In Popular Culture
The song is used in the soundtrack to the 1994 film Pulp Fiction. Bruce Willis's character sings along to the line, "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo." In the 1995 film Die Hard with a Vengeance, when Willis's character John McClane is describing his suspension from the police force, he says he was "smoking cigarettes and watching Captain Kangaroo."
The song was frequently employed as bumper music on the syndicated radio talk show Coast to Coast AM, particularly in the earlier days when Art Bell was the host.
This song also featured as the theme song to A Dog's Show (1977 to 1992), a New Zealand television series featuring sheepdog trials.
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. quotes the whole lyrics in his 1981 book Palm Sunday calling the song "yet another great contemporary poem by the Statler Brothers" and using it to describe "the present condition" of an American man who had recently departed his family. "It is not a poem of escape or rebirth. It is a poem about the end of a man's usefulness" he adds.
Read more about this topic: Flowers On The Wall
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