Hola, Sneakers! Welcome to our 406th attempt to do a podcast!
This week: Interrupting cat; unfinished comics; poor dinosaurs; direct to sequel; horrifying shorts; too famous; “imteresting” leading men; perfect timing; meaningful nicknames; bank robber; Dirty Harry Minute; nauseating video calls; phone-a-phobia; phone scams; win-a-car scam; old enough for circuses; ye olde clowne; regional kiddie shows; unspoken agreements; Rankin-Bass Tolkein; impossibly high self-esteem; Ian meets jocks; getting in people’s way; too aware; people are angry; feeling ignored; self-reality; fine; craving anonymity; clubland; self-conscious dancing; and, finally, the genie is out of the bottle.
Thanks for listening.
Question of the Week: What was your childhood morning TV routine? Or maybe non-TV routine?
Sub-question: Did you ever have a sort of unspoken agreement with your parents? A sort of quid quo pro like David’s set the breakfast table/get to eat breakfast in front of the TV.
Our regional morning TV:
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Thanks for posting that final episode of J. P. Patches. We watched him a lot once our family got cable and could get Seattle TV channels. I don’t remember Vancouver having a kids’ show with a clown, but we did have “Pete’s Place” with ventriloquist Peter Rolston. He was a gentle kind of guy who was not as in-your-face as J.P. I couldn’t find any episodes online, but there is interview with him.
Ventriloquist ‘Pete’s Place’ Peter Rolston. THEN & NOW
Saturday morning routine- wake up, wake my brother up, turn cartoons up really loud, wake parents up, sugary cereal.
Unspoken agreement: Keeping my room clean for a month? New DOCTOR WHO novelization for me!
I only wish I had some sort of agreement with my Mom about watching TV as a kid, there was nothing. I used to record all sorts of shows an a portable Panasonic tape recorder but there was a catch, I had to hold it upright so that the microphone was level with the TV speaker. So as I was hostage, close-up and to the right of the screen, my Mother would walk into the room talking loudly and without any idea what I was doing. “Eddie!! Don’t sit so close! Why did those idiots on Gilligan’s Island bring all their good clothes! Did you eat already?!”
I’d try to quietly ask her to be quiet since I was taping with an index finger to my lips but my Mom would fly into a rage. “Don’t tell me to be quiet in my own goddamn house!! I can talk as loud as I want!” For years my audio recordings were breached by my Mother and I always knew when they were coming as I listened, I even played them back to her thinking she’d realize how she sounded and possibly stop doing this….but she just got madder. “Goddamnit Eddie! Why did you tape me swearing?!!”
Imagine listening to the comedy brilliance of the Marx Brothers only to have it shattered by my Mother’s swearing, Dumont had it easy next her.
I was born outside Chicago, so when I was very young I watched the Larry Harmon Bozo show on WGN, which was accompanied by The Banana Splits and Gumby. WGN was replaced by the local Dallas affiliate KTVT when we moved to Texas. They started each day with Icky Twerp’s Slam Bang Theater, showing one Hanna-Barbera cartoon, like Quickdraw McGraw or Top Cat, then a Three Stooges short and then a Felix the Cat cartoon. The end of Felix was my cue to leave and go to school. The noontime show was called Cartoon Carnival and was usually Looney Tunes, the good ones too, not the overweight Bugs Bunny with eyelashes who looked like the Grinch’s half-brother.
But the show that took the prize was The New Zoo Revue. This show featured married hosts, Doug and Emmy Jo that interacted with three annoying characters in big animal costumes….Freddie the Frog, Charlie the Owl and Henrietta Hippo, all WAY out of scale with one another. (Imagine a frog as big as a hippo!) They all lived on a set where each animal had their own house. The only thing that makes this show far better than I remember was the discovery of this amazing outtake between Charlie the Owl and Freddie the Frog.
https://youtu.be/26umR8gWjSE