HMOTD 005: Hot Blooded

Rob & Mike discuss the WKRP episodes "Mama's Review" and "A Date With Jennifer" with special guest star Chris Tatro.

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

Check out this episode!

What "Love Returns" Wrought

After launching with considerable fanfare, WKRP in Cincinnati's ratings declined steadily over the first half of the first season. After the creative and ratings nadir of "Love Returns," CBS pulled WKRP from the schedule for retooling. The Wall Street Journal, which had carried a piece promoting the show's premiere, now described it as "temporarily cancelled."

(Click through for PDF.) (If for some reason you need a PDF of this.)

No hiatus for us, though! At least not yet. We'll have a new podcast this Wednesday, revisiting "Mama's Review" (a clip episode designed to onboard new viewers after the show returned two months later) and "A Date With Jennifer."

Show notes for HMOTD 004: I Thought Turkeys Could Fly

Listen to HMOTD 004: I Thought Turkeys Could Fly.

0:00 Listen. Some will say we went too far in this episode, maybe even reached a little bit in our conclusions about the Big Guy and the occult underpinnings of WKRP. My model for this sort of pop culture overanalysis has always been this little throwaway line in Douglas Coupland's Microserfs, which I read at a very crucial time in my life. Protagonist Dan is relaxing in his Microsoft-geek house in Redmond with roommate "Bug Barbecue" and watching TV:

Bug is here in the living room watching "Casper the Friendly Ghost" cartoons on the VCR, "looking for subtext." I can't believe it, but I'm getting into it, too. ("Wait, Bug - rewind that back a few seconds - wasn't that a Masonic compass?")

I also know both Rob and I are heavily influenced if not outright indebted to the great Ken Hite and his own series of close readings of history for those with an occult/conspiratorial bent, Suppressed Transmission. We've both shamelessly ripped the Suppressed Transmission format off in past and in present, so to Ken, just a quick note of acknowledgement and thanks for the inspiration for all those Livejournal posts and for this episode of HMOTD and our ongoing Cincinnati Triangle segment. As we are not Avram Davidson, we are stealing Ken's bit.

The uncollected Suppressed Transmissions are diabolically hard to get hold of in this fallen age, but you can get a regular dosage of Hitean weirdness from Ken's excellent podcast Ken and Robin Talk About Stuff (with the also great but perhaps less demented Robin Laws) or from his bimonthly column, Ken Writes About Stuff. Again, we swear we're not ripping you guys off with this one Canadian, one American, two-man podcast format.

tl;dr version: We seek the Grail, what can I tell ya? *shrug*

02:40 "There's something cool about the confidence to wait until minute 17 to drop the joke on you." Let's just call that Meta Moment #1 for this podcast.

07:30 Richard Sanders even says "Get this, Johnny, can you get this, Johnny?" or an equivalent (I can't hear over the studio audience) in his turkey drop narration, a reference to Morrison desperately making sure his engineer Charlie Nehlsen is getting the sound.

08:38 Herbert Morrison's real voice was considerably deeper than what you hear in the famous broadcast of the Hindenburg disaster--his recorder was running slow. You can find corrected versions on YouTube; they actually sound less like Richard Sanders' pastiche.

09:15 If I may again take our occult weirdness close reading for a ride: the Pink Floyd track "Dogs" made me think on second viewing, after all our Fisher King silliness, of the Irish culture hero Cú Chulainn, a.k.a. the Hound of Culann, who slayed the hound who was guarding the smith Culann's house and then offered to serve in the hound's place. Watch this later as we talk about Johnny.

09:37 What you're hearing here is the original version of this episode, with Pink Floyd's "Dogs." (Fair use! But don't tell Roger Waters.) On the Shout Factory DVD, a close soundalike has been used, and a bit of dialogue has been cut ("What's the name of that orchestra?" "Pink Floyd." "Ooh, is that Pink Floyd?"). But it's not bad.

11:11 A callback to episode 2, in which we took the band Detective's name in vain.

12:50 Skinny Bobby Harper's life is super interesting (I want my wake held at a Dave and Buster's: skeeball, beer, and mourning for all!), as is Jerry Blum's. And this oral history of "Turkeys Away" will do the best to de-bisociate all the versions of the turkey giveaway story.

15:30 ChickieNobs! Also, the venerable urban legend of "Animal 57." That is some kibo Usenet realness right there.

16:20 Rob, Sarah Palin thinks we're BOTH wimps. Also, how depressing is it that video from as recent as 2008 can look this blurry to 2015 eyes?

17:50 "It gets pretty strange after that." And that (at minute 17, mind you), is this podcast's Meta Moment #2.

19:00 So yeah. You do something outrageous or transgressive and you do it well, and it becomes legend. Luckily, there are Wikipedia pages for both "Chuckles Bites the Dust" and "The Contest." But not one for "Turkeys Away." I suspect history erasure thanks to the Turkey Working.

