Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 222: Ed Wood and Admit One Video Presentations (Part 2)

Ed Wood (top row, center) stars in Glen or Glenda, as released by Admit One Video Presentations.

Last week, we got to know Admit One Video Presentations, the offbeat Toronto-based company that distributed Ed Wood's movies in Canada in the 1980s. Like numerous other companies from that era, Admit One acquired vintage low-budget sci-fi and horror films and released them profitably for home viewing, much to the delight of the emerging "bad movie" cult. You might think of them as Canada's answer to Rhino Home Video or Something Weird Video. To my knowledge, Admit One put out their own versions of all six of Ed Wood's directorial efforts from Glen or Glenda (1953) to The Sinister Urge (1960). If eBay listings are to be believed, these releases are now pricey collector's items.

I was unaware of Admit One until recently, when reader Brandon Sibley brought the company and its products to my attention. To me, the most intriguing of the company's tapes is their release of Glen or Glenda because it gives us yet another slightly different cut of the film. In the past, I've explained how Glenda was released under numerous titles and was edited to various lengths, often to appease the censors. To summarize, the main edits I'm familiar with are:

• The Rhino cut. The longest, least-censored edit I've seen, if not necessarily the best looking or sounding. It was released on VHS tape by Rhino Home Video and was included on the two-disc set Ed Wood: A Salute to Incompetence (2007) from Passport International Entertainment. The film's title card is obviously, clumsily doctored. Whatever real title appeared onscreen has been blurred out, and the title "GLEN OR GLENDA" has been pasted over it. I believe this change was made by distributor Wade Williams, who did something similar to Night of the Ghouls (1959) aka Revenge of the Dead.

• The Image Entertainment cut. The most common version I've seen on the market. This is a sharper, cleaner transfer of the film with less static on the audio track, but it's plagued by numerous omissions, including a scene in which a homosexual man (Bruce Spencer) hits on an unfriendly straight man (Conrad Brooks). The dialogue also deletes certain references to God and sex. Some shots, including part of Glen's nightmare, have been trimmed for pacing reasons. Image's cut is the one used for the colorized version of Glen or Glenda and was also the one Rob Craig consulted for Ed Wood, Mad Genius (2009). It, too, has the doctored title card.

• The AGFA cut. The most recent edition of the film and the one that has provoked the most angry reactions from Ed Wood fans. This transfer from the American Genre Film Archive features dramatically brighter, crisper images than we've ever seen before, but it is also easily the shortest, most censored cut of the movie on the market. It's missing many sequences, some of which are iconic and crucial (e.g. the buffalo stampede) and also reorders certain scenes, especially during Glen's nightmare. The film features a unique credit sequence, including a title card that incorrectly identifies the movie as Twisted Lives. 

Podcast Tuesday: "Coping with the Happy Days Musical (Act 2)"

The Dialtones sing one of their many, many songs in Happy Days: A New Musical.

I watch a fair amount of product review videos on YouTube, and recently, a channel I follow called Freakin' 2 tested out some novelty Easter candies. Among the items being reviewed were those Dr. Pepper-flavored Peeps you may have seen at the supermarket. I was especially interested in these because I'd tried them myself a few weeks ago and found them to be a decent facsimile of the popular beverage. But I don't really drink a whole lot of Dr. Pepper, so maybe I'm not the best judge.

The host of the Freakin' 2 video reached this conclusion: "I think occasional fans of Dr. Pepper will probably like it, but purists may not be convinced."

Well, friends, that's exactly my reaction to Happy Days: A New Musical, the show we're reviewing this week on These Days Are Ours. If you've seen a handful of Happy Days episodes and have a basic grasp of the characters and their relationships, the 2007 stage musical will probably be satisfactory to you. It's pleasant enough and doesn't overstay its welcome. But if Happy Days is burned into your brain because you've reviewed all 255 episodes, plus the animated series, the stage version may seem slightly "off" to you.

In other words, Happy Days: A New Musical is the Dr. Pepper Peeps of musicals. But is that necessarily a bad thing? Listen to our review of Act 2 and find out!

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 221: Ed Wood and Admit One Video Presentations (Part 1)

This quirky company brought Ed Wood's movies to the Great White North.

The home video gold rush of the 1980s and '90s was a boon to director Ed Wood, even though he was already dead by then. By pure serendipity, the book The Golden Turkey Awards (1980) made Eddie and his films famous at the same time people were starting to buy VCRs for their homes. Naturally, those folks needed plenty of prerecorded videotapes to play on those expensive new machines of theirs, and numerous distribution companies popped up to supply those tapes. Ed Wood's movies certainly were not left out in the cold. His best known works, including Glen or Glenda (1953), Bride of the Monster (1955), and Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), were released on tape numerous times by numerous labels.

In the 1980s, a Canadian company called Admit One Video Presentations produced its own line of Ed Wood tapes, perhaps hoping to capitalize on the Golden Turkey publicity. Very little evidence of Admit One survives today, apart from some Ebay listings for their products, but they released editions of numerous sci-fi and horror films: Robot Monster (1953), Reefer Madness (1936), Spider Baby (1967), The Horror of Party Beach (1964), Chained for Life (1952), Satan's Satellites (1958), She Demons (1958), Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), Monster from Green Hell (1957), The Robot vs. The Aztec Mummy (1958), White Zombie (1952), Lost Planet Airmen (1951), and Bowery at Midnight (1942), which came paired with Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946). 

What concerns us, however, are Admit One's releases of Ed Wood's movies. It was reader Brendon Sibley who brought the company to my attention. As far as I can tell, Admit One put out its own editions of Plan 9 from Outer Space, Bride of the Monster, and Glen or Glenda plus Jail Bait (1954), Night of the Ghouls aka Revenge of the Dead (1959), and The Sinister Urge (1960). In case you're counting, that's all six of the feature films Ed directed during his classic period. You must admit that's a very decent Ed Wood catalog, especially considering the Tim Burton biopic was a decade away and Nightmare of Ecstasy (1992) hadn't even been published. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 220: "Never Too Late—Never Too Soon" (1973)

This article captures Ed Wood in his "Cliff Clavin" mode.

Ed Wood died less than four years before the TV sitcom Cheers debuted on NBC in September 1982. Isn't that wild? They seem like they belong to two very different eras of popular culture, but they were closer than you'd guess. In fact, I think Eddie would have been a great character on the show, had it taken place in L.A. instead of Boston. From his writing, I gather that Ed was contemptuous of "beer bars" and "beer joints," but the man clearly loved to drink and to socialize, and a bar like the one in Cheers would have allowed him to do both. (Fun fact: Eddie's last apartment was only two miles from the Paramount soundstage where Cheers was filmed.)

In the 1960s, director Joe Robertson owned a bar in North Hollywood called the Surf Girl, and Ed Wood was a regular there, sometimes even showing up in drag. I bet everyone there knew his name. I can imagine a bedraggled Eddie coming into the bar after a hard day—his wig crooked, his makeup smeared—and everyone yelling, "ED!!!!"

In the past, I've compared Ed Wood to Cliff Clavin, the motormouthed, know-it-all mailman John Ratzenberger played so ably on Cheers. I think Eddie considered himself something of an expert on numerous topics, and he was not one to keep his opinions to himself. This side of his personality comes through in his writing occasionally. I've also referred to this as Eddie's "professorial mode" in which he aims to dazzle us with his knowledge. And this week, we encounter another sterling example of this phenomenon.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 219: Exploring Ed Wood's contributions to Boyplay magazine (1973)

Two gentlemen frolic in the pages of Boyplay.

Do you have a "good" pair of scissors in your home, one that cuts more cleanly and assuredly than the others? How about a "good" flashlight that you always reach for whenever there's a blackout? Perhaps in your closet is a "good" pair of jeans that fits you just right, even when you've cheated on your diet a little. Chances are, if you own multiples of any item, one always becomes your favorite, simply because it works so reliably.

Here's to the "good" things in life.

For publisher Bernie Bloom—who oversaw a multimedia porn empire in the 1960s and '70s—Ed Wood was definitely his "good" writer. Bernie published a wide variety of adult books and magazines in those days under such banners as Pendulum, Calga, and Gallery (all the same company), and Eddie was his man-of-all-work. If Bernie needed text of basically any description, Ed Wood could provide it, quickly and dependably. This could mean full-length novels or nonfiction books, but it could also mean short stories, editorials, or even photo captions. When Bernie's son Noel got into making adult features and loops, he also hired Eddie frequently, but that's a whole other story.

The point is, in the final decade of his life, Ed Wood wrote a massive amount of text for Bernie Bloom. Some of that was written under his own name, making it easy enough to spot. Some was written under well-known pseudonyms like Dick Trent and Ann Gora. That's fairly easy to identify, too. Eddie himself kept track of this kind of material on his own resumes. But, once you start delving into this subject, you start to realize that a great deal of the Wood text in the Bloom publications is not attributed in any way; sometimes it's not even titled.

One thing (among many) that the late Greg Javer taught me is that, if a Calga/Pendulum/Gallery magazine contains a known Ed Wood article, it probably also contains some other, uncredited Wood text, too. As I told you in a recent blog post, I purchased a copy of Gallery Press' Boyplay magazine, vol. 2, no.2 from May/June 1973. This is the first vintage adult magazine I have ever purchased, and having a physical copy of such a publication gives me a new perspective on the world Ed Wood inhabited in the 1970s. 

Podcast Tuesday: "Coping with the Happy Days Musical (Act 1)"

The happy, happy cast of Happy Days: A New Musical.

When Howard Ashman and Alan Menken adapted Roger Corman's dark comedy Little Shop of Horrors (1960) as a stage musical in 1982, it was rather a novelty in the theater world. Stage shows based on movies weren't exactly unknown back then—think of Sondheim's A Little Night Music (1973), based on Ingmar Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night (1955)—but generally the adaptation process went the other direction. Stage musicals became movies, not the other way around.

Nowadays, due to the success of movie-based shows like The Producers (2001), Hairspray (2002), and Spamalot (2004), it seems like every fondly-remembered pop culture property gets its own theatrical musical eventually. It's not surprising at all that Happy Days (1974-1984) would also get this treatment, especially since the long-running sitcom was already heavily influenced by the stage show Grease (1971). And so, in 2007, Happy Days: A New Musical debuted to generally positive reviews. It never reached Broadway but has become a rather popular choice for high schools and community theater troupes.

A few years ago, my cohost suggested we cover the Happy Days musical on These Days Are Ours, but I've been putting it off for some reason. Now that we've finished all eleven seasons of the sitcom and both seasons of the cartoon, it feels like it's finally time to cover the stage show, which has a book by Garry Marshall and songs by Paul Williams. That's an impressive pedigree. Does the show live up to it? This week on the podcast, we try to answer that question as we review Act 1.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 218: What motivates Bela Lugosi's character in Plan 9?

Never is a long time, as Bela Lugosi proves in Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957).

When I think about the movies I've seen the most times, a few titles come immediately to mind, including The Wizard of Oz (1939), Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), This is Spinal Tap (1984), and The Big Lebowski (1998). Among Ed Wood's movies, however, the clear winner is Plan 9 from Outer Space aka Graverobbers from Outer Space (1957). I first sat through this notorious sci-fi horror chiller in October 1992 as part of a four-film Ed Wood marathon in Flint, Michigan. Since then, I've probably seen Plan 9 theatrically about a half-dozen more times. At home—through VHS, DVD, Blu-ray, and streaming—I've screened it dozens of times in whole or in part, often while doing research for this series.

In short, I've spent many hours of my life with this odd little film. And yet, all these decades later, it may still have things to teach me. I'll give you an example.

Critic Harry Medved, who helped give both Ed Wood and Plan 9 from Outer Space some measure of immortality with his book The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), recently devoted an episode of his PBS documentary series Locationland to the making of Plan 9. Among the filming sites Medved visited was 15129 Lakewood St. in the Sylmar neighborhood of Los Angeles. Back in the 1950s, this charming domicile was the residence of actor-wrestler Tor Johnson, who played Inspector Daniel Clay in the film. Johnson allowed Ed Wood to use the site as the home of Bela Lugosi's unnamed character, generally referred to as Old Man or Ghoul Man. In Plan 9, we see a grief-stricken Lugosi—still reeling from the death of his young wife (Vampira)—smelling the roses outside the house before wandering into traffic and getting run over.

"Confused by his great loss," intones narrator Criswell, "the old man left that home, never to return again."

