Archive for the 'Cathode Rays' Category
100 Favorite Moments In Television Revisited
February 22nd, 2007I’ve updated an old scrubbles page — 100 Favorite Moments In Television, a reprint of an article which appeared in the short-lived pop culture magazine Egg in 1991. When I first put this together back in 2003, I didn’t notice that a few missing pound symbols in the page’s HTML code resulted in a screwy […]
Great Lost TV Theme: Probe/Search
February 18th, 2007Every so often I have a mini-obsession with certain tracks in my iTunes library. Lately it’s been composer Dominic Frontiere’s theme from Probe, a made for TV movie which served as the pilot for the series Search. From what I can gather, Search was a technology-based caper series in the Mission Impossible vein. It ran […]
The Secret World of Guys
February 5th, 2007The New York Times on the best and worst Super Bowl ads. We recorded the telecast last night, especially for the ads. With the very first ad break I whined to C., “these commercials are soooo Straight White Male.” I felt like I needed to watch a few touchy-feely Lifetime TV movies to cleanse myself […]
Deja View
January 28th, 2007Going through the 1973-74 episodes on Sesame Street Old School Vol. 1 gave me some of the weirdest “deja vu” feelings. Cartoons and skits buried in the subconscious for thirty years flashed back as if I just saw them yesterday. Case in point is the following clip of two muppets singing “Me/Yo,” a perky tribute […]
It’s SNL and You’re Not
January 7th, 2007The Onion’s Nathan Rabin shares his impressions of Saturday Night Live after viewing the first season DVD set. Funny that Rabin’s first exposure to SNL was similar mine (and doubtless millions of others). Some long-ago night, my parents had some company over. They sent us kids to bed so everyone else could watch SNL. From […]
Rainbow-Colored Necklaces for Everyone
December 28th, 2006Scattered advice to people who appeared on this year’s Kennedy Center Honors telecast:
Aretha Franklin, don’t ever change. I know you looked ridiculous in a giganto brown ruffled boa which made you look like an overstuffed chocolate dessert. Outrageous is what you are, criticism be damned.
Smokey Robinson, you totally deserved the honor. I just wish we […]
Smiles, Everyone, Smiles
December 20th, 2006Behold the stupefying fabulousness of the opening production number for the 1986 Miss America pageant. The contestants may have been different, but year after year one could count on getting the same elements from this spot. A jazzy dance troupe gyrates away while the fifty finalists walk around and lift their arms in unison — […]
Jeffy’s Crappy Christmas
December 17th, 2006Is there a piece of holiday television that you haven’t seen in years? Something you’d want to catch again to find out if it’s as good/bad/sappy as you remember? My main choice would be the animated A Family Circus Christmas, first broadcast in 1979. I recall that the special was as inoffensively cute as the […]
Into the Groovy
December 7th, 2006I got reactions of both thrill and nausea watching the first 10 minutes from Make Your Own Kind of Music, a 1971 TV variety special starring Herb Alpert, The Carpenters, Al Hirt, Mark Lindsay, and The Doodletown Pipers (via Patrick). Enjoyed the Sesame Streetlike opening, the alphabet theme is nicely carried throughout the show, and […]
Charlie Brown Music; Asshat Santa
November 28th, 2006I was going to link to the swell NPR story on Vince Guaraldi’s musical contributions to A Charlie Brown Christmas, but Christopher has beat me to it. Rats! Instead, we have to make due with a YouTube user’s demonstration of Santa Claus’ jerkiness in the Rankin-Bass holiday classic Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer:
Everybody’s a Critic
November 15th, 2006Scott Tobias of The A.V. Club Blog writes on the succession of stand-in critics on Ebert & Roeper, which points out many of the same things as my previous post on the subject. Namely that people within the entertainment industry have serious credibility problems when they slip into critic mode. On the other hand, TV […]
P Is for Product
October 24th, 2006Muppet Central reviews Sesame Street Old School Volume 1, which makes me wanna rush out and buy it instead of waiting for the rental discs to arrive. The 3 DVD set contains the premiere episodes for each of the first five Sesame Street seasons (1969-74), along with various popular sketches and bits from that period. […]
Little Miss Sunshine
October 23rd, 2006Whenever I think about Doris Day, I just smile. So geniune and multitalented, but also projecting just enough artifice to make you question whether that genuineness is truly what it is (know what I mean?). That’s what came to mind for me while taking in The Doris Day Special, recently issued on DVD from MPI […]
Ready or Not
October 14th, 2006Looking forward to the December arrival of Saturday Night Live’s Complete First Season, complete and unedited on 8 DVDs. This first season will be interesting to check out, since it was still a work in progress with a few elements (grungy Muppet creatures, short films) ironed out of the more polished later seasons.
Admittedly, “ABBA appeared […]
Sitcoms on the Brain
October 8th, 2006Jaime Weinman explains what makes a successful sitcom on his weblog for Macleans, TV Guidance. As on Something Old, Nothing New, the guy consistently wows me with his knowledge of TV, stage and screen. Is there anthing he can’t do?
I’m of two minds on those old sitcoms. There’s the good quality TV, and then there’s […]
