New $h!t Has Come to Light
So, there’s this exchange in The Big Lebowski that goes something like this:
WALTER Shut the fuck up, Donny. This kid is in the ninth grade, Dude, and his father is--are you ready for this?-- Arthur Digby Sellers. DUDE Who the fuck is that? WALTER Huh? DUDE Who the fuck is Arthur Digby Sellers? WALTER Who the f--have you ever heard of a little show called Branded, Dude? DUDE Yeah. WALTER All but one man died? There at Bitter Creek? DUDE Yeah yeah, I know the fucking show Walter, so what? WALTER Fucking Arthur Digby Sellers wrote 156 episodes, Dude. DUDE Uh-huh. WALTER The bulk of the series. DUDE Uh-huh. WALTER Not exactly a lightweight. DUDE No. WALTER And yet his son is a fucking dunce.
While surfing around on IMDb for something totally unrelated, I came across a reference to “Branded”. Intrigued, I took a look, and discovered that it was indeed a real show, albeit only two seasons: 1965-66. “Sure”, you say, “so Arthur Digby Sellers wrote 156 of the 48 total episodes produced, what’s the big deal?”
Here’s the deal, Dude: One of the characters in “Branded” is the real-life General Phil Sheridan. The very same General Phil Sheridan that is the namesake of Sheridan, Oregon, hometown of Jason Pinkal, my first boss at UP. Not only that, but rap artist Busta Rhymes also sampled the lyrics from “Branded” in a song, and Jason Pinkal is a huge rap fan…
“I won’t say a hero, ‘cause what’s a hero?—but sometimes there’s a man… well, he’s the man for his time’n place, he fits right in there…”
And that’s The Pinque, in Sheridan.
