Friday, March 18, 2011

The Kitchen-Ware Dealer Quarterly and Miz Scott's Familiarity

Big doin's, as always today in "OTR Friday", with the family in the little house half way up on the next block. Let's git right to it, for a half hour of some of the best comedy in radio history...Paul Rhymer's "Vic and Sade".

Our first show today is from May 15, 1940. Sade prepares the mid-day meal and this may be the first mention of the fabled "Beef Punkles", at least in the surviving recordings (I'll say it again...damn you, Proctor & Gamble!). I don't know what beef punkles are, and I'm pretty sure they don't exist, but coming from a working class midwestern family whose recipes and cuts of meat were often strange often consisted of oddly shaped, tough cheap cuts that needed to cook low and slow for tenderization, I can imagine them. I picture them being leg joints full of connective tissue and cartillage and gristle...and tasty as hell by the time Mom or Sade got done working their cullinary magic!

But that's not even the center of the story here. It instead centers around Vic's vanity as he looks forward to a "Picture and autobiographical sketch" dedicated to himself in the current issue of "Kitchen-Ware Dealers Quarterly", and finding that the publishers instead printed someone elses picture and just a brief caption. The picture is of "a bald-headed man in a striped bathing suite with garters and no shoes" captioned "Mr. Victor R. Gook competent chief accountant of plant 14 (this part is true, though uncomplimentary) prepares to take a dip in the Pacific Ocean near his home in Grovelman, South Carolina.". Not only is this not Vic's picture, but not his home-town and even more erroneous, South Carolina is no where near the Pacific Ocean.

Vic is so mad he's barely aware that the "beef punkles" aren't finished yet.

Enjoy!



The second episode today is from May 27, 1940 and shows another great examination of the character and sensibilities of Sade and I'm sure 10's of thousands of other midwestern housewives. She feels uncomfortable with the familiarity of next-door neighbor Miz Scott adn goes into detail about why.

Sociologists could learn alot by listening to the reasoning of Paul Rhymer's character here. I've heard and seen it a hundred times myself. Though never quite as funny.

Rush finally gets to get off a story about Smelly Clark's Uncle too. A milestone.

Enjoy!



And a little visual for you to finish things off. An undated issue of "Stars of Radio" Probably from 193 or so with a little snippet about Vic & Sade. This time Vic is without his striped bathing suit, though.




Talk to you soon.

2 comments:

Jimbo said...

Awesome blog you got here!

(Check out my Vic and Sade blog?)

Unca Jeffy said...

Glad you like it Jimbo, and I have checked yours out since you last dropped by. I think yours is ULTIMATELY more in depth and entertaining than mine, come next Friday I will be pimping yours and retiring from the Vic & Sade biz.

I'm glad to have found so many folks who dig Paul Rhymer's work!

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