“Peg…it will come back to you…”

First off…many thanks to those of you who sent my mother best wishes on her recuperating from her recent experience with the surgeon’s scalpel.  I would like to honestly say she was overwhelmed by your kind thoughts…but her reaction was more along the lines of “Stop writing about me on your blog, damn it!”

One of the fabulous perks I receive as a result of my liner note contributions to Radio Spirits old-time radio collections—besides a little jingle in my pocket so that I might keep creditors at bay, of course—is that RS usually sends me a few gratis copies of the sets on which I’ve worked.  I usually keep one for myself, and then either hook up a friend with one or give them out as fabulous prizes to reward those people patient when the blog fields at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear fall fallow.

The last giveaway I did here on the blog was for a Don Rickles DVD back in October…so what do you say to a chance to win a copy of the Radio Spirits release The Couple Next Door: Merry Mix-Ups?  For those of you not familiar with the program…here’s a little background:

Actress-writer Margaret Frances “Peg” Lynch—who, sadly, was summoned to the Great Audition Room back in July of 2015 at the age of 98—was one of the most amazing individuals employed during Radio’s Golden Age.  Her website rightfully boasts that she was “the lady who invented sitcom”—that sitcom being The Private Lives of Ethel and Albert, which premiered over NBC Blue on May 29, 1944 (an earlier version had appeared previously in three-minute installments over several local stations at which she was employed).  It was a simple, character-based sitcom: Peg played Ethel Arbuckle (Lynch stepped in when the network brass didn’t think any of the actresses who auditioned were suitable), a typical housewife married to a typical husband in the form of Albert Arbuckle.  Albert was played initially by Richard Widmark, who eventually moved on to a stage and film careet, and he was replaced by Alan Bunce…whose chemistry with Peg was quite convincing.

Ethel and Albert spent most of its run on radio as a five-day-a-week quarter hour—it was expanded to a half-hour in its final season before it was cancelled on August 28, 1950.  After that, it became one of the boob tube’s early successes—first as a fifteen-minute segment on Kate Smith’s variety show, and then as a half-hour series that aired on all three of the majors (ABC, CBS and NBC) from 1953 to 1956.  Lynch went on record as not being overly fond of the TV Ethel and Albert (“…I always felt it spoiled my timing…I would have to hold up for the laugh…”) so when she got an opportunity to revive her creation for CBS Radio beginning in December of 1957 she leapt at the chance.  The only snag was that because she had signed away the rights to “Ethel and Albert” sometime ago, she would have to rename the new series The Couple Next Door.

The Couple Next Door is a quirky little situation comedy in the mold of Vic & Sade (without the engaging eccentricity) and Lum ‘n’ Abner (without the bucolic wackiness).  I only had a passing familiarity with the series before I was asked to contribute liner notes, but in listening to the shows it wasn’t long before Couple Next Door worked its magic on me.  What I enjoy so thoroughly about Peg Lynch’s writing is that it doesn’t come off as writing; the dialogue sounds perfectly natural to the ear—it’s as if you caught yourself eavesdropping on a neighbor couple’s conversation by accident.  Several of the broadcasts in the Merry Mix-Ups collection are Yuletide-themed; one of the funniest is an outing that finds Mr. Piper (Bunce) having to drop off a parcel at the post office and being stymied by the nitpicky regulations that the clerk insists must be followed to the letter before it can be sent on its way.  (You have no idea how much I identified with his situation.)

I have two copies of The Couple Next Door: Merry Mix-Ups to give to two lucky members of the TDOY faithful.  It’s a six-CD set containing twenty-four broadcasts from 1958 and 1959 (retail value: $24.95), and if you’re interested in winning one all you have to do is drop me an e-mail at igsjrotr(at)gmail(dot)com with “Merry Mix-Ups” in the subject header (you can add something witty if you like…though I should warn you that the winners of this giveaway will be determined by the old random number generator at Random.org).  The contest will end next Thursday, March 10 at 11:59pm EST, and once the winners have been chosen they will be notified of just how very fortunate they are.  (Oh, and I will get their prizes out as soon as possible.)

