I'm just a guy who likes the classics. I love Old Time Radio Shows. I love Classic TV. I love Classic Movies. I love songs from the "Great American Songbook". I dig songs from the first decade of Rock and Roll. Don't get me wrong, I am not opposed to newer things. My musical taste ranges from Classical to Classic Rock and Country to Rap. I love a good book and am always looking for something to read. I tend to lean toward historical fiction, biographies, mysteries, and more.
I have always believed that our past (and the things we've experienced in it) make us who we are today. That being said, after reading through some old My Space blogs (yeah, that's about how long it's been since I blogged regularly), I decided that I should once again write. Welcome to my blog. I hope you find it interesting, thought provoking, and entertaining in some way.
CONTACT ME AT - nostalgicitalian@yahoo.com
Recently, I replaced the main light in our kitchen. It was surprisingly easy. Black wire to black wire, white wire to white wire, and ground to ground. Bingo. It was done. Because of this I got extra cocky and decided to put a new light in above our kitchen sink. Boy, did I make a mistake thinking I could do that!
If you’re not sure what I mean with the wires, here is a diagram that is kind of close to what I was looking at:
My light didn’t have a fan, so imagine this without that fan wire and you will understand. The orange and yellow caps holding the wires together are wire nuts – for future reference. So let’s proceed from the point where I turn off the power at the breaker box to begin this project.
To aid you in my story, I have created a visual of the kitchen area where the fiasco happened.
I thought the main power would be in the ceiling, where the mount is. Instead, a wire came down from the mount through a chain and went into a plate on the wall. There is a plastic wire cover coming from the cupboard that also went to the plate on the wall.
Now, above my stove and connected to the bottom of the cupboard is one of those light/fan hoods. The lights help you see the stove and the fan helps suck up any smoke from what your are cooking. That died a while back and I wanted to take it down. I disconnected the hood from the wires that went from the vent/light to the plate on the wall (hidden by the plastic wire cover). So now I have two wires that I don’t need that are connected to the main power wire, which is under the plate.
I now have to remove cover from the plate to expose the wires underneath. What I see is this huge asbestos wire coming out of a huge hole in the drywall. The wires kinda look like this:
Now that picture is a lot neater than my wire. The first thing my father-in-law, who I have now called for assistance, does is disconnect all of the wires by removing the wire nuts. Of course, we didn’t really pay attention to them when we did it.
Once the wires are disconnected, we get rid of the two that were connected to the vent/light. So from here on out, it should be easy, right? Black to black, white to white, etc…WRONG!
We wire it up and my father-in law tells me to go downstairs and turn on the breaker. When I flip it the bulb in the light goes on. Good? No. The light switch is in the off position. When he flips it on, the breaker snaps off. So we figure we got the two wires from the switch messed up and swap them to the other wires. We turn the power back on again and the breaker snaps again.
My father-in-law didn’t have his voltage tester, so we made a quick trip to the hardware store. I pick up a cheap one and we come home. My father-in-law tells me that the black wire should be hot and the white should be neutral. When we test the wires, it is the opposite! He is perplexed and so am I. That is NOT the way it is supposed to be.
After consulting my brother-in-law, they agree that somewhere in the walls of our house, whoever wired the house, swapped the wires. Maybe at a hotbox or somewhere else. There is more discussion and it is decided that if we take the “hot”(black) wire from the lamp and put it on the white wire coming from the wall (which is now the “hot”) and the neutral (white) wire to the black wire (now neutral) coming from the wall – it should work. So we do that and add the two wires from the switch and TA DA! We have light and the breaker doesn’t snap off.
I tell you all of that to tell you this….
All in all, I must have run up and down the stairs 30 times during this project. Once we got the the vent off the cupboard, I pushed the stove back in place and plugged it in to the 220 plug behind it.
After flipping the breaker off one time, I came back upstairs to see my father-in-law on the counter with the main power wire in his hands. I noticed the clock for the stove was on, so I yell, “WAIT A MINUTE, DAD!!” He almost falls off the ladder as he asks what was the matter. I told him, “The stove light is on and it has power!” I said this totally forgetting that the 220 plug is an entirely separate line. My father-in-law reminded me of this.
“You scared the hell out me, Dad!” I told him.
“I had my hands on the wire. You scared the hell out of me!” he replied.
My three year old son, Andrew was watching all of this and said, “You both scared the hells out of my body, too!”
That was the best moment of the project! A laugh we both needed!
Welcome back to The Music of My Life. I began this feature last May on my birthday. Over the past 11 months, I have featured 10 songs from every year of my life. The songs featured were released in that week’s particular year. It may have been a bigger hit the following year, but I decided to stick with the rules I had put in place.
Like last week, this week I will be focusing on two years because I couldn’t really come up with 10 songs from each year. As I went through the songs from the more current years, I found that the lyrics were just to raunchy, or I found myself looking at songs I disliked or had never heard of. Every once in a while, I’d come across a song or two, but it has become very difficult.
So today, let’s tackle two years 2018 and 2019. In 2018, life began to change for me. I had found my soul mate and we got married. In 2019, we found out we were expecting our daughter. Life began to get better and better.
