ShezCrafti on Nerd Lunch #82: Sitcoms of the 90s

Last week the crew from Nerd Lunch needed a last-minute fill-in spot for their show about 90s sit­coms, and I, hav­ing noth­ing bet­ter to do on any given night, obliged. Also I fig­ure I’m not sit­ting on all this use­less Roseanne and Full House knowl­edge for noth­ing. I’ve gotta let it breathe every now and then, like a fine $4.49 bot­tle of Arbor Mist.

Fill­ing in for Jeeg, I was joined by show reg­u­lars CT, Pax (sup, homie?), and fourth-chair guest William Bruce West . Hear us try to talk over each other about our favorite 90s sit­coms, why every show on TGIF sucked, the age-old debate of whether or not Sein­field was any good, and for­got­ten, lesser-known shows like Herman’s Head  (you’re wel­come) and Phe­nom . All your favorite shows are present and accounted for, and then some.

Plus, in a rather awk­ward fash­ion, I bring up that time on Rosanne when Dar­lene catches D.J. jerk­ing off. If I can offer one sell­ing point for this episode, it would be that.

Lis­ten to Nerd Lunch, Episode #82:

Nerd Lunch Episode #82 — 90s Sit­coms

Buy some rad stickers, why don’t ya?

As usual, I fail when it comes to pro­mot­ing Cult Film Club , being over a week late in announc­ing that we have TOTALLY RAD STICKER PACKS for sale!

I’m hop­ing the all caps will make up for my lack­adaisi­cal­ness (it’s a word, I checked) and put me back in the good graces of my co-hosts Pax and Shawn who’ve been (prob­a­bly) talk­ing behind my back.

Take a look at these bad boys:

These lim­ited run stick­ers were designed by our own Shawn Robare and fea­ture his orig­i­nal art­work (again, I do noth­ing around here). Instead of beg­ging you guys for tips and dona­tions to help with pro­duc­tion and host­ing costs, Shawn had the bril­liant idea to win you over with “no tip­ping” Steve Buscemi stickerlust.

Each pack is $7 and includes the Cult Film Club logo, Offi­cial Mem­ber Badge, Phan­tom Ticket Taker, and Mr. No Tip­ping him­self, Steve Buscemi.

All pro­ceeds go directly toward our pro­duc­tion and host­ing costs, and not, I repeat NOT toward cans of Four Loko, which is how we make the magic happen.

First Impressions: Johnny Depp does NOT want you to like him.

This week The League is all about first impres­sions. Though I’m cer­tain this won’t be a pop­u­lar choice, my mind imme­di­ately went to a movie that has one of the best open­ing mono­logues in cin­e­matic history:

My favorite Johnny Depp movie isn’t Edward Scis­sorhands or Pirates of the Car­ribean: Jesus Christ Please Stop Mak­ing These Movies .

It’s this lesser-known gem from 2004 called The Lib­er­tine , in which Depp gives one of the best per­for­mances of his career. He also says “The C-Word” quite a lot–something like 50 times by my count.

In 17th cen­tury Lon­don, Depp plays John Wilmot, sec­ond Earl of Rochester dur­ing the prime–and even­tual fall–of his soci­etal reign under King Charles II (John Malkovich). John is a gifted writer, but a mis­an­thropic snob whose fond­ness for alco­hol and insa­tiable lust become his undoing.

His slow decline in both health and social sta­tus is bril­liantly por­trayed by Depp, cul­mi­nat­ing in a spec­tac­u­larly uncom­fort­able speech, in which he looks like this:

It’s quite a trans­for­ma­tion, to say the least.

I can’t help but like him anyway.

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was to share a moment in pop cul­ture his­tory that had us say­ing, “Now that’s how you make an intro­duc­tion!”  Here’s what made an impres­sion on my fel­low Leaguers:

• Cav­al­cade of Awe­some was impressed by L.L. Cool J in Krush Groove
• Pop Rewind was more impressed by sequels than orig­i­nal movies
• Diary of a Dor­kette , to nobody’s sur­prise, was impressed by She-Ra!
• Good­will Hunt­ing 4 Geeks was impressed by Thun­der­cats. HOOOOOOOOOOOO!
• Infi­nite Hol­ly­wood was impressed by the Super Mario Bros. 3 machine at a store called Zayre
• Jath­niel was impressed by Superman’s first flight
• Nerd Rage Against the Machine was impressed by Dr. Who
• Stunt Zom­bie also goes the Super­man route, was impressed by Doomsday
• The Bat­cave Toyroom’s world was also rocked by Superman
• Retro Toy Safari was impressed by the orig­i­nal Star Wars
• The Mos Espa Col­lec­tion was impressed by Heath Ledger as The Joker. Kinda pissed I didn’t think of it!
• Geek Chunks was impressed by awe­some car­toon intros he’ll never forget.
• 3B’s Toy Hive was impressed by Batman!

5 Bastard Kids from the 80s I Want to Punch in the Face

Nor­mally I have a very sweet dis­po­si­tion around chil­dren and can usu­ally find a way to relate to them on some level, being an over­grown child of 31 myself. How­ever, there are some kids–the bad seeds–that do their level best to annoy the crap out of me, to the point where I can’t help but fan­ta­size about intro­duc­ing them to my fist. Of course I would never do that, but if enter­tain­ing the idea makes me a hor­ri­ble per­son, so be it. Also, hi, are you new here?

In the mean­time I’ll safely take out my frus­tra­tions on the kids who annoyed me in the movies and TV shows I grew up watch­ing. Here’s five child stars from the 80s who played the roles of bas­tard kids I want to punch in the face!

#5 — Billy Lombardo

It’s a shame Billy Lom­bardo quit act­ing after 1986’s The Money Pit , he was so good at play­ing the pre­co­cious teen pop star “Benny,” who, accord­ing to his man­ager Wal­ter (Tom Hanks) was Billboard’s Artist of the Year. Benny him­self, who last year alone sold a mil­lion records! His exchange with Wal­ter is brief but eas­ily one of the fun­ni­est scenes in the movie. Hav­ing more money than he knows what to do with, Benny spends his days loung­ing around his man­sion while chicks wait for him in the Jacuzzi, berat­ing ser­vants, and get­ting waited on hand and foot by his mother–who is also his maid. His out­right refusal to loan Wal­ter money and sub­se­quent tem­per tantrum that would make a 2-year-old proud reveals a spoiled-rotten but inse­cure lit­tle boy who could have ben­e­fited from a severe ass-kicking. This is not too far off from what I image Justin Bieber’s home life is like.

#4 — Emily Schulman

Small Won­der was a show FULL of kids I wanted to punch in the face, but the clear fron­trun­ner was pesky next door neigh­bor Har­riet Brindle, played by Emily Schul­man. Twenty-four years later, I still can’t fig­ure out how they were able to get her hair to look like a per­fect bowl with two pig­tails com­ing out of it, and some­times still think about how if you chopped them off she’d totally look like a boy. Why do I still think about these things? That’s the real small wonder.

#3 — Jason Hervey

Jason Her­vey is a pro at play­ing kids I want to punch in the face. Most mem­o­rable for his role as the obnox­ious Wayne in The Won­der Years , he lived to tor­ment younger brother Kevin Arnold (Fred Sav­age) and wel­comed every oppor­tu­nity to ruin his life. How­ever, his most punch-in-the-face-worthy role for me was in  Pee Wee’s Big Adven­ture  where he plays a child star (so meta!) named Kevin Mor­ton in the midst of shoot­ing what appears to be a heart­warm­ing movie about a sweet, young orphan boy find­ing his parents–but when the cam­era stops rolling he unleashes a world of shit on poor direc­tor Jerry and his co-stars. His on-set melt­down is what I assume work­ing with most child stars is like, and kind of makes me think hit­ting kids isn’t so bad. You don’t have to tell me I’d make an awe­some mom.

#2 — Miko Hughes

Miko Hughes is another actor whose early career has included mul­ti­ple bas­tard child roles, all of them wor­thy of a cold-cock. Most famously, Hughes was fond of point­ing out that boys have a penis and girls have a vagina; arguably the most impor­tant take­away from Kinder­garten Cop . If you were a Full House fan, you might remem­ber him as Aaron Bai­ley, the brat­ti­est of Michelle’s school friends. At least in  Pet Semetary you could claim self-defense as there are few things more threat­en­ing than a creepy baby return­ing from the grave with a vengeance and a really big knife.

