November 2025 – Go Retire Psychiatrist

Svengoolie Movie: “Devil Doll”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

Well, I watched the Svengoolie movie, “Devil Doll” last night and was that creepy! It’s a British 1964 film directed and produced by Lindsay Shonteff (although I don’t know him from Adam. What do you take me for, a legit movie reviewer?).

Anyway, I noticed right away that I recognized one of the stars, William Sylvester (Mark English) who played a reporter trying to figure out what gives with the Great Vorelli (Bryant Halliday) a really sleazy ventriloquist and hypnotist whose stage act includes stealing Mark’s girlfriend Marianne (Yvonne Romain) and humiliating his dummy Hugo in front of an audience full of well-to-do people who smoke unfiltered cigarettes like they were going out of style.

Anyway, William Sylvester starred as Dr. Heywood Floyd in the 1968 blockbuster film 2001: A Space Odyssey. Who can forget the scene of him puzzling over the long sheet of instructions for using the Zero Gravity Toilet! I don’t think there’s a free copy of it, so it’ll set you back at least twelve bucks.

But what a contrast between the elegantly cryptic Heywood Floyd and Mark English, who is a hard-nosed, cynical journalist trying to figure out whether there’s a little guy inside the Great Vorelli’s wooden dummy Hugo, mainly because Hugo can get up and walk, even sing and dance a few show tunes like Puttin on the Ritz better than Frankenstein’s monster in you-know-which movie! Mark even gets an opportunity to examine Hugo using a set of Stanley tools, x-rays, and X-Acto knives but doesn’t get any reaction from the dummy unless you count a little sawdust.

But the tough-minded Mark gets a surprise visit from Hugo who gives him a few tips on woodworking and a hint that there’s more to him than sawdust.

The Great Vorelli has a master plan and hypnotizes Marianne which leads to a pretty complicated plot twist which involves the hypnotist learning ancient techniques for messing around with peoples’ souls which Dr. Heller (Karel Stepanek) dismisses in favor of a clinical diagnosis of catalepsy (although he didn’t directly imply Marianne was cataleptic) when Mark tries to convince him that Marianne’s personality change and delirious appearance was brought about by Vorelli.

You can check the catalepsy comment on a 16mm film of the full movie at about 1:05:40.

This catalepsy reference fascinated me because I’m a retired psychiatrist and I’ve seen patients with the syndrome. I guess there were no expert consultants available to the director.

There is a fight scene between Hugo and the Great Vorelli, full of switchblade knives, a hybrid chess boxing match, and tag team with Chuck Norris although the roundhouse kick was ineffective.

You didn’t think there’d be spoilers, did you? There were a lot of ventriloquist dummy jokes during the Svengoolie show and my featured image is my stab at it. Anyway, the ending is surprising.

I think the movie is pretty creepy and dark enough that it might not be a good flick for children. I give it a 3/5 Shrilling chicken rating.

The Snow Looked Gentle This Morning

The snowfall this morning looked pretty gentle out in our backyard—and then the storm hit the gas. Around 7:30 a.m. the wind was barely blowing and the first snow looked slow.

A half hour later, it was blowing sideways and the plow had just plugged our driveway (Thank you so much!).

Across the street, kids came out to play while the snow was blowing. The neighborhood is still pretty new and pretty much under construction, so not much of a place to play yet.

Sena and I remember going to an outdoor skating area at East Park in Mason City when we were kids. It was really just a pond. Park staff pushed the snow away when the ice was thick enough to skate on. Lots of kids skated there and it was free.

It’s not like nowadays. The ice skating rink at the mall not far from us charges you just to fall down on the ice. I think they charge $7 admission and $3 to rent skates. Skating coaches charge $6—I don’t know if that’s an hourly rate or flat fee.

Anyway, at East Park back in the day you could fall down on the ice for free.

Snow Storm vs Electric Snow Shovel: The Rematch!

Well, now that we’re getting this big snowstorm, this will be the second season Sena breaks out the Voltask battery-powered 48V 16-inch snow shovel! It’s up to the task! I manned the snow plow shovel as usual-but Sena deserves all the glory.

We got outside around 8:00 a.m. and finished up at 10:00 a.m. It’s still snowing, but we’ll tackle the rest of it tomorrow. We’re pooped.

Snowstorm Barreling Toward Iowa!

We’re going to get about a foot of snow starting tonight according to the weather report. There are webcams about Iowa that will document the storm, which will occur across most of the state. You can watch it’s progress on the University of Iowa webcam.

We’ve charged up the batteries in the Voltask electric snow shovel, which got quite a workout last winter. We took videos of using it that racked up over 5,200 views. Search my site with the term “electric snow shovel.”

Thanksgiving Day 2025 Tabloid News!

