Own a Piece of the Freeb!

Readers of this blog know of my admiration for the late Stan Freberg, who was a great actor, a great voice actor, a great satirist, a great maker of funny commercials and a great person. I owe a large part of my sense of humor to this man.

Stan left us in April of 2015. When his widow Hunter (whom he adored) phones me now, the Caller I.D. tells me Stan Freberg is calling and for a fraction of a second, I get excited; not that I don't love talking to Hunter but…well, you know. Anyway, with Hunter's OK — and Stan was very much behind this in the months before he died — some vintage items are about to be auctioned off so that his fans can get their mitts on some wonderful Freberg artifacts. There are two auctions and the first is this Saturday. If you're in the Los Angeles area, there's a viewing tomorrow at the Heritage Auctions offices in Beverly Hills.

You can see the items going up for bid in this first batch over at this page. Among the goodies are Stan's original scripts for the best satiric Christmas record ever made (Green Chri$tma$) and the best satiric history record ever made (Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Volume 1). There's also the manuscript to his autobiography, some awards he won, his old typewriter, his passport (see above), his high school yearbook…well, just go browse them yourself.

Let me give you a tip: If you want to bid, read the instructions carefully and don't wait until Saturday morning to do that. The first few times I bid on things in online auctions, I lost out on great treasures I would have gotten if I'd understood the rules of bidding better. There's some really great stuff here and if you're a lover of Freberg, I'd like to see you get it. Unless, of course, you're bidding against me.

That bidding starts Saturday morning at 9 AM Pacific Time. Let the games begin!