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What was the name of the employer Joe Bob Briggs work for from 1978 to 1982?
Joe Bob Briggs John Irving Bloom ( born January 27 , 1953 ) , known by the stage name Joe Bob Briggs , is an American syndicated film critic , writer , actor , and comic performer . He is known for having hosted the TNT television series MonsterVision from 1996 to 2000 , and The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder from 2018–present . Early years . Bloom was born in Dallas , the son of Thelma Louise ( née Berry ) and Rudolph Lewis Bloom . He was raised in Little Rock , Arkansas , and attended Vanderbilt University on a journalism sports-writing scholarship . He began his writing career at Texas Monthly and Dallas Times Herald . While a movie reviewer at the Herald , he created the humorous persona of Joe Bob Briggs to review exploitation films and other genre films . Persona . Briggss acting persona is that of an unapologetic redneck Texan with an avowed love of the drive-in theater . He specializes in humorous but appreciative reviews of B-movies and cult films , which he calls drive-in movies ( as distinguished from indoor bullstuff ) . In addition to his usual parody of urbane , high-brow movie criticism , his columns characteristically include colorful tales of woman-troubles and high-spirited brushes with the law , tales which inevitably conclude with his rush to catch a movie at a local drive-in , usually with female companionship . Briggs revealed in an interview with James Rolfe that he intended the character to have an ambiguous sounding name and initially thought of calling himself Bubba Rodriguez , but was told that the name Rodriguez would be perceived as racist and decided to go with The whitest name I could come up with . The reviews typically end with a brief rating of the movie in questions high points , including the types of action ( represented by nouns naming objects used in fight scenes suffixed with -fu ) , the number of bodies , number of female breasts bared , the notional number of total pints of blood spilt , and for appropriately untoward movies , a vomit meter . A typical summarization would read , no dead bodies . One hundred seventeen breasts . Multiple aardvarking . Lap dancing . Cage dancing . Convenience-store dancing . Blindfold aardvarking . Blind-MAN aardvarking . Lesbo Fu . Pool cue-fu . Drive-In Academy Award nominations for Tane McClure . Joe Bob says check it out . Originally , Briggss film reviews were limited to pictures shown at local drive-ins . Later , after a tongue-in-cheek battle with his own convictions in Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive In , he also began reviewing films released on VHS and DVD . Reaction to redevelopment of 42nd Street . During the early 1980s when New York City was in the planning stages of redeveloping its run-down 42nd Street , Times Square area , which included closing many grindhouses showing B-movies on double and triple bills around the clock , as well as many porn theaters , Joe Bob expressed great opposition . He encouraged a postcard-fu campaign , i.e. , encouraging film fans to write to New York City officials and pressure them into saving the one place in New York City you could see a decent drive-in movie . He felt the 42nd Street movie houses rightfully belonged to all Americans and should be preserved as places where Charles Bronson can be seen thirty feet high , as God intended . Leaving the Dallas Times Herald . In 1985 , Briggs wrote a column about the We Are the World video , in which he wrote a mocking description of starving African children , and made derogatory comments about the American Negro College Fund . The resulting controversy ended Blooms position at the Dallas Times Herald , though his syndicated column merely changed distributors . One-man shows . In July 1985 , Joe Bobs one-man show , An Evening with Joe Bob Briggs , debuted in Cleveland . Later re-titled Joe Bob Dead in Concert for home release , the show evolved into a theatrical piece involving storytelling , comedy and music . The show was performed in more than 50 venues over the next two years , including Carolines on Broadway in New York and regular engagements at Wolfgangs and the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco , as well as convention centers , theaters , music clubs and other comedy clubs . In 2019 , Joe Bob began performing a new one-man show , How Rednecks Saved Hollywood , at genre film festivals and revival movie houses across the United States . Television . In 1986 , as a result of the stage show , Joe Bob was asked to be a guest host on Drive-in Theater , a late- night B-movie show on The Movie Channel ( TMC ) , related network of Showtime . Briggs went over so well that he was eventually signed to a long-term contract . Joe Bobs Drive-in Theater became the networks highest-rated show and ran for almost ten years , and was twice nominated for the industrys Cable ACE Award . He appeared on some 50 talk shows , including The Tonight Show ( twice ) and Larry King Live . He was also a commentator for a Fox TV news magazine for two seasons . He also appeared in episodes of the eighth season of Married.. . with Children as Billy Ray Wet Nap , co-owner of Pest Boys Pest Control . Joe Bobs Drive-in Theater ended when TMC changed its format in early 1996 . He was off the air for only four months before joining the TNT network , where he hosted MonsterVision for four years . That show ended in July 2000 , when TNT likewise changed format . In 2011 , the most definitive account of the MonsterVision series ( including interviews with Briggs and series mailgirl Honey Gregory ) appeared on the cult movie website , Mondo Video . In the late 90s he also spent two seasons as a commentator on Comedy Centrals The Daily Show ( under his given name John Bloom ) , with a recurring segment called God stuff beginning on the 2nd ever episode in 1996 . He starred in Frank Henenlotters documentary Herschell Gordon Lewis – Godfather of Gore . In 2018 , the horror-themed subscription video on