Podcast Tuesday: "Drugs Are Bad, M'kay?"

Marta Kober on Happy Days.

I grew up during wartime, by which I mean the War on Drugs. Remember that dumb thing? I guess the government officially declared "war" (whatever that means) on mind-altering substances in the early 1970s when soldiers were coming home from Vietnam hooked on dope. But the War on Drugs that I remember started in the 1980s, shortly after Ronald Reagan became president. I think we all remember Ron's wife, Nancy, telling us to "just say no" in some famously ineffective PSAs.

I was in elementary school at the time, and I can say that drugs were not a factor in my life at all. We kids were fairly bombarded with antidrug propaganda, but it was not needed in my case. Teachers would say things like, "We know you kids are under a lot of pressure to smoke pot and pop pills." Wanna bet? I certainly wasn't being pressured to do drugs back then. I wouldn't have even known where to get that stuff if I'd wanted it.

By the time I got to high school in the '90s, students were expected to go through a program called Drug Awareness Resistance Education or D.A.R.E. Drugs were still not a factor in my life because I didn't hang around with cool-enough kids. So D.A.R.E. was just kind of a goof to me. One of my favorite moments of my high school years was when our gym teacher asked the class, "Why do you think they call it dope?" and some wiseacre answered, "Because it's dope." Such a great line. I'm ashamed I didn't think of it.

This week on These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast, we're covering the obligatory antidrug episode of Happy Days entitled "School Dazed." The plot has Joanie (Erin Moran), now somehow a full-time teacher at Patton Vocational School, mentoring a troubled young student named Jesse (Marta Kober). Marta pops pills at school, causing Joanie to get all up in her business. Speeches are made. Tears are shed. Lessons are learned. You know the drill.

But is "School Dazed" any fun at all? Or is it just another useless sermon? Find out by listening to our latest episode, which is linked below.

'Mary Worth' and the shameful ballad of Tommy

Lower that eyebrow, mister!

This has truly been the summer of Tommy. Can there be any doubt? The last few months have simply been dominated by the saga of this sandy-haired ex-meth addict, as depicted in Karen Moy's syndicated comic strip Mary Worth.

I'm sure you've been following Tommy's adventures as closely as I have, but for you few stragglers out there, let me get you up to speed. Tommy is the twentysomething son of Iris Beedle, an attractive, blonde, fortysomething divorcee who lives in the same condo complex as Mary Worth. Iris used to date another of Mary's neighbors, pudgy, befuddled advice columnist Wilbur Weston. They broke up. It was a whole thing. Iris is with a younger, more successful guy named Zak now. And Wilbur? Well, Wilbur takes a lot of long walks these days.

Meanwhile, Iris has had her hands full with her fully grown, live-at-home son. Up to this point, Tommy's been what you'd call a ne'er-do-well. He ne'er does well. How often does he do well? Ne'er. He's been in jail on drug charges before, and he recently got addicted to Vicodin after literally attempting to move one piece of furniture. This guy is one end table away from perdition.

Anyway, Tommy's clean now and working at a supermarket, where he met his current girlfriend Brandy. Problem is, Brandy is sickened by the very mention of drugs or alcohol due to traumatic events in her own family, so Tommy's been afraid to 'fess up about his extremely sketchy past. The last few months have shown Tommy grappling with this problem, and I've been there to document it every step of the way.

Some of this I already covered in my last Mary Worth post just a month ago, but I've done so many more since that they warranted another post. As Tommy's story finally reaches its conclusion this weekend, let's look back on a summer of great memories. (NOTE: Click on the images to see them at full size. I can't promise it'll be worth it, but the text will be more legible.)

Since this is Mary Worth, Tommy went right to the source for help. It did not go well.

That's how I like my jokes: cheap.

Their conversation got intense.

And under those sweatpants? Nothing but support hose, baby.

Tommy, being a good Catholic boy, then took his problems right to the confessional, where I imagined that his old nemesis, Wilbur, was there to greet him.

Sorry, Wilbur, but that's Frasier Crane's line.

But it turned out Tommy was talking to a genuine priest. Talking a little too much to be honest.

Don't judge. Priests need their rest, too.

Tommy eventually had an epiphany, which I turned into a cheap pop culture reference.

Props to Allison Hayes, y'all!

Tommy's confession seemed like it would never end.

I don't even know if that's a priest he's talking to anymore.

Tommy emerged from his confession haunted by voices, one of which I imaged to be Zak.

How does he get his stubble so perfect?

Like Wilbur before him, Tommy decided to go on a walk/vision quest.

I'm pretty sure Dorothy can hook you up with those pills, Tommy.

He eventually decided to spill his guts to Brandy, but the words didn't come easily.

Even Shatner might balk at that pause.

They went out running, which I spruced up with a cameo by Jay Johnston from Mr. Show.

Not pictured: Champion the Drinker.

Tommy made some pretty shocking confessions that day.

Brandy's father was into really long pauses, too.

We learned a lot about Tommy's own past.

Side note: doesn't Ivan Drago look great with long hair?

Brandy took the news very well, as you'd expect.

Her last words to him were "Meep! Meep!"

Meanwhile, Mary and Iris had a very odd, stilted conversation about Tommy.

One of these images is slightly retouched.

Eventually, Tommy and Brandy got things sorted out and spent a nice afternoon on the beach. An afternoon I decided to make just a little nicer.

Next problem: Tommy's Faberge egg addiction.

Iris was so proud of her son. Despite the evidence.

And you thought Iris was the only cougar in this family?

And now, Tommy and Brandy have a wonderful future in front of them, with no problems on the horizon. Well, maybe one problem on the horizon.

That's it, kids. Carpe diem. Carpe that diem all night long.

Let's have fun with the funnies! Part Two: Into the Worth-iverse!

Mary Worth: Isn't she lovely? Isn't she wonderful?

There are comic strips I parody, and then there is Mary Worth. I am continually captivated by the saga of Ms. Worth, a sixty-something retiree who counsels the various misbegotten residents in her SoCal condo community of Charterstone. I do more Worth-related takeoffs than nearly all other comic strips combined, so I thought I'd gather some more recent ones into a post of their own.

Let's light this lavender-scented candle, huh?

Here's a York Peppermint Pattie commercial inspired by 'Requiem for a Dream' (really!)

Quick! Is this shot from a candy commercial, a harrowing depiction of drug use, or both?

File this under "too bizarre to be real, yet too random to be made-up." York Peppermint Pattie, a product of the candy kingpins at Hershey, has an ad called "Environmental Connection" which seems uncomfortably close to the famous, much-parodied "getting high" montage from Requiem for a Dream, Darren Aronofsky's bleak 2000 film about drug addiction. Judge for yourself, though. Don't let me unduly influence you.

Here's the ad:

And here's the corresponding scene from Requiem for a Dream:

It's not just me, right? This is totally intentional, right? The quick cuts, the gasping for breath, the close up of a dilating pupil. It's all taken directly from Requiem for a Dream. The message isn't really even all that subtle: "Look, fatty, we know that chocolate is your heroin. Don't try to pretend that you have free will. You're our junkie slave, and you know it! Now have another York Peppermint Goddamned Pattie!"

Shocking.

Notes on my incredibly glamorous and exciting life (including a trip to Onion HQ)

No, this isn't an outtake from Caligula. It's supposedly a picture of an Onion staff party. (Not pictured: me.)

"May you be happy in the life you have chosen."

-Scrooge's ex-girlfriend, Belle*

*She doesn't really mean it when she says it, but I think it's good advice anyway.

My life is, at least partially by design, uneventful to the point of almost total stasis. I can define myself by the (many) things I dislike: people, crowds, noise, disruption, spending money, following directions, traveling, making small talk, listening, trying to be nice, doing favors for people, and social interactions of all kinds. The extent to which I can successfully and temporarily avoid these terrible maladies is the extent to which my life is tolerable. Of course, this comes at a price. Boredom, alienation, loneliness, and stagnation are the occasional side effects of my chosen lifestyle, but they beat the alternatives: despair, frustration, humiliation, resentment, and an overall disgust with the world and every last person in it. In other words, a relatively solitary, quiet, and dull life is the only kind for me. I couldn't imagine any other way of existing.

