The Super Mario 64 Got Milk Commercial

I don't remember this.

Willy Wonka and Other Theater News

 

Willy Wonka is being re-released to theaters for its 55th anniversary. I plan to see it.

Other upcoming re-releases: "Point Break" and "Terminator 2" in August; "The Passion of the Christ," "Transformers: The Movie," "Princess Mononoke" in September.

Also, one of the new episodes of MST3K (from the latest kickstarter) will be in theaters September 9th and 13th (and check your local listings for exact dates).

Greatest Event in Television History #4

In the newest Greatest Event in Television History, Paul Rudd and Adam Scott recreate the opening to "Bosom Buddies."

The Bradys

 

It is the 90's and there is time for... Bradys.

In 1988, CBS aired a Brady Bunch reunion called "A Very Brady Christmas" and it was a big hit. I remember, not so much seeing it, exactly, but learning about it as a myth. "Did you know they made a Brady Bunch movie where they're all adults?" was passed from kid to kid as we watched TMNT or played Nintendo, which was the style of the time.

From that success, TV executives realized they could make Brady specials every few years to allow audiences to check in on the Bradys and see how things are going, and also to keep milking the cash. From that idea, someone said, "Why not a regular series?" "Fine," they said. And at some point - I don't know who or why or how - someone said, "Let's make it a drama."

Yes, the Brady Bunch show of the 90's was a serious drama, for some reason.

It's pretty nuts but this Brady Bunch show went up against "Family Matters" and "Full House" in its time slot. It also failed badly and was axed after only 5 episodes.

Here's the rundown (spoilers to follow for this crappy show):

Bobby Brady became a racecar driver in the Christmas special. In this series he crashes and is paralyzed in the first episode. Throughout the rest of the series he will hope to, and work to, get out of his wheelchair. It's fun, silly, Brady Bunch action.

Also, Bobby meets and marries a woman played by former MTV VJ Martha Quinn, which is notable.

Jan is married and is having sex. Her and her husband are trying to conceive (and having trouble) and the show makes it abundantly clear that Jan is having ALL OF THE sex. So much sex. I will never look at Jan the same way again.

Cindy is a radio DJ and dates her boss.

In the Christmas special, it is revealed that Peter is engaged but in the first episode of this series, he calls it off. Peter is a ladies' man and the joke is he basically dates a new girl every night. The only person having more sex than Peter is Jan.

Greg doesn't have much to do. He's a doctor and married to a beautiful wife (the new Gidget) and is just... kinda... he's just winning at life. That's pretty much his story.

Marsha is an odd situation. Marsha is the only case where the original actor didn't want to be in the show and had to be replaced. Which is too bad because... everyone loves Marsha and I am everyone. The Marsha character is married to a whiny loser for some reason. Her husband's main skill in life is to get fired from as many jobs as possible, leaving his family homeless. It's annoying.

Marsha slips into alcoholism. Why? It seems the show's explanation for her alcoholism is that she's bored one day and just starts drinking. And then she admits she has a problem, says she's going to get professional help and she never does. By the end of the show she is cured of alcoholism merely by deciding not to drink anymore. It's a serious topic, handled with skill and nuance.

Alice is basically comic relief and is just hangin' out. She's still married to Sam the butcher.

Mike Brady gets so fed up with his local government that he runs for office and wins. The Bradys help him with his campaign. Carol is there too.

One other note about "comic relief." The show is a terrible attempt at a serious drama, like I said, but the ratings were so bad that a few episodes in they start adding a fake laugh track to try to tap into the old Brady magic but it just makes things worse. A bad drama with a laugh track is just bonkers.

Behind the Track - Loser by Beck

Beck explains how his hit "Loser" was made. I wish this was longer, with more detail.

And all this time I thought the chorus was "Sore from head to toe /  I'm a loser baby...."

Top 25 David Brent Moments

Ricky Gervais counts down the Top 25 David Brent moments on "The Office" and gives some behind-the-scenes insights.

America is Like the Movies?

If a half hour is too long for you, you can get the core idea from the woman at 23:24.

All people generally know about a place is what the media tells them. For years I've encountered the negative side of this as I've had English people on the internet telling me how Americans are all rednecks and it's a country of uncontrolled, non-stop crime. And so finding there's a flipside to that coin - the idea that movies have imbued the country with a feeling of magic - is pretty cathartic.

