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An Episode of Bewitched Written By A High School English Class
And a bunch of other things to look at
David Friedman
February 25, 2025
This week, I bring you a variety of Things To Look At.
So without further ado, look at these:
Look At An Episode of Bewitched That Was Written By A High School English Class
Think back. Do you remember that there was an episode of Bewitched that had Darren and Tabitha in blackface? It was a special episode about race, and was written by a class of Black students at a South Los Angeles high school where most kids were reading and writing below grade level — many at a third grade reading level.
Knowing how much kids like TV, their teacher was inspired to reach out to several TV producers to see if they could work together on a project to motivate the kids. Only Bewitched responded. The kids were invited to Hollywood to visit the set, and the new relationship eventually culminated in this episode written mainly by the students. They all got to see their names on TV with a “Story by” credit.
The episode received a special award at the 1971 Emmys, and was recently posted on YouTube by the official Bewitched channel. You can learn more about the story behind this episode on Wikipedia.
One of three “Story by” credit screens needed to fit all 26 names
Look At Strange Nicolas Cage Items You Can Buy On Etsy For Some Reason
Why is Etsy so obsessed with Nicolas Cage?
Sell enough of these and your 3D printer pays for itself
Can’t believe they didn’t go with Duckolas Cage
Okay, this one’s actually pretty good
Look At A Dance Competition Held In VR
I had no idea this was a thing.
Look At A Free Zen Driving Simulator
It’s called “Slow Roads” and you can play it in your browser for free!
You can even go for a drive on Mars:
Look At Every Advertisement in Times Square on January 20, 2007
One day in 2007, I found myself in Times Square with time to kill and camera in hand. For the purposes of this gallery, flashy store signs are also advertisements. You can see all these images in higher resolution on Flickr.
Look At Your Parents’ Pantry
I don’t have a picture of your parents’ pantry to post here. That would be creepy if I did. I’m just suggesting you go look at it. Before you do, try to guess what the oldest expiration date is that you’ll find. Then see if you can find something even older than that.
This should be a TikTok trend.
Wait, is it already a TikTok trend?
Look At Eefing and Hambone
I wish there were better quality clips of Riddle and Phelps on YouTube, but this is the best I could find. Still worth looking at.
Look At Ike & Tina Turner Album Covers
Tina Turner was awesome. Ike Turner was an asshole. Together they made great music. And they had some incredible album covers. It’s hard to praise the talent here without seeming like I’m also praising the work of an abusive prick, so this should be taken as recognition of Tina Turner specifically, and for the album designers, artists, and photographers who made these things awesome despite Ike.
Wikipedia says the artist is Mike Salisbury but I suspect he was just the art director and not the actual artist. Anyone know for sure who painted this?
Those last two provocative images are the front and back of the album Outta Season and here’s a little context from Wikipedia:
The art direction was by Tom Wilkes and photography by Barry Feinstein. As a sarcastic statement, Amos and Andy are credited for the design & photography on the album due to the history of the characters being portrayed by white actors wearing blackface.
The album cover features the Turners (Ike on the front and Tina on the back) in whiteface eating watermelon. Due to the white audiences' interest in blues music in the 1960s, music critic Pete Johnson noted that the Turners are "pictured in whiteface eating big slices of watermelon each winking broadly at any young record buyers who might suspect that black people can't sing the blues."
Wow, I didn’t mean to start and end this newsletter with topics about race. That turned out a bit heavier than I was going for. Still, those are definitely things you should look at, so they fit the theme.
And that’s it for another edition of the newsletter. I wouldn’t deign to remind you that you can upgrade to a paid membership to this newsletter. I’ll save such a plea for next time when I actually have a pretty important post planned.
Until then, thanks as always for reading!
David
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