Book Review: Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America

We had a total of nine trick-or-treaters ring the doorbell at Rancho Yesteryear this year.  Nine.  We had enough candy for nine hundred, of course; my mother has this habit of looking at the amount of candy she’s purchased each Halloween, and saying ruefully: “I don’t think this is going to be enough.”  This October 31, she actually ventured out that afternoon to get more candy…just to be on the safe side.  Suffice it to say, we were safe.  Very safe.

Now, in past years—this glut of Halloween candy would not have been a problem…because I would have made certain it did not go to waste.  If you’re a regular member of the TDOY faithful, though, you know that any future trips to Candyland for yours truly were nipped in the bud back in July when my doctor motioned for me to come a little bit closer in order to say “Psst…just between you, me, and the lamppost—you’re diabetic.”  (Let me just take this moment to thank everyone who bestowed well-wishes and empathies upon me at that time…particularly those who refrained from remarking “No sh*t, Sherlock.”)  So, we had this ginormous basket of candy sitting around Castle Yesteryear, and two of its subjects unable to enjoy the basket’s contents.  (The other member of the household, mi madre, doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth…but when the fever does hit her, she now buys the kind of candy I don’t like.)

So, as I was tossing a bit o’trash into the kitchen receptacle last week…my eyes laid witness to the saddest sight I have ever seen.  Mom had thrown away all the leftover candy.  The M&M’s (peanut and plain), the Snickers (regular and the peanut butter ones), the Butterfingers…murdered.  I was devastated.  I wept quietly, and gathered up the trash bag to take out to the bin on the carport, where I presided over a small Mass.  I’m saddened to report that the turnout for the funeral was not what I was hoping for; a couple of the neighborhood dogs ambled by (attracted to the candy corpses, no doubt), and I saw one of the kids on our street pedaling a bicycle in the distance.  Requiems can be a bummer.

The untimely demise of the Halloween candy prompted me to sit down with an e-book (another $1.99 bargain from BookBub) I bought back in June of 2015.  It’s called Candyfreak: A Journey through the Chocolate Underbelly of America, and it was written by an appropriately-named gentleman named Steve Almond (his other books include My Life in Heavy Metal and Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life: A Book By and For the Fanatics Among Us), an author and rock music critic.  First published in 2002, Candyfreak is an ode to one man’s mania for candy.  Almond has eaten a piece of candy every single day of his entire life, and is so obsessed he hoards 3-7 lbs. of the sweet stuff in his domicile at all times.  I knew Steve wasn’t just exaggerating about this in the opening pages of the book, where he says a silent prayer for the Marathon bar, “which stormed the racks in 1974, enjoyed a meteoric rise, died young, and left a beautiful corpse.”

The Marathon: a rope of caramel covered in chocolate, not even a solid piece that is, half air holes, an obvious rip-off to anyone who has mastered the basic Piagetian stages, but we couldn’t resist the gimmick.  And then, as if we weren’t bamboozled enough, there was the sleek red package, which included a ruler on the back and thereby affirmed the First Rule of Male Adolescence:  If you give a teenage boy a candy bar with a ruler on the back of the package, he will measure his dick.”

There are not enough words in my admittedly longwinded vocabulary to describe how much I loved—and miss to this very day—Marathon bars.  (I’m told that Curly Wurlys are similar…but I’ll guess I’ll never know.)  In Candyfreak, Almond channels his inner Roald Dahl and makes arrangements to visit the factories of those candies still being produced locally: Valomilk Bars in Merriam, Kansas; Idaho Spuds in Boise; Twin Bings in Sioux City, Iowa (the Palmer Candies company); Lake Champlain candies in Vermont; and Goo Goo Clusters in Nashville.  (The only one of these I have sampled is the last one; I’ve been told that there are Cracker Barrels that carry Valomilks but I’ve not come across one yet.)  Almond also drops in at the Annabelle Candy Company in Hayward, CA (not far from Steve’s original stomping grounds), makers of Big Hunk and Abba-Zaba bars (you might be familiar with this last one if you’ve ever watched Half Baked). 

Did Almond get a tour of the Big Three (Nestlé, Hershey, Mars)?  No, because all that chocolate espionage you saw in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (the 1971 original, natch) wasn’t just a fictional plot device; candy makers really do keep closely-guarded secrets.  (He was denied a tour at Boston’s Cambridge Brands—makers of Junior Mints, Sugar Babies, and Charleston Chews [Mom’s favorite when she indulges]—because Tootsie Roll Industries, which owns Cambridge, said “nothin’ doin’.”)

