I awoke this morning in a great mood. Went out with a great lady last night and had fun. Things with Brian, my new associate, are going well. Everyone’s healthy….

Then I looked at the computer and uncontrollable tears ran down my cheeks, and I felt like I’d crashed and was in flames. Soupy Sales died yesterday.

Soupy was my first real idol. When I was a “tween” I had lunch with Soupy, Whitefang, Blacktooth, Pookie, Marilyn, The Unseen Neighbour, and the rest of the lunatics nearly every day. Little of the food made it to my stomach, as it’s impossible to swallow, and keep from “spraying”, when you’re guffawing. Yes, guffawing, because you didn’t simply laugh with Soupy, you howled.

Thanks to my liberal parents, by the age of 12 I was already forming my political ideology, but I knew little about true Anarchy. Soupy taught me, and the lessons I learned from him, albeit unintentionally, have shaped my entire life. He taught me there’s nothing so serious you can’t look at it - hell, dissect it - with humor. And the humor made the lesson stick. Genius.

Yes, Soupy was a genius. One need only look at the New Years Day, 1965 “incident” to get that. Television was a teenager, and still in its formative stages then, and Nielsen’s ratings system only beginning, when Soupy got suspended for telling his audience of kids to “sneak quietly in daddy and mommy’s room, (they’re sleeping off last night), and go in their purses and wallets, and grab all those green-paper pictures of old men in beards and send them to me here at WNEW…”.

Reports are he got $80,000 dollars (which was all returned)!!!! He also got suspended, with Metromedia’s aim being to cancel him for totally fucking with FCC regulations. Within 5 days, though, the station had received 50,000+ calls and letters and he was back on the air with an unrepentant vengeance. He started the first show back with the entire troupe dancing to the strains of “Happy Days Are Here Again”, the glint in his eye brighter than ever. He’d clearly proven the power of the medium, something that no other entertainment show had ever done. Genius.

At the height of the Beatles popularity, Soupy had a number one hit with “The Mouse”, another stroke of genius. If you’ve never seen or heard it, do a YouTube search for it. You won’t regret it, and you will learn something about the man who changed children’s television forever. Soupy knew what worked.

He was the king of the “what can we get away with?” double entendre. My favorite was, “I took my girlfriend to a baseball game. I kissed her on the strikes, she kissed me on the balls”. It got past the censors. I was watching that day, and at 14, understood it on the grown-up level. I nearly died gasping for breath. His references to Banana Cream Pie were legendary.

His cast of characters, in front of and behind the cameras, were phenomenal, and always, somehow, in on the joke. He broke the “fourth wall” before that term entered the general lexicon, and he did it daily. And his guests…oh, his guests…from Dizzy Gillespie to Sammy Davis Jr, educated an entire generation in the ways of Jazz, the music AND the lifestyle. In later life interviews he said he always looked at doing the show as a “jazz gig”; loose as a goose but completely connected. He was spot on. And his musical legacy was clear in his sons, Tony and Hunt, who have played with everyone from David Bowie to Iggy Pop.

But the moment that he says (and I’d agree) brought him that elusive adult audience he’d always played to anyway was this: One day his booker received a call from Frank Sinatra, who in the ‘60s was at his pinnacle. Evidently, daughter Nancy had turned Frank onto the show and Frank BEGGED to be on, with only one condition; he had to get a pie in the face, by then Soupy’s trademark. Not only was it one of Soupy’s finest, funniest moments, but it opened the floodgates to huge performers of the day also begging to be on, and being hit in the face with shaving cream pies.

It was a defining moment for children’s television that everything from "Pee-Wee’s Playhouse" to Seth Green’s “Robot Chicken” owe a huge debt of gratitude to, as they wouldn’t exist without Soupy Sales having broken that ground.

Rest In Peace, Soupy. And I hope you brought at least one big pie with you, because God’s been waiting his turn for a loooong time.