[UPDATED UPDATE: I'm leaving this up for another day. My son, Mark, won't stop suggesting entries for proposed 'TV Dinner' menu items, which I keep adding at the bottom of the column. And you readers also have added some great ones, which keep piling up as Comments.
So have fun, folks. We're here all week. Try the Veal of Fortune... - DB]
They laughed at me when I brought doughnuts into the Fresh Air with Terry Gross office in Philadelphia last Friday. Not because I brought doughnuts -- I always do that when I guest host.
They laughed because last week, I brought in special Dunkin' Donuts, offered in celebration of the 60th anniversary of NBC's Today show.
And more specifically, they laughed because the mere existence those doughnuts brought me such joy. But while they're laughing, I'm dreaming -- of a million-dollar idea for a theme restaurant built around TV shows. I think of it as a little place that's called, and serves, 'TV Dinners'...
But first, let's get back to the doughnuts.
Melody Kramer, the genial guru of all things online at Fresh Air, has made a habit of photographing and chronicling the Hawaiian shirts I wear Fridays when I guest host. I'd like to claim my wardrobe choices as a "Casual Fridays" thing -- but I can't. I'm dressed just as casually on Thursday. And Wednesday...
But this time, I asked Melody to take a picture -- of me holding a Today doughnut. She obliged, happily -- knowing it would be mere minutes before she's post the photo on Tumblr, or Jugglr, or TghtropeWalkr or whatever she does, and toss me out there to be chewed alive, like chum to the sharks.
One of the Fresh Air producers, John Myers, thought this particular photo session was ridiculous enough to photograph with his own digital phone camera (I'm surrounded by Zapruders!) -- which is how I'm able to show you not only Mel's photo of me above, holding the doughnut, but the one at right, taken by John, of Mel taking my picture.
(Reactions to that shot are at our own TV WORTH WATCHING Tumblr page -- yes, apparently we have one -- HERE.)
But look what happened next. Mel posted the picture on the Fresh Air Tumblr page HERE, and asked readers to suggest their own TV-themed doughnut flavors and designs. The results were not only voluminous, they sounded delicious -- and were flat-out clever.
My favorite, from Skipp (who has a Tumblr page called IllJustBeLike), responded to another poster's request for a Breaking Bad doughnut by imagining the perfect one: "Crumbled blue sugar crystals on top of plain white frosting." Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Another Tumblr poster, TheJungleNeverDies, suggested an Arrested Development doughnut with "banana frosting" -- a clever nod to the show's Bluth Frozen Banana stand. And there are plenty of other suggestions, which you can read on the aforementioned Fresh Air Tumblr site. Or begin a discussion on this aftermentioned Facebook page: the TV Worth Watching Facebook page. Apparently, we have a wall HERE, or at least a lean-to.
But enough social media sidetracking. The main event here is food and TV.
Doughnuts are what got us here, and they have a strong association and tradition with TV. When I think of TV and doughnuts, my mind goes back to ABC's Twin Peaks (see the photo at the top of this column), where the sheriff's conference table was decked out with doughnuts, stacked in tiny tasty towers of two.
Mmm, doughnuts.
Which reminds me -- The Simpsons, of course, has long presented doughnuts as Homer Simpson's favorite, saliva-inducing, mmm-generating treat. And the marketing people behind that show know well the power of doughnuts. When The Simpsons Movie was released, Sony sent (to some critics) specially made boxes of specially made Simpsons doughnuts, seen at right.
Why stop there? Why not offer them to everyone, all the time?
And why, for that matter, stop with doughnuts? Twin Peaks was as famous for its "damned good coffee" and its cherry pie as for its doughnuts. Why not have a Twin Peaks coffee-and-pie special on a restaurant menu?
It's not like it hasn't been done before, many times. ABC's Pushing Daisies was set at a mouth-watering pastry diner called "The Pie Hole." To publicize the show's second season, ABC rigged up a portable "Pie Hole," and hit the streets of Southern California trying to drum up viewers while slicing up pie.
Even HBO's True Blood has gotten into the game, marketing not only uniforms and mugs and beer glasses from Merlotte's, the show's fictional bar. The show even approved the marketing of a crimson-red brew called Tru Blood -- named after the synthetic blood sold to well-behaved vampires in that fictional bayou town.
So can I bayou a brew? Sure -- if it's blood red.
And what of the Boston Beacon Hill bar once known as the Bull & Finch Pub? That place was the inspiration for the bar in NBC's Cheers -- and when that sitcom proved so overwhelmingly popular, the Bull & Finch eventually bowed to the cultural tsunami and changed its name, officially, to Cheers Beacon Hill. Play it again, Sam Malone...
My TV Dinners restaurant idea, though, isn't centered on a single show -- but celebrates all of TV at the same time. Maybe we'd have to pay the culinary equivalent of royalties to the various studios and program owners, but so what? That'd still leave room for enough profit, and enough creativity, to make it a fun place to run -- and to visit.
Think of your favorite shows, and the associations that come with them, and help me plan a menu:
Aunt Bee's fried chicken from The Andy Griffith Show!
Pork sandwiches and meatball "gravy" from The Sopranos!
Bree's pineapple upside-down cake from Desperate Housewives!
Steak tartare from The Walking Dead!
And what about home-made M*A*S*H Potatoes?
Charlie's Angel Food Cake?
Gunsmoke-d salmon?
Prime Rib Suspect?
The Mickey Mouse Club Sandwich?
77 Sunset Strip Steak?
I await your suggestions...
[UPDATE: My son, Mark, who insists he still writes for this site (most evidence to the contrary), caught wind of my TV Dinners restaurant theme and rose instantly to snap the bait. This is, after all, the young man who contributed to a list of classic literature-related meats by providing, among others, "Filet Miserables," "Porterhouse-Five" and "To Grill a Mockingbird."
So, in annoyingly short time, Mark relayed back these TV Dinners menu suggestions:
South Pork
Bonanza Cream Pie
Sponge Cake Square Pants
Kebob Newhart
The Twilight Scone
Leeks and Geeks
Grill More Girls
I Love Sushi
Chex & The City
Sandwich and Son
The West Wings (too easy, perhaps)
Coffee the Vampire Slayer
Makes a father proud. - DB]
[Second update, sent after his lunch break on the West Coast:
Mary Tyler Mortadella
Mary Tyler Smores
Ally McVeal
Murphy Brownie
Brie's Company
Slaw & Order
Dukes of Haggis
Fantasy Eye-round
The Toast Whisperer
Mad About Stew
Malcolm in the Griddle Cakes
How I Met Your Mutton
All My Chitlins
Nip/Duck
Pork and Mindy
Bread Like Me
Hash Gordon
Dennis the Venison
My Favorite Margarine
Flan-tourage
Gossip Grill
Saved by the Bell Peppers
S'more-Ville
Have Bun Will Travel
Fudging Amy
-- Makes a father worried. - DB]
Third and decidedly final update from alleged TVWW The Son Also Criticizes contributor Mark Bianculli, sent later:
The Flax of Life
Logan's Rum Cake
Laverne and Shirley Fries
La Femme Ni-Pitas (ouch, sorry, had to try)
The Big Meringue Theory
Rescue Meat