Nine years ago, I was in a pretty bad place. My mother had just died, and I wasn't truly the same person anymore. I walked away from long relationships and almost felt myself slip away. I wasn't sure where I was going. Nine years later, I can't say I'm any closer to any kind of real future because time almost feels likes it's standing still and bleeding away in an instant at the same time, but this entry isn't about a bummer trip. This is about one of the few positives in my life that I found to keep me going and, in some way, keep me sane and birth me anew.
It was around the summer of 2014 when I decided to dust off my Twitter account after seeing a fan selection day on Turner Classic Movies from the people of the #TCMParty hashtag. I still was not a fan of Twitter and didn't let that judgment go for several months, but I thought I might find something there to help me through what I was feeling. At the very least, I just needed somewhere I could talk. Into the void, if necessary, and that was exactly what I was doing back then with no follower count and just using Twitter as a silly sort of diary blurb. The chatroom life I'd led for over a decade before that was almost bone-dry for conversation at this point, so I felt like venturing out. Additionally, in that short amount of time coming up on 2015, I came to learn that virtually everyone with whom I had forged a conversational relationship on the platforms I used to use were avid Trump supporters. The landscape was no longer maneuverable for me there when people I used to consider friends suddenly started showing their bigotry and ignorance and leaving me with a sour taste that I had partaken in it myself under the guise of "we're just talking about shared movie and TV interests here" and "well, they were always nice to me."
It was in early 2015 that I cut the cord and lost Turner Classic Movies, making me feel like I couldn't fit into the tiny corner of a community that brought me there in the first place, and as the depression of losing my mother still took its toll (plus the added difficulty of my aunt becoming permanently disabled from the grief of the experience, very slowly leaning her toward being totally in my care as of almost three years ago), I started thinking very hard about leaving Twitter again. I kept looking for something, anything, that might convince me to stay, but it wasn't there.
Around March or April of 2015, I was prepared to leave, and then I found them: the prime time livetweeters, many of whom I had met through #TCMParty to find they hosted movies and shows themselves. Some of them had been doing it for years, but I'd never come across them until now. Suddenly, a new world was opening to me where I could get back into the chat groove I felt I had lost over the past few years. This was where I felt the most confident and comfortable. This was where I could be me. After 12 years in a MST3K file sharing chatroom that had slowly died away, I could riff again. For my sanity and my peace of mind, I could riff again.
Then, on the night of May 10, 2015, it happened. The long-running #DriveInMob livetweet showcased a couple of episodes of Space Giants. Suddenly, I found myself taken all the way back to the age of four when I would watch Spectreman every day after kindergarten. It was just that simple. That was how #GHWP, or the Gaping Head Wound Playhouse, started. I just said hey, anyone wanna stay up late with me and watch Spectreman? And they did. Almost every night after that for weeks, months, they did, after the prime time livetweet candles had burned down and only a handful of night owls like me were still awake. We watched Spectreman episodes on YouTube and had the most wonderful time. I piggybacked off every livetweet I joined at the time, which was almost every day of the week, and I kept the fires burning late into the night with the "Midnight Spectreman" show (a take on the Midnight Special), dropping the showtimes down to a couple of days a week with "new" episodes late Friday night and "repeats" on Tuesdays until I'd run almost the entirety of Spectreman twice over. The mixed bag theme of material soon focused exclusively on its roots in Japanese superheroes, and Friday nights became the place for an hour of colorful action with spandex and giant monsters. I used my blog to promote it and, well, you can dig into those old entries promoting my old livetweets in the beginning if you feel inclined, nestled in with my unfinished Godzilla fanfic stories and other life musings.
After a lifetime of love for television horror hosts, this was as close to living the dream as I had ever come to being one without stepping in front of a camera and putting on a costume: creating YouTube playlists and having upwards of fifty people at a time show up to watch them and talk about them. My Twitter persona became the "Son of Karas," an offshoot of the colorful and memorable villains of Spectreman: Dr. Gori and Karas.
The backstory I created in my head was that I was a test tube baby grown in a lab from the combined cells of my two space ape dads, and that Gori and Karas faked their deaths at the hands of Spectreman and now run a quiet bed and breakfast in Indiana. I thought it was funny.
