It seems to me there’s been a lot of commercial time dedicated to the new Fox Human Target series.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mg7Yv3aWc8w]
I’ll be frank, it looks quite a bit like a standard contemporary spy-thriller TV show.
You know what was way better? Human Target (1992).
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b7JrOj6HAc]
He had a flying wing!
He had a machine that could give him any face!
He was Rick “Jessie’s Girl” Springfield!
I was introduced to Ke$ha by last night’s Conan O’Brien. In case you missed it:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbMWaNKWrN4]
Of course I was outraged, it’s obvious that the entire setup is a rip off of a famous act from the late 1980s.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMKT0gGEBJQ]
Dear Plink-Plonk Commercials With a Wispy Vocal,
Stop it.
Sincerely,
Sincerely
I was a boy who burrowed deep into his family’s basement. On weekends I would often creep out of bed and into the rec room, flip the set on low and hunker close to take in the ridiculous beauty of late night TV. Sure, I watched a lot of Weird TV, and that odd show about the fellow who has had his identity stolen by some corporation, but what I was really tuning in for was the 3am broadcast of Elvira’s Movie Macabre.
Earlier in life I’d been given pretty open access to a selection of terrible films via the Uncle of a friend of mine, but Movie Macabre was really my introduction to the beauty of trashy horror. Late-night-movie TV hosts are rare these days, but thanks to the internet bad movies are always on hand, and to quote such a film, it’s always midnight somewhere.
My two favourite torchbearers maintain the D.I.Y. feel while providing plenty of crap movies:
The Right Reverend Chumley has been sporadically releasing episodes of Cult Of UHF since 2005,and his film selections are an interesting mixed bag of ancient public domain mixed with newer (i.e. colour) horror, scifi and action b-movies.
Count Gore De Vol‘s Creature Feature is a classic horror style show that puts out a film every week or two, but I find its website a little tough to contend with, so you may be interested in its (free) itunes podcast link.
I was watching the the glass teat the other day and was shown a commercial for some Minipops knock off CD for kids. The formula is familiar: take popular music (in this case Top 40 Hits of the ’60s through ’80s), clean up any lyrics that might be off-putting, then have some overly self-possessed children squeal it all into microphones while cousin Eddie and his band play backup.
This isn’t the commercial in question, but a demonstration of the genre:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfpL41Pwj50]
I’ve been unable to locate the original commercial in question, but it contained a remake of a certain hit for Jimmy Soul, a hit re-written to tell children to do whatever makes them happy for the rest of their lives. Great message, and I could see some 5-year-old girl falling in love with those happy tones, tucking that song away as a secret method of brightening a bad day, and then hitting fifteen and suddenly encountering the original:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh9ZZgDqzAg]
Ugh.
(I found Kris & Scott’s Daily Affirmation ably demolished that festering nugget.)
This is a scan from the back of an old Green Lantern comic I had kicking around my office.
The game was so lacking in fun they had to make up a bunch of fake reviews, passed off as comedy, to try and sell it – a ploy so lame that it limps home with “The Boston Orb”, which isn’t even trying to be humourous so much as just not lawsuit inducing.
In the end, despite the fact that it was pretty widely advertised, “James Bond As Seen In Octopussy”, (the official title) never made it to market. There’s a bit of conjecture out there as to what happened, but I’m betting that listening to the same 8 bars of the Bond theme while murdering an endless supply of generic bandits atop The Möbius Strip Express is something closer to secret agent hell than a game.
Dear Turner Classic Movies,
I’m concerned about Robert Osborne, he’s looking quite gaunt. Is he OK?
Ever faithful,
My Paranoia
I realize I’m kicking around the bowels of TV-commercialism a bit, but it reminded me that I needed to look into something; I’ve been getting funny looks when I imply the “Stop having a boring tuna, stop having a boring life.” guy has a name beyond Vince – part of the problem was that I couldn’t recall his show-surname, I just knew it was something like “Vince Sales” or “Vince Crapyouwannabuy”.
Now, thanks to wikipedia, my memory is refreshed:
Offer “Vince” Shlomi (born April 25, 1964 in Haifa, Israel) also known as Vince Offer or the ShamWow! Guy, is a writer, director, and comedian widely known as the owner and pitchman of two sold-on-TV products: ShamWow! absorbent towels and the Slap Chop food chopper.
– more
Almost more interestingly: Vince Offer is apparently a failed comedian. While hawking his unsellable film, The Underground Comedy Movie, he accidentally stumbled into the fact that people will buy anything at 3 in the morning.
Comedy movie? Well – sort of:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQZXta68jlc]
I don’t mean to be that guy, MSNBC, but regarding Yankee Stadium and the halls of the dead, maybe you want a comparative preposition in there.
That isn’t to say there aren’t holes in my own grammar, but that’s a pretty brutal possibility you’re presenting.
Perhaps you’ve been to a post-apocalyptic future where Yankee Stadium is used as a massive tomb for a well-loved warrior king; either get your tenses right or throw a “like” in there.
This is a screen cap from an episode of the ’60s Spiderman cartoon that floated up at me from the TV aether of darkest night, while I was tending a sick child.
I’m not sure if there was a time when the “Texas pronunciation” was more common, or if this is actually an indicator of a horrible ultra-power that lies above and beyond fission/fusion.
The episode, Specialists and Slaves, can be found on the youtube:
[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z51-Rh4Vr2s]
Part 1
[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=617i-1PSaw8]
Part 2