That Time Paul Shaffer Went Swimming With Martin Luther King Jr.

You sometimes find poignant stories about major historical figures in unexpected places. On Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I'm reminded of a passage from Paul Shaffer's highly entertaining memoir, We'll Be Here For the Rest of Our Lives: A Swingin' Showbiz Saga.

When Paul was a young boy, his Canadian parents enjoyed taking the family to warmer climes on vacation. One year, they ended up in The Bahamas, at the Royal Victoria Hotel in Nassau. Shaffer speaks of arriving, of his father taking him to a jazz club "on the wrong side of the tracks," and relates this story:

The next day Dad spotted Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. by the pool. The great leader was in matching shirt-and-bathing-suit cabana attire. My father approached him and said, "My family and I greatly admire you and would be honored if we could take your picture."

"With pleasure," said Dr. King.

Dad snapped the photo. We all shook hands and went to the lounge chairs. A few minutes later Dr. King entered the pool from the deep end while I entered from the shallow.

Just like that, the dozen or so vacationers, white people all, who were in the pool suddenly got out, as if the water had been contaminated. Dr. King and I stayed in and swam for the next 20 minutes or so.

When I got out, my father took me aside and said, "We're changing hotels. I'm not staying anywhere the guests display this kind of racist behavior."

... When I told this story to my son, Will, who was nine at the time and studying the civil rights movement in school, he was puzzled and said, "Dad, how could Dr. King stay at that hotel when there were segregation laws?"

"Those laws were in the United States, son," I said. "That's why to vacation comfortably, he had to leave his own country."

(Where the ellipsis appears above: Before the modern conclusion of the MLK story, Shaffer told about his family running into Harry Belafonte and daugher Shari the following day, and taking a photo with Belafonte. Decades later Shaffer was musical director at a charity concert, and Belafonte was appearing. Shaffer told Belafonte about meeting him as a child. Belafonte replied, "Impossible, I've never been to Nassua, you must be thinking of Sidney Poitier." Then admitted, a few seconds later, he was pulling Shaffer's leg.)

'A Word to the Wives': Historical Document of 1950s Gender Roles ... That Helped Launch Darren McGavin, Norman Lloyd Careers

The IMDB plot summary for the 1955 advertising short called A Word to the Wives is succinct, and accurate: "The story of two women and how they trick a husband into renovating a kitchen."

But it doesn't do this 13-minute mini-film justice. A Word to the Wives features one of the earlier acting jobs in the career of Darren McGavin (who plays the put-upon husband). It was directed by Norman Lloyd. And the star (and doing the voice-over narration) is Marsha Hunt, who was acting in movies and television from the 1930s into the 2000s.

That's quite a bit of talent for what was a promotional movie sponsored by the American Gas Association, the National Association of Home Builders, and The Woman's Home Companion. The Internet Archive summary of the movie states that the "American Gas Association offered prints of this film for sale to gas utilities to help them coax builders to incorporate kitchens into their new homes."

It's a comical short that shows two wives - one who just got a brand new house with an all-gas kitchen, the other who badly wants the same - hatch a plot to convince the new-kitchen-craver's husband to take care of his woman, too, with an all-gas kitchen.

That's the other part of A Word to the Wives that makes it worth watching all these years later: It's a look back (an astounding look back, probably, for people younger than a certain age) at the gender roles and gender attitudes prevalent in the United States in the 1950s. (The film was released in 1955.)

It's not a work of art or anything. But A Word to the Wives is an interesting historical document of the era, and in the careers of (in particular) McGavin and Lloyd.

Is This the Best Steve Martin Talk Show Appearance Ever?

Steve Martin has been on the American (and world) entertainment scene for a long time now - nearly 50 (!) years. His on-screen career dates to the late 1960s, but he became very famous in the early to mid-1970s. And he's done a lot of talk shows over the years. And Martin typically kills in the talk show setting.

I can recall several iconic Martin appearances on talk shows. There was his Johnny Carson-requested performance of The Great Flydini (his only performance of that act on camera) for one of Carson's final Tonight Shows. There was the Late Night with David Letterman appearance in which Martin showed up with a doctor and begged out of talking to Letterman, feeling sick. Dave offers Steve the chance to lay down and rest in Dave's office, but during periodic check-ins throughout the show we see Martin first planning and then hosting a giant, raucous part in Dave's office.

There are dozens more than come to mind. Of course, humor is a very personal thing, and your mileage may vary. But for my money, Steve Martin's funniest-ever talk show appearance happened in 1980 on Letterman's short-lived morning show. Having worked very hard the night before (so the bit went), Martin is wheeled out in bed. He's asleep, yet clutching a six pack of beer. There is a small, portable TV at the foot of the bed.

Here is Part 1 of the appearance (forgive the very low quality, but clips of Letterman's morning show are difficult to come by):

The phony commercial, from a TV special Martin is plugging, is hilarious: It's for "Honeymoon Butter," which is, literally, made with love.

If anything, the laughs get bigger (for me, anyway) in Part 2, once Martin, still clad in pajamas, leaves the bed for the chair next to Letterman:

It's easy to see why Letterman became such a late-night legend, why Steve Martin was always one of his favorite guests ... but also why Letterman's morning show was canceled after just a few months. Imagine the people watching daytime TV in 1980 — accustomed to only seeing game shows, soap operas and talk shows like Phil Donahue and Gary Collins — stumbling on this.

Today in Cute: Hand-Feeding Grapes to a Baby Beaver

Have some grapes around and want to get rid of them quick? Leave it to beaver.

Or, rather, feed them to this baby beaver. Her name is Hazel, and she lives at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington (pdza.org).

The Helicone: Science or Art? Plenty of Both

What is the Helicone? You wouldn't be wrong if you called it an art piece, although a mobile one, one meant to be handled. And you wouldn't be wrong if you called the Helicone a toy, although a science toy, one meant to be pondered, one meant to excite wonder.

Whatever you call it, the Helicone is cool and beautiful. The Helicone, which you can buy on Amazon.com,comes looking like this:

But when you take it out of the box, set it on its base and spin it, the Helicone takes one of two forms:

On the left is a helix, on the right is a cone. The "helicone." Spin it and it transforms from one shape into the other.

The Helicone is made by a company called playableART - which calls it an "interactive kinetic sculpture" - and was designed by John Edmark. How does it work? Here's the best explanation I could find: "Through the use of internal stops, each arm is constrained to rotate a maximum of 68.75° (1/2 the Golden Angle) relative to its neighboring layer." Here's some more company text:

Inspired by nature, based on the Fibonacci Numbers and the Golden Angle, helicone not only represents beautiful botanical structures but also provides stunning transformations before your very eyes. Watch it magically transform between a helix and a pine cone with a simple, quick twist.

To really appreciate the beauty of the Helicone, you have to see it in action:

And here's one more video:

You want one now, don't you? I sure do. You can find it, and similar things, on Amazon.

This Puppy Wants Its Doggie Bed Back From that Damn Cat!

Don't you just hate it when all you want to do is curl up in your bed but something's standing in your way? In the case of this adorable French bulldog puppy, it's a cat that's standing in the way! Kitty has claimed the doggie bed, and doesn't want to give it up. Will our intrepid puppy manage to get that damn cat out of its bed? Let's find out:

The Astonishingly Beautiful Chand Baori Stepwell In Rajasthan, India

(Photo by selmerv/Flickr)

The photos on this page are of the Chand Baori, an architectural marvel of ancient and astonishing beauty located in the Indian state of Rajasthan.

(Photo by lumiere/Flickr)

Just what is Chand Baori, and where do all those steps lead? Chand Baori is a stepwell, and all those steps lead to water. A stepwell is, really, exactly what the word says: a well reached by a series of steps. Rather than dropping a bucket via pulleys down into a narrow, vertical shaft, and pulling it back up to get water, stepwells allow many people access at the same time to the water at the bottom of the steps. Lots of people can climb down those steps, fill a bucket or other receptacle with water, and climb back up. Hey, we never said it would be easy!

