Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 297: The Crooked Path of Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) [PART 4: THE CONCLUSION]

Doesn't he look like a Mario Puzo character here?

Edward D. Wood, Jr. was not in a good place—careerwise, healthwise, or otherwise—in 1975. He was still writing short stories and articles for various pornographic magazines, along with the occasional dirty paperback, but he wasn't nearly as productive as a writer as he'd been just a few years previously. (Ed was at his most prolific from 1968 to 1973.) Ed's film career by then consisted of making X-rated loops and writing screenplays for other directors. And, by my count, only one more of those scripts would actually be produced in Eddie's lifetime.

As poorly as Ed was doing back then, one of his old cronies from the 1950s, actor Timothy Farrell, was doing even worse. Under his real name, Timothy Sperl, he'd been tried and found guilty of misconduct in his role as a Los Angeles county marshal—illegally dispatching his subordinates to work at campaign events for a politician named Jim Hayes, then covering up the evidence of this. As with the Watergate scandal, which was raging at the same time, the Sperl case was as much about the coverup as the crime itself.

After two months of damning testimony by Sperl's coworkers, Judge Richard A. Gadbois determined that the star of Jail Bait (1954) and Glen or Glenda (1953) had falsified timesheets, misappropriated funds, destroyed radio logs, and interfered with civil service examinations. He was looking at a six-month prison sentence, a $500 fine (that's about $3,200 today), and four years of probation. In addition, he had been publicly humiliated, and his reputation was tarnished beyond repair.

But his story wasn't over. As we shall soon see, there were more twists in the Timothy Sperl saga.

Podcast Tuesday: "Blow Up Your TV"

Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke bicker on The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Garry Marshall served a long and productive apprenticeship in show business before creating the megahit Happy Days in the 1970s. He wrote jokes for standup comedians and late night shows, then graduated to writing prime time sitcoms. One of the most famous shows he worked for in the mid-1960s was The Dick Van Dyke Show. Not only was this series a critically-acclaimed classic with very decent ratings, it also put Garry in contact with some people who were important figures in his life, such as creator Carl Reiner and director Jerry Paris.

I've been watching Dick Van Dyke reruns for decades now, but doing These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast has caused me to notice things in the show that I might have missed before. In particular, a 1966 episode called "Bad Reception in Albany" struck me as a precursor to Happy Days. The plot has comedy writer Rob Petrie (Van Dyke) trying and failing to watch a televised fashion show in an Albany, NY hotel overrun with rowdy, drunken conventioneers. It seems that a fraternal organization called the Seals have descended upon Albany the same weekend that Rob is there, causing him no end of trouble. Years later, Happy Days would have its own fraternal organization, the Leopards, and they would get into similar booze-fueled shenanigans.

This week on the podcast, we're talking about "Bad Reception" and the importance of The Dick Van Dyke Show in the history of Happy Days. As usual, this leads to us talking about a whole variety of subjects. If that interests you whatsoever, click the play button below.

Identifying the second-stringers from Little Golden Books

Not all of these characters are still superstars in 2026.

Like generations of American children since the 1940s, I grew up with Simon & Schuster's Little Golden Books. I was born in the mid-1970s, so my fondest memories of that venerable, much-loved literary franchise are of the titles released during that specific time period. From about 1973 to 1978, the standard back cover art for Little Golden Books featured a train populated by various licensed characters. Just seeing that familiar, friendly picture brings back a wave of nostalgia for me. I must have spent many accumulated hours studying it in my younger days, and I was glad to see it again on social media earlier today.

Upon closer inspection, though, I have a question: Who the hell are some of these characters?

The Beatles gave us a glimpse of their possible future... on their last song

No longer hungry: The Beatles as they appeared during their final photo shoot.

The future we didn't get.

