4/18/2007

At one of my latest public appearances, a viewer was asking me “aren’t you embarrassed to go out in public dressed like-” no, wait- a different viewer asked me if I remembered any of my very first appearances as the Svengoolie character. That took me back to 1979, when I was known as “Son of Svengoolie” at WFLD…and what I think was my very first Sven public appearance! One of the women in charge of promotion had lined up an appearance at a charity “Christmas in July” event. Now, she was a nice woman, but I was pretty sure she didn’t get my show or the humor- we had done some promos for the show, take-offs on other programs currently running on the station- “Six Million Dollar Man” and “Brady Bunch” –which she didn’t want to run, because she didn’t understand them. Anyway, we went to this benefit, and she told me I was actually supposed to do something as entertainment for the crowd (gee, thanks for the early warning!) I decided to do a bit that used people in the audience, which I learned from the original Sven, and that I still do today- a thing about a new ecologically-friendly type dance (I’m not going to explain it here, but maybe I’ll do it again at an upcoming appearance!) Just as I was looking for some women to portray trees (it’s part of the bit-really!) two very lovely tall willowy identical twin ladies walked into the room! They agreed to help out, we did the bit, and it got laughs (my work here is done!) Actually, it wasn’t, because I also had to help pull winners for a raffle. One of the prizes was an odd- looking actual mink pillow… which the winner gave to me later, so I guess she enjoyed my act! On the way back to the station, I told the promotion woman that I wasn’t quite sure what to do with such a strange thing, and she graciously volunteered to take it. I gave it to her, only to have someone chastise me later, saying “do you know what that was probably worth?!’ Hey, whatever- I’m not quite a mink pillow kind of guy…one interesting note- also appearing as entertainment that night was comedienne Judy Tenuta- but, this was before she had hit upon her accordian-playing “goddess” character. She was doing material about Hare Krishnas at the airport ( who wasn’t back then?!) and dressed normally at that time. Maybe this was before the great and unusual Emo Phillips had any influence on her… I know that same year of 1979, I did a lot of Halloween appearances, as well- if you were at any of those, or other first year gigs, drop me a line and refresh my memory! I’m at svengoolie@wciu.com.