Soupy Sales

So, I am trying to get back in the game here. It's 5 AM on Sunday morning, and Soupy Sales is obvious fodder to make it happen. Getting Lou Albano up was positively cathartic, and had to be done BEFORE I could touch "Milton Soupman."

There's a lot of things my recent spate of work has affected. I've had a little less time for soccer coaching. And domestic repairs and chores? Well, they're always a challenge, even on a slow day. Once I get busy and traveling, other aspects of my life start to fall apart. I truly long for a simple life, but living in the go-go northeast with five kids and a large mortgage, I can't have one. My therapist tells me that I have too many interests, too many distractions. Pick ONE thing, he says. To me, that's like watching one channel all night. And, I was never very good at watching one channel.

When I was in third grade, a direct mail piece showed up at our house, informing my family that CABLE TELEVISION was available in our area. I was so tickled about this news that I brought the brochure into school with me. My teacher, a sweet older woman named Jewell Smith, mistakenly believed that I was hawking Cox cable and told me she wasn't interested. Truth was, for me, it was just this bizarre show and tell thing. Cable TV is coming! Cable TV is coming! And with it, came The Chicago Cubs and HBO movies, and wrestling from Georgia, oh, and ... Soupy Sales.

My family all knew about Soupy Sales, the "pie-in-the-face" guy. He had a show in the late seventies that was supposed to re-ignite his career , and that is pretty much how I ran into Soupy. Truth be told, the show wasn't all that great and I probably watched a handful of episodes, if that. I really don't else to say about him. But, there's always the Web, far cooler than cable TV, to help me out.

For starters, the Alice Cooper episode seems to get a lot of play. His old stuff is positively weird. Four Soupy, off-camera was probably more important than on, which is kind of a nice way to engage folks. The Stripper gag is legendary and really remarkable for its time. Pull a gag like that in this day and age, and there's a national scandal. He was a frequent guest on the great celebrity recycling bin known as Match Game. And here's a neato factoid I completely missed. Soupy's sons Hunt and Tony were a part of that bullshit David Bowie "band," Tin Machine that released not one, but two, almost un-listenable albums.

And, stopping with Soup's progeny is probably a good enough way to end this bloated, overdone post. Now, back to work.

Captain Lou Albano

I'll be the first one to admit that I have let you down. That I am out of shape. Lazy. Lame. Just like Captain Lou Albano. Heh Heh.

Let's face facts. The celebrity death business ain't what it used to be. It has been slow. Really, Really, Slow...

I swear. Every single day I check the obituaries, and every single day there really isn't all that much of interest. And, gosh, short of Patrick Swayze, this has been going on for well over two months.

So you might think I would be all over the Lou Albano thing. Well, it kind of caught me on a rather busy week. See, I started this blog during a relatively slow time in my career, and (Thank God) things have picked up, so I am not exactly sitting around downloading music all day long.

Captain Lou, like, perhaps, Ed McMahon, is pretty much why Celebituary was invented. I mean, sure, we all felt the Michael Jakson death on some level, but, as I have said before, this blog is about giving another fifteen minutes to some of our best friends on their way out the door. And, unlike Michael, Lou Albano, really could use that last fifteen, methinks.

See, I was way into 'rasslin growing up. I watched it every Saturday. An on occasion, I had the honor of going with my dad to the old Municipal Auditorium in Pensacola, FL. I had the honor of seeing a young Hulk Hogan, at the time known as "The Hulk" battle Andre the Giant. And Hogan was the bad guy.

Lou Albano was "New York wrestling," and that wrestling was much better than most of what we got on the Panhandle. No offense to Ron Fuller, Bullet Bob Armstrong, or even Austin Idol.

Here's the thing about Captain Lou. First of all, his schtick was unmatched, save for perhaps George "The Animal" Steele. Frankly, I never liked the whole Cyndi Lauper thing. He shows up in that video as her dad, and I'm thinking "well, that's an endearing role, but Captain Lou is a bad guy, not a good guy,...so WTF?"

Well, I got over it, and as we all know, that video launched Lou into a brief period of national celebrity. I think you know you've made it when you are the center square, even if you have to share it.

This is kind of fun from a pop culture standpoint. What do you get when you combine Captain Lou, Mario, and hip hop? This.

And, the captain parlayed his Mario celebrity into a memorable PSA against doing drugs, which is a bit laughable given his Coke-fueled rants of years gone by.

Ok. Enough. Let's close this one out with a sweet song. It's remarkable. Detached from the body, he sounds a bit like Jimmy Durante.