The Glass Character

Monday, July 10, 2017

Two bad shows in a row (or: did James Coco really look like a hippo?)

Blogger's apology. I am so sorry! I thought I had found the worst TV sitcom in human history - Calucci's Department - but I was not even close. For some reason, when James Coco starred in anything, it only lasted eleven episodes. This one was so bad, episode #11 was destroyed before it had a chance to air.

The Dumplings - 1976

One Season - 11 Episodes

TV Historian's Blurb: This show aired before (PC) political correctness was popular. The show followed an overweight married couple that owned and operated a New York deli on the first floor of an office building. This one may have survived had it not been so fat joke "heavy."

Network: NBC

I have taken YouTube by the heels and shaken it, and I cannot find anything about this show. But I found the theme song, and it is putrid. The lyrics are:

Arms and legs
Ham and eggs
The great team of pipe and slippers
And there's the daily double
Good things come in pairs
Heart and soul
Rock and roll
An old fashioned horse and buggy
A song's got words and music
Good things come in pairs
You can bet Noah knew just what he was doing
When he began all the two-by-two-ing
He and she
You and me
A sweet blend of milk and honey
Always together
We'll go through life discovering
Good things come in pairs!

The Dumplings theme song

MORE INFO:

Aired: Wednesday nights at 9:30 pm Eastern U.S.
Premiered: January 28, 1976
Ended: March 24, 1976
Theme Song: Listen here The Dumplings Theme Song
Writer(s)/Creator(s):
Fred Lucky

Don Nicholl
Michael Ross
Bernie West

Developer: Norman Lear

Cast:

James Coco as Joe Dumpling
Geraldine Brooks as Angela Dumpling
Marcia Rodd as Stephanie
George Furth as Frederic Steele
Jane Connell as Bridget McKenna
George S. Irving (1) as Charles Sweetzer
Mort Marshall as Cully

Series Premise: Fat married couple, Joe and Angela, own a deli in New York.

Season One Episodes:

1 - Pilot - Aired: January 28, 1976
2 - The Ultimatum - Aired: February 4, 1976
3 - To Drink or Not to Drink - Aired: February 11, 1976
4 - The Parting - Aired: February 18, 1976
5 - Gourmet's Delight - Aired: February 25, 1976
6 - Sweetzer's Image - Aired: March 3, 1976
7 - Cully's Sister - Aired: March 10, 1976
8 - The Other Woman - Aired: March 17, 1976
9 - The Foundling - Aired: March 24, 1976
10 - Joe Takes a Fall - Aired: March 31, 1976
11 - Joe Gets Jugged - Unaired.

Show canceled after episode 10.

And here are details about each episode. I am particularly intrigued by the suicide one. Hard to wring merriment out of someone wanting to die. The show lasted one more episode after that.

Title	Plot/Notes
Pilot	Joe and Angela try to celebrate the anniversary of their first meeting. NBC rebroadcast this episode on January 28, 1976, as the first episode of the weekly series in its regular time slot.
"The Ultimatum"	The Dumplings' landlord orders them to move their luncheonette out of the building after Joe calls Mr. Steele a thief.
"To Drink or Not to Drink"	The Dumplings inherit a $900 bottle of wine and must decide whether or not to drink it.
"The Parting"	Joe and Angela must be apart for the first time in their 15-year marriage.
"Gourmet's Delight"	A newspaper columnist praises Angela's soup.
"Sweetzer's Image"	Mr. Sweetzer seeks refuge with the Dumplings after a fight with his wife.
"Cully's Sister"	Cully's twin sister makes a surprise visit – and reveals an even bigger surprise.
"The Other Woman"	Stephanie becomes hysterical when she sees her boyfriend, Mr. Steele, with another woman.
"The Foundling"	Angela talks a woman out of committing suicide.
"Joe Takes a Fall"	Joe is injured in a fall from a broken apartment step. Vernon Weddle guest-stars.
"Joe Gets Jugged"	Joe is arrested after he accidentally knocks out a policeman.

NEWS FLASH! A discerning reader sent me a YouTube video of The Dumplings theme song, so now you can SEE what I meant, not just hear it. Thanks, Brian!

And as a glorious (inglorious?) p. s., here is the intro to a truly clenchworthy show about zany priests. Didn't age well at all.

FatBoyGetDown: The Return

Sunday, July 9, 2017

One man clapping

The second-worst sitcom in human history?

I very vaguely remember this '70s (or '80s?) sitcom, with James Coco working in some dreary office from hell, doing God knows what. The preview has a Dante quality to it, with everyone working in thick, slow-mo, zombie-faced torpor. Coco looks like he wants to commit suicide. The show lasted a few episodes, maybe made it through a season. But it definitely wins the prize for worst opening credits.

BLOGGER'S INCREDIBLE DISCOVERY! Here is a summary of every episode of Calucci's Department - eleven in all. One can see why it failed, but it failed with such a . . . clunk! The last episode had Calucci on a quest to discover the meaning of his life. It sure wasn't this.

