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Svengoolie Triggers Memory Lane Trip to the Drive Ins

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 90^th 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.

Attack of the Demonic Shrilling Chicken!

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.

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.

Closing the Loop on All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office Search for Extraterrestrials?

Just in case you haven’t already heard, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) revealed the lack of evidence proving the existence of extraterrestrials from the reports about what we used to call UFOs.

And NASA has said basically the same thing.

So, is there anything left to say about this? Probably not from the official side of the issue. But I don’t think this will be the end of reports of UFOs from the public.

Fake Snakes Saga Slithers On

The fake snake saga continues with not much change in scaring off birds, evidently. Bird poop calling cards are still being left.

I repositioned them and we’re hoping for the best.

This reminds me that the other night I was awakened by what I was pretty sure was an owl and dogs raising a ruckus at each other. I thought there was either one or two dogs trying to imitate the owl.

I don’t think it was the other way around. There is an owl that barks like a dog, but I believe it’s found only in Australia. I think it barks because it can’t stop eating vegemite, which makes it think it’s a dog.

Snakes don’t make noises generally, other than hissing sounds unless they’ve been abducted by extraterrestrials. The ETs conduct genetic experiments on them and that’s how they came up with the reptilians—who bark like owls.

Make or Break Escape Plan When Your Car is in a Flood

Sena and I saw a Weather Channel segment on how to escape your car if it is sinking during a flood. It’s mainly a reminder to turn around, don’t drown. However, there were a couple of interesting things about it. One was the quiz, in the format of a “how would you survive?” quiz with 3 choices: Fasten the seat belt securely, shatter the window, or call 911. The right answer is to break the window and I’ll have more on that because there was no guidance at all about how to break the window. We thought that was an important omission.

The interesting thing about the video clip is that I thought I recognized it from a paranormal TV show, The Proof is Out There with Tony Harris. Most of the time, the conclusions tend to lean toward skepticism regarding paranormal explanations, but in this one, Tony called it a “Possible Miracle.”

In both the Weather Channel and The Proof is Out There, the vehicle was red and looked like it was bigger than a compact or standard size car. The way it moved in the flood water was very similar in both. The YouTube on The Proof is Out There was from Season 3 and it was posted on October, 2023. I’m pretty sure I saw it long before that. The video on the Weather Channel looks like a clip from the full video, and it stops early before the rest of the action.

In fact, there are a few news report videos (from the same news agency, the archives of which no longer have the video for some reason) of the incident, which happened in 2006 and which involves a woman in a red SUV in Pueblo, Colorado who drove into flood waters. The SUV sank, but not before attracting the attention of rescuers, reporters and camera crews. The SUV went underwater with windows rolled up and when it was later pulled out, the windows were still rolled up, unbroken, and all the doors were closed. It has never been clear how she escaped, although many speculated that it was a miracle.

Sena noticed that the windshield wipers were still working, something I had missed. A couple of YouTube viewers (in The Proof is Out There video) mentioned it, but nobody responded to the implication that the electric controls to the lower the windows might still have temporarily worked as the vehicle went under. That still doesn’t explain how they got rolled back up.

It’s also noteworthy that, despite the news story mentioning the driver’s name, where she worked, and that she had called her brother while the SUV was sinking, there doesn’t seem to be any record of anyone asking her how she’d gotten out of the vehicle.

This post is going to contain several YouTube videos, but I’m trying to keep them to the relevant minimum. I think, in all fairness to The Weather Channel about omitting how to shatter the vehicle window in order to escape sinking and drowning (during the TV episode mentioned above), they have posted a video in the past which does provide excellent guidance.

In this video, they mention something Sena knew about but which I was not familiar with—the little tool called a seat belt cutter and glass breaker. You can buy them just about anywhere, often for less than $20. The AAA web site has clear instructions for what to do in situations where this tool would come in handy. In that same web page, there’s a link to the AAA research study done in 2019 about these tools, which contains more helpful advice, such as that the spring-loaded tools work better than the hammer type, and that they work on tempered glass, not laminated glass.

