Kolchak Factoid....

Hello, Happy 3000 to everyone,

Now, this is a short second May entry. It is not a big article. I will likely write June's article about the Montreal Canadiens hockey team. If they make it through the first round of the playoffs and set their eyes on Lord Stanley's Cup... I will be overwhelmed and compelled to write about them. If they don't.... I'm gonna probably write about something else, I guess, next month.... maybe something like ... I don't know.... something good too, hopefully.

Until then, I think I've grown quite intrigued by something I have noticed on an episode of Kolchak. I am fantastically intrigued by an erroneous credit at the end of an episode that has led me to believe that a certain person may have ghost-written parts if not portions if not large parts and/or portions of Kolchak.

Kolchak, of course, is a show from the 70s where the titular character solves fantastical mysteries of the super-normal and of the para-normal.

Now, after the episode where he fights energy earthquakes from a local hospital that was built on some kook's burial ground (or something)... we see the "Janitor" is credited as being portrayed by Robert Mitchum's brother, John Mitchum.

Yet this character does not look anything like Robert Mitchum's brother John! It compels a person to wonder aloud as to what manner of foolery is afoot. Surely, this wasn't a simple mix up in the credits department for Robert Mitchum's rotund yet less famous frère to be stated as being this Janitor in which he most surely was not.

One must surely ask themselves... why was this mysterious Janitor... who is on the show for about thirty seconds... who's name is apparently "Don't Know" as he tells Kolchack during their brief conversation...  credited as being portrayed by Robert Mitchum's brother... even though he looks nothing at all like John Mitchum? It's a fantastic mystery is what it is, friends. It is nothing short of a fantastic mystery!

First of all, Kolchak and the proto form of it known as the "Kolchak Papers" were apparently written by a mysterious author named "Jeff Rice"... yet no wikipedia entry or any records seem to exist for this so-called "Jeff Rice" .... leading some to question if this man ever really existed at all. A writer with no corporeal form? A ghost? Writer?

Hmmmmm.

Seems to me.... the reason there's no "Jeff Rice" in any wikipedia pages or historical records is because... there was never any "Jeff Rice" to begin with! He's a nom-de-plume as the french often say or a pseudonym as others might. There's scantly any mention of this man throughout the annals of history and time. 

So, if one can deduce that there probably was no "Jeff Rice" then who was it who wrote the brilliantly crafted words that exit Carl Kolchak's person on every TV movie and episode if there is no "Jeff Rice"? 

Can we go by writing style? Possibly, I must say.

It is in my opinion that the Janitor who doesn't know his own name in the episode where Kolchak investigates the whacky Energy-related event in the hospital (and subsequently fights it) ... is, in fact, "Jeff Rice."

Let's now show a short montage of what Robert Mitchum's brother John resembled... the man purportedly who portrayed this nameless Janitor, shall we?

A rotund and jolly fellow... slightly Santa Clause-esque in nature one might describe him as.

Now... let us see the Janitor who didn't know his own name in Kolchak....

Is it not safe to say that this fellow is definitely not John Mitchum in the least!? The man, indeed, looks nothing of the sort! This man looks nothing like him! Not even a small resemblance exists between The Janitor and John Mitchum (Robert's brother). But come to think of it, haven't I seen this Man before? This Janitor reminds me of someone... but who you may ask? Where have I seen this devilish bearded profile before? That snaking beard that suggests an air of intrigue.... have I seen this man before? 

....and, to further press the boundaries of veracity ... what Janitor have you ever met in your life .... that didn't know his own name? What manner of Janitor does not know their own name? So much mystery surrounds this fellow.

You ever see the guy in the line in "A Christmas Story"... the guy with the snakey beard and the bowler's hat?

That man is Jean Shepherd there in line to meet Santa in "A Christmas Story" .... now, it is of my opinion, I being a fellow of sound-ish (or sound-enough) mind... and I believe this with close to 75% of my knowledge. Yes, I believe these two men to be One and the Same. I believe The Janitor is the Man in the Bowling Hat in Line in A Christmas Story. He has the same beard, the same ear... I think even though the greying of the hair is there... that it's the same person.

I'm not saying this with certainty or total clarity but I think there's about a 75% chance that "Jeff Rice" was Jean Shepherd.... and it wouldn't be that surprising, really. 

If we look at his "I, Libertine" prank from the 50s...

(See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Libertine)

This wouldn't even be the first time he did something like this. I wonder if Kolchak could be an "I, Libertine" for TV instead of literature. Very possible, I think. In fact, I think it is even likely.

But...

...in the end, it seems like most things in life ... that it shall forever remain a mystery. A simple after-thought of history like anything else. Just like the Night Strangler, The Night Stalker, the Shape-shifting Diabolero, the Cajun Swamp Monster... etc, etc....

