Third day into 2010 and nothing's hit me yet. To my utmost surprise, I created 137 blog entries last year, starting January 11, something I would not have predicted at the close of 2008. So much for predictions. I seldom try and make them.
While time is a continuum, I always see a gap at the end of the year. If I were to draw 12/31 and January 1, I would never put them next to each other. There would be a ravine, or something that would need to be crossed before you got to 1/1. Maybe that has something to do with hanging a calendar. You have to take the old one down and put the new one up. And you probably aren't doing that at 12:01 A.M. January 1st.
So, it took a few days, but Margalit Fox's NYT obituary on Curtis Allina gets the year off to a start. I like to read nearly everything she writes, but I first misread the headline and thought Mr. Allina was an 'Executive Who Put Heads on Prez, Is Dead at 87." I somewhat imagined a baker who was designing inauguration commemorative cookies.
No, it's Pez, not Prez, and apparently Mr. Allina was responsible for designing, promoting, whatever, the Pez candy dispenser that became so popular when I was a kid. And apparently, the item is still made, and there is, guess what, a robust collectible business in acquiring vintage Pez dispensers. Web sites ensue.
My daughter on casual questioning confirms Pez is currently available in the supermarket. This fully explains my ignorance. Others in my family go to the supermarket, and they do such a great job at it that I've never challenged their right to continue without me. I fairly hate supermarkets.
Margalit, in her mixture of history and current cultural use, reveals that Pez is from an Austrian company, and that Pez is a contracted word for the German word for peppermint: pfefferminz. Marketing at its finest.
The collectible part doesn't surprise me, but I really had no idea the company was still around and churning out tomorrow's memorabilia as we speak. There's a Barack Obama headed Pez dispenser, so Pez and Prez is not really such a leap. Clicking my way through the pictures I came across the one I used above. It doesn't have a title anywhere near that of who it reminds me of: Rod R. Blagojevich, the former governor of Illinois who recently resigned.
They couldn't have known it, but they got him to a T, with what looks like a dead animal haircut on his head.
I've got to look at Pez dispensers a little more closely as a source of social satire.
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