HOOK, LINE, AND SINKER

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And then she says to me, "Oh, stop your blubbering. So I'm leaving you for a woman - take it like a man! Besides, there are other fish in the sea."

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So I'm going to the sea to see.

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In this case, the "sea" being the Horse-A-Round merry-go-round bar at Circus-Circus in Las Vegas, Nevada.

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But, your questions, your compliments, your outraged indignation - keep it all a-comin' and I will address your comments upon my return next Wednesday or Thursday. (Unless, of course, I don't return because I've won a million dollars and run off with a cocktail waitress, a Vegas showgirl, or some horse's ass.)

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~ Stephen T. McCarthy

D-FensDogg of the 'Loyal American Underground'

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YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.

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UHP! I'M AN IDIOT! ...(AGAIN)

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It was probably with slight but smug satisfaction that I read through all of the lists submitted by the participants in Alex Cavanaugh's recent TOP TEN TV SHOWS Blogfest and saw so many folks bemoaning the fact that they had stupidly left this show or that show off their own list.
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I had been there before, I knew the feeling. Back when we did the 15 FANTASY ISLAND FAVORITES Record Album Blogfest, I had inadvertently left the great Tom Waits soundtrack to the movie 'One From The Heart' off my list, and I was kicking myself for weeks afterwards.
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Well, I was determined not to let that happen to me again. This time I would spend weeks thinking about this Top Ten TV List and get it right! I even went so far as to rent from NetFlix some discs of SCTV and DREAM ON, just to see whether or not I could still include those shows in my Top Ten after all these years. Yes, sir, this time I'd do it right!
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So, when I saw so many participants kicking themselves because they had forgotten about GET SMART (or some other good show), I just smiled to myself and thought: You shoulda thunk it out mo'.
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But then just two days after the Blogfest, something made me think of Charles Kuralt and his old program "On The Road" which I used to wait for with great eagerness on the CBS Sunday Morning program, and I thought to myself: DOH! You've done it again!
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There is no question that "On The Road With Charles Kuralt" should have been included on my Top Ten TV Shows list. So, now here I am, kicking myself...again! Oh well. Kick Happens!
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Perhaps the reason I didn't think of the program originally is because the memory of it was tarnished slightly by some of the things I learned about Kuralt after his death. Sadly, I came to find that politically, he leaned to the Left. (Well, he was a professional entertainer, after all, and most of them have this strange leftist disease.) But worst of all was that nasty bit of business about him carrying on a 30-year adulterous relationship with some nitwit feminist which didn't come to light until after he had passed away.
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But the bottom line is that "On The Road With Charles Kuralt" was really more about the road (and the people he met on it) than it was about Charles Kuralt. And the truth is that "On The Road With Charles Kuralt" should have been included on my list.
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The Los Angeles Times once referred to Charles Kuralt as "Television’s Norman Rockwell." Why? Because for decades, Kuralt traveled the country in a motorhome to visit interesting places, usually Small Town America, and to interview interesting people. Not famous people, not movie stars and politicians, but just "everyday people" - people like you and me - but people who had a story to tell. It was a wonderful program, and in a way, it was the first form of meditation I ever dabbled in.
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And so now I sit here on my sore butt (I'm still kicking myself!) and post a review that I wrote five years ago for a 3-VHS tape set titled "The Best Of ON THE ROAD With Charles Kuralt". This will give you a better idea of what the program was all about:
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[From the STMcC archive; September 12, 2005]

THE CHEMICAL AND ALCOHOL-FREE ANTIDOTE FOR DEPRESSION
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Charles Kuralt was the poet of small town America the way Vin Scully is the poet of Dodger Stadium. Relaxed, warm, folksy and deceptively insightful. He had a way of setting you at ease and somehow convincing you that the entire cosmos could be found in the minutia of this one fleeting moment. His beloved little program, 'ON THE ROAD' (1967-80) in which he traveled the backroads of America in a motorhome to show us the real heart of the country was eagerly anticipated by countless people every weekend - myself included.

