DL Open Thread Sunday Magazine: February 1, 2026

We lost some icons this week.  Let’s salute them.  Starting with the absolutely great Catherine O’Hara.  O’Hara once said:

“I think there’s a bit of the sameness in a lot of the characters I do,” Ms. O’Hara told Vulture. “I think there’s a lot of … insecure delusional.”

“I say this a lot,” she added, “but I love playing people who have no real sense of the impression they’re making on anyone else. But the more I say it, the more I realize that’s all of us, and the internet, social networking, is a desperate attempt to try to control what others think of you.”

This is a lengthy clip–but it illustrates why I always preferred SCTV to SNL.  It’s the disciplined dedication to craft vs. cocaine-fueled hit-and-miss humor. Lola Heatherton epitomized O’Hara’s ability to build a character.  Not to mention–Eugene Levy, John Candy, Joe Flaherty, and Dave Thomas:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0J3AkEiisA

A particular favorite of mine was her ‘Dusty Towne Christmas Special’.  Look for John Candy as–well, that would be spoiling it:

Uncle Floyd.  He was really big in New Jersey:

Floyd Vivino, the porkpie hat-wearing, piano-playing comedian known as Uncle Floyd, whose very low-budget television variety show on local UHF and cable channels made him a cult favorite of fans, especially in New Jersey, his home state, which he celebrated in song, died on Thursday in Hackensack, N.J. He was 74.

From 1974 to 1998, Mr. Vivino oversaw a ludicrous, freewheeling weekday program — an unrehearsed blend of music, featuring his stride piano playing; skits; puppets like Oogie, a wooden clown, and the testy skeleton character Bones Boy; parodies of local personalities; and an oddball troupe of actors with names like Weenie, Mugsy and Netto.

“We were a vaudeville type show that was a parody of 1950s kids’ shows,” Scott Gordon, a longtime friend who performed with Mr. Vivino, said in an interview.

Mr. Floyd’s appeal included rockers he booked on his show, including Cyndi Lauper; Jon Bon Jovi (who, after Mr. Vivino’s death, wrote on Facebook, “Uncle Floyd gave me a shot on his show before anyone”); Elvis Costello; the Ramones; and Blue Oyster Cult, whom Mr. Vivino introduced as “our Halloween super special guest.”

“Managers would say, ‘Cyndi Lauper and the Ramones were on the show, you need to be on,’” Jimmy Vivino said in an interview about potential guests. “And they didn’t know what they were getting into when their limo pulled up behind a dumpster at Channel 68.”

I highly doubt that I ever watched the show when I wasn’t stoned.  Which is why having Floyd double down on a stoopid idea often left me helpless with laughter.  As in this one:

Finally, Johnny Legend.  Didn’t know him, didn’t know of him, until I read his obit.  Which was my loss.  My kind of cultural icon:

Johnny Legend, a polymath of the perverse who became something of a cult hero as — among other outré personas — a punk-rock wrestling impresario, an accomplice to the comedian Andy Kaufman, a B-movie archivist and erotic film auteur, and, with his flowing beard, a recording curiosity known as the Rockabilly Rasputin, died on Jan. 2 in South Beach, Ore. He was 77.

As frontman for a variety of bands, he recorded a handful of minor-label albums. But he really made his presence known onstage. Touring the United States and Europe over the years, Mr. Legend became a lightning-rod figure on the Brylcreem-pompadour circuit for his unhinged performances — including one at a prison in Chino, Calif. — and his transgressive tendencies. One favorite costume was a Confederate general’s uniform.

His best-known musical accomplishment was writing the 1977 novelty song “Pencil Neck Geek,” recorded by the former professional wrestler Freddie Blassie, which became a staple of Dr. Demento’s long-running syndicated radio show.

In the 1990s, Mr. Legend cemented his status as a ringmaster of the bizarre by founding Incredibly Strange Wrestling, an unholy blend of Mexican lucha libre (one marquee act called itself the Ku Klux Klowns) and live performances by punk bands like the Dickies. The amalgam became an underground sensation and was featured as a sideshow attraction on the Lollapalooza rock tour in 1995.

His star turn, of sorts, came in “Man on the Moon,” the 1999 Kaufman biopic starring Jim Carrey, in which Mr. Legend played a New Age guru trying to rid Mr. Kaufman of the lung cancer that ultimately claimed his life in 1984.

Mr. Legend and Mr. Kaufman — a legend himself, for his surreal mix of standup and performance art — were real-life friends and kindred spirits in weirdness. In 1983, Mr. Kaufman starred in “My Breakfast With Blassie,” an outlandish parody — co-directed and co-produced by Mr. Legend — of Louis Malle’s 1981 art-house hit “My Dinner With André.”

Let’s close with a double-header of Johnny Legend’s genius: