Soupy and The Captain

News came down the wires that Soupy Sales has passed away. 83. I remember as kid watching his show – I don’t remember much about it other than the pies – there was one sequence that I remember pretty well – there was an old time record player – well that’s showing my age all record players are old time these days – anyway there was this record player sitting on the table – and while soupy watched this hand and arm (part of the show ) put a record on the record player – I forget the song but it was something about money or something, the point was that what ever the song was about showed up, then the hand put another record on, it was “Pennies from heaven” and sure enough the hand held out a tray and pennies poured down on it. The hand left after that, and Soupy looked at the record player for a moment then put the next record on – that song started off “I wish I had a pie in my eye” and sure enough. Splat.

My mom hated the show for some reason and forbade me to watch it. I never knew quite why I was very young, maybe it had something to do with his infamous routine where on New Years Eve he told the children to get up real early the next day and take out the green pieces of paper from their parents wallets and mail them to him. I’m sure nobody thought for a second that kids would actually do that. One of the dangers of making a show that has two levels is that some times you can forget that.

Anyway he had a good run and the Band is going to do a tribute to him when we play on Halloween.

2 – File under things said that can not be unsaid:

I was talking with a co-worker about the Green Hornet serial – (he’s a bit of comic book geek as well) actually the second (not that that matters re the story but it is important that you get the details right) and mentioned that the company that had put that on disc (digitally re-mastered to boot) other of the old serials including The Phantom and Captain Marvel and Captain America.

“The funny thing about the Captain America serial is that they completely changed the story, in the serial he’s a DA who decides to dress up as Captain America, not Steve Rogers.”
“Really”
“Yeah, it’s not the real Captain America.”

I realized what I had said the instant I said it – and it hung there like the words in a comic book “the real Captain America”

There was a moment of silence and then I spoke

“I’m never going to touch a woman again am I?”

My coworker was too polite to answer. Still if there was any doubt about my inner geekdom it vanished that very minute.

Ouch.

Peace Love I wish had a Pie in my eye