"When Happy Met Froggie" on DVD!

One from the JSH News blog:


"Morris Book Shop at 408 Southland Drive now has a quantity of the brand new DVD release of When Happy Met Froggie available for sale!

The documentary, which recently had its world premiere in Lexington, includes footage from an interview with Jeffrey Scott Holland discussing his painting of the beloved clown-and-puppet pair whose children's show aired on local TV in the 1970s.

Support indie films and indie bookstores by trekking here to get your copy today!"

The End Times? Not Again!

"The time is getting closer; I read it on a poster."
- - Alice Cooper.

There's nothing more self-destructive for a representative of one's religious faith to do than to declare a doomsday date. You may get temporary attention and fame, but when the end of the world inevitably doesn't come, you end up discredited and having turned more people against your cause. The kind of people who start these doomsday scenarios probably don't care, though, because they're almost always in it for their own publicity and not concerned about the reputation of the religious faith they've hijacked for their own ends.

Perfect example: last year these billboards started popping up all over the world, proclaiming that the Biblical judgment day will occur on May 21, 2011. These billboards aren't cheap - I think a billboard in Louisville runs between $2000 and $5000 a pop, depending on location and duration. Does the apocalypse really need an ad campaign?

A lot of these billboards are coming from someplace called Family Radio whose website "explains" why the Rapture is coming on May 21 by way of one of the most poorly-written and irrational treatises I've even seen. The date of 2011 is arrived at by piling arbitrary assumptions on top of bad math on top of mangled Biblical quotes on top of failure to realize that people in Biblical-era Jerusalem didn't observe the same calendar as we do.

Of a similar ilk is judgementday2011.com, who needs to learn to spell "judgment" before passing same.

It would be hilarious if it wasn't so dangerous. Every time some charismatic kook starts a "world's about to end" meme, there are always gullible people who quit their jobs, throw everything away, and put their lives in total disarray. Some have even committed suicide after the big day passes and Christ didn't show up.


"We Can Know" is another affiliated bunch who are buying billboards, and so is The Latter Rain, whose name suggests connection to the post-William Branham "Latter Rain" movement, including "Joel's Army" - which has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "rapidly growing apocalyptic movement" who believe they possess "a divine mandate to physically impose Christian "dominion" on non-believers".


Another related group is eBible Fellowship, who are especially proud of their billboards - so much so that their site is almost wholly devoted to bragging about the placement of the ads in most countries of the world. They even have an interactive map that lets you track the progress of their ad campaign. Um, that's nice, guys, but if it really is the end times, don't we really have more important things to do?


Apparently even though the Rapture is on May 21, the actual end of the world for the rest of us won't come until October 21. Okay. I need one of those giant foldout flowcharts that take up two walls in order to map out all the signs and seals and bowls and trumpets; it's all too complicated for me.

Like Ken Ham and his Creationist Museum, these doomsayers are far outside the fringe of mainstream Christianity, but at the same time apparently have a mysterious knack for fundraising. Imagine what these people could have accomplished to combat world problems like hunger and illiteracy, with the staggering amount of money they blew on this self-aggrandizing, masturbatory, mentally ill ad campaign.

Sandy's Hamburgers

Tonight I've been doing a little research for my proposed fifteen-volume encyclopedic work What Used To Be Where, Back In The Day (and you thought I was joking about that, didn't you?)

In the course of my studies, I just happened across a delightful web page devoted to the long-since-departed Sandy's Restaurant in Louisville. Sandy's, apparently a Scottish-themed burger joint, had a girl in a kilt and a plaid beret for their mascot and served a specialty burger called a "Big Scott". They operated one location in Paducah and three locations in Louisville. Of the Louisville stands, one was at 5009 South Third St. (pictured above in a photograph taken on October 16, 1971) another was at 1007 W. Broadway, and the other was at 1420 Poplar Level Road. The Paducah stand was at 1726 Broadway.


There's nothing like a gang of retro-obsessive hunter-gatherer archivists to restore my faith in the human condition. These people are hardcore serious about reconstructing the lost memory of Sandy's for posterity, as it should be. Here's an example from their site to illustrate their zeal:

"The 1968 Sandy's locations list shows one of these locations as a possible 1967 opening. The 1973 list shows Poplar Level Road as Sandy's #317 and 3rd Street as #318 which points to a 1973 opening. Perhaps these locations were rebuilt as the new mini or maxi Sandy's restaurants as some locations were switching to the new buildout at this time and maybe they were renumbered into the 300 range at that time.

Robby Delius shows yet another scenario by providing both the 1965 and 1969 city directory listings for Louisville which shows Poplar Level and S. Third Street as being in existence in 1965 as well as 1969!"

