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?

Deadwood (HBO)

HBO's excellent frontier drama, Deadwood, had it's lighter moments, but by no stretch was it a comedy. But what happens when a laugh track is added is eerie and surreal.

Doesn't it actually start to feel like a sitcom?

(Remember this is Deadwood, so the language is graphic to say the least)


Deadwood as a Comedy - Watch more Funny Videos


Big Bang Theory (CBS)

This clip has been making the rounds on the web over the last week or so. The Big Bang Theory is a highly rated, well-produced comedy but there's something strange about its vibe when the laugh track is scrubbed from it.

We're not really aware of the unnatural pauses between lines when laughs fills the spaces. Without laughter, the action seems to freeze freakishly between patches of dialogue.




Friends (NBC)

Friends was one of the most popular TV comedies of all time. But can you tell that from watching this laughtrack-less clip?




So what is it really that we're laughing at?
Does something seem funnier when we're given evidence that others have found it funny? Isn't that why the laugh track is there?

Why are so quick to surrender to the hidden command?

Is this all just another example of we call Psycholgia Apocalypzia?




What do you see in the Benson & Hedges ad at the beginning of this post?
Get the surprising and shocking story here.

Tay Zonday

Then: Chocolate Rain
Tay Zonday's Chocolate Rain video was released almost three years ago. By the end of 2009 it had 46 milliion YouTube views and a few dozen spoofs, including one by John Mayer.

The song is an interesting combination of poetry, melodic repetition and Tay's surreal baritone voice.




Now: "You You You"
Today, Tay Zonday is focusing on original music and is also finding some success in acting and social commentary.

His video You You You was released last November.





Marie Digby

Then: Like a Star
In the summer of 2007, Marie Digby released a short video clip of her cover of Corinne Bailey Rae's Like a Star. For better acoustics, she recorded it in her bathroom on a Mac Powerbook.

Despite these limitations, Marie displayed awesome talent and amazing potential.




Now: Avalanche
Marie isn't just like a star now. She is one. She's released three studio albums that have spawned seven singles.

She's responded to allegations of astroturfing by saying that her early homemade video clips were required to make up for a lack of promotion by Hollywood Records, whom she had previously signed with.

Personally, we don't care. We're just happy this great young talent is getting exposure..




Gary Brolsma

Then: The Numa Numa Guy
Gary's Numa Numa video was a shot heard round the world. In 2004, Gary used his bedroom webcam to make a video as he lip-synced the song "Dragostea din tei" by Moldovan pop band O-Zone.

Something about Gary's arm-waving and eye-brow cocking struck a chord with YouTube viewers worldwide. The video got an amazing 700 million hits. VH1 named Gary the Number 1 internet icon.




Now: The Numa Network Guy
Gary's homemade video actually inspired Dan Balan, formerly of O-Zone, to re-issue Dragostea Din Tei, as a new single "Sugar Tunes Numa Numa."

Gary has launched The Numa Network on the web which offers videos and other original programming, like the Kristy Storms Show:

Michael Jackson's Beat It
(After the rather long intro, the singing kicks in at about 0:48 in the timecode. It's worth the wait.)




We enjoy showcasing undiscovered or lesser known talent here.
We're huge fans of Fiomily, the young sisters, Emily and Fiona, who do such amazing covers of new and classic rock.



And we think Sinval Fonseca's smooth one-man-band Bossa Nova is refreshing and fantastic.



Then came Dr. Karaoke.
Dr. K Chaudhry is something else again.
We don't know exactly what to make of him and we're hoping that maybe you do.

Dr. K, like Fiomily and Sinval, loves to crank up the webcam and belt out a song. At least that's what we think he's doing.

If this is a joke, he's carried it a pretty long way.
Dr. K. has dozens of Karaoke covers online, and that's just the stuff in English.

There must be hundreds of clips out there of Dr. K singing along with songs which we assume are in his native Hindi.

And that's not even getting into his online astrology predictions.

If nothing else, he is unique, no?


The Eagles' Hotel California




The Beatles' Yesterday




Abba's Dancing Queen

Jeff Zucker - President and CEO of NBC Universal



Loser:
Under Zucker's command, NBC plummeted from being ranked first among the top three networks to fourth among the top four. Yeah, that's right.

The Los Angeles Times calls Zucker's bungled attempt to placate NBC affiliates with his late-night shifting of Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien "one of the biggest debacles in television history."

Lucky:
Zucker will continue to lead the NBC/Universal joint venture currently in the works between General Electric and Comcast


Jay Leno - The once and future host of NBC's Tonight Show



Loser:
Jay Leno, pointman of one of the most conspicuous failed experiments the history of modern media, hosted fully one-third of the 2009 NBC primetime schedule with tired jokes, bland sketches and a distinct lack of show prep.

Lucky:
Leno, at least as of this writing, looks poised to wrestle the helm of the Tonight Show back from Conan O'Brien, in order to resume his position as King of Late Night.


Ben Bernanke - Chairman of the United States Federal Reserve



Loser:
Ben Bernanke was head of the Fed as the global economy suffered the worst financial meltdown in nearly a century.

He's the genius who came up with the Bernanke Doctrine, recommending that the way to stave of deflation is to print more money and pay zero interest on it.

Says Bernanke:

The U.S. government has a technology, called a printing press, that allows it to produce as many dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost. Under a paper-money system, a determined government can always generate higher spending and, hence, positive inflation.

Along with former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Bernanke was the target of fraud allegations in 2009 issued by the New York State's Attorney regarding improprieties in the acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America.


Lucky:
Bernanke was not only reappointed to the position for another term but was named Time Magazine's Man of the Year.



Lovie Smith - Head Coach of the once redoubtable Chicago Bears.



Loser:
Smith has registered losing seasons for half of the six years of his coaching career in Chicago.

He has an overall winning record of just barely over .500

His key strategy/tactic on the field is to "make plays." Yeah, that pretty much his entire game plan.

Lucky:
After leading the Chicago Bears to an ugly 7-9 losing season for 2009 and with many Bears fans demanding that he be sacked, Smith was the last man standing after the entire coaching staff was fired.

CBS is the big dog of the major TV networks...at least until American Idol kicks off
Looking at the TV season to date, 13 of the top 20 shows of the 2009/10 season are on CBS.

Four of the top ten TV shows are CBS dramas: NCIS (America's favorite program with over 20 million viewers each week), The Mentalist, NCIS LA and CSI.

The news isn't all good at CBS
Three Rivers was an early cancellation and several other shows -- Cold Case, The New Adventures of Old Christine, Gary Unmarried and Accidentally on Purpose -- may be on shaky ground.

Even The Good Wife, which would be a sure-fire hit on any other network faces an uncertain future on the high-powered CBS.








Dancing with the Stars
America's third most popular program is ABC's top rated show -- Dancing With The Stars. (The DWTS results show is seventh in season-to-date rankings.)

The network has two dramas in the top ten -- Desperate Housewives and Grey's Anatomy. The last season of Lost -- kicking off after the first of the year -- should bolster the network.



Hank Yanked
One ABC show, the embarrassing Hank, is already gone. Several others -- Ugly Betty, Better Off Ted, Eastwick, the forgotten and Scrubs may soon be on the chopping block.







House rules
House, ranked 12th in overall popularity, is currently the only Fox program in the top 20 but Simon Cowell & Company will change all that in a couple of weeks.

Brothers struggling
Fox has several shows that may be on life support. Til Death and Dollhouse are struggling.

Also, Brothers, the Fox sitcom that we find refreshing and funny, may be on borrowed time.









Nothing to brag about
If it weren't for Sunday Night Football, NBC would have no shows in the top 20. That's right. Zero.

And the regular football season will be history come January.

Medical malpractice
Two of the dramas that NBC was banking its revival on -- Mercy and Trauma -- may soon be DOA.



But anemic ratings are only part of NBC's uncertain future. Some have suggested that the recent acquisition by Comcast may be the beginning of end of NBC.

Is that possible? Will NBC follow in the footsteps of the WB and UPN?


Sources: tvbythenumbers.com, zap2it.com

The Lone Ranger
For many Baby Boomers, The Lone Ranger wasn't just a western, it was the western.





Rawhide
The Rawhide theme is perhaps the most iconic of all TV westerns. The lyrics don't really refer to the show itself so much as they do to the life of a cattle wrangler at the time.

Some people think the Blues Brothers' cover is pretty good.







Branded
After his successful run on The Rifleman, Chuck Connors returned to television as Jason McCord, an officer booted out of the army on charges of cowardice.

The intro, probably the best part of the series, depicts McCord's cashiering.




Bat Masterson
This theme seemed longer, and probably more interesting, than the show it described.





The Rebel
Despite the fact that the Confederate side of the US Civil War wasn't terribly popular in the 1950's, this series was a moderate hit at the time.

The theme song was performed by Johnny Cash.





The Wild, Wild West
Calling this show a western is a bit of a stretch. It was actually developed to capitalize on the 1960's spy craze. The lead character, James West, was a secret agent in the 1800's who had more gadgets than James Bond.

Though the TV series was popular, the 1999 cinema version, starring Will Smith, was no hit at the box office.





Jim Bowie
Because the rule was that every person who died at the Alamo had to have his own TV show, this program hit the airwaves for a short time.

Jim Bowie wasn't exactly as popular as his Alamo amigo Davy Crockett, though.




Cheyenne
Clint Walker, who looked to be about 8 feet tall, starred in this series which has to have had the saddest theme of all TV westerns.

Who would have guessed this cartoon would become a hit?

Who would have thought this was even a cartoon?

Calling Clutch Cargo animation is a stretch. This kid's series, launched in March 1959, was basically a static storyboard with a human mouth.

Even South Park is more life-like than this.

Airplane pilot-Clutch and his pal Spinner and dog Paddlefoot travelled the world in search of adventure in one stagnant episode after another.




The shall-we-say unique nature of style of Clutch Cargo has made it an easy target for spoofing.

The Golden Age of Radio died on September 30, 1962
Commercial radio was born on November 2, 1920. Several months before, amateur radio operator Dr. Frank Conrad was approached by leading radio manufacturer, Westinghouse, with the idea of setting up a radio transmitting operation in Pittsburgh that would later become KDKA.

On November 2, KDKA broadcast the news that Warren G. Harding had won the race against James Cox for the US presidency.

The birth of the radio spot
Two years later, a New York real estate developer paid to advertise his services on the radio. The new medium had found its revenue stream.


The world's four decade long love affair with radio
For the next 42 years, the world enjoyed a passionate love affair with radio. Families huddled in darkened living rooms listening to drama, comedy and news with only their imaginations to fill the spaces between the spoken words and static.

All that came to an end the evening of September 30, 1962. The world had been lured away from radio by a younger, more exciting lover. Those darkened living rooms were now lit with the cathode-ray flickering of television.

Johnny Dollar
On the night of September 30, those few people still listening to radio heard The Tip-Off Matter, the final installment of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar, a radio series with a 13 year run.

The Bogart-like lead character was Johnny Dollar, a freelance insurance investigator with an action-packed expense account.



Most episodes began with Johnny taking a phone call requesting him to investigate a high profile insurance claim. After a few moments of hesitation, Johnny, imagining the beautiful women in the exotic locale he was beckoned to, would agree to take the assignment.

Johnny's expense account was the spine of the adventure as he chronicled the cost of cab rides and booze to ply necessary information from the crimson lips of some femme fatale.

Over the course of the series run, eight actors played the role but most old-time-radio fans agree that Bob Bailey was to Johnny Dollar what Sean Connery was to James Bond.



Something in Bailey's voice and the way he portrayed the cool demeanor of Johnny Dollar made the character his alone.

As good as Bailey was, he didn't make it to the end of the run. When production of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar moved from California to New York in 1960, Bailey decided to stay where he was.

Two years later, with Mandel Kramer in the title role, Johnny Dollar completed his final investigation.

By the end of that evening, commercial radio, as listeners had known it for over 40 years, ceased to exist. After September 30, 1962, dramas, comedies, variety programs and quiz shows faded from the airwaves.

The medium became the home of Top 40 music, 24-hour news and controversial talk.

Radio lived on but its Golden Age was over.


You can listen to nearly 500 installments of Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar on the excellent old time radio site: OTR.net.

SCTV: One of Canada's Best Exports

Offering some of the best television sketch comedy ever, SCTV was built around the premise that viewers were watching the programming of a local Canadian TV station.

This high-concept offered the flexibility of lampooning the entire range of drama, comedy and variety shows on the tube as well as movies, news and documentaries.

The cast of the comedy troupe varied over the run of the series but every member could be counted on to bring his or her A-game every week.

Perry Como
Perry Como, a popular TV singer in the 50's, hosted one of the first weekly programs broadcast in color.

Known for his relaxed singing style, Perry was spoofed by SCTV in one of their most well-known parodies. That's American Pie's Eugene Levy doing the impersonation.

It's been reported that Perry thought this bit was hilarious.




Yosh and Stan Schmenge
Before John Candy was a movie star he portrayed, among a thousand other characters on SCTV, one half of the Czechoslovakian polka act, the Schmenge Brothers.




Ronco: Shower and Blow Dryer in a Briefcase
You don't see this kind of commercial too much anymore but there was a time when TV ads for useless gadgets like Pocket Fishermen and Clappers were all over the place.

SCTV's genius was to take an existing TV premise that was already silly and push it just a few clicks into the absurd.

Be sure to notice what happens to the post and the tree behind Martin Short in this bit.




The Farm Film Report
Who else but SCTV would mash-up an early morning TV farm report with movie reviews about blown' up stuff real good!

That's Joe Flaherty on the right.




English for Beginners
Catherine O'Hara and Andrea Martin were, without a doubt, two of the funniest people ever on television.




5 Neat Guys
SCTV looked at all the commercials for records and cassettes of middle-of-the-road-mediocre music acts and, once again, nudged the concept into the ridiculous range.

What's truly funny about this spoof is that it's not that far off from an ad that might have actually run on TV at the time.

This Jedi Never Returned

The producers of the Star Wars Holiday Special believed the magic of the film franchise would make this TV extravaganza a seasonal classic with the same cachet as "Miracle on 34th Street."

Things didn't work out that way. The special had a single airing on November 17, 1978, then made the jump to lightspeed on its journey into oblivion.

But what, indeed, would Christmas be without hearing Princess Leia sing the Life Day song to the tune of the Star Wars theme.

This special has been the target of much lampooning, but the message is worthwhile, the cast committed to their character roles and Carrie Fisher has a very nice voice.

Here They Come...
Back in the 1960s, NBC, in an effort to capitalize on the success of The Beatles, came up with the idea of a TV show about a rock band called The Monkees.

But The Monkees weren't just copycats. Their I'm a Believer was the top charting single in 1967 and, that year, the TV band sold more albums than The Beatles and The Rolling Stones combined.

Lip Service
Everyone knows that the network, at least at first, didn't want the actors to play their own instruments but it looks like producers weren't sure if they trusted the vocal talent of the cast either.

Here's an early take of the TV shows opening with Micky, Mike, Davy and Peter lip syncing their way through the intro while other singers and musicians did all the heavy lifting.




The Finished Product
When NBC let the group get in front of the microphones, they cranked out a far more lively version of the theme, don't you think?




Related Apocalypzia Posts:



The Night a Monkee Upstaged the Beatles

John: "Whot's 'appenin' brutha?!"

Me: "You're John Lennon."

John: "That's right, mate."