2018
I was back at the country station in 2018. Honestly, I was not really liking the whole “Bro Country” scene. I felt that the format was steering too far away from its roots. I never understood why rap would need to be in a country song.
Florida Georgia Line was a duo made up of Tyler Hubbard and Brian Kelley. They came on the scene in 2013 and had matured by 2018. This song came after each of them had gotten married. Their writing became deeper, yet simpler.
Simple is a song that I can relate to. It hit me when I was playing it on the air because of my new found love.
Simple
Down to the Honky Tonk is yet another country song from my days at the station. This one stuck with me every time I played it and for days after. Apparently, that was the intention. Jake Owen chose to record the tune as he suspected it was one that would easily get stuck in listeners’ heads.
“It’s a special kinda song. I think when people hear that song, it’s one of those that’s just like an earworm,” he said. “It’s something that connects, and I feel like in a world of a lot of music and art and ways to distract us and our attention, it’s super-important if you’re gonna put out any sort of content, that it’s content that grabs people’s attention.”
Personally, I liked the words and word play in the song. I think the chorus of the song fits me at a particular time in my life. I spent a lot of time in the bars in my 30’s.
I might not end up in the Hall of Fame With a star on the sidewalk with my name Or a statue in my hometown when I’m gone Nobody gonna name their babies after me I might not go down in history But I’ll go down to the honkytonk
Who’d want a statue of me anyway?
Down To The Honky Tonk
I never saw the remake of A Star is Born and I don’t have a desire to do so. However, I remember playing Shallow on the Adult Contemporary station and thinking that it sounded “out of place,” but in a good way.
(From songfacts.com) This dramatic duet features Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper (Who knew he could sing?). Gaga plays the rising star Ally, and Cooper the established musician Jackson Maine, who becomes her mentor and lover. Gaga explained that the song serves a crucial moment in the film. She told Zane Lowe on his Beats 1 Radio show: “It’s two people talking to each other about the need and the drive to dive into the deep end and stay away from the shallow area.”
The song was something special as it won many awards: It won the Golden Globe award for Best Original Song From A Motion Picture; It won the Grammy Award for Best Pop/Duo Group Performance at the 2019 ceremony; and it won the Oscar for Best Original Song.
Shallow
Did you ever see a video that leaves you wondering just what the heck it was all about? My buddy is always sending me crazy videos and stuff, so when he sent this I didn’t know what to expect. I watched this and really couldn’t understand a thing I was watching. It is basically everyone doing this weird walk while moving their arms in and out.
It still perplexes me, which is why I include it on my list. It is by a Russian band called Little Big. According to Wikipedia:
On 26 January 2019, the music video won the category “Hype of the year” of the Ketnet award “Het Gala van de Gouden K’s 2018”, which took place in Belgium The song was also nominated for the “ZD Awards-2018” for “Trends of the Year” and “Hype of the Year”, which were presented on 28 February 2019. On 16 February 2019, the music video was awarded the “Chart’s Dozen” prize for “Best video”. On 10 April of the same year, the video was nominated for the awards for “Best video” and “Best Song in a Foreign Language” at the Muz-TV 2019 awards.
So, it is an award winning song that went viral. Little Big challenged fans to post their own Skibidi dance videos, which they called the “Skibidi Challenge”. I would imagine if I walked into work like this, they’d call and have me committed!
Skibidi
When I found my wife, I knew I had found my soulmate. The next song says, no matter what life throws at you and whatever money worries you might have, you’ll be fine if you have the right person by your side. It also is a great reminder that life is short, so “Make It Sweet.”
The guys from Old Dominion say writing it came easy, “…t he words just came tumbling out.” The next thing they knew, they had recorded “Make It Sweet.”
“That [final] recording is probably the second time we’ve ever played that song,” lead singer Matthew Ramsey said in an interview with Billboard. “You can kind of hear the excitement and the energy we have for it right there, because we had just created it and said, ‘Okay, let’s record it.'”
Make It Sweet
The older I get, the older I feel. Some days it is just hard to get up in the morning. The I read the story of how the next song came about:
(From songfacts.com) Toby Keith wrote “Don’t Let the Old Man” for Clint Eastwood’s 2018 film The Mule and it featured in its trailer. He told Billboard that he was inspired to write the song after a conversation he had with the 88-year-old Eastwood while the two played golf.
When Eastwood told him he was about to start working on a new movie called The Mule, Keith asked him, “How do you do it, man?” Eastwood responded, “I just get up every morning and go out. And I don’t let the old man in.”
Keith immediately started writing around Eastwood’s “don’t let the old man in” line and what he knew about his character in the movie.
The day he recorded the demo for Eastwood, he was sick with a bad cold. “I gave it the best vocal I could that day, and I sent it off,” he recalled. “It’s a real raspy, sleepy, tired, sick vocal. I said, ‘Well now you’ve got a reference, and I’ll go back and put a vocal on it for you.'”
Eastwood liked the recording because Keith’s raspy delivery fit the movie. “He wanted it sick and tired and dark like that,” said Keith. Clint didn’t want Toby to change his vocal and used that version for the movie.
