USA discovers Dr. Ruehl!

The USA has discovered Dr. Ruehl! The USA Network, that is, which is featuring cult television legend and rising mainstream personality Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D in its popular “Characters Welcome” ad campaign.

What’s more, the Doctor’s legendary cult TV show is being offered across the universe online. And he’s being honored in the new movie from the producers of Napoleon Dynamite.

Ruehlmania is catching on!

Newcomers to the Tabloid Baby universe know Dr. Ruehl as a runner up for Tabloid Baby’s person of the year for 2005. “The nuclear physicist turned public access cult hero is television’s most indefatigable and optimistic personality,” we wrote. “On the brief and lamented return of A Current Affair, he led a groundbreaking and historic Bigfoot expedition, and brought celebrity coverage to new heights. Dr. Ruehl is one of a kind, and television nabobs will one day realize it.”

But Dr. Ruehl has been a valuable part of the Tabloid Baby universe since the start, contributing the popular “Ask Dr. Ruehl” column on the original Tabloidbaby.com and, in 2000, recipient of the very first Tabloid Baby commendation.

Dr. Ruehl does not merely represent everything that's good and indefatigable about the show business spirit. He's an actual nuclear physicist with a degree from UCLA, a noted researcher and lecturer who somewhere along the line went off the beaten path and into the realms of the unknown-- dedicating his life and career to the scientific evidence for UFOs and ETs, paranormal phenomena, cryptozoological entities, enigmatic structures, anomalous entities, and anything else of an intriguing and unusual nature.

All of it is poured into his long-running and influential cable television series, Mysteries From Beyond The Other Dominion.

We discovered the show and star a decade ago while producing a paranormal-themed syndicated television series and watching TV in the Hollywood Hills with veteran producer and tabloid television innovator Wayne Darwen.

The doctor sat at a desk in front of primitive green screen effects, and lectured on old sci fi movies, Biblical mentions of invisibility, and UFO sightings. When he took a break, instead of cutting to a commercial, the camera trained on a two-headed plastic dinosaur on his desk while the Doctor audibly sipped a glass of water. He came back, drove a straw through a potato, pointed at the camera and shouted, “May the power of the Cosmos… be with you! Yes! Yes! Yes!” as he and the desk flew off into the green screen cosmos.

We couldn’t tell how old the video was, whether he was dead or alive, if he was transmitting from space— if it was the tequila or the weed…

We found out the next day that Dr. Franklin Ruehl, Ph.D was alive and well and lively in Glendale, recording his show each week from the public access studio in Eagle Rock section of Los Angeles.

The man who hosted one of the first four shows to debut on the Sci Fi Channel became a regular on the series, Strange Universe—one of the many television shows, from Jimmy Kimmel to Tom Green to Extra, that would make use of his talents. Most recently, he was a fixture on the retooled A Current Affair, crashing Hollywood premieres and leading the expedition into Manitoba, Canada to track down Bigfoot.

His work on the Bigfoot series led to the call from movie producer Jeremy Coon, who was in Portland, Oregon shooting The Sasquatch Dumpling Gang, and rewriting to base a character on the real Dr. Ruehl. A Current Affair producers planned visit to the film’s set— but the show was canceled! We do know the film includes a character named Dr. Artimus Snodgrass—played by Carl “Apollo Creed” Weathers! (Dr. Ruehl himself will star in the Frozen Pictures documentary feature, “Bigfoot! The Mystery of Norway House,” now in pre-production.)

Earlier this month, the USA Network taped a spot with the good doctor in Dallas, in which he drives not one but ten straws into a potato in one minute.

It’s available now online and is part of a commercial now airing on USA, NBC, and his alma mater, Sci-Fi.

Meanwhile, Hungryflix is offering episodes of Mysteries From Beyond The Other Dominion for downloading, so you can carry Dr. Ruehl around on your i-Pod or PSP!

Now, perhaps Dr. Ruehl will get his due at last!

And if some smart young network executive wants to hear the pitch for “Dr. Ruehl’s Dance Party”-- featuring an Amazon B-movie queen and an albino Yeti dancing in a cage— contact this site!

And may the power of the Cosmos be with you! Yes! Yes! Yes!