Rage against the (Windstream) machine

The fields went fallow on the blog for nearly a week for one simple reason: our internet provider is terrible, and isn’t planning on improving their behavior anytime soon.  I’m not shy about naming these poltroons; we get our crappy service from Windstream, and in a just world the company would be brought up before a tribunal to answer for their crimes…and once found guilty by a not-at-all-impartial judge of my own choosing, sentenced to one of those islands where they used to quarantine lepers, plague victims, and other unfortunates of society.  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Windstream—at least in my neck of the woods—has been wedded to DISH, since they both deserve one another.

The trouble started around 4:30pm last Wednesday, when I noticed the little yellow triangle symbol superimposed over the internet connectivity icon on my laptop.  This meant that the system was down, and though I was mildly annoyed (I was working on a post for the Radio Spirits blog) I decided to be cool and wait to see if the problem would be quickly worked out.  Two-and-a-half hours later, and still no internet, I phoned Windstream with that sinking feeling in my stomach pit that they were going to make me run what I call “the Internet Obstacle Course.”  (This is where I’m required to unplug and re-plug cables, the modem, etc.—which I wouldn’t have a problem with except my mother insists that they be relegated to a space behind the TV (an area where a person of my girth has difficulty accessing) because she doesn’t like the sight of wires.

Before I called Windstream, I ran the Course ahead of time to make sure the problem wasn’t on my end.  It wasn’t, and I had suspected as such.  So, once I’d made it past their infuriating phone tree, I explain to the customer service representative that the system is out.  She’s convinced the problem is on my end, since no one else has complained, and lets me know she’s writing up a ticket so a technician can fix the problem.  He’ll be there Saturday.

I’m ticked off at this, because that means we’ll be offline for two entire days…and I won’t be able to get this post done.  I phoned my editor at Radio Spirits, and she lets me know that if I can get the piece to her Monday morning (assuming the tech fixes the problem on Saturday) she’ll give it a quick read, make the necessary changes, and have it back at me so I can schedule the post.

I should have known the technician wasn’t going to be at Rancho Yesteryear Saturday.  Oh, we got a phone call from Windstream at 11:15am informing us he’d be there between 11:15 and 3pm, but I end up calling them back at 3:05 to find out that the problem is worse than they originally estimated and that we may not be back up until Monday morning.  Monday afternoon, I’m having to call them back to find out where the hell the guy is, and they’re telling me it’s not going to happen until the next day.  I gave the person a bit of pranging about this, and they finally acquiesce to my demands, promising the work will be done by five that day.  When I wound up having to call back at 5:05pm to ask why they insist on lying to me every time I phone, we got a call on our other cell phone line…telling us the technician will be at the house between 8am and 12 noon.

Substitute "Windstream" for "AT&T" and you'll get the idea.

Since confession is good for the soul, I’ll come clean here.  I have a bit of a temper.  But I’m even-keeled for the most part—the only time I start approaching Hulk status is when someone can’t be straight with me.  They couldn’t be forthright and tell me that the problem with our internet connectivity was that some idiot installed some switches wrong, and it apparently took them all that time to find out just exactly what that individual screwed up.  My mother ran into the technician as she headed out the door Tuesday morning as he was just pulling up.  I had discovered by that time that our internet was back, but he wanted to check on our status.  He told her the story of what happened (I believe I was asked by both my parents not to come into contact with him for fear that something terrible might happen) and she replied matter-of-factly, “That person needs to be fired.”  The technician, looking out for his own, tried to explain that “it’s not his fault” and Mom just dismissed him with a wave of her hand.

That’s the sordid story of why there’s been nothing new to read on the blog for over a week, and because I had to get caught up with some other assignments there may not be any new material until next Monday (I wanted to at least get a new Crime Does Not Pay up—I’ll try my best, but my eye appointment tomorrow may interfere with that).  If your situation is like mine in that Windstream is your only option for internet access…I feel your pain, brother.  If you’re looking for a provider and are considering Windstream…don’t.  Run fast, run far.

Rage against the (Hopper) machine

“Those opposed to DRM contend there is no evidence that DRM helps prevent copyright infringement, arguing instead that it serves only to inconvenience legitimate customers, and that DRM helps big business stifle innovation and competition. Furthermore, works can become permanently inaccessible if the DRM scheme changes or if the service is discontinued.” – Wikipedia

Well, as I initially suspected, Thursday was the last day of our receiving the Buzzr channel at Rancho Yesteryear with our DISH “Flex Package.”  What made me wary that it would be a temporary thing was that we experienced something similar when DISH added the Grit subchannel a while back; when I noticed that they added a few “new” reruns to their lineup—one of them being The Californians, which I was curious to check out—I went to program the DVR only to discover it had completely vaporized from our system.

I recorded reruns of To Tell the Truth, What’s My Line?, and I’ve Got a Secret from Buzzr for two purposes—the most important being that I had planned to use these episodes as “filler” whenever I dubbed a ninety-minute movie to a DVD-R.  (I’m kind of anal about that sort of thing.  Please do not look upon me with bewilderment and pity.)  Friday afternoon, I decided to get started with the dubbing and as I set up the first installment of Truth…I get an onscreen message telling me that I can’t watch this recording because I’m not subscribed to the channel.

This is not the first time this has happened.  My Mom had the same trouble watching Gone Baby Gone (2007), which I snagged during a Starz “freeview” some time back.  (I had already managed to dub this one off onto a disc, and offered to run it for her but she waved me off.)  The peculiar thing about all of this is that we never experienced these difficulties until DISH uploaded a new “interface” for their Hopper DVR about two weeks ago.  I got an earlier heads-up about this from Andrew “Grover” Leal, who told me he could no longer watch a movie he DVR’d from HBO a while ago.  (He’s also been experiencing trouble programming his DVR since the changeover.)  I checked out an HBO recording I made—I believe it was The Sixth Sense (1999)—and it seemed to play fine, so I didn’t think much more about it.

But the Buzzr situation really got me steamed.  It angered me because the recordings were only a month old, if at that—I could understand it if I had DVR’d these last year but this just seemed to be one big clusterfudge.  I decided to call someone at DISH about this nonsense.

You’d think when you get to be the age I am now you’d learn that anytime you must contact a cable or satellite company about a problem it’s not going to end well.  There is a simple reason for this.  These companies are staffed by people working for human-weasel hybrids.  (I used to think that everyone employed there was some sort of half-human, half-weasel until I further contemplated on the matter and decided that it was probably just upper management—the rest of the proles were unhappy humans forced to work for the company to afford luxuries like food, clothing, and shelter.  This does not, however, resolve them from any of the evil their masters do nor their tireless efforts to see just how high they can raise my blood pressure.)

When we moved into Rancho Yesteryear (the Winterville edition) in July of 2015, we didn’t have many options re: TV service; although our mailing address is Winterville, we’re technically outside the city limits…where no cable installer has gone before.  So, it came down to DISH or DirecTV, and after hearing a few of my friends bitch about how DirecTV loves to raise their rates more than they love their children I decided to go with DISH as our provider.  (Plus, there was already a DISH dish in the yard.  I figured it would make things easier.)  Since that foolish decision, DISH has gone above and beyond the call of duty to keep me in a continually ulcerated state.

It started when Mom and Dad were upset because they couldn’t watch Braves games on the weekend; the channel (Fox Sports South) that televised the games would have a notice onscreen that the outing they wanted to watch had been blocked in our area.  I called DISH to ask what the dealio was and the rep I spoke with swore on the lives of her children that this was completely out of the company’s hands.

Yes.  This woman flat-out lied to me, thinking smugly: “This guy sounds too dumb to even look it up on the Internets.”  Because here’s the thing: it’s bad enough that you’ve aroused my ire by doing this kind of sh*t in the first place (although it was really more of my parents’ ire…since I had no f**ks to give regarding the televised games) but then you compound this by not being straight with me.  All she would have had to say is: “Yes, we’re too cheap to pay Fox for the weekend games.  I know you, as a customer, probably don’t agree with what we feel is a principled stand…but we really don’t care because you have no other options regarding TV.  Have a nice day, asswipe.”  (Sure—I still would have been angry…but it would be an honest anger.)

Let’s get back to the present.  Before DISH instituted its new “interface”—there was never any problem with my DVRing movies from freeview weekends and then watching them when I had the time.  After the changes, however—this crap starts happening.  Now—I know that believing correlation equals causation is a logical fallacy…but it just seemed odd that this kind of problem would rear its ugly head after DISH changed their Hopper/Joey.  I had an online chat with a rep to find out what was going on.

I should have foreseen that this person was not going to give me any sort of honest answer—that she had, in fact, been conditioned by her human-weasel masters not to get sidetracked from the official story (I’m guessing it was a combination of snakes and live electricity).  She kept prattling on about it being a DRM (digital rights management) issue—that practice that companies have adopted to, in the words of Wikipedia, “restrict usage of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works.”  Since I wasn’t subscribed to Buzzr, I couldn’t access any programming I might have recorded…and if I did record a show, it would expire after a 24-hour period.  (“What’s the point of having the DVR if I have to watch this stuff before that time limit runs out?” I asked to no reply.)

This made no sense to me whatsoever.  What she was saying was, if I was subscribed to Buzzr—I could continue to access the programming I had legitimately recorded…but how would that stop me from “piracy”?  (Wikipedia: “Proponents of DRM argue that it is necessary to prevent intellectual property from being copied freely, just as physical locks are needed to prevent personal property from being stolen, that it can help the copyright holder maintain artistic control, and that it can ensure continued revenue streams.”)  The most infuriating part of the conversation was that she steadfastly maintained that this had nothing to do with the new interface…even though these “piracy” threats were not a problem with the old interface.

My favorite part came at the end, when she acknowledged that this might not have reached a satisfying conclusion but was there anything she could do to “better the experience”?  My response was no, there was not.  “You are doomed to spend eternity in Dante’s Ninth Circle of Hell, along with politicians and pedophiles,” I explained to her. “I couldn’t do what you do for a living because I have a conscience.”  All she would have had to say to me would be: “Yes, unfortunately one of the side effects of the interface change is that it puts the screws to people who like to record movies.  Here’s a coupon for the inconvenience.”  (The ‘rents would have liked that part.)  I guess if there is a bright side to all this I now have some space cleared on the DVR because I had to delete all the movies I grabbed during the freeview weekend as well as some TV episodes I obtained from the Encore Westerns channel.  (Oddly enough, there were a couple of movies I could continue to access…though those might be history by the time this tirade posts.)

And they wonder why people despise cable/satellite companies so much.  Okay, rant over.  Back to business tomorrow.

“Is it bigger than a breadbox?”

The night that I wrestled with the meshuggeneh desktop computer—the one that eventually had to be hauled into the repair shop so that the hard drive could be replaced—I was stuck for something to do while the diagnostic tests were running, so I grabbed the bedroom TV remote and started in with the channel surfing.  Imagine my delight when I learned that DISH has added a new channel to its lineup: BUZZR (channel 245), the Fremantle Media-owned subchannel that offers up classic game shows to those couch potatoes jonesing for a fix of Match Game or Family Feud.  Wikipedia says that DISH added BUZZR in May of this year but I’m still a little skeptical about that only because I go “round the horn” on a frequent basis if I can’t sleep at night, looking to see if I can find anything that won’t require a lengthy time investment.  It seems to me I would have come across BUZZR sooner, but…what the hey.

I’m not a big game show fan as a rule.  I watched a lot of them as a kid, and then eventually grew to understand that most of them are vacuous, insipid, and a clear threat to my logging as many classic movies under my belt before I’m summoned to that Great Movie Palace in the Sky.  Still, I have a soft spot for the panel shows of the classic TV era like What’s My Line?, I’ve Got a Secret, and To Tell the Truth…because there are celebrities on these vintage telecasts that are idolized by your humble narrator like Fred Allen (a panelist on Line from 1954 until his death in 1956) and Henry Morgan (Secret).  The Game Show Network used to run these repeats in the 1990s until Sony’s contract ran out…but by that time, GSN was starting to shift toward their own homegrown programming anyway.  (This resulted in people of my vintage reclining in our porch rocking chairs and grumbling about how great things used to be “back in the day.”  “Remember when AMC and TVLand used to be good?  Those were the days…”)

I can’t quite put my finger on it…but something tells me that unless you subscribe to one of DISH’s major packages (America’s Top 200, America’s Top 250, etc.) BUZZR isn’t going to be around Rancho Yesteryear for long.  (We have the Flex package, see, which—thanks to member of the TDOY faithful Barry—allows us to get channels we’ll actually watch and insulates the ‘rents from any potential danger resulting from my succumbing to The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ withdrawal and running after them with a butcher knife.  Okay, I am kidding about that.  Nobody runs in my family unless we’re chased.)  So I am currently DVRing every episode of Truth, Secret, and Line that I can lay my hands on; it will make marvelous filler for when I’m dubbing off movies to discs.  That’s three down and seven to go…Arlene?

Rain delay

My mad scheme was to have up on Monday and Tuesday reviews of two movies that I recently watched off my Hopper (Dish’s cute nick for their DVR…though the one in my room is technically a “Joey”) …and then that plan quickly went south.  I’m still trying to tame the dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear archives (I seem to have accumulated a lot of DVDs over the years) by cataloging my holdings (every time I do this, I find a movie or two I missed previously) and because I set Sunday aside to do that, my Monday post never materialized.  Monday, I spent three hours of my life that I’ll never get back journeying to the doc’s for an appointment (I wouldn’t mind the wait so much but the chairs in the endocrinologist’s waiting room appear to be leftover furniture from The Flintstones) and then after lunch, I agreed to go with Mom to Kroger Nation to get some things she needed.  For reasons that I can only attribute to my stupidity, I lifted a few cases of water from one section of the store to my cart (the water was in the area where you walk in, and I didn’t want to set off any alarms in the store since I had already placed items in the cart), then picked them up to put them in the trunk of the car…and then picked them up to set down on the carport.  That left me kind of stove-up, and I decided to just continue with Operation DVD Reorganization.

Artist's depiction of the waiting room at NAED.

Because I have committed to the current Classic Movie Blog Association blogathon, there will be an “Overlooked Films” entry tomorrow (that’s the blogathon theme), and (knock wood) normal posting will resume on Thursday and Friday (Crime Does Not Pay!).  (I splurged on a metric butt-ton of DVDs from Oldies.com since I had a little jingle in my pocket, and I’ll be reviewing some of my acquisitions in the coming month and June.)

Color my world

The post you’re reading now was composed on Wednesday evening of the previous week—and before I begin, I apologize to everyone who may have already been clued into this news (I talked about it on Facebook…but not everyone in the TDOY faithful is into the whole [anti]social media thing); an article that I read at the MeTV website sort of planted the seed of inspiration, and I knew I needed to cobble together something fast and economical because of the weekend busyness.

Back about this same time last year, I mentioned that our DISH network system started carrying WGTA (channel 32), a local TV station in Toccoa (the “GTA” stands for “Greenville to Atlanta”) …and because WGTA’s programming consisted of the substations Heroes & Icons (32.1), Decades (32.2), and Movies! (32.3), our DISH had the full Heroes & Icons lineup—a rarity in the world of DISH, since they don’t usually carry substations.  In January of this year, there was an announcement that MeTV would be available on our DISH Channel 32 starting March 25, because WSB-TV—which originally carried MeTV as a substation—had dropped it, switching to Escape.  (And not the good kind—“designed to free you from the four walls of today.”)  The addition of MeTV as a WGTA substation meant all the other substations moved down a peg in terms of OTA (off the air)—Heroes & Icons is now 32.2, Decades 32.3, and so on.

The news that MeTV would once again be available in the House of Yesteryear was, as you may have guessed, warmly welcomed; sure, I experienced a small amount of initial disappointment (I was only a handful of episodes from a complete collection of Broken Arrow) that gave way to me being extremely jazzed because MeTV offers a good deal more variety in their classic TV programming.  (Also, too; I would gain access to reruns of Our Miss Brooks and 77 Sunset Strip—two series not yet released to DVD.)  I’m not happy that these shows are heavily edited in order to cram in the commercials my father constantly bitches about…but a thirsty man never turns down a glass of water.  I’m not joking about the ads on MeTV, by the way; I tried to persuade His Lairdship to start watching Gunsmoke on MeTV at 1pm EDT weekdays because they show two of the half-hour episodes back-to-back and he’s seen all of the color hour-long episodes they run on TVLand at that same hour.  (He claims he hasn’t…but this is incorrect, because I’m usually in the living room with him and I know I have.)  He gave up after one thirty-minute episode.  “Too many commercials,” he griped.  (I’ve been away from TVLand too long—I was not aware they were now ad-free.)

The amusing thing about MeTV is that on their current schedule, they run back-to-back episodes of The Andy Griffith Show at 8pm EDT weekdays (7pm EDT Sundays)—but only in selected areas.  If they’re running TAGS on another station in your viewing area, MeTV substitutes those reruns with…wait for it…Mayberry R.F.D.  (“Every time I think I’m out—they pull me back in!”)  Now comes an announcement that the network is going to work the TAGS episodes from 1965-68 into the rotation.  That’s right.  The color episodes.  The Mayberrys That Dare Not Speak Their Name.

I know many people—I think we even heard from them in the comments section when I was doing the Mayberry Mondays posts—who will not only refuse to watch The Andy Griffith Show in color…they vehemently deny the period ever existed.  And I get this—I really do.  There are a lot of TAGS episodes from the color era—a lot of episodes—that clearly illustrate that sitcom was running on fumes once Don Knotts said “I’m off like a prom dress.”  I think Don’s departure is the chief explanation for the hostility toward the Mayberry color era—replacing the Barney Fife character (even though Knotts returned on several occasions in a guest-star capacity) with that doofus played by Jack Burns was an idiotic decision that would not be equaled until they rolled out New Coke.  And I say this as a guy who likes Jack Burns…I just believe his "Warren Ferguson" was not a good fit where Mayberry was concerned, and in the MeTV article (“The Color Seasons of ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ are Great and Here’s Why”) the author amusingly notes “the character only appears in 11 episodes before mysteriously vanishing to wherever Chuck Cunningham went.”

The article makes some good arguments…and some not-so-good.  Their first bullet point, “Howard Sprague is a wonderfully milquetoast character,” is the strongest argument they could make (I’m going to assume that’s why it was first); it’s no accident that, as I have stated in the past, Howard is usually at the center of the one laugh-out-loud moment in every episode of Mayberry R.F.D.…and the subject of that show’s funnier episodes (“The Panel Show,” “The Caper,” “The Mynah Bird,” etc.).  My fellow Facebook denizens and I discussed this article a bit, with many of MeTV's points greeted with all the enthusiasm of drinking warm beer.  I believe it was Andrew “Grover” Leal who had his flabber gasted at #4, “Road Trips”—personally, I didn’t have a problem when Andy, Opie, and Aunt Bee made the trek to Hollywood…because if it was good enough for Lucy and Ricky Ricardo, it was good enough for the Taylors.

The only item on the MeTV list that found me searching for where in my skull my eyes had rolled to was #7, “Aunt Bee Gets to Do a Lot More.”  Mr. Leal persuasively argues: “[They] were trying too hard to fill the ‘Barney does something wacky’ gap,” and I have to agree (while at the same time believing “The Mayberry Chef” to be one of the stronger final season episodes).  I might be persuaded to side with MeTV if I stopped to consider that with every “wacky” Aunt Bee installment that meant less time spent with Mayberry’s resident fix-it savant and wife-batterer, Emmett Clark.  As I told Facebook chum Jason Beard: “…I have stared into the R.F.D. abyss, and I know that even on its worst color-saturated day TAGS was better.”

I think that last part might be the number one reason I’m not as filled with revulsion with a color Mayberry as some.  You see (this is the portion of the blog where I tell a sad childhood story—please, no tears), we didn’t get a color TV set until 1976.  Mayberry was always in black-and-white when I was a kid.  Sure, some of town’s residents either vanished (Otis, Ernest T.) or moved away (Barney, Floyd), but for the younger Ivan, that sleepy little North Carolina hamlet remained in its monochromatic state until the day my father decided that color TV was no longer a fad and was here to stay.  (Yes, he never misses an opportunity to ride me about my love of black-and-white TV shows and movies—completely missing the irony that my childhood might have had something to do with that.)

So bring on the color episodes of The Andy Griffith Show, MeTV.  The channel is also running announcements of the return of Rhoda (yay!) and Remington Steele (snore) …I just hope this isn’t going to interfere with my burgeoning Our Miss Brooks collection.

Hurry on down to Hardie’s

My fellow classic movie mavens are well aware that in the month of February (and first three days of March—except leap year), The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™ runs their “31 Days of Oscar” tribute.  This event and “Summer Under the Stars” usually allows me to catch up with whatever I have squirreled away on our DISH DVR, and I was very much looking forward to watching the content (and slapping my favorites onto disc).

But…in the immortal words of Robert Frost: “The best laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft a-gley.” (Who says this blog isn’t highbrow?  Besides 98% of the blogosphere, I mean.)

The good people at DISH decided to have a “freeview” weekend of HBO, Cinemax, and Showtime the weekend of February 17-20.  The following weekend, we were treated to free Starz.  The weekend after that, Encore.  And we just finished up a freeview of Epix this past weekend.  For a recovering movie nut like your humble narrator, this is an embarrassment of riches—particularly because when there isn’t anything on the schedule worth grabbing, there’s always On Demand offerings I can download.  I have been spending every free waking moment luxuriating in movies, movies…and more movies.

Laramie stars John Smith and Robert Fuller

It shouldn’t come as a surprise that I went hog wild during the Encore freeview…because their On Demand features episodes of the classic TV westerns they offer on their schedule—this is how I was able to build my substantial Wanted: Dead or Alive collection back in December of 2015.   Encore Westerns on Demand has episodes of Death Valley Days, Laramie, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, Tales of Wells Fargo (a recent acquisition), and Wagon Train—which presented me with a dilemma: which show do I download?