I need to issue a couple of caveats: 1) this promotion is limited to U.S. residents only.  You know I love the people from the Great White North (sheesh—I sound like Donald J. Drumpf: “I have a great relationship with the Canadians”) but unfortunately when I send packages that way I have to jump through a great many postal hoops like being fingerprinted and submitting some skin from the back of my neck.  (The last time I mailed something to Canada there was a strip search involved…though I can’t swear that had anything to do with the parcel’s destination.)

Secondly, all I ask is that you’ve won something off the blog within the past thirty days that you wait and let some other people have a chance to benefit from this sweet, sweet largesse.  This rule can’t really be applied for this particular giveaway because it’s been about four months since I handed out free swag…so if you’re of U.S. origin, take a chance!  Remember: Thrilling Days of Yesteryear is the phrase that pays!

We’re back, baby!

Here I stand (hat in hand) begging the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear faithful for forgiveness because I’ve been away from the blog for so long.  I mentioned that content for the blog in January would be a bit skimpy due to the hustle-and-bustle expected after mi madre’s back operation…but surely, I said to myself, things would pick up again in February.  Alas, this was not to be.

Sister Kat posted this picture to Facebook, commenting "Mom prepares to go to the gym. I never thought I'd be typing 'Mom' and 'gym' in the same sentence."

First, the particulars: Mom’s operation(s) went without a hitch—the only real storm cloud on the horizon was that a week after the work was done, she was transferred to a facility to undergo rehab of a physical and occupational therapy nature…and she did not like that one little bit.  No sir.  She did not like it.  She started to see her facility time as some sort of punishment, which was certainly not our intention—we just wanted her to get on the mend as quickly as possible, and not endanger all the nice work done by the surgeons.  This is purely speculation on my part, but I think she might have stared into the abyss and thought This is what it’s going to be like when those rotten children of mine put me in a home.  It got so bad that she began wheedling for an early release date, and though I promised Dad I would hold firm I pretty much caved after one of the night nurses told me of an incident in which she had to calm Mom down after a panic attack.  I just couldn’t sign on to keeping her there any further even if it was best for her in the long run.

So with the return of Mom to our modest digs at Rancho Yesteryear, we had to make a few changes; one was to rent a hospital bed from an outfit here in town…and that lasted all of three or four days before Mom said “f**k this noise” and elected to sleep in the guest room.  With each day, she gets adventurous to do little tasks like fold laundry and make preparations for lunch and/or dinner; I do most of the heavy lifting like get the clothes into and out of the washer and dryer, and serve up the grub for meals when it’s ready.  Unfortunately, I’m still on Grocery Duty (gad, do I hate shopping) but I’m getting more acclimated to it.  The last time I was in Publix, one of the cashiers who knows Mom pretty well started pumping me for information…and it took all of my self-discipline not to fall to the floor in helpless laughter when she said, “You know, I’ve known your mom for quite a while…and she strikes me as a stubborn person.”  (Had this been someone I knew better, my response would have started with “no” and ended with “Sherlock.”)

As you might have inferred from some of the photos accompanying this essay, the Double K’s (sister Kat and sister-in-law Katie) visited for a couple of days and brought my favorite nephew with them—which was a wonderful gift for Mom, since she doesn’t get to see him as often as she should.  Because I am a part-time idiot in real life, I made the mistake of telling Davis that while I had seen the first Toy Story movie I had not seen Toy Story 2 or 3—so he preceded to give me an exhaustive rundown of the content in each film.  At every lull in the conversation. During the visit, the landline phone started ringing in my back bedroom and the only way I would be able to answer it was to run and get it before the fifth ring…so when I took off down the hall I heard Davis cry out “I’ve never seen Uncle Ivan run before!”  (I was not angry about this, because it is true—I rarely run unless I’m chased.  Mom and Dad, on the other hand, were dissolved in hysterics…with Mom commenting that she nearly wet her pants.)