The Forecast Today

Pretty much everywhere it's gonna be hot.

E-HEH-HEH-HEH-HEH-HEH!

Popcorn in Bed - The Insider

It seems to me that "The Insider" is an underrated classic.

There's an interesting phenomenon here They say the movie makes them question the government and the News stories they're told, etc. - that's all well and good - but they believe the movie implicitly. Why is one form of storytelling more trustworthy than the other?

Happy 40th Anniversary of Hell Track Day

America's 250th Anniversary isn't the biggest and most important anniversary this year. 

Today (June 26) is the 40th Anniversary of Hell Track. For the background on that, see here.

I'm just assuming here that the year of Hell Track is the year that "Rad" came out. Given that the movie came out in March 1986, and if we assume the events of the movie didn't occur after the movie was released, that would place the first Hell Track Day in 1985, making this post 1 year late and thus, quite lame.

We still don't have a proper tradition for celebrating Hell Track Day. 

This sucks.

How the Lighsaber Sounds Were Made

Rating Foods from Buc-ee's

I've been going through the "World Cup Fans experience America" content and, for whatever reason, the #1 one thing people seem to be focusing on is Buc-ee's.

I have no opinion on the matter - I have never been to Buc-ee's in my life, though I have had one of their snacks: the Famous Beaver Nuggets.

In this video, Babish rates a variety of Buc-ee's offerings, and though the video is 47 minutes long and the title says "eating everything at...", he gets to less than 1 percent of the total number of foods available. Buc-ee's seems to be a wonderland of odd/unique food creations.

Which Once Again Proves My Theory...

 As a reluctant fan of the "Reacts To" genre, and a low-level movie buff, I went down the rabbit hole of movie reactions and observed one incontrovertible fact: Women Love "Rocky".

I first documented this phenomena in "The Ladies and Rocky - A Genre Within a Genre" and noted as evidence the Youtubers: Popcorn in Bed, Duaffy M&S, Mom and Mary Cherry.

Since then, there has been Jen Murray, MovieJoob and Liteweight Reacting.

Today I offer as further evidence: Liz Reacts (above), Movie Date with Kate, Addie Counts, VKunia, MillieMochisTV, Stacey's Silver Screen, Molly Bee, Verowak Reacts and Totally Whatever.

Not all of these women have made it through the entire series but, for those that have, 5 is generally recognized as the weakest. However, it must be noted that 5 is still generally really well-liked, they just rank it below the others. And there was one woman who said 5 was better than 3. Another commonality is: almost everyone hates Paulie (which is expected). But I continue to be surprised by how underrated the character of Mickey is among women (though with some stark exceptions).

They often comment how much they love the training montages and the gimmick that every big fight has a certain unique strategy.

World Cup Fans React to America Compilation

I kept hearing about how "viral" the World Cup fans reaction videos were but, not being on social media, I didn't see any. Here's a compilation I found.

I don't know if this is the best one or what the best ones are, but I found it interesting.

If you're in the opposite situation and you're being flooded with these and I'm just hopping on a trend, my apologies.

Blind Mike - Joe Matarese's New Podcast

"Philly" Comedian Joe Matarese, who lives in New York, is thinking of moving to Philadelphia (or some place in the Philadelphia area). He has created a new podcast where he talks about moving to Philly and asks callers which town/area he should move to specifically.

Blink Mike and Craig listen to his podcast and try to digest what is going on.

Binging with Babish - 10 Levels of Chocolate Chip Cookie

Another instance where I find the art of cooking (baking) to be fascinating. Particularly, Levels 5 and 6, where simple, ingenious changes actually improve the seemingly already perfect chocolate chip cookie.

Humor Me - The Steve O'Donnell Letter Conclusion

This is the Part 2, the conclusion of Letterman, Smigel, Downey helping to write a letter to Steve O'Donnell. Part 1 was here.

Beyond the Fringe - Great Train Robbery

Late Night - A Compilation of Bloopers

It's never occurred to me to watch a Conan compilation before but here is 2 hours of things going wrong on Late Night with Conan O'Brien. No real reason, just a fun video if you're looking for entertainment.

There are lots of these types of compilations and I may have to explore more of them.

And now here's where I get pedantic...

