#guy caballero

[mortifiedandawesome]

[super8my]

So….do you think it’s about our Guy?? 🤔

[autolykiss]

proud to be the first guy caballero editor

[marlowinc]

Safe journey, Joe Flaherty. Of course you would pass away on April Fool's Day.

[qupritsuvwix]

‘SCTV’ star and comedian Joe Flaherty has died at 82 after an illness, his daughter says

Comedian Joe Flaherty, a founding member of the Canadian sketch series “SCTV,” has died.

[wanderingmind867]

Follow me down this rambling thought:

SNL during the Dick Ebersol years was very good (or it was the best SNL ever was). And it had a few ties to SCTV (Martin Short, Robin Duke and Tony Rosato), so I want to imagine something so I can tie SCTV and their concept to SNL of the 80s.

So follow me here (maybe I can add this to my idea from before): Guy Caballero was secretly in charge of SNL and he was using Ebersol as a puppet (or at least he claims this happened. There may be no proof). In this way, SNL can be tied to SCTV. Maybe we can also try and find a way to say SNL personalities of the early 80s (like Buckwheat, Dr. Jack Badofsky and Norman Thurm). This is rambly, but my point is: I like when sketches share characters between them. If SNL did more wraparounds like what SCTV did, I'd like it a little bit more. I mean, just imagine Earl Camembert and Rosanne Rosannadanna together. Or even if more SNL characters interacted with each other! It'd be fun!

[wildepotato]

Another full page of SCTV sketches comment below who else I should doodle and what scene

[nextbigaiello]

Count Floyd...Why Was He Just EVERYWHERE!?

Okay so like I should preface that I have no problem with Count Floyd. On the contrary. I actually love Count Floyd and the fact that SCTV news anchor Floyd Robertson was his alter ego. The two could’ve just been two separate Joe Flaherty characters that had the same name, but they actually went out of their way to make the connection, and I absolutely love that. I already loved Floyd and his clear superiority over Earl Camembert, and adding onto his character with another opposing side really upgraded him to one of my favorite characters in SCTV. Both are hilarious characters. Floyd’s straight and narrow need to mock Earl and just tell the news for the adults while trying to be a recovering alcoholic, and his switch to a goofy and child friendly who knows he’s shelling out shit on Saturday nights make the character more than just one note. It really makes me happy when they acknowledge that both Floyds are the same Floyd in universe. The first time was in the very first edition of Monster Chiller Horror Theatre (from series 1, episode 18), where it was clearly mentioned in the opening credits: "With Floyd Robertson as Count Floyd." During one newscast, Earl gave a heartfelt testimonial to Floyd who had been at Rolling Hills Rehabilitation Center for the past year, mentioning that in addition to his news career, he had delighted children for years as Count Floyd. Another was in the very last edition of SCTV News (from series 6, episode 17), where an obviously inebriated Robertson showed up late to the newscast after a Monster Chiller Horror Theatre taping, still wearing his Count Floyd makeup. During that broadcast, he announced that Monster Chiller Horror Theatre's sound engineer was retiring, thus completely upstaging Camembert's announcement that he was retiring from the newscast; which is my favorite moment of this. Floyd Robertson being Count Floyd was a favorite fun fact of mine. But, the two characters started to separate and one got more attention than the other.

Sure! As is to come with great characters! Count Floyd had a powerful personality that was much stronger than regular Floyd Robertson, who was typically just the straight man to Earl’s antics. It is to be expected that more extravagant and formulaic characters would be more popular and thus be used more often. There’s nothing wrong with this. It just personally saddens me in this particular case because I really liked that Floyd Robertson was Count Floyd and had another side to him that could be let loose, and they just kind of threw that away making me wonder why they would go out of their way to combine the two if one side was going to have more of a separate impact. I don’t know. But don’t think that I hated Count Floyd because of his popularity boost. No no. He was still great; with his werewolf howl that he had and I never noticed as to why a vampire would howl nor seemed to care until Joe Flaherty on a podcast decided to call everyone out for not realizing it and now I feel dumb.....thanks Joe. But Count Floyd and Monster Chiller Horror Theatre was great! But Count Floyd was used A LOT with other projects and I don’t know necessarily why.

