Friday, October 30, 2015

Show Notes for HMOTD 015: Don't Hit It To Me


0:00 So an interesting thing happened over the course of recording, editing, and doing the Show Notes for this episode: I think I like "Baseball" less and "Bad Risk" MORE now. Again, analyze any piece of media for long enough and hidden gems will start to emerge. I still connect with "Baseball" on a visceral level, but I see Rob's critique, especially compared to other great baseball episodes (we had to cut a bit on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's "Take Me Out to the Holosuite," which comes in a close second to "Homer At The Bat" among baseball episodes for me). And "Bad Risk" actually has a lot of really strong bits, and while I would argue it is still a bit weird structurally and thematically, it's better than I initially gave it credit for.

1:22 "It's extremely basic." Rob and I have discovered that disagreement makes for good radio podcast, and while we're not quite at the "Mike, you ignorant slut" level yet, I would humbly offer that our disagreements on both "Hoodlum Rock" and "Baseball" have made for some of our best episodes.

3:50 "It's a fashion show...": Might as well link to a shot of the team in their pre-game huddle.

5:10 "Because you're the most wholesome!": We had to cut a bit about Les citing Bailey as "the most wholesome" and how it jibes with our "Les Nessman, secret swinger" thesis. More on this later.

5:40 The Scorecard: I gave it a shot. Click here to embiggen.


So a few things here; for a game that was likely cobbled together from footage, it's remarkably plausible. The lineup and position switches all work out. A few notes. 1) I can't figure out how Bucky drove in a single run in the fourth inning. The final line score, seen here, seems to indicate that however Bucky got the rally going, it was in the fourth. For him to have gotten an at-bat in the fourth, WKRP would have had to have gotten a lot of hits in the second and third. It's possible, but not probable. 2) The first, fifth, and seventh innings are kosher, though. We see them basically in their entireties. WKRP bats around in the fifth, with Les killing the rally, and then Carlson, Fever, Quarters and Flytrap get up in the sixth to let Marlowe lead off the seventh. 3) I decided to score Moose's inside-the-park home run as a home run and not a four-base error because damn it, the Big Guy deserves it.

I feel a little embarrassed to have spent this much time on this.

8:15 "Don't you think you've had one too many?" "Absolutely." I wish there was more Bucky Dornster in WKRP, but maybe that's why he's such a great character. Small bits. This is the last time we'll see Bucky; he's only in "Hold Up" and "Baseball." Thanks, Bill Dial. You made me smile more than should be possible with about three minutes of combined screen time.

10:08 "If I can psychoanalyze you a little..." Hey, turnabout's fair play, we do it to Les later.

10:48 Grantland Rice: When we think of flowery, epic-poetry level sports prose, we're really thinking of the tradition founded by Grantland Rice, which is obviously a legacy still felt today.

14:45 The Python Barber Sketch: If you're not someone who's memorized Monty Python sketches (and really, how much more of a Freaks and Geeks-type confession could that be), the gag here is that Michael Palin's barber is a homicidal maniac who is afraid he's going to kill his customer and he plays an audio tape of him cutting the customer's hair. Which, of course, somehow leads to the classic Lumberjack Song.

15:57 Carlin's Baseball/Football Routine: I wonder if you could chart how football replaced baseball as the national pasttime by how crowds reacted to the lines in Carlin's classic baseball/football bit. This recording is from the period of the First Gulf War, which I think says it all about the crowd's reaction.

17:47: "There's a lot of time to sit and think..." While baseball's leisurely pace undoubtedly leads to a lot of great baseball prose, it also leads to the dead air that leads to all kinds of random factoids being talked about between pitches and batters.

I should add that it's not impossible to write poetry about basketball; my uncle, noted poet Michael Sweeney, does just that in his collection In Memory of the Fast Break. His recollections of the 1960s Russell Celtics were some of my earliest encounters with poetry and undoubtedly colored both the way I look at sports and poetry. Thanks, Uncle Mike.

18:30 "The Sweet Science": The phrase comes from way back in the early 19th century. Interesting story about how sportswriter A.J. Liebling brought it back in the middle of the 20th.

19:20 The Python Cricket Sketch: I think I might subconsciously be trying to prove my geek bona fides in this sports-centric episode by pulling off the elusive double Python clip inclusion. I wonder if subconsciously I am using this many Python clips because the time period I discovered Python (junior high) was also the time period of my greatest athletic embarrassments in gym class.

20:10 "Baseball emerges in... 19th century New York": You can do worse than watching the entire 18+ hours of Ken Burns's Baseball. I'm not so much of a hipster contrarian to admit that he did a fantastic job with this series. Episode 1 gives you the true, urban origins of the game. As my British wife slowly became a baseball fan over the course of the Boston Red Sox's 2007 World Series run, we watched the miniseries and it gave her a fantastic grounding in the history of baseball.

26:05 Moose Carlson: Moose Carlson is very obviously flouting the unwritten rules of baseball here. There's been a lot of discussion in the past few years about showboating, bat flipping, and the so-called "unwritten rules of baseball," but since Moose's leisurely promenade around the bases could be considered payback for Clark Callahan's calling in the fielders, I suppose the Big Guy is justified. But still, Moose, pick up the pace!

28:30 Clark Callahan/Ross Bickell: I want a ruling on the deep psychology of Ross Bickell a) having to watch his real-life wife tease all the members of the WPIG team and having to act angry about them getting distracted and b) the aforementioned sub rosa flirtation developing between Loni and Gary.

29:40 Homer at the Bat: Ozzie Smith falling through the dimensional vortex at the center of the Springfield Mystery Spot is honestly the funniest four seconds in the history of television and I will brook no argument or contradiction on this.

Here's a detailed, loving oral history of the episode, where I grabbed most of the factoids about this Simpsons classic.

Also, happy trails Don Mattingly. Now trim those sideburns, you hippie.

31:48 The Diary (Freaks and Geeks): Rewatching this episode for the podcast was such a treat. As Rob mentions, that sequence where all the geeks get picked last, all soundtracked to XTC's "No Language in Our Lungs," is yes, extremely painful to watch. But yeah, Martin Starr kills it in this episode, especially the prank calls. Oh, and Coach Fredericks is watching What's Happening!! in that clip. Also, Biff Tannen wishes you a happy Belated Marty McFly Day! Make Hill Valley Great Again!

36:00 "Herb Tarlek is selling life insurance!" I want to commend Rob for his prescient choice in our live radio set from a few weeks back of the Knack's "Good Girls Don't," which actually does get played in this scene where Johnny and Venus are hiding from Les.

40:00 "It was The Monster Who Sold Life Insurance-insurance-insurance!!" More fodder for my Venus as scholar of pop culture thesis! He loves old '50s monster movies! Also, check out them playing another snippet of great music, the Rolling Stones' "Bitch."

46:15 Network: I recently finished a great book: Mad as Hell: The Making of Network and the Fateful Vision of the Angriest Man in Movies by Dave Itzkoff. We're going to have more, much more to say about Network as the podcast unfolds, including at least one more time this season; it's impossible to see television in the late '70s in the aftermath of Paddy Chayefsky's masterful satire without considering its impact on the pop culture of the time.

50:40 Apologetics/Les having Borderline/Histrionic/Narcissistic Personality Disorder: The cluster of personality disorders in the DSM-5 in "Cluster B" all seem to apply in one sense or another to Les Nessman, with maybe the exception of Antisocial. I cited Borderline and Histrionic in the podcast, but Rob is right; there is a healthy dose of narcissism in there too. And again, we are speaking of Les Nessman, not ourselves.

55:00 Conspiracy theorists: Here's a great article on the psychology of conspiracy theorists, and yet another, which appeared just this week and despite the title is less about psychology and more about the social conditions (i.e., "perceived power imbalances," *coff*late 70s*coff*) that lead to conspiracy theorizing. Some good links in that article, though.

56:50 "You drove all the way over there, and Charlie wasn't there?" This is definitely a drug deal, guys. But it's also an example... of a trope! Also, I mentioned the "So I says to Mabel, I says" line from The Simpsons, which people have been puzzling over for years.

58:20 "One that has been featured on 60 Minutes... twice!" Friend of the podcast Leah Biel reminded us after HMOTD 014 that the Point/Counterpoint bit from SNL was an explicit reference to 60 Minutes's popular liberal/conservative head-to-head feature. And of course, Airplane! used the actual Point/Counterpoint folks (James J. Kilpatrick and an off-screen Shana Alexander) in a cameo. "I say, let 'em crash!"

We end the podcast with a bit of the classic SNL sketch from the Christopher Guest/Harry Shearer/Billy Crystal/Martin Short era, the Minkman Toys/60 Minutes sketch. Martin Short has literally never been better.

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

HMOTD 015: Don't Hit It To Me


Rob & Mike join the WKRP crew on the diamond for a game of "Baseball," and try to psychoanalyze Les Nessman in "Bad Risk."
(Full show notes appear at Hold My Order, Terrible Dresser two days after each episode is released. All audio clips are the properties of their owners/creators and appear in this work of comment and critique under fair use provisions of copyright law.)

Check out this episode!

Monday, October 26, 2015

We're Talkin' Basebaaallll...

Have you got World Series fever yet? Not feeling the Mets/Royals matchup in 2015? Then come back in time with us to 1979:


Yes, it's the "We Are Family" Pittsburgh Pirates prevailing in a seven-game series against the "Adorable Mascot That Little Mike Loved" Baltimore Orioles. But maybe you're not into exciting seven-game Series matchups and bright yellow pillbox baseball caps. Maybe you prefer sitcoms taking to the baseball field. Okay, we can hook you up there too.


The third episode of WKRP In Cincinnati's second season, titled "Baseball," actually aired on Monday, October 15, the night after Pittsburgh saved their season with a clutch 7-1 Game 5 win over Baltimore to send the Series back to Baltimore. The WKRP crew's timing was excellent.

And so is ours! We hope that after you finish watching Game 1 of the Mets and Royals on Tuesday night, you won't be too hung over with baseball to listen to HMOTD 015, which drops Wednesday morning, October 28!


(Terry Cashman's "Willie, Mickey, and the Duke (Talkin' Baseball)" from 1981, sadly not contemporary with the 1979 Series but definitely heavy with '70s-style '50s nostalgia.)

Friday, October 16, 2015

Show Notes for HMOTD 014: We Don't Know Any Chad


For those of you who are new to HMOTD, this is where we explain some of the unexplained references from the actual podcast and expand upon stuff we didn't get a chance to go deeper into. You can read Show Notes for all our past episodes here.

1:00 “I'm The Doctor, Dr. Rob MacDougall, and with me is Mike 'Flytrap Venus Rising' Grasso:" During our recent sojourn on internet radio, it was discovered in assembling our playlists that Rob leans more on the rock side of music from the late ‘70s and I’m definitely more into the smooth music and soul of the era, so these improvised monikers actually work really well in retrospect. *bangs yin-yang-branded gong*

1:35 “Welcome to the show, Lenore.” We are so lucky to have fantastic friends who share our taste in fantastic classic TV, and Lenore’s perspective on Chad & Buffy & Raoul & Jennifer was invaluable. As Rob mentioned in Part 2 of our Season Review last season, some of our co-hosts in the coming weeks and months will actually be people of the female persuasion!

2:55 Michael Kassel: Again, let’s give a shout-out to Michael Kassel’s behind-the-scenes episode by episode look at WKRP, "Baby, If You've Ever Wondered," America's Favorite Radio Station: WKRP in Cincinnati.

3:20 Charles Kaufman and Spike Jonze: Speaking as a neutral outsider, Nic Cage plays Rob in the Charlie Kaufman/Spike Jonze-written-and-directed movie adaptation of Princess Street and Catherine Keener plays Lenore. Let's hope they can do passable Canadian accents. I'm not sure who would play then-17-year-old Mike who wanders into Canada with his 40-year-old time traveling clone on a mission from the future to save meta for everyone.

3:55 "I am pathetic." This movie's due a rewatch I think, for me personally. I think I consistently underrate it. After the bleakness of Synecdoche, New York, I kind of didn't want to deal with the Jonze/Kaufman continuum for a while.

5:30 Four 20, 21-year-olds: I thought I detected a coded 420 reference here between this and the mention of watching 6-hour VHS tapes due to inertia on the couch, but I might just be reading too much into everything these days.

6:00 "I want you to throw away these old calendars and TV Guides." One day, they'll find my stash of old TV Guides. Probably in a pile that's collapsed on top of me.

9:15 Second-wave feminism. We've talked deeply about the three ages of comics (and sitcoms) but maybe we should also gloss the three waves of feminism.

11:10 "Julie Payne plays Buffy, Johnny's old flame." We'll return a couple more times to Julie Payne over the course of this podcast, but here's her IMDB to get you started. One thing I noticed: she's one of the few woman cast members (playing "Additional Voices") in the famously testosterone-soaked Glengarry Glen Ross.

18:40 "Well, I think the key here is the fact that, well... Chad. I mean, we don't know any Chad." Just picture me poking my head through Jennifer's kitchen ledge to say this. It is tremendously useful as an apologia for in-jokes, though.

22:45: The Raoul-Raoul connection: Well-played, Rob.

23:50: "I looked up the schedule of TV shows on the air in 1979..." Excellent research by Lenore here on woman-led sitcoms at the end of the 70s, and a startling lesson about how in some ways we've gone backwards in the last 35 years. More bricks for our Master Carter-Reagan HMOTD Thesis.

26:00 "You use Skype for Business..." Since you all don't know any Chad, I'll raise the curtain and explain we turned a Skype-related tech hiccup in recording this episode into... yes, another in-joke. Yay! I'm on the inside of the joke this time!

28:20 "There actually was a gigantic orgy to which Les was not invited." I have a side thesis going on right now inspired by Noted Community Fan Jeff Wikstrom's "Les on a Ledge"-related realization that Les never explicitly denies he's gay, that Les is secretly a huge 1970s bisexual swinger. I'll keep my eyes open for this one as we go.

31:15 "You take a woman to a nice place. N-I-C-E." Goddamn, he really had me going there until the obligatory "You get her drunk, stupid!" punchline. I Want To Believe Herb isn't a complete scumbag.

34:55 "After The Love Has Gone." A Grammy-award winning R&B single for the songwriting trio of David Foster, Jay Graydon, and Bill Champlin, three (white) session musicians and songwriters with deep roots in the music industry and a collectively massive string of hits. I am rediscovering Earth, Wind & Fire lately and so much of my childhood, it seems, was soundtracked to their music, including, I am utterly convinced, NBA commercials in the 1980s (sadly, I can find no YouTube evidence of this, but I'm sure there was an NBA "Shining Star" commercial when I was growing up). Nothing beats "One on One," though. It's about basketball, but also about romancing. By the way, if you are not moved by James Worthy, Mo Cheeks, and a startlingly young MJ gliding to the hoop during the sublime sax solo... well, you didn't grow up in the 80s I guess.

38:45 "You looked up the tax law!" Damn it, Lenore, your research kung fu is putting us to shame.

39:15 "King, this case is closed." Another way I'm identifying more and more with Venus; his pop culture references. Hanging out with Venus is like MST3K ten years before it debuted. Another reason I'll wear the "Venus Rising" moniker proudly.

40:10 Les's topical references: a) I think the writers just have it in for Philadelphia; there are a few more "disaster strikes Philadelphia" throwaways in Season 2. Maybe because of the Pete Rose thing? b) Rob, regarding Iran and the Ayatollah: WKRP-Argo crossover fanfic when?

40:50 "I was so, I dunno, COOL." Let's go back to the MST3K well and my reaction when I heard Bailey's bubbling over at asking Johnny out... I was immediately reminded of the protagonist of the MSTied industrial short "Young Man's Fancy," which asks us to consider the wonders of the modern electric kitchen. Two money riffs from the Satellite of Love crew: "Thank goodness for my electric dress!" and "She's squishy, she's got the reds... what's going on around here?"