To me, the breakup of The Beatles is no great mystery. It's simple math. When the group started in 1960, its members were about 20 years old and hungry for rock stardom and everything that went with it—women, money, houses, cars, publicity, screaming fans, etc. When the group ended in 1970, these men were about 30 years old and had had plenty of all that stuff. Too much, in fact. At every meal, no matter how delicious, there comes a point when you have to push your chair away from the table and declare that you've had enough. And so, they walked away under their own power while they still could.

I'm reminded of comedian Mitch Hedberg's description of pancakes: "All exciting at first, but then by the end, you're sick of 'em."

Many of The Beatles' contemporaries, like The Rolling Stones and The Who, decided to stay at the banquet for decades, even after the deaths of core members. Even the always-squabbling Kinks managed to outlast them. But the Fab Four remained stubbornly broken up, with each member of the quartet pursuing a solo career. Fans have naturally been curious about what kinds of albums John, Paul, George, and Ringo would have made if they had stayed together through the 1970s and beyond. Some fans have even created compilation albums and playlists with tracks taken from various Beatle solo LPs. 

But in 1970, just as they were disintegrating, The Beatles gave us a humorous glimpse into their own possible future as a band were they to remain together. Yes, I think there's a somewhat obscure Beatles B-side that demonstrates what would have happened to The Beatles if they hadn't broken up. And this song occupies a unique and important place in the group's discography.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 296: The Crooked Path of Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) [PART 3]

After this series, I may never read or write another word about Timothy Farrell ever again.

I learned a valuable lesson from the last two articles in this series. Namely, if I'm ever going to finish this series about B-movie actor turned disgraced lawman Timothy Farrell aka Timothy Sperl, I'm going to have to stick to just the highlights. Or the lowlights, I guess. 

So where were we? Okay, it was May 1974, and Sperl's criminal trial was underway. Witnesses were testifying about Sperl's alleged crimes as an LA. county marshal, which included: misappropriating funds, assigning his men to work at campaign events for Supervisor Jim Hayes, falsifying timesheets, destroying records, and interfering with civil service exams to favor particular candidates. Let's jump back into the timeline:

I've just seen what I've been told is 'Everything'

Nathan Fielder (left) questions Elizabeth Holmes in You Can See Everything.

What the hell did I just watch? 

But can you, really?

If it's possible to emerge from a three-hour movie knowing less about its subject than you did going in, then that's the experience I had watching Nathan Fielder's You Can See Everything, his supposedly all-access look at now-imprisoned Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. 

After emerging from this surprisingly dreamlike and artsy film, I'm not sure if Holmes is a master manipulator or someone who genuinely cannot distinguish lies from the truth. I'm not sure how sincere Nathan Fielder, known for his deadpan demeanor and high-concept stunts/pranks (like Dumb Starbucks), intends this film to be. I'm not even 100% sure how to pronounce the name of actress Amanda Seyfried, who famously portrayed Holmes in Hulu's The Dropout and who reprises the role here. And, yes, that last one comes up as an issue in the film.

Is this movie a documentary about Holmes, revealing the flesh-and-blood woman behind the scandalous headlines? Sort of, though the lady herself disappears (to a Texas prison) about halfway through and is "present" only through brief phone calls and a hologram after that. Is it a meta-narrative about Fielder trying to make a movie about Holmes? Sort of, though Fielder doesn't really let us in on his editing process (which must have been an ordeal in and of itself). Is it a sequel to The Dropout? Again, sort of, though Seyfried is the only returning cast member from that series. Is it a three-hour meditation on the slippery, elusive nature of truth itself? That may be the most accurate label I can give it.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 295: The Crooked Path of Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) [PART 2]

Things were looking shady for Timothy Farrell in the mid-1970s.

NOTE: It had been my sincere hope to bring this series about actor Timothy Farrell to an end with today's article. However, as I began assembling this second installment, I realized I had far too many articles to sort through. I simply hadn't counted on Farrell's 1974 court case generating as much publicity as it did. This article started growing exponentially larger and did not seem like it was close to reaching a conclusion. In other words, I goofed. Rather than releasing nothing this week, I decided to publish what I had. Please bear with me. One way or another, I will bring this thing to a conclusion... eventually. Just not now. J.B.