In an interview, John said he got two questions all the time while living in New York -- "Are the Beatles getting back together?" and "Aren't you John Lennon?"

Though John Lennon was world famous, identity was a frequent topic for him.
In his song Nowhere Man -- which he wrote about himself -- John seems to be asking Who am I? Who is John Lennon? The lyric answers that question with another question -- Isn't he a bit like you and me?

In A Hard Day's Night, there is a scene where a woman suspects John may be THE John Lennon. But after talking to him, she assumes she is mistaken...



MILLIE: Oh, wait a minute, don't tell me you're ...

JOHN: No, not me.

MILLIE (insistently): Oh you are, I know you are.

JOHN: No, I'm not.

MILLIE: Well, you look like him.

JOHN (examining himself in the mirror): My eyes are lighter.

MILLIE (agreeing): Oh yes.

JOHN: And my nose...

MILLIE (starting to walk away): You don't look like him at all.


Sometime in New York City: The Night I Met John Lennon
Until long after midnight I wandered the streets of mid-town Manhattan. I was a kid in a candy store, on my own for the first time in my life in a city that made my own Chicago look like a small town.

I couldn't believe that a city could be so alive, so filled with people, lights and action after 2AM.

I wanted to see it all -- Fifth Avenue, Times Square, Central Park, Broadway...

Broadway!

More lights, the roar of traffic and the constant hum of people all hurrying somewhere in the middle of the night. But further down on Broadway there was dark building that caught my attention.

The Ed Sullivan Theatre
I approached it and saw that it was the old Ed Sullivan Theatre. David Letterman's Late Show is broadcast from there now but this night, so many years ago, it was empty, dark and abandoned.

I stood there under the historic marquee, peering through the entrance door windows trying in vain to see inside.

All the time I was thinking, this was where the Beatles first performed on their first American tour when 73 million Americans tuned in to see the Fab Four on television.



A car approaches...
It was then that I noticed that a car had pulled up behind me and parked at the curb. The rear passenger window rolled down slowly. I could hear laughter and talking inside. Someone stuck his face out of the window and spoke to me.

It was a man who I had seen on television, in movies, in magazines and on album covers. It was the man who had taught me how to play guitar by listening over and over to the dozens of hit songs he'd recorded.

It was the man who -- with the three other members of his band -- got his superstar start in the very building that we were now in front of.

The Liverpool accent was unmistakable.

John: "Whot's 'appenin' brutha?!"

Me: "You're John Lennon."

John: "That's right, mate."

The face receded from the car window. After a few more moments of laughter and chatter, the vehicle pulled away.

What just happened here?!, I thought. Had I just met John Lennon in front to the Ed Sullivan Theatre? Was that possible?

And if it was possible and if it had indeed happened, couldn't I think of something better to say than what was clearly obvious to him?

Me: "You're John Lennon."

Disbelief, Doubt...
When I got back to Chicago and told my friends what had happened, they didn't believe me. It didn't make any sense. It was too surreal to be true.

After awhile I almost began to doubt it all myself. But there really was no question...



Seeking out the Master
It was many years later that I read that while John lived at the Dakota in New York City, new bands would seek him out. Aspiring rock musicians all wanted an audience with the man who had helped to change the face of music.

And sometimes he would take them on a tour of his city. But there was one place they all wanted to see -- the Ed Sullivan Theatre.

By some strange coincidence, the night I roamed the late night streets of New York happened to be a night that he was, no doubt, giving some new band a tour.

And all I could come up with to say to him was...

Me: "You're John Lennon."

Identity and the Last Dark Day at the Dakota...
But I was reminded of that brief -- though in retrospect quite poignant -- conversation a few years later, reading about the night John was shot.

He was semi-conscious and bleeding profusely as the police rushed him to the hospital. Officer James Moran tried to keep him from slipping into the darkness by talking to him, trying to keep him alert.

"Do you know who you are?," Officer Moran asked. John, moaned and nodded as if to say ... yes.

My very brief conversation with John Lennon suddenly took on special meaning to me.

Yes, indeed John... You're John Lennon...


John Lennon 1940 - 1980

A longer time ago in a galaxy not so far away...
...there was a star-wars-sized battle between planets Earth and Mongo. Flash Gordon, a character created by Alex Raymond in 1934, single-handedly took on Ming the Mercilous -- ruler of Mongo -- and his army of minions.

Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker's biological dad but Flash Gordon may indeed have been his cinematic great-grandfather.

Flash Gordon started in the 1930s as a comic strip but is best known as the first science-fiction movie serial. Buster Crabbe -- the Olympic-champion Michael Phelps of his day -- played space hero Flash Gordon.

Buster was obviously in high demand during his acting career. He's the only actor to have played Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers and Tarzan -- the top three comic strip heroes of the 1930s.

When George Lucas was contemplating Star Wars, he considered rebooting Flash Gordon. Fortunately, he decided to go his own way and create his own epic storyline, adding his own genius to the genre.

Flash didn't have Luke Skywalker's X-Wing Fighter but he did have a way to get around the galaxy (even if his rocket ship did sound like a Hoover vacuum cleaner...)





Ming the Mercilous (with way too much starch in the collar) was Darth Vader and the Emperor rolled into one
Bearded and dishelved Dr. Zharkov was to Flash what Obi-Wan was to Luke Skywalker -- except Zharkov would sell out to the enemy at the drop of a space helmet.

Clearly, Ming saw himself as a player but Flash was having none of that...





Dale Arden = Princess Leia?
Dale was the leading lady of the series but she lacked all the feisty, spunkiness of Princess Leia. She, like Dr. Zharkov, was also awful quick to throw Flash under the bus.





Enhanced Interrogation Planet Mongo Style
Dale Arden -- played by a different actress in this episode -- does about all that Hollywood directors gave actresses to do in 1930s movie serials, scream and faint.

Doesn't the guy with the wings on his helmet have a great laugh?




Question of the Day: If a fight between Flash Gordon and Luke Skywalker broke out at the Mos Eisley Cantina, who would your money be riding on?
(No rayguns or light sabers allowed)

Wow!

Our Best Bond post giving Daniel Craig the edge of Sean Connery produced quite a debate.

Well, not so much a debate as an outcry from loyal Connery fans. We feel that Craig's portrayal is truer to the character in the Ian Fleming novels. That's our story and we're stickin' with it.

Connery: The Quintessential Bond
We do that though with full deference to Sean Connery who we referred to as the Quintessential Bond. Without Connery, there would be no franchise today for Craig to enjoy. Connery had a massive impact on the role and the culture.

We know. We were one of the many young boys who spent hours in front of a mirror trying to get that left eyebrow to arch without the right one going up with it. Seriously.

Spotlight on Sean
Given all that, we felt that we hadn't given Sean nearly enough credit for his remarkable achievements with the role. So after giving Daniel Craig the spotlight on Monday, we thought today we'd show some deserved respect to Connery, Sean Connery.

Let's start with the two actors in question.

Daniel Craig: "Connery is my favorite Bond"
In a 2005 interview, Connery called Craig a "terrific choice" for the role of Bond. "He's a good actor. A completely different departure." But before the release of Casino Royale, Daniel Craig, in interviews, praised Sean Connery as his favorite Bond and commented that he was a big fan of the actor as a child.

And from Pierce Brosnan; "Goldfinger was the first movie I ever saw"
Pierce Brosnan also spoke of his great admiration for Connery. Somewhat ironically, Sean's Goldfinger was not only the first Bond movie Pierce ever saw, it was the first film he ever saw on the big screen. "Little did I think that I would be playing the role someday," he's quoted as saying.

Who's the Best Bond -- Poll Results
A joint poll conducted earlier this year by HMV.com and getcloser.com determined that Connery was not only the favorite Bond, but that he bested Craig by a two-to-one margin!




