Joe Blevins's Blog, page 44

Podcast Tuesday: "We Can't We Be Friends?"

Tom Bosley and Ron Howard on Happy Days.
Something very unusual happened to me when I screened the March 1980 Happy Days episode "Father and Son" recently: I cried. In three and a half years of reviewing this sitcom for our podcast, no Happy Days episode had ever moved me to tears, but this one did. And it's not a sad episode at all. It's as goofy as most of the installments of this lighthearted series. Much of it is devoted to childish pranks and novelty store gimmicks like whoopee cushions and chattering deeth. But a particular aspect of this story hit too close to home.
The plot has middle-aged hardware salesman Howard Cunningham (Tom Bosley) trying to bond with his college-aged son Richie (Ron Howard). He misses the days when they were "buddies" and wants to spend quality time with the lad before Richie moves away and starts living his own life. So he guilts Richie into attending a convention of the Leopard Lodge in Chicago with him. Richie had planned on spending the weekend with his own friends, Ralph (Don Most) and Potsie (Anson Williams), but he dutifully attends the convention with his father. Once at the convention, Richie ditches his dad to cozy up to Margo (guest star Nyla Rogers), a woman who jumps out of cakes for a living.
My dad was never a member of any fraternal organization like the Leopard Lodge, and neither he nor I ever attended a cornball convention like the one depicted in this episode. I've never even met anyone who jumps out of cakes at parties. But I do know what it's like when your dad wants to spend quality time with you and you'd rather do something else. When my father died in 2018, I was wracked with guilt because I had not spent enough time with him in his final years. He'd want to go to some concert or event with me, and I'd give him some excuse. Then, suddenly, he was dead, and I felt like I'd made a terrible mistake that could not be corrected.
All these awful feelings came flooding back when I screened "Father and Son." I was a wreck by the end of it. I didn't even know if I could review it for the podcast. But I did, and the results can be heard in the latest installment of These Days Are Ours: A Happy Days Podcast .

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Youthful Boobs" (1972)

Ann sure knew a good title when she saw it.

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Youthful Boobs." Originally published in Young Beavers (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 6, no. 2, July/August 1972. Credited to "Ann Gora."
Excerpt:" The girls like to feel the material rubbing up against their breasts. It gives them a feeling of sexiness at all times . . . the soft wool . . . the tickle of the angora . . . but they are smart enough . . . most of them . . . to know that without their support it will only be a few short years until their breasts are down around their belt line."
A 1964 Bali bra ad.Reflections: When you think of feminists from the 1960s and '70s, you probably picture women burning their bras at protest rallies. That's what all those kooky women's libbers did back then, right? Torched their Maidenforms as a show of strength against the patriarchy? Well, here's the thing: they didn't. Yep, surprising as this may be, bra-burning is largely a myth. It's been debunked over and over and over . This urban legend seems to have started with media coverage of a protest at the 1968 Miss America pageant . One woman at this event was photographed throwing her bra into a trash can, along with other symbols of traditional femininity such as lipstick, and somehow that spawned a myth about feminists burning bras that persists to this day.
Ed Wood definitely believed it. A devoted cross-dresser, he was deeply obsessed with women's underwear, including bras. He must have been horrified by the prospect of these precious undergarments being lit on fire by angry feminists, so he wrote the 1972 broadside "Youthful Boobs" in response. Think of this as Ed Wood's official position paper on bras. He used his "Ann Gora" pseudonym this time around, possibly because readers would be more likely to believe a female writer on the subject of brassieres. 
Eddie seems to believe that feminists burn their bras because "men are more interested in a girl's set of boobs than anything else." He also posits that radical feminists deemphasize their bustlines and affect a mannish appearance because they "want to do men's work," a la World War II icon Rosie the Riveter . There's no need to panic, though, because most women, aka "girls who are real girls," want nothing to do with this bra-burning nonsense. "Coming right down to it," Ed writes, "most girls like their brassiere."
I previously described "Youthful Boobs" as Ed Wood's position paper on bras, and he has a lot to say on the subject, beyond the mere "bra-burning" kerfuffle. He addresses, for example, the issue of women going braless. This requires women to have breasts that are just the right size. If they're too small, "there certainly can be no swinging to the action." And if they're too big, the breasts become "like the smashing of two trains on a one-way track." Better stick to wearing bras, ladies.
But what about those women who want to accentuate their nipples and don't want them hidden under brassieres? No problem. Today's lingerie manufacturers now produce platform bras or nude bras that leave the nipple unencumbered. There are also bras with built-in nipples for those unfortunate ladies whose own nipples are inverted. At this point in the article, Eddie just starts naming brand names of bras. One company he mentions repeatedly is Bali , a lingerie manufacturer that is still in business in 2022! The company's prominence in this article may simply come from the fact that Ed Wood saw one of their ads in the December 5, 1971 edition of The Los Angeles Times West magazine and decided to pilfer a lot of the ad copy. 
Eddie looked far and wide for resources when assembling "Youthful Boobs." He also quotes from Ann Landers' December 28, 1971 column in which she talks about the infamous "pencil test." That's when a woman sticks a pencil under her breast to determine whether or not she needs to wear a bra. (If your boob is big enough to hold up a pencil, you need a bra.) Ann has been credited with devising this test herself, but Ed's article seems to imply that the idea came from a reader and that Ann simply publicized it. Eddie further supplements his research with an article called "Bouncy Boobies" from The National Close-Up . This is yet another of those obscure tabloids that Ed Wood must have read obsessively in the '70s. I'm sure he loved their motto: "Daring Enough to Print the Facts."
Eventually, after naming even more bra brands and discussing women whose breasts are so saggy that they look like turkeys (???), Ed/Ann delivers these closing thoughts:

And there you have it, girls. The brassiere is here to stay and once you get used to it . . . the guys never will . . . they've got to drool when what they are looking at is just the right thing. You don't see the male attracted to the cow's udder do you . . . except the Farmer at milking time? Besides if the brassiere manufacturers went out of business . . . what would the transvestites do for putting up their front? 

Finally, he gets to the heart of the issue, the real reason he wrote this article. Ed Wood may not give a damn whether or not women wear bras, but the lingerie companies have to keep making bras so that men like himself can wear them!
Next: "The A.C.A.R. Revisited" (1973)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Let's Talk About It!" (1972)

Reminds me of The Morton Downey, Jr. Show. (Illustration from Switch Hitters)

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Let's Talk About It!" Originally published in Switch Hitters (Calga Publishing), vol. 3, no. 3, November/December 1972. Credited to "Dick Trent."
Excerpt: "Unisex has made it rather difficult to tell the girls from the boys at times. Then why must it be so different in their sex lives. Does a transvestite dressed in the clothing of a girl as he goes down on a girl make him a lesbian? Of course not; no more than it does a girl going down on her husband for oral intercourse make her some form of a homosexual or a freak which she might have been thought to be so short a time ago."
Ed Wood was like a filthy Cliff Clavin.Reflections: In late 1972, possibly the most prolific year of his life, Ed Wood wrote an article for Switch Hitters called "Let's Talk About It!" But what was the "it" about which Ed was talking? Uh, that's tough to say. I mean, at the most basic level, this article is about the importance of discussing our problems, especially those of a sexual nature, openly and honestly with each other. As Eddie reminds us, "It's never any good for anyone to keep everything walled up inside of them." 
At first, it seems like the rest of the article is going to build on this strong central idea. But, really, "Let's Talk About It!" is one of Ed Wood's disjointed, rambling essays about nothing in particular. He's like some drunk at the end of the bar pontificating woozily about whatever comes into his mind, regardless of whether it makes any sense. He's a smutty Cliff Clavin, in other words.
In a way, this article was a stroll down memory lane because it contains some of the ideas that kept turning up over and over at the beginning of When the Topic is Sex. Eddie tells us once again, for instance, that the missionary position used to be the only acceptable sex position in previous generations but that today's young people are more daring and experimental in the bedroom than their parents and grandparents. As Ed explains:

But then came along the modern generation. They are no longer satisfied with small dishes of the sex food. They have a hearty and healthy appetite which is not going to be tossed away with simple words. 

Did you notice that phrase, "small dishes of the sex food"? That's typical of the strained metaphors and similes found throughout "Let's Talk About It!" Ed Wood tells us that people are like steam engines and will split their sides if they don't vent their frustration occasionally. Many parents, meanwhile, are like ostriches with their heads in the sand when it comes to talking about sex with their children. And then, Ed tells us that a single person's voice can be lost "in a big wind," but when an entire generation speaks, "it will not be lost in any manner of wind, hurricane or tornado." I'm not exactly sure what the "wind" is supposed to represent in this metaphor.
More recycled ideas: Housewives are having lesbian affairs while their husbands and children are out. Suburbanites in general are engaging in orgies with their friends and neighbors. (More fun than the weekly bridge game!) Oral sex is normal and healthy and doesn't necessarily mean you're gay. Information about sex used to be known only to doctors and scientists, but today it's out in the open. Books about sex are no longer hidden in the basements beneath libraries but are now available to the general public. Eddie comes back to this "library" idea time and again in his articles. I'm not sure where it comes from. Maybe, when he was growing up in Poughkeepsie, he imagined the Adriance Memorial Library on Market St. had some secret, forbidden storehouse of sex books hidden in its musty catacombs.
Next: "Youthful Boobs" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Satyriasis and Prostitution" (1971)