We need more people like this in America.

And it gets better. It turns out that this lovingly detailed paean to preserving memorabilia related to the Sandy's of Louisville is actually just one page among many in a greater effort to hoard photos, menus, and even signage from every Sandy's restaurant that ever existed on Earth. It could take two hours to absorb it all, and if you're as much a card-carrying member of the Society For The Preservation Of Everything as I am, then you will devote those two hours to this holy work.


But wait, there's more!

Sandy's is just the tip o' the iceberg - that link is actually just one small fraction of Captain Ernie's Showboat, a truly leviathan site that assiduously sniffs out all available effluvia regarding a whole raft of obscure and neglected stuff from our collective childhood of the Midwest - everything from Romper Room to Cactus Jim to the Davenport, Iowa Morning Farm Report!

Life is good.

The Kilowatt Kid

Cruised by the Frankfort Avenue Art House the other day and spied a new addition to his menagerie: an antique standup of Reddy Kilowatt, inexplicably in Western gear.

Goober and his Kentuckians

Found this postcard for sale on VintagePostcards.org: a nice shot of Goober and the Kentuckians, suitable for framing.

Who was Goober? I don't even know. This page lists him as "Goober P. Nutt and the Kentuckians" but has no info other than a truly frightening photo wherein Goob's looking like a cross between Howdy Doody, Okie Jones, and the resurrected corpse of Archie. This blog evidently found the same postcard site as I did, but had nothing more to say.

And then there's this eBay auction from our friends at Bright's Antique World down in Franklin, where you can get this poster for "Uncle Remus Hush Puppies Dog Food", which apparently was the sponsor of a Goober and the Kentuckians TV show that aired Fridays at 5:45pm on WSIX-TV. It also uses the exact same promo postcard image.


WSIX-TV, however, is in Nashville. Or should I say, was - it's since morphed into WKRN. And this forum says that Goober, whose real name is Gib Buchanan, got his start on WDZ 1050 in Decatur, IL.

So was Goober even really a Kentuckian? The odds are actually against it, since it was seemingly very hip back in the day to be a Kentuckian, real or imagined - witness Henny Hendrickson's Louisville Serenaders, a bunch of Jersey guys who probably never set foot in Louisville in their lives. And Johnny Hamp's Kentucky Serenaders, based out of Pennsylvania.

Hobbs Chapel Facade

Like the Heigold Facade, the Hobbs Chapel facade is the remaining front entrance to a building that no longer exists. The original church was built on this site in Anchorage in 1876, and destroyed by a fire in 1954.


Note the Tudor Roses on the front entry gateposts.



Somewhere along the way, someone decided to rescue the abandoned remains of the church and rehabilitate it. The area is now a public park, and a charmingly spooky one at that.


It would appear that the base of this birdbath is actually a piece of debris salvaged from the church.



The sign says "Hobbs Chapel and Cemetery", and I'd always wondered where the heck the graves are. I just did a Google search, and lo and behold, the cemetery is in the woods further back behind the park area, about 300 yards. Guess now I gotta go back and check that out too.

"When Happy Met Froggie" Film Premiere

Tonight's the night! Scott Hall and Michael Crisp's documentary When Happy Met Froggie makes its world premiere at the Kentucky Theatre in Lexington at 7:30pm.

It tells the true story that Lexingtonians have been longing to hear told - the power and the glory that was a locally-made low-budget TV kid's show called Happy's Hour. Happy's Hour starred Happy the Clown and his puppet sidekick Froggie, plus an obese doppelganger called "Happy II" in the later years. It ran on Lexington's WTVQ-62 (which later became 36) from 1976-1980.

Yours truly makes an appearance in the film, as the producers sent a film crew to my house when they found out I'd painted Happy and Froggie's portrait.

I'll be there on the red carpet tonight for the premiere, come join us! And then find me later, because I'll probably be at Blue Agave Cantina.

More Kangaroo Sightings

Is it possible that kangaroo escapees from the circus could continue to live and thrive in Kentucky's climate over generations? Wouldn't people see these Kentucky kangaroos? Well, some people apparently have.

We've reported here and in Kentucky Monthly on the anomalous kangaroo sightings in Kentucky, circa 1899 and 1974.

Now there's a new report, from Unusual Kentucky reader Erin Kelley Henry, about kangaroos that she and her mother were eyewitnesses to in 2002. On three separate occasions, a kangaroo was seen hopping around residential areas in Richmond.

Anyone else have a kangaroo sighting they've been withholding all these years?