Not everyone liked Sean...
While we are great fans of Sean Connery's portrayal there is one person who thought he was an absolutely dreadful choice for the role. That would be character-creator Ian Fleming. Fleming is quoted as saying he was "looking for Commander James Bond, not an overgrown stuntman."

Physically, Fleming pictured a guy who looked like a less attractive version of 1920s songwriter Hoagy Carmichael.



O--kay... Hmmm. Maybe Fleming didn't have as good a fix on the true character of James Bond as we thought...

How About James Bond Movie Themes?

HMV.com and getcloser.com also conducted a joint poll rating the themes of James Bond movies in March 2009.

Favorite James Bond Theme Songs:

1. Live And Let Die - Paul McCartney and Wings
2. Goldfinger - Dame Shirley Bassey
3. Diamonds Are Forever - Dame Shirley Bassey
4. Nobody Does It Better - Carly Simon
5. James Bond Theme (Dr. No) - John Barry Seven and Orchestra
6. We Have All The Time In The World - Louis Armstrong
7. GoldenEye - Tina Turner
8. View To A Kill - Duran Duran
9. Living Daylights - A-Ha
10. James Bond Theme - John Arnold (ANI)

Goldfinger #2?!
We reacted to these poll findings much the way that many readers reacted to our picking Craig over Connery. Dame Shirley Bassey's Goldfinger taking second place to Paul McCartney's Live and Let Die is wrong on so many levels, don't you think?

For our money, we'd move Tina Turner's Goldeneye somewhat higher on the list.
Tina captured the Bassey growl yet made the song her own.




We notice that Matt Monro's From Russia with Love is nowhere to be found here on the list of best bond themes ... and rightfully so.




Apoc Post 11/23/09: Seven for 007: Who Was the Best Bond of Them All?

Scene from Goldfinger (1964):
Bond is strapped to a table. A razor-thin laser beam blazes its way ever closer to Bond. In mere seconds he will be sliced in two, the hard way. Amused and slavering, the evil Goldfinger, the man with the Midas touch - a spider's touch - looks down on it all.



Bond: Do you expect me to talk?!

Goldfinger: No, Meester Bond. I expect you to die!

For some reasons, Bond villains like to call 007, Meester Bond.
It's required. That pseudo-deference somehow makes the bad guys seem more menacing. Try it. Meester Bond. See? You sound scarier already.

Since Ian Fleming first created the character way back in the early 1950s, a number of actors have played Bond on the big screen. Here's our ranking of the seven best, in reverse order.


7 George Lazenby The Forgotten Bond -- On Her Majesty's Secret Service


George seemed like a nice enough guy.
He somehow got caught in the negotiations-crossfire between Sean Connery and the Bond producers and ended up with the job, looking more shaken than stirred.

Connery had just left the role for the first time when George came on board for his single Bond mission, On Her Majesty's Secret Service. Connery, afterwards, returned to the franchise for the embarrassing Diamonds are Forever.

George was a little stiff on screen. Maybe if he'd had a longer tenure, he'd have had the chance to loosen up a little.





6 David Niven The Recommended Bond -- Casino Royale (1967)



That 1967's Casino Royale was the worst Bond film ever is an understatement.
This movie may be the most confounding piece of cinema ever. But David Niven's special pedigree earns him a position in this ranking ahead of George Lazenby.

You see, when the character was about to make the leap from the printed page to the big screen, Niven was author/creator Ian Fleming's personal choice for the role. It's even rumored that Fleming developed the character in his novels with David Niven in mind. And if that wasn't enough, two of Fleming's Bond novels actually mention David Niven, as an actor, by name.

Niven's personal blessing from Fleming earns him this ranking position, but in no way excuses this confused, meandering mess of a movie.





5 Roger Moore The Cartoon Bond -- 7 Films



Roger Moore made James Bond more of a caricature than a character.
What Adam West brought to Batman is what Roger Moore brought to James Bond. Connery's replacement spawned the campy, cartoonish era of the series.

But Moore's contribution is not to be overlooked. He sustained the franchise for seven films.

Moore's stuntmen were in their own way more important to those seven films than he was. The Spy Who Loved Me had this iconic chase moment that Moore didn't even need to leave his trailer for:





4 Pierce Brosnan The Madison Avenue Bond -- 4 Films



Pierce Brosnan would have been Bond sooner but couldn't because of his NBC TV show, Remington Steele.
By the time he got the role, the whimsical side of of his TV persona was gone. Brosnan was more realistic in his portrayal and a welcome relief from the tired tenure of Roger Moore, but seemed to be a somewhat detached, walking showcase for dozens of product placements and merchandising tie-ins.





3 Timothy Dalton The Bad-Timing Bond -- 2 Films



Timothy Dalton's problem was timing.
Dalton was actually one of the first actors considered to take over the role the first time Connery walked. He turned down the offer to play 007 in On Her Majesty's Secret Service because, at only 23 years old, he thought he was too young for a license to kill.

Less gimmicky, more gritty
He was also offered For Your Eyes Only and Octopussy but turned them down, apparently because he didn't like the whimsical direction the franchise had taken. If he was going to play Bond, he wanted the films to be less gimmicky and more gritty.

He got his wish with The Living Daylights, a box office winner. His second Bond movie, Licence to Kill, had a sluggish reaction in the US but did well worldwide. Goldeneye was to be next but a five-year long dispute among production companies held up the project. Dalton got tired of waiting and Pierce Brosnan got the call instead.





2 Sean Connery The Quintessential Bond -- 7 Films



What? Number 2?!
By all rights, Sean Connery should be Numero Uno. After all, he invented single-handedly not just the role but the modern spy genre. For 50 years, every TV and movie spy has been a variation of Connery's theme. Connery made Bond a household name and made 007 everybody's lucky number.

But though Connery starred in arguably the best of the Bond films, like Goldfinger, Thunderball and Dr. No, he was also in Diamonds are Forever, a double-oh-dreck effort as bad as anything Roger Moore ever released.

Toward the end, his boredom with the role was undeniable. It just didn't seem like Sean was having fun anymore. His non-canonical return to the role in Never Say Never Again was a treat for his fans but had a certain I'm-only-doing-this-for-the-money feel to it.





1 Daniel Craig The Rebooted Bond -- 2 Films and Counting...



Back to the Basics
The James Bond that Ian Fleming created wasn't a suave, wise-cracking playboy. He was a hired killer, a blunt instrument designed to inflict a mortal blow as necessary for Queen and country.

The producers were lucky to be able to reboot the franchise with a film based on the novel that launched the Bond books. They used that opportunity to retool 007 in a manner more aligned with the original concept.

Daniel Craig offers a new minimalist take on 007, respectful of the characters roots yet aligned with today's post-Cold War realities.

Ironically, our choice for the best Bond of them all is also the shortest of them all. The actors who have played the role are all over 6 feet tall. Though there are a range of estimates of Craig's height, all register under the 6' mark.






Bond vs Bond: The Connery / Craig Showdown


Other Choices
Other actors had a shot at playing 007. Check out the screen tests for Sam Neill and James Brolin


Sam Neill




James Brolin



Apocalypzia Question:
Now that the Bond series has been rebooted should some of the Fleming books that became Moore movies be remade with Daniel Craig?

The JJ Abrams Star Trek reboot grossed over $380 million this year, with $75 million in US ticket sales its opening weekend.

Take that Rick Berman!

The Great Bird of the Galaxy
Gene Roddenberry's Star Trek franchise spawned numerous TV series, movies, books, cartoons, graphic novels and just about every other brand of media for over 40 years. In fact, Star Trek is credited in the Guinness Book of World Records as having the largest number of spin-offs of all shows in television history.

But when this galactic juggernaut was launched on the Desilu backlot few were convinced that Star Trek's continuing mission would continue at all.

Live Long and Prosper
The initial pilot for the original series (TOS) starred Jeffrey (King of Kings) Hunter. That one didn't go so well so most of the cast was dumped and another pilot was shot, this time with William Shatner in the Captain's chair. The rest is future history.

