It's 1983 and I'm sitting in my living room in Topeka, Kansas, having just installed the cable into my Betamax.
I'm all excited about being able to get the Kansas City stations. I tune in KSHB-TV, Channel 41, late at night and come across this crazy guy in a fedora who talks on a banana phone to some old lady named Mrs. Walker and a slightly fey guy named Lee Cucarachi.
The guy in the hat and the thick black glases makes chicken faces into the camera. He sings to himself while he does stuff. He starts the show with some crazy pledge while holding up his hand, the back of it turned to the viewer like a slightly obscene gesture. Every once in a while, he introduced "The Twighlight Zone" or some other old time TV show.
He even pals around with Cloris Leachman and steals the show from the old pro.
It's "All Night Live" with host Uncle Ed Muscare. And I'm hooked.
***
Over the next days, months, and years, while working at KTWU-TV (PBS), several of my colleagues and I talk about Uncle Ed nearly every day at work. "Did you see that routinue?" one of us might ask? "Did you see that interview?" another might say. "Damn, I wish I were as funny as Uncle Ed" another of us might say.
Image via Wikipedia
We love Uncle Ed. He is the Ernie Kovacs of local TV. He is both a throwback to another era of sight gags and schtick but he also understands the cool nature of the TV medium.
He seems to have no pretenses. Just the crazy characters, his hat, his old songs he sings to himself, his schtick, and an absolute ability to make you feel like he is talking directly to you and only you. He takes the every day and makes it funny.
Some of us send cards and letters to Uncle Ed telling him how great he is. He never responds. We ask to be on his show. He never responds.
We're obviously geeked out about Uncle Ed and his crazy little show. Ed Muscare is too cool to return the adoration.
***
Life goes on. I'm a new Wasbhurn Law School graduate but still working hard in my chosen field of local public TV, covering politics and public affairs. I'm a newlywed, a dog owner, and a fitness buff.
I still like Ed but he's no longer quite the obsession. I have a life as a young professional, a young husband.
In May of 1986, my wife Donna, our standard poodle Phoebe, and I move back to my former home state of South Dakota, where I go to work for South Dakota Public TV. There is no Internet yet to keep up with Uncle Ed Muscare. No YouTube. No satellite TV (or at least not much yet.)
Ed Muscare begins to fade--a little--from my memory. Though I'll still catch myself saying Ed Muscare catch phrases like "This is Mrs. Walker calling. You know, Ed..." and doing chicken faces to my confused South Dakota colleagues.
But once you've seen and admired Uncle Ed, you can't unsee and unadmire him. That is his pull. He is the hipster who made it to be the cool old relative you like to hang out with at family reunions. Just thinking of Uncle Ed brings a smile. For his many fans, he still does.
***
Friends from Kansas tell me when I talk to them in late 1986 that Uncle Ed is suddenly off the air. What could have happened to Uncle Ed? He's a comic genius!
***
Uncle Ed Muscare apparently has a past and a problem that we didn't know and couldn't see. When someone comes into your home night after night and brings you such enjoyment, you think you know them. But like any celebrity, none of us truly know them. Who knew O.J. Simpson was a wife-beater and a murderer? He seemed so likable on TV.
Ed Muscare has a dark deep secret. In 1986, he's convicted of sexual battery on a 14 year old boy in Florida. He's a sex offender. And then, later, he's a sex offender who failed to register as a sex offender.
As a juvenile is the victim of a sex crime and juveniles and victims of sex crimes are generally protected by the law and the media, it is not clear what happened. It will probably never be clear, a well-deserved mystery for the victim.
But whatever did happen, an old man apparently tried to take advantage of a young boy. And society just doesn't like that very much. It's the modern equivalent of the Scarlett Letter--probably even worse.
It's a kid, for God's sake. What kind of a sick fuck does that to a kid?
Apparently, Uncle Ed Muscare does. The "uncle" honorific doesn't sound funny or endearing any more but creepy.
At least he wears a jacket and tie for his Florida sex offender photo. Might as well class up the gig a bit, right Ed? Or is it another of your subtle jokes that is lost on most of us?