I eliminated Death Valley Days and Wagon Train right off the bat; I like both shows—but they’re not something I have to have.  I leaned heavily toward Laramie, particularly due to the piss-poor quality of the Timeless Media Group DVDs…but I’ve got a 30-day window with these downloads, and I didn’t think I could get all EW had in that amount of time (particularly since they’re 50-minute shows).  There’s DVR space to consider, too—I like to have enough of a “buffer” in case Mom (who learned how to work the DVR during her convalescence) wants to grab any Rambo movies or something with Jean-Claude God Damme.  (I don’t know why she insists on recording stuff with commercials…particularly since she hasn’t learned to fast-forward yet.)  So, it came down to either Wyatt Earp or Wells Fargo…and since all six seasons of Earp have been released to disc, I went with Fargo (its DVD release history is a little spotty).

Tales of Wells Fargo originally premiered as a December 14, 1956 episode of CBS’ Schlitz Playhouse of Stars, “A Tale of Wells Fargo”—with a teleplay by Frank Gruber from a Zane Grey story.  The producer of this episode, Nat Holt, had also produced the 1949 film that gave future Wells Fargo star Dale Robertson his first onscreen credit, Fighting Man of the Plains (Fargo creator Frank Gruber also wrote this screenplay…in addition to the novel on which it was based).  Holt had quite a time talking Robertson into doing “Tale” as a regular series—Dale initially didn’t think much of the script, and only agreed to commit to the pilot as a favor to his friend.  He never dreamed that the show would leap to #3 in the Nielsens in its second season (Tales of Wells Fargo officially premiered over NBC on March 18, 1957).  (Wells Fargo remained in the Top 10 in its third season, and continued to be a solid ratings performer until its final season in 1961-62.  More on this in a bit.)

I thought that by downloading all the Wells Fargo Encore Westerns had to offer, I could play a few for mi madre—a longtime fan of the show.  I know I mentioned this on the blog in the past (my previous experience with Wells Fargo was a single episode, “Jesse James,” which was on Timeless’ The Classic TV Western Collection) but my father used to tease my mother unmercifully about this series, derisively referring to the star as “Dale Roberts” and saying…well, I won’t repeat exactly what he said (it’s a little insensitive) but he hinted that Mr. Robertson was a few horses shy of a remuda.  I’ve watched 13 out of the 14 episodes in the first season (“The Silver Bullets” did not download properly, much to my dismay) and a couple from Season Two…and I don’t know why Dad kids Mom so.  Granted, I do not possess the sophisticated television tastes as my old man (and by “sophisticated television tastes” I mean shows about UFOs and cops placing people under arrest) but I’m finding Tales of Wells Fargo to be a pretty entertaining series.  It’s not a great show (there are superior western half-hours, like Gunsmoke and Have Gun – Will Travel) but it’s far and away better than The Cisco Kid or any other juvie oater you’d care to name.  Robertson didn’t consider Wells Fargo an “adult western” or a “kids western”—but a “family western,” assuming your family conducted private investigations for the Wells Fargo company for a living.  (That’s the premise in a nutshell: as Jim Hardie, Robertson chased down bad hombres who robbed the company’s stagecoaches or freight wagon in the 1860s/1870s/1880s, and brought the miscreants to justice.  This was quite a few years before the Wells Fargo company started committing fraud on a major scale.)

Hugh Beaumont as Jesse James

One of the aspects of the program that I’ve observed is its rather compassionate portrayals of its outlaw element: in the aforementioned “Jesse James” (07/01/57), future Leave it to Beaver dad Hugh Beaumont portrays Jesse as a very sympathetic sort, and in “Sam Bass” (06/10/57), rifleman Chuck Connors makes the titular bandit a jovial, happy-go-lucky fella (the real Bass was apparently also a “no worries” kind of guy).  (Connors also appears in the premiere episode of Tales of Wells Fargo, “The Thin Rope”—adding some interesting shadings to the villain.)  The nature of Hardie’s work dictated he make contact with many Old West legends, including Belle Starr (a nice turn by Jeanne Cooper), John Wesley Hardin (Lyle Bettger), Billy the Kid (Robert Vaughn), and Butch Cassidy (Charles Bronson).

Jack Elam

Of the episodes I’ve viewed so far, I was very impressed with “The Hijackers” (06/17/57); Hardie puts a premature end to his vacation by tracking down the son (Harry Holt, Jr.) of a wealthy man and his fiancée (Jacqueline Holt) and finds their trail leads to a ghost town, where they’re being held captive by Jack Elam and his gang.  There’s a beautifully done (and wordless) sequence in which Robertson and Elam play hide-and-seek in the abandoned burg, and when the closing credits rolled I was not at all surprised to see serials ace John English attached as director.  (The author of this one is N.B. Stone, Jr., later responsible for Ride the High Country.)  The following episode, “Stage to Nowhere” (06/24/57), is also first-rate; Hardie is escorting an outlaw (Walter Coy) to the hoosegow when their stagecoach is chased down by the man’s gang—also on board are a timid newspaper reporter (the ubiquitous Lyle Talbot) plus a woman (OTR’s Barbara Eiler) and her son (Bobby Clark), who have an important connection to Jim’s prisoner.