Two great tastes that go great together. (Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley)

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Satyriasis and Prostitution." Listed on Ed Wood's resume as simply "Satyriasis." Originally published in Swap (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 5, no. 3, July/August 1971. No author credited.
Excerpt: "Many satyr homosexuals today still have generous feelings toward some kind of duty in the armed forces. The attitude might be an honest lure for the glory of battle or the pride of wearing the uniform. But there is also the fact the services can supply an endless source of males for the satyr diet."
Reflections: I'm pretty sure I first heard the term "satyriasis" in the movie The Big Lebowski (1998). There, it is uttered by pretentious conceptual artist Maude Lebowski (Julianne Moore), who is complaining to The Dude (Jeff Bridges) about her drug-addicted porn star stepmother Bunny (Tara Reid): 

It's a male myth about feminists that we hate sex. It can be a natural, zesty enterprise. But unfortunately there are some people—it is called satyriasis in men, nymphomania in women—who engage in it compulsively and without joy.

I think that's a pretty decent definition: "compulsively and without joy." Well, it turns out that, in 1971, Ed Wood wrote an entire article about satyriasis for the orgy-themed magazine Swap. "Satyriasis and Prostitution" is actually one of the longer pieces included in When the Topic is Sex, largely because Ed has a lot to say about the two titular subjects and seems determined to say just about all of it.
This is Messalina, not John Belushi in drag.First and foremost, this article is about the career path of the typical male prostitute. Eddie is utterly obsessed with the caste systems or hierarchies that govern both stripping and hooking. He likes to write about how, in either of these professions, people tend to move down the ladder as they get older and less desirable. In the case of the young, handsome male hustler, the goal is to be a "call boy" catering to wealthy customers. After that, you move down to working in brothels, then working on the streets. Once even that becomes untenable, you must cater to the "rough trade" at "beer bars," those most-hated establishments in the Wood canon. Is there a step lower than beer bars? Yes. Skid row.
What keeps the male prostitute going through all these circles of sexual hell? A few things. The first factor, as you should know from the title of the article, is his insatiable, incurable addiction to sex. But Ed Wood adds that the typical male hooker probably has some kind of substance abuse problem as well. Eddie explains all this in his usual, byzantine way:

Thus, when the street has accepted him again, he has two monkies on his back . . . his insatiable urge for sex and the addiction to narcotics and alcohol. He has to come up with the cash to support either of the habits. However, it must be understood that most narcotic addicts do not take to alcohol. But, for this article we have combined the two as one for easier diagnosis. Either one can be just as demanding according to the subject's own physical acceptance or rejections. And either one can be just as expensive . . . the narcotics, of course, will probably be the more costly of the two. And with the pushers always under the eyes of the law, they are forever raising the price. 

At this point, there can be little doubt that Ed Wood is really writing about himself and the decline of his own career from the 1950s to the 1970s, largely due to his alcohol addiction. Notice that Eddie does a little rationalizing, even here. Alcohol is at least legal and therefore more affordable than drugs, so he's chosen the more sensible of the two addictions.
But Ed does not limit himself to the topic of male hookers in "Satyriasis and Prostitution." He's got a lot on his mind this time, maybe too much more. For a few paragraphs, he starts discussing famous women and men from history who were either bisexual or homosexual. What does that have to do with the rest of the article? I think the point is that these historical figures (Cleopatra, Shakespeare, Alexander the Great) were also sex addicts. The reason I say that is because Ed's list includes Messalina (20 AD - 40 AD), wife of the Roman emperor Claudius. Apparently, Messalina's name has become synonymous with promiscuity.
And "Satyriasis and Prostitution" is still not done! Ed shifts gears again and starts talking about homosexuality in the US military. At the time of this article, openly gay men and women could not serve in the armed forces. That change was still decades away. Eddie writes, perhaps with compassion, about gays being court martialed and then dishonorably discharged from the service. He describes this as process "a terror, a nightmare to the offender's future." He also adds that homosexual acts are illegal in 48 of our 50 states, which is a sobering thought.
So "Satyriasis and Prostitution" is very much a sampler platter of ideas and topics related to homosexuality, sex addiction, and prostitution. Does Ed Wood bring it all back home with one final thought that sums it all up? You bet:

There is no easing the satyr's position. For a time he may have a swinging life, but as age creeps up on him, and masturbation is no longer of any true satisfaction, the swinging life becomes intolerable because he finds himself swinging alone. 

