The radio just played the 1974 song “Rock On” by David Essex, with its lyric: “See her shake on the movie screen/Jimmy Dean — James Dean.” And I remembered how, as a kid, I thought the late movie star James Dean and the breakfast-sausage pitchman Jimmy Dean were the same person.

I knew that Yogi Bear and Yogi Berra were distinct creatures — one was a cartoon, after all, and the other one was Yogi Bear — but I didn’t know which had inspired which, or if their names were merely coincidental. I stood equally confused at the intersection of baseball and candy bars. Was Babe Ruth named for the Baby Ruth, or vice versa? (I wouldn’t know until years later that the answer was neither.) Was the “Oh, Henry” bar named for Hank Aaron, as I’d been led to believe, or for O. Henry, whose Twilight Zone twists at the end of each story preceded (I now know) the actual Twilight Zone.

To this day I haven’t a clue what (if any) connection exists between actor Chevy Chase and Chevy Chase, Maryland, or if the Pink Panther movies preceded the cartoon series that appeared in the title sequences of the films. (But I fear Ogar, our resident Peter Sellers expert, will elucidate.) My most inexplicable convolution involved frequent Carson guest Orson Bean and cinematic giant Orson Welles. At 8 years old, I couldn’t conceive of two people named Orson existing apart. So in my mind, Orsons Bean and Welles became one and the same.