Short Attention Span Theatre 5

Hey kids, it's that time again! You have the inclination but not the time to watch all these MeTube clips, and believe me, I feel your pain. So here are a whole bunch of them adding up to one minute, give or take.

I give you animated clips that look nothing like Sam Elliott...



...or Owen Wilson.



I give you an old woman throwing a solid punch.



I give you the Little Mermaid's bare hinder.



I give you a six-fingered woman. I think.



And I give you three clips from Kentucky Fried Movie.



You may have to hit "refresh" to see them all in one go. Just make sure you don't miss out on the last one...

Otis! My man!

You're not going to believe the energy in this clip. It's Otis Redding on Ready Steady Go!, singing a medley of "I Can't Turn You Loose," "Shake," and "Land of 1000 Dances." He's joined by Eric Burdon and Chris Farlowe, fair soul singers in their own right.

Everyone will be famous for 4.25 minutes

There's no two ways about it - you're either going to love this or hate this.

It's a short film made by and starring Andy Warhol. To say any more would, I think, detract from the point of watching it, so I'll just let you decide whether it's worth 250-some-odd seconds.

Let's mock Star Trek

I can't find the exact quote or the comedian who said it, but there's a great line about how a guy should be in bed that goes something like, "I figure if I can get the girl to sing the Star Trek theme, I'm doing my job." Well, here's a guy doing it down at the pub - singing the theme, that is.



Then there's this mashup of ST visuals to the Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit." Really quite brilliant.



And now for something completely juvenile.

Ring of Fire Times Two

I've already showcased one excellent cover of the Johnny Cash classic "Ring of Fire," but I didn't think it would hurt to feature a couple more interesting ones.

First we have a live version by Social Distortion, who made the song (if not their own) all theirs for a while.



Then there's the Wall of Voodoo version. It's not quite "Mexican Radio," but it'll do nicely.



Or at least it would if it doesn't cut off with two minutes left in the clip. So to make it up for you, here are a couple of kids totally feelin' it.

High school is a battleground for your heart

I watched every episode of My So-Called Life save the pilot on its original 8pm Thursday time slot on ABC, absolutely loving the whole thing. I identified in an awfully big way with Brian Krakow (played by Devon Gummersall), who was a curly-haired smart kid harboring a gigantic crush. A stranger once told me I looked like Krakow, and I just glowed. I wrote ABC a letter begging them not to cancel the show. I planned a spec script where Brian's cool cousin breezes into town and Angela gets a crush on him and Brian can't understand why. And since I didn't have cable, I never saw a rerun, but despite being without it for over a decade, so much of it has stayed burned into my head.

Anyway, this week the complete series, all 19 episodes, was released on DVD, and I'm getting all caught up in it all over again. To give you just a little idea why, here are a few favorite clips.

First, the moment when Jordan Catalano (Jared Leto) realizes he loves Angela Chase (sweet, sweet Claire Danes), prompted by a reading of Shakespeare's Sonnet 130.



And this is him acting on it. Never before has handholding been such an absolute apex.



Finally, the last few minutes from the last episode. Brian's done a Cyrano and written a love letter to Angela under Jordan's name, and she's found out.



Oh, did this kill me. The way she says "Brian?" The way Brian says "Hi" and the quickly corrects himself with the cooler "Hey." They got it. And boy, did they get me.

Ariel gets nas-tayyyyyy

This isn't safe for work, but what do you care? It's Saturday!

It's the Little Mermaid as you've never heard her before, channeling her inner Yoni Mitchell as she sings of her wish to have a little enchantment under the waistline.

You can never get enough Saber Dance

Here are nine young people doing a dance routine at varying speeds to Khachaturian's greatest hit.



I'm willing to bet good money that most if not all of the people we're seeing here are theatre students.

The front fell off

This is going to be a busy month for me, what with my thesis coming due in three weeks closely followed by Thanksgiving and Black Friday, pretty much in that order. So my comments may not be quite as thorough as they could be. But I'll still keep the clips a-comin' as quick as I can.

Here's an Australian comedy team, John Clarke and Bryan Dawe, doing a routine that's SO dry the YouTube commenters (not the brightest crayons in the box, granted) can't make up their minds on whether it's real or not.

MeTube Extra: Two more Halloween hits

I wasn't planning to do this, but I know that the nine-minute-plus cartoon below might be too long for quick enjoyment. Plus I saw these over at Barstool Sports and I just had to share. (I'm guessing there's not too much overlap in our audiences.)

Less than half a minute combined, these two clips teach the same valuable lesson: don't scare a man who's learned how to defend himself without thinking.

This cartoon scares the shit out of me

I first saw The Sandman as part of an animation festival. Paul Berry, the animator, would later go on to work on The Nightmare Before Christmas and James & the Giant Peach, but passed on in 2001 at the too-young age of 40. This is his masterpiece, based on the story "Der Sandmann" by E.T.A. Hoffmann.

The less you know going in the better, so I'll just let it play now. Make sure and watch it through the closing credits. Unless you're scared. Buck buck buck-kaw!

