— I can’t take the loss of many more of my childhood icons; Captain Kangaroo has passed on, and now also Soupy Sales at age 83. Soupy in my opinion has never gotten the credit or recognition that he deserved; a comedian of television, radio, and film born Milton Supman, Soupy drew heavily from slapstick and also used word play and improvisation. His comedy wasn’t always sophisticated, but it could be clever and was always funny; taking a pie in the face was a stock in trade, and Soupy estimated that he and his visitors took 20,000 pies in the course of his career. Soupy was big at the time in the New York area where I grew up in to the extent that kids would imitate him and do his routines.
Soupy had furry elements; two of the visitors to his shows were dogs called White Fang and Black Tooth, who appeared at his door as giant shaggy paws with felt triangular claws. White Fang spoke with unintelligible growls and grunts which Soupy repeated back to his audience in English; Black Tooth was also unintelligible, but was into giving loud and sloppy kisses to Soupy off-camera. Then there was Pookie the Lion, a hip character prone to appearing in Soupy’s window who you could understand. – -Soupy even had a novelty dance record and song called The Mouse which was wildly popular in the mid-1960’s!- –Hey!–Do the Mouse, Yeah! I last saw Soupy on game shows, those last retreats of celebrities past their popularity prime. Even then, he was funny, using his improv talents to transcend the medium and material that he had to work with.
As Soupy was influenced by the Marx Brothers, so he also influenced other comedians including Andy Kaufman and Paul Reubens; if you twist and press Soupy’s persona, you get Pee-wee Herman! Soupy was an earlier prototype of the cheerfully demented childrens’ TV show host, filled with manic energy. All of these comics realized that much comic inspiration can be drawn from childhood, which can be darker and more twisted than many realize…
Thank you, Soupy, for all the laughter and the furry undertones! To quote lyrics from The Mouse, “every cat in the neighborhood will be in shock.”
Cats, you see, loved Soupy Sales, and will miss him as will I…
– – I’d really like to have a costumed arch-nemesis; no plain-clothes nemesis for me, thank you very much…those with a costumed arch-nemesis
— He’s furry, he’s fun, and he’s…everywhere!–The crasher squirrel, that is!
–My people are moving on in…to Detroit, that is. That’s right, the Motor City! ‘Ya see, Detroit had a population of 1.8 million hyoomans in 1950, and it’s down to 900,000 now. With the big economic meltdown and GM goin’ belly-up, Detroit has an unemployment rate of 23%. Bad for hyoomans, good for us foxies; we’re movin’ in, ‘ya see. We figure we just might be able to do somethin’ wid da place…
–When I was a kid, I had a big collection of hard rubber dinosaurs which I regarded with love and veneration.
— Disney stuff is usually too mainstream and white breadish for me, but I have to love Perry the Platypus, pet of the title characters in the Disney Channel show, Phineas and Ferb. Unknown to his owners, Perry (aka “Agent P”) lives a parallel life as a secret agent for The Agency, a government organization of animal spies. Pretending to be a mindless house pet, Perry is secretly a fedora-wearing secret agent who enjoys romance soap operas and potato chips.
– -Hehe!
–<sigh>–The daily grind…in a treadmill going nowhere, just like the legion of other hamsters spinning in their circular treadmills on the roadway…how futile…how meaningless…how very existential!
–Being a twisted piece of work, I like the idea of verbal, insulting flowers, and there hasn’t been vegetation this bad since the 1962 movie, Day of the Triffids or the musical, Little Shop of Horrors. If you wish to see nasty flowers of a more recent vintage, check out the recent Teleflora commercial
–Chad Carpenter’s comic strip Tundra has been around since late 1991, but has just recently found publication in newspapers in my area. The comic usually deals with wildlife, nature, and outdoor life, and was named best newpaper panel of 2007 by the National Cartoonists Society, also receiving the Reuben Award in 2008.
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