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Rey & Johnny Carson

(Click on pic to read the story behind "Carson's Greatest Interview")

 

Distinctive, original, offbeat FreeHOF creations

Light Sweet Crud - Rey Barry's Mensa think tank   America's Cherished Myths - and the truths behind them - You'll be surprised   One of the most popular acronym definition pages in cyberspace, an award winner   21 Clues to the Blues How to tell real from faux?   The Investor's Guide to CNBC Tips and Traps   The first and the best insider guide to eBay ever published   Charlottesville, Virginia's, legendary Gaslight Restaurant   The Gaslight's legendary Charlottesville, Virginia   Backpacking Through Hell - remembering a father   And a New England sea coast saga like no other Click here for an index to most of our HTML pages

They include a page all about the great Goggo Motorscooter with uncommon details to help the collector and restorer, plus plenty of pictures.

There's an article recounting for an alumni magazine The Day Joe Kidd Ran My Pants Up The Flagpole

One of our neighbors, Anna Anderson, was widely believed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, daughter of Czar Nicholas II. She was world-famous for this, since conventional history said the Czar and his family were wiped out in 1917. Jack Manahan, an eccentric genealogist she married late in life, believed she was genuine. So did some of the people who shared personal memories with the actual Anastasia they knew as a child, and that was amazing. Anna Anderson knew things only the real Anastasia could know. We wrote first-hand, personal stories about Anna and Jack for the Manahan's hometown newspaper. There's never been anything quite like Anna Anderson's upside down Cinderella story We explain why the DNA tests were unreliable and don't end the controversy. There is still ample grounds to believe this woman, or wonder how a Polish peasant could know the private memories of a princess whose body was never found.

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What do you know about the South? Would you agree that for a post-war 100 years the South was dominated by badly schooled gentry and barely schooled rednecks sharing a secret pride they were betrayed by god? That and other commentary can be found on our hometown tribute to Charlottesville, Virginia. We're often ranked the No. 1 place in the country to live. On that page you'll learn the good and the bad, no punches pulled.

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In 1970 my wife and I had a unique wedding at the Rotunda of the Univ. of Virginia. It's the only wedding ever held in this remarkable building designed by Thomas Jefferson and now a National Historic Landmark on live mini-cam.

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The ongoing influence of Jefferson makes FreeHOF's home town unique. Under TJ's watchful eye was one of the great saloon society restaurants of the 60s, so quaint it's where Bob Dylan and Joan Baez came to sing for free. Read about John Tuck's world-renowned, irreplaceable Gaslight

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One of the pages on this site is a stock market column mostly about eBay, the on-line auction site. We began studying eBay as an e-commerce business model long before it went public. (The column was important then; it's not now.) We've held 1000+ auctions on eBay, plus a substantial number on Amazon. For a close-up of what eBay is and how it really works, and how to avoid being cheated, see our inside eBay tutorial. Do you invest in the stock market? If so, you likely know about cable channel CNBC. If your cable carries it, CNBC can help you reap rewards. We tested it for years, watching it all day, every day. We charted it over the long haul looking at action and reaction. Here's a CNBC analysis of how to make money from the channel. Ever wonder if those email warnings people circulate about viruses are true? Here's how to find out. We suggest you bookmark this IBM-Symantec Virus Hoax page and NEVER forward a virus warning without checking there first. Why? More than 90% of email virus warnings are hoaxes. This Email Guide tells the full story. FreeHOF also ran a one line blog. Worldly wisdom in one line. Some became famous. Sue Collins's "Evangelists do more than lay people" began as a tagline blog, then became a FHOF bumper sticker picked as Bumper Sticker of the Year by Dallas Magazine. here for our One Line Blogs. Americans of 225 years ago elected George Washington, "the man who could not tell a lie." We elected Bill Clinton, "the man who did not inhale." Are today's Americans anything like the people who founded this country? Not at all, so FreeHOF modernized the Bill of Rights - the 1st ten Amendments to the US Constitution - to reflect the changes time wrought. We expected to see it scorned since it mocked both conservatives and liberals. It came as a surprise to see it treated with reverence and called a "Must read" in some places. Maybe the Preamble struck a chord: "We exchanged a birthright of justice for a magic bullet, and replaced the Pioneer Spirit with the Pioneer Stereo. We're not like the people who founded this country ..." Do you think this New Bill of Rights describes us better? The calendar followed by Christianity crossed the year 2000 recently and Americans partied. That calendar is the only one most of us know. Because of that, we have a very flawed perspective on history. While we celebrated the year 2000, the Chinese were celebrating the year 4695. The Jews also go back more than twice as far as Christians. Our 2000 was their 5759. Their society was 3700 years old before Christianity existed. Maybe in another 3500 years a new religious leader will come along and his followers will again wind the clock back to zero. Have a glance at the calendars of the Chinese, the Jews, and the Masons. The yardsticks other people use, and civilization itself, passed the year 2000 eons ago. If you like to play trivia games we have two: the easy CLUE1 and the fiendishly hard CLUE2. Someone unknown wrote CLUE1. We added the clues and later wrote CLUE2. Too hard? Bam bam poppa that's a two-bam dad.

In 1947 my brother brought home a 10" George Shearing LP. Jazz dominated my life from that day on. This included being an habitue at Birdland most of its life, usually backstage by the cash register outside the kitchen listening to owner Oscar Goodstein share wonderful anecdotes, or reading his fascinating 10-page letters from Charlie Mingus, an amazing writer and philosopher. I grew up with Benny Goodman and Ray McKinley as neighbors. One summer I was the lifeguard at Goodman's club. When he came to the pool I played his LPs on the PA system. He was OK about that. Ray's baby sitter gave me access to his remarkable record library. Bud Powell was a drinking companion in Paris for a week. Count Basie needed to run some errands one afternoon on the French Riviera and I had a car. A lot of memories. As a jazz DJ in the South I came to know many performers on the road in the 50s. Those were jim crow days and we were the contact to local restaurants and motels willing to break the color line. Restauranteur Buddy Glover was happy to feed Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross and other jazz greats who came to play at the Univ. of Virginia. So it's with pleasure that we carry this link to Tom Morgan's jazz page, a great web site. Tom is one of the foremost authorities on early jazz, and he shares it well. If you have any interest in jazz roots, that's where to find them. If you like jazz via the Internet, Tom is on the Web with jazz programming on WWOZ New Orleans. His shows air on Tuesday from 11 AM to 2 and Wednesday from 9 AM to 11. That's Central Time so adjust accordingly. In 1963 there was a famous jazz concert in Jackie Robinson's backyard in Stamford, CT. It was the beginning of what became the Jackie Robinson Jazz Festival in NYC. There's a secret tape of the first concert few know about. Here's the story.