The song took on a personal meaning for Toby. He performed it at the 2023 People’s Choice Country Awards after being awarded the Country Icon award. The performance was his first time back on red carpets and television after his diagnosis of stomach cancer the previous year. Keith said he chose the ballad because it inspires those who’ve been touched by his cancer journey.
Don’t Let The Old Man In
Let’s wrap up the week’s list by moving into 2019 ….
2019
The next song was one I played on both the country station and the AC station. It was a nice crossover hit. Maren Morris wrote The Bones when she was getting ready to marry singer Ryan Hurd. It is “a story of a long-lasting partnership where the couple have been through many storms together.”
When the bones are good, the rest don’t matter Yeah, the paint could peel The glass could shatter Let it rain You and I remain the same The house don’t fall when the bones are good
When the song came out the two were already married. The video features clips of Morris and Hurd during their vacation in Hawaii in June 2019. The couple split in 2023.
“The Bones” hit #1 in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic and remained a big hit throughout lockdown. Morris said she feels it resonated as it’s more than just a love song.
“It’s kind of amounted to being this really medicinal cry for hope in a time where it’s a very unsteady and unpredictable time that we’re in right now,” she said. “I feel like the whole message of ‘if the bones are good the rest doesn’t matter’ has applied to this year of 2020 being a complete mess. A ton of fans had reached out and said, ‘This feels like a cry for the world right now. Like we’re in the homestretch of the hard times.’ So it graduated beyond earthly love to something broader.”
The Bones
The Jonas Brothers had broken up six years before, so it was a big surprise when they released Sucker in 2019. The song speaks of being a “sucker” for the love of a woman.
I’ve been dancing on top of cars and stumbling out of bars I follow you through the dark, can’t get enough
The song debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. This was their first ever #1 song. It was one that I not only played on the radio, but at some of the last few DJ jobs I did. It always made folks dance and I liked the sound of it.
It would go on to be the most-heard song on US radio in 2019 with 3.49 billion audience impressions. I guess I was a sucker for this song.
Sucker
You can thank Tik Tok for the next song. Old Town Road gained popularity as a result of memes on the social media platform, where users uploaded clips using snippets of the song, plus the hashtag #oldtownroad. Lil Nas X uploaded the song to TikTok himself, masterfully using the platform to launch the track.
On April 5, 2019, a remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus was released and the song exploded, going to #1 on the Hot 100. It was one of the few songs that was so popular, I’d have to play it twice at dances to make the audience happy.
Personally, I disliked the song, as I felt it fell into that rap/country category. However, I did laugh at the 2020 Super Bowl commercial for Doritos. It featured Lil Nas X and Sam Elliott. They line up for a duel, and when Elliott says, “make your move,” Nas busts out a dance move, triggering a dance-off. Billy Ray Cyrus appears in the kicker, saying “I ain’t dancing.”
Old Town Road
The deaths of my grandparents devastated me. They were so important to me. So when I was at the country station and played the next song from Riley Green, it hit home. It’s about more than grandparents, though, it is about those great things in life that end a bit too soon.
I wish high school home teams never lost And backroad-drinking kids never got caught I wish the price of gas was low and cotton was high I wish honky-tonks didn’t have no closing time And I wish grandpas never died
It, like a few other songs on my list this week, was thought provoking.
I Wish Grandpa’s Never Died
So that wraps up this week. I know many of my readers are unfamiliar with songs after the 2010, so apologies to them. For those familiar with new stuff, what did I miss that was your favorite from 2018 and 2019? You can drop it in the comments.
Next week, believe it or not, we will wrap up the feature, or at least this aspect of it. Looking ahead, I was able to go through 2020-2025 and come up with a few tunes. That sort of tells you how I feel about the last 5 years of music. It will be a short list next week. I hope to see you then.
25 years ago today a catchphrase was born. One of Saturday Night Live’s funniest sketches aired for the first time. The host? Christopher Walken. On Cowbell – Will Ferrell.
It’s a Behind The Music sendup, with Walken playing producer Bruce Dickinson, sent to deliver a hit. We see Blue Oyster Cult rehearsing the song (Don’t Fear) The Reaper. When they run through the song, Ferrell plays the cowbell with alarming enthusiasm. Walken loves it, ordering “more cowbell” and telling him to “really explore the studio space,” which he does. Jimmy Fallon, playing the drummer, almost ruins the bit by laughing his way through it.
Incidentally, there really is a Bruce Dickinson, but he wasn’t the band’s producer – he worked on re-mastering the album, which is likely how his name got used.
On a recent visit to the Tonight Show, Ferrell told Jimmy Fallon:
“I went to see Christopher Walken years later in a play he was doing and I talked to him backstage and he’s like, ‘You know, you’ve ruined my life,’ “
When Ferrell asked how, Walken responded:
“Every show, people bring cowbells for the curtain call and bang them and it’s quite disconcerting.”
On this day in 1970, the 42nd Academy Awards were handed out. The Oscar for Best Song – Original For Movie went to a song from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head for the film.
