Thursday, October 22, 2009

R.I.P. Milton Supman

A.K.A. Soupy Sales...I don’t really remember the crazy “Soupy Sales Show” he did in New York, where he once got in trouble for asking children to mail him the pieces of green paper in their mother’s purses with the president’s pictures on them, whose wacky antics probably inspired the future Peewee Herman. I remember him mostly from my childhood as a funny regular on “What’s My Line?”—later as the father of Hunt and Tony, who with Reeves Gabrels...oh, and this guy David Bowie, were the band Tin Machine.

(A band I’ve always loved, despite much negative nattering from many a devoted Bowie fan. It was Bowie being a guy fronting a band, not “being Bowie”—I think he relished it...but I digress)

Sales was a funny man. A man who could take a pie in the face and still retain his dignity. Not a lot of pie-in-the-face men today. Not an awful lot of dignity either.

Goodnight Soupy, we’ll miss you more than we know.