Except Lugosi totally returns again just 23 minutes later, as proven by that aforementioned episode of Locationland. When Harry Medved visited the house in Sylmar, the owner graciously let him film the outside. But Medved and his guest, comedian and writer Dana Gould, wanted to film the back porch of the house as well, because this is where Ed Wood shot the scene in which Bela's character, having been resurrected from the grave as a zombie, enters his former home, now owned by pilot Jeff Trent (Gregory Walcott) and his wife Paula (Mona McKinnon). Jeff's away when Bela arrives, so Paula is all by herself and quite vulnerable when this strange figure suddenly appears in her bedroom.

Even though I've been watching Plan 9 for decades, it took Locationland to make me realize that the Trents are living in Lugosi's character's former home and must have moved into the place shortly after he died. Jeff's coworker, sassy stewardess Edie (Norma McCarty), comments that the house is too close to the local cemetery, "I tried to get you kids to not buy too near one of those things," she opines. "We get there soon enough as it is." She also says Jeff's house is "quiet alright, like a tomb." Jeff is rightfully concerned that the police keep showing up at the cemetery for unknown reasons. What exactly is going on there?

We soon find out what's happening at that cemetery, and it's more bizarre than we could have possibly guessed. Aliens from a faraway planet, represented by the arrogant Eros (Dudley Manlove) and the more pragmatic Tanna (Joanna Lee), are using their "electrode guns" to resurrect some recently deceased earthlings, including both Lugosi and Lugosi's wife. This is all part of a larger campaign to strike fear in the hearts of the human race and thus deter us from creating a weapon called "Solaronite" that will destroy the entire universe. Got all that? 

The aliens' plan is quite convoluted and doesn't come close to working. But they do manage to bring Lugosi back to "simulated life" for a short while. Once resurrected, he is more like a traditional obedient "voodoo zombie" rather than the cannibalistic, aggressive zombies we know from the George Romero films, starting with Night of the Living Dead (1968). Eros and Tanna can control the zombies to some extent, but Lugosi is apparently allowed to explore the world on his own for a while when he's revived. And where does he choose to go first? Right back to his old house.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 217: Some more info about Ed Wood's "TV" novels

Ed Wood wrote two very similar novels late in his career.

If you've been following this blog, you know that I recently reviewed two of Ed Wood's rather obscure gay porn novels from the 1970s: Diary of a Transvestite Hooker (1973) and TV Lust (1977), both credited to his "Dick Trent" pseudonym. Technically, Diary is one of Ed's "nonfiction" books, since it supposedly contains the true-life reminiscences of an actual gay prostitute in Hollywood. However, since the prostitute in question ("Randy") is totally imaginary and his memories utterly bogus, I consider the book just another of Ed's novels. Either way, Diary is mainly an opportunity for Ed to indulge in his love of women's clothing and describe various outfits in fetishistic detail. TV Lust contains much of the same.

A Wood twofer.

The reason I reviewed Diary of a Transvestite Hooker in the first place is that a reader named Leonard Johnson mailed me a bootleg reprint from Amazon that he no longer wanted in his collection. Somehow, having a physical copy in hand (rather than just another PDF on a screen) made me think about the book for the first time in quite a while and consider it as an individual work. Once I'd written extensively about Diary of a Transvestite Hooker, it only felt right to review its little sister, TV Lust, since those two books are so similar thematically. They were even published as a twofer in 2009 under the title Wood on TV by Ramble House. How could I break up such a perfect set?

Side note: When I first bought a copy of Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) about 30 years ago, I was so unschooled in the ways of porn that I didn't even know "TV" was slang for "transvestite." I figured that TV Lust was about the proliferation of sex on television or something similar. Ed Wood was known to watch hours and hours of television, so it's not an entirely far-fetched notion.

Anyhow, in my review of Diary of a Transvestite Hooker, I noted that my bootleg edition contained the full text of the book as well as the photo captions but was missing the actual photographs from the original 1973 paperback Well, as usual, the ever-reliable James Pontolillo swooped in to rescue me. Not only did he have the pictures, he had some trivia to go along with them. Here are two pics from Diary, supposedly depicting the book's subject on the job.

Randy conducts a typical transaction. Note the john's plaid pants.

Due to the obvious signage, you can easily see that these photographs were taken on the 7000 block of Hollywood Boulevard, near the Hollywood Walk of Fame. More specifically, in the background, you'll spot a business called The London Shop. According to James, this was "housed in the ground level of the Roosevelt-Hollywood Hotel." The Roosevelt is still very much in business, but The London Shop has since gone the way of all flesh.

The world's ugliest?

As it happens, I do have the photos from TV Lust in my collection. I didn't comment on them in my review because I wanted to focus solely on the text of the book, which may well be the last Ed Wood novel published in the author's lifetime. In Muddled Mind: The Complete Works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (2001), David C. Hayes described the pictures thusly:

The novel is illustrated with photos of the world's ugliest transvestite in some really awful poses.

Ouch. I feel that Hayes may have been experiencing some burnout by the time he got to TV Lust, having worked his way through many Wood books in a row, and this may have clouded his judgment somewhat when it came time to write his review. Once again, James Pontolillo had some insights to offer on the book's mysterious cover model:

The model featured in TV Lust (1977) went variously by the names Dean Noel and Dena Noel and appeared in only one photoset, apparently originating in 1975. Contrary to the TV Lust cover banner proclaiming “Exclusive Photos,” all of the book's photos came from this photoset, portions of which were first published in Female Mimics magazine some two years earlier. Various pictures of Dean/Dena were published from 1975-1985 in a variety of East and West Coast adult fetish magazines (Female Mimics, Guys in Drag, Ladies by Choice, More She-Males, Transsexuals) and novels (Transvestite Bride, Transvestite Housewife – both by Star Distributors).

Thanks again to James for providing some interesting background information on these striking photographs.

Podcast Tuesday: "The Top 5 Episodes of The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang"

Scenes from various episodes of the '80s animated series The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.

Rather like Joanie Loves Chachi, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang occupies a place of infamy in the Fonzieverse. Why did we even need an animated version of Happy Days? Why does it feature a talking dog and a "future chick" with magic powers? Why are the characters traveling through time in a flying saucer? The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang seems like another example of the Happy Days franchise completely selling out and betraying its own origins as a sweet, simple show about 1950s nostalgia. File it alongside that time Fonzie jumped over a shark in Season 5.