Some felt the song had the wrong tone for a Western, but director George Roy Hill insisted on its inclusion. Robert Redford, one of the stars of the film, was among those who disapproved of using the song, though he later acknowledged he was wrong:
“When the film was released, I was highly critical: How did the song fit with the film? There was no rain. At the time, it seemed like a dumb idea. How wrong I was, as it turned out to be a giant hit.”
The song is used in a memorable scene where Newman pedals a bicycle through the countryside with Katharine Ross riding on the handlebars. When she gets off, he does some impressive tricks, riding with no hands and even backwards. He finally gets a little too clever and ends up in an encounter with a bull.
Dionne Warwick convinced Bacharach to get BJ Thomas to sing the song. Thomas was getting over laryngitis when he recorded “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head.” It gave the song a raspy quality that the producers of the movie liked. Eight weeks later, Thomas recorded another version that was released as a single in October 1969. This version, with the famous horn solo added to the end, made #1 in the US the first week of 1970 and stayed there for four weeks. BJ said: “I was in the right place at the right time, and probably got their best song ever.”
This week, I got an unexpected package in the mail. The contents made me laugh out loud. Let me set it up for you…
I woke up one morning after having a ridiculous dream. In the dream, I was meeting my old radio buddy, Johnny Molson. I do not know the reason for our meeting. In the dream, he hands me this tricycle. The thing is literally beat to hell. It is rusted and the front wheel is bent. I am speechless and have no idea what to say. Before I can say anything, John says:
“The guy at the antique shop says it could have, and probably belonged to Dean Martin! See the whiskey stains on the seat?!”
I wake up and chuckle from this dream and I message him to tell him about it. He responds:
I responded that if I ever got ahold of Jerry Lewis’, I would do the same.
That had to be two or three weeks ago. I had all but forgotten about this until I got home from work one night. The package was sitting on the kitchen counter. When I opened it, I saw a picture frame. As I pulled it out of the box, I began to laugh out loud. The picture?
That wasn’t all. There was a note:
It was a much needed laugh. Even as I look at the pictures in this blog, I’m laughing. It is so important to have friends who will go the extra mile and put extra effort into getting a laugh. John and I have been friends for over 30 years and I’ve always appreciated his quick wit.
Over the past week, I have featured some of my blogging friends in a round of Share Your Nostalgia. I always feel happy when someone tells me “Yes! I’d love to participate and write something for you.” I feel even better when those who respond are those who will write a piece that you find interesting and entertaining. This week, was no exception.
This round tapped into the childhood of my guest bloggers. I asked them to write about their favorite cartoon or cartoon character growing up. Each of them wrote a piece different from the other. Each relayed an experience that was unique to them, yet shared with you and me. I extend to each of them my sincere gratitude for taking time to participate. Thank you!
I love features like this because the contributions will sometimes be familiar and sometimes be an introduction to something new. That has been the case with each Share Your Nostalgia round. Randy, Max, Dana, Dave and Paul all wrote of familiar toons (Gumby, Underdog, Musical cartoons, Huckleberry Hound, and Top Cat). Christian introduced us to a long running German cartoon (The Show Starring the Mouse). Now, it is my turn to wrap up the topic.
Saturday mornings were such a great time for my brother and me. My mom often slept in on Saturdays (because she was watching old Kung Fu movies the night before). My dad would usually be at work. So when we got up, we’d run out to the living room and turn on the TV. Cartoons were usually on until noon and on all three of the network stations. Chris and I would be up around 8am and be in front of the TV until the toons were over.
The one that was a staple was The Bugs Bunny Road Runner Show.
This show seemed to be on all morning. It was constant Looney Tunes! We watched this a lot. We discovered other shows when we’d switch channels because Pepe LePew, Road Runner or some other character we weren’t really into came on. When we discovered that, we were really perplexed as to what to watch. Neither of us knew how to read the TV Guide, so we often stumbled on shows by accident.
I believe that is how we discovered the crazy Laff-a-lympics show, which featured many Hanna Barbera characters.
If the Super Friends was on, we’d certainly stop to watch that. Both of us were fans of the superheroes. The show paired Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman and Aquaman with The Wonder Twins in some seasons and Wendy, Marvin and Wonder Dog in others.
I seem to also remember watching all things Scooby-Doo. We’d catch the classics (Scooby-Doo Where Are You?) and The New Scooby-Doo Movies. The “movies” featured famous folks that the gang would meet (The Three Stooges, Laurel and Hardy, Batman and Robin, Don Knotts, Jonathan Winters, Sonny and Cher, Jerry Reed and even the Addams Family) and the real star (in most cases) provided their own voice.
So many cartoons! Saturday mornings were heaven for us kids!
Dave said in his piece that he tended to like the Hanna Barbera cartoons more than the others. I don’t think I’d be wrong to say that they “owned” Saturday mornings. As a matter of fact, my choice also comes from Hanna Barbera – Hong Kong Phooey.
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1974. Confetti and banners appear high above a parade. We see the back of our hero riding in a convertible. Then the narrator says: “Who is this superhero? Sarge? No. Rosemary, the telephone operator? No. Penry, the mild-mannered janitor? Could be!”
