Category: media

TV Dinner

Nightmare SausageWhat ever happened to the trope of the “bad food” nighttime hallucination? It seemed like there was an era when any television-based father figure who ate a sausage and took a nap, while suffering some sort of moral quandary, would have their rest interrupted by a roaming hallucinatory spirit, or alternate-universe versions of their own children.

Cliff Huxtable eats a hoagie and bam, he’s suffering the delusion that Theo is dropping out of school and Rudy is climbing up his leg with a knife clenched between her teeth.
Huxtable and a Hoagie
For the youngsters in the crowd who might be doubting that this sort of thing happened, allow me to quote a snippet from TV.com, regarding The Cosby Show, season 6, episode 8.

Cliff dreams that the eruption of a volcano in Peru has sent spores into the drinking water and caused men to become pregnant. Cliff, Elvin, Martin and Theo are all pregnant. Theo deals with stares and unkind comments because he is an “unwed father.”

Was ergot poisoning just a lot more common back then?

The Cos wasn’t the only one to suffer through this situation (repeatedly) though, I’m fairly sure that this gag was used in quite a few shows to help grease the wheels for a seasonal ripping off of “A Christmas Carol” – heck, if I recall correctly, the entire run of Newhart was blamed on some bad “Japanese food” in the final episode.
Newhart finaleI’m reminded of this Mitch Hedburg quotation:

I hate dreaming. Because when you sleep, you wanna sleep. Dreaming is work, you know – there I am in a comfortable bed, the next thing you know I have to build a go-kart with my ex-landlord. I want a dream of me watching myself sleep.

CNN Has Questions (and Turkey)

Periodically CNN.com gets confused about who’s asking the questions, and who’s supposed to be answering them, so I pitch in a helping hand to clear up the confusion.

Uh, I believe it’s a right and then another right at the desert. Wait, no, maybe it’s a right and then – hmm.

You know what? Let me check Google maps and get back to you.

Anderson Cooper is actually already on his way over to your house to cough on your meal, so, unfortunately, yes.

CNN Front pageAye, you’ve got to punch them in their bad wing.

CNN Front pageThis isn’t actually a question, but it is a perfect example of why you want to be sure to kill and pluck your turkey before attempting to deep fry it.

Musical Spine

George 2007George Of The Jungle is a cartoon show about a man wearing animal skins swinging around the jungle. The newest iteration, launched in 2007, has pulled in high enough ratings that they’ve been allowed more than one season, but the original, launched in 1967, ran only seventeen episodes.

So what?

Well, I have a theory. George, frankly, isn’t very good. It’s too ridiculous for older children, and is entirely devoid of the educational content that assuages parental guilt about letting a small child watch TV. Both versions of the show strike me as perfect examples of mediocre television, run only to fill time for kids being babysat by the glass teat.

Old George

One of the truly weird aspects of its continued existence is the fact that this generation isn’t even really all that familiar with Tarzan, which the series is a direct spoof of – there hasn’t been a major iteration of the ape man in over a decade, although I suppose they may be familiar with the Phil Collins-filled Disney version.

So why is it still on?

My theory is that it’s the theme song. The theme song is also what got the 1997 movie, starring Brendan Frasier, made.

How could a theme song have reached out from 37 years previous to get a major motion picture put together?

Well, it was this remake, as done by Weird Al in 1985. My belief is that Al, looking for material, reached back into his childhood years and pulled out the one redeeming item that had stuck with him from the original cartoon, the music.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJDmkCDqzFU]

Maybe it was a young go-getter, maybe it was a studio exec with a kid constantly playing Weird Al, but at some point the licensing must have crossed some listener’s desk, and the spark of resurrection was born.

I realize it may sound crazy, but: how many people can honestly say they’ve seen Saturday Night Fever? How many people are familiar with it because of Stayin’ Alive (the song, not the sequel film)?

Staying Alive

The original Shaft is another great example. A lot of folks know who is the man that would risk his neck for his brother man, but, when pressed on the details, they’ve got little info. Still, Samuel L. Jackson shafted us all out of admission fees in 2000.

Eye Of The Tiger got three or four more Rocky movies made, and the catchy Pink Panther theme launched an entire franchise separate from the Peter Sellers character.

I’m sure there are many missing examples, please feel free to chastise me with their titles in the comments.

