Still Shocked after all these years

I'm 11 again.

After 40 years, I'm watching Shock Theater and reveling in the snark and camp that was Dr. Shock, Igor and the merry band of creepy idiots that was must-see TV when I was a kid in Baton Rouge.

Saturday-night routine: Turn on TV set about 10. Adjust the loop antenna during the 15 minutes of the ABC late news on WRBT to get a good picture on Channel 33. Because UHF.

SETTLE IN for a couple of hours of the oddball antics of Dr. Shock, along with a classic(ly bad) horror flick.

Wait for next Saturday at 10:15 so I could do it all again.

Truly, Shock Theater helped to make me the (extremely warped) man I am today. Today's kids should have had it so good.

But they didn't. And poorer are they for the absence of bad horror movies and smart-assed, tongue-in-cheek offerings from local TV.

They also would have learned patience from adjusting that #$&*!@%!! UHF antenna.

What Mrs. San Guinary didn't know. . . .

What do kids today do without a local horror-movie host?

When I was growing up in Baton Rouge, we had Dr. Shock and Shock Theater on Channel 33, starting in 1971 or so. In Omaha, about the same time, there was Dr. San Guinary and Creature Feature on KMTV, Channel 3.

In both places, the sidekick's name was Igor.

Unfortunately for Baton Rouge, we did not have then-KMTV weathercaster Carol Scott as a special guest modeling a T-shirt. If Scott has a daughter, Omaha's now-Channel Third needs to hire her immediately.

I'm just sayin'.