Hong Kong Phooey aired from September to December. There were only 31 episodes. To me, it seemed like there were so many more. The show aired September through December of ’74 and was rerun through 1976. There were so many things that I loved about this show.
Fun Fact: Originally the show was meant to be a vehicle for Huckleberry Hound, playing Hong Kong Phooey, until it was decided to make it more original.
Our hero is kind of clumsy. Many times it is his sidekick, Spot, who is there to help him catch the villain. He sort of reminds me of the Inspector in the Pink Panther movies. He’s a bumbling, clownish character. Spot would sometimes prove to be the brains of the two, helping Hong Kong Phooey out of certain jams. The humor of the incompetence of Hong Kong Phooey is a recurring theme of each episode.
Greg Ehrbar, host of The Funtastic World of Hanna and Barbera Podcast and author of Hanna-Barbera: The Recorded History said, “Joe Barbera and the team auditioned everyone possible for the perfect Penry/Hong Kong Phooey voice. Scatman Crothers really impressed them with his talent in 1966 with his performance as the Cheshire Cat in the album version of the classic Alice In Wonderland. He voiced Meadowlark in the CBS Harlem Globetrotters series in 1971 and became the definitive Hong Kong Phooey in 1974, making him the first African American to play the lead in an animated TV series.”
I cannot imagine Hong Kong Phooey without Scatman’s voice. It was a perfect fit.
Sergeant Flint finds himself annoyed by our hero and feels that he is a hinderance to the police. The character is voice by Joe E. Ross, who many remember from Car 54, Where Are You? He even uses his “Ooo Ooo” catchphrase for this character.
Rosemary, the telephone operator is voiced by Kathy Gori. She explained in an interview how she came up with the very unique voice: “My inspiration was “Rhoda”, played by Valerie Harper, on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. It was a combination of Rhoda and Rhoda’s mom, played by Nancy Walker. I used to watch Rhoda all the time and thought that’ll be funny.”
Rosemary is an important character because she always answers a call about a crime and tells Sergeant Flint about it. Penry, the janitor (and HKP’s secret identity) over hears her. Then he’s off to change and fight crime. To do so he goes behind the vending machine, jumps into a filing cabinet (always getting stuck, and is freed by Spot) and once disguised, jumps on an ironing board that flattens him against the wall only to drop onto a couch that he uses to bounce into a dumpster that houses the “Phooeymobile.” The vehicle can change into other forms of transportation simply by hitting a gong!
When perplexed with a problem, he never worries about it. He simply turns his copy of The Hong Kong Book of Kung Fu, a correspondence-course martial-arts instruction handbook!
The idea of having a clumsy and incompetent character be a hero was not something new. It was the precursor to many other characters including Inspector Gadget. The premise works and fans enjoy it. Hong Kong Phooey was feared by criminals and admired by citizens, despite his clumsiness and flaws.
Over 50 years later, Hong Kong Phooey remains popular. Kathy Gori (Rosemary), says she still receives fan mail in connection with the cartoon! One guy took his love for the cartoon a bit far. In 2002, a plumber in England changed his name legally to Hong Kong Phooey out of admiration for the character. He did this without telling his wife, who only found out when utility bills addressed to Hong Kong Phooey started arriving at their house. She was not pleased.
In 2006, I saw that the entire series had been released on DVD. Naturally, I rushed out to buy it. The DVD set includes commentary on select episodes as well as a documentary of the show from its development through its legacy. The set also includes production designs, never-before-seen original artwork, and new interviews. It was worth every dime!
Finally, I couldn’t write about the “number one super guy” without playing his theme song!
Again, I thank all of the bloggers who participated this time around. Perhaps I’ll come up with another topic in the future. If you have a suggestion, please let me know. Thanks for reading!
A while back, I asked some blogger friends if they’d want to write a piece for my Share Your Nostalgia feature. In the past we have looked at Favorite Childhood Toy and Favorite Childhood Book. Today, we go back to Saturday mornings. This was when we sat in front of the TV with our favorite cereal and watched hours of cartoons. So I asked my guests to write about their favorite cartoon or cartoon character growing up.
Today’s guest blogger isPaul, who along with Colin, run the Once Upon A Time in the 70’s Blog. It features music from the 70’s, 70’s Pop Culture, Movies and TV from the 70’s, and Life in the 70’s in general. If you’re looking for a trip back to the groovy years of disco, this is the site for you.
Will Paul be featuring a cartoon or cartoon character from that decade? Let’s find out together. Take it away, buddy….
Sharing your nostalgia is a great way to dive deep into thoughts and memories you haven’t considered for some time, so I was delighted when Keith reached out to ask us to write about our favourite animated characters.
Animation has come a long way since I first started watching cartoons and although I’m a big fan of modern shows like Family Guy there’s something about old-school cartoons that take me back to a happy place, so for this task I was compelled to reconnect with my 10-year-old self.
As a child of the 60’s, cartoons were undoubtedly the highest form of entertainment available to our generation, consider also that there were only two television channels available for the first six years of my life in the UK and I was 24 and married by the time we reached four channels.
