Rant #2,169: Bits and Pieces

Welcome to another installment of Bits and Pieces, the Ranting and Raving Blog's off-again, on-again, semi-regular compendium of stories that may not deserve an entire entry, but certainly deserve some mention.

Let's see what Bits and Pieces has in store for us today.

Sarah Sanders Deprived of Service In a Restaurant: The other day, Sarah Sanders was denied service from a restaurant that she decided to eat in, and the reason given by the restaurant for this denial of service is that they objected to her boss--President Donald Trump--they objected to the Administration's stance on various issues, including LGBTQ rights--and heck, they just objected to her presence, period.

She had already ordered a couple of appetizers for her and her small entourage, and they were delivered to her table, but afterwards, she was called aside, told that she would not receive any further service, and she and her group left the restaurant.

Yes, this is America today, where we are coming to the point where you are going to need the proper papers simply to eat dinner outside your home.

The restaurant--the Red Hen in suburban Virginia--and its workers are just so proud of themselves, basking in the glory derived from their 15 minutes of fame.

Some are linking this with what happened a few months back, when a gay couple was denied a wedding cake by a local baker, who objected to their union due to their religious beliefs--a move which was recently OK'd by the courts.

I liken these actions to what happened in Nazi Germany, where you always had to have your papers in order--even if you were Aryan--to move around and to do much of anything.

Are we coming to this in this country, where either you are of the proper "background" to the particular shopkeeper, or you will be denied service and asked to leave?

Sure, these are minor political statements--not to be confused with the Starbucks disaster, which morphed into a clear, major political statement by the idiocy of Starbucks itself and the handling of this event--but they show that America is crumbling at the seams due to its own intolerance.

Me, I go by the almighty dollar, a plan which these establishments should also follow.

If you have the money to pay for whatever you want, you get what you want. You don't have the money, well, then, too bad.

Weaving politics into this is ridiculous, and while the Red Hen is basking in its own glory, reports are that other restaurants with the same name are feeling the backlash.

Many people mistakenly think that the Red Hen is a chain restaurant--which it clearly is not--since for some reason, there are many Red Hen restaurants operating around the country.

There are several in the New York Metropolitan Area, and they are losing business to this mess, with people thinking that the behavior of the Virginia Red Hen represents the beliefs of the "chain," one that actually does not exist.

So several Red Hen restaurants have experienced cancellations, and more importantly, have received death threats over the phone and via social media, and some have had to post notices that they have nothing to do with the Virginia Red Hen or its policies.

Of course, the Virginia Red Hen--which should be admonished by whatever local restaurant association they belong to, but probably won't face any retribution--is basking in its own glory right now.

But what they don't understand is that this is not America, this is not the American way, and they will suffer in the long run for their idiotic actions.

Are we going back to the time when some Americans couldn't get served in some places because of their racial and religious backgrounds?

Dan Ingram Passes: If you do not know who Dan Ingram was, well, I am sorry that you didn't know him. I will fill in the blanks for you, or at least try to, Keemosabe.

Ingram, during the 1960s and 1970s, was probably the No. 1 radio disk jockey in the world. He plied his trade on WABC, probably the most popular Top 40 station in the country at the time and the one certainly with perhaps the widest reach.

He took the role of DJ very seriously and he, along with a stable of local New York DJs including Harry Harrison and Bruce Morrow, molded the role of the disk jockey into an art form.

Ingram was the best of the bunch, touching listeners with his humor and his understanding that listening to the radio was not akin to performing brain surgery. People came to the radio for relaxation, to get away from the trials and tribulations of the day, and he played upon that, with regular listeners relying on him to deliver the goods--and the music--in his own, venerable style.

The DJs role was different back in the 1960s and 1970s than it is now, and Ingram was the ultimate salesman of the music and of WABC as the powerhouse Top-40 radio station that it was. He played off of the music, often changing the names of the songs to suit his humor, and listeners loved it all, and loved it for decades, and when he moved over to oldies WCBS-FM, he carried his audience with him lock, stock and barrel.

He also did many voiceovers for TV commercials, but Ingram was the consummate DJ, a part of our lives that we will probably never see, hear or experience again.

Ingram was 83 when he passed, and my suggestion is to look up his airchecks--they are plentiful on the Internet--and then you might understand, if you don't already, how talented this guy really was.

"Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" Found: This is just one of my personal news items, nothing earth shaking, but something fun to mention.

When "Mary Poppins" came out in fall 1964, it tickled the fancy of millions of young Baby Boomers, and it remains in our hearts as one of our favorite films of our collective childhood,

Many parents loved the film, too, and when the movie ended, they ran to their local record stores to buy the record album as a keepsake of this movie experience.

In 1964, in the midst of the British Invasion led by the Beatles, the biggest album hit of the year was led by another Brit--Julie Andrews--which not only rose to the top of the movie box office, but whose album hit No.1 and stayed there for 14 weeks, making it one of the most successful movie soundtracks of all time.

We all had the album, but does anybody remember that there was a 45 RPM single that was released from this soundtrack?

Yes, there was, and "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious"--featuring both Andrews and her co-star, Dick Van Dyke--backed with "A Spoonful of Sugar" was released a bit later than the LP, in late April 1965,to keep the momentum going for both the film and the LP, but with everyone buying the album, who needed the single?

It rose to No. 66 and fell without a trace.

Now in 2018, I was noodling around Ebay during lunch a few weeks back, and lo and behold, on a lark I looked the single up, and several people were selling their copies. I found the cheapest one--with a nice picture sleeve--and bought it, and it came in the mail just the other day.

This was a dream come true for me, as I remembered the single, but never actually owned it. My mother ran out and bought the LP all those years ago, but the single ... nope, I never had it until now.

It is one of my personal great finds, and I just wanted to tell everyone about it, because I am overjoyed that I finally found it.

It is not the rarity of this record that I am talking about, it's that I personally found this treasure that I had been looking for for decades.

So we end this installment of Bits and Pieces with a story that really means nothing to most people, but means everything to me.

As I warned you yesterday, June has been a super-busy month for me, and it continues tomorrow.

I won't be checking in with a Rant tomorrow, but I will be back here on Thursday all ready to start my engines again.

So, Keemosabe, I won't ever turn down anybody who wants to read the Ranting and Raving Blog, and expect another "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" Rant on Thursday.

In the meantime, take a "Spoonful of Sugar" and I will speak to you again on that day.