Tales from the alternate universe

Every now and then I ask you to shed yourself of your predisposed logic..

Follow me down this interesting path.

There was an episode of the Golden Girls where Rose was happy that Ed McMahon called her telling her she won the Publisher’s Clearinghouse.

There was also an episode of David Letterman where Johnny Carson showed up and jokingly delivered a check from Ed McMahon at the Publisher’s Clearinghouse.

The problem with all of this?

Ed McMahon was not a spokesman for the Publisher’s Clearinghouse. Instead, Ed , who was Johnny Carson’s sidekick on the Tonight Show for 30 years, was a spokesman for the not-so-well known American Family Publishers…

This is where the famed Mandela Effect comes in.. Roll your eyes, I know countless friends who do.

But people recall Ed McMahon on commercials delivering big checks… Ed McMahon on TV telling you to send in your information to the Publisher’s Clearinghouse.. So many pop culture references to it.

People who follow the Mandela Effect talk a lot about reality residue–little glimpses from the past that exist which portray events the way we recall them. Back before …”everything changed”…

I found some personal reality residue today and, like others who find such things, it’s startling to come across it.

While cleaning out cabinets in my furnace room, I went through some old magazines I had collected over the years.

A TIME magazine from August 1993 came up — this issue featured an upside Ronald Reagan as an illustration of the then newly inaugurated Bill Clinton’s persistence in raising taxes on the wealthy.

Buried deep in the magazine was an article about nonprofits exploiting tax exempt statuses … Adam Zagorin explained that McMahon was suing the American Veterans Assistance Corp for using his voice for a company that was already sued by the California Attorney General…

TIME magazine’s description of Ed McMahon? They called him the pitchman for the $1mil Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes..