Archive for culture
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If you want a dog for protection, get a German Shepherd. Or a doberman. Or a rottweiler.
Owning a pit bull is like walking around with a cocked gun that has a hair trigger.
The aforementioned dogs in the opening sentence provide security without attacking out of the blue (for the most part). The pit bull clearly has some issues.
They come in waves, these pit bull attacks. And when a wave comes, it’s of the tidal variety.
We’re on the crest of one now. Pit bulls are running amok in Metro Detroit these days.
Yesterday, a four-month old baby’s scalp was bloodied. The other day, a family’s five-month old puppy was mauled to death and its teenaged owner was badly injured by a pit bull gone mad.
Those are just two of the recent pit bull incidents reported over the past several weeks.
It’s not just the dog itself—the owners of these violent animals are culpable. For example, it’s amazing how many pit bull owners don’t keep their dogs chained, tied, or otherwise under control.
I’m a dog lover. Let’s get that straight right off the bat. We currently own an epileptic Jack Russell Terrier who is precious to all of us. So my anti-pit bull stance isn’t because I wish a pox on dogs of all breeds.
Too often, the missing ingredient is that elusive element we like to call “common sense.”
Pit bull owners will tell you that their breed gets a bad rap. They’ll say that the pit bull only attacks when provoked, or that if it is violent, it was somehow made that way by an irresponsible, perhaps sadistic owner.
I can go along with the latter, but what’s provoking about a teenager walking his puppy without trespassing? Or a four-month old child minding his own business? If that’s considered enough to provoke another dog to attack, then something is wrong with the attacking dog.
The lovable pit bull
I’m not sure what the answer is, because it’s not easy regulating who owns what pet. What muddies the issue further is that when pit bulls attack, it’s very often the first instance of violence that the animal has ever exhibited.
In other words, if you own a pit bull you own a ticking time bomb that only counts down internally, so we can’t see the detonation coming.
I don’t think that pit bull owners are bad people, any more so than the owner of any animal is a bad person. But I do think that too many pit bull owners lack responsibility and that much-ballyhooed common sense.
The pit bull attack is scary because the animal’s jaws are so strong and so is its barrel chest, and the ferocity is mind-boggling when it happens. A smaller dog or even a human can be killed within a minute or two.
Do we dare try to eradicate pit bulls? They aren’t on any endangered species list, but if we make their breeding illegal, that might be a start.
For all who think that might be unconstitutional or otherwise tromping on dog owners’ rights, come talk to me when we start reading of a spate of Golden Retriever or Pomeranian attacks.
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We’re doing all the wrong things in our cars nowadays.
We’re texting, talking on the phone, shaving, putting on makeup. Driving falls somewhere in the middle of the pack.
I like what we used to do in our cars—like eating (when the car is parked) and watching movies with speakers hanging on the windows.
The Woodward Dream Cruise is this weekend, so it’s impossible not to turn on the wayback machine.
They ran rampant in the 1950s and ’60s—drive-ins of both food and cinema.
Woodward was one of the main providers of the greasy spoons at which you’d park and a gum-chewing, sassy girl would take your order. Maybe she was on roller skates.
But other main thoroughfares were drive-in havens: Gratiot, Groesbeck, Jefferson.
Now, all you can muster for a drive-in food fix is the occasional A&W or the newish Sonic locations.
If you wanted dinner AND a movie, you could do that in your car as well; but the drive-in theaters are pretty much gone, too.
I missed the cruising by a hair; I grew up in the ’70s, and didn’t start driving until 1979. By then, cruising was fading fast. But it sounds like fun: zooming up and down a busy pike, windows rolled down, flirting and having a good old time.
Then, when your stomach growled, you pulled in to any one of many joints where you could eat in your buggy.
I was able to enjoy a couple drive-in eateries as a child: the Big Boy at the southwest corner of Plymouth and Farmington Roads in Livonia, and Daly’s at Merriman and Plymouth. They’re both still there, but the Big Boy hasn’t been a drive-in for years. You can still eat in your car at Daly’s—home of the foot long Daly Dog coney.