I’m sure you’re asking yourself right now: why on Earth would a guy who’s had to eliminate his sweets intake read a book about such forbidden fruit?  Well, I never said I was sane (and I have witnesses to back this up).  Candyfreak is such a wonderful read, and it brought back a flood of memories of those halcyon days of indulging in chocolate and candy fantasies.  Remember those mammoth candy counters inside the Sears Department Stores?  The one my mother always patronized had that section planted right where you walked in the front door!

“At about age ten, during a late summer visit to Sears to buy school clothes, I became aware of the concept of candy by the pound.  This was revolutionary.  Here were entire stalls of candy, naked as the day they were born, piled up two feet high and God knows how deep, glittering behind glass windows.  You might have thought I was staring at tropical fish in an aquarium.  Or you might have been the poor clerk forced to sit inside the Sears candy stand on one of the many ensuing Saturdays, which meant you faced an odd decision: whether or not to call security on the little, bubble-eyed goon circling your station, which was me.”

“Candy is the Dow Jones of the kid economy,” Almond asserts, as he reminisces with a trip in the WABAC when the Bubble Yum craze took over in 1975.  And, since it was the death rattle of that Halloween candy Mom chucked out in le garbage that nudged me toward reading this book, I identified strongly with this passage:

“Now: I’m a great lover of visual art and I will happily discuss the color and texture of Van Gogh’s Starry Night, or the way in which the eye is led into Goya’s The Third of May 1808, and even though I don’t really know what I’m talking about, I can get myself awfully worked up, just as a fine sentence or paragraph (say, the opening salvo of Henderson the Rain King) can send me into shivery rapture.  But I can think of nothing on earth so beautiful as the final haul on Halloween night, which, for me, was ten to fifteen pounds of candy, a riot of colored wrappers and hopeful fonts, snub-nosed chocolate bars and SweeTARTS, the seductive rattle of Jujyfruits and Good & Plenty and lollipop sticks all akimbo, the foil ends of mini LifeSavers packs twinkling like dimes, and a thick sugary perfume rising up from the pillowcase.”

My sister Kat can’t stand red velvet cake.  Which is odd, because I don’t have a problem with it…but I have noticed that due to the current sugar smackdown (the only consolation I have made is strawberry preserves on an occasional PB&J…because that sugar-free jam is abominable) I’m not quite as discriminating as I once was.  Kat posted on Facebook that red velvet cake is the disappointment of the dessert world, which led to a lot of jokes along the lines of “Circus peanuts are the red velvet cake of the candy world.”  So I was tickled when I read Almond’s declarations about MWM (Mistakes Were Made) candy, the top two examples being Twizzlers (“Twizzlers bears roughly the same chemical relationship to strawberry as the Vienna Sausage does to filet mignon…which is to say: none”) and Jujubes (“if one were to set Jujubes beside pencil erasers in a blind taste test, it would be tough to make a distinction, except that pencil erasers have more natural fruit flavor”).  Here are some others:

Marshmallow Peeps: A candy that encourages the notion that it is acceptable to eat child offspring.  Composed of marshmallow dyed piss yellow and sprinkled with sugar.

Circus Peanuts: Again, a marshmallow pretending to be something else, this time a legume.  An affront to elephants everywhere.

Boston Baked Beans: If you are an actual peanut, why are you not covered in chocolate?  Why are you covered, instead, in some kind of burnt-tasting brick red shell?  Is the idea that you resemble a baked bean supposed to make you more alluring?

Jordan Almonds: Who chose the color scheme, Zsa Zsa Gabor?

Chuckles: A fruit jelly the consistency of cartilage.  Explain.

Sixlets: Those of us over the age of, say, three can usually differentiate between chocolate and brown wax.

White jelly beans: I defy you to tell me what flavor white is supposed to signify.  Pineapple?  Coconut?  Isopropyl?

Lime LifeSavers: The LifeSavers people haven’t figured out by now that no one likes this flavor?  (Ivan’s note: I like Lime LifeSavers.  Or I used to, anyway.)

