So I was on TV, talking about Happy Days...

Adding some necessary labels to TV We Love.

It used to mean something to be on television, especially national television. When I was a kid, there were only three major networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC), plus PBS and a handful of independent stations that didn't always come in clearly. And that was your home entertainment, apart from books, magazines, newspapers, etc. The internet was still far in the future. There was no such thing as "streaming." Even cable and VCRs were but distant lights on the horizon back then. And so, my family and I would gather around the television set in our shag-carpeted, wood-paneled basement and watch shows like Alice, Fantasy Island, The Wonderful World of Disney, and Happy Days. Mainstream fare, in other words.

Many decades hence, long after television became irrelevant, I finally made it onto the boob tube. On Monday, November 10, 2025, my episode of the documentary series TV We Love aired on the CW. Had I not been on the show, I never would have heard of it. But I was, so I did. What can I say? It was still exciting to see myself on the screen, talking about Happy Days. My sister's family watched. Some of my internet pals and high school classmates tuned in. I tried to get some of my coworkers to watch, but I soon realized they had no idea what the CW even was.

Did you watch? If not, I have some good news: my entire episode is available for free right here. Enjoy! And if you want to know how I got involved in this project and what making the documentary was like, you can find out here.

Update regarding that 'Happy Days' documentary that I'm in!

Some promotional artwork for TV We Love.

In case you don't follow me on any of my social media accounts, I have some exciting news about the Happy Days documentary that includes an interview with me. The show will air on the CW on Monday, November 10, 2025 at 8:00 EST and 7:00 CST! The title of the series has changed from TV That Changed the World to TV We Love, and it has switched networks from CBS to the CW. That's showbiz, I guess. I'm just happy that it's finally going to air, and I hope you will watch it.

In the meantime, TV We Love will air every Monday night on the CW for the next eight weeks. The show premiered tonight with a look at I Love Lucy. Future episodes will cover Dynasty, Cheers, The Love Boat, The Brady Bunch, and more.

Joe's AI-Generated Funnies!

This header image was AI-generated. Am I supposed to feel bad about that?

"You scribble."

This book changed my life.

My older sister said those words to me when I was about four years old, and they had such an impact on my still-developing brain that I didn't draw or color anything for quite a while after that. Eventually, my concerned parents bought me a copy of I Can Draw It Myself (1970) by Dr. Seuss, which got me to pick up a crayon again. Very little has changed in the ensuing decades since the incident with my sister; I'm still hyper-sensitive to criticism and am liable to quit a project after receiving any negative feedback.

Dr. Seuss got me back into making art, and I was further inspired by Lee J. Ames' Draw 50 Famous Cartoons (1979), which I discovered at the Flint Public Library. Because of those books—plus the influence of Mad, Cracked, and various DC and Marvel comics—I became a compulsive doodler for decades, drawing on any piece of paper I got my hands on. Did I get any good at it? No, but I was having fun. As I've mentioned on this blog in the past, I started creating my own comics and sharing them with classmates in elementary school, and I continued doing so through junior and senior high. I trailed off a little in college, until I saw Crumb (1994), which made me want to draw again.

I used to spend hours and hours drawing. To this day, I have two thick binders of the sketches I've created over the years. They're still on a shelf in my closet now, taking up valuable real estate. But whenever I've shared my hand-drawn art with others, it tends to get one of two reactions: either total indifference or mild dislike. I think the low point of my experience as an artist was submitting a cartoon to a website and being told, straight up, that the art was not of professional quality. I call this a "low point" because the same website had recently published a cartoon that was simply a drawing of a triangle with a funny caption. That's what had emboldened me to submit one of my own drawings in the first place.

Life update: A cry for HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gene Wilder and Zero Mostel in The Producers.

There's a moment, early in Mel Brooks' The Producers (1967), when meek accountant Leo Bloom (Gene Wilder) finds a serious discrepancy while auditing the books of failing Broadway producer Max Bialystock (Zero Mostel). Max raised $60,000 from his backers for his last flop but only spent $58,000 on the show; the other $2,000 he kept for himself. This is fraud, Leo reminds Max, and could send the producer to prison. Max responds with a soliloquy:

Bloom, look at me. (more forcefully) LOOK AT ME, BLOOM! Bloom, I'm drowning. Other men sail through life. Bialystock has struck a reef. Bloom, I'm going under. I'm being sunk by a society that demands success when all I can offer is failure. Bloom, I'm reaching out to you. Don't send me to prison. (getting very close to Leo's ear) HEEEEEEEEELP!!!!!!!!

I've reached a stage in my life when I can relate to both men in this scene. Like Leo, I go to a dull, unrewarding office job every day. It's how I'm able to pay my rent and my bills and have medical insurance. At night and on the weekends, I pursue various creative enterprises. Unfortunately, like Max, I have largely met with failure. Despite producing a great deal of work over the course of several decades, nothing I have done has reached beyond a very small audience. Sometimes, the only audience is myself.