Kind of a depressing message for the readers of Swap, but there you have it. 
Next: "Let's Talk About It" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Yes or No—The Candidates and Busing" (1972)

Ed Wood wasn't afraid to tackle controversial topics. (Illustration from Black and White)

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Yes or No—The Candidates and Busing." Also known as "Yes or No—The Candidates on Busing." Originally published in Black and White (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 2, no. 2, June/July 1972. No author credited.
Excerpt: "Will the war in Viet Nam continue, and how long? And when are we going to pull the soldiers and Marines out of that far-off cobra infested country? And what in hell are we there for in the first place? That seems to be the general question. And whether or not straight answers are ever forth coming, there are always opinions by those who are in the know, or who would like to think they're in the know, or those who would like everyone else to believe they are in the know."
The awesomely-named Leonard Woodcock.Reflections: The landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case of 1954 declared the racial segregation of schools unconstitutional in America, but de facto segregation was still everywhere in this nation. How could we ever achieve racial equality if black children and white children didn't even attend school together? One proposed solution was so-called "forced busing." Basically, students were transported outside of their local school districts via bus—black kids to white neighborhoods, white kids to black neighborhoods. This pissed off just about everybody and dominated the news cycle for months in the early 1970s.
I was born just a shade too late to experience the "busing" controversy at its peak, but I learned about it from my usual sources: old sitcoms and back issues of MAD magazine. Since it was a political issue that directly affected schoolkids, busing received plenty of coverage in MAD. We also learned a bit about it in school. We were shown the 1990 made-for-TV movie Common Ground starring Jane Curtin during a high school civics class. (I mainly remember Jane putting on a Bahstahn accent and yelling a lot.)
What I didn't know was that Ed Wood had written an entire article on this hot-button issue in 1972. Well, "wrote" is somewhat of an exaggeration. Once again, Eddie just borrowed a bunch of quotes from someone else's article, in this case a piece about busing from Life magazine. Still, even though it's second- or third-hand information, you can read what a number of real-life politicians had to say about busing during that fateful election year. One of those quoted is Ed Wood's old crony, Los Angeles mayor Sam Yorty, but Ed doesn't mention his own connection to the politician. Other speakers include Shirley Chisolm, George Wallace, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, and UAW president Leonard Woodcock. (Some name, huh?)
If the busing issue were occurring in 2022, it would likely break down neatly along party lines, with Democrats on one side and Republicans on the other. The politicians in this article would be more concerned with demonizing the opposition than they would with actually addressing the issue. But the hyper-partisanship we see commonly today is not in evidence in this article from 50 years ago. The candidates actually talk about the merits and demerits of busing, and their main concern seems to be the education of our nation's youth, white and black, rich and poor. 
Moreover, not one politician in this article, conservative or liberal, slings an an insult at the other side. Most of the speakers, Democrat and Republican alike, come to the conclusion that busing is well-intended but ineffective. Not even George Wallace, the man all but synonymous with segregation, resorts to slanderous rhetoric in his response. He's anti-busing, as you might guess, but he doesn't feel the need to be a dick about it. In other words, this article would be completely impossible in 2022. Today, it's all about scoring a "win" for your team and beating the other side. What's best for the kids? Who cares? Spew out a soundbite on Fox News or CNN and move on.
Ed Wood being Ed Wood, he does wander off the main path and talk about other issues of the day. You may notice that the excerpt I included above is about the Vietnam War, not busing. I had to include it because of the phrase "that far-off, cobra-infested country." Eddie also discusses Richard Nixon's highly controversial trip to China and predicts (correctly) that Nixon will win reelection in 1972. But who could have known the controversy that would eventually arise from this election? Even Criswell didn't predict that!
Next: "Satyriasis and Prostitution" (1971)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Lost Souls Delivered" (1972)

The needle and the damage done. (Illustration from Savage Sex)

