman could figure it out, but apparently the Decatur Pork District can’t. Yes, that’s “Pork”, not a typo. we always refer to it as the Decatur PORK district because of all the foolish and wasteful spending that goes on there. As far as my favorite abandoned vacant buidling, how about the boarded up house next to Long John Silver’s on Eldorado? I thought it being on a main street where so many people pass by it, surely it would not be left like that so long, wrong! Does it take finding a dead body in something or a big chain ready to build something, anything new in Decatur to get anything changed/fixed/altered/moved?
March 26th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
I watched the entire interview with Rep. Hare. (P.S. I was fortunate not to have any technology difficulties.) My, oh my, was that hysterical. I have never had the opportunity to watch his show, but it really was quite interesting to see the spin he put on it all.