A week ago today, we were discussing the up-and-down life of Timothy Farrell, a wavy-haired Los Angeles theater, film, and television actor who was part of Ed Wood's repertory company in the 1950s, appearing in Glen or Glenda (1953), The Violent Years (1956), and Jail Bait (1954). Under his real name, Timothy Sperl, he had an almost entirely separate career as a Los Angeles county marshal that started in 1947 and ended in 1974 amid allegations of corruption, embezzlement, and conspiracy. He then retreated from the public eye and died in obscurity but was one of the interview subjects in Rudolph Grey's Nightmare of Ecstasy: The Life and Art of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1992).

More than a half-century later, questions still remain about Timothy Sperl's very public downfall. Was he really taking advantage of his job for financial and political gain or was he unfairly targeted by his enemies because he tried to increase minority representation in the marshal ranks and improve living conditions in the Los Angeles jails? Since the actor/lawman is dead and can no longer speak for himself, we are forced to rely on what various California newspapers reported about him decades ago. In that spirit, let us jump back to Friday, January 25, 1974, the day after Sperl was hit with a nine-count criminal indictment. He had already retained legal counsel, attorney Paul Caruso.

Podcast Tuesday: "Turd Ferguson: Assignment Tampa Bay"

Norman D. Golden II and Burt Reynolds in Cop and a Half.

Remember when cops dominated movies and TV? When I was growing up, they were the closest thing we had to real-life superheroes. From the 1970s to the 1990s, we thrilled to the big- screen and small-screen adventures of maverick plainclothesmen who drove flashy cars, carried powerful guns, routinely roughed up (or just flat-out killed) suspects before bringing them to trial, flagrantly ignored the rules, and infuriated their stressed-out superiors. They did what they had to do to keep the scum off the streets and protect the citizens. Sometimes, they were lone wolves. Other times, they'd be given humorously mismatched partners, who didn't even need to be cops. But we loved everything about them, right down to the clever catchphrases and gratuitous car chases.

That time seems very distant today and impossible to revive or replicate in the 21st century. Too much has happened since the '90s. Too many sad, scary headlines. Nevertheless, in this week's installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we are revisiting the era of the fictional supercop. In particular, we are reviewing Henry Winkler's Cop and a Half (1993) starring Burt Reynolds. This movie was made during the post-Happy Days years when Henry walked away from acting and tried to reestablish himself as a producer and director. 

But Cop and a Half wasn't just a straightforward cop movie! Nope. Burt's character, Detective Nick McKenna, was given an unlikely partner: a wisecracking eight-year-old named Devon Butler (newcomer Norman D. Golden II). You have to understand, this was just a few years after Home Alone (1990). America wanted stories about precocious, resourceful kids who could make helpless fools of the grownups around them. And Hollywood was more than happy to supply these stories. You'll hear all about it on this week's show, which is conveniently available right here:

Where is God in Ken Russell's 'The Devils'?

Oliver Reed gives a tortured performance in The Devils.

I don't know who or what runs the universe. It might be a wise, benevolent, and all-powerful God. It might be nobody at all. Either answer is bound to disappoint somebody. But what I can be fairly sure of is that anybody who claims to know definitively what God is and what God wants—and has the evidence to "prove" it—is either being dishonest or delusional. 

I don't necessarily mean that as a complaint. There are considerable benefits to people claiming to speak on God's behalf, even if it's all baloney. In his "Sky Cake" routine, comedian Patton Oswalt explains how there would be no civilization as we know it today if "weaklings" in the past hadn't invented religion. But, human nature being what it is, we invariably take it too far. People will always want power, money, and status. We also want to impose our personal beliefs on large portions of the population, the more the better. And these desires have driven us to do awful things to one another in the name of God.

All this brings me to Ken Russell's The Devils (1971), a long-suppressed, much-censored film just now being released to theaters in its uncut glory. I'd been hearing about this infamous movie ever since I started hanging around Usenet movie forums in the 1990s, but I'd never even bothered to track down any version of it, since I knew I'd just be seeing a censored print. Now that an uncensored Devils is playing on theaters across the country, however, I knew I had to see it. 

