If at some point today you woke up in a cornfield without having been turned into a jack-in-the box, consider that a very good thing, sort of. There’s a way out, but it’s a bit of a hike, though. You do have a compass in your pocket and some good walking shoes, I hope?
Who would have thought a lot of people just wanted some cheap peach brandy and a good Perry Como record… and that the late Rod Serling had a built-in barometer?
Bleh. I was trying to hold off for a few weeks, but the laptop is officially dying and was in fact quite dead for most of the day today. A bunch of reboots, a complete system diagnostic that took about an hour and revealed nothing “wrong” with the old beast (except the double screen image and a couple of blank startup screens) and a few other issues later and yup, it’s time for a replacement. This post is here thanks to a load of extra restarts and “only” three crashes, but I’m hoping the dang screen doesn’t freeze before I’m done (yaaaah!)
Amusingly enough, I’ve been looking for a new laptop for a while, but not something with a big-name overprice tag loaded to the gills with bloatware and other junk. With my current budget, pricing needs to be about $600 or so with moderately decent specs. No chuggy i3 processor, integrated video or anything else that won’t work for me, a BR or DVD-RW is a must and at least a 1TB HDD and perhaps additional room for something else is what I’m looking for. I did get a nice set of lists from three friends, so those along with what research I’ve done over the last few months will help me pick something out within the next week or so. In the meantime, updates will be slow as the two desktops I have seem to not want to work at all and both need major updates if they do fire up.
Okay, let me cross my fingers and hit “Publish”. So far, the few minutes it took to type this have been the longest I’ve been online in the last two days. Ah well, life happens, right? If I were a rich man (hey, you know the rest), this wouldn’t even be an issue. But I’m not, so it is. Back in a bit (well, depending on what happens with this stupid laptop tomorrow)…
There’s trouble in Hazzard County for sure this time. A few days ago I overheard two guys (one older, one younger, both black like moi) arguing over whether or not The Dukes of Hazzard was a “racist show” (in my opinion, it’s not). The conversation took a strangely surreal and slightly amusing turn because the guy defending the show also happened to have a load of Dukes collectibles thanks to relatives who bought all that merchandise back when the show originally aired and him holding onto most of it.
Now, there’s a deep fried dill pickle for you, ladies and gentlemen.
But not really. Although some major to minor retailers have been hastily yanking anything with a Confederate battle flag off their shelves, Dukes of Hazzard memorabilia seems to be one of the few exceptions. That said, one does have to wonder with an arched eyebrow how much of that stuff was not so ironically but somewhat ironically manufactured outside of the good ol’ U.S. of A. (by underpaid workers) and how much of it was bought over time for by folks who’d probably NOT want it because it wasn’t made here… Continue reading →
For those of you who’ve served, thank you for your service. For those of you who remember the late, great Bob Hope doing his part for those who’ve served or want to know what some of the fuss was about, courtesy of MVD Visual here’s a Memorial Day buy that’s not some condescending mattress, car, food or other product not worthy of the holiday. Back tomorrow with some updates.
55 years ago to-day, The Twilight Zone premiered on CBS and while it only ran for five years (1959-1964), it’s still one of the most memorable anthology series to this day. There was a revival in the 80’s that ran from 1985-1989, and while it wasn’t as great as the original series, there were a number of excellent episodes in that reboot that come to mind as worth tracking down. According to USA Today, the fine folks at Image Entertainment have decided to collect every episode from both series along with a wealth of special features and is going to release a very limited edition 41 DVD set called The Twilight Zone: The 5th Dimension on November 11, 2014.