Growing up in Scotland I don’t remember many British cartoons of note although there was a popular series of science fiction based supermarionation shows created by Gerry & Sylvia Anderson – Fireball XL5, Stingray, Captain Scarlett and Joe 90, being the stand outs.
As a kid I was aware of the Disney universe of course but the most watched, most loved cartoons in our stratosphere were Looney Tunes and Hanna Barbera productions. Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Foghorn Leghorn, Tom & Jerry, Yogi Bear and The Flintstones were all favourites but if I had to pick one cartoon that always grabbed my attention it would be Top Cat.
It’s worth noting that in the UK, the show was called Boss Cat as there was a well-established brand of cat food already utilising the Top Cat name in the 60s, however, despite the name change, the original “Top Cat” theme was still used, which confused the hell out of us.
Okay so why Top Cat, I hear you ask?
Well, the best cartoon characters for me have always been multi-dimensional, for instance, when you watch the Road Runner, you know before the start of each episode that Wile E Coyote is never going to catch him. Similarly, Tom is never going to get the better of Jerry, whilst Sylvester has as much chance of lunching on Tweety Pie as Dick Dastardly and Muttley have of ever winning a round of Wacky Races.
As entertaining as these cartoons are, you know exactly how each episode is going to play out, there’s zero jeopardy.
That’s why I always preferred characters like Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck or Foghorn Leghorn, all of whom may come out on top more often than not, but who were often victims of their own hubris and were never quite as smart as they thought they were.
Top Cat (close friends get to call him T.C.), fell into this bracket, he always assumed he was the smartest cat in the room (or alleyway), but his stunts often missed the mark. This of course can be traced back to the cartoon’s origins and the fact that T.C. was based on Phil Silver’s ‘Sergeant Bilko’, a fast-talking hustler who’s get-rich-quick schemes rarely paid off.
Every cartoon requires an antagonist and Officer Dibble was the hapless policemen tasked with keeping T.C. and his crew in check, however, he was no stereotypical bad-cop, Dibble was a friendly enemy and the audiences’ sympathies often lay with him.
Whilst TC and Dibble are the protagonist’s, part of Top Cats appeal was its ensemble cast featuring T.C.’s crew who all had their own personalities and foibles….
Benny the Ball, is TC’s loyal, naïve and diminutive best friend.
Fancy-Fancy, is the Cary Grant talking womanizer of the bunch.
Choo-Choo, is the shy, sensitive one.
Brain, is the ditzy, slow-witted one.
Spook, is the cool-cat, the Miles Davis of the bunch.
I read somewhere that the Dead-End Kids, a tough street gang who appeared in early Jimmy Cagney movies were an inspiration for the writers, which makes sense as T.C. and his gang lived on the streets of New York, railed against authority and used their wits to get by, just like the Dead-End Kids.
I was staggered to learn that Top Cat was cancelled after only 30 episodes in 1962, I could have sworn that I had consumed hundreds of episodes as a kid and perhaps this scarcity of supply is another reason why I appreciate the series so much.
It’s also weird to think that I watched all these iconic cartoons in black and white until 1970 but I can only remember them in colour.
Animation has obviously moved on so much but as a kid you didn’t worry about things like production values and with one television per household, I was just delighted to get any screen time, particularly whenever Top Cat appeared on our screen.
Today’s photo flashback takes me back to one of the craziest trips I’ve ever been on. My buddy Steve asked me and a bunch of friends to go up to his parent’s place for a weekend fishing trip. It was a weekend to remember, although some of the guys don’t remember much of it.
As I recall, we all arrived at his parent’s place in the afternoon. Each of us had brought beer to drink. Once we were settled, there was a bonfire. We were all telling stories and laughing while drinking the beer. Next door, it sounded like they had been partying for much of the day. A couple of the guys went over to say hello. They came back saying that they had a lot of booze and that we should all go over later.
We had planned on getting up early to head to Skidway Lake to fish the next day, so after a while, a couple of us decided to call it a night. Others decided to go back next door to hoop it up a bit. They paid for it that night and the next day. My best friend, Jeff, and I had nabbed bunk beds when we arrived. I was on the top bunk and asleep before he got back from next door.
In the middle of the night, I could hear him throwing up below me. I figured he’d grabbed a trash can or something. It wasn’t aware until the next morning that the receptacle he threw up in was my shoe! Thankfully, he was kind enough to clean it while hung over.
The above photo makes me a little sad. I was at my goal weight when this picture was taken. I really wish I could get back down to that weight. I’m trying.
When we walked outside in the morning, I remember seeing all the beer bottles on the picnic table and laughed like crazy. I had to get a picture of it. I think we all took it easy that night and only had a beer or two.
As far as the fishing trip itself? Skidway Lake is not too deep. We were pulling up 3 inch fish. It was quite humorous actually. We almost always got a fish with every cast, although there were far from anything you’d share with anyone.
Despite his hangover, Jeff caught the biggest fish of the trip!