Author Almond also confesses a prejudice towards coconut—which makes for some giggly moments whenever he must sample candy bars containing his bête noire during his factory journeys.  “Oddly, it isn’t the flavor of coconut that troubles me, but the texture, and specifically that stringy residue utterly impervious to the normal processes of digestion.  In short, I feel as if I’m chewing on a sweetened cuticle.  Anyone who’s eaten a Mounds knows what I’m talking about.”  (I didn’t care for coconut when I was a kid…but I gradually warmed up to it as I started marching toward my dotage.)  Steve’s not a white chocolate fan, either; “When I was eight or nine years old I flew from California to New York with my twin brother, Mike.  We were unchaperoned and therefore doted on by the stewardesses, who snuck us each a special dessert from first class: a white chocolate lollipop.  I wolfed mine down and, shortly thereafter, got violently ill.  This was mortifying at the time.  In retrospect, I’m sort of proud of myself.”

“A few years ago, my friends began urging me to write a book about candy,” Almond explains at the beginning of Candyfreak.  “Their reasoning ran as follows: Maybe if Steve writes about candy, he will shut up about candy.”  Me, I’m glad he wrote about candy—because even though my intake is now limited to nocturnal flights of fancy, I tremendously enjoyed reading a book about one man’s confectionery passion.

Christmas swag and other items

Unless I’m struck by an inspiration bolt from the blue within the next few days, this looks like it’ll be the last post here at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear in 2014.  I won’t lie to you—I was disappointed with my output on the blog this year, and the fact that there were 162 posts to last year’s 174 is proof that my intentions to work on TDOY a lot harder fell short of my personal goals.  I suppose I could offer up the defense that my other outside assignments (my latest “Where’s That Been?” entry is currently up at ClassicFlix) compete for my time…but who am I kidding?  Most of the time, my inactivity is due to just pure dagnasty laziness.

The lethargy and the holidays contributed to why I didn’t cobble together an edition of Serial Saturdays yesterday and why there won’t be a Doris Day(s) tomorrow.  We had an exceptionally grand Christmas; my sister Debbie, her husband Craige and my niece Rachel visited for the occasion and they presented me with enough Amazon gift card largesse to be able to purchase a Blu-ray player for our main TV in the living room (we’ve not been able to watch DVDs since I moved the DVD recorder back to my boudoir—and I don’t have the right cordage to hook my spare DVD player up, since it’s an older model).  The Double K’s sent me the Collector’s Edition Blu-ray/DVD set pictured at the beginning of this post and this replica of a major award…

…and my nephew Davis (seen here opening up the Lego Treehouse I sent him) gifted me with an Elvis ornament which plays I’ll Be Home for Christmas very loudly when you press a button so I’ve only pressed it once.  Mi madre got me a copy of Showbiz Politics: Hollywood in American Political Life and a Darden Restaurant gift card…which, coupled with the Red Lobster gift card she received from sister Debbie—and some Olive Garden cards she already had on hand—means that we’ll be taking my Dad to Longhorn for twenty-pound butt steaks (with lobster chasers) on his birthday in February.

Also, too: there were mimosas.  Many mimosas.

I learned during my sister’s visit that she has been furthering my niece’s classic movie education: Debbie took Rach to see Gone with the Wind (1939) on its 75th anniversary showing in December and Rach thought it quite good.  (Well, she’s young.)  Rachel was also inducted into my mother’s adoration for The Lone Ranger; she watched with “Nana” some of the reruns on FETV and pronounced them tres awesome.  FETV ran the first three LR “origin” episodes Friday, but Rach didn’t get to see those—I told her I’d send them on to her because I had them on DVD.  “Of course you do,” she cracked, followed by a rimshot.  (I also gave her a copy of the Radio Spirits collection Six Gun Hero that I wrote the liner notes for a while back, so that she could experience the radio Ranger and also brag on her uncle a bit.)

Los Parentes Yesteryear and I watched a Lone Ranger repeat Friday night that I have to tell you about: the title is “Sawtelle Saga’s End,” which originally aired on March 24, 1955.  You have two outlaw brothers, Peter (Peter Hanson) and Benjamin (Robert Foulk), who are responsible for a perplexing series of payroll robberies in and around the town of Sandstone—the only reason why they’ve not robbed the Sandstone Wells Fargo office is because Sandstone is their home base of operations, and they don’t want the heat of being under investigation.  They return to their hideout—the Sawtelle Ranch—where we learn that they’re merely the henchman of the real brains of the outfit…

“Aunt” Maggie Sawtelle, played by none other than Frances Bavier.  When I caught sight of her I shouted “I knew it!”—because I have posited during many a previous write-up on Mayberry Mondays that Beatrice “Aunt Bee” Taylor was twisted and evil, yet with nothing truly substantial to back up my assertions.  Aunt Maggie has instructed her nephews (they’re redopted, by the way) in a life of crime and is getting ready to pull out of Sandstone…but she directs “her boys” to rob the Wells Fargo office before they skedaddle.  Andy Griffith Show fans will really get a kick out of this episode: Bavier’s kindly persona is mostly an act to stave off any suspicions of her true identity as a criminal mastermind (“Why don’t you wash your neck now and again,” she scowls at Peter.  “My, but you’re an untidy boy.”)

The Sawtelle boys carry out her instructions but Benjamin is wounded by the Ranger in their getaway…and though he’s tossed into the pokey, he’s not talking.  After chatting with—I swear I’m not making this up—Sheriff Taylor (William Forrest), the Lone Ranger and Tonto head out to Aunt Maggie’s to see if she has the skinny on what’s become of Ben’s accomplice.  (The Ranger says to Maggie “We’re friends of Sheriff Taylor’s” as means of introduction, much to my amusement.)  Maggie plays the innocent old lady in attempt to fool the two men—but though the Lone Ranger may have been born at night, it wasn’t last night; he saw quite plainly Peter’s horse outside on the way in.  So Maggie whips up a lie: yes, Peter was here but he left—she had no idea those boys were in such trouble!

LR still isn’t buying it—Peter left his saddle behind on the outside horse—but by that time, Maggie’s got him and Tonto locked in a shed and she orders Peter to grab a kerosene lamp for the purposes of making that shed burn, baby, burn.  (A prospect that she, by the way, enjoys with unbridled glee—you can understand what Andy Griffith meant when he subtly suggested Bavier could be a real rhymes-with-witch at times.)  Our heroes escape via the roof (they chop an exit with an axe) and tackle Peter; while the Ranger gives the bandit a proper pummeling, Tonto has to deal with Maggie kicking his shins.  He then says to the Ranger in a line that had us all in hysterics: “Next time me take easy job—fight man, you fight woman.”

No, this is not a lost episode of TAGS in which Barney accidentally locks Aunt Bee in one of the holding cells.  Bee is going to the real slammer, where she'll no doubt make a fellow cellmate her bitch.

All in all, 2014 was a swell year—and I’m hoping 2015 is a most worthy sequel.  Special thanks to my BBFF for the hilarious card (and swell DVD present of Gunsmoke’s seventh season) as well as to Doc Quatermass, Kim, Rodney, the Kelleys, Laura, Brandie and Martin for the wonderful Christmas sentiments as well.  From all of us (the ‘rents and me) at Rancho Yesteryear—Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year!

52 pickup

Guess who’s celebrating a wedding anniversary today?  Yes, it’s the blogosphere’s favorite comedy couple, Ivan (Sr.) and Irene, more familiarly known here at Thrilling Days of Yesteryear as “the ‘rents.”  (Or “Los Parentes Yesteryear,” as my pal Brandie once memorably tagged them.)  They were married on this date in 1962, and continue to defy the odds season after season by being renewed in perpetuity.  I’d be hard-pressed to explain their longevity, except that they simply excel at making it work.

This morning, the ‘rents were nice enough to invite me along to their breakfast celebration at The Cracker Barrel (I know—I was afraid things would get out of hand and the police would be called in).  Truth be told—I’m not a fervent fan of the Barrel, but I pushed aside my usual tendency to order the combo breakfast with the biscuits and the gravy and the grits and instead had my favorite, blueberry pancakes.  They were indeed most excellent.  (The sausage patties I ordered on the side…not so much, but then I’m more of a link man.)  Both Mom and Dad have noticed that the quality of the Barrel’s cuisine has seen a decline in recent years (the last time we went was on Election Day and the biscuits were like hockey pucks), so a return trip might not materialize unless things improve.  (If anyone with the organization is reading this—you seriously need to step up your game.)

Dad prevailed upon me to find some comedy aprons for Mom as an anniversary gift…

…and I complied, courtesy of Café Press.  There will be much feasting and merriment later this evening (Mom is making her favorite dinner, filets mignon) but I just wanted to nibble a tiny bit of bandwidth to wish my parents the happiest of anniversaries…because I dearly love them so.