#1 — Michael Oliver

Okay so Prob­lem Child is from 1990, but my list would not be com­plete with­out Michael Oliver, bet­ter known as “Junior.” A poster child for red-headed stepchil­dren every­where, the mere sight of him makes me want to plant my fist right in the mid­dle of his ugly, freck­led face. I can’t be alone in my irra­tional hatred, can I? Even though we’re kind of  sup­posed to hate him, it’s gotta be a tough break for Michael Oliver, who’ll for­ever be known as that bas­tard kid from Prob­lem Child . That kind of noto­ri­ety does things to a man.

Case in point:

If you never ask me to babysit your kids after this, I’ll com­pletely understand.

There is Neither Magic Nor Wonder in Zoobilee Zoo. Discuss.

The 80s had no short­age of weird and uncom­fort­able children’s shows fea­tur­ing cos­tumed per­form­ers, but this week’s League topic was to write about some­thing I hated as a kid, so I feel it’s my duty to bring the atroc­i­ties of Zoobilee Zoo to your attention.

For those who don’t remem­ber it, Zoobilee Zoo was a ter­ri­fy­ing children’s show star­ring a bunch of overly-enthusiastic peo­ple dressed up like ani­mals known as “Zoobles” who sang, danced, and intro­duced young chil­dren every­where to what they would later learn was furry porn. Also Ben Vereen.

The show ran from 1986 — 87, which means I was about five or six when I watched it. But even as a child squarely within the show’s tar­get demo­graphic, I can remem­ber feel­ing embar­rassed when­ever it came on. Like some­how I could sense the per­form­ers were all rejects from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats, or that the show was endorsed by The Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Teach­ers even with­out know­ing it was mar­keted as such (thanks ran­dom press release I found online!). Things that teach­ers like are lame, and I, clearly a kid who was too cool for school, rec­og­nized this. Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers Neigh­bor­hood this show was not.

Let’s intro­duce the Zoobles to you!

Here’s the main cast of char­ac­ters, includ­ing each Zooble’s job, because appar­ently Zoobilee Zoo is so broke all the ani­mals have to work. And I thought the Bal­ti­more Zoo was ghetto.

Sandy Grinn as “Bill Der Beaver“
The Zooble with the most prac­ti­cal job and least clever name, Bill Der Beaver is a BUILDER and inven­tor. Get it?

Louise Val­lance as “Whaz­zat Kan­ga­roo”
The bimbo of Zoobily Zoo. She’s not a very tal­ented musi­cian, but gets by on her (good?) looks. Guys dig chicks with fuzzy pink tails.

For­rest Gard­ner as “Van Go Lion“
He’s a painter just like Van Gogh, but still has both his ears. He’s also the rea­son I once mis­spelled “Van Gogh” in a school report. I thought this show was sup­posed to teach us shit?

Karen Hart­man as “Talk­a­too Cock­a­too“
Eas­ily the most annoy­ing res­i­dent of Zoobilee Zoo, she’s a vicious gos­sip who “spreads the news” as well as bird flu.

Gary Schwartz as “Bravo Fox”
He’s a jug­gler and magi­cian. Unof­fi­cially, he’s also kind of an asshole.

Michael B. Moy­na­han as “Look­out Bear”
I guess he’s sup­posed to be a scout of some sort who looks out for dan­ger. I told you Zoobilee Zoo was ghetto.

Ben Vareen as “Mayor Ben“
In Zoobilee Zoo, one of the perks of being the Mayor (besides dress­ing like a pimp!) is you don’t have to iden­tify your­self with a spe­cific ani­mal. To this day I still don’t know what the hell Mayor Ben is sup­posed to be, besides token black guy.

The Zoobles are sup­posed to resem­ble ani­mals, but who­ever designed the cos­tumes opted not to go full-furry. So instead we have an awk­ward mix of cos­tumes, the­atri­cal make-up and pros­thetic noses I find extremely unap­peal­ing, almost repel­lent. There’s just some­thing about peo­ple in bright cos­tumes and make-up with big noses I can’t get past. I don’t know if there’s an exact pho­bia for what­ever this is, but maybe if you’re one of those peo­ple who are afraid of clowns, you can under­stand. I guess this explains why I never wanted to get my face painted as a kid.