Was 'Help!' the first Beatles concept album?

The Help! soundtrack captures The Beatles at a transitional time.

The Beatles evolved a great deal between their debut album, Please Please Me (1963), and their farewell album, Let It Be (1970). During those seven incredibly eventful years, the group's songs became more adventurous and experimental, both lyrically and sonically, and their albums became more ambitious in scope. There's a world of difference between Beatles for Sale (1964) and Abbey Road (1969), even though they were recorded by the same four guys from Liverpool, just a few years apart.

On the cusp: The Beatles in 1965.

In the early days, The Beatles' albums were extensions of their live concert performances. Each LP was simply a grab bag of whatever tracks the group happened to be working on at the time, generally a combination of Lennon-McCartney originals (with occasional Harrison contributions) and some rock, R&B, and country covers. It was a good formula that resulted in several classic LPs that remain popular today. 

But the Fab Four stopped touring in mid-career, which in many ways liberated them creatively. They no longer had to reproduce their songs onstage, so they were free to make music that could only emerge from a recording studio with all its sonic trickery. The group's lyrics changed, too. While their early albums are dominated by simple love songs—boy meets girl, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, etc.—their later LPs could tackle any number of social or psychological themes or even indulge in surrealism and pure abstraction.

There is so much difference between the group's early work and its later work, in fact, that most fans tend to divide their albums into two major categories: Early Beatles and Late Beatles. But some experts have proposed a third category: Middle Beatles, referring to that brief but productive time circa 1965-66 when they were first showing signs of artistic growth and dabbling in Dylanesque folk rock. The two best-known Middle Beatles albums are Rubber Soul (1965) and Revolver (1966). But I'd like to add a third LP to this roster: the soundtrack to the group's second movie, Help! (1965). In revisiting this somewhat-neglected and underappreciated album, I have discovered some remarkably consistent themes throughout it. Help! is so cohesive that I would be comfortable calling it The Beatles' earliest concept album, predating Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).

Does that sound preposterous? Stick with me. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 294: The Crooked Path of Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) [PART 1]

Actor/lawman Timothy Farrell aka Timothy Sperl and his attorney, Paul Caruso.

Actor Timothy Farrell.

Ed Wood fans know mustachioed, curly-haired actor Timothy Farrell (1922-1989) from his roles in Glen or Glenda (1953), Jail Bait (1954), and The Violent Years (1956). A veteran of the Los Angeles theater scene, Farrell appeared in films and TV shows fairly regularly in the 1950s. His acting career seems to have petered out sometime in the 1960s. The IMDb says he worked on the cautionary educational films of producer Sid Davis as late as 1968, but I'm not convinced of this. I know I spotted him in a 1964 episode of the soap opera Day in Court. 

Apart from the Wood movies, Tim's greatest accomplishment as an actor was playing the villainous Umberto Scalli in three low-budget flicks produced by George Weiss: The Devil's Sleep (1949), Racket Girls (1951), and Dance Hall Racket (1953). (I may have to cover the Umberto Scalli trilogy someday.) While Farrell was occasionally cast as authority figures, like cops and doctors, I find him more convincing as slimy underworld types. There's just something vaguely unwholesome and unsettling about him. His most convincing performance is as the volatile, easily-agitated crook Vic Brady in Jail Bait. When Vic warns his young accomplice Don (Clancy Malone), "I'll fix you but good with the cops," you believe him.

Using his real surname, Sperl, Timothy had a lengthy but troubled career in law enforcement that eventually ended in scandal and disgrace. I find this terribly interesting because it suggests that the impatient, snarling hoodlum we see in Jail Bait is closer to Timothy's real personality than the reasonable and understanding Dr. Alton in Glen or Glenda. To test this theory, I thought I'd see what the Los Angeles newspapers had to say about Mr. Sperl, both the actor and the cop, over the years.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 293: The Hall of Fame of Western Film Stars (1969)

Kathy and Ed Wood at Kenne Duncan's wake. Note the book Ed is holding.

