blast from past

I never really watched the Drew Carey Show, but I vaguely knew they had a theme song that name-checked a number of northeastern Ohio cities and landmarks.

I had never listened to the full thing through but it makes me both grin and laugh:



And Big Chuck and Little John! I remember them! I kind of gasped when I saw Little John, I had totally forgot about them until just now. (A lot of their humor would not be acceptable today - they poked fun at "certain ethnic" which in the Cleveland area usually meant Polish people). But it was that sort of goofy, local-tv stuff you seldom see any more.

Also....pink flamingos. (Yes, I still have mine). I knew they were a thing from my past.

"Parma style" was something people in my town sometimes sneered at slightly as tacky. (Parma was envisioned as the place where recent immigrants from Eastern Europe or the area around Greece wound up. I have no idea if there is any truth to that or not). Parma was seen as the place where people had pink flamingos in the yard, and "bathtub Madonnas" (statues of Mary that had a grotto over them that some people thought looked like a bathtub over her). And it was also the sort of place where those lady-in-the-rain lamps were popular. And there were many jokes about upholstered furniture with plastic covers over it, and those plastic carpet runner things (which my parents had, in fact).

So yeah, people in my town sneered at it. But you know? I bet I would have liked a lot of the Parma people just fine, and probably better than some of the snobs in my town. (And I still think the lady-in-the-rain lamps are kind of cool, even if I'd be afraid the oil that made the "rain" would make a mess).

Here's one of the tamer Big Chuck and Little John bits, where they prank weatherman Dick Goddard:



The canned laughter at the end is very, very typical of the show, they used that exact one at the end of every sketch.


Edited to add: LOTS AND LOTS of Cleveland nostalgia shirts (I am considering getting a Cleveland Force one. Yes, they're a defunct team, but I remember going to see them play).

I don't remember everything - of course not the bars or the in-Cleveland restaurants (we rarely got up there). But the stores - oh, the stores. Fazio's! and Higbees! and Lawson's Dairy Store! And Hough Bakery!

Oh, and Red Barn which was a kind-of-terrible (as I remember it) fast food chain, but still.

And Earl Scheib! They have an Earl-freaking-Scheib t-shirt, with Earl's face and the "I'll paint any car $29.95" (I remembered it as "any car, any color, $29.95....) I kind of want an Earl Scheib t-shirt too.