Re: Wizard

1

Wow! No more dry ice and getting the ring to fit over the ball. I don't know how long it took to hit the NY market after 1951 but I was totally engrossed in that show from the first time I saw it.


Posted by: Biohazard | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 7:20 PM
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2

Wow...now that is a man I thought had died 25 years ago. Even when I was watching the show as a kid I thought it was a rerun from way back and the man was probably dead by now.

Popularizing is a hard job.


Posted by: Cryptic Ned | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 7:21 PM
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3

He was a total pedophile, though.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 7:29 PM
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4

Classy.


Posted by: Wade | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 7:34 PM
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5

I try.


Posted by: Beefo Meaty | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 7:35 PM
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6

The orignal title of this post was much better. Who downgraded it, and why?


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 8:07 PM
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7

Was it "Wizard Cocksucker"?


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 8:11 PM
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8

6 - Yes, it was a variation of 7. I just couldn't do it.


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 8:16 PM
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9

Misogynist.


Posted by: Brock Landers | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 8:18 PM
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10

8: yeesh. Sorry. I will atone by saying Mr. Wizard was awesome , and I used to watch the show after school right before Saved by the Bell, which shows that Generation Awesome! isn't completely bankrupt. We had science once!


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 8:34 PM
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11

Oh! And my favorite! The "I bet you can't cut a hole in this piece of paper big enough to walk through".

I'm going to go bathe in nostalgia.


Posted by: Becks | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 9:01 PM
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12

I have longed used "to Mr. Wizard [someone]" as a description of an annoying conversational habit of asking someone for a specific answer to a question without providing all the necessary information. Mr. Wizard was always telling neighbor kids to "Blow up this balloon and make it fill the inside of this bottle!" and the kid just blows and blows, not making any headway until Mr. Wizard sneers, "I didn't say you couldn't use a straw," which straw he'd yank out of a drawer somewhere. Or, "Hold this paper in your hands and, without moving your hands, rip the paper into three equal strips!" Disastrous attempts and frustration yield only to "I didn't say you couldn't use your mouth."

There's my reminiscence. I loved him at the time, but now I think he was kind of a prick to those kids.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 9:57 PM
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13

I watched it on Nickelodeon all the time. RIP.


Posted by: Gaijin Biker | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 9:59 PM
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14

Oh, he did not sneer.


Posted by: redfoxtailshrub | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 10:01 PM
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15

14: It felt like it. I longed to be one of those kids, but I feared his censure.


Posted by: A White Bear | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 10:04 PM
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16

I longed to be one of those kids, but I feared his censure.

Thus was formed your psychosexual profile.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 10:05 PM
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17

Thus was formed your psychosexual profile.

Said the prescriptivist pot to the kettle.


Posted by: TJ | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 10:38 PM
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18

12: But the necessary information was always at least implicit. I was too to young remember how snide he was about it, but I do remember that it caused me to earnestly question the parameters of all sorts of tasks, earning my parents many phone calls.


Posted by: foolishmortal | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 11:35 PM
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19

Few know that he wrote Contingency, Irony and Solidarity.

Needless to say, he never contemplated a mechanical transcription of the original; he did not propose to copy it. His admirable intention was to produce a few pages which would coincide--word for word and line for line--with those of Richard Rorty.


Posted by: Wrongshore | Link to this comment | 06-12-07 11:56 PM
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20

The very title of CIS reveals that its existence is not necessary the way that Hamlet, for example, is.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06-13-07 12:00 AM
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21

The Being of the very title was already always being being, ben. Get serious.


Posted by: Stanley | Link to this comment | 06-13-07 12:10 AM
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22

Rorty this, Rorty that: it seems like you can't talk about any pedophile's name these days without Rorty coming up. I just meant to say that I tried to copy a cursive C through twenty sheets of paper and my teacher got annoyed.


Posted by: foolishmortal | Link to this comment | 06-13-07 12:14 AM
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23

Don't you mean you tried to make ten carbon copies at once?


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06-13-07 12:16 AM
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24

I'll ontological your difference, Stanley. Watch it.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06-13-07 12:17 AM
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25

I should have checked before assuming that Hamlet numbered among the necessary works: they are actually less obvious. I cannot imagine the universe without Edgar Allan Poe's exclamation: Ah, bear in mind this garden was enchanted! or without the Bateau ivre or the Ancient Mariner.


Posted by: ben w-lfs-n | Link to this comment | 06-13-07 12:19 AM
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26

There was no carbon involved: just one poorly formed cursive "C" and,above it, a bunch of ripped, elementary-school lined paper which represented what to this day I maintain are 19 other poorly formed cursive "C"s.


Posted by: foolishmortal | Link to this comment | 06-13-07 12:23 AM
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27

The few of you still masturbating to Mr. Wizard had better wrap it up.


Posted by: Standpipe Bridgeplate | Link to this comment | 06-13-07 7:06 AM
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28

I would like to know how, exactly, David Milch pitched John from Cincinnati.


Posted by: slolernr | Link to this comment | 06-13-07 7:08 AM
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29

I never got why Borges' narrator should count Coleridge among the necessary works. "Mariner" and "Kublai Khan" seem to me pleasant but on a way lower plane than e.g. Poe or Eliot.


Posted by: Clownaesthesiologist | Link to this comment | 06-13-07 7:16 AM
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30

18: 12: Exactly. I figured if he set out a task it was possible. Then the idea was to find/make the tools needed.


Posted by: Biohazard | Link to this comment | 06-13-07 7:31 AM
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