Happy Birthday to the "Mouth of the South!"

That's right, it's Jeff G_____'s birthday, April 7th--or as M'Osh and I once tried to rebrand it, Monkey Day. Similar to the way everyone is Irish on St. Patrick's Day, on Monkey Day™, everyone's name was "Monkey." Like, if you renewed your driver's license, you had to fill in your first name as Monkey. (The concept didn't take.)

I imagine the first day of fifth grade in 1979, when Jeff and I met, occurred the day after Labor Day, as it typically did. That would be September 4th, making our acquaintance (and pretty much immediate friendship) 17,017 days--just over 46 years and seven months.

To commemorate our friendship on his birthday, I'm going to post some of our drawings and writings from an old notebook, from either sixth or seventh grade, or possibly both. I managed to hang on to a few of these books, and the lack of actual schoolwork in them is frankly disgraceful. I was an autodidact from an early age, but I can't deny laziness as a major contributing factor.

I've posted examples of the "artwork" in my old Catholic grade school notebooks before: This birthday salute to M'Osh; and this drawing of my alma mater being targeted by a missile.

I'm going to try to keep this post updated with new content, simply because there are so many pages that made me laugh out loud, but there's no way I can scan and edit them all now. 

I'll begin by introducing the two major characters: Jeff and Mike. Here, I've drawn cheeky Jeff with an pleasant smile, even as he pours a cup of some kind of dark liquid on little Mike's head. Mike was years away from a growth spurt, so while the scale is not accurate, you get the gist. That angelic smile is indicative of how Jeff was able to get away with so much shit, so often. Jeff was not known to wear clown shoes, but I was definitely known to lose interest in whatever I was drawing by the time I got to the feet.

This next full page features our friend Chris as depicted by Mike, always a much better artist than me. His work is in here because we were constantly stealing and defacing each other's books. For reasons lost to me today, Mike portrayed Chris as "Chris the Maniac," with a bloody knife in one hand and--I think--a cellophane sleeve of Wacky Wafers candy in the other. I then added "Jeff the Milkman" (with the same gory font), just because Jeff was very fond of drinking milk. I also drew "Mike the Asshole" at the bottom, to which Jeff later added "who is Paul S____'s best friend." Note the jagged border around his words, meant as a barrier to further adulteration. I cleverly foiled this attempt by inserting a "J" in front of my name, with the clarification that Mike the Asshole was the best friend of "not Paul S____, but J. Paul S____." Damn, I was good.

This next scan is typical of many pages in here, a cacophony of scribbly images and captions that boggle the eye. I'll do my best to explain. At the center, more or less, is Jeff, clutching his "jug o' milk" and a joystick to his Odyssey² video game system. He's wearing a t-shirt for a cruise ship, an article of clothing that passed back and forth between our homes every time one of us slept over the other's house, surreptitiously slipped in with our stuff. I think it was originally mine, a cruising souvenir from my sister. I wore it sometimes, but mostly it existed as a running joke.)

Above him and to the right is Jeff drawn as a classmate of ours, with pointy hair and sweater vest, and even Jeff had to concede that that was pretty funny, adding an arrow and "hee hee hee." The other elements are less explicable, although the tiny four-panel comic of Jeff in a car offering someone a ride (who then jumps on the car, causing Jeff to crash, The End) needs no explanation, except perhaps to a child psychologist.

This looks to me like I drew (in black ink) an E.T. face, to which Jeff added (in blue ink) hair and Mike's name.

There's a lot going on with this next page, little of which I can interpret. At top, Jeff drew the profile face and the figure below it, which then got connected by stick and spit. The other various heads in blue are Mike's, but "Mr. Jeff" is my depiction of him as a circus ringmaster. I'd love to know what the diagram at lower right was meant to show.

Here are various demonic, ghoulish figures doodled by me--including my razor-toothed Pac-Man, who turned up from time to time. The phrase "Gooby Ga" is another recurring detail, the derivation of which is now a mystery to me, and the universe. I've redacted a classmate's name that was added by Jeff. We were abusive little bastards.

More unflattering classmate portraiture (with Mike trying on a very large, bowed hat to his apparent delight), and Mike as "Mosh, Space Cadet," firing his laser rifle. I drew his uniform to the right, which Jeff repurposed as the Invisible Man (with enclosed words, of course).

We all had a fling with a Dungeon's & Dragons-type role-playing game called "The Fantasy Trip." Jeff would concoct the adventures, and we gathered a handful of times to play. Mike, the low man on our social totem pole, was allowed to participate on the condition that his character was a dwarf. I think this next drawing, by me, is meant to show my character (whose name I can't recall at the moment) throwing Mike's character through the flames of a burning hut. This may have been retaliation for his getting my beloved warhorse (“Ripper”) killed, but in any case, it’s the earliest depiction of dwarf-tossing I can think of.

