Wow! Here on Rottnest Island, it’s almost time for Deputy Dawg! But first a word about this week’s TV listings, brought to you by Quokka U. If we can raise enough money, we can buy one of those air-boats like they had in “Everglades.” Now all we need is a swamp!
Byron the Quokka here, and here’s a sample of this weekend’s fabulous television.
6:30 P.M. Ch. 03 THE BLOODY PIRATES OF SKELETON ISLAND–Adventure
The pirates swoop down on a wagon train in the middle of the prairie and suddenly discover they’ve lost their ship! Cap’n Cod: Lorne Green Clambrain: John Kerry Marvin the Talking Ox: Howard Cosell
Ch. 05 NEWS WITH STEVE THE HAMSTER–News
Who says the news anchor has to be human? As Steve runs faster and faster in his hamster wheel, news stories fly out from the bottom and Ed McMahon digs them out of the cedar shavings and reads them for the camera.
6:36 P.M. Ch. 46 SHERPA TO THE STARS–Travel
Hollywood superstars love to climb the Himalayas! And Sherpa Gutzu Lhotsa Sope is the man who guides them to the summits. Even if he doesn’t always come down with the same celebrities with which he went up. With Andrew Cuomo and his orchestra.
7 P.M. Ch. 10 HOPALONG HAGGIS–Scottish Western
Hopalong Haggis really does have to propel himself by hopping along on alternate feet, but that doesn’t stop him from solving crimes for the Phnom Penh C.I.D. in Cambodia, with whom he communicates telepathically. This week: someone’s left the water running. Hopalong: Harry Wong Sgt. MacPherson: Sid Fernandez Mrs MacGavin: Linzy Kagemusha
Ch. 12 TITUS ANDRONICUS–Cartoons
Shakespeare’s gory mess makes for hilarious cartoons! Host: Suitcase Simpson.
Ch. 17 MOVIE–Tragicomedy
“Lost in the Outback” (1958) features the Bowery Boys being picked off one by one by rogue kangaroos and vengeful wandering minstrels. Filmed in Brooklyn but made to look just like the Australian wilderness, give or take a few cars and sidewalks. Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall. Rogue kangaroo trainer: Loretta Young. Suspicious-looking Rock: Tommy Lee Jones.
Well, there you have it! I can’t wait to see “Lost in the Outback.” A lot of ninnies get lost in the Outback. Some of them get lost looking for it. They think it’s somewhere “out back.”
I hope our university opens soon.
These are some of your best! (But I say that about all of them, don’t I?) Andrew Cuomo and his orchestra sent me into paroxysms of laughter. And I won’t repeat what I thought about nooze items spinning out from the hamster wheel and into the shavings. Well done, Byron!
A side note on “Titus Andronicus”: I used to love teaching this play, and my students loved it as well. My favorite stage direction is: “Enter a messenger with two heads and a hand.” (He’s carrying them, not wearing them.) My students kept coming up with their own favorite Absolutely Awful Lines from the play. But one student wrote an excellent essay in the play’s defense as a noteworthy example of its genre. Her essay was titled “Great Schlock,” and it was brilliant, one of the very few A+ grades I ever gave.
Was Shakespeare half-asleep when he wrote that stage direction? Sounds like a two-headed messenger with only one hand! Wish I’d thought of it!
“The Fugitive” was such a phenomenon in its day. And isn’t it interesting how the Bowery Boys continue to have hit TV shows.