So, with things settling back down to some semblance of normalcy, I’m going to try and get some reviews up on the blog soon.  I’ve been very naughty and purchased more movies (many of which you probably won’t be seeing on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ any time in the near future) in addition to receiving one or two gratis screeners outside of my ClassicFlix work.  (My recent contributions to CF, reviews of The Captive City and Everybody Does It, are up for your perusal if you’re interested.)  I’ll also have some nice Radio Spirits swag to give away—the first of several giveaways will begin on Thursday.  Tomorrow, I’ll resume with Overlooked Films on Thursday with an entry that aired on Tee Cee Em recently…so once again, mea culpa for making you wait so long.

Number Twelve Looks Just Like You

It’s that time again, cartooners—when we roll a big honkin’ blogiversary cake out on the trolley so that every member-in-good-standing of the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear faithful can have a slice while I wax nostalgic (which seems fitting, since this is a blog devoted to nostalgia) about what a long, strange trip it’s been in the many years since some sharpie at Salon Blogs sweet-talked me into signing a four-year lease back on November 4, 2003.  (“You have to move?  Oh, you can store that stuff over there—this place will never be torn down!”)

You know the origins story by heart, of course.  One of my dearest Internet chums, The Baby, mused out loud in a chat room one night that I should get me one of them newfangled blogs and I told her that I would as soon as I found out what the heck they were.  Though Baby planted the seed, it was migrant workers S.Z. and Scott C. at World O’Crap who really cultivated the soil of the entire blog project (this was a time when they were working for $1.10 an hour, waiting for sales of their hilarious book Better Living Through Bad Movies to make them filthy, stinking rich beyond their wildest dreams)—honest to my grandma, when I first began reading WO’C and said to myself: “How hard could this be?”  As it turned out, quite a lot—the first blog I authored crashed, burned, and vaporized itself in scattered smithereenies all over the Internet…prompting a second effort, which worked like a charm.  (All three individuals present at the birth of TDOY belong to my true Facebook friendage, by the way—they are among my oldest online compadres, and I cherish each and every one of them…as well as the many followers, fans and other devotees who have encouraged my behavior over these many years.)

Buy the book...so that they might continue to do the Lord's work.

This year’s blogiversary celebration is sort of clouded with a touch of solemnity…because while I had concocted all sorts of mahd schemes to beef up the content this year, I have fallen far, far short of my expressed goals.  (This will make the thirty-sixth post I’ve written in 2015.  I am a human dynamo.)  For example, I was particularly gung-ho about getting more of the old Salon Blogs material up at the Best (and Worst) of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear website…a project that quickly fell by the wayside once I was distracted by a shiny object.  I am thoroughly shamed, and at the risk of coming up with lame excuses as to why this is the case, I need to share with you some information that’s usually filed under “Personal stuff.”

You’ll remember back in July that the ‘rents and I were forced out of our Athens digs a month earlier by an evil landlord heckbent on screwing us over because he could, and that we wound up in nearby Pixley Winterville, a.k.a. “City of Marigolds.”  (I need to mention here that while our mailing address is Winterville, we’re actually situated out of that burg to an unincorporated area in nearby Oglethorpe County—which is why I never stop with the Green Acres references.)  The move took quite a bit out of us, due to the fact that Mom and Dad are no spring chickens and my rock-solid abs have the consistency of Cool Whip.  With the help of sisters Kat and Debbie, we were able to successfully complete the relocation…but the repositioning was not without its perils.

Mom started experiencing a bit of back trouble once the move was completed.  Then she started experiencing a lot of back trouble.  It would come and go, particularly since there would be days when I would order her to sit down and rest (what is it about old people that makes them so goddamn stubborn, anyway?)—she’d be okay for a day or two, and then she’d overdo and be right back where she was.  One Saturday morning, she went out to do a bunch of errands…and that was what buried the camel in a big straw stack.  She was experiencing shooting pains in both her legs, and suffering from downright agony in her back.

