Cyrille Aimée joins Scott Ryan for a discussion about her Grammy nominated new Album: Move On- A Sondheim Adventure. Cyrille is a French Jazz singer who had never heard a Stephen Sondheim song before a few years ago. Now she is playing clubs in New York with Sondheim in the front row… Scott Ryan 2 rows behind him. If you haven’t heard of her yet, be ready to get a new obsession. Listen in for a great talk and some wonderful music.
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Josh & Scott count down the top 25 TV shows of the decade (2010-2020). We picked the shows that spoke to us and reflected the decade. We realized after we were done we forgot The Good Place. Oops. The list is always changing. Enjoy the list here:
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I have often been told, (well, made fun of,) that I am guilty of livingfor the Massillon Tigers High School football team. I don’t live for them. I am alive because of them. And I’m just one Tiger fan among thousands. Massillon, Ohio is where football was born—me, too. The Massillon Tigers and the McKinley Bulldogs have the oldest rivalry in the country. They were the first 2 pro teams created and have now morphed into high school teams. They have played 130 times since 1894. (That isn’t a typo, I meant the actual 1800s.) I am a Massillon fan. McKinley is my sworn enemy. I don’t wear Red and Black ever, and I hardly even wear red at all. I wear, and bleed, Orange and Black only.
In 48 hours, the Massillon Tigers will have the chance to do something they have never done in their storied history. They can win a state championship on the football field. They have won 24 newspaper titles back in the days when sports writers picked the winning teams. The time before 1970. The time before me.
This Thursday, December 5th, they will play Cincinnati Lasalle in the Division 2 state championship game. This will be their 5th attempt to win at states on the field in the last 49 years. I have been at 4 of the 5 attempts. All have ended in losses. But this time…
I have been going to the games since as far as I can remember. My dad, mom, brother and I went and sat in Section 14, Row S, Seats 1-4. That started for me in the late 70s. My parents had those seats years before that. In the 80s, my brother stopped going and my first wife went with us. In the 90s, a McKinley fan sat behind us and started a fight with the people next to us. My mom never went to another game again.
A Massillon McKinley game in the late 90s. With my Dad and my friend.
When I had twins in the late 90s, my first wife stopped going and just my dad and I went. Once a year, we brought the twins for the first half and my wife took them home. In the late 2000s, my dad and I took both twins until just my son came with us. When I got divorced it was just dad and son till 2008 when my dad died. My son and I went together for a few years until my second wife started to come with us. We drive from Columbus every week. A 4-hour, round-trip drive back to my hometown to see the Tigers. We had to get extra seats so we could bring her kids too. That lasted 4 years until all the kids graduated from school, and then it was just my second wife and I. That has lasted up till 2019—this year. This year the Tigers have gone undefeated and earned a spot in the state championship game. This time?
My wife and I at a rainy game last year.
I have asked my grown son to come back from Chicago to go to the game with us. My wife, my son and I will go—and watch—and see—if for the first time since I was on the planet they can win a state championship. For 49 years, I have ended each year experiencing a loss. Basically, 50 years of learning to deal with loss and then picking up and starting over with hope for another year. 49 years of starting over—and cheering—and supporting—and sitting in the same seat that my father sat in.
This year, we could end with a win. The town could win. The team could win. I could win. I would have to learn to live with being on the winning side. That will be something new.
I don’t live for the Tigers. I live because of them. When you grow up with something in your family since your birth, you don’t often discuss it with your family. The fact that I am at the games every Friday night is not something worth talking about with my mom. There is nowhere else I would be. In talking to her about the upcoming game, I learned a family fact that I never knew. In 1967, my dad placed a bet on the Massillon-McKinley game. The Tigers won 20-15. He took the money and bought an engagement ring. He asked my mom to marry him and she said, “Yes.” A year later my brother was born. 3 years later Massillon won their final “paper” state championship, and I was born. It’s been 49 years since then. Thursday is waiting. Massillon is waiting. Maybe somewhere my dad is waiting. My son, my wife and I will be there waiting. Believing. Cheering. Hoping. Supporting. Win or Lose, I know where I will be next year. Where I have always been: Section 14. Row S. Seats 1-4. Go Tigers.
Lodge 49 is the best show on TV and for some reason it is in danger of being cancelled. We won’t let that happen. Scott Ryan & Josh Minton ask the cast of Lodge 49 about their characters, the series and how to save the show. The Red Room Podcast welcomes actors Kenneth Welsh (Larry), Eric Allan Kramer (Scott) and Linda Emond (Connie) to the show. You can listen here, or head out to iTunes and down the podcast.
Scott Ryan interviews Alexandra Jacobs about her new biography,The Madcap, Nervy, Singular Life of Elaine Stritch.
They discuss Elaine Stritch’s career which included Company, 30 Rock, Follies in Concert and just about a million other film, television and theater projects. Alexandra explains how she got the idea for the book and all the people she interviewed. (Scott doesn’t even get jealous when she says she interviewed Sondheim….or does he?)
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Brad Dukes returns to the Red Room to talk about his article in Issue #12 of The Blue Rose Magazine. Brad writes a critical essay about David Lynch & Mark Frost’s Season 3 of Twin Peaks. Brad, who wrote Reflections: An Oral History of Twin Peaks, was a huge fan for 25 years … then Season 3 happened.
