I was visiting Tony Packo’s Cafe in Toledo, Ohio recently. You may be familiar with them from MASH, where Cpl. Klinger used to mention them. Once of the things they are known for, besides good hot dogs and good chili, is the tradition of celebrities signing hot dog buns, which are then preserved and mounted on the walls of the restaurant. Well, guess whose signed bun I happened to see there?
I didn’t know she had visited Tony Packo’s! Must have been in the late 80’s
That’s right: Tracey has been immortalized at Tony Packo’s! The bun was not dated, but I think she signed it in 1988 or 1989 during a promotional visit to Toledo (and Detroit, too) to promote TTUS, which was in the middle of its run on Fox.
One of the things I’d like to do is to have organized re-watches of Tracey’s old shows. It would be great to watch them again, especially in the virtual company of friends whom I didn’t necessarily know when the shows first aired. One of those friends was too young to see some of them the first time around.
There’s only one problem with this: her old shows aren’t easily available right now. The Tracey Ullman Show (which I frequently abbreviate as TTUS) hasn’t been repeated since the 1990’s and has never been released on tape or DVD; and while Tracey Takes On… (TTO) and Tracey Ullman’s State of the Union (SOTU) have seen tape and DVD releases, they’re out of print now, to the best of my knowledge. In the case of TTO DVD’s, the episodes were altered for various reasons, lack of music rights being one. Ideally, they should be seen as they were originally aired. I’m able to do that because I saved my vintage recordings, but you can’t all come over to my house to watch them 🙂 ! Although that would be an interesting gathering…. Anyway, it’s possible/likely that some of these are out there via alternate sources of greater or lesser legitimacy; perhaps they could serve as the seed of a re-watching program.
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