Chand Baori is one of the deepest - and certainly most elaborate and beautiful - stepwells in the world. It is located, more specifically, in the village of Abhaneri, near Jaipur, India. It was completed circa 800 AD - making it around 1,200 years old - and the stairs descend the equivalent of 13 stories. There are 3,500 steps.

And at the bottom of all those steps there is still water today:

(Photo by doron/Wikimedia Commons)

However, the Chand Baori stepwell is no longer used as a source of drinking water today. It's a fantastic tourist attraction, though.

One of the four walls of the stepwell is given to pavilions and a temple:

(Photo by selmerv/Flickr)

Many of the photos of Chand Baori make it appear as though the staircases are very narrow and the sides of the stepwell are quite steep. But in reality the steps aren't nearly as scary as they appear depending on the angle of the photo. For example:

(Photo by stuartjaksharp/Flickr)

No matter how you look at it, the Chand Baori stepwell is an architectural wonder, and a destination of great beauty and awe.

(Photo by Vetra/Wikimedia Commons)

(Photo by arpitaroy8/Wikimedia Commons)

(Photo by Joel Leimer/Flickr)

7 Kittens, Synchronized

Here's a video to make you smile: seven Maine coon kittens, sitting together, watching a shiny object that they simply can't turn away from, and moving in synchronized fashion:

This Dog Snores Like They Do in Cartoons and Old Comedies

The dog in this video is an English bulldog. Its owner posted the clip to YouTube with the comment, "My English Bulldog, Apollo, snoring after a long day at the beach. He often snores like this." What does the headline mean? Well, you'll know exactly what it means after you listen to Apollo the bulldog snoring:

Meet the Chimp Act the Rolling Stones Had to Follow at Some of their Earliest American Concerts

There's a terrific article in the San Antonio Express-News edition of Jan. 7, 2014, written by Hector Saldana, about one of the Rolling Stones' earliest concert appearances in America. Alas, the article is hidden behind a pay wall.

But the gist of it is this: At their San Antonio appearance on June 6, 1964, the Rolling Stones were heckled, booed, hissed, pelted with various objects — and those weren't even the biggest indignities.

What was? They had to follow a trained chimpanzee act onto the stage.

The Stones were in San Antonio in June 1964 to play a series of 20-minute sets at something called the Teen Fair of Texas. They were on a bill that included country music's George Jones and a chimp act that was actually very well-known at the time called the Marquis Chimps.

The Marquis Chimps appeared as guests on early television variety shows, performed in commercials and movies. And, obviously, they did live performances on stage. They also co-starred (with, among others, Jack Weston) in a sitcom called The Hathaways that ran on ABC from late 1961 through Spring 1962.

And they were regulars on the Jack Benny Show; he continued performing with them for years, even doing a TV special in 1963 called Jack Benny and the Marquis Chimps. This is who the Rolling Stones followed on stage in one of their very first American gigs:

Saldana's article quotes Stones bassist Bill Wyman's memoir about the Stones' 1964 San Antonio sets: "Everyone got a poor reception from a mixed crowd of cowboys and kids. We had to go on after some performing monkeys. What the hell were we doing there? People didn't know whether to take us serious or as a joke."

Saldana brings up something odd, though: In Keith Richards' book, he mis-remembers the act they followed as circus seals; then-Stones-manager Andrew Oldham also told Saldana that they followed trained seals. Great examples of how easily malleable memories are.

More of the Marquis Chimps: Here they are in a 1950s-era commercial for Red Rose Tea:

Their June 1964 appearances in San Antonio weren't the only trying gigs for the Stones on their short swing through the United States. They were openly mocked in at least one television appearance by the show's very famous host.

Here's a great look at the Rolling Stones as they appeared in 1964, from an episode of the Dean Martin Show, filmed at the Hollywood Palace. At the end of the song, a clearly unimpressed and disinterested Martin says, "Aren't they great?" and rolls his eyes, which draws a laugh from the crowd: