Forever Young

In 1975, Helen Mirren participated in a saucy and friction-filled interview with the BBC's Michael Parkinson. She was England's sexy ingenue at the time. There was quite a bit of verbal sparring between the two as Helen chose to define herself rather than allow others to do that for her.

Some thirty years later, Parkinson interviewed Helen again. Notice how the vibe has changed now as Helen over the preceding 30 years has remained sexy in every way yet has redefined the term in the process.





Age of Consent

One of Helen's first major screen roles was in Age of Consent with James Mason. where she played a Lolita type waif. She is charming and gorgeous.

The Real Reason Why the Soviet Union Collapsed?

Stephen Colbert helped to make Eduard Khil a viral video phenomenon not long ago.

Colbert presented one of the most amazing and bizarre lip-sync performances of all time. And since his Comedy Central debut, Khil, born in Smolensk, Russia, has come to be known as Mr. Trololo Guy.

Khil didn't think the actual lyrics this song were all that interesting:

"I'm riding the prairie on my stallion, a mustang as such, and my sweetheart Mary now knits a stocking for me, a thousand miles away from here."

Probably a good call to go with the tro-lo-lo approach.


Mashups

And just as US singer Rick Astley's Never Gonna Give You Up video became fodder for the clever minds that create YouTube mashup videos, intriguing variations of Mr. Trololo Guy's spirited 1976 performance are all over the internet.

Here are our favorites...

Being Human is our favorite TV series about all things unhuman

The series -- a kind of Three's Company for the supernatural underworld -- examines the joys and trepidations of a werewolf, a vampire and a ghost sharing a flat in England. It answers the age-old question, can't we all just get along?

Being Human (the BBC original not the SyFy clone) is smart, witty and intriguing. And Ghost Annie can haunt us anytime.

But the series got us thinking about Creepy TV back in television's more Golden Days.

Creepy TV Hosts



Rod Serling was the best known but there were a slew of program hosts who introduced programs with a chilling and enigmatic monologue.

Alfred Hitchcock: Alfred Hitchcock Theatre




John Newland: One Step Beyond




Roald Dahl: Way Out




Boris Karloff: Thriller




Comedy of Terrors

Before Cable TV and Netflix the only way to see classic scary movies was on some local TV station late on a Saturday night.

These movie nights were often hosted Halloween-style by someone with a way-over-the-top tongue-in-cheek approach to terror.



The talented Elvira. Mistress of the Dark, arguably the most successful of these hosts, went on to national fame and, we hope, fortune.

Here in the Midwest we had Svengoolie and Son of Svengoolie.

When a local Chicago station came up with the idea for Screaming Yellow Theatre, they hired local disk jockey Jerry G. Bishop to host the show.

Jerry concocted the part-beatnik, part-hippie character Svengoolie to do comic bits and sketches during the scary movie breaks.




Enter the Son of Svengoolie

When Jerry G. left the show in the late 1970s, he handed over the reins to one of his young writers, the brilliant and hilarious Rich Koz. He's kept the franchise going, one way or another ever since.

Rich was originally billed as the Son of Svengoolie until a number of years later he was bequeathed, by Jerry G., the full Svengoolie monicker. Now we know him as Sven.

If we were asked to name the funniest five people on television, Rich would be at the top of our list. The man is a genius.


Putting on the Boot




Boogie-Woogie Bogeyman of Berwyn

The Regurgitator

Stevie Starr has found fame and perhaps fortune by swallowing things and then throwing them up on command. Coins, cue balls, tennis racquets, whatever. Stevie turned dry heaves into high art.




But as crazy as Starr's act is, there was one in the early 20th Century that was crazier still.

Classical Gas: Enter Le Petomane

Joseph Pujol enjoyed a successful decades-long stage career by releasing gas from his anus on cue. Pujol performed crowd favorites like O Sole Meo by forcing air out of his rectum on time and in tune.

He also used his talent to do animal impressions and to simulate battlefield artillery.

Hell, by using a rubber tube, he could even play La Marseilles on the ocarina.

And the man was versatile. It's reported that he could blow out a candle from several yards away.




Pujol was billed as Le Petomane, the French Flautulist. What he did, however, was no school boy prank.

During a swimming accident as a young boy he discovered that water had somehow been sucked into his rectum.

By manipulating his sphincter and abdominal muscles, he was able to force the water out at high velocity.

By learning how to suck in air rather than water, Pujol realized that he could do something that had never been done before -- something that the world was waiting for.

He was sitting on a gold mine.

You see, the air streaming out of his anus was fresh -- well relatively fresh -- air as opposed to the intestinal outgassing that we're all more familiar with.

This was an act he could take on the road.




Before long Pujol was at the Moulin Rouge tooting up a storm for the likes of Kings and Queens.

It's reported that even Sigmund Freud was a fan.

We have no idea if the audio clip below captures a real stage performance by Pujol from the early 1900's as the uploader claims.

But if this is Pojul, we wonder just what the hoopla was all about.

This isn't exactly what we'd call a virtuoso performance.

We first came across the amazing Fiomily about a year or so ago.

We were blown away by the talent of the two young sisters, Emily and Fiona. We said then and we say now that watching them grow as musicians is like watching John and Paul finding their musical way back in Liverpool so long ago.

They were just kids when they started posting their covers songs on YouTube. Now they are blossoming into lovely young women and impressive artists in their own right.

They recently conducted a Q and A session for their fans. Check it out below.

It's refreshing to see the wit and humor of these young ladies when they set the guitar down and step out from behind the microphone.

We can only ask, if there's room on the stage for Justin Bieber, surely there must be a record company out there that wants to offer Fiomily a contract.

They deserve to be heard, don't you think?

Sinval is the Brazilian Renaissance Man Who Does it All



Sinval paints, plays a million different musical instruments, sings, records and produces videos of his creations.

As we've said before, we'd like to be Sinval when we grow up.

We got an email from Sinval not long ago and he was kind enough to attach this video of his unique rendition of the classic In the Mood.

Enjoy more of Sinval's mellow music...

Bossa Nova Redux

Ah, Brasil Bossa Nova!

The Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott (Off) Key

It's not all Christina's fault.

The Star Spangled Banner is one of the most difficult songs to sing. A singer needs an incredible vocal range to hit all the notes.

The mistake that most acapella singers make is to start the song too high up the musical scale.

In those cases, there is that look of panic that sets in about halfway through when the singer realizes that he'll have to reach into the stratosphere to comment on the rocket's red glare.

And that's of course if he even remembers that line about the rocket's red glare.

Everyone kind of thinks that he or she knows the lyrics but in truth, maybe not so much...

And that's just the first verse. What about...?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe's haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o'er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?


Yeah, try that on for size to kick off your next sports event.

The vocal range is extreme and the lyrics are somewhat obscure. And if that wasn't enough, the melody is derived from an old English drinking song.

Yes, Christina may have flubbed some of the lines at the Super Bowl but compared to others who have attempted and failed to deliver, she did pretty darned well.


Comedian Roseanne Barr




Olympian Carl Lewis




Contest Winner Natalie Gilbert

What starts out as a disaster here actually turns into a sweet moment. The way the coach and the spectators come to the aid of a fellow American in need says perhaps more about patriotism and loyalty than the forgotten lyrics.

Even the special effect guy helped out on the rocket's red glare part.

James Bond was the most famous spy of all until Valerie Plame got her burn notice.

Our favorite of the cinema secret agents was always Derek Flint as portrayed by the ever-cool James Coburn.

Our Man Flint was, for our money, the best 007 spoof. It was just outrageous enough to be fun, with enough action to be a great ride.






The Man From U.N.C.L.E




James Bond creator Ian Fleming was in on the ground floor of NBC's The Man From U.N.C.L.E.

Originally pitched as Ian Fleming's Solo, the show became something different by the time it found popularity on the small screen. And Napoleon Solo wasn't solo at all with Illya Kuryakin as his sidekick.

S#*! My Man From U.N.C.L.E. Says
Not only did the Man from U.N.C.L.E save the world every week, he gave William Shatner the early opportunity to hone his overacting skills. And as an added bonus, in the cast of the Project Strigas Affair episode was the future Captain Kirk AND the future Spock.

Check out William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy together before they blasted off for the final frontier.




The closing credits thanked the United Network Command for Law and Enforcement for their cooperation with the program. NBC attorneys probably had to set up some kind of on-paper bogus organization just to be able to say that and get away with it.

Robert Vaughan showed up a few years later in England-based The Protectors.





Secret Agent / Danger Man / The Prisoner



Sean Connery got the James Bond role because Patrick McGoohan turned it down.

Patrick wanted to do something with a little more gravitas. The smart and sophisticated Secret Agent (titled Danger Man in the UK) was TV's answer to 007.

The Johnny Rivers intro was recorded to make the show more palatable to US audiences.

Proving that the David Hasselhoff can absolutely destroy almost anything the least bit creative just by getting close to it, listen to the Hoff's version of this TV show's iconic theme if you dare.

It's pretty bad. It's real bad.

It's very, very bad...





In England, the show used a classy instrumental theme.




Patrick McGoohan maintained that the character Number 6 in The Prisoner was not John Drake from Secret Agent.

But, then again, would a secret agent ever reveal his true identity?




The Saint



Roger Moore was never our choice for 007 but he really seemed to find his stride as The Saint's Simon Templar.

But Roger Moore wasn't just James Bond and the Saint. He was Beau Maverick, Ivanhoe and a bunch of other TV characters in his time.





The Avengers




We never got the point of this show. It was too campy, too tongue-in-cheek.

And what was the deal with the derby and the umbrella?

Steed and Emma Peel never interested us. We preferred Dempsey and Makepeace.

No, they weren't really spies but we'll use any excuse to show a clip that includes Glynis Barber.

Not even the Beatles could get away with this one...

Even the biggest entertainment act of the 20th century had to back back when Capitol Records nixed their butchered babies album cover.

The Suits were a little queasy about the concept. And the subdued expressions of the group on the album cover, as released, seem to suggest that they weren't all that happy about the more conservative approach.


Sweet Mother of God!!!


We're thinking if you threw Edgar Winter, Elvis Costello and Rosa Klebb in a blender this is pretty much what you'd get.

Heino is some kind of German folksinger who may explain why so many people in Germany are ga-ga over David Hasslelhoff.

Liebe Mutter translates into Dear Mother, just in case you were wondering.





Not exactly Peter, Paul and Mary ...



We're not sure which one of this trio is Maddy.

And we're also not sure that an accordion and an organ offer the most diverse musical accompaniment, but there it is.

To be fair here, it looks as if this album cover was created from a candid snapshot and not the result of an elaborate photo session.

That said, the cover does have a disturbing funereal vibe to it.

Will Ferrell channelled music groups like this one on SNL.



We couldn't find any recordings of Maddy and the Boys but we imagine they sound something like this.




And speaking of Jesus Use Me...



The Faith Tones



We weren't completely sure whether this is a bona fide album cover or not.

It has such a strange, twisted thing going on here that it might have been some kind of spoof.

There's something about the nuclear mushroom cloud of a hairdo of the Faith Tone on the left and the thousand yard stare of the Faith Tone on the right that seem odd.

And the lighting on the faces is just wrong somehow.

"Use me for what exactly?" is the question that comes to mind.



American Gothic Meets Children of the Corn




Good God! Who the hell's hand is that on her shoulder!!!

It ain't the guy behind her. It's too low for him, too far away for the guy stage right and wrong hand for the guy stage left.



Mike??!!



The most disturbing thing about this cover is that it's for Mike Terry not Michelle Terry.

Are you sure Elton John started out like this?



Somebody call 911



We're pretty sure that whatever is going on here is illegal in at least 42 states, though not necessarily in the one where this album was released....



Again, somebody call 911



This may be some kind of comedy album. A very vulgar one, we would imagine.

First of all, Old Jacinto should lose the hat. A hat like that is always a bad choice.

If Thomas Edison had worn a hat like that we'd still be reading by gaslight.

Imagine Neil Armstrong making his small step on the lunar surface wearing that hat.

Imagine JFK asking us not what our country could do for us, but what we could do for our country wearing that hat.

But, of course, that's not the only thing wrong with the album cover. This peeping tom and his slavering ebullient grin is never going to impress the ladies. No way.

Especially wearing that hat.



Not exactly the Sopranos...



Don't these guys look like they're high-tailing it from some low-rent drive-by in South Jersey?

At least, that's what we hope they're doing.


But seriously, who-the-hell's hand is that???!!!

Up, Up and Away

You can talk Spider-Man, Iron-Man and X-Men all you want but Superman was the old-school original.

And if Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster hadn't come up with the idea for the Kryptonian alien back in 1932, there might be no such thing as a graphic novel today.

Superman has been flying to the rescue in some media or another for nearly 80 years.

Oddly enough, this iconic super-hero started as a hairless Lex Luthor-type megalomaniac bent on world domination.



In 1938, Siegel and Shuster retooled the idea and transformed the character into a hero.

Some think the inspiration for the invulnerable and bullet-proof Superman was a tragic incident in which, just one year before the character's first comic book appearance, Jerry Siegel's father died during a robbery attempt.

The Superman who made his debut in 1938 was patterned after the swashbuckler Douglas Fairbanks.

Comic Harold Lloyd was the template for Clark Kent.





Ten years after the first comic book was published, Superman hit the big screen as a movie-serial.

Special effects in those days involved using a cartoon image for Superman's flying scenes.

And yes, that's Noel Neill as Lois Lane. And Tommy Bond, as Jimmy Olsen, looks just like what you'd think a cub reporter would look like back in the 1940s.








The late, great George Reeves brought the character to TV in the early 50s.

Baby Boomers were unaware of the movie serials of the decade before. For millions of mid-century kids, this was the definitive Superman.





This wasn't the first time George Reeves was Gone with the Wind.

When the first Superman comic books were just hitting the newstands, George was cast as one of the twin red-headed suitors of Scarlett O'Hara.





Christopher Reeve takes flight.
Forty years after the first Superman comic book was published and thirty years after the first Superman movie serial, Superman was again on the big screen.





In 2006 Superman was rebooted, this time with Brandon Routh wearing the cape.





And it looks like another Superman reboot is in the works.

This time with the guy who rebooted Batman at the helm.

Brian Regan






Dave Allen







D.C. Curry

Jokes.com
D.C. Curry - Common Sense
comedians.comedycentral.com
Funny Jokes Funny Videos Daniel Tosh Stand-Up

Jokes.com
D.C. Curry - Mama's Backhand
comedians.comedycentral.com
Funny Jokes Funny Videos Daniel Tosh Stand-Up

He was the biggest and one of the first idols of the Baby Boomer generation.

He hosted a TV show watched religiously each afternoon by a big chunk of 73 million post war-born kids.

He was Pinky Lee.

He was an explosive combination of high jinx and high-energy hilarity.

And he was the guy that Pee Wee Herman mostly likely channeled to create his Playhouse character.



The Day the Baby Boomers Cried...

Exactly fifty-five years ago, on September 20, 1955, while doing a live commercial in front of a studio audience of adoring kids, Pinky Lee collapsed in a writhing heap on the stage floor.

He had just jumped up in a signature move to click his heels to show just how strong and vital he was as a result of using the sponsor's product.

He landed badly and began to crumple to the floor.

For millions of his young fans the last words they heard him utter were, "Somebody help me..."

He didn't die that afternoon on live television as many of the urban legends suggested.

The story was that he had a bad reaction to a medication he was taking for a non-life threatening condition.

But something did die that day.

Pinky Lee's career for one.

By the time Pinky had recovered enough to return to the air -- several months later actually -- a new afternoon show had captured the attention of the fickle Baby Boomers.

The Mickey Mouse Club was the new kid on the block and afternoon children's TV would never be the same.

Guys with funny hats and big bowties wouldn't be en vogue again until Pee Wee had his Big Adventure.

Pinky Lee had boarded the last clown car out of town.

Way before there was Man Vs. Wild...




... and Deadliest Catch...




..there were Men's Magazines.

We're not talking Playboy and Penthouse here. We're talking about magazines that reminded men of the rewards and risks of manliness on a monthly basis.

There must have been hundreds of these periodicals back in the 1950s and 1960s.

And each cover portrayed the hero of the month captured in some dramatic splash-screen moment of ultimate danger, larceny and/or lust.

Each cover was some kind of strange Thematic Apperception Test designed to suggest what was happening, what had just happened and more importantly, what was about to happen in the midst of ultimate intrigue and high adventure.



Man to Man December 1960



First of all, we don't think the name Man to Man would work the same way today as it did back in 1960.

Secondly, we have absolutely no idea what's going on here.

The guy hanging by his ankles is definitely not having a good day. But then again, the guy in front of the apparently blissed-out character wearing the party hat seems to be learning just what Man-to-Man is all about.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

And all the while, the old ball-and-chain hyper-buxom Kaiba Wong watches it all with that cool, detached haughty sneer.

And just what lesson did Cliff Wrede teach her?

We think Cliff's wisdom was to keep at least a car length's distance between you and guys with funny hats.



Battle Cry March 1960

Looks like this ship was hijacked on the way to an I-Dream-of-Jeannie convention.

Apparently back in the 60s, getting lashed to the riggings of a ship was pretty common.

Our favorite callout: Fraulein Brigade: They didn't use guns! Nudge, nudge, wink, wink.






True Men Stories August 1957

Okay, this is a bit of a stretch, isn't it?

The flying rodents look a lot like squirrels. Treacherous, blood- thirsty killer squirrels, yes. But just squirrels, right?






Men May 1955

Maybe it's a better idea to just shoot the monkeys instead of trying to club the crap out of them with your rifle.






Man's Adventure December 1964

Looking like some lost episode of She Spies, this cover is tough to decipher.

Apparently woman in the Maidenform Bra has just shot a German soldier in the back of the neck while seducing him and now has decided to cross-dress her way to freedom.

Meanwhile, her buddies are in the process of strangling, rifle-butting and groin-kicking the soldier whose helmet is really not helping him at the moment.



But what really catches the eye is the callout for one of the stories inside: She Loved A Rotting Corpse -- Only the Dead Could Arouse Her Passion.



True Action February 1970

Hogan's Heroes was never like this.

The caption reads...these rugged Yank soldiers devised a plan that would blast themselves out and land them in the beds of Europe's most voluptuous women.

Now that's a plan!






Wildcat March 1960

For some guys, the fun never stops.

Couple Flees Talking Bear!

Long before there was The Onion, there was an outrageous tabloid called Weekly World News.

The name sounds innocent enough but this publication made the National Enquirer look like the Manchester Guardian.

The newspaper existed somewhere out there in the media ecotone that lies between what most people thought was truly ridiculous but what some twisted few out there believed was hidden, conspiratorial truth.


Bat Boy was a running gag.

Bat Boy was a hideous half-human, half flying rodent creature who was somehow discovered by WWN every few months or so doing some crazy thing or another.

The magic behind WWN headlines was to take something totally preposterous and then give it an added nonsense that somehow, ironically, lent a bit of twisted credibility to the whole thing.

Reporting that a talking bear had been discovered just wouldn't have been enough of a story for WWN.

No, they needed an angle with that special something. How about a couple fleeing a talking bear?!

Now that's a headline!

And doesn't it make you wonder just what the bear was saying?

Maybe, "Hey you! Come back here!"

Weekly Word News ceased publication in 2007.



Bigfoot needs love, too!



It's clear in the photo that the lumberjack is not just love-smitten but suffering from a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome as well.




Gesundheit!



What really caught our attention on the lumberjack-love front page was the story at the top of the page.

If you can't read the small print under the photos of the sneezing man it says, "Reginald Kaulman reenacts his hurricane-force sneeze for photographers."

Hurricane-force indeed! His now bald as a cue-ball wife says, "it was worse than Hurricane Andrew."

Now that's bad.



E-mc2



Once again, in keeping with the WWN protocol, just having Einstein's brain come to life just wouldn't be enough, now would it?

But if it destroyed Cleveland, now you're talking!

Interesting that Bush renaming the planets falls below the fold.



A little off the top?



Things were always exploding in the WWN world. If it wasn't a patient exploding on an operating table, it was a man's head exploding during a trim.

It could have been worse for this guy, of course. Reginald Kaulman could have sneezed his hair off.




Perhaps the one story WWN got right.

Groucho Marx was one of the funniest entertainers of all time.

What's most amazing about Groucho is that he was, off the cuff, as witty and funny as the scripted characters he played in the Marx Brothers movies.

In the 1950s, he hosted the TV game show, You Bet Your Life.
Well, it was kind of a game show. Actually, it was a half hour showcase of Groucho at his ad-lib best.

The core of the show was Groucho conversing with the contestants, producing some of the best television ever.





No Failure to Communicate here...
After being Groucho's sexy foil on You Bet Your Life, this contestant, actress Joy Harmon, went on to fame as the Car Wash Girl in Paul Newman's Cool Hand Luke, a character known well by every adolescent Baby Boomer male.




The rumor was that actual filming of You Bet Your Life ran for an hour or more. But after all of Groucho's racy bits were edited out, the show clocked in at thirty minutes.






Who Do You Trust?





Before he hosted the Tonight Show, Johnny Carson was the host of a TV show very similar to You Bet Your Life called, Who Do You Trust? and for a time, Do You Trust Your Wife?

Young Johnny showed the promise of the TV master to come, but he seemed surprisingly restrained and very shy compared to the irrepressible Groucho.

In the game show's second season, Ed McMahon joined the show as Johnny's announcer and sidekick. It was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

But Who Do You Trust? wasn't Johnny's first television gig. A very young and very skinny Johnny hosted Carson's Cellar on a local station.

In this clip you see the possible beginnings of the famous "How cold was it?" routine immortalized years later on the Tonight Show.




Interestingly, after Jack Paar left the Tonight Show, it was Groucho, who had done time as one of the show's substitute hosts, who introduced Johnny Carson as the new star of the program.



You Bet Your Life Redux

Late in his life, Groucho suggested to Bill Cosby, then a young struggling comic, that he might be the perfect host for a reboot of You Bet Your Life.

In the early 1990s, Bill hosted his own version of the show.
Cosby seemed to channel the spirit of Groucho but the program never found an audience and was canceled after only one season.

Editing is Everything
When it comes to film and television, the individuals most responsible for setting the mood for what we watch is not necessarily the screenwriters, actors, directors, producers, or lighting specialists.

It's the editors who make the crucial difference in how we feel about what we watch on the big or small screen.

And it's in trailers for coming attractions and intros to TV shows that editors can have the greatest impact on whether we'll choose to devote and hour or two of our lives to what's being submitted for our approval.

Editors weave together certain video clips and music tracks that can instantly communicate whether we're about to watch a deep drama, a thriller or a comedy.

The editors let us know whether we should be prepared to scream, laugh or cry.


Star Wars: A Different Beginning

We all know Star Wars as an iconic science fiction/fantasy franchise.

But in the videos below, talented editors (amateurs we assume) used clips of the movie, themes from popular TV shows and signature graphics to create videos that totally alter our expectations about the Star Wars we're about to see.


Star Wars / The A-Team




The A-Team Original



Star Wars / Dallas




The Dallas Original




Han Solo, P.I.




The Magnum P.I. Original




Star Wars / MacGyver




The MacGyver Original




Star Wars / Airwolf




The Air Wolf Original

Just the facts Ma'am
When Jack Webb brought his popular radio show, Dragnet, to the infant medium of television in the early 1950s, many people had their doubts about the switch.

Webb insisted on bringing pretty much the whole radio production cast, crew and staff to the TV version.



That just wasn't the way things were usually done in those days.

Radio and TV were seen as two very different media.

Indeed, Radio's Matt Dillon, William Conrad, lost the shootout with James Arness for the starring role in TV's Gunsmoke.




But Webb stuck to his guns and Dragnet became one of the most iconic programs of TV's Golden Age.

Webb played Dragnet's lead character, Joe Friday, as a no-nonsense, by-the-book LA cop.

(Actually the closest Joe Friday came to saying "just the facts ma'am" was probably "All we know are the facts, ma'am.")

The ominous nine-note musical intro to the program became synonymous with grim, grey flannel law-enforcement.





M Squad
The success of Dragnet encouraged other TV crime dramas, one of which was M Squad, starring Lee Marvin, as Detective Lt. Frank Ballinger.

M Squad had a lot in common with Dragnet but also had some very key differences.

Both shows were about plain-clothes detectives working in big cities, Friday in LA and Ballinger in Chicago.

But while Joe Friday was strictly by-the-book, Ballinger was more of a maverick, bucking the system where necessary to ensure that justice prevailed.

Accordingly, M Squad's theme song, in sharp contrast to the blaring staccato of the Dragnet theme, was a jazzy number, composed by none other than jazz great, Count Basie.















Police Squad!




And some 25 years later, the filmmaking trio of ZAZ (Zucker, Abrahams and Zucker), still flush from their satirical success with the film Airplane!, used M Squad as a template for one of the funniest -- and most short-lived -- TV comedies of all time.

The opening sequence, action, music and narration of Police Squad, was a direct lift from the old M Squad show.

Police Squad!, starring Leslie Nielsen, was cancelled after only 4 episodes. But for a month the program was an excellent send-up of the hard-bitten cop shows of the 50's.

The central character of Police Squad! was Detective Frank Drebin, played by Leslie Nielsen in his second configuration.

The New Breed
The first configuration of Nielsen was the super-serious actor. Nielsen even starred in the Quinn Martin production, The New Breed, in 1961. His character on that program, Detective Lt. Price Adams, was every bit as street tough as Joe Friday and Frank Ballinger.



The third configuration of Nielsen, as we've seen in his later films, is the lovable Inspector Clouseau-like goof, who is the butt of every joke.

Police Squad! was built around the second configuration of Nielsen; the one who played the doctor in Airplane!; the sane too-serious inhabitant of an insane world.










Naked Gun
Though Police Squad was yanked quickly from the TV schedule, the concept had success on the big screen as the Naked Gun trilogy, where Nielsen swapped out the straight-laced TV version of Drebin for the buffoon version the character.

(Yes, that's OJ as Drebin's partner.)






Stan Freberg gets into the act.

But M Squad and Police Squad! weren't the only productions that Dragnet inspired.

Stan Freberg, one of the great comedic minds of our time, spoofed the Dragnet series on radio with a dead-on, dead-pan and hilarious take on the old Jack Webb cop show.





Also Check Out:
The Conan TV Show that might have been: Lookwell!

The Fabulous Fiomily singing about Parallel Worlds.

We've said it before but we think the talented and beautiful Emily and Fiona are the Lennon and McCartney of the new millennium.

When John and Paul were lads in Liverpool, they were primarily doing covers of Top 40 hits as they improved their skills as musicians and singers.

And all the time, these early Beatles brought a passion and an energy to the songs they sang that made us stop and listen to the lyric as we swayed to the rhythm.

Fiomily has a similar musical gift and we're glad that through YouTube and MySpace, that they're sharing it with the world.


Here's the original Eliot Minor version of the song.





And here's a bonus. Fiomily singing -- of all things! -- Honky Tonk Women.

This is a darned good cover. And there's something about Fiona singing about meeting a gin-soaked bar-room queen in Memphis that is just too precious.





See more of the Fabulous Fiomily here:


Fiomily Back-to-Back

Fiomily Sing the Beatles

Fiomily Encore

There was something especially sad about the recent passing of Gary Coleman.



Though a talented entertainer, some portion of his celebrity was inextricably linked to the fact that he was a man-child of sorts.

A hormonal condition kept his adult persona in a body that we perceived -- and chose to continue to believe far longer than we should -- was that of an adolescent.

Gary Coleman's general situation was shared by at least two other actors during the mid-20th century.


Walter Tetley




Most Baby Boomers knew Walter Tetley as the voice of the red-haired and bespectacled Sherman, Mr. Peabody's pet boy on the animated Rocky and Bullwinkle Show.





Though Walter was in his mid-forties at the time, Sherman certainly sounded like a 12 year old.

Like Gary Coleman, Walter was affected by a condition that limited the natural growth and maturation process. Walter's body never transitioned through puberty.

The generation preceding the Boomers had already been introduced to Walter as the voice of Leroy, the precocious nephew on the Great Gildersleeve radio show in the 1940's.



During the same decade, Walter also voiced the comic radio character Julius Abruzzio, the delivery boy on the Phil Harris and Alice Faye Show.

Julius was, as a teenager, the oldest of Walter's most well known characters.

That gave him more room to maneuver. Played with a thick Brooklyn accent, Julius was a total wise-ass who traded insults with Phil and was lust-struck for Phil's wife Alice.




Walter tried to make the jump from radio star to movie star but the breach was too great.

His child-like voice and the face moviegoers saw on the screen just did not mesh.

Walter was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident in 1971 and was wheelchair-bound until his death four years later. There are reports that after the accident he lost his home and lived out his final days alone in a trailer.

Check out some of Walter's hilarious radio work at OTR.net one of the premier old time radio sites.


Dick Beals
Baby Boomers know the voice of Dick Beals, though they probably haven't heard it for a long time.



Dick sang the Plop Plop Fizz Fizz jingle as Speedy Alka-Seltzer. He was also the voice of both Gumby and Davey of Davey and Goliath.




Like Walter Tetley, Dick never experienced puberty and the resultant deepening of his voice.

None of this appears to have slowed Dick down, however. Though 4 feet 7 inches tall and weighing less than 70 pounds, he's often a guest at Old Time Radio conventions, does motivational speaking and was a licensed pilot.

These days, he spends time relaxing on his yacht, appropriately christened, Think Big.

I love the art in general, I have the music as hobby and the painting as profession.

As told to Apocalypzia in November 2009



We've said it before and we'll say it again. When we grow up we want to be Sinval Fonseca.

Sinval is the true renaissance man of the creative arts. Painter, musician, singer -- he does it all.

It's been awhile since we featured him so we showcase him today, doing that which he does best.

After Batman, Before Tonight, Before Late Night
Long before he battled with Jay Leno over NBC's Tonight Show, Conan O'Brien was a television writer and producer, and was one of the brains behind the long-running Fox hit, The Simpsons.

During his producer days, he and Robert Smigel (more about him later) shot a pilot for a TV comedy called Lookwell.

The very funny premise -- a has-been over-the-top actor assisting the police in solving crimes -- was a perfect fit for the show's star, the post-Batman Adam West.



The pilot aired on NBC in the summer of 1991 but the show was passed over by the network.

That's too bad, in retrospect. By making the successful transition from a serious actor to a comedic actor, Adam West -- and Leslie Nielsen for that matter -- has done so well what William Shatner has made a lot of money doing but has yet to perfect, IOHO.

Here's the Lookwell pilot, if you'd like to check it out.




Robert Smigel, Conan's partner in crime on Lookwell, has a pretty impressive resume on his own.




As a writer on Saturday Night Live, Smigel helped to pull that show back from the cancellation brink in 1986. He is perhaps best known, though, for his puppet character, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.







Hey, here's an idea for a TV pilot. Don Rickles and his pet dog, Triumph. What do you think?

SCARY is one thing but CREEPY...well... that's another thing all together.

SCARY is that twisted, disfigured face that juts out from the shadows when you least expect it.

CREEPY is something that starts with your own imagining of horror and dread that steams into overdrive, anticipating the very worst that you can possibly conceive.

When you're watching a truly CREEPY movie, you become the producer, writer and director of your own terror.

And what you imagine, fueled by your own unspoken fear and latent guilt, is generally far more terrifying than anything the filmmaker could possibly come up with.


Mama
Mama is a recent film short by Andres Muschietti, a protege of Guillermo Del Toro, the mastermind behind the Pan's Labyrinth and The Orphanage.

The film is only about three minutes long. Watch it and see if, in just a few moments, you don't enter a very CREEPY world.