But that second version of the show got some tweaking before it hit the airwaves and we doubt that the series would have lived long or prospered if that hadn't happened.

Here's a glimpse of what TV audiences did not see back in 1966. If they had, what's your guess that we'd be talking about Star Trek 43 years later?




Here's what we noticed in this never-broadcast version of the pilot...

Typical Run-of-the-Mill Theme Music
The theme song in this pilot could have been used for any cop show in the mid-1960s. Though we're sure it was intended to be exciting, the music comes off as routine and tedious.

For some reason the female soprano singing "ahhh-AHHHH-ah-ah-ah-ah-AHHHH" in the iconic theme eventually used for the show just sounds outer-spacey.

Space: The Final Frontier
The opening monologue got a major rewrite after this version of the pilot. What rambles on here for a full minute was eventually tightened up to be a textbook example of an effective mission statement. Never before had an infinitive been split so courageously.

Space...the final frontier
These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise
Its five year mission
To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations
To boldly go where no man has gone before...

Smirking Spock
This is a different Spock than the one that Trekkers came to love and revere. Smirky and pompous. Our should we say even more smirky and more pompous?

Spock's Eyebrows
And speaking of Spock, his eyebrows were defintiely going rogue in this pilot. Either that or the third round bell had rung and they were crawling back to their neutral corners.

No Bones About It
No Leonard (Bones) McCoy here. Instead we get Paul Fix as the ship's doctor, though he's seen only briefly in this clip walking past the camera. His greatest claim to TV fame was playing the alcoholic Marshall who always ran to Lucas McCain for help on the 1960s series The Rifleman.

Special Bonus: Gary Lockwood
You may have noticed Gary Lockwood here. Lockwood has a unique place in science-fiction lore, having appeared not only in the launch of this historic TV space show but also starring in the historic space film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The Wrath of Lucy
Star Trek, The Original Series, ran for only three years but there was pressure to shut the show down in its first year.

Who saved the day for the crew of the Enterprise?

None other than Lucille Ball -- head of production company Desilu -- who believed in the show and allowed its mission to continue.

No, the first actor to play James Bond on the screen wasn't Sean Connery.
But you knew that already. You knew that way back in 1954 there was a LIVE production of Casino Royale on US television on a program called Climax!

Barry Nelson played Jimmy Bond, an American spy. American? Viewers wouldn't accept a Brit as a suave, debonair secret agent, would they?

More Schlitz than Absolut
Actually, Nelson played Bond more as if he'd been created by Dashiell Hammett -- or even Damon Runyon -- than Ian Fleming. This Bond was more of a Schlitz beer guy than a Absolut martini guy. In this TV adaptation of the first Bond novel, there was no M or Q or Miss Moneypenny. Just Jimmy.



Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre
You say Barry Nelson isn't your idea of great casting for Bond? Maybe not, but the long-term success of the franchise has hinged as much on the casting of the villain as the hero, and this early production may have hit that one out of the park. Peter Lorre seems perfect in the role of the cipher, Le Chiffre

This is how James, sorry, Jimmy Bond was first introduced on the screen...




And this was the climactic scene...




The one that got away
If you enjoyed the 2006 Daniel Craig version, you can probably thank this TV production for it. Because Ian Fleming had already sold the rights for this Bond script, Casino Royale wasn't included in the film franchise package that producers Broccoli and Saltzman acquired a few years later. It was through this loophole that the god-awful David Niven spoof with the same title made it to the screen in 1967.

Rebooted, not stirred
Had it not been for the Barry Nelson version, Casino Royale would likely have been the first big-screen film of the series and Sean Connery's debut in the role. As it was, when filmmakers wanted to reboot the movie franchise, the movie rights to the book that started it all were available and Bond was re-introduced and reborn.

Things have changed in 52 years...

Who You Gonna Call...?
We're already on record stating that if all hell breaks loose we'd feel safer if our Top Ten Women of the Apocalypse were guarding the ramparts. But that doesn't mean that guys should be left totally out of the equation.

We've already identified the secret agents we would choose to be on the front lines in an end-of-days struggle and in this post we look at the heroes of sci-fi movies who in our opinion would be our go-to-guys in the Mother-of-All-Battles against unspeakable evil and devastation.


The Night of the Living Dead: Duane Jones as "Ben" 1968



Movie Storyline:
A NASA space probe explodes generating radiation which not only re-animates the dead but turns the slow-walking corpses into fleash-eating ghouls. Ben is the unlikely saviour for a group of strangers barricaded in an isolated farmhouse.

"They're coming to get you, Barbra!"
There were certainly zombie movies before this one, but George Romero's 1968 The Night of the Living Dead (NLD) is arguably film-zero for modern zombie-apocalypse cinema and the template that shaped the genre for the next four decades.

Mister Romero's Neighborhood
Greorge Romero -- who before this film had worked as a director for Mister Roger's Neighborhood -- admits that he ripped off Richard Matheson's I Am Legend to turn what, in early drafts, started out as a horror-comedy flick into a film that stunned audiences with its skin-chewing savagery.

Ben Takes Charge
At the center of the mayhem is the character Ben, played by the La Sorbonne trained stage-actor Duane Jones. Ben's courage and intelligence are all that stands between a ravenous brigade of zombies and a motley crew of strangers trying to escape.




Why does Duane (Ben) Jones qualify to be one of the Sci-Fi Men of the Apocalypse?
Ben is the epitome of the apocalyptic leader. He is cool under fire yet forceful when required. He's the kind of character in a movie who when faced with the riskiest of propositions for rescue usually gets that great cliche line: It's the chance we'll have to take!

Duane Jones was even cool about playing the hero of a movie that spawned the entire sub-genre of zombie apocalypse movies. He went on to head the Theatre Department at the State University of New York at Old Westbury. The Duane L. Jones Recital Hall there is named for him.

His role in NLD broke Hollywood stereotyping, representing the first time a black actor was cast as a non-ethnic lead in a major US motion picture and the first time a black actor had the leading role in a horror film.

Mr. Jones is quoted as saying, "It never occurred to me that I was hired because I was black. But it did occur to me that because I was black it would give a different historic element to the film."


The Blob: Steven McQueen as "Steve" 1958



Movie Storyline:
Gelatinous meteor goop consumes an entire town one resident at a time until Steve, a 28 year old teenager, convinces the authorities to act.

Steve single-handedly saves his hometown and the world from the most dangerous mass of strawberry Jell-O ever. It was curious casting to have McQueen play a teenager in this movie but it wasn't the last time this kind of thing happened. Eight years later, at the age of 36, he played a young teenager in the opening scenes of Nevada Smith.

No matter. This was his movie debut and the start of one of the biggest film careers of the last half of the 20th century.




Not exactly a film to brag about
The Blob was a surprise-hit horror movie though a number of people who were involved with it chose to leave it off their resume. Steve McQueen didn't seem to say much about the movie and it was also the only time that Terrence Steven McQueen went by the stage-name Steven. (His Vampire Diaries grandson goes by Steven R. McQueen.)

Even Aneta Corsaut who played Steve's girlfriend, and went on to play Andy of Mayberry's girlfriend Helen Crump, didn't exactly brag about her participation in the film.



Rain-blobs keep falling on my head...
But the most deafening silence comes from the two young men who wrote the 50's rock-and-roll inspired theme song for the movie. When audiences heard it in 1958, it would have been hard for them to believe that these two guys would go on to write some of the most beautiful and enduring music of our time.

A long way from The Look of Love, Burt Bacharach and Hal David made their film-score debut with the title track, Beware of the Blob. Take a listen...




Why does Steve (Steve) McQueen qualify to be one of the Sci-Fi Men of the Apocalypse?
Number one, he's Steve Freakin' McQueen, for goodness sake. He's the guy who wrote the book on Cool.