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Lost Souls Delivered." Originally published in Savage Sex (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 4, no. 2, April/May 1972. No author credited.
Excerpt: "There has been certain agreements that the child might be cured of the addiction right there at the start. But little is known how much of the drug hunger remains in the makeup, thus what future demands in their young adult life they might have. So far the doctors can only report what is happening there in the hospital where they have the control. In most cases when the baby is removed from the hospital it is lost into the metropolis probably never to be heard of again."
Author Sophy BurnhamReflections: The phrase "lost souls delivered" was already familiar to me from Ed Wood's fiction. His notorious 1968 anti-drug novel Purple Thighs was originally published under the name Lost Souls Delivered. That book—which reads like it was written by Jack Webb's grandmother—is Eddie's singularly absurd take on hippies and the acid scene. The novel's hero, Adam, utters the final line of dialogue: "LSD really stands for LOST SOULS DELIVERED!" 
Because of that, I thought an article called "Lost Souls Delivered" would also be about hippies dropping acid. I prepared myself for some psychedelic Dragnet-style fun. Nope. Not even close. It's actually about heroin-addicted babies and the terrible social problem they represent. That makes this one of the least fun articles in When the Topic is Sex. When Ed Wood uses the word "delivered" here, he means babies being delivered in hospitals. Why Eddie felt he needed to write about this sad topic, especially for a magazine like Savage Sex, I have no idea.
It's possible that Eddie was simply inspired by something he read, in this case a grim article called "Heroin Babies: Craving a Needle Not a Nipple" by Sophy Burnham in The Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. It's about drug-addicted mothers giving birth to drug-addicted children and what happens to those very unfortunate babies once they leave the hospital. It seems that this same article ran under a different title in The New York Times on January 9, 1972. Perhaps the Herald-Examiner picked it up from a wire service. 
Burnham states that this problem is most prevalent among poor black and Puerto Rican mothers, a claim Ed Wood repeats with a certain emphasis. Interestingly, Burnham's original article inspired a Bronx nurse to write to The New York Times to say that "drug use among white mothers is far from negligible." This nurse also says that white women have more access to abortion, an issue neither Sophy Burnham nor Ed Wood addresses. "Lost Souls Delivered" offers expert commentary from various doctors, all of it taken directly from Sophy Burnham's research.
So what does Ed Wood bring to the table? Well, this depressing topic provokes a few ponderous sermons from Ed. He even starts the article by decrying drug use in general:

One of the most frightening aspects of modern times is the steady and increasing use of harmful drugs by the younger generations of this modern world. No matter how many articles, newspaper stories or radio programs and television presentations are brought to the foreground little attention is being paid to the message. Even though the words are becoming more and more a message of death these people go out of their way to ignore the dangers.  Many are saying, "What the hell, we're going to die one way or another anyway." And perhaps that is the deepest of the underlying thoughts concerning drugs and the people who use them. Perhaps there is somewhat of the death wish involved there. Death has been shouted loud enough both vocally and in large, tremendously black headlines, so therefore the death wish has an overpowering motivation in such things. 

This entire article might be considered a stern, humorless anti-drug lecture. Now, it's possible that Ed Wood wrote this strictly for a paycheck and didn't give a damn about heroin-addicted babies, but I'd like to think that "Lost Souls Delivered" is entirely sincere. What is unclear is whether Eddie thought of his own, out-of-control alcoholism as a form of drug addiction. Did he have the "death wish" that he describes above?
Next: "Yes or No—The Candidates and Busing" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "An Age of Hunchbacks" (1972)

Oh, good! Ed's writing about bikers again! (Illustration from One Plus One. )

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "An Age of Hunchbacks." Originally published in One Plus One (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 4, no. 1, January/February 1972.
Excerpt: "And even the most experienced of them have found themselves with broken legs, arms, and even necks . . . and more to the point found themselves traveling to the graveyard in another type of vehicle. It too has the body in the middle but has four wheels. Two in the front and two in the back. And it's all black and generally has long windows stretching from the driver's seat in the front all the way to the sliding doors in the back. It's called a hearse."
Choppers on parade in Easy Rider.Reflections: I've been looking forward to reviewing Ed Wood's "An Age of Hunchbacks" ever since I learned of this article's existence. Why? Because it's called "An Age of Hunchbacks," that's why! What the hell could that be about, I wondered? I could scarcely imagine, but my hopes were sky high. I pictured an entire society of deformed Quasimodos wandering the streets.
Well, as it happens, "An Age of Hunchbacks" is simply about motorcycles and those who ride them. It's no surprise that Ed wrote such a story circa 1972. The motorcycle, with its air of danger and nonconformity, became an icon of the counterculture and inspired any number of songs, TV shows, books, and movies in the '60s and '70s. From The Fonz to Evel Knievel, "Leader of the Pack" to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, bikers were everywhere for a while. Never forget that it was a low-budget biker film, Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969), that altered the entire course of the movie industry. Ed Wood's own forays into bikerdom include the movie Nympho Cycler (1971) and the novel Hell Chicks (1968).
I'm sorry to report that, despite its eccentric title, "An Age of Hunchbacks," is not as interesting as most of what I've been discussing. The basic of theme of this remarkably even-handed article is: boy, there sure are a lot of advantages and disadvantages of motorcycles, huh? Ed quotes no sources and names no names, but he still maintains a subdued, informative tone throughout the piece. Mostly, that is. He lets his imagination run wild near the end. We'll get to that.
Admirably, Ed Wood gives ample space to the positive aspects of these often-controversial vehicles. He admits, for instance, that motorcycles are quite popular with all sorts of people and that some of the clubs formed by riders are peaceful. He also points out that 'cycles are useful, especially for delivering messages or maneuvering through city traffic. They're great for racing, too. And, thanks to Japanese imports, the prices have come down and made motorcycles available to just about everybody. Anyone who wants to can explore the nation's obscure backroads without fear of reprisal from traffic cops. Add to that the fact that motorcycles use less gas than cars.
So much for the nice stuff. What are Ed's complaints? Well, there's the noise, for one thing. Eddie seems almost gleeful when he mentions that California had recently started requiring motorcycles to have mufflers. (He somehow thinks this will solve the problem entirely.) He also alludes to certain "black hats" and "villains" riding motorcycles and generating negative press with their bad behavior. 
But Ed's main gripe—the one that gives this article its name—is that many motorcyclists are modifying their bikes in ways that are dangerous and illegal. You'll remember that Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda rode just such vehicles in Easy Rider. The bikes in that film had absurdly high handle bars and grotesquely extended front wheels. Throughout "An Age of Hunchbacks," I kept waiting for Ed Wood to refer to these customized motorcycles as "choppers," but he never does. That term must have been in wide use by 1972, right?
Okay, so the article is mainly about choppers. What about the hunchbacks? Well, according to Ed, the riders of such bikes have to contort themselves so often that they may become physically deformed like The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He mentions that title specifically. And then he really starts talking nonsense:

Then why do we not think that this age of hunchback riders will not permanently be damaged to such a point that this will be spread to their offsprings? Inherited physical damage has been known to come from a lesser degree of punishment to the body. This has been fact throughout time. But when we look to the nation of hunchbacks we wonder if these people ever look in the mirror and wonder just what is happening to them.

At this point, Ed has abandoned his encyclopedic tone altogether and is concocting some kind of absurd horror movie scenario in which bikers are deformed and giving birth to mutated children. This is the point at which "An Age of Hunchbacks" becomes prime Ed Wood.
Next: "Lost Souls Delivered" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "An Age of Hunchbacks"

Oh, good! Ed's writing about bikers again! (Illustration from One Plus One. )