42:10 "...while a man with a... wiggling noodle is coming out asking them silly questions." Ahem. Well... the Fisher King is impotent after all. Also, here is Mary Maguire's IMDB.

45:20 Jennifer as Galahad or Percival. Now that I've had some time to ponder the link between a woman as healer of the Fisher King and the two "pure" knights that Lenore cites here, Galahad and Percival. Galahad was a later English addition to the Grail myth, the son of adultery between Lancelot and Elaine (while disguised as Guinevere), and his link to continence, purity and celibacy might, in gender studies terms, "un-man" him. Percival is from the French and German tradition, more a holy fool figure, a child of nature... perhaps that's more of a Johnny figure, but again, Perceval is pure, virginal and conflated in later collections of tales with the virgin knight/Galahad figure.

(Not totally related, but Monty Python very slyly links Galahad (played by Michael Palin) and actually Lancelot too (played by John Cleese) to different types of sexual farces in their respective Tales in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.)

48:40 Buffy's greatest hits: They are all great lines.

52:15 "Baby Boomers were materialistic." Yuppie literally came from the same portmanteau impulse as hippie, and yippie. Check this article from the Schenectady Gazette in 1986.

53:40 Wizards and Warriors. NOT the video game, as this late Gen-Xer thought, but this TV show, which I literally had never heard of before we recorded this episode. If we're going to talk Jeff Conaway, by the way, we need to link to this closing credits riff-fest from MST3K where Mike and the bots come up with titles for new erotic thrillers for the mid-90s USA Network, most of which star Jeff Conaway.

55:00 "You know those yellow actual official TSR D&D character sheets?" Yeah, Rob, I know. *laugh* They're remarkably difficult to find online though! There are modern PDF re-creations but very few original scans. But here's the bit I love: these sheets were released in... 1979. Hinge year! Grognardia cites them as "the greatest character sheets ever made for any iteration of Dungeons & Dragons, possibly for any RPG," and we all know OSR grognards NEVER EVER exaggerate. [/RPG inside baseball cattiness]

57:00 et subseq. Palimony. First of all, the song "Palimony" courtesy Leon Rausch, proving again that country music is a great barometer for what Middle America thinks of social trends. That "have my cake and Edith too" pun is awful, though, come on Leon.

Okay, palimony. First, Rob's incredulous fury at the realization that the media have been making stupid, facile portmanteaus (portmanteaux?) for social trends since the late 70s is priceless here. The condescension with which Rob cites "bromance" and "funemployment" is hilarious. Marvin v. Marvin is indeed the seminal case here, and as we noted in the podcast, the rich white men (or rich white women, see below) usually won these things or got them settled on the cheap. In the cases of gay palimony, Scott Thorson and Liberace did settle out of court, and both Martina Navratilova and Billie Jean King fended off palimony cases with their longtime partners.

The SNL skit indeed lives on long past the events of Marvin v. Marvin. Transcript here. And yeah, people ended up treasuring Dan Aykroyd's rant and totally ignoring Jane Curtin's fantastic Point.

1:07:25 "That's our headcanon." This podcast is wrecking my brain, man...

1:08:35 "He's kind of her requisite bad boy..." ...although Lenore is also guilty of having a rich interior WKRP headcanon too, it seems. :)

1:10:15 Dig our new outro! And yeah, listen to the words, we want your stars on the iTunes store!

Wednesday, October 14, 2015

HMOTD 014: We Don't Know Any Chad


Mike & Rob kick off Season 2 with special guest Lenore MacAdam and a great WKRP two-parter, "For Love Or Money." When an old flame comes to town, things get zany--and that happens to Johnny Fever as well!

(Full show notes appear at Hold My Order, Terrible Dresser two days after each episode is released. All audio clips are the properties of their owners/creators and appear in this work of comment and critique under fair use provisions of copyright law.)

Check out this episode!

Monday, October 12, 2015

"Do you like Bogart?" "Humphrey? Oh yeah." "He's dead now."