The Exorcist
The Exorcist was arguably the CREEPIEST film ever made. The clip below was not included in the final cut.

In the film as released, the fully-possessed Regan never left her room. Consequently, her bedroom door was the gateway between the world that we know and the depths of hell itself.

For that reason, director William Friedkin may have thought this scene of Regan doing her SPIDERWALK down the stairs didn't fit the framework of the film.

The scene is, however, about as CREEPY as you can get.





The Others
If you like CREEPY movies and you haven't seen The Others, get to Netflix or Redbox right away. It is a masterfully done exercise in all that is genuinely frightening.

The line, "I am your daughter" is the epitome of all that is CREEPY.





The Abandoned
The Abandoned is one of our favorite CREEPY movies. Like The Others, it turns the tables on what is real and what is not. And those Doppelgangers are just freakin' freaky CREEPY.

The 20 Minute Workout

Back in the days of leotards, big hair and high-impact aerobics there was a TV exercise show called the 20 Minute Workout.

Bess Motta was one of the hosts of the show and was arguably the best broadcast aerobics instructor of all time.

She was the epitome of high-energy, inspiration and charm. While other aerobics leaders shouted out there instructions, Bess would sing, dance and strut.

Her workouts were daily metaphors for all that was steamy, sensuous and sexy.

We're not even sure how her signature move at the 7:25 mark of the first video shown here ever got past the censors, but we're glad that it did.










A Star is Born
She clearly overshadowed others on the program and caught the attention of the casting folks for James Cameron's iconic film, The Terminator.

Bess played Ginger Ventura, Sarah Connor's gorgeous and iguana-spooked roommate.




Fans can see Bess at Chicago Comic Con, August 20 - 22 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center.


God Bless the USA.
While Bess was charming American audiences in the 80's, take a look at what the Soviets were watching.

Rock on George. One time for Ringo...


Baby Boomers came of age in the 1960's and 1970's, and the music they danced to was the pulsing backbeat of a generational party that lasted for two decades.

But this was no come-as-you-are-party.

Just as Baby Boomers experimented with new ways to experience the worlds of politics, protest and pills, they also dared to push the limits of fashion and in doing so became, perhaps, the wackiest dressed generation since the Elizabethan era.

Nowhere was this more evident than the rock bands of the day, who in turn inspired their fans to dress even wackier.

Yet, the clothing some of these acts wore was often organized around some kind of theme. These weren't just strange looking outfits but rather a group-supported costume; a uniform that helped to establish the brand of the band.


Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs
They were around for a long time but the band was arguably a one-hit wonder with Wolly Bully.

But the Bangles could have used those outfits for Walk like An Egyptian 20 years later.







Paul Revere and the Raiders
In these outfits they would be the darlings of the Tea Party today, don't you think?





Gary Puckett and the Union Gap
It takes a brave group to embrace a Civil War theme to sing love songs.





The Temptations
This group started out in suits and ties, then by the late 70's all that changed, radically.







Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells
Hey, let's face it. The song Lady Marmalade absolutely demands outfits like these.





The Beatles
Somehow we're thinking just a few years before this video was made, the Beatles, in their black leather jackets and duckbill haircuts, would have laughed and said rude things if they'd seen this band on the telly.

Stars Wars Episode IV: A New Hope

- Released in 1977
- First film of a double trilogy
- Produced with a budget of $11 million; earned $460 million in the US
- Winner of 7 Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor (Alec Guiness) and Best Film

A New, New Hope

The first Star Wars film, later titled, A New Hope, might have been a very different movie with a different cast. Take a look at how the film might have turned out with an alternate approach to casting.


Kurt Russell as Han Solo
Kurt Russell would later get his chance to play a Han Solo-like character in the Escape From New York series.





Cindy Williams as Princess Leia
Cindy Williams actually turned in a pretty good audition here. She seems to get the idea of campy drama.





Robby Benson as Luke Skywalker
Robby comes off a bit too much like...well...Robby Benson.





Andrew Stevens as Luke Skywalker
Andrew Stevens doesn't seem to be sure whether he auditioning for Star Wars or Hamlet. Geez! Chillax, dude...

Before Christian Bale, George Clooney, Val Kilmer and Michael Keaton, Adam West was Hollywood's definitive Batman.

The ABC TV series, Batman, premiered in January 1966 and ran for over two years.

Different from virtually every TV show before or since, Batman, for two seasons at least, aired twice a week in half-hour segments, connected by a cliff-hanger scene reminiscent of the old 1940's movie serials.

Adam West and Burt Ward were cast as Batman and Robin and for awhile the show was a campy cult hit.

Though West and Ward seemed like naturals for this over-the-top mashup of action and humor, they weren't the first choices for the roles.




Lyle Waggoner almost snared the role of Batman.

Maybe everything worked out for the best though. Within a few years he was a member of the comedy ensemble of the popular and iconic Carol Burnett Show.

Anyway Lyle kind of got his shot at TV superhero stardom after all when he co-starred with Lynda Carter on Wonder Woman in the 1970's.

Take a look at Lyle's audition for Batman and compare it to that of Adam West.

Who would you have chosen?

Girl From India (1982)
Somewhere between the 1982 film Girl From India and and the 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire, men outside of India learned what men inside of India had known for a long time.

India is alive with beautiful and talented women.


Some of our favorite actresses of Indian descent:


Freida Pinto Slumdog Millionaire







Suleka Mathew Men in Trees, HawthoRNe
Born in Kerala, India








Archie Punjabi The Good Wife, Bend it Like Beckham
Raised in Mumbai, India








Parminder Nagra ER, Bend it Like Beckham
Born in Leicester, England








Navi Rawat Numb3rs
Born in Malibu, CA







Devika Parikh Three Rivers, The West Wing, 24
Born in Gaithersburg, Maryland








Rhona Mitra Party of Five, Boston Legal, Gideon's Crossing, Underworld: Rise of the Lycans, The Gates, Nip/Tuck, Etc...
Born in London, England






And did we mention Rhona Mitra?

Step Aside Ed Wood

Ed Wood certainly got a lot of attention for making movies that were so bad they were absolutely compelling. After all, Plan 9 From Outer Space is arguably the best-worst movie of all time.

But William Castle was no slouch either.

Castle was the producer/director of dozens of B-movie horror films.

But more than that, he was the king of movie gimmicks.

Whether it was wiring theatre seats with electric buzzers, having skeletons zip through the audience on clotheslines at dramatic plot points, or offering fright insurance for movie patrons, Castle worked every trick in the book and invented new ones of his own.

And like Hitchcock, Castle also made an appearance in most of his films.

While Hitchcock generally made a short quiet cameo somewhere in his movies. William Castle often opened his films with a brief intro letting you know just how SCARY!! the film you were about to see truly was.

Though it's hard to believe it based on just how bad some of his black and white films were, Castle did eventually break into the big-time with one movie, starring Mia Farrow, that many regard as a classic.

Castle produced the 1968 thriller, Rosemary's Baby.

He wanted to direct it was well but the studio wanted someone with a better reputation to take the helm. Roman Polanski got the job but, of course, that's another story.


3D glasses? No! A special color-coded Ghost Viewer!! for 13 Ghosts




Lloyd's of London Fright Insurance anyone?





In Mr. Sardonicus, Castle gave you a chance to vote on the fate of the lead character with a thumbs-up/thumbs-down ballot card.





Homicidal had a 45 second Fright Break! to give you a chance to leave the theatre if you were too scared to sit through the rest of the movie!

They weren't exactly one-hit wonders.
They actually scored two Top-Forty records. And they were lucky enough to sign with the most famous band manager of all time.

Back in the early 1960s, Don Dannemann and Tom Dawes were the founding members of a US music group called the Rhondells.

After being brought to his attention by a business partner who heard them in New York, Brian Epstein, who you'd think would have his hands full managing the Beatles at the time, took the group under his wing in 1965.

But the band's name didn't work for Epstein. He changed it to the Circle. Beatle John gave the name a twist of Lennon by suggesting a quirky spelling based on a certain roundabout back in England.