A while back, I asked some blogger friends if they’d want to write a piece for my Share Your Nostalgia feature. In the past we have looked at Favorite Childhood Toy and Favorite Childhood Book. Today, we go back to Saturday mornings. This was when we sat in front of the TV with our favorite cereal and watched hours of cartoons. So I asked my guests to write about their favorite cartoon or cartoon character growing up.
Today’s guest bloggeris no stranger to readers of this blog. He is my friend, Dave, from A Sound Day. He has been hosting his monthly music feature Turntable Talk for 3 years. I have been lucky enough to write for every topic. He is also the one who encouraged me to host a feature of my own, which is this one. I have used his presentation as a blueprint for my feature. I appreciate Dave’s support on this. I probably would have never started it, had he not encouraged me.For that, I thank you!
I’m excited to see what Dave’s thoughts are, so I’ll turn it over to him….
Thanks to Keith for inviting me back to this round of his super “Share your Nostalgia”. I love the idea and the picks for toys and books were pretty simple for me. But this round is a bit different. Keith mentioned that I challenged him a little in the last round of my Music round-table, Turntable Talk, with a tricky topic. Well, I think he’s going tit-for-tat here; I had to think some about this one – a favorite childhood cartoon.
I loved cartoons as a kid, but it’s odd. I loved music then too, and I seem to have an almost photographic (or is it audio tape?) memory of the music I heard back then. It seems like I could close to pull a top 30 chart from the early-’70s out of my head and it would be fairly close to accurate; I can hear a few bars of a song from that era and usually I’ll identify it if it was on radio back then, even if I’d not thought about it for a couple of decades. Not so the cartoons though! My memories of the ones I watched are now a bit fuzzy.
Reading Christian’s column earlier this week, it occurs to me I could have gone for Peanuts and A Charlie Brown Christmas. I loved that show then, love it now and I likely have seen it each and every December since I was a kid, so I remember it pretty clearly! But even though it was animated, it somehow seems more like a “special” than a cartoon for me.
I do remember, as many others here will probably comment on too, that it was a different world back then. The Flintstones and Jetsons (both of which I liked) were something of a different breed, half hour cartoons with a full story line, and they played Monday-Friday when I was young. They were like a sitcom made via animation and the forefunner of The Simpsons, which for years as an adult in the ’90s was a weekly “must see”.
I remember seeing the Flintstones a lot during my school lunch breaks … the public school was just five doors up from our house so coming home was easy and I often had my sandwich while enjoying Fred and Barney’s antics. But otherwise, cartoons were pretty much just a Saturday morning thing. No Cartoon Network or round-the-clock programming with cartoons then, so they were a special treat. Many a Saturday I’d be up before my parents and crept into the living room (no TVs in our bedrooms back then either) and turn on the big old console TV quietly and laugh my head off at the cartoons.
Now, it’s tough to really pick a particular favorite but what I recall well is that there were essentially two diffferent cartoon streams. There was Merrie Melodies/Looney Tunes and Hanna-Barbera. The first two were technically separate but by the 1940s had pretty much merged and were interchangeable. They were the dominant ones that played week after week, hour after hour it seemed. There were shows like Looney Tunes and the Bugs Bunny & Roadrunner Show. They were, I guess, the “stars” of the cartoon world – Bugs Bunny, Roadrunner and Coyote, Tweety bird and Sylvester the Cat, Porky Pig and of course, everyone’s favorite sexually abusive skunk, Pepe le Pew. There were endless numbers of the short cartoons featuring those characters and while I enjoyed them somewhat, they didn’t really grab me all that much.
Bugs Bunny actually bugged me somewhat – he was too smug, too arrogant. Looking back, I think it was indicative of my upbringing. Both parents rather stressed “don’t brag. Don’t show off” to me, and while even though my Dad wasn’t British (my Mom was) they both rather exuded that British “stiff upper lip” persona. As such, that smug, show offy rabbit got under my skin … though not as much as it did Elmer Fudd’s. Same goes for Tweety, as much as I love birds. And the Coyote, he I sort of felt sorry for. But even now recall wondering “why does he keep buying stuff from Acme when it always backfires on him?”
I much preferred the Hanna-Barbera ones, though I didn’t see them nearly as much. They likely weren’t as popular overall. I guess Yogi Bear was the most famous of their Saturday morning characters, there were shows which incorporated Yogi into the title. I found Yogi, Booboo and their never-ending quest for a pic-a-nic basket kind of funny. But the real stars to me were some of the minor or secondary characters who’d have their own little bits now and again. Specifically, Auggie Doggie and Huckleberry Hound.
Huckleberry Hound was a laid-back blue dog with a southern accent apparently designed to sound like Andy Griffith. He’d try various jobs, like dog catcher or even ancient knight, usually not too well and was often outsmarted by local crows. All the while, his love was playing on his old banjo, singing “My darling Clementine” rather off-key. It was the first animated show to win an Emmy by the way, going back to 1960 when it won Outstanding Achievement in Children’s Programming. When I found this old clip of him on Youtube, it made me smile and think back again.