“Get the Daly Habit!,” it still screams on all their bags and containers.
I remember eating fish and chips from Big Boy in the car, back when they served it in a basket lined with faux newsprint from the U.K. to give it that “genuine” British fish and chips feel.
Menus on stands with speakers at every parking space, under a large awning; what a cool concept.
I still go to Daly’s, by the way—usually when we visit my mother in Livonia. She likes it, too. Always has.
It’s good food at a low price, and it’s filling and hearty.
Another cool concept.
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She’s Miss USA and she’s from Michigan. Hooray!
Oh, she’s gorgeous, as you would expect—but this time Miss USA looks a little different.
That’s because she’s Arab American.
Rima Fakih of Dearborn wears the crown today, chosen over 50 other contestants at yesterday’s pageant in Las Vegas.
She’s 24, of Lebanese descent, and a graduate from the University of Michigan-Dearborn with a bachelor’s degree in economics and business management.
And did I say gorgeous?
Fakih works in marketing at the Detroit Medical Center, and she’s got the Arab American community atwitter.
“This is unbelievable,” gushed Rami Haddad of Livonia. “It’s a dream come true. I can’t express my feelings.”
“This is the real face of Arab Americans,” said Zouheir Alawieh of Dearborn. “Not the the stereotypes you hear about. We have culture. We have beauty. We have history, and today we made history. She (Fakih) believed in our dreams.”
I had no idea the Arab American community would be so agog about one of theirs winning Miss USA, but I must say—I’m proud of them.
Rima Fakih
Good for them, because they haven’t exactly had the best of images around these parts in the past, oh, eight years, eight months, and six days—if you get me.
I’m proud of them because they wanted this not to give us all the bird, but to feel more like they belong. What better way to do that than to hold up one of your brethren as Miss USA, for goodness sakes?
Rima Fakih is beautiful and smart and has a bright future and she’s Miss USA. The fact that she’s of Lebanese descent is secondary.
Some will disagree with me. They’ll look past her beauty and see the dark hair and the olive skin and the name and they’ll sneer.
She’s Arab!! She’s not one of us!!
Fine. You’ll not change those minds, no matter how hard you try.
And there’s this.
When asked how she felt about winning Miss USA, Fakih said—and I’m not making this up—”Ask me after I’ve had a pizza.”
Now THAT’S an American girl!
At La Pita Restaurant in Dearborn, they had a viewing party—not knowing who would win, of course. Well, apparently the place went bonkers when Fakih came out on top.
Some of her supporters wore t-shirts that bore this quote, from Rima Fakih herself.
“It’s beauty that captures your attention, personality which captures your heart.”
Red, white and blue decorations dotted the La Pita banquet hall.
They read, simply, “USA.”
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greg
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Where have all our Detroit-area retail brethren gone?
The other day, I got to thinking of unique-to-Detroit stores and shops, and also gas stations of days gone by.
I’m sure the following list of names will prompt a lot of “Oh yeah!!” moments.
Jacobson’s. I believe this was a mainly women’s apparel retailer, though they may have sold men’s clothes, too. Sometimes shortened to “Jake’s.”
Winkelman’s. As with Jacobson’s, “Winky’s” had a prominent location in Dearborn, on Michigan Avenue. Another mostly-female apparel shop.
Crowley’s. I used to frequent the Crowley’s in Universal Mall in Warren; speaking of Universal, that “mall” at 12 Mile and Dequindre has undergone quite a makeover. In fact, it’s not so much a mall anymore as it is a plethora of retail outlets, still using the Universal name.
Joshua Doore, Robinson’s, Wickes, Englander Triangle. Ahh, remember these furniture retailers? Joshua Doore had a catchy jingle (”You have an uncle in the furniture business…”) and a murdered executive, who was found in the trunk of his car. The mob was suspected in his murder.
Hughes, Hatcher & Suffrin. Harry Suffrin, who owned a men’s apparel shop downtown for years, merged with Hughes & Hatcher in the 1960s. I have especially fond memories of HH&S because their store in Westland Mall was a bi-level thing, with ultra-cool, carpeted stairs separating the upper and lower levels.
