IT'S A MAMMOTH OCCASION

Man oh man, is Your Humble Narrator homesick today. How I wish I could be back in my beloved hometown of Erie, Pa, at UPMC Park, for the inaugural game of the Erie Moon Mammoths...

...alter-ego of the Erie Seawolves. The team, the AA affiliate of the Detroit Tigers, has been (temporarily) rebranded by the great John Oliver and the staff of his HBO series Last Week Tonight. The renaming is after a fossilized mammoth skeleton discovered in 1991 by a scuba diver named George Moon at the bottom of Lake Pleasant, a glacial lake in Venango Township in Erie County.

The bones were taken to my alma mater Gannon University where they were examined by Professor M. Jude Kirkpatrick.

I had Dr. Kirkpatrick for Sociology, a class he seemed to find a chore; his real interests seemed to be archaeology, anthropology and paleontology. Though a fine specimen, the skeleton was apparently deemed too fragile for reconstruction; it was publicly displayed for just one day before being socked away at the State Museum of Pennsylvania in Harrisburg.

Anyway, Erie is set to party hard this weekend, and the game, against the Chesapeake Baysox, is now underway, so I'm being taunted by images from friends who are there:

Well, as I have written here before, I myself was once part of the pregame festivities at a Seawolves game, reading a baseball sonnet back in 2009; you can still watch it on YouTube. So I've composed a new sonnet for the Moon Mammoth; here it is:

MOON MAMMOTH

Frigid fathoms down into the depths

Where bass and sunfish breathe the brineless murk,

And algae straining sunlight intercepts

And dims the realm where grim hellbenders lurk,

Reposing in this glacier-shoveled grave

In layered silt the fleshless bones would lay,

As petrafaction form immortal gave

A trunked behemoth of another day.

Twelve thousand years elapsed, then to the light

A wetsuit-clad invader it exhumed;

A single day it basked in public sight,

Then academically was re-entombed.

But now the mammoth rises once again,

To urge our local Nine on to the win.

GO MOON MAMMOTHS!

THAT HAMILTON MONSTER

RIP to Isaac Heller, co-founder of Remco Toys, passed on at 88. Like most kids, especially boys, of my generation, I had some history as a Remco customer, but one Remco item I never had, alas, was…

Monster-of-the-Week: …this week’s honoree, Horrible Hamilton...

The most badass of the giant space bugs featured in the Hamilton Invader line of the mid '60s, Hamilton was a mandibled abomination who trundled along the floor in response to a pull-string. The playsets also included, in various combinations, a smaller giant beetle and giant spider, as well as blue soldiers and various armaments and vehicles to do battle with the aliens. These sets are rare and expensive collectors’ items now, but…a friend of mine, one of those insufferable little freaks who actually took good care of his toys, still has his freakin’ Horrible Hamilton set in mint condition, and...his Hamilton’s pull-string still freakin’ works!

Back in the ‘80s, my pal’s Hamilton played the title role in a short movie, written by Your Humble Narrator and produced by the Communications Department of Gannon University, called Grok: Creature From Lake Erie, which was actually shown on the local late-night horror show, then hosted by Sir Robert Ghoulini—one of the high points, I must admit, of my 20s. But alas, as far as I know no video of Grok is extant.