Thank You Za Za

 

Thank you Za Za








    The many hours wasting teenage time watching local TV may have rotted our brains but it did fill us with hours of campy, absurd dialogue. Cashing in on the surfer craze in So Cal channel 9 aka KHJ created a show called  "Surf's Up" with host Stan Richards. Richards was a DJ on radio station KHJ where they also celebrated Hot Rods and other fleeting fragments of early 60's pop culture. "Surf's Up" was an hour long show on Sunday evenings with the surf sound of the band "the Challengers."  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSGindvHIto  I doubt we could ever endure an entire hour but we did dip into the show a few times just to make jokes about this lame attempt to be cutting edge surfer cool as expressed by middle-aged executives. Stan Richards was supposed to be a film maker dealing with the surfing lifestyle after seeing the success of the very cool "Endless Summer" that made some dough at the time. However, Richards did have a great radio voice but he was older than the teens who he tried to woo onto his shows. Stan had come out to LA from New England where he hosted record shows as early as 1954 and his deep, fully adult voice in a teen world had some gravitas. In one of the oft-repeated commercials of the day KHJ had dragged out Za Za Gabor who long before the Kardasians was famous for being famous. Za Za was a guest on talk shows like Jack Parr and had nine husbands which made her remarkable, if not talented. In the commercial Za Za of all people was teaming up with Stan Richards for some kind of coverage of a holiday Parade of some kind. She begins by calling out to him "Stan! Stan Darling!" Stan with his smooth baritone answered "Thank You...Za Za!" It tickled us and Greg was able to mimic Richards and oft repeated his words related to anything he felt like at the time.




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