So it's been a year. How am I?

(from left to right) Me as I appear now; me as I appeared one year ago. 

"So how have you been?"

Every Wednesday afternoon at around 3:59, I pull into the parking lot of the Arlington Professional Center, an uninspiring complex of squat brown office buildings, in my battered, decade-old silver Cavalier and walk to Suite J for my weekly therapy session. I try not to arrive even a minute early, because I want to spend as little time as possible in the waiting room. Suite J of the Arlington Professional Center has the worst waiting room in the history of people waiting in rooms. Auschwitz had nicer waiting rooms than this place. It is a cramped and ugly space which, if anything, would deepen a patient's sense of hopelessness. There's a faded poster of a wolf on one wall and a table piled high with useless, glossy, oversized magazines filled with pictures of expensive furniture. Certainly, the room's oddest touch is a shelf with a hopelessly outdated and never-used boombox, along with a stack of never-played CDs (classical, new age, lite jazz) and even one sad, neglected cassette. Fortunately, my therapist's own office is much more inviting, with its soothing, dim lighting and comfy, tasteful furniture. Each week, at around 4:01, I haul my depleted husk of a body into this room and plop down on an overstuffed black couch. My therapist, a 50-ish Polish woman with spiky blue hair and the wardrobe of a bohemian artist, asks me how I've been that week.

"Oh, I don't know," I'll usually say. "The same, I guess..."

Et tu, Stretch? Another Armstrong admits doping.

Armstrong in his '70s heyday, a disturbingly pliable role model to a generation of children.

In retrospect, we should have all seen it coming. The freakishly elongated limbs capable of extending to many times their normal lengths, the ability to contort himself into elaborate, pretzel-like configurations, the mysteriously smooth and hairless skin, the apparent lack of a skeleton -- these were not traits which Stretch Armstrong acquired naturally through genetics or learned through years of practice.

And now, finally, the truth has come out. In a highly-publicized TV interview with Color Purple star Whoopi Goldberg, Mr. Armstrong has admitted to his use of a whole battery of performance-enhancing drugs, including Rubbernol, Stretchabunch, Twistophan, and an extremely dangerous bone-softening hormone known only as "Twang." During the course of the hour-long chat with Goldberg, Armstrong also owned up to dozens of cosmetic surgeries in order to maintain his youthful appearance. Despite Stretch's repeated denials in the past, fans had long suspected the muscleman of going under the knife, especially when he re-emerged in the 1990s with an alarming new look. A simple side-by-side comparison makes it obvious:

Armstrong in 1976 and 1993 respectively. Years of plastic surgery had clearly taken a toll.

"What can I say?" Armstrong told Goldberg when asked for his motives. By means of explanation, Stretch spoke of his humble upbringing as the son of a Wisconsin mill worker:

A gateway drug.

I was insecure. My parents named me Stretch, thinking I was going to be tall like my dad, who was All State in basketball when he was in high school. But I was this runty little kid, you know? I was never good at sports or anything. I mean, for one thing, I had these freakish, blobby hands and feet without fingers or toes. I couldn't even hold a football, let alone throw one. 

Then my parents took me to the circus, and there was this contortionist on the bill. I think he was from India or Pakistan, one of those countries. Anyway, I was transfixed. I knew then and there what I wanted to do with my life. Every day after school, I'd practice my contorting. I actually did get pretty good at it -- enough to be hired for birthday parties and car dealership openings, stuff like that. 

One day, a man from the Kenner Corporation caught my act and told me that if I was ever going to make it big, I'd need some extra help. That's what got me started on the whole doping thing. I mean, I'm not blaming Kenner. I was the one who first injected Elmer's Rubber Cement into my calves and forearms. No one put a Nerf gun to my head.

The news has saddened Armstrong's fans around the world,  particularly those in France, a country where he is known as "Monsieur Extensible" and has been widely hailed as an artistic genius. The Légion d'honneur is one of many honors of which Mr. Armstrong has been stripped in recent days, along with his 1976 Toy of the Year Award, his Nobel Prize for Achievement in Contortion, and a Nickelodeon Kids Choice Award he nabbed during his 1990s comeback. Because the Hollywood Foreign Press Association has no integrity whatsoever, though, Stretch will be allowed to keep the Golden Globe he won for appearing opposite Pia Zadora in 1982's Butterfly. He may need to sell it in order to pay the rent on the one-bedroom apartment he currently occupies in Pomona, California -- a far cry from the palatial Malibu estate he once shared with now-ex-wife Tawny Kitaen.

Indeed, the flexible image of Stretch Armstrong will likely never return to its original shape after these shocking admissions. But he is hardly alone in his use of performance-enhancing substances. Let us not forget, for instance, Underdog and his infamous "super energy pills." Then, of course, there is Popeye and his so called "spinach." And Captain America? Trust me, you don't even want to know what that guy has taken. It would be easier to list which performance-enhancing substances he hasn't used. That guy's testicles? Like raisins.

A day (vicariously) spent with Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer: Mathematician turned singer-songwriter turned mathematician again.

"One man deserves the credit. One man deserves the blame."

-Tom Lehrer

Tom Lehrer would scoff at the idea of being anyone's hero. This is part of the reason why he's one of mine.

A native New Yorker born way back in 1928 (one shudders to do the grim calculations here), Lehrer was a child prodigy who graduated magna cum laude from Harvard at the age of 19. Since that time, he has spent most of his career either teaching or lecturing about mathematics at some of America's finest academic institutions, including MIT and the University of California at Santa Cruz. He formally retired in 2001, but he's still listed at the Rate My Professors website with a student review as recent as 2005.

Latter-day Lehrer

What sets Tom Lehrer apart from other mathematicians, apart from his claim of inventing the Jell-O shot, is that he devoted much of his time in the 1950s and 1960s to writing and performing some of the darkest, funniest songs I've ever heard -- deceptively joyous musical theater-type ditties with droll, sardonic lyrics about such topics as sex ("I Got It From Agnes"), drugs ("The Old Dope Peddler"), violence ("The Masochism Tango"), religion ("The Vatican Rag"), death ("I Hold Your Hand in Mine") and war ("So Long, Mom") with a candor that set him far apart from both the singers and the comedians of that era. Today, comedians can joke openly about pornography, incest, cannibalism, bestiality, and necrophilia on prime time network television, but this wasn't true 60 years ago when Tom's records couldn't even be played on the radio during respectable hours.

As with much of the music that now clutters up my brain, the bizarre and sometimes brutal song stylings of Tom Lehrer first entered my life through The Dr. Demento Show. This was back in the 1990s, before the internet was any damned good, and it was difficult to come by information about Tom's life or career back then. I couldn't even find a picture of the guy! I knew instinctively, though, that he wore glasses. Somehow, that was obvious to me. His myopia was audible. 

Despite the apparent rudeness of his lyrics, Mr. Lehrer conducted himself with the utmost decorum onstage, using impeccable Ivy League diction, eclectic and impressive vocabulary, and carefully-curated grammar. On his records, he comes across as man far too smart to take life the least bit seriously. Lerher's musical career occurred during the Cold War when it seemed ever-more-likely that mankind would annihilate itself with increasingly-deadly weapons. This looming apocalypse is the topic of several Lehrer songs, and he treats it the way he treats all other subjects: with an air of detached amusement at the absurdity of it all.

Tom Lehrer's 1953 debut

Today, almost two decades after I first heard "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," (the song that made me a fan) I spent some quality time listening to virtually every Tom Lehrer recording available to the public. That's not a great investment of time, honestly. There are roughly three hours of Lehrer audio in total, nearly all of it consisting of Tom singing solo and accompanying himself on piano. 

