Page 28 - Finding Tulsa - Preview

20 Jim Provenzano

an image of Burt Reynolds getting butt-fucked. No offense to Ned Beatty,
but when I finally saw the film, I was disappointed.
When not thinking sexual thoughts about movies stars, which was
most of the time, I danced off the paneled basement walls, singing George
Chakiris and Richard Beymer’s parts in West Side Story. All right, Natalie
Wood’s too, and Rita Moreno’s, on occasion.
Dan and I often filmed our little movies in the basement, the only
place where a mess was allowed to remain in progress. We’d stay up late on
weekends, clicking away with an animated cartoon or Claymation four-
minute masterwork while watching a late night horror movie.
Two Cleveland stations played late night horror movies, and each had
hosts with their own styles. Friday nights, one of the small local stations
had a strange host called The Ghoul. He wore sunglasses with one lens
permanently out, a hippie Cyclops in a lab coat and a goatee.
The Ghoul helped initiate a sardonic sensibility toward our young
minds. At pivotal or ridiculous scenes in Bride of the Monster, or possibly
the best worst horror film of all time, The Creeping Terror, the show’s
studio technicians would bump in a sample of some wacky comment
from The Beatles Christmas Album: “Look out for yourself!” “Ooooh, Get
away!” or snippets of appropriate songs. When Ghidra took flight, the
“Surfin’ Bird” chorus blasted through the worn speaker of the black-and-
white TV Dan and I had dragged down to the basement after Dad got
tenure and bought a newer color set for the living room.
Once, I even dressed up an old Raggedy Andy doll to look like The
Ghoul, complete with goatee, eye patch, and lab coat, and mailed it to the
station as a gift. Weeks later, The Ghoul displayed it on one of his shows.
“This was sent from Brookside, Ohio by Stan and Dan Groz, Groooze,
Groznik!”
He messed up our name, but we screamed so loud with joy it woke
our parents. Dad came downstairs just in time to watch his sons marvel as
The Ghoul placed my Raggedy Ghoul on a table with his constant victim,
Froggy, a plastic amphibian, atop him, and finally blow them both up
with a cluster of firecrackers.
My father seemed concerned for our sanity and the content of local
television, but made no protests since we usually watched it in the base-
ment. Despite the cement floors, the carpeting was pulled up in the spring,
when the drain clogged up, leaving the floor an inch high in water. But
those winter nights, with the fireplace going, marshmallows roasting in
our basement, we often had a few of our friends over to watch the monster