The Mom and Pop Culture Shop

Bill Boner

He cheated on his law school exam and wasn't allowed to take the bar exam, but still went on to a great political career in Nashville. He was elected to Congress and later as Mayor of Nashville, at which point he went on the Donahue show with his mistress, an aspiring country singer, to whom he was engaged, even though he was still married to his third wife, who had no idea anything was going on.

The people of Nashville didn't like this one bit. Bill Boner was not reelected, even though he ran for several minor offices, one of which was something on the level of dog catcher. After that didn't pan out, Bill had many jobs including delivering newspapers and the Yellow Pages.

Boner memorabilia is all over Nashville estate sales, and as far as I know I am the biggest collector of it. I have a Boner t-shirt, Boner nail files, Boner hats and Boner fans; I am a Boner fan. A fun party game is to make the bone in the Boner logo look like a penis, which is surprisingly easy if you have a blue Sharpie.

And that's your Nashville moment for today.

Rosetta Stone

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results. I used to read 16 magazine even though every issue was exactly the same. Each issue featured nine million pictures of Shaun Cassidy, six million pictures of Leif Garrett, and maybe one or two million of The Bay City Rollers. But occasionally there was one picture, usually with no explanation, of some band no one had ever heard of. Rosetta Stone is a good example of that phenomenon.  I'm sure their publicist paid pretty good money to get their picture in the mag, especially for a full color poster sized pull-out.

Anyway, after writing that last paragraph, I did five minutes of research and found a fan site for Rosetta Stone and guess what, they opened for the Bay City Rollers, the best band in the history of the universe, and if not the universe, at least the best band ever in the history of Scotland.

Oh my God, I just realized that the one holding his crotch is Ian Mitchell, who was also in the Rollers. It all makes sense now and Rosetta Stone is my new favorite band of all time.

Jerry Lewis by Margaret Keane

Click on the image for a larger and scarier view.

Jerry Lewis commissioned this painting of himself and his family and pets from Margaret Keane, who was the original artist of the big-eyed-waif-kid-holding-a-sick-kittycat genre. I'm not sure whose idea the harlequin tights was, but if you notice, Mrs. Lewis is not wearing them. I'm sure she'd had just enough of Jerry's shenanigans and crackpot theories for one day that day. I do know, or have read, however that this was the Lewis family's Christmas card one year.

Notice Jerry's apparent lack of genitalia under the tights in this painting, which I think is pretty odd, considering it probably takes a lot of balls to pose in jester tights.