The longest-running drama in US broadcast history, Guiding Light, has wrapped it up after 15,762 episodes and an incredible 72-year run. This past Friday, September 18th CBS aired the final episode. Because of its high production costs and falling ratings, it was decided last April to pull the plug. Though there was a huge outcry over the decision, viewership over the last year was still down to about 40 percent of the audience it captured a decade ago. CBS plans to replace the soap opera on October 5 with yet another, newer version of Let's Make a Deal, hosted by Wayne Brady. That sounds like a winning idea!

 

According to what I heard by the water cooler this afternoon, the daytime Soap icon went out big and tearful, with most of the characters gathering for the perfect picnic on the perfect day. Meanwhile back in the town of Springfield, in front of the old light house, the incessantly on-again-off-again romance between Reva and Josh met Fate one more time, one last time, where finally, once again, they reconfirmed their love for each other. This time -- it was best of times, music filled the air tenderly as a beautifully slow moving, gauzy camera shot gazed over the lovers driving off into the sunset in Josh's pick-up truck, no doubt destined for bliss and wedding bells and living happily ever after in the foggy Neverland of cancellation.

 

Some fans complained the ending was rushed. Other fans are still in denial, thinking this must be an elaborate and misplaced April Fools joke, a publicity stunt. Some are saying CBS is crazy, out of their minds, that CBS and their collective heads are up their collective asses, and though it’s great Reva and Josh are finally together again, what about Jeffery, nobody mentioned Jeffrey, what happened, is he still alive, where’s Jeffrey?

 

Nonetheless, millions of devout fans are having to bid adieu to those wonderfully dysfunctional Spaulding and the Lewis families and the seemingly infinite number of marriages, scandals, divorces, affairs, remarriages, re-divorces, the missing, the found, the dead, the back-from-the-dead, little white lies, big bad lies, secrets, shames, gossip, cheats and scoundrels, lusty scoundrels and cheats, the innocent, love gone bad, gone mad, temptations, taboos, mind boggling miracles and mind bending seductions, steamy and sexy story lines heating up kitchen tables and kaffeeklatsches across this star spangled land of ours where old and young hearts skip beats in odd polyrhythmic patterns.

 

Created during the Depression, The Guiding Light debuted January 25, 1937 as a 15-minute program on NBC radio. It was the original soap opera; being owned by Procter & Gamble, most advertisements spotlighted P&G’s line of products like Ivory, Tide, Mr. Clean, Cascade, Zest and Crest toothpaste. The Guiding Light first moved to the CBS radio in 1947 and later premiered on the same television network on June 30, 1952. No American Television show has come this close to spanning the entire history of the medium.

 

“So as we fade to black, stay tuned for the award winning drama The Edge of Night, next over most of these CBS stations. This program was recorded.”

I’m not from Chicago, but I like Chicago, and though I’m a true blue, life long LA Dodgers fan, I’ve always had a soft spot for the Chicago Cubs: Wrigley Field, Hippo Vaughn, Three-Finger Mordecai Brown (who really only had three fingers on his right hand, but two them sported World Series rings), Riggs Stephenson, Ron Santo, ‘Mr. Cubs’ Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, Fergie Jenkins, Milt Pappas, Ryne Sandberg, Jack Brickhouse and Harry Caray and on and on ... these have been some tough years for Cubs fans. It's been one hundred and one years and counting since their last World Series victory.

Anyway, today, September 20^th, marks the 25th anniversary of the death of one of the biggest Cubs fans ever to cheer amid the hallowed ivy covered walls of Wrigley Field, singer-songwriter Steve Goodman. Born and raised in Chicago, he never had much success as a solo recording artist, though his albums constantly received critical acclaim; he found far greater accolades as a songwriter. Some folks say he wrote the greatest Country and Western song ever recorded, and it says so right there in the song. “You Never Even Call Me By My Name” was the biggest hit record David Allan Coe ever had and the lyrics mention everything a proper and perfect Country/Western song should ever need or want: mama, jail, dead dogs, trains, trucks and drunkenness. Goodman also wrote the greatest friggin’ song about the railroads, “City Of New Orleans,” which became the biggest charting hit of Arlo Guthrie’s career. In the early 1970’s Goodman saw Guthrie in a bar and asked if he could play him a song. Guthrie agreed only on condition that Goodman first buy him a beer. The song would become something of an American standard, covered by many others including Johnny Cash, Judy Collins, John Denver, Jerry Reed, Hank Snow, Willie Nelson and even David Hasselhoff. Goodman also wrote some great songs about his own home town, “A Dying Cub Fan's Last Request;” “Go, Cubs, Go;” “The Lincoln Park Pirates,” a tribute to the notorious Lincoln Towing Company; and “Daley's Gone,” about Mayor Richard J. Daley, undisputed king of Chicago’s backroom politics, the last of the big city bosses, whose power didn’t create disorder, but was there to preserve disorder.

About the time Goodman's career really began taking off, he was diagnosed with leukemia. Still he managed to write and perform and fight cancer; he had a tongue-in-cheek nickname for the disease, “Cool Hand Leuk.” On September 20, 1984, Goodman died at University of Washington Hospital in Seattle. He was 36 years old. Eleven days later, the Chicago Cubs played their first play-off game since 1945 at Wrigley Field.

