From the Couch Hole: Straight Down the Mississippi River to the Gulf of Mexico

Previously on FTCH, the little sister gave us the lowdown on the secret separation of Ultraman from Wall-E who was cleaning up the Protein Doritos fallout. This week we’re officially counting down the days until the Memorial Day weekend. I would love to spend it out at the ballpark, but still trying to sell this dang house occupies my time. This week Poirot met the veiled lady up on cripple creek. The Dunwich horror was to call me by your name which was dirty Mountain Dew. Remember, at FTCH there’s a swim advisory in effect.

Pop Culture Ephemera

• Agatha Christie – The Short Stories of Hercule Poirot: Series 1-3 (2020) (Published by Bankshott Books): “Wherever there is human nature, there is drama.” Poirot debuted in the novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920). Because of the popularity of the character, she was contracted to write 12 stories for the journal, The Sketch, in 1923. They were so popular she was contracted for a second group of 12, and those led to a third group in 1924, this time a serialized story that later became The Big Four novel. At the end of the last group, Poirot had retired. At least he was retired until he returned in The Murder of Roger Ackroyd in 1926.
  
  I like short stories. These were all mostly bite-sized pieces that I could digest like an episode of a show about one per day. That started to run together after the first 24 stories. It’s not a surprise that the best stories of the book were all part of the third group that told a more cohesive story. My favorite of the bunch being “The Yellow Jasmine Mystery.” I love watching how in just over a year and a half Christie really developed Poirot and Hastings’ relationship. The final story, “The Crag in the Dolomites,” shows Poirot with a playful friendliness towards Hastings that he is usually so reluctant to admit. I would recommend the third block of stories to be read first. The first two are best read at a more deliberate pace. I’m ready for another one of the Poirot novels now.

Buy Hercule Poirot: The Complete Short Stories

• Agatha Christie’s Poirot Mysteries – “The Veiled Lady” (S.2 E.3) (ITV) (1990): “Hastings, what a cracksman was lost when Hercule Poirot decided to become the world’s greatest detective.” – Poirot. It was interesting that this episode came up not long after having read the short story. It’s one of the more simple, straightforward stories in print. The story of Poirot being engaged to help a woman who is being blackmailed with a compromising letter she wrote in her youth. The episode necessarily expands on elements to fill out the hour. The testament to this series is that all of the choices are ones I feel make the story more entertaining. The series adds Miss Lemon as their assistant, who isn’t present in the stories. This particular episode expands Poirot and Hastings breaking into a house to recover the letter. It’s a scene that is glossed over in the story that adds a comedic touch to the story. This is a great introduction to the series and the characters if you haven’t watched it previously.

The Band (50th Anniversary) album

• The Band – “Up on Cripple Creek” (from The Band) (1969): “Now there’s one thing in the whole wide world / I sure would like to see / That’s when that little love of mine / Dips her doughnut in my tea.” Sandwiched between their singles, “The Weight” and “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” I feel like this song off their second album gets lost in the mix. I know it’s featured in their concert films like The Last Waltz (1976), but once again, it isn’t the star it should be.
  
  The song about the truck driver (the same one that pulled into Nazareth?) going to see Bessie in Lake Charles, Louisiana is about as Americana as the genre can get. It serves as a template for bands like Little Feat and the Marshall Tucker Band to come. The amazing thing about the song is the super funky clavinet played by Garth Hudson. That sound would be replicated on about a dozen Motown records in the next couple of years.

• The Dunwich Horror (1970) (Directed by Daniel Haller): “The Old Ones are not truly dead. They only sleep. It is a dreamless oblivion, stretching on and on towards vast eternity!” – Wilbur Whateley. I recently reread “Herbert West – Reanimator” (1922) by H.P. Lovecraft. I stumbled upon this film again on Tubi. I didn’t remember much about the film or the story that I read probably 40 years ago, but I was curious. The thing about Lovecraft that doesn’t translate well to film is that it tends to be very heavy on two things that don’t translate well to film – internal dialogue and background story.
  
  Cutting to the chase, it’s a passable film that doesn’t ever seem to get really good or really bad. That background story problem raises its head early. The mysterious stranger, Wilbur Whatley (Dean Stockwell with a cool perm), arrives in town to get hold of the Necronomicon. There’s a ton of backstory of his family, the legends of the town, and this titular monster. Wilbur’s seduction and kidnapping essentially of Nancy (Sandra Dee, a little too old to be the coed still) helps the pacing of the first third of the film, then it slows to a crawl while we try to piece together a history, and then when the monster is to be released, there’s a huge rush. It’s an AIP (American International Pictures) film, but it borrows much from the Hammer films of the era, and the sets are well constructed. I don’t know how you would adapt this any better in a film, but it doesn’t rise to anything I’d choose to watch again.

Buy The Dunwich Horror Hardcover by H. P. Lovecraft

• Call Me by Your Name (2017) (Directed by Luca Guadagnino): “When you least expect it, nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot.” – Mr. Perlman. One of the fun things about queues on streaming sites is that you add things to them without any context. I don’t know how long this has been in my queue and no idea what prompted me to add it years ago. I’m glad I decided to watch this instead of delete it from the list.
  
  If you don’t think it’s going to be a coming-of-age romance between 17-year-old Elio (Timothee Chalamet) and visiting doctoral student Oliver (Armie Hammer), then you haven’t watched more than four minutes of the film. I know it’s partially the 1983 setting or the Northern Italy locations that help me really appreciate the film. What is too often lost in current films is the way it doesn’t hurry at anything. The camera lingers over lush gardens, city parks, and lets there be long pauses in conversations. Elio and Oliver have an electric chemistry that doesn’t need words. Chalamet is already showing how he will later play a Timothee Chalamet character, as an awkward but cocky young man who acts years beyond his age. Written by James Ivory, of Ivory-Merchant fame, the film unfolds at just the perfect pace. I need to learn to trust younger me who put things in queues for a good reason.

Buy Call Me by Your Name

Best of the Rest

• The song “Up on Cripple Creek” was 13 years old when it had a great year in 1982. The Dukes of Hazzard (CBS) was riding high in popularity, and they released an album, as one did in those days, to promote the show. Almost everyone in the cast got a chance at doing a song of their own, including Waylon having a couple of songs thrown in for good measure. Tom Wopat’s version gives the song a more boogie-woogie feel. As much as I want to hate it, I’m tapping my toes. It can’t hold a candle to the original, but it’s not as terrible as you might expect from a Duke Boy.

• Also in 1982, the Oak Ridge Boys were enjoying their time in the sun. “Elvira” had been a big hit in 1981 and the follow-up album Bobbie Sue was a big crossover hit with the title song climbing the charts. I have a double confession. I like the Oak Ridge Boys, especially when they are singing their harmonies. I detest most of the songs from this era of country music. Their “Bobbie Sue” was good, but this version of “Up on Cripple Creek” loses all of the soul and 100% of the funk is gone. It turns into a soulless version that doesn’t even feature the strength of the group. Until recently, I had even forgotten that they recorded this atrocious cover.

• On their 1990 album, Step in the Arena, Gang Starr sampled “Up on Cripple Creek” and “Keep on Movin'” by Soul II Soul for one of the funkiest cuts on their album. You didn’t hear the Band sampled much in hip-hop of this fertile era. Everyone was chasing the James Brown and Funkadelic samples. This felt right at home among those, and it’s a testament to the funky sound that the Band had found in the studio.

Sunday Morning Tuneage Flashback

• Sunday Morning Tuneage from 5/30/2010, it was Memorial Day weekend and 97 degrees, so of course, I was going outside to a baseball game. I lamented that the Indy 500 (ABC) was on over the weekend and that it used to be a big deal. Like the Kentucky Derby, it was the one time a year that the sport mattered. In 2010, it was already an afterthought, and things have not improved for it in 2026. The Belmont Stakes were coming up the next Saturday if you want to talk about things that used to be popular and have completely been forgotten. The Top Ten of the week was made at a time that we played almost daily as a family. We still play when we get together, but I’m not sure this list will be distinctly different.
  
  My #61 Top TV Show of All-Time was Monty Python’s Flying Circus (BBC) (1969-1974): I had watched Holy Grail (1975), Life of Brian (1979), Meaning of Life (1983) and listened to some of their albums before I remember watching episodes of the television show. What I discovered was even more chaotic than the movies, and I loved it. As they said, “And now for something completely different.” I can’t think of anything since then that has surpassed this show. The influence it has had on sketch comedy and the number of imitators shows me that I probably need to move it higher in my rankings.
  
• BEST BOARD GAMES ALL-TIME (2010)
  • 10. Scattergories
  • 9. Trivial Pursuit
  • 8. Clue
  • 7. Boggle
  • 6. Risk
  • 5. Battleship
  • 4. Stratego
  • 3. Chess
  • 2. Monopoly
  • 1. Scrabble
    
• BEST BOARD GAMES OF ALL-TIME (2026)
  • 10. Backgammon: It’s one of the oldest board games, and it fits what I love about strategy games. It’s easy to learn, it revolves around the luck of dice rolling, but there’s a level of skill involved in how you react to the numbers you rolled.
  • 9. Rummikub: I enjoy this more now than I did when the children were younger. It’s a deceptively simple game that can be played pretty quickly. The strategies can vary and don’t always guarantee a win.
  • 8. Clue: The game of deduction was really fun as a child. I love how it taught me logic in figuring out the three variables. I still enjoy the game, but mostly playing with younger players and watching them figure it out on their own.
  • 7. Trivial Pursuit: There are hundreds of variation that you can play to make sure you have a successful evening. I enjoy trivia at bars and completing with other teams a little better. This is a good, low-key evening with friends if you don’t try to make it the focus. The biggest drawback is usually that it lasts too long. I don’t recall a game where I wasn’t losing focus by the end.
  • 6. Othello: It’s a great strategy game that I don’t think I started playing until college. I had some good matches against my roommates over those years. There’s definitely a winning strategy, but matched up against another equally skilled player makes for a fun match.
  • 5. Stratego: This is an underrated strategy game. It combines some of the fun elements of Battleship, Checkers, and Chess. I think this has fallen out of favor with younger people.
  • 4. Risk: I don’t seem to have skill in dice-rolling games, so I rarely win this board game. It was one that I played over and over in high school with friends, but I don’t feel like I ever mastered a strategy. I liked having the Australia monopoly, but sometimes you get trapped there.
  • 3. Monopoly: Knowing the history of the game (thanks, PBS!) as the Landlord Game makes me love the experience of playing it even more. I don’t love that they’ve felt the need to trick up the rules over the years. The only extra rule needed is the money you can win on Free Parking. It’s the rare long game that I don’t feel the need to speed up.
  • 2. Chess: Maybe it’s not #1 because I’ve never managed to progress very far in my skill level. I like watching it as much as playing it. I respect the levels of strategy and complex thinking involved to win.
  • 1. Scrabble: The ultimate word-building game is still undefeated for me in terms of excitement to play. No game is ever the same, and it’s the one game that I feel builds my vocabulary in real life.
    
    There are so many board games these days. My children have them, and they fascinate me in comparison to the enjoyment I got out of looking at the classics in the board game aisle at Toys ‘R’ Us. I didn’t include some of the newer ones because they don’t share the same memories for me. There are games that didn’t get consideration because they don’t have what I would consider a “board” – Mastermind, Connect Four, Boggle. There are games that I have loved but over the years have lost their enjoyment – Payday, Life, Stay Alive.

Buy Scrabble

1976 in Review

• May – Batman #275 (DC Comics): Cover by Ernie Chan. Written by David Vern Reed. Art by Ernie Chan. The Underworld Olympics are still happening. It’s a weird story where the challenge ends on a midnight ferry, but the ferry is closed for repairs. The criminals steal a million dollars from other criminals to donate to finish the ferry repairs so they can complete their crime that is stopped by Batman.
• May 10 – Paul Harvey started a daily radio series called The Rest of the Story. The Monday through Saturday segment consisted of little-known facts or stories that didn’t reveal the subject matter until the end of the story with a “And now you know the rest of the story.” It would last until 2008 when Paul Harvey passed away.
• May 22 – TV Guide The meteoric rise of Laverne & Shirley (ABC) was notable, even as a spin-off of the equally popular Happy Days (ABC). The female-led sitcom had debuted in January 1976 and by the end of May 1976, the first shortened season was over, and the show was often a strong #2 in the ratings behind Happy Days. The show’s early seasons revolved around the two always looking to establish their independence and seek a better life outside the brewery.

What the Hell Did I Put in My Mouth?

“Up on Cripple Creek, she sends me
If I spring a leak, she mends me
I don’t have to speak, she defends me
A drunkard’s dream if I ever did see one” – Robbie Robertson