Towne Club Soda. Who can forget the super-thin, torpedo-like bottles and the monstrously heavy cases that they came in?
Stroh’s Beer. This one still bothers me. Stroh’s should still be around, and being brewed in Detroit!
Highland Appliance, Fretter Appliance. Remember Ollie Fretter, who promised “five pounds of coffee if I can’t beat your best deal”? And how about the old Highland TV commercials, including the quasi-famous one of the little kid “practicing” piano—when he was in fact playing a recording in his room while he was out on the ball field?
Great Scott! I’m not sure if this was a Michigan-only market, but I mention it because of its name. My name is Gregory Scott Eno, so when I was a small child I thought the name of the market was Greg Scott! Needless to say, I didn’t read the sign closely enough.
Cunningham’s Drugs. I know there are tons of now-defunct local drugstores out there, but Cunningham’s was a Detroit-area institution because of its multitude of locations. Their slogan for a time was “21 Stores under One Roof.” They even took to calling themselves “Cunningham’s 21″ for a while.
Now, here are some gas stations I remember from my youth:
Standard. The pre-cursor to Amoco—same sign and everything.
Texaco. Bob Hope used to swat a golf ball off a Texaco oil rigger in their commercials. An old-time sponsor of 1950s TV theater.
Gulf. I know they’re still around, but I don’t see their sign anywhere around here.
Sinclair. Their logo was a dinosaur. Talk about ahead of their time!
Clark. Yes, they’re still around, but I’m talking about the old Clark stations, which were tiny structures and had orange and white signs.
Check out those prices!!
Boron/Sohio. Boron was in Michigan, and Sohio had the same sign but was in Ohio.
Leonard. I seem to recall a station called Leonard on Plymouth Road in Livonia. Either that, or my mind is making things up.
Speaking of gas stations, remember when there was full service and they’d give away things, like knives and other household items, with fill-ups?
Then there were the banks: NBD; First Federal; Manufacturer’s (slogan: “That’s MY bank”); Detroit Bank & Trust. I also remember when the Penobscot Building in Detroit was briefly re-named the CNB Building, after a bank.
What do YOU remember?
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greg
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Is James Sikes a poor, unsuspecting driver who had the bejeebers scared out of him thanks to a stuck accelerator, or is he up to something nefarious?
It’s time to look cross-eyed at another victim again, because he might not be a victim.
This is getting a little balloon boy-ish.
Sikes says he was driving his Toyota Prius last week in California, when it suddenly accelerated out of control. He reached speeds in excess of 90 mph before he came to a halt, with the help of CHiP officers.
His frantic 911 call—is ANY 911 call NOT frantic?—was played for public consumption. He spoke openly with the media, and although his reluctance to put the car into neutral was odd, there didn’t appear to be anything less than truthful about his story.
Only, experts have been unable to replicate the stuck accelerator on his car after several hours of test driving, and the condition of his brakes aren’t consistent with someone who jammed on them while going that fast for that long.
What’s more, Toyota officials say the Prius is equipped with a mechanism that shuts the engine off if someone jams on the brakes while the accelerator is engaged.
David Justo of Toyota Motor Sales headquarters, described in a memo as Toyota’s residential hybrid expert, said that if the car’s gas pedal was stuck to the floor, and the driver applied the brake, the engine would shut down.
“If the engine does not shut down, then the gears would be spinning [past] their maximum revolutions per minute and completely seize the engine,” the memo said, quoting Justo. “So, in his case … it does not appear to be feasibly possible, both electronically and mechanically that his gas pedal was stuck to the floor and he was slamming on the brake at the same time.”
Hmmm.
In this nothing-is-truly-private digital world we live in, skeletons are already being found in Sikes’s closet, even though he never let us into his house. The press broke in.
Jim Sikes meets the press after his wild ride
They found that Sikes owes a lot of money on his home and to others. So naturally the conspiracy theorists think that Sikes is trying to shake Toyota down for some dough. It was also revealed that Sikes, or someone representing him, has reached out to Larry King and other on-air personalities, so he can tell his story.