Auggie Doggie was a little dachshund pup who adored his father, Doggie Daddy. Auggie just wanted to make Dear Old Dad proud and Doggie Daddy doted on his son (in his Jimmy Durante-like voice) and together they took on a number of adventures… usually with unexpected consequences. For instance, in a review of the first season of its clips, storylines included Auggie creating a flying saucer and taking off into space and “Good Mouse Keeping” where the pair “try to get rid of an annoying mouse from their home” with the mouse always getting the upper hand.
I liked those three dogs a lot, and perhaps even more because they weren’t as omni-present as the Merrie Melodies crew. Looking back, there was a sort of innocence and naivete about them perhaps lacking in the competitors which were a little mean at the core. Its a child-like quality that seems entirely welcome in shows for small children and something that, my very limited experience suggests has long disappeared from 21st Century cartoons. Those are usually better drawn or computer-animated and more action packed but lacking in storyline or morals. It’s nice to think back to a simpler time and simpler childhoods and watching a few of these old cartoons helps me do that, so thanks Keith for the topic. I hope you all have similar recollections or trips back to happy times of your past with the others’ picks too.
I feel like it’s been forever since I posted a personal update. My wife’s surgery, her recovery, the daily features, and this week’s Share Your Nostalgia, I’ve been a bit busy. So let me bring you up to date.
My wife is recovering nicely. She will be heading in for another post op check up next week. Her hope is that they clear her to go back to work. She had made it no secret that she is bored and hates laying around. She’s already been her stubborn self and doing things that the doctor told her not to do. That’s how I know she is ready to go back!
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Our photographer, Beth, at Enjoy The View hosted a Spring Mini session recently. We love taking our kids here. The session is 15 minutes long, which is about how long they will behave. Beth had a dog that the kids loved named Roxie. They asked her where Roxie was when they walked in. Beth whispered to us that Roxie had passed away a few days before. Ella heard her and after the session, she told us she had to get a card for “Miss Beth” because “she has to be really sad.”
When the session started, they were ok. However 5 minutes in, they started to get crazy. They were moving SO much. I cannot even believe the great shots she got of them. Sam and I looked at each other when we saw the photos and asked, “Were we at the same session? I could swear they never stood still!”
Here is one of my favorites:
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My brother came up for a visit over the weekend. The kids have been cooped up and wanted to get out of the house. We decided to take them to the Sloan Museum, which has a lot of fun for kids. They have this huge water area for them to play.
They also have a cool treehouse that they can climb in.
When we pulled in, we could see just how busy they were, but we ventured in anyway. It was packed. We had the two kids and four adults and it was a challenge for us to keep them in our sight. They love playing with the other kids, but for us, it was wall to wall people and I was afraid we’d lose sight of them. In the end, they had fun and I was glad to be out of there!
We all went to dinner afterward at our favorite steakhouse – Lucky’s. My brother had never been there before, and we have never taken the kids there. Andrew was a hoot.
They brought out a salad and he was eating it when he found a leaf of spinach. “What?! A leaf?!? Who puts leaves in a salad?!”
There was a bottle of wine on the table and they asked if they could have some. We said that it was not for kids and it was alcohol. Andrew says, “Alcohol?!? People die from that on Dr. G!”
(Dr. G Medical Examiner is a show that follows this doctor doing Autopsies!)
Despite the 30 minute wait, the food was excellent. My brother and his partner decided they would go back to the hotel because it was close to bedtime. Sam and I walked in the door and we were ready for bed.
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My brother has read just about everything on Anne Frank. Sam knows that I read a lot of World War II books. She had asked if we’d ever been to the Holocaust museum here in Michigan. I had no idea that there was one. We looked and they were open on Sunday, so we met there about 1pm. We took the kids to Nana’s.
When we walked in, the first thing I saw was a train car. As many know, German soldiers loaded many Jewish people on these cars and took them to the gas chambers. I had read about these cars, which many books describe in detail. I felt it was smaller than I pictured.
This museum not only looks at the events of WWII and the Holocaust, but it takes it a step further and features the stories of survivors who moved to the US and to Michigan. I was disappointed when we found out that one of those survivors was there doing a talk an hour before we arrived. Her name was Irene Miller.
She has written a book about her experience and they had copies in the museum shop. My brother and I both bought copies. When I got home, I noticed she had autographed them. I cannot wait to read this.
It took us about 90 minutes to go through, but I can see where it might take longer. There are many of those codes you can scan with your phone and it takes you to videos with more information. As you get to the end of your trip, there is a hallway with Michigan survivors.
It truly was a very moving experience. I am so glad that we all decided to go. I hope to go back again soon and revisit some of the things we didn’t do.
One of the most sobering facts was that there were over 6 million Jews died during the Holocaust. A quote on the museum website from a Midland High School student makes a good point:
“The Zekelman Holocaust Center shows how much of an impact the Holocaust had on the world. Looking at the number six million in history class doesn’t show much, but seeing the impact here does.”
On the outside of the building are six peaks. They represent those 6 million lives.
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My brother’s visits are never long enough, but I am always glad to see him. We’re hoping to make the trip down to see him over the summer, if possible.
Various Ramblings of a Nostalgic Italian 