Bummer of a birthmark, Hal

Back in 1994, I joined millions of Americans in eagerly sitting down in front of my TV to watch Tales of the Far Side, a Halloween special featuring the work of the brilliant cartoonist, Gary Larson. His very askew humor (this entry's title was spoken by one deer to another, who had a target shape on his body) and his genuinely funny art (I loved the way the fat ladies would make dents in their sides when the put their fists on their hips) made me certain I was about to see something great.

I have to say, I didn't expect what I got - nearly wordless vignettes strung together, with characters being killed, repeatedly. There was nothing wa-hah-hacky about this show. The scene with the wolves in the second clip below, in fact, is genuinely moving.

Here are three excerpts from a most unusual animated special.



Tommorow: the scariest cartoon I've ever seen.

Yay

Forgive me a little joy. My Red Sox just won the World Series.

I've been a huge fan of Mike Lowell for the past two years (read this to understand one of the reasons why), so I was really happy to see him win the Most Valuable Player award. Here's a video celebrating Lowell to the tune of the Dropkick Murphys's "Shipping Up To Boston." And slipping in a few phobic digs at A-Rod besides.



That shot near the beginning of the Red Sox bullpen (a.k.a. "The Black Pearl") playing the bottles has been a favorite part of the season for me. They stare straight ahead, expressionless, and bang out the rhythms. Here's a better version with sound, plus a fan's very true take on it.



Oh, and don't forget to pick up your free taco at Taco Bell between 2 and 5PM on Tuesday.



Congratulations, Red Sox, and thank you so much for the memories.

Fine and Mellow

It's a slow, cold Sunday, and I've been looking to put up this clip for a while. Today, I dare say, is the day.

This is Billie Holiday performing "Fine and Mellow" on the 1957 TV special The Sound of Jazz. Lester "Prez" Young takes the second sax solo, one of the loveliest in music. Within two years both Holiday and Young would be dead; she of cirrhosis of the liver, he of cancer.

Quicker than the eye

Ricky Jay has built himself a fair career as both a writer (Learned Pigs and Fireproof Women) and a character actor, but it practically goes without saying that he'll be best remembered as a master of sleight of hand with a deck of cards. YouTube has all kinds of clips of him doing what he does best that'll make your jaw drop.

This is him doing a "is this your card" trick with multiple audience members.



And here he is flummoxing America's favorite triangle head, Arsenio Hall.



One of the commenters pointed out that with 2:30 left to go, you can see Jay switch cards. I watched it a good half dozen times, I can see how he did it, but the smoothness with which he accomplishes this just makes it all the more astonishing for me.

This one's for the lay-days

Tonight I'm going to a Halloween party. I'm wearing sandals, white jeans, a Hawaiian shirt, gold chain, aviator sunglasses, plenty of mousse, and a light dusting of powdered sugar around the nostrils and going as a '70s LA cokehead.

There may be a number of people who are also attending a gathering this weekend and are in need of something to wear. Well, if you're a woman, help is on the way...

William Castle Rocks

William Castle was a man who created gimmicks to bring people to see his B-movies. From skeletons flying overhead to the Coward's Corner, Castle knew how to fill those seats. Here's a trailer for a documentary about him.



His best known gimmick was for The Tingler, where selected seats were literally electrified. Here's the trailer for that.



If you've got the time, you should really read this salute by John Waters, from his book Crackpot. Among other things, it tells about the time a mischievous film projectionist made use of the electrified seats from The Tingler during a screening of The Nun's Story.

What's a good indie wedding song?

My friend John in LA is going to his brother's wedding in the not too distant future, and he sent me an email last night asking a favor. His brother was originally planning to have the first dance song be "California Stars" by Billy Bragg and Wilco.



Unfortunately, a buddy got married and used it first, and he doesn't want to follow in someone else's footsteps here. (Totally understandable, right?) So John asked me if I had any suggestions for something else, something "in the same vibe and feel."

I had a bunch of suggestions, my personal favorite being Nick Cave's "The Ship Song."



The jury's still very much out, though, and I wanted to throw this out to my readers. If anyone's got any good ideas for a first-dance song that's gentle, but has a little swing and pep, I'd love to hear them.

Petite peepers

I wrote a story for my fiction workshop that had a character telling the story about the time he tackled a man fleeing the police. As the cops were taking him away, one of them said, "Let's go, short eyes." The storyteller realized from this that he had just helped them catch a child molester.

One workshop member said something to the effect that the only way he could know arcane prison slang like that was if he himself had been a child molester. This got kicked around for a couple of minutes, with me sitting their thinking, Um, I wrote this, you realize. Finally, the teacher came right out and said this was starting to get weird and she wanted to emphasize that in no way was anyone saying... She didn't actually finish the sentence, but everyone was on board with what she meant, and we moved on.

Nobody actually asked me where I had learned this phrase; if they had, I could have told them I had two sources. One was the play "Short Eyes," written by Miguel Pinero, which was made into a movie, starring a young Bruce Davison and featuring the film debut of an even younger Luis Guzman. It's a pretty intense work, about a pedophile who finds that prisoners mete out even tougher justice than society.



