Meanderings: March 15, 2000

Wednesday,
March 15, 2000

First off, happy birthday to my little 29-year-old brother. May he soon get a phone so that I can call him again and actually wish him that telephonically.

Oh, my God, I am awash in nostalgia. I was reading the latest entry in the Book of Rob, and he mentioned trying to remember details about this strange kid's TV show set in a hotel populated with a whole bunch of weird, weird puppets like this foul-tempered dragon, a bizarre bellhop and some old guy who thought the hotel was his ship.

Wait a minute, I thought. I remember that show.

And my God, I did. Gigglesnort Hotel, the brainchild of the adroit artist/performer/renaissance babe Bill Jackson (who also starred as the only human resident in the hotel), and one of Chicago's great kids' shows from the 70's. I have no idea how Rob saw it, considering that he grew up in Texas -- I can only assume that it was syndicated or something. But Gigglesnort Hotel and its predecessor The BJ and Dirty Dragon Show were two of my absolutely favorite programs when I was a kid, only in part because I had a humongous crush on Bill Jackson (a sentiment which, I now find, was shared by quite a few ex-kneebiters, according to the letters on the show's page at http://www.tvparty.com. However, I was special in my devotion -- I distinctly remember announcing to my bemused mother that I was going to marry BJ when I grew up. Looking back, I think it was the derby -- he just looked so damn cool in it).

The general plot of GH was, well -- a whole bunch of puppet characters living in this hotel, basically. BJ ran the desk, Dirty Dragon lived in the basement, providing the heat for the hotel with his breath, and had an absolutely foul temper (the smoke that poured out of his nose could very easily fog out the entire set). There was a rather confused old sailor who thought the hotel was his ship, a southern crow named Maynard, two old folks named Finster and Pearl who were definitely into alternative lifestyles, the Lemon Joke Kid, Weird the bellboy, and Blob the. . .well, blob of clay. As well as being sculpted into all kinds of shapes by BJ, Blob was also the obvious predecessor of Kenny from South Park, in that his vocal repertoire consisted of rumbles, grunts, moans and vague wurbling noises. I don't even want to get into where that came from, but back in the 70's it was pretty nifty. In fact, the whole show was incredibly cool -- completely unlike anything else on the air at the time and lightyears ahead of the competition in terms of atmosphere, and attitude. It's kind of a shame that nobody's doing a Schoolhouse Rock and cutting a deal with Jackson to rebroadcast the episodes -- I think Gigglesnort Hotel would go down just fine with the newest crop of prepubescents.

However, it's their loss and I'm not going to cry about it because -- ta da -- you can now buy episodes on tape! Thank Allah for foresight, Jackson's contract with WLS-TV meant that he got to keep all the Gigglesnort programs, and he's slowly transferring them all to videotape (copies available from his website). As soon as I can round up a money order in greenbacks and alert my sister that there's a parcel on the way, I'm ordering myself a chunk of my childhood, you betcha.

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