NIGHT OF THE LIVING PIZZA

It's Saturday Morning.  Good a time as any for a post about the Tooniverse.....

If you don't know it already, Toobworld has various food items that are alive.  As an homage to a commercial for orange juice in which there was a living sandwich inside the refrigerator, one of my Toobworld adventure stories has a living, talking Rueben sandwich named Benny Kinkaid.  (Think about it.....)

Last year, Orbit gum had a blipvert in which Damon Wayans, Jr. (and as far as I'm concerned, he was playing Coach from 'New Girl') did battle with a slutty slice of pizza before his date showed up.

Or if you prefer, it was Ashton Kutcher for Extra gum.  

Maybe that takes place in an alternate universe?

At any rate, we've seen living food in Earth Prime-Time, something that one might expect more in the Tooniverse.  'Aqua Teen Hunger Force', anyone?

And apparently, that slice of pulchritudinous pizza has a counterpart in the Tooniverse as well.

PIZZA EVE, MEET PIZZA STEVE

Actually, he's more of a cartoon cousin.  This is Pizza Steve from 'Uncle Grandpa'.  

You know - based on the lascivious behavior of that stripperoni slice - should either one of them crossed over to the other's TV dimension, Pizza Steve would be in her deep dish in no time!

This is what I get when my nephew is in charge of the TV up here at the Lake....

BCnU!

THEORIES OF RELATEEVEETY: 'STRANGER THINGS' & 'THE X-FILES'

Good news the other day regarding 'Stranger Things': my favorite new series of the year will be back in 2017 for a sophomore season with an episode total of nine, one up from the freshman season.  

My cousin Paul and his wife Angela have an interesting theory that Jonathan Byers will one day be John Fitzgerald Byers.  Angela posted this earlier this month and then we carried on the conversation in a private Facebook conversation:

Paul and I just started watching Stranger Things and we both really like it. I'm also digging Paul's theory (and granted, we're only two episodes in) that this is an origin story of sorts for one of the Lone Gunmen, Jonathan Fitzgerald Byers, from the X-Files, since the early adult life of the character named Jonathan Byers in this show is heavily influenced by government conspiracies and strange happenings. I'm excited to see if we can expound on our theory and also just excited to continue watching the show.

Toby O'Brien:
Charlie Heaton is 22. He's playing high school age, so 18, unless he stayed back. JFByers was born 11/22/63, thus the name. So he's 20 years old at the time of 'Stranger Things'. Keep that in mind. I think it could work with those conditions added in.

Angela Dabkowski:

Yeah, Paul said if he was 20 in the show, it would work.

Toby O'Brien:
I'm envious.

Angela Dabkowski:
It seems like John Byers is already out of high school.

He hangs the missing poster on the school wall and then leaves the building as the other kids go to class.

Toby O'Brien:
I didn't read that far into his wikia bio

Oh! You mean Jonathan!

Okay, but I did see that JF Byers was supposed to be named Bertram, after his father. So Winona (blanking on her character name) could have been married before Lonnie. This could be why Jonathan is so antagonistic to Lonnie - step-dad issues.

Angela Dabkowski:
Oh, you mean Lonnie...

Gunmen?!

Toby O'Brien:
whuh?

Angela Dabkowski:
Paul thinks maybe his name was inspired by the word Lone.

Toby O'Brien:
Bertram Myers could have been Bertram Alonzo Myers and even though they were going to name JFB "Bertram", their intent may have been to name him the full ""Bertram Alonzo Myers, Jr." But everybody called him Lonnie growing up.....

Angela Dabkowski:
That could be... it could also maybe be like parallel universe thing that they're doing in order to have Jonathan Byers cross over into the 'X-Files' universe in order to bring the Lone Gunmen back to life in the X FIles. Or so conjectures Paul.

Toby O'Brien:
I think they are really most sincerely dead. It was suggested as such by that horrible drek of a sequel this year when they made a cameo in his drug dream.

Bertram Alonzo Myers Sr. could have been named after his Uncle Bertram Cooper, who died in 1969 just after the moon landing.....

[For those who don't know that's a 'Mad Men' reference....]

That theory is a work in progress for Paul & Angela and I wish them well with it.  As you can see I played with it for a bit and they're welcome to use any of my suggestions as they see fit.  For my own part, I try to follow Occam's Razor with my theories in everything Toobworld.....