Awake, a wake.

There is a sweetly sad quality to the photos of Ed Wood taken in the last decade of his life. Eddie was in freefall by then, physically, personally, and professionally. Years of alcohol abuse had ravaged his face and body, leading to his early death at age 54. His career in show business was faring no better. He was supporting himself entirely through his work in the adult film and publishing industries. And even there, he had to maintain a furious pace just to (almost but not quite) keep up with his creditors. As he spiraled into addiction and poverty, he often took out his frustrations on his wife, Kathy. Ed Wood's last decade was marked by disappointment, uncertainty, violence, and desperation.

And yet, the man in the pictures looks cheerful and content. Not a care in the world, this guy. Sure, you could say that he was simply too soused to worry what was happening to him. He found a fool's paradise at the bottom of a glass and stayed there. But I'd like to think that the optimism that brought him to Hollywood in the 1940s had not abandoned him entirely in the 1970s.

One of the most compelling latter-day photos of Ed Wood was taken at the wake of actor Kenne Duncan in 1972. After years of declining health and declining fortunes, the famed cowboy actor ended his own life by overdosing on barbiturates. Some time later, Eddie and Kathy celebrated his memory by throwing a wake in his honor. They invited such luminaries as Paul Marco, Criswell, David Ward, Nona Carver, and Hope Lugosi. A somewhat grainy, underlit black-and-white photo—complete with handwritten notes by Kathy—captures all of these people, plus figures I believe are Marg Usher (Paul's agent) and actress Mona McKinnon. Eddie, drunk as a lord, is leaning against Kathy and holding a book: Ernest N. Corneau's The Hall of Fame of Western Film Stars (1969). 

Naturally, I was curious. What was this strange, obscure book? What secrets might it contain?

Podcast Tuesday: "Twenty Feet from Fonzie"

A Fonzie presidency would bankrupt this country.

The dinosaurs are long gone, but some of their footprints still remain on the surface of the earth. You don't even have to leave the United States to see some of them. There are dino prints in Connecticut, for god's sake. Think of that: these huge, terrifying creatures lived millions of years ago before going extinct, and yet their tracks are probably within driving distance of a Target today.

I think you know where I'm going with this. The nostalgic sitcom Happy Days (1974-1984) has been off the air, extinct, for over 40 years, and yet its tracks can still be seen. If you know where to look, that is. While the show debuted in January 1974, it didn't really become a multimedia pop cultural phenomenon until 1976 during its third season. This was a pivotal year for Happy Days. The show's breakout character, Fonzie (Henry Winkler), moved in with the Cunninghams, and the entire series was reformatted so that it could be filmed in front of a live, boisterous studio audience. It also gained an immortal catchphrase: "Sit on it!"

The schlockmeisters and opportunists smelled money in the air, and they didn't wait to cash in. Soon, stores were flooded with Happy Days and Fonzie-branded merchandise—some of it authorized, some of it bootleg. In the spring of 1976, London Records wanted a piece of the action, so they released a novelty single called "The Fonz Song" by a manufactured group called The Heyettes. It was a breakthrough hit in several markets and even made the national charts. Was that enough? No. London Records decided that a full-length Heyettes album was in order. The result was Fonzie, Fonzie, He's Our Man. Naturally, we're talking all about it on this week's installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast.

Some real talent went into this LP. The Heyettes were accomplished session singers, and the producer and arranger were longtime music industry veterans. But does any of this add up to a great (or even listenable) album? My cohost and I have some thoughts, and you can hear them by clicking on the podcast below.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 292: The Lascivious World of A.C. Stevens & Ed D. Wood, Jr. (2008)

Of all the Ed Wood sets ever released, this is definitely one of them.

lascivious [las·​civ·​i·​ous, lə-ˈsi-vē-əs] (adj.):

filled with or showing sexual desire; lewd, lustful

Over the decades, Ed Wood's films have been bundled together in various box sets, first on VHS, then DVD, and now Blu-ray. I've definitely purchased my share of them over the years. Maybe you have, too. There's a strange quality in Eddie's movies that makes you want to see more of them right away, so it makes sense to sell them in bulk. They're like potato chips or pretzels, difficult to stop at just one. Let's see now....

