Ed Wood Wednesdays: The Ed Wood Summit Podcast #5 by Greg Dziawer

Dr. T.K. Peters was a seemingly endless source of books.

Sketchy as they might seem, Ed Wood's textbooks on human sexuality from the 1960s and '70s do have some vague basis in actual scientific research. And that is due to the groundbreaking work of one Dr. T.K. Peters (1879-1973), a highly accomplished man I find immensely fascinating. In fact, I talked all about him in last week's edition of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast. Among other things, I wanted to clear up the misconception that Wood and Peters were one and the same person.

After that deep dive into Peters' life, I thought I would continue the story in this week's video. Earlier today, the mailman delivered to my home a vintage Peters book that was entirely new to me called A Study of Intimate Sexual Problems. This particular volume was written in 1970 and published in 1971 by SECS Press, an arm of Pendulum Publishing. It's credited to Frank Leonard and Dr. T.K. Peters. But who really wrote it? Could Ed Wood have been involved? Take a guess before pressing play on the video. Here are your choices:

a. Dr T.K. Peters 

b. Leo Eaton 

c. Hal Kantor 

d. Frank Leonard and Ed Wood 

e. Leo Eaton, from a source by Dr T.K. Peters

Before you go, let me add one last anecdote about Dr, Peters. In 1908, he constructed a studio set for Biograph, an early film company, at Pico Blvd. and Georgia St. It was quite a historic site. The legendary D.W. Griffith even shot there. When Peters visited the Pendulum magazine office on W. Pico Blvd sixty full years later, one can only imagine his sense of deja vu.

P.S. For the first time in the history of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast, I'm pleased to present a very special and unexpected guest, my cat Ivy.

Ivy and Greg are vlog buddies.

Previous episodes of The Ed Wood Summit Podcast can be found here.

The Adventures of Sarah Morgan, Child Genius

Cats are sometimes difficult to identify.

You might think that a comic strip called Rex Morgan, MD would be about a doctor named Rex Morgan and all the medical stuff he does all day. You'd be wrong. Rex is more of a supporting character in the strip that bears his name, and he's such a vacuous dimwit that you wouldn't want him doing any doctoring. Instead, the main character is Rex's precocious daughter Sarah, who has a career as an art prodigy going and who looks like a grown man in a bad wig in closeups. Sarah is the creepy heart and icky soul of Rex Morgan, MD, and eventually the strip will bear her name. Until that glorious day, here is my pilot for the reboot.

(today's zomby) AND THE BEST AND WORST SONG YOU WILL HEAR THIS TUESDAY!

From one "Fluffy" to another...

The cover of Gloria Balsam's infamous 45.

Gloria Balsam was the stage name used by Cynthia Frantz, an aggressively eccentric Philadelphia-born singer who became a hanger-on/peripheral presence in the San Francisco new wave scene of the late 1970s. Her discography is slim, but it does contain the indescribable 1979 single "Fluffy," which had an initial run of only 1000 copies but which found greater fame on a Rhino Records compilation The World's Worst Records in 1983. That compilation must have given Gloria's career a boost. Here is a video of the chanteuse performing the song live (singing along with a pre-taped backing) at a 1984 "new music" seminar in New York. Wonder if the audience knew what they were in for:

Gloria has not produced much in the way of new music in the last three decades, but we'll always have "Fluffy." The singer also seems to maintain a minor Internet presence these days. Under her real name, Cynthia Frantz, she works as an attorney in Vermont.

• Here's her Facebook page

• And here's her MySpace

• For the truly curious, there's a nicely detailed article about Gloria's career here.