SEATTLE'S CITY GOVERNMENT might not have an answer for the future of the Viaduct or for unaffordable housing, but it's ready to take one really serious move-banning microwave popcorn from municipal offices. The reason/excuse: A false fire alarm or two, traced to overburnt popcorn bags.

GOP PREZ CANDIDATE RON PAUL appeared on The Daily Show, and Jon Stewart, that belovedly shameless punster, just had to open with a wisecrack (that fell flat with the studio audience) about the candidate's "lovely wife and her delicious fishsticks."

While Rep. Paul is not related to Mrs. Paul's (which was founded by two guys, natch), our own state does have an ex-politician from the frozen-seafood biz. GOOD NEWS! Flicks candies, listed in this space years ago as one of the few San Franciscan things I unconditionally liked (back before my anti-snob Frisco-bashing was superceded by Bill O'Reilly's anti-gay Frisco-bashing) have been bought by an indie manufacturer and are back in production. Around here, they're available at Cost Plus World Market.

BAD NEWS, PART 1: Of the four currently-being-debated plans for renovating Seattle Center, three of them (all except the "do nothing" plan) call for razing the Fun Forest. The slightly seedy but still functional Forest is Washington state's last permanent, year-round (more or less), pre-Disney-style amusement park. It's as close as you can get here to old-time "carny" culture. It shouldn't be scrapped for an undefined "family activity area." It should be preserved, even upgraded to compete with the likes of Wild Waves. BAD NEWS, PART 2: Some of you know I used to work in the bucolic Maple Leaf neighborhood. One of that area's greatest attractions has been the regional Camp Fire USA headquarters, originally built in 1924 as Waldo General Hospital. It's a stately two-story structure hidden behind an "urban forest" of some 100 second-growth trees. It's a sanctuary for eagles, squirrels, and oxygen.

And, as you might expect, it's endangered.

Late last year, with little warning, Camp Fire sold the property to a developer, who plans to put up 40 townhomes and 48 parking spaces.

And, as you might expect, neighbors would like to keep the site closer to what it is now. You can reach them at "Save Historic Waldo Hospital" SaveWaldo.org. THE END OF THE GOLDEN ROAD: As anyone who's been reading the entertainment pages knows, Darrington-born Bob Barker has hosted his last Price Is Right episode. And thanks to the Interwebs, you may compare-n'-contrast that piece of video history with the first episode from 1972, excerpts of which have been posted to YouTube.com by a fan. (The person who posted the clip edited out the very first prize plug, which was for that future Barker bugbear, a fur coat.) I don't remember having watched that premiere at the time of its original airing, but I have seen the series since its first year (I was 15). It's remained one seldom-changing constant in an ever-changing world.

Back then, America was under the thumb of a paranoid, dictatorial President and his brutal, power-mad minions; mired in a meaningless and futile war; torn by dissentions over race, gender, human rights, and the planet's survival; and battered by its dependence on foreign oil. Gawd, I'm glad those days are past us.

TPIR was a product of the old three-network system; the first new national "channel" since TV's dawning years, PBS, had just gotten underway. CBS hadn't aired any game shows for the previous four years, when the network convinced the Goodson-Todman production team to bring back a Bill Cullen 1956-65 oldie with a new host and a revamped concept (at least partly "inspired" by the then-popular Let's Make a Deal).

How has this ultimate piece of junk-food TV, this craven homage to the gods of merchandise, this candy-colored orgy of noise and flashing lights, outlasted all the other network daytime game shows to become the stuff of Internet discussion boards and manic fandom? Part of its appeal has to do with its very status as a national institution. Part of it has to do with its odd combination of mindlessness and nerdiness. Part of it has to do with the fact that it has more variety and visual punch than most game shows have had. But I'd say a huge part of the show's survival is due to its evocation of a classic circus-sideshow environment (where the MCs were coincidentally known as "barkers").

Author James Twitchell, in his 1992 book Carnival Culture, noted that the "vulgar" elements of mass culture, so vehemently denounced by the paragons of good taste, have always been with us. The vulgar is just as much a part of human heritage as the sacred. It enlivens us. It unites us. It invigorates us. It's among our eternal needs.

CBS promises TPIR will return from reruns once a new host has been found. If and when it does, it won't be the same.

I SWEAR, I DON'T FEEL A DAY OLDER THAN 49: Thanks to the 50-plus people who partied with me one recent Friday as I became 50-plus. (No, I don't have any pix of the occasion. I'm not that self-centered.)

I don't think of myself as an oldster. Some generous people have said I don't look like one, either. Except for a strange craving for afternoon naps I started to get last year, I still see myself as the frustrated ex-college student trying to get his life started already. (I was going to write that I still feel like a 25-year-old, but that didn't mean I was going to get one.) It turns out there's one celebrity born on my day in my year: Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams. He even made a circuitous reference to his birthday in the strip published that day. The title character says, "Happy birthday. What's it feel like to be 50?" "Great! Never felt better in my life," replies a talking skeleton in a business suit. (Ah, you know you're getting old when a Dilbert strip means something to you.)

Other folks sharing the great six/eight include Frank Lloyd Wright, Jerry Stiller, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Kanye West, Nancy Sinatra, Sonia Braga (herself still fabulous), Griffin Dunne, Supreme Court Justice Byron White, Joan Rivers, Mariner Kenji Johjima, Picket Fences costar Kathy Baker, James Darren, Bernie Casey, Colin Baker, DNA researcher Francis Crick, and some obscure Brit named Tim Berners-Lee who thought up something called the World Wide Web. (Alas, I also share my special day with My Lai killer William Calley and Satan-spawner Barbara Bush.)

A birthday, especially one that's a nice round number, traditionally represents a good time to look back at things.

I remember quite a few things about my early years. I remember watching that primitive, monochrome television (one of my lifelong loves); teaching myself to read newspapers at around age three-and-a-half (another of my lifelong loves); getting bullied by the older kids; leaving the bucolic outskirts of Olympia (long before That College was ever built) for the comparatively sterile foothills east of Marysville (long before its casino- and sprawl-driven boom turned it into an endless subdivision); being bored to tears by school and household chores; repeatedly discovering that a jock town held no particular fondness for smart but un-athletic boys; finding little to no interest in most "guy" style recreations (drinking, smoking, drugging, cussing, driving, fighting); feeling imprisoned out in the (then) countryside; wishing as hell that I was among real streets and sidewalks; finding partial solace in the pages of good books (my third lifelong love); sitting and squirming in the back seat of a '57 Chevy station wagon (we'd later become a "Ford family"); finding (and losing) religion; seeing my first live rock concert (a promo gig at the opening of a new housing development with The New Yorkers, later known as TV comedians the Hudson Brothers); and discovering about sex at the exact same time that the mass media did (hence failing to learn the valuable lesson that my culture had been lying to me all this time). And I remember the day we all went to the Seattle World's Fair, some time just after my fifth birthday. I basked in a real city experience. I stared in awe at the attractions. I calculated I'd be a still-hale adult in my forties when all these wonderful techno-utopian predictions would come to pass. (I don't miss not having a flying car; but the peace, prosperity, and progress they promised back then would still be nice.)

IT'S HERE! IT'S HERE!: The vastly larger and more comprehensive second edition of my "e-book" Take Control of Digital TV is now available. As some of you know, television as we know it ends in 2/09, when the analog broadcast transmitters shut down and everything goes digital. Before then, you've got a lot to learn about the new digital TV system and all the software and hardware that goes with it. I humbly believe my e'book's the best way for you to get up to speed about HDTV, LCD, plasma, Blu-ray, HD-DVD, Apple TV, DVRs, and all the other myriad aspects of the new video universe. Get it now at takecontrolbooks.com.