Greater Tampa (part 1)

A combination of this post on Cracked and this post at BoingBoing on the same day made me think about a fun little bit of Tampa that has not come to mind in some time, public access tv. If you lived in Tampa in the late 90’s and if you had little to do on the weekend due to lack of life or vehicle, there was only one thing to do to help you pass the time, watch local public access affiliate Tampa Bay Community Network. As a part one of a planned series of looks at my many Tampa loves, I want to share with you a few of the most interesting shows, this is only the tip of the iceberg though, I could do an entire series on this subject alone.

My group of friends saw plenty of nudity on the pre-Girls Gone Wild clip show “Lifestyles.” I pretty much said everything there is to say about “Lifestyles” in my last sentence, it was just shot after shot of girls grinding in clubs, showing their boobs for beads and kissing each other sensually. The only other thing to say about “Lifestyles” is this, latter in life, when I was older and frequented multiple Tampa clubs on occasion, I often wondered where all those girls had disappeared to, and I never saw that kind of crazy shit in real life. Anyway, it might seem kind of weird now, and I know admitting this is not going to help any future Freedom of Speech arguments, but as a twelve-seventeen year old, before the days of high speed internet, this was AWESOME. Looking back, a little odd that it was me and two-five other dudes staring at the TV though, but eh, what can you do. No clips are being provided at this time, because like I said, “Lifestyles” was more or less porn, and if you need a clip to refresh your memory, go to Ybor during Gasperilla or ask your girlfriend nicely to see her boobs.

If “Lifestyles” is a decent representation of the clip show type show popular at the time, “Insanity Defense” is a perfect example of the other type of show, the one where one or more people sit around making random comments about usually nothing and taking phone calls which almost always end in the caller using their thirty seconds of air time to blurt out a curse or throw some random insult to the host. “Insanity Defense” starred Jerry Cantor usually sporting a pig hat and glasses sitting in front of an American flag or something of the sort. Jerry liked to sing along to songs, talk about local news, and provoke callers as much as possible. He actually had a number of shows over the years, but this is the one that sticks out for me. “Insanity Defense” was a popular call in for the Raindogs (my group of friends, or so we are called) usually just to curse or amuse ourselves, I did once call in to discuss the parallels of when Laverne and Shirley would appear on Happy Days and the day he had a guest star of Charlie Perkins of the Happy Dog Show (that one is a whole other story, believe you me.) Enjoy this clip, which is a great example of his work. Jerry is actually enough of a sport to have a MySpace video channel with a number of clips, so I will be enough of a sport to provide that link here. At the end of this clip, you will notice the old school awesome First Ammendement notice that played through out the day.

Insanity Defense


Last show I am going to talk about now. For those of you familiar with the last two shows, you are wondering when I was going to bring up the man, when I was going to talk about a local folk hero, a man who always speaks from the heart, Dr. “Black Jesus” Connelly. If that name does not automatically strike a bell, I will share, Dr. Connelly was a preacher of sorts convinced of the inherent evils of the white man, the blackness of Jesus and how everything in the world is wrong. He could talk for shows on end, without making a lick of sense and we just ate that shit up. A quick search of YouTube provided quite a few videos. I was shocked at how upset people were getting at the teachings of the man, but I guess you can’t get the whole picture unless you were there. He was harmless, more fodder for callers than a leader of people. A perfect example is a time when Dr. Connelly was having a long conversation with a caller on the inherent evil of this or that, and my friend PeeWee (RiP) used the operator call interrupt feature. He called us before hand to ensure we were watching (we were) and right then in the middle of the call, the operator chimes in, “Excuse me, you have an emergency call interrupt from Black Jesus.” Oh man, the Doc lost it, “what do you mean he’s on the phone for me, he is busy” That one had us rolling all night, even now I am smiling ear to ear thinking about it. Check out this perfect example of Dr. Connelly’s awesomeness to witness for yourself.



If you are still interested in Tampa public access, do yourself a favor and Google the hell out of it or ask a Raindog. There are many, many more shows worth mentioning, like I said, this is just the tip of the iceberg. For those of you wondering how the above BoingBoing link related, the above mentioned Lobster Boy appeared on a number of shows and even had his own for awhile. Till next time.