Monthly Archives: November 2016

It's been a while since we've had a bizarre rendition of "Bohemian Rhapsody" on this site. Here it is performed by excerpts from 260 different movies because…well, why not?

Hey, remember the Duffy's Dozen presentation that Hanna-Barbera did? This thing? Well, Mike Tiefenbacher notes that in the sales pitch, they mention Pebbles & Bamm Bamm as one of the studio's hit shows. Pebbles & Bamm Bamm went on the air in September of 1971 so that probably means Duffy's Dozen was not done in 1970. And if it wasn't done in 1970, it was most certainly not done for a network but instead to try and syndicate a show for the prime-time access market.

H-B did Wait Till Your Father Gets Home for prime-time access starting in September of 1972. Maybe this was a matter of one H-B show beating out another for a time slot.

Back in this posting, I raved about an improv troupe in Los Angeles called The Black Version which does the following: The audience, by nominations and voting, suggests a classic movie with an all-white or mostly all-white cast. The all-black cast then proceeds to improvise the all-black version of that movie. They're wonderful and hilarious and I told you I'd let you know the next time they're performing.

Well, the next time they're performing is Thursday, December 1 at the Largo at the Coronet. I'll be there. If you're local, maybe you'd like to be there too.

Friday morning on Turner Classic Movies, they're running the following films in this order: Yankee Doodle Dandy, Citizen Kane, Seven Days in May, A Face in the Crowd, Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Born Yesterday and The Candidate. That's a pretty stellar lineup of movies, don'tcha think?

Next Monday night, Get TV is running a special which ran on NBC on October 23, 1968. It's The Friars Club Roasts Johnny Carson and the dais includes along with Mr. Carson, Roastmaster Alan King, Steve Allen, Dick Cavett, Groucho Marx, Ed McMahon, Don Rickles, Ed Sullivan, Flip Wilson and then-Mayor of New York, John Lindsay. In case you're wondering, Mssrs. Rickles and Cavett are the only ones who are still with us.

Sounds like a great show, huh? Well, you might be surprised…though as I recall, Groucho was pretty good, and the Mayor and Ed Sullivan weren't the least funny speakers. But you might want to catch it as an interesting curiosity. Who knows? Maybe Rickles will drop his pants and fire a rocket.

I said here recently that my favorite musical group is Julien Neel. That's true but he only wins in the category of musical groups that only contain one person. Among musical groups that feature two or more people, my fave is still Big Daddy, The Band of '59.

Big Daddy, for those of you who don't know, operates on a simple, inarguable principle: That music in this country was way better before around the time John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Ergo, they take songs that were recorded after that calamitous period and rearrange them so they sound like songs recorded before November of '63…a most worthy endeavor.

For example, here's the music video for Michael Jackson's song, "The Way You Make Me Feel." Watch a little of it to remind you of that tune which starts about a minute into this video…

Okay, fine. Not a bad little number. I mean, 170,199,696 YouTube views can't be wrong. But I liked it better when it was Big Daddified into something more resembling the record, "See You Later, Alligator" by Bill Haley and the Comets. Here's how B.D. did that some years ago…

See? Much better. Big Daddy is still around, still sounding as great as ever. They're performing this coming Saturday at Alva's Show Room in San Pedro, California. I can't go but if you're anywhere near there, you can.

Well, I hope it's one week. Don't we all shudder at the possibility that there will be questionable countings and recounts and court challenges that will make this sucker last past November 8? That's scarier than anything I saw on Halloween. Meanwhile, we're in the week when some people will say anything, others will believe anything and everyone's imagining nightmare scenarios. Gonna be a tough week to get through.

I still look at Electoral College totals and see a Hillary victory…alas, not by as wide a victory as some of us had hoped. I also see a country where the losing side, whichever one it is, is not going to let a little thing like losing make them believe the other side has actually won.

In any case, I'm not posting many (lately, any) more links to articles about why Donald Trump is a horrible, dishonest, unqualified person who's never done anything that wasn't in his own self-interest. I figure if you're not convinced by now, nothing in this world is going to change your mind — especially in the week when some people will say anything, others will believe anything and everyone's imagining nightmare scenarios.