You know how to whistle don’t you? Just put your lips together and blow…
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections,
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling,
Or just after.
– Wallace Stevens
One fateful day in the late ’80s, during the golden age of local talk shows, a man wearing a great t-shirt and an even greater haircut spent two minutes and 35 seconds performing an act involving whistling, facial expressions, and a Hoagy Carmichael song. Like a viral Holy Grail, it sat dormant for years, waiting to be discovered. Presidents came and went, nations rose and fell, hip-hop was born and New Coke died. The world waited for it to return.
And now, finally, it has.
click image above, or here, to view
As we wet our whistles, we might recall that it was on this date in 1950 that James Dean, the rebel without a cause who was later to become the first actor to receive a posthumous Oscar nomination, had his first paid acting gig: he was featured in a Pepsi commercial.
click image above, or here, to view
(Dean puts the money into the piano/jukebox)