Of bagels and blogathons

One of the reasons why I’m taking a break this week from our regularly scheduled Serial Saturdays shenanigans was I had an insider’s tip that sister Kat, her partner Katie, and my nephew Davis would be in town for a quick visit before they have to head back to their new home in the wilds of the PNW.  We have been experiencing sheer delight spending time with the five-year-old bundle o’fun, who has apparently shelved his obsession with all things Thomas (the Tank Engine) and found a new interest in a Disney Channel cartoon series, Jake and the Never Land Pirates.  (Kat joked that all of his Thomas toys and forty miles of track will probably turn up soon on an eBay near you.)

Because I am the good uncle, I found a handful of episodes of the show via the On Demand option on the ol’ AT&T U-Verse and I put one of them on for him the other day in direct violation of his moms’ “Don’t-let-him-watch-a-lot-of-TV” edict.  (Sticking it to The Man!)  For those of you unfamiliar with the program, it’s basically an extension of Disney’s Peter Pan franchise (featuring a trio of “pirate” kids battling the forces of Captain Hook and his crew).  I don’t have a high opinion of the show (it’s repetitious in that “this-is-for-kids” fashion) but I get a chuckle out of hearing Corey Burton flawlessly imitate Hans Conried (as Hook) and Jeff Bennett channeling his inner Bill Thompson (as Mr. Smee).

Anyway, we watched another episode this morning while we breakfasted on some of the best bagels I have ever eaten—purchased from a jernt here in the Classic City what’s known as The Ideal Bagel Company.  It’s the “sister eatery” of a place called Ike and Jane’s, a famous Athens establishment once profiled on The Today Show (they have an “Elvis donut”—peanut butter, banana and bacon—that my brother-in-law proclaimed worthy of The King hisself), and I have to say…the bagels are worlds better than those at the overrated Panera Bread.  The ‘rents and I don’t get the opportunity to sample much Athens cuisine, sadly—we usually make do with leftover gruel.

Since Davis and Kat had an appointment for haircuts this morn I thought I would take advantage of this lull to mention a couple of blogathons that I got wind of thanks to Classic Movie Hub (the proprietress of that site mentioned it on Facebook).  It’s only fitting, therefore, that the CMH gets first mention with The Rita Hayworth Blogathon, an event coordinated with the ever-popular getTV—who’ll be saluting everyone’s favorite red-headed glamour queen on Thursdays in October with schedulings of her films.  As such, the Ritathon will be in effect in the entirety of October, and as an added inducement, participants have the opportunity to be entered into a giveaway for a DVD of Gilda (1946) (provided by the channel).  If you’re interested, click this linky for details.

The other ‘thon in October has been (fiendishly) devised by Aurora at Once Upon a Screen (still recovering from the Rooneython, mayhaps) and Kay at Movie Star Makeover: a tribute to Latinos in classic film entitled Hollywood’s Hispanic Heritage Blogathon.  This one looks as if it’s going to feature some great essays; I unfortunately am going to have to sit this one out (and the Ritathon as well) because I just have too much on my plate here in October (the Heritage ‘thon will run from October 11-12).  But that shouldn’t deter you from participating, so go around to the back door (the password is “swordfish”) and tell them I sent ya.

“You better sit down kids…”

On this date in radio history—we have two very, very important anniversaries to observe.  Eighty years ago today, the adventures of “the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains” were first broadcast over WXYZ Radio in Detroit, Michigan.  The rider was masked because he, his brother and four other lawmen were cut down in an ambush by some really skeevy criminal types…and as the only survivor, he donned a mask (created from his brother’s vest) and tracked down those scumbags to mete out justice…and then learned that he liked leading “the fight for law and order” in the West.  Accompanied by his faithful Native American companion Tonto (the man responsible for treating his near-fatal wounds and nursing him back to health) and riding a beautiful white stallion named Silver…well, you don’t have to ask who that masked man was—he’s the Lone Ranger.

Three years after the debut of The Lone Ranger, a similar masked crimefighter took to the airwaves (making this his 77th anniversary)—similar in that he also rode with a sidekick, only in this version he drove a car (nicknamed The Black Beauty), and both programs’ theme songs were classical music masterpieces.  In the case of the Ranger, it was The William Tell Overture—The Flight of the Bumblebee introduced the adventures of The Green Hornet.  Over at the Radio Spirits blog, I hoist a few in the direction of these two iconic programs…and tout an excellent CD collection available at the site that no Lone Ranger/Green Hornet fan should be without (with liner notes written by one of the great ones, OTR historian and author Martin Grams, Jr.).