Only 7500 of these must-have sets will be made and while that $349.98 price tag may seem steep to some of you who think anything old and in black and white isn’t worth that kind of money, old fogeys like me who grew up in the Zone are breaking out our knives and are getting ready to fight it out with other fans and collectors just to get our grubby mitts on this collection. I’d imagine the chances of Image shooting one of these over for review are absolute zero, I’d trade one of Alicia’s robot arms (from The Lonely), a bar of gold (from The Rip Van Winkle Caper), a family-sized can of chicken (from Two) or a Kanamit cookbook (from To Serve Man) for one of those babies. Okay, all I REA::Y have is an old tin can here, but I hear it’s quite magical once kicked around a few times…
Yeah, I knew you needed a lift today, so here you go, lemon-face. Thanks to the always informative Professor Mortis over at The League of Dead Films for noting this in his excellent post today about Black Caesar, a film I absolutely NEED to write up as a Random Film of the Week or Week(end) soon. There’s nothing like a Larry Cohen flick when he’s in full-on guerrilla mode and this one’s a classic (despite the dubious idea of reviving a character who was killed dead in the first film, it works well as it is with all its unapologetic content intact). Anyway, Please, Please, Please enjoy this super Saturday, whatever you choose to do with it!
(Thanks, SidCaesarCom!)
Do yourselves a favor, class. Hit up Google (or whatever search engine you use) and YouTube, type in Sid Caesar and prepare for an education. Without him and a bunch of other dearly departed funny people, you have no sketch comedy, no Saturday Night Live and quite a few other shows and folks making us all laugh to varying degrees. What few episodes of Your Show of Shows I’ve seen made it for me one of the funniest live sketch shows ever created, and while “tame” by today’s standards, the writing team (Mel Brooks, Neil Simon, Carl Reiner, Danny Simon, Mel Tolkin and Larry Gelbart among others) plus the cast managed to pull off some nicely subversive and just plain timeless routines.
(Thanks, shawmk!)
I’m kind of bummed out a tiny bit because too many younger folks don’t know the man’s work and probably know less about how he and his team revolutionized on a few fronts, but that’s what the internet is for, I suppose. Anyway, here are three routines to start you on your trip. I’ll leave it to you to find more (and believe me, there are PLENTY of clips to go around from this show and others Sid did). Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to do a little research myself – I could use a good laugh today…
Well, that took way too long. Anyway, according to DC Comics and that news item/tweet they ran from Conan O’Brienhere, it looks like someone’s long national nightmare is over while others are going to be starting. Anyway, Warner Bros. Home Video will be dropping some sort of set on you Bat-fans sometime in 2014, so you may (or may not) want to haunt your favorite retailer online or off so you can run over someone to grab that day one release. That is all. I’m a little bit thrilled about this because I’ve seen all those episodes but not for some time now and can only imagine the transfer work and all those crazy colors I’m going to see pop off the screen. “POW!” Indeed.
Well, you’re still here and I’m still busy. Hmmm… what to do, what to do? Ah, this should keep you entertained for a hot minute (take it away, Gene!):
Now, THAT’S what I call ACTUAL reality TV, folks! I do miss the late, great Chuck Barris and all his bizarrely awesome programming that more or less changed the landscape of entertainment telly as we know it (yeah, for better and worse). Yeah, I know loads of substances were involved in the making of these shows back then, but there’s a certain insane purity to this stuff that’s FAR more honest than anything claiming to be “real” on TV today. Go dig up some old clips of the man’s huge body of work and see for yourself, I say…
So, yeah – someone decided to partially translate this classic Abbott and Costello routine from English to Japanese and somehow, I found this more hilarious than I needed to, so here you go. This clip is from the great old flick The Naughty Nineties, by the way. I think I was thinking of seeing this in full reverse with a pair of Japanese comics doing this bit in Japanese and having English subtitles done up. That would be pretty darn spectacular, as Japanese baseball has some oddball rules you don’t see here that make it a more exciting game in a few respects. Granted, I’m not a HUGE sports fan at all (yeah, yeah – I’m soooo unpatriotic it hurts YOU more than it does me), but I know funny when I see it and appreciate a good laugh a hell of a lot more than a well thrown, hit or caught ball of any type.
Oh, yeah – here’s a longer version of the famous routine below – enjoy!
"DESTROY ALL FANBOYS!" 