Yabba Dabba Don't

Occasionally I'll stumble across a detail about some celebrity that is so odd it overtakes just about everything else I think I know about that person.

Case in point: Dick Clark's Flintstone-inspired home, currently on the market for $3.5 million. Perched amid 22 choice hilltop acres in Malibu with views of the Channel Islands, the one-story house features heavy, cavelike molded floors, ceilings and walls. Just looking at the photographs, the oppressive impact of all that weighty material feels like a spelunking expedition gone horribly wrong. What could have inspired "America's Oldest Teenager," now a stroke-ridden 82, to design his retreat as a suburban Lascaux?

Well, if childhood memory serves me, Clark once appeared as an animated version of himself on an episode of the Flintstones series in the early 1960s. It was a common trope of the show, which really was a prime time Stone Age interpretation of Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners, to feature real-life guest stars. A Bedrock version of, say, Tony Curtis would do a walk-on in a ragged pelt, his name adjusted slightly to something like "Stoney Curtis," and mild mayhem would ensue.

Perhaps Clark was so taken with his prehistoric incarnation he created a retreat as an homage. Somehow, though, I predict that this will be just another expensive California tear-down.