OCCAM'S RAZOR

a scientific and philosophic rule that entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily which is interpreted as requiring that the simplest of competing theories be preferred to the more complex or that explanations of unknown phenomena be sought first in terms of known quantities [Merriam-Webster]

I think I'm going to stick with this Theory of Relateeveety:

Jonathan Byers of 'Stranger Things' is first cousin to John Fitzgerald Byers of 'The X-Files'.  They are contemporaries in age, but their first names come from different sources.

I'll still stick with them being related to Bertram Cooper of 'Mad Men', however, and that the Lone Gunman was originally meant to be named after him as his own father was.

Thanks, Angela & Paul!  Without your theory, I never would have even realized there could be any kind of connection between the two.....

BCnU!

TVXOHOF, SEPTEMBER 2016 - IT'S A WONDERFUL LINK

September is the traditional month in which the Television Crossover Hall of Fame salutes the people behind the scenes who are instrumental in expanding the TV Universe - producers and writers especially.

Being behind the scenes, I suppose we could have chosen anyone for this honor in the year during which we celebrate the League of Themselves.  But I finally went with a producer who also appeared as the fictional version of himself in Toobworld....

From Wikipedia:

Sheldon Leonard (born Sheldon Leonard Bershad; February 22, 1907 – January 11, 1997) was an American film and television producer, director, writer, and actor.

Later in the 1950s and 1960s, he established a reputation as a producer of successful television series, including 'The Danny Thomas Show' (aka 'Make Room For Daddy') (1953–64), 'The Andy Griffith Show' (1960–68), 'The Dick Van Dyke Show' (1961–66), and 'I Spy' (1965–68). Leonard also provided the voice of Linus the Lionhearted in a series of Post Crispy Critters cereal TV commercials in 1963-64, which led to a Linus cartoon series that aired on Saturday (and later, Sunday) mornings on CBS (1964–66) and ABC (1967–69). He also was briefly the star of his own television show 'Big Eddie' (1975), where he played the owner of a large sports arena. The show lasted for only ten episodes.

The character of Andy Taylor was introduced in a 1960 episode of 'The Danny Thomas Show', which led to the series 'The Andy Griffith Show'. Leonard is informally credited with developing the practice of using an episode of a series as a backdoor pilot episode for new series, in which a guest star is introduced as a new character with the intention of using this character as the basis for a new show.

So here are the two TV shows that establish Sheldon Leonard as a citizen of Toobworld:

'I Spy' 
- "Crusade to Limbo" (1966)

'The Lucy Show' 
- "Lucy Meets Sheldon Leonard" (1967) 

But he was also chosen for his work as a producer.  If he wasn't directly involved in the creation and production of some of these shows, he helped forge the blueprint that would lead to them connecting with each other:

• 'Make Room For Daddy'
• 'Make Room For Granddaddy'
• Post Cereal commercial
• 'I Love Lucy'
• 'The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour'
• 'The Dick Van Dyke Show'
• 'The Dick Van Dyke Show Reunion'
• 'The Andy Griffith Show'
• 'Gomer Pyle, USMC'
• 'Mayberry RFD'
• 'Herman's Head'
• 'The New Andy Griffith Show'
• 'Return To Mayberry'
• 'Here's Lucy'

So here's to you, Sheldon Leonard.  Welcome to the TV Crossover Hall of Fame.

BCnU!

A TV WESTERN JOKE

When I first began exploring the internet 21 years ago, I used to get a lot of jokes via e-mail.  And I would copy them into files before adapting them to be either about my family or about TV characters.

I get my jokes via Facebook nowadays and my cousin Coco shared this one last August.  All I had to read was the first line ("An old woman walked up and tied her old mule to the hitching post.") and I knew exactly who this would be perfect for - all three roles in it, as a matter of fact!

Since my Inner Toob dance card was already full for last year's August showcase for the TV Western, I set it up to be published now at the end of the 2016 TV Western showcase........

"DIRTY SALLY" FERGUS WALKED UP AND TIED HER OLD MULE NAMED "WORTHLESS" TO THE HITCHING POST IN DODGE CITY.  AS SHE STOOD THERE, BRUSHING SOME OF THE DUST FROM HER FACE AND CLOTHES, A YOUNG GUNSLINGER BY THE NAME OF CYRUS PIKE STEPPED OUT OF THE LONG BRANCH SALOON WITH A GUN IN ONE HAND AND A BOTTLE OF WHISKEY IN THE OTHER. PIKE LOOKED AT DIRTY SALLY AND LAUGHED, "HEY OLD WOMAN, HAVE YOU EVER DANCED?"

