Interviews

Musings
&
Articles

Photos
& Ephemera

E-Mail

My
(Auto)
Biography

Home

See us on TV!
Baked Potato

Radio,
Rondo
&
The State

Underground

Papers

©&®

Crazy College Image Page.

Not that anything can improve George's image.....

Postcards and photos from my collections, drawing I've done over the years and cool stuff people have sent; all mixed together in a random scrapbook.

Doodles Weaver and Spike Jones:

Esquavel

The Proctor's Holiday card:

•

While visiting Stowe, Vermont, I discovered this sign in the backwoods of some place called "Jeffersonville." We quickly took this picture then hightailed it out of there because the banjo music was scaring me.

I paid a visit to Soupy at his home back in 2008. The photo is a Daguerreotype taken by Blacktooth and developed by White Fang.

•

September 23, 2014 Unfailingly approachable, insatiably inquisitive, Tony Auth was always a pleasire to run into. The first time I met the Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist was at a Philadelphia Art Opening back in 1999. Turns out he was a fan of the show and especially wanted to talk about Tom Lehrer whom I had just interviewed. At year’s end I got one of his Christmas Cards in the mail. Tony died on Sunday at 72.

•

We went to a marvelous party.

Artist Chris White and his wife Janis put on quite a frightening display at their Halloween do. Good food great company plus enough scares to raise the hair on my head.

Chris has just finished his commission of Enterprise starship paintings and he’s the one who designed that great Polar Lights Invisible Man model a few years back.

•

Justin Bieber vomited during one of his performances. Now he knows how I feel.

•

Monsters on the Loose in Regal Theaters

DATELINE: Oct 24, 2012 I went and saw "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein" at Regal last night. $12.50 a ticket bordered on pure larceny. But the films looked great. The audience loved it and it was PACKED. Old folks with canes, Tweens with iphones. Kids with blankets.

Now let's hope Universal schedules a 3D showing of "Creature from the Black Lagoon" doubled billed with "It Came From Out Space" sometime soon.

•

Zappa: “That song was pretty white...”

Davy Jones: “So am I; what can I tell you?”

-HEAD (1968)

The man knew his limitations – and his strengths. Given the right support, Davy Jones created some great pop music. The Monkees in their prime were nearly as influential as The Beatles, thanks mostly to week-in week-out exposure on a hit TV show. Sure, they were the "Pre-fab Four", a manufactured group, but then, many were. Peter, Paul and Mary were created by agent Albert Grossman, who always lived up to his last name. They many not have come together by chance, but they still brightened up AM radio for a few years. Their 1967 lp, Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones Ltd. was their one near-perfect album, with a title that was a clever admission of their second-class status. "Head" is one of the best films about Hollywood’s star-making and -breaking philosophy. Good-bye, Dave, and thanks for all the good music.

•
In my neighborhood we seem to honor our war dead on Memorial Day by cutting our lawns

•

There's an interesting discussion of Cigarette advertising at http://lane.stanford.edu/tobacco/index.html. Here's one featuring W. C. Fields. But where's is nephew Chester Fields?

Bastete
1995-2011
<

I'd love to incorporate the views of listeners like you in this site. Discovered a new collection of comedy songs? Have a thought you'd like to share? Email it and we'll included on the Crazy College website.
His work has hit the big screen! Our friend Chris White, who creates classic monster models similar to those of my youth but better, has his work shown in close up in the new film, Super 8! "See" his Invisible Man model, who gets a nice close up in the kid's room before all hell breaks loose. Congrats and all that!

.

Raymond Scott's son introduced his new doc on his old man at the Atlantic City Film Festival October 14 at 6PM. The film was great, the audience appreciative and the boardwalk fries as salty as the sea. Learn more about Raymond's music and his life when Radio Times interviews Stan on WHYY-FM, November 17. College

We note with sadness the death of Jimmy Sangster who wrote so many of the great Hammer Studio horror films, including Horror of Dracula, Revenge of Frankenstein and The Mummy.

Now in it's 37th year, AN EVENING AT A BRITISH MUSIC HALL returns to Touchstone Theatre 321 E. 4th St Bethlehem, Pa 18015. AN EVENING AT A BRITISH MUSIC HALL celebrates the era of British Vaudeville 1850-1930. With a very talented cast of 10 performers and three musicians, it’s guaranteed to be a fun evening, from people who love and study the music. You’ve heard Mary Callahan, the Philadelphia Nightingale, and Chris Simmons, the director on Crazy College many times. Performances will be Oct 28-29 at 8pm and tickets will be $15 and reservations may be made by calling 610 867 1689.
•
Remembering Bert Schneider
Film producer Bert Schneider, kinda made the 60s happen. Not all of it, just the fun parts, the parts that I loved as a kid. First he created the Tv shows the Monkees, who were second only to the Beatles as a cultural influence. Later he made such films happen as "Easy Rider," "Five Easy Pieces," "The Last Picture Show" and, finally the brilliant "Days of Heaven." And we mustn’t forget “Head” supposedly starring "The Monkees" but in reality their cinematic sudoku, a biting satire on the music industry and a requiem to the moribund Hollywood studio system. In 1974 Schneider was awarded an Oscar for the documentary” Hearts and Minds" about the Vietnam War. He died on December 12, 2011 of natural causes at the age of 78
•≤,≥≤,≥
•

Harry Morgan
He lived to be 96. He had a career that saw him become a popular supporting playing in both Tv and film. And it had a dash of scandal that was never really explained (or, really, anyone else’s business, excepting for him and his wife). Everyone notes his years on Dragnet fighting hippies or his time on MASH first against the Koreans as surrogates for the Viet Kong. But let me put a vote in for his work on Tv’s
Pete and Gladys
which ran for two years starting in 1960. Maybe someday soon the Antenna Network will rerun that, along with The George Burns Show and his son’s summer sitcom.
•

•
THE CIRCUS WAS IN TOWN!
Newark, Delaware

The Cole Brothers Circus!!

As a kid I was always excited when the circus came to town. And I'm just as excited now that the Cole's Brother's will be in Newark, Delaware this weekend. I think the Coles Brothers Circus is the only traveling show that still sets up a big top, out on some muddy field on the outskirts of town, the way a circus should be seen. Sure the band isn’t as big and has a synthesizer to fill in the gaps, but the stunts are real and the are dangerous and there’s no computer generated trickery involved and it is happening right before your eyes.
I do miss the sideshow, though, a victim of political correctness that cost a lot of these “human oddities” (aren’t we all?) a chance to ply their craft. I remember the last side show I saw, in the early 1970s, when the circus set up next to the auto plant, near the train tracks at Prices Corner. The individual banners that made the tent look bigger. The living mermaid. The Duck Boy. The Rubber Man. My grandmother, who was a nurse in the 1920s, told me she once looked down the throat of a sword sallower and it was nothing but scar tissue. Inside were small risers where we could gawk at William Durks, the man with three eyes and two noses (clearly he had been hit square on in the face with an axe which had split his nose in two. The eye was just a painted dot from an eyebrow pencil). Next to him sat Little Sweet Marie (or Lotsa Sweat Marie, really), an electric fan at her side. “Seven Hundred and Fifty Eight pounds of pure woman!”, we were told. Ester Lester came out and showed his/her stuff, half shaven on one side, her hair bobbed on half her head, the left arm well-muscled from doing one-handed pushup (“Notice the mus-iles,” Ester pointed before she began offering her photo for sale at 50 cents each, sealed, for propriety’s sake, in individual small waxy envelopes. The female contortionist closed out the program, which ran no more that a half hour, if that, gliding demurely into a small coffin, than diced into sections by large meat cutters. There was no way she could have avoided being dismembered – and it would cost me an additional 50 cents to find out for certain. A curtain was drawn, and those of us “18 or older; ladies, this is not for you!” did discover her secret of survival, so simple, so elegant and so deceptive that the ingenuity of it all was well worth the half dollar.
We, being teenagers, and thus too sophisticated, decided to forgo the Big Top show and left the small tent content to explore the rest of the night elsewhere.
I remember as a kid, just out of grammar school, watching the circus break down on one cold gray day in late October. It must have been the last stop of the season before they headed south to their winter camp in Florida. The vans were packed; an exhausted roustabout climbed in next to the driver and promptly fell asleep. The driver gunned the engine and made the transmission scream as he rocked the caravan down the muddy, rutted road, leaving behind scattered in a shallow puddle, the unsold tickets from yesterday's show. I salvaged a few and put them in my pocket, then headed home for dinner.

Three acts you WON"T see at the Coles Brothers Circus: William Dirks, the man with two noses and three eyes, Ester Lester, aka Presto-Chango, the Hermaphrodite" and "Professor Fetlocks and his Dancing Horse, Bob."

New from Arceophone!
1914: "Her Memory Haunts You"

How do they get such good sound out of such old records? Here's another must-have collection in their on-going series of musical "ear"books that is as much sociological history as as a collection of great pop tunes. Many of the titles still live on – often stripped of their subtext. But here's a nation in the last throws of an idyle unaware of the dark clouds of a first world war that will soon change everything - including the music.
One of my favorite sites, DVD Savant, offered this link to a funny bit from Cracked at http://www.cracked.com/photoplasty_235_b-movie-posters-classic-films_p27/#14

*

P>

From the very informative history of cigarette advertising at http://lane.stanford.edu/tobacco/history.htm

I though you might enjoy 4E's business card that a good friend sent me..

"Howdoyado, everybody, howdoyado?" Billy Jones and Ernie Hare, The Happiness Boy, singing about Interwoven Socks. They recorded a lot of great comedy 78s in the 1920s and can be heard all too often on Crazy College

I remember when Calvert "performed" at the University of Delaware in the late 1980s. His rider required a bark-o-lounger and a bottle of scotch on stage, which was really the gym forecourt with a hundred folding chairs around. A student was selected to hold his cue cards which he read with diminishing success as he drank more and more of his scotch while reclining in his bark-o-lounger. When the bottle was finsihed, so was the show - and him. A pleasant time was had by all.

"Palin. Bachmann. Ryan. Trump. Have you ever seen a Tea Party with so many Mad Hatters?”
=300 width=400>

>

"Palin. Bachmann. Ryan. Trump. Have you ever seen a Tea Party with so many Mad Hatters?”

Here's Tom Lehrer.

Here I am with WVUD DJ Jerry Grant, host of Hip City Pt 2 (Saturdays 6 pm-8pm) during my induction to the WVUD Wall of Fame on May 5,2010.

Here I am with WVUD DJ John Lupton of Rural Free Delivery (Sat. Noon-2pm) accepting the award for his late wife, Suzi Wallenberg, fellow recipient Larry Carr (Fine Tuning (Fridays 11 am -1 pm, during our induction to the WVUD Wall of Fame on May 5,2010.

Here I am with WVUD station manager Steve Kramarck during my induction the WVUD Wall of Fame on May 5,2010.

Here's Tom Lehrer again.

Here's Harpo Marx.

Here I am next to "Rural Free Delivery" hosts John Lupton and George Mercer in March of 2009.

Here I am with June Foray in 1986. It's cropped funny due to print damage

Here's a PR photo of satirist Michael O'Donoghue.

Here I am with Lee Dexter and his wife Sunny in their home in 1984. Lee was the creator of Philadelphia favorite, Bertie the Bunyep, broadcast on Tv 3 in the 1950s.

Here is Roy Disney, Howard Green and Leondard Maltin at the Philadelphia Film Festival in April, 2007.

Ross Bagdasarian, aka "David Seville"

The Happiness Boys, Billy Jones & Ernie Hare

Ruth Wallis
>

My brother
>

My half sister (and half brother) Erika, also know as "Presto-Chango, the Hermaphrodite"
>

Jordan Young, author of the difinative Spike Jones biography with the founder of the Snicklefritzer band, his wife and me in 1992.
>

Here I am with Leonard Maltin and his wife Alice at the Philadelphia Film Festival, April 2007
>

Phil Silvers "The Phil Silvers Show" 1963My half sister (and half brother) Erika

Charlie McCarthy being boxed up by Edgar Burgan 1975
>

The Monkees
>

Here I am in 1982 sitting in front of a door
>

Here I am back in 1975 at radio station WHEN

Edie Massey, "the Egg Lady" star of many of John Water's best films at her shop in Baltimore
>

>

Here's an Allan Sherman PR shot.

Cousin Bela.

Uncle Kari.

Here's Music Hall star Marie Lloyd

Here's Uncle Cal

Here's Vivian Stanshall: of the Bonzo Dog Band.

Learn all about Harry Stewart, aka, Yogi Yorgesson and Harry Kariat http://www.yogiyorgesson.com/index.html.
What a weekend we had the first of April! Glad to see all the people who came out to catch the SILENT Our Gang shorts. Leonard Maltin introduced the Philadelphia Film Festival's salute to Our Gang on Saturday... But even better than these goreous prints from the Library of Congress was the chance to sit around and talk with Mr Maltin and his charming wife Alice about film, and – even more surprsingly –novelty music! Seems they and another guest, Howard Greene, love the silly songs like we all do.
I learn so much, heard about acts I didn't even knew existed, most of which will slowly make its way into upcoming programs. We also got to show a whole bunch of rare Disney silent cartoons, including the just returned Oswald the Lucky Rabiit shorts, plus a bunch of early Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies shorts, all in 35mm and all from the Disney archieves! Those of you who missed it (and you know who you are) will get a chance to own the Disney Oswalds in a Treasures Collection slated for release around Christmas time. Roy Disney, son of Walt's brother and partner), was also in town to recieve our Insperation Award and he was every bit as down to earth and accessable as the Maltins. Within an hour of meeting I felt like I was with old friends. It's hard to beleave the weekend is over...

...

We note with sadness the passing of Tom Poston. Born on Oct 12, 1921, he made us laugh until the end on April, 2007. Tom was always a welcome sight on any sit-com. But I think his most memorable work was on the Steve Allen Show where was a "Man in the Street" who couldn't remember his own name. Here's a great cover of Tom from the Valentine's Day edition of Harvey Kurttzman's "Help!" Magazine......
Brother Theodore supplied by his Boswell, Jeff Semeral