Episode 013: This Show's Niche, The Tarleton State Halftime Show, and "The Last Married Couple in America"

Today Frank welcomes everyone back to the show after brainstorming where to take its future.  He begins by talking about its niche, an important concept to set the show apart from others, yet a limiting one for his vision.   He contends that his niche is in talking about "obscure" topics that few are talking about and which typically have  a lot of nuance.

He goes in to an example from college football, which may be destined for trouble on the horizon.  Emphasizing that there are many subtopics under that to  discuss, he has observed fewer and fewer visiting bands doing halftime shows at Texas Tech (and elsewhere)--until this last game against Tarleton State.  It's a small thing for sure, but an important tradition on Saturdays that may be disappearing along with others.

Finally, Frank reviews The Last Married Couple in America, a time-specific comedy from 1980 about marriage and relationships.  It has a great title, song, and cast (including Priscilla Barnes).  He sees it as a fair movie with funny parts, but understands why fans and critics dislike it still today.

The Last Married Couple in America is available on Blu-Ray and DVD.

The theme song is called Retro Funk by SoulProdMusic and can be found at pixabay.com.

--The best way to contact is:
Twitter: @frankwebertx
Web:  frankwebertx.com
Email:  frankoweber@hotmail.com

Transcript

Frank: 0:41

Hello and welcome back to Frank Weber's Party. This is your host Frank Weber. So glad that you can make it today This is our first show after I guess a month since I recorded last time And I took that time off to try and figure out what would be better for this show And what would make it flow better and be better in terms of content for you Was lost in a lot of thought, you know, I As a single show, or a solo podcast, I guess you could say, I'm basically just talking to you. I'm basically bullshitting with you all the time. Because that's kind of what I do, I'm just bullshitting about various topics, and some of them are more important than others. But I do want it to be a big show, or a bigger show than it is, and so I had to think about what exactly I wanted to do, and what would be appealing to an audience. And it involved... A lot of possible things, suggestions and ideas that I'm planning on trying to get into and probably during the month of October. It's September 18th right now as I record this, but that includes, video podcasting, more social media. interaction and marketing, getting on other people's podcasts, and also doing more one on one interviews with guests on the show. But I wanted to get back into doing the show again. Haven't done one in a month and I don't want to get rusty and I don't want you to, to forget about the show. The main thing that I spent most of my time on during this, this off time was What is, what is this shows niche or niche? I'm not sure what the correct pronunciation is. I like niche better. It sounds a little bit more polished and kind of fancy, kind of like a French word. It probably is a French word. But a lot of the podcast experts will tell you, you need to have a niche topic that is very specific. Which I get, makes total sense to me because you want to stand out from the competition. You don't want to do something that everybody is doing. So I get that and my main podcast teacher, I've never met him or anything, but his name is Pat Flynn and he is kind of a podcasting and internet business expert. It seems like a really good guy. Very knowledgeable. I would equate him to being like sort of the Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey of course is a financial expert and I say that meaning you cannot go wrong with his advice, but his advice isn't necessarily right for everybody. And it's difficult for me as a person to kind of fit into any kind of one category and stick to it all the time. especially when you see podcasts out there like Joe Rogan or my favorite, you know, Adam Karola show, they have a genre. But they don't really have a niche from show to show. Adam's genre is comedy, of course, but he doesn't really have a niche. he doesn't fit into a box. I'm trying to say, and, a lot of his guests are comedians, but a lot of them are in other fields as well. So my niche, if I have to have one, I'm not still not sure that I really have one by the way, but. If I have to have one, it's discussing or bringing up, first of all, and discussing topics that a lot of people either can't or won't discuss. Because there's so, there's so many of those now in our current society. and a lot of them are pretty broad topics. but there's also a lot of little subtopics that would make good conversation starters. as well, and good topics to discuss here. These things tend to require a lot of critical thinking, and kind of nuance to them as well. I guess you could say, I find them to be very interesting, and I really wish a lot of people, I'm not trying to point fingers or anything, but people could, think about these things and discuss them a lot more openly in our society. We really need to get out there and talk and communicate with one another. Another word for this would probably be, you know, I had a professor in dental school who actually coined this and I'm going to use it here now, but I would call it a hairy chested topics. I'm going to try not to be too serious about them. I don't really want to get too much into politics or religion if I can avoid it. But a lot of these stories do come from news or sports, possibly entertainment. things that are generally just not talked about, but not necessarily taboo in any way. Although I guess we could, you know, have a taboo type of thing discussion here. My review of Priscilla Barnes works that she's been in, Outside of Three's Company, those are things that are generally not talked about too much. I mean, you could find a podcast or two