21:00 Not to go to the Wikipedia well one too many times, but the Fisher King legend is so multi-dimensional and has been told and retold so many times that we need a little bit of, well, encyclopedic-ness. Wikipedia does warn us that this article has multiple issues.

24:10 The three issues of Sandman I cite here are the ones with the Emperor Augustus, Emperor Norton, and Caliph Haroun. And, of course, here's Henry V in disguise.

28:00 He's history's greatest monster!! Transcript here. Can you imagine a President having the guts to say stuff like this today? "These wounds are still very deep. They have never been healed." Indeed, JC. Indeed.

30:00 Our source for all things ritualistic related to the turkey is Karen Davis's More Than a Meal: The Turkey in History, Myth, Ritual, and Reality.

30:45 Ben Franklin on the turkey (you'll need to click through the disclaimer). And this... this is one of those facts that creeps even ME out. This reference to the turkey being superior to the bald eagle was made on the occasion of a society presenting medals (medals on which the bird was apparently so badly sculpted that it resembled a turkey, which led to jokes and Franklin's timely defense of the humility of the turkey) to American allies in France after the Revolutionary War's conclusion. That society's name?

The Society of the Cincinnati. (Named of course for the Roman who wisely laid down his arms after he was needed by his nation.)

Sometimes... sometimes, this podcast.

33:00 Ronald Reagan, Oliver North, and turkey pardoning.

34:10 I can't be the only one whose blood ran cold hearing this jolly anecdote about a bleeding turkey from the Gipper. I immediately thought of this. And we're back to man-made chickens.

37:24 Southern Ontarians of the right vintage will recognize the great Vincent Price, on Hamilton, Ontario's own CHCH-TV's beloved, demented kiddie show Hilarious House of Frightenstein. Hammer kids, represent!

38:00 Our mentions of the "Turkey Working" is yes, more or less an explicit reference to Jack Parsons, L. Ron Hubbard, Aleister Crowley and the Babalon Working.

Thank you, Hugh Wilson.

39:13 "That doesn't make a lick of sense!" And that would be Meta Moment #3.

40:45 The story of Linda Ronstadt and Jerry Brown. Former AND current Governor of California, by the way.

43:19 We got the subtitle confused, but Rob's referring here to Michael Kassel's America's Favorite Radio Station, one of our go-to sources for WKRP history and trivia.

43:52 This curiously lukewarm introduction ("I guess it's good enough for me") comes from Jose Feliciano, on Burt Sugarman's The Midnight Special.

45:30 Linda Ronstadt and Philip K. Dick.

46:30 All credit to filmmaker and YouTube personality Anna Kay Akana and her, um, "BonerBookClub." Yes, Anna, PKD was indeed craaaaazy.

47:30 Cheesy late-night record compilation commercials seem to be a universal constant for people raised in the 70s or 80s. Not only do Rob and I (a Canadian and an American) remember these, but so does my British wife AND the creators of Blackadder, so apparently it was a Thing in the UK as well.

48:20 Linda Ronstadt, of course, owning Warren Zevon's "Poor Poor Pitiful Me."

50:00 "No way for a figurant to win. No possible voice or focus for the encaged figurant. Gately speculates briefly about the suicide statistics for bottom-rung actors."

52:40 *wink* *WINK*

52:58 That's Dave Thomas' rather unfortunate character "Lin Ye Tang" on SCTV's "Doorway to Hell." "I ruined this whole episode." And that's Meta Moment #4. Thanks, everybody!

HMOTD 004: I Thought Turkeys Could Fly

This is the big one! Rob & Mike go deep into WKRP in Cincinnati's famous Thanksgiving episode, "Turkeys Away"! Plus we spare a few minutes for the existential horror of "Love Returns."

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

Check out this episode!

Cincinnati Beat

Fellow babies!

So I listen to a lot of podcasts, and I admit I often roll my eyes at how the hosts of fledgling podcast always seem to be hustling for love "engagement," in the form of email, comments, feedback, and the like. But now that I have a fledgling podcast of my own, I get it. Because it is SO EXCELLENT that people are actually listening to this thing, and it is SO FUN to get email, comments, feedback, and the like. So thank you. Thank you. You are awesome and I hope you keep listening and enjoying and commenting for as long as this little ride goes.

