Hi everyone! Welcome to our special seven-days late edition of our regular links post. Sorry, a period of busy-ness was followed by a period of laziness, but why am I apologizing to you? What makes you so great? …ahem…
First up, our guest this week, Shane McCarthy, is not only a comic book writer, he’s also quite the dancer as this blurry video will attest:
Shane is the one in the yellow shirt.
Ian and I talked about one of our worst experiences at the US border when we almost got the full Jim Henson treatment – if you know what I mean. Ian thought that was a great excuse to play this:
There are six more parts after this one and I highly recommend you watch them all. Unless you don’t like the Muppets, in which case I’m wondering why you’re here.
We learned an important thing this episode: when you’re in prison NEVER ask for an ice cream cake. Just sayin’
I like the slight “Noo Yawk” accent of the announcer. You don’t often hear regional accents in that sort of context these days. Everyone has this middle of the road, vanilla accent.
We talked a little bit about the Australian expression, “The duck’s nuts”, which is an Australian (and by Australian, I mean coarser) variant of “The bee’s knees”. Speaking of duck’s nuts, this duck is really nuts!
That cartoon is the cat’s pajamas!
We talked a little bit about Batman – specifically, what made him Batman. Does this make him Batman???
No, it makes him silly. (I like that it squeaks while he’s hanging there, the millionaire. What’s Alfred doing that he can’t oil Bruce Wayne’s ridiculous hanging upside down machine? Or maybe Bruce Wayne is squeaking…because he’s a BAT!!!)
Ian blew my tiny mind when he told us that Jeff Goldblum – yes, that Jeff Goldblum – played a street tough in the movie Death Wish.
Okay, is there anything less threatening than that gangly, goggle-eyed goof? He and his cronies look like escapees from a version of West Side Story mounted by the kids from Fame and why were he and his fellow thespos directed to act like an adolescent version of the Three Stooges. There should be several “boingggggs” in the soundtrack.
The reason I was amazed was because I had been led to believe that Goldblum’s brief role in Annie Hall was his first screen appearance. Not so as it turns out; he had already appeared in such films as Nashville and Next Stop, Greenwich Village before Annie Hall. Still, it is a great, if brief, part:
After loudly proclaiming my dislike of Michael Bay movies (yuck! ick! ptooey!), I was dumbfounded to discover that Con Air, a movie I actually enjoyed, was directed by that guy. WTF!!!
Shane mocked the ending and, by extension, me. But could Shane really have been making fun of this touching, heartfelt scene?
Really, Shane, really??? You’re making fun of that scary, sweaty guy with his weird, scraggly hair extensions trying to give a dirty stuffed animal to a terrified little girl while Trisha Yearwood caterwauls in the background? Really? And look at this beautiful – also frightened wife – with her vacant eyes and her plastic mannequin complexion welcoming her murderer/husband home. Sigh…so moving. Really tugs on the heartstrings.
Here is one of the worst chase scenes ever filmed by humans:
Terrible!
If Sean Connery’s character is so tough, why did he steal a Hummer?
And that scene was shot in San Francisco! The location of one of the best car chases of all time!
That’s how you do it, motherfucker! One more chase sequence: this time from William Friedkin and it’s not from The French Connection.
Also shot in San Fran and around the same time as The Rock, but so much better. Not a great movie, but a great chase scene with real tension, not stupid smashie-smashie.
All right, enough testosterone.
During the show, I made a joke about a guy who took pictures of rocks being taken for “granite”. It received the appropriate reaction:
Luckily I didn’t make my joke about the guy who took pictures of hillbillies. He was a still photographer.
Don’t ask me why because I really hated all these shows, they were such shit, but we talked about He-Man and his ridiculous moral lessons.
My apologies that you had to see that.
We talked a bit about Wonder Woman and her unfortunate murderous, child-alienating tendencies. Ian has linked to a happier time when she only neglected her job and disappointed young children:
As usual, I don’t remember, but apparently we talked about James Bond. Here is a compilation of James Bond groaners:
Well, let’s end on a high note, shall we? The Fleischer Brothers super-duper Superman cartoon. We’ll see you next time!