***
So, years later, after wondering what the hell happened to Ed Muscare, he suddenly reappears, on TV, sort of. He's
Image via CrunchBase
Living in borderline squalor in some hick South Carolina town in a ramshackle house, with three dogs and an old VW Beetle, Uncle Ed makes videos that he uploads on YouTube.
Ed takes his video camera everywhere. Literally. To the store. In his yard. On his roof. To his kitchen. With this dogs.
He is a spectral figure now. Pale skin, thin, uncut hair flying everywhere, deepset eyes surrounded by darkened skin, a missing front tooth, he looks like a cross among an aging Penguin, Beetlejuice, undertaker, and ghost.
He looks like death warmed over from central casting. He's 77 years old or so and wearing torn clothing like his "airconditioned shirt" and pants that are neither shorts nor trousers.
And now he makes videos that I watch again late at night. Sort of like back in the old days.
***
For many of us who "knew" Ed Back In The Day, his look is off-putting. He looks like the crazy old man down the street with a pack of baying hounds who wanders aimlessly around his yard in the rain. Plus he has that whole registered sex offender thing going on.
My wife Donna, while not the crazed Uncle Ed fan who I was in the 1980s, used to enjoy watching him on "All Night Live." But Ed gives her the creeps now with his videos.
So I ask Donna, the clinical social worker, for a diagnosis after watching his "Backscratcher/Suckling Dog" video.
"Disturbed," is her one word answer. No DSM IV axis. Just disturbed with a major helping of creepy.
***
But there's one problem. Uncle Ed still knows how to make love to the camera. When he talks, he's still only talking directly to me. He pours grits from a big box to a small jar. Jim Dandy Grits. He adds, "Go Jim Dandy, Go Jim Dandy" ala the song. I watch, transfixed. He's still funny.
And many of his his videos, like pouring grits or watching his dogs drink water from a faucet or a tour of his closet have a sweetness, lightness, and Zen-like "in the moment" quality that you can't help but to watch.
With a sweet tenor voice, an ability to carry a tune, he's still the consumate showman and broadcaster. He is a communicator with a side of Buddha.
If Buddha were a sex offender on a child, that is.
***
People from around the world comment on his site. Lots of young people, junior high, high school, and college aged. They want him to be their grandfather. They want to be like him when they are old like him--still "cool," still creative, still looking at the world through a child's eyes.
Ed touches something in them like he touched in me nearly 25 years ago. A spirit of wonder, of marching to your own drummer, of looking at the world through fresh eyes. And being subtly but still damn funny when he's not weirding you out.
In "Shadow Painting Signed," he shows a painting of himself as a ten or eleven year old boy--not much younger than his victim--painted by his late brother. Artistry apparently ran in the Muscare family. The young Muscare has a full head of dark hair, neatly combed. He's a good looking kid.
And then you wonder what the hell happened, from that sweet young boy to this slightly nutty but sweet old man. What made him do what he did to another sweet young boy in the interim?
Fuck, we'll never know. Ed probably doesn't even know.
***
I obviously didn't know Uncle Ed Muscare on TV 25 years ago when I watched from my living room in Topeka. I thought I knew him. But I didn't. None of us really know any celebrity. Hell, most of us don't know our own friends and family as well as we think. You can't really know another person.
We don't even truly know ourselves.
But one thing is typically missing from Uncle Ed's current YouTube videos--other people. He seems desparately lonely. The camera is his surrogate for companionship. Ok, maybe not, maybe off camera Ed has friends and neighbors and fellow Lions Club members and church congregants and a book club. But I'm guessing not.
As close as we get to some Ed self-reflection is a video called "Tragedy." Even it only skirts the issues, couching them in traditional Christian terms. He talks of forgiveness and Christ and following and turning your life over to God and God even being in evil people. He talks about Paul, the ultimate Christ follower, who gave up so much to be with and promote Jesus.
But no mea culpa. But I have no doubt that he knows tragedy, self-inflicted as it might be. And perhaps God is in him. Even a man who has done an evil thing.
Being a convicted sex offender who has victimized a child is not a good way to become popular in your community.