SALLY FERGUS LOOKED UP AT THE GUNSLINGER AND SAID, "NO,... I NEVER DID DANCE... NEVER REALLY WANTED TO."

A CROWD FROM THE LONG BRANCH SALOON HAD GATHERED AS CYRUS PIKE GRINNED AND SAID "WELL, YOU OLD BAG, YOU'RE GONNA DANCE NOW," AND STARTED SHOOTING AT HER FEET.

DIRTY SALLY -- NOT WANTING TO GET HER TOE BLOWN OFF -- STARTED HOPPING AROUND AND EVERYBODY BEGAN LAUGHING. WHEN HIS LAST BULLET HAD BEEN FIRED, PIKE, STILL LAUGHING, HOLSTERED HIS GUN AND TURNED AROUND TO GO BACK INTO THE SALOON.

SALLY TURNED TO HER PACK MULE WORTHLESS, PULLED OUT A DOUBLE-BARRELED SHOTGUN, AND COCKED BOTH HAMMERS.

THE LOUD CLICKS CARRIED CLEARLY THROUGH THE DESERT AIR, AND THE CROWD OUTSIDE THE LONG BRANCH SALOON STOPPED LAUGHING IMMEDIATELY.

THE YOUNG GUNSLINGER HEARD THE SOUNDS, TOO, AND HE TURNED AROUND VERY SLOWLY. THE SILENCE WAS ALMOST DEAFENING. THE CROWD WATCHED AS THE YOUNG GUNMAN STARED AT THE OLD WOMAN AND THE LARGE GAPING HOLES OF THOSE TWIN BARRELS.

THE BARRELS OF THE SHOTGUN NEVER WAVERED IN THE OLD WOMAN'S HANDS, AS SHE QUIETLY SAID, "SON, HAVE YOU EVER KISSED A MULE'S ASS?"

CYRUS PIKE SWALLOWED HARD AND SAID, "NO M'AM... BUT I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO....."

O'BSERVATIONS:

• I changed all the references to the "old woman" to the variations on the name of "Dirty Sally" Fergus.
• I changed all the references to the young gunslinger to Cyrus Pike.
• I gave the mule the name of Worthless.
• I identified the saloon as the Long Branch and situated it in Dodge City.
• This makes the joke a prequel to the 'Gunsmoke' episodes "Pike: Part One" and "Pike: Part Two".  And those episodes served as a backdoor pilot for a TV Western that would debut a few years later - 'Dirty Sally', which starred Jeannette Nolan as Sally Fergus and Dack Rambo as Pike.
• 'Gunsmoke' - "Pike: Part One" makes it obvious that Sally and Pike's paths first crossed in this storyline.  But I think it's easy enough to claim that their paths crossed before the bank robbery and played out exactly as it did in the joke.  Neither character saw fit to mention the earlier encounter for their own reasons.

From the IMDb:

Riding away from Dodge after a $2800 robbery, four bandits escape into the windy night. With one of them wounded, it seems like a three-way split until Pike, the wounded one, surprises the other three.

Dirty Sally becomes smitten with the outlaw Pike as he continues to heal up and the gang begins tracking Pike down.The friendship between the two grows as Pike is faced with leaving or standing his ground with the gang.

Jeanette Nolan played Sally; a toothless, tobacco-chewing old woman who lived in a shack about ten miles out of Dodge City.

Scratching out a meager living by picking up the droppings from passing wagon trains and selling them in town, Sally was often teased for her ragged clothing and soiled appearance. One of her finds on the trail-a wounded gunman-would end up changing her life.

The plot is very simple: a very poor aging woman named Sally (Jeanette Nolan) lives on the prairie and collect all sorts of trash. She is really fond of glass and her yard and house is scattered with her bottle which is all of her belongings. The only thing of value she really has in a mule that she dresses in a hat.

Cyrus Pike (Dack Rambo) is an outlaw that stolen money and is being tracked by Marshal Dillon and Festus. Pike stumbles up on Sally's old shack with a gun wound. Sally, being alone and wanting company, tends to the wounds and also throws Matt off his track when she advises that she has never seen him. But Pike also has some other outlaws chasing him and they are not just going to ride on when Sally says she had not seen him.

In Pike's last scene with Sally after he's put in jail, he tells her to wait until he gets out in "September." This was obviously a reference to the producers' hopes that "Dirty Sally" would be picked up as a series for the fall schedule; the producers were unaware that CBS was going to purge almost all of its rural-appeal shows from the schedule instead. "Dirty Sally" did finally reach the air two and a half years later.

