"I was bickering, or rather joking, with my wife. It's nothing."

Said Emmanuel Macron, quoted in "The giveaway sign that Macron was 'furious' with wife Brigitte for viral push in face... as he tries to brush it off as 'joking around'" (Daily Mail).

I'm sure you've seen the video:

French President Emmanuel Macron responds after he apparently got assaulted in the face by his wife Brigitte while stepping off of a plane in Vietnam.

Macron was seen getting shoved in the face before getting off the plane as if nothing happened.

Macron has since responded to… pic.twitter.com/YeEAwdLcxF

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) May 26, 2025

My favorite part is his "Oh, hi" gesture, when he sees that the face push got caught on camera. And that you only see Brigitte's hand, not the rest of her — in the manner of Soupy Sales and White Fang:

ADDED: Here's a different angle:

I clicked on "Three sentences no one should forget about onions."

But it actually said "Three sentences no one should forget about unions." I would never have clicked on that. And now I'm sad not to have 3 sentences not to forget about onions. Please help me do better than this:

1. "Get those onions out of here!" (That's what Philo Kvetch said to "Onions" Oregano on "The Soupy Sales Show.")

2. "That was strange, having real onions and the rest of the stuff phony." (Andy Warhol's diary entry for Monday, August 27, 1979, commenting on a sandwich he ate at McDonald's.)

3. "Be an onion!" (According to Mark Twain, that's what a Bermudian says to his son.)

Professor Irwin Corey screwed up the Soupy Sales funeral!

"Professor Irwin Corey had to be removed from the podium after his eulogy turned into a diatribe about health-care reform, in which he insisted that Soupy — along with Odetta, Eartha Kitt and Miriam Makeba — died prematurely because of inadequate treatment."

Maybe you don't care about Professor Irwin Corey — or Soupy Sales — but I do.

"Have no fear when Soupy's here."

And now, Soupy's not here!

Critics were unkind, calling ["The Soupy Sales Show"] "a mishmash of mediocrity" that was meant for "kids with low IQs." But viewers lapped it up, making it the No. 1 local show by 1962. A survey at the time revealed that more than a third of Sales' fans consisted of adults. Some of them were hosting pie-lobbing parties in their basements....

Were you, like me, a teenager in the 1960s? If so, did you cry a tear when you read that the charming, silly comedian has died? Here's a clip from his, which meanders seemingly pointlessly and ultimately gets to his novelty dance-hit "The Mouse":

Don't be afraid that you can't do it
There is really nothing to it
Shake with your hands wiggling from your ears
Make like a mouse push your feet down and cheer...

Hey, do the Mouse...

Don't be afraid that you can't do it
There is really nothing to it
Just follow me and I'll get you through it
Have no fear when Soupy's here

This post is about Soupy Sales, but I've got to throw in a second topic. "The Mouse" got me thinking about all those dance hits from that era. Didn't they all emphasize how easy the new dance was? Don't be afraid that you can't do it. There is really nothing to it. Didn't they all have that lyric? I challenge you to find one of those old dance songs that told you the dance is pretty complicated and you might not be able to do it.

There are so many of those old dance songs. There's Marvin Gaye, doing "Hitch Hike." See how easy that dance is? It's all in the arms. There's Smokey Robinson and the Miracles doing "Mickey's Monkey." Sorry the linked clip doesn't show you how to do the monkey. (Here, this makes it really easy — and reconnects with our kids' show theme.)

A favorite old dance song of mine is "The 81" by Candy and the Kisses. One thing about "The 81" is that no one I knew had the slightest idea what the 81 was supposed to be. Was it just a song with no dance? "There's a new dance going around they call the 81. Everybody's doing it whether they are old or young." But not only wasn't everybody doing it, nobody was doing it. Nevertheless, put on your dancing shoes, feel the beat, get with the groove, and, most importantly, form a big boss line.

More Beatles on Ed Sullivan. The last of the four Beatles-on-Ed-Sullivan shows is a year and a half after the first three, which occurred on three consecutive weeks. (First show described here.) You'd think the fourth show would look quite different, that the culture would have radically changed, in this year and a half. In fact, The Beatles music was very different. The first three shows featured "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and "She Loves You," and this September 1965 show had "I Feel Fine," "I'm Down," "Act Naturally," "Ticket to Ride," "Yesterday," and "Help," clearly a later Beatle period.

My favorite Beatle moment: After Paul sings "Yesterday," John says, "Ah, thank you Paul. That was just like him."

Perhaps the other performers have advanced a bit, but not much. There's no vaudeville throwback like Tessie O'Shea now, but there's Cilla Black in a gigantic wig, singing "Out of My Head," to a tame big band arrangement. Here's Soupy Sales singing "Hey! Do the Mouse! Do it all through the house." He leaps into the audience doing his new mouse dance: make mouse ears with open hands and stick out your upper teeth and gnaw. He gets all up in people's faces, and mostly they pull back and make an effort to conceal their horror. Barely one in a hundred responds with the appropriate mouse gestures. There's another magician: Fantasio, a serene man in a tuxedo, pulls doves out of scarves while mellow music plays. There's another lame comedy duo (Allen & Rossi).

Ed's still the same. After The Beatles' first set he shushes the audience and says "Now be quiet. Now whom do you listen to when you're buying a carpet?" He introduces Steve Rossi saying "I've asked Steve to sing a very charming song: 'Try to Remember.'" He says to The Beatles, "I'd just like to congratulate the four of you on the way you've handled yourselves."

I must say the commercials have picked up since the earlier Beatles shows. Now we have lots of actors enjoying the products, and even a comic attempt (new All detergent introduced like a movie Coming Attraction). We see the ridiculous George Fenneman (who reminds me of Ryan Seacrest!) riding a strange water-land vehicle to rescue folks at a picnic who are simply unwilling to eat hamburgers in the absence of iced tea. And here's that great classic headache commercial. A woman is happily cooking dinner, when her husband, a man in a suit, comes in the door. She says to him, "Hi, darling, hurry and get ready for dinner. PTA meeting tonight." He completely snaps into a scary, mean guy: "Ellen, please. Don't rush me. I just got home!" The voiceover intones: "Control yourself. Sure you have a headache. You're tense, irritable. But don't take it out on her." Anacin solves the whole problem; apparently, it's a powerfully psychoactive drug. The voiceover assures us: "You're in control again." (Older readers will remember another ad of this type, where the woman cooking is the one who snaps; she says "Mother, please, I'd rather do it myself!")

In the end, Ed tells us about next week: it will be the first color show, with Milton Berle, Eddie Fisher, and Polly Bergen. "And for you youngsters, we'll have the youthful singing trio of Dino, Desi, and Billy." How well I remember when those three ruled the teen magazines (16 and Tiger Beat). Poor Dino--Dean Martin's adorable son--died flying a jet for the National Guard in 1987. One always reads that Dean Martin never recovered. Desi, of course, was the offspring of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. Billy was just the other guy. The performance by Dino, Desi, and Billy on that first color Ed Sullivan Show is available on this great DVD.