Jim Nolan's Blog

The 1970s Just Ended

As long as there was Tab Cola, the decade wasn’t over.

You were beautiful to me.

 

I can still hear the jingle in my head.

“Tab, Tab Cola, what a beautiful drink. Tab, Tab Cola, for beautiful people. Tab, you’re beautiful to me. Real cola taste, just one calorie.”

In the commercial, a beautiful bikini-clad woman walks towards camera from the water, wet from the sea but somehow holding a can of… Tab. Apparently, if you drink Tab, one calorie Tab, you will look like her or I suppose the male equivalent. “Promise, large promise,” said Samuel Johnson, “is the soul of an advertisement.” Becoming beautiful because of a soda pop is a large promise.

In my house growing up, we loved Tab. Dad especially. It was the one soda we were allowed to have, maybe because it didn’t have sugar and tasted bitter. No Coke or Pepsi for us. We were beautiful people, becoming more beautiful with each lousy-tasting can.

Occasionally we might drink a Fresca, which was, like Tab, a Cola-Cola Company product. It was another one-calorie drink, and also tasted terrible, which made it acceptable in our house. The cyclamates gave both sodas a weird aftertaste and probably grew polyps as they traveled down into our sugar-free gullets.

“Fresca” means “fresh” in Italian and Spanish. I bet the naming experts had a good chuckle over that one. If you opened a can of Fresca today that had been sitting in the sun on an AMC Gremlin dashboard since 1971, the potassium benzoate, Ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid and glycerol ester of wood rosin would have aged it like a fine wine, if they didn’t dissolve the can and the car first.

Both Tab and Fresca were truly representative of the times. The Me Decade, Tom Wolfe famously called it, but it was also a decade when Americans decided that they had missed out on all the fun hippies had in the 1960s, and decided to create their own unique and insane version of it. Even Lawrence Welk decorated his TV set like Timothy Leary had slipped the entire staff peyote. Wunnerful, wunnerful. And if you look at it now, psychedelic. They probably had a lot of Tab backstage in the fridge.

As of December, Tab is as kaput as Shake-A-Puddin’, having outlasted it by decades. Of course, Tab had the advantage of being physically addictive, having caffeine, the only reason anyone would drink it more than once. To me its demise somehow marked the true end of the 70s. As long as Tab was out there, the decade was hanging on, like Marimekko and weed still give life to the 1960s.

But the 70s will never die, even if Tab does. As long as there’s bad taste, the decade will be with us, like the smell of English Leather lingering in your dad’s closet. As long as a double knit suit hangs in a vintage clothing store, the spirit of the 70s is still strong. Until the last orange shag carpeting is ripped out, revealing a wood floor. The last Ford Pinto gets crushed. The last time “Disco Duck!” gets played on Spotify. When the last beaded macrame planter is taken off its ceiling hook.

We won’t have Tab, but we will always have the jingle. Which raises the question, what are the beautiful people supposed to drink now? I can’t imagine anybody emerging from the ocean with a can of Mello Yello. No, our country’s signature Tab beauty will now begin to fade away, like Dorian Gray once his portrait is destroyed. It was a good run.

Boring Is the New Exciting

I can’t imagine anything less interesting to me than something interesting. 

After the last two-and-a-half years of pandemic and political insanity, the last thing I need is stimulation of any kind. I’d rather be pleasantly numbed. My mind-altering substance of choice is YouTube. 

I think there are a lot of people who share my desire for a few precious, placid moments. One of my favorite YouTube channels is called, appropriately enough, The Boring Channel. If it was any more boring, it would be test patterns. But, and here’s the thing, it is irresistibly boring. You can’t stop watching it.

The host is a good-humored and kind-hearted lawn care expert. In each video, he shows up at a house with a massively overgrown lawn and proceeds to mow it. But that’s not all, not by any means. He also edges the walks.

 Who could possibly watch an hour of something like that? Well, lots of us. Each video has thousands of views. One has 10 million!

So I sit and watch as a neglected-looking yard is returned to something close to its former glory. The host skips no step, even though he’s doing it for free. By the time he leaves, he’s taken the same care and shown the same attention to detail the White House lawn receives before the Easter Egg roll. 

