Remember that Shrilling Chicken I tried to juggle a few days ago? Well, I got my revenge for the sore finger it gave me. This is the message to chickens who peck me.
Chicken, meet your juggler!
This time, I put on gloves along with my usual safety goggles to prevent further injuries from the satanic cluck-meister.
I guess I taught that bird a lesson.
Recently, we saw a rabbit in our back yard on one occasion and a feral tabby cat on another day doing what they do best.
The cat was hunting and the rabbit was on the lookout for hunters. The hunted and the hunter are both alike in many ways except for the most obvious—one gets to eat the other.
Otherwise, in action they are both like coiled springs: alert, jumpy, and ready to do what they do best, flee or pounce.
Whether you are predator or prey, you do this every day.
Both Sena and I stayed up to see the cheesy 1972 horror flick The Gargoyles last Saturday night. No kidding, Sena stayed up for the whole thing! The show runs from 7-9:30 PM but the actual movie is only a little over an hour long. It’s about a clan of gargoyles that every 500 years hatch from eggs and wage war on humans to take over the planet. They never get the job done, probably because humans have all the guns and all the gargoyles have are claws and flimsy wings which you don’t see used until the very last scene. Like all of the Svengoolie movies, all of the jokes are so bad they’re good.
You can ask a fair question, which would be what else is on in addition to the movie? There’s a lot of commercials, of course, as well as the corny jokes and skits. But the other features last Saturday were excerpts from the Flashback Weekend Chicago Horror Con, in August 2023. I think it’s an annual historical horror convention that takes place in Rosemont, Illinois.
One of the attractions was a panel presentation about the history of the 90th anniversary of the drive-in theater hosted by Svengoolie and Joe Bob Briggs. It was arguably better than the feature flick. I have heard the history elsewhere about how the drive-in theatre began (I think it was on the travel or history channel).
The most interesting part of the history is how the Covid-19 pandemic influenced the recent history of the drive-in theaters. The point was that, when the pandemic hit the country, all indoor theaters closed, leaving the drive-ins the only place to watch movies for several weeks. They did pretty good business.
Moreover, horror movies and drive-ins go together like cheese and crackers (see what I did there, cheese as in cheesy movies?). OK, fine.
Anyway, horror films were mainly linked to low budget projects that big stars and big directors avoided like the plague. Mainly, those movies were played at the drive-ins—which is how they got a tarnished reputation. That led to cherished stories by older people who used to sneak their friends into the drive-ins by stowing them in the trunks of their cars. That probably did happen, even in the old Mason City Drive-In Theater in Iowa where Sena and I grew up. It was demolished in 1997.
As far as The Gargoyle movie goes, the one thing I couldn’t find out was exactly why Bernie Casey, who played the head gargoyle, didn’t voice his own lines. The web references I found just mentioned briefly that it was because his natural speaking voice didn’t fit the character. They were dubbed in by Vic Perrin who did the voice-over for the introduction to The Outer Limits.
Maybe the funniest scene was when the head gargoyle placated and playfully slapped the fanny of the female head breeder gargoyle after she noticed he was flirting with the human woman he kidnapped. The breeder was obviously really jealous. Maybe this means that the battle between gargoyles and humans will always come to a stalemate because we’re too much alike.
Remember that rubber chicken Sena ordered as a joke for what looks like my transformation into a Svengoolie fan? Svengoolie is the longstanding host on the MeTV channel which shows old, cheesy TV horror movies every Saturday.
Svengoolie always gets a lot of rubber chickens tossed at him after he tells a few jokes. Well, the rubber chicken arrived. Actually, I think it’s plastic, about which I’ll have a lot more to say. It’s called Shrilling Chicken. Sena ordered it from Wal-Mart. We’re still waiting for the Svengoolie glow-in-the-dark T-shirt, which she ordered through the Svengoolie web site.
The chicken is about a foot long and squeals when you squeeze it. It’s sold as a dog toy. It’s red and yellow and the first thing I did was to try to juggle with it along with two juggling balls. I thought it would be cool to get a YouTube video of it, especially while wearing the Svengoolie T-shirt.
I was trying to get the hang of juggling a linear chicken with juggling balls and was just getting to where I could do 3 or 4 throws while also squeezing it to make it squeal. And then it happened: the demonic chicken bit me (or is “pecked me” a better way to put it?)! That’s pretty spooky given the connection to Svengoolie, the horror show host.
OK, so it didn’t actually peck me in a satanic manner, but I caught it awkwardly in my right hand. My right index finger swelled up and it got a little sore. It’s healing quickly although it did leave a faint bruise.
Then I looked up Shrilling Chicken on the web. What a rabbit hole! I found warnings seemingly all over the web against getting within 100 yards of the thing because of allegations it contains toxic chemicals. In fact, pretty much all the warnings came from a group called Ecowaste Coalition, with the chief spokesperson being someone named Thony Dizon, Chemical Safety Campaigner.
Thony’s main message is that Shrilling Chicken contains unacceptable levels of “toxic plastic additives.” He cites a long list of European countries that have banned Shrilling Chicken, despite the labels on the package, one of which is “CE” which means that it meets European Union standards.
The warnings go on to say that children should not be allowed to even touch it, although there are dozens of ads on the web showing where you can buy it for kids, with one image of a child hugging a Shrilling Chicken as tall as he is. I didn’t know they made them that big.
Thony also goes on to cite an “FDA Advisory No. 2020-042” which clearly is opposed to Shrilling Chicken being on this planet. I spent quite a while looking for that FDA Advisory in the U.S. FDA website. I couldn’t find it.
If you don’t look closely, you’ll miss the part at the bottom of the page indicating that the “FDA” referred to is the one in the Philippines.
The Shrilling Chicken label also indicates that the toy is approved for kids 6 years and older. It also has the Green Dot symbol on it. Wikipedia says it’s “…to indicate to consumers who see the logo that the manufacturer of the product contributes to the cost of recovery and recycling.” The Shrilling Chicken is made in China.
On the whole, I would say Shrilling Chicken is less than demonic in any sense of the word. However, given what happened to me, I probably would not toss it at Svengoolie.
Also, I would suggest you not try to juggle with it. I had to lay off juggling practice briefly so I can heal up.
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