But wait…there’s more!

I want to thank everyone who entered Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s “Burns & Allen Treasury” giveaway, and only wish I had enough of the CD sets to give one to every person who e-mailed an entry (and I would, too, because that’s how I roll).  The winner of the 10-CD set (a $39.98 value) is Ellen E. from Undisclosed Location, North Dakota (Ellen didn’t send me a snail-mail when she entered so I’m guessing at the coordinates) and I will get her prize out as soon as I hear back from her.

To temper the disappointment for those who didn’t win, I’d like to announce another TDOY giveaway—this time, it’s the Radio Spirits release Sergeant Preston of the Yukon: Arctic Odyssey.  An eight CD set containing sixteen broadcasts, this collection is unique in that the episodes included were previously uncirculated and for many listeners, will be the first time they have been available since their original airing.  Paul Sutton stars as the square-jawed, straight-shooting member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police who is assisted by his trusty dog King in rounding up the various miscreants, scofflaws and ne’er-do-wells that ran rampant in the Yukon Territory at a time when gold fever was rampant and so were men slightly-less-than-honest.

Sergeant Preston of the Yukon—also known in its early years as Challenge of the Yukon—was sponsored in its half-hour form by Quaker Puffed Wheat and Puffed Rice (“The breakfast cereal shot from guns!”), and because the Quaker people’s mission to was to sell as much cereal as possible they would often offer up premiums to younger listeners: nifty little prizes that could be obtained by mailing in boxtops and a small amount of coinage (usually a dime or a quarter back in those days).  There’s a story arc in this collection that just does that, offering up five totem pole models to coincide with the events on the show…I’d be curious as to whether or not anyone out there still has these totems as a souvenir.

So you know the drill: if you’re interested in a chance to win this set, just drop me an e-mail at igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot) com before 11:59pm next Friday (February 3) and Saturday morning I will draw a winner from what I’m sure will be a bodaciously large stack of entries.  Just make sure you put “Sergeant Preston Giveaway” in the subject header (I thought about using “Arctic Odyssey Giveaway” but that sounds like something that would wind up in my spam e-mailbox) and if you’d rather wait to see if you’re a winner before including a mailing address, that’s fine and dandy with me.  This 8-CD set, which retails at $31.95, comes as a courtesy of my splendiferous working arrangement with Radio Spirits, for which I am truly grateful…and having listened to these shows, I think you’ll be pleased with the end result.  Thrilling Days of Yesteryear—where the winning tradition continues!

Department of Corrections

Peggy, a loyal member of the TDOY faithful, e-mailed me this morning to inform me that she kept getting her “Burns & Allen Treasury” contest entry bounced and the reason for this is because I left out part of the e-mail address to send the entries to.  It’s igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot)com (I stupidly forgot the “otr” part—irony can be very ironic sometimes), so thanks to her for pointing out the error and good luck to everyone who enters (I’ve also corrected the addy in the original post).

Fabulous prizes…er, prize!

Things have not been dull here at Rancho Yesteryear, despite the erratic posting schedule—I just finished the notes for a Richard Diamond, Private Detective release that will be coming your way via Radio Spirits in the near future, and am also plugging away on another project that I hope I’ll be able to do a little chest-swelling about soon (I’ve mentioned it to a few of the people in my “inner circle,” aka the people who e-mail me from time to time).  Speaking of busting buttons, my Mom fished an Radio Spirits circular out of the mailbox yesterday and noticed that the company has two new releases out that I had a small hand in: a collection of Our Miss Brooks broadcasts that was as fun to write as it was to listen (and is pictured at your left), and a smaller (but just as pretty) set of The Life of Riley.  Both of these classic radio comedies are among my all-time favorites, so sometimes it’s like being paid to attend a party.

The collection pictured on your right is one I did last year for RS (and I had planned to do this earlier but things kept getting in the way); it’s a 10-disc set of twenty broadcasts featuring the immortal comedy team of George Burns & Gracie Allen, with a few of these shows making their compact disc debut for the first time since their original broadcast.  One of my all-time favorite Burns & Allen shows is on this one, a riotous December 4, 1947 outing with Der Bingle as guest star (I referenced this show in a review I did for the 1933 film College Humor back in April 2011), and the two broadcasts featuring Cary Grant are most enjoyable to listen to as well (Grant was a big George & Gracie fan, and once offered to appear on their show without pay…something that I’m sure went over big with his agent).  Among the Hollywood celebrities you can hear in this collection are Brian Donlevy, Ray Milland, Ann Sheridan, Pat O’Brien, Hedy Lamarr (that’s Hedley!), Loretta Young and Ida Lupino.