No one wants to hear excuses or explanations or that you found God.So Uncle Ed shares his life via one take, unedited videos shot on a cheap camera with the rest of us now.
His dogs--Buster, Buddy, and Lady--love him unconditionally. Like his fans like me once did. But that unconditional love has probably been gone for decades. From the looks of things, conditional love has also gone the way of my old Betamax for Uncle Ed. Thrown away, long forgotten. An anachronism in an age of iPods and YouTube.
And age that has no tolerance for creepy old men who perp on young boys.
Besides the wry wit, the snippets of old songs, even bits and pieces of "All Night Live" schtick that comes out from time to time, you get the sense that Uncle Ed Muscare is no longer anybody's uncle. And he's making the best of it that he can, one crazy, poignant, creepy, brilliant, and Zen-like video at a time.
And I'm not handing you no jive.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=b0cd487f-88c2-4cf1-84c2-db637890d349)
.jpg)
Posts
15 comments:
This whole saga is both compelling and repellent, and I'm ashamed of the part of me that finds it fascinating.
I remember a friend telling me at the time that the secret of Ed's appeal was his ordinariness and complete lack of apparent talent. It's clear now that he was good at hiding what talent he did have, and hiding much else besides.
a member of my family was wrongfully accused of child molestation, he served just as many years in the slammer as uncle ed, not because he did it, but because he refused a deal from the court and demanded he was not guilty. (there was a eye-witness statement but it was rejected because the witness was "legally" blind, though still had great vision)
how do we know he is really guilty? i have heard that he gave drugs to a number of little boys and molested them. and i heard that he was accused by a guest from his TV show.. until the real details are brought up, why even point the finger?
That was a great story you told and had a wonderful flow and understanding of who Uncle Ed is. I too discovered edarem on YouTube, actually EbaumsWorld, and found him instantly entertaining. Though I'm not old enough to remember or see his past tv days, I do see that Edward was once a man great character, that attracted the eye to him. I've spent hours watching his videos. It wasn't until a few days ago that I ran across his name and I googled it and found little information except of his Sexual Offender registration and past TV days.
A day past and it explodes. Edward is everywhere, his YouTube page has tripled with subscribers (he only had a few hundred when I found him). I was mind boggled. How could this old creepy mundain man become so popular so fast? Over one video? And it's because he's a showman. He's fasinating to watch, so simple and carefree, you respect him (unknowningly of course) and wish to know him.
But then you flip the coin over and see that this man isn't what he appears to be. He is no hero like others see him as, he isn't the fun guy his videos portray him as. Maybe he has changed, maybe he lives life in regret, maybe this, maybe that. That still doesn't change the past or what he did. How far in society are we going that we can easily forgive and ignore such a persons actions like child endangerment/molestastion or worse?
What next? Charles Manson going to get a talk show? Osama Bin Laden is given a medal of honor? It's not a matter of pushing hate on Edward, because I still love to watch his videos and find him entertaining, but to ignore who he is and just paint a happy picture would be a total disreguard to the truth.
That's pretty naive, ABleedingCorpse. The state said it so it is the truth? The truth is we don't know any circumstances surrounding his arrest, the crime, or if he even did anything. And it's likely we'll never know.
Like most all killers and rapist Ed is a con artist you can't buy anything he says after all his craft is ACTING.
He did the crime, he did the time, no further charges of substance have been raised against him since beyond the registration issue. Now he is trying to salvage what he has left in life in utter poverty under the grace of God. I don't know how sincere he really is but he seem's sincere enough. People want these offenders to die or just disapppear but they have lives too and are victims of their own bad actions and have to live with it. If they want to try to find some kind of happy way of living, for God's sake let them. He is a human being too. I am against kicking a man when he is down. Not when he appears to be living a harmless life in a small town. Take away all hope from people who offend society in ways like he did and you won't like what happens. God forgave him and so do I. I am not flip about this either. I was molested when I was a kid and I don't think it serves any purpose to hound these guys into hell forever.
