Forty Years of Madness.

I wrote a post forever ago about the "Hour of Madness," a Dr. Demento-style radio show I listened to as a pre-teen in the early early 80's. (Go ahead and hit that link, I'll wait. It's only two paragraphs.) I dug out a few of the tapes tonight and made voice memos of them, played on one o' them Crosley record-your-old-shit-to-CD deals that's already a relic itself.

I know I have another tape where the DJ, Gail Massey, mentions me and my nerd pal Jeff. (I’m sure it's around here somewhere, because, well, what isn't?) On that same tape, she also shouts out to another kid from Plainview: Joe, who hoped to recruit fellow HoM listeners into becoming his acolytes by joining the "Joe from Plainview Fan Club." I wonder how that panned out.

Anyway, I cobbled together a series of clips taken from three tapes, and a photo of one of them--a dynamic Computron™ brand cassette, made with love in Hong Kong, a tape which even back then hissed more than a coven of particularly cranky witches--accompanies this oxymoronic "audio-only video." (By the way, if you are planning on starting a band anytime soon, I suggest you call it "Hong Kong Computron." Actually, I insist. No, I don’t care that you’re a chamber musician.)

I assembled this hodgepodge (there's only one full song, with just openings and closings of the rest) for no reason other than that it conjures a time well before the Internet, when finding weird stuff was a calling. Weird movies, weird books, weird music, for weird people. Not just anyone could be weird back then. It required a certain tenacity and a tough skin, because one's weirdness was only cool to the other weirdos. Do you know how many of my peers I played the spare blues of Scatman T.J. for--either his paean to cooking rats ("Cookin' Rats") or his romantic praise for someone's mama ("Goin' Out with Yo' Mama")--only to be met with a blank-yet-derisive stare? Probably zero, now that I think of it, but you know what I mean.

The mad melange starts with the end of "Only the Good Eat Lunch" by a guy calling himself "Joel Williams," if I remember correctly. There's a cut to Massey saying "WNYT, the Hour of Madness." Massey segued from Tom Lehrer to a request for Wild Man Fischer's "My Name is Larry." After that was Robert Klein doing his Our Gang bit, and Massey name-drops Plainview (that requester mighta been me, I was a big Little Rascals fan), into old-school Weird Al.

Next is the end of "Obese Man" by the Ladmo Trio, from the long-running Phoenix, Arizona kiddie show Wallace & Ladmo. (The tapes may be forty years old, but these are things I learned forty seconds ago.) This cuts to a real oddity that I left in its entirety. Stars on Echo (again, if my recollector isn't rusted, because I’ve found precisely squat on the webs) was a few high school students somewhere on Long Island who evidently hated the Dutch studio-musician group Stars on 45, whose oldies medley was a hit at the time. I can remember listening to this with friends and cracking up, but I find the droning performance and boys' room acoustics somewhat painful to endure now. Massey is heard for a second before I cut to what may or may not be Joe Renda doing a station ID, as his song (with the Variable Speed Band) "Eugene" begins.

The original Weird Al recording of "My Bologna" ends, and Massey explains that the song was number three on the countdown that night (preceded by Bruce Baum's "Marty Feldman Eyes"). That leads to the second most-requested song, one I'm sure you'll recall, by Napoleon XIV (ha-HAAA!). Cut to the end, and the song in the top spot is introed by a bit of The Rutles' "Number One."

Only a few hushed opening seconds of the climactic novelty record were captured before I popped the record button off. It's from an "ethnic" comedy album which was at that time about 15 years old, featuring several familiar comic actors. A John Cashman Lollipop Award to anyone who can name the song (the artist, the album, whatever)...

The Feel of a Winner.

My previous entry here (about memories of childhood speech therapy) was really just a rewritten Unnamed Social Media Giant post of mine, with pictures of dubious tangential relevance added. So I figured what the hell, while I'm recycling my garbage, I'll also republish this unpleasant school-days reminiscence. I wrote it on the fly as I was posting old ads to the Unnamed Social Media Giant group that goes with this blog. Again, I've now rewritten it to offer more details, because I know the world is eager to speculate further about my fluctuating position on the Awkward Dork Spectrum. Enjoy!


Believe it or not, looking at this back-to-school ad I found in a 1976 TV Guide is just a smidge painful for me. It's for a sneaker called "The Winner" from Sears.

The red-white-and-blue ones seen here were perfect for the Bicentennial, but the ones I had (seven years later, as a freshman in high school) were not multi-colored, just blue stripes on blue. This gloomy color scheme was also appropriate; all my parochial school buddies had moved on to Catholic high schools, while I went into solitary at the nearby public institution, a stranger to virtually everyone. For a quiet, inward kid sometimes verging on neurotic, one not even overly comfortable in what had been my comfort zones, it was not a laugh-riot of a year.