Once every couple of years, when I need a little lift, I get out my boxed set of THE BEST OF 'ON THE ROAD WITH CHARLES KURALT' and pop in one of the three 60-minute tapes. I invariably end up watching all three in one sitting. It's as if once I'm on the road, I can't quite convince myself to pull into a rest stop.
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Tape 1 - THE AMERICAN HERITAGE: We start out at the beginning (always a good place to start) when Kuralt takes us to the roaring wind-swept dunes on Roanoke Island, North Carolina and the site that John White and the early English settlers of 1587 decided to call "Home." We see where they lived and ponder the great mystery of their disappearance.

Then it's off to Independence Hall in Philadelphia where independence from England was first declared, and where the U.S. Constitution was later hammered out. Kuralt relives those tumultuous times and his sense of awe and admiration is evident. "There were great men in those days. Never from that time to this has so much greatness crowded onto the American stage", he informs us. I for one, agree with him. But then Kuralt nominates his choice for "greatest" and takes us to Monticello, the stately residence of Thomas Jefferson and shows us the very bed that Jefferson passed away on one Fourth of July!

Then we go "on the road" again to the survey site of the 1803 Louisiana Purchase. It's funny to hear Kuralt close the segment with the statement that "the French don't talk about it much."
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In The American Heritage we also get to visit Wyoming's "Register Cliff" on the Oregon Trail; the place of Custer's Last Stand at Little Bighorn, Montana; the old Spanish Missions of California; horseback cowboys in Texas; Dearborn, Michigan and the Henry Ford museum; Tuskegee University and the inspiring story of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver; and then to the annual Town Meeting in tiny Stamford, Vermont, where pure Democracy is practiced.

Kuralt closes tape one with the comment: "All these places that we have visited are waiting for you to visit them, too. You'll feel prouder of the country afterwards. We do."

Most of these segments were originally filmed for television in the 1970's and so the picture clarity is not all that we've come to expect, and once or twice a trace of political correctness may seep in (after all, this was a CBS-sponsored program), but these are small prices to pay for such richness that can be enjoyed again and again.

Tape 2 - SEASONS OF AMERICA: This time we go on the road with Charles Kuralt to experience the seasons. In Spring, it's the "romance" of tapping maple syrup from trees in Vermont; harvesting daffodils in Virginia; at Appomattox Courthouse, where Lee surrendered to Grant, we find the blooming of the pink and white Dogwoods and learn that this is "the most American of trees being native to 40 of our states and native nowhere else on Earth."; then there's the indescribably heartwarming story of the old man of Surry County, Virginia, and his 13-acre garden planted simply for the pleasure of others, and the surprising twist at the story's conclusion.

In Summer we go tubing on a river in Wisconsin; we participate in the funny, but heartfelt 4th of July activities in the small towns of the midwest, and in the Tom Sawyer Days celebration in Mark Twain's, Hannibal, Missouri. It just doesn't get more "American" than this!

Autumn finds us in Pacific Grove, California for the mysterious butterfly migration; Colorado Springs for the pumpkin harvesting by countless school kids at the Venetucci Brothers farm; and of course, Kuralt takes us to New England for the "shower of scarlet, lemon and gold leaves" and wood pile constructing in preparation for Winter.

In Winter, the horse, "Babe" takes us for a ride in an 1890 sleigh in Connecticut; in Miller's Mills, New York, we follow the honored tradition of generations past in cutting and storing pond ice for next July's ice cream social; and we finish the year with the inspiring story of the miraculous Juniper tree in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado and its yearly Christmas message to everyone "on the road."

Tape 3 - UNFORGETTABLE PEOPLE: Kuralt introduces us to many types of people here, like Bill Patch, who converted his old Nash Rambler to run on corn cobs - gets 3 miles to the bushel. With the price of gas, I'm ready to buy one!
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But my favorites were from the Carolinas: Jethro Mann, an old black man in Belmont, North Carolina, and Agatha Burgess, an old white woman in Buffalo, South Carolina. Mann, entirely at his own expense, restores old bicycles and loans them out daily to the poor kids in town so that they can all experience the pleasure of having a bike and being on the road. Burgess spends all day, every day, cooking in her small kitchen so that anybody who wants to, can have a hot home-cooked meal at a nominal price, and gets to eat it in her own home. It's what she wants to do, and she tells us that she always gets what she wants, and then sagely adds, "But I know what to want."

