4 posts tagged “youtube”

Jasmine Guy being bitchy! The Gute on a motorcycle! Malcolm-Jamal Warner! Debbie Gibson! Danny Glover! John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John! Aykroyd! Ferrigno! Bialik! Feldman! Helmsley! Abdul! I can't even count all the fantastic washed-up celebrities! Oh, the awesomeness!

Any video with Lou Diamond Phillips and Billy Dee Williams having a conversation wins at life.

When I was 5 years old, I made a video tape that had Frosty the Snowman and the Irwin Allen two-part celebrity-studded Alice in Wonderland special (which came out on DVD about a month after I bought a boot of it -- bogus).  Alice in Wonderland was absolutely awesome.  I made Segev watch it the other day and he thought it was awful.  Which it is.  But also awesome.  What beats Sherman Helmsley in a mouse costume swimming in a river of tears singing about how much he hates dogs and cats?  Nothing.  Except maybe Carol Channing turning into a goat.  The special also scared the bejeezus out of me, with the giant roaring lightning-flashy Jabberwocky that periodically appears.  But then Lloyd Bridges sings a song and everything is all better.  Sigh of relief.

I held onto the tape for a long time.  I had it all through college.  When I made the switch over to DVD completely, it had to go -- the only cassette I still have is The Jungle Book.  Well, that and the Cher-fitness workout tape.  But we won't talk about that. 

But the tape was such a beautiful time-capsule of TV during my childhood.  Part of that capsule-effect was the advertising.  Two ads in particular stood out in my memory -- they were played every Christmas, and they were both on that tape.  The first is Ronald McDonald and the badly-animated deer helping up the little boy who falls while ice-skating.  The second is the son-coming-home-from-college Folgers ad.  And thanks to the magic of YouTube, they're both readily available.  Commercials really stick with you -- it's kind of horrifying, but true.  I'll try to think up some other good ads and post them.  The only thing that's springing to mind right now are the Micro-machines commercials, but that was more a marketing campaign and not any one particualr really well-crafted ad that stands out.  Thinking Micro-machines for some reason makes me think of Wacky Wall-walkers, which of course makes me think of Dr. Fad, the worst show ever to run in that really early Saturday morning slot (yes, worse than the Fraggle Rock cartoon OR Alf Tales.  Did you know that Alf Tales is out on DVD?  That's nostalgia taken to a ridiculous level.)  I looked up Dr. Fad on YouTube, but it's so bad I can't even bring myself to post anything from it.  I may have to do a separate post on Saturday morning television once Gummi Bears comes out on DVD (November 14th) -- I'll rent it and see if it holds up.  The theme song certainly does.  It's beyond compare.  They are the Gummi Bears.  They are the GUM-MI BEARS!

I've already posted the anti-drug music video "Stop the Madness" over on my LJ,but I wanted to continue the substance-abuse theme over here for a minute.  A couple of days ago I was shown the ridiculousness that is the Pee Wee Herman anti-crack ad, as shown at left.

I guess one can compare and contrast the message of this ad with the message of Blow, which Paul Reubens was also in.  Blow was not exactly a pro-drug movie, but Reubens did play a very cool, calm, and collected cocaine dealer.  And, of course, Blow was made by Ted Demme, who died from a heart-attack while playing basketball high on coke.  A very interesting career path for Pee Wee.  Although I'm guessing that after being caught jerking off in a porno theatre and arrested on child porn charges, there's not a lot of public service announcement jobs being thrown his way.  (As Tina Fey once said, where would America be comfortable with Pee Wee Herman masturbating?)  And speaking of masturbating in a porno theatre and doing handfuls of cocaine, avoid Jack Nicholson's ludicrous performance in The Departed if you can.  Unless you'll be seeing it at the Magic Johnson Theatre in Harlem, where the crowd reaction to said ludicrous performace will be vastly more entertaining than the movie itself.

I've also recently been reminded of the Even Stevphen segment on The Daily Show a couple of years back where Steve Carell gets rip-roaring drunk and thought I would post it here.  I've found a number of webpages that say Steve did an interview claiming that he did actually get drunk and puke in Stephen Colbert's car, but not the actual interview, so I remain skeptical.  Not that The Daily Show is a bastion of responsible journalism (embarassingly better than most news on TV but still a comedy show at heart), but there's no way anyone could conscientiously watch someone down about 15 drinks in two hours and then FILM IT.  Even the drunk-mom episode of Morgan Spurlock's 30 Days only made the mom drink 4 drinks.  But then again, she was a total lightweight and that show is annoying.  Anyway. 

I've grown to love Steve Carell in the last two years, especially his bit part in Anchorman, which totally made the movie.  I find that interesting, because he irritated the hell out of me on The Daily Show most of the time.  Produce Pete, in particular, was oddly unengaging.  (I did like the theme song to "Slimming Down with Steve", though.)  And in the first season of The Office, he was thoroughly unlikeable, which I supposed was the point but made it difficult to watch.  Once Michael Scott became a more sympathetic character, it may have corrupted the spirit of the original show, but made it a more emotionally complex program.  And I liked not having to look at his combed-back hair-pluggy hair, which, again, was funnier but kind of gruesome to look at.  To this day, I wonder whether they thinned his hair out in the first season or gave him ACTUAL but convincing hair-plugs in real life.  Or maybe just combing his hair differently made that big a difference.  I still think he looks best with his wannabe-Jim-Halpert hair in the episode "The Secret".

I'm actually enjoying the new version of iTunes, and it's making me covet a video iPod even more than I did before.  I've made a playlist with all of the Sesame Street clips I've downloaded from YouTube, so now I can just put it on shuffle and it's like watching a bunch of episodes straight through.  It links easily to QuickTime settings, making it possible for me to watch things on full screen (I have QuickTime Pro, thanks to my dad's flagrant spurning of terms of use) without having to leave the program.  The interface is pretty nice in general -- the podcast section in particular seems much better organized than I remember it being before.  Which doesn't make much difference to me, because I'm not really that into podcasts.  My dad keeps raving about them, but all the hype doesn't change the fact that they're really just regular old mp3s that happen to have a variety of content within one file.  I don't see how that's particularly revolutionary.  Still, the Muppet podcasts are fun to listen to, if far too short.

I wanted to post a link to the "Alphabet Chat" sketch where Guy Smiley (née Bernie Liederkrantz) does an ad for Bow Wow Chow.  But You Tube's down.  So I'll come back and post it later.  I just wanted to get something up on this blog, cuz, you know, why not?

EDIT:  Let's see if this works: