All Right, Buffet, What Are You Trying to Pull?

Cafe Society
1

The Pirate of the Coral Reefers is famed for having released a song called Pencil Thin Mustache, in which he wishes he had a pencil-thin mustache of the type worn by famous old-timey mystery solver of the silver screen, Boston Blackie. I first became aware of this song some 40 years ago, and although I had never watched a Boston Blackie flick, I took Jimmy Buffet at his word, and it was a fixed fact in my mind that Boston Blackie wore a pencil-thin mustache when he was solving mysteries.

Now let us fast-forward to 2017. My late-shift job has me taking my lunch in the wee hours, when the lunchroom TV offers me a somewhat meager selection of amusements to occupy my time. I usually settle on Movies!TV to see half an hour’s worth of some (usually) pretty good films. This practice has resulted in my having watched chunks of most of the Boston Blackie catalog; and, much to my dismay, BOSTON BLACKIE’S UPER LIP IS ALWAYS FREE OF MUSTACHES, PENCIL-THIN OR OTHERWISE!

So does anybody have a clue what Jimmy Buffet was singing about?

2

Watch Blackie in his TV series: Boston Blackie TV Series

3

*Buffett

4

The references to Sky King, Andy Devine and Ricky Ricardo should have clued you in that it was TV he was watching, not movies.

5

Although, to be honest, Jimmy does throw in the line “But I can go to movies and see it all there, just the way that it used to be.”

I blame Obama.

6

Oh.

Never mind.