I have two things to share today: A bit of nostalgia, and a Dark Secret.

I really MISS "The Ed Sullivan Show". Really. Topo Gigio-the little Italian Mouse, Senor Wences, Belgian circus performers spinning plates on poles...and the COMICS. Especially the Borscht Belt comics, those vaudevillian masters ov yiddishkeit who brought an oddly foreign-yet-familiar flavor to their humor:.Alan King, Myron Cohen; and Jack Carter, f'rinstance. Myron Cohen, a fine Irish name...I REVELLED in his stories: bizarre, convoluted, and unique in their comic logic. Which leads me to my Dark Secret.

I really do NOT like "King of the Hill". I find it crude, tacky and needlessly ugly. It is "Beavis and Butthead" Lite, and I TRULY do not enjoy B&B, but my terrible little secret is:

I was Bobby Hill.

I was a chunky, crewcut blond elementary school kid, with a penchant for class clowning. Today, I would be drugged beyond caring on Ritalin; back in the early 60s, I got a desk near the teacher. At recess on Monday, I would regale my classmates with the tales I learned from Cohen and Co. "I like privacy!!" (My father and grandmother would be irked when I did stuff like that at home:"If you studied your lessons the way you study that foolishness...") I loved the cadence, the accent, the PUNCHLINES!
Most of all, I loved the laughter. I remembered every line, every gesture, and I'm SURE that few if any of my classmates got it. But we all laughed. I will not debate that some of it may have been AT rather than WITH -I was, after all, the chunky kid who had to sit near the teacher- but it was laughter.

A merry heart doeth good like medicine. If I can keep the laughter up, I'll live FOREVER!