Category: humor

Transforming Into A Svengoolie Fan

We’re on a Svengoolie roll lately. I watched the Svengoolie show last Saturday and the made for TV movie was Dan Curtis’ Dracula. It was made in 1974. I thought I’d never seen this film before but that final scene in which Dracula (played by the phenomenal heavy, Jack Palance) gets skewered looked familiar. I may have seen part of it a long time ago.

I read the Bram Stoker novel, Dracula years ago when I was just a kid. It’s a scary book. I haven’t seen many movies about Dracula. I think we saw Bram Stoker’s Dracula produced and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, which came out in 1992.

In fact, Dan Curtis’ Dracula (produced and directed by Dan Curtis) was at first called Bram Stoker’s Dracula, although the title had to be changed so they wouldn’t be confused with each other. I got one joke from Svengoolie:

What’s Dracula’s favorite ice cream? Veinilla.

When you look at Svengoolie’s comments section about the movie, it’s astonishing to see there are over 3,900 comments (still counting) and over 3,000 just during the movie.

I thought Jack Palance was riveting as Dracula. Sena didn’t watch the show with me but she remembered Palance’s antics during the 1992 Academy Awards when he got the Oscar for best supporting actor in City Slickers. After he got the Oscar, he moved away from the podium, dropped to the floor and did one-arm pushups—and he was 72 years old at the time. I never saw that, probably because I was on call as a first-year psychiatry resident.

This upcoming Saturday, the movie will be Gargoyles, which I’ve never seen or even heard of before. Svengoolie is known for cheesy films, but many of the stars in some of them went on to have successful careers.

Sena plans to watch it with me! And she ordered a glow in the dark Svengoolie T-shirt as well as a rubber chicken for me. Svengoolie does a lot of dad jokes and he gets rubber chickens tossed at him. I’ll probably try to juggle using the rubber chicken.

Today is National Spinach Day!

Sena just told me today is National Spinach Day. Naturally this means she is going to prepare a big whopping mess of spinach for us to eat. She also recently ordered a 100-gallon keg of Super Beets supplement capsules as part of her health food project. She drank the Super Beet Kool-Aid, if you know what I mean.

I guess Popeye the sailor man is still one of the best spokespersons for spinach, which I actually sort of like when it’s soaked in vinegar for about a year or so. When I was a kid, I used to watch Popeye cartoons. The basic storyline is Bluto uses Popeye for punching bag until a can of spinach weighing a metric ton drops out of the sky on Bluto. This never taught Bluto a lesson.

In honor of National Spinach Day, we’ll probably have a platter of Florentine chicken fricassee with a pound of spinach simmered with extraterrestrial brain lobes paired with Bigfoot armpit glands and a glass of chilled free range beagle pee layered with beet juice. Yum.

Maybe just a salad. Happy National Spinach Day!

spinach, beets and leeks and fig vinaigrette

Picture credit: Pixydotorg. I’m not sure about exactly when Popeye goes into the public domain. There are different dates on the web. But the picture is free on Pixydotorg.

National Spinach Day!

We Put on the Ritz for the Solar Eclipse!

We’re putting on the Ritz for the solar eclipse next month! We got our crazy T-shirts and the eclipse glasses and solar filter.

We didn’t know we’d be blind after donning the glasses. You don’t want to go for a walk wearing them because you’re likely to trip over something, mainly other eclipse observers.

We’ve got instructions for snapping photos of the eclipse safely. We’ve got our fingers crossed that it won’t be overcast on the big day—April 8, 2024.

Will Iowans Get the Whole Enchilada with The Upcoming Total Solar Eclipse?

So, are Iowans going to get “the whole enchilada” when it comes to seeing the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024? No, but we’ll see a partial eclipse. The T-shirt Sena got for me says “Total Eclipse” on it—but it also has extraterrestrials on it, which I really like.

The paths of these total eclipses are narrow. The path of the Total Solar Eclipse on August 21, 2017 would not have been visible in the totality phase for Iowans either. So, no whole enchilada then either.

In fact, I don’t remember the 2017 solar eclipse at all. Sena watched it on TV when CNN televised a special program about it. She noticed that it got dark, probably in the early afternoon. I don’t know what I was doing, but I was no doubt running around the hospital responding to psychiatry consultation requests. I probably wouldn’t have noticed a gigantic enchilada stalking the earth.

In fact, to see a total eclipse back then and next month, we’d have to drive to Carbondale, Illinois. That’s at least a 6-hour drive and probably longer since a lot of people would be on the road with the same goal. There are already warnings from some officials about traffic jams, cell phone problems, and other disasters which can happen during the mad rush to see the whole enchilada.

Which brings me to the question: do you know the origin of the phrase “the whole enchilada”?

