Karen Dotrice. Yes, Karen Dotrice.

The first movie I ever saw in a movie theater was Mary Poppins, in 1964. Hell, maybe it was the first movie I ever saw. Anyway, the big screen, the incredible special effects, the magical nanny... I was nine years old, and I couldn't take my eyes off the character of Jane Banks. I'd never felt anything like that before. I wanted to move to England. I got angry at Michael Banks, her brother, because he got to play with her all the time. (And besides, he was a little snot.) Jane was played by Karen Dotrice, who never again appeared in anything I saw, which is just as well because I was able to maintain the illusion that Jane Banks was a real person, not that a nine year old needs much encouragement to do that.

Sure, watching that movie now--on DVD, over and over and over, given that there are three little Centerfielders in the house who love the movie--I'm more partial to the nineteen year old Julie Andrews, but 45 years ago... Karen Dotrice.

Who was your first movie star crush?

(Tonight's the All-Star Game, so I'll dust off a previous entry in this series.) If you grew up a baseball fan, you must have fond memories of grabbing your mitt, going to the ballpark, eating hot dogs slathered in yellow mustard, followed by peanuts and cotton candy, all washed down with a giant soda, and then going home full and feeling sick. I've done that.

But what's the best ballpark food? The traditional dog and beer? (Dodger Dogs really do taste great.) The Bar-B-Q at Memorial Stadium? (Can't say, haven't had it.) Brats in Milwaukee? Are nachos and jalapenos strictly a southwestern phenomenon, or can you get that in Minnesota too? Sushi in Seattle? Vote and expand.

It pains me to think about, 39 years later. For my 14th birthday some friends got me a bottle of -- wait for it -- Boone's Farm Apple Wine. You know, the good stuff, with the fine light green bottle and the screw cap. I hid it from my parents and carried it up to my room that night. Not knowing anything about how you go about drinking wine, I waited until everybody had gone to bed, unscrewed the cap, and, well, I wouldn't say I chugged it, exactly, but I did drink it down pretty quickly.

I remember feeling a bit giddy for a short time, and then I don't remember anything at all, except for waking briefly to barf all over my bed and pillow and floor, followed by my mom entering my room, followed shortly thereafter by a horrified gasp.

To my parents credit, they figured I had suffered enough -- and indeed the next morning I suffered -- so never punished me or read me the riot act or anything. They just made sure I understood that what I had done was pretty stupid.

And I never had Boone's Farm Apple Wine again.

So, when was the first time you got drunk? Or do you not even remember?

Last month I flew down to Virginia to meet my brother and my parents and to attend a memorial service for my uncle, my father's brother. My brother and parents had flown to Virginia from California. My uncle was 81 when he died, and the service was held at the assisted care center where he had moved a number of years ago. He was vibrant and had all his faculties until last year, when a series of small strokes took his mind and then his body.

Last week my father's sister died. Her service was this past weekend. She was 83 and had been in a home for many years, during which time she didn't recognize her son or her grandchildren or her siblings.

Yet my father's oldest sister is north of 85 and is sharp as a tack, able to get around on her own, remembers everything, and is self-sufficient, living by herself in the house in which she raised her kids. Last week I realized that she's the oldest person I know, and I'm so glad she's physically and mentally healthy, though I regret I don't see her as much as I'd like.

How old is the oldest person you know (not the oldest person you've met, but the oldest you know), and how often do you see them?

Hot on the heels of last week's edition of The Tuesday Diversion, which asked about funniest Monty Python bits, let's ask about the worst movies ever made.

Anna Karenina begins "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way," and perhaps movies are like that. Last week there was much agreement on funny Python bits. I suspect, however, that there are as many choices of worst movies ever made as there are people doing the choosing of the worst movies ever made.

There was no The Tuesday Diversion last week because it was the final primary day, and on that day we didn't need a diversion. Well, yes, that, of course, and also it was Mrs. Centerfielder's birthday, and I was busy.

I  first saw Monty Python on TV a little over 30 years ago:

In 1975 the series was first broadcast in the United States, and soon gained a cult following. Ron Deveiller, an executive from PBS television station KERA in Dallas, Texas, found Monty Python episodes on a shelf when searching for programming for his station. He watched one episode, then another, and before he was done he had acquired the entire series to put on the air. The series was eventually aired on PBS stations across the country, and by this chance event Python invaded America.