THEORIES OF RELATEEVEETY:

• Although he didn't know it, Cyrus Pike's father was the gunslinger Jim Sonnett.
• It is from the lineage of Cyrus Pike that the family tree of Christopher Pike can be traced.

Thanks, Coco!  This is your birthday present, by the way........

BCnU!

THEORIES OF RELATEEVEETY - MERRY FLORENE TO HOUSTON

'GUNSMOKE'

"HILL GIRL"

'THE ROCKFORD FILES'

"WHERE'S HOUSTON?"

Two for Tuesday, Part Two!

When Newly O'Brien (distantly related to my own televersion) "rescued" Merry Florene from her no-good half-brothers and brought her to Dodge City, Matt Dillon suggested that Newly introduce her to Mr. Jonas at the general store and see if he could get her a job in the store.

Jonas did better than that.  Besides promising to pay her four dollars a week in wages, he gave her a new dress to wear and shoes as well.  He was even willing to order a larger pair (probably from Levinson's Dry Goods in Ohio) if the pair he gave her weren't comfortable.  He said he would take it out of her wages, but it was O'Bvious that was never going to happen.

And when Merry Florene returned a bracelet that she had taken from his display case, Jonas told her to keep wearing it.  It had been on display for over a year and nobody expressed any interest in wearing it, so why shouldn't she continue to do so?  (I think he splained it away as being good advertising.)

No matter what she did - and there were worse things to come! - Mr. Jonas just couldn't get angry at her.  And it was more than being a good samaritan.  He recognized Merry Florene for who she really was - his own daughter.

Mr. Jonas - and it's hard enough to believe it to look on him - was a playuh.  He "sparked" a lot of the women-folk living in Dodge and the surrounding area when they came in to his store.  Sometimes it paid off, sometimes it didn't.  But it definitely resulted in the births of three young women - Merry Florene of the Hill People, the outlaw Allie Sommers, and a dance hall girl known only as "Lucky".

The power of telegenetics was strong not only in Merry Florene and her sisters, but also in their father, Mr. Jonas.  In fact the pairing of them would repeat itself several generations later, when Peter Preli raised his granddaughter Houston Preli.  He looked like Mr. Jonas and she looked like Merry Florene.  

Sadly, Pete Preli was killed to cover up a botched fake kidnapping of Houston Preli, but luckily a private eye named Jim Rockford was able to save the day.

By the way, one of the women from an earlier generation married an Italian immigrant named Perelli and it was a corruption of this name that made its way west to California to become "Preli".  This means that Pete Preli and Houston Preli were distantly related to the (in)famous "Slaughterhouse Sid" Perelli (a baseball legend), his daughter Sharon (both from 'Arli&&' - "The Immortal"), Dominic Perelli ('General Hospital' - about 140 episodes) and an English widow named Linda Perelli ('Widows'.)  It is unclear as of this time if the Linda Perelli from the United States, whose life eerily echoed that of the English widow, would be related, of if she even belongs in Earth Prime-Time.

BCnU!

SALOON GIRL SHOWCASE - FEELING "LUCKY"

"Then he could hitch up with that dance hall girl 

and raise himself a bunch of young-uns."

Casey

'Gunsmoke'

'GUNSMOKE'

"MULEY"

So far with my saloon girl showcases, I've focused on their male descendants, based on the men I knew they had sex with.  But the girl who called herself "Lucky" and worked in Miss Kitty's Long Branch Saloon is different; mainly because I don't think she ever had sex with Muley Proddert, the young bushwhacker who tried to gun down Marshal Matt Dillon.

However, there were plenty of female telegenetic echoes throughout 1970s "Telemerica" who could have been descended from "Lucky" and so many other men she probably slept with after the episode ended.  (Lane Bradbury, who played Lucky, was a frequent guest star in a lot of the drama series in the 1960s and 70s.)

With Lucky, she had a theoretical backstory in connection to 'Gunsmoke' that tied her into the general area of Dodge City.  She had come from somewhere close by and - despite Miss Kitty's hesitations about her age - she had decided to make a living at the Long Branch for a year before moving on to some big city.  

We don't know who her parents were, but her birth father certainly got around; couldn't keep it in his chaps.  He fathered two other girls in the area: one a member of a hillbilly clan named Merry Florene, and the other named Allie Sommers who ran with an outlaw gang.

