Princess Cakes

I have no idea what I should name this post, so Princess Cakes (what Marge just told the bullies that Bart can't get enough of) seemed as apropos as anything.  Today on the way home from work I was listening to the Almanac segment on the radio station I frequent.  This is a half-interesting, half-off-the-wall segment including different birthdays, deaths and other events that happened on this day in history.

One of the events today was the anniversary of the death of the horse that played Mr. Ed.  Wikipedia didn't confirm the date of Mr. Ed's passing for me, but if you want to learn more about how Mr. Ed was apparently like Elvis, feel free to take a look at the death section the Mister Ed Wikipedia entry.  Mister Ed's death didn't really do much for me, but then I started thinking about the implications of there ever actually BEING a Mr. Ed, a talking horse whose death we would recognize more than 40 years later.

Mr. Ed was introduced to the American public way back in 1961.  It was a simpler time - and as my wife points out - they were only just beginning to realize what they had with the television.  Kennedy's inauguration would be the first live televised inauguration the same year.  Talking people were just starting to get overdone - but the industry was revolutionized with a talking horse.  What else was happening in 1961 that might give us a glimpse in to why people would be entertained by a TV show whose lead character was a talking horse?

• Roger Maris hit 61 home runs
• Tom and Jerry returned from a 4 year hiatus
• That's it.  

Okay, so maybe that's a little overblown - there was some pretty crazy stuff going on in 1961 - the Bay of Pigs invasion, Freedom Riders were arrested in Jackson, Mississippi, and the Vietnam War began.  So perhaps that is all we need - there was a lot of crazy shit going on and the baby boomers and their parents needed to escape reality - what better way to do so than to watch a talking horse on TV?   I can understand Dick Van Dyke, Andy Griffith, and The Flintstones, but I just cannot wrap my head around a TV show with a horse as the title character.  If anyone that has actually seen a full episode can explain it to me, I'm ready to listen.  

Then I started thinking about the crap that is on TV today.  And this came to mind.  

I'm fairly certain that at some point in the not-too-distant future, one of my as yet unborn children will be composing a blog post (in a far cooler way than typing it out on a laptop) and will question why anyone would ever watch a cartoon starring a container of french fries, a milk shake and a meatball.  Or, they will just realize that people at the start of the millenium were ruled by fast food restaurants until we all decided to hop on the health food/gym bandwagon and television devolved to this.   

And suddenly I realized just how relevant the Princess Cakes title truly is.