The other was from the old Doctor Demento favorite "Kinko the Kid-Lovin' Clown" by Ogden Edsl. They're better known for their song "Dead Puppies," which I never found funny as it's too "oh my aren't I outrageous" for my tastes. "Kinko" has that quality too, but somehow the excessive innocence / excessive creepiness works to greater effect there.

A drinking song & a drunk song

Well, the Red Sox are going to be representing the American League in the World Series. Can I just say, "WOO HOO!!!"

No, I can't - I've got to actually post some video clips, don't I?

Well, here are a couple song from the '40s that I thought might be a fun way to celebrate.

First we have the Maine Stein Song. The University of Maine is the only school that (a) has a drinking song for its school song, and (b) has seen their school song reach number one on the hit parade (thank you, Rudy Vallee.) Here it's paired up with Georgia Tech's.



Ah, but once Demon Rum has you in its clutches, you wind up singing a little more like this.



Oh, well - as long as everyone's happy.

Five down, 64 to go

The Magnetic Fields' 69 Love Songs is going to go down as one of the greatest achievements in the history of rock music. Stephin Merritt composed 69 songs in dozens of styles, played dozens of instruments, employed four other vocalists, wrote the most creative lyrics since Stephen Sondheim, and came up with a work that's great not just in size, but in quality. No matter what your age or your tastes, you're guaranteed to love L-U-V more than one of these songs.

It's an album whose fans are extremely devoted - YouTube has an awful lot of homemade videos for them, and it's funny how many of them have responses saying this is their favorite of the 69. I thought I'd post my favorite songs here; if the video's good too, that's just an added bonus.

I've already posted one for "The Book of Love," so that's out for now. My other favorites include "I Don't Want To Get Over You,"...



"All My Little Words,"...



"Long Forgotten Fairytale,"...



and "The Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side."



Wanna go for a riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide?

How mighty is this mouse?

In the late '80s, Ralph Bakshi, famous for helming adult animated features throughout the '70s (Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic, the execrable Lord of the Rings), was invited to revive the Mighty Mouse franchise for Saturday morning cartoons. Many media watchdogs watched the show like hawks (mix that metaphor!), pouncing on footage of Mighty Mouse sniffing a ground-up flower and insisting that he was actually sniffing cocaine, and what about our children, and yammer yammer yammer. This wild fuss combined with poor ratings to result in the show being canceled after a mere two seasons.

Its influence has lasted, though, in no small part because it was clearly aimed at adults and not children. Also, many of the writers and animators would go on to fame and fortune of their own, most notably John Kricfalusi, creator of Ren & Stimpy.

Here's one of their efforts - "Don't Touch That Dial," where they repeatedly bite, chew, and spit out the hand that feeds them. If you like this, go to YouTube and type "mighty mouse bakshi" for more.

Celebrities Tell Dirty Jokes Too

Everyone's heard dirty jokes. Everyone's heard celebrities. But not everyone's heard celebrities telling dirty jokes. Why is this?

What's fun about these clips is the way these non-comedians take such pleasure in the telling. I'd heard all four of these jokes before, so the way they're spun out is the real treat for me.

For your pleasure, we have fantasy writer Terry Pratchett...



...actress LeeLee "Don't Call Me Helen Hunt Jr." Sobieski...



...actor Dustin Hoffman, who's thoroughly enjoying the joke-telling process....



...and the one and only Sir James Paul McCartney.

Let's talk about Fred Willard

One of my favorite comedians out there is Fred Willard. His characters, oblivious in their fatuousness, constantly deliver lines you can tell they don't think are anything unusual, when in fact they're hilarious.

There's quite a bit of Fred on YouTube; I even found a bit with him on the original Get Smart TV show. But for the sake of brevity, I'll just give you a few here. There's this bit from A Mighty Wind...



...an excerpt from The Stu Osborn Show...



..."Tragg's Trough," from The Tim and Eric Awesome Show...



...and a bit from David Letterman, where he tells a joke that David apparently never heard before.



Say - that gives me an idea for tomorrow's entry.

Champ, champ!

Last Sunday, the New England Patriots continued their dominance of the NFL, beating the Dallas Cowboys by three touchdowns. At the press conference, Bill Belichick and Tom Brady fielded the media's questions with grace and aplomb.

Little did they know that among the questioners was 1920's Reporter Guy.



Apparently, radio station 1310 in Dallas has a recurring character who goes to sports press conferences and asks questions with as many slang terms from the roaring twenties as possible. He's done it before with quarterback Vince Young...



...and hockey player Sidney Crosby.



Some of the New England blogs are objecting - sanctity, revoke his credentials, etc. - but I've got to say, this is the hardest I've ever laughed while watching a sports press conference. And I've seen Jim Mora's "Playoffs??" rant.

The Roastmaster General

Jeffrey Ross has a reputation for being the go-to guy at roasts. Over the years he's roasted everybody, whether you've never heard of them...



...or whether they're famous. Two of his secrets: the subject of the roast is far from the only target, and he will stop at nothing. Nothing. Witness his line about Shaquille O'Neal at the (NSFW) Emmitt Smith roast. Don't worry, you'll know it when you hear it.



Finally, here's a couple of quiet minutes where he talks about a mistake he made in one of his standup appearances.

White on white

Ever hear the term "evil albino plot device"?

Albinos have been portrayed negatively in fiction and film so often that people fear it engenders discrimination against them. Not all of them are biased, but really - when your community has been portrayed by both Gary Busey (Mr. Joshua in Lethal Weapon) and his son Jake (Joseph in Contact), that's two strikes against you right there.

Here's an example of anti-albinism, although this is SO over the top you have to wonder if anyone can really take it seriously. It's from The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean, starring Paul Newman in the title role and Stacy Keach as Bad Bob the Albino.

"This is madness!" "This is Quahog!"

"The title 300 comes from, 'How gay is this movie on a scale of 1 to 10?'" - Sarah Silverman

Seems that Family Guy clips are now off limits to YouTube these days, thanks to claims put in by 20th Century Fox. Shame.

But of course, it's okay to put up clips that aren't directly taken from the episodes, i.e. that have been, shall we say, touched up in one form or another.

Which means this favorite is still up and should remain so for some time.



Bonus cartoon/300 fun - especially appealing to me, as you'll see.

Bend over and say "Ah"

I gave a reading last night that went really well, and I thought it would be fun to post another writer's work. The first one I thought of? David Sedaris.



Nothing to see here - just listen for nine minutes. Among other things, it made me feel better about my not-so-great dental time.

Young Blue Eyes

I can't believe I've had this blog going for well over a year and I haven't featured Frank Sinatra yet. Somebody slap me.

Well, it was worth the wait, on account of I was hoping to run across this short for some time and now I have.



Sinatra came out against anti-Semitism at the end of World War II, singing the at-the-time daring anthem "The House I Live In." This won a special Oscar in 1946.

This goes on for ten minutes. If you don't have the time, here's a three-minute take on "Stardust" from a couple years earlier. You can see why the bobbysoxers went nuts.



And just for fun, here's one minute of Sinatra and Groucho Marx duetting on "It's Only Money" and looking for all the world like they're running through town. Let's see Industrial Light and Magic top this!

Beats pickin' cotton & waitin' to be forgotten

Do you have a favorite song on a record you want to post on YouTube, but it doesn't have a video? Well, don't let that stop you - just videotape the playing record and post that!

There are a lot of people who do just this, and God love 'em for it - there's no way humanly possible that I ever would have learned about the Popular Five's "Baby I Got It" if someone didn't take this route.



This type of "video" reminds me of the Replacements' song "Bastards of Young." It's nothing but a speaker for almost four minutes. Not only does it force you to listen to those great lyrics, it effortlessly makes any other artists who attempt to Produce a Visual Statement look close to ridiculous.

Free your talkbox and your ass will follow

Peter Frampton did more to popularize the talk box than anybody, thanks to his extended use of it on "Show Me The Way" and "Do You Feel Like We Do" on Frampton Comes Alive. (Incidentally, am I the only one who's convinced that he's saying "I want to fuck you" and not "I want to thank you"?)

But for sheer brilliance, nobody can top what Stevie Wonder did with it - and four years before Frampton, no less.




Awesome as those clips are, they're nothing compared to this one,where he jams on "Papa Was a Rolling Stone." Seriously, if you're about to watch this, I hope you've put on yo yo yo yo yo boogie shoes.

Two boxes of voice

Mel Blanc did a lot of voices in his lifetime. I've seen him doing them in old interviews, and even though I know who he is and what he does, I still can't help thinking, "Wow, he does an excellent imitation of Bugs Bunny."

But I've never seen him doing them like this. This is apparently a genuine video of his larynx as he vocalizes. I have no idea if the larynx looks enormous compared to others or what, but it's got a little bit of creepy fascination to it.



But nowhere near as much as this. This guy has a few videos up on YouTube explaining what it's like to have an artificial voicebox. No video, just audio, but they're quite interesting listens. In no small part because the guy's got a pretty good sense of humor.

What's the opposite of Christopher Reeve?

Most people made the awesome discovery that Christopher Walken is a hell of a song and dance man with the video to Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice."



Or was it Boots Randolph's "Yakety Sax"?



Well, at any rate, this was far from the first time he'd flashed his footstompin' chops. Here he is in 1981, blowing away Bernadette Peters and every other viewer of Pennies from Heaven.

Cash in the Temple on a Sunday

I'm exhausted, so rather than keep myself up past midnight I'm posting Sunday's entry a few hours early.

I recently bought The Best of the Johnny Cash Show on DVD, and I'm mighty glad I did. There are so wonderful performances on there - you may remember the rendition Ray Charles gave "Ring of Fire," but the two discs are just jam packed with highlights, both from Johnny and his guests. To whet your appetite a little more, here are two Cash performances that really hit me.

First we have "Sunday Morning Coming Down," which for all I know could be attributed to some of you today. The censors didn't want Johnny to sing the line "Wishing, Lord, that I was stoned." He refused to leave it out. Kris Kristofferson, the song's writer, said that by taking that stand, he validated the song as it was, and it wound up winning an award for Country Song of the Year. Thanks, Johnny. (To watch it, click here.)