And number two, this is one of those movies that's so bad, it's good. It is both an awful 1950s B-movie and the perfect parody of an awful 1950s B-movie, all at the same time.


The Incredible Shrinking Man: Grant Williams as "Scott Carey" 1957



Movie Storyline:
Scott, a normal-sized guy, is briefly engulfed by a radioactive cloud that causes him to shrink so much that he has to do battle with his house cat and, before it's all over, a basement spider.

The Incredible Shrinking Man was a different kind of horror movie. There was no monster terrorizing the town. The real problem was the lead character himself. This story is more closely aligned with true science-fiction in how it explores what happens when the very foundation of a person's self-identity is stripped away from him.

And let's face it, getting smaller is no guy's idea of a good time.




Why does Grant (Scott Carey) Williams qualify to be one of the Sci-Fi Men of the Apocalypse?
Setting this movie apart from others of the genre is a transcendent final voiceover scene in which rapidly-shrinking Scott Carey articulates the majestic unity he discovers between the microscopic and the macroscopic, the earthly and the ethereal, the logical and the spiritual:

"The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet, like the closing of a gigantic circle. And I felt my body dwindling, melting, becoming nothing. My fears locked away and in their place came acceptance. All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something. And then I meant something, too. Yes, smaller than the smallest, I meant something, too. To God there is no zero. I still exist."

Apocalypzia's Men/Women of the Apocalypse Series:

Top Ten Women of the Apocalypse

Mara Jade: Star Wars Expanded Universe


Men of the Apocalypse: Secret Agents

Derek Flint: Our Man Flint


Hedy Lamarr: Woman of the Apocalypse

Hedy Lamarr

My Pal Foot Foot
Even in the smoky, drugged-out haze of the late 60's music scene, the Shaggs' My Pal Foot Foot just didn't have what it takes to be a hit song.

But here we are talking about it some forty years after it was recorded. That says something that certainly can't be said for the thousands of forgotten one-hit-wonders that have come and quickly gone in the meantime. The Shaggs -- Dot, Helen, Betty and Rachel Wiggin -- made their mark in pop music history.


Drawing by Dorothy Wiggin: Foot Foot was the name of the family cat


Winning us over?
The Shaggs are easy to ridicule yet we find ourselves gradually won over by their innocent charm. They weren't trying to sound bad but felt compelled by love for their overly-ambitious Dad to strum guitars and beat drums when they likely would have preferred to hang out with their friends.

And who among us can't identify with the lengths often gone to in order to earn Dad's approval?

Not enough can be said here about the brilliant video that D. Sticker put together for this song. It has fun with the song somehow without really making fun of these young singers.

And it's an interesting yet surprising compliment to the Shagg's that their original version is arguably superior to the Deerhoof cover of My Pal Foot Foot, recorded years later.

My Cutie
It appears that the Shaggs had matured a bit as musicians and songwriters by the time My Cutie rolled out. It's really not a bad tune about teen angst. We see this song as kind of their Rubber Soul period -- eschewing the hard rock edge for a softer lyrical focus. The closing guitar riff is classic Shaggs though.

There's an unsubstantiated rumor that Neil Diamond, who reportedly took an interest in the Shaggs' music, is playing rhythm guitar on this recording. We don't believe it but the guitar does sound a lot better here.




The Shaggs - Still Rockin' It




Want More of The Shaggs?: It's Halloween!

They were the Jonas Brothers of the Swingin' 60's
Actually that isn't true at all. As far as we know the Jonas Brothers weren't forced by a somewhat overbearing father to reluctantly pursue a painful and talent-challenged musical career to fulfill some fortune teller's strange prophesy.

The Shaggs were.

Known today as the best worst rock band ever, the Shaggs were made up of the Wiggin sisters -- Dot, Helen, Betty and later Rachel. From 1968 through 1975, the Shaggs performed some of the most celebrated god-awful music in the history of humankind.

So bad it's kind of compelling
The Shaggs' music was so bad that, in its own way, it's endearing. What it lacked in tempo and tuning, it tried to make up for in both innocence and a brash audacity.



Mistake? What mistake?
An engineer who worked the studio sessions for Philosophy of the World, their first album, reports that he was gobsmacked when in the middle of recording, one of the Shaggs stopped playing because she made a mistake. How, the engineer wondered, could she sort the mistakes out from the rest of it?

Their most famous release is their seasonal favorite, It's Halloween!

You can listen to it right here. Please note, there is no video in this YouTube clip except for the title slide.




Want to hear more from the Shaggs?
Sure you do, because the My Pal Foot Foot song and video are just too strange to miss.

And by the way, here's the lyrics to It's Halloween so you'll be all set for Karaoke night!

It's Halloween

It's Halloween
It's Halloween
Its time for scares
Its time for screams
It's Halloween
It's Halloween

The ghosts will spook
The spooks will scare
Why, even Dracula will be there

It's time for games
It's time for fun
Not for just one
But for everyone

The jack-o-lanterns are all lit up
All the dummies are made and stuffed
By just looking you will see
It's this time of year again

It's Halloween
It's Halloween

All the kids are happy and gay
There doesn't seem to be a cloud in their way
But when it's over and they've had all their fun
They'll wish that Halloween had just begun

Oh, there are witches, goblins, Frankensteins and zombies
And there are tramps, Cinderallas, pirates, angels and gypsies
So let's have lots of fun and give many cheers
For Halloween comes but once a year

It's time for games
It's time for fun
Not for just one
But for everyone

It's Halloween
It's Halloween
It's Halloween
It's Halloween

It's Halloween!

No Funny Business
In 1954 Fredric Wertham wrote a book that changed an industry almost overnight. Seduction of the Innocent was a scathing attack on comic books and the potential danger their horrific images and storylines posed to young children.

The firestorm of controversy that flared after the book's publication resulted in the creation of the Comic Code Authority (CCA), a trade-sponsored internal censorship review board established to restore confidence in the industry.

Had this last ditch effort to save the business not been successful, Spider-Man, Superman, Batman and the entire Justice League for that matter, might never have survived past the Eisenhower administration.

In the spirit of Halloween, here are some of the kinds of ghoulish comic books that sent Wertham into a tizzy...



Come on, seriously. Who hasn't had this experience?
You stumble out of bed after a particularly rough night and schlep into the bathroom. You turn on the light, look in the mirror and see something grotesque staring back at you wearing your pajamas.

James Lileks and his Institute of Official Cheer has taught us all about comic book cover perspective. We imagine he would be the first to point out that the horrified woman couldn't possibly see the image in the mirror from where she's standing but she's horrified nonetheless.




No this isn't an anti-smoking ad but it certainly could be.
We're not sure why this poor guy is so surprised that it wasn't such a good idea to jam a radioactive tube in his mouth. Certainly whoever handed him this stick of radium was either suffering the same effects or protected by a lead-lined haz-mat suit. Either one would be a tip-off.

And what about whoever carefully stenciled the word radium on this side of the tube? He can't be looking too good about now either.





Real Police Cases?! Really?
Yeah, we're sure this was ripped from today's headlines. The guy in the brown zoot suit is so shocked by the gorilla that the force of his hair standing on end has ejected his fedora from his head.

His fellow gunsel -- with the stogie flying out of his mouth -- is just ticked that he was given bad intel. After all, no one told him it was this kind of gorilla. Whatever this kind is.

And why for Pete's sake would a gorilla have a safe full of greenbacks? Wouldn't you guess it would be full of bananas?

Yes, we know this cover isn't especially ghoulish but we couldn't pass up the idea of a gorilla smart enough to have an apartment yet too dumb to arm the burglar alarm when he stepped out for the evening.



Overstating the Obvious
We don't think anyone would argue with the gun moll that a volley of tommy-gun bullets wouldn't be faster-acting than drowning the cop in what looks to be green sludge.