Scott Ryan (The Blue Rose, Last Days of Letterman) talks with Brad Dukes (Reflections, China Beach) about the upcoming article, the passing of Robert Forster (who Brad interviewed in 2016) and his overall feelings for Twin Peaks. Brad says, “Michael Ontkean is infinitely cooler for NOT doing Season 3.” Listen to more here or got out iTunes and download.
The Women of Amy Sherman-Palladino: Gilmore Girls, Bunheads, Mrs. Maisel contains 14 essays by 14 different writers. They cover the female characters from the above mentioned series. You can now listen to writer Scott Ryan read his opening essay: An introduction: 3 Pilots + 1 Funny Girl = Multitudes of Amy’s. Click the play button below to hear the opener. You can order the book now.
July 19-21, Sheryl Lee and Ray Wise came to Columbus, Ohio to attend 4 showings of Fire Walk With Me. Scott Ryan from The Blue Rose magazine was at all four showings and is here to tell you all about it. Josh Minton from Red Room and Skeleton Key was there as well. So Scott & Josh discuss the event.
Then Scott talks with Xan Sprouse from Ghostwood Podcast and Megan Long, a new Twin Peaks fan with an unpopular opinion, and Mike McGraner who planned the entire event. This is the longest podcast we have ever done, sorry about all that.
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On Episode 168 of The Red Room Podcast, Scott Ryan welcomes author and Lynch scholar Martha P. Nochimson. She has a new book coming out called Television rewired: The Rise of The Auteur Series. This book covers many of the series that has changed TV over the past 20 years: The Sopranos, X-Files, Mad Men, The Wire, Girls and Twin Peaks. Being the Red Room, we focus on Lynch and Twin Peaks. Listen to this deep dive into Season 3 and the original series. Nochimson lays out all the threads in Season 3 and ties them together as well as anyone has. This is the book that Twin Peaks fans have been waiting for.
The conversation around this podcast dinner table is lively. Click play to listen to the podcast or head out to iTunes:
I don’t know what you do with your friends, but I argue about arcane Twin Peaks history with mine. Yes, I know everyone is wondering about “How’s Annie?” or “What year is this?” or “Who’s the dreamer?” Those answers are easy: Dead, 2014 and Cooper. The harder questions are the ones that we need our memories to answer. The most recent one (so that makes it the most important one) is what day was The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes released?
The internet doesn’t really help on this one. There are websites that say May 1991 or April 1991. Wrapped In Plastic magazine has an article about it in Issue #23, and they list it as April, but no date.
One of The Blue Rose’s Twitter followers said the book came out on May 1st (which was a Wednesday) but Twin Peaks wasn’t airing in May. It was on ANOTHER hiatus. (What was ABC going to do, play the amazing Episode 29 during a sweeps month? Never. Why would they want to air one of the most artistic hours of television ever during sweeps? If they had scheduled Season 3, they would have played Part 8 at 2 AM on a Wednesday. Some grudges I’ll keep for life.)
I want to know the exact date. We know the book had to be released on a Tuesday because that is when books were released back in 1991. So when did it get released?
The month of May just doesn’t feel right to me because I have a memory of reading it while Twin Peaks was airing. I remember specifically thinking because I had read the book, I was more afraid of Windom Earle in those episodes. (But I also have to admit that I could have had this thought when I saw Episode 29, [which aired in June] when we saw Caroline and Cooper laying on the floor together. That scene is directly from the book. {Ok, now I just had a new thought. Does this mean Lynch acknowledged the book? He staged it like it was written in the My Life, My Tapes. Man, he’s changed over the years. If he did that scene today, he would have Caroline be strangled by a rope and say, “I don’t care what was in the Cooper book.” We have fun, don’t we?})
That was when I remembered something very specific. I pictured an article from The USA Today written by TV Critic and Twin Peaks supporter Matt Roush. I was pretty sure that there was a review of the book alongside a picture of Cooper playing chess. But that was in the newspaper in 1991. How could I check that? I would have had to have saved that paper for 28 years and know exactly where I kept it to prove that. Good thing I am a crazy man because I have still have it. (Pictured below)
This article was printed the day Episode 24 aired. (I’ll be damned if I ever use the word titles for the episodes.) Roush has several articles about the return of the show after its six week hiatus. It has a review of Episode 24, a recap of what is going on with the plot of the show, and a review of My Life, My Tapes.
So this article proves that May is not a viable release date. No newspaper would print a review for a book in March that comes out in May. Plus, in the article Roush writes: This “autobiography,” in stores next week, (emphasis added) is by Peaks co-creator Mark Frost’s brother, Scott.” Knowing books comes out on Tuesdays, I submit that the book was released (in the United States) on April 2, 1991. This would jive with my memory that I was reading it while episodes aired. Episodes 25-27 aired for the first 3 weeks in April before ABC pulled the series till June.
I am going on record as mystery solved. (Hey, is this the first mystery ever solved in Twin Peaks? I guess Cooper did actually figure out Josie shot him, but come on, he never really got a handle on her confession. [I love telling Twin Peaks jokes.])
My question for you is can anyone out there prove me wrong? Come on, this is your favorite thing to do, internet. I am asking you to say I am wrong. It is your chance to get me. Ready. Set. Go!