Oddly, I’m not both­ered by peo­ple wear­ing cos­tumes that fully cover their faces, or anthro­po­mor­phic ani­mals in pup­pet form. Mup­pets and I are cool. Zoobles and I? Not cool.

My main prob­lem with Zoobilee Zoo (besides being creepy as hell) was that it tried too hard. Every­one on this show acts like they just snorted ten lines of coke. I refuse to believe any­one is that enthu­si­as­tic about wear­ing shitty ani­mal cos­tumes while spoon feed­ing dumb kids all the typ­i­cal social val­ues and moral lessons you’d expect from a show like this, includ­ing the oblig­a­tory “peo­ple in wheel­chairs are just like all the rest of us!” episode that seemed to be a pop­u­lar theme in 80s shows. Even Saved by the Bell was guilty of that one.

By far the worst thing about Zoobilee Zoo, how­ever, is the theme song which I’m con­vinced was con­jured up in a Satanic rit­ual. I don’t rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing unless you want it stuck in your head. All day.

Zoobilee Zoo, Zoobilee Zoo
Magic and won­der are wait­ing for you
It’s as close as a dream
And as bright as the bright­est blue
Wel­come to Zoobilee Zoo

Really? As close as a dream? As bright as the bright­est blue? They weren’t able to come up with any bet­ter sim­i­les? All these ani­mals with jobs and not one of them is a writer.

P.S. Did the show ever say what ani­mal Mayor Ben is sup­posed to be? Does any­one know? I’d look up some more episodes on YouTube to try and find out, but frankly that’s too much effort for a show I’m sup­posed to hate.

Magic and won­der aren’t wait­ing for you.

Won­der­ing what this is all about? This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was to reveal some­thing in pop cul­ture­dom we hated as kids . Here’s what my homies in the League had to say:

• Toyriffic hates G.I. Joe, is un-American.
• Mon­sterfink is secretly a vil­lain and hates the good guys!
• Nerd Rage Against the Machine hates Foot­loose, which means we’ll prob­a­bly never be friends.
• Jathniel’s Space for Rent hates the lack of death in children’s shows, pos­si­bly needs therapy.
• Thir­ty­ish Year Old Boy is hangin’ tough, hates New Kids on the Block.
• My Vin­tage Toy Box hates dolls that crap them­selves. Understandable.
• Hench­girl hates Hermione Granger. The only thing I hate is that she didn’t end up with Harry. (Yeah I shipped HHr what of it?)
• Pop Rewind is sym­pa­thetic to the plight of cereal mascots.
• For­tune and Glory Days , like me, hates Mighty Mor­phin Power Rangers. Sol­i­dar­ity, man.

John Waters Approved: ‘Hairspray’ 1988 Soundtrack on Spotify

It’s ridicu­lous how hard it can some­times be to find sound­tracks for the movies you love, espe­cially from older movies with out-of-print sound­tracks. Some­times there aren’t even legal ways to acquire it. Other times, the “offi­cial” sound­track that was released is incom­plete, lack­ing many of the key songs that made the film so mem­o­rable to begin with.

Such is the case with John Waters’ Hair­spray , the campy 1988 dance movie set in racially tense Bal­ti­more dur­ing the 1960s. Being from Bal­ti­more myself and a fan of cult movies in general–especially ones that involve lots of cheesy danc­ing and kitschy humor–it shouldn’t come as a sur­prise that Hair­spray is one of my favorites. (And just to be clear, I’m NOT talk­ing about the 2007 movie based on the musi­cal star­ring John Tra­volta in drag.)

The offi­cial sound­track that was released for John Waters’  Hair­spray  only con­tains twelve songs. You could  buy it from Ama­zon for less than $8 if you really want, but you’re only get­ting less than half the songs fea­tured in the movie. For exam­ple, none of the four Chubby Checker songs are included. Oh, you want Gravy for your Mashed Pota­toes? Don’t even think about it.

What’s a Tracy Turn­blad wannabe hair hop­per to do?