I’ll say it again: hmmmm.
Comparisons are being made to the balloon boy incident, that infamous escapade last summer of a boy supposedly trapped inside a homemade hot air balloon. That, of course, was proved to be a hoax.
Is Sikes trying to capitalize on the scare over Toyota vehicles? Did his accelerator really stick? Or did it stick, but he didn’t do enough to stop it?
Or is he simply an innocent man being made to look opportunistic due to conflicting facts that may ultimately prove to be explainable?
I saw one of Sikes’s interviews, conducted as he sat in his car. He appeared to be sincere, but who the hell knows?
He did say something odd, though.
“I haven’t given up on Toyota. I just won’t drive another Prius.”
Huh?
If I nearly lost my life in a carmaker’s vehicle, that company would be crossed off my list.
It’s like nearly dying from food poisoning after eating a bad corned beef sandwich at a diner, but vowing to return to the diner—just making sure not to order the corned beef next time.
Mr. Sikes can do whatever he wants, of course. It’s his life.
What he can’t do, and get away with it, is punk Toyota, and the rest of us in the process.
I sure hope he’s not.
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Sanders is coming back, after all.
No, Lions fans, I don’t mean Barry.
Sanders Candy is being reanimated, thanks to the help of Morley Brands.
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“Fundraising really took a hit in the 1980s and ’90s,” Morley Brands President Ron Rapson tells CNNMoney.com about the fetish schools, Boy Scout troops, and other organizations had for hawking Morley candies to beleaguered friends and relatives. “It got to the point where it wasn’t really a money maker. So we decided to go back to what we did best—making chocolates.
“And we hooked up with another great company—Sanders,” Rapson adds.
Fred Sanders’ company hit the market in Detroit in 1875, offering everything from candy to milk shakes to ice cream. In its heyday—from the 1950s through the ’70s, you could hardly drive more than a few miles in metro Detroit without running into a joint that sold Sanders products, or that had a genuine soda jerk emphasizing Sanders goodies.
But about 20 years ago, Sanders started falling off the map.
That’s about to change.
Rapson now also holds the title of President of Sanders Candy, as Morley decided to take over the brand. And they haven’t taken that responsibility lightly, according to Brian Jefferson, Majority Partner of Sanders Candy.
“We looked at all the different logos Sanders has had over the past 130-plus years,” Jefferson says. “I believe we came up with nine different ones. And we picked one from the 1920s that we feel best captures the vision that Fred Sanders had.”
When even the logo is selected carefully, you know that this isn’t the typical buying out of another company.
“It’s a labor of love,” Jefferson says. “We have a sense of responsibility, not only to our workers, but to the community, in bringing back this brand.”
For those worried that Morley will take the Sanders product and brand and run roughshod over it, fret not, according to Rapson.
“You have to be careful. You want to keep these old brands going, but you have to tweak them and continuously improve them so that you can bring them to new markets and new customers,” Rapson says.
“Because you want the new customers to experience what we have enjoyed and experienced in Detroit for all these decades.”
I’ll eat to that.
For more info about Sanders candy, visit www.sanderscandy.com
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greg
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We don’t have to wonder too much about how Elvis Presley would look like at age 75, because he looked more like that than he did 42, which was his age at death.
The King would be 75 this Friday, if he hadn’t accelerated his demise with a cornucopia of drugs and bad diet.
We get besieged twice a year by all things Elvis—right around now, and again in mid-August, denoting his death on the 16th in 1977.
But this is a biggie—the diamond anniversary of Presley’s birth in Tupelo, Mississippi.
Presley, at his best, was maybe the sexiest man alive. You can debate until the wee hours his actual musical talent, but he was an entertainer, not necessarily a musician. And yes, there’s a difference.
But there was no debating his sexual allure. Perhaps he never looked better than in 1968, when his nationally-televised “comeback” concert showed him as a 33-year-old, smirking, playful, good-humored man who engaged his live audience in a very intimate, “in the round” setting.
