“So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure, how amazingly unlikely is your birth. And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space, ‘cause there’s bugger-all down here on Earth!” From The Galaxy Song, written by Eric Idle.

You probably are aware that I do a weekly Pop Culture SquadCast with my good pal and treasured co-conspirator Bob Harrison, but if you have yet to hit cult status with us, be advised that we do the SquadCast live for two hours most every Tuesday and on occasional Thursdays, from 8:00 to 10:00 PM Eastern. It’s on all sorts of places like our YouTube channel, and you can see on the ad Bob puts together for each show. Most places are streaming it after the live show.

To finish the deep background portion of this week’s epistle, more commonly referred to as a “plug,” roughly the first 20 to 30 minutes are spent with the two of us waxing poetic on the big-ass comics topics of the moment (hey, we are live!) as well as some breathtaking jibber about cool new titles. Then we move on to our guest, sometimes two, and we… actually have a conversation! We tend to avoid those people we’d just want to bitch at, which is why President Felon has not been asked to appear.

We love comics, and we do what overall is an extremely positive show, occasional political asides aside. “I yam what I yam”. And, quite frankly, I yam proud of our show’s positivity.

But that’s not why I’m writing about the SquadCast. Shockingly, I’m writing about me. I promise to explain what all this has to do with fast-food chicken and the yellow Batmobile.

Bob produces the SquadCast. This is an amazing and wondrous experience for me. Other than guest appearances, I don’t think I’ve had a broadcast producer in a half-century. I have been a fool. Letting somebody creative and persistent do the heavy lifting is something that should have occurred to me long ago, but editors are paid to be control freaks. It’s part of the job, and I don’t do it when I’m off the clock. So Bob’s indefatigable efforts allow me a freedom I haven’t had in front of the microphone (and camera) since I was almost a child. I find myself with an attitude and an enthusiasm that is like, well, all tough sailors do when they’re far away at sea. They fly tits to the wind.

For example… there used to be a less-than-spectacular fast-food franchise called Chicken Delight. It was started back in 1952 by some of my Illinois homies, and it grew to become the biggest fast-food company on the continent. In 1958, Chicken Delight was bought out by a group of Winnipeg business folks, and other franchises such as Kentucky Fried Chicken and Popeyes have been eating Delight’s lunch ever since.

However, in the late 1960s they still had a lot of outlets, particularly in their original Illinois territory. They sponsored a talk show on a Chicago UHF channel that was powered by three Eveready triple-A batteries. It was MC’ed by jazz radio host Marty Faye, who was better known for having done thousands of live television commercials on all the local channels. Chicken Delight made sure Faye gave his guests a free box of chicken.

All of his guests received a box of Chicken Delight… including Frank Sinatra, who accepted the offering from Faye as though he were given a plate of hot steaming shit. Marty seemed apologetic, although he might have just been pleading for his life.

A few years later, I was sitting at a Chicken Delight having a lunch meeting with the owner of a local FM radio station. He was offering me a job, and I was polite enough to share a meal that Frank Sinatra would never have dreamt of consuming. Mr. Owner paid the tab.

That show was the first I ever produced entirely on my own. I think I was just eligible to vote at the time, although back then the voting age was still 21.

I have absolutely no idea why the Chicken Delight owners in Manitoba made their own Batmobile and then painted it yellow. If it’s still around, maybe Batman movie producer and comics writer par excellence Michael Uslan could buy it. It would make a nice change of pace from those hideously disgusting Cybertrucks.