As stubborn as she was about not overdoing…she was downright bull-headed about seeking medical attention.  This kept up for several days, until I finally laid down the law: either she would allow Dad and I to take her to the emergency room, or I would call 911 for an ambulance and save Dad some driving.  She vehemently argued with me about this, and we agreed to a compromise—she would call her doctor in the morning for an appointment.  (I wasn’t very happy about the compromise, to be honest—the healthcare system in this country is a farce, and I knew it would be several days before she would be able to see him.)

The day of the appointment, the doc runs some tests—including an MRI.  The results reveal that Mom has been suffering from scoliosis; Doc says from the looks of things she’s had it most of her life.  (Mom is still bamfoozled that it took so long to diagnose this, seeing as how she unloaded trucks when she worked at Springmaid-Wamsutta and it never bothered her then.)  He then referred her to a specialist, where further examination reveals that there’s been slippage in her third and fourth vertebrae that’s brought about painful arthritis.  The nerves in the vertebrae area look like someone went at a circuit board with a pair of pinking shears; he had hoped physical therapy might alleviate the problem but it now looks as if surgery is the only way out.

So Mom shifts back into Stubborn Mode (though it’s really more like Denial).  She’s scared sh*tless about the surgery, which is understandable, but the only other alternative is how she’s getting around now: with a walker and a grimace of pain every time she overexerts herself (and as you’ve already guessed, it’s always too much).  We had a long talk about the surgery, and she gave me a glimpse into why she doesn’t want to hop up on the table; my mother has this complex where she’s convinced she’s the only one who can take care of my father.  “You don’t even know what pills he has to take each day,” she wailed.

“Look…I didn’t go to the best schools…but the one I did attend learned me pretty good about reading.  I think I could dope out what meds he needs,” was my reply.  As irony would have it, she’s at the doctor’s right now while you’re reading this and I hope they’re able to reach a quick decision as to when she’ll have this done.  Nothing hurts me more than seeing my mother hurt, and even though one of the doctors suggested she try to do a few things around the house to prevent from getting “stove up,” I don’t like seeing her in pain.  What really angers me is that she got so upset back in March of 2010 when I was at death’s door (well, not really—I was just helping the Girl Scouts move some cookies and I wandered into the wrong neighborhood) because I originally dismissed it as just a case of the flu.  (In case you’ve joined us in progress, it turned out to be a life-threatening calcium build-up…plus I had to have surgery to remove some too-mahs.)

With Mom out for most of this season, it fell upon me to answer the ad as chief cook and bottle washer; I’ve been preparing about 85% of the meals as well as running the dishwasher and tending to the laundry.  (We have cleaning people who come in every other week, thanks to Kat and Debbie…so that’s one chore off my plate.)  I also have had to do most of the errand-running, and that includes doing the weekly grocery shopping.  My friends—I do not exaggerate when I confess that I would rather chew off an arm and/or a leg than step foot inside a grocery store.  I hate it with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns.  But hey—sometimes all good men have to come to the aid of the party, if I learned nothing else from typing class.

Mom spends most of her time in her recliner—she’s unable to lie down in her bed, so she watches a good deal of late-night TV while snoozing off-and-on throughout the day.  As her only son, I feel it’s imperative I spend some time with her so I arrange for us to have some Mom-and-Ivan outings in the evenings; this past October I entertained her with many of the Universal horror movies I’ve collected over the years (if you recall from yesterday’s Dementia review).

So this is why the blog postings have been spotty of late—very spotty, to be frank.  In addition to TDOY and the reviews I write for ClassicFlix, I’m also in charge of the Radio Spirits blog…so you can imagine all of this eats up a lot of my free time.  I’m not complaining; I just felt you good people were entitled to know why the blog resembles a barren wasteland, and why the Doris Day(s) and Serial Saturdays features kind of came to a grinding halt—I just don’t have the available spare time to work on those as I would like.  I even missed out on writing a post about my natal anniversary in September—and I had the perfect title, “Fifty-two Pickup.”  (Crickets)

I wish I could say we’ve turned a corner here at the new Rancho Yesteryear…but for now, we’re continuing to take one day at a time.  I’m going to make a concerted effort to do some landscaping here in the meantime, with a goal of getting something up once a week…twice, if I’m feeling crazy.  In closing, I want to thank everyone for their patience and continued support of Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.  I’m having too much fun here to quit anytime soon.

