40-05-15 Vic's Picture Totally Mislabeled

STARRING: ART VAN HARVEY, BERNARDINE FLYNN AND BILL IDELSON 

Vic's Kitchenware Dealer's Quarterly has come and he knows his picture and a long, biographical sketch will be printed. However, thanks to the utter sloppiness of the editors of the magazine, the photo of Vic really isn't Vic at all.

MIS' CROWE SAYS:
The Kitchenware Dealers’ Quarterly completely misrepresents Vic.

click to enlarge

If Vic would only lighten up and have a sense of humor about this, if he would embrace his new image before the wisecracking crowd, he’d come off much more gracefully. You know Vic’s coworkers are only doing this because they know how much this editorial snafu is going to upset him. Vic’s image is everything to him, and even if most of the magazine’s readership will never meet Vic, this is a severe blow. It’s interesting how easily Vic is able to ignore his wife and son’s merriment at his predicament this time — maybe such domestic mirth seems trivial in the face of the embarrassment he feels in front of his colleagues. Although Sade and Rush laugh at the image, they’re unusually sensitive and sympathetic toward Vic here. Even smart-aleck Rush is tiptoeing around him toward the end.

This episode contains the first (surviving audio) mention of the mysterious Midwestern delicacy, beef punkles. I’ve always thought that beef punkles, whatever they are, sound delicious. I am not sure why this is. I’m not fond of beef and, in fact, haven’t eaten it regularly since I was a child. We know that beef punkles take a long time to “get tender” (four hours, in fact), which makes me think they come from either a very tough, stringy old cow or from some part of the cow we don’t normally eat (the word sounds like ''knuckles''). Depression-era Midwestern cuisine, in general, is not what you’d call ''delicious'' (is anything delicious after you boil it for four hours?). All evidence suggests that beef punkles are probably terrible. Still, I have an urge to try a beef punkle. Leave it to Paul Rhymer to put together a bunch of nonsense phonemes that sound delicious.

SEE THE SCRIPT (transcribed by Lydia Crowe)

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This is the first of many episodes where both the Kitchenware Dealer's Quarterly and the lodge quarterly will absolutely butcher Vic's photo and/or biographical sketch.  Personally, I think it's one of the funniest running jokes in the series - and this is one of the funnier episodes.  (For some reason, it's always fun to laugh at Vic's woes!)

Vic is a proud man and lousing up his photo is no joke to him (although funny to his family and us listening at home.)   It's just Paul Rhymer's way of keeping Vic down a bit.

Trivia:

+ This is the first surviving episode that mentions beef punkles. They aren't done and Vic always makes a bit of fuss when he comes home noon and the meat's not done.

+ We find out that Mr. Chestbutter's first name is 'Steve.'

+ The biographical sketch of Vic lists him as living in Grovelman, South Carolina and that he is about to go swimming in the Pacific Ocean. (See graphic up top.)

+ Vic had planned on ordering a dozen copies of the Quarterly and sending them to friends and relatives

+ Ike Kneesuffer, Mr. Ruebush and Stan Turpin all call Vic and talk about his picture in the Quarterly.  This is the first time Stan Turpin has been mentioned.

Vic gets a phone call from Ike Kneesuffer: {{{HEAR}}}

+ Mr. Ruebush, Vic's boss at the plant, calls and says he recognizes the man in the photo as Chalmers Zest Hadee, who works in the Boxing Department of Consolidated Kitchenware Plant Number 8, Shockersly, Oregon.

What does Vic think of the Quarterly?: {{{HEAR}}}

Just a bit upset... (((HEAR)))

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