What Makes This Song Great? - Black

He's right about that piano. I never noticed how there was a guitar in this that sounded exactly like "Yellow Ledbetter". It's like they're ripping off themselves.

The Reason Why Switches are Clicky

Rad - The Deleted Scenes

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is finished. The end has come. The fifth and last Golden Ticket has just been found right here in Paraguay. The Rad deleted scenes have surfaced on The Facebook.

Many thanks to Corey Kearns of facebook who writes:
"Hi guys, these are the cut scenes from the movie. I recorded this in 1989 from Canadian cable. These scenes are not in the American release. Sorry for the quality but this tape is almost worn through from me watching it so much lol, LETS WALK THIS SUCKER"

And many thanks to Victor for sharing the link.

It feels like the end of an era. I can't believe it's over. Not only did we get the deleted scenes back but I HAVE CONFIRMED THAT THERE WAS THE MURRAY FROM THE STORE. I hope to ruminate on that in a future post.

I would venture to say historians will be examining and picking apart every detail of these scenes for decades. But here are a few initial observations:

• Every actor in these scenes appears to be an alien or android. Is this how the rest of the movie appears to people who haven't seen it a million times?
• Luke's parents appear to be his grandparents. Did they skip a generation?
• Luke's dinner scene with his "parents" mirrors the scene in Star Wars where Luke has dinner with his aunt and uncle on Tatooine. In fact it's very similar. Is it coincidence? Luke/Luke!
• More character development for Amy. She likes WHAM and Duran Duran and she has a waterbed. Whoah.
• When your parent confronts you in your room and you storm out, where do you go?
• Imdb describes the third scene as "An unnamed boy storms out of his house late at night." The unnamed boy looks so familiar, I thought I could name him, is it possible it's the guy who says "how about a hand for our rad dude?"... It could be the character Harold or Miles but I can't figure out which one is which.
• Bart Taylor doesn't know how to act drunk. The filmmakers were perhaps unsure of the effectiveness themselves and perhaps just decided to have actor just announce that he's "smashed". We can't compare to the script because that's been taken down though we know this scene is in the script in some form.
• The couple who announce that he's smashed is interesting - Rick and Katie. It looks like the guy from the beginning who's listing off colleges he's applying to is with Katie, Cru's fantasy. Is this coupling seen anywhere else?
• Blob is standing in the back of the drunk scene. What is he doing?
• There could have been an alternate timeline where Sgt. Smith arrests Bart for public drunkenness and Cru wins Helltrack because Bart's still stuck in jail. But events would change further because without Bart in the race, the Reynolds Twins would try to win themselves instead of taking Cru out. Perhaps in this alternate timeline Cru loses.
• Sgt. Smith charges Bart $1.05 but I'd like to think it's not for his sundae, it's the cost of not getting arrested - freedom costs a buck-o-five.
• Did Bart lose Helltrack because he was hungover? Did Bart almost win Helltrack whilst hungover?
• Mr. Pratt has the mannerisms of some sort of bicycle priest. He seems to say "Go now, my child... and ride in peace."
• Cru receives the bike of his dreams and his reaction is as if someone just died. Shouldn't this be a happy moment?
• Unrelated to the deleted scenes.... but I just noticed that an actress is credited as "Katie's Friend" but no one is credited as "Katie".

Again, it's not much, just my initial thoughts.

Best of the Worst - Bad Movie Scavenger Hunt

One of my favorite bad movie tropes is that period in the 80s when computers were depicted as performing magic. This episode has one of the best (several of the best) examples of that that I've ever seen.

JonTron - Getting Your Boating License

Revisiting John Adams

I recently decided to re-watch the HBO series "John Adams" and read the book on which the series is based ("John Adams" by David McCullough). I don't remember which I decided first and which second. But having done so, there is a slight re-evaluation in my esteem of the series.

"John Adams" is one of the finest books I've ever read. A large part of what makes it so enthralling is the persons of John and Abigail Adams. They are Salt of the Earth people, superior in intellect, superior in morals, yet friendly and down to earth folk with great senses of humor.

For Episodes 1, 2, 3 and 7 of the series, they effectively communicate some sense of this. But 4-6 take a strange turn. There is no doubt that John Adams was an emotional man, prone to outbursts and negative thoughts but, perhaps for dramatic effect, these qualities are exaggerated (to mind) to an unacceptable degree to the point that he's made out to be an ass. In particular Episode 5, there are Dutch angles and arguments with everyone as he rants and/or raves that it becomes a cartoon. I watch Episode 5 and I don't know why we care about this man or what happens to him. I suggest a Christmas Special of the series where he could be telling people "bah humbug" and slamming the door on charities.

