Want to know how to correctly pronounce the region in southern France – known for wine?
Don’t watch this video.

You hear a song for years and think you know the band, but maybe you don’t. It’s no accident the band below sounds like The Beatles, but it’s actually New Jersey’s The Knickerbockers.

The Knickerbockers’ singer Buddy Randell really could play the saxophone, and in the video, you can see him put it to his lips just as the guitar solo kicks in, but if it’s there, it’s buried in the mix. Buddy’s around 24 in this clip, but he had a radio hit with another band before he was even 18.

 The Royal Teens went to #3 in 1958 with “Short Shorts.” On the single, Buddy plays the signature sax riff and says, “Man, dig that crazy chick.” In the clip below, someone else is faking to Buddy’s part. By 1958, the song was a hit, but Buddy left that band because he was still in high school and couldn’t tour. Bob Gaudio is definitely the guy on piano here. Gaudio co-wrote “Short Shorts” and, eventually, went on to perform with Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons for decades.

March of 2020 is not the best time to launch a new product, but Anheuser-Busch had Budweiser Nitro Reserve Gold in the pipeline already, so I snagged a six-pack at Total Wine before heading into the treehouse for a few months.

Most beers are fizzed with carbon dioxide. A few, including Guinness Draught and Boddingtons Pub Ale are nitrogenated. The bubbles are smaller and less acidic than CO2, so they feel velvety, not bitey.

Budweiser Nitro Reserve Gold is the latest beer with nitrogen bubbles. The weird thing is that it doesn’t use a little plastic ball to hold the nitro like other brands. In a can of Guinness, you pop the tab, releasing pressure, and nitro freshly squirts out into the beer. With Budweiser Nitro Reserve Gold, you have to shake the can, but not too much (!), to get the nitro dissolved in the beer.

I’ve tried the “triple flip and pour hard” method twice now and I end up with a sweet, malty beer that goes flat fast. Maybe there’s a reason other nitrogen beers use that “widget?”

Budweiser beers are not very malty, so that’s interesting, but, overall, Budweiser Nitro Reserve Gold is disappointing. If you’ve had Boddingtons, it’s a bit like that but sweeter and not as rich. It’s a clean sweetness, not heavy, but the creamy effect from the nitrogen fades quickly.

Regular Bud drinkers want crisp and dry. Nitro drinkers want velvety with a little bite. Budweiser Nitro Reserve Gold isn’t going to make either group happy. It’s like those weird Oreos. You’re happy to try Birthday Cake flavor once, but this is more a novelty than something that goes on the shopping list again. Alcohol by volume is five percent.

Hi, I’m John. Welcome to my place – ThatGuyonTV.com.

I wanted this web domain for years, but it had been snapped up by a cyber-squatter. No website, just an offer to sell. Then, right when I wasn’t on TV as much as I used to be, ThatGuyonTV.com was available. So, here we are!

I’m socially distancing, as a lot of folks are, so I figured it was time to fire up a website. I’m hoping that, if someone reads this in 2045, “social distancing” is as faded as “dustbowl” and “polio” and “all that and a bag of chips.”

I’ve had a lot of fun working in TV and I’ll tell some of those stories and show some clips, but also pop culture (mostly of the 1980s and 1990s), music, theater, recipes, beer, magic tricks, comic books, other things as they flit through…

Let’s go…