Schizochronistic

1
"Too much Alice cooper, too little Alice Faye."

That's a a line from the 1976 Paul Lynde Halloween Special with guest stars Kiss, Witchiepoo (Billie Hayes) and The Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), among others.

Kiss was not allowed in my house when I was a boy. My brother Tom and I did try to watch this when it aired in 1976; when Kiss came on to perform their first number, Mom said "Turn it off. I won't have that in this house."[1]

I just watched this same Paul Lynde special with my almost-4-year-old daughter Dee Dee, who liked seeing Margaret Hamilton dressed up again as her favorite witch. She said Kiss looked like scary monsters.

If you don't have a fondness for the era, it may fall a little flat, but you can watch the entire show here:

The Paul Lynde Halloween Special (1976)

If you can't watch the whole thing, at least watch this:

KISS 1976 - King Of The Night Time World

I played Kiss's "Destroyer" so much I wore the printing off the cassette tape. (Head phones let me rock 'n roll all night.) Believe it or not, at one time, Kiss was as big as Justin Beiber, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, and Ke$ha all rolled into one. Bigger.

Oh, and the two Alices didn't appear in this special. I like them both, in different ways and for different reasons. Phil Harris and Alice Faye are at the top of my list of Old Time Radio favorites. You can listen to a little of them here on a radio episode of their show, "Talented Children's Screen Test".

I'll coin a word for my condition: schizochronistic.

[2012-09-29]

 

2
Say something else in that ear.

"The spiritual connection one generation has with its own music is rarely shared by the next.

Just as every person who falls in love thinks no one else has ever felt that way, so each generation thinks no music has ever sounded or will ever sound as sweet.

--Clarence 0ddbody

[2012-10-09]

 

3
Overheard

Q: Why did you convert?
A: It was late and I heard my mother calling.

[2012-10-20]

c0

[1]
My Grandma Grandy (Mom's mom) told me once of having the same reaction to Elvis swinging his hips on Ed Sullivan. But during the same period my mom was falling asleep listening to Love Me Tender on the radio; she thought Elvis was dreamy. Grandma Grandy also felt George Burns was behaving shamefully by having Vegas chorus girls hanging off each arm in the 1970's. She thought it was disrespectful to the memory of Gracie, George's wife and partner in vaudeville, radio, and TV for many years. That was one of the few times I saw sincere disappointment in Grandma Grandy.

He was devastated by the loss of Gracie. There is a clip of him being assisted by Jack Benny and others at the end of the committal at the cemetery. I can't find it, but it often appears in retrospectives.

Burns spanned a century, 1896–1996. He died at the age of 100, of pneumonia as I recall. He had been booked to perform for the Queen of England on his 100th birthday but was too ill.

c0