And certainly anyone who would first consider green sludge instead of a tommy gun as the best way to do away with this cop is most likely crazy.

And as for the joining your partner comment, that pretty much looks like a done-deal at this point.




The Haunt of Fear! Now there's a cool title.
We don't know what it means but it certainly sounds scary. We're not exactly sure why bow-tie guy is so upset by his UPS package. Judging by the lion's head mounted on the wall, disembodied craniums aren't a big problem for him.

What really strikes us about this cover is the list of cameos featured in the issue. You get the lovable Old Witch, for one. But in addition you get the Vault-Keeper and as an added bonus you get the Crypt-Keeper, who pretty much looks like the Vault-Keeper without the green doily on his head.

One of our all time favorites...

Milton Supman, born in 1926, had two older brothers nicknamed Ham Bone and Chicken Bone. Milton, in time, became known as Soup Bone, which was later shortened to Soupy. When he became a disk jockey, years later, he took on the last name Sales and Soupy Sales, the entertainer, came to be.

Soupy Sales made getting a pie in the face a high art form.
His afternoon children's TV show was as enjoyable for Moms and Dads as it was for their kids. And it's hard to say just who was having more fun, the viewers who watched his show or Soupy himself.

Remembering the Great Soupy Sales...

Frankie (Original Jersey Boy) Valli




Pookie Sings the Blues




Fess (Davy Crockett, Daniel Boone) Parker




Alice Cooper
Soupy's sons may have had a hand in getting Alice Cooper on the show. They're musicians who have played with David Bowie, Todd Rundgren and Iggy Pop.




Soupy and the Stripper
Kids never saw the R-rated version of this prank the crew played on Soupy (and YouTube has pulled the raw edit after we originally filed this post). But here's Soupy telling Bob Costas about the time the crew punked him on live TV, along with the censored video.

Stand-Up Comics: Laughter from Beyond the Veil
These funny gentlemen in their short years on Earth made us laugh and forget -- in a seven minute set -- the trouble and strife in our own lives.

We remember them here today, amazed that, even though they are gone, these brilliant comedians continue to amuse, engage and entertain.

Life is short. Enjoy...


Mitch Hedberg 1968-2005



Sam Kinison 1953-1992



Bill Hicks 1961-1994



Richard Jeni 1957-2007


Also see Angels in the Wind; Gone Not Forgotten

2009's Fall TV season is only a few weeks old but already has two casualties.

Proving that sometimes four million Twitter followers just aren't enough, Ashton Kutcher's The Beautiful Life on CW was the first to go, followed by NBC's Southland which hadn't even had its official fall premiere yet.

But Hollywood is a tough town and always has been.


1969 ABC Turn On gets Turned Off During the Premiere
Hoping to leverage off the wild success of Laugh In, George Schlatter and ABC launched similar-but-different Turn On in 1969, guest hosted by Tim Conway. To say the show was not well received is an understatement.

The cast threw a party in LA the night of the show's first and only airing. Accounting for time zones, Turn On was seen first by audiences on the East Coast. But by the time it was showtime in California, the show had already been cancelled. The premiere party suddenly became a wrap party. Ouch.





1979 CBS Co-Ed Fever Flunks Out the First Day of Class



National Lampoon's Animal House was hot and every TV network wanted a piece of the action.
CBS offered Co-Ed Fever in 1979, a half hour sitcom about a previously all-female college that changed its admission policy to admit males.

The pilot was given a special pre-season airing but the show was cancelled before its official scheduled premiere. In retrospect, this was probably good news for David Keith, one of the shows stars. The cancellation freed him up to launch a respectable movie career, including such films as The Great Santini and Officer and A Gentleman. Heather Thomas, also in the cast, went on to do several seasons on Lee Major's The Fall Guy.


1993 CBS South of Sunset Goes South


Remember Cody McMahon ... that cool detective on that early 90's show?
No, you don't. Nobody remembers Cody McMahon or South of the Sunset, the show that was to be the career changer for Eagles front man Glenn Frey.

Maybe it was a surprise that the show was yanked after only one airing. Glenn was not only a rock star but had been associated with the cult-hit Miami Vice, appearing in one of the episodes and performing two hit songs for the shows iconic soundtrack.

But the premiere was pre-empted in some areas for news coverage of fires raging in Malibu. Also, Miami Vice had been off the air for several years by the time South of Sunset hit the airwaves and perhaps many viewers had already forgotten about Smuggler's Blues and You Belong to the City.

Fortunately for Glenn, Hell froze over shortly after and he was free to rejoin his Eagle buddies. Ariel Spears, also in the cast, went on to a long successful run on Fox's MadTV.


1966 ABC Tammy Grimes Show Should Have Been Bewitched...But Wasn't



Making History
This show made TV history in 1966 as one of the first sitcoms booted after only four airings. That. of course, doesn't sound like very many now, but back then networks held off much longer before dropping the axe on a scripted drama or comedy.

Ironically, the stars of this cancelled show were kinda sorta almost the cast for one of TV's most successful shows.

The program, scheduled as a lead-in for Bewitched, was a showcase for then-popular Tammy Grimes who starred as a rich heiress squandering her money while her banker tries to rein in her wasteful spending. Her character's brother was portrayed by Dick Sargent, who sometime after the shows demise, went on to be the second Darren on Bewitched.

For further Bewitched irony, it's reported that Tammy Grimes, with the right of first refusal, had turned down the role of Samantha in the soon-to-be-hit series.

But a show somewhat similar to the Tammy Grimes Show also premiered that season.
ABC's The Pruitts of Southampton, starring Phyllis Diller, certainly wasn't a monster hit, but it stayed afloat longer than the Tammy Grimes Show. Maybe the show's relative success had something to do with Diller's fun, campy, over-the-top show intro. Marvy-poo!

First of all, we are huge fans of the smart, sexy and playfully sassy Jenna Elfman.
We looked forward to her return to network TV on the sitcom, Accidentally on Purpose. But somewhere between when this show was pitched to the network and its premiere on CBS this fall, something went terribly wrong.

According to the Comedy Centric, each airing of the show has registered lower Nielsen ratings than the previous episode. And if that wasn't bad enough, the show is losing the audience of its lead-in, How I Met Your Mother (which, by the way. might have been a better name for Jenna's show).

So what's the problem?
It isn't as if Jenna isn't trying. She seems to be working hard to keep the sinking ship afloat with her considerable charm and comic timing.

But creating greater drag than her lift is an unfortunate amalgam of poor casting, poor scripting and a poor premise.



Perhaps the greatest disappointment is the casting of Jon Foster opposite Jenna.
Not because he's so weak in the part (though he certainly is) but because we -- and we're sure the network -- expected so much more from him.

Jon, in his career, has kind of hit the Cougar jackpot, so to speak, making his debut as the love/sex interest of Kim Basinger in 2004's The Door in the Floor.

In that film, Jon held his own against the talented likes of Kim and Jeff Bridges. His portrayal of a teenager in a Summer of 42 romance with an older woman is what gives this well-done film both heart and soul.



And therein lies the problem.
We're sure that the producers and the network expected him to bring the same level of sensitivity and energy to this show. He didn't.

Not to say that Jon is the only problem.
The show seems to be searching each week for a reason for being. Why do these two people live together? What attracted them to each other in the first place? Why should we care?

Chuck Lorre to the rescue?
With the success of Two and a Half Men and The Big Bang Theory, Chuck Lorre -- the brains behind Jenna's Dharma and Greg hit -- is the reigning master of TV's Odd Couple genre. When we first heard about Accidentally on Purpose, we hoped that Lorre might be associated with it in some way. He isn't.

But perhaps even he couldn't sort this one out at this point.

Come on, Jenna. We're pulling for you. Make us proud.

HELL'S KITCHEN SPOILER ALERT!!!!!