on those, but that's why her reviews fit into my niche, along with these other topics that I'm going to discuss. these topics and subtopics will also include personal stories, and experiences that I've had. I'm going to try to elaborate on them to where, you know, I can talk for them, about them for about several minutes. And hopefully do it in a comedic way. I'm trying to make this lighthearted and funny. I've even thought about doing something called a, the pet peeve of the week. But occasionally those things don't have a lot of material. Let me give you an example here. So, whenever I go to Costco, usually with my wife, I love to go to the free food samples. And a pet peeve of mine is that if they're temporarily out and require some preparation and cooking, when I go by and they're not available, that's a pet peeve of mine. Not a real big deal, usually we're staying there long enough that they'll have some more in just a few minutes. So, but that's kind of a, the situation that I'm talking about here. just a regular pet peeve like that. That, I can elaborate on. that's gonna be the important part. Now the story that I wanted to share with you today, my wife and I, we go to all the Texas Tech home football games down the road in Lubbock, about an hour and a half south of Canyon here. And I mentioned a few weeks ago, concern about college football and the direction it's heading. I think it has a... business model that will eventually fail due to greed and consolidation and certain schools getting all the money and all the benefits of the ultimate competition and winning championships and what have you. A very broad topic with a lot of subtopics and I wanted to tell you today. the other night we just, we went to a game in Lubbock where they were playing, a small school in Texas, Stephenville, Texas, called Tarleton State and the Red Raiders won the game pretty easily, 41 to 3. It was, the game they would play every year that they should win on talent alone and usually win pretty big. the smaller school, which is actually at one level lower in college football, comes there even with an ass kicking because they get something like I think the going rate now is about 800, 000. to come to Lubbock and be in that game, which apparently will cover Tarleton State's athletic budget for probably the, the next year or so. And the NCAA allows it, it counts toward bowl games, so, so that's why people do that, that's why a lot of schools do that these days. I had started noticing last year, there's one tradition that seems to be kind of falling by the wayside, amongst some of the others, in fact, some that I mentioned on that, Take a few weeks ago, but, there's, there seems to be fewer and fewer teams. Sending their full band to the stadium and then having a halftime show on the field. Now, last year we had seven home games. four of those teams, I think it was UH, University of Houston, University of Texas. I want to say... Baylor maybe? My memory's kind of fuzzy. And then OU, University of Oklahoma. They all brought pet bands to the stadium, but they never did a halftime show. Was really surprised by that. Was really surprised that UT, didn't do that because they would always bring their full band and have a halftime show. But that's a big part of college football tradition, not just being able to have your school's music there and fire up the team, but to get down on the field and have a, maybe at most a 7 or 8 minute halftime show to entertain the fans. And to have both schools partaking in that, that seems to be falling by the wayside. However, this little school, Tarleton State from Stephenville, Texas, decided to bring their full band to the game. And they actually performed on our field for 4 or 5 minutes during a 20 minute halftime. And it was nice to see that. And I was kind of surprised that it would, come from them, that they would be the next one to grace us with a halftime show. And the reason this is important, and you may be thinking, like, why am I going on and on about this, you know, Frank, can you just move on to Priscilla's review or something right now? The reason that I'm talking about this is because years ago, not just being at the game, but if you watched a game on TV, like the old Southwest Conference, Raycom Game of the Week. The TV networks, including that one, would show a couple of minutes of each team's band at halftime. They wouldn't just automatically send it back to the studio for scores and highlights. But they would show you what is essentially the pageantry of college football. And now for some reason, a lot of teams aren't bringing their full bands anymore. I know some of that has to do with band budget. but I don't know if there's some other reason why it's happening as well now too. And so my hat's off to Tarleton state. I'm glad they did that. I was surprised that, like I said, a little school like that would be the first one in a while to bring their full band and have a halftime show. But I'm glad they did. I'm glad they're bucking the system. I tend to think the lower levels of college football and schools there may have it a little bit easier. They may not make as much money and they don't have as big... But they seem to have it a little bit easier in that regard than I think the big schools now, given all the circumstances that's going on. And I'll probably mention that again some, sometime later in a future podcast. But anyway, thank you, Tarleton State Texan band. And, and that was followed up, of course, by our Texas Tech alumni band. And then our current going band from Raider land. Very pleased to see all that. But I just wanted to share that with you. The halftime show seems to be disappearing. It doesn't happen at every single game. People need to think about this and be aware of this. It's part of one of those non monetary intangible benefits of watching college football. And I'd hate to see it go. That's all I'm going to say for that topic right there, and I'm going to take a quick break, and we're going to come back and talk about an interesting Priscilla Barnes movie, fairly early in her career again, called The Last Married Couple in America, which came out in 1980, and we'll be right back. Alright, well we're back. Before I get into the review of this movie here, The Last Married Couple in America, I just wanted to say real quick, the first two home games in Lubbock at, Jones AT& T Stadium, both Oregon and Tarleton State have had terrific fans and really enjoyed having them there. I just wanted to give a little shout out there. So now I'm gonna review another movie that Priscilla Barnes was in early in her career. called The Last Married Couple in America, whose slogan was the comedy that fools around a lot. It was filmed in 1979 but not released in theaters until February 8th, 1980. This is not a great movie. It's, it's hard to say if it's really a good movie or not, but I don't think it's a bad movie. I think you can kind of call it fair to Midland if you want to. And the reason for that is, there's a married couple, the main married couple, and there's actually a group of couples throughout the movie. the main married couple, which is George Segal, who plays Jeff Thompson, and his wife, Natalie Wood, who plays Mari Thompson. are the main couple in this movie, and they start seeing a lot of their couple friends separate, possibly get divorced. They are relatively happy, but they start wondering why all this is, is happening, and they kind of fall into some thought traps and they go through some difficulties as well before they all figure it out in the end. They discussed... Early in the movie before everybody split up the topic of marriage and whether it was still useful in Society at that time following the sexual revolution and people's desires to try other things and be with other people this was essentially at the end of the sexual revolution. in 1980, it was almost over. 1981, they discovered and named HIV and AIDS. And Natalie Wood, incidentally, was in a movie some years before this that I think I mentioned. In some context earlier called Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice that explored this topic as well. The reason that I don't think it was well received and didn't do well at the box office is because there was so much in your face about people separating and getting divorced and, instances of infidelity. And, unfortunately the main characters, Jeff Thompson and Mari Thompson both had affairs. In the movie, George Segal had an affair with one of Mari's friends called Barbara who was played by Valerie Harper. got gonorrhea from her and tried to hide it from Mari. And that's how Mari eventually found out when they were at the doctor's office. Mari began dating a younger man after they separated. but didn't quite divorce. Had an affair with him. And then George Segal, this character again, Jeff Thompson, had an affair with. Priscilla Barnes character, Helena Dryden and it was at that point that, uh, they both, he and Helena after they had done the deed at her house, the sex may have been good, but there was no desire there. There wasn't anything more than sex and, and then so Most of the couples that broke up or separated for a time, they eventually and somewhat magically get back together at the end of this flick. and then everything is all well and good again. So if you're squeamish and saddened by people breaking up and divorcing or adultery and infidelity, This isn't a good movie for you, but the movie isn't all bad. It makes you think about these topics and these issues that are coming up throughout the movie. And, it does have a happy ending. And it is a comedy with some funny scenes and funny characters that I'm going to get into here. I'm also going to note that the theme song was sung by Maureen McGovern. I didn't write down the title here, but I realized that she also sang the theme song to the original Poseidon Adventure, which was, There's Got to Be a Morning After, which, uh, even some of the characters, were seen partly in that movie. The movie was a time capsule for that period, not just because of late 70s, still some sexual revolution going on at the time, that was almost over, but also because of, clothing styles and housing styles. Uh, the Thompson's home had a lot of dark flatwood paneling all over the place, probably some shag carpet, totally something that you would not see now that's done by pretty much anybody. and of course I always find little factoids like that to be funny. Now let's go over some of the characters here. So I said, I said the main couple, is George Segal playing Jeff Thompson. Of course, George Segal, most recently, before he passed away in 2021, was the, the venerable and very likable, comical, popular grandfather pops in the series, the Goldbergs. He was a widower and quite a playboy, something that I guess a lot of Guys as they get older would really like to be, including this one right here. I hadn't seen too many of his movies really over the years. I had seen Roller Coaster, which is a, a film in 1977 disaster, a terrorist disaster, where somebody's bombing the roller coasters as they're in use and killing the passengers. that, I think that had a young, I believe it was Helen Hunt in that movie. And then he was also in a movie with, Denzel Washington, not too long after this movie called, Carbon Copy. I think that came out in 1981. And then you have, Natalie Wood, who was in a lot of different movies over the years, some of which were a little bit risque like Sex and the Single Girl. That was in a sixties movie and was in a movie with James Dean. I think it was It was a rebel without a cause or on the waterfront. I can't remember exactly, but. She, was married to Robert Wagner at the time. And she drowned, uh, I think it was Thanksgiving weekend in 81. So, not even two years after this movie came out. Very sad. Drowning. Robert Wagner, by the way, of course, is still with us. I don't know if... We all know that or not. He's 93 and about a year older than William Shatner. then you have, Richard Benjamin who was in a number of movies and shows for a while, became a pretty good director. He plays Marv who is Jeff's best friend. He's getting divorced. And this movie is, is actually kind of inclusive for the time. If you want to be. kind of politically correct and even woke, which I'm not, but He at one point is dating an Asian woman and kind of double dates Technically with Jeff brings along another Asian woman. There's also a gay couple male couple here In this movie that breaks up, so interesting for the time. I would say Valerie Harper plays Barbara, who is a friend of Mari's and we see her early in the movie. She and Mari have a lunch together and tells Mari that she's dating a younger man. It's wonderful and telling her about these crazy surgeries that she's been getting. And of course, Jeff has an affair with her and gets gonorrhea as a result, but no HIV and AIDS, of course, were known yet. Valerie Harper, of course, at the time was best known for her Role on the Mary Tyler Moore show. I think that was was her name Rhoda or something I can't remember then there's Bob Dishy who plays Howard. He's a divorce attorney So he's kind of on the prowl in this movie not just for business But he apparently has a I guess you could say a special way of comforting women who are going to go through divorce Obviously talking about a sexual way Also in this movie you have And a pretty funny character, always funny character. I don't know if people really know how great a comedic actor he was. Dom DeLuise is in this movie. Plays a character named Walter, who Jeff knows from a little while back. He's apparently a plumber, since they live in Southern California. This is Hollywood area. He's also trying to be an actor. And, has had trouble getting regular acting gigs, so he's actually in the porn industry. That would be very weird to think of Dom DeLuise trying to be in the porn industry. probably a little bit gross too, for sure. But he's also been divorced three times and he's found a wife and a hooker who is still actively working. So, the idea of, Hooker's having relationships and still actively working. It wasn't just for Priscilla's Vegas episode that came out later this year in 1980. And then Priscilla Barnes, of course, plays Helena Dryden. She's married to a guy named Max Dryden, the actor of which I don't have written down here, and I don't really, wasn't really a big actor, but, She, is kind of the very youthful, kind of vivacious, wife in this movie, of all the couples, She doesn't have a lot of lines or, or anything, but she does play a big role in it because, Jeff has an affair with her one night at her house, and she's sitting under the covers naked while he's wearing a big pink robe of hers, watching the rain fall outside, and she's mostly covered up except for one scene. The breasts and the nipples kind of poke through. but then the very next time you see her, that's pulled up again. So, I'm not really sure what happened on that shot, but that one shot, they gave us a little bit of an eyeful. and so some other people of note there, you have, Catherine Hickland, who's very young in this show. She was a late date of Jeff's that he brought to this party at the end of the, The movie, I'm trying to remember whose birthday it was they were celebrating. Maybe Mari's, I'm not exactly sure. But it was at his, or theirs, their house with all the wood and flat wood paneling, dark flat wood paneling. she, would marry David Hasselhoff in a few years and appeared in several Knight Rider episodes. finally we had, Sandra Curry. she, was a redhead that appeared three times as guest star on three's company. really beautiful. she, at the end of this movie is married to basically a swinger and somebody who has an open marriage. They were trying to get both Jeff and Mari, who had not quite yet reconciled, to participate in group sex and swinging with them. And, the husband has Laney stripped down naked. only her breasts were really visible. She used her hands over her, her genitalia. But at that moment, it kind of solidified for Jeff and Mari that this is all pretty stupid and ridiculous and we have a pretty good life as a married couple. And they also had two kids. in fact, that swinging couple, it sounds like they got divorced and, Bob Dishy's character as the divorce attorney, tried to get their business and stuff at the end. So, anyway, like I said, it's a fair movie. If you can stomach certain things. I know a lot of people can't stomach them. They couldn't. Really do it back in the day. There was a lot more traditionalism in 1980. I would say then there is now, but we still have a lot of traditional people who believe in the power of love and marriage. I do, of course. but it is kind of funny and I think it is worth a look. I'm going to give the overall grade for the movie, I'm going to give it about a C. So like I said, pretty fair. Priscilla's appearance in it though, I'm going to give an A 2. And, I believe that's about everything that I have for this show. obviously, like always, I'm going to give a call to action. You know, please hit subscribe and tell your friends and family about... Especially if you enjoy this show, enjoy this content. I'm working on making it, funnier and, producing the best content that I possibly can here. it would mean a lot to me if you did that, and I'm gonna try also in various ways to reach out to you, and as, fans and friends of mine, there's not a podcast if you, number one, can't make good content. I mean which I feel like I'm doing here and number two Need to have good Back and forth with fans. I really desire that and really appreciate that from you So until next time this is Frank Weber signing off for Frank Weber's party The theme song is called retro funk by soul prod music and can be found at pixabay. com