Coast to Coast AM Election Night

Today is Election Day, the beginning or the end of a dark age, depending on who you want to win. I'll stay away from the election and politics and direct my anger at a more convenient, and for regular readers, a more familiar target. I'm talking about George Noory, the current host of Coast to Coast AM.

I've taken aim at George before, for his ruining one of my favorite radio programs and for his complete lack of interviewing style. You can read about that here, here, and here. I've got yet another bone to pick with old George.

Tonight, Election Night, George has extended Coast to Coast AM another hour for election coverage. Election coverage. It's almost as if George has no idea what the show he's hosted for over a decade is supposed to be about. Coast to Coast is a show about the paranormal. I can hear the news, or the election on every station on the dial. I tune into Coast for something special, something specific. Unless we're electing a reptilian alien, and I'm pretty sure we're not, despite what you've heard, that's not in Coast's wheelhouse.

This is one week after a catastrophic Ghost to Ghost show. Coming once a year, a decades long tradition on Coast, this is a night-long show where callers phone in and tell ghost stories, and it rocks... until recently. The last few years George has cut it down by hours. Last week we barely got an hour and a half. That's what we waited a year for?? Why couldn't the Ghost to Ghost show have been extended???

Ghosts and the paranormal are what the show's about. It even says so on their website, nothing but news about UFOs and ghosts and Bigfoot. Or is the website too hard for someone who needs to have Uber and Instagram explained to him? It's not like George's interviewing skills could be improved (well, actually they could, a little research beforehand, not napping while a guest talks, and maybe a follow-up question once in a while...), but you could give us more ghosts and less election!

It's November, we are all sick of politics, but most of us who love Coast to Coast AM are tuning in for the paranormal. So if you're listening tonight, and can actually get through the call screeners, ask George when the real Coast to Coast AM is coming back. If we can't get the leader we want, at least give us the radio we want!

Quisp

Finally my local Shop-Rite has decided to stock Quisp cereal. This is kinda cool, rather than drive a couple miles away to the Acme, or ordering through the mail, we can get Quisp almost any time we want. For a long time, that wasn't really possible. Quisp was among the missing.

Quisp was my favorite cereal when I was a kid way way back when. Way before Frosted Flakes and Rice Krispies, I loved me some Quisp. The cereal was what I would munch while watching the Saturday morning cartoons and beg for in the supermarket because it had a toy inside. I have a distinct memory of my big sister building the toy flying saucer from inside the box. That's right, a toy so complex it had to be put together. She even attached a thread to it so it would appear to fly on its own.

Yeah, we're talking about real cereal, it's even made mostly of corn and sugar, in the shape of little flying saucers. It even took its name from the little alien who was the cereal's mascot, who was featured in a series of animated commercials during Saturday mornings, by Jay Ward, who also did "Rocky and Bullwinkle." Can you get more retro than that?

On Saturday mornings back in the day, the commercials were a little longer, not thirty-second buy-me blasts, but sometimes multi-minute-to-be-continued-on-a-later-break stories. The ads for the original G.I. Joe Adventure Team were like that, and so were the adventures of Quisp and Quake.



While Quisp was a little alien dude, Quake, his default friend and active rival was a big burly miner (later a superhero-like swashbuckler), and they would argue, fight, and compete over whose cereal was better. Ironically, they tasted the same, but had different shapes, Quisp in the shape of tiny bowl-like flying saucers, and Quake was, I think, big rock-shaped cereal. I really couldn't say, I always got Quisp.


I remember vividly in 1972 when an election took place where you could vote for your favorite of the two cereals. A nation of kids, wrapped up in the same type of election fever that gripped their adult counterparts, voted for Quisp as the chosen one. Quake won. As his punishment, besides dealing with Quisp's gloating, Quake became the sidekick to Simon the Quangeroo, who got his own cereal, albeit an orange flavored version.


When another election, one I don't actually recall, was held in 1976, Quisp won again and Quangeroos were vanquished, ahem, I mean discontinued. The ironic thing is shortly thereafter, all three cereals seemed to vanish from not only television screens, but also store shelves.

Quisp returned in the 1980s briefly and then again in the 1990s as available online only, before coming to select stores. I'm glad it's now available closer to home, and I'm sure we'll be getting it more often.