Red Rubber Ball, co-written by Paul Simon of Simon and Garfunkel, was Cyrkle's biggest hit, reaching #2 on the Billboard TOp 100 List. Turn-Down Day also cracked the Top-Twenty.




A short time later Cyrkle was the opening act for the Beatles during their 1966 US tour.

After their tour duties were done, however, with Epstein having little need for a US connection, they didn't get much attention.

By 1967, Cyrkle had disbanded.

The group's founders each went separate ways but both went on to compose commercial jingles. Tom Dawes, who passed away in 2007, wrote the famous Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz jingle for Alka-Seltzer.





Cyrkle had some guts
Their shall-we-say unique rendition of the Beatles I'm Happy Just to Dance with You seems odd to the ear but we give them credit for putting their own stamp on such a popular song by such a popular group.

The Cyrkle version...




The Beatle version...







Tom Dawes: 1944-2007

With Kevin as Killer...









With Kevin as Victim ...

Star Wars meets the Star Trek Reboot...





The Exorcist as a Christmas Comedy...
(Language Alert...)

We've all been there.

The thrilling TV trailer for a new movie seems to have nothing to do with the film that we see at the multiplex.

The reason is that the people who produced the movie are most likely not the same people who produced the trailer.

And the Trailer Producers are only focused on getting us to buy a ticket, whether we get what we thought we came for or not.

So what power do these Trailer Producers have anyway?

Seinfeld was one of the most popular TV comedies of all time. Most of us know the show and the characters pretty well.

But take a look at what might happen if the Trailer Producers were tasked with pitching Seinfeld for different genres.


Inspiring Melodrama...





Horror...





And a little fun with Seinfeld as the 300!

We think our Twitter buddy @jerrybattiste is ready for some more Arnold Schwarzenegger prank calls so who are we to disappoint him!














Want more?: If Arnold Schwarzenegger Made Prank Calls...



(Original February 9, 2010 Post)

Just once we'd like to see this guy busted in a police sting operation...

We know there are some real creeps out there but something about what Chris Hansen does on NBC that just feels a little dirty, doesn't it?

Here's what someone thought his prank calls might sound like.

Psychologia Apocalypzia

Prank phone calls are cruel and funny in a sadistic way but they are also a portal into the human psyche.

Why do we -- as evidenced in these clips -- allow ourselves to be harangued, insulted and ridiculed by a cold call from some guy who calls himself Richard Roma?

I like movies. Do you like movies?

I mean do you really, really, really like movies?

The 2002 documentary Cinemania follows days-in-the-life of several New Yorkers who really, really, really like movies.

These moviegoers structure their days around the 3 or 4 movies that they plan to see each day ... every day.

Yes, that's right. Every day.

They haunt multiplexes, art houses and movie festival screenings to see just about every piece of motion picture film ever developed.

As one of the subjects in the documentary suggests, film is a substitute for life, an alternate reality no less real than the flesh and blood world.




Viewing this film is a little like watching the people featured on Hoarders on their day off.

The subjects come off as pathetic and hopeless for a time until you realize that...

(1) they are fulfilled by their obsessive hobby and...

(2, and this is a big 2) their addiction to movies is not that far out of line with average television viewing.

Statistics show that in the US and UK, TV viewers watch an average of 28 hours of television each week.

28 hours!

Thats more than one full day each week sitting in front of the television.

That's 70% of a normal work week in front of the tube.




Maybe we are the maniacs

The Cinemaniac who watches three films a day (and let's assume that the movies are 90 minutes long as was the case for many of the classic flix) doesn't spend much more time watching movies than the average American or Brit does watching TV.

Except for the fact that of those 28 hours of TV viewing, about 9 hours are commercials.

Yeah, that's right. Unless you're zapping through with your DVR, you're spending one full work day each week watching ads.

So maybe the Cinemaniacs aren't so pitiful after all. At least they're doing something they love to do in a way that they love to do it.


Abed the Ultimate Cinemaniac

The character Abed on NBC's excellent comedy Community is indeed a Cinemaniac himself. Film provides an organizing framework for his worldview, his life.

And Danny Pudi, the actor who plays Abed, has an uncanny ability to morph into and out of TV and movie personae.

See him as Mad Men's Don Draper....




And the stereotypical Southern Sheriff in every cop-buddy movie you've ever seen...





Cinemania Postscript:
(The cantankerous yet lovable) Roberta (Hill), died on July 18, 2009 shortly after her 73rd birthday. Roberta was born in Washington, DC to Dorothy Dyar Hill and Robert Lindsay Hill. She was a consummate collector and animal lover. When she moved to New York in 1983, her love of cinema took center stage. She has been a fixture at almost every film festival and movie house in the City ever since, as captured in the film Cinemania (2002). She was a true New York character and will be missed by many. (From the New York TImes: August 9, 2009)

Maybe it's a new genre...

The attractive female lead discovers that the guy she's interested in is a cold-blooded undercover operative.

Actually that was the formula for a lot of spy movies, the James Bond series in particular. James (Avatar) Cameron's True Lies used that cinematic conceit also.

We're seeing that setup in more and more rom-coms lately.

Maybe it's the new hybrid. The guys in the audience get action and explosions, the ladies get romance and everybody has a good laugh along the way.

This summer, opening within weeks of each other are two movies which, based on their trailers, seem almost clones of each other.

This June, it's Kutcher-Heigl vs Cruise-Diaz...


The Killers Ashton Kutcher/Katherine Heigl Opening June 4





Knight and Day Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz Opening June 25





By the way, wasn't that kind of the setup for The Bounty Hunter a few months back?

WIlliam Shatner is a versatile actor.

What else could explain why, as Captain James Tiberius Kirk, he created one of the screen's most enduring and beloved characters while in every role since he comes off as a low-budget huckster and a third-rate Leslie Nielsen wannabe?

Yeah, yeah we know that he got all kinds of accolades for playing that insufferable windbag on Boston Legal. But true Trekkers squirmed and fidgeted at the thought of Captain Kirk playing attorney Denny Crane.

Hell, TJ Hooker was bad enough.

And don't get his former Star Trek cast members started. The late James (Scotty) Doohan didn't have much good to say about him and George (Sulu) Takei doesn't sound like much of a fan either.

This fall Shatner will star in the new situation comedy $#*! My Dad Says allegedly inspired by authentic Twitter Tweets.

After generating so much enmity with former cast mates, maybe Shatner is the perfect choice to play the cantankerous star of the program, which, based on the promo clip, looks like a train wreck waiting to happen.

When we saw that he was returning to television this fall, we were reminded of a video clip of Wil Wheaton, who played young Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Wheaton's recounting of his first -- and perhaps only -- meeting with William Shatner is priceless and may possibly shed light on some of the issues others have had with him.

The audio in this clip is pretty poor but you can read the text of the clip here.

The language is a strong here but, as Wil Wheaton points out himself, it's integral to the story.

The new 2009 Fall TV season is almost over and ready to go toward the light like Jack, Kate, Sawyer and even Melinda Gordon for that matter.

Back in September we posted that we were pulling for some of the new comedies but had doubts about others.

Based on our record here for picking hits and misses, you wouldn't want us putting together your stock portfolio.

Here's our previous post, edited with the benefit now of hindsight, in green.




Accidentally On Purpose
Our undying love for Jenna just could not save it

We've been madly in love with Jenna Elfman ever since Dharma and Greg but we wonder if the pregnant cougar angle is enough to carry this show. Can Jenna's likeability and charm turn this newcomer into a hit?




Welcome to the Future! Video-in-Print? Is this even possible?!

By the way, CBS is introducing its entire fall line-up in an innovative high-tech way. They've teamed up with Pepsi to produce what they claim is the first Video-in-Print promotion. You'll be able to watch video clips of CBS shows embedded in the pages of a magazine.

Watch for a groundbreaking issue of Entertainment Weekly at the newstands.







ABC is bringing back Fox's 2008 bomb Back to You, sort of...



Spare Parts
ABC has blown out its entire Wednesday schedule for new shows made primarily of parts stripped from Fox's failed and disappointing Back to You. Kelsey Grammer, Patricia Heaton and Ty Burrell, all stars of the 2008 Fox series, headline CBS's Wednesday night lineup.


Hank
We pegged this catastrophe as a loser and it was one of the first shows to go

Kelsey Grammer seems to be working a theme here.
In 2008, Fox's Back to You was about a Frasier-type character -- a big time TV news anchor -- who lost his job and had to come back to the town where he got his start.

Hank is about a Frasier-type character who loses all his pre-financial-crisis riches and has to move back to the town where he got his start. Maybe Kelsey's plan is to continue to work this theme until he gets it right.




The Middle
This show still seem like a tepid redux of Malcolm in the Middle to us but fans love it

Why does this show seem awfully familiar? Maybe the title should be Malcolm in the Middle without Malcolm but Co-starring a Kid to Remind You of Dewey.

The always-talented but ever-grating Patricia Heaton, late of Back to You, stars.




Modern Family
We pegged this as a loser but it seems to be going strong

Ty Burrell, also fresh on the heels of the disappointing Back to You, is one of the co-stars of this ensemble comedy which, for some odd reason, reminds us of CBS' Rules of Engagement.




Cougar Town
We doubted that this show would had any legs either but it has done well

Cougars are obviously big this season. Friends' Courtney Cox stars in a show that will have to work hard not to be a one-trick pony.







Jay Leno
We only wish that they had already cancelled the New Tonight Show by now...

NBC is, quite simply, betting the farm on the new Jay Leno Show. If it succeeds, NBC execs will be seen as absolute geniuses. If it doesn't... well... for NBC's sake, it better work.









Brothers
Another show that we wanted to succeed that has long since bit the dust

Carl Weathers, the great CCH Pounder and ex-NFL star Michael Strahan team up for Fox's new non-animated comedy, Brothers. Actually, Strahan doesn't seem to come off worse than other sit-com stars in this clip. Does this show have a chance?




The Cleveland Show
With the golden touch of Seth MacFarlane, this show was bound to be renewed

Fox continues their all animation Sunday programming, swapping out Mike Judge's King of the Hill for Seth MacFarlane's The Cleveland Show.

Cleveland was the best choice for a Family Guy spin-off because he's one of the few characters not voiced by the already way-overworked MacFarlane. But the real question is, can Cleveland carry a show without Quagmire as a sidekick? Giggity-Giggity.

Living on the air in Cincinnati...

CBS TV's WKRP in Cincinnati was possibly more popular in syndication than in its original network run.

WKRP was a small, quirky radio station in the not-too-big, not-to-small town of Cincinnati, OH.

There are a lot of those cities across the USA that aren't New York City but aren't Podunk, IA either.

And for a number of them, there are Hastily Made tourism videos that don't exactly make you want to book the next flight out to visit these towns.

Check some of them out...


Cleveland leads the nation in drifters!




Detroit: Our football team went 0-16!




Come on, let's all go down to Boston (No!)

The One and Only Ryan O'Neal
Ryan O'Neal was, at one time, one of the most popular movie stars in Hollywood. For his performance, opposite Ali McGraw in Love Story, he was nominated for an Academy Award.

He was very nearly cast as Michael Corleone in the 1972's The Godfather. And, believe it or not, he was a contender for the role of Rocky in the original Rocky.

Maybe why he never got those roles ...




And why Ryan would have been a lousy choice for Star Wars ...





But why Ryan might have actually been a good choice for the Troll series ...

McDreamy or McSteamy? Grey's Anatomy


It's the Ultimate Rorschach Test
What starts out as Who's Hotter than Who? is ultimately an experiment in self-discovery.

It is a journey within, where our reactions reveal more about ourselves than the images and characterizations we judge.

As they say, there are no right or wrong answers here. Your opinions are all that matter.



We provide no analysis, conclusions nor judgments about your choices.

But we're betting that when you've finished reviewing this list, you'll learn something about yourself. (We did in the Men's Only version)

And, hey, it beats looking at inkblots!


Email us to tell us about your choices.


Shawn or Gus? Psych



Napoleon or Illya? The Man from UNCLE



Neal or Peter? White Collar




Darrin #1 or Darrin #2? Bewitched




Luke or Han? Star Wars




Dean or Sam? Supernatural




Dean or Jerry? Martin and Lewis




Sheldon or Leonard? The Big Bang Theory




Crockett or Tubbs? Miami Vice




Starsky or Hutch? Starsky and Hutch




G or Sam? NCIS LA




John or Paul? The Beatles




Butch or Sundance? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid




Butch or Sundance? The Real Butch and Sundance

It's the Ultimate Rorschach Test
What starts out as Who's Hotter than Who? ends as an experiment in self-discovery.

It is a journey within, where our reactions reveal more about ourselves than the images and characterizations we judge.

As they say, there are no right or wrong answers here. Only your opinions -- and mine.



We provide no analysis, conclusions nor judgments here about your choices (or our own).

But we're betting that when you've finished reviewing this list, you'll learn something about yourself. (We did.)

And, hey, it beats looking at inkblots!


Email us to tell us about your choices.


Britta or Annie? Community




Annie!




Jennifer or Bailey? WKRP in Cinncinatti


Bailey!




Janet or Chrissy? Three's Company


Janet!



Janet or Terry? Three's Company


Still Janet!




Xena or Gabrielle? Xena, Warrior Princess


Gabby!




Electra Woman or Dyna Girl? Electra Woman and Dyna Girl


Catwoman!




Cagney or Lacey? Cagney and Lacey


Cagney!




Lucy or Ethel? I Love Lucy


Ethel!





Laverne or Shirley? Laverne and Shirley



Shirley!




Betty or Veronica? Archie Comics


Betty!




Wilma or Betty? The Flintstones


Veronica!




Addison or Naomi? Private Practice


Addison! ...no, wait... Naomi!...no...uh... Too Close to Call... Tie!




Leia or Mara Jade? Star Wars: Expanded Universe


Mara Jade!

The Fugitive:
An innocent victim of blind justice...freed by fate to search for a one-armed man..freed to run from a policeman obsessed with his capture.

You don't see this kind of character on TV much anymore more but in the mid-20th century it was one of the most popular of all.


The Drifter...
He -- always he -- had no home and was constantly on the move, whether driven by need for excitement, justice, survival or inner peace.

And over the course of each episode, strangers would become friends or lovers as the Drifter found some lost jigsaw piece of his own self-mystery.


The Seven Types of Drifters:

The Running Man Drifter



The Running Man Drifter is accused of a crime he didn't commit and must find the true killer to prove his innocence.

Ripped from the same cloth as The Fugitive was the Incredible Hulk series. David Banner was the sci-fi twist of Richard Kimble.

Banner's first name was Bruce in the comic book that spawned this series, but that wasn't considered macho enough for TV.

Like Kimble, David/Bruce Banner ran to escape those who had falsely accused him.

On the way, he experienced one extreme wardrobe-malfunction after another.


The Gadabout Drifter



Warner Brothers cornered the market on old-west drifters in the 50's.
Maverick was a classic Gadabout, always in search of whiskey, women and a fast hand of five-card stud. This Drifter was motivated by thirst for risky adventure.

James Garner portrayed Bret Maverick, a card shark with a heart of gold. But because each episode took more than a week to crank out, Bret's brother Bart -- played by Jack Kelly -- was soon introduced. Most episodes featured Bret, some featured Bart.

Roger Moore, playing English cousin, Beau, joined the show when Garner left over a contract dispute.

Oh yeah, the WB was turned down by their first choice for Beau, Sean Connery.


The Crusader-Drifter



The Crusader Drifter was a man on a mission.
He was a tortured soul who could not rest until every wrong had been righted and every perp put in prison.

Batman never left Gotham and Superman stayed close to Metropolis. But the Crusader Drifter was always journeying from town to town, hoping to be there when justice had to be done.and there was no one else there to do it.

The Crusader-Drifter sometimes had a sidekick.
The Lone Ranger had Tonto and Batman had Robin. But the Crusader Drifter's sidekick was generally motivated by loyalty to his Kemo-Sabe, as opposed to the same kind of justice-jag that spurred on the main character.


The Lonesome Road Drifter



This kind of Drifter wasn't running from anyone nor toward anything .
He was called by the open road, that endless ribbon of highway.

He wasn't yet ready to settle down and he had the money and means to take some time to ... drift.

On CBS's Route 66, Tod Stiles and Buz Murdock restlessly searched for adventure in an inherited convertible Corvette, which was somehow always the latest model each of the show's four seasons on the air. (Chevrolet was a sponsor).

Route 66 was the last chance for viewers to see a regionally diverse America that just doesn't exist anymore. As stars Martin Milner and George Maharis commented in interviews, "Now you can go wherever you want ... and it's a Denny's"


The Dead-Man-Running Drifter



Tick...tick...tick
This Drifter has only so much time and he's trying to grab for all the gusto he can.

He wasn't out to save the world yet each week he found a way to bring resolution or meaning to lives he touched as he wandered from one city to the next.

NBC's excellent, but ironically short-lived, Run For Your Life starred Ben Gazzara as Paul Bryan, a man afflicted with a never identified terminal illness.

Paul Bryan now had to squeeze thirty years of living into one...or two...


The "If I'm Not Me Who Da Hell Am I?!" Drifter



This Drifter suffered from some kind of amnesia.
He had no idea who he was. All he knew was that he had to keep on the run because someone, for some reason, was trying to kill him.

Coronet Blue was a short-lived series in the mid-60's. It didn't last long enough for the lead character to figure out his mystery.

The main character crawled out of the ocean, cold, alone and afraid, with no memory of his past and only the knowledge that he was being pursued by dangerous people.

Hmmm....

Do you think if the series lasted longer he might have discovered that his real identity was that of Jason Bourne??!

No one described this Drifter better than Arnold...





The Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance Drifter



Like, far out, man
This Drifter was like, you know, tired of that whole button-down corporate thing, man. He had to, I don't know, like bust loose and maybe like, you know, find himself and stuff.

Maybe he would, maybe find some chicks along the way and dig that groovy scene. But then he'd have to cut out, like space. Leave, even.

Like, you know?

I see dead people...all the time...
After seeing the M. Night Shyamalan film, The Sixth Sense, I saw it again the very next week. I was sure the movie had cheated its brilliant conceit somewhere along the way. It hadn't.

Could a movie be this good? Could a filmmaker be this brilliant?

Then I saw M. Night's subsequent movies, Unbreakable, Signs, The Village. One hokey, sophomoric bomb after another.

If those movies had been that bad, could The Sixth Sense have possibly been that good?

Not that there's anything wrong with that...
Jerry Seinfeld's long-running NBC hit, Seinfeld was the bedrock of Must-See-TV in the Go-Go 90's. It redefined the TV sitcom and was the fountainhead of ongoing syndication and DVD franchises.

Jerry Seinfeld has a secure position in the TV Comedy Hall of Fame, right?

Now, I'm starting to wonder...

The first chink in the armor was that shorter-than-intended series of embarrassing Microsoft commercials.

While many viewers expected a clever pushback to the long-running PC/Mac Apple campaign, what they got was rambling stream-of-consciousness, featuring Seinfeld and, surprisingly, an equally funny (or unfunny) Bill Gates.



Then came the Marriage Ref.

Seinfeld produces this curiosity but he isn't really identified as the star of the show.

Tom Papa plays Ryan Seacrest to a judging panel of three celebrities that more-often-than-not includes Seinfeld.

And what are they judging?

Pre-recorded -- most definitely scripted/directed -- vignettes of couples playful sparring over one insipid, trivial thing or another.

Then the panel judges spout off what sounds like scripted ad-libs that generate surreal and wholly unbelievable laugh-track-enhanced studio audience guffaws.

Note to Marriage Ref producers:
Compare the quality of your celebrity quips with those of NBC's vintage Hollywood Squares.




How could NBC replace one night of the disaster that was the Jay Leno Show with a program that accomplishes the seemingly impossible feat of being less funny and less clever?

How indeed.

Here's what the critics are saying about The Marriage Ref:

NPR / Linda Holmes: "terrible" ... "heinous"
(Interesting since The Marriage Ref does have the vibe of a witless version of NPR's "Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me!")

Time Magazine / James Poniewozik: "the most God-awful mishmash of a comedy-variety show to lead into local news on NBC since immediately before the Olympics."

NJ.com / Alan Sepinwall: "ugly, unfunny, patronizing mess."


Maybe the Must-See-TV Seinfeld show just wasn't as funny as I thought it was...

It all started in Pennsylvania back in the 19th or maybe even the 18th century.
In the past, the ritual, which may have its roots in the German Candlemas, has involved badgers and bears.

Today, in the US and Canada, the celebration centers on a groundhog and whether or not the skies are cloudy or clear on an early February morning.

If the groundhog sees his shadow we get six more weeks of winter. And if he doesn't, we get...let's see...six more weeks of winter.

Canada Peg, our way-up-north correspondent, files this story about Groundhog Day and how Canadians use rodents to judge the duration of winter.

(Some of you will remember Canada Peg's excellent Sarah Palin song parody, North From Alaska.)

Take it away, Peg!

Groundhog Day -- Dateline: Canada

The States has good old Punxsutawney Phil
I know there are a few others scattered about the country. Here in Canada there are also a few:

Shubenacadie Sam



Our Nova Scotia claim to fame, and of course, the best groundhog in Canada, is Shubenacadie Sam (that's shoe-been-ock-uh-dee with no accent on any syllable, to you normal folk.)


Wiarton Willy



Ontario, the California (biggest province) of Canada, has Wiarton Willy (wier-tonne). He's always wrong, but he does get the most press. (Far bigger population base. )


Balzac Billy



Balzac Billy of Alberta is the nuttiest, and not cause he's a squirrel. Nope. He is a guy in a groundhog suit. How's that for one heck of an embarrassing resume stuffer for an actor: crawl out of your hibernation hole and act like an idiot.

Good thing old Honore Balzac is long gone, or he would sue: after all, the French get really upset when made fun of in any manner, and this should qualify. I'm almost surprised some Quebecer hasn't already shot the dude.


Manitoba Merv



The cheapest celebration centers around Manitoba Merv, a lousy puppet! 'Nough said.


Of course, our favorite Groundhog Day was Bill Murray's excellent 1993 comedy

Behind the curtain, beneath the veil...
Vance Packard wrote about the power of embedded, subliminal advertising messages in his landmark book, The Hidden Persuaders, published in 1957.

He hypothesized that advertisers motivate us to buy in ways that only our slavish subconscious mind can comprehend.

Do you see the hidden message in the ad above?
Do you see the provocative optical illusion that some believe changes the entire meaning of the ad? More about that in a bit.

When Subliminal goes Supraliminal
But it isn't just in advertising that the media plays tricks with the mind. And sometimes the cues are embedded in what we hear as opposed to what we see.

Dancing to the music
Music background in TV and films may not be subliminal in the technical sense but it still seems to slip beneath the radar of consciousness, doesn't it?

It's always there in the background nudging us this way or that, suggesting what we should think, how we should feel.

The driving pulse-pounding intro theme to CBS's NCIS LA meshes with the frenetic jump-cut visuals to tell us what to expect for the next hour.



Does the music merely reflect the excitement level of the show or does it, in large part, create it?

Without the music are we left only with images to two guys smiling at each other while they run around, pointing toy pistols?

Laughter from nowhere
But even more subliminally supraliminal is the sitcom laugh track, the strange invention of Charley Douglass.

First used only to sweeten the laughter of an actual studio audience, the laugh track, sometime around Hogan's Heroes, took on a life all its own. It continues to be the haunting, ubiquitous background noise of nearly every TV sitcom.

Speaking of haunting, some of the laughs you may hear on laugh tracks today were recorded nearly 60 years ago. The laughing dead...now there's a creepy subliminal image...

The TV laugh track doesn't have the power to make us laugh but it does inform us that (1) we are watching a comedy and (2) what that actor just said is funny. Even if it isn't funny. Or perhaps better said, especially if it isn't funny.

After all, if it were funny, why would we even need a laugh track?

Let's play around with this idea of laughter from nowhere. What happens if we have a little fun with it?