Here's Ed's take:
http://thanksforparticipating.wordpress.com/2009/04/23/the-musical-stylings-of-youtubes-edarem/
Re: Heads up: your 23-year-old past conviction has been exposed on reddit.com
This letter I wrote to TV stations in 2005 might explain...
__________________________
What can be done about the growing number of sex offenders?
Here's one possible solution - a way for Law Enforcement to remove hundreds, possibly thousands of sex offenders from their watch-lists.
Grant amnesty to those offenders who have shown they are no longer a threat to society. It's as simple as that.
Let's face it; ninety-nine percent of all the males in this country have "sexually offended" someone - at one time or another. The majority of them just never got caught.
Of those that did get caught, most will never offend again. They realized their mistake and want no part of returning to prison. It is this group of non-threatening, one-time sex offenders that should be considered for release.
Amnesty. It makes sense.
Who would qualify?
The obvious answer is - first-time offenders who served their time in jail and completed their probation with good conduct - and have stayed out of trouble since. The chances of their re-offending are practically nil. And, in releasing them, thousands of man-hours could be saved and used to monitor those felons who need closer supervision.
I, myself, am a one-time sex offender. I was arrested almost 20 years ago for an offense committed while on vacation in Florida. Because of my arrest, I lost my car, my house, my job, my career.
I did not kidnap, rape or kill anyone.
I was caught engaging in consensual sex with a minor under 16. I pled 'no contest' to the charge of sexual battery and was sentenced to a 18 months in jail and 10 years probation.
Upon my release from jail in early 1988, I settled in Lake County and lived on my savings. I managed to survive with no income until 1994 when my Social Security checks started at age 62.
In 1997, just months before I was to finish my probation, and get on with my life, Megan's Law went into effect. That law stated that all sex offenders currently in jail or on probation had to register with the County Sheriff every year for the rest of their lives and have their photographs posted on the internet as a sex offender.
I was devastated. That killed any chance I had of returning to my profession as an announcer on radio and television.
Ever since that law came out, I've worried that a friend or a neighbor or a church member would come across my photo on a sex offender web-site.
I've lived at the same address in Lake County for 6 years and have been a member of a local church since that time. For many years, I've visited area nursing homes every week to entertain the residents playing the piano. In other words, I've been a model citizen for the past 19 years.
But, guess what?
I recently received notification from Florida Law Enforcement stating that, henceforth, until further notice, I had to register in person twice a year (instead of once) with the County Sheriff, and I could not live near a school, library or day-care center.
These additional restrictions came about because of the kidnapping/murder of little Jessica Lundsford. This new law was passed to tighten the screws on Sex Offenders. Somehow, because I was jailed for a sex offense almost 20 years ago, I've become as dangerous as a rapist/murderer. That is ridiculous and it's extremely unjust.
Recently, I was invited to become a board member of my church. I reluctantly declined. Reluctant because I knew there is always a chance that someone could discover my photo on a sex offender web-site, which, if made public, could damage the church's reputation.
And, that is the point of this letter.
Why punish those of us who have paid for our crime and have proven ourselves harmless by years of good conduct? Why waste the State's money, time and manpower on those of us who are not a threat to anyone?
Why not, instead, concentrate on those offenders who have shown they can't be trusted? Maybe if the State of Florida had thought of this sensible solution a year ago, little Jessica Lundsford might be alive today.
Grant amnesty to those who deserve it. This will greatly increase time and manpower which can be then be used to govern those felons who have shown they are dangerous and cannot be trusted.
The list of sex offenders is growing daily across this nation. It's bad...and it's getting worse.
Something has to be done - and soon.
(signed)
Name withheld for obvious reasons
Lake County, FL
Uncle Ed was (is) one of the funniest guys EVER! I loved watching him on TV.
Remember:
The Kreeper
Mr. Mummy
and, of course, Uncle Ed. Of 41 Treehouse Lane and of All Night Live.
Did you know that Uncle Ed was the first show to ever air on Channel 41 in Kansas City?
I still love the guy, and I wish he would post MORE videos!!!
Thank you for writing this, all I ever read is pure hate full of swearing.
