Nothing new under the sun, or on the air

Long before Conan O'Brien's nightly zaniness, another comedian of Irish descent from the Boston area also made audiences howl with laughter. His name was Fred Allen and his medium was radio. Like O'Brien, Allen (1894-1956) had a variety show that over the years took on  different names but kept the same wackiness. As with O'Brien's show, news stories were fodder for jokes and routines, there was a sidekick (his wife, Portland Hoffa, who would greet him with a hearty "Misssss-ter Allll-llennnn!") and characters galore, not all of whom were politically correct (Mrs. Nussbaum, for example). But while O'Brien thrives on TV, Allen never made a successful transition from radio. Under the bright lights, he looked old and tired and baggy-eyed, and he seemed to lack the verve he brought to radio. But where would O'Brien's show -- and those of his predecessors -- be without the pioneering absurdity of a very funny man named Fred Allen.

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A couple years back, I nodded off during the movie version of "The Da Vinci Code," so it was only fitting that the other day I nodded off during the sequel, "Angels & Demons."

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My favorite Michael Jackson song is the poignant "She's Out of My Life." And you can't even moonwalk to it.

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Homer Simpson is my role model.

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I love the Heineken TV ad featuring a bunch of drunks singing in a taxi.

Exhaustion, thy name is Maxwell

Whew. My wife and I have just spent three days taking care of our 5-year-old grandson, Maxwell. Or maybe he was taking care of us. In any event, here's what he did:

* Built a Lego city in about an hour. That same task would have taken me a month. That is, a month before I gave up and threw the pieces against a wall.

* Went to Canobie Lake Park in Salem, N.H., where he rode the bumper cars (the Dodgem) six times in a row, often ignoring the traffic because he was busy looking up at the mechanism that causes a spark and propels the cars.

* Announced a career change. Instead of being a train engineer, with his grandparents as his assistants (presumably shoveling in the coal), he wants to join the State Police and operate the command center that is located within a police truck.

* Slept fitfully for a couple of hours, sending the bedsheets and pillows flying, then slept like a motionless angel for a couple of hours, then repeated the process.

* Instructed the plumber on how to tame the disaster that occurred when our outside faucet wouldn't shut off and our yard was being flooded. The plumber appreciated Maxwell's  instructions, acknowledging them with an angry grunt.

It was a marvelous three days, and I think I will recover nicely after an uninterrupted week of sleep.

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A couple of decades ago, when my daughter (a.k.a. Maxwell's mother) was about 13, I was practicing Michael Jackson's moonwalk in our kitchen when she looked up and said, "Why don't you be like other fathers and play chess or something."

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Now that the 40th anniversary of Woodstock is coming up, expect to hear from many great pretenders claiming that they were there. If all the people who say they attended the music festival were really there, the ground would have caved in, sending the attendees to the center of the earth.

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I never see anyone smoking a pipe anymore. I abhor smoking in any form, but I always thought pipe smokers looked kind of cool.

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My wife prefers to bring junk into the house by going to yard sales. I prefer to bring junk into the house by ordering on eBay and elsewhere. We heartily disapprove of each other's methods.