M*A*S*HCast #62 – Private Charles Lamb

M*A*S*HCast -  Season 3, Episode 14: Private Charles Lamb

Special Guest Star: Ken Holtzhouser

Air Date: December 31, 1974

Have a question or comment?

Theme music by Johnny Mandel

Subscribe to M*A*S*HCast on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/m-a-s-hcast/id1329304951

Follow M*A*S*HCast on Twitter: https://twitter.com/MASH4077Cast

This podcast is a proud member of the FIRE AND WATER PODCAST NETWORK:

That is all!

13 responses to “M*A*S*HCast #62 – Private Charles Lamb

  1. The Spam Lamb reminds me of the Tofu-rkey episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. A disgusting, gelatinous mound of tofu in the wiggling shape of a turkey. Ugh.

    I LOVED Spam as a kid. I have had it sparingly as an adult. Can’t say I’ve really kept a taste for it. I understand it’s HUGE in Hawaii, even appearing on the menu of their local McDonald’s at one point.

    Chris

  2. Regarding SPAM in pop culture, I found this gem of a blog from Boston U.: http://sites.bu.edu/gastronomyblog/2020/05/22/spam/

    Multi-national ops really do generate some nice meals and sublime comedy. You could easily do a dramatic farce series like MASH based on Coalition headquarters in Kabul, where I served my last deployment. While a buddy and I were inprocessing, getting one issue item required going through a German captain in order to see the Romanian Captain. Said Romanian captain was apparently new, because he was being closely supervised by a Turkish major. The captain certified that the item was good to go by hand-stamping the form (in triplicate, natch) with three separate stamps in different parts of the form in TWO DIFFERENT COLORS of ink. The colors were important, somehow. We had to go through the same crew to get permission to get an ID badge — not the badge itself, mind you, but just the authorization to get one. I’m pretty sure the forms were all S47 stroke 19Js.

    Each country would celebrate their national day and serve the rest of us their food. I didn’t get to take advantage of this as often as I would’ve liked (stupid work), but it was a nice treat. For their day, the Romanians also sent everyone a slideshow that highlighted all their national achievements. It included a lot more cool inventions than you might expect (jet engine, ballpoint pen, etc.). To my amusement, Dracula was conspicuously absent from the slideshow. I noticed because I was always looking for a way to bring him up. Once, I asked one of the Romanian cops where exactly he was from. With a sigh of resignation, he admitted he was from Transylvania. He rolled his eyes at my juvenile smirk, but it still felt like victory.

  3. Regarding Radar being a vegetarian, I could swear in previous mess tent scenes that I’ve seen Radar wolfing down a plate full of chicken drum sticks. I’m too lazy to research it though, so take that as you will.

    Rob, I totally agree that bit with Henry and Radar was fantastic! The timing involved for Henry to miss Radar’s sigh of relief is amazing. LOVE. IT.

    1. Tim, I remembered the same scene. I believe it’s in “The Trial of Henry Blake”, where Henry is on trial for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

  4. I’d like to point out that actually lobster was the proverbial last straw for me as far as becoming a vegetarian. I was a flexegetarian strongly leaning towards vegetarian to begin with. Social norms would have it that you must eat some meat so was doing research on it before switching. Not as easy 20 years ago as today.

    Also as a side note apperantly don’t do a paper on either why not to eat red meat nor on Buckminsterfullerenes in High school no matter how well sourced if you want decent grades (at least where I was in the Midwest).

    But, while living in Maine was going to do a lobster dinner and realized how hard of a time I was going to have killing it. Then I was thought what difference does it make if I kill it or someone else does that’s it definitely going vegetarian.

  5. Forgone my ignorance, Sontaron: I understand Midwesterners might have an economic grievance with people advocating against red meat consumption. Why the problem with Buckminsterfullerenes?

    1. In fairness in this case I can truthfully only talk for me and this teacher. But, like several school districts in the area I know of he was hired more for being the football coach than the English teacher. This also isn’t to take away from what teachers have to do to become a teacher or their work or how they are underpaid. I come from a family of teachers and they have said how must of the coaches were hired to be that not to be the teacher position they had to have. The schools bring in money from sports. But it’s harder to get science and math teachers so they are almost never “used” for coaching.

      So while it wasn’t Buckminsterfullerenes per say it was that at the time it was cutting edge science and I’m guessing he didn’t want to figure out how good the sources were. So for the rest of the papers I dumbed down the subject and did better. The meat one yea probably much more the area and school the High School had and ag department.

      1. Ah. I guess the takeaway was to try to avoid making the person grading your paper feel dumb? That seems counterintuitive in an educational setting, though, and could be a difficult line to walk. Glad you scored better when you made your material less challenging — even though it doesn’t seem like you should have had to.

  6. Hey, thanks for bringing Ken Holtzhouser back, Rob. He’s been a great guest, especially considering we’re not even to his MASH “sweet spot” yet (Seasons 4 and 5).

  7. Thanks for another incredible episode, gentlemen. I know this is kind of perverse, but I now wonder if Charles Lamb arrived safely in Iowa only to become Sunday dinner for Radar’s mom and Uncle Ed.

  8. Radar also ate a sausage in the episode where Mulcahy got hepatitis.

    A fun episode. One it is good they used this season as it couldn’t have happened under Potter.

    I never saw Radar as a vegetarian, just as an animal lover that didn’t want to see what he ate. It would probably creep me out a little as well, though I do eat meat. I also don’t see a small lamb feeding the whole camp plus the Greeks.

    I liked seeing Frank have fun at the party.

    If Rob is reading this, I have a suggestion/request. Maybe at the end of this season, have an episode featuring Henry and Trapper. Talk about what you liked and disliked about each of them and also about what motivated each actor to leave and what could have been done to keep them. I think that would be a fun way to say goodbye to them. Do the same for Frank and Radar.

    Anyway, just an idea. Keep up the good work!!!

Leave a Reply to Captain Entropy Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *