Interesting tidbits I don’t have time to comment on right now:
Guiding Light, the oldest dramatic series on American TV (or maybe any other, for that matter) has been cancelled after seventy-two years on radio and TV. Almost all the shows I watched as an impressionable child while staying with Oleene are long gone now.
I occasionally find myelf looking for old soap opera video online. It’s some of the ultimate TV ephemera, as most of the early shows were done live and are lst forever. Even after the advent of videotape in the 1960s, most sopar operas and game shows (along with Johnny Carson, etc.) were not deemed worthy of longterm preservation and were just recorded over by shortsighted networks. Miraculously, Dark Shadows is one of the few 1960s soaps that survived more or less in its entirety, paving the way for a successful syndication run and DVD release. Match Game is one of the few 1970s game shows that was similarly preserved, essentially giving GSN most of its start-up programming.
I stopped by Ed McKay’s while I was out on some errands late this afternoon. I didn’t find any books, but there were some oddly obscure 12-inch singles in the bins that tickled my fancy.
There was a boy there who ticked my fancy, too. It was strange. He was not at all my type: a little chubbier than I usually like them. But he had a really dorky grin that I couldn’t resist. And he was looking at vinyl, too. We struck up a conversation about the Soft Cell 12-inch I had in my hand. He’s a fan, apparently. As it turned out, he was in town for a job interview at Kripsy Kreme, of all places. And he’s from Pittsburgh! Who could have predicted that? He was amazed to learn that Mark and I are in the process of buying a house there.
We talked for about fifteen minutes in the store. I really couldn’t get a feel about where he was coming from and what he was looking for. I sort of felt like I was being hit on, but I wasn’t really sure. I’m a little out of practice, after all. But he did keep telling me how much he’d like to hear the Soft Cell 12-inch.
So I invited him over to the house to do just that.
I was really nervous. Like I said, I’m a little out of practice. Mark is understanding about this sort of thing, so I didn’t think he’d mind if we got a little intimate. But I wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I needn’t have worried, though. We got back to the house, one thing led to another, and when I looked at that goofy grin and then took him in my mouth, I knew I hadn’t made a mistake. He was really sweet.
It was fun. I may meet up with him again this weekend when I go up for the inspection.
He let me snap a picture of him, and he said it was OK to use it on the site as long as I didn’t put it on the front page:
Headline News
Weird Al Yankovic (1994)
Upon reading this article, I’m not sure which is more frightening: the fact that there’s enough demand for methadone clinics in West Virginia that they’re operated as for profit businesses, or the fact that the state sees them as such a great potential revenue source.
Why, yes. Now that you ask, that big standoff/shootout in Pittsburgh yesterday was less than a mile from our prospective new house, and was actually going on at the precise moment I was at said house for the home inspection. I even had to pull over on the way to let a line of six cop cars with wailing sirens pass me.
Otherstream.com: your close-up source for breaking news. A day or so after it happens.
The inspection, by the way, went very well. Apparently, the place is in really good shape for a 105-plus year old house.
Don’t Box Me In
Stewart Copeland and Stan Ridgeway (1983)
The important part of Wall of Voodoo meets a third of The Police at a rumble(fish). This is one of those songs I always really loved, but that no one else ever seems to remember or think about.
This is news I’ve been hoping to read for several years.
“Bloom County” was always about the daily strips and bizarre storylines for me, which is why I never really warmed to “Outland” or “Opus”. Evere since the “Peanuts” and “Calvin & Hobbes” collections appeared, I’ve been hoping Milo and Binkley and Opus would get a similar completist treatment, so if anyone is looking for that perfect Hallowe’en gift for me, this would be it.
Just a block or two from our (mortgage gods willing) new house in Pittsburgh, via Historic Pittsburgh (1920) and Google Maps (2009):
Sorry. This is one of those things that just requires a visual link:
