Last night, I was re-watching the first of Disney’s Dexter Riley trilogy, 1969’s “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes.” If you haven’t seen it – or even if you have – Kurt Russell plays Dexter, a college kid who accidentally gets a punch-card mainframe shocked into his brain and uses all that new mental ability to … win a college game show. Dexter had accidents two more times in later movies – becoming invisible in 1972’s “Now You See Him, Now You Don’t” and eating super-vitamin cereal in 1975’s “The Strongest Man in the World.”

In the middle of “The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes,” I spotted a familiar face and heard a familiar voice. Olan Soule was playing a reporter, but you might know him as John Masters, choir director on “The Andy Griffith Show” – or as the timid professor or bank teller or clerk in a million shows. Here he is, using that face to sell the sexiest of products, prune juice.

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We’re all used to old TV shows getting cut up in reruns. The Carol Burnett Show got it worse than most. Not even the lawyers foresaw DVDs, let alone streaming, so no one figured out how to pay for all the songs in each episode.

Carol came from Broadway, so she’d often include big dancing and singing numbers. It could be The Jackson 5. It could be operatic soprano Beverly Sills. Syndicators cut down the hour-long “The Carol Burnett Show” into the music-free thirty-minute “Carol Burnett and Friends.” Carol would come out at the end with her autograph book, wearing a Bob Mackie-designed Sgt. Pepper costume. Bobbie Gentry, Phyllis Diller, and Gwen Verdon were there too … but no one would mention it. The whole five-minute song-and-dance medley was gone and “good night” was the only bit left.

Good news for us. You can now find (mostly) uncut episodes of “The Carol Burnett Show” on Amazon Prime and The Roku Channel and even officially licensed on YouTube. Give it a watch and come back…

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Most folks recognize Fran Drescher’s exaggerated Queens accent from “The Nanny.” I think it’s safe to say she heightens it for comedy, especially the nasal quality, but at the core, it’s how she talks. Here’s an interview from 2018.

Of course, Drescher’s an actress, so she’s learned to ramp it up – or tamp it down – as needed. In her film debut, 1977’s “Saturday Night Fever” it’s not quite so exaggerated when John Travolta drops an f-bomb on the dance floor.

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I’ve had a can of Nordic Swell in the Frigidaire since February, but I’ve been a bit intimidated by the 9-percent ABV. Turns out it was a limited edition. It’s May now, so you might have trouble finding it in stores the farther you are from DuClaw’s Maryland home base.

The big selling point for Nordic Swell is the Norwegian yeast called kveik. Brewers in Norway have passed down their yeast through the generations, so genetically, it’s branched off from the rest of the world. Some of the differences are technical – like faster or hotter fermentation – but some stand out in the flavor. Kveik supposedly tastes more tropical or orange with hints of gingerbread or clove.

The aroma on the pour is surprisingly not that hoppy. You mostly get the fruity, sweet malt. It’s very orange copper in the pint glass with an every-so-slightly amber head. The first sip does have a bit of that hoppy resin bitterness, but it’s carried away by the sweet and the malt.

It’s a bit thick, sweet but not cloying. As I read the label, there are three honeys in there (wildflower, clove, orange blossom) as well as chamomile tea. That 9-percent ABV doesn’t come off as “hot.” I’d say everything is working in balance so it’s not too sweet or too bitter, too heavy or too floral. It might be better enjoyed on a Maryland winter than a warm Florida spring, but that was DuClaw really wanted in the first place, wasn’t it?

Between working in TV news and working in non-news video, I paid the bills (mostly) for a year by working at Brookstone. Remember Brookstone? The memory foam mattress you could lie down on (ew) and weird flashlights and a massage chair anyone could hop into? The company now seems to just live in airports, but once, it was a magical place where shoppers could kill ten minutes until Mom came out of Burdine’s.

That’s “my” store in the photo – Mall at Millenia in Orlando, FL. It’s a Lily Pulitzer now.

My Brookstone year started as a Christmas gig, shuffling boxes in the tiny back room. Eventually, I got to put on the denim apron and work the floor. It was a very hands-on store, so just about anything a customer could pick up would end up in the opposite corner from where it started. I remember these tiny sealed glass bubble aquariums that were in equilibrium until a sticky-fingered kid would shake it like a snowglobe and rattle all the brine shrimp (aka generic Sea Monkeys) inside.

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