DDT-V (1983-86)

From 1983 and 1986 a number of Bay High School students (and a few graduates who never really got away) produced a half-hour comedy program for our public access station. At the time we thought of our work as mediocre, but looking back is it surprising how much we were able to accomplish with so little. 



Most of the bits trod well-covered ground, obviously emulating Saturday Night Live, SCTV and Not Necessarily The News, featuring fake news segments, advertisements and public service announcements. But at least the writing was original and we were able to exploit our suburban surroundings to our best advantage.

We produced two "Christmas" episodes in 1984 and 1985. We had been working on one in 1983, but someone in production rewired the editing facility and got us banned from the studio for about a year.

In the year 1985 alone the company made six shows, but after producing two more the following spring and summer, a large number of cast members graduated from high school and that was apparently that.

UPDATE: DDT-V (Revisited)

The Joy of Christmas

Don't smile.

People, all kinds of people, like to kvetch and moan about how much better things were in the past. Some undefined past, could mean twenty years ago, could mean fifty. But things were less troublesome, more gooder, you weren't being inconvenienced by the thought police and gas was cheaper.


Well, I don't know about all that. If you know me, you know I believe society is a continuum where fates and fortunes are rising for some and falling for others. Ask a member of the homosexual community if things are better for them now than they were fifty years ago.

One community, however, which is always being persecuted, because it is part of their charter, is the Christian community. And who can blame them, since Obama took God off our coins, and no one says the Pledge of Allegiance in our public schools anymore.


What I can say is this, The Joy of Christmas would probably not have been produced today. Fall, 1979 the choirs of Bay Presbyterian Church were asked to participate in a holiday Christmas special for WEWS (ABC) hosted by Eyewitness News anchor Ted Henry.

Anchorman 2 opens December 13.

The holiday set, with fake lampposts and artificial snow was set into one corner of a large room in the WEWS studios on Euclid Avenue. This one room also included the set for Eyewitness News in another corner, for Morning Exchange in yet another corner, with the much smaller set for the Ohio Lottery wedged between.

Mother tells me I joined the choir for that one year so I could be part of the broadcast, which I do not remember, but may be true. However, if I was hoping to "shine" on local television, that did not happen. While the producer kept asking us to put on a bright and cheery holiday smile for the camera, our choral director, Ernie Hisey, quietly warned all of us to do no such thing. The result is that I look a little pissed off.


The program was repeated a Christmas season or two, but was soon after shelved no doubt because of its strong religious content. This is a Christian celebration of Christmas, including Bible verses from the host, classical images of the birth of Christ, and a family sitting around to read the Bible to each other.

It is not true, however, that the big bad president has taken God off our money, he hasn't. It is also not true that kids no longer recite the pledge in public schools, they do, all across northeast Ohio for certain, because I see and hear them do it all the time as part of my job. The United States government, which is supposed to be religion-neutral, is not.

But a program like this may never again be created by a commercial television station, and for strictly commercial reasons. They aren't worried about offending anyone. They are worried about not pleasing everyone, which is quite different. They are worried about losing money, that same American money that still says "In God We Trust" on it.

Happy Black Friday.

WCLV Marathon for the Cleveland Orchestra

Spring, 1970 - Cleveland's classic music station, WCLV 95 FM conducted its first on-air marathon to raise money for the Cleveland Orchestra. The goal was $10,000 which they raised handily within 24 hours.

The goal for their eighth marathon (1977) was $125,000.  That seems so modest by today's standards, when the Cleveland Orchestra's 2012 operating budget is $42M. But as today, the recession hit performing arts organizations very hard, and public fund-raisers like this not only raise necessary funds, but "demonstrates the wide support of the orchestra by thousands of people who may never set foot in Severance Hall," said (then) WCLV vice president and program manager Robert Conrad.

Hitting the east side and west side, the 24-a-day weekend of events (April 22-24) were broadcast live from Severance Center and Parma Town. Conrad and Tony Bianchi interviewed a host of regional celebrities, including orchestra Director Lorin Maazel, Great Lakes Shakespeare Festival Artistic Director Vincent Dowling, Fred Griffith and Joel Rose from Channel 5's Morning Exchange, among many others, including the legendary Mitch Miller.

