Let me make one thing perfectly clear...

I am not a crook.

No, wait, that wasn’t it.

Oh, yes, now I remember.

Anastasia was not, as I mistakenly said in a comment on the last post, a Princess. She was a Grand Duchess.

Try not to forget that. We will be testing later.

After I mentioned Anastasia, commenter A Lady’s Life of British Columbia, Canada, mentioned singer Pat Boone’s rendition of the song “Anastasia.” Thank you, A Lady’s Life, and as Little Red Riding Hood may or may not have said, “What a strange name you have, Grandma.”

Bringing up Pat Boone has opened a tremendous treasure-trove of trivia (note the alliteration) that we have not hitherto mined.

Did you know that Pat Boone is the great-great-great-great-grandson of the early American explorer Daniel Boone?

Did you know that Pat Boone is a cousin of actor Richard Boone who starred in the television series Have Gun, Will Travel?

Did you know that Pat Boone’s wife Shirley is the daughter of country-singer Red Foley, whose 1951 recording of “Peace in the Valley” was the first million-seller gospel recording in history?

Did you know that Pat Boone’s daughter Debby (the one who kept singing “You Light Up My Life” over and over again until we all wanted to fwow up) is married to Gabriel Ferrer, the son of actor José Ferrer and singer Rosemary Clooney?

Did you know that, according to Billboard magazine, Pat Boone was the second biggest charting artist of the late 1950s, behind only Elvis Presley but ahead of Ricky Nelson and The Platters, and was ranked at No. 9 — behind The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney but ahead of artists such as Aretha Franklin and The Beach Boys — in its listing of the Top 100 Top 40 Artists of 1955–1995?

Live and learn. For example, I never knew there was a group called Ricky Nelson and The Platters.

Here is that test I warned you about:

Anastasia was:
1. A song sung by Ricky Nelson and the Platters
2. A princess
3. A showgirl
4. A Grand Duchy, like Luxembourg
5. Ingrid Bergman
6. All of the above

You get extra points if you can identify the building behind Richard Nixon in the photograph at the top of the post.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Grand Duchy of Luxembourg.

Here is a goofy picture of Pat Boone:

(Photo by Gage Skidmore, 2011)

...but it is not nearly as goofy a picture as this one, which is of two people who are definitely not Pat Boone:

Since the drinks have been poured, a toast is in order.

Accordingly, I propose the following toast:

Here’s to the dwindling days of our lives
And the hope that you’ll always remember
The day I composed this ridiculous remarkable post:
The thirtieth day of November.

Let me also make one other thing perfectly clear.

I have not been hitting the sauce. This is the way I normally am
am normally am have been for as far back as I can remember.




SIX DEGREES OF SEPARATION DEPARTMENT, MINUS FIVE, TIMES TWO: One of the things I can still remember from the dear, dead days almost beyond recall is having attended, as a high-school student, a State Convention of the Future Teachers of America at North Texas State College (now the University of North Texas) in Denton and dancing the night away to the live music of the NTSC Jazz Band and their squeaky-clean boy singer, one Pat Boone. This memory pre-dates by about three years my 1958 appearances on American Bandstand with Dick Clark in Philadelphia.