I guess the history of the expression is a little dark, in a manner of speaking. Some people don’t define it and bail by comparing it to other similar phrases like “the whole nine yards” or whatever. On the other hand, there are variations on another story of the origin that date back to the Watergate tapes scandal in the era of President Nixon’s administration in the 1970s. Supposedly, John Ehrlichmann called Attorney John N. Mitchell “the big enchilada.”

In general, it means the whole thing, the entirety, everything. So, if we want to see the whole enchilada as far as the total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024, we’d have to drive 6 hours to either Carbondale, Illinois or Poplar Bluff, Missouri. We’ll pass on that.

However, Sena did make the whole enchilada last night for dinner.

Getting Ready for the Solar Eclipse!

Sena has placed the order for our eclipse glasses and eclipse T-shirts. They should get here in plenty of time for the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. And if the weather is really crappy that day—we have 30 days to return them.

There is an interesting history of eclipses on the NASA website. It mentions how Einstein hypothesized that gravity warped space and time, distorting the universe. The sun is big enough that its gravity could bend light. In fact, during the eclipse on May 29, 1919, scientists noted that some stars were in the wrong place, proving Einstein’s theory.

And now for some eclipse jokes:

What do you call it when you fall in love on April 8, 2024? A total eclipse of the heart.

What will the moon bring to the beach on April 8, 2024? Sunblock.

Jupiter to the moon on April 8, 2024: Do you remember the sun?

Moon: No, I blocked it out.

Sena: How do you organize a solar eclipse party?

Jim: I don’t know. How?

Sena: You planet!

An interesting Iowa history story is about the solar eclipse of 1869. Several small markers were placed in various locations to mark the event. Many were lost. They were plowed out or covered up. The author mentions the upcoming 2024 solar eclipse and wonders if anyone will leave markers to remember it.

I think what some may leave behind are tattered eclipse glasses and cheeseburger wrappers. But we’ll have our memories to pass on in stories, pictures, and dad jokes—a living monument.

Solar Eclipse in April!

We just found out there’s going to be a total solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. We hope to get some solar eclipse glasses before then if they don’t run out of stock everywhere. They’re selling fast.

We’ve seen a couple of lunar eclipses and those were fun. The most recent one was during cold weather in November 2022. I had to wear a winter coat.

In Iowa City, it starts at about 1:00 PM on April 8, 2024 and runs until a little after 3:00 PM. We missed the last one in 2017. The next one visible in the U.S. won’t be until 2044. We think we better see the one next month.

The SD Card Caper

I have an SD card (more commonly called just a “memory card”) for my camera and the other day I couldn’t download the videos to my computer using the SD card reader in the tower. The card reader is just a slot-shaped port in the tower, above the USB ports. SD stands for Secure Digital. It’s really secure when you can’t download any videos or pictures.

This had never happened before. Naturally I turned to the internet for guidance, which was my first mistake. I never saw so many web sites with confusing advice, some of which involve zip lines.

Most of the web sites assumed I could see the icon for the SD card on my computer screen, but I couldn’t. Several web site help sites (hah!) breezily suggested I rename the disc or update the driver, or contact the extraterrestrials who manufactured the item as if I wanted them to know where I am so they can abduct me again.

This suggested the problem was probably the SD card reader in my computer—The XPS 8950, my nearly new computer which has already had major parts replaced and which is now out of warranty.

Only a couple of websites were on the right track about the SD card reader itself. One expert said that if I blew in the slot (That’s right! Not as dumb as it sounds; dust can be a problem) and wiped the card with a Q-Tip, and it still didn’t work, I should try it in a different computer. If it worked, then the problem was probably the card reader. It turns out you can blow on the SD card reader or the SD card until you’re blue in the face if the card is not detected in the Device Manager or any Device. If the card is dead, you get a new card, “and let it go.” Those are the exact words from that expert. Do I also have to sit in the lotus position?

 Anyway, I did try the card in the SD card reader in my wife’s computer. It worked!

But if the SD card works in another device, the problem could be a dead SD card reader. What should you do?

Well, when a couple of fans went out in my tower when it was under warranty, a repair guy came over, took the tower apart and replaced the fans. My machine is out of warranty and I don’t want to go through the same hassle of negotiating with the manufacturer to work out a time compatible with the repair guy’s bowling league schedule to drive to our house from British Columbia.

On the other hand, could I replace the SD card reader in the tower itself? A long time ago, I replaced a fan in my computer, which reminds me; you should never install oscillating fans in a computer.

Here’s the thing—I found a web page that fits my situation exactly, right down to the make and model of the tower. It turns out that it’s probably not possible to replace the SD card reader in the tower without replacing the mother board, which you, as a home user, should not attempt unless you have been drinking heavily.

What I found out is that combination USB with SD card readers are available and all you have to do is stick the SD card in the reader slot on the unit and plug the USB into the port on the tower. The whole thing fits in the palm of your hand.