I had a hand puppet which I dubbed Howard Schmortz. He was a fuzzy green fella wearing a red-and-white striped shirt with matching pillbox hat, his face framed by a magenta beard. In this rare color drawing (well, mostly colored, until I lost interest or the Magic Marker dried out), I really captured his off-kilter eyes, which look to me now like those of Goya's ravenous Saturn.

More monsters, with a scrawled list of all the Uncle Floyd Show guests I could think of. (The creepy little guy at lower left is Jeff's, and looks familiar, like he's from something.)

This page is my attempt to illustrate--from memory, of course--the infamously spooky stop-motion open to WPIX's Chiller Theatre. It's really not very good. There might be a better one somewhere.

Come back later! There might be more! Or not!
Happy Birthday Jeff!

Newsday TV Book, March 25-31, 1984.

I know what you're thinking: "Why are you putting up a new post when you haven't even finished the last one?" (Or perhaps: "Why do you continue to waste your time on this at all?") Well, I've had this issue for many, many years now, and it just seemed like a good time to upload scans from it, in order to compare and contrast with that previous post, from roughly one year earlier. (Yes, even as I typed that, it seemed like a pretty dumb reason.)

In any case, Jimmy Cagney and Artie Carney (and yes, I know no one called him that) do their grimacing curmudgeon thing on the cover, for their TV movie Terrible Joe Moran. (Cagney lived another two years; Carney, who was 19 years his junior, died in 2003.)

As usual, the TV Line column features several queries that one hopes were from children.

Here's the cover story, plus some Local Cable TV highlights. By the way, I don't know if Judge Israel Rubin (of Cablevision's Lawline) is the best guy to get legal advice from; a few years later, he would rule that a mansion in Nyack was, as "a matter of law," actually haunted, as the spooked plaintiff claimed. (Spoiler Alert: it wasn't.)

Speaking of curmudgeons, critical harridan Harriet Van Horne has some nerve calling Beatrix Potter a late-in-life termagant (although I did enjoy her reporting of Potter's deathbed directive).

I’m not sure who “Cori Ol’ Anus” is, but I can tell you that’s a terrible stripper name.

Sunday morning's listings, and the directory of local stations.

Cool Alien pic--plus, I did not know that Martin Mull played "Martin Crane" nine years before John Mahoney!

Here's Sunday's late listings, although I forget if I had a specific reason for scanning this page. Maybe because I had just gotten my own little television for my 15th birthday a week earlier, so it's nauseatingly nostalgic to see the shows I stayed up all night watching as I dreaded the imminent return to ninth grade misery. The best was when WABC would show several 1960’s beach party movies in a row. I blame Erich Von Zipper for my lamentable high school career.

I would describe the gal in the hair replacement ad as "Long Island hot." Not disparagingly, you understand, but she might be a little "ethnic" for fellas in other parts of the country.

I've reproduced this Easter ad for Westbury's Hicks Nurseries elsewhere online, but here it is in its original context.

Cool illustrated ad for the Cagney ITT Theatre showcase, with young representations of him and cutie Ellen Barkin.

Thursday's afternoon and evening schedule is accompanied by an ad that, best as I can tell, is for a two-location video store chain called "Video." (One was on Main Street in Farmingdale, meaning there is a very good chance your humble Non-Parader perused those very shelves at some point in its undoubtedly brief existence.)

As I like to do, I now present late Friday night and all day Saturday.

I remember watching this WNEW channel 5 "Movie Greats" presentation of Desk Set. I liked it, but it's probably not the best of the Tracy/Hepburn movies to start with.

WOR channel 9 had They Saved Hitler's Brain for their wee-hours "Fright Night" feature, followed by UFO's: It Has Begun, both of which I likely anticipated with excitement... and then dozed through.

Off Camera features tidbits for fans of Michael Landon and The Duck Factory.

Now for some ads... No Frills Nuts & Fruit Etc. claimed to be "the greatest nut show on earth," so they clearly had no premonition regarding the present administration.

I seem to recall liking McMichaels (no apostrophe?) Seafood Restaurant just as much as Red Lobster, but don't remember if my family went to the Bethpage or Hicksville location.

I've posted ads for other LI lawn care services in the past, but Lawn Doctor was the one my family occasionally employed. I know this because I remember signs placed on our property of the cartoon hand with the green thumb. I wonder if that scored my dad a discount.

I'm not finding much on "Frantic Fredda" online (or, for that matter, "Leg-Warmer Lucy," in the adjacent ad, probably because I just made that name up).

Trivia page 1: I got the first and third questions correct...

Trivia, page 2: nailed all three--but how dare they omit Joanna Lumley as Purdey!

Until next time, enjoy your spring! Although it's already too damn warm for my taste!
And get off my lawn--a doctor just put chemicals on it! Don't you see the thumb?

Newsday TV Book, March 6-12, 1983.

 Hey, I'll write up something soon! Just wanted to get this on here in a timely manner...