This isolation was driven home one morning in Earth Science class, when classifying and categorizing were being taught. All the students' sneakers were collected for empirical tallying (pee-yu, what lucky kid got that job?). The results were fairly predictable, with something like fifteen or so Reebok, fifteen or so Nike, and... precisely one not-yet-broken-in pair of "The Winner II" by Sears. That's right, not even the original--the sequel! I don't think the shoes had "Converse" written anywhere on them to lend a little cred, but SEARS was of course quite prominent. I seem to recall that the kid who read off these results punctuated them by saying the name of my sneakers with comic timing, pronouncing it crisply, like a Letterman punchline.

I don't recall a roar of laughter, but there was definitely mockery dampening the already-stifling classroom air. Mainly I remember one chubby, way-prematurely balding creep sitting several seats behind me, maliciously chuckling "The Winna!" in his grotesque Long Island accent.

(Okay, we were all afflicted with that accent, but still. It's a brutish dialect steeped in a rich history of sarcasm and humiliation, one that may dull the points of verbal barbs but they don't rip at you any less for it.)

Trying not to come off as confrontational or too defensive, I turned around and said to him, matter-of-factly, "I had Reeboks, they fell apart after six months." (Which was true, but, really, just be quiet now, sad, poor nerd.) The teacher--cute, pudgy, hippie-ish Ms. M.--gave me a pained, apologetic look, like, "Whoops, sorry to inadvertently spotlight you as comparatively impoverished, there."

Over the next few years, after making an actual effort to not be such an introverted turd, I made some friends who helped me become social (meaning "a drinker") and even kindasorta popular (mainly among undiscerning teen drunkards). Much later, like at the very end of senior year, I was out somewhere among a small crowd of students and heard a stage-whispered "The Winna!" I looked and it was that same kid, with whom I had still never exchanged a look much less a pleasantry, talking behind my back--again literally--to seemingly disinterested others a few feet away. It took me a second to even process what it meant, and once I figured it out I laughed and thought, well, I've changed in these last few years but clearly he hasn't.

I should leave it there to make it seem like I'm the bigger person. I am not, however, thus I am regretfully compelled to add that I looked at his social media profile a while back, while lurking in a largely-neglected group for the class. He's saddled with a terribly unattractive family, and is decidedly fatter and inevitably balder, but most important, he's much fatter and balder than I am. The Winna!!!

Suffering Succotash.

I am so grateful that St. Pius X gave me speech therapy. (My Catholic grade school, y’unnerstand, not the canonized Pope himself.) I find it shocking, how often these days I encounter a young person with a speech impediment, one that could have been surmounted. I suspect speech therapy went the way of art and music classes in the last generation or so, mistakenly deemed disposable, an unnecessary expenditure of money and time (but especially money).

I had a lisp, so starting around third or fourth grade, I got therapy once a week. (Upon these piddling details I will casually disclaim that while my memories are usually reasonably accurate in the rare provable instance, by no means do they come with a guarantee.) I, along with a handful of other students from various grades, was brought to the lower wing library to repeat tricky sentences and find out where, via cartoon mouth diagrams, my tongue should be for certain sounds. We gathered at a table in a space created at the back of the room. It was closed off in a way that I found pleasingly private, if a little claustrophobic.

I didn’t really take the lessons to heart; I mostly thought of them as mini-vacations from regular class, where I could giggle about funny-sounding phrases with my pal Chris I_____. His impediment, by the way, was a drawn-out “uh” when saying “er” words. For example, instead of “purple turtle,” he’d say, “puhhhh-ple tuhhhh-tle.” It didn’t register as an impediment with me at all. I just thought he was British.

There’s one session I still remember distinctly—emphasis on the stink—because a student I won’t name (but could) ripped a masterly fart. Like, deliberately--this ferocious gas leak was no accident (although it may have preceded one) and it reverberated so loudly on the molded plastic chair he was sitting on that students in the classroom next door later swore they had heard it. Around our little table, it was an occasion of much raucous laughter that refused to subside, and I’m certain the teacher (whom I don’t remember, oddly enough) felt that very little was accomplished after that.

After a year, maybe two, I was the only one from my grade still requiring lingual improvement, so now I was shuttled on a little bus (and what kid didn’t dig that?) to another school once a week and forced to speak before a large room of strangers. Not that I spoke a lot, as I recall. “Speech” was no longer a period I looked forward to. Quite the oppothite.

Then, first week of sixth grade (or seventh, which would be... 1981? Holy moly, who can remember?! Consider this another disclaimer!), everyone was milling around homeroom wondering why class hadn’t begun. Soon the word spread that some outside teacher or teacher’s aide was speaking individually with every kid, to determine if anyone would require speech therapy that year. I began to panic a little. I really didn't want to go back, but I had put so little practical thought into the correcting of my defect, I honestly wasn’t sure if I even still had a lisp or not! How was I supposed to know? I never listened to myself!

So the young lady at last came to me, and she seemed very nice. She found my name in some pages on a clipboard, asked me some questions, and as I answered I tried my damnedest to speak properly, without making my labor apparent. And by golly, it worked. I would liken it to when Bart Simpson barely passed a grade by off-handedly mentioning some historical fact, thus implying he had actually learned something even though he had bombed the test.

So that was it--I was officially cured! According to this lady! Thankth, lady!

As a lisp-free, deep-voiced teen, I considered doing something career-wise involving announcing, so I’d habitually read the cable TV on-screen graphics out loud: the Swap 'n Shop postings, the local Weather Channel forecasts, etc. That practice and the therapy may explain why I don’t have a Long Island accent today—until I get annoyed, and then I'm all “wudda-ya-DOOwin?” (Mostly to the cats, when they choose to do something, usually in the middle of the night.)

Anyway, I’m glad I don’t have a lisp, and for that I thank Saint Pius X.
(Again, meaning the school. Not the actual saint. Those lessons didn’t take at all.)

As a little bonus, here are the pals of Pals Vitamins, from their 1970 coloring-game-activity book. One of them has been name-dropped.

I also enjoyed the punk fish and the Greek cat.

Now here's a commercial from my collection, where we learn that P.T. had a fine speaking voice.

[Please note: it seems sometimes there's a video there, sometimes not, oy, for real, I give up. I'm sure it's me, but in any case I give up.]

 

Newsday TV Book, October 7-13, 1979.

I had been writing about the 1979 Newsday TV Books for a while there, but then I let it drop. I thought I had gotten to the October issue I have, with Buck Rogers and Twiki on the cover, but recently discovered that I hadn't. I'd scanned the cover a long time ago, so maybe that's why I figured I must have taken a look at the whole thing at some point. Anyway, it's done now.
In advance: you're welcome.
(Click pics to, you know, see them.)

Was Twiki a useful robot? He musta been, like, super-duper-smart, right? Because personally, I'd prefer to employ an automaton that could, at the very least, reach a high shelf for me.

The cover story, as related by Bill Kaufman, tells of Gil Gerard being a hack, and Emma Peel's influence on Erin Gray.

Overall, the subjects covered in the TV Line this week are not especially interesting to me, but one thing really stood out: This "Aristophones" fella sure could talk a buncha bullshit!

Some classy dames, a few Little Rascals, and Leonard Nimoy (searching for horror in Amityville) turn up Off Camera.

There was something that caught my eye on various pages of the Sunday listings, starting with this early-morning note about the Pope screwing with your regular programming.

The next page has an ad for the North Shore Animal League, which was a prolific advertiser in Newsday. They typically offered a pet adoption incentive of some type (such as baseball tickets, or fast-food coupons, or even reimbursement for however much gas you used to get there). This one promises nothing more than unshuttered filling stations nearby!
Maybe they could have mentioned that, with a new furry baby in the home, you'll get what the ad above offers: In just hours, you'll have hair... all over your furniture.

Here's a rather rare network ad for "Vampire," the ABC Sunday Night Movie. The Newsday reviewer (John Cashman, I presume) discounted this one for horror buffs as "mostly talk and no gore."

Here's the late-night sched, if only for "David Susskind Meets the Martians," and the punishing thought of enduring a Carry On double feature until the sun rises.

The kid in this dental ad is one of several miserable-looking cartoons in this issue.

Columbus Day parades took up much of the afternoon on several channels Monday, and please note that Empire of the Ants was on the WABC 4:30 Movie, because that's awesome.

Solar energy is NOW! (Meaning forty-two years ago.)

Another unhappy cartoon.

According to the Reborn Maternity ad's peculiar asterisk, Carol Horn designed a pregnancy outfit "for great times." I can't even begin to guess what that means. Also, Peter Lorre plays a fat clown.
(Now that, I get.)

Here's a coupla pages with Trivia for ya.

I've put a number of Hicks Nurseries' older Halloween ads online, but here is the one for that year's "Otto and the Cider Mill" display. (I've left in the other ads on the page this time to demonstrate exactly why I omit so many of them: Dullsville!)

Skipping to Saturday night now, including an ad to remind us that, in a better, long-ago world, Star Wars and superhero costumes were strictly for children.

For my stoner pals (and me), the late night Saturday schedule. And of course, the two shows that would have most appealed to me, SCTV and Theatre of Death, are on at the same damn time!

Specials and Cable TV Highlights.

Say what you will about Columbus, the man had some dynamite legs.

Finally, one last portrait of suffering, possibly related to orgasmic difficulties.

"We are experiencing orgasmic difficulties. Please stand by..."