Well, Bogie may be dead but we here at Hold My Order, Terrible Dresser are very much alive and kicking! And will you look at what we've been up to!



Yes, that's right, not only are we "big in Canada" (top image, and yes, you see correctly, we ARE beating the Trailer Park Boys) but as of yesterday we began our tenure at the top of New & Noteworthy on the U.S. iTunes Store's TV and Film section as well! And we're still hanging on on the History section of the Society & Culture page (bottom image) in the U.S., which in a strange way I'm even more proud of.

We're absolutely over the moon at all the great reviews and support we've gotten from you, our loyal Season 1 early adopters. So let's talk about what's ahead.

On Wednesday we're releasing HMOTD 014, which covers the Season 2 premiere two-parter, "For Love or Money," where Johnny's ex-girlfriend Buffy comes to Cincinnati from California. And we really couldn't have picked a better guest host for these episodes than Lenore MacAdam. To say more would be spoiling this extra-length season premiere episode of Hold My Order, Terrible Dresser. But you are in for a treat.

Now that we've got a solid presence on iTunes... keep rating and reviewing and downloading and subscribing! We've got another few weeks in our New & Noteworthy window on the iTunes Store, and we want to make sure we get in front as many new fans as we can!

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Hold My Order, Terrible Dresser... the Broadcast?!


Yes, if you missed our live recording tonight on mixlr, you can listen to both hours right here!

http://mixlr.com/hmotd/showreel/

Thanks to EVERYONE who joined us tonight for our Season 2 celebration live radio show! We had a blast playing DJ for a night. And we know at least one house party out there was listening, which is just really cool.

Thanks to all of you who listened, and all of you who've downloaded, rated, and ranked our podcast on iTunes. We need more clicks! If you haven't already, Subscribe and Download and Rate and Review! Subscribing means you'll be the first to get our Season 2 premiere episode on Wednesday!

Friday, October 9, 2015

You're not listening to the 16th best WKRP podcast on iTunes... you're listening to the 14th.


Wow, so much to say this fine Friday morning. Let's start with the big news:

WE'RE ON ITUNES!

This is where we ask you, our loyal listeners who have been with us through thick and thin the past half a year, to do us a favor to help us raise our standing on the iTunes store and get news of the podcast out to people using iTunes:

1. Please go to iTunes or to the Podcasts app on your iPhone and hit Subscribe. Subscribing to our podcast will not only bring you new episodes as we charge through Season 2 but also help us raise our profile on the iTunes store. If you've listened to one or more episodes of our podcast, please take the time to write a review on your Podcasts app or on iTunes, under the "Reviews" tab on Podcasts or "Reviews and Ratings" on iTunes. If you are so inclined, please both write a review and give our podcast a Star rating, because both of these will help people find Hold My Order, Terrible Dresser.

In short, writing a review is best, a Star rating is next best, and Subscribing is next best after that, but ALL THREE are awesome.

2. Even if you've heard them all, and you've got room on your iPhone, iPad, or desktop, download all 13 episodes; that's 13 more downloads to push us up the rankings.

3 is optional, but please let everyone know on social media that our Season 2 debut episode will be dropping next Wednesday, October 14, and feel free to use the above iTunes web link to lead people to the podcast!

Whew. Enough shilling for iTunes for a while. Let's shill for something completely different.

Tomorrow night! Rob and I are spinning tunes from 1978 and 1979! Popular hits from the twelve month period of the first season of WKRP, as well as songs featured on the show. So yeah, you're not going to be hearing Joy Division or anybody like that on this podcast; this is what pop radio would've been playing back then. So that means lots of smyooooooth music! And some classic rock, and disco, and maybe even a few "alternative" hits.

So join us at http://mixlr.com/HMOTD on Saturday night, October 10, from roughly 8 pm to 10-ish pm, where Rob and I will spin tunes, talk about music and pop culture, and maybe even talk about the podcast?

Monday, October 5, 2015

Turn it up! That's enough, so you know it's got soul...