Now here's Johnny explaining why he's "The Man in Black." This is less a song than a sermon, just as relevant today as it was over a third of a century ago. I swear, by the time he was done, there was a tear in this flinty eye.

Rah rah rah! We're going to smash the oiks!

Who would have thought that such a nice gentle song from Cliff Richard would become the theme song to one of the loudest, most violent, anarchic sitcoms ever created?

The Young Ones - Rik, Vyvyan, Neil, and Mike - were four students at Scumbag University sharing squalid housing and squabbling at the top of their lungs, with surrealism, puppets, random subliminal flashes, and Alexi Sayle popping in for good measure. Like all good British kult komedy klassix, it lasted twelve episodes and will hopefully live on forever.

Here are a couple of great moments from the "Bambi" episode. First there's this moment, where Vyvyan loses his head. Then there's the match between Oxbridge and Scumbag. Dig if you will the presence of Academy Award winner Emma Thompson.

High on Waltons Mountain

The Waltons showed '70s audiences life in the Virginia mountains forty years earlier in the Depression, when life was simpler and you could fill the tank with a gallon of gas. Originally a TV movie with Patricia Neal, it aired for nine years and won a boatload of Emmys.

Their opening credits used to take almost two minutes; watch them here. When they figured out they could get to commercial a lot faster with a shorter theme, they switched to the sepia snapshot look. (The original music wasn't really this fast; it's been compressed to allow for even more ads.)



The show centered around writer-wannabe John-Boy Walton, played by Richard Thomas. He had a mole and was wholesome. Though you wouldn't know it to watch him in this outtake.

You plug 'em, we plant 'em

Back before Paul Lynde was yukkin' it up on Hollywood Squares (like so)...



...he appeared in a whole bunch of movies and TV shows. Perhaps his best known is his role as the father in Bye Bye Birdie, but I want to give some love to this scene from Send Me No Flowers. It's a 1964 film where Rock Hudson thinks he's going to die, but doesn't want anyone else to know, so he sets about planning everything, including his final resting place. That's where Lynde comes in, as a cemetery director who just loves his job.

Take note of the line that would raise eyebrows once Rock had been outed.

Almost golden

Jessica Savitch was a newscaster in the '70s - not an easy thing for women to be in those days (the Veronica Corningstone character in the Will Ferrell movie Anchorman: The Ron Burgundy Story was based on her and her struggles). She was very popular with the viewers, but very demanding behind the scenes.



She was equally demanding of herself, leading to stress and drugs. And on October 3, 1983, 24 years ago today, she had an absolute meltdown on camera. (Note the globe spinning the wrong way at the beginning.)



Three weeks later, Savitch was dead - she was in the back seat of a car that went off the road and into a canal, where she drowned. She was 36 years old.

Is it safe?

I have a few cavities. I don't like to call them cavities. I like to call them "places to put stuff." Do you know where I can store a pea? Yes, I have some locations available. - Mitch Hedberg

Last time I went to the dentist, I was told I had teeth like the Rock of Gibraltar. Well, over time there was some erosion, and tomorrow I have to go in for some, uh, storage removal.

Since the most famous dentist scene in film history (with the possible exception of the Little Shop of Horrors sequences) is from Marathon Man, I thought it best to show the trailer to that. I've never seen the film, but the book by William Goldman is terrific.



Or would you rather the entire drilling scene?

And it makes me wonder

Once upon a time there was a version of the theme song to Gilligan's Island set to the music of "Stairway to Heaven." And it was good.



Then lo, the scum descended, and they were called lawyers, and they did smite the artist with lawsuits. But the great Percy caught wind of all and said, I grant thee my permission.

And thus did the song survive to be sung to schoolchildren who knew not Dr. Demento. And it was awesome, dude.

Here's to Fenway

I've just come back from my few days away and discovered that on Friday, I had more hits than I've ever had before. There were over three dozen viewings of the lip-synched drunken Steely Dan intro alone. Honestly, I can't leave you kids alone for one minute...

Another big event happened in my absence - the Boston Red Sox have clinched first place in their division, as the Yankees tumble to second for the first time in twelve years. Rather than subject you to footage of star reliever Jonathan Papelbon doing an Irish jig in his underwear (oh, all right), I thought I'd give you something more inspiring. Thanks once again to The Sports Guy for introducing this to me.

It was Disability Awareness Day at Fenway Park, and an autistic young man was performing the national anthem. Partway through he got a bad case of nerves, and the crowd came through with supporting cheers, and then by taking up the song. It's got to be one of the best moments of the year for the Sox, and in a year where they capture the division title (at least), that's saying something.

Man from the South Times Three

I'm going off to Maine for a few days and won't be back until the end of the week, meaning no updates until Sunday. But I hate to leave you completely in the lurch, so here's nearly an hour an a half to tide you over.

Roald Dahl's best known for all his children's books, but he was a mighty fine storyteller for adults as well. He liked the macabre humor and the last minute plot twist, and he was great at describing people. I still remember the ratty hitchhiker in "The Hitcher," and the wine critic darting his tongue in a glass in "Taste."