Podcast Tuesday: "TRUE STORY: I'm in a Happy Days Documentary"

Am I an official Cunningham now? No, but I can dream.

I've been putting original content on the internet for over 30 years now, most of it totally for free. I started posting on Usenet newsgroups and AOL forums in the mid-1990s, and I've never stopped creating material (songs, scripts, stories, etc.)  and trying to get it out to the world somehow. It's really just an evolution of what I was doing in junior high and high school. In my pre-internet days, I made little hand-drawn comics and passed them around class. I also wrote for the school newspaper. You'd think the internet would connect me with a much larger audience than I had back then, but so far that's not really been the case. My appeal has always been extremely limited, bordering on nonexistent.

I suppose I hoped that, eventually, something I made would catch on and I'd garner some kind of following. It just never happened for me, though, at least not on any grand scale. Whatever the zeitgeist is, I've never captured it. About a decade ago, I briefly made an attempt at being a professional freelance writer. I got some things published, but again success eluded me. Then, the work dried up altogether and I had to give it up. Still in all, I've been doing this blog since 2009 and These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast since 2018, and I have no plans to stop either one of them any time soon. I'll keep creating and releasing this stuff for as long as I can, even if my only audience is myself.

These days, I'm always surprised and grateful when anyone reads anything I've written, listens to anything I've recorded, or watches anything I've filmed. It's not often that people find my work, but I'm happy when they do. Recently, I was contacted by a production company that was making a documentary about Happy Days for CBS. I'm not exactly sure how they found me, but they did, and they asked me to be a part of their show. This was pretty extraordinary. This week on the podcast, I talk about that experience and what I learned from it. If you're interested in hearing it, just press the play button on the episode below.

Did you know I have a YouTube channel? I do. It's awesome, and you should definitely check it out!

How can I "pivot to video" if no one pivots with me?

If you're reading this article right now, you obviously know I have a blog. Thank you for reading it. But I'm a multimedia, multi-platform artiste, baby. I cover the waterfront. I'm everywhere all at once. I hope by now you're aware of my podcast, which has been going for six years now. (New episode on October 29, by the way.) If you look to the right-hand margin of this blog, you'll see a sidebar with links to all my other social media accounts and places online where you'll find my work. So much stuff there, well beyond the scope of this blog. I'm posting this little article to alert you to the existence of my YouTube channel. Lots of fun, goofy content over there, some of it Ed Wood-related and some not. Check it out and consider subscribing.

Ed Wood Wednesdays, week 196: The Ed Wood Experience Project (a modest proposal)

Some Ed Wood math. Are my calculations correct?

"Come out and play!"

A few years ago, I was watching Walter Hill's cult classic The Warriors (1979) when a strange thought occurred to me. As much as I enjoy this highly stylized film about urban decay and gang violence, with its memorable catchphrases ("Can you dig it?") and its outlandishly-costumed hoodlums, I was not watching it in the way it was intended. This film should not be enjoyed from the comfort of a couch in a nice, cozy living room. For maximum impact, you should see it in a sleazy New York grindhouse where you'd think twice about even going into the bathroom for fear of being mugged or worse. Ideally, this theater should also be one where you'd have to take the subway to get home, and your paranoia about that upcoming journey would be on your mind as you watched the film.

I've had similar thoughts while writing these articles about Edward D. Wood, Jr. Sure, I can watch Eddie's movies and read his many books and articles, and I can theorize about what was happening in Ed's life at the time he created them—for instance, how drunk or sober he was. But what do I really know about this man? After all, I was just three years old when he died. I don't drink. I've never been a Marine, a husband, an actor, a novelist, a pornographer, or a film director. 

What's more, I've lived my entire life in the Midwest: first Michigan, then Illinois. I've been to New York City a couple of times but never Eddie's hometown of Poughkeepsie. As for the city where Ed lived and worked for the last three decades of his life, I haven't visited Los Angeles since I went there with my parents on a family vacation many decades ago, and I saw the city mainly from the vantage point of an air-conditioned tour bus. (I did get to meet Cesar Romero, though. On Rodeo Drive, no less!) Cross-dressing has never appealed to me, not even for Halloween. All of my teeth are real, except for one in the front.

If I squint, I can just barely make out a few points of similarity between myself and Ed Wood. We're both Caucasian males born in America during the 20th century. I have written professionally and have dealt with editors, deadlines, and meager paychecks. I share Eddie's interest in classic Hollywood films, especially those of the Universal horror variety. Technically, by the standards of my county, I am living just below the poverty line. But I am frugal with what little money I have, so I've never experienced the bleak, paycheck-to-paycheck desperation that was Eddie's constant reality. Plus, Ed Wood had two expensive, bank-account-draining habits—alcoholism and filmmaking—that aren't a part of my life at all. So my existence is vastly different from Ed's. How could I understand this man without ever wearing an angora sweater or drinking rotgut whiskey?