In any case, we’re sold on the glass breaker and it’s on order. However, we would prefer to turn around, don’t drown.

Sena Says Chase Away the Winter Blues, Try Lume!

Sena said I could give you an update on the Lume products. Remember, she said this was OK.

She’s actually happy with the product. She uses it as recommended by the creator, who recommends applying it “under boobs, butt crack, pits,” and so on. That’s how the commercials go.

We shoveled snow and scraped ice yesterday and she thought she could go without a shower last night—mainly to see how long the deodorant would last.

On the other hand, she’s not going to buy it again because it’s too expensive. Really, that’s the only knock against it, according to her. And her word is the only one that matters. Except her suggestion I try Mando products. Is she trying to tell me something?

I’m wondering how this will promote Lume research into making the deodorant for Bigfoot (my proposal in the original post), namely Bigfoot B.O. Begone (BBOB). Lume can even have the name, as long as they back it up with field research. That means going into the field to find Bigfoot, applying the product, and getting follow up results periodically (every hour on the hour would suffice) for at least 72 hours.

Bigfoot is about 8 feet tall and weighs over 600 pounds, so wrestling with it will require fortitude, strict dedication to the scientific method—and plenty of beef jerky. Sticking your nose into its armpits and other unmentionable body sectors will take courage, excellent health insurance, life insurance, and a total lack of sanity.

What some people will do in the name of science makes you wonder if psychiatric treatment could make a difference.

Remember, she said this update was OK. I’m available for questions just as soon as I’m released from the witness protection program.

Sena Gets Her Lume!

Sena finally got her Lume products delivered yesterday. That’s right, I said “Lume,” the total body odor remover you see being advertised on TV. I can’t bear to watch them, which might say something about how we’re socialized to avoid confronting our own B.O. In my defense, the commercials have been described as “in your face.”

The packet arrived after 11 days, starting its delivery journey in Kentucky. I suspect the recent bad winter weather had a lot to do with the delay. The postal service delivered it and the products inside were frozen. The Acidified Deodorant Wipes package was a solid brick and I bet you could have broken a window with it.

Sena ordered the Lume products with the goal of experimenting with them to just to see if they work as advertised. The long message Lume sent after the delivery was interesting:

UPS has marked your package as delivered! This is one of the best days of my life, second only to when you placed your order.

Please allow an additional 1-2 business days for your lovingly prepared package to arrive on your doorstep. Sometimes packages are marked as “delivered” while they’re still in your faithful mail carrier’s bag or looking cute in the mail truck.

If you still haven’t received your Lume in 2 more business days, please contact us! (Not to brag, but we are pros at Where’s Waldo^TM.)

Tips & Tricks for Becoming a Lume Pro

Prep Your Clothes & Prime Your Pits

Body odor happens in two places: ON your skin and IN your clothes. Learn how to both places ready for outrageously effective odor control on our Getting Started Page!

We Had to Break Some Rules to Be This Good

What’s that smell? It’s the sweet smell of science! Our water based cream rubs in like a lotion, and because Lume is not like ordinary deodorant, it doesn’t smell like ordinary deodorant. A natural, unexpected, fleeting scent leaves you smelling like nothing at all.

Pits, Feet, and Privates

Odor reactions are the same no matter where they happen on our body! You can use Lume anywhere you have external odor but wish you didn’t. Yes, even there.

Have Some *Private* Questions?

No need to be coy. We all have private parts, and we all have odor! Find answers to your questions on our FAQ page or by messaging our knowledgeable team at website address. (Trust us, we’ve heard ALL the questions.)

Doubts have been raised about whether or not the deodorant keeps you odor free for 72 hours. I’m not sure what to make of the claim. Most deodorants and antiperspirants that have been on the market for years make that claim. I’m not sure how you’d verify it. I don’t generally go without showering for several days. I’m likely to wash the deodorant off well before 72 hours after application.

