Red Tie Formal

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

“Tails.” I spoke the word out loud with my indoors voice. I ordered white tails to wear at my high school prom.

For many American high school students, senior year means at least two things: Graduation and Senior Prom Night (and the morning after). With no research, I can tell you that “prom” is short for “promenade,” which is long for “prom.” For naive bookworm me, the prom, far more than graduation or even thecontinuousthinkingofthoughtsabouttheentirerestofmylife, was the source of many anxieties.

(There is an ancient cliché about how native peoples who live in the Arctic have 1000 words for snow because they know snow so intimately that they have 1000 words to describe 1000 unique realities. Replace the word “snow” with “anxiety,” and you have me. A thousand different anxieties.)
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Today in History: June 8

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

For several years in a row, if one encountered a television set on a Tuesday night in America, and if that television set was turned on, it was tuned to NBC and Texaco Star Theatre hosted by Milton Berle. On June 8, 1948, when the show and its new host made their debut, finding a television set was easier dreamed about than done: fewer than a million were owned in the entire country.

By the end of Berle’s run in 1956, some 30 million sets had been purchased in the subsequent years and many sources pay him at least partial credit for this sales success. The show had been a hit on NBC radio with Fred Allen as host; on TV, it was career-defining, for Berle certainly, but for the executives who hired him as well.
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He Knew a Guy

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

He knew people. Had connections. A Brushes-With-Hollywood™ Tale.

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There is a big difference between living a life story about which people say, “That ought to be a movie,” and possessing a life story about which those same people will pay real money to buy the book or sit in a theater to view that movie.
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