TV schlock so bad it was good

Now that Rebecca de Mornay is on HBO all the time, it figures somebody would ask, "what became of the old Wally George 'Hot Seat' shows on Channel 56?" That someone is Luke Y. Thompson of the OC Weekly, who got the answer from the new owner of KDOC-TV and blogs it. A comment on the blog compares George to today's TV frothers and concludes, "If Wally George were around today, he'd make Ann Coulter look like half the man she's trying to be." Here's what Thompson had to say:

Wally, as you probably know, was the forerunner of today's pretenders to the throne like Bill O'Reilly, and in college I even named my band after one of his catchphrases..."His Wife Bruce" (a line Wally would use to imply a guest was gay).

So it saddened me to hear that when Ellis took over, he found that the previous management would simply tape over Wally's old shows when recording new ones, and many of the archived episodes have been lost -- the recent three-hour tribute show represents the best of what they could salvage.

He was also unaware, until I told him, that Wally put out at least two record albums -- one titled "Wally George Sings the Rock Hits" and the other an E.P. called "Wal-ly, Wal-ly."

KDOC would like your old videos of Wally, should you have any. But as the blog says, "Let's be honest. Even if they owned a VCR, most of Wally's fans undoubtedly taped over his shows as well. Probably with episodes of 'Knight Rider' or 'New Wave Theater' or some other such nonsense."

Blast from the past: When Luke Y. Thompson almost died