Don’t waste your time. . . buying coffins today.

Short article in today’s LA Times about local 60’s kiddie show icon Sheriff John:

For Southern Californians who grew up watching television in the 1950s and ’60s, the death of “Engineer Bill” Stulla last week at age 97 sparked memories of another beloved Los Angeles children’s TV-show icon: “Sheriff John” Rovick.

A staff announcer for KTTV-TV Channel 11 when the station first went on the air in 1949, Rovick began portraying the badge- and khaki-uniform wearing Sheriff in 1952 as the host of “Cartoon Time,” a live, late-afternoon show that won an Emmy Award in 1953 for outstanding children’s program.

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Along with showing cartoons, he’d offer up a mix of safety tips and patriotism (he led viewers in the Pledge of Allegiance), have chats with occasional visitors and, of course, offer birthday wishes to his young viewers and sing “The Birthday Cake Polka” (”Put another candle on my birthday cake . . . “).

Growing up in SoCal, kids used to watch this show every day. I remember watching on my birthday, disappointed when he didn’t mention my name. My sister used to get me to eat foods I didn’t like as a kid by telling me they were Sheriff John eggs or Sheriff John broccolli.

I was surprised to hear the guy was still alive. . .

Jim Morrison, (December 8, 1943 – July 3, 1971)

I remember when Danny Sugarman’s book came out. I was in high school, less than a decade after Morrison died in France. I’d basically missed The Doors hey day, lacking an older sibling to show me what to listen to. Maybe I knew Light My Fire, I can’t remember.

But the book triggered a Doors renaissance of a sort, at least at my school in The Valley, at least among the school paper / honor’s English crowd. In retrospect, it was an eclectic time. I listened to The Clash, Bruce Springsteen, The Doors, Neil Young – I lacked the commitment to really be a punk or a head banger, I mostly listened to what Jim Ladd listened to, plus whatever punk/new wave my friend John Z turned me on to.

I do remember that my little brother, in junior high at the time, liked The Doors and The Boomtown Rats, before Bob Geldof tried to save the world.

Morrison died 27 years ago today. Now, my kid’s know who he is, can tell its The Doors when we listen to KLOS in the car — though maybe they think he looks like Val Kilmer.

I, wonder, actually if Morrison ever thought people would be digging on The Doors 27 years after his death.

I know the youtube linked cuts off a little at the end, but I liked the intro, so I used it.

C’mon, baby, take a chance with us …

. . . but it might be time to go to rehab, after all.

LONDON (Reuters) - Soul singer Amy Winehouse has developed the lung condition emphysema and has been warned by doctors that she will die if she continues smoking drugs, her father said in an interview on Sunday.

Mitch Winehouse said the incurable illness, which leaves sufferers struggling for breath, was diagnosed when his daughter had series of health checks in hospital.

“The doctors have told her if she goes back to smoking drugs it won’t just ruin her voice, it will kill her,” he was quoted as saying in the Sunday Mirror. “The doctors have said that if she had continued the way she was going she could have ended up an invalid — she wouldn’t have been able to breathe.”

He added: “She’s got emphysema. It’s in its early stages, but had it gone on for another month they painted a very vivid picture of her sitting there like an old person with a mask on her face struggling to breathe.

“With smoking the crack cocaine and the cigarettes, her lungs are all gunked up. There are nodules around the chest and dark marks. She’s got 70 percent lung capacity.”

Robert Wyland, who paints whale pictures for tourist galleries, is having a spat with California’s DMV over the whale-tail license plate:

One of California’s most popular specialty license plates depicting the tail of a Pacific humpback whale rising out of misty waters could soon become as endangered as the mammoth mammal.

Robert Wyland, the artist who created the pale blue image and gave it to the state more than a decade ago to help it raise money for marine programs, is now demanding 20 percent of any future revenue for his art foundation.

Fair enough, but here’s the part that caught my eye:

“I would just say it would be like Picasso lending one of his pieces for a license plate and them saying we’re not donating to the Picasso Foundation,” said Wyland, an official artist for the United States Olympic Team for the 2008 Games. “They’re saying ‘We can get anyone to paint a Picasso.’ Well you could, but it wouldn’t be a Picasso.”

This is exactly right, except for the fact that Pablo Picasso never made license plates, never commissioned his work for keychains, and the fact Wyland is to Picasso what Pauley Shore is to Charles Chaplin.