Separated at birth?

Who would notice this if I didn't?

Ambassador Dictator Phantom, the bad guy from Prince of Space,



and arch-nemesis of Rainbow Brite, Murky Dismal:

In sickness and in hell

I'm still working on getting over this damned cold. My brain feels just fine, but my body feels like it was beaten by little men.

Through the miracle of science, we're able to see what my body says to my brain when it tries to make me move. We truly spare no expense here. There aren't any words, but I think you'll get the idea.

Like a rickroll with poo

There are very few things I haven't seen on the Internet--whether I actually wanted to or not.

That said, I've still managed to steer clear of watching "Two Girls, One Cup," though I've seen videos of people seeing it for the first time. Now that's entertainment. Likewise, I've also avoided the even more repulsive "Four Girls Fingerpainting."

Now if you have no idea just what in the hell I'm blathering on about, consider yourself lucky. And for the love of God, don't look it up. Same goes for Goatse and Tubgirl. You can get a (mercifully) picture-free explanation at Wikipedia, but trust me, you don't want to know.

The lure of the forbidden is hard to resist. Half of you are more tempted to look this stuff up every time I say not to, so don't blame me. That's how I learned about most of the big Internet shock sites.

You think, "Well, come on...how bad can it be?"

*CLICK*

"MY EYES!OMGWTFBBQ!!11!"

I don't know what the next gross-out video meme is going to be. I mean, how do you top what is essentially a rickroll with poo?

Of course, by the time you read this post, e-mails will be crossing the globe, daring friend worldwide to check out "Three Girls, a Yeti, a Frozen Turkey, Two Grapefruits, Half a Tub of Cool Whip and the Collected Poetry of Rod McKuen."

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Cruel summer

Some songs will always remind me of summer, no matter how many times I hear them. I used to listen to my radio while I waited to fall asleep every night. If I was lucky, a relatively cool breeze would blow in just over the head of my bed, a respite from the day's oppressive heat.

And when I say summer, I lived in a part of California where we had two seasons: hot and cold. Summer to me could very well have been in April, but when you're wearing shorts and still sweating your ass off, it seems summery.

Interestingly, the three songs that remind me the most of summer despite having heard them a bajillion times in the years since they were new all came from the same summer. So now I'll make a little like Casey Kasem and do a mini countdown.

3. "All I Need is a Miracle," by Mike + The Mechanics

Released in March 1986, this had been a radio staple for a while by the time it seared itself into my memory. At the end of sixth grade, we had a pool party. The radio was tuned to the local Top 40 station, and for one of the few times that school year, I didn't feel like a total outsider.

Sure, I wore a T-shirt in the pool because I was self-conscious and I wore my glasses so I could, you know, see, but I didn't get much crap about it that day. Everyone was busy having fun.

You know how when you're a kid, everything compresses to a single point sometimes? For a moment in that pool, with this song playing in the background, everything just kind of came together and I actually felt happy. I thought that maybe seventh grade wouldn't be so bad. For that brief pinprick in time, there was hope.

Happy moments come fairly rarely in middle school, so it's not surprising that they stay with you.



2. "Human," by The Human League

Released in August 1986, I don't think this hit the charts till at least September, by which time seventh grade had started, but it was still pretty hot. Plus, since that feeling of hope hadn't quite panned out thus far, it suited my melancholy attitude. I know it's not really about feeling alienated, but since I felt that way in junior high school, anything the slightest bit sad was an anthem for not fitting in.

"What Am I Doing Hanging 'Round" by The Monkees served a similar purpose, so you see how little I paid attention to the lyrics. What can I say? I was emo before emo was emo.



1. "We Don't Have to Take Our Clothes Off," by Jermaine Stewart

Now it's not so much that I particularly liked this song, though I kinda did. But it hit the charts in May 1986 and was in heavy rotation--one of those songs they played every hour.

It didn't occur to me at the time that the song referred to AIDS; I just thought it was a song about abstinence in general. And honestly, selling abstinence to a hopeless nerd is like selling Crayolas to the blind. Though I have to admit that I was puzzled even then. The message I got: Sex = bad; drinking cherry wine = A-OK.

Seemed to me that if you drank enough cherry wine, you had a better chance of taking your clothes off. But I was a miserable, cynical 11-year-old, so I could've been wrong.

Still, this morning, more than 20 years later, I heard this song on my way to work, and for a second I was back in my bed, waiting to fall asleep and hoping for a cool breeze.

Fortunately, I wasn't driving.

This, ladies and gentlemen, in lieu of actual entertainment

I'm trying to stave off the latest cold to bless our household, so to conserve brainpower, here is yet another example of how almost everything is funnier set to the music from The Benny Hill Show.

And yes, I know it's called "Yakety Sax," but if I say that, then I have to explain for the benefit of those who don't know that it was used as the theme for the show, and I don't really want to go to the trouble of typing all that.

Answers to yesterday's quiz

1. Pieces

2. Robot Monster

3. Microwave Massacre

4. Jack Frost

5. Night of the Lepus

Because all you of Earth are idiots...