It seems to me that the animal expert segments where the animals do unpredictable things can't really be counted as bloopers. There was no script for the animals so they can't make mistakes. However, if we're allowing "blooper" to mean anything unplanned/unexpected happening, it seems to me the animal expert segment where Conan gets peed on is a must:

Late Night - The Tom Shales Saga

 In an interview with Howard Stern, Conan talks about the rough experience of his early Late Night days and identifies the specific moment when he was at his lowest:

"The one that comes to mind is... we were just on the air for 2 or 3 months and things weren't going well and then I did Charlie Rose's show when he went, 'Well, you're probably aware of what came out in the Washington Post today... The top TV critic in the world just wrote this piece and here's what it says- and it goes...' It was a brutal take down of me, Andy, everything..."

This is a story Conan had told before, though the way it was told and the location in which it was told obscured its gravity. In 2003, Conan recounted the Charlie Rose episode to Charlie Rose:

Rose: I remember at one point you, early, were on my show--

Conan: Yes.

Rose: And it was during the difficult time.

Conan: It was the beginning of the difficult time, I think, you- you informed me of one of my worst reviews when I was first here.  It was about 2 months into the show--

Rose: I read it to you?

Conan: And you said I don't know if you're aware of this and you started reading and it had just come out that morning... 

Now, through the magic of Youtube, we can watch the original 'offensive' interview from 1993:

Here is what Charlie Rose actually said:

"If in fact you're doing the show you want to do and critics - I just saw a piece by Tom Shales, I think, saying, 'Look...', you know, it's not working for him as a critic - does it bother you or do you say to those critics, 'I'm doing the show I want to do. If you don't like the show I want to do, then sorry. I can't please everybody but this is what I want to do, I found my voice, it's the show I want, it's the combination I want, we are approaching what I want to be."

Quite a difference. Quite a difference. It isn't Rose reading the hit piece to a horrified Conan on national TV. It's briefly mentioning the review and using a phrase - "it's not working for him" - is arguably the kindest and most sanitized summary of the article possible. 

It's amazing how wrong Conan's memory of it is. But this isn't uncommon - memory is not as reliable as people think. It's quite a problem of History. If you were writing the story of Conan, who would you take as more reliable to talk about his own experience than Conan himself? And if a person recounting the major events of their own life are unreliable, how do we trust the things passed down through indirect accounts?

That aside, I accept Conan's answer to the "lowest point' question, outside of Charlie Rose. Conan got a bad Tom Shales review during a critical point in the show, it was devastating to him and that was his lowest moment doing Late Night. And I suppose, some time after that, Charlie Rose's part grew from announcing the review to reading it.

One point that I can pretty much confirm from Conan's story is where he stresses the importance of critics back then. It does seem silly now, but they did have a great deal of power in shaping public perception, for whatever reason. 

Here is that Shales review, by the way, if you'd like to revisit it. And it's worth noting that 3 years later, Shales did another review that reassessed the show and was much kinder to Conan. Shales noted that the late night landscape had shifted drastically and essentially called Conan "The New Dave".

10 years after the original review, Tom appeared on Conan to promote his new book. Conan confronts Shales about the bad review (though within the bounds of the playful interview shtick).

Another aside about memory and history. In this interview, we have both Conan and Shales agreeing that the phrase "white Irish shark coming at you" was used in the review when it doesn't appear at all. 10 years after an event that directly affected them, they agree on a hallucination.

A final aside. I always found it creepy how Shales sounded so similar to Roger Ebert. It was disconcerting. How is it that the top film critic in the world and the top television critic in the world are both fat men with glasses and similar voices? I don't know but I also never heard anyone mention it.

To Conan's great credit, he seems to have handled the whole thing with great grace and, of course, seems to have a great sense of humor about it all. Shales passed away in 2024.

Robert Smigel, David Letterman and Jim Downey

Robert Smigel (head writer for Conan, writer for SNL, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog) has a podcast.

In this episode, he talks to Jim Downey (Conan, SNL) and David Letterman (himself).

To the casual observer, this doesn't mean much but for someone like me, it feels like the Super Bowl.

The premise of the show (or the premise of the show within the show) - that someone in Turkey wants help writing an email to Steve O'Donnel (Letterman, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, Norm Macdonald) - is ludicrous, bordering on annoying. But, again, it really doesn't matter what the premise is, with this panel.