But, over the course of doing These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast since 2018, I've learned a few surprising things. Joanie Loves Chachi, though totally disposable, is a competent, occasionally amusing sitcom. The "jump the shark" episode is actually a lot of fun if you don't take Happy Days seriously (and you shouldn't). And even The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang has its redeeming qualities.

This week, my cohost and I go over our respective picks for the Top 5 episodes of the animated series, and we talk about our overall impressions of the show and its characters. It'd be awfully nice if you would join us.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 216: TV Lust (1977)

For what might be his last novel, Ed Wood returned to familiar territory.

Fans can never agree which of Ed Wood's movies qualify as his "first" and "last." Admittedly, there are a lot of factors to weigh here. Do the films in question still have to be extant today? Does it matter if they were never completed or released in Ed's lifetime? Furthermore, are we only considering his directing jobs, or should we take Ed's numerous credits as a producer, actor, screenwriter, and assistant director into account as well? It all depends on your definitions and your parameters.

Was this the end for Ed Wood?

Similar confusion surrounds Ed Wood's "first" and "last" novels. To the best of my knowledge, the earliest surviving Wood novel we have today is Casual Company: The Laugh of the Marines (1948), but in interviews, Eddie alluded to a few early manuscripts, including The Sunset Murders and The Inconvenient Corpse, that have not yet resurfaced. If one of those is found, it may supplant Casual Company as Ed Wood's literary debut. As for his last novel, the bibliography in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992) ends with TV Lust (1977), a gay porn paperback that Eddie wrote for Eros Goldstripe under his most-used pseudonym, Dick Trent. The guidebooks Muddled Mind: The Collected Works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (2001) and Ed Wood's Sleaze Paperbacks (2013) likewise end their lists of Wood novels with TV Lust.

I cannot say with 100% certainty that TV Lust is the final full-length literary effort of Edward D. Wood, Jr. But it certainly arrived very late in Eddie's life. The author was in the end stages of alcoholism by the time it came out, and his most productive years were behind him. I think, when we ask about the first and last works of any artist in any medium, what we really want to know is: Where were they at the beginning of their career and where were they at the end of it? By those standards, TV Lust is a fitting farewell to Eddie's writing career. While Casual Company gave us a snapshot of twentysomething Eddie at the outset of his career, TV Lust shows where that career had taken him in three decades: straight into the gutter.

At first glance, TV Lust feels like a mere rehash of Killer in Drag aka Black Lace Drag (1963), the lurid, violent novel that truly marked the beginning of Eddie's prolific career in adult paperbacks. (For what it's worth, the bibliography in Nightmare of Ecstasy starts with Killer in Drag.) Once again, in TV Lust, Ed tells the story of an androgynous, cross-dressing young man, in this case Chris/Christine, who becomes a hired killer and makes some good money before his luck inevitably runs out. In Muddled Mind, author David C. Hayes is offhandedly dismissive of the novel due to its perceived absence of originality and flair. He writes:

The rigors of writing smut were definitely telling on Wood at this point. The rehashed plot of the transvestite hitman certainly wasn’t original this time around, and the usual colorful characters are almost nonexistent. The flair that made some of his other novels and films bearable, even through a thin plot and the strange grammar, was noticeably absent from TV Lust. It seems as though Ed Wood had finally given up.

As I've made my way through the Wood novels over the course of the last decade, I've found myself agreeing with Hayes less and less, and this is definitely one of those times when I feel his review is not terribly accurate or helpful. Hayes' problem may be that he chose to read too many of Wood's books in too short a timeframe. I've been there myself. Once you get to TV Lust, you start to feel like a bloated contender in the final round of an eating contest, forcing yourself to take just one more bite but hardly being excited about doing so. 

While TV Lust will never be one of my favorite Wood novels, I see no evidence indicating that Ed Wood had "given up" on anything when he wrote it. It's the kind of story that he might have told at any point in his writing career, at least from the '60s onward. With the benefit of hindsight, knowing the author's remaining time on earth was short, we can see this book as Ed exploring his career-long obsessions—women's clothing, death, booze, prostitution, etc.—one last time. Along the way, the author even trots out some of his classic phrases, like "youthful boobs," "sweater girl," "swap spits," and "love object." It's like all these classic Woodian tropes are taking their curtain call. Besides, you can flip to pretty much any page in this novel and find examples of Ed Wood's beautifully tortured writing style. Here's an evocative passage from Chapter Five as the protagonist deals with his father's death:

He got up from the bed and crossed to a chair which was near the window. There wasn’t much to see beyond, but he stared into space … a starless space …the great black beyond. … that’s where his father was … out there somewhere in eternity … he’d never come back. … he’d never be able to tell what he had thought at that moment of recognition, that he had sired a pup which was neither boy or girl.

TV Lust is filled with passages like that, so I'm not sure what Hayes means when he says the book lacks "flair." From where I stand, it has plenty of Ed Wood's unmistakable style. No other author could (or would) have written this.

When I reviewed Diary of a Transvestite Hooker (1973) a couple of weeks ago, I noted that Ed Wood must have been more sober and coherent than usual when he wrote it, because the book largely tells the main character's story in a straightforward, linear fashion. TV Lust, in contrast, is one of Ed Wood's rambling, Proustian novels. Most of the book is taken up with flashbacks that Chris/Christine is having while preparing to carry out a hit. Through these detailed memories, we learn quite a bit about the character's previous life: how he started cross-dressing as an adolescent, how this habit led to a rift with his wealthy father, how he got involved with the sex film industry, and how he eventually became a hitman for the syndicate. Ultimately, because of these extensive flashbacks, Chris becomes one of the more well-rounded and fully-dimensional characters in the Wood canon.

A Station of the Cross.

Hayes complains that TV Lust lacks "the usual colorful characters" that we find in Ed Wood's other novels. Again, I'd point out that Chris himself is given a surprising amount of depth in the novel. We follow him from his early days in the small town of Grandview, where he has his first, fumbling sexual encounters. After a brief, traumatic stint in college, he transitions into the professional world, working as a secretary and living completely as a woman. It's the secretarial job that becomes the unlikely springboard to his criminal career. Above all, what seems to motivate him is his total obsession with women's clothing. When he schemes to get his hands on an angora sweater, it's like a junkie scheming how to get his next fix.