Ours was a WCLV household, though I have never been a fan of classical music. However, at the age of eight I was definitely a huge fan of WCLV Saturday Night, which had been a fixture on the program schedule since it went on the air in 1962. Three-hours of high-brow comedy from 10 PM to the 1 AM sign-off. (Cue: Today Is The First Day of The Rest of Your Life.) It was due to this program, perhaps, more than any other influence that I became an anglophile. They played Flanders & Swann, bits of The Goon Show, Monty Python and Beyond the Fringe, as well as Nichols and May, Bob Newhart, National Lampoon (the clean stuff) and countless other comedians, comedy troupes, parody commercials and novelty songs.

The annual orchestra marathon included premiums for those who contributed, including CLE Orchestra swag, and tickets to Severance or Blossom, as well as contributed offers from area merchants and artists. However, if enough people kicked in a total of $20 per hour, every hour, my brothers and their friends would keep playing Monopoly in a tree.

No kidding. I wish I could claim to have been a part of it, but at the age of eight my limbs were still too short (and my nerves too weak) to climb the tree in our backyard. But I did try to contribute, fetching things like food and drinks to haul up in a bucket while they tree sat, huddled around a wooden frame set in the tree to hold the board, using cards and money which had been laminated for the occasion.

Because it was April in Bay Village. It rained. It was cold. As I recall, it sucked, but then I was listening to the radio all night, warm and dry in my bed.

WCLV now broadcasting from ideacenter in downtown Cleveland at 104.9 FM celebrates its fiftieth anniversary on November 4, 2012.

Sources:
WCLV.com
The Plain Dealer:
April 11, 1977 - Marathon: Serious Business by Raymond P. Hart
April 6, 1977 - Marathon for Orchestra has a star cast by Robert Finn

Dazed and Confused (1993)

 Stay-In-Bay Days July 4, 1976 

There's a script festering in the vault of my mind, it takes place during the Bicentennial, and once upon a time this blog was dedicated to Bicentennial research.  I wrote the first act of that piece in 24 hours, and I have yet to complete the second, but it will get there. It's all waiting for me. Yes, for sure it is. But for right now, let's celebrate the Fourth of July in style, hopped up on allergy medication and pain relievers.

My experience of the mid-to-late 1990s, as someone in his mid-to-late 20s, was a treasure-trove of long-lost childhood memories. As Gen-Xers were resigning themselves to prolonged adultescence (okay, I just read that word yesterday in The New Yorker) we as a cohort group jumped into the deep end of our subconscious, digging up nuggets long-thought lost.

The "World Wide Web" barely existed, you could not yet "google" the phrase "Saturday Morning Cartoons" and get a thousand "YouTube" videos of every show you saw when you were five. Instead, there were 'zines circulating celebrating childhood ephemera. I still have my three-issue series of Ben Is Dead (1995) which was an encyclopedia called Retro Hell chronicling pop culture of the 1970s and early 80s. I had no idea I had forgotten so much.

Dazed and Confused (1993) was Richard Linklater's second major release. Taking place on the last day of school in 1976, I had the great fortune to watch it first with my brother Denny, who finished his freshman year in high school at the same moment in history.

"Okay, guys, one more thing, this summer when you're being inundated with all this American bicentennial Fourth of July brouhaha, don't forget what you're celebrating, and that's the fact that a bunch of slave-owning, aristocratic, white males didn't want to pay their taxes." - Feminist lady teacher in "Dazed and Confused"

My brother and I also watched The Ice Storm (1997) together. Though enjoyable, he noted several minor, historical inaccuracies which would only be visible to someone who had been living in 1973. He found Dazed and Confused startling it its detail. During the credits, establishing the exterior of, and then moving into, the high school, he leaned over and said, "They only need a Bicentennial mural somewhere and it will be perfect."

 Perfect!

7up "United We Stand" Cans (1976)

Anyone who has seen Dazed and Confused knows the Bicentennial was hardly 24-hour patriot extravaganzas and colonial soap-making workshops, although there was a lot of that. No, it was still the mid-70s, President Gerald Ford was the only un-elected President in American history* we were in economic doldrums and were still reeling from the end of the Vietnam War.

How best then to regain a sense of pride and uplifting nationalism? Bicentennial branding!

7*UP released a limited edition of cans, each featuring one of the fifty states on one side, and on the other side a cryptic, seemly random series of 7UPs in red or blue on white background.

Detail.

Collect them all — one featured a key for how to stack the cans — and you were treated to an optical illusion of a certain American icon! Collecting and stacking empty beer cans was a national hobby at the time, why not stack cans and celebrate our freedoms at the same time?

My brother Henrik collected all fifty. He didn't buy them all, he asked the guys at Village Pizza (two doors down from Bay Lanes) to hang onto empties anyone left around the place, and he would collect and wash them. I still have all 50 stored in my attic. I have no idea how rusted these steel cans may be, I have no looked for them in quite a while. I did find a complete collection on eBay going for $425.