I don't know when the Detroit PBS station started showing Python, but it was probably 1976. At that time I had a friend at the University of Michigan named Thomas Thomas.

I didn't have an after-school or summer job during high school. But in 1972, newly turned 17 years old, I went away to go to college at the University of Michigan, and got a job working evenings as a short-order cook at the snack bar in the bowels of Mary Markley Hall, the dorm I lived in. Probably paid no more than a dollar and change an hour.

I cooked it all: burgers, fries, hot dogs, grilled ham and cheese sandwiches, onion rings... everything college students need to start a life of cholesterol-fed artery-clogging.

And I was good at it, too. About half an hour before the snack bar closed, there'd be a line snaking out the door, everyone wanting to get their order in at the last minute. The entire griddle surface would be covered in greasy meats, and I almost never screwed up an order. Oh sure, when I got a little behind some of the burgers may have been a bit on the, uh, rare side, but no one ever died. So far as I knew.

So, what was your first job?

In a The Tuesday Diversion entry from a couple of years ago, I asked about funniest scenes in a movie. This time, I'll just ask "what is the funniest movie you've ever seen."

I know that there's a wide variety of movies I find funny, from the silliness of "Blazing Saddles" or "Young Frankenstein" to small but quirky and off-beat gems like "Local Hero" and "Raising Arizona." Some think the Marx Brothers genius, but I never really understood the attraction. Chaplin and Keaton, on the other hand, still amaze me.

So, what's the funniest movie you've ever seen?

It's been over a year since I posted a diary in The Tuesday Diversion series. I didn't think it had been that long. But with 80 percent of the country thinking we're on the wrong track and the endless primary not yet ended and all, a return to TTD is warranted.

Wednesday of last week I flew down to Virginia for a funeral service. When I left I noted that super unleaded was 3.99 a gallon. This morning it was 4.18 a gallon. This is in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Twenty cents in less than a week.

So, where do you live and what's the price of gas there?

This question can mean two things. It came to mind as I was looking for presents for my kids, and remembered back to Christmas when I was a kid. Some stand out, like the year in the early 60s when I got a battery powered beeping jeep, a drum set, and a Superman outfit (warning: never drape a plastic yellow belt over the lampshade of a lit bulb). Or when my sister and I got all sorts of Man From U.N.C.L.E. spy paraphernalia. We still fight over who was cooler, Napoleon Solo or Ilya Kuryakin (it was Ilya).

But then I thought of the presents I've given, and without doubt I've received more joy from the giving than I have from the receiving. Even as a kid, whenever someone in my family was genuinely happy with a gift of mine, I felt great. Well, ok, maybe not as great as when I got a great gift, but it's certainly true as a grown-up.

So, there's two possible answers: what's the best Christmas present you ever got, and what's the best you've ever given?

Let me say this up front: I love Christmas. I do. It's my favorite secular holiday.

In 4th grade Sunday School in the mid-60s I didn't get satisfactory answers to certain questions (like "Just how did that Red Sea part again?") and so became a non-believer at an early age. But I still loved Christmas. Sure, the presents were great and all, but I liked the twinkle of lights through frosty windows, and sleigh rides in the park, and the ceremony: buying a tree, my dad tying it to the top of the station wagon, decorating it in the living room while listening to Johnny Mathis. All that stuff.

That's also the year I found out there was no Santa Claus. Maybe, for me, discovering the truth about the falsity of Santa Claus liberated Christmas from the falsity of Christianity, and enabled me to enjoy the holiday for what it was itself, lights and sounds and magic, unencumbered by forced belief.

As part of their 50th anniversary issue, the magazine New Scientist asked "over 70 of the world's most brilliant scientists" for their predictions of the next 50 years' greatest scientific breakthroughs.

Remember, these are serious guys, not given to flights of fancy, especially for attribution in a serious journal. But some of the answers are very cool. Ray Kurzweil predicts we'll have a computer that passes the Turing test, and Freeman Dyson, one of my favorites, says we will discover extra-terrestrial life. (That'll be bound to make some heads explode.)

This article in the New York Times (login might be required) reports on out-of-body experiences being induced by stimulating a portion of the brain called the angular gyrus. The types of experiences described include 1) leaving one's body, floating up, and looking down on yourself, and 2) sensing someone next to or behind you, though no one is there. In each case the feeling is unpleasant.

