Stay tuned for Dragnet on most of these stations. The rest of you will get bupkis.

[spatch]

After listening to old-time radio for three hours straight last night, as part of our Halloween show prep, I believe I am now sufficiently qualified to make the following observations:

1. It can be quite difficult to distinguish between the voices of little kids in certain family situation comedies.
2. The more a kid whines in a family situation comedy, the more Spatch wants to turn down the volume and "pretend" he's listening.
3. If your kids won't eat our sponsor's hot cereal, tell them Hopalong Cassidy eats it and they're sure to shovel it down by the bowlful.
4. Jack Benny's valet Rochester has a brother named September. They were both named in the same fashion: Rochester was born in Rochester; his brother in September.
5. Ozzie & Harriet had a real clever way to plug their sponsor, International Silver. The Nelson family lived on 1847 Rogers Road. This is a great coincidence because International Silver made a line of silver called 1847 Rogers Silver. It's all over eBay nowadays. You can look it up.
6. According to the American Meat Institute, it's perfectly okay to pronounce the word protein with three syllables ("protean") instead of with two. At least, that's what their announcer thinks. I was trying to figure out what the hell he meant by protean meat.
7. During "the duration", everybody had at least one point in the day where they'd stop in mid-conversation and just start pontificating on how we all have to do our part and send a message to "those guys" that we don't want them ever picking a fight with us again.

BUY WAR BONDS

Comments

[argentla.livejournal.com]

Rochester was born in Rochester; his brother in September.

In another episode they said he had a brother named Schenectady, although Jack's response was "Now cut that out!"

[dcart.livejournal.com]

I saw a Simpson's episode recently that I hadn't seen before. They had one of the best Jack Benny references I've ever seen. Smithers comes running up to Mr. Burns while Smithers is literally on fire. In trying to get Mr. Burns to help put out the fire he yells "I'm flaming, I'm flaming" and Burns does a dead on Benny style "camera take"*, looking straight into the camera, chin on his hand, just like Benny. I almost fell off the sofa.



*I don't really know how better to describe that even though I'm not sure that "camera take" is a real thing and anyway, there's no camera and no Mr. Burns to look into it if there were.

[spatch]

I believe you can call that "the chin take" if you want, but for best results, it should be accompanied by a shocked-and-surprised "Well!"

[argentla.livejournal.com]

*I don't really know how better to describe that even though I'm not sure that "camera take" is a real thing and anyway, there's no camera and no Mr. Burns to look into it if there were.

Animation writers and directors use the same terminology, so that's

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

I've looked in the past with very limited success, but I wonder what it would take to track down scripts to "The Curse of the Flying Wombat" (or pretty much anything else) from I'm Sorry, I'll Read That Again for live performance?

[spatch]

(LJ munged my comment, rzzz)

Transcripts are rare, so you may unfortunately have to track down the source audio and do the transcribing yourself. Oh, it's hours of fun for all ages, repeatedly skipping back the same two seconds to figure out what those three muffled syllables were!

That's one of the factors I'm considering when making the choice for my segment of our Halloween show. Comedy Show A is pretty funny and has a transcript already online, but Comedy Show B is even funnier, has a more involved cast, however we'd have to make the transcription ourselves. Which will it be? Whiiich will it beeeee?

And now, Mrs. Pretsky, would you please take a taste of both Comedy Show A and Comedy Show B, then tell our television audience which tuna casserole you'd serve to your family?

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

Sadly, even the source audio takes a dispatch from the UK to pull off. Still, it'd be worth it just to do the following bit:

SHERLOCK HOLMES: I must think! Watson, hand me my violin!
SFX: Trombone
WATSON: Nobody plays the violin quite like you do, Holmes.

[fancycwabs.livejournal.com]

Correction: Collections of ISIRTA are available on iTunes, for a nominal fee.

[jotasbrane.livejournal.com]

BBC 7 has previously aired ISIRTA online, and they also have a tendency to re-run programs periodically, so there's a chance you might be able to find it for free if you're patient.

[ivorjawa.livejournal.com]

I saw a movie about protean meat once.
It had Kurt Russell and Wilford Brimley.

Everyone died.