 
During the 2007 season, the Chicago Cubs began playing Goodman's recording, "Go, Cubs, Go," after each home game win. When the Cubs made it to the playoffs, interest in the song and in Goodman surged, resulting in October 5, 2007 being declared by Illinois Lieutenant Governor Pat Quinn as Steve Goodman Day across Lincoln's Great State.

Avast me mateys! By the powers this day be, a good day to pour ye self a tall, deep grog, get loaded to the gunwales, raise the Jolly Roger and scare the livn’ bejesus out of them landlubbin’ scurvy dogs, argh! Aye! On the account, today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day, no son of a biscuit eater goin’ to put up with them lily-livered scallywags, or them sprogs! Aye, I might toss a wee bit wi' a wannion on them scurvy asses, toss em into Davy Jones' Locker. Tell the tale me heartys! Slight no black spot on me troubled soul! Us gentlemen o' fortune need more than doubloons and booty before sailin’ into Fiddlers Green ... aye the sweet trade! Ahoy, ye need a furner to sail thar, wenchs ands the gates of Hades starboard to grabs at ye gods own swaggy golden pieces o’ eight! Yo ho ho ho!

 

Shiver me timbers, I think I was momentarily possessed by the ghost of some long dead privateer, or more likely a B-movie screen writer from the 1930’s!

 

Every September 19th is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. The day was created back in 1995 by John Baur, AKA ol' Chumbucket and Mark Summers, AKA Cap'n Slappy as an inside joke. But the holiday didn’t achieve any real media attention until 2002 when Miami Herald syndicated columnist and Pulitzer Prize winning writer of "distinguished commentary," Dave Barry, wrote about it. Today there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,500 “Talk Like a Pirate” videos on YouTube, and millions of websites dedicated in one way or another to Talk Like a Pirate Day. According to Summers, he chose this particular date because it would be easy for him to remember; it’s his ex-wife's birthday. Aargh! I hoist a tankard to ya and spit in yer eye, ye ol’ stinkin’ blaggards!

Rats the size of a cats and fanged frogs were discovered by Smithsonian Institution biologists working with the Natural History Unit from the BBC in the remote Southern Highlands province of Papua New Guinea in the Mount Bosavi Crater, an extinct volcano. The huge crater, measuring two and half miles wide and rimmed with walls nearly half a mile high, appear to have trapped these creatures inside the isolated crater’s rainforests and they possibly have never been seen by man before.

 

Among the discoveries is a woolly silvery gray rat, weighing nearly 3.5 pounds, and measuring 32 inches from nose to tail, that’s almost three friggin’ feet long! I think I just soiled myself...

 

The Bosavi Crater rat would be one of the largest rats in the world. Most surprising to the BBC documentary team, the rodents were completely tame, a sign that animals were unfamiliar with humans. The rats live on a diet of leaves and roots, and probably build their nests underground beneath rocks and tree roots. A member of the genus Mallomys, these rats have yet to receive their formal scientific name. More than 70 species of rats and mice are found on Papua New Guinea. (And I don’t think I’ll be vacationing there anytime soon.)

 

Altogether, some 40 new species were discovered by the crater expedition, including approximately 16 species of frog, one species of gecko, at least three new species of fish, 20 species of insects and spiders and one new species of bat, plus what may be a new subspecies of tree-living marsupial.

 

The BBC and Smithsonian teams found these previously unknown species while filming a documentary about wildlife of Papua New Guinea. The film, Lost Land of the Volcano, is a three part series which started airing this week in the United Kingdom on BBC One. Below is some footage.

It’s September, which of course everybody knows is National Biscuit Month. But wait, what’s a biscuit without a little gravy? Probably dry and sawdust-like, unless you’ve lived a charmed life amongst bakers. Well, not only is it National Biscuit Month, but the second week in September is always observed -- and religiously so in some circles -- as National Biscuit & Gravy Week. So for the next few days, add a little flavor to that otherwise boring brick biscuit. This celebration is obviously not for the weak of heart; participants must of course be cleared by a cardiologist. But B&G week is more than permitting credence to an angio-edge life style, B&G week is here to help us remember good old fashion homemade fixins’. And since cooking at home has gone the way of indoor smoking, Betamax, pull tabs, floppy discs, and glaciers, take some time out in your marathon commuter mornings, hit the local diner, whether it’s a Denny’s or a faux-bohemian hipster dive or a Mom & Pop’s greasy spoon off the health department’s radar, sit down to a breakfast of hot biscuits & gravy, a cup of coffee, ignore your cell phone, leave the laptop in the trunk, and read an actual morning paper, and not a Weekly ... a real daily newspaper with real smudgy newsprint. And as long as you avoid the articles on American politics, you won’t regret the respite!

 

Biscuits and gravy was once just a popular breakfast dish in the South, but its popularity has spread nationwide and is now served for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Think about it, a buttermilk biscuit covered in a piping hot thick "country" or "white" gravy made from the drippings of cooked pork sausage, a little white flour, milk, with bits of real sausage, bacon, or ground beef, flavored with lots of black pepper. I’m heading out right now, and just to keep a balance between my health and my bent for ruin, I’m biking to my favorite greasy spoon. Biscuits & gravy ... live on the edge!