"Divy It Up Amongst You"

That run on words won't mean a lot to most of you, but anyone who's old enough to remember The Soupy Sales Show will recognize the saying. Okay, maybe not, but I can be positively sure both my sisters will remember it. Soupy used to say it all the time, but wait a minute, maybe it was Pookie who used to say it, or was it White Fang, or Black Tooth, or Hippy the Hippo, or one of those hilarious strangers who showed up at Soupy's door and inevitably through a pie in his face. No, I'm pretty sure it was Pookie.

Either way, I was so sad to learn of Soupy Sales' death early this week. Very hard to imagine him being 83 years old. When I was a kid, I absolutely loved Soupy, his TV show and his albums which I listen to over and over again. I thought he was the funniest man on the planet (well, aside from Jack Benny).

The humor on Soupy's show had definite, strong, sarcastic undertones and may have gone over the heads of many kids watching in the 60's, but I always felt like I understood what he and his crew were laughing at, as if I were in on the joke. So sophisticated!

And so Soupy has shuffled off for the last time, had his last pie-in-the-face, and, being the Jazz aficionado that he was, has heard his final jazz theme played. We loved you, Soup, and we always will.