There are a few running themes in the emails, comments, and conversations I've had about last week's episode. To wit:

Joyce Armor

Some of the hardcore KRP experts among you pointed out that Joyce Armor, the name of the real-life writer of episode 6, "Bailey's Show," is also the name of a character on a later episode of WKRP. What can I say? We're watching these in order so the fourth-season episodes are really not on my radar yet. It just goes to show: 99.9% of the world would say Mike and I are dangerously obsessed with this show, but at least two of my good friends are giving me grief for not being obsessed enough. Anyway, yes. I admit I had forgotten this, but in the fourth-season episode "An Explosive Affair" (aka the one with the Phone Cops), Jennifer's predecessor as the station receptionist is named Joyce Armor! Crazy. Is it a shout-out to the real-life Joyce Armor? An inside joke? I'm sure we'll talk about all that when we get there. In the meantime, enjoy our buddy Chris' theory that WKRP is some kind of hyperfictional metatext riffing on Grant Morrison's The Invisibles.

Were we too hard on Team Bailey?

Several people, including my wife*, have said we were too tough on Bailey fans in our last episode. (* Who is beautiful, bespectacled, smart, and sometimes underappreciated at work. Hmm...) Let me be clear on this: we still love Bailey! We just don't claim that ours is a minority opinion. If we were tough on Team Bailey, it's because we were being tough on our own selves.

To make it up to you, here are several early pictures of Jan Smithers. See if you can look past her awkward exterior to appreciate the beauty within.

Close Encounters was Not Scary

I have to agree. Man up, Mike!

Show notes for HMOTD 003: Speed Kills, Del

0:00 The title of this week's podcast not only refers to Del's seemingly dexedrine-aided loquaciousness (and the motto of the methamphetamine awareness campaign started by Dr. David E. Smith of the Haight-Ashbury Free Clinic), but may also be a more oblique reference to the very current-in-1978 controversy over the much-maligned National Maximum Speed Law in the United States. I had always thought that the speed limit was a Carter initiative but no, it was Nixon, during the first oil crisis!

6:00 The Squeaky Fromme assassination attempt on Gerald Ford is the strange mid-70s coda to the already-strange saga of the Manson Family.

6:30 Here's another great Wikipedia summary for D.B. Cooper. Sorry about the mistaking "Dan" for "Don." Obviously too excited about that Don Draper theory.

7:30 I very enthusiastically recommend The Skies Belong To Us. Just a great, riveting read.

9:00 My esteemed collaborator was apparently as tickled as I was by David Lynch's portrayal of an old-timey agent on Louie.

14:45 Oh man, can I just say? I spent one year in Toronto in grad school in the late 90s. I took two pilgrimages to Suspect Video and it was indeed as good as its reputation indicated.

16:15 AFSCME! The Amalgamated... F-Federalizat... hey, apparently I, too, don't know what the fuck it means (NSFW!).

20:30 Unsurprisingly, if you listened to Del's on-air monologue, Hamilton Camp later became a very prolific voice actor. All you 90s Kids will know him from Darkwing Duck as Gizmoduck and all of you 80s Kids will know him as Greedy Smurf AND Harmony Smurf.

22:00 "Don't. Praise. The machine." Also, here's a capsule history of radio automation.

25:00 What the crap, Samsung. Seriously.

26:40 Michael Kassel's book is fast becoming an indispensable concordance for this podcast. Yeoman work, Mr. Kassel, bravo.

28:00 Joyce Armor's IMDB. After you've worked on WKRP, Love Boat, and Remington Steele, what else is there?

31:45 Excerpts from Newsweek's "The Teen-agers" issue here, including the Jan Smithers cover.

36:35 This is from the fantastic second season Mad Men episode "Maidenform."

38:17 Here's Dawn Wells (Gilligan's Island's Mary-Ann) on forty years of the the question, "Ginger or Mary-Ann?" She's good-natured about it, but immediately sees it is all about the male ego. "A boy could go to the prom with Mary-Ann. You had to be a man to court Ginger."

40:15 I dropped the Good Will Hunting reference, so it's up to me to post the video, and I'll just pretend Robin Williams is telling me about this Bailey vs. Jennifer-at-20 thing, "It's not your fault, Mike. It's not your fault."

44:00 Extraterrestrials. Magic and Witchcraft. Missing Persons. Myths and Monsters. Lost Civilizations. Special Phenomena. My six dream Jeopardy! categories.

46:00 C'mon son. C'MON SON.

47:15 Here it is. UFOs Are Real (1979). I want you to watch this and pretend you are 6 years old watching this on WSBK-TV 38 in Boston in 1981. Betty Hill first appears at 1:06:45. Oh, and here's the movie poster. Pleasant dreams.

49:00 Black triangle UFOs. Project Mayflower. Mrs. Woodruff's business card above. IT'S ALL RELATED PEOPLE

HMOTD 003: Speed Kills, Del

Rob & Mike discuss the WKRP in Cincinnati episodes "Holdup" and "Bailey's Show," along with hijacking, unions, the great Bailey vs. Jennifer "debate," and UFOs.

This episode is rated PG-13 for foul-mouthed teamsters and scary grey aliens. All audio clips are the property of their owners/creators and appear in this work of comment and critique under fair use provisions of copyright law.

Check out this episode!