The book notes that Adams was vain, too emotional, too spontaneous, too unthinking. No one told the series that these criticisms come from John Adams himself, not the people around him. Are they not aware that a person can be their own worst critic, and often are? In fact, I'd say the more self-critical a person is of their own flaws, the less likely those flaws are to be seen by others.

If the first great advantage of the series is to give historical figures three-dimensional weight and character, the second is to imbue the history books with the emotion and intensity of current events. This is another thing that the series does well but takes too far. There is a scene in Episode 1 where Samuel Adams takes John to see an American protest where a man is stripped naked and tarred. Samuel Adams looks at it with the relish of a vampire while John Adams is justifiably appalled. This scene never happened. It is put in to communicate their differing views on peaceful protest vs lawlessness - yes, Samuel Adams was much more enthusiastic about protests and Adams much more worried about law and order - but Samuel Adams was not a sadistic sociopath hungry for violence, as far as history records.

Again Episode 5 is the worst in this too. Adams lived in difficult and stressful times, his presidency was hard, it was turbulent. But, I venture it wasn't a descent into Hell, as that episode portrays. The goal is to take the events from the philosophical heavens and plant them solidly in the soil, but they've skipped that sphere and gone below the earth, creating events as though they took place where the fire is not quenched and their worm never dies.

There is a scene in Episode 7 that is so ironic I have to believe it is intentional. John Adams (aged 90) is brought in to review a new painting of the signing of the Declaration. It's the painting used for the back of the $2 Bill. Adams, reviewing the painting, completely eviscerates and berates the painter to the point of inhumanity. Again, this is not what actually happened. The series is portraying Adams as a jerk, for reasons only they know.

But here's the thing... In this scene the fictional Adams's criticism is that "it is very bad" history. The painting arranges all the signers together and in a semi-circle so that all their faces are recognizable. All the signers were never all together in the same room to sign. The painter essentially argues that even if the piece is not factually accurate, artistic license is necessary to nonetheless capture the greater truth. Adams responds, "Do not let our posterity be deluded with fictions under the guise of poetical or graphical licenses... I consider the true history of the American Revolution as lost forever."

Just as the painter needed to take license in order to neatly portray the entire truth, the series "John Adams" takes huge leaps of artistic license in order to shape a 650 page book into a compelling 7 episodes. Conversations that actually took place in letters are, in the series, face-to-face; secret differences of opinion are stated openly; different times and events are combined into one. All of these shortcuts are, to me, completely acceptable. But the people who made the series decided to portray Adams as decrying artistic licenses - and therefore their own series - as bad history and worthless. As I say, I have to assume this much is intentionally tongue in cheek. But the double irony is that the very speech in which he does it is not just artistic license but made up whole cloth. The series wants to declare itself not just worthless in its finest moments, but also less than worthless in its nadirs? I can't fathom what they intend.

All of this is not to say that "John Adams" is a bad series. I still consider it one of the greats. Episode 2 is one of the greatest pieces of television ever made. Episode 1 is fierce and most excellent. Episode 7 is a sublime meditation on the nature of existence. The rest of the series is still very compelling. No, my re-evaluation serves merely to take it from "Perfect" to "Imperfect" but not much further.

Is Brown a Color?

According to QI (1:46), in ancient Greece, Brown (Bronze) was the ONLY color. But now, according to this, it might not be a color at all. I don't know what to believe.

Re:View - Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory

The Ending of Dinosaurs

The Jim Henson show "Dinosaurs" had a last episode that was apparently a bit of a downer. I always find it funny when lighthearted situation comedies decide to go dark. And this show had a demographic that was decidedly young. Here's how it went:



I get the feeling like behind the surface events of the show, there's some sort of intended inner message or "moral" they're trying to ram through. I don't know what it could be though.

Boxed Cake vs. Scratch Cake

An interesting video about the reasons boxed cake tastes different from cake made from scratch and the science behind it.

The Rad Blu-Ray and Deleted Scenes (Update)

Although my Rad Blu-Ray has not yet shipped, the word is in from my friend Vic... The Blu-Ray does NOT contain any deleted scenes. Yet another defeat.

For context.
Context #2.

Rad Script Anomolies #10-#6.
Rad Script Anomolies #5-#1.

Building the Perfect Squirrel-Proof Bird Feeder

Revisiting the Walker Texas Ranger Lever

I've been revisiting the Walker Texas Ranger Lever recently and here are the fruits of my search.





Although many people seem to disagree, the one clip in this "episode" is my personal all-time favorite:

Space Heater Nonsense

Found this interesting. A video about how heaters for small rooms and heaters for large rooms are really just the same and why energy efficiency in a heater does not matter at all.