Enyclopedia Brown: The Grown-Up Years

Patrick from Popehat looks back at the career of the late Leroy "Encyclopedia" Brown, "disgraced former detective for the Rover Avenue Police Department and later private investigator to the stars."

Comments

[Fist of Etiquette]

The Croce song was based on this character? Was he genuinely the baddest man in the whole damn town?

[Tim]

He was bad, bad.

[RedDragon6009]

According to Croce, the song was inspired by someone he served with in the Army.

[Paul.]

So the SCOTUS gets all constitution-ey when it comes to a fictional character, but less so when it’s a real case. Awesome.

[RedDragon6009]

How ironic that he dies on the same day as Donald Sobol, the author of the Encyclopedia Brown series of children’s books.

[CE]

Who said that Encyclopedia Brown was “smarter than a bathtub full of smart men” — which always seemed to me an uncomfortable way to say it.

[RedDragon6009]

Someone who believes that you should be putting more than one man into a bathtub together…

[Episiarch]

“Why don’t you make like a drum and beat it?”

Man, I loved those books as a kid.

[Tim]

When did you grow up? For me, I knew it was over when Linda Carter hit the tube as Wonder Woman.

[Episiarch]

I never grew up, Tim.

[mr simple]

You know that’s no defense against statutory laws, right?

[Episiarch]

I have learned that lesson, unfortunately.

[Warty]

Epi’s correct, Tim. He’s 4’9″.

[Tim]

[insert dick joke]

[$park?]

Is that ‘insert dick’ joke or insert ‘dick joke’?

[Episiarch]

Insert dick

[Abdul]

Why don’t you make like a hydraulic lift and jack it?

[EDG reppin' LBC]

Why don’t you make like a tree and beat it.

[Episiarch]

Thanks, Biff. WRONG REFERENCE

[The Hammer]

Why don’t you make like a tree and get the fuck out?

[Warty]

Me too. No case too small!

[Jesse Walker]

Man, I loved those books as a kid.

Who didn’t? If you were an American born after 1960 or so and you enjoyed reading, you were probably an Encyclopedia Brown fan as a kid.

(Note: This claim is not backed up by any social science.)

[$park?]

Who didn’t?

Me. I’ve never even heard of this guy until now. And I was born in the early ’70s.

[Episiarch]

PWN’D

[Jesse Walker]

I had a feeling that comment would be a beacon for counterexamples…

[Warty]

You left yourself an out, though.

and you enjoyed reading

Sparky’s just an illiterate, that’s all.

[Episiarch]

GOD DAMN IT WARTY

[Episiarch]

No, it’s just that Sparky is illiterate. You have to cut him a little slack. Instead of reading, he spent his afternoons smearing lightning bugs on his forehead.

[$park?]

In my defense I spent a lot of time cooking grasshoppers with hairspray flamethrowers, blowing up frogs with firecrackers, and dropping tadpoles into pools of ammonia. You know, stuff real kids do when they’re little.

[robc]

You missed out.

[Tim]

Scooby Doo with his subtle marxist-stoner undercurrent usurped child detectives in the early 70’s

[kinnath]

I was forced to watch a lot of Scooby Doo by my kids.

[CE]

Those darn kids!

[The Hammer]

Well, Sparky, some of the kids you flung your crap at were probably reading Encyclopedia Brown at the time, so there’s that.

[kinnath]

Never read any of these books (born prior to 1960 of course).

[Tulpa the White]

Paging barfman:

If Obama wants a fair playing field for America, he can start with college sports

It is the premise of President Obama’s re-election: We have a choice to make between a candidate who favors the privileged, the comfortable, the powerful, and a candidate who wants a country where, as Obama has said repeatedly, “everyone gets a fair shot, and everyone does their fair share and everyone plays by the same set of rules.”

As Obama sees it, the more affluent should pay higher taxes; big banks should stop playing fast and loose with exotic, risky bets; tycoons shouldn’t be allowed to put their thumbs on the scale of political campaigns with unlimited, untraceable money.

But there’s one arena, dominated by a privileged, insular few, where rampant hypocrisy and exploitation reign, where an obsession with conquest overrides the most basic standards of fairness, and where Obama has stood somewhere between indifferent and complicit. It’s the arena of big-time college sports. And therein lies a tale.

[generic Brand]

Finally! A candidate will tackle the scourge that is women’s sports.

[Hugh Akston]

HaHaHaHaHa

As if anybody pays attention to college sports!

[Tim]

And speaking of dick comparisons:
“U.S. satellite imaging firm Digital Globe said Wednesday on its website that it had captured an image that appears to be the Chinese aircraft carrier Varyag during drills in the Yellow Sea.”

http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011…..t-carrier/

[db]

Those are balls!

[Dagny T.]

This close, they always look like landscape.

[Generic Stranger]

There seems to be a distinct lack of aircraft on that carrier.

[Franklin Harris]

What a whitewash. Nothing about Brown’s complicity in the Case of the Bloody Glove.