So not all of the future Lane Bradbury characters have to be descended from Lucky.  They could be from the family trees for Merry Florene (whom I believe eventually married Newly O'Brien) or Allie Sommers (once she had been reformed.)  In fact, I think we can assume that Houston Preli from the 'Rockford Files' episode "Where's Houston?" was descended from Merry Florene and Newly (but more on that is a separate post today.)

So here is a list of characters played by Lane Bradbury who could have been descended from her character of Lucky, the dance hall girl.  Or from Merry Florene.  Or from Allie Sommers....

• Amy Nichols, 'Gemini Man'
• Sister Mary Dolores, 'Westside Medical'
• Emily Robbins, 'Doc Elliott'
• Jennifer Carter, 'MacMillan'
• Penny Hale, 'Judd For The Defense'
• Maggie Seller, 'Medical Center'
• Bella Mendoza, 'Then Came Bronson'
• Janet Kegler, 'The Fugitive'
• Sally James, 'Banacek'
• Charlene Nelley, ''The Young Lawyers"
• Cassie Howard, 'The Bold Ones: The New Doctors'
• Carol Harrington, 'McCloud'
• Carole Anne McMurdy, 'Owen Marshall, Counsellor At Law'
• Karen Gunderson, 'Mannix'
• Cindy Jeffers, 'The Mod Squad'
• Ellen Westfall, 'Mr. Novak'
• Rita Silveri, 'Doctors And Nurses'
• Miriam Halsey, 'Bracken's World'

O'BSERVATIONS:

I only chose characters played by Lane Bradbury from the mid to late 20th Century as candidates for this theory of relateeveety, and then only characters who had their last names listed in the IMDb.  I also passed over those shows, like 'The F.B.I.', in which she played more than one character in different episodes.  (Just getting too old and ornery to come up with splainins for all that.)

Ellen Westfall ('Mr. Novak' - "Love Among The Grown-Ups") may be related to the (in)famous Westphall family of 'St. Elsewhere'.  Slight name changes like that are not Zonks.

In an earlier generation, a woman named "Bunny" was somehow involved in a taxi dancer's murder.  ('Banyon' - "A Date With Death")  For alls I know, Bunny was the murdered taxi dancer.  I'll have to do more research in this.  But if Lane Bradbury as Bunny was any "taxi dancer" (taking the term to a seamier implication) in that episode, she may have been following in Grandma's line of work as well as resembling her.

I was tempted to come up with a suggestion that Cassie Howard ('The Bold Ones: The New Doctors' - "End Theme") and Carol Harrington ('McCloud' - "Give My Regrets To Broadway") or Carol Harrington and Carol Ann McMurdy ('Owen Marshall, Counselor At Law' - "Run, Carol, Run") might be the same character.  (I would have been pushing it to claim all three were one and the same.)  "Carol Harrington" could have been a stage name using Cassie Howard's initials.  Or the two Carols could have been one and the same, with "Harrington" being her married name.

'The Young Lawyers' - "Down At The House Of Truth, Visiting"

When Charlene Nelley met Aaron Silverman at David Barrett's Boston law firm, it could be that the great-granddaughter of Lucky was meeting the reincarnated soul of Muley Proddert.  It's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble......

Happy trails to you!

PS

This is part one of a Two For Tuesday......

THE PENULTIMATE SALOON GAL SHOWCASE - FROM THE SKITLANDIAN FRONTIER

For the penultimate Saloon Gal Showcase, here's an unnamed saloon girl played by Leslie Uggams in the 1970 All-Star NBC special celebrating America, "Sing Out, Sweet Land", which was hosted by John Wayne.

All we know about her is that she could sing, and that she could parlay with ghosts:

Because of the nature of the special, this took place in Skitlandia.  That means if this saloon gal did have any off-spring, they would be found in Skitlandia as well.

Some of her Skitlandian descendants could have been characters played by:

Johnny Brown
Chelsea Brown
Teresa Graves
Danitra Vance
Ellen Cleghorne
Tim Meadows
Kenan Thompson
Jay Pharoah
Tracy Morgan
Melba Moore
Eddie Murphy
Chris Rock
Garrett Morris
Leslie Jones
Finesse Mitchell
Sasheer Zamata
Maya Rudolph
Aries Spears
Jordan Peele
Keegan-Michael Key
Phil LaMarr
Erica Ash
Donnell Rawlings
Lenny Henry
Charlie Murphy
Dave Chapelle

And even a few who had been played by Leslie Uggams.  (O'Bviously those descendants would have the strongest tele-genetic imprints from their great-grandmother.....)

Happy trails to you!

VIDEO WEEKEND - "SHOTGUN SLADE"