Chess for Oldtimers --- Good Idea !

Hey, fightingbob, is your name an homage to 'Fighting Bob La Follette,' the great progressive reformer of early twentieth century American politics?

No, Bob Acres, just one character along with Mrs. Malaprop in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 18th century comedy of manners titled The Rivals.  The difference is Bob Acres pretends to be a banty rooster and I am one.

Wow, Bob.  You had a TV when you were 3?  My memory is I was almost kindergarten before we got our first.  Guess I missed a lot.  :-)

I don't know when my parents purchased their first TV, but it must have been before I was 3, which would have been 1956.  Too bad they are not here so I could ask them.

Thanks for the new posts.

FightingBob: Funny that you should mention " The Honeymooners ". Early in my long ( & very boring ) career on the CPR Railway I would sometimes give people heck a bit as Jackie Gleason did. Needless to say a few characters at work started to greet me with " Hey Ralphie-Boy ! "  lol.  

Love it, Ralph, and so would Ed Norton.  You should have made that your account name. 

I was sufficiently young in the early days of television that I used to confuse Fred Flintstone with Jackie Gleason.  You have to admit that there was some analogy between the two.

I think they are both guys that were relatively straight shooters and men’s men. Nowadays, people less defined roles often.

As the first prime-time cartoon in history, and a successful one at that, The Flintstones (1960-66) was based on The Honeymooners; that is a documented fact.  I think that's why it did so well.

Ralph was boisterous, irascible, yet lovable and funny.  He always wanted to make it big not just for himself but for Alice, but he invariably ended up being what he called a moax, a loser, but he was no loser to me.  Unlike the cynical, one liner crapola that populates TV today, this series was human, all too human, and that's why it will always be a classic.

Thanks a lot for all of the new posts.

A funny item from Sydnie Meltzer Kleinhenz: " They bit and chewed and served me well as through the years we ventured. We had a falling out, and now my new teeth are indentured. " 

That's a clever one, Ralph.  Thankfully, I haven't reached that point yet.

"Why should I worry about dying.  It's not going to happen in my lifetime."

Raymond Smullyan

Some people can just word it so right.

Like that one too, Steve.

that reminded me of some of the funny comments that are (supposedly) on headstones.

"i'd rather be where you are standing"

"i told you i was sick"

Yes, Al, and I might add the urban legend that W.C. Fields headstone has the epitaph "“All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.”  Too bad it's not true.

I think I'll have Emauel Lasker's comment that "In life we are all duffers" on my headstone.

Woody Allen:  "I'm not afraid of dying.  I just don't want to be there when it happens."

Also:  "There are worse things in life than death.  If you've ever spent an evening with an insurance salesman, you know what I mean."

The last one I particularly like, Mil.  Woody Allen even had a short scene in Take the Money and Run (1969) where he was placed in solitary confinement with an insurance salesman.  My best friend nearly fell out of his theater seat laughing.