"You May Call Me Creepy, Cookie!"

Just as Masha in Chekhov's Three Sisters cannot get a snatch of poetry about a golden chain around an oak tree out of her head, I cannot stop thinking about Creepella Gruesome's first words to Wilma Flintstone: "You may call me Creepy, Cookie." And like Masha, I don't know why. Is it the eagerness for intimacy expressed by the unconventional Creepella to the conformist Wilma? Is it the fact that Creepella looks exactly like a drag-queen version of Cher? Is it the introduction of a horror-show neighbor to the Flintstones because The Addams Family and The Munsters were flooding the airwaves?

The Gruesomes were pretty much forgotten among the 1960s monster families that invaded America's living rooms. These Halloween nightmare creatures were substitutes for the hippies and weirdos creeping into the suburban consciousness of middle-class USA. They were safe versions of the scary challengers of the two-car garage. In an interesting development when the Flintstones introduced the freeloading Hatrocks to the Gruesomes in order to scare the pesky hillbillies, they took to the weirdos. It took a conspiracy of all three Bedrock families--the Flintstones, the Rubbles, and the Gruesomes--imitating a prehistoric version of the Beatles to finally get rid of the Hatrocks. You would think the red-state yokels would want to shoot to long-haired Gruesomes on sight.

Maybe Creepella was really a tranny hiding her bizarre secret from Wilma and Betty.

Jetsons' Residence, Rosie Speaking

We have new phones at my office and we have an infinite choice of ring tones. I chose the Jetsons doorbell. This was one of my favorite shows since it predicted the world of the future not the past like the Flinstones. The best thing about the Flinstones was the animals who operated all the appliances and would look at the camera and say "It's a living."

The Jetsons on the other hand was about the world I was supposed to grow up in. I remember figuring out I would be about 40 in the year 2000. I imagined we would be flying around in rocket cars, vacationing on the moon, and spending the weekend in Acapulco, like Jane's friend Helen. ("Now that's what I call racy dialogue," Helen quipped when Jane and George could only say each other's name to each other after Jane's trip to a dude planet.)

The picture is of Jane getting ready for "My Space Lady" and George gave the tickets to Mr. Spacely. That episode always annoyed me because Mr. Spacely was within his rights to demand George forego the theatre, but to take his wife's ticket as well was just cruel. I always wandered what "My Space Lady" would have been like. Did Professor Henry Higgins-rocket make Eliza Spacelittle into a lady at the interplanetary ball?

Another Jetsons memory was when Rosie fell in love with Mac the Robot. When Henry the Janitor de-activated him, she went around saying "Eh-Neh" like she said Judy sounded when she was out of love.

The most interesting aspect of the Jetsons was its total lack of advancement for women. In their world, females are still mostly housewives with a fear of mice and poor driving skills.