Being online has changed some things for Dr. Demento, too. He no longer has to worry about FCC regulations and can be a little more flexible with what he can play without being censored or fined. So, with that introduction, he played a few examples of things that were banned by the FCC on the radio, but which can now be shared online. (Note to parents: you should, of course, preview these before showing your kids.) First up was Monty Python’s “Sit on My Face.” After that we heard “The Crepitation Contest,” a sports-broadcast-style sketch about, well, an international farting contest. This one just has a use of the s-word at the end, which had to be bleeped when it was aired on the radio. Finally, we listened to “Penis Envy” by Uncle Bonsai which, while it doesn’t technically have any FCC-banned words in it, still led to FCC fines for its content. Dr. Demento suspected, though, that it had to do with some of the truths of the song rather than the actual content.
After this bit of naughtiness, we watched two more videos. The first was the original 1979 short by Mike Jittlov, “The Wizard of Speed and Time.” It involved a lot of stop-motion animation, including animation of himself. It was later made into a feature-length movie, but Dr. Demento prefers this compact version:
We then watched Weird Al’s “White and Nerdy” video (which is still brilliant).
To conclude the talk, Dr. Demento put on some music and started singing “Shaving Cream,” a song I remember from Boy Scout camps. I missed the first verse (which was the traditional first verse), but started recording the rest of it. Instead of the usual verses, these were updated and rewritten to include some more Portland and Reed College references:
And then the evening was over. I’d forgotten to bring my copy of the Dr. Demento 20th Anniversary collection, unfortunately, or I might have stood in line to get an autograph. It was great to hear all these fun stories and to re-experience so many of these greatest hits, plus a few that I wasn’t familiar with before.