Amazingly, next year marks the 50th anniversary of Ed Wood's epic Plan 9 From Outer Space. Director John Johnson and Darkstone Entertainment plan to mark this occasion by releasing a remake called simply Plan 9.

Why is this exciting?

Well, the plan (so to speak) is for this remake to be a serious attempt at a horror film. No lovingly campy reproduction here. They're out to make this a scary movie.

Now this interested me because obviously, I'm a fan of B-movies, but also because I've often thought of rewriting cheesy sci-fi and horror movies as writing exercises.

When you distill Plan 9's plot into its most basic form, it has potential: Aliens reanimate the dead.

Of course, they wanted to do so to prevent Earth's scientists from creating a doomsday weapon, and you wonder why plans 1 through 8 were unsuccessful, but that's overthinking things.

So you know I'm going to be all over this when it comes out, just to see if they can make an Ed Wood movie scary.

This made me think of other movie distillations that didn't really work when they were originally released but still have hope as a remake. Even bad movies can have good ideas.

I'll list them, and you try to guess them. Then I'll post the answers tomorrow.

Killer targets women and uses parts from each of his victims to create a composite body.

Eight people are the only survivors of an alien attack on Earth.

Ordinary man discovers he likes the taste of human flesh.

A murderer is reincarnated.

Mutated animals terrorize the world.

Well, that'll do for a start. To get you in the right frame of mind, here's Ed Wood's original classic.

Wiggle, wiggle, wiggle!

Oh dear God.

OK, now I love playing Guitar Hero, and I have a Nintendo DS, but sweet monkey danish, this makes baby Jesus cry.

Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a video promoting Guitar Hero for the DS. I keep telling myself that this is intentionally asstastic, but I'm really not sure.

I feel like kicking myself in the ass just for sharing it with you, but you really have to see it.

Make sure you watch it all the way to the end. If you don't actually feel measurably dumber after watching it, you are a better person than I.

More DIY videos at 5min.com

This was passed along to me by my pal Karyne, who saw it at Neatorama. I'm still talking to her nonetheless. I'm magnanimous like that.

Or dumb. I haven't decided yet.

Asking the immortal question, "Waar is de pisjongen?"

Harvey Korman died today. Dick Martin died Saturday. I spent a lot of time watching both of them on TV growing up, so I thought I'd give them a shout-out.

In addition to providing the voice of The Great Gazoo on The Flintstones, I knew Harvey Korman as one of the players on The Carol Burnett Show, where he showed superhuman ability in keeping a straight face when paired with Tim Conway.

One of my favorite bits was where Conway's character is lamenting the loss of a cousin (or something) to a shark attack. The story goes on until he gets to this line:

"She would have made it if she hadn't been wearing her lucky ham..."

I wish I could find a clip of that because I'm not doing it justice; granted, I was very young at the time. I might be missing a few details.

In high school, I rediscovered him in such epics as History of the World, Part I, where he gets one of the best lines in any movie ever:

"Your Majesty, you look like the piss boy!"

Here's a bit of Harvey Korman in action. The first clip is mildly not safe for work because of language, and the second one, a little more not safe for work (brief boobage); you've been warned.






In addition to co-hosting Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, Dick Martin seemed to be on nearly every game show in the 70s and early 80s, as well as an appearance on The Carol Burnett Show.

I loved hearing him laugh. If you heard it, you know what I mean. You can pick it out of a crowd easily.

While I recommend watching anything these two were in, you can get a taste by cruising YouTube and other places. Here's an episode of Laugh-In, followed by some bloopers. Listen for the laugh. You'll know it when you hear it.

Enjoy.

At first I was like ???, but then I LOL'd

Saw this on a pole at Second and Mission today on our way to the BART station:



Pardon my crap photography skills; I took it with my phone while trying not to look stupid. It says "LOLCAT | Responds to CHEEZBURGER | Please to call | 515-862-1000."

OK, so what does that mean? I enlisted the help of the crack Siftin' Research Squad (I looked it up on Google).

It's a promotion for Drown Radio's album, Me Geek Pretty One Day.

Well played, sir.

I think I might just check it out. For 8 bucks, you get "nerdcore hip hop songs with 8-bit instrumentals, electro-pop, and sexy r & b." How can I resist?

As clever as the sign was, that's the second most interesting animal-related sign I've seen. It's going to take a hell of a lot to top No. 1:

Hidden memory nuggets

With so many shows being released on DVD, you'd think that for someone like me, I could watch all the old shows like I watched when I was little.

For example, the Looney Tunes Golden Collections have tons of awesome cartoons and extras. But so far, I haven't seen any of the later Warner Bros. cartoons that were a staple of Saturday mornings of my youth, watching the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour on CBS.

So when I found this clip on YouTube, hearing the first few seconds of the music from a late Road Runner/Wile E. Coyote cartoon really brought back memories.

For a second or two, I was 6 years old, clad in my Superman pajamas, nursing a bowl of Apple Jacks on my trusty TV tray.

(the clip is a bit loud, so turn down the volume)



It's these little things that I enjoy almost more than the prospect of getting to see one of my favorite shows in its entirety; the stuff that most of us forget.