demand service Shudder , owned and operated by AMC , signed Joe Bob for a new series The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs , which premiered as a 13-film marathon on July 13 , 2018 . During the premiere , Shudders servers crashed as a result of an overwhelming number of subscribers attempting to access the services new Live Stream feature . Despite the server errors , the series received critical acclaim from critics and horror fans alike . On July 20 , Shudder announced on social media that Joe Bob would return , which was realized as two shorter marathons on Thanksgiving and Christmas Day . Beginning on March 29 , The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs marked the return to his double feature format , streaming live on Friday nights , and streaming on-demand on Shudder after the live streaming premieres . The second season of The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs started on April 24th , 2020 consisting of 10 films . On February 23rd , 2021 , Joe Bob Briggs announced on Twitter that Season 3 of The Last Drive-in with Joe Bob Briggs on Shudder will start on April 16th , 2021 . During these TV years , Briggs remained active as a writer , working as a contributing editor to the National Lampoon , freelancing for Rolling Stone , Playboy , The Village Voice , and Interview . He was the regular humor columnist and theater critic at National Review , and he published five books of satire—Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-in , A Guide to Western Civilization , or My Story , Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive-in , The Cosmic Wisdom of Joe Bob Briggs , and Iron Joe Bob , his homage to the mens movement . He also wrote and performed in special shows for Fox and Showtime , and collaborated with veteran comedy writer Norman Steinberg on an NBC sitcom that remains unproduced . His two syndicated newspaper columns , Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-in and Joe Bobs America , were picked up by The New York Times Syndicate in the 90s , and he continued to write both until putting the columns on hiatus in 1998 . For one year he wrote a humorous sex advice column in Penthouse . In November 2000 he started writing the Drive-in column again , this time for United Press International , along with a second column , The Vegas Guy , which chronicles Joe Bobs weekly forays into the casinos of America . In 2003 , Briggs delivered Profoundly Disturbing : Shocking Movies That Changed History . In 1998 , Bloom retired from writing newspaper reviews , only to return two years later due to popular demand and continue his column as Joe Bob with UPI . Bloom has also appeared on television as a host of TNTs MonsterVision horror movie marathons , and has an internet website , The Joe Bob Report , with collections of movie reviews and other articles . Briggs was president of the Trinity Foundation of Dallas , a non-denominational , non-profit public foundation that serves as a religious watchdog group and publishes The Door , a Christian satire magazine , of which Briggs was a regular columnist and investigative reporter . Some of the efforts of Blooms religious watchdog reporting and satire were featured ( under his given name John Bloom ) in God Stuff , a regular segment in the first two seasons of The Daily Show . Books . Joe Bob Briggs movie reviews are collected in the now out-of-print books Joe Bob Goes to the Drive In and Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive In . His most recent books , Profoundly Erotic : Sexy Movies that Changed History and Profoundly Disturbing : Shocking Movies that Changed History , contain all-new material . Recently , Briggs has contributed audio commentaries to DVDs released by Media Blasters and Elite Entertainment including Jesse James Meets Frankensteins Daughter , The Double-D Avenger , Michael Findlays Blood Sisters , Warlock Moon , Samurai Cop , I Spit on Your Grave , and several Ray Dennis Steckler films including The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies and Blood Shack . Joe Bob Briggs appeared as himself in the 2008 novel Bad Moon Rising by Jonathan Maberry . Joe Bob is one of several real-world horror celebrities who are in the fictional town of Pine Deep when monsters attack . Other celebrities include Tom Savini , Jim ORear , Brinke Stevens , Ken Foree , Stephen Susco , Debbie Rochon , James Gunn and blues man Mem Shannon . Under his given name , John Bloom , he also co-wrote the nonfiction book Evidence of Love : The Candy Montgomery Story ( 1984 ) . The book recounts the 1980 Wylie , Texas murder case in which Montgomery killed her ex-lovers wife , Betty Gore , by striking her a total of 41 times with an axe and whose highly publicized trial ended in an unexpected not guilty verdict . The book was made into the CBS television film A Killing in a Small Town ( 1990 ) , starring Barbara Hershey . In 2016 , also under his given name , he wrote the nonfiction book Eccentric Orbits : The Iridium Story in which he traces the conception , development , and launching of the Iridium satellite constellation and the race to save it from destruction . Filmography . Podcast appearances . Briggs appeared on Ken Reids TV Guidance Counselor podcast on June 16 , 2016 , as well as the podcasts Frightday on July 11 , 2018 , Astonishing Legends Podcast on December 9 , 2018 , and The Last Podcast on the Left on March 28 , 2019 . Bibliography . - Evidence of Love : A True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs ( 1984 ) with Jim Atkinson , - Joe Bob Goes to the Drive-in ( 1987 ) , - A Guide to Western Civilization , or : My Story ( 1988 ) , - Joe Bob Goes Back to the Drive-in ( 1990 ) , - The Cosmic Wisdom of Joe Bob Briggs ( 1990 ) , - Iron Joe Bob ( 1992 ) , - Profoundly Disturbing : Shocking Movies that Changed History ! ( 2003 ) , - Profoundly Erotic : Sexy Movies that Changed History ( 2005 ) , - Eccentric Orbits : The Iridium Story ( 2016 ) , External links . - Official website - ACME Joe Bob Briggs - Interview with Kittenpants.org - Interview at The Onion AV Clu