His musical output boils down to two brief studio albums (Songs by Tom Lehrer and More of Tom Lehrer), three live albums (Revisited [a.k.a. Tom Lehrer in Concert], An Evening Wasted With Tom Lehrer, and That Was the Week That Was), plus a handful of miscellaneous recordings. He recorded a handful of his most famous songs with a full orchestra, for instance, plus he did a few well-remembered educational songs (like "Silent E") for a PBS children's program called The Electric Company. There are a few good CD compilations out there of Lehrer's work, but buyers should know in advance that the same exact songs from the two studio albums are heard on his first two live LPs as well. And I mean, they're note-for-note the same. If you buy the boxed set with his "complete" recordings, be prepared to sit through the same songs two or even three times.

In all instances, the live versions are superior to their (crude) studio counterparts. For one thing, Tom tends to put a little more oomph into his singing and playing when he's onstage, hamming it up for the benefit of the crowd. He was supposedly uncomfortable with live performances and had trouble remembering the words of his own songs, but you'd never guess that from these recordings.

Better yet, Tom's between-song monologues are little masterpieces of deadpan, spoken-word comedy. He does long, elaborate intros to his tunes, often going off on absurd tangents that have little to nothing to do with the songs. These little digressions are the source of many of Lehrer's best one-liners and bon mots. A particular favorite, from his description of a fictitious doctor: "His educational career began interestingly enough in agricultural school where he majored in animal husbandry... until they caught him at it one day." The audience roars at that joke, and the reaction of the crowd is another reason why Tom's best records are his live ones. There's palpable tension as the audience members decide how far they're willing to let Mr. Lehrer go in his pursuit of tasteful bad taste. You can practically hear them wince, for instance, when Tom gets to this couplet from "Bright College Days":

Oh, soon we'll be out amid the cold world's strife.
Soon we'll be sliding down the razor blade of life.

I'll leave this little discussion of Tom Lehrer's brilliant career with one of the nastiest, truest, and most cynical songs ever written. It first appeared on his 1953 debut album, and when he reprised it on his first live LP, he dedicated the song to those in the audience who were still in love. If you are in love, I now dedicate this song to you:

HEALTH NEWS AND NOTES: I haven't done one of these updates in a while because, frankly, there's been nothing much to report. Taking meds and attending therapy sessions no longer feel like digressions from my life anymore. They're simply part of my life, as regular as a job. Speaking of which, my job remains simultaneously stressful and dull.

Make no mistake: I am fortunate to be employed at all by anyone in any capacity, so I am very grateful to my corporate paymasters. I cannot forget that the insurance I have through my job is what's financing my treatment. Homer Simpson once memorably referred to alcohol as "the cause of and solution to all of life's problems." That's kind of how I feel about my job. It makes me miserable, but I'd be lost without it. 

My anxiety and depression have tapered off quite nicely over the last month, and the severe gastrointestinal problems that were once a huge part of my life have now disappeared utterly. I'm still isolating myself from the world, and I'm always in danger of disappearing into a sinkhole of solipsism or narcissism. I can spend entire weekends pondering the subjective nature of "truth" and "reality" rather than, you know, talking to other human beings or getting fresh air and exercise. Gotta work on that.

There's a fine line between breakdown and breakthrough

A scene from last night's episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

Did you catch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia last night?

The Marx Brothers: Terrible people

I did, and I might have laughed harder than anyone in America at it. For the uninitiated, the show revolves around "the gang," a group of five horrible human beings who somehow remain friends. The main characters are bratty, unduly confident siblings Dennis and Dee Reynolds; their stepfather, Frank, a lecherous lowlife; and two other companions: musclebound lunkhead Mac and twitchy neurotic Charlie, easily the show's most complex character. In each episode, the members of "the gang" make reckless, terrible life choices and end up hurting themselves, each other, and innocent bystanders. The characters are largely defined by their negative traits, including vanity, stupidity, and selfishness. 

Without being too pretentious, I see Sunny as the modern-day equivalent of the Marx Brothers, because those classic comedians of the 1930s also portrayed deeply flawed, often aggravating individuals who treated each other badly and yet maintained a curious camaraderie. These people are loyal and disloyal simultaneously. Like the Marx Brothers,  the members of "the gang" on Sunny never learn anything from their experiences. They simply act upon their instincts, consequences be damned, for their own amusement and ours.

Like most episodes of the series, last night's installment of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia had a self-explanatory title: "The Gang Gets Analyzed." That's exactly what happens in it. The entire episode takes place in the office of Dee's therapist, beautifully played by guest star Kerri Kenney-Silver of The State and Reno 911. The office depicted on the show was very much like the one I visit each week, right down to the soothing artwork and the various knickknacks, and the demeanor of Kenney-Silver's character was very much like that of my own therapist. This was incredible serendipity: one of my favorite shows was depicting events currently unfolding in my own life!

Of course, Sunny turned the entire experience into a grotesque farce. The plot had Dee inviting her four companions along with her to therapy so that the therapist could settle a petty dispute: who should wash the dishes from one of the gang's recent dinners? Frank had actually brought the dishes with him and dumped them on the floor of the stunned, yet admirably composed therapist's office. Kenney-Silver then proceeded to analyze "the gang" one by one. Inadvertently, each one ended up revealing a great deal to this woman. Mac is gullible and delusional. Dee is a liar. Dennis is egotistical and condescending. Frank has deep psychological scars from his past. And Charlie? Well, Charlie carries a dead pigeon around with him, which may offer some clue to his mental and emotional state. 

As per usual for Sunny, nothing is "solved" during the episode. The characters reveal themselves at their worst and then just carry on with their lives. I like that a lot. Too many TV shows offer trite homilies and facile speeches to their viewers. Sunny is just about venting negativity and letting that negativity stand, untouched and unfixed.

All Day by Girl Talk

Meanwhile, I had something of an emotional breakthrough yesterday. In brief, I can feel sadness again! For me, that's remarkable. I've spent the last few weeks not feeling much of anything. It was so gratifying to have an actual strong emotion after such a long period of evenness. And it was the damnedest thing which brought it on, too. I was running to the commuter train station from my office in downtown Chicago. It was a few minutes after 5:00, and I'd just worked a very long, stressful shift. 

I decided I needed a little music to pep me up, so I listened to my iPod as I ran. The song which came up was a track called "Jump on Stage" by Girl Talk, which is the pseudonym of a DJ named Gregg Gillis who creates long, elaborate audio collages by combining snippets of various pop, rock, hip-hop and soul records in a number of unorthodox ways. It is not uncommon, for instance, for Gillis to mix the vocals of a song from one genre with the musical backing of a song from a completely different genre. "Jump on Stage" is a track from his most recent album, 2010's  All Day, and for a few glorious moments, Gillis combines the vocals from "Hey Ladies" by the Beastie Boys with the music from Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life." 

As you probably know, one of the Beasties, Adam Yauch, died of cancer earlier this year. But in the sample from "Jump on Stage," he sounds young and vibrant and alive again, even though all he really says is "hey." Add to this the fact that "Lust for Life," which Pop co-wrote with David Bowie, is about the singer's recovery from heroin addiction. I can't exactly explain why, but the combination of these two songs -- both jubilant, by the way -- had a seismic emotional impact on me. By the time I reached the train, I had tears in my eyes. I thought about trying to fight it, but then said to myself, "Fuck it. Just let it out." It was great to be so sad. Paradoxically, my desire to live was incredibly strong at that moment.

Then, as will happen in a city the size of Chicago, a man dressed like Indiana Jones boarded the train and somehow snapped me back to reality. This was not a costume. You could tell it was his regular, everyday look. I immediately stopped crying and spent the rest of the 40-minute train ride in contemplative silence. If you're curious, here is the track which provoked such a strong response from me. The relevant portion begins at roughly the 5:18 mark.


HEALTH NEWS & NOTES: For those who live with depression and anxiety, sleep can be an issue. Cheap over-the-counter sleep aids usually work for me, but these are relatively weak and may take a couple of hours to work. While I was in the behavioral health center, my doctor prescribed Restoril for me and told me to take it at my discretion as necessary. 

Let me tell you, this is some serious shit. Restoril will kick your ass. At least it did mine. I was used to taking sleep aids well before bedtime, and I thought I could do that with Restoril, too. But that drug has me sound asleep within an hour. The problem with this is that I might wake up fully rested at 2:00 in the morning, which screws up the rest of my day. So I'm trying to avoid using it unless the "nuclear option" is mandatory. 

Meanwhile, I'm a little concerned about my lack of physical exercise. I got a lot of exercise over the summer months, but this was almost entirely based around running and walking at a nearby park. When the temperatures dropped, my long walks stopped. I don't think it's coincidental that my depression spiked when the chilly weather arrived. I have to think of an alternate exercise routine. My psychiatrist just told me to join a gym, but I'm not really a "gym" guy. For one thing, I'm very self-conscious about my body and appearance. Plus, frankly, gyms cost money, and I'm a cheapskate. If you have suggestions in this regard, please leave them in the comments section.

More Funday Sunnies

Artwork from Crankshaft; dialogue by me.

Artwork from Mark Trail; dialogue by me

George Stover: Not just an actor but a fine dancer as well!

making gifs

As it turns out, pills are not candy.

Thanks to the good folks at the Long Island Regional Poison Control Center, here's a fun little PSA from 1983 featuring a vocal quartet comprised of singing pills. I wonder if this is what went on in Judy Garland's head all the time.

And in case some of those lyrics sound awfully familiar even though you didn't grow up in or near Long Island during the 1980s:

The true origin of a popular catchphrase

It didn't start with this guy, that's for sure.

"Bow chicka wow wow."

That little bit of onomatopoeia has slowly infiltrated the English language over the course of 20 years. Urban Dictionary defines it as (among other things) a "verbal means of referencing a sexual encounter" or "a poor imitation of pornographic like music." So the term BCWW can refer to sex itself or to the bass-heavy music heard in pornographic films, particularly those of the 1970s. The term has become so commonplace that there is even a song about it -- "Bow Chicka Wow Wow" by Mike Posner featuring Lil Wayne. 

But where did the phrase originate? Who came up with the idea of verbally mimicking the music from 1970s porno flicks? I distinctly remember the phrase first being used as part of a stand-up comedy routine in either the late 1980s or early 1990s. With a little "Google fu," I think I have tracked down the creator of this concept: a stand-up comedian named Jordan Brady. He performed this routine on an early 1990s stand-up show called The A-List. 

Jordan Brady doing his famous "bow chicka wow wow" bit.

This comedy routine was widely seen in the '90s, and kids started imitating it at school pretty quickly. But, somehow, Brady's name is no longer attached to this famous catchphrase. Hopefully, this article sets a few people straight.

As long as I have your attention, do you mind if I try a little experiment? I've been getting some "sensitive content" strikes on old articles, and they're obviously computer-generated rather than human-generated. My guess is that there's some very prudish Google filter that searches articles for "forbidden" keywords. So now, I'd like to list a bunch of troublesome words to see if Google notices: fuck, pussy, cock, dick, sperm, ass, balls, pornography, kill, suicide, murder, drugs for sale, porno, nudity, jizz, sperm, vagina, penis, bleeding asshole, nubile cheerleaders soaked in cum. Let's see if that gets this article suppressed.

UPDATE: Google was fine with everything in the previous article. So let's continue the experiment. I'm going to cut and paste an entire article that Google claimed was too "sensitive" for some readers. Here's the whole thing without a word changed.

This week, Eddie takes us back into nudie movie history.

A coin-operated peep show.

Edward D. Wood, Jr. is, for better or worse, still known primarily as a filmmaker rather than a writer. Even though Eddie's books and articles represent a vast and colorful body of work, rich in themes and ripe for rediscovery, most documentaries about the man make only passing references to his writing career. A typical doc might show a couple of paperback covers from the 1960s before going back to talking about Ed's movies. Cue the umpteenth clip of model flying saucers dangling on the ends of strings.

If people haven't read Nightmare of Ecstasy or Muddled Mind, they may have no idea that Ed Wood was a writer at all, other than his screenplays. Part of the problem has been availability. Due to rights issues, only a few of Ed's dozens of novels (Killer in Drag, Devil Girls, Death of a Transvestite) are readily available on sites like Amazon today. The rest are expensive collectors' items. In recent years, the anthologies Blood Splatters Quickly and Angora Fever have made nearly a hundred of Eddie's short stories easily accessible to his fans. But this represents merely a tiny fraction of Wood's written output

And Ed Wood's nonfiction remains even less known than his fiction, if that's possible. While Eddie's short stories and novels have been somewhat neglected over the years, his fact-based articles and books, nearly all of them sexual or sex-adjacent in nature, have been basically abandoned. Almost no one writes about this material, voluminous though it is. So, today, I thought I'd shed some light on one of Eddie's lesser-known nonfiction works from later in his career.

The story: "What Would We Have Done Without Them?" Originally published in Body & Soul, vol. 8, no. 1, May/June 1975. Anthologized in Short Wood: Short Fiction by Edward D. Wood, Jr. (Ramble House, 2009).

A "camp" classic.

Synopsis: Though the porno film may seem like a relatively recent phenomenon, it's actually part of a heritage that goes back to the earliest days of filmed entertainment. In the old days, there were arcades with hand-cranked machines that allowed the viewer to flip through photographs. Then there were primitive "peep shows" that displayed brief filmed striptease routines. Eventually these shows evolved, adding color and full nudity. Many of these shows focused on nudist camps, since that setting allowed filmmakers to present nudity in a non-sexual way. Eventually, the appeal of these nudist films wore off, and the coin-operated machines weren't profitable enough for film producers or arcade owners.

The next step was projecting these films onto a big screen for an audience, rather than showing them to one viewer at a time. Nudity started becoming commonplace in theatrically exhibited films made after World War II and shown at burlesque theaters. Some of these films had stories, but many were simply the same old strip shows of the past. Patrons back then would sit through live strippers and old newsreels before getting to see the films. Even though these films were cheaply made and shown in black-and-white, they initially attracted long lines of curious spectators.

But this, too, lost its novelty, and producers realized they would have to invest more money in these movies. Some of that money came from theater owners who depended on the producers to stay in business. By the mid-1960s, the movies featured some "petting and kissing" between boys and girls. And, at long last, color became standard. But the stories were still "weak." Ultimately, knowledgeable audiences simply demanded that the films include actual sex. And this practice continues now, despite the efforts of "pressure groups," who have only succeeded in making sex films into a thriving multi-million-dollar business.

Wood trademarks: Sex film industry (cf. "Sex Star"); strippers (cf. "Flowers for Flame LeMarr"); jollies (cf. "Insatiable," "Never Up-Never In," "Blood Drains Easily"); ellipses (Ed's favorite punctuation).

Excerpt: "Sex simply had to rear its purple head… and that meant sex with no holds barred. The people in the audience weren't going to take any more of this kidding around. When they came to see a sex show that’s what they were going to see or they were going to cut up the seats, tear down the screen and jam the projector where it would do the most good."

Reflections: By 1975, if you consider Orgy of the Dead his debut in the genre, Ed Wood had been working in the sex film industry for a decade when he wrote this article. And that decade happened to be a very tumultuous and eventful one for adult entertainment. It's a long way from Orgy, which features topless dancers but no bodily contact between men and women, to Deep Throat (1972), which features full nudity and real intercourse captured on film. The public profile of the sex film had risen as well, with Linda Lovelace and Marilyn Chambers becoming nationwide celebrities and "respectable" couples attending pornographic films without shame. The very idea of "porno chic" would have been unthinkable in 1965.