Last Friday, I promised an announcement about an exclusive live event having to do with our Season 2 kickoff. Well, here it is:

On Saturday evening, October 10, from 8 to 10-ish pm Eastern time, your podcast hosts are going to do a live radio show online, where we will be playing some of the music from WKRP's first season, as well as some of our favorite contemporary hits from 1978 and 1979.

You can find this live broadcast on mixlr.com, at http://mixlr.com/HMOTD. We'll be taking a break between our first hour and second hour, as dictated by mixlr's "if you don't want to pay us, you can only broadcast an hour at a time" dictate.

There's going to be a live chat room (which you can join through Facebook or by signing up for a mixlr account) where we'll take questions and requests, and in between the songs, we hope to give you some behind-the-scenes thoughts on Season 2 of the podcast and on the pop music we both remember ever-so-vaguely from our childhoods.

So join us! It should be fun. And stay tuned for EVEN MORE special announcements on Friday of this week!

Friday, October 2, 2015

The Three R's: Reading TV Guide, Writing to TV Guide, and Renewing TV Guide


Long time no see, fellow babies!

Have no fear; your genial hosts have been working feverishly behind the scenes, recording new episodes at a feverish clip, bolstering our podcast's infrastructure, recruiting guest hosts, and doing everything we can to make Season 2 of Hold My Order, Terrible Dresser THE BEST PODCAST SEASON EVER RECORDED OR HEARD*.

To this end, we have a startling array of promotional events happening over the next week and a half or so, starting with this very blog post!

This summer, I had occasion to make my way to The Outer Limits comic store in Waltham, MA. Apart from being a very solidly-stocked comic shop, The Outer Limits also features a great deal of pop culture ephemera from my own childhood period. Yes, this means old newspapers and supermarket tabloids (no sign of the "3 Survive UFO Attack" WKRP issue of the Weekly World News, sadly) and old VHS tapes and toys and such from the '80s. As I crept around the comic back issues, though, I felt my foot nudge something and looked down to a set of four piles of tiny little digest-sized magazines. Dare I dream? I thought to myself. Could this really be?


Yes, I dare, and yes, it was.

So naturally I bought a huge pile of these bad boys. It's all for the podcast, I recited to myself in my head as I greedily scooped them up and took them home. And you know, that's actually almost true! Because even though the first thing I had to do was take a Boston edition issue from 1979 and spend time deconstructing it thoroughly (follow that link for a glimpse at this project), there was also an issue with a lot more direct pertinence, not only to the podcast, but also for this exact second season of WKRP!


It's a lengthy interview with Howard Hesseman, published as episode 4 of Season 2 of WKRP, "Bad Risk," was airing in October of 1979. If you'd asked me before buying these old TV Guides if TV Guide was in any way a bastion of journalism, I'd have shouted, "No!" from the rooftops. And while this Hesseman profile is pretty classic and standard entertainment journalism, it actually delves pretty deeply into Hesseman's background in The Committee, his love of scuba diving (!!!), and his seeming cynicism for every authority figure in his life.

Speaking of real journalism, the other issues I purchased contained articles on the death of public broadcasting (predicted, yes, since the 1970s), the abduction of Patty Hearst, the rise of closed-circuit cameras in fighting crime and the civil liberties implications of such, and questioning the wisdom and appropriateness of the exploitation of the Loud family in PBS's An American Family (which you can bet I'll be revisiting when it's time for the "Real Families" episode of WKRP).

Oh, TV Guide, where have you gone? A nation turns its lonely eyes etc. etc.

Anyway, here's the interview with all contiguous ads intact (click on images to embiggen). Feel free to have a cringe over ads for weight loss aids, cigarettes (remember, kids, black eyes on women are a great way to sell cigarettes!), K-Mart, and home video mail order (yes, even in 1979 people had home video machines!). This particular issue is sadly not a Boston market edition but instead for northern Kentucky, which I suppose is pretty much perfect for WKRP in Cincinnati, no?





More announcements coming Monday, including an invite to an exclusive LIVE event to help celebrate Hold My Order, Terrible Dresser Season 2!

*notaguarantee