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "An Age of Hunchbacks." Originally published in One Plus One (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 4, no. 1, January/February 1972.
Excerpt: "And even the most experienced of them have found themselves with broken legs, arms, and even necks . . . and more to the point found themselves traveling to the graveyard in another type of vehicle. It too has the body in the middle but has four wheels. Two in the front and two in the back. And it's all black and generally has long windows stretching from the driver's seat in the front all the way to the sliding doors in the back. It's called a hearse."
Choppers on parade in Easy Rider.Reflections: I've been looking forward to reviewing Ed Wood's "An Age of Hunchbacks" ever since I learned of this article's existence. Why? Because it's called "An Age of Hunchbacks," that's why! What the hell could that be about, I wondered? I could scarcely imagine, but my hopes were sky high. I pictured an entire society of deformed Quasimodos wandering the streets.
Well, as it happens, "An Age of Hunchbacks" is simply about motorcycles and those who ride them. It's no surprise that Ed wrote such a story circa 1972. The motorcycle, with its air of danger and nonconformity, became an icon of the counterculture and inspired any number of songs, TV shows, books, and movies in the '60s and '70s. From The Fonz to Evel Knievel, "Leader of the Pack" to Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, bikers were everywhere for a while. Never forget that it was a low-budget biker film, Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969), that altered the entire course of the movie industry. Ed Wood's own forays into bikerdom include the movie Nympho Cycler (1971) and the novel Hell Chicks (1968).
I'm sorry to report that, despite its eccentric title, "An Age of Hunchbacks," is not as interesting as most of what I've been discussing. The basic of theme of this remarkably even-handed article is: boy, there sure are a lot of advantages and disadvantages of motorcycles, huh? Ed quotes no sources and names no names, but he still maintains a subdued, informative tone throughout the piece. Mostly, that is. He lets his imagination run wild near the end. We'll get to that.
Admirably, Ed Wood gives ample space to the positive aspects of these often-controversial vehicles. He admits, for instance, that motorcycles are quite popular with all sorts of people and that some of the clubs formed by riders are peaceful. He also points out that 'cycles are useful, especially for delivering messages or maneuvering through city traffic. They're great for racing, too. And, thanks to Japanese imports, the prices have come down and made motorcycles available to just about everybody. Anyone who wants to can explore the nation's obscure backroads without fear of reprisal from traffic cops. Add to that the fact that motorcycles use less gas than cars.
So much for the nice stuff. What are Ed's complaints? Well, there's the noise, for one thing. Eddie seems almost gleeful when he mentions that California had recently started requiring motorcycles to have mufflers. (He somehow thinks this will solve the problem entirely.) He also alludes to certain "black hats" and "villains" riding motorcycles and generating negative press with their bad behavior. 
But Ed's main gripe—the one that gives this article its name—is that many motorcyclists are modifying their bikes in ways that are dangerous and illegal. You'll remember that Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda rode just such vehicles in Easy Rider. The bikes in that film had absurdly high handle bars and grotesquely extended front wheels. Throughout "An Age of Hunchbacks," I kept waiting for Ed Wood to refer to these customized motorcycles as "choppers," but he never does. That term must have been in wide use by 1972, right?
Okay, so the article is mainly about choppers. What about the hunchbacks? Well, according to Ed, the riders of such bikes have to contort themselves so often that they may become physically deformed like The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He mentions that title specifically. And then he really starts talking nonsense:

Then why do we not think that this age of hunchback riders will not permanently be damaged to such a point that this will be spread to their offsprings? Inherited physical damage has been known to come from a lesser degree of punishment to the body. This has been fact throughout time. But when we look to the nation of hunchbacks we wonder if these people ever look in the mirror and wonder just what is happening to them.

At this point, Ed has abandoned his encyclopedic tone altogether and is concocting some kind of absurd horror movie scenario in which bikers are deformed and giving birth to mutated children. This is the point at which "An Age of Hunchbacks" becomes prime Ed Wood.
Next: "Lost Souls Delivered" (1972)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Who Wants to Get Involved" (1972)

Ed Wood has a rhetorical question for you today. (Photo from Garter Girls.)

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Who Wants to Get Involved." Originally published in Garter Girls (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 6, no. 2, May/June 1972. No author credited.
Excerpt: "The figure in the darkness detached itself and with knife in hand started running after the woman . . . death was but a few running footsteps behind her. Over her shoulder she could see the figure and the gleaming knife. She burst out onto the busy sidewalk screaming for help. Most of those who saw simply scampered out of the way, or stood back aghast . . . shocked as the man caught up with Kitty and plunged the knife into her body time and time again."

Reflections: Back in 2014, I reviewed  Ed Wood's "Scene of the Crime," one of the best and most unusual stories in Blood Splatters Quickly. It's about a news reporter interviewing the witnesses who failed to intervene when they saw a woman being murdered in broad daylight. At the time, I compared it to the infamous 1964 Kitty Genovese murder case in which 37 New Yorkers (supposedly) failed to come to the aid of a woman being pursued and murdered.
Well, in retrospect, I wish I'd known about "Who Wants to Get Involved," a nonfiction article that Ed Wood wrote just months before "Scene of the Crime" in 1972. This piece for Garter Girls deals with the same exact issues as "Scene of the Crime"—namely, people's reasons for not wanting to intervene when they see a crime being committed—and directly references the Genovese case. In fact, Ed describes Kitty Genovese's murder in a dramatic and suspenseful way. The so-called "bystander effect" is clearly an issue that Ed found important. When I revisited "Scene of the Crime," I noted how often the characters use that same, all-important word—"involved."
A billboard asking for information in the bizarre and tragic Carmen Colon case.
The Genovese case is the one people always associate with this phenomenon, but Ed describes one more that I'd never heard of: the 1971 murder of a 10-year-old girl named Carmen Colon in Rochester, NY.  Dozens of motorists saw Carmen undressed and in obvious distress by the side of the highway but failed to stop and help. Days later, she was found sexually assaulted and murdered. Her killer apparently chose victims whose first and last initials were the same. The horrific case has never been solved. 
It cannot be a coincidence that these two parallel tragedies, Kitty Genovese and Carmen Colon, occurred in Ed Wood's home state of New York. That might be part of the reason why these stories resonated so deeply within him. As usual, Ed gets philosophical by the end of the article and cannot resist getting a little, well, Ed Wood-ish with his choice of words:

The ghoulish delights of terror which are deep within everyone of us demand that we watch . . . or read about such things in the newspapers and see it on television . . . and the matter is of much interest and we must, because of conscious reasons, say "Why in hell didn't somebody step up there and help that poor person?"