WATCH! The Candy Land commercial that haunted me for years! (Updated for 2024!)

This is what Milton Bradley's Candy Land looked like in 1978.

The game board as it looked in '78.

It's funny how an utterly ephemeral piece of music will become firmly lodged in one's brain for decades. Take, for instance, the instrumental music in an early '80s ad for the Milton Bradley board game Candy Land. There was a particular 30-second spot for this product that I must have seen dozens of times while watching Popeye and Andy Panda cartoons as a kid. Obviously, Milton Bradley bought up a lot of advertising time on children's TV shows, and I was smack dab in the middle of the target demographic.

The commercial itself is typical of the era. In a sunshine-yellow suburban kitchen somewhere, a young brother (played by a pre-Christmas Story Peter Billingsley) and sister play the game with their mom, while a gentle-voiced male announcer explains how it all works.

But underneath the narration is a jaunty, repetitive little melody with a whistle-like sound. To this day, I remember that insidious little ditty by heart. I will likely never forget it. As for the narrator's spiel, I didn't commit every word of it to memory, but there are certain passages that stick out: "You'll discover the Gingerbread Plum Tree, a Rainbow Pass, and Gumdrop Mountain! But be careful of the Cherry Pit Falls, and don't get stuck in Molasses Swamp!" The way he weirdly emphasizes "Rainbow Pass," as if it's a major selling point, is rather memorable.

Incidentally, one thing I learned in the course of researching this article is that there is no "definitive" version of the classic game. The internet can't even decide whether it's called Candy Land or Candyland. Under either spelling, the game goes back to 1949. The gameboard itself and the box it comes in have been redesigned and revamped many times since then. What was once merely "Molasses Swamp," for instance, is now a sentient creature unappealingly named "Gloppy." Other characters, like "main antagonist" Lord Licorice, have been added to Candy Land since the days of my youth. (In my day, bad luck was the only antagonist in Candy Land.)

Through trial and error, I learned that the version of the game seen in the famous ad dates back to 1978. Most sources say the commercial first appeared in the early 1980s, possibly 1983.

The indelible Candy Land jingle played a minor yet arguably-significant role in my life. I can remember humming it over and over to annoy my older sister during a long car trip. She must have identified the song, too, because she said, "Mom, tell Joey to stop singing the Candy Land song!"

A few years later, when I joined the school band, a few of my fellow musicians-in-training and I would try to learn as many pop songs, TV and movie themes, and advertising jingles as possible on our respective instruments. Then as now, I played the euphonium—a little-understood and much-neglected instrument to which I was dutifully assigned after failing to make the grade on the cornet. 

Being relegated to the low brass section was moderately more fun if I could play a reasonable facsimile of '"Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin or "The Ballad of Jed Clampett." I remember it was a major victory (in my own mind) when I learned the familiar seven-note "Miss Gulch" theme from The Wizard of Oz. But there was this one kid, Marc Wojtowicz, who played the saxophone and had a dizzying range of tunes at his command. And one of them was—you guessed it—the Candy Land jingle. That may not impress you, but it impressed the hell out of me.

Anyway, here's the commercial. If the song takes up permanent residence in your subconscious, remember that I tried to warn you.

UPDATE FOR 2024: Reader Dan Mahoney informs me that the jingle used in the Candy Land commercial is actually a piece of stock music called "Whistling Robot" by British composer and organist Harold Smart (1921-1980). In more recent years, Harold's music has turned up on SpongeBob SquarePants and its various spinoffs. Thanks for setting the record straight, Dan!

Revisiting a (mostly bad) Christmas album from my childhood

This album was somehow part of my family's Christmas tradition.

Built for comfort, not for speed.

The Winston Singers. They sound famous, right? You're pretty sure you've heard of them. They had that one song. Or was it an album? Or maybe it was a TV special with Jim Nabors and the Marine Corps Band. Whatever. They did something.

Didn't they?

The truth is that The Winston Singers were a bunch of uncredited session musicians who made two quickie cash-in Christmas albums for a low-budget record label in Pennsylvania called Wyncote in the mid-1960s. For the most part, their albums weren't even sold in real record stores. Instead, middlemen called "rack jobbers" would rent space in drug stores and department stores to hawk these inexpensive albums to people who were buying sweaters or talcum powder or lawnmowers.

One of those LPs, simply titled Christmas Carols (aka 14 Christmas Carols and released in 1964), found its way into my family's music collection, along with my dad's Joan Baez albums and the Sound of Music soundtrack. We used to bring it out every December, though the only thing we had to play it on was a Fisher-Price portable turntable that was designed to be sturdy rather than acoustically pleasing. Eleven months out of the year, this album was collecting dust in some hall closet.

In retrospect, that was probably for the best. I recently revisited The Winston Singers' album and found it to be mostly terrible. The jacket does not include any sort of credits or liner notes, just plugs for other holiday-themed Wyncote LPs like Organs and Chimes and Silent Night. No legitimate singers, musicians, or producers would want their names on an album like Christmas Carols. Wyncote may not have been at the absolute bottom of the American record industry, but it was in the lower third. The nicest thing I can say about the LP is that it's pressed on good quality, durable vinyl, much better than some of the flimsy compilation albums I've found from the '70s and '80s that are so wobbly they're almost like flexi-discs. (Even the sleeves on those are thin and cheap.)

The short-lived, low-budget Wyncote Records.

As its title suggests, Christmas Carols—which was available in both stereo and mono (our family splurged for the stereo)—consists of chintzy, rinky-dink choral renditions of Yuletide songs like "Jingle Bells," "I Saw Three Ships," and "Joy to the World." The stuff everyone knows, in other words. Of the 14 selections, there were only two titles I didn't immediately recognize: "Hail to Christmas" (from the Babes in Toyland operetta) and a somber number called "Christmas Hymn," which closes the album.

The music is best described as loud and shouty, with very little subtlety or nuance. Dynamics are not in evidence here. I can't quite tell how many Winston Singers there are. It sounds like maybe five to ten, both men and women. They are accompanied by an organist, whose shrill tones occasionally threaten to drown out the vocals. The mixing seems noticeably "off" somehow. I'm not sure if the singers could hear the organ at all, since they're never quite on pitch. Musically, Christmas Carols is just not of professional caliber. It's more like what you'd hear at a smallish church or school with limited resources.

The one track I remembered most vividly from my youth was "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen." That's a carol I've always liked anyway because it has an eerie, spooky vibe to it. Plus it name checks Satan—rare for a holiday tune. And, sure enough, "God Rest Ye" is probably the strongest part of the entire Christmas Carols experience. The tinny organ and curdled vocals actually kind of work to the song's advantage.

"Go Tell It on the Mountain," on the other hand, is a disaster. I don't know why the very Caucasian Winston Singers thought they could tackle a spiritual, but they were misinformed. At least this rendition is brief. In fact, all 14 songs on this album are brief. I doubt anything goes past three minutes. A wise decision. Christ is merciful; albums recorded in his name should be, too.

Overall, despite its many technical shortcomings, Christmas Carols fulfills its destiny, which is to be generic, instantly recognizable holiday music. On that count, it succeeds where the bombastic Mannheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra so often fail. The Winston Singers' LP is something (mostly) unobtrusive to have on in the background at a holiday party, for instance. My folks used to have big Christmas parties at our house every year, inviting mostly work friends, and I'm sure this record got some playtime there. You could also listen to the album while wrapping presents or trimming a tree. Maybe we used it for that, too.

The sophomore (and farewell) LP.

And so, this obscure, indifferently made Christmas album from 1964—probably the result of an afternoon's work by people who did not care how it turned out—became an integral part of my family's holiday traditions. It served in that capacity for at least a decade, maybe more. Because I associated this record with vacations and presents, I was even excited to see the ugly LP cover, which depicts some creepy, dead-eyed Dickensian caroler figurines in an unflattering close-up.

I'd say we got our $1.99's worth out of this LP.

No other Christmas album ever had quite the same importance in our household as the Wyncote budget record, but there were a few pretenders to the throne. My mother bought a copy of A Very Special Christmas in 1987, for instance, only to be horrified that it contained a newfangled rap song, "Christmas in Hollis" by Run-D.M.C. Even the offerings by Bon Jovi, Bryan Adams, and Bruce Springsteen were too noisy for her liking. About the only track that met with her approval was "The Coventry Carol" by Alison Moyet.

Maybe The Winston Singers were on to something. Or maybe not. They released a second album, Little Drummer Boy, in 1966. The title track was the only new recording on it; the other nine songs were borrowed directly from Christmas Carols. Neither "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" nor "Go Tell It on the Mountain" made the cut. Wyncote Records went under the next year.

Ed Wood extra: A smattering of Ed Wood fan art

Four of my portraits of Edward D. Wood, Jr.

A typical early cartoon (1989)

I used to draw an awful lot as a kid. That's not surprising, since I've been obsessed with comics and cartoons since well before I can remember. My only real "instruction," though, was in grade school. At my alma mater, Springview Elementary in Flushing, MI, we'd spend a couple of hours each week in the art room with a glum, mustachioed guy named Mr. Barnes. My strongest memories were of him yelling at me for leaning back in my chair too far. I never studied artwork formally after that.

But on my own, I'd create little homemade comics and cartoons, strictly for my own amusement. I started with established characters like Popeye, Garfield, and Hagar the Horrible. (For some reason, I was always writing gags that involved quick-drying cement.) But by the time I was 11, I was creating my own characters, eventually including Iffy the Troll, Margin Man, and Vernal Q. Equinox, plus a monstrous rock band called The Apple Scruffs, who allegedly killed a fan at every show.

Sometimes, I'd pass my work around in class. Among my earliest "hits" was a series called Moscow Vice, a Russia-set parody of Miami Vice with two burly Bolshevik cops named Crockski and Tubbnik. I also got a strong response with The Melties, a comic strip about a family made of drippy candle wax. Every Melties plot was the same: the family would try to do something (play baseball, have a picnic), but they'd melt in the sun and end up as puddles of goo on the ground.

I kept drawing into my teens and beyond, never keeping a sketchbook but scrawling on whatever random bits of paper came into my hands. Most of my work was in pencil or ballpoint pen on notebook paper, but I'd write on napkins, gum wrappers, the backs of form letters, etc. It was more of a nervous tic than anything else. I drew pictures instead of biting my nails.

By then, most of my drawings were caricatures of famous people—actors, musicians, historical figures—and modeled after photos. I subscribed to Rolling Stone in the '90s and always did drawings of the celebs in there, generally rock stars. But I'd draw my own weird little monsters and grotesque human figures as well. To this day, I have two thick binders of this material.

As you might expect, I did some Ed Wood-related drawings over the years, and I'd like to share them with you today. First up are caricatures of Johnny Depp and Martin Landau as their characters from Ed Wood. Also included here is a little picture of the real Bela Lugosi in Dracula (1931). The Lugosi pic was done on a different piece of paper and then cut out.

Johnny Depp and Martin Landau: (inset) Bela Lugosi

Next up are two portraits of Edward D. Wood, Jr. himself, done completely separately but based on the same photograph from Glen or Glenda, as published in Nightmare of Ecstasy. The one on the left is in color, though I used a very messy charcoal pencil for the black background and immediately regretted it.

Two views of Ed Wood from Glen or Glenda.

My most ambitious example of Ed Wood fan art is this wonky triptych based on that much-circulated headshot of Eddie in his theater days. These portraits were done completely separately on different pieces of notebook paper, then taped together. I believe these were done in the 2000s when I was commuting to Chicago from the 'burbs by train. Those Metra trips leave plenty of time for nonsense like this.

An Ed Wood triptych

That about does it for the hand-drawn stuff. These days, I do most of my artwork digitally. It's still just as crude and wobbly as ever, but I don't get ink or graphite on my hands anymore. Plus I can tweak it and try to make it better. Some of this stuff I've already posted on the blog, but I thought I'd put it all in one place. Here's a mischievous Eddie as Mr. Murphy in The Love Feast (1969).

Eddie in The Love Feast.

In a similar vein, here is Eddie in Mrs. Stone's Thing (1970), squinting at the camera through his makeup.

Ed Wood in Mrs. Stone's Thing.

And here is bulldog-faced Duke Moore in Night of the Ghouls (1959). As you can see, this one is a bit more cartoony and distorted. I once thought of creating brand new artwork for every article in the Ed Wood Wednesdays series, but that proved impractical.

Duke Moore in Night of the Ghouls

Here's another actor portrait: craggy, ill-tempered James Craig in Venus Flytrap (aka The Revenge of Dr. X) (1970).

James Craig in Venus Flytrap.

My most recent portraits of Ed Wood include this regal purple one, again based on the same photo from Glen or Glenda. I must be really drawn to that picture, huh?

Ed Wood in Glen or Glenda.

And, last but not least, here's Ed as Alecia in Take it Out in Trade (1970). I hope you've enjoyed this little gallery of Ed Wood fan art. Crude as these are, these sketches and portraits are a testament to my longstanding fascination with Eddie and his movies.

A portrait of Ed Wood from my "blue" period.

Ed Wood extra: An outline of 'Ed Wood' (1994)

Johnny Depp and Martin Landau in Ed Wood (1994).

Today's article about Ed Wood (1994) took a fair amount of preparation. Before I could really even get started on it, I found I had to make an outline of the entire film. (The finished movie, that is, not the screenplay.) Just to give you a peek into the creative process, I thought I'd post the entire document here. This gives you some idea of how I broke down Ed Wood into various scenes and episodes, and you can see what made it into the article and what didn't. Enjoy. WARNING: SUPER NERDY AND BORING STUFF AHEAD.
       

Journey to the dark, dank heart of my 1980s sticker collection

"The mummy's ready for his mystical journey!"

Where were you during the sticker craze of 1982-83? Me, I was attending Springview Elementary School in Flushing, MI. And, yes, like a lot of kids my age, I got caught up in the fad. There was even a store called Happyland at the local mall that sold pretty much nothing but stickers. For a few months there, that store was the center of the kid universe. Then it went away and no one even noticed.

Recently, I discovered my old sticker album from those days. Well, to call it an "album" is being generous. As you'll see, it's just a bunch of loose pages of typing paper crudely stapled together. But it's an excellent indicator of my tastes during the early Reagan years. I was obsessed with cartoons, comics, video games, and movies. Other than my near-total lack of interest in video games other than Tetris these days, very little has changed in the last 35 years.

Anyway, out of some misplaced nostalgia, I've decided to scan the entire thing so that we can all peruse it together. I think it provides valuable insight into who I was back then and what pop culture was like. Page 1, for instance, is dominated by E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982), but there's a little Pac-Man thrown in there, too. I guess that ghost is supposed to be Inky, but he's the wrong shade of blue. Or maybe he's just a pixelated Fry Guy from McDonald's.

E.T. and Pac-Man stickers

I don't claim to have had great taste as a kid. My love of cartoons and comics knew no bounds, as evidenced by these stickers representing Ziggy and The Smurfs. Hey, I wish I could say I was a 7-year-old hipster, browsing through record store shelves for the latest Plasmatics and Husker Du albums. But it's not true. I read Ziggy and watched The Smurfs. Come at me, bro. It should be noted that all the stickers on this page are puffy stickers. Those were the best kind for some reason.

Ziggy and Smurfs stickers

If cartoons and video games were great on their own, then surely the combination of the two was doubly intoxicating. Which brings me to my utter fascination with Nintendo's Popeye arcade game from 1983. Oh, did I love this game, but I only got to play it at the local roller skating rink. And I was lousy at it, which meant my quarters were soon gone. You have to understand that Popeye himself was my favorite cartoon character, and I consumed as much Popeye media as I could back then. Bonus: these stickers are made from some kind of felt-like material. They're still soft and fuzzy all these decades later.

Also on this page: the wizard mascot from Mystiks, which were these weird, animal-shaped stickers filled with some kind of color-changing oil. If I remember correctly, these were sold only one at a time rather than on pages. It was kind of a big deal to get one of these. The flat, unchanging wizard stickers just came free with the sticker you were actually buying. Sadly, this album does not contain any of the oil-filled Mystiks. Just this lone wizard. "I'm a sticker too!" he pleads. Yeah, right. Go to bed, old man.

Popeye video game stickers.

Did I tell you my love of Popeye was intense back in 1982? I have at least three pages of these stickers, featuring Popeye, Wimpy, Olive Oyl, Swee'Pea, and Bluto. I only scanned one page, though, because the other two are just copies of these same designs. I must have gotten a pack of these.

Popeye stickers

And it's right back to the video games. These are some awesome Donkey Kong puffy stickers. The main sticker even has googly eyes. Who knew Mario was on his way to one of the mightiest franchises in video game history? And who's that woman he's rescuing? Peach? Daisy? Nope. It's Pauline. And this wasn't her last game by a long shot. But, sticker people, she was a brunette, not a blonde.

Donkey Kong stickers

This sticker album also shows how I was growing and maturing in those days. It may be a stretch to call Masters of the Universe more "grown-up" fare, but remember that just a few pages back, we were dealing with Ziggy and The Smurfs. This is a fairly lame representation of the franchise: the logo, Man-At-Arms, He-Man, Skeletor, Beast Man, and two crummy weapons. Barely enough to fill up a page. Ultimately, though, it's stuff like Masters of the Universe that would lure me away from stickers.

Masters of the Universe stickers

Would you believe it? More puffy stickers based on a video game. Go figure. Bet you didn't see that twist coming. These are from Q*bert, another game I only played at the local roller rink. (The joint had a real catchy name, too: Roller Skating. That was the name.) But how often did I get there? A couple of class trips per year? Maybe a birthday party?

Q*bert stickers

Pac-Man, on the other hand, was everywhere. Grocery stores and pizza parlors had Pac-Man cabinets. There was a Pac-Man TV show in 1982-83. We even had a miniature Pac-Man home version. He had a level of ubiquity that Q*bert couldn't touch. These stickers specifically say "Pac-Family." There was no game with that title, but Pac was a family man on his show. (These designs are a little different, though.) And what have we here? More googly eyes!

There are a few randos in here as well: a hockey player, a rocket ship, plus a couple of stray Muppets. The Fozzie sticker makes no sense. It's Halloween, obviously, and he's dressed as a clown. Which tracks, I guess. But he's talking to a pumpkin-headed ghost who looks just like him. And he's saying, "Halloween sure is fun!" like it's some kind of secret. Shrug. (By the way, that "HOT SHOT" scratch 'n' sniff sticker used to smell like cinnamon. Now it just smells like paper. Time, time, time. See what's become of me.)