The monolith.

• The first such anthology I ever bought was Rhino's The Ed Wood Collection (1995), a three-tape set that came in a faux-angora box and included Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), Glen or Glenda (1953), and Bride of the Monster (1955). That pink, fuzzy monolith still sits among my Wood memorabilia today. I vaguely remember a blue version existing, but I can't find it. Did I dream it?

• Then there was Image Entertainment's The Worst of Ed Wood (2000), a four-DVD set. It contained the same films as the previous Rhino set, plus Jail Bait (1954). Its Plan 9 disc also included the documentary Flying Saucers Over Hollywood (1992). When I think of this set, I remember buying it at a Borders in Flint, MI on a freezing cold day, using money I'd made as a customer service rep for General Motors.

• Just a few years later, Image released The Ed Wood Box (2004), a six-disc collection that included everything from The Worst of Ed Wood but added Night of the Ghouls (1959) and The Haunted World of Edward D. Wood, Jr. (1996). It handily makes the previous Image set obsolete, but I never bought it because I already had Night and Haunted separately.

• A staple of cutout bins for years was Passport Video's two-disc The Ed Wood Collection: A Salute to Incompetence (2007), which included Plan 9, Glenda, Bride, Ghouls, Jail Bait (in its rare director's cut form) and The Violent Years (1956), plus a bonus featurette called The Ed Wood Story. For some reason, this once-plentiful title has become scarce in recent years. A shame, too, as it contains the longer Rhino cut of Glenda rather than the shortened, censored version included in the Image sets.

• The landmark DVD collection that inspired this series of articles was S'more Entertainment's Big Box of Wood (2011), a six-disc set that included Plan 9, Bride, and Jail Bait, but added The Violent Years (1956), The Sinister Urge (1960), Fugitive Girls (1974), Drop Out Wife (1972), Hot Ice (1978), The Snow Bunnies (1972), The Beach Bunnies (1976), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Trick Shooting with Kenne Duncan (1960), and Crossroad Avenger (1953). The set included new introductions (by Ted Newsom) and various commentary tracks, plus trailers and interviews with Dolores Fuller, Joe Robertson, and Kathy Wood.

• It's not a multi-disc set, but After Hours' Cinema's single-disc Ed Wood's Dirty Movies (2014) contained Eddie's final directorial effort, The Young Marrieds (1972), plus two additional titles: Nympho Cycler (1971) and Shot on Location (1972). Eddie's participation in Nympho is undisputed—he cowrote the script and appears on camera in a supporting role—but whether he worked on Shot is controversial.

• The most significant Wood collection of recent years has been Severin's three-disc Blu-ray set, Hard Wood (2024). It contained The Young Marrieds, plus Necromania (1971), The Only House in Town (1971), and Shotgun Wedding (1963), plus a variety of loops, featurettes, and commentary tracks. 

I think you can agree, that's a lot of Ed Wood collections and box sets. And there are still more I don't own, like The Ed Wood Curiosities Collection (2023), which adds the much-disputed Revenge of the Virgins (1959) to the mix. Then there's The Ed Wood Collection, Volume One (2009); The Ed D. Wood Jr. Collection (year unknown); and Ed Wood: The Dark Collection (unknown). Most of these are simply recycling the same old titles: Plan 9, Bride, Glenda, the usual suspects. But today, I want to talk about a three-disc DVD collection that's been largely ignored by the Ed Wood fan community.

The value of art can't be listed, measured, graded, or ranked... and we need to stop pretending it can be

This might or might not be the greatest movie of all time. That's up to you to decide.