That last question might be one that we ask about Ed Wood.
Ed Wood's own life was a tragedy, for sure, but not the dramatic type experienced by Kitty Genovese or Carmen Colon. His was a more subtle, slow-motion tragedy occurring over the course of several decades. And many people did try to help Ed along the way. The pages of Nightmare of Ecstasy are filled with stories of people who got involved and tied to rescue Eddie from his self-destructive ways. Maybe, when he wrote "Who Wants to Get Involved" and "Scene of the Crime," he felt that he had been abandoned or ignored by those who could help him. Unlike Kitty and Carmen, Eddie had some good Samaritans in his life, but even good Samaritans can only do so much.
Next: "An Age of Hunchbacks" (1971)

Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "A Tax on Sex?" (1975)

Ed Wood proudly put his own name on this one!

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "A Tax on Sex?" Originally published in Ace (Four Star Publications), vol. 20, no. 1, February 1975. Credited to Edward Wood, Jr.
The Ace magazine where Ed's article appeared.Excerpt: "There are times when it only takes a small and simple idea to be studied and the simple idea becomes a nationwide happening. There is always someone in the government who is looking for the new tax dollar whether or not the public can afford it. However Mr. Porter doesn't complete his article on such a high note. The realization of problems are clear in his mind. He puts the problems down for study, as well as the general well being of his proposition."
Reflections: Among the pieces in When the Topic is Sex, "A Tax on Sex?" stands out for a number of reasons. For one thing, it was published in 1975, making it one of Ed Wood's later magazine articles in this collection. Secondly, he wrote it under his own name rather than anonymously or pseudonymously. That's not unheard of, and there have been other such examples in this book, but it's still relatively rare. Thirdly, it was written for an adult magazine called Ace, which was outside of the Pendulum Publishing family for whom Ed typically worked in the 1970s.
Those oddities aside, "A Tax on Sex?" finds Ed Wood up to his old tricks. Once again, he's blatantly recycling material from another writer—in this case, an editorial written by Harold T. Porter (identified as the "business manager for the New Orleans public schools") for the American School Board Journal suggesting that a tax be levied on sex to fund the educational system. Try as I might, I cannot find the original article, but both the Journal and Mr. Porter are quite real, so I have no doubt of the editorial's authenticity. Whether it was intended seriously or satirically, I do not know. I also have no idea how something from the American School Board Journal ever came to Ed Wood's attention in the first place.
However this article came about, its premise is fairly simple. The government always needs more money, and everything else has been taxed. Why not sex? Ed Wood discusses the pros and cons of this radical idea, including the problems of implementation and enforcement, but nearly everything he has to say about it is pilfered from Harold T. Porter, who is quoted throughout the body of the article. Ed does find a few ways to sneak in his own obsessions, namely his fixation on death. Dig the opening paragraph:

The tax issue starts even before you are born and doesn't even end once you have shuffled off this mortal coil. The graveyard may take your body, but the government is right around to make sure that the old clay pays the dues. There is the inheritance tax. Funeral directors collect their fee plus a tax... the grave opening at the cemetery... taxes ... taxes ... taxes ... 

So Eddie kicks off an article called "A Tax on Sex?" by talking about graveyards, funeral directors, cemeteries, and mortal coils. You'll notice he manages to work in a few of his trademark ellipses, too. The period key on Ed's typewriter must've been worn out.
Naturally, I have to mention that this same exact idea was the basis for a sketch on the September 22, 1970 episode of the classic British comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus. In the Python version, the politicians act like overgrown children who cannot bring themselves to say "sex" and instead refer to it as "thingy." One committee member played by Terry Jones explains his rationale for the new tax: "Most things we do for pleasure nowadays are taxed, except one. Smoking's been taxed, drinking's been taxed but not... thingy." It takes the other dimwits a few moments to catch on, but they finally get it. "Well it'll certainly make chartered accountancy a much more interesting job," declares Eric Idle.

Next: "Who Wants to Get Involved" (1972)