Pac-Man and Muppets stickers

This next page is sparse but very indicative of its time. It contains three large stickers depicting video games of the era (from top to bottom): Centipede, Frogger, and Defender. I never played Defender even once, and Centipede hurt my hand. You played that one with a track ball, and your skin would always get trapped between the ball and the arcade cabinet. Ouch! Maybe that's why I stuck this one to the page upside-down. Frogger, on the other hand, I played a lot. It's a game I still think about because I live near a very busy street, and crossing it on foot is tricky. My strategy is to make it to the center island and from there to the other side. I don't just play Frogger now; I live it.

Centipede, Frogger, and Defender stickers.

Not much to say about this next page. It's mostly just more randos, including your standard-issue Terrifying Clown from the Depths of Hell™. The one licensed character on this page is Snoopy. The only thing really remarkable about these stickers is that they're (mostly) the shiny, reflective kind. Those were sort of neat, I guess. Not as neat as Masters of the Universe or Popeye, but still kind of eye-catching. I honestly don't get the stickers down at the bottom. They're a bunch of strange props: an old-timey phone, a boiling cauldron, a piggy bank. Your guess is as good as mine. Probably better.

Random shiny stickers

More of the dregs here, I'm afraid. Fairly generic-looking aliens and spaceships. Snoozers. I do like the idea of giving a child a "Pretty Bright!" sticker, though. "Hey, kid, you're fairly intelligent! Not a genius by any means but certainly adequate!" At the bottom of the page are these strange "Penny Power" stickers. I have no idea what these are or where they came from. Google didn't tell me jack squat.

Aliens and Penny Power stickers

Oh, but things turn around in a big way here! Even by the age of 7 or 8, I was already a nerd for old-timey, long-dead comedians like Abbott & Costello and W.C. Fields. So I can remember being ecstatic with happiness at finding these Laurel & Hardy puffy stickers at a drug store one afternoon. Curiously, these designs are based on a 1966 animated series from Hanna Barbera. I can't say as I ever saw that show, but I do remember Stan and Ollie turning up on Scooby-Doo. Also on this page: more Penny Power nonsense, plus Felix the Cat, a panda bear, "I Love My Dog" (we always had dogs in my family), and a now-dormant peppermint scratch 'n' sniff.

Laurel & Hardy stickers, plus Felix the Cat and more!

And now, the end is near, and so I face... Hello Kitty. Look, back then, I was a sticker junkie. I'd take whatever I could get. Even Sanrio stuff. Remember Happyland? That place was like Sanrio Heaven. It's only natural that some of that stuff would filter into my collection. Maybe the American flag helps balance it out. There's some more interesting stuff on this, the final page of my little sticker album. See that Smurfs sticker down there, for instance? It's another scratch 'n' sniff, but this one actually still smells like peanut butter. I'm not kidding. Don't believe me? Smell your screen.

You might notice some Hi-C/Return of the Jedi stickers, too. Turns out this was part of a whole promotion. I somehow wound up with arguably two of the lamer stickers in this collection. Wonder what happened to the rest? Anyway, thank you for taking this voyage with me down Memory Lane. You have a real nice rest of your day.

Hello Kitty and Return of the Jedi stickers

Some thoughts on Ed Wood's 93rd birthday

Happy, happy birthday, Eddie!

Edward Davis Wood, Jr. would have turned 93 today. That is, if his alcohol-drenched heart hadn't given out in December 1978. The Bible promises us "threescore years and ten" (Psalms 90:10). So Eddie got about three-quarters of what he was due. Was he cheated? I dunno. Hard to say. He didn't exactly treat his body like a temple. More like a distillery. And, besides, he packed a lot of living into his 54 years. I mean, I never made any movies with Bela Lugosi. Did you? My mother only lived to 46, and I'd sure as hell rather have her alive today than Ed Wood.

Eddie became an interest of mine about 25 years ago, thanks largely to Danny Peary's Cult Movies and a well-timed movie marathon. He didn't become my taskmaster until four years ago when I started Ed Wood Wednesdays.  I can say that this series has more or less cured me of my need to know more about the director of Plan 9 from Outer Space.

I don't know all there is to know, and I'm a long way from seeing all there is to see and reading all there is to read. But I know enough. And I've seen and read more than enough. I'm sure there are 80 bazillion more porn films of his I could watch from the 1970s. But I don't wanna. Once you've seen 12 or 13 of those, you've seen 'em all. They're not sexy. Just kinda sad. And gross. And then sad some more. I'd rather sit through more of his Westerns than more of his pornos. At least some of the people in the Westerns look like they're getting fresh air and exercise. (That old sourpuss Kenne Duncan being a perennial exception.)

A lifelong drunk, a mediocre Marine, and a prodigious wife-beater, Ed Wood was no hero. He's certainly not my hero. I even flinch a bit at being called an Ed Wood fan, because that implies that I'm either a delusional idiot who thinks Eddie's movies are unassailable masterpieces or a smirking hipster making snide jokes about an unfortunate dead man. I've tried not to be either.

