STARRING: ART VAN HARVEY, BERNARDINE FLYNN, BILL IDELSON AND CLARENCE HARTZELL
Confused Jimmy Custard, the town's calistoker, comes to visit the Gooks and take statistics just as they are about to leave the house. Sade's patience finally runs out (ish!) and they leave the disoriented statistician to Uncle Fletcher as they depart.
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There's an interesting book online called, Tales from the City Calistoker; in it's very first paragraph in chapter one and in many more after that, it refers to Jimmy Custard but not in a Paul Rhymer or Vic and Sade way. What I get is that either Rhymer used the name "Jimmy Custard" in his plays as a joke about calistokers or calistokers became known as "Jimmy Custards" after Vic and Sade. And I really don't know which one is true - but I suspect one or the other must be true.
Unfortunately, not much else can be found on the internet concerning the subject but I do find it most interesting.
At any rate, the Jimmy Custard in this episode is far crazier than Uncle Fletcher and when the two are compared, you realize that Fletcher isn't crazy at all.
Trivia:
+ The episode begins with Rush reading from a Third Lieutenant Stanley novel. Of course, he's being harassed by six counterfeiters.
+ The Gooks destination is the Stembottom home; we can assume they are going to play "500."
+ Sade notices that Mis' Donahue has now put up a curtain and a light in her attic and vows to ask her "what's going on?" Recall the earlier episode where Mis' Harris was alerted to strange activitity in the Donahue attic.
+ Someone calls the house for Fat Jackson and accuses Sade of being "Adeline."
+ When Jimmy Custard arrives, the Gooks and Uncle Fletcher are all in the living room; Custard simply walks in without knocking.
+ Custard confuses Rush with "Mr. Gook" on two occasions.
+ Custard is wearing another person's hat as there was a mix-up at the Bijou between a man and a woman and himself. Each got the wrong hat.
+ Earlier in the day, Mis' Harris refused to allow Custard entrance into her home because she didn't believe who he was.
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THANK YOU! I have been trying to find out what a calistoker was for a while now, though I couldn't figure out how it was spelled. Callestaulker was my best guess, and an internet search turned up nothing. Glad to see this other book, which from the reviews might seem to be just as silly as Vic & Sade.
ReplyDeleteI find a lot of the characters in these later episodes to be very unfunny. Of course one of the brilliant things in the rest of VIc & Sade was having to only imagine the wackos that lived in that world, through the main characters dialogue, so actually getting to hear them is a bit of a letdown. Often I find that their performances feel too cliche (Orville Wheeney especially annoys me- too much like Disney's Goofy or Mortimer Snerd or a million other characters of that era). Jimmy Custard however, is pretty funny though. I find his voice amusing and love the gag with his iron bound notebook, and how it's falling to the floor is telegraphed each time. I also love how he keeps referring to Sade, or anyone else as Mrs. Emmerson. Do you happen to know the actors name who played Jimmy? I believe it was the same actor who played Orville Wheeny and Mr. Sprawl. Could he perhaps be the author of the Tales from the City Calistoker's Book?
Hi Eric, so good to hear from you! I am hoping that someday soon you will draw up some more Vic and Sade characters. I'd love to see your renditions of Rush and Russell, especially. Almost every day I wonder if it's the day that you draw up some sketches and email me and let me use to pretty up my sites!
ReplyDeleteAs far as Jimmy Custard and "series 2," I kind of lucked out on finding the book I referenced. Who knows if it was inspired by Vic and Sade or vice versa?
I am not crazy about "series 2" either but it's not as bad as I had imagined (this is my first tour through series 2.) At least Rush is back.
Always good to hear from you and your thoughts because I know you, like me, love Vic and Sade.