Happy’s Place

/ Shane / 8 Comments

One thing about having a baby is that it forces you to remember a lot of things from your childhood that you thought you forgot.  So naturally every time Evie was playing with a frog I had to rasp, “FROGGY’S PAAAAAAAAD!”

For whatever reason, we didn’t have a local Bozo the Clown, instead we had our own equivalent named Happy the Hobo.  It was essentially the same thing as Bozo.  The show was called Happy’s Place and kids could come on the show to be in the audience.  They would show cartoons and, in between, the kids would play games, etc.  At one point all the kids got to come and stand in a long line and Happy (Mike Fry) would ask each kid a question.  So, you were guaranteed to be on T.V. if you came.  There was also a vaguely frog-shaped puppet named Froggy who mostly hosted a morning cartoon show on the same set.  Being on Happy’s Place was sort of a local rite of passage.  You can see a few videos here.

Happy was a local celebrity, nay, a god.  He was the real deal too, I remember seeing him do back flips and stuff in the parade.  He juggled, he made jokes, he did it all.  His show had ALL the best cartoons.  Any kid would have taken a bullet for him.  One day he fell off the roof of the Happy Mobile and blew out his knee (apparently it is a rumor that he was doing a handstand at the time).

We were only on Happy’s Place one time, but my mom has the tape so I have seen it many times.  I was wearing an iron-on Tyrannosaurus Rex shirt and Happy asked me if I would ride one.  I snottily responded, “If I saw one.”  My sister was sort of camera shy and giggly and Happy commented on that and had her giggle.  My brother, however, stole the show.  He was very little, maybe 3 or so, and wearing his very favorite California Raisins‘ tee-shirt.  Happy asked him about it and he spontaneously burst into song: “I uuuuurd it troo the gape bine!”  You could see that Happy totally didn’t expect it and quickly looked to the camera man (probably the only adult around that he knew) for confirmation with a smile on his face.  It’s fantastic, I wish I had it on youtube.

So anyway, next came Cousin Happy and then a 3rd Happy the Hobo.  Now, I don’t know that they were bad Hobo’s, but I didn’t like them.  Perhaps I just got too old for the show.  Perhaps the shoes they had to fill were just too big (get it, like clown shoes?)  Perhaps it was just a job to them and their hearts were never in it.  But all in all, I thought I was done with Happy’s Place.  Then along comes Happy #4, Adrian Guenther.

Happy #4

Happy #4

In this incarnation, Happy was a little different.  He was still a juggler, but he was a little goofier than the original Happy.  Two additional characters came on board, Chester T. Fox (I assume because the show was on the Fox network) and Lawn Boy.  Both were great additions to the show.  Now that there were 3 people, they did more skits.  Maybe it was because I was older, but I got the distinct impression that a lot of things they did they did because they thought they were funny.  I’m not sure the kids were always in on the joke.  It always just seemed like they were having so much of their own fun that you couldn’t help but enjoy it.

There were two promos (or maybe it was the intro?) that played over and over again that influenced my life.  One was Happy telling Chester, “That’s nacho cheese!”  (I realize that as I type that, the joke only makes sense out loud) which I found just hilarious.  The second was Happy (after being tricked by Chester) saying, “You’re not a fox, you’re a weasel!”  This single quote led to a roughly 6 month campaign by me and my brother to convince our dog that she was in fact, not a dog but a weasel.

So anyway, like Commander Mark, if this should ever reach the eyes of any of the people involved in the show I just want to say that you made a lot of kids happy.  I hope you all got rich off the show, though I highly doubt it.  But even if you didn’t, your work was not in vain.

If there are any readers out there who have Happy’s Place memories (hmm, I don’t think there really is), feel free to share!

P.S. While researching for this post, I came across another blog post about Happy’s Place.  People really got into the comments with memories, etc. about Happy’s Place and other local celebrities so it is quite the trip down memory lane.  There are even a few posts from the guy who was the voice of Froggy and from 4th Happy!

Awesome pictures

/ Shane / 1 Comment

Artists come in all sorts shapes and sizes.  Who says that the subject of a painting has to be serious or stuffy?  I give you Brandon Bird, pop culture artist:

No one wants to play Sega with Harrison Ford

No one wants to play Sega with Harrison Ford

His subject matter is anything from Bea Arthur wrasslin’ dinosaurs to a cut out halloween mask of Christopher Walken.  And for BaconBach, he even has J J Abrams and spider man having a pillow fight.  He has a special place in his heart for Law and Order, such as this depiction of a camping trip or even these Law and Order SVU valentines.

One of my favorites is the very aptly named “Prelude to the Magic Hour”:

Prelude to the Magic Hour

Prelude to the Magic Hour

I can just imagine it hanging over my fireplace.

There is also some humor of a different type regarding letters written to Christopher Walken that is worth checking out.

Lawyer Jokes

/ Shane / Leave a comment

Speaking of things everybody likes, how about Lawyer jokes?  This is a quite hilarious collection of things that were said in actual court transcripts.

For example, my personal favorite:

Q: All your responses must be oral, OK?  What school did you go to?
A: Oral.

Forked

/ Shane / 1 Comment

I am going to go out on a limb here, but I think I’m going to go ahead and say this is the finest acappella band ever to come out of Finland.

I give you Fork.

Everybody loves an acappella band.  When they are really good it is just amazing to think that the sounds you are hearing are coming only from someone’s mouth.  Fork is especially interesting because usually an acappella group consists of a lot of people and they are only four.

They have some of their own music as well as covers anywhere from Queen to Bon Jovi to U2.  Some are funny and some are so haunting they send chills down my spine:

So continue to look here, your source for all Finnish acappella bands!

AT&T is the Spawn of Satan

/ Shane / 6 Comments

Why is the customer service of a company inversely proportional to the size of the company?

I had a call with AT&T that made me so furious today that my hands were literally shaking with anger.

We got our bill and we had a $40 pay-per-view charge for WWE Summer Smackdown or something like that (our dish network is through AT&T).  Now obviously we didn’t order this so I wanted it taken off the bill, but I just *knew* it was going to be a hassle.  So I called today and waited on the phone for literally 30 minutes before talking to anybody.  When I finally did get through to someone of course I had to be transferred.  Then, of course, my call was dropped.  (Ironic for a phone company?)  Now all of this is just what I expected so far, which is a shame in and of itself.  But I honestly thought if I slogged through all this nonsense, they would just reverse the charges and that would be that.  It didn’t get bad until I called back.

Luckily I had gotten the direct number of the division I needed to talk to so I was able to call back later.  When I finally got through to someone and explained what happened, she got really rude.  She told me that pay-per-view was non-refundable and there was nothing she could do.  I was irked, but I immediately asked for a supervisor.  I have been literally told in the past by other supervisors at other large companies that you will only reach a supervisor if you ask and they are the only ones who can do anything.

The supervisor was 10 times ruder than the regular person.  I told her I wanted the charge removed and she said it couldn’t be done.  She said that it showed the pay-per-view was ordered from our remote so the only possibility was that someone in my house ordered it, so therefore they wouldn’t waive the charges.  I told her that perhaps there was a hardware malfunction.  She said that was impossible.  Impossible!  She said that these units had been tested “thousands of times” and the only possibility was that we ordered it.  I told her maybe the neighbor has the same remote code.  I said maybe I dropped the remote and it fell in such a way that the proper buttons had been pressed.  She just kept saying, nope, impossible.  I or someone in my house had ordered it.  I asked her if she was calling me a liar to my face?  She said no she wasn’t, but it is impossible (Impossible!) for the hardware to malfunction and someone in my house ordered it, which is totally different than calling me a liar.

Now, I don’t know what happened.  Maybe Evie did it by accident.  Maybe Sara snuck out under the cover of darkness to watch some WWE Smackdown after I was in bed.  Maybe someone broke into our house and ordered it.  I don’t know.  But neither does she and the fact that she kept insisting that it was *impossible* that anything happened other than that I ordered it.

So finally she agreed to reverse the charges.  In order to “punish” me she informed me I would lose my ability to receive pay-per-view programming.  This was quite excellent since it was my next order of business!  However, it quickly went downhill from there.  Here is a rough estimate of our conversation:

“I will reverse this charge ONE TIME but after that if you have any more we will not reverse the charges! So if you have any at home you have already ordered you will be charged and we won’t reverse it.”
“No. Cancel any charges now, cancel pay-per-view and cancel any charges in the future. I don’t want any pay-per-view.”
“I will reverse this charge ONE TIME but after that if you have any more we will not reverse the charges! So if you have any at home you have already ordered you will be charged and we won’t reverse it.”
“I don’t agree to that. I don’t know if my equipment is malfunctioning or what, but if there are any more pay-per-view things I don’t want them!”
“I can’t tell if you have any more, but I’m just letting you know that if there are any more charges, we won’t reverse them.”
“I don’t agree to that! Cancel everything!”
“I can’t cancel any you’ve already ordered. We won’t reverse any charges in the future!”
“I don’t agree! If I get charged I’m calling back!”
“But we won’t reverse the charges!”
“I don’t agree! I know this is being taped! I want it on record that I don’t agree to that!”
“This is the only time we will reverse the charges!”
“I don’t AGREE! Make a note on my file that I don’t want any more!”
“Too bad, we won’t reverse it!”
“I DON’T AGREE TO THAT!! I DO NOT AGREE TO THAT!!”

And honestly, no joke, that wasn’t even the end of it.  Yes, I admit, I was hysterical.  I realize that makes me sound like a psychopath, so I’m counting on the readers of this blog to know that I am a reasonable, even-keeled person.  She did eventually reverse the charges, but she made it clear she was only doing it because I was such a pain.  Fine, I as a pain.  That’s part of the worst thing about it, that I had to be a pain to get my charges reversed.  It is the only way to accomplish anything with companies like that.  I pay them how much per month and they make me scream at them to remove a $40 one time charge.  That is ridiculous!  To be treated like that…despicable.  Reading the text really doesn’t do it justice.

And that is really the worst part.  I could cancel my service, but I’ve had just as bad service with everybody else; Comcast, Verizon, ComEd…all of them.  This is just the way these companies work.  And there’s just nothing I can do about it.  I could cancel and go with another just as bad company.  I could call and complain to someone but they wouldn’t care.  I’ve read enough exposes to know that they are told to act like that, to be aggressive to get people to pay the charges.  Everything in their system is designed to force me to give up. And if I canceled my service, what do they care?  One less customer, boo hoo.  And what else can I do?  Write my congress man?  Write a blog post?

Okay, I guess I’ll do that, but it sure doesn’t make me feel any better.