I picked up the Venture Brothers Season 3 DVD set for my birthday last week, and was immediately reminded of why this is the BEST FRIGGIN' SHOW ON TEEVEE....episodes featuring Tiki mugs, Sufferin' Bastards, and tacky Tiki motels.
Season 4 starts October 18th on Adult Swim. Here's the preview trailer. I am damp with anticipation.
[Link: HEE HEE HAW HAW HAW HAW]
If this was 1977, I'd probably be crying "sellout!" and rioting outside the Whisky, or something. Nowadays, I just laugh and reach for the English muffins.
Mmm....butter....[drool]
[Link: John Lydon Butter Commercial]
What the hell was their marketing department thinking?
[Link: 1975 Ball Buster Game!][via Junkyard Clubhouse]
At last, something has roused me from my blogospheric torpor! Max Sparber has disinterred the moldering corpse of the not-quite-dead-yet, Essential Ghoul's Record Shelf, a weblog dedicated to a rather specific list of song stylings which include the following topics:
I am a monster.
My girlfriend is a monster.
Everyone we know is a monster, so let's do a monster-specific dance.
I'm being chased by a werewolf.
I have had a spell cast on me.
Where did all my blood go?
The Ghoul then goes on to add a new topic to his repertoire: Let's sing a song about hilariously inaccurate television psychics.
Criswell Predicts tells the story behind Mae West's stirring hoochie-koochie paean to her psychic friend, the Amazing Criswell, who, as you may recall, predicted that Mae would not only become President of the United States in 1960, but would also accompany him to the Moon (along with Liberace).
It's a great song, and a terrific reintroduction for the Ghoul. You have been missed, you rotten old creep. Welcome back!
[Link: Criswell Predicts]
It's About Time was a '60s television comedy I would've rather left in a pile of forgotten memories from my youth, but Classic Television Showbiz yanked it out of my subconscious, and embedded its ear-wormy theme song in my brain. Now, I feel as if I must pollute the minds of my collective readership as well (it's only fair that you all suffer with me).
IAT had an incredibly thin premise: 2 astronauts stranded in time with a bunch of cavemen who talk like this:
"What Gronk say?"
"Him say, 'If Gronk become chief, nobody hunt sabertooth tiger."
As you can imagine, a half-hour of this is about 29 1/2 minutes too much. Nevertheless, I felt compelled to watch a couple of episodes due to the talented cast who were caught slumming in this Sherwood Schwartz steamer: Bob Denver, Joe E. Ross, and Imogene Coca, among others.
[Link: It's About Time]
Mike Nesmith's Television Parts Home Companion shares the remarkable account of one man's heroic attempt to prove that the ancient Hawaiians could've crossed the Pacific in a Polynesian restaurant and sailed to America's western shores.
More video ex-Monkeeshines here [Link].
[Link: Voyage of the Kona Tiki][via TC]
As I've mentioned previously, I was once shamefully involved in that last refuge of the scoundrel...public access television...where I scripted and played bit parts in an extremely low-budget, horror-hosted anthology of films and cartoons in the public domain, called Chester's Chillers.
My then-partner in televised crimes against humanity, Rob Mattison, has been working overtime, digitally capturing the very worst of these ancient episodes from the studio vaults, and uploading them to YouTube for your viewing displeasure. The clips have been edited so only the interstitial bits remain, which means that you don't get any cool films or cartoons, just the skits that were performed in-between. Rob's got 4 episodes up, and if you can bear to sit through them, you'll see a definite evolution (and improvement) in the characters of manic host, Chester, and his smartass baseball-bat sidekick, Woody. I'm particularly fond of episode #4, in which we mocked a couple of conspiracy wingnuts who were appearing on the same public-access channel at the time (1994). The episodes in which I appeared haven't been uploaded yet, and when they are, I'm certainly not going to call undue attention to them for fear of extreme mortification, but those of you who know me will recognize my bad self instantly.
[Link: Chester's Chillers on YouTube]
About 8 years ago, I happened to catch an episode of Lexx on the SciFi Channel, and was immediately captivated by its twisted cast of characters and the incredibly weird universe they inhabit. The show deals with the adventures of the motley crew of the Lexx, a living spaceship capable of destroying planets, then eating the leftovers. The plots are brimming with brilliant concepts, quirky humor and kinky sexual situations, like the romantic triangle between the undead assassin, Kai, the decapitated head of lovesick robot 790, and Zev, a hot babe who's half cluster lizard. The show lasted 4 seasons, and got pretty much unwatchable (in my opinion) towards the end, but series 1 and 2 were more focused, and dealt primarily with the battle between the crew of the Lexx and the evil and mysterious alien, His Shadow, who rules over their universe.
Seasons 2 through 4 are available on DVD here in the US, but season 1, which consisted of four 2-hour television movies, seems to only be available in Germany. If you're a diligent googler, you can find most of season 1 on YouTube and DailyMotion, where I managed to scrounge up three-fifths of the first episode, I Worship His Shadow. Enjoy, meatbags!
Be-fezzed mad scientist, Uncle Pete, and his Lucha-masked sidekick, El Vato, bring you a World of Twisted and Absurd Audiovisual Oddities and The Forgotten Children of the Silver Screen in every online episode of The Dark Vault of Public Domain [Link]. They get mega-bonus points for playing a clip from my favorite Japanese New Wave band, The Plastics [Link].
Watching these clips reminded me of my own foray into public-access horror-hosting back in the early '90s, Chester's Chillers [Link]. I'll have to check into getting some episodes up on YouScrewed.