Regardless of what he may or may not have done, the massive impression of lonliness and desire to be loved from his videos is striking.
If he did do what he was accused of, then he has served his time in prison and his punishment has continued. He is all alone and craving human comnpanionship.
I never knew his programmes on tv - I'm assuming it was in America? But he makes me smile so I watch his videos.
I was attacked and raped when I was younger, the guy was never found, never convicted. I forgave him a long time ago and I honestly hope that he regrets doing it and has moved on. There's too much hate in this world that drives people to do that in the first place.
Thank you again.
Try not to read my comment with any ill-tone or inflection, please read it with a neutral voice in your mind.
Its a strange blog you have, on one of your posts you chide Pastor Steve Hickey about his reaction to 'Dr' Tiller being murdered, showing your support for a doctor that [coldbloodedly] murdered countless innocent children before they had a breath, before they had a voice, before they could look up at the sun or moon and marvel at their existence.
Your reaction to Uncle Ed was even more strange.
You condemn this Ed Muscare over his past transgressions with the law, of course he was condemned and put in jail. You called Ed a 'sick fuck' and your wife said he is 'creepy'.
I am curious if you had the chance, would you and your wife shake the hand of Dr Tiller if you met him in person? Would you feel creepy knowing what this doctor did?
Given the chance, would you have invited a person like Dr Tiller over for a family BBQ?
Let me set this hypothetical scene: You and your family are grilling out back, a number of your freinds are over and you have invited your special guest Dr Tiller, but his secretary calls and said he will be late because he is 'backed up' at the office.
How would you feel when he finally arrived? Would you ask him about his work that kept him from being on time as you hand him a hamburger and some baked beans?
It is a strange world we live in when people react the way society thinks they should to a given situation. We tend to measure our anger and hatred upon how we feel our neighbors would, not how we truly feel.
To understand everything is to forgive everything.
It is strange until it happens to your family and
friends. Sexual unwanted advancements on 1 year to 16 year old's children should be punished for Life! These people have done way too much damage to other people and can never be trusted again.
Death Penalty would be great!
Poor poor pitiful Ed Muscare!! Victim of laws that are way too strict and unjust. He doesn't see what all the fuss is about. It's just not fair. He only got CAUGHT having sex with a minor just the one time. He didn't actually abduct or rape the child you see. He had the child's permission. And it was twenty years ago and he did serve his time. So I guess that makes everything all right.
Does You-Tube know about good ole Uncle Ed's misunderstood past??
And if so why are they allowing his video posts to be shown and commented on by dozens of under age viewers who seem to regard him as some kind of cool twisted loving grandfather figure. Would you want this guy living next door to you in annonymity if you had children of your own? How 'bout your kids watching these videos on the internet without you or them really knowing this wack-job's real idenity??
The Death Penalty sounds pretty good to me as well!!!
To the poster above, you make it sound like it is Ed's fault that kids look up to him on Youtube, and you want him to be executed because he wishes what happened had never occured. People can change and although not every waking moment of Ed's life is known, that doesn't mean he is hiding something from the world. I'd rather much see you get the death penalty than Edward. People like you are the reason people like Ed continue to suffer long after they have paid their debt to society. You are the real rapist, not Ed.
Too bad his computer and camera got taken away by the probation officers. even though he's been off probation for like 15 years or more...
I meet Ed Mascare when I was 13 years old. At that time, he was living at the old Bellreive Hotel in Kansas City. My dad lived there for a few months before our family moved from Iowa to Kansas City. He got to know Ed and introduced us when we moved down. Even then, there was something about him that was very strange. I sort of felt like I was meeting a character from a bad horror movie. I don't know why. He just gave me a bad feeling.
We had no contact with him after that one meeting other than to see Uncle Ed on television. I guess that is why I was so shocked to see him on the local news a couple of nights ago. I, now, live in central Florida. Ed has been arrested and is in the Orange County Correctional Facility for parole violation. Under his parole conditions, he is not allowed to have any contact with the Internet. He violated his parole by posting the YouTube videos. I was shocked to see that face from my distant past and, rather sad to see what he became.
Post a Comment