Michael Landon

You’ll spot a good many familiar future TV faces and veteran character thesps in these episodes of Tales of Wells Fargo: Michael Landon is not only in “Sam Bass” but “Shotgun Messenger” (05/07/57)—which I’d wager was the first time he worked with his future Little House on the Prairie co-star Kevin Hagen (as one of the bad guys, of course).  Some time back on Facebook, I made a joking reference to actor John Carroll being “the poor man’s Clark Gable” …and my social media compadre Christopher Snowden (the proprietor of Television Diary) responded that he always considered Dale Robertson to be quite Gable-ish.  When I concurred that I can definitely hear a Gable-ness in Robertson’s speech patterns, Chris observed: “[H]e's also there in scenes where Robertson's character is charming the ladies—chin down, and eyes uplifted as a big ingratiating smile spreads wide.  And all of these mannerisms are still in place twenty-odd years later, when he appears for short stretches on Dallas and Dynasty.”

The moustache helps a lot.  (From a 1965 TV pilot, Diamond Jim.)

William Demarest with star Robertson

In the fifth season of Tales of Wells Fargo, Earle Lyon replaced Nat Holt as the series’ producer; Lyon related in an interview: “I took over the last two years.  Dale Robertson called me one day and said he felt Nat was getting too old and couldn’t remember things.  Dale was pretty upset with the way things were going with the series.” NBC decided to side with the show’s star, and Holt’s inaugural season as producer went so swimmingly the network made the decision to not only expand Wells Fargo to an hour in Season Six but produce it in Living Peacock Color.  A cast of regulars was also added as Jim Hardie acquired a horse ranch near San Francisco (star Robertson was quite the horseman in real life) including future My Three Sons co-star William Demarest (as the stock crotchety ranch foreman, Jeb Gaine) and future Folgers’ pitchwoman Virginia Christine (as Hardie’s neighbor, The Widder [Ovie] Swenson).

Tales of Wells Fargo had stiff competition in its final season—it was scheduled Saturday nights opposite Perry Mason, and though it came in a respectable second, ratings-wise, the decision was made (the show was getting a bit expensive for the cost-conscious MCA/Revue to produce) to send it to the Old Syndication Retirement Home.  Star Robertson would later headline Iron Horse, another boob tube oater that barely hung on for two seasons, and J.J. Starbuck (1987-88), a Stephen J. Cannell creation that also resurrected Ben Vereen’s character of E.L. “Tenspeed” Turner (which he had played on the short-lived 1980 series Tenspeed and Brown Shoe, also created by Cannell).

Tales of Wells Fargo’s first and second seasons are available on DVD (Tales of Wells Fargo: The Complete First and Second Seasons); in addition, there’s a collection containing “selected” episodes from Seasons 1-5, and Tales of Wells Fargo: The Best of the Final Season in Color.  In looking at what I downloaded from Encore Westerns, neither seasons five or six seem to be in their package—perhaps they will air these in the future.  Wells Fargo plays much, much better than I had hoped…and later, I will make a small sacrifice to the satellite gods for allowing me to grab these episodes for the dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear archives.

The Return of the Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™!

Thanks to loyal member of the Thrilling Days of Yesteryear faithful Barry, who was gracious enough to alert me to DISH Network’s new Flex Channel package, Tee Cee Em has made a triumphant return to The House of Yesteryear.  There are not enough words to adequately express my joy at this turn of events.

The way the Flex package works, you start with a basic tier of fifty channels—one of which is my beloved Turner Classic Movies.  You can then add additional packages according to your whims…or the whims of your family, as the case may be.  (If it were solely my decision, I’d be Encore Channeling and Movie Plexing all up in this bitch.)  “This is the closest thing to à la carte so far,” Barry explained in a follow-up comment.  “I could cut my bill by more than half: just add the News Pack (FBN and Bloomberg for wife), Encore (westerns for me), and dump the locals (I have an antenna and Windows Media Center).  I only wish AMC were in an extra package so I could have the satisfaction of dumping them too!”  The way this deal worked out for Rancho Yesteryear almost makes me regret the terrible things I’ve said about DISH in the past.  (Almost, that is.)

I had to add the Locals package to ensure we’d still receive our local channel lineup (my father has somehow convinced himself that if he watches WSB-TV’s newscasts at noon, four, and six o’clock there will be a tremendous change in the content), and the News package (also for Dear Old Dad) because he needs the newsreaders at MSDNC—or to use the longer nomenclature, the Hillary Clinton Pantsuit Politburo—to continually convince him HRC is not a terrible candidate.  Finally, as a nod toward mi madre, I added the Regional Action Network package—which carries both the SEC and Fox Sports South channels—so that she never goes hungry again (as God as her witness) missing out on her beloved Braves, Hawks, and Georgia Bulldog games.  (When I presented this proposal to Mumsy, she picked up her cellphone and threw it at me—yelling “Call them!  Now!” A day after we initially whittled down the package, Mom had more regrets than a Brexit voter.)

The package isn’t perfect.  I’m still out GetTV, and I lost RT America, the channel that carries my favorite satirical political comedy show, Redacted Tonight.  (This last one is no biggie; I can watch the episodes online via YouTube.)  When I sat down in Count Comfy von Chair to explain the new setup to the Laird and Master, my Mom started waving me off like I was trying to steal home.  I waited until Father had to answer the call of nature, and then I asked her: “Why don’t you want me to tell him about this?”

“He’ll figure it out sooner or later,” she replied.  I then pointed out that he’ll certainly notice it when we get the cable-internet bill but she was way ahead of me: “He’s not going to see it,” she assured me as she tented her fingers while a white cat leapt into her lap.  Twisted and evil!

Will the return of TCM affect the new direction of the blog?  I’m determined that it will not.  Thanks again to Barry for having my back, and I hope all you cartooners have a wonderful weekend.

