Monday, November 5, 2007

Geektarded celebrity sightings

The Shirt Tails put on a show at"Worlds of Fun" in Kansas City.




A rare public appearance by Yogi Bear at Shepherd Mall, Oklahoma City, around 1982.




Local Oklahoma City celebrity, Ho-Ho the Clown, November 1982. I have the fondest of memories of the Ho-Ho Show on KOCO-TV (the ABC affiliate). Gotta love that tiny party sombrero. Who wants Pac-Mac cake?

Here's a brief bio from Wikipedia of Ed Birchall who played Ho-Ho all those years:

Edward Patrick Birchall (1923-1988), was known to generations of Oklahomans as HO-HO the Clown. Mr. Birchall was born on July 16, 1923 in Colchester, Connecticut and served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. A lover of the circus, he performed as a freelance clown before being hired as an entertainer who by KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City. There, he starred in a local children's television show named after him, which typically featured an array of firefighters, police officers, zoo animals, visiting circus clowns, and other guests, as well as Pokey the Puppet, played by Bill Howard, the station's long-time stage manager wearing a sock-puppet on his arm. HoHo was all over the TV schedule, for much of the 1960's he was on six days a week. Various titles were "HoHo's Showboat", "Lunch With HoHo", "Good Morning HoHo", and "HoHo's Showplace". The show survived for 29 years, long after the station was acquired by Gannett, airing in its last years without commercials to fulfill the station's public service requirements. He was a frequent visitor to children's wards at local hospitals, providing a kind of medicine the doctors could not. He also appeared at restaurants, charity events, parades, and children's parties, from which he derived most of his income. Mr. Birchall was a diminutive and slightly round man of cheerful spirit and hippie inclinations. Friends remember him as behaving much the same in real life as on his show. He lived in Bethany, Oklahoma for most of his life, and suffered declining health leading to his death in the hospital at age 64 from a heart attack while undergoing treatment for cancer. His popularity was so great that it took three funeral services to accommodate all of his well-wishers, the first of which was attended by an honor guard of professional clown friends and carried live by KOCO-TV.



Worlds collided in the fall of 1983 when He-Man and Skeletor traveled from Eternia to the "Toys Plus" toy store at 84th and Center in Omaha, Ne. We can only assume He-Man's melting leg syndrome is due to some sort of time portal lag.

3 comments:

Evil King Macrocranios said...

That Skeletor looks like the world's most pumped up chupacabra.

Evil King Macrocranios said...

Oh hey I just found a website called Plaid Stallions that would probably like to have your celebrity photos. They have an archive of them going on at their site.

OG said...

Howdy - I was surfing and found your reference to Ho-Ho. Do you remember an afternoon kids show hosted by Pinto Bean? He showed monster movies - it was the highlight of my Fort Sill childhood!