3/16/2007

Are you ready for St. Patrick’s Day? That’s the day that, so they say, everyone is Irish! Just call me O’Goolie. I know that, every year at this time, people request that we show a bit we did way back in 1996- our visit from a leprechaun!(I’ll ignore the whispers that it was actually a Keebler Elf doll, or that the same doll showed up on the show as one of Santa’s elves.) The wee fellow strolls onto the set with Doug and I, and proceeds to sing a song that I actually first wrote (sigh) back in the ‘80s while doing the “Son of Svengoolie” show on that other channel. In this instance, the representative o’ the little people was operated by our own puppet master, my dear friend Steven Wagner. For some reason, people just love that bit! One of our former co-workers, a Bolivian-Japanese gentleman named Jaime Tamaki (long-time viewers will remember me ending our mail segments with “hit the theme, Jaime!”) was a big fan of the song, and would sing little bits and pieces of it every so often! Sadly, there will NOT be room in the show tomorrow night for this seasonal epic- BUT- fear not! Thanks to the futuristic technology we now have in our grubby little paws, you can find the bit as a Sven webisode- right on this website! So, grab your green beer, click on the icon, and sing along… I’d be remiss not to mention the horror franchise based on the legend of the leprechaun- “Leprechaun!” I know a lot of my Irish friends were actually very upset that the beloved little character of their heritage had been turned into a blood-thirsty mini-Freddy Krueger. The story involves a guy who captures a leprechaun in Ireland, and steals his gold. He returns home to the states, but the leprechaun follows, out to kill him. The guy somehow traps the little monster in a crate; years later , he’s released, and goes on a murderous rampage, aiming for victims like Jennifer Anniston (why couldn’t Ross be there to get slaughtered?!) As if once wasn’t enough, there were sequels like “Leprechaun: In The Hood” and “Leprechaun: In Space.” Warwick Davis, a little person actor who resembles former Chicago radio personality Kevin Matthews (if Kevin was only about three feet tall), played “Willow” in the George Lucas film of the same name, has appeared in Harry Potter flicks, and was even an Ewok in “Star Wars” films, plays the nasty wee fellow under heavy make-up in all six of the series’ films. At one point, “Leprechaun VS Chucky” and “Leprechaun VS Wishmaster” were supposedly on the books, but I don’t think either saw the light of day- although it probably would’ve been fun to see him face off against the killer doll Chucky! I’m sure the “Leprechaun” movies will be airing somewhere in the next day or so- most likely on cable. I have to say that, when one of the other local stations had this flick for St. Patrick’s Day, they had a very clever line in their ad- “he’s magically malicious!” Although the visiting leprechaun in our Sven bit is somewhat malicious, I don’t recall any of my Irish friends not liking him. If you’ve never seen him- check him out in our webisode!