So with the anniversary cake and ice cream out of the way…I have news that isn’t easy for me to impart.  (No, your mom and I aren’t getting a divorce.)  About two weeks ago, I was hired by the CEO of ClassicFlix.com to assume associate editor duties at the site—they will be revamping the place come this February, with articles and reviews on classic films and DVD reviews, and a regular series of columns from contributors on areas involving classic movies and classic television.  In addition, I will also be making the concerted effort to boost the site’s profile on various social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter—if some of you subscribe to their Twitter feed or ClassicFlix’s Facebook page, you may have already read some of my pithy bon mots…though in the case of Twitter, it’s not easy to bon mot in 140 characters or less.

It is a superb opportunity for me, one that I enthusiastically agreed to because it allows me to write about my lifelong passions…and in complete I’m-not-making-a-joke honesty…if you have told me this would come along when I started Thrilling Days of Yesteryear nearly ten years ago I would have suggested you seek serious psychiatric help.  The great thing is that this job also compliments what I now do at Radio Spirits, continuing to maintain their blog and write liner notes for their new collections when assigned.

The sad news is…well, both of these responsibilities are going to eat up a fair amount of my time…and as such, I’m not going to be able to carry on here at TDOY as much as I have in the past.  I’m not completely closing down shop—there’s just going to be more than few occasions when a regular feature like Mayberry Mondays and Serial Saturdays will become…well, irregular.  I had hoped to be able to keep the Mayberry thing going till at least finishing out the series…and while there’s certainly a small chance I’ll accomplish that soon, I can’t promise it will happen as quickly as I would like.

I’ve made a couple of commitments to some upcoming blogathons that I plan to keep—right now, I don’t anticipate any setbacks…but again, if the people running those events find an e-mail from me in their mailbox it might not be positive news.  But I plan to look in on the place from time to time (so don’t get any ideas about camping out or eating the Little Debbie Swiss Cake Rolls I have in the freezer) if only to keep my “skin in the game,” as the hipsters say…and if you plan to stop by the new places where I’m practicing cinematic medicine, you’re more than welcome.  (Just call first so I have a chance to do a quick tidy-up.)

Sunday’s birthday card

Two of my favorite performers from the Golden Age of Radio—Fred Allen and (wife) Portland Hoffa—have generously baked yours truly a birthday cake to celebrate the tenth anniversary of my 39th natal anniversary.  (Though in the tradition of the “feud,” I think Fred might have winced at that last part.)  Many thanks to Facebook chum John Wells for posting this on my “wall,” as the kids call it—I’m always up for a good snapshot of Fred and Porty, who was once told by James Thurber “everything you and Fred said to each other was somehow akin to The Sweetheart Duet from Maytime.”

The ‘rents and I have planned a simple celebratory affair—I was very fortunate than Mom made pancakes this a.m. (the best to me this morning!) and will later work her magic on her new barbecue grill with a couple of twenty-pound butt steaks.  (Kroger’s had a sale on rib eyes a while back…and we socked a couple away for the occasion.)  Mom is in charge of grilling around Rancho Yesteryear, because Dad hates it…this will come as a complete shock to BBFF Stacia, who loves grilling more than life itself. 

By the way, the doyenne of She Blogged by Night is currently whooping it up in Las Vegas on a much deserved vacation/honeymoon—she made the rounds at the In-and-Out Burger (pictured above), saw Neil Diamond in concert, and hopefully will return home with most of the “nest egg” intact.  (“Twenty two…twenty two…come on back to me…come on back to me…”)  Champagne wishes and caviar dreams go out to her and her hubby Mr. SBBN—those crazy kids finally decided to make it legal (okay…I am joking about this—they were already married)..

Melissa Prince at INSP e-mailed me a couple of days ago to let me know what the cable channel’s other classic TV western acquisition is—they will have exclusive rights to air The Virginian, the 1962-71 oater that will also celebrate its 50th anniversary this year (and had previously been a fixture on Encore Westerns).  The channel will kick off its addition with an all-day marathon of the show beginning at 1pm September 22 before taking its place on Saddle Up Saturday the following week.  (Later, The Virginian will air in INSP’s Monday-Friday block.)

I’m not normally a corny or sentimental guy…but I am in extraordinary good spirits today simply because I have been receiving a torrent of heartfelt birthday wishes from my boon companions on Facebook, and though I will probably be mocked in the comments section I still believe wholeheartedly in the lesson to be taken away from It’s a Wonderful Life—no man is poor who has friends.  To each and every one of them who gave me a shout-out…you’re a good group.  But for those of you who’d like a bit of lemon to cut the sweetness, I will share this goodie sent to me this morning by Peter Nellhaus of coffee coffee and more coffee (a title card from the 1927 silent film Girls, directed by George Marshall):

I had planned to talk about a trip to the library Mom and I took this week…but that will have to be a post for another day.  (Besides, I have writing to catch up on.)  So until next time—on with the opera.  Let joy be unconfined.  Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor. (Play, Don...)

A blog well-calculated to keep you in…Suspense!

Sixty-nine years ago on this very date, the venerable radio drama anthology Suspense presented a play that would become the program’s most well-known…and is still so fondly remembered today there’s no doubt a high school out there somewhere across this great land is performing it.  It’s “Sorry, Wrong Number”; written by Lucille Fletcher and performed as a one-woman tour de force by the great Agnes Moorehead, who, after the initial broadcast, would revisit the production seven additional times before Suspense left the airwaves in 1962.

This blog post kicks off what I hope will be a continued fruitful association with Radio Spirits, a company for which I have been doing freelance work since 2006, shortly after Radio Again founder Mark Tepper became CEO.  Mark and I had a recent phone conversation concerning some upcoming projects and he was telling me about how he was wanting to get Radio Spirits’ blog going on a regular basis, mentioning that he envisioned it spotlighting articles on old-time radio and classic film.

“In other words…pretty much what I do now,” was my response…and it didn’t take me too long to convince him I was more than up to the task.  I am most grateful for the opportunity to oversee the blog’s authorship, even at the great risk that this might bestow some respectability upon myself.  I’ve put a little button on the left sidebar that links to the Radio Spirits blog, so you might want to check it from time to time to see when I put something up for your edification.

Right now, I’m in the middle of getting the inaugural Green Hornet portion of Serial Saturdays completed, but I quickly wanted to direct your attention to this:

Yes, for a limited time only the Hostess people have transformed my favorite snack cake into something the Half-Assed Gourmand would truly appreciate.  Alas, a search of most of the grocery establishments here in the Classic City turned up nary a chocolate Twinkie…so my BBFF Stacia was only too happy to step into the breach and send me a couple of boxes from the She Blogged by Night office in West Lompoc.  She’s a treasure, that gal…she truly is.

“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.

Congrats of a prize-winning and birthday nature…

Profuse apologies for not having the winners of the Sergeant Preston Arctic Odyssey Giveaway up sooner, but I’ve been quite busy this morning celebrating the eightieth natal anniversary of the man who my Mom tells me is my father (and that’s good enough for me), the beloved patriarch of Rancho Yesteryear, Ivan, Sr. (pictured above with his faithful grandson sidekick).  Yesterday, he received a visit from his sister Natalie (“Aunt Nat” to me) and her husband Ted (to your right), and after a delicious dinner (prepared by mi madre) of baked ham, Julienne potatoes, broccoli, baked beans, salad and cornbread, they stayed in our guest room suite and then took the family out to breakfast the next morning before continuing on to Marietta to spend time with their son (“Cousin Emery” to me).  I always enjoy when Aunt Nat and Uncle Ted get together with my parents because a good time is truly had by all—Ted was one of my father’s roommates during his carefree bachelor days in the Windy City in the 1950s…where he of course met Dad’s little sis, and the rest is history.

So as I set aside that little nostalgic excursion, I’d like to congratulate my Facebook chum and Munsters devotee Doc Quatermass on being one of the winners in TDOY’s Sgt. Preston Giveaway…and the other is longtime TDOY supporter Bill “You kids get off my lawn” Crider, renowned pulp mystery author and caretaker at Bill Crider’s Pop Culture Blog.  Bill was one of the very first people to promote my ‘umble little scrap of the blogosphere, a decision I’m sure he wished he could journey back in the WABAC machine and rectify…but as Don Gibson assured us in song, they don’t give gold statuettes for tears and regrets.  Kudos to the both of them, and my only regret is that I couldn’t send a Preston collection (an 8-CD set valued at $31.95) to everybody who entered (and I had quite a few who e-mailed this time).  But there are more goodies to give away just around the corner, so stay tuned to this space for further details.  Once again, thanks to all who participated and congratulations to Doc and Bill!