Now our toaster doesn’t work.

Svengoolie and The Comedy of Terrors

Last Saturday on Svengoolie, I watched for the second time the 1963 movie “Comedy of Terrors,” a slapstick horror spinoff of Shakespeare’s farce, “Comedy of Errors”—which I’ve never seen. I didn’t see the whole movie the first time around, and I can’t remember exactly where I saw it. Most likely it was on Svengoolie.

The movie story is not actually based on the Shakespeare comedy itself. Most of the lines by Basil Rathbone (as Mr. Black) sounded vaguely familiar and I think they were from “Macbeth.” Vincent Price (Mr. Trumbull) plays an evil mortician and Peter Lorre (Mr. Gillie) plays his bungling assistant. They bury people in a casket which they use over and over because they dump the corpses in the graves after the mourners leave. Boris Karloff plays Hinchley, the senile father of Trumbull’s wife, Amaryllis who is played by Joyce Jameson.

Basil Rathbone as Mr. Black is the landlord who threatens to evict Trumbull from his house if he doesn’t come up with the rent sooner rather than later. This leads to Trumbull’s plan to kill Mr. Black—who doesn’t stay dead more than a few minutes, repeatedly springing back to life and flawlessly reciting Shakespeare in a thundering voice, before collapsing periodically back into his lifelong affliction with bouts of catalepsy.

Now, you know I’m going to have something to say about catalepsy because I’m a retired consultation-liaison psychiatrist and I’ve seen enough patients with catatonia who display various signs of that neuropsychiatric disorder, including catalepsy. According to the University of Rochester Bush-Francis Catatonia Rating Scale Assessment Resources, catalepsy is defined as “Spontaneous maintenance of posture(s), including mundane (e.g., sitting/standing for long periods without reacting).”

After Mr. Black has an apparent heart attack after being shocked by the sight of Mr. Gillie, who sneaked into his house, the butler calls for the doctor. The butler reminds the doctor that the distinguished gentleman suffers from periodic episodes of “catalepsy.” The doctor insists that Mr. Black is dead after applying a perfunctory examination.

After that Mr. Black abruptly snaps into and out of periods of catalepsy typically reciting Shakespeare perfectly, even after Mr. Trumbull shoots him a few times. Needless to say, catalepsy is only one feature of many. It almost invariably appears in those who have severe neuropsychiatric illness such as schizophrenia or epilepsy and they would rarely be able to speak so eloquently.

What amazed me is that all of the actors remembered and spoke their lines perfectly, despite being lengthy and polysyllabic.

Although the film didn’t do well at the box office, I thought it was pretty funny. You can view it for free at the Internet Archive.

Please Return to Sender

We get a lot of mail meant for somebody else. What’s up with the United States Postal Service (USPS)? It has been happening for years. What we do is identify that the mail is not for us and put it back in the mailbox for the postal delivery person to pick up. We write “Person does not live here” on the envelope.

We’re going to write “Return to Sender” on them. Maybe that’ll work.

The Svengoolie Phenomenon

I wrote about Svengoolie a couple of years ago and just for old times’ sake, I watched the 1960 horror film 13 Ghosts on the Svengoolie broadcast by MeTV a few days ago. It had been a while since I watched Svengoolie and I thought I would have the usual experience of being able to sit through the opening credits and then being unable to watch more than 5 minutes of one of the cheesy movies for which Svengoolie is well known.

In fact, I watched and even enjoyed 13 Ghosts which I suppose makes me a hopeless case. The movie is about a family down on their luck and about to become homeless but a rich uncle leaves them a haunted house. It turns out to be haunted by a dozen ghosts, and the surprise ending reveals who the 13th ghost turns out to be.

Back in the day, William Castle, the maker of the film, had a knack for coming up with neat gimmicks for his films. The gimmick for this one was a set of special glasses for the audience, which allowed them to see the ghosts or not, depending on which part of the glasses you looked through.

I recognized a couple of the actors in the movie. One of them was really well known to me and thousands of others. It was Margaret Hamilton as the housekeeper, who played the Wicked Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz (1939). The other was Martin Milner, who was in the TV crime drama, Adam-12, which ran from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s. Hamilton obviously teased viewers by holding up a broom and smiling broadly in one scene.

I really didn’t get a lot of nostalgia from watching 13 Ghosts since I was too young to see it when it first opened. But I watched it from start to finish, something I could never do in the past when watching Svengoolie. Don’t get me wrong; I actually got more of a kick out of Svengoolie’s cornball jokes and gags complete with rubber chicken firing squads.

One thing I am still amazed about is the popularity of the Svengoolie show. There were over 3500 comments about 13 Ghosts the last time I looked, which was days after the movie. There were over 2,000 just during the show!

Another thought about Svengoolie and his rubber chickens. I looked all over the web for a free picture of a rubber chicken. I found only one. Why is that?