One of his stories, "Man from the South," has been turned into a screenplay three times (four if you count Quentin Tarantino's using it in Four Rooms). I think it might be quite informative to stack them up one after another and see their likeness and differences. Don't you? Course you do.

So here's the Alfred Hitchcock Presents version from 1960, starring Peter Lorre and Steve McQueen.



Here's the Tales of the Unexpected version from 1979, starring Jose Ferrer and Michael Ontkean (Slap Shot, Twin Peaks) and introduced by Dahl himself.



Finally, the 1985 pilot for the updated Alfred Hitchcock Presents, with John Huston and Steven Bauer, plus a fairly impressive cast of women.



See you when I get back...

I Got Me The Death Star Blues

Big thanks to Mike Daisey for bringing this one to my attention.



Darth Vader's on the verge of death; he's entitled to a little "Whoopin' the Blues" by Sonny Terry.

I think I can safely say that a good half the people who see this will think, "I always thought that's what it looked like!"

Ask a Professional Wrestler

John Stossel, reporter/professional Liberterian, decided to answer the burning question of whether or not professional wrestling was genuine. Among the people he interviewed was David Schults, a.k.a. "Doctor D."

The interview didn't go well.



Stossel later filed a lawsuit against the World Wrestling Federation and settled out of court for $400,000. Schults, who claimed he was simply doing what he'd been told to do, was fired.

Interestingly, Stossel claims in his book Give Me A Break that he stayed on the ground until Schults had stormed off. I guess it sounded better than "I ran like the colors on a pair of Madras slacks."

Da da da dummmmm

The opening four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony constitute the most recognizable four note intro in the history of music (with the possible exception of the Dragnet theme). Anybody who doesn't appreciate classical music can still appreciate the portent inherent in the opening - and, very likely, they can appreciate the rest of the work as well.

Here, Sid Caesar and Nanette Fabray, playing husband and wife, act out an argument to the strains of the symphony. Not a word is spoken, but everything is said loud and clear.

Marjoe

Marjoe Gortner (the name is a combination of Mary and Joseph) became an ordained minister at the age of four. He was a huge hit on the revival circuit; who can resist a little preacher boy?

His folks trained him hard, and then his father absconded with the millions he'd made. This can get a fellow jaded, and Marjoe eventually left the circuit. But before he did, he was the subject of a documentary, Marjoe, that wound up winning an Academy Award. In it, he discussed how he'd manipulate the crowds; the film wasn't shown in the American South, for fear of riots in the Bible Belt.

Marjoe tried breaking into show biz as an actor-singer, and was briefly married to Candy Clark (American Graffiti), but things didn't pan out there. The documentary was thought lost for years (an Oscar-winner, post-1970, lost - can you believe it?), but the negative was found in a vault and the film restored and now available on DVD. Here's how it begins. (Pardon the bad synch.)

Paar for the course

Dick Cavett used to write on the Tonight Show, both for Jack Paar and Johnny Carson. He heard two people debating which was better. Pro-Paar said, "Carson's a drag. In all his career he'll never shed a single tear." Pro-Carson said, "For which I will be profoundly grateful to him."

Paar was a mercurial raconteur, known for wearing his emotions on his sleeve, which made for some fascinating television. He could also cut to the quick when moved to. Once he was interviewing a fat comic, Jack Leonard, who said, "You know, my wife is an acrobat." Paar replied, "She'd have to be."

This clip captures a lot of that - he's describing working with Jonathan Winters (who's sidesplitting in this), telling a great self-deprecating story, and almost breaking down at the end.

Man of a Thousand Faces

Lon Chaney is best known for his performance in/as The Phantom of the Opera, and for his ability to work wonders with makeup. I've actually seen him in only one movie, but the work he did for it was great - and we got to see what he really looks like.

In The Unknown, Chaney played a circus performer, a knife thrower named Alonzo the Armless. Only his assistant (a Chico Marx lookalike) knows the truth; Alonzo's got both his arms and is wanted for murder. To complicate things, he's in love with the victim's daughter, played by a so-young-she's-actually-attractive Joan Crawford. Director Tod Browning (pre-Dracula, pre-Freaks) does some fine work here, but the film belongs to Chaney, who actually learned how to throw knives with his feet.

Take a look at this and see if you don't want to see more.

A (very) little blue-eyed soul

Michael McDonald first made it into the public's ear when he sang back up on Steely Dan's Katy Lied. He then hit his stride with the Doobie Brothers, and went on to appear on a lot of other artists's albums. He didn't have to be on them long - those distinctive pipes only needed a few moments to work their magic.

SCTV parodied this with their imagining of how the studio sessions went for the Christopher Cross song "Ride Like the Wind." Somehow, I can't help thinking this isn't far from the truth.

The Truth About Heavenly Creatures

Way, way back in 1994, before Kate Winslet was famous and before Peter Jackson brought The Lord of the Rings to the big silver screen, the two of them collaborated on Heavenly Creatures.



The true story of two Aussie gals who share such an intense friendship that they're driven to matricide in order to maintain it, Heavenly Creatures is a great film, wonderfully realizing the people and places in the girls' imaginary world.

When the film was released, it was revealed that Winslet's character grew up to be the famous mystery writer Anne Perry. In a remarkably revealing interview with author Ian Rankin, she gives her side of the story with a forthrightness that's spellbinding.

Eat lead, froggies!

Hell Comes to Frogtown is the kind of film that knows it sucks right from the get-go, so it might just as suck as long, hard, and bad as it can. If you don't know what you're in for from the trailer, I have to ask you - which would you rather get back, your ability to see or to hear?



Just in case there's a question, check out the stuntman's work here. More specifically, the highly visible mat he lands on.



Coup de grace time: the Dance of the Three Snakes.



Hard to believe we were on about Citizen Kane just the other day, isn't it?

The Ultimate Mashup

Since I get such a kick out of posting other people's creative smooshing of others' creative efforts, I thought I would be remiss if I didn't post the mashup that stopped everyone with two ears (which rules out George Weasley) in their tracks when they first heard it.

Roy Kerr, better known as Freelance Hellraiser, took the instrumental track for the Strokes song "Hard to Explain."



He married it to the Christina Aguilera vocal for "Genie in a Bottle."



The result, now titled "A Stroke of Genie-us," inarguably improved both songs. The far more articulate than I Village Voice explains here what it is about this new version that rubs us the right way. If you'd rather watch and listen than read, take it all in right here.

Coming Soon: Citizen Kane

Orson Welles just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Not only did he make the Greatest Movie of All Time™, he made a terrific trailer to go with it. This pulls off the classic trick, so rarely done, of making us feel we know everything but giving away absolutely nothing. (The shot of the boom mike coming our way was later used in The Magnificent Ambersons.)



Of course, such an achievement can’t not be held up for mockery. Here’s someone reimagining Kane as a trannie comedy.



Better yet, Kane as the #1 playa in da hood (tip o’ the blog to Rooktopia).

You should be dancing, too

My friend Jamie sent me a couple of dance instructor videos that I just had to pass along, seeing as one of the instructors is James Brown...



...and the other is Elijah Wood.



One more dancing instructor for good measure: Mr. Cole, the gosh-darned coolest teacher in the school, doing his Bumble Bee Dance.

Dear John

First, for those not in the know, a solid definition of the term from Wikipedia:

The term "Dear John letter" refers to a letter written by a woman to her husband or boyfriend to inform him that their relationship is over, usually due to the woman finding another man.While the exact origins of the phrase are unknown, it is commonly believed to have been invented by Americans during World War II. Large numbers of American troops were stationed overseas for many months or years, and as time passed many of their wives or girlfriends decided to begin a relationship with a new man rather than wait for their old one to return. As letters to servicemen from wives or girlfriends back home would typically contain affectionate language, a serviceman receiving a note beginning with a curt "Dear John" (as opposed to the expected "Dear Johnny", "My dearest John", or simply "Darling", for example) would instantly be aware of the letter's purpose.

One of the great "Dear John letter" stories concerns a young soldier in... well, I'll just let the video tell it...



Sad to say, it's not true. Here it is as portrayed in "M*A*S*H: The Preachy, Sucky Years."


That's from Snopes, the urban legend reference page of choice. Click here to see a version of the story being used back in 1881.

My all time favorite special effects sequence

There have been millions of uses of special effects in the movies. Among the standouts are the cow being hit by the car in O Brother Where Art Thou, Tom Hanks shaking hands with three presidents in Forrest Gump, and Sean Connery's wig staying on underwater in Never Say Never Again.

But for me, I don't think anything will ever top the skeleton army in Jason and the Argonauts. Ray Harryhausen's piece de resistance of seven stop-motion skeletons battling live actors took four months to complete, and it was time well spent. It wouldn't take anywhere near that long with computers today, but I can't see how all the technical improvements made since 1963 could match the sheer energy of this encounter.

What's the truth about Gladys Hardy?

A friend of mine sent me this clip of the Ellen DeGeneres show, where she phones an 88 year old in Austin, Texas, who gets Ellen laughing fit to bust with her homespun folksy idioms.



Then a local paper said there was no Gladys Hardy in the area, and that it was actually a male comedian. Further investigation on the ever-reliable web gives evidence both ways, but I can't find any postings on the subject more recent than late May. I do have to say this radio ad sounds just a little more like a man imitating a woman...



In fact, it sounds so much like Maude Frickert it's uncanny. Seriously, though - anyone out there know the whole truth & nothing but?

The Return of John-John

Has it really been four months since I've posted a Sesame Street related clip? That ain't right...

I was doing a little cleaning up of past entries and found that a clip I'd posted of John-John, the cutest kid in public TV history, was no longer available. But a hydralike thing happened; three more clips of him had appeared to take its place. Here they all are.

First, one where he and Grover count to one...



...one where they count from one to ten and back again (the last few seconds are the total payoff)...