If you're a fan of Hell's Kitchen, you already know that the winner of the current season has been named.

In a hard fought three-way battle between Ariel, Kevin and Dave, the last remaining female was eliminated, setting up a showdown between cocky Kevin and Dave, the one armed bandit.

The ultimate prize for this season was a job as the head chef at the Araxi Restaurant in Whistler, Canada, just in time for the upcoming winter Olympics.

And the Winner Is...

...Slow-takin' but good-cookin' Dave Levey

After injuring his arm early in the competition, Dave -- forearm cast and all -- fought on valiantly, rarely displeasing the mercurial Gordon Ramsay, and shutting out one contender after another.

Dave deserved to win and we hope that he enjoys his new job as head chef at the Araxi. In fact, we hope he actually ends up in the job he was promised.

The Ballad Of Heather West
Heather West was Hell's Kitchen's Season 2 winner. That's Heather being congratulated by Chef Ramsay in the photo at the top of this post.

She faced down 11 competitors in her successful bid to win Hell's Kitchen for the promised job of being the executive chef of the Terra Rossa at the Red Rock Resort Spa and Casino in Las Vegas. The job she was given at the Terra Rossa was Senior Chef -- a few notches down. A year later, after her 1-year contract was up, she was no longer employed there at all.

According to Reality Blurred, Rock Harper, winner of Hell's Kitchen Season 3, was the first person to actually get the prize job being competed for. He took the promised job as head chef of Terra Verde at the Green Valley Ranch Resort.

Michael Wray, winner of Season 1, was given the prize options of apprenticing under Chef Ramsay in London or being set up in his own restaurant. He reportedly chose neither.

Lemons from Lemonade
But not to worry about Heather. She landed a job on the Hell's Kitchen crew as one of the show's sous chefs who are basically assistants to the contestants. That's Heather in the background of the photo below, her head just over the shoulder of the poor soul in the foreground being reamed by Chef Ramsay .




And our question is...
Is it worth going through hell to wind up as just another unheralded sous chef for the competition that was to launch your career, there only to help other aspiring hopefuls achieve their dreams?

I guess we'd have to ask Heather that.

No Wonder Baby Boomers Have So Many Issues
Most everyone who grew up in the 1960s can tell you about the eerie Outer Limits episode about space bugs with human faces. The Zanti Misfits was the title of that episode. Talk about your flesh-eating bugs!

Of course, that was supposed to scare kids out of their wits. What happens when we're frightened by something that supposed to be innocent and benign?

Last August we took a look at some very scary TV Shows seen by Baby Boomers when they were kids that were actually offered as that generation's version of Sesame Street.

Here are a couple of other examples of kid's shows that suggests what Nickelodeon might be like if Stephen King was the program director.

What the Hell is This?!
How'd you like to have the kids curl up in from of this video right before bedtime?

Mark Twain, reportedly, went into a deep depression shortly before his death. His last work -- which was never completed -- was The Mysterious Stranger, which was adapted for this animated film. The alternate title for the original work? The Chronicles of Young Satan. Lovely.




The Bizarro Wiggles
We think the Wiggles are scary enough in human form but these ghastly finger-puppets are just plain disturbing, don't you think?




What are your examples of supposedly innocent TV that scared the bejeezus out of little ones?

In Memoriam
Years ago, we were fortunate enough to meet Mary Travers. She was as warm and gracious as she was talented.

Touched by Mary's recent passing, we take this opportunity to remember her and to salute other gifted women -- all taken too soon -- whose music and songs have touched our hearts. kindled our memories and fired our imagination.


Mary Travers 1936 - 2009



The Song is Love
The delicately entwined folk harmonies of Peter, Paul and Mary were blessed by the vibrant Mary Travers.

Mary's voice -- so different from the sparkling soprano of Joan Baez -- was rich and imbued with a passionate urgency, demanding that she be listened to and ultimately understood.






Laura Nyro 1947 - 1997



Laura and the Thirteenth Confession
Before she was in her mid-twenties, Laura Nyro had already written hit songs for the Fifth Dimension, Blood, Sweat and Tears and Barbara Streisand. But as gifted as she was a songwriter and singer, it would possibly be more accurate to describe her as one of the superb poets of our time:

Emily, you're the natural snow, the unstudied sea, you're a cameo.
And I swear you were born a weaver's lover, born for the loom's desire.
Move me, oh sway me. Emily, you ornament the earth for me.





Minnie Riperton 1947 - 1979



Perfect Angel
Minnie Riperton's vocal range spanned over five octaves, including what's known as the whistle range. As a member of the Rotary Connection, her angelic voice was majestic as it soared into the high registers of heavenly harmony.

Her classic solo album, Come To My Garden, is, in our opinion, one of the most beautiful and romantic ever recorded.





Tammi Terrell 1945 - 1970



Ain't No Mountain High Enough
Tammi Terrell's magnificent romantic duets with Marvin Gaye defined her short career. Her music added its own special magic to the mighty Motown Sound.

While on stage during a concert in Virginia in 1967, she collapsed in Marvin's arms. A few years later she succumbed to a brain tumor. But her beautiful music lives on.





Eva Cassidy 1963 - 1996



Songbird
Eva Cassidy dared to cross the boundaries of musical genres. The haunting masterpiece which was her voice graced folk, rock, soul and jazz with equal ease and brilliance.

Even though much of what she sang had already been made famous by others, she made each song she performed uniquely her own.

It was Twenty Years Ago Today...
Last week we previewed the new dramas and comedies launching on the major TV networks this coming fall season.

We thought it would be interesting to take a quick look back at the network promos that ran 20 years ago to introduce the 1989 Fall TV season.

How did the ratings shake out that season?
Here are the top ten shows in 1989-1990:

1. The Cosby Show (NBC)
2. Roseanne (ABC)
3. Cheers (NBC)
4. A Different World (NBC)
5. America's Funniest Home Videos (ABC)
6. The Golden Girls (NBC)
7. 60 Minutes (CBS)
8. The Wonder Years (ABC)
9. Empty Nest (NBC)
10. Monday Night Football (ABC)

CBS didn't have a single scripted program in the top ten. Nor did FOX, which had just come on the scene a few years before.

Interestingly, NBC premiered, perhaps, the biggest and best hit show in television history on July 5, 1989, but didn't think it was good enough to make the cut that fall season.



CBS GET READY
The CBS promo was working some kind of social responsibility vibe, as if that had something to do with its programming.

Jon Cryer is the notable survivor here.
Today, he's the co-star of CBS's Two and a Half Men, one of the highest rated comedies on television. In 1989, he starred in the short-lived Famous Teddy Z, based on the real life story of a man who worked his way up from a talent agency mail room to being Marlon Brando's agent.





NBC COME HOME TO THE BEST

It's clear in this promo that Bill Cosby was the king of NBC in 1989. But Jerry Seinfeld was the prince waiting in the wings. His show premiered that summer and had such a shaky start NBC took it off the schedule and tried to palm it off on an unimpressed Fox. Jerry and the gang weren't considered good enough to be scheduled for a September start until 1991, their third season.





ABC SOMETHING'S HAPPENING

This is a pretty poor quality video clip so allow us to sum it up for you.
A bunch of highly paid actors who hadn't been seen before 1989 and who haven't been seen since, laughing and mugging to a much-too-up-tempo generic music ditty.






FOX THIS IS THE YEAR

In 1989, Fox was running only three nights of programming and would not have a full seven-day-a-week schedule until 1993. Their promo song has the interesting lyric -- no looking back 'til we're on top. That achievement came in May 2008 when -- powered by American Idol and Super Bowl XLII -- Fox was crowned TV's highest rated network.

Yes, that's Johnny Depp in there as the star of the new 21 Jump Street along with some of the people whose voices would help make The Simpsons one of the longest running shows in TV history.

What Goes Around, Comes Around
There's a good