The Passing of Ingrid Pitt

Ingrid Pitt

Nuts – we’ve lost another Hammer Horror alumni, and cult figure from the ’70s horror scene.

From the BBC:

[…]

She added that she wanted her mother to be remembered as the Countess Dracula with the “wonderful teeth and the wonderful bosom”.

Official Hammer historian Marcus Hearn paid tribute to the star, calling her a “talented actress and fine writer”.

He added: “She was partly responsible for ushering in a bold and brazen era of sexually explicitly horror films in the 1970s, but that should not denigrate her abilities as an actress.”

A good friend of the actress, Mr Hearn said she was “gloriously uninhibited” and “great fun to be with”.

The horrorati can complain about the down turn that Hammer took in the ’70s, but it’s my personal opinion that the Hammer legacy we have today wouldn’t have survived as strongly as it has if not for the schlock they put out during that decade.
Tea with Ingrid

Music Of The People

Kim Jong-il in Team America

RetroJim and I got into a minor tangent the other day regarding the lack of modern “The True Tale of —” songs. The last one Jim could recall was The Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, which sounded about right to me as it came at the tail end of the ’60s folk revival.

That got me thinking about rap, however, as it strikes me as the only current venue that is supposedly telling true tales of the downtrodden – so, obviously, rap is the new folk music.

That’s when I encountered this CNN article:

“Mok Nah No Sah”

That’s a Korean acronym for “people who put up their lives to sing.” And that’s a new underground rap group in South Korea that’s blasting North Korea and the regime of Kim Jong-Il.

The group’s lyrics include cursing and abusive language against the North Korean leader and his youngest son, who’s been tapped to take over the reins of leadership from his reclusive father.

(Apparently acronym means something different in Korean.)

These folks are literally risking their lives to take up a worthy political cause in the form of art, and that takes gumption. Sure, they’re in South, and not North, Korea, but Kim Jong-il has always been happy to reach out across international lines as he pleases.

A reminder from the wikipedia:

In 1978, on Kim’s orders, South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee were kidnapped in order to build a North Korean film industry.

The group have taken precautions though, and not in the usual “tucking a pistol in their pants” method that we might see here in North America.

“We haven’t received any threats, but it’s true that we’re scared,” the rap group’s leader, who goes by the pseudonym Michelangelo, told Yonhap. “If our faces are known, I think North Korea could attack us.”

This is where, for me at least, the questions began.

Michelangelo?

For now, all members of the group have taken on names from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon, but their message remains serious.

Ruh-roh, I’ve seen how this rapping & ninja turtle game ends, and it doesn’t involve anyone having a continuing career.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx7dt0Wscpc]

Disappear

Image from Crushable.com (Image from crushable.com)

Criss Angel is one of those personal annoyances* I forget about until some ridiculous bit of info surfaces in the media. This time, however, he hasn’t been revealed as a edit-happy sham – no, he’s got a new product to push.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oF4ZfQYuzd4]

Film editing suite, to cover up lack of of skill, not included.

If you ignore his grating stage persona, or that he attempts to re-brand even these simple tricks as MINDFREAKS, you’re left with the fact that this is almost EXACTLY the present my parents bought my brother for Christmas when he as 9 or 10.

You can try to adult it up all you like, but I don’t think making a ping-pong ball disappear from the interior of a cup has ever helped him open a conversation with an intriguing female. (I could be wrong.)

Did you know Angel had a band before he was famous? They were called Angeldust, and their first item was entitled “Musical Conjurings from the World of Illusion”. I kid you not.

*I do give him props for calling out Uri Geller.

You Again?

Sometimes CNN gets confused and requires a little help.

I am here to provide that clarification.

All of these items are from today’s front page.
Chilean Miners Traveling BandThey forgot the punctuation on this one, but my guess is, based on the recent reunions of both The Backstreet Boys and The New Kids On The Block, and the depressed look on these people’s faces, that Menudo is about to announce a comeback tour for its late-’70s line-up.

Haunting Questions

  • That ghost-Priest that keeps interrupting sexually-charged moments to scold unmarried fornicators.
  • Well, we wanted to save up enough money for a place that wasn’t haunted first.
  • At least it’s better than cutting loud-mouthed Uncle Teddy.

Harry Potter I’ve never heard of this scrappy Potter kid, hopefully this gets him some press coverage.

FacebookThe afterlife is full of people trying to get me to play Mafia Wars? I’ll pass.