I wonder where he got the idea to do this? “I’m going to post videos of me cutting grass” does not seem to pop out as a particularly good idea, at least to me. Where are the superheroes? Explosions? Spoiled rich folks yelling at each other? Maybe he sensed that nowadays that kind of exciting is getting a little boring. 

Still, every episode does have the “hero’s journey,” maybe the oldest plot ever. Hero shows up, battles the bad guys (grass, weeds, entropy) and restores balance to the universe (suburban block). It’s exactly like The Odyssey, had Odysseus traveled home from the Trojan War on a riding mower and then power washed the palace sidewalks. 

I’m half inspired to start my own channel. I could film our Roomba on its route around the living room. This might be even more dull, and thus more popular, than lawn care. At the end, I would empty the filter compartment, so each video would have a satisfying conclusion. The comments section would be boring too, like, “Gee, look at all that dog hair. Labradoodle?” A comment like that could get dozens of likes, because the viewers will have found the boring they were looking for. Quality boring. Exceptional boring. Boring that never gets boring. 

Or I could just sit on the couch and watch more YouTube. There is also a channel I like of a guy in the deep woods silently carving wooden spoons. It doesn’t get any better—that is, duller—than that.

Tab Cola Piece in Funny Times

I'm always excited to have a piece run in the FT. This one is about the late and great soda pop for beautiful people. Click to enlarge.

 

Sympathy for Gríma Wormtongue

It starts with his first name

In the J.R.R. Tolkien novels and Peter Jackson films of The Lord of the Rings, Gríma Wormtongue is portrayed as a devious, sniveling bad guy, with greasy dark hair and an all-around bad attitude.

By far, he’s my favorite character.

I find it easy to sympathize with him. Let’s start with his last name. It couldn’t have been easy growing up a Wormtongue. On the mailbox at the foot of the driveway, there’s a big “Wormtongue” written on the side. People ride their horses by it every day. I’m not sure it sets up a notion in visitors’ minds that this is a family to be trusted. “Let’s get Wormtongue’s thoughts on it,” is probably a question that never got asked. No wonder he went into the spy and betrayal business.

I can imagine the poor guy trying to mumble his name to folks he just met. “Wait, what did you say your last name was again?

You know he never went James Bond with it. “Wormtongue. Gríma Wormtongue.”

Also, the poor guy was in love with the beautiful Éowyn, the king’s niece. Unlike him, she had really nice hair, like she just stepped out of a L’Oréal shampoo commercial. In the unlikely case they did end up getting hitched, I’m guessing she would not have taken his last name. Éowyn Wormtongue. Nah.

In the movies, actor Brad Dourif plays poor Gríma. While he does an excellent job, you should know he’s the same actor who voices the serial-murderer doll Chucky in the “Child’s Play” movies. I mean, c’mon. Give the character a break.

I would have cast Tom Hanks in the role.

Gríma comes to a bad end in the books and movies. In the books, it’s hinted that he not only killed Lotho Sackville-Baggins, but may have eaten him for good measure. Well, we all make mistakes. Lotho’s nickname, by the way, was “Lotho Pimple.” So he had challenges of his own. In the luxury of hindsight, Gríma should have bonded with Lotho, rather than eaten him.

Gríma comes to a grisly end himself, getting killed by hobbit arrows after finally killing the evil wizard Saruman. In the movie version, he stabs Saruman with a knife in the tower Orthanc, only be be shot by the somewhat dim-witted elf Legolas. They’re all a little trigger-happy where Gríma is concerned.

I can only hope that he was eventually recognized as the hero he was for finally offing his tormentor and doing the denizens of Middle Earth a big favor. I hope they buried him in some leafy Shire spot with a handsome tombstone.

It would be nice if they left his last name off it.

Squirrels Gone Wild

Forgoing acorns, they bite the Big Apple. 

Photo by Caleb Martin on Unsplash

Squirrels have quickly gone from our country’s most unusual airline service animal to the biggest menace to society since murder hornets.

In the Queens, NY neighborhood of Rego Park, they have been attacking residents and, rudely, biting them. Even if these people had coated themselves in a mixture of suet and sunflower seeds, it’s unusual behavior for squirrels. Naturalists are baffled—even David Attenborough has wisely stayed above the fray. I thought I’d clear things up , based on a lifetime of backyard squirrel observation. Bird feeders have been my Gombe.

I have two theories. The first is a simple one, you’ve probably already come up with it yourself. These are New York City squirrels. They have an attitude. But these squirrels live in Queens, so they they have a big acorn on their shoulders.

Manhattan is the most glamorous borough, Brooklyn, the hippest, the Bronx, the toughest, and Staten Island is where the Wu-Tang Clan is from.

Queens, maybe because its many charms are frequently overlooked, has become the most pugnacious borough, in any of the 138 languages spoken there. Archie Bunker lived in Queens. As did our former president and current governor. Why should the squirrels behave differently from any of the other locals?

Also, Queens has the best food, and the squirrels are getting what, seeds? Seeds they have to scrounge from feeders meant for birds? What makes birds so special? Do they plant acorns that grow into mighty oaks? No. They sit in the oak trees and flit about. Hardly a constructive use of time. You think they thank the squirrels for their leafy habitat? Pffft.

I won’t even get into birds’ relaxed sanitary behavior, but it’s the reason many of us wear hats in the city.

Is there an Audubon Society for squirrels? I’m not aware of any popular rodent clubs. Or, for that matter, rodent watchers, except involuntarily in the subways. At least Pizza Rat got something good to eat.

It may be a better question to ask why the squirrels haven’t been acting like this previously. They have a lot of beefs.

In due time, they’ll probably chill out and constrain themselves to just insulting dogs from the safety of a high branch. This is what squirrels enjoy doing all over the country, and it’s not difficult to imagine that Queens squirrels have a special knack for it.

At least they’ll be using their words this time.

 

 

 

The Monty Hall Problem Is My Problem

Behind curtain #1 is a devilish math test

Monty Hall, the late host of “Let’s Make a Deal,” may not be the first person who comes to mind as someone associated with complicated probability theory. But to mathematicians, he’s as well known as Stephen Hawking, Katherine Johnson, or even the jerk responsible for so many unfortunate results on my geometry tests: Euclid.

This fame derives from the “Monty Hall Problem.” My son told me, “anyone with a passing interest in math has heard of it.”

Naturally, I hadn’t heard of it.

But Monty Hall will be known for the Monty Hall Problem long after his TV show is forgotten, like Arnold Palmer will be known as a drink, not a golfer.

It’s a problem to explain the Problem, but I’ll try. In “Let’s Make a Deal,” contestants are asked to choose what’s behind one of three curtains. Behind one of them, there’s a big prize. Behind the other two, a clunker, often a goat.

However, before he would reveal whether you chose correctly or not, Monty would reveal what was behind one of the other curtains that was not the new Ford Mustang convertible or trip to fabulous Puerto Vallarta. And then he’d ask you if you wanted to stay with your choice, or switch to the other remaining curtain.

He’s trying to trick you, right? With two curtains remaining, the odds are obviously 50/50. Why change and be embarrassed when the goat appears?

Here’s why. Because if you do change, you have a two-in-three chance of winning. And that is what makes people’s head explode, mine included.

How can this possibly be correct?

Apparently, and I say apparently because I don’t fully understand it, it’s because Monty knows what’s behind each door. And he’s removing a goat for you. So if you stay, you have your original one in three odds. If you change, acting on that new information, your odds improve considerably.

That’s the best I can do, people. I dropped math after the 10th grade.

By the way, no one understood the Monty Hall Problem better than Monty Hall. He surely liked math. He had a B.S. degree in chemistry and zoology. Monty and a partner got rich developing and producing “Let’s Make a Deal,” so at a minimum he got good at counting.

Beyond being smart, he was nice—Canadian, like Alex Trebek—and helped raise over a billion dollars for charity.

Hall didn’t see the problem from a purely mathematical standpoint, because he knew he didn’t always play by “the rules.” He could make or not make the offer to switch depending on how he was feeling that day. It kept things fresh, and he didn’t have a problem with that, or with the math behind knowing which curtain to pick.

After all, “Let’s Make a Deal” was all about math. What are the odds you can do better by trading for something else? If you had a head for figures, you could make out pretty well on that show, then and now.

My best case scenario? I wind up with a goat.

 

Squirrel Piece in January Funny Times

Thrilled to have this piece run in the FT. All my favorite ones have my dad in them. Beautifully drawn and colored cartoon by Six Chix's  Isabella Bannerman.

Squirrel King: Birdseed, Mayhem and Madness

Lions and tigers and squirrels, oh my.

While watching an episode of Netflix’s popular “Tiger King,” my wife casually mentioned that I am the Squirrel King. It’s an identity I embrace, but unlike Joe Exotic, I do not intend to become polygamous, at least not right away. Also, I’m guessing the neighbors might disapprove if I start blowing up gas canisters, even with advance warning.

There is this similarity: many furry mammals depend on me for their happiness. There is a family history to this. My father also used to provide for the squirrels, in his case unwillingly, because until recently, homo sapiens were incapable of outsmarting squirrels. “Squirrel-proof” feeders were joked about at squirrel gatherings, as hilarious, ineffective attempts by humans to favor avian species over them. The feeders not only sustained them with food, but with a sense of superiority to us.

To give the chickadees and cardinals any chance at all, Dad would trap the squirrels and release them at a driving range several miles away. Some of the larger squirrels may have hit a few buckets of balls before beating a well-worn path back to our yard.

Unlike Dad, I have discovered a truly squirrel-proof feeder, no doubt the result of some NASA-developed technology repurposed for sunflower-seed and cracked-corn protection. It’s an invention on par with man’s greatest achievements, breakthroughs like spray cheese or dry shampoo. Squirrels give it the old forest try, and soon give up, discovering that it’s easier for them to eat the seed on the ground that’s been spilled by the birds. I spread a little more of it beneath the feeder, too, resulting in the healthiest, plumpest population of squirrels in the tri-state area.

I imagine that to the birds and squirrels and chipmunks, I am like the horned god Pan in The Wind in the Willows, the beloved Friend and Helper of the woodland creatures. But it’s more likely I am considered the unreliable moron who hasn’t refilled the feeder yet.

To do that, I keep a plastic container holding 40 pounds of seed out on the deck. One day I forgot to put the lid back on, and when I returned 15 minutes later, a squirrel was sitting inside it with a dazed expression. It may have been the most amazing moment of its life, like you or me falling in a vat of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. Its grandchildren have heard the story a million times:

Grandpa: “Why, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Quantities of sunflower seed beyond the dreams of avarice.”

Grandchild: “Did you go and get Grandma?”

Grandpa: “I wanted to.”

My dad’s own squirrel-proofing activities came to an end when his trap captured not another squirrel, but a skunk. As long as the skunk could not lift its tail, Dad was assured, it could not spray him. The skunk had not heard this, however, and Dad got hit. You can just imagine the delight of the squirrels watching from the trees, some of them who no doubt had done time in the trap themselves. Their little paws must have been slapping their knees, if they have knees.

My rapprochement with the greater squirrel community has helped heal this rift between the Nolan family and the family Sciuridae. I may be their King, but I rule with a sense of noblesse oblige, extending these lovely creatures a helping hand in an uncertain world. There’s nothing exotic about it, but I hope my reign will be remembered fondly among my subjects.

I Like Big Bears and I Cannot Lie

In 2020, the grizzly lifestyle is more appealing than ever.

Holly, role model and resident of Katmai National Park, Alaska. Photo: National Park Service.

There’s nothing wrong with being a human, but other species have a better lifestyle. Like Ursus horribilis, the grizzly bear, whose concentration on eating and sleeping give us much to envy and even aspire to. Especially the bears of Katmai National Park in Alaska.

The biggest and baddest of the bunch live near the Brooks River, which come summer is so chock full of organic wild salmon that it puts Whole Foods to shame. You can’t literally walk across the backs of fish to cross the river, but you could walk across the backs of the bears gorging on them.

These are celebrity bears, like Yogi or Boo-Boo. Their every waddle is observed on bear cams, and in October, fans vote for their favorite fatty in the National Park Service’s Fat Bear Week contest, although many bears prefer to think of themselves as big-boned. I’m voting for Chunk today. He’s in the finals against 747, but he’s already down by 1,000 votes. Rotundity is in the eye of the beholder.

Chunk is estimated to weigh 1,100 pounds. When I showed a photo of Chunk to my friend Ron, Ron said Chunk was pregnant. Chunk is a male. He just has a huge gut, and no body shame. The opposite, really. His size lets him stake out the best fishing spots on the river, typically on top of the little waterfalls the salmon must leap over to continue up the river to spawn. Chunk’s giant maw is waiting for them, his incisors flashing like a sashimi chef’s filleting knife. He may eat 90 pounds of raw salmon a day, the same amount you have to eat at Nobu to get a free meal and your photo up on the wall. Imagine Chunk at the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest. Not only would he smash the existing record of 73 dogs in 10 minutes, he’d eat Joey Chestnut, too.

Chunk can’t help himself, and he doesn’t have an eating disorder, either. He has hyperphagia, a condition that doesn’t allow him to feel full. He needs all the fat reserves he can put on, as he’ll wake up in the spring after six months’ hibernation having lost as much as 30% of his weight.

That’s right, six months of uninterrupted sleep. Diet sleep.

And he gets out of holiday gift giving, writing cards, and dinners with family.

Plus, this year, a November election. And a deadly pandemic. I don’t see a downside. If Chunk has room in his den, I hope he’ll shove over and make some space for me. I’m already in a hyperphagia stage, eating banana bread and cannelloni at every opportunity, and using my bulk to dominate the ice cream aisle at Wegmans.

Chunk and I will awaken in late April, with the turning of the earth to spring. The Brooks River will shed its thick ice and once again run free, and the salmon will heed the ancient call to return. Having taken it easy for the winter, we’ll allow ourselves one last moment to take it all in, grateful for nature’s unceasing cycle of death and renewal.

Then, it’s back at it. Those rolls of fat aren’t going to put themselves on.

Sign of Summer

Who can resist a church pie sale?

There are moments in life that leave you flabbergasted at your ridiculous good fortune.

Finding a twenty in an old pair of pants.

Reading Where the Wild Things Are to your kid for the first, or hundredth, time.

The sound of hard rain on an awning, as you sit underneath it.

Goodies, for sure. But they pale to this one: driving down a small town Main Street and seeing a pie sale sign in front of a church. I think I almost got rear-ended as I stomped on the brakes and careened across the road into the parking lot.

The pies went on sale at noon, “until gone.” It was 1:30 already, but the ladies were still there, sitting at a folding table, admiring my skid marks. They had probably seen worse drivers that day. After all, it is a fact universally acknowledged that the best pies are church pies. Any of these pies would be disqualified from The Great British Bake-Off, out of a sense of fairness to other contestants.

The strawberry-rhubarb crumbles were gone, which was crushing. But here were blueberry pies to be had. And I was in Maine.

You can’t get Maine blueberries outside of Maine. They don’t make it that far before they are consumed. Some might come close to the New Hampshire border, but even people who intend to leave the state with them cannot hold out that long. They are tiny and bursting with flavor, what all blueberries aspire to be, just like strawberries want to be wild strawberries in Sweden. They not only do not escape Sweden, they don’t escape the hand that picked them. They’re okay for film titles, but not for sharing.

I was concerned about the pie, because it was early in the season, and Maine blueberries had not yet become available. Would I be stuck with ones from out-of-state? Even New Jersey blueberries? I was embarrassed to ask, so I didn’t.

Upon arriving back at the vacation cabin, I immediately cut myself a slice. Beautiful little blueberries revealed themselves, perhaps frozen from last year’s crop or picked from some secret patch Mainers are not allowed to discuss with visitors. Either way, it was a superb church lady pie. Of course, there is no other kind.

If you are near Acadia National Park this summer, I highly advise you stop by the United Church of Christ in Somesville on Wednesdays at noon.

Better yet, get there at 6:00am. You don’t want to take any chances.

"Raisin Bran" Piece in July Issue of Funny Times

Always exciting to be in the Funny Times! And Isabella had two cartoons in the same issue. Click to enlarge.

The 1950’s Rulebook for Mad Men and Women

The Better Business Bureau’s “Do’s and Don’ts in Advertising Copy” Binder

Every rule and regulation you needed to break, updated yearly.

No one considers the 1950’s a golden age in advertising, except perhaps for the salaries (if you were the right gender, religion, and color to work in the industry). TV was new and money flooded into agencies trying to reach Americans glued to the three networks.

The real creative revolution began in the 1960s. All the rules were broken.

I know because I have the rulebook.

When one of the big agencies I used to work for was moving offices, lots of decades-old artifacts ended up in the trash. That’s where I fished out a thick, three-ring binder, the cover embossed with “Do’s and Don’ts in Advertising Copy: A Looseleaf Service for Advertisers, Advertising Agencies, Broadcasters and Printed Media.”

