THE CLEVER GREETING!
this is my favorite day of the year because it is probably the only one we have left with which we can express ourselves properly and project the insane culture we've managed to conjure up in this country since WWII. i figured i'd share some weirdness... it is long, so if you aren't able or willing to read it... then watch the youtube clip. if you wanna read further, you'll surely get something from it.DR. PAUL BEARER!
this post is about dr. paul bearer. for a few decades he hosted the "creature feature" on channel 44 which broadcast primarily in central florida. i met him at a halloween event at the winter haven mall 23 years ago today. he died at some point in the mid 90's and i really hope they buried him with his make-up. he has a special place in my hall of heroes. here's the wiki link. and here is a memoir written by a fan of the doctor.THE YOUTUBE CLIP!
- SOMEONE FINALLY POSTED A CLIP OF HIS SHOW THIS WEEK.
this clip is great- it shows one of his shitty sets, his lighting, his voice, some props and a horrible pun-punchline... and of course a swipe at christmas. he, like myself... probably felt that halloween really was superior to xmas, at least in the festive sense. spiritually, xmas of course, belongs to the druids and female feudal german overlords.
THE LOST INTERVIEW!
i found the lost and probably longest interview with dick bennick aka - dr. paul bearer.
what i am posting below, is a link to a long interview, but it is a fast read. very fascinating. reading it reminds me how playful, humorous and campy florida used to be. reading this also reminds me of some of his fake commercials and his so-crappy-its-retarded studio sets.
dr. paul bearer's florida was one that prospered before the disneycorporatism, suburban sprawl and megachurches took over. its not that a saturday horror show has anything to do studio sets... with selling dogshit shaped ice cream bars to british tourists, but the fact is - he is gone and an efite rat, a dwarf named dopey and a dog named goofy rake in bazzzzzillions annually. but who am i to judge?
i'm sure the tourists merely see themselves in those characters and want to be a part the magic. for all of its bin-laden surpassing evilness, disney was a pioneer, and what is florida without disconnected a-cultural weirdness? so props to walt for buying up part of the swamp i guess. attractions made florida... especially central florida.
for instance, there really was a "circus world" - open all year long... 20 mins from my house... which was home of the florida hurricane - one of the roughest rollercoasters in the south. i rode it countless times.
growing up i thought that all cities had huge and multiple attraction sites. i thought everyone had a sea-word, disneyworld... or at least a somethingworld of some sort. i thought every town had a "cheap tourist shirts" zone... and i assumed that convenience stores everywhere had rows of mickey mouse crappola for sale. i also thought that all presidents had to be actors first. how right i was at such a young age.
interestingly, a lot of horror / monster / zombie movies were made in florida from 40's up to today, including some of the classics. just as tampa was the speed metal capital of the world in the early '90's, low budget horror had a solid home in central and south florida, for a time.
my favorite low-budget zombie movie ever - children shouldn't play with dead things, was made in central fl. and miami. i probably get my love of campy horror from my dad - who worked on a few "fake scenes" for the faces of death series, in central florida in the late 80's. at one point they called him the "guts consultant."
fortunately i'm barely old enough to remember the eccentric motels, attractions and cultural oddities that were still ubiquitous in central florida 25 years ago -and the doctor's saturday afternoon show - the creature feature - looms large on the list of eccentric attractions. he was a tv show - not just the host, a rock star, a local-celebrity, a comedian, an archivist and a smart-ass. he also had depth. he screened some amazingly obscure japanese sci-fi and some of the weirdest horror-western-comedy-monster movies in existence.
he was a hero of mine before i realized what a hero was. apparently dr. paul even played his part in spreading rock n' roll through the carolinas in the 50's and 60's. the devil's music. awesome. its too bad rock is dead. luckily zombie movies aren't.
i'm not 100% certain, but i think i got my sense of cultural irony from dr. paul bearer... the expounding of which, is the only thing i'm actually good at.
so anyway, what a great guy... one of the most interesting and eccentric tv personalities in history. i got to mow his yard once.