Some celebrities, I believe, simply weren’t destined to grow old. They live forever in our minds as young, attractive, and iconic. Marilyn Monroe would be 83 years old today. Can you imagine?
Oh, Presley did indeed grow old, but not for very long, and not very publicly. But there were some awkward, clear-your-throat-and-look-the-other-way moments. One of them happened in the Pontiac Silverdome.
It was New Year’s Eve, 1975, and The King played the Dome (it was actually called PonMet back then—short for Pontiac Metropolitan Stadium, its original name). Sometime early in the show, Presley made a signature move and….rrrrip! He burst through a seam in his pants.
The crowd waited politely while Presley changed into a backup pair of pants.
This was about 20 months before he passed away, bloated and moody.
Presley, gettin’ near the end
Whenever I think of Elvis, I think of a Johnny Carson joke.
It was around the time that the U.S. Postal Service came out with commemorative stamps of Presley—one that showed him as a young man and one that portrayed him older and more mature. The stamps came to be known as “young Elvis” and “old Elvis.”
“I’m not going to say the mail is slow these days,” Carson said during a monologue. “But I sent a letter using the ‘young Elvis’ stamp and by the time it arrived at its destination, it had the ‘old Elvis’ stamp on it.”
Well, I thought it was funny.
What wasn’t funny, of course, was the demise of a once healthy, once vibrant, once sexy beast of a man. All because of those damn drugs.
Elvis would be 75 this Friday. Not that there would be much shake, rattle, or roll left in him. There wasn’t much at age 42, really.
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For someone who professes to hate goodbyes, Oprah Winfrey sure is hosting quite a long one.
Oprah’s TV show will vanish sometime in 2011, she says. I only wish we had this kind of warning BEFORE she arrived on the scene.
Oh, stop frowning and looking at me sideways. Oprah’s OK. She annoys me a little bit but she’s probably done more good than bad for folks in this cartoon of a country that we inhabit. I’m sure she’s a very nice woman, truth be told.
Time for a quick check of the iconic TV people over the years.
Johnny Carson: none of us did what Johnny told us to do, because that wasn’t his gig. He didn’t pontificate, he entertained. He mugged. He could crack us up with an arched eyebrow and a crooked mouth. But Carson was a ghost outside of his TV show. He was almost Howard Hughes-like in guarding his privacy. He championed no causes, endorsed no products, imparted no life lessons. No way of knowing if he was a Republican, a Democrat, or a Marxist. Johnny was just there to make us laugh every night at 11:30. That was it.
David Letterman: Letterman is perhaps the closest thing to Carson as there ever was, or ever will be: private, close to the vest, apolitical. No endorsements, no causes, either. Just glad to be a sounding board and a straight man to whoever happens to be sitting to his right every night.
Walter Cronkite, Ted Koppel, Dan Rather, Peter Jennings and the rest: Men we would trust with our liquor cabinet while on vacation. Personalities ranging from uncle-like (Cronkite) to wooden (Jennings) but in all instances, guys that were OK in our book—as long as they stuck to reading the news and giving us election results. Outside of that it could get clunky and awkward—and did on occasion.
Jay Leno: More of a person than Letterman and Carson. Jay let us know that he’s into cars, for one. He put on some free shows for the unemployed in Michigan, as a way to show support for the car industry. Even appeared in a movie, although in the worst way. Funny in a Bob Hope kind of way; you wonder if he’d be a cut up sans cue cards and pre-written material.
Oprah—she’s one of those who ascended to the one-word name, like Madonna or Johnny or Magic—changed the way TV personalities interacted with their public; I must grant her that. She doesn’t have fans, she has cultists. Oprah won’t just have someone on to promote a book—she’ll practically insist that her viewers read it. Like, right now. Immediately.
And she did all this without the benefit of prime time or late night. She’s one of the few TV personalities who carved out her niche while the sun was still out—soap opera stars notwithstanding.
But I still don’t like that she feels compelled to put herself on the cover of every issue of a magazine that bears her name.