The New York Times recently released its list of the 100 greatest television shows of the 21st century. In case you haven't read it yet, here's a spoiler: it's pointless, meaningless horse manure. Judging by my social media feed the last couple of days, people seem to have forgotten that. There is a widespread delusion that The New York Times is somehow "in charge" of which shows are important or worth watching. 

Reality check: It isn't. You are. You, the person reading this article now, get to decide which are the greatest TV shows of this century. The ones you watch, the ones you like, the ones that mean something to you—those are the greatest. Never ever lose sight of that. The New York Times doesn't know diddly. They can't. It's unknowable. You can only know which shows you think are the greatest; you don't get to decide for anyone else.

There's a British film magazine called Sight and Sound published by the BFI since 1952. Every ten years, they release a list of the greatest films of all time. In the most recent one from 2022, the winner was Chantal Akerman's deliberately slow and methodical art film Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles (1975). Many disagreed with this choice, and they expressed their anger in various articles and videos. Bizarrely, their wrath was largely aimed at Akerman's film, as if the movie had arrogantly elected itself the greatest of all time. Instead, the haters should have been angry with a stupid system that dupes us into thinking that the Sight and Sound poll is somehow meaningful. It's not. It's just the fancy version of an internet listicle. 

The strange, twisted world of Beatles soundalikes!

These lovely ladies are not The Beatles, as you may have guessed.

I wish I had a great story about becoming a Beatles fan, but in truth, I found the group's music in a clunky, roundabout way. That's the case with most of my lifelong interests. In the late 1980s, when I was in junior high school, my older sister briefly became friends with a somewhat artsy girl whom I will call Willow. That friendship ended acrimoniously, but it lasted just long enough for Willow to dub some cassettes of a few Beatles albums for my sister. And she, in turn, dubbed some copies for me. 

That's how I first heard Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), Abbey Road (1969), The Beatles (White Album) (1968), and Rubber Soul (1965): through muddy, third-generation cassettes that I listened to on a portable tape player. I can still remember how I'd listen to "Within You, Without You" and imagine myself as an English secret agent deployed to India, chasing some scoundrel through a public market. There was just something about that track, with its exotic instrumentation and dry, reserved vocals, that ignited my imagination. 

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 291: "I Woke Up Early the Day I Died - An Ed Wood Jr. Inspired Horror Short Story" (2002)

Kailleaugh Andersson took Ed Wood to a strange place: Scotland.

There's a whole universe out there of Ed Wood-inspired fanart: comics, music, film, plays, etc. And I've reviewed a great deal of that material in this series. But not all of this stuff reaches me on its own. Far from it. Occasionally, readers of this column will hip me to some bit of obscure Woodiana that I might not otherwise have heard of. Recently, for example, the redoubtable Bob Blackburn told me about a short story called "I Woke Up Early the Day I Died" by Scottish author Kailleaugh Andersson that is available on Amazon for the Kindle. The story's two-star rating wasn't promising, but the $0.99 price tag was, so I took the leap of faith.

I could not find out much background information on either the story or its author. Kailleaugh Andersson once maintained a personal website, but this has not been updated in years. His Amazon biography describes him as a prolific horror author whose stories have been published (by the hundreds!) since the 1980s, sometimes in anthologies, other times in magazines or webzines. His wife, Alex Severin, has a number of books available on Amazon and still seems to be active. Maybe Kailleaugh is, too. But is his Ed Wood-inspired story worth your time and your 99 cents? Let's find out!

Podcast Tuesday: "Upstairs, Downstairs" or "Encyclopedia Blues"

Debra Jo Rupp, Marion Ross, and Kurtwood Smith on That '70s Show.

Happy Days (1974-1984) was part of a nostalgia cycle that started in the late 1960s and kept going well into the 1980s, leaving numerous TV shows, movies, stage musicals, and albums in its wake. When Happy Days finally breathed its last in the summer of 1984, you'd think the cycle was truly over, too. Nope. Not even close. Robert Zemeckis' Back to the Future (1985) showed that there was plenty of juice left in that particular turnip. Stand by Me (1986) and Dirty Dancing (1987) proved it was no fluke. With The Wonder Years (1988-1993), nostalgia returned to television. By then, the bygone era being wistfully evoked was the late 1960s.

