John Bogert's Mashup

I wrote a mashup on Vincenzo Riccardi and Eric Taylor, but the Daily Breeze's John Bogert wrote mashup on Vincenzo Riccardi and Robert Adler.

Robert Adler died last week.

Vincenzo Riccardi passed on more than a year ago.

One sort of enabled the other....

[W]ay back in 1956...Adler, well into a six-decade career with Zenith, was asked to find a way for TV viewers to change channels without having to do all that highly dangerous standing and sitting back down....

Adler, by the way, was so far ahead of his time it was as laughable as Uncle Milty showing up on TV in a dress. God that was funny, now that I recall those rollicking days of early television, when some cities had as many as two channels to choose from....

You see, there was no reason as yet to own a remote control when there was hardly a reason to own a television aside from how, if you did, entire neighborhoods would crowd into your living room to practice looking slack-jawed. In fact, what we were doing back then, without knowing it, was becoming what we are now. Which is, as you shall see, a vision embodied by the late Vincenzo Riccardi....

[Riccardi] was 70 when he passed away while watching his TV over a year ago. Police in Southampton, N.Y., figured this out when they discovered the mummified remains of the...widower sitting upright in front of his set ... which was still on.

The cops didn't say if a remote was in his hand. But I'll bet that there was one comfortingly nearby, a boon companion even in death.

television

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