Nightmares

The photo collection above ties together both of the panels from yesterday's quiz. I thought about including it yesterday, but decided that the frame on the far right might be a little too obscure. (Click on the picture to see a larger version.) But you do get extra bonus points if you can follow the logic on this one. And double extra bonus points if you see the connection between the second panel and the fourth. (Answers below.)

While you're thinking about that, let me share another photo from Sunday's hike. Kim took this one, and it does a much better job of showing how my snowshoes flip snow up onto my pants.

I suppose this does render me somewhat camouflaged from the waist down, so these shoes would probably be a good choice for a hunter...or for an illegal alien trying to sneak across the Canadian border. In fact, if I run in these snowshoes, the spray pattern covers my entire back and sometimes even puts snow down the back of my collar, which I have to confess I don't enjoy all that much. If cammo was my main objective, though, I think I'd be better off buying a white nylon ski suit. In any case, if I'm going to stick with these snowshoes, I definitely need to get some less-wettable pants.

Anyway, I must've been thinking about yesterday's quiz when I went to bed last night, because I woke up from a related nightmare this morning. I was on a vacation in Australia and had met a nice Aussie girl on the beach, and was attempting some awkward flirtation. It was going well up until I realized that I was actually part of a Brady Bunch Travel Special. My flirtation was interrupted by Greg and Bobby running up to breathlessly ask if I had seen the mystic Aboriginal talisman they had taken from the local medicine man. That in itself wasn't all that disturbing, but a moment later, Florence Henderson showed up...and I woke up screaming.

I don't know why that woman gives me the heebie jeebies, but she does. I have always thought that she was the creepiest female this side of pea-soup-mode Linda Blair.

Anyway, if you haven't figured it out already, the theme for the first set of photos is "Brady".



The first guy is Tom Brady, who is obviously a football player of some kind. The second panel is Robert Reed, who played the evil stepfather on "The Brady Bunch". I'd be really interested to know if anyone recognized the people in the third frame -- you'd probably have to be older than me to get that one. The finger-pointin' feller is a cowpoke named Leonard Slye (better known as Roy Rogers), and he's sitting next to his wife and singing partner, Ms. Dale Evans. But the driver of the jeep is the key to this frame; his name is Pat Brady, Roy's longtime comic-relief sidekick.

Just out of curiosity, have you ever given a name to the vehicle you drive? I doubt that I've ever told anyone this, but I called my Ford Pinto "Bucky, Jr.", and my Yamaha 750 "Rocky". I've grown up now, and have less attachment to mechanical devices, so you'll be happy to know that my Subaru station wagon remains nameless.

Anyway, the last guy in the panel is Wayne Brady, host of several lame shows, er, I mean game shows. (Or do I?) He was very funny on "Whose Line Is It, Anyway?", but didn't quite achieve the Ryan Secrest magic he was hoping for in his emcee career.

The next puzzle was a little tougher because they don't all have the same name. But they start with the same syllable, which is "Man".



The first is Eli Manning, son of legendary Saints quarterback Archie Manning. The second panel features Mike Connors in his role as Joe Mannix. This was one of my favorite detective shows growing up -- until the episode where he got thrown in the bay and they showed him trying to swim. It was pitiful, and I lost all respect for him.

(As a point of reference, Magnum PI is actually a pretty good swimmer. And Dirty Harry? Well, Clint Eastwood was a lifeguard before he met Sergio Leone, so he's OK, too.)

But don't get me wrong: I don't have anything against people who don't swim well...in fact, I love to try to help them improve their strokes. But I figure if you're gonna be a detective in a town next to a bay, you gotta figure you'll be dumped in the drink at some point, so fergawhsakes, dude, take a lesson or two!

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Mighty Manfred, the Wonder Dog. He was the dim-witted sidekick of a poorly drawn cartoon hero named "Tom Terrific", who for reasons that were never adequately explained, wore a funnel on his head and a ribbon around his neck. The cartoon was a feature on Captain Kangaroo's show, and I enjoyed Manfred's dry wit so much that Santa brought me a stuffed dog for Christmas one year and I promptly named him Manfred. (He was replaced as my favorite plush toy when I got a stuffed Yogi Bear to play with, but we had a good run.)

The last panel features Carl Lumbly in his role as "MANTIS". It wasn't a great show and didn't last very long, but I watched every episode. Lumbly not only has a great name, but also a distinctive voice, and I'm pretty much a sucker for any show that has a guy using technology to turn himself into a crimefighting bug. I may be mistaken about this, but I also think it was the first primetime show to feature an African-American superhero. MANTIS was an acronym for "Mechanically Automated Neuro Transmitter Interactive System", which is another reason the nerd in me was attracted to the program.

Anyway, the panel at the top of this post relates our previous two puzzles together via a name-similarity progression. On the left we have quarterback Brady Quinn, who may end up starting for the Broncos next year if Tebow doesn't improve his passing over the summer. The second frame features Denzel Washington in his role as "The Mighty Quinn", which was a movie about a cop in some swampy place. (He did not get thrown in the water, though, so I have no idea if Mr. Washington can swim or not.) The third picture is obviously our friend Mighty Manfred again. And the admittedly obscure final frame features Manfred Mann's Earth Band, which gives us a double dose of our "Man" syllable to finish off the connection between our two Super Bowl puzzles. Ties it up neatly, doesn't it?

But here's the double extra bonus points connection: Manfred Mann's second most lucrative tune was "Quinn the Eskimo", which was written by none other than Bob Dylan and has lyrics that make absolutely no sense. The phrase "You'll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn" incorporates a double negative, which makes it mean "You will see something like the mighty Quinn,"...but it still makes no sense. Anyway, the other Mann song you'll recognize is Bruce Springsteen's "Blinded by the Light", which makes even less sense than "Quinn". But both tunes were big hits, and you've probably sung along with "Wrapped up like a deuce, you know the runner in the night" without ever giving any thought to how incomprehensibly stupid the song is.

Anyway, now that you know what Manfred Mann looks like, you'll probably feel the same way about him as I do about Mannix. I apologize if I've shattered any of your illusions, but the truth must come out eventually.

As for me, well, I'm going to try to put all of this out of my mind. If I do manage to dream about vacations and beaches again tonight, I want no Bradys, Quinns, or Mantises sneaking in there to wake me up. Wish me luck, and have a great day!