It's interesting to me that Ed was already looking ahead to the future. "Where the business can go from the movie projector is only up to the scientists who might invent something else," he writes. Note that phrase "from the movie projector." Remember, as of this article, the greatest technological advancement in the history of nudie films was showing them in movie theaters rather than peep show booths. The rise of the VCR was still in the future. Did Eddie sense that something like this was on the horizon? While this article makes no mention of the 8mm home-market loops such as the Swedish Erotica series, the very existence of these films may have suggested to Ed that "home entertainment" was the next frontier for pornography.

Ed Wood was a famously speedy author, cranking out manuscripts as fast as possible to get that quick cash to buy booze. That meant he was probably not doing a great deal of research on his nonfiction pieces, instead relying on his own memories and that old Wood standby, simply making stuff up. There is a noticeable lack of specific dates and proper names in "What Would We Have Done Without Them?" He mentions a few basic time periods ("the late 1940's, just after W.W. II" and "the middle of the sixties") along the way, and gives some sample titles for peep show booths (A Day In The Life Of A Nudist, Nudist Fun,  and Life At A Nudist Camp), but he otherwise skimps on specifics. In general, Eddie seems to view the progression of the adult film as occurring on a few basic fronts: economic, technological, and legal/moral. And on all counts, Ed Wood finds, the nudie has made great strides.

Readers may shun Ed Wood's nonfiction because they feel this work will not offer the author as much opportunity for artistic expression as his short stories and novels. But rest assured, Ed manages to put his personal spin on every topic he covers. Here, for instance, is his description of nudist films:

And as advertised the films did depict the goings on at the nudist camps. Mother and father bouncing a ball around or playing tennis in their all-together. There were always the scenes of extremely fat people as well as the more handsome of bodies and this was called taking the curse off. It was thought, at the time, that in showing only the youthful bodies of the males and the females having their nudist fun, that some label of pornography might be put on them and the place would be busted. But by showing all the types of figures which visit such places then the little film remained art.

The tone is rather similar to that of Ed Wood's how-to-break-into-showbiz manual Hollywood Rat Race. Ed was well aware of the legal gamesmanship necessary to stay afloat in the adult movie industry. I can almost hear the producers now. "Pornography? Why, no, your honor! This is art! I mean, just look at all those extremely fat people up there on the screen!"

UPDATE #2: Google is now fine with that article, I guess. Let's try another suppressed article. Again, I'm going to post the entire thing, not a word changed. Let's see if Google notices this time.

Ed Wood's return to directing came in 1971 with the X-rated Necromania. 

   

"We thought he was making a comedy, to tell you the bloody truth. We were just a bunch of young kids."

-Ric Lutze, an actor in Ed Wood's Necromania

  

Goodbye, Tor.

And now it is 1971. Whether he knows it or not, Edward Davis Wood, Jr. has only seven years to live. He and his wife, Kathy, have lost their little house on Bonner Street in North Hollywood and have moved into the seedy, violence-prone Mariposa Apartments at the intersection of Yucca and Cahuenga in LA. Before the year is out, Ed's longtime friend and long-ago star, Tor Johnson, will have died of heart failure at the age of 67. Nevermore will the ex-wrestler break one of Ed's insufficiently-reinforced toilet seats with his massive bulk.

Meanwhile, the world seems to be growing stranger and uglier by the day. President Nixon promises his 207 million constituents that he will end the nation's involvement in Vietnam. Public support for the war dwindles every day, especially when an American-supported SVA offensive in Cambodia fails after six miserable weeks.

On the homefront, the so-called "generation gap," a moral and aesthetic schism between the old and the young, has been turned into a sitcom, rechristened All in the Family, and given a spot on the CBS Saturday night lineup, right before Funny Face with Sandy Duncan. There are astronauts driving a buggy on the moon. The boxer once known as Cassius Clay has KO'd a draft-dodging rap. And down in Orlando, Walt Disney World finally opens five years after the death of its nameake.

On the radio, the ex-Beatles are either singing hymns to God ("My Sweet Lord") or questioning His very existence ("Imagine"). On movie screens, Gene Hackman and Clint Eastwood are both playing rule-flouting, fascistic cops to critical and popular acclaim, either acting as the urban saviors for whom we've been praying or embodying all our worst fears about what happens when power goes unchecked. Elsewhere in cinema, Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange asks us which is more disturbing: an amoral generation of lawless punks who steal, rape, and kill simply to relieve their boredom.. or a totalitarian government which will resort to truly perverse and unnatural measures to stop them?

Clearly, it is a time of transition for America.

The adult film industry, too, is in flux. The sexual liberation movement has made odd bedfellows (sometimes literally) of idealistic First Amendment advocates, "free love"-preaching libertines, cynical hucksters, and frustrated lechers alike. Though their motivations vary, each of these disparate factions wants to take sex out of the bedroom and splash it across movie screens for all to see. In 1970, producer Bill Osco gave the world a novel form of diversion with his film Mona: The Virgin Nymph, the first X-rated feature with explicit, non-simulated coupling to achieve a mainstream release in the United States, cagily omitting the credits so as to avoid prosecution.

The "nudie cutie" and "beaver" films of yore, which featured plenty of nudity but no actual intercourse, are starting to look a little quaint, even prudish, by 1971. Gerard Damiano's watershed 1972 film Deep Throat, which will make adult films fashionable even in respectable society and permanently change the adult entertainment industry, is on deck. Something's up, and a lot of people want in on the action. One of those people is Ed Wood.

NECROMANIA (1971)

She is Tanya: Strange happenings in Ed Wood's Necromania.

Alternate titles: "Necromania": A Tale of Weird Love! For a while, it was assumed that The Only House aka The Only House in Town was a re-edited version of Necromania. But, no, The Only House was a separate feature film that Ed wrote and directed around the same time.

Availability:

• The original DVD release of the complete hardcore and softcore versions (Fleshbot Films, 2004) is currently out of print, but you can still nab a used copy for $60 on Amazon. 

• In 1994, Something Weird Video marketed an incomplete VHS version of Necromania as part of its series, Frank Henenlotter's Sexy Shockers From the Vaults, with an added featurette in which author Rudolph Grey and others discuss the film. 

• Necromania was reissued on DVD in 2014 by Alpha Blue Video. This new disc contains the softcore version plus all of the hardcore scenes as special features, along with an assortment of films starring Maria Arnold. 

• The softcore version is also available here as part of the Rene Bond Triple Feature Two set (Alpha Blue Productions, 2006) along with Teenage Sex Kitten (1975, dir. Ann Perry) and Sex-O-Phrenia (1972, dir. unknown).

A Pendulum Pictorial.

The backstory: Starting in roughly 1968, Ed Wood began working for an adult entertainment concern known as Pendulum Publishing, which operated out of a building on West Pico Boulevard in Los Angeles. It wasn't terribly lucrative, but it was better than nothing. Eddie needed work, and they needed writers. Quantity and speed were the guiding principles of the smut business. Get the horny customer's $1.75 away from him before the other guys even have a chance to make a grab at it.  In short order, the company published Eddie's Bye Bye Broadie, The Svengali of Sex, and Raped in the Grass as "Pendulum Pictorials," i.e. pornographic stories liberally illustrated with numerous photographs. These were slyly, if falsely, marketed as tie-ins with nonexistent film productions.

Duplicity was part of the company's business model. Its official name was Calga Publishers, but its products also came out under the Pendulum and Gallery brands, among others. A results-oriented man named Bernie Bloom was Pendulum's owner, and he ran the proverbial tight ship. He had to. There were too many competitors in this crowded field to allow for any slacking. In a reflective and informative article, writer Leo Eaton remembered his days at Pendulum in 1970-71. The place was like a factory, Eaton says. You clocked in (with a time card, yet!), went to a windowless office (or "cell" in Pendulum parlance), and started clicking and clacking away at an electric typewriter. If Bernie was paying you for eight hours of writing, he expected to hear eight hours of typing.

This attitude was not unique in the adult industry. In an article from 2003, late film critic Roger Ebert recalled his experience writing the screenplay of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls for director Russ Meyer:

"Working with Meyer was exhilarating but demanding. He equated writing with typing. He kept his office door open, and whenever he couldn't hear my typewriter keys, he'd shout, 'What's the matter?'"

While Eaton and the other "young Turks" on the Pendulum payroll -- restless men twenty years Ed's junior -- looked at the company as a mere way station on the path to a legitimate writing or film career, Wood seemed to be there for the long haul and took the job much more seriously than they did. A crumbling old sot who occasionally wore miniskirts and angora sweaters to work and who tried without success to convince his youthful coworkers that he used to make movies with Bela Lugosi, Ed Wood seems to have been a comical mascot figure in the dreary Pendulum offices.

While his associates shirked their duties playing "push pins" (a workplace variation on darts) in the hallway and blatantly plagiarized entire manuscripts until they got caught at it, the ever-earnest Eddie kept slaving away at that typewriter, cranking out books, articles, and short stories for the firm until about 1975. Pendulum put out numerous magazines each month, after all, and those magazines needed content -- even if customers were buying them strictly for the pictures and barely glanced at the words next to them.

Ed was a company man through and through, and when Pendulum decided to get into the feature film game under yet another banner, Cinema Classics (not to be confused with Screen Classics, the company that produced Glen or Glenda?), Eddie immediately stepped up and offered to direct it. "I can do it," he told editor Charles Anderson. "You want Gone with the Wind? Anything you want, I'll give it to you."

To say the least, however, Cinema Classics did not have the financial wherewithal of Selznick International Pictures. Ed's typically overambitious quote reminded me of a scene from Tim Burton's biopic Ed Wood (1994). In Burton's film, Eddie (Johnny Depp) and producer George Weiss (Mike Starr) meet in the cluttered, dingy cinder-block offices of Screen Classics, where Ed declares that George's upcoming Christine Jorgensen biopic needs "a star" to give it legitimacy. George scoffs at this pie-in-the-sky notion.

Weiss: Kid, you must have me confused with David Selznick. I don't make major motion pictures. I make crap. 

Wood: Yes, but if you take that crap and put a star in it, then you've got something! 

Weiss: Yeah. Crap with a star.

In fact, Ed Wood did have a star in mind for Necromania, namely Maila "Vampira" Nurmi from Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959). Though they hadn't worked together for over a decade, Nurmi still thought enough of Ed to at least take his phone call while she was laid-up in an LA hospital with an undisclosed illness. When Ed described the role to her, however, Nurmi wasn't interested. She felt, perhaps rightly, that appearing totally nude and emerging from a coffin while a man jumped on her would be "professional suicide."

Disappointed yet determined, Ed was forced to carry on without Ms. Nurmi. The script, based on Ed's short story "Come Inn" (published in Pendulum's Young Beavers magazine in 1971) and typed up at his usual breakneck pace, apparently clocked in at about 20 pages, mostly dialogue with very minimal screen directions. For the all-important love scenes, the script merely instructed the actors to "go into sex." Pendulum had every faith in Ed and so allowed him as much creative free reign as he could muster within the film's $7,000 budget and three-day shooting schedule.

Dan and Shirley go exploring.

As was typical of him, Ed contrived a pseudo-Gothic, quasi-horror scenario for Necromania complete with prominent references to his dear departed friend, Bela Lugosi, and Lugosi's signature role of Count Dracula. The plot of the film ostensibly centers around necromancy, a type of black magic which involves communication with the dead. In reality, of course, the film centers around graphic depictions of heterosexual and lesbian lovemaking. That's what sold tickets, and everyone involved with this movie knew it. As long as Ed included plenty of sex scenes (and his bosses knew he wouldn't fail in that department), Pendulum was fine with whatever plot Ed wanted to use for the movie.

The finished film revolves around young lovers Dan and Shirley who pose as a married couple called "the Carpenters" when they visit the eerie mansion of a mysterious woman named Madam Heles (her name is pronounced "heals") for a weekend of sensual instruction and erotic exploration. Danny has been struggling with what we'd now call erectile dysfunction and seems to be selfish and uncaring in bed, so fed-up Shirley has given him an ultimatum: either get some help or find a new girlfriend. Since there is no one at the door to greet them, Dan and Shirley let themselves in and are soon confronted by Tanya, Madam Heles' sexy, nightgown-clad assistant, who informs them that her mistress sleeps by day in a coffin and will only attend to them at midnight.

Seeing as it's only 2:30 in the afternoon, Dan and Shirley retire to their room and unsuccessfully attempt to have sex, little suspecting that they are constantly being spied upon by Tanya, who peeps on them through the cut-out eyes of an owl painting on the wall. After performing a strange ritual with a bronze skull at an altar in front of Madam Heles' coffin, Tanya reluctantly "services" another houseguest, a petulant greaser named Carl. Frustrated and sexually unsatisfied, Shirley wanders around the house and meets yet another self-declared "inmate," a dark-haired woman named Barb who introduces her to the gentle joys of sapphic love. Tanya, meanwhile, seduces Dan and then shows him a roomful of Madam Heles' permanent residents: men and women whose sexual addiction precludes their reentry into polite society.

A gong signals the hour of midnight, and all the characters convene in the foreboding "red room" which houses Madam Heles' coffin. Barb and Tanya make love, which shocks and offends Danny. The infamous necromancer Madam Heles finally appears and asks for a status report on the new arrivals. Barb declares that Shirley has "learned her sex well," so the necromancer allows her to "graduate." But what about Danny? Well, he has one more lesson to go. Carl, Barb, and Tanya strip him naked, and he is forced to make love to Madam Heles inside the coffin. It is a success. "I'm a man!" declares Danny. "I'm a man! Oh, great! Oh, great!"

Ed Wood on the set of Necromania in 1971.

Necromania's production was more prosaic than its plot suggests. The sets were largely constructed within the studio of noted talent agent and cameraman Hal Guthu, who also acted as the movie's cinematographer (a duty he'd previously performed for Love Feast and Take It Out in Trade). Possibly out of legal concerns, however, Guthu would not allow any hardcore scenes to be filmed in his studio. Therefore, the graphic shots of cunnilingus, fellatio, and vaginal intercourse were shot elsewhere by secondary cameraman Ted Gorley and inserted rather clumsily into the finished film. Neither Gorley nor Guthu would receive any onscreen credit in Necromania, and considering the legal atmosphere of the time, they wouldn't have wanted to. Legalities even forced the normally-unabashed Ed Wood to be humble this time around. He was billed under the bland pseudonym "Don Miller" for pulling double duty as writer and director. As for the actresses and actors in the film, a simple title card merely informed viewers that "Our Cast Wish to Remain Anonymous."

Production of the film occurred as Los Angeles was experiencing 110-degree temperatures, and the actors were nearly overcome by heat exhaustion while working under the hot movie lights. But they, and Ed, got through it somehow. While several cast and crew members recall Eddie coming to the studio in drag, the one widely-circulated photo of Eddie on the set of Necromania shows him in a sleeveless t-shirt and sweatpants, his booze-swollen face framed by a greasy-looking mullet. To be honest, he looks like a shabby porn industry lowlife, the type of untrustworthy character about whom young starlets are warned before they take the fatal bus trip to Hollywood. But Gorley remembered that "the cast loved Ed."

The fact that Eddie finished the film at all is a testament to his perseverance. He'd been on one of his customary binges the week before filming began but showed up on time and ready to go on the first day of production. Necromania's two most prominent and remarked-upon props were the dark, lacquered coffin of Madam Heles and a terrified-looking, taxidermied wolf. The latter, the film's single most expensive item, was charmingly referred to in the script as "the wolf mummy," simultaneously suggesting both the Wolfman and the Mummy from Orgy of the Dead (1965). The coffin, a Lincoln-era relic, was supplied by Orgy's star, the Amazing Criswell, who paid a visit to his old buddy Ed Wood on the set.

California girl: Rene Bond and her proud papa.

Necromania's lead actress was LA porn princess Rene Bond, a cheerful, chipmunk-cute brunette who would vacillate between softcore films, including several directed by Stephen C. Apostolof and written by Ed Wood; hardcore films; and even the occasional "legit" film (like 1973's Invasion of the Bee Girls), racking up potentially hundreds of credits throughout the 1970s. The daughter of a small town politician who took great pride in his little girl and a doting mother who accompanied her everywhere, Rene entered the adult entertainment industry in the late 1960s because she needed money and soon became a favorite of directors, producers, and fans with her sweet personality and svelte, squeezable figure.

As film historian Greg Goodsell stated in the 2012 documentary Dad Made Dirty Movies: "Everybody liked Rene Bond.... [Her father] would get the chamber of commerce to see her hardcore pornographic films and he would say, 'That's my daughter!'" On the side, Rene modeled, stripped, sang, and sold pictures of herself through the mail. At the time of Necromania, Rene was allegedly married to her sandy-haired, unassuming co-star, Ric Lutze, an adult film performer in his own right who remained active until the mid-1980s and who appeared in some of the same films as Rene even after the couple's 1972 split, including Morris Deal's enticingly-named Beach Blanket Bango (1975). Rene's next alleged husband, minor adult performer Tony Mazziotti, also appeared in Bango, which must have made for an interesting set. Tony and Rene's marriage would last about three years, finally dissolving in 1976.

Relatively early in her film career, Rene got breast implants in a successful gambit to nab more screen work. ("I was told there's a North American breast fetish," she'd recall to an interviewer in 1977.)  In Necromania, however, Rene's assets appear to be all-natural. She's not flat-chested by any means, but she doesn't have the familiar bubble-shaped boobs she would sport in later productions. Rene, a friend and client of Hal Guthu, retired from movies in the early 1980s. In either 1985 or 1986 (sources vary), she resurfaced as a winning contestant on a game show called Break the Bank, where she appeared alongside her new husband, Lonnie Levine.

The "wolf mummy" with its mistress, Madam Heles.

This happy television appearance, in which she was identified as a "bankruptcy specialist" and seemed for all the world like a devoted and totally "normal' suburban wife, was Rene Bond's last moment in the national spotlight. In the late 1980s and 1990s, she became a fixture on the Las Vegas scene and apparently descended into alcoholism. In 1996, she died from cirrhosis of the liver at the age of only 46. She was posthumously inducted into the Legends of Erotica Hall of Fame for her years of service to the adult industry. Lonnie Levine was last seen giving tours of L.A. crime scenes and donating some of the proceeds to charity.

To this day, Bond is one of the most fondly-remembered actresses from the so-called Golden Age of Pornography, and there are numerous DVD collections of her films, both soft and hardcore. While she wasn't exactly taking roles away from Meryl Streep, Rene was a capable performer with an innate likability and a girl-next-door quality that audiences obviously appreciated. I certainly disagree with critic Danny Peary, who in his book Cult Movie Stars (1991) cattily dismissed Bond as a "non-cutie" whose "acting skills never improved." If any of this were true, her fame would have faded away decades ago.

Besides Bond and Lutze, the only positively identified cast member of this film is Maria Arnold, another adult actress and model who would cross professional paths with Rene several times in the future. Necromania would presumably have been hitting theaters around the same time Maria was profiled as one of the "Girls of Porno" in Playboy's October 1971 issue. Here, Arnold plays Tanya, the servant to the pivotal but rarely-seen Madam Heles, the role Eddie intended for Vampira. In a sense, Arnold follows in the proud tradition of such ghoulish ingenues as Fawn Silver and Valda Hansen.

Although multiple sources state that Ed Wood appears in this movie as some kind of Orson Welles-ish sexual wizard (even Ric Lutze remembered Eddie having "a bit part" in the film), don't you believe them. He appears in neither of the verified-as-complete prints of the film I just screened, and there are only six speaking roles in the entire production so it's not like he'd be hard to spot. If it's any consolation, Ted Gorley remembered Necromania as being superior to The Only House in Town.

Sex Ed: Wood's textbook.

Superior or not, Necromania seems to have enjoyed a very brief, almost nonexistent life in theaters. Ed Wood was certainly proud of it, however, touting it as part of "the trend toward better entertainment in the XX rated films" in A Study in the Motivation of Censorship: Sex and the Movies, Book 1 (Edusex, 1972), one of the many ersatz, supposedly "educational" textbooks Ed penned for the pornographic market in the 1970s. "The emphasis," he wrote, '"is placed on the basic story." He went on to praise the cast and crew and declared that Necromania would not insult the intelligence of the adult film audience. For many years, the only version of the film which was available to the public was an incomplete VHS tape of the softcore edition.

In 2004, however, Fleshbot Films -- a now-defunct spin-off of the popular Fleshbot porn blog -- released a DVD which billed Necromania as "Ed Wood's Last Movie" and contained supposedly-complete prints of the hard and soft cuts, both of which Eddie had edited himself over 30 years previously. The hardcore Necromania is only about a minute longer than its R-rated incarnation and contains a few explicit shots of oral and vaginal sex as well as the requisite "cum shot" in which Ric Lutze ejaculates onto Madam Heles. The oddest difference between the two different versions of the movie is that at least half of the hardcore Necromania seems to have been accidentally "flopped," i.e reversed horizontally so that left is right and vice versa. In Ed Wood, Mad Genius, Rob Craig remarks at some length on this odd continuity error and speculates about its possible significance. Curiously, the softcore cut is not affected by this. Such are the mysteries of Ed Wood.

The viewing experience: As erotica, Necromania is approximately as arousing as Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ (2004). I'm not saying that to be glib. During the film's tender love scenes (all of them surprisingly gentle until the finale), I honestly got the same queasy feeling I experienced while watching Jim Caviezel being whipped until his flesh was torn, raw, and bloody. A lot of this has to do with the look of the film: the harsh, unflattering photography which tends to make the actors look either too pale or too red, especially in contrast to the vulgar colors of the costumes, props, and sets, which employ tacky, nauseating shades of red, pink, purple, yellow, orange, and even puke green -- the over-saturated hues you'd expect to find in an artificially-colored breakfast cereal intended for hyperactive children. One particularly unsightly bedspread appears to have been made out of the beloved Sesame Street character Big Bird. (Again, not an attempt at glibness but a genuine reaction.)

It's tough for any actors to look good in front of such a gaudy backdrop, even my beloved Rene Bond. In preparation for this review, I watched both the softcore and hardcore versions of Necromania (approximately 52 and 53 minutes long, respectively), and I found that it helped considerably to turn the color off and watch the film in black-and-white. It was still not exactly a treat for the eyes, but it was no longer such a harsh assault upon them either.

Fawn Silver's Princess of Darkness in Orgy of the Dead.

Fortunately, the diligent Wood-ologist will find much consolation in Necromania's script, which is laden with the trappings that have made Ed Wood's other movies so distinctive. He may have been working under an assumed moniker, but Eddie definitely put his signature on this one. Most obviously, the heroine shares the same name as Ed's drag persona -- Shirley. The castle-like mansion of Madam Heles is a disorienting, architecturally-impossible location very much like the reconfigured Willows Place in Night of the Ghouls (1959). Just like that movie, there is no relationship between the interior and exterior, and each room of the house seems to exist in its own dimension, totally isolated in space and time.

