Archives: Episodes

Bruce Halstead and Phill Castell discuss the upcoming Strait Stamp Show, and will share some history on stamps, and collecting, etc.

Bacon Bit with Sonia Manzano...aka "Maria" from Sesame Street

It's National Pickle Ball Day AND INTERNATIONAL Cat Day.  Don't get those mixed up.

Todd, Steph and Marc talk about their weekend, what was with all the bikes, and pickle ball!

An attractive brunette with angular features, Lee Grant began her career as a child performer with NYC's Metropolitan Opera. By age 11, she had become a member of the American Ballet Theatre. After music studies at Juilliard, she won a scholarship to attend the Neighborhood Playhouse and switched her focus to acting. Grant understudied the role of Ado Annie in a touring production of "Oklahoma!" before landing her breakthrough stage role as a young shoplifter in Sidney Kingsley's "Detective Story" in 1949. Hollywood soon beckoned and she recreated the role in William Wyler's 1951 superb film version. Grant won the Cannes Film Festival Best Actress prize and earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for the role. Seemingly on the verge of a brilliant career, the actress found herself the victim of the blacklist when her husband, playwright Arnold Manoff was named before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Grant herself refused to testify and the film offers over the next decade were sporadic.

Returning to Manhattan, Grant found work in TV (e.g., the daytime soap "Search for Tomorrow") and on stage (i.e., "A Hole in the Head" 1957; "Two for the Seesaw" 1959). After earning an OBIE Award for her work in Genet's "The Maids" in 1963, her small screen career began to pick up. In 1965, Grant joined the cast of the primetime soap "Peyton Place" as Stella Chernak and picked up an Emmy for her work. She earned a second statuette for her performance as a runaway wife and mother who ends up at a truck stop in California in "The Neon Ceiling" (NBC, 1971).

By the time she had earned her second Emmy, Grant's feature career had been rejuvenated with her stellar work as the widow of a murder victim in Norman Jewison's Oscar-winning "In the Heat of the Night" (1967). That same year, she essayed a neurotic in the campy "Valley of the Dolls." In "The Landlord" (1970), she was the society matron mother of Beau Bridges and her comic portrayal earned her a second Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Grant then played the mother of all Jewish mothers, Sophie Portnoy, in Ernest Lehman's film version of Philip Roth's novel "Portnoy's Complaint" (1972). Hal Ashby's "Shampoo" (1975) finally brought her a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award as a Beverly Hills matron having an affair with her hairdresser. The following year, Grant received a fourth nomination for her deeply moving portrayal of a Jewish refugee in "Voyage of the Damned."

Her subsequent screen roles have been of varying quality, although Grant always brings a professionalism and degree of excellence to even the smallest role. After striking out as a sitcom lead in the underrated "Fay" (NBC, 1975), she delivered a fine portrayal of First Lady Grace Coolidge in "Backstairs at the White House" (NBC, 1979), was the domineering mother of actress Frances Farmer in "Will There Really Be a Morning?" (CBS, 1983) and excelled as Dora Cohn, mother of "Roy Cohn" (HBO, 1992). On the big screen, Grant lent her substantial abilities to "Teachers" (1984) as a hard-nosed school superintendent, "Defending Your Life" (1991), as an elegant prosecutor sparring with adversary Rip Torn, and "It's My Party" (1996), as the mother of man suffering from complications from AIDS.