Today is the day for the 2025 Thanksgiving Day Tabloid News and you better believe this paper’s got issues. Eat turkey, watch football, take a nap from all that turkey.

This post’s title was inspired by (what else?) lines from the first Men in Black movie:

Agent K: [at newsstand] We’ll check the hot sheets.

Agent J: *These* are the hot sheets?

Agent K: Best investigative reporting on the planet. Read the New York Times if you want, they get lucky sometimes.

Agent J: I cannot believe you’re looking for tips in the supermarket tabloids.

Agent K: [front-age article about farmer’s stolen skin] Not looking for. Found.

Anyway, today is a special day because we’re waiting for some new items: a premium Cribbage Wars board from Ebonwood with resin inlays. We’re also waiting for extra pegs. These acrylic and brass pegs just shipped from the United Kingdom, which doesn’t charge tariffs. Michaud Toys makes a game board they call Cribbage Rumble (actually the same game as Cribbage Wars), but they’re currently not shipping to the U.S. because of the tariff situation.

We’re still playing Cribbage Wars on our economical little board with tiny peg holes. We’re finding out we like it so much we’d prefer a larger board so we can at least see what we’re pegging without a magnifying glass.

Sena still wins most of the games. I’m working on my strategy.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Enjoy Thanksgiving!

We hope everybody has a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

Breaking News: Hands-Free Driving Law in Iowa!

Sena saw a news headline about the new hands-free driving law in Iowa that’s going to be enforced in 2026 (passed in July of this year). Guilty drivers are going to get socked with a $100 fine if they’re caught messing with their cell phones with their hands off the wheel because they might think “hands-free” means you can’t touch the steering wheel.

Drivers have been getting off with a warning for now. Hundreds of people in Iowa die every year because they fool with their cell phones while driving.

You can download a variety of free materials from the Iowa Dept. of Public Safety.

And of course, this reminds me of a Men in Black 3 quote (why not?):

Agent J: Okay! You know how you’re on a airplane and the flight attendant asks you to turn your cell-phone off. And you’re like, I ain’t turning my cell-phone off, that don’t have nothing to do with no damn airplane. Well, [Showing the crowd a crashed spaceship] this is what we get, that’s what happens. It gets up there, bounces around on the satellites, then blam! Just turn your damn cell-phone off. Now you’re gonna drive off a cliff tonight because your GPS don’t work.

The thing about GPS reminds me of a Garmin Nuvi navigator we used years ago. We could plug it into the cigarette lighter power outlet. I had to update the map data from the internet although the Garmin used satellite-based GPS signals to manage the turn-by-turn route instructions.

It worked just fine except when airplane passengers used their cell phones to play Men in Black movies after the flight attendants instructed everybody to turn them off. Most people don’t know that kind of behavior also automatically releases the frozen block of blue ice (waste) from the toilet right over Area 51 (just kidding—actually the wings just fall off!).

I’ve used my old cell phone to get directions driving once or twice but not recently. I set it in the cup holder and never took my hands off the wheel—even when I drove through the front window of Pizza Hut.

So, if you happen to be driving through Iowa in the near future, remember to abide by the new law, which doesn’t mean you can get hands for free at the discount store.

Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome in the News

I just saw a news item today that is interesting for two reasons, at least to me. It’s about people who have Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome. The physician interviewed for comments about it is Dr. Chris Buresh who used to be an emergency department physician at the University of Iowa. He’s now at the University of Washington UW Medicine and Seattle Children’s Hospital.

His comment was published in a couple of local newspapers and he pointed out that even small amounts of marijuana can make people start throwing up.

The other reason it’s interesting to me is that I gave a grand rounds on eating disorders back in 2016. I had a slide on Cannabinoid Hyperemesis Syndrome (see featured image above). There’s a reference from 2016 that probably is still useful.

Brewerton, T. D. and O. Anderson (2016). “Cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome masquerading as an eating disorder.” International Journal of Eating Disorders.

Svengoolie Show Movie: “Curse of the Undead”

Svengoolie Intro: “Calling all stations! Clear the air lanes! Clear all air lanes for the big broadcast!”

I watched the Svengoolie show “Curse of the Undead” last night. Sena watched some of it. I guess I had more stamina. This is a 1959 vampire cowboy flick directed by Edward Dein and starred Eric Fleming as Preacher Dan (if you’re old enough you might remember him as Gil Favor in Rawhide in the 1960s) and Michael Pate as the vampire Drake Robey who could withstand full daylight without turning to mush. Kathleen Crowley plays Dolores Carter, the woman who owns the ranch where Robey does a lot of the biting.

My favorite line from the movie was Drake Robey’s comment about the dead When Dolores Carter asks him if living near a cemetery would bother him: “The dead don’t bother me; it’s the living who give me trouble.”

