‘At birth they should give every child a PhD’: Norton Juster at home in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 2011. Photograph: Getty Images
Norton Juster, who has died aged 91, wrote The Phantom Tollbooth, which became a classic for children of all ages. It tells the story of a boy named Milo, who is both bored and boring. One day he finds a package in his bedroom, from which he assembles the flat-packed eponymous tollbooth, and through which he proceeds in his toy electric car.
He finds himself enmeshed in an ongoing conflict between Azaz the king of Dictionopolis and his brother the Mathemagician, ruler of Digitopolis. Tasked with rescuing the princesses Rhyme and Reason, Milo – accompanied by Tock, a watchdog who sports an alarm clock on his torso – begins an epic journey through a world filled with wordplay. Juster recalled his own childhood, in which he experienced synaesthesia. “I couldn’t do numbers if I didn’t see co
(Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times)
Lamb Chop, Charlie Horse and Hush Puppy. Like Tillstrom, magician’s daughter Shari Lewis was a genius at switching among characters, but as a ventriloquist, she was often a part of the conversation herself, conducted sometimes at breakneck pace. Her technique is astonishing but her writing and characterizations are also first-rate, subtle and unpredictable and full of warmth. (She studied acting with Sanford Meisner.) Lamb Chop is her star creation, quickly changeable, a child and not a child, sweet or saucy, tender or tough as the moment demands; Lewis’ own Bronx roots come through in her. Lewis made her way through local television shows in the 1950s until NBC’s “The Shari Lewis Show” took her national in 1960. In the 1990s, the public television series “Lamb Chop’s Play-Along” proved an Emmy magnet.
Lazzo Hired Me Dec 16, 2020 By Jake Uitti Adult Swim
For fans of Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, the name Brak likely brings about a particular type of grin. Brak is the oddball amongst oddballs. He’s the lovable, childish character repurposed from the original
Space Ghost cartoon series (he was one of the series’ Council of Doom members). Brak was used both on the animated talk show
Space Ghost Coast to Coast and later for his very own series,
The Brak Show. That program aired as part of the original Adult Swim cartoon block with
Aqua Teen Hunger Force,
Sealab 2021, and