I've had such feelings, though not in the past 20 years. I used to have such "looking down on myself" dreams often as a kid, usually ending as a "falling" dream which woke me up. I'm not surprised to hear that there's a physical explanation.

But...

My daughter just bought a box turtle. She's wanted one for near a year here, and finally we did it. However, she's learned that she needs to feed it chopped mealworms. Yumm. She's a little grossed out, but the pet store owner assured her that she doesn't really need to chop them up, she can feed the turtle live mealworms, but just be sure the mealworms don't crawl away and hide because the baby box turtle needs the protein.

So, that got me to thinking... You hear about people eating live worms and cockroaches. Crunchy clam sushi is supposed to be alive -- that's why it's crunchy. And of course there's that rock star who bit the head off a live bat / bird / chicken / name your favorite animal here.

So, anyone here actually eat a live animal / bug / something not a fruit or vegetable?

So I was thinking about Joseph Heller yesterday. Well, I was thinking about the phrase "Catch-22" and how much that phrase has permeated our culture, and that it came from a book, from the imagination of one man. Well, that's pretty impressive. So I thought of Joseph Heller, and it occurred to me that, as good as Catch-22 was, it was his only good book. Sure, he wrote many, and Something Happened had its moments, but, really, the rest were no great shakes.

So from there I thought of musical one-hit wonders (the obvious suspects -- A Flock of Seagulls, 'Til Tuesday, Midnght Oil -- come to mind), and how many more of them there are than literary one-hit wonders. I mean, most great writers, and I don't mean this tautologically, have a body of great work. Dickens, Wordsworth, Joyce, etc. Eliot is sometimes castigated for "only" producing The Waste Land, but Four Quartets and Prufrock are top-notch as well (we'll forget his plays).

In any case, there are many more musical one-hit wonders than literary ones. So, 100 points for your favorite musical one-hit wonder, and an extra bonus of 25 points for a literary one-hit wonder.

Yes, The Tuesday Diversion has been away for awhile; after everyone got out of school we traveled much. First a driving trip to the East Coast -- Niagara Falls, Cooperstown, Manhattan, Princeton, Hershey PA, and Gettysburg -- and a week later a flying trip to visit family in Seattle and Republican Orange County, California. Then last week a quick trip to Republican rural Ohio. It feels good to be back in the People's Republic of Ann Arbor.

While in Ohio my brother and I compared the amount of gray on our heads. I won. I noticed that Mrs. Centerfielder and my sister-in-law were exceedingly grayless, and I askd them about that. Well, I guess I'm a clueless idiot. "You mean you color your hair?" I asked, and got a look like I had two gray heads instead of one.

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Yesterday morning, on the spur of the moment, Mrs. Centerfielder and I decided to travel Eastward for a bit. We quickly packed, loaded the little Centerfielders in the car, drove from Ann Arbor through beautiful Ontario (are there more golf courses in western Ontario than in Florida?), and arrived last night in Niagara Falls, Ontario, at the brand spanking new Great Wolf Lodge, where they have free wireless and the kids sleep in a log cabin in the middle of the hotel room (I kid you not). I find myself wanting to speak French, mais maintenant je ne sais pas les mots...

Tonight we watch fireworks over Niagara Falls, and I fully expect it to be an impressive sight. So I started thinking back on past 4th of July celebrations. For someone who used to get dirty looks in high school because I refused to stand for the singing of the national anthem (this was during Vietnam, remember), certain expressions of nationalistic pride still move me. The 4th of July is one of those.

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One of YearlyKos's more fun activities were the book signings. Markos and Jerome signed copies of Crashing The Gate, but, alas, mine was at home. I did get a signed copy of The Republican War on Science by Chris Mooney.

But this got me to thinking. What is it about "celebrity" (for want of a better word) and our need to memorialize proximity with celebrity. I have about a dozen autographed books -- Seymour Hersh, Paul Muldoon, and the like -- and somehow it seems less seemly to request an autograph in a book.

I recall 30 years ago I was working as a midnight security guard at the University of Michigan and found this guy working in the papyrology department of the Graduate Library. I checked his ID and it turned out to be Robert Huebner, at the time the 4th ranked chess player in the world, and visiting from Germany to do research. So I got his autograph. Don't know why, though I still have it.

So, what autographs do you have? And what's your closest brush with celebrity (other than Markos).