"The pure examples of Camp are unintentional; they are dead serious."
- Susan Sontag, "Notes on Camp"
Today's SSCE is a bit of a Redux, as this treasure has for years been one of my very favorite YouTube finds and popped up way back in the Café's earliest days.
It reminds of the early '80s, the glory days of New York Public Access TV, when, any time the possibility arose, my pal Miss Rheba and the rest of us would hightail it up to Manhattan - not (or not only, I suppose) to run around the East Village, try to second-act Broadway shows, and desperately attempt to feel worldly and sophisticated, but to sit around as stoned as our budget allowed, watching the amazing cavalcade of humanity that had taken advantage of a system that, it seemed, allowed anyone with a half-hour to spare and a dream to get on television.
We watched Channel J, of course, the soft-porn outlet that made a (bigger) star of Robin Byrd and featured the creepiest and most terrifying escort and fetishy phone-sex ads imaginable (people d'un certain age who lived through that era will never forget - with a shudder - the phrase "the extra 'E' is for extra peeeee!" But I digress. As if that were something new...). They were certainly something we didn't have in one of your better Philadelphia suburbs. But it was the other channels that really grabbed us, the ones that featured kooks and cranks and well-meaning souls like the alarmingly enthusiastic lady here. She is, by the way, apparently one Reverend Alecia, and more than that the Internet does not tell much, although there is a little info about her here. If you like her style, but think you'd enjoy seeing her moves set to something even more authentically of the era, you might try this. I have a feeling you won't forget it...