Book Review: Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Gorilla!

I’ve acquired a reputation as a Luddite when it comes to certain forms of technology.  For example, I’m the last remaining person on Earth not to own a cellphone.  I’ve never had a desire for one, even though I readily admit they come in handy from time to time.  To put this into perspective—both of the ‘rents own cellphones, and yet the only time they’ll explore the features on the DISH satellite system is when they inadvertently screw up something I tried to DVR.  (I have noticed this has happened a lot lately.)  In my former career as a night auditor/hotel clerk, I was constantly having to answer the telephone—and that might go a long way towards explaining why a ringing cellphone is the last thing I near my person.

But I’d like to say a good word or two about Kindle.  I think being able to store a library on my tablet is a pretty cool thing, particularly when storage space seems to get smaller and smaller with each new house we rent.  I have a few friends on Facebook who view Kindle (and other forms of electronic bookage) with disdain, rhapsodizing about how reading books just isn’t the same unless you’re able to lovingly caress the paper pages and enjoy that new book smell (or old book smell, depending on the vintage).  If this brings you pleasure in life…have at it.  I still have a good many tomes on my bookshelf that I like to pore through from time to time—but I can do it faster (and it’s less cumbersome) with Kindle.  The electronic book industry seems to be a thriving one; my fellow CMBA members Rupert Alistair and John Greco are just several people who have had luck with the e-book format, and I myself have even contributed to e-books.  (Don’t think I started building a swimming pool from all this, though—the proceeds go to worthy charities.)

One of the first e-books I bought for my Kindle was Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Gorilla!—a collection of movie reviews penned by my Facebook compadre John V. “Jay” Brennan.  The content originally appeared as essays written for a number of websites maintained by Jay, including The Secret Vortex, The Stuff You Gotta Watch, and Laurel and Hardy Central (he’s one of the co-founders).  (Note: if you click on any of these links and get a “Traffic Quota Exceeded”—there is nothing wrong with your computer.  Jay is just a very popular guy.)  It’s a fun movie book to peruse, because you can devour with relish the subjects that appeal to you…and skip over those that do not.

Jay and I share a mutual appreciation for certain types of movies: his likes include vehicles featuring Laurel & Hardy (natch), W.C. Fields, Abbott & Costello, The Marx Brothers, and the Bowery Boys.  Films with Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, and Popeye also rate highly with Mr. B, and I was also tickled that he shares the same disdain for Roger Moore as 007 as I do.  (Not a fan.  Sorry.)  His favorite filmmakers are Billy Wilder, Akira Kurosawa, and Alfred Hitchcock, and in addition, Gorilla is sprinkled with humorous personal anecdotes, including his attendance at a Chiller Expo in 2008 (where he insulted a Ferengi) and his lifelong affinity for schlock-horror movies like The Incredible Melting Man and Q: The Winged Serpent.  (“That one had Michael Moriarty, Candy Clark, Richard Roundtree, and David Carradine.  Wow!  A nutjob, a cutie, an action star and a Carradine all in the same movie.  You would think with that cast, they wouldn’t need a winged serpent to spice things up.”)

The title of the book is explained by Jay in a review of the Bowery Boys romp Spook Busters (1946): “Spook Busters breaks what, to me, is a cardinal rule of slapstick comedies: never kill the gorilla.  If you’re going to use a gorilla in a comedy, killing it at the end leaves a bad taste in my mouth.  In a horror movie like Murders in the Rue Morgue, fine—kill the gorilla.  But in a comedy, he should triumph at the end, as in Laurel and Hardy’s Swiss Miss, when he makes a surprise reappearance after Stan and Ollie believe he had plummeted to his death.  In Spook Busters, after being cooped up in a cage for most of the picture, the gorilla escapes and is shot to death by Douglass Dumbrille and the cops.  It might be a little thing, but it just spoils the final moments of the film for me.  I have my movie rules, and I don’t like to see them broken.”  Brennan’s advocacy in protecting celluloid gorillas did not go unnoticed by the African Wildlife Federation, who honored Jay with its “Activist of the Year” Award in 2012.  (Okay, I made this last part up.)

What I enjoy most about Jay’s book is that his essays are clear, concise and to the point; he doesn’t go in for a lot of the frilly profundity that pockmarks a lot of film criticism but rather writes in a fashion that John Q. Moviegoer can easily comprehend.  Okay, I should say that’s the second thing that I like most about Don’t Shoot Me, I’m Only the Gorilla!—the real selling point is that the price of this delightful collection of movie essays is only $4.99…a mere bag of shells.  Drive by Amazon (you’ll know it when you see it—it’s that huge place that resembles a penitentiary) and grab yourself a copy for hours of reading pleasure.

“And now it’s time for another special feature…”

Hello, Thrilling Days of Yesteryear faithful.  Honest Ivan here again...but not to sell you anything.  When the DISH Austerity Program first went into effect in the House of Yesteryear, I was a little crabby…and I may have even whined a little.  (How do I know this?  Well, when about half a dozen people say to me “Will you stop whining, ferchrissake?” that’s a little hard to ignore.)  I had reached a point where I started to sound like Karl Swenson in The Birds: “It’s the end of the world!”

But a month into our whittled-down package…I’m beginning to think that Nietzsche guy was right.  I speculated that when I first announced the DISH news this experience might be a positive one for TDOY, in that such a removal of this distraction might provide the impetus for more prolific blogging.  At the risk of tooting my own piccolo, I have been en fuego in the month of August.  While the ‘rents search in anxiety for something with which to be entertained (Mom is so sick of Dad’s constant watching of MSNBC that I think she’s on board with Giant Meteor in November), I sit smugly in Count Comfy von Chair with my tablet, composing blog post after blog post.  I’m not going to lie to you.  Occasionally, when I get wind that a movie I wanted desperately to see is playing on The Greatest Cable Channel Known to Mankind™, I tear up a little.  But it passes quickly.

This post is going to serve as sort of a guide to the “new” Thrilling Days of Yesteryear—what you can expect in terms of content and such.  Not all of what I write about will appeal to everyone, so if you have an idea of what will appear on the blog on a daily basis you can plan your visits accordingly.  (In a perfect world, of course, you would not only read every utterance you would pledge complete and unwavering fealty to TDOY…but alas, we do not live in such a Utopian existence.)

Mondays – Book reviews.  Again, because I’m under oath—or am I?—I must truthfully admit the few times I reviewed a book here at TDOY in the past is when someone graciously sent me a free copy for the blog.  (No money exchanged hands, I cannot emphasize this enough.  It’s more “quo” than “quid”—if I may indulge in a little pun.)  In most cases, there were books that I paid for myself with TDOY funds simply because it was something I was excited about reading.  Since I invested in the new computer three years ago and it came equipped with Kindle. I have found that it’s relatively inexpensive to build an electronic library if you just keep an eye peeled for book bargains.  (BookBub is a great resource in giving you a heads-up on this.)  So I’m going to make a concerted effort to read more than I have previously (the Kindle allows me to effortlessly sit in Count von Comfy and accomplish this task), and we will see where that takes us.

Tuesdays – It was Todd at Sweet Freedom who first instituted “Overlooked Tuesdays” and in the beginning, I tried my darndest to structure TDOY so that movies that don’t always receive the greatest number of electrons here in the blogosphere would be featured on “Overlooked Films on Tuesdays.”  My track record for participating, sadly, was the very definition of “spotty”; I blame this on the fatigue and ennui I experienced after completing Serial Saturdays and Doris Day(s) on Mondays.  (More on this in a bit.)  Nevertheless, I have seen the light, brother, and am committed to making certain an overlooked motion picture gets its due on Tuesdays, be it an edition of “From the DVR” or “Grey Market Cinema.”

Wednesdays – If you’re going to place a bet in the pool of “Which feature will have the shortest shelf life at TDOY”, this might be the nominee that will pay off big time.  It’s not that I don’t enjoy a good shoot-‘em-up, it’s just that the number of economically-shot oaters in the Dusty Thrilling Days of Yesteryear Archives has diminished in recent years: many of my B-Westerns were relegated to the trash can (I decided about a year-and-a-half ago that I was going to stop recording movies at anything lower than SP speed) and the others wound up on the eBay runway.  I know I’ve got some on hand; it will just require my digging through a—what I call for lack of a better word—“pile” of DVD-R discs.  Still, B-Western Wednesdays is back with a vengeance, baby—so saddle up for some good ol’ rootin’-tootin’ fun (in memory of my dear departed Facebook compadre Lloyd Fonvielle).

Thursdays – Thursdays will be devoted to “silent cinema”; it can take the form of comedy shorts that I’ve acquired over the years (my recent review of Steve Massa’s Lame Brains and Lunatics no doubt inspired this) …or “On the Grapevine,” which spotlights DVDs purchased from Grapevine Video.  There may also be silent films both unknown and well-known tossed into the mix (discs purchased from Flicker Alley and Milestone Films).  And there may be an occasional “talkie” featured as well (I’ve socked away quite a few Alpha DVDs.).

Fridays – It’s Forgotten Noir Fridays!  (Don’t tell me you’ve relegated yesterday’s post to ancient history already.)  VCI Entertainment and Kit Parker Films’ acclaimed DVD series will be examined on a weekly basis, one movie at a time.  By the way, I made a lulu of a boo-boo yesterday in my review of I’ll Get You: according to friend of TDOY/film historian Richard M. Roberts, the Lippert film library was never “orphaned.”  “Robert Lippert Sr. sold the rights to those films to the Weiss Brothers in the early 60's, where Weiss Global International kept them in perpetual television syndication into the early 80's,” Richard wrote me in an e-mail.  “When Adrian Weiss passed away in the early 00's, the rights and materials to the Lipperts and all other surviving Weiss product was sold to Kit Parker, who has made them available ever since through VCI.”  I am so grateful that Richard is around to keep me honest.

I’ve made the decision that with the exception of an occasional post (like this one) or the announcement of swag to give away, weekends will be kind of quiet here at TDOY.  (Hey, I have book reports to write.)  Which means that Serial Saturdays will be retired (though I had two chapters left in The Black Widow—if I can locate the DVD I’ll try to wrap those up) and as for Doris Day(s)…well, again—a little honesty is in order.  I have to watch these episodes in order to transcribe the dialogue…and then a second time (I generally speed this up if I’m in a hurry) for the screen grabs.  I just don’t have the intestinal fortitude for this anymore (and my recent diabetes diagnosis doesn’t help, either—Doris is awful gooey at times).  Maybe if MeTV decides to add it to its schedule (I’ve seen the traffic for Mayberry Mondays shoot up since they started airing RFD reruns, and I think I thank them for that) I may apply some paddles but for now you’ll just have to settle for memories of Leroy B. Semple Simpson.  (Andrew “Grover” Leal keeps insisting I’ve lost the Doris DVDs…this is simply not true, though I sometimes wish it were.)

So there you have it: the new Thrilling Days of Yesteryear.  (I feel like I just participated in a network upfront.)  Enjoy the rest of your weekend, and meet me back here Monday.