It will forever remain a mystery... we'll just never know for sure if any of it was true or not.

The only known photograph of the Mysterious "Jeff Rice"

(Note: You should read this article in Kolchak's voice... it makes the article better)





Edit (May 26th): That Janitor seems to actually be John Mitchum. I was mistaken. I am still 75% sure that "Jeff Rice" is Jean Shepherd though. I believe he is the man in the only photograph that exists of "Jeff Rice" still.

We've seen Jean Shepherd with a fake beard before in "Ollie Hopnoodle's Haven of Bliss" where he looked like this:

Here he is in disguise, with a fake beard... he doesn't look like him but it's him. Knowing he does stuff like this, I think, made me try to find if he had a cameo appearance on Kolchak. I was looking too hard, I think. That Janitor is John Mitchum even though he looks totally different than John Mitchum usually does.

It's Almost 3000..... Also Titled: "A Pandemic in Words"

About three real years ago, I wrote "It's Almost 2000....."

(See: https://www.writingsonsubjects.com/2018/10/it-almost-2000_98.html)

It was about how the narrator of this blog (who in a lot of ways is a "character", one however, decently based on me)... gave up on standard Time and started chronologically ordering his thoughts based on the Count from Sesame Street counting on Twitter.

Well, now, according to the Count from Sesame Street... it is almost 3000!

What an eclectic last 1000 moments it has been... and if memory serves me right... The Count stopped counting for a long time during the last year or so.... but then again... didn't we all? Didn't we all sort of lose track of Time this last year? Count Standard Time took that into account...I guess.

A fun thing I just noticed about this long living novel I write is that I still wrote every month in it during the pandemic and I wonder if looking back on it would be interesting. I wonder if in the future someone might read it and be interested how a person lived through this and how they felt, thought, etc, about it.

I started writing as soon as it started with this one:

"Loneliness and Stayin' Home"
(See: https://www.writingsonsubjects.com/2020/03/loneliness-and-stayin-home.html)

To just think about how much fear was going on back then... like this was written the second things were starting to get weird like empty grocery store shelves and rumors of lock downs. I mean, the two previous articles were like centered around Tag Team Wrestling and Orange Nehi soda! The main thing on my mind in March of 2020 from what I remember was how cool PAC vs. Orange Cassidy was and one of the top things I was thinking about was stuff like "Gee, I wonder what this Orange guy is gonna do next?" and then the next week it was... all of a sudden.. all my thoughts were total fear of the uncertain.

If March 2020 was a song it would be "Rest Aria" ... which is a song by The Residents. It's a song of cautious leisurely bings n' blongs and then all of a sudden total crashes and distress. I would describe the month of March 2020 as Rest Aria come to life....

A song who's life is of some Bing bing bings and some doot doot doots (silly life stuff not a care about nothing) ... then things start to be discordant... then haywire.... then... a sort of hap-hazard frantic attempt to keep things on track.... then.... CRAAAAAAAASH ...  followed by a soft echo that comes out of the crash trying to rebuild and to try and re-find those times of fun days of the Bings and Doots.... and ends on a fading-out yet also fading-up trumpet of Hope.

Looking back, my loneliness article was a sort of bracing of oneself for the uncertainty to come. A gigantic fear of the unknown that back then we had NO understanding of as of yet.

It's almost as if by envisioning extreme forms of Loneliness and using prior experiences of it... my mind did sort of create a way of pre-emptively coping with the uncertain incoming stress it knew was coming.

I almost knew what it would feel like to live through an era of loneliness and in a strange way it's almost as if my mind, knowing what it had to prepare for, kicked into gear and really helped me evade a larger problem. My mind focused on prior feelings of loneliness and wondered what it would feel like if those previous experiences were then amplified and then my mind braced itself for these perceived amplified feelings of Super Loneliness. 

... my mind was mentally simulating inoculation to Super Loneliness by simulating perceived notions of what it could entail and then being prepared for when they occurred.

Physically, this is how vaccines work. This is what inoculation means. We now have vaccines for the physical aspects of the virus. We can use past experiences with viruses and make our bodies go into a "brace" mode so it can easily learn to cope with the virus when the body has to deal with it.

Mentally, Loneliness was a factor I don't think people were bracing themselves for and I think the tone of narrative in here writing-wise switched to...thinking maybe my method of Loneliness Inoculation will interest others.

So after my Loneliness one.... 

Next was the Turkey... which was spelled out in the intro what it was attempting to do which was to create a Hero of Loneliness or maybe even a Champion of Loneliness. It was based off a guy from the 1900s who hibernated. For me it was to keep a routine. I woke up in the first days of the lockdown not knowing what to do... so... I needed to assign my self a routine... Turkey was written each day for two weeks... and it retained a semblance of routine for myself. I would wake up, make coffee, n' write some Turkey.... it was my routine... each and everyday for about two weeks.