And then there's the wonderful story of the formerly dirt-poor and cotton-picking Chandler family of Mississippi. There's parents Alex and Mary and their nine children, all who helped one another to graduate from college. We join them for their Thanksgiving celebration and watch as they are all reduced to tears in thanking God for His goodness.

THE BEST OF 'ON THE ROAD WITH CHARLES KURALT' is a great set. It should be enjoyed by any viewer, and I think it would make an excellent addition to a homeschooler's library. If you can watch all 3 of these tapes and never once feel the moisture of joy welling up a little in your eyes, then there is simply no warmth left in you. This doesn't just mean that you're dead, of course, but that you've likely been dead for a good long while.

Ukulelely Yours . . .

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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WE INTERRUPT THIS REGULARLY SCHEDULED BLOG TO BRING YOU THIS IMPORTANT TELEVISION PROGRAM

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We here (me, myself and I, and the 666 voices in my head) at STUFFS made the decision to participate in Alex Cavanaugh’s ‘Top Ten TV Shows’ Blogfest. Come on in, it’s festival style seating, too, so just plant it wherever ya want.
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The observant readers will notice that every show on my list is a comedy. (Well, actually, now that I’ve mentioned it, some of the nonobservant readers might notice it too.) No dramas (and damn sure no reality shows!) made the grade. In my opinion, probably no television dramas have ever been produced that are worth watching regularly for an extended period of time . . . except for ‘Columbo’ and ‘The Twilight Zone’.
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If you’ve got the buttermilk and the popcorn, we’ve got the television shows. So, sit back and relax – put your shoes back on and take your feet off the coffee table; don’t relax THAT much! – and enjoy the shows.
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What follows is my all-time top 3 favorite TV programs, in order of rank, and after that, the next 7 in only alphabetical order.
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TOP 3 FAVORITE TV PROGRAMS:

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THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW – 1960-1965
The Andy Griffith Show (TAGS) was always on the tube at our house when I was growing up because it was also my Pa’s favorite show, so I was virtually raised on it. The down-home atmosphere, the clean humor, the wholesome messages delivered to an older generation that still possessed a moral compass makes TAGS unequivocally my all-time favorite TV program. If told I could only watch one show for the remainder of my life, TAGS would be it!
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Although the show ran up until April of 1968, sadly, it deteriorated badly after Don Knotts left. Don, as Barney Fife, was the most indispensable character (even though barber Floyd Lawson was my favorite). This rule of thumb will keep you from wasting your time: If the episode is in color, you should probably skip it. Knotts left after the 5th season, and the show upgraded to color from black & white beginning with the 6th season, so with the exception of a few guest appearances, color means “no Barney”.
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My favorite episode is “The Case Of The Punch In The Nose”, when Barney being Barney inadvertently brings the whole town to blows. But the episodes about Aunt Bee’s “kerosene cucumbers”, Floyd’s… uhm… exaggerations to a “lonely widow” in a Lonely Hearts Pen Pal Club, and Barney’s first car are also way high on my list. And as if all that weren’t enough, the show’s theme song – although an instrumental – had a good beat and you could whistle to it.
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I have a litmus test to determine whether or not there is any chance I might develop a good friendship with another person. If that other person dislikes The Andy Griffith Show and the music of Roger Miller, there’s no chance.
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I’d like to give a shout out to Mrs. Wiley.

How do you do, Mrs. Wiley?