Oprah helped to build a school in Africa for girls, though that wasn’t without some controversy, when it came to how those students were being treated by the faculty when no one was looking. But at least she didn’t take her sweet time responding to the reports of maltreatment.
Oprah’s OK. I’m a little put off by the way her fans follow her like wide-eyed puppy dogs but if that’s the worst thing, then maybe it’s not so bad after all.
And, she’s giving them plenty of time to say goodbye to her TV show.
Or is it vice-versa?
Reminds me of the last line of pitcher Jim Bouton’s famous tell-all book about baseball, “Ball Four.”
“You see, you spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball,” Bouton wrote, “and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.”
You see, Oprah Winfrey had her faithful in the palms of her hands for over two decades, but maybe it was the other way around all the time.
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The late, great sportswriter Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times used to be one of the best at skewering towns across this great country. I haven’t been to nearly as many burgs in the United States as Murray visited during his wonderful career, but I HAVE been to my share of cities around Metro Detroit and outstate…
We’ll start with Pontiac, which would be a terrific town—if this was 1956. When a bus stops in Pontiac, everyone gets on, no one gets off. There’s a road somewhere called Pontiac Trail, which isn’t so much a street name as it is a warning. The overall mood is like a drab winter’s day, only worse. The town is full of ghosts of businesses past. The city would make a mint if they erected toll booths at the borders and charged people to leave.
Then there’s Taylor, where half the population is in-bred. More people sleep with their teeth in a glass than in their head. It’s a great place to go if you’re a producer for “The Jerry Springer Show.” The official city song is “Dixie.” After driving through Taylor, you have to change your clothes to get rid of the bacon stench. They park more cars on the front lawn than a valet at the mall during Christmas season. It’s so bad that Southgate makes fun of it.
I used to live in Warren, where the only thing more crooked than the politicians are the police. If they didn’t have the GM Tech Center, the city’s IQ would drop like a lead balloon. The home of the brick ranch. Houses weren’t built in Warren, they were pressed. Even Wal-Mart high-tailed it out of town. Warren has more motels and gas stations than the Ohio Turnpike. The next good night out in Warren will be the first. The city has as much culture and enrichment as Benton Harbor on a bad day.
I grew up in Livonia, the whitest city in America. You’ll see grains of rice that are darker. The welcome mat for new residents includes a DNA kit. It’s the only city I know where you have to pass a genealogy test before you can move in. They tried to bring Broadway-like entertainment to Livonia via the George Burns Theater, but the residents liked their tri-levels more than culture so it closed. The problem with Livonia is that there’s nothing to do after 10:00—in the morning. Livonia is where you go if you want to see what the demographic of Detroit was like in 1944. The biggest attraction is the Awrey Bakery. By the way, when was the last time you saw any Awrey Bakery items on your grocer’s shelves?
I live all-too-close to Royal Oak, which thinks it’s Greenwich Village’s long lost brother. It’s a great town to people watch in—if you’re Diane Arbus. There are more freaks strolling the streets of Royal Oak than all the circuses of this country combined. The real estate and homes are more overpriced than Nordstrom’s. Royal Oak is a wonderful place, if you’re into paying $1,400 a month for a 900 square foot bungalow. $1,700 if you want a bathroom. Royal Oak borders Ferndale, which is like Boy George bordering Clay Aiken.
Off I-275, around Ford Road, is a city called Canton, which is where to go if you ever wondered what Canton, Ohio would look like without the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Canton wasn’t founded, it sprouted. Like a weed. Canton is four shopping centers, 10 strip malls, and a Meijer’s. If it was a movie, it’d be “The Stepford Wives.” No one goes to Canton unless they have a shopping list. You wonder if the residents are only living there because someone has something on them. Canton is as intoxicating as alcohol-free beer.
Then there’s Southfield, which isn’t a town, it’s one big freeway exchange. People only pass through Southfield because it’s on the way to someplace far more fun and interesting. It’s the only city around that’s so stuck up it named a freeway after itself. Someone should tell them. Southfield has it all, if you’re planning on spending no more than an hour. The city has more concrete than Manhattan and less pizazz than Al Gore. Southfield is a perfect place to live if you want to keep your smart, cultured, refined friends away from you.