...and one where he and Bert run the gamut of emotions for losing paper clips. Again, John-John's expression at the end is a treat and a half.

hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah, hah,

"O Superman (For Massenet)" by Laurie Anderson made it all the way to #2 on the UK singles charts. To me, that may be the most amazing item in music chart history. This is an eight and a half minute piece of experimentalism that manages to be hypnotic without being boring in its repetition of sounds and (in the video) images. It was influenced by the opera Le Cid, the Tao Te Ching, Herodotus, and the Iranian hostage crisis. And to cap it off, Anderson has been going out with Lou Reed for the better part of a decade. Top that, Beyonce!

Movies by the numbers

The guy who put this together has my respect in a big way. He's picked 100 quotations from the movies, with the numbers 1 to 100, and put them in ascending order. The only one I saw coming was #11, although I've heard another say they knew what #36 had to be.



This lasts about nine and a half minutes; the freeze frame here just happens to be on the halfway mark of #50. If he planned that, he's got even more of my respect.

MY NAME IS LEGION

Mojo, the best music magazine in the world, introduced me to this. So blame them, not me.

There's a group called the Legion of Rock Stars, and their MO is really quite simple. They put on headphones that cancel out all noise, listen to and play along with the same song, and dub the results over video of the original hits by the original artists. The results are... really quite painful.





There are a lot of these to choose from; if you're a fan of the Shaggs and/or you like what you see here, go here for more.

Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment

The Cramps have a lot of claims in the music world. They have some of the greatest punk names - Lux Interior, Poison Ivy Rorschach, and drummer Nick Knox, to name a few. They put psychobilly music on the map. But perhaps the most amazing of all is their playing the absolute punkest punk concert.

They gave a performance at a mental hospital.

God knows how, but they got permission to bring their sleazy-and-proud-of-it songs to the Napa State Mental Hospital, where they played for thoroughly medicated patients who lurched and jumped and wandered onstage and grabbed them... Not that that doesn't describe their usual audience, but you get the point.

It sounds like an exaggerated rumor, doesn't it? Well, their performance was immortalized by one video camera shooting in black and white, and the evidence lives on today. Here they are doing the Jack Scott song "The Way I Walk."

Are you pondering what I'm pondering?

I was too old to grow up with Pinky and the Brain, but what I've seen of it has quite impressed me. It's well animated, well written, and appreciable by adults as well as kids.

They have a running gag where Brain asks Pinky, "Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" Pinky replies, "I think so, Brain, but..." and delivers an absolute non sequitur.

Isn't it wonderful that somebody put them all together?

A cartoony Tom Waits

I never knew this existed, so I can't tell you how excited I was to find this.



"Tom Waits For No One" is an Academy Award winning short (for Scientific & Technical Achievement), with Waits singing "The One That Got Away" from his Small Change album. The footage got rotoscoped and was designed to be one of the first videos to go on the barely fledging MTV. Things led to other things and it never happened, but here it is now. Said it before, say it again - God bless YouTube.

The Warren Oates Film Festival

I much prefer character actors to out and out stars. Not only are they often better actors, they have a very diverse body of work to enjoy. And one of the great ones was Warren Oates. He was likable, he was tough, but above all he was there.

Witness his work in Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia...



...Race with the Devil (can't believe this was PG)...



...and Cockfighter (suppose any animals were harmed in the making of this film?).



Finally, to clear the palate, here's one of my favorite movie lines ever; it's from Stripes, and I'm happy it's Warren delivering it.

You should be dancing

I'd like to take a moment to thank Deputy Dog for linking to my blog on his site; it's doubled the number of people who've stopped by, and I'm happy for the company.

There have been a couple of interesting sites linking to mine; the Yahoo message board for US global investors linked to my Zero Hour/Airplane post (I sure didn't see that one coming). But the biggest surprise was discovering that readers of Julie Andrews Online had stopped by to see her scary movie mashup trailers.

This next clip is for them. (And they should also check out The Great White Dope while they're at it.)



It was fun to see a clip of Gene Kelly in action that I'd never known existed. It's also nice to hear the guy's part in "Supercalietc." sung without a trace of a would-be Cockney accent.

As long as we're looking at one of the great male movie dancers, we might as well take a look at the other one - Fred Astaire, of course. This is my favorite work of his, and it's not with Ginger Rogers - rather, it's with Eleanor Powell, in Broadway Melody of 1940. The clip's actually taken from the documentary That's Entertainment, with Frank Sinatra narrating.



Both of them are stunning, and considering that this is clearly videotaped off a TV screen, the visual quality's not too bad at all.

Good God amighty

This is the weekend that college football starts, and I'm going to put up a couple of great finishes for your enjoyment. And don't assume you won't just because you're not a football fan.

First we have The Play, in the famous Stanford vs. Cal game of 1982, featuring five laterals and the band on the field. This particular clip is notable for featuring John Elway's remarkable drive right before the madness, not to mention Joe Starkey's delirious call.



But this is the one that's most entertaining. It's got what may be the greatest comeback in high school football history, in a 1994 game between Plano East and John Tyler. Plano was down 41-17 with less than three minutes to play, and they mount an amazing comeback. But what makes this clip is the announcers, three Texas good ol' boys who throw all semblance of impartiality out the window. You have to watch this to the end, just to hear what they say.