Just the little bit of music they played to introduce the cartoon is something that I forgot until I saw this video. But as soon as I heard it, it was like, "How could I have forgotten it?"

See if you can last through this whole compilation. My thanks to WREYNetwork for uploading these gems.

Taking the day off

So until tomorrow, why not watch something educational?

The name of the game

Everyone, I think, went to school with someone who had a funny name. I had a lab partner in high school named Rob Graves. Jen went to school with a girl named Anna Banana.

Jen and I had long discussions about baby names. It seems to me that some parents just don't think very far ahead when they come up with names for their kids. Ours are tested; I tried to come up with everything I could think of that a kid might twist the names into.

The name I was born with was innocuous enough, but I've told friends about a young man who was not so lucky. I went to school with a kid named Harold. Harold Balz.

Yup.

Harry Balz.

As you might imagine, he got a lot of ribbing for his name, and he tended to be something of a troublemaker. Causing trouble was the only way he could distract people from making fun of his name, and he developed quite the reputation.

So much so that when our teacher was out sick, she left a note that explicity mentioned Harold and his propensity for causing shenanigans.

One day when we found ourselves with a substitute teacher (in an astounding display of poor judgment, our teacher actually alerted us ahead of time) for the day, Harry decided to start the day off by hiding most of the class in the coat closet. Big closet, small kids, and not everyone participated; he needed witnesses to document the sub's reaction.

Our hapless sub came in and noticed that our numbers were a little thin. Before she could call roll, Margaret Ballanger, the class tattletale, made like Benedict Arnold and ratted out Harry and the others. The substitute teacher, Miss Binney, said that our teacher had left a note about Harry and thanked her for being honest.

I rolled my eyes at Margaret.

To be fair, I think the sub would've figured it out before too long. With all those kids in the closet, they weren't all that quiet. Miss Binney walked over the the closet, the clacking of her high heels sounding like gunshots in the relative silence.

As she got closer, the whispering from the closet grew more audible. She leaned her head in and knocked on the closet door. More whispering and even more shushing from inside.

"All right," Miss Binney said sternly. "Anyone in there with Harry Balz had better come out right now." As she realized what she said, I was busy trying not to explode with laughter. The classroom was dead silent.

And then, from inside the closet: "...does fuzz count?"

Today's moment of fail

Taken at the corner of Howard and 2nd, in San Francisco. Oops.

Start the weekend off right

Here's Weezer's latest video for their single "Pork and Beans." If you spend as much time online as I do (and God help you if this is the case), then a lot of this will look familiar to you.

I love it, but couldn't help but notice that there's no Rick Astley. Oh well.

Just sayin'...

Dear Yahoo,

If you have a spaceship prototype picture that looks, well, a bit phallic, you might not want to put "Buzzing now" right under it. People might take it the wrong way. (That's what she said).

There's always room for the jibba-jabba

My son has something in common with Mr. T. Well, two, if you count the fact that they both pity fools. They share a birthday. We celebrated Brody's birthday over the weekend with his cousin, so I figured today I'd give a birthday shout-out to good ol' Mr. T.

In honor of T's 56th birthday, here is a nugget of wisdom and joy called Be Somebody or Be Somebody's Fool. Enjoy!

Post 500, m'kay?

On weekday afternoons, my brother and I would often catch the old Marvel Super Heroes cartoons from the '60s. We always thought it was funny that it looked as if they cut the pictures out of the old comics books and shuffled them across the screen.

And this, in comparison to Hanna-Barbera's own "limited" animation, which was not as fluid as the classic theatrical cartoon shorts.



Catchy tune, though, innit?

And then I heard about Clutch Cargo, which apparently had an animation budget of 37 cents. I thought that it was a joke; surely the animation couldn't be that bad. Instead of animating the characters talking, they superimposed actors' mouths over the faces. That was a gag, right?

Well, after years of managing to avoid seeing it, I finally have experienced a Clutch Cargo cartoon.

Oh my.



And while I'm thinking about it, the first time I saw South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut, I thought of the old Marvel cartoons when the song "It's Easy, M'kay" came on.





The melody of "You can do it, it's all up to you, m'kay" reminded me so much of "When Captain America throws his mighty shield" that I still sing the latter in place of the former. At least on those occasions that find me singing that song, which, admittedly, aren't all that common, but still...

Hottie alert

I usually don't blog about such things, but in this case, I had to. See, this new hot girl started at my work today. Brunette, glasses, hawt. I'd totally marry her.

If I wasn't married to her already.

Yep, my wife is now my co-worker. We've worked together before, and we'll be on opposite sides of the floor, so we won't be right next to each other.

But it will be nice to see her more often. And I'd say that even if she wasn't driving in the mornings.

And in other news, do you know who is on the nickel? You may be surprised.

This made me happier than I think it should

Apparently, The Gong Show will once again return to the airwaves. I loved the original show as a kid, even though it seemed that there was always a lot more going on than I was getting.

Here's what they have to live up to:



No matter what happens with the new incarnation, I'd be willing to bet that something they won't try is to make a feature-length movie out of it. Once was more than enough. I have it on video, and I haven't quite made it all the way through it just yet. Why ever might that be?