So…where do YOU live?
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His name was Soupy, but his game was pies.
He was Milton Supman by birth, and like so many stars of that era, his stage name was a cocktail of nicknames and nods to others.
Soupy Sales is gone, passed away at 83 and it would be nice if you had lunch today in his honor. Then, maybe tonight, take a pie in the face to top off the day.
Comedian Sales took, by his unofficial count, about 9,000 pies in the kisser over the years, beginning in the 1950s when he burst onto the scene in Detroit, hosting “Lunch with Soupy.”
The pie-in-the-face routine wasn’t invented by Sales, but no one made it more famous than he. It got so big that stars the likes of Frank Sinatra, no less, would line up to take a pie from Soupy, who wasn’t always the recipient—he could play perpetrator, too.
Soupy Sales was minding his own business as Milton Supman, child of a Jewish dry goods merchant who had emigrated to the U.S. from Hungary in 1894, when his older brothers attained the nicknames Ham Bone and Chicken Bone.
They started calling Milton “Soup Bone,” which eventually got shortened to “Soupy.” Then, while working in radio as a DJ, Milton Supman went by the stage name Soupy Hines. Though spelled differently, Hines sounded just like the famous ketchup and pickle company, so the last name was changed to Sales, after old-time comedian Chic Sale.
Got it?
I’m too young to have grown up having “Lunch with Soupy,” the show he hosted from the studios of WXYZ-TV in Detroit from 1953-59. By 1960, the show had gone national, and Soupy moved to Los Angeles.
“I didn’t want to be an old man, wondering if I could have made it in another market,” Soupy once said.
The show was live, at lunchtime, and though it was targeted at children, lots of those kids’ parents sat and watched, too. The success of the lunchtime show spawned an 11 p.m. version for the adults, which was a variety show with some sketch comedy.
But maybe the thing that truly brought Soupy Sales to the national fore was a stunt he pulled on New Year’s Day in 1965.
Irked that he was working on a holiday, Sales urged his young viewers to go into their still-sleeping parents’ bedrooms and “take all the green pieces of paper with presidents’ pictures on them” and mail them to him.
“Then I’ll send you a post card from Puerto Rico!,” Soupy said on the air.
He never imagined the joke would be taken seriously.
But it did. Within days, money started being received in New York, where Soupy was doing his show at the time, from WNEW-TV. An embarrassingly large amount of money rolled in.
The cash was donated to charity, but WNEW management suspended Soupy. There was an uproar—protests and even picketing—and Sales was reinstated. And much more famous than ever before.
Soupy wasn’t just Soupy, which was entertaining enough. He developed a bunch of characters and penned some novelty songs, like “The Mouse,” which I was caught on 8mm film depicting in one of those silent home movies my parents shot of me in the mid-1960s. Sales even performed “The Mouse” on Ed Sullivan’s show.
Soupy Sales doing “The Mouse,” circa the mid-1960s
There was a brief feud in the 1980s with fellow WNBC radio personality Howard Stern, who shared a studio with Sales and who would complain about the condition in which Soupy left things by the time Stern went on the air. Stern, in 1985, pretended to cut the strings in Soupy’s studio piano, but it was just to “torture” Sales; Stern never harmed the instrument.
Stern, years later, regretted his little tiff with Sales because Soupy was one of Stern’s childhood heroes.
The 1970s and ’80s saw Soupy Sales become a big game show guy, appearing on many of them—usually What’s My Line, Match Game, and Pyramid. Those and other pseudo-reality shows like Almost Anything Goes were good places to find Soupy.
Sales also participated in a TV ad campaign for Big Boys Restaurants and their homemade pies. Guess how those commercials ended?
Sales died in a hospice, afflicted with what was called “numerous” ailments.
Maybe Big Boys can offer up a special in his memory: a bowl of soup and a slice of pie.