Along the way, as he races toward the inevitable, Chris encounters any number of memorable characters. Early on, for example, we meet Chris' fun-loving, hard-drinking older sister, Shirley—what, you thought we were getting through an Ed Wood novel without a Shirley?—who at first enables her brother's cross-dressing but then disowns him when he takes it too far. Then, there is Tiny, a vivacious and outgoing bisexual woman who takes a keen interest in Chris after they meet at work. Even more intriguing is Tiny's fashionable, mysterious, cross-dressing brother Richard aka Regina, who leads Chris into a life of crime, becomes his lover, then betrays him. Naturally, we have to have a few truly unsavory characters in every Ed Wood book, and TV Lust is no exception. Besides Richard, the heavies here include Talley, Richard's thuggish college roommate, and Solly, an overweight, cigar-chomping pornographer with possible mob connections.

More than anything, reading TV Lust took me back to those Catholic masses that my parents made me sit through, week after week, when I was a child. Along the walls of the church were displays showing the Stations of the Cross, and I spent hours studying these bas-relief vignettes of Christ's suffering and death: "Jesus Falls the First Time," "Jesus Falls a Second Time," "Jesus Speaks to the Holy Women," and so on. Well, TV Lust is like Ed Wood's Stations of the Cross. We get all the classic Woodian moments: "Chris Trades Clothes With an Adventurous Local Girl," "Chris Gets Caught in Drag by His Conservative Father," "Chris Becomes Estranged from His Entire Family," "Chris Dresses Like a French Maid While Being Whipped by His Favorite Prostitute," "Chris Makes His First Porno Film," and finally, "Chris Gets Killed in an Alley."

Come to think of it, maybe there's some special significance to the lead character's name: Chris/Christine. If TV Lust is meant to be Wood's twisted, degraded version of the Christ story, complete with its own cognates of Judas Iscariot and Mary Magdalene, that makes it one of the most intriguing novels he ever wrote.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 215: "Zeus and His Lovers" (1973)

Zeus was a horny bastard, as Ed Wood understood all too well.

I've covered dozens of Ed Wood's short stories and articles over the years, but I've never owned any of the vintage adult magazines in which they were originally published a half-century or more ago. Most of the short pieces that I've reviewed on this blog have come from the three marvelous Wood anthologies assembled by Bob Blackburn between 2014 and 2022. The magazines Ed Wood worked on during the 1960s and '70s have become very expensive on the secondary market—well out of my price range—and I'm grateful to Bob for buying dozens of them so that Ed's work can be reprinted and enjoyed by fans today.  A few more of Ed's articles have been sent my way by generous readers, typically as PDFs or JPGs. Those were much appreciated as well.

I now own this exact magazine.

Recently, though, reader and podcaster Rob Huffman let me know that a copy of the May/June 1973 issue of Gallery Press' Boy Play was available online for a stunningly low price, and I couldn't resist. The Nixon-era gay porn magazine contained one verified short story credited to Ed Wood, but based on past conversations with Greg Javer, I knew that Eddie probably wrote multiple pieces for that same issue. Sure enough, when the copy of Boy Play arrived in my mailbox a couple of weeks later, I found Ed's unmistakable writing style throughout the entire issue. My preliminary diagnosis is that Eddie wrote every last word in it, including the unsigned editorial at the beginning. Hell, he may have written the copy in the ads!

Would you believe it took me this long to realize that Boy Play is a mere reversal of Playboy, the most famous adult magazine ever published in America? Funny how swapping those two syllables makes all the difference in the world.

I'll probably end up writing multiple blog posts about this one magazine. For now, though, I'd like to concentrate on the one short story in this issue that Ed wrote under his own name. It's called "Zeus and His Lovers," and the title gives you a good indication of its contents.

The story: "Zeus and His Lovers" (aka "Zeus... and His Lovers"), originally published in Boy Play, vol. 2, no. 2, May/June 1973. Credited to Edward D. Wood, Jr.

Synopsis: Zeus, king of the Greek gods, is happily married to Hera. They have an extremely active and mutually satisfying sex life. In addition, Zeus has numerous mistresses, a fact he does not hide from Hera. However, there is still something bothering him. He feels tremendous pressure to compete sexually with the other male gods, and it seems that all of them have taken young boys as lovers. Zeus is the only one who hasn't.

Zeus and Hera have a marathon lovemaking session. In the afterglow, the god and goddess discuss Zeus' sexual dilemma. The other gods have definitely noticed that he doesn't have a boy lover, and they're starting to talk. There's even a popular "epigram" about Zeus that's going around. Hera tells her husband that she supports him totally in whatever he does and would not be hurt if he took a young male lover. Zeus tells her he already has a boy picked out: a beautiful mortal named Ganymede, who will be the new cupbearer to the gods.

Wood trademarks: mythology (cf. "Thor and His Magic Hammer"); the word "lovely" (cf. Glen or Glenda, many others); heavy use of ellipses and italics; sheer material; supposedly "new" things that are not really new (cf. Glenda); references to characters' body temperatures; pink clouds; kaleidoscope; androgyny; ancient Greece (cf. "The Greeks Had a Word For It," "Sappho Revisited").

Excerpt:

"It is not for me to say what you should do, Zeus. It is only that I must serve you. You must do as you see fit. And if that is the fad, then you should most certainly investigate the cause for the fad and find out what enjoyment might be captured in the tender young bodies of boys."

Reflections: Back in 2022, the late, great Greg Javer and I reviewed an Ed Wood story from 1973 called "Thor and His Magic Hammer." As its title suggests, this strange little fable explores the sex life of the Norse god of thunder, specifically how a mortal woman named Andralia gives Thor a few pointers in the bedroom and makes him a better lover. "Magic Hammer" originally appeared in the May/June 1973 issue of Gallery Press' Goddess. That makes it an obvious counterpart to "Zeus and His Lovers": same publisher, same release date, similar subject matter. Eddie must've been going through a mythology phase in 1973. Or maybe the subject was always on his mind. Remember that Glen or Glenda (1953) makes an incongruous reference to Morpheus, god of sleep.

In hindsight, it's not difficult to see what attracted Ed to this strange, often disturbing material. Greek mythology is rife with loathsome and depraved behavior, much of it sexual in nature, including instances of adultery, rape, incest, and pedophilia. This is the stuff of trashy, exploitative fiction, exactly the kind that Ed Wood wrote. The fact that the Greek gods are capable of supernatural acts, such as turning into animals, only aids them in their debauchery. Their perversion truly knows no bounds.

