Are you a fan of the 70's Sid & Marty Kroft TV show "Land of The Lost"? Are your pants continually in danger of falling down? If so, this is the item for you: that's right, Sleestak belt-buckles!
I saw that these were being sold at this year's currently-under-way San Diego Comic Con, the annual huge convention of comics, film and all things beloved by geeks and increasingly, the mainstream. If you're heading there this weekend, be sure to stop by and say hi to some friends o' blogfoot, many of whom are linked on the right. King Mini, Sam Hiti, Brian Ewing and Big Time Attic will all be there flogging their wares. Buy some stuff from them so that their wives do not beat them with rolling pins when they get home.
Not able to make it to the big comic-con? No sweat. You can get your Sleestak belt buckles (sorry, no Chaka belt buckles at this time) at this website, where they also have buckles of Frankenstein, a cyclops and the chick robot from Fritz Lang's "Metropolis."
Among certain circles, there is a piece of art whose power reverberates to this day. And that piece of art is the infamous "punk rock" episode of "Quincy M.E" where Jack Klugman blew the lid off of the sinister punk rock movement, a drug and rage-fueled musical cabal that threatened to destroy every value our country ever dared to hold dear.
The episode, chillingly titled "Next Stop, Nowhere" first aired on December 2, 1982, and as someone once said on a website I no longer have bookmarked and therefore cannot properly credit, "a stunned generation has been picking up the pieces ever since." The episode had Quincy investigating the murder of Zack, a street punk who was killed while attending a show by the band "Mayhem" at the Ground Zero Club. Poor Zack is stabbed with an ice-pick in the neck while "slam-dancing" to Mayhem's incendiary classic "I Wanna See You Choke." Some choice lyrics from this sly condemnation of bourgeois society are as follows (the third line was unintelligble, sorry):
Get a job for the man Go on and break down if you can (something something ) like his face there's no garbage like the human race
Come on! I don't know why you try Come on! You know you're gonna die Come on! It's all just a joke Come on! I wanna see you choke
Printing more of the lyrics would merely cause you to break down and sob as you realize the stunning hypocrisy of your life, so I will spare you. Plus, it was difficult to transcribe them, as the audio quality was quite poor.
Here's a montage of scenes from this slab of cinema verite' / documentary / time-capsule:
As you can see, the "punks" are terrifying in their authenticity. One imagines the casting director simply used giant nets to capture a real-live punk audience from a Dead Kennedys or Black Flag show, transported them to the set, and filmed them in all their feral glory, paying them in drugs, safety pins and make-up for their time.
At one point Quincy talks to a female punker and tells her "I'm with the Coroner's office." Her reply? She says she's heard of his band and likes them. My goodness.
At the end of the episode Quincy, having cured society of punk rock, is dancing with a square white lady who earlier in the show described punks as "like soldiers fighting in some insane war." Anyways, as they shuffle their old bones to the mellow sounds of the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, Quincy asks "why anyone want to listen to music that makes you hate, when you can listen to music that makes you love." Hmm. Why indeed, Quincy?
Appparently "CHiP's" had a 2-part punk rock storyline as well. More on this later.
I suppose it's possible that I've been thinking a little too much about "M*A*S*H" lately, because last night there was a segment in my dream in which I was talking to an 11-foot tall Charles Emerson Winchester (David Ogden Stiers), and I was telling him that although I initially didn't like him, I eventually found him to a much more interesting character and long-term foil for Hawkeye and B.J. than Frank Burns was, seeing as how at the point of his departure from the show Frank had become rather one-note, and a pretty shrill one at that.
So I was clicking around on the internet during lunch today, and, as I am sometimes wont to do, I was reading about M*A*S*H. Specifically, I was reading about "AfterMASH", the lame, ill-advised spin-off that ran for just over a year from September 1983 - December 1984 and featured Col. Potter, Corporal Klinger and Father Mulcahy (ie; the characters no one gave a shit about) working together in a veteran's hospital after the Korean War.
Anyway, something caught my eye. In discussing a two-part episode that featured special guest star Gary Burghoff reprising his role as Corporal Walter "Radar" O'Reilly (appparently "Match Game" was on hiatus that week), the article mentioned that it wasn't Burghoff's last appearance as Radar, and that the same character "was also the star of a pilot called W*A*L*T*E*R, in which Radar moved from Iowa to St. Louis and became a cop."
What the?! This was unknown to me. I grew dizzy...how had this escaped my notice until now? How, in all my hours of acquiring worthless trivia, had this gone undetected?
But it's true. "W*A*L*T*E*R" was indeed a pilot for a spin-off of M*A*S*H made in 1984 that mercifully, was never picked up. It aired only once, in July of 1984 (prime viewing time, hey?) and was pre-empted on the West Coast by the Democratic National Convention.
The summary of the pilot, which paints a powerful and compelling picture with but a few strokes, is as follows: "The show related the adventures of Corporal Walter (Radar) O'Reilly after he had returned home from the Korean War. The woman he had romanced during his final appearance on M*A*S*H was nowhere to be found. More importantly, he was no longer calling himself "Radar" and he had moved away from Iowa (his mother having died). Taking root in St. Louis, Missouri, he had become perhaps the world's gentlest police officer."
You know what happened next: dying to see the adventures of "the world's gentlest police officer", I went racing to youtube, hoping some social miscreant had posted the pilot. But alas, it was not to be. In fact, none of my usual sources could dig up a clip. All I found was a blurry screenshot, as seen above.
More strangeness: the credits for this nightmare state that it was created by Bill Bixby! Yes, "The Incredible Hulk"-"You wouldn't like me when I'm angry" Bill Bixby. Curiouser and curiouser, as Alice would say.
Rest assured that I will marshall all my forces in pursuit of a clip from this show.
Here's a pic from what I can only assume is the famed Running of the Bulls event in Pamplona, Spain. What is impressive about this picture is that the bull has managed to stab/gore/impale not one, but two dudes in the ass at the same time. Dang.
I was outbid on ebay yesterday by some basement-dwelling slob for an original "Nancy" strip by Ernie Bushmiller, as seen below. I admit I didn't bid that much, but now I wish I had, because as you can see, it's a pretty funny joke. Plus, it has Nancy in shorts and a tank-top, Sluggo trading in his shopworn beanie for a more beach-appropriate sailors cap, and not a whiff of proper punctuation.
Fifi, one of the denizens of Australia's Taronga Zoo, passed away today at ripe old age of 60. Fifi, who suffered from arthritis and had taken to sipping from a cup of chamomile tea each morning in her later years, stayed in bed Thursday morning, raising suspicions among the keepers that she was unwell, the zoo said in a statement.
Keepers provided her with fresh bedding and her favorite foods, while other chimps in the group visited her throughout the day, the zoo said. She died peacefully in the afternoon.
Boy, that part about the "other chimps visiting her throughout the day" kinda gets to ya, doesn't it? I'm visualizing a long line of somber chimps waiting to pay their respects. Although unconfirmed, it's possibile that regularly scheduled afternoon activities such as screeching and waving sticks were cancelled out of respect for the matriarch, who had four generations of family at the zoo.
And just who is the world's oldest living chimp? None other than Cheeta, the star of a dozen "Tarzan" movies! Cheeta, who is listed by the Guinness Book of World Records as the record holder, turned 75 in April. Cheeta was also mean as a snake, and bit almost all of his co-stars, and probably many gaffers and cameramen to boot.
I know I haven't blogged a ton lately (busy/lazy), and I hate to just throw up another youtube video, but this is too good to pass up. It's Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video re-enacted by a gym-full of inmates (over 1,500 of them!) at a prison in the Phillipines. And you know what? They're not too shabby.
Thanks to poetv.com and Boing Boing for the heads up.
Until I manage to string together some words and form a meaningful post (although to be fair, my last entry was truly epic in size and scope, both literally and figuratively), here's a youtube video to keep you occupied. It's Andy Kaufman on "Late Night with David Letterman" performing the wrenching Slim Whitman song "Rosemarie" while wearing a turban and a diaper. Good stuff.
This past weekend the little lady and I visited Convergence, an annual sci-fi con held here scenic Bloomington, Minnesota, just outside of Minneapolis (a big thumbs down to the dealer room there. Truly lame). A friend of ours was hosting his annual "Cinema Apocalypse" there, where he shows genre films projected in a rather huge fashion on his hotel room wall from dusk-to-dawn, and convention-goers are free to wander and absorb some cinema.
One of the movies he unspooled (well, projected) was "War of the Gargantuas" a strange 1966 Kaiju film from the folks at Toho (the studio that unleashed Godzilla and his ilk). I don't know quite how to describe this film. I mean, it's super-simple in a way, depicting the combat between two giant humanoid creatures ( they look like building-sized, acne-ravaged Bigfoots) throughtout Tokyo and the surrounding countryside. But it's stranger than that. The creatures are actually descended from Frankenstein's monster somehow, and are referred to throughout as "Frankensteins." Interesting. I don't remember Frankenstein's monster being 100-feet tall and hair-covered, nor was I aware that Dr. Frankenstein was not German as we were all lead to believe, but was instead of Japanese descent. Thankfully, this movie cleared up all of these long-held misconceptions.
The concept of a Frankenstein-soaked Japanese culture is tossed around so much that at one point the films cuts to a scene at "The Department of Frankenstein Research." How cool would it be to work at a place like that? Someone get me an application! Anyway, one Gargantua is rather benign ("Sanda", the brown one) and the other is vicious and likes to eat people ("Gaira", the green one). It is from this difference in their worldviews that the titanic conflict of the title springs.
For whatever reason, this movie sticks in the head of every genre fan who sees it. Maybe it's the title, which is pretty close to perfect. I first saw it as a little kid and it was burned into my brain. Then I saw it once in the 80's, once in the 90's (where it held a roomfull of 7 or 8 drunk guys at a party, me included, spellbound for it's entirety), and now again in the aughts.
Now, I know what you're thinking: "You paint a pretty picture, senor Blogfoot, but what proof do I have? This movie is sadly unavailable on region 1 DVD." This is true. But, as is the custom of our times, someone has posted large chunks of clips of it on youtube! Huzzah!
Here's the english version of the trailer:
And here's a scene where an American songstress warbles a horrible tune before being interupted by the hideous Green Gargantua. Special Blogfoot Trivia: DEVO was fan of this film, and used to cover this song in concert:
There's plenty of fight scenes from this treasure posted on youtube as well, so enjoy. Me? I'm going to watch the bootleg DVD my buddy lent me over and over again. Thanks, dude! I'll get this and your copy of the legendary "Cannibal Holocaust" back to you as soon as possible.
The movie is "White Lightning" a two-fisted drama from 1973 starring Mr. Burt Reynolds as Gator, a southern fella convicted of running moonshine and subsequently recruited to work uncover for the feds in order to bring down the corrupt sheriff played by Ned Beatty, who just so happened to have also killed Gator's brother. Whew! It spawned a 1976 sequel called, simply enough, "Gator", which we can assume tied up all the dangling plot threads left from this one.
Actually, nothing was left dangling. Burt got his revenge, the sheriff died, and I staggered off to bed, bleary-eyed and questioning my self-worth and sanity.
I would recommend clicking on the poster image in order to embiggen it, because not only is it nicely painted, but it adroitly sums up the entire plot of the movie in one fell swoop. The cracking moonshine bottles, cursing sheriff and brazen floozy in the front seat are all certainly nice touches, but the crowning detail is the pair of broken handcuffs adorning Burt / Gator's wrist. It really drives home that 70's anti-hero angle. Nicely done. The inset photo of a shirtless Burt seems a bit shoehorned in, but what are you gonna do.
Here a picture I found on the electronic ether of an old box of dynamite from the 1920's (why was I searching for pictures of Hercules? For work. Honest!). Except that rather than just stencil "dynamite" or "boom" on the the box, some intrepid soul thought long enough to come up with a concept that would differentiate the product from others in the munitions aisle, and then showed admirable restraint in delivering a nice little graphic reward to those dynamite shoppers with discerning eyes.