In SCTV, it didn’t bother me that Count Floyd became his own entity and focused on Monster Chiller Horror Theatre and being scary more often. But it was when he spun off into other media that I started to wonder....why the hell is Count Floyd in this?

Count Floyd (1982):

So this is a mini album....a VERY MINI ALBUM. There’s only four songs and they’re all strange. It's basically a comedy album and it sells that really well. I just don’t know exactly why they made it, especially in the height of SCTV. But prominent writers Dick Blasucci, Mike Short, and Paul Flaherty helped write and produce this with Joe, so there was some strength with this. It's just a strange little thing (literally) that kind of just escapes under the radar. If you want to check it out, go ahead. But don’t use it to nod off and get a lot of work done.

“The Weapon”, Rush (1984): https://youtu.be/iTBx0P0zOqA

Now I just stumbled on this today, but I feel like it should have a small mention. It’s not crazy like the other stuff I’ll talk about. In fact, its really cool and dope. It's interesting because this is just after SCTV, and we know Bob and Doug McKenzie were able to have Geddy Lee on their album in ‘81 due to Moranis knowing Lee from school, and we all know just how popular the McKenzies were and still kind of are. But Count Floyd had an opening video for the song “The Weapon” on Rush’s Signals and Grace Under Pressure tours, and it's a nice little fit. They use him well and it looks like everyone had fun.

The Completely Mental Misadventures Of Ed Grimley (1988)/ Cartoon Planet (90s): https://youtu.be/DcNi9qoaKqM

This is an interesting choice. Not a bad choice. Just an interesting one. The Completely Mental Misadventures Of Ed Grimley is really fun and weird and I highly recommend seeing it if you haven’t already. Even for an SCTV fan, it's very weird. Each episode actually pauses and takes time out to dedicate time to Count Floyd, which are live action segments against the cartoon world. It was no longer about scary movies and 3-D glasses, but a show about Count Floyd telling scary stories to an audience of kids who would mock him and tell him he wasn’t scary. But Count Floyd knew that the child friendly content wasn’t scary, and he always tried to make it sound scary so he could get paid.....that’s what his character was. But now he’s almost insulted now, when really the real Floyd could tell those kids to take a flying leap if he could. The reason for Count Floyd being on the show is because its Ed Grimley’s favorite show. Fair enough. I just think this starts a “Count Floyd is really just for kids” idea. Not that we wasn’t supposed to be something kids couldn’t watch, but Count Floyd and especially SCTV was something for all ages, and Count Floyd was meant as kind of a parody of those kinds of child friendly/spooky hosts from the 50s and 70s, so it wasn’t to be too sincere. But this started the trend of child friendly Count Floyd, and it would only go downhill from here.

Cartoon Planet just recycled the segments years later so they could have content. It features the characters from Space Ghost: Coast to Coast in a way that they’re trying to connect the two, but its clunky.

Making Real Funny Home Videos (1990): https://youtu.be/wLCDwrLCOVA

God this fucking thing-SO...I hate this. ‘Why’ is the biggest question I have for this. I don’t know the reasoning for this. All I know is that its dumb Count Floyd camp.

Basically what it is, is a “how to” style video in which Count Floyd....fully as Count Floyd, mugs to the camera for 30min and fails at teaching people how to make America’s Funniest Home Video videos. I’m annoyed by this VHS tape because this completely ruins the Floyd lore and makes Count Floyd this somewhat unstable and sad man. He has a full ass family; in SCTV he was “living with a girl and he wasn’t even married”, but also alluded to having a nephew. He never gets out of the character, and it kind of seems like he just kidnapped this family. Its less charming because this isn’t the same character from SCTV. This is a mad man who thinks he’s a vampire.