I say “you can hear” because, yes, I have a set to give away to some lucky member of the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear faithful.  All you need to do is shoot me an e-mail at igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot)com with “Treasury giveaway” in the subject header by 11:59pm next Thursday (January 26) and if you want to include your snail mail address, that’s fine (that allows me to send it out quicker) but if you’d rather not divulge that info until you’re certain you’re the winner that’s fine and dandy as well.  If you desire, you can even compose something in the e-mail along the lines of “I desperately want to win this set, and if I do not I shall throw myself off from the highest turret.”  I will draw a winner Friday morning the 27th using the old reliable random number generator at Random.org and send out the prize with all deliberate speed.  The Burns & Allen Treasury CD set (a $39.98 value) would make a nice addition to your OTR library or a nifty gift to the OTR/classic film fan on your list, and I want to thank Radio Spirits for sending this freebie my way.  Thrilling Days of Yesteryear…where the winning tradition continues!

Go west, young critic

Back in 2009, the Western Writers of America composed a list of what its members felt to be the Top 50 boob tube oaters, splitting the tally into two separate countdowns—one for miniseries, and the other for regular shows.  In fact, I composed a post about that very list that expressed how pleased I was with the choices even though I had a tiny nitpick or two.  (I apologize for leaving out the miniseries list; I focused mainly on the other.)

A writer named Roger Catlin over at Salon.com has put together a list that he calls “TV’s greatest westerns” in one of those slide shows that used to be the specialty of the site’s former TV critic, Matt Zoller Seitz, before he went traipsing off to work for New York Magazine.  I wish Matt nothing but the best, but I also wish he’d reconsider coming back to Salon because despite my tendency to disagree with some of the pieces he put together for them in the past he never came up with anything as mind-boggling asinine as Catlin’s slide show.  Here’s his list of (my emphasis added) TV’s greatest westerns:

 1. Gunsmoke

 2. Deadwood

 3. Lonesome Dove (miniseries)

 4. The Big Valley

 5. McCloud

 6. Firefly

 7. The Wild Wild West

 8. Rawhide

 9. Wanted: Dead or Alive

10. Have Gun – Will Travel

If you haven’t already burst a blood vessel in your brain, you’re probably thinking (as I did) right now—what for the love of Shiloh is Firefly doing on this list?  Firefly was a short-lived science-fiction series that came and went in 2002, the creation of writer-director-producer Joss Whedon, who was also responsible for Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  The show attracted a significant fanboy (and fangirl, judging by some of my Facebook friends) element to live on despite its brief run in the form of a 2005 feature film, Serenity, and a myriad number of comic books, role-playing games, fan fiction, etc.  Catlin writes:

Joss Whedon’s first series after “Buffy” and its spinoffs was this fanciful futuristic space show that he quite explicitly described as a western. That could be seen too in the adventures of the spaceship, led like so many cowboy series, by a pair of soldiers from the recent Civil War (in this case the Unification War,) in which planets banded together to resist the controlling Alliance.

So the show was, in essence, an evocation of Western elements.  Fine and dandy.  But that doesn’t make it a western.  My Facebook compadre Archie Waugh points out that if that is the case, Star Trek would go on this list ahead of Firefly—creator Gene Roddenberry (who cut his teeth writing many an episode for Have Gun – Will Travel) sold that series as “Wagon Train to the stars.”  (Archie also argues that any number of shows—The Rifleman, Kung Fu, Alias Smith and Jones—would be better choices, which I heartily concur.)

The show he lists at #5, McCloud, also contained western elements—cowboy cop, horse, etc.—but it, too, is not a western…it’s a cop show.  I even have a problem with The Wild Wild West ranking so high on this list (and I’m a huge fan of the show) because it’s more of a spy show than western…but at least it takes place in the period in which we generally associate westerns.

Any “greatest TV westerns” list that doesn’t include Bonanza (even though I’m not a fan, it’s still an essential western) or Maverick—he left off Maverick, ferchrissake!—isn’t worth the bandwidth he used to stick this up on the Internets.  I don’t begrudge anyone tallying up such a list, you understand—Catlin puts Wanted: Dead or Alive in his Top 10 and while I think Wanted is a good western I’d hardly call it a great western.  (I think Catlin included it just so he could make a Bon Jovi joke.)  But he would have been a hell of a lot better off if this had been titled “My Favorite TV Westerns.”

At least he got the #1 oater right.  And Brother Edward Copeland can “enter his house justified” that Deadwood is finally getting a little respect.

“How would you like one ‘cross your lips?”

Forty years ago on this date, NBC premiered Sanford and Son—a sitcom starring legendary nightclub comedian Redd Foxx and stage veteran Demond Wilson as a bickering father-and-son team of junk dealers that became a smash sensation in its first “half-season” despite its “time slot of death” at 8pm on Friday nights (the series ranked #6 in the Nielsens in its freshman start).  The success of the series allowed NBC to establish a beachhead on Fridays, turning the later Chico and the Man into a Top Ten favorite and putting such series as The Rockford Files and Police Woman in the Top 20.

Although Sanford and Son seemed like an unlikely hit at the time, the producers of the program—Norman Lear and Bud Yorkin—had to suspect the show would catch on because of its pedigree: it was an Americanized version of Steptoe and Son, a popular Britcom that had been entertaining U.K. audiences since 1962 (it would be the second success of a British sitcom adaptation for the two men, following Tandem Productions’ All in the Family—known as Till Death Us Do Part across the pond).  I wrote a little tribute to the series that you can read at Edward Copeland on Film…and More, and in revisiting Sanford and Son discovered to my delight that the show still holds up pretty well today.  There are probably more than a few of you who are saying right now “No duh, you big dummy”…but it’s been a while since I’ve seen the series and when I did run across it (I caught it on TVLand once or twice during my hospital stays in March-April 2010, if memory serves) the episode always seemed to be one of the outings from the last two seasons when the show wasn’t quite as good.

I watched a few Sanfords over at Hulu.com in preparation for my Copeland essay, and enjoyed those so much that when I happened to spot the Sanford and Son: The Complete Series box set on sale at DeepDiscount.com for $23.23 I popped that puppy in my shopping cart faster than you can say “I’m comin’ to join ya, Elizabeth!”  (17¢ an episode—it’s a junk man’s dream.)  Had I known that our household would soon be receiving the show as part of our recent acquisition of Antenna TV (which repeats the sitcom at 11pm weeknights) I might have given it a second thought but that’s the great thing about TV-on-DVD—it doesn’t have to conform to any schedule.

It’s a most unusual day

I know today is Friday the 13th, but it’s actually turning out to be one of those days when the Cable Gods are smiling down upon my ‘umble existence here at Rancho Yesteryear.  Let me see if I can explain why in a few short sent…oh, hell—you should probably know by now it’s never going to be a few short sentences…

Last night, I turned on the TV set in my bedroom shortly before eight o’clock because Thursday evenings offer up my boob tube favorites: Parks & Recreation, The Office…and I would have Community on this list except NBC has for the time being assigned it to that frustrating television limbo known as “hiatus” in order to put 30 Rock back on the schedule.  (I also like Up All Night, despite what majorly important TV critics say.)  But the channel I had watched when the set was last on was the digital feed of MSNBC, and I noticed when the set came on that all that was left of the Lean Forward people was a blue screen with a “No Signal” box floating around in all its blue-osity.

This is generally a sign that our cable company, CharredHer Communications, has done a shuffle of their channel line-up and the last time this happened I thought (briefly) that I had lost my fiancée, Me-TV.  So I went ahead and reprogrammed the set, and when I was finished noticed that many of the digital channel versions of some of the stations I watch had vanished…which was a small disappointment.  However, since Me-TV was still intact I didn’t get too worked up about this.

This morning, I started surfing the new channels and came across Seems Like Old Times (1980) on one of them…and since I had nothing else to do at that time, watched a bit of it until the station break.  It was at that time that I was informed I was watching…wait for it…

Antenna TV!

(Heavenly chorus)

I know what you’re saying/thinking right now:  “It takes so little to make him happy.”  And you would be right, though I’d be in a much better humor if you removed a little of the sarcasm from that remark.  But the addition of Antenna TV to our Athens environs (courtesy of WATL in Atlanta) can only be a good thing, because now I have access to such TV chestnuts as Bachelor Father, Father Knows Best, Gidget, Hazel, The Flying Nun (touché, Ms. Driscoll!), The Monkees, The Partridge Family, Burns and Allen, Jack Benny and so many more.  With great TV comes great responsibility, however…I’m fearful I may never emerge from my bedroom again.

CharredHer Cable is a completely evil entity (in league with the USPS, by the way) but every now and then they do something worthwhile…and they’ve come a long way from RTV, which we no longer get but that I also no longer miss (CharredHer in Athens doesn’t carry the RTV affiliate in our area, WYGA).  I welcomed Antenna TV on Facebook this morning, and this is the response I received:

We’re registered at Kohl’s…

On Facebook today, my pretend girlfriend Me-TV rolled out a brand new promo for The Second Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ (and if Rick Brooks thinks he’s getting a piece of that action, he’s out of his tree):

I was so taken with this that I finally got up the nerve to propose in the Facebook comments.  I didn’t get a definite yes, but the response was encouraging:

(You may have to click to embiggen.)