While the story of Zeus and Ganymede inspired artists for centuries, it seems today like a textbook case of predatory sexual behavior.  According to the myth, Zeus was so taken with this beautiful adolescent boy that he took the form of an eagle, swooped down to earth, grabbed Ganymede, and carried him back to Mount Olympus. There, Ganymede indeed became the cupbearer to the gods, just as it says in this story, as well as Zeus' lover. It's never clear that Ganymede consented to any of this. Nevertheless, Zeus was so grateful for the boy's service that he granted Ganymede eternal youth and beauty. Is anyone else reminded of the real-life story of Liberace and Scott Thorson? While the famed pianist could not make his young lover immortal, he did pay for Thorson to have numerous plastic surgeries.

It's interesting to note that, in "Zeus and His Lovers," Ed Wood portrays Zeus' wife, Hera, as simpering and submissive. Greek mythology portrays her as anything but. In fact, Zeus' love affair with Ganymede angered Hera greatly. She was intensely jealous of her husband's new boy toy and made no secret of this. So why does Ed write her like the ultimate supportive wife, a woman who encourages her husband to have numerous lovers, even young boys? Perhaps this was Ed's commentary on marriage and how a wife "should" behave.

I'd also like to point out that the rest of Boy Play magazine is not about "playing" with actual boys. The magazine includes many explicit pornographic photos of men, and they're all very much of age. Some even look rather weather-beaten. Again, as with his story for Goddess magazine, Eddie may have taken the title of the publication too literally. Maybe even he didn't get the wordplay. 

Podcast Tuesday: "Fonz of the Baskervilles"

Fonzie (Henry Winkler) meets Sherlock Holmes in Victorian London.

Contemporary critics may see the animated series The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang as a disappointment or even an outright failure because it "only" lasted 24 episodes between 1980 and 1981. Apparently, to be successful by modern standards, a show has to accumulate many dozens of episodes spread out over numerous seasons. The live-action Happy Days, for instance, ran for 11 seasons and 255 episodes. Now that's an impressive run! Its cartoon counterpart didn't survive nearly so long.

What people overlook is that it was the norm at Hanna-Barbera from the 1960s to the 1980s to produce only a handful of episodes for each of its series and then rerun those same episodes over and over for years. Long-running series like The Flintstones and The Smurfs were the exception, not the rule. The original Scooby Doo, Where Are You? only ran 25 episodes from 1969 to 1970. Jabberjaw and Hong Kong Phooey ran 16 episodes apiece. Josie and the Pussycats ran 31 episodes, but that's only if you count Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space. Wacky Races only ran 17 episodes, and that got two spinoffs! By those standards, The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang did respectably.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we arrive at the final episode of the animated series, entitled "Give Me a Hand, Something's Afoot." This time, Fonzie (Henry Winkler) and his friends travel to 1894 London and meet the legendary detective Sherlock Holmes (Henry Polic II). If you were hoping for an epic Sherlock/Fonzie team-up, however, this episode may be a bit of a letdown. The characters do meet, but they don't really work together for long. The famous detective's archenemy, Professor Moriarty, is here, but Holmes' sidekick, Dr. Watson, is mysteriously absent.

Does this mean "Something's Afoot" is a bad episode, though? Listen to the latest installment of the podcast to find out!

Ed Wood Extra! Harry Medved revisits Plan 9 on Locationland (2025)

Tor Johnson emerges from his grave in Plan 9.

We may have celebrated the 100th anniversary of Ed Wood's birth in 2024, but the party is continuing well into 2025, folks. We all know film historian and critic Harry Medved as the co-author of The Golden Turkey Awards (1980), i..e. the book that brought posthumous fame to Ed Wood. Well, these days, Harry is working on a series of videos for PBS entitled Locationland in which he visits the Southern California filming locations of some of Hollywood's golden classics. 

Did you think he'd forget about Eddie? Fat chance!

In today's episode, premiering at 6:00 pm PST, Harry visits the filming locations for Ed Wood's Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957). Harry's guests include comedian and writer Dana Gould, author Katharine Coldiron, and our very own Bob Blackburn, the co-heir of Kathy Wood's estate. You can watch the premiere of Plan 9 episode of Locationland right here. And you can watch a trailer for the episode right here. And if, by chance, you need a little more Medved in your life, Will Sloan recently interviewed Harry about The Golden Turkey Awards. You can find that right here.

Happy viewing/listening!

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 214: 'Diary of a Transvestite Hooker' (1973)

Is this Ed Wood book from 1973 worth your time in 2025?

Ed Wood wrote many (!) books between 1963 and 1977, both fiction and nonfiction, but very few of them are in print and readily available to the public today.  Despite (or maybe because of) this scarcity, interest in Ed's written work remains high among fans. Dedicated Woodologists still want to study these forbidden volumes, especially after they've read Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992), which contains a lengthy and detailed bibliography section, complete with tantalizing cover art and lurid quotes from the original paperbacks. Subsequent books like Muddled Mind: The Complete Works of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (2001) and Ed Wood's Sleaze Paperbacks (2013) have also focused on Ed's colorful and prolific writing career.

This has created a strangely persistent gray market on sites like Amazon and Ebay. Independent, small-time publishers with no legal claim to Ed Wood whatsoever will boldly put out their own editions of Eddie's books. The prices for such reissues, although not necessarily cheap, are substantially less than you'd pay for actual vintage paperbacks from the 1960s and '70s. The estate of Kathy Wood, Ed's widow, has tried to put a stop to this practice, but it's like a never-ending game of Whack-A-Mole. You knock one down, and another has already popped up.

Here's what Bob Blackburn, co-heir of Kathy Wood's estate, has to say about the matter:

You are correct about the plethora of bootlegs out there. Part of the problem is, like on Amazon, I need to 100% prove that I am now the copyright owner for them to halt sales. This is nearly impossible to do, even though in the mid-late 1990s Bob [Weinberg, Kathy's attorney] got about 8-10 titles copyrighted in Kathy Wood's name. 