Look it isn’t the worst thing ever like I’m making it out to be. Its just character assassination in an extreme sense and its not even that funny. But I would at least check it out once if you want to see a strange little VHS score.

Smoke Detectives with Count Floyd (1990): https://youtu.be/2xb_My1HN6c

-_-

Must Be Santa (1999): https://youtu.be/1uXB9IR9vOw

A Canadian lifetime movie from 1999 has Count Floyd in it for a rough estimate of ten minutes. I also found this today. I skipped through it just so I could see how big a part he plays in the movie, and again....he doesn’t. The reason he’s there is because the main character’s name is Floyd Count, and the North Pole or whatever tries to do research on him because he’s like the new Santa, but Count Floyd shows up on the monitor instead and won’t shut the fuck up. It is a dumb cameo because its probably to be expected that they called the main character Floyd Count just so they could make this joke. But Count Floyd doesn’t do anything except howl and do intros to Monster Chiller Horror Theatre. A small cameo, but a dumb one nonetheless.

“Nightlife”, The Wet Secrets (2014): https://youtu.be/zYV1K3wyCnQ

It took a while, but this is a really good Count Floyd cameo. Well, I shouldn’t say its a Count Floyd cameo, more that its actually a Joe Flaherty cameo in which he plays a vampire. The music video is really cool and I appreciate it on a greater level because it kind of shows the difference between the past and the present and getting older, and how everything sucks, and especially that Joe Flaherty doesn’t need all this youthful shit that we have now. It's a really great video and song, and the end of the video gets me every time!

A Conclusion

Count Floyd is a really great character. I love his howl, his painted on widows peak, and his desire to sell kids cheap 3-D glasses for a stupidly large price. I love the fact that he was this alter ego to his staunch opposite, and the two could coexist together. I’m just annoyed that there were too many changes to cash in on popularity. If Count Floyd and Floyd Robertson were still the same person, Count Floyd wouldn't have been in those kid oriented projects. Because I like to think that Floyd Robertson has dignity (I mean as much as he can being an alcoholic). I like to think that Joe Flaherty is above this, and I think my grievances mostly stem from that.

No one talks about Joe Flaherty in the same sense of every other cast member from SCTV or the Second City stage. Sure hardcore comedy people will regale him as comedy gold, but that’s because he is. But there’s only so much I can take when I can only describe him to people as the dad from Freaks and Geeks and the “Jackass” guy from Happy Gilmore. And I’m not discrediting those roles at all. I love Freaks and Geeks and the part he plays in the show, I just wanted him to do more with that show! And Happy Gilmore is a really good movie and I actually really like that he’s given a somewhat big role in it. Joe Flaherty just flies under the radar for most people and it makes me sad. Especially when a lot of movies he does get to be a part of, they’re usually shit (Dogmatic, A Pig’s Tale, Home On The Range), or no one has ever heard of them or acknowledges him in the small role he plays (Going Berserk, Stripes, Snowboard Academy, Used Cars, Back To The Future Part II, etc..). Sesame Street Presents: Follow That Bird is my favorite movie of all time (sharing the #1 spot with My Blue Heaven) and Joe Flaherty is a big reason as to why that movie is continuously great. I just wish he got more recognition, and had film and tv roles that weren’t so cheap. He’s a comedy icon, and I want him to be treated as such. Count Floyd was a great character for him, but so was Floyd Robertson...and Guy Caballero...and Sammy Maudlin...and Norman Gorman, and Big Jim McBob, and so many others!

In the end, I just want Joe Flaherty and his creations to be cherished fondly. I want the character of Count Floyd to be the same Floyd from the very beginning with no hang ups and children to kick him while he’s down. Because then I know that comedy can still be just as funny throughout the years without aggressive changes that shoots for too low or too general an audience. Everyone can laugh at Count Floyd trying to describe the plot to the lost footage of “Blood Sucking Monkeys From West Mifflin Pennsylvania”, but I can’t say the same for adult child Count Floyd. To take from Guy Caballero and his wheelchair, all Count Floyd needs is some respect.