So if I'm not a fan, what am I? I'm a person who admires aspects of Ed Wood's work and thinks his life holds some -- though not infinite -- fascination. He's not without talent, you know. There are moments of genuine horror, humor, pathos, drama, and even wisdom in his works. Those who write him off as a clueless hack -- and that's almost everybody -- are mistaken. I'd say he was a better writer than he was a filmmaker, though he brought a lot of enthusiasm and inventiveness to those early movies of his. In a lot of ways, my experience with Ed Wood peaked with that film festival in 1992. I've been chasing that high ever since.

Eddie's been in the news quite a bit this year. For one thing, actor Martin Landau, who played Bela Lugosi in Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994), died at the age of 89 this July and got a gratifying amount of news coverage. Meanwhile, James Franco's new film The Disaster Artist, chronicling the making of Tommy Wiseau's The Room, has been garnering many, many, many comparisons to Ed Wood. (Trust me on this; all these reviews wind up in my inbox.) And then there was that semi-disastrous recent screening of Take It Out in Trade at Fantastic Fest. I don't even want to get into it, but this garnered a lot of negative press. There was a flurry of statements and think pieces and accusations. To be honest, I barely followed it due to lack of interest. But if there's no such thing as bad publicity, then 2017 has been a pretty decent year for Ed Wood.

*sigh*

There's no real point to this article. Sorry about that. But I hadn't written anything for this blog for a while, and it was Ed Wood's birthday, and I decided to use that as an opportunity to vent a little. Don't let my lack of enthusiasm get to you. Greg Dziawer has enough enthusiasm for ten people, and I'm sure he's got plenty of articles lined up. Ed Wood Wednesdays could not be in better hands. Here's his latest.

Happy birthday, Ed.

TMBG: Postcards from the edge (UPDATED!)

John Linnell and John Flansburgh of TMBG before they became ubiquitous.

TMBG's debut album from 1986.

This will seem completely ridiculous to anyone in 2017, but it used to be kind of difficult to get information about your favorite bands. Like, really difficult. Especially if your musical tastes were even slightly outside the mainstream. In the mid-1980s, for instance, my favorite band in the whole wide world was They Might Be Giants (TMBG), the pioneering New York nerd rock combo originally consisting of John Linnell and John Flansburgh. (The group's lineup would ultimately grow as its sound evolved.) At the time, apart from reviews of the group's albums, the press paid little to no attention to this band. TMBG wasn't serious enough for Rolling Stone -- a publication then in the thrall of earnest, message-driven bands like U2 and R.E.M. -- and not quite cool enough for, say, Spin. (Though the latter did publish a few fleeting features about the group. Thanks, Spin.)

That would all have been okay, but there wasn't really any internet to speak of back then either. By the early-to-mid-1990s, there were some primitive Usenet newsgroups, and TMBG fans used to congregate there somewhat. But in 1986? Zilch. Nothing. Diddly squat. You had to rely on newspapers, magazines, and television for your information. If those outlets didn't choose to cover They Might Be Giants, you were out of luck.

And so, oddball bands had to get the word out themselves using the slowest, most unreliable medium known to man: the United States mail. I can proudly say I was on TMBG's first-ever mailing list, eventually known as the TMBG Info Club. I was even proud that my fan club number, #36, was so low. From the mid-1980s to roughly the late-'90s, when the internet finally supplanted the postal system, I regularly received newsletters, postcards, and catalogs from the group. For some reason, I saved pretty much all of it, probably thinking that it might one day be used in a book about the history of They Might Be Giants. Now that information about TMBG is plentiful on the internet, however, I don't think my humble little collection has much historical relevance. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame hasn't exactly been beating down my door.

Nevertheless, I'd like to share at least a few postcards from my rather vast collection of TMBG-related ephemera. Enjoy.

Ad for the "Hotel Detective" single and video. (1988)

"Ana Ng" inspired this whimsical card. (1988)

Promotion for "Santa's Beard" from Lincoln. (1988)

Promo for "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)." Note the mention of 1-800-Dial MTV. (1990)

Naturally, Apollo 18 got its own postcard. (1992)

"The Statue Got Me High" was the lead single from Apollo 18. (1992)

A new album meant a new tour. Note the expanding lineup. (1992)

Promoting the Back To Skull EP. (1994)

TMBG was the first major act to record for eMusic. (1999)

Long Tall Weekend was TMBG's groundbreaking digital-only album. (1999)

One of the last TMBG postcards was this one for Working Undercover For The Man. (2000)

And, seriously, if you're ever doing that book about the history of They Might Be Giants, drop me a line. I have so much more of this junk. Not just postcards but all kinds of stuff. Remember when you could buy an official TMBG fez for $20? Good times. Wish I'd bought one.