I have broached the subject with Ben Ohmart at Bear Manor of potentially re-publishing some of these down the road, and hopefully we will. Of course, Killer In Drag (1963) and Death of a Transvestite (1967) were legally reprinted in the late 1990s around the time Bob got [Ed Wood's memoir] Hollywood Rat Race published [in 1998]. And yes, it is "whack-a-mole." So, hopefully this year we can get some of Ed's titles out there legitimately. I am hoping to get some of those that come from ed's personal collection and call them, "The Ed Wood Jr., Signature Collection" and use scans of Ed's signatures as proof that they're from the estate.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 213: 'The Muddled Years of Edward D. Wood, Jr., 1946-1948' (2025)

In his new book, James Pontolillo covers a misunderstood era of Ed Wood's life.

The biopic Ed Wood (1994) only covers a brief span in the life of its title character. The story starts with Ed (Johnny Depp) directing a production of his play The Casual Company circa 1952 and ends with the (improbably grand) premiere of Ed's feature film Plan 9 from Outer Space in 1957. That's five years out of a 54-year life, about 30 of which were spent in Hollywood. In their introduction to the published screenplay of Ed Wood, writers Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski explain their reasoning for limiting the film's scope:

First, we decided that most film biographies were boring. They seem compelled to follow the subject from cradle to grave. We felt this was too much to cover. Why is somebody's death important? The result often ends up quickly skimming the surface and being uninvolving. So we determined that we would only cover five years—the period that Ed was actually "famous" for.

I heartily agree with this streamlined approach. A good biopic should take the life of its subject and mold it into a satisfying three-act story, and that's exactly what Ed Wood does. Besides, most people who watch that movie will be content with seeing Ed during his prime years, making his most iconic films and working with his idol, Bela Lugosi (as portrayed by Martin Landau).

But then, there are the diehards. The completists. The collectors and catalogers. The makers of lists and writers of essays. They can't be satisfied with a mere capsulized history of their hero. They want the entire, sordid Ed Wood saga, stem to stern. Well, they're in luck this week, because James Pontolillo is back with his second highly specific book about Eddie's early years. 

James' first book, The Unknown War of Edward D. Wood, Jr. 1942-1946 (2017), laid bare Eddie's much-mythologized service record as a Marine during World War II. The sequel, The Muddled Years of Edward D. Wood, Jr. 1946-1948 (2025), basically picks up where the previous volume left off. It covers Ed's life from the time he was honorably discharged through the making of his abortive Western, Crossroads of Laredo (1948).

This was a pivotal time in Ed Wood's life, as it would be in any young person's life. From his birth in 1924 to his induction into the military in 1942, Ed's fate was obviously guided by his parents, his employers, and his teachers. After that, Uncle Sam was definitely calling the shots, even telling him when to get up and when to go to bed. But, as of 1946, Eddie was officially an adult in charge of his own destiny. So what did he do with his newfound freedom?

We've heard various accounts of this transitional period in Ed Wood's life, most of them coming from Eddie himself. But the director of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) had a tentative relationship with the truth, to put it mildly, so it's difficult to know what's accurate and what isn't. Did he really perform in drag in New York nightclubs? Did he tour with a traveling carnival as a half-man, half-woman? Did he study with famed choreographer Martha Graham? Did he spy on the Ice Capades for the U.S. government? James Pontolillo is here to investigate each and every one of these claims, plus several more.

Look, I can't "review" this book in any objective way, since I wrote the foreword to it and am quoted in the text several times. But I can honestly report that this book not only gave me a lot of new information, it also caused me to look at Ed Wood's career in a new way, particularly in regards to the various plays Ed studied that may have influenced his later writing. 

James has told me he didn't intend for his book to be any kind of definitive, final statement about this time in Ed's life. And he admits that there are still gaps in the chronology that have stubbornly resisted even his formidable research abilities. But The Muddled Years of Edward D. Wood, Jr. certainly supplies ample food for thought. I can pay it no higher compliment than that. Like The Unknown War, this is a quick, fulfilling read that sheds light on some of the darker corners of Ed Wood's colorful life. It's worth your time.

The Muddled Years of Edward D. Wood, Jr. is available right here.

Podcast Tuesday: "Wisconsin Fonzarelli and the Chest of Wonders"

Fonzie (Henry Winkler) is menaced by snakes on The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang.

Timbuktu. It's one of those faraway places I've been hearing about since childhood, but I never really knew where it was or what happened there. Well, now, thanks to The Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, I at least have some idea. Timbuktu is a city in the West African nation of Mali, and it became a center of both trade and learning in the 1100s. The city lost its influence over time, due to various wars and invasions, plus the shifting of trade routes. But Timbuktu still exists today, and its rich history is currently being cataloged and preserved. 

Isn't that interesting? There's only one thing that could make the city even more interesting, and that's if the cast of Happy Days somehow managed to materialize there in a flying time machine, accompanied by a "future chick" and a talking dog. And wouldn't you know it? That's exactly what happens in the November 1981 episode "All This and Timbuktu."

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we talk about that episode and the effect it's had on our lives. We sincerely hope you'll join us for what should be a frank and eye-opening discussion.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 212: Comparing two prints of 'Hellborn' (1956)

Two views of Conrad Brooks as a juvenile delinquent in Hellborn.

When Woody Allen was dissatisfied with September (1987), a somber, Chekhov-inspired drama he'd written and directed, he did something truly remarkable. Even though the movie was already in the editing stages, he scrapped everything he had completed, revised the script, recast all but two of the major roles, and reshot the entire film from scratch. The resulting motion picture garnered lukewarm reviews and earned back only 5% of its $10 million budget. It remains one of the biggest money-losers in the Allen filmography.

I think this story establishes Woody Allen as the cinematic opposite of Ed Wood, despite the passing similarity of their names. Eddie rarely had the luxury of throwing away footage that he'd shot and developed. His most famous feature, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), was literally built around using some precious silent film he'd shot of actor Bela Lugosi shortly before Bela's death. And when Ed's juvenile delinquent epic Hellborn (1956) ran out of money and couldn't be completed, Ed took some of the footage he'd shot for it and recycled it in Night of the Ghouls (1959) and The Sinister Urge (1960), regardless of whether it actually fit.

Generally, when we talk about Ed Wood's career, we can divide his film projects into two major categories: ones that got made and ones that didn't. Hellborn is in that rare middle territory, along with Range Revenge (1947), Crossroads of Laredo (1948), and The Night the Banshee Cried (1957): ones that sort of got made. Which is to say, enough footage was shot to give us a vague idea of what this project was supposed to have been. The remains of Hellborn were included in a 1993 documentary produced in conjunction with Cult Movies magazine that I reviewed some time ago on this blog.

Recently, however, reader Brandon Sibley informed me that the 2017 Blu-ray of The Violent Years (1956) from Vinegar Syndrome contained the Hellborn footage as well. This was certainly news to me, and I was eager to compare the 1993 and 2017 editions to see if there were any notable differences between them. Fortunately, since I don't own the Blu-ray (yet), Brandon was kind enough to rip a copy of the Hellborn footage for my perusal.

At first, I was shocked to see that the Vinegar Syndrome version ran over nine and a half minutes, while the Cult Movies version lasted only about seven minutes and 50 seconds. Had Vinegar Syndrome found nearly two minutes of precious extra Hellborn footage? Nah. A side-by-side comparison revealed that both versions of Hellborn contain the exact same shots in the exact same order, but the 1993 version runs about 25% faster than the 2017 version, hence the shorter running time. When I slowed down the 1993 edition just a little, it synced up with the 2017 edition perfectly. This begs the question, which running time is more accurate? I have no idea. My copy of the 1993 Hellborn documentary was made from a VHS tape, but Vinegar Syndrome says its copy of the footage was sourced from VHS as well. You'd think they'd run at the same speed. Nope.

Content-wise, as I indicated earlier, the two Hellborns are the same. I've never seen a script or even a plot outline for this film, but it seems to center around two violent street gangs—one all male, the other all female. We see both groups committing crimes, including mugging a man in an alley, terrorizing an ice cream salesman, and robbing a gas station. At the end, the two gangs rendezvous in the park. Conrad Brooks has a central role as a gleefully violent thug. Ed Wood plays two parts: a switchblade-wielding crime boss and a female robber. Mona McKinnon also turns up as a gun moll (or knife moll, if you will). Conrad's brother, Henry Bederski, has a memorable cameo as the aforementioned ice cream salesman.

There is a striking visual difference between these two transfers of the Hellborn footage. Neither one, it must be said, is in great shape. The source footage, much like that of Range Revenge, is alternately underlit and overexposed. Perhaps Ed's camerawork was faulty or the footage was poorly preserved. The 1993 transfer is rather dark and murky, but there's a reassuring, homogeneous smoothness to the images. In contrast, the 2017 version is considerably brighter but also quite a bit grainier, giving it a scratchy, speckled appearance.

As seen in Hellborn (sort of): Atlas Batteries and RPM Lubrication.

When I was performing the side-by-side comparison described above, my eyes initially preferred the dark-but-smooth 1993 version. But ultimately, the Vinegar Syndrome version won the day because it was sharper and revealed more background details. For instance, when the girl gang robs the ice cream joint, there's an oval-shaped neon sign in the window that reads "OPEN ICE CREAM." In the 1993 edition, this is just an indistinct ovular blob, but it's clear as day in the 2017 edition. Similarly, during the famous sequence in which Ed Wood (in full drag) robs a service station, there are signs advertising "ATLAS BATTERIES" and "RPM LUBRICATION" in the background. They're visible in both versions, but they're only legible in the 2017 version.

Another point in favor of the 2017 version is its soundtrack. The surviving footage for Hellborn is totally silent. One wonders what Ed Wood's plan would have been for completing the film. Stock music? Narration? Post-dubbed dialogue? It's a moot point, since the project was abandoned. The Cult Movies version from 1993 adds some tinny, lackluster synthesizer music to Ed's flickering, soundless footage. The score has a very distinct '80s/'90s sound and doesn't really match the footage at all. Meanwhile, Vinegar Syndrome chose to underscore Hellborn with some rambunctious 1950s rock music driven by saxophone, drums, and guitar. There's a snarling version of "Malagueña" that I especially enjoyed. If Hellborn's juvenile delinquent characters had been real, these are the records they might well have listened to!

I remain skeptical that Hellborn is a "lost masterpiece" or that it's of particular interest to anyone other than Wood completists. But, if you want it, it's out there to be found. In multiple places, no less!

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 211: The incredible artwork of Shenandoah See (and my total failure as an Ed Wood fan)

I think this piece captures something essential about Tor Johnson.

In August 2021, I did what I had hoped never to do again: I returned to full-time office work. It seemed like my only option, since my freelance writing career was truly dead by then. I couldn't sell very many articles to editors, at least not enough to cover my monthly expenses, and Dad Made Dirty Movies: The Erotic World of Stephen C. Apostolof (2020), the book I'd authored with Jordan Todorov, wasn't exactly opening a lot of doors. Meanwhile, I needed medical insurance and a reliable source of rent money. It was time to go back to the only life I'd ever known.

Turns out, cubicle jobs like the ones I'd had in the '90s and '00s weren't as common in the 2020s—especially after the pandemic—but I found a reliable (if low-paying) position at a mortgage company and have stayed there for over three years. Since then, free time has become my most precious commodity, maybe the only thing I really treasure anymore. Every second away from that office is golden, even if I'm spending it in traffic or waiting in a checkout line.

Since time is my most/only valuable asset, I have to decide how to spend it wisely. Maintaining this blog is one of my main hobbies, but it's not the only one. Believe it or not, I have a life beyond Ed Wood. Since 2018, for instance, I have cohosted a podcast called These Days Are Ours that requires many hours of research and editing. I'm also a member of the Glenview Concert Band, an ensemble that rehearses and performs regularly. So I have at least three sirens calling out to me. But there is a fourth that outranks the others: the urge to do nothing at all. Often, when I drag myself home from work, all I want to do is stare blankly at the TV for a couple of hours and then crawl into bed without accomplishing a single thing.

I feel guilty about all this, because earnest, well-meaning people continue to email me with questions, comments, and suggestions—pretty much all of it related to Ed Wood. To be honest, I've barely skimmed most of this material. In many cases, these fine folks are working on books and documentaries of their own, and they want my input or participation. If I respond at all, it's usually something like, "Sounds interesting!" or "Keep me posted!" Some help I am, huh? 

One of the people emailing me lately is a talented writer and artist named Shenandoah See. Even though I have been shamefully lax in responding to his emails, he graciously said I could share some of his work however I see fit. This is how I see fit. Here is a little gallery of Shenandoah's work. I genuinely hope you enjoy it.