Eventually, I got into hosting movies as well, naming and co-founding a livetweet group called the #Filmistines to host movies on Twitter on Saturday nights. There was some level of pressure there because I felt obligated to show "better" movies than I normally would, but I think I did okay. During that time, I also went from several "guest host" spots including serving as a temporary co-host of the #MondayActionMovie livetweet as well as becoming permanent co-host of the Monday night #Cinemon livetweet. Eventually, the #Filmistines went their separate ways, but I did not want to stop hosting movies on Saturday nights. Rather than walk away from the slot, I decided to keep it going alone, branding it as the secondary branch of the Playhouse, #SpaceApeCinema, hosting movies as well as the entire original Twin Peaks series.
As Spectreman was the flagship of #GHWP, El Santo became the flagship hero of #SpaceApeCinema, inspired in large part by my late livetweet friend @GregMcCambley, who passed away from COVID last year and was also one of the people, if not the person, who ultimately convinced me to stay on Twitter to do this. With great thanks to his influence, #SpaceApeCinema developed a rich Mexican flavor I did not expect to happen. I would have thought I'd be showing nothing but Japanese movies on Saturday nights. Go figure. As of this writing, we have featured almost the entire Santo franchise and then some.
My livetweeting ability dwindled over the past few years to the point that the livetweets I was hosting myself were almost the only ones I had time for. #GHWP remains cemented in a prime-time Friday slot, the absolute worst place to fight for viewership, especially with the return of one of my lifetime heroes Joe Bob Briggs and #TheLastDriveIn stealing what's left of my audience. I'm kidding, Joe Bob. I love you, and #SpaceApeCinema finds time to feature your old MonsterVision shows several times a year because my movie livetweet show would not exist if not for horror hosts like you. Thank you for sending me a Twitter DM that one time after reading all my tweets about Slaughter High and really making my day. I hope my gushy response didn't make it weird. It probably did.
Shout out to #slutfluff on late Thursday nights being pretty much the only livetweet I can attend and don't host myself. There's also #CultShelf in a late Tuesday night slot I used to run movies on myself, but I only manage to get to that one on rare occasion. I can't tell you how much I miss #DriveInMob and wish I could join it every Thursday as well. It truly is the best livetweet out there that I am never able to attend.
On top of my ability to attend as many livetweets as I used to on a near-nightly basis, the attendance of my own livetweets dropped as well. I'm lucky to get three people on a Friday night these days, but I've always maintained it never was about attendance numbers. I always said I didn't care if no one showed up and I was livetweeting alone. I was doing this to share something I loved whether anyone saw it or not. Into the void, if necessary. Twitter became my repository for sharing what I loved and, eventually, my one home away from home. This helped keep me sane and give me some peace of mind outside of my life, and it pushed me to make time for some self-care that I might not have sought out properly for myself without making it a weekly tradition to put on a performance of commentary and trivia.
I considered going to a lot of effort to make this blog post special with image inserts and captions of some great memories, but time and energy always seem so fleeting. I just look forward to those livetweets and the momentary respite they bring. A time to laugh and unwind. I wanted to get all this out while it was strong in my mind. If anyone reading this is among that group of people I have joined in these livetweets and this livetweet community, I want you to know how much I appreciate you for spending even a second of your time with me to give me the time of day. It means a lot.
As of this writing, cut to seven years later, in 2022, and I haven't stopped. I'll be honest and say I've considered it and imagine that there will come a time that I have to, but I have managed to keep a calendar of livetweets going for seven years for #GHWP with our anniversary this Friday night and over four years of #SpaceApeCinema with our 200th movie feature this Saturday night. I hope to be able to keep doing it as long as I can.
#GHWP celebrates our seventh anniversary every Friday night in May at 10PM Eastern/9PM Central/7PM Pacific, devoting the entire month of May to Metalder, followed by our flagship hero Spectreman returning for the month of June.
#SpaceApeCinema celebrates a milestone of 200 movie livetweets over four years with the 1986 movie musical adaptation of Little Shop of Horrors this Saturday night, May 7th, at 1AM E, Midnight Central, 10PM Pacific.