It was published by the National Better Business Bureau from the early 1950's to the mid-‘60s.

Meant to keep advertisers honest, it lays out the rules for every imaginable product and condition from Abscessed ear (“It is prohibited to represent symptoms result from Vitamin A deficiency”) to Zirconium anti-perspirants (“Must bear warning: If a rash develops, discontinue use”).

There is a special section on “Sensitive Products.” It includes laxatives, toilet tissue, and foundation garments. To protect the public from being offended, “a special sub-committee of the Television Code Review Board has made a report summarizing its initial findings. It has compiled a set of guideposts as techniques to avoid in television commercials and those to seek.”

The sub-committee’s work on laxatives is especially noteworthy. Here is their counsel:

“AVOID — Techniques which over-dramatize the discomforts of requiring a laxative, which emphasize the speed or efficiency or a laxative, which duplicate the mechanics of elimination by charts or props.” (I just have to say that I think this is one of the funniest sentences ever written by a committee, or by anybody, for that matter.)

“SEEK — Techniques which demonstrate the pleasant after effects of the product, and dramatic settings connected with places other than the family bathroom.”

I’m not sure how you’d demonstrate the pleasant “after” effects they mention in bold italic, but it sounds hilarious. “Hey Mom, Grampa’s not grumpy anymore!” My friend Mike had a genius idea for a laxative commercial. It was simple visually, cutting from one closed bathroom door to another to another. To this he wanted to add the music and refrain from The Drifters’ “This Magic Moment,” and then reveal the Ex-Lax logo at the end. It would have been a memorable spot, but you’d never hear the song quite the same way again.

Later in the binder, there are seven more pages of laxative do’s and don’ts.

In the “Drugs and Devices” section, we are told that “Smoking mentholated cigarettes will have no beneficial effect on colds or coughs.” Good to know. Also, “the advertising of cigarettes should not be presented in a manner to convey the impression that cigarette smoking is important to the development of the youth of our country.”

Also:

“The sale of dental plates by mail is neither a practical nor safe procedure, such offers should not be advertised to the public.”

“Despite all claims to the contrary, no preparation or treatment has yet been discovered which will revive hair color once the pigment is gone.”

“Radioactive Waters: A product that does contain any appreciable amount of radium is extremely dangerous to use except under the care of a competent physician.”

“Turtle oil creams process no rejuvenating or other special qualities.”

“Ozone generators should not be advertised as effective germicides.”

“Devices resembling fountain pens or pencils but designed to expel tear gas have been advertised to the public to afford harmless protection against holdups, vicious dogs, etc. The advertising has neglected to state that purchasers of such devices may automatically become lawbreakers in many parts of the country.”

“Kelp is worthless in the treatment of obesity.”

“Although the purpose of using seat belts is to help protect against injury or death, seat belt advertising shall project their advantages in protecting against injury without resulting to purely “scare” type advertising.”

That last directive is insane — choosing “decorum” over saving lives. But the networks probably didn’t want anybody harshing their “Beverly Hillbillies” vibe. And their biggest advertisers, car manufacturers, didn’t want to remind people that in 1966, 50,894 people died in traffic accidents.

The binder was meant to be updated with new pages as best practices changed. And it was hoped that this new-found effort to tell the truth would “stimulate an improvement in relations between advertising and the public,” an ambitious goal not fully realized.

Having worked as an advertising copywriter for years, I can say that we are never asked to say anything untrue, nor do we want to. Clients don’t want to make one sale to a customer, but many, over many years. Telling people the truth is the most powerful way we have of doing that.

That insight came from 1960s ad folks presenting the truth in fresh, witty, and meaningful ways that respected the intelligence of the viewer. Bill Bernbach, George Lois, and Shirley Polykoff weren’t leafing through this binder looking for ideas.

In any case it seems like this “Do’s and Don’t’s” was put on a shelf and never looked at again. The last of the updates was added in 1966. The pages are unmarked, with no underlining, dog ears, or marginalia. Decades old, they look fresh off the printer.

Anyway, if you have any questions about “Fiber Content Disclosure in Hosiery,” “so-called miracle Socket TV Antennas,” or “describing a non-lumber product as wood,” feel free to reach out. I have the information you need. And it’s been waiting 60 years for you.