“Please excuse Ivan from the blog…he was sick at home…”

Since I’ve already gotten word that a few people have organized a search party to look into my disappearance for the last seven days, I would like to take this moment to apologize for letting the lights on the blog go dark this past week.  I could go through the usual gamut of excuses—“My dog ate the Internet,” etc. but I have a legitimate absence (and a note from Mom) this time…I’ll try to fill in some of the details without getting too graphic.

There was a time in my young life when I was invincible when it came to eating…and because I’ve never really been a “breakfast-y” kind of person (I have sort of come around as I’ve gotten older) I would often select items from the menu that are not normally associated with the first meal of the day.  For example, before fast food places hopped on the McMuffin bandwagon there was a time in this country when you could order a hamburger for breakfast and no one would blink twice…now you have to wait until 10:30 in the am before they “start serving lunch.”  (There are still places you can go where this is possible—Denny’s, IHOP, etc.—but it’s just not the same.)  I remember a time from my youth when my family was on vacation somewhere out in the Midwest (I’m thinking around Illinois) and we went to this greasy spoon where you could actually order a chili dog for breakfast…which I think may have sparked my lifelong breakfast irresponsibility.

Anything in the fridge that needed to be tossed fairly soon was fair game for breakfasting during my carefree bachelorhood days—and among the food items frequently chosen was cold pizza, something that became as familiar to me as…well, as toast, juice and coffee to the average person, I suppose.  Last Wednesday, we had a few pieces of leftover ‘za in the fridge (from the Transmetropolitan, the best place in the Classic City to get a slice) here at Castle Yesteryear and so I decided to have a couple as the first meal of the day.

Alas…I am not a young man anymore.  My days of getting by on donuts and Mountain Dew for breakfast are behind me, but every now and then my body needs to remind me of this…and it generally does so in a rude fashion, far beyond nudging or loud throat-clearing.  The pizza bestowed upon me intense abominable abdominable tummy ache that literally felt like a couple of the neighbor kids were playing jump rope with my intestines.  This lasted well unto Sunday morning, when my system finally decided it had finished giving my body the equivalent of a swirly and found some other kid to pick on.  I was pretty sore from the experience and so I needed to rest up a couple more days (I had planned to get a Mayberry Mondays up on that same day, but a last-minute babysitting session with my nephew put that on the backburner).

I continue to argue that the pizza gave me a mild bout of food poisoning; mostly because of the excruciatingly painful stomach cramps…my mother has a dissenting opinion, probably because she loves pizza and doesn’t want us to give up eating it anytime soon.  (It’s possible she is correct about this—I’m not a doctor, though I do find I get free drinks if I tell the bartender I am.)  Nevertheless, this experience has left me a sadder but wiser individual…and I think there’s a lesson for all of us to learn here.

But I’ve remembered that I needed to announce a winner in Thrilling Days of Yesteryear’s That ‘70s Show giveaway…and I’m pleased to reveal…that there wasn’t one.  I had one person enter the thing, and since he had already won one of the previous contests I sort of had to eliminate him as a contestant.  So I have set Seasons 3 and 4 on a shelf for another time…and I’ll also announce another contest later today (I’m hammering out the details right now, in tandem with an “Overlooked Films” post).

For those of you who missed the regular features last week—my humblest apologies.  I’m going to do whatever I can to get back on track but I will warn you in advance that I’m facing a deadline on an outside project and if it turns out I can’t juggle the two I may have to jettison blog stuff.  Once again, thanks to all who e-mailed to make sure I was okay.