The vaguely sinister bric-a-brac which clutters the walls and halls of Madam Heles' abode -- various skulls, wall hangings, scrolls with Chinese characters, velvet paintings, an inverted cross with a rubber snake wrapped around it, and even an ax -- is similar to the debris and detritus of Bela Lugosia's celestial "laboratory" in Glen or Glenda? (1953). Furthermore, the tasteless use of brightly-colored decor to denote Madam Heles' suburban castle as a "house of sin" recalls Love Feast (1969) and Take It Out in Trade (1970). Even a moment when Danny wakes up in bed and sadly caresses the pillow of the absent Shirley made me think of Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), in which Mona McKinnon's character, Paula Trent, confesses that she touches the pillow of her pilot husband Jeff (Gregory Walcott) when he's away.

The movie Necromania most closely resembles, however, is Orgy of the Dead (1965). Both films depict the swift sexual reeducation/radicalization of a squabbling heterosexual couple: a woman named Shirley and her insensitive lunkhead of a boyfriend. Both films emphasize the combination of eroticism and horror with ghoulish, Halloween-type sexual rituals. With her rigid, ceremonial language, Tanya seems to be a first cousin of Fawn Silver's Princess of Darkness. Carl, arguably Necromania's most ridiculous and hilarious character, also recalls Fawn Silver with his demand for immediate sexual gratification. ("Now is the time!")

I must remark again how Orgy and Necromania both uncannily presage 1975's The Rocky Horror Picture Show. It is not difficult to see Dan and Shirley as Brad and Janet, Madam Heles as Frank-N-Furter, libertine Barb as Columbia or Magenta, and jealous, brooding Carl as Riff-Raff. How interesting to note that all three of these movies have a severely compressed timeline and mostly unfold over the course of one night!

Meanwhile, the film's dreamy quality and use of pagan-like sexual ceremonies makes it a precursor to Jim and Artie Mitchell's landmark art-porn smash, Behind the Green Door (1972). It's noteworthy that in both Love Feast and Necromania, there is an ornate door which acts as a portal between humdrum reality and the world of debauched pleasure. Once inside that door, the morality of the outside world no longer applies. And it cannot be a coincidence that Necromania, like Ed Wood's Final Curtain (1957), ends with the hero climbing into a coffin and shutting the lid.

And then, of course, there is the dialogue. Cowboy star Johnny Carpenter once declared Ed Wood's writing to be "too perfect." He meant that as a complaint, but in the long run, the stilted formality of Eddie's scripts is a big part of what made them immortal. In preparation for this article, in fact, I took the liberty of transcribing every last line in this movie. (Don't worry. There aren't many of them. This is a sex film, after all, not Shakespeare in the Park.) I could have just cut and pasted the entire file into this article, but I decided to hone it down to a more reasonable length by cherry picking the movie's best and most memorable lines. Here, then, are my favorite quotes from Necromania. Feel free to read them aloud if you care to.

(Dan and Shirley sneak into Madam Heles' house; Danny is nervous)

Shirley: Sometimes I think you're more of an old woman than my mother!
Dan: I just don't like to think of going to jail!
Shirley: We're invited guests!
Dan: Then where's the invitee?
Shirley: Oh, be quiet and close the door!
Dan: Any minute, I expect Bela Lugosi as Dracula!

(Dan and Shirley enter the bizarre, prop-laden Red Room.) 

Dan: Good lord!
Shirley: You can say that again.
Dan: Good lord!

(Tanya introduces herself.) 

Tanya: You are Danny and Shirley Carpenter? I am Tanya.
Dan: (to Shirley) She's Tanya.

(Tanya demonstrates a dildo which, when squeezed, makes the sound of a doorbell.) 

Tanya: All you must do is squeeze this little dong for attention.

(Dan and Shirley argue privately.) 

Dan: I don't like this whole setup.
Shirley: I admit it's a strange place, but strange happenings come from strange happenings!

Shirley: You wouldn't know what to do with a bed if you did try it out!
Dan: I sure wish you'd stop trying to insult my manhood!
Shirley: Manhood? Ha! That's what we came here for -- to get you a manhood!

Shirley: Madam Heles is not a witch. She's a necromancer.
Dan: That still spells witch to me. W-I-T-C-H. Witch!

(Carl, clad only in his tighty-whities, stops Tanya in the hall to beg for sex.) 

Tanya: Carl... I do believe you have become in-sash-able.
Carl: Only because you... (awkward pause) ...taught me to be that way.
Tanya: I suppose I have. But there are others in the house now. And others to be serviced.
Carl: (whining like a spoiled brat) BUT I WANNA BE FIRST! I must come first! I PAID PLENTY TO BE FIRST! To be completely cured!

(Unsatisfied by Dan, Shirley tosses a blanket over him before leaving the room.) 

Shirley: Have fun.

(Shirley bumps into the wolf mummy in the hall, then is confronted by Barb.) 

Shirley: You nearly made me wet my nightgown, old boy! It's new, too.
Barb: (trying to seduce Shirley) He died of rabies, you know.

(Barb hints that Danny is receiving sexual instruction in Shirley's absence.) 

Shirley: Danny's in training?
Barb: You bet your sweet bippy!

(During a private tryst.) 

Tanya: (to Dan, who's worried about appearing "conventional") The word conventional has many connotations, never more so than in this establishment.

(Dan and Shirley, accompanied by their new bed partners, reunite in the Red Room.) 

Dan: Where have you been?
Shirley: I could ask you the same question!
Dan: Well, I had a delightful time.
Shirley: Yes, but did she?

(At the final ritual.) 

Madam Heles: (about newly-graduated Shirley) Henceforth, she shall live for sex and sex alone!

The 2004 Fleshbot DVD.

And that's really just a sampling of what you'll find in this movie, folks. There's more where that came from, I assure you. Necromania is one of the most quotable films in the entire Ed Wood canon. An adventurous theater troupe could turn it into quite an entertaining stage play, as long as they depicted the fornication in an abstract, non-representational way. Viewers more comfortable with such Eisenhower-era fare as Plan 9 from Outer Space and Bride of the Monster may not want to sit through an X-rated Ed Wood film which contains graphic sex acts.

But don't be scared away from Necromania. As noted previously, the disc contains a less-explicit R-rated version which contains copious (and unappetizing) nudity but no oral or vaginal sex. It's kind of a shame that there isn't an even softer cut of Necromania which dials back the sexual content even further and places the emphasis where Ed Wood intended: on the plot and dialogue. "Although the sex scenes are what the public wants and demands," the director wrote in 1972, "they are also being treated to a well-balanced storyline which is sure to get rave notices in the publications which outline such films."

Compared to the Internet pornography of the 21st century, Necromania is positively Victorian in its chastity. Can you imagine a modern day sex flick in which anybody gives a damn whether the leading man and lady are legally married? Yeah, neither can I.

And if Ed Wood's moral turpitude were ever in doubt, he made sure to add a totally-out-of-left-field anti-marijuana message to the script. When Shirley mentions that necromancers have lots of "potions" which can help those with sexual performance issues, Danny is offended. "You mean dope?" he snaps. "You know I don't take dope!" Once again, career alcoholic Ed Wood was expressing his utter disdain for illicit drugs and the hippie culture that spawned them. Even though Necromania borrows at least two catchphrases from Laugh In ("And that's the truth!" and "You bet your sweet bippy!"), it was obviously the work of a man who was completely out of touch with the Love Generation. 

Next week: Reunited and it feels so good! Seven years after Orgy of the Dead, the second collaboration between screenwriter Edward D. Wood, Jr. and director Stephen C. Apostolof arrived in America's movie theaters. Steve had made seven movies in the meantime, just without Ed Wood's distinctive input. But the two got back together in a big way during the Nixon era, and their partnership would produce seven more movies in a mere six years, starting with a feature which explored what really happened to the class of '69.  While Harry Reems was curing Linda Lovelace's sexual frigidity in a most unorthodox manner, Apostolof's leading lady Marsha Jordan was in a nostalgic mood as she, too, caught up with old acquaintances... including Rene Bond and Ric Lutze. Make sure you're back here in seven days for The Class Reunion (1972).