Storm, 4/4/2011

Was out wandering in the woods again this morning and a storm started blowing in.

I thought I'd better skidoo since I'd heard reports of the potential for tornadic weather; plus I knew storms and high winds during the night had already knocked out power in parts of downtown and Butchertown.

But I scurried home for nothing - the storm was extremely fast-moving and the dark clouds had already vamoosed to Owsley County by the time I made it back to my car. It's still super-windy out there at the moment, though, so we're not out of the woods yet. So to speak.

Stinkbug Invasion

This winter I've noticed these dark sepia-colored "stink bugs" (or "shield bugs", as some call them) in my house. Following the Buddhist golden rule of "Do No Harm", I gently escorted these critters out the door and let them go about their buggy way.

As it turns out, my mercy for creepy-crawlies may have been a bit premature. For you see, these were no ordinary stinkbugs. They were the dreaded Brown Marmorated Stink Bug, which is indigenous to China and did not exist in North America until 1998, when an infestation of them manifested out of nowhere in Pennsylvania. Apparently they stowed away in some shipment of items from China, and immediately gained a foothold in the new world.

(Gee thanks China, that's another favor we owe you. And we still haven't forgotten your poisoned cat food, fake eggs, melamine-tainted fish, sewage-fed fish, faulty GM automotive parts, toxic sofas, cancer-causing mattresses, cadmium-laced children's jewelry, and dumplings with ground-up cardboard substituted for ground beef.)

Since then, the stinky plague has spread to 33 states, including Kentucky, which had its first sightings a few months ago. Eight more states have been added to the list since last autumn.

So what's the big deal, since stinkbugs don't sting, don't bite, and don't swarm around your head driving your crazy? Well, they eat like a bug possessed. And they love to gnaw on crops such as tomatoes, apples, pears, soybeans, peppers, corn, grapes, berries, peaches, green beans, cherries, raspberries, and many more. Some farmers have lost their entire crop to stink bugs, and there is no natural predator in North America for them.

When next I see a stinkbug, will I let it live? Probably. I'm soft hearted/headed that way, and also know that statistically one more won't make a difference in the bug - er, big - picture.

View from Victorian Square Parking Garage

Another from our high views department: these shots were taken yesterday from the top of the Victorian Square parking garage on the corner of Short and Broadway, Lexington.

Note the nice ghost sign for Uneeda Biscuits on the side of the old Jester's building above.

Brown's Tastee Beer Cheese

One from our Transylvania Gentlemen blog:

I was making my rounds yesterday and stopped into Pisgah to see a man about a horse, and you know I can't go to Pisgah without dropping into my favorite donut shop in the solar system, Doughdaddy's.

This day found me desirous of something savory in addition to my customary box o' cream cheese covered donuts, and so I reached into their beer cheese cooler. They have an admirable selection of Kentucky beer cheeses, including several I've never tried, and the duck selected Brown's Tastee Beer Cheese. The package says they're based in Versailles, but their website says Lawrenceburg. Either way, both fine towns with a beer cheese to be Kentucky-Proud of.

As regular readers must know, the only yardstick by which to measure the greatness of a beer cheese is The Johnny Scale, meaning, how close is it to Johnny Allman's original formula? Friends, it's right up there near the top, alongside River Rat (whose package bears the slogan "Just Like Johnny's") and the new Allman's Beer Cheese which revives Johnny's recipe, thanks to his grandson's noble efforts.

Brown's Tastee meets my core criteria:

1. It's delicious.
2. It's spicy-hot but not stupidly so.
3. It contains beer. (You'd be surprised how many wannabe beer cheese's dont!) However, the beer does not dominate the flavor, nor does the garlic, which is as it should be.
4. It has an approximation of the correct texture, for which there is no word to adequately convey. "Fibrous" doesn't sound right, and "grainy" comes closer but still misleads. But the texture is there.

And when you put it in the freezer with the lid off - not long enough to freeze it solid but just long enough to give it an extra crystalline surface veneer - and knife it into small paper ketchup-cups, it succeeds as a simulacra of what my childhood mind (I had both "photographic memory" and synethesia as a tot) recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s during my visits to Johnny's with my parents.

The texture issue is what often trips up other leading contenders for Allmanesque greatness. Kentucky Ale Beer Cheese, on the other hand, has the texture down, but tastes very different from Johnny's because of the addition of mustard powder to the proceedings. The beer cheese one was served at Johnny's was not quite as spread-like and dip-like as what you buy in a tub today - the nudging of the formula towards being a spread comes from emulation of Hall's, which for many years was the reigning beer cheese in supermarkets, but had a completely version for retail as compared to the actual restaurant's.