While Grant has continued to act in features and on TV, she has concentrated more on her directing career since the 80s. After studying at the American Film Institute, she made the short "The Stronger" (1976) which eventually aired on Arts & Entertainment's "Shortstories" in 1988. Grant made her feature debut with "Tell Me a Riddle" (1980), an earnest, well-acted story of an elderly couple facing death. She has excelled in the documentary format, beginning with "The Wilmar 8" (1981), about strike by female bank employees in the Midwest. (Grant later directed a fictionalized account entitled "A Matter of Sex" for NBC in 1984). She steered Marlo Thomas to an Emmy in the fact-based "Nobody's Child" (CBS, 1986) and earned praise for helming "No Place Like Home" (CBS, 1989), a stark look at the effects of unemployment. A number of her documentaries have been screened as part of HBO's "America Undercover" series, including the Oscar-winning "Down and Out in America" (1985), about the unemployed, "What Sex Am I?" (1985), about transsexuals and transvestites, "Battered" (1989), about victims of domestic violence, and "Women on Trial" (1992), about mothers who turn to the courts to protect their children. In 1997, she produced, directed and hosted the well-received "Say It, Fight It, Cure It" (Lifetime) which focused on breast cancer survivors and their families.

To see her new movie, "Killian and the Comeback Kids", click here.

For information on her GROUNDBREAKING documentaries, click here.

Steph and Amanda get to talk to "Elsa and Anna" from the new Ghostlight Production of "Frozen Jr. the Musical!"  To purchase tickets to the fantastic production, click HERE

To make reservations at the AMAZING Kokopelli Grill, you can call 360-457-6040 or click HERE

We love our buddy Michael and are so thankful to have him as a show sponsor for over 12 years!  Thank you Kokopelli and Hook and Line for your years of support!

Thank you also to Fogtown for our amazing Anna and Elsa "Frozen" drinks today!  We love you too!

Sesame Street.  I don’t know about you, but I spent every afternoon of my childhood watching Sesame Street.  I still…to this DAY…sing the jazz version of the alphabet song they taught me.  And the song for crossing the crosswalk, “I’ve got a new way to walk”…which was sung by pigs in leather too-too’s…classic.  Not only did I love the large puppets and music…I loved the people on the show.  And one of those people was Sonia Manzano…known to all of us as…Maria.  When I got word that I was going to have a few minutes with Sonia, I was BEYOND excited.  The day of the interview came and I said my hello.  When she responded, and I heard her voice, say MY name…well…I got very emotional…as you will hear.  Hearing a voice from my childhood brought back so many memories.  Like the super dry peanut butter and jelly sandwich my Grandma Bacon would make me while I watched the show.  I would give anything to have her be able to make me a sandwich again.  Maria, I mean Sonia is a 15 time Emmy winner for her work in television.  For 44 years, she taught kids kindness, how to bring books to life, and that it was ok to be sad. She now has a new novel out, entitled COMING UP CUBAN: RISING PAST CASTRO'S SHADOW 

I hope you enjoy my interview…with one of my heroes, Sonia Manzano. 

We've heard of "beer goggles" but now there are beer shoes? Heineken has filled a void in our lives that we didn't know needed filled.  Todd and Amanda talk Beer, Oysters and Underwear!

Award-winning National Geographic writer and bestselling author Daniel Stone discusses his new book “SINKABLE: Obsession, the Deep Sea, and the Shipwreck of the Titanic”. He’s spent years interviewing marine biologists, astrophysicists, wreck experts, and historians to discover what happened after the ship sank. - Former Port Angeles resident Terry Clayton on his new book "Facing the Moment: Lessons from a Global Odyssey"

EGGG-sactly the best way to start your day!  Brown, Todd and Amanda talk Eggs, Bigfoot and Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Today we honor our favorite salted treat that packs a punch and is a great source of protein!  Happy National Grab Some Nuts Day!

Brown, Todd and Amanda talk about Baseball legends, and a job opening at a Candy company.

New Rural Training Track residents, Abigail Ahyong, Michaela Fallon, and Lisa Skarling discuss the RTT Program where their 1st year in residency is spent in Seattle at the Swedish Cherry Hill Family Medicine and the 2^nd & 3^rd years are here at North Olympic Healthcare Network (NOHN).  The program is aimed at training family physicians to practice broad spectrum family medicine in rural and underserved environments. - Second segment with Clallam County Sheriff Bill Benedict