I want YOU.
*For those too young to remember, Michigan House Representative Ford was appointed Vice President when Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace, and became President when Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace.

UPDATE: I sold my brother's can collection in 2026, for $47.76.

"Let's Go Bowling!"

"Every size, age, kind, breed and class from all walks of life."
Except ... well, you know ...
Last year my wife took the girl to what they call Girl Camp, a weekend of feminist mysticism and indoctrination. Seriously, though I think they sit around a campfire and sing and cry and talk about boys. So the boy and I declared our home Boy Camp which meant we slept in, farted a lot and went BOWLING.

This weekend ... BOY CAMP YEAR 2: This time, it's Star Wars.

Bowling Proprietors Association of America presents:
Let's Go Bowling


Growing up in Bay Village, my parents would take me with them on League Night, when I was too old for them to seem to justify paying for a babysitter, but too young to leave at home on my own, like when I was eight or nine years-old. Besides, I knew there would be pizza at Dominic's afterwards.

Bay Lanes in those days was full of smoke, smelled of beer, and the "kids' room" was a plexiglass cage with broken toys and a black and white TV with very poor reception. Those under 18 were not allowed in the "lounge" which was a slightly more respectable plexiglass cage in the swinging 1970s style. I would often slip in quickly to snab one of the cardboard coasters or bev naps with dirty cartoons on them.

DID YOU KNOW ..?

Nixon did not build the first bowling alley in the White House. He did have a new alley constructed (paid for by donors, not taxpayers) under the North Portico in 1969. However, bowling lanes were originally installed in the West Wing in 1947 as a birthday present for President Truman ... who did not like bowling. The staff, however, formed a league. Makes you wonder which bowl-happy member of the staff thought that might be a good present.

These lanes were torn out in 1955 to create a mimeograph room.

Sources:
The White House Museum
Secret Bay Village

Sam Sheppard

Let's dig right in, shall we?

Dr. Samuel Holmes Sheppard (December 29, 1923 – April 6, 1970) was an osteopath who lived in Bay Village, Ohio, my hometown.

The end, moving on.

*Big sigh.*

Okay, let's try again.

Dr. Samuel Holmes Sheppard (December 29, 1923 – April 6, 1970) was an osteopath, living in Bay Village, Ohio. He was married to Marilyn Reese Sheppard, mother to their son, Sam, whom they called Chip.

In the early morning on July 4, 1954 Marilyn was brutally murdered in their lakefront home. Sheppard gave conflicting reports about the events in question, claiming he had seen a "bushy-haired intruder" assaulting her, with whom he got into a fight and was knocked out. Pursuing the assailant to the beach, he was struck unconscious again.

The trail of Sam Sheppard for the murder of his wife ... Jesus, I can't even write this, everybody knows this story. The Fugutive, The Cleveland Press, Louis Seltzer, F. Lee Bailey, it makes my head hurt.

How's this ... the made-for-TV movie Guilty or Innocent: The Sam Sheppard Murder Case was released on November 17, 1975 starring George Peppard as Dr. Sam. Someone in my family watched it. It couldn't have been my father - he had absolutely no interest in this case, the man was guilty, full stop. It was probably Denny, who was in eighth grade. In any event, I took in this horrid story, told in the form of a horrid TV movie, at the tender age of seven. My daughter is seven.


So, since the second grade I have been aware of this gruesome tale, of what the word "bludgeon" means, to know that justice does not exist, that truth can be unknown, what the 46 year-old George Peppard looked like without a shirt ... a child does not need to know these things.

And to think that it happened in my home town.

Bay Village

Eliot Ness and his wife Edna Staley Ness lived in a bungalow right on Lake Erie in the bedroom community of Bay Village, a town described in a 1936 edition of The Plain Dealer as "A little New England, west of Cleveland."

Eliot & Edna

Their cottage (pictured above) would have sat hidden from Lake Road, behind a much larger house. I have no idea what the address is, and the odds are very good it was torn down in the past decade to create a much larger house.

The Lake Shore Electric would make the trip downtown in about an hour. The Ness home was a gray, one-story affair with a reflecting pond, easy access to the water, a cozy fireplace and plenty of room for their six cats. However, Eliot did not usually get home before 10 PM.

Sources:
Bay Village (Virgina L. Peterson)
Eliot Ness, The Real Story (Paul W. Heimel)
Bay Village: A Way of Life