Episode #	Episode Title	Original Airdate	Episode Summary
1	"The $80 Heist"	September 14, 1973	After the $80 he has collected from staff is stolen, Calucci does some detective work to find the culprit, but becomes a psychoanalyst and peacemaker in the process.
2	"Calucci, His Brother's Keeper"	September 21, 1973	Gonzalez asks Calucci for $400 after having his life threatened by loan sharks.
3	"Calucci, the Matchmaker"	September 28, 1973	When Calucci's date with Shirley also involves finding a date for Elaine, he and Gonzalez go to great lengths to find her a date.
4	"Calucci Goes on a Diet"	October 5, 1973	Calucci's trip to the doctor for stomach pains results in a directive to lose weight, an edict he finds it increasingly difficult to focus on.
5	"Winners and Losers"	October 12, 1973	After Calucci is told that a member of his office staff must be fired, it becomes an incredibly difficult decision for him.
6	"The Bloom is Off the Rose"	October 19, 1973	Calucci is upset when he finds out that his secretary and girlfriend, Shirley, once had another man in her life.
7	"Life is an Anchovy"	November 2, 1973	The office staff is concerned when the usually sour Woods is even grumpier than ever because of problems at home.
8	"A Mother's Love"	November 9, 1973	When Cosgrove begins to act neurotically, Calucci attempts to diagnose his problems. However, he doesn't count on the prescription for the cure from Cosgrove's mother.
9	"Gonzalez's Thrill"	November 16, 1973	Confirmed bachelor Gonzalez appears ready to take the plunge into matrimony when he buys an engagement ring after meeting Samantha.
10	"Calucci and the Chicken or the Egg"	November 23, 1973	Calucci finally gets up the courage to take Shirley home to meet his mother.
11	"Calucci's Raison D'Etre"	November 30, 1973	Gonzalez decides there must be more to life than the office, setting Calucci off on a soul-searching quest for the meaning of his own.

Saturday, July 8, 2017

Bentley Meows!

Bentley meows! This is a statement as significant as "Garbo Talks". It may not mean a lot to you, but he meows about twice a month. He sort of purrs, but it sounds wheezy and a little pathetic. You can feel a slight vibration, mostly at the back of the neck. He wheezes once or twice, a sort of token purr, then stops.

We have wondered if his vocal cords were damaged when he was thrashed by a dog or coyote (he was a rescue, found near death at the side of the road after a vicious mauling). But then I read that some cats don't meow at all. I'd quote this, but I'm too tired and the quotes are kind of stupid. The fact he DOES meow, and purr (half-assed), means he's likely just a quiet cat.

Hybrids in love

The continuing saga of Bosley, the magpie duck/mallard hybrid, who has finally found love in Belinda - another hybrid. At least, we're pretty sure, with her pied markings and flipped-up tail. And she has a green bill, which I've never heard of! Every time we go to Como Lake, we see the two of them together, but there is always a third presence - a mallard drake who just hangs around them. At one point, he seemed very attached to Bosley and even chased him all over the park, while Bosley ran in terror. Is this a romantic duck triangle, or what?

Oh gee! Oh joy!

Friday, July 7, 2017

I am not the same table

This is just one of those crazy things. A piece came into my head tonight that I hadn't even thought about in years - some sort of crazy whistling or pinging, only synthesized. Then I heard myself say, "That's Debussy." Yes, it was the Arabesque by Debussy, but whatonearth version was this?? Hadn't I heard it on TV a long time ago? Where, and when?

All it took was to do a search on YouTube under Debussy Arabesque Synthesizer, and up it popped, over a dozen versions of the same piece: and it was the right one, the whistling, pinging one. But it didn't solve where I had heard it before.

I had to go to the comments for that.

I am JUST SICK of comments sections now, and have started not to read them at all - particularly on YouTube where people wage bloody war on each other for no reason, wishing each other a slow horrendous death. Racism, sexism and every other kind of ism abound, and there are no rules, no laws, no holds barred.

But this time it was worth it. Someone mentioned that this piece was the theme song for a short program called Star Hustler that came on PBS in the '80s, usually late at night,. Later, as the name "hustler" increasingly came to mean prostitute, it was changed to Star Gazer. Jack Horkheimer, whoever he is, would come on and blather on for five minutes about the wonders of astronomy. He was fat, cheesy, decked out in a grey polyester windbreaker, a kind of bargain-basement Carl Sagan. Star Gazer was a crash course, fast and aggressive, a kind of "learn this or else" that made you feel even dumber at the end - but the only really interesting thing about it was the theme song.

Realizing that this DID come from somewhere, that it was an actual "thing", was a revelation. I had not imagined it.

I've pulled information out of the internet like this before, and found my neurons exposed to certain things for the first time in decades. It's a weird experience. They say that every seven years, every single cell in your body is replaced. One by one, they die and are regenerated, until there's no original material left at all. In that case, it's a completely new me who is listening to this music - which means that, in truth, I've never heard it before.

This piece also jacked open the cover on a new genre, or a new composer of a genre - new to me, at least. I must admit that I had never heard of Isao Tomita, but he is everywhere on YouTube - master of the synthesizer before anyone was using it in movies or in recordings. I had a delicious album called Moog by Dick Hyman (and I've found that one again, too) which was a dinosaur version of synthesizer, quite primitive by any standard, but which I still love to hear, because . . . I've never heard it before! All my cells have been replaced multiple times since I first heard it in the '60s, so it's REALLY new to me now.

I went through a time in my life when I feverishly took courses - not to get a degree, which I knew was useless and impossible, but just to try to learn something. One of the courses - Philosophy 101 or something - talked about how, if you had a table, and one day replaced a leg, then the next day replaced another leg, and so on, and so on, and then replaced the top. . . so that ALL the parts were now completely different parts. . . would it be the same table?

I am not the same table. I know I am not the same table, but I am able to hold on to the shape of the table I used to be, because of a little thing called Memory. Memory is a dense tangle like seaweed, with molluscs and clams and giant squid attached to it. Without it, I would be a piece of meat, plain and simple. But even animals need Memory, or they would not know who to flee, or where to fly.

BLOGGER'S REALIZATION. My God, the Arabesque on the synthesizer is just like the X Files theme! I mean that whistly, swoopy effect that is almost human, but not quite. Whoever composed this eerie snippet must have been influenced by Isao Tomita. Or is it possible they had never heard him before?