....when this pandemic initially started I thought it was gonna be for TWO WEEKS and planned Turkey to end when everything opened back up again! Gosh.

Next came some palette cleansers and stuff like Speed Racer and some others....  and as the pandemic was not ending... I thought it was a good idea to make another two week long story. It would last through October and end on Halloween. This again, for me, was to give myself a "routine" but I wrote these at NIGHT as opposed to in the morning. The happy go lucky style of the Turkey became the paranoid darker side of my Loneliness Inoculation methods as time wore on.

I don't know if Lights Out through Halloween was a good idea in retrospect. My Loneliness Inoculation may not be suitable for all. The darker paranoid part of what Loneliness could entail was far more ... uh..... dark, I guess.

I was already leveled out of the Residents by that point for that side of the Innoculation. Not even Ginger Bread Man was working so I started listening to Lights Out by Arch Oboler every night in the dark for a few weeks. It was scary. Some of those things are scary. My story, I think, was VERY close to the tone of Lights Out even getting the "pitchman" right (who ironically is the villain at the end of my story). 

The Ghostbuster portion of my Lights Out story reminds me that one of the first things I did to cope at the start of the pandemic was to go on Twitter after writing Turkey chapters and just posting songs from Ghostbusters II.... I don't know why... but I think as a kid who grew up on the GBs.... I think my brain has a sort of "When all else fails.... GHOSTBUSTERS, man, GHOSTBUSTERS! Just Ghostbusters!" switch in it.

Ghostbusters saved the sad ending in my Arch Oboler homage story... because it is very much how my mind actually works on a functional level.

Then after my second routine-keeping long-form short-story through October of 2020... came some more palette cleansers and the Twitter Awards which is a long running article on here.

The next big story one came in February of 2021... almost the anniversary of the pandemic at this point. It opens by telling the entire world that I was "down" which is a thing I don't think I've ever done on this before. After one full year of the pandemic.... we were all down, no? This one was about my memories of a concert where I was one person amid 499,999 other people. My recollections of going to SARS FEST '03 were all true and 100% a real story about going to the first SARS FEST in Toronto decades ago.... which is still strange to type "SARS FEST"...  but just thinking of it reminded me that something like this not only happened before but Rush, AC/DC, The Rolling Stones and others lifted people's spirits when it was over.

This article in many ways was the trumpet portion in a Rest Aria sense. After the crash and the frantic attempt to re-gather the semblances of the bings n' doots ... this article was my Trumpet of Hope.

I was reminded of this concert by seeing people on Twitter speak of a certain upcoming event which sought to get a framed picture of the picture of the picture of the Geddy Lee picture that got Re-Tweeted 2112 times once again get re-Tweeted 2112 times.

(See: the "Tweet": https://twitter.com/WizzurdX/status/1388300166076063744)

Now, from what I can gather and understand about this, the original picture was from the Thon's creator's father... who whence he first got on social media, like many older gentlemen who aren't very familiar with social media... he didn't really understand it and would just post these photos of 70s rockers on it. Now that social media post has grown into a Global International Event... so if you're reading this in May of 2021... please re-Tweet the above tweet to help get it to 2112!

(Note: I was interacting on Twitter with the Thon of late and I hope they don't think I'm some sort of Rush purist who is up-in-arms over the lackadaisical attention given to Rush on the Thon. I quickly realized while interacting with many of the Thon folk that it's a very fun-for-all experience that is a joyous celebration of many many things.)

So yes, I was down in February of 2021 but was reminded of being at SARS Fest '03 which helped me remember that these things end and celebrations occur... so I felt good again. So, yes, just to re-iterate... the Thon was a key factor in three ways to getting me un-down.

1) It reminded me of the power of Rush... which is an awesome power. I was listening to Moving Pictures and 2112 on loop some nights while playing Dragon Ball Z: Card Warriors and it was the best. I was having a blast.

2) It reminded me of the 2003 SARS Fest which I wrote about here... which is a good reminder that things like this do end and things get fun again.

3) The comedy of the people who do this Thon are really funny. They are great. The Bizarre Internet Comedic Stylings of Phil Braun are top notch.

So yeah... after the SARS story came Estelle Geddy and another one... and here we are! I feel with the vaccine inoculating everyone and our society gradually re-opening up....  I'm going to probably revert back to normal too. 

We'll see light fun stuff back here in the future... I hope people liked Turkey... and I hope people weren't weirded out too much by Lights Out Homage.

Now... well.... I guess I can just get back to caring about what I was caring about in March 2020, I guess. I was thinking how cool PAC vs. Orange Cassidy was.... 

....I hear a re-match is on the horizon for these two stalwarts combatants.... in possibly a sold out venue. A full arena of fans for PAC vs. Orange Cassidy.

....that's some full-circle stuff for me. It really is.