Halloween Minus One
Halloween is officially over, November is here, but for those who want to extend the moment, there are a few sites to visit for a special post-Halloween treat. (get it? Treat!) More on those, below.
Time to finish the candy corn, remove the decorative cobwebs (is that the ultimate oxymoron?!), put away the costumes, and start thinking about Thanksgiving.
We East Coasters of a certain age recall the various and sundry aspects of the hysterical, chillingly multi-faceted career of John Zacherle. Zach is now 84 and going strong. This year was the first one in ages that Zach was not on the New York radio airwaves at some point on Halloween.
John Zacherle, aka Zacherley, The Cool Ghoul, is a media marvel. A true anachronism, a one-of-a-kind. This man is the same age as my father, and yet his music tastes when he was a free-form progressive rock DJ in New York, were the hippest, the most diverse, and among the most avant-garde one could find. Zach hosted Horror Theatre TV shows, did long stints on Rock Radio in New York, and hosted a very progressive UHF-TV daily rock music program, Disco-Teen. It even including live appearances by area bands. In his ghoulish garb, Zach hosted a cooler-than-cool daily music show. He took the American Bandstand concept to the next level. Zach was, and is, the hippest of the hip.
So, on Halloween night, doing a little browsing ñwhat with there being no Zach on the air, making this a very empty sort of Halloween- I found not one [1], not two [2],
but three [3] good Zacherle sites.
He may have been missed on the radio tonight, as commercial radio goes through the changes of the era, but thereís still some Zach to be found right here, on this old radio guyís blog.
Long live Zach, the Cool Ghoul, the coolest 84 year old on the planet!
A Beautiful Day
On this Halloween Day it was my good fortune to have a lovely daytime drive across the Palisades Interstate Parkway, from The George Washington Bridge on the Jersey side into the New York side, here in Rockland County. Watching the foliage, in full peak, and viewing the tree-lined Ramapo Mountains, it was splendor to behold. A treat (not a trick!) for the eyes.
Peak won't last too very long, we are getting hit with colder-than-usual temperatures here of late, and the leaves will soon drop, suddenly and totally.
If I get the opportunity, I will go back out, this time with my cool new digital camera, take some shots, and post them here.
One More Thought
It would be wonderful to sit at a round table with Zacherle, Paul Krassner [4], Larry Josephson [5], Jim Webb [6] (not only a composer, but an excellent author [7]!), Steve Martin, and a few other of the sharpest, keenest minds of a certain strata.
For a long time I would answer the question, "If you could have dinner with any three people, dead or alive, what three would you pick?" with this: Albert Schweitzer, Jimmy Carter, and Einstein. But we know that's not happening, at least not in this incarnation.
Maybe all this really means that I want to have a career as some sort of cross between Dick Cavett, Charlie Rose, Dave Garroway and Regis Philbin. I told a group of friends that it would be fun to have DeanTV (DTV?), my own show. I guess the blog will suffice, until such time as I win the MegaBucks lottery and can afford to launch my own satellite channel and create the show.