Once I got past the idea of the vampire not immediately bursting into flames in the daytime, I was pretty much OK with Robey, a man in black gun for hire whose attire reminded me of Johnny Cash. I half expected him to whip out a guitar and start singing “The Ring of Fire, “only Robey didn’t sing because this movie was not a musical.

The action starts in a small western town where everyone smokes cheroots, so popular in Spaghetti Westerns where all the cowpokes eat Italian cuisine lightly seasoned with cigar ash. Young females are dying off from anemia and nobody notices the two small puncture wounds in their necks except Preacher Dan, who wears a lapel pin festooned with a tiny cross made of the wood from the original cross. Something really special happens to this little cross.

One of the major conflicts in the film involves a guy named Buffer (played by Bruce Gordon) who is giving the Carter family a hard time by squatting on hundreds of acres of their land and planting marijuana on it, which his henchmen (yes, the stooges of the boss evil guy are always called henchmen) steal to stuff their bongs, homemade from cattle horns and then try to play poker but can’t win even a single hand because they forget how to play and get the munchies just looking at the chips (“Wow, man, I didn’t know they made potato chips different colors!). Buffer eventually kills two members of the Carter family.

After that, Dolores makes a bunch of help wanted signs advertising her need for a hired killer in order to get revenge on Buffer. The Sheriff (played by Edward Binns) just tears up all the signs citing her for spelling errors and tries to team up with Preacher Dan to strong arm Buffer into a scheme to make a new headache medicine they promised would be named after him if he would just cool his jets.

About this time, the man in black, Drake Robey, arrives in an exquisitely tailored outfit of slim fitting jeans with matching leather vest who evidently has no aversion to sunlight but takes exception to Preacher Dan’s assertion that suicide is a sin punishable by God, which you’ll have to figure out by watching the movie. Obviously, there’s more to Robey than meets the eye because he’s a killer for hire who always seems to win every gunfight even though his opponents always swear they shot first and hit him—just before they die.

Robey’s lack of sensitivity to light can also be inferred from one of the first scenes in which he appears. He “sleeps” during the daytime but with the coffin lid open. Claustrophobia comes to mind.

The big battle between Preacher Dan and Robey begins with a preliminary 2 out 3 fall hybrid chess boxing match in which Preacher Dan gets knocked out despite winning the chess match. The final struggle takes place in the street and you’ll just have to watch the movie because there are no spoilers here on that. However, several members of the cast had roles on episodes of a popular TV show, which is a longstanding joke on the Svengoolie show.

I think this movie is OK and I give it a 3/5 shrilling chicken rating.

Big Mo Pod Show: “Garage Blues”

I heard the Big Mo Blues Show last night and the Big Mo Pod Show today. I can say that the Garage Show title refers to a get together during the Covid pandemic that Big Mo threw and held in his garage and featured local Blues artists including Bryce Janey, who is number 5 on the list of songs with “Down Home Blues.”

Big Mo Pod Show 084 – “Garage Blues”

Anyway, the most interesting part of the podcast was the 3^rd song, “Coal Black Mare” (misspelled as “Cold Black Mare”) which was produced by Bob Corritore and released as part of historical album released October 17, 2025 entitled “Bob Corritore and Friends—Early Blues Sessions.” It includes songs recorded between 1984 and 2007. Corritore was on harmonica and blues artist Clarence Edwards sang the song (he died in 1993).

I looked up Clarence Edwards on Wikipedia and he was born in Louisiana in 1933 and became more widely known in the 1980s when he performed on a national blues festival circuit. I found a version of Coal Black Mare recorded in 1961 by Edwards.

The song “Coal Black Mare” has a very interesting history all by itself. Most internet articles say Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup, was probably best known for writing the song “That’s All Right” in 1946 which Elvis Presley make famous later. Some say “That’s All Right” was the first rock and roll song. The Blues Hall of Fame says that Crudup was the “The Father of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

I found references that say Crudup wrote “Coal Black Mare” and released it in 1962 or 1965 (the Fire Sessions) depending on which web site you read. I also found a song entitled “Black Pony Blues” which on most web sites is the same as “Coal Black Mare” and was recorded in 1941 under Crudup’s name. They both sound like the same song.

Opinions differ about the meaning of the song “Coal Black Mare.” While I think most would say that it’s about a black race horse that won a lot of races, I think the “gold earrings” and “gold teeth” lyrics could make some people wonder if this is a metaphor for a woman. I found a web reference hinting at this, speculating that Charley Patton’s 1929 “Pony Blues” might have inspired the song and say that in all versions, including Crudup’s, the black mare stands for “…a black lover.”

I got lost in the internet forest on this one and I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have the first idea of whether or not “Coal Black Mare” was inspired by Charley Patton’s “Pony Blues.” And while I think gold earrings and teeth would look odd on a horse; I also suspect Crudup was probably singing about a race horse.

Your thoughts?