The Bugaloos

I can thank Sid and Marty Krofft for keeping me off drugs during my adolescence. Their work filled my head with strange and disturbing images at an impressionable age, and for many years I was unable to substantiate what I'd seen as fact or fiction. In high school, when friends offered me drugs, I had no problem saying, "Nooooo, thank you!" I didn't necessarily know what tripping felt like, but I had enough flashbacks in my head and I didn't want any more.

In college, I met a few kindred souls who were suffering from the same Sid and Marty Krofft psychosis. Just what had we seen? How much of it was real? We formed a small support group (aka, cluster of smokers) to discuss our experiences. In time a name emerged: The Bugaloos.

Or, as I should say in my Benita Bizarre voice, "The BUG-a-Loos!"



It was such a relief to learn that the flying people and bee thing and the scary person with feathers on her head were not just figments of my imagination. My unease hasn't exactly been quelled by a reintroduction to the show, however. The Krofft's have gone on record declaring that drugs never influenced their creations and yet... the only other explanation I can think of for The Bugaloos is that the Kroffts, during the show's creation, were restricted the bargain bin of a drag queen marquee's going out of business sale. How else can one explain a villian, covered in feathers, who keeps a Third Reich rat for a butler, drives a shoe that wears sunglasses and lives in a jukebox? Or heroes who live inside flowers and speak only in 1970's slang to plants from the Bronx?

The plot of the show hinges on Benita Bizarre's (the feathered villian) desire to become a rock n' roll sensation. This goal is often furthered by kidnapping some innocent and either strapping them into a horrible machine or using them to lure the Bugaloos into a trap. But if this show teaches us anything, it's that you can't outwit fairy people and good help is hard to find.




I could probably write for hours about The Bugaloos. It's a weird show with weird characters in weird settings and weird story lines. But the theme song is damn catchy, and I will always be grateful for the message that I derived even as a very young child: stay off drugs. Seriously.