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FRASIER – 1993-2004
Although TAGS is #1 on my list, I have to admit that Frasier is actually the FUNNIEST show ever produced. A combination of great characters; extremely smart and witty writing; and almost magical casting of even minor characters blended together to make one deliciously humorous drink… er, show, I mean. This is one sitcom that actually makes demands on the viewer. If you don’t have at least a reasonably good grasp of history, culture and literature, a good many jokes will fly right over your head.
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I could go on and on about Frasier, and in fact, that’s what I did in November of 2008 when I posted an entire blog bit about the show here at STUFFS. Rather than repeat myself, I’ll just post a link to it at the bottom of this installment. You should read it because it includes lots of dialogue from the show, so it’s pert dern funny!
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ALL IN THE FAMILY – 1971-1979
One of the things that tickles me about All In The Family is that the leftist producer of the show, Norman Lear, meant for the lead character, Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor), to be the buffoon that every American laughed at and poked fun at. But in an American society being quickly changed by young radicals, Archie, with all of his many foibles, still represented something down-to-earth and “blue collar working man” that many Americans could relate to. Sure, we laughed at him, but we liked him too, and much of America (the nonradical America, anyway) definitely empathized with Archie.
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Originally, “Meathead”, Archie’s son-in-law, was supposed to be the protagonist, he was supposed to represent the voice of knowledge and reason and hip awareness. But as the show went on and it became increasingly apparent that We The People loved Archie best and felt that he was right at least as often as he was wrong, more and more the producer and the writers began to distribute some of the buffoonery and wrongheadedness to Meathead. Like what happened years later with the show The Simpsons, the program’s creator had one idea about who the protagonist was, but the viewers had a different idea and the creators were forced to adapt.
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I know it must have stung leftist Lear when we embraced Archie more than we despised him, and the faux “Archie Bunker For President” campaigns must have irritated him no end. Of course, the fact that Lear had a huge moneymaking hit on his hands was probably a balm to his wounds. Never mind what they say, frankly, I suspect that every socialist secretly wants to make as much money as he or she can. Politics usually ends where the dollar begins.
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I felt that after some years, Carroll O’Connor began to portray Archie as more of a caricature than a real, breathing, feeling person. You could see all of the familiar mannerisms coming from a mile away. But for awhile, O’Connor gave television the best acting it has ever known. Someday I must acquire the early seasons of All In The Family on DVD. One episode that still stands out in my mind is the one where Archie and Meathead are accidentally locked in the basement together and find a bottle of liquor. That was some freakin’ A-List acting!
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“Oh, the way Glenn Miller played, songs that made the Hit Parade; guys like us, we had it made. Those were the days! And you knew who you were then; girls were girls and men were men…”
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THE NEXT 7 FAVORITE TV SHOWS IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER:

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BATMAN – 1966 & 1967
You know what’s funny? What’s funny is that when I was watching Batman as a 7-year-old boy, I didn’t know it was funny. To me, that was deadly serious business! Now, of course, I’m amused by the preposterousness and the cleverness of it. Batman, answering Commissioner Gordon’s call to save Gotham City yet again, arrives at City Hall in the Batmobile and screeches to a stop. But he pauses long enough to put some money in the parking meter, reminding Robin, The Boy Wonder, that they must do their civic duty. Now THAT’S funny stuffs!
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Although Batman ran for part of a third season, sadly, after two seasons, it really had lost the spark that made it a hit with little kids and college students alike. Julie Newmar, the only actress to play Catwoman purrfectly, nailed it when she explained what really ruined the show:

“You got a sense of the rhythm, the sense of the straightness of it. You played it very, very straight. Those people who camped it up too much spoiled it. Many people, even good actors, had a tendency to ham it somewhat, and it didn’t need to be, because it was already campy.”
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Now let me relate to you a funny story that writer Stanley Ralph Ross once told:

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“I had used some obscure dirty words in the scripts – obscure in other languages. And they got some flack. They got some letters from people who thought it was funny that I used these obscure dirty words. But the network warned me not to do that again, and I said I wouldn’t. Then I was doing a show where they had this sheik that had to be weighed. I called him the Missentiff of Furderber. Furderber is a friend of mine, Skip Furderber, and Missentiff I got from W.C. Fields. Well, the network said that sounds dirty, so I changed it to Sheik Ibn Kereb which in Arabic means ‘son of a bitch’. They never caught it.”
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By the start of the third season, the show was already in big trouble and foolishly they thought maybe adding a Batgirl might help save it. Yeah, that’s just what the show needed, another character! Batgirl added nothing to the show but another cape, and – Holy Curtains! – it was the end for Batman.
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My favorite episode? Any one with Julie Newmar in it. As a little boy, I always loved those scenes in which she had Batman all tied up, but I didn’t know why I loved them. Now I do.
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THE BENNY HILL SHOW – 1951-1989
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People always think I’m joshing when I say this, but Benny Hill was a genius. He was a genuine comedic genius. How he was able to come up with so many exceedingly clever situations and gags on such a demanding time schedule is beyond me. As geniuses go, I’d rank him just below Twain and just above Einstein.
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I remember one sketch in which Benny was playing the Queen of England (as if that’s not funny enough!) who was being interviewed remotely, but there was a delay or lag in the transmission signal. As a result, the Queen unknowingly fell one answer behind and so her every response was in fact an answer to the previous question. As bad luck (and great writing) would have it, everything the Queen said seemed like a sexual reference. So there’s the Queen of England saying something dirty and then smiling big for the camera. Too funny! Only a genius of comedy could have conceived of that scenario. Benny Hill: genius.
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And let’s be honest, this world would be a little less entertaining had there never been a Fred Scuttle:

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Now, who can tell me the name of the song that brought The Benny Hill Show to a close while everyone chased everyone else around in fast-motion?

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EVERYBODY LOVES RAYMOND – 1996-2005
The show had been on for years but because I hardly ever watch television, I’d never seen a single episode of it. I remember seeing promos for it one time and remarking to my Ma that it looked like a dumb show. She replied, “Actually, it’s pretty funny.” So sometime later, I found myself watching an episode of it with my brother, Napoleon, on his tiny black and white television. Pretty soon I was laughing and before long I was watching it regularly with Nappy. We lived together (still do, in fact) and became big fans of Raymond (and Frasier) at the same time.
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Nappy and I watched Raymond for a couple of years on that dinky black and white TV of his before we finally saw an episode “in living color” on a full-sized television screen. I remember saying, “So THAT’S what color Marie’s kitchen is.”
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Everybody Loves Raymond had a good cast, but to tell you the truth, it was definitley the actresses Patricia Heaton and Doris Roberts, in the roles of Debra and Marie respectively, who really made the show for me. My favorite episode was probably the one where both Raymond and Debra refused to remove the suitcase from the staircase. Marie gave Debra some good advice: "Don't let that suitcase be your big fork and spoon."
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I was known to sometimes tell people that my Ma was “just like Marie Barone, but without the good cooking”. That may seem cruel to you, but then you didn’t know my Mother, did you? But she always did it "out of love for the family!"
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GET SMART – 1965-1970
Brought to you by the same wacky mind that gave you ‘Blazing Saddles’. Ya gotta love 86, 99, the Chief, and The Cone Of Silence. I said, “THE CONE OF SILENCE!” Nappy and I have recently watched some episodes of Get Smart after having not seen it for a number of years and it holds up great! Funny stuffs. But would you believe?… it almost missed making my list by that much.
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Check out this truly classic scene from Get Smart.
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MOONLIGHTING – 1985-1989
Moonlighting is the closest thing to a drama on my list – and it ain’t really that close. This is the show that turned an unknown New York bartender into a superstar. In searching for the right actor to play screwball, hungover, wisecracking private investigator David Addison, Cybill Shepherd said that the moment wannabe actor Bruce Willis entered the office she knew instinctively that they had found their David.
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Right from the pilot episode you could tell that this show was going to be an intelligently written winner… and different. Lots of cop shows have had car chases but this was something new: an elevator chase.
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The writers really fouled up the show when they decided to have David and Maddie Hayes sleep together and the great sexual tension that really held the show together was lost. And if they WERE going to have them “do the thing”, it certainly should have been very romantic after all of the build up to it. Instead, we got this silly, contrived, mistaken identity nonsense in the bedroom. The show was never quite as good after that, but it did finish with a final episode that nearly matched the standard for quality that Moonlighting was known for. Rarely does a sitcom conclude so well.
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I loved the writing and the occasional breaking of “the fourth wall”. Favorite episode? Well, Moonlighting’s version of Shakespeare’s ‘Taming Of The Shrew’ was definitely a standout. In my opinion, the theme song, featuring a vocal performance by Al Jarreau, is one of TV’s best.

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THE ROCKY AND BULLWINKLE SHOW – 1959-1964
This was the first really popular cartoon for adults. Oh sure, we kids loved it – after all, it was a cartoon – but the clever wit and deliberately bad puns are really aimed at adults who will understand all of the sly nods to historical events and famous personalities.
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The Rocky And Bullwinkle Show is one of the great works of satire, and both this blog and my other blog is replete with references to it. OK, replete with lines and jokes stolen from it. Anyone who hasn’t noticed this hasn’t been paying close attention to my writing, or knows nothing about Rocky And Bullwinkle, or hasn’t been reading my blogs at all. Whether it’s this, that, or the other, shame on you!
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One segment of the show doesn't hold up so well for me now. Namely, Peabody and Sherman. But speaking of Peabody and Sherman, did you know that Mr. Peabody was recognized as a puppy prodigy when he recited Friedrich Nietzche’s “Beyond Good And Evil” by memory in Latin, Russian, and his native tongue, Dog? Heck, I couldn’t recite it at all, and I’ve only read it in the language of Mumbo-Jumbo.
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I love the Fractured Fairy Tales segment, and, of course, the adventures of Moose and Squirrel. The narrator (Bill Conrad) says great stuffs like this:

“Last time, you remember, our friends were stranded in the middle of the desert with the sun setting fast. Well, they shivered their way through the long, cold night, and in the morning, gazed out over miles and miles of… miles and miles.”
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One time, the narrator accidentally called our antlered hero “Bullwinkie”. The Moose was not amused.
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If you think that The Rocky And Bullwinkle Show is just for kids, you’ve got a lot of growing up to do.
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[Test your knowledge of Rocky And Bullwinkle trivia by clicking on the link at the bottom of this blog bit. ]

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THE TONIGHT SHOW Starring Johnny Carson – 1962-1992
"Heeeeeeeeere's Johnny!" coming to you live from beautiful downtown Burbank. (If you’ve never been to Burbank, you never got the joke.)
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In my opinion, this is the late night television talk show by which all others must be measured. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson is indeed the gold standard, and I’ve yet to see another host measure up to it.
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Look, if a show where a bunch of celebrities sit around and yak keeps me from going to bed, you KNOW it’s good! Johnny in all of his various characters, including, of course, Carnac the Magnificent, Art Fern, and Ronald Reagan, was always entertaining. Heck, even when he wasn’t funny he was funny! If a joke died, Johnny was sure to make some insulting remark to the audience that would get the laugh the first joke didn’t.
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Favorite episodes? Oh, there were too many to remember them all, but certainly the first time Johnny brought out Tiny Tim was a classic, and I always loved Johnny’s ad-libbing whenever Joan Embery would visit and bring her animals to interact with him. Johnny Carson had style, charm, wit, and he represented the best of late night television, and the Jazzy theme music was topnotch, too.
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Well, folks, that’s my list and I’m sticking with it because it was good.
You: “How good WAS it?!”
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Please don’t tell me you disliked it.

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. . . “I asked you not to tell me that. Wossamotta U.?”
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Ukulelely Yours,
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~ Stephen T. McCarthy
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Links:
TV Or Not TV: That Is The Question [Why Frasier was TV’s funniest show.]
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EDJUCATION-R-US: We B Edjucatin' U.; Issue #2: Rocky & Bullwinkle Trivia Test
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YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.

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SOME OF MY FAVORITE MOVIES “B” WESTERNS

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Ordinarily I post all product reviews on my politics and product reviews blog ‘Ferret-Faced Fascist Friends’. But in this case, I’m posting my old review of the 'THE ROY ROGERS COLLECTION' (20 Movie Pack; 4-DVD Set) here since all of my recent Western movie lists were also posted on ‘Stephen T. McCarthy STUFFS’.

This one’s for Sheboygan Boy Six (the artist formerly known as Mr. Paulboy VI).

[From The STMcC Archive; March 1, 2007]

A lot of folks don’t know that ROY ROGERS (Leonard Slye; 1911-1998) was born at approximately where 2nd base in Cincinnati’s old Riverfront Stadium would eventually be located. How American is that? It’s a wonder he didn’t emerge from the womb draped in The Stars And Stripes, holding aloft an apple pie still hot from “the oven” and whistling ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy’ (or ‘Take Me Out To The Ballgame’). Every time Pete Rose slid into 2nd base, ol’ Roy probably thought that the Reds had scored a run because Charlie Hustle was safe at “home.”

Roy Rogers was one of my great heroes when I was a kid, and I can still recall the pride with which I wore my bright yellow raincoat with the black pictures printed on it of Roy (“King Of The Cowboys”), Trigger (“The Smartest Horse In The Movies"), and Dale Evans (“The Queen Of The West”). I even had a little schoolboy crush on Roy’s wife, Dale.

These old “B” Westerns starring Roy were so wholesome and exuded such innocence that I can’t help saddling up from time to time with my old hero and revisiting a simpler, more pleasant bygone time that won’t be riding our way again. Heaven? Well, it can’t be much better than lounging around late on a Saturday morning in cotton flannel jamas, with hot coffee, and watching Roy round up rustlers. “Look out behind that rock, Roy!” Too late. Oh well, Roy will ultimately win the fight (even if he does consistently “fall” for that leg sweep trick) because the good guys and bad guys are always clearly delineated in “B” Westerns and the good guys always win. And what’s wrong wit dat?

In 1990, my girlfriend and I self-published "CALAMITY CAT'S AND BLACK COLE KID'S UNCOMPLICATED GUIDE TO WESTERN MOVIES FOR THE SIMPLE-MINDED COWPERSON." It’s quite a collector’s item now; I’ve even heard of some copies selling for as much as ten cents! Calamity Cat and I saw every Western you can think of (and plenty that you can’t). On September 7, 1990, we drove out to the Roy Rogers Museum in Victorville, California, and since The Good Lord had taken a liking to us, we actually met Roy and Dale. I recognized that distinctive “double rolled” crown of his cowboy hat as he drove past in a van. “It’s him!” I yelled. “Cut him off at the pass!” Calamity demanded. I was really going to attempt to box him into the parking lot with my car (Calamity and I were both temporarily insane), but he pulled over of his own volition.

When Roy said he no longer signed autographs, Calamity and I were crushed. He added, “But we’ll be happy to have our picture taken with you.” Yeah sure. We watched Roy work the crowd for awhile and then as someone started to hustle him off, he stopped and said, “Wait! You two wanted a picture, didn’t you?” We couldn’t believe it! He and Dale posed with us, and Roy insisted that a second shot be taken for insurance. (I later tried to feed Trigger a handful of oats but he refused to take a bite as he was already stuffed.) We were so eager to see the pictures that Calamity and I went to a one-hour photo joint in Victorville and waited while the film was processed.

Roy Rogers was probably the most famous of the old “singing cowboys”, but don’t make the mistake of thinking that the “singing” part was just a movie production gimmick. Roy was a founding member of the renowned and influential Country-Western group THE SONS OF THE PIONEERS, and he had a d*mn fine voice and really knew how to swing. There was nothing “B” about Roy’s vocals! No, sir – he was the real McCoy when it came to music. And by all accounts, one of the nicest gentlemen in the history of Hollywood. (But then there’s never been a lot of competition in Tinsel Town in that department.)

Although the audio/visual quality of some of these old prints is pretty ragged at times, you’re getting 20 of Roy’s classic Westerns (2 in Trucolor – which is something of a small fib) for a dern low price. Will you find a better deal anywhere? “Neigh.”
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Included is 1944's historic “COWBOY AND THE SENORITA” (the first time Roy and Dale appeared in a film together) and perennial favorites of the Roy Rogers fan clubs, “KING OF THE COWBOYS”, “ROBIN HOOD OF THE PECOS”, and “MY PAL TRIGGER” which chronicles the birth of Roy’s famous palomino.

For this little wrangler, the inclusion of my three favorite R.R. pictures alone made this DVD worth the price:

“HELDORADO” has Nevada Ranger Roy tracking counterfeiters in Las Vegas. It includes the quintessential old coot sidekick, GABBY HAYES (“Pershnickety females!”); the rubber-faced pre-Jim Carrey Jim Carrey, PAT BRADY, who sings the wonderfully comic “I’m A High-Strung Lad”; Roy’s great line when he rescues Dale from a locked refrigerator (I won’t spoil it); and concludes with an astounding shot of what downtown Las Vegas looked like in 1946!

“BELLS OF SAN ANGELO” (1942, in Trucolor) has some great songs (including THE SONS OF THE PIONEERS doing “Lazy Day” and Brady’s manic antics over “Hot Lead.”)

And I suppose my favorite is “UNDER CALIFORNIA STARS” (1948, in Trucolor) which in a sense is an archetypal “B” Western. It commemorated Roy’s 10th anniversary in motion pictures and he and THE SONS revisited “Dust”, the featured song in Roy’s very first movie. The story revolves around the kidnapping of Trigger, a lame little boy, Ted, and his scruffy ragamuffin dog named… what else?… “Tramp”. At one point, Trigger stomps on the face of a prostrated “inflatable” villain (HOO!-HOO!-HOO! Watch in slow motion for capital “B”, “B”ad special effect laughter) and this movie contains perhaps the meanest, most downright ornery thing Roy ever uttered on the silver screen… brace yourself now: “IT’S TOO BAD A KID LIKE TED HAD TO GET HIMSELF MIXED UP WITH A NO GOOD GUY LIKE YOU!”
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But don’t worry, Roy will eventually get Trigger back and get the best doctor in the country to heal Ted’s leg. Everything’s Gonna “B” OK (EGBOK).

Unfortunately, the Mill Creek Entertainment company felt it necessary to display their logo in the bottom right corner of the screen every so often, but really, what does that matter? I mean, you’re viewing movies in which the good guys chase the bad guys on horseback around the very same rock formations from one movie to the next (watch them boulders, some of them are like recurring characters!)

Nevertheless, mind your tongue around me! As I wrote in the out-of-print Western movie guide that Calamity Cat and I created: “Let me spell it out for you… I don’t give an armadillo’s tail in Texas what you think of his movies, but you best not say not nice things about MY Mr. Rogers when I’m around, lest your butt and my metal-tipped cowboy boots get acquainted!”

Well, ‘Happy Trails To You’ until I review again.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.
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'BACK HOME & SOBER' (Or, 'WHAT I DID ON MY SUMMER VACATION')

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Hello, you goodniks, you no-goodniks, and you low IQers!

As you may or may not know, I was on vacation last week in Wisconsin, or "Dairyland, U.S.A."

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I saw some fabulous old buildings in Milwaukee:

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And even more in the small town of Appleton.

My favorite of them had to be this one, located in downtown "Appletown":

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I was just strolling along College Avenue when I glanced to my right and involuntarily uttered a "Wow!" It looked like something that had been fabricated for a Halloween Haunted House experience, but I crossed the street and took a good look at it, and it appeared to be authentically antique. And vacant. Ready for you to move in and start your new business.

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It's not so easy to see in these photos, but at the very top is a horse's head protruding from the building, and just below the flower-shaped window, on either side, are gargoyles. GARGOYLES! Hokey-Smoke! How cool 'n' creepy is that?! What a fantastic building!

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Anyway, I have posted on my blog a four-part blog bit about my vacation. Not here, but on my "real" blog. You know, like my REAL blog? So, why don't you quit Moosin' around and Rocket on over there and check it out? It's a story that's full of it. Excitement, I mean. And humor. And PICTURES!!! Just click on the link below, dudes and dudettes, and it will take you where the action is.

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And now HERE'S something I hope you'll really like!

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~ Stephen T. McCarthy

"As a dog returns to his own vomit,
so a fool repeats his folly."

~ Proverbs 26:11
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YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.

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