And so it continued. One of the big trends of the 1990s was nostalgia for the 1970s, though the nostalgia for that decade was about half-sincere and half-sarcastic. The pinnacle of this phenomenon was Fox's rambunctious comedy That '70s Show (1998-2006). Much more so than The Wonder Years—which was a thoughtful, occasionally weighty series—That '70s Show was the obvious spiritual successor to Happy Days. Like Happy Days, it followed a group of average Midwestern teenagers through various social, romantic, scholastic, and domestic adventures. Both shows were even set in Wisconsin and both shows existed largely to entertain rather than educate or enlighten.

During its initial run, Happy Days acknowledged its sitcom roots by welcoming classic guest stars like Danny Thomas, Elinor Donahue, Harriet Nelson, and Jane Wyatt. That '70s Show did something very similar by casting Marion Ross from Happy Days as Bernice, the demanding mother of patriarch Red Forman (Kurtwood Smith). In the November 1998 episode "Sunday, Bloody Sunday," Bernice has a longstanding grudge against Red's wife Kitty (Debra Jo Rupp), and it's up to Red and Kitty's son Eric (Topher Grace) to keep the peace. Or try to.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we discuss That '70s Show and Marion Ross' participation therein. We review "Sunday, Bloody Sunday" and talk about how our feelings toward That '70s Show have evolved over the years. We invite you to join us.

A weird, forgotten chapter of 'Simpsons' history has been rediscovered

The Simpsons consult a family therapist in this forgotten 1989 cartoon.

By the time cartoonist Matt Groening unleased The Simpsons on an unwitting world in 1987—it debuted as a segment on Fox's live-action sketch comedy The Tracey Ullman Show—the era of the theatrical animated short was long over. Movie audiences of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s were accustomed to getting cartoons before features, and studios like Disney, MGM, and Warner Bros. famously produced them by the hundreds. Characters like Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, and Tom & Jerry thrived in this medium for decades. This was an era we now call the Golden Age of Animation.

But animation was commonplace on television by the 1960s. Ex-MGM animators Joseph Hanna and William Barbera proved that cheap, made-for-TV 'toons could be successful, and other producers followed suit. People who wanted to see cartoons could do so at home whenever they wanted, so movie studios phased out their animated shorts over the course of that turbulent decade. From the 1970s on, theatrical cartoons were parceled out only as occasional treats, usually in conjunction with children's films. That's the way it still is today. If you see a Pixar feature, for example, you expect a short cartoon first. But you won't get one with most live-action movies.

Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed Wood Summit Podcast vs. 'Trip from Lesbos' (1967)

This week, we try to determine if Ed Wood wrote a forgotten 1967 pulp novel.

Ed Wood wrote a hell of a lot of pulp novels in the 1960s and '70s, most of which can be categorized as "erotic" literature. These books were written for an audience of dirty old men and inexperienced boys. But Eddie didn't write absolutely every dirty book on the market. He definitely had some competition in his chosen profession. And since he didn't always sign his own name to these tomes, his modern-day fans sometimes have to do some guesswork to determine whether Eddie did or did not write a particular novel.

This week, on The Ed Wood Summit Podcast, I'm part of a panel of experts—along with Rob Huffman, James Pontolillo, and W. Paul Apel—who have gathered to discuss a fairly obscure little novel known as Trip from Lesbos or Flight from Lesbos published by Pad Library (one of Ed's known employers) in 1967. It tells the story of a young lesbian named Jean and what happens to her when she moves to Hollywood, reconnects with an old friend, and makes some new ones. This book has some hallmarks of Eddie's writing of the period, including an angora sweater, but does that mean it's his work? Let's discuss it.

If you're interested in reading this book yourself, it's available from Triple X Books for a mere $2. How can you go wrong?