Along those lines, there’s also a product like Lume for men now, called Mando. I’m not sure why the name was chosen. It can be short for mandolin or Mandalorian (fictional male warrior character in the Star Wars franchise) among other meanings, usually suggesting machismo.

The Mando product may or may not be connected to the acquisition of Lume by Harry’s Inc. (maker of men’s personal care products) in 2021. According to the web, Mando was launched in 2023.

So, the logical question, of course, is when will the Bigfoot deodorant be released? Hey, it’s well known that Bigfoot stinks to high heaven, and while explanations differ about what he smells like and why, there’s no reason not to develop a total body deodorant for Bigfoot. It could be called Bigfoot B.O. Begone (BBOB for short). It has a ring to it. And there’s even a Minnesota connection relevant to the Lume/Mando creator. The Bigfoot Field Researchers Organization (BFRO) have documented at least 75 sightings in Minnesota.

BBOB could lead to making him less shy and more willing to share his favorite food, which is beef jerky. And we’re always talking about Bigfoot as though there are only males in the species. The classic 1967 Patterson/Gimlin film of Patty the female Bigfoot (with boobs no less) clearly illustrates the need for an “under boobs” deodorant for the Sasquatch tribe. It would probably have to last more than 72 hours.

I’m not making any guarantees here, but there may be an update to this post.

New Aromatherapy Diffusers!

Sena got some new aromatherapy diffusers made by Studio 66. They have a magical glow. One has a design of cardinals on it and it is titled Winter Ice (or Mistletoe, depending on what side of the box you read). The box says it smells like sweet orange, warm cinnamon, juniper berries and eucalpytus. The other has a design of deer in the trees, called Enchantment or Cozy Cashmere. According to the box, it has notes of jasmine, sandalwood, and vanilla with a hint of sweet musk.

They were obviously designed and named by extraterrestrials, but they look nice. So far, I can’t smell them-which could mean the nasal implant the ETs jammed up my nose is dysfunctional.

The Geezer Remarks on Superfoods

Sena is big on eating healthy, which is a good thing. On the other hand, we don’t necessarily always like the same foods. And there’s the whole issue of what people call superfoods nowadays.

Funny, when I was a kid, I used to just refer to superfoods as “yuck!” There are variant spellings.

I read the Wikipedia entry on superfoods and it essentially says there is officially no such thing.

Take beets—please!

Sena’s big on Beets and Leeks. I’m not a big fan. I’ll eat them, of course. There’s nothing wrong with them that intravenous ipecac and a stomach transplant won’t fix. The drawback is the medical bill.

I don’t think we’ve ever had kale. Does that make the superfood list? I think it’s the same thing as mustard greens, okra, and other building materials similar to shingles.

I tried okra when I was a student at Huston-Tillotson University (then Huston-Tillotson College). I was offered this slightly slimy substance as part of a dinner at the home of my Religion and Philosophy professor and his family. It’s slimy because it contains mucilage, which is (correct me if I’m wrong but I’ll naturally ignore you) also the name of the glue we used in grade school to make valentine cards.

In fact, think of any food you dislike as intensely as any medication or tonic you had to take when you were a kid. That would be classified as a superfood. I had to take a tablespoon of mineral oil a day, which is a substance very much like mucilage.

I found out that millet is marketed as a superfood. That’s funny, because it’s also used as a filling for juggling balls. When you work up an appetite juggling, you can just bust open one of the balls and snack on a handful of bird seed, which is what millet really is.

Actually, superfoods come in handy in case you’re abducted by extraterrestrials. Whenever they look like they’re getting ready to jam some kind of implant up your nose, offer them a juggling ball. Just tell them to keep chewing through the leather shell until they get to that tasty millet center. This will give you time to write down the driving directions to the nearest barbecue joint for them (Jimmy Jack’s Rib Shack in Iowa City for example).

Anytime you need any more expert advice on superfoods, just let me know. I’m not available.