Time Warp

The other day some friends and I, all of whom grew up in the Delaware Valley, were reminiscing about television in the 1970s, and we started talking about Dr. Shock. Remember him? He was this mad-scientist character who hosted the Saturday-afternoon horror movies on Channel 17. He'd introduce the terrible movie, shriek a couple of times and then perform magic tricks and goofy skits during intermission. (His real name was Joe Zawislak, and he hailed from Manayunk.)
The real highlight of "Scream-In," though, was the advertising. The low-budget local commercials were completely cheesy, and to this day I remember them.
The ones for a local transmission shop featured a brassy, heavily-made-up woman with a beehive hairdo: "The boss's wife for Atlantic Transmission," she'd announce in a nails-on-chalkboard South Philly accent.
"Do you feel trapped by high repair costs?" she'd ask, lowering onto a toy car the kind of plastic basket that onion rings come in at a diner.
And then there was the narrator on the plastic slipcovers ad, who pronounced "beautiful" as "bee-you-dee-full."
Our trip down memory lane led to Dr. Demento and Stella the Man-Eater from Manayunk, but I'll save them for another blog entry.