Luck­ily, I was able to find almost all of the orig­i­nal songs on Spo­tify, which is sur­pris­ing given the rar­ity of some of them. Although Spo­tify has a ton of playlists for the 2007 Hair­spray, it seems nobody yet both­ered to make one for John Waters’ orig­i­nal (ahem, supe­rior) ver­sion of the movie. I did what had to be done .

Now let’s get all rat­ted up like a teenage jezebel!

P.S: These are the songs I’m miss­ing that Spo­tify doesn’t have:

• “Hair­spray” — Rachel Sweet (this is the one I’m most heart­bro­ken about)
• “Life’s Too Short” — The Lafayettes
• “The Bird” — The Two Du-Tones
• “The Bug” — Jerry Dall­man and Mil­ton Grant
• “Day-O” — Pia Zadora
• “Wad­dle, Wad­dle” — Rudy Clark

Sup­pos­edly Spo­tify adds 10,000 new tracks to its music library every sin­gle day, so I’m hop­ing it’s just a mat­ter of time before these lost gems show up. When/if that hap­pens, you can be sure I’ll add them to this playlist! Also, if you have any of these tracks, you can always import them into Spo­tify your­self to sup­ple­ment what the ser­vice lacks with your own library.

History, motherf*ckers! FDR: American Badass

It’s not often some­thing that’s actu­ally edu­ca­tional sneaks into my feed reader, and even less often when that some­thing per­fectly aligns with one of my weird inter­ests in some way and I end up giv­ing two shits and post­ing about it. Today is one of those days.

But first, here’s the his­tory les­son from Geekosys­tem that started this:

On this day in 1933, only eight days into his pres­i­dency, Pres­i­dent Franklin D. Roo­sevelt made his national radio debut with the first of his famous “fire­side chats.”  Pres­i­den­tial speeches and addresses were prop­a­gated to the masses all the time, but what made FDR’s fire­side chats dif­fer­ent was their inti­macy. They were broad­cast via radio from the White House to the radios of every Amer­i­can who tuned in.

You can go read the whole arti­cle if you really care that much, or, if like my own high school days, Amer­i­can His­tory was just another period in which you could safely take naps (stay awe­some Mr. Hol­brook!) and you’ve for­got­ten why our 32nd Pres­i­dent of the United States was so bad ass.

Luck­ily I’m here to remind us all:

On Jan­u­ary 30th, 1882, a man was born that would go on to change the course of world his­tory as we know it. This man was a true Amer­i­can Badass.

I know…because I am him.

Badassery is not born, but often thrust upon you. The film you are about to see is ded­i­cated to Badasses every­where. If you have to ask your­self if you are one, you’re prob­a­bly not.

Sin­cerely,

Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt

I had the priv­i­lege of see­ing this movie over Valentine’s Day week­end (really, can you think of any­thing more roman­tic?) and I’ve been dying for an excuse to post about it ever since. How can I not love a movie about Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt in a rocket-powered wheel­chair con­trolled with Atari joy­sticks doing bat­tle with an army of Nazi were­wolves? At one point he gives an inspi­ra­tional speech that directly quotes Bon Jovi’s “Livin’ On a Prayer.” That was the exact moment I knew my love was true.

It also has this guy and his charm­ing wife/cousin:

He is slightly less awe­some than FDR him­self. But only slightly. When­ever he graced the screen, my heart swelled with a nat­ural warmth that invig­o­rated me and caused me to be able to do things I could only do when I was a fetus–I am sorry, I am quite ine­bri­ated and I was unaware that I was speak­ing out loud just now.

FDR: Amer­i­can Badass is ridicu­lously funny, and not even in a you-need-to-be-high-to-enjoy-it kind of way. I would rec­om­mend it to any­one who loves Amer­ica, peaches, shit­ting in vases, and not giv­ing any fucks.

ShezCrafti’s Rating:

10 out of 10 stars.

Remembering the Top 5 Dirtiest Music Videos on The Box

Come along and ride on a fan­tas­tic voy­age, back to the early 90s when a lesser-known music video chan­nel known as The Box used to exist. With the tagline “Music tele­vi­sion you con­trol,” The Box let view­ers call a 1–900 num­ber to pay $1.99 to play any music video through its auto­mated phone sys­tem, using num­bered codes that flashed on the screen in between songs. The entirety of The Box’s pro­gram­ming con­sisted of full-length, uncen­sored music videos that other view­ers had paid to request and there were lit­tle to no com­mer­cials. It’s not hard to under­stand why this was totally fuck­ing awe­some com­pared to, say, MTV, which edited the hell out of their videos, if they were even play­ing videos at all.

Here’s a circa early 90s promo for The Box that some­one uploaded to YouTube:

As you might expect, the most pop­u­lar music videos on The Box seemed to be the ones with the most explicit content–the ones MTV would cut down to prac­ti­cally noth­ing, or out­right ban. The Box was  edu­ca­tional , to say the least, for curi­ous, young teenagers like myself. I can remem­ber many hot sum­mer days spent hang­ing out at my friend Gina’s house, glued to The Box on the 19″ tele­vi­sion in her base­ment, well out of earshot from her mom who would have grounded her and sent me home if she had known what we were watch­ing. (My par­ents, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind if their thirteen-year-old daugh­ter was exposed to sim­u­lated sex and close-ups of booty sweat. Thanks Mom and Dad, for being you.)

Here’s a round-up of the top five dirt­i­est videos I can remem­ber get­ting fre­quent rota­tion on The Box (and it should be obvi­ous that extreme NSFW warn­ings apply):

#5 — “Short Dick Man” — Gillette

Just in case you aren’t clear on what these lyrics are sup­posed to mean, Gillette help­fully acts them out by scru­ti­niz­ing a num­ber of dif­fer­ent men’s crotches with a mag­ni­fy­ing glass, mea­sur­ing tape and video cam­era as they dan­gle and thrust their man parts in her face. Thanks to this song and video, I knew that size mat­tered before I even really knew  why .

#4 — “Come Baby Come” — K7

Yo dawg, this song is STILL slam­min’ in 2013! That’s what I’m plan­ning to say in my YouTube com­ment, any­way. K7’s (what­ever hap­pened to this guy, by the way?) video for “Come Baby Come” is typ­i­cal of the period and starts off rel­a­tively tame, you know, despite being for a song called “Come Baby Come” which means exactly what you think it means. Just a cou­ple of bros shootin’ some b-ball and danc­ing around in match­ing out­fits while scantily-clad women jig­gle their breasts and K7 licks ice cream off her–WAIT, WHAT? You tricked me, bros!

#3 — “Put ‘Em On the Glass” — Sir Mix-a-Lot

Sir Mix-a-lot was evi­dently a big fan of the 1992 sexs­ploita­tion flick The Bikini Car­wash Com­pany , or at least that’s what I gather from this video. Only the rap­per of “Baby Got Back” fame could write a whole song about women rub­bing their big, soapy breasts–oh excuse me– lungs  up against the wind­shields of lux­ury cars.

#2 — “Pumps and a Bump” — MC Hammer

This is the infa­mous M.C. Ham­mer video that was banned from MTV for being too sex­ual, as Ham­mer is shown pranc­ing around in only a tightly-fitting speedo that barely con­ceals his rag­ing hard-on. He thrusts and gyrates his banana ham­mock around a harem of girls who all have spec­tac­u­lar bumps as they dance pool­side in pumps. In some of the shots Ham­mer turns to the side and you can totally see it , not that I was look­ing that closely or any­thing, or paus­ing the video after I taped it just to make sure.

#1 — “Pop That P*ssy” — 2 Live Crew

Here it is, the mother of all dirty rap videos. If I have to explain this one, you might be asexual.

Thanks, The Box, for teach­ing me SO MANY THINGS!

Nicky & Alex voted most likely to be kicked out of Full House.

In last month’s poll, I asked you guys who should be kicked out of Full House. Per­son­ally, I threw in a vote for Joey, because what does Joey even  do ? Sure, he’s sup­pos­edly there to help raise the girls and be the comic relief, but what does he really con­tribute  besides wear­ing the most god-awful shirts you’ve ever seen and mak­ing shitty jokes? Even Kimmy Gib­bler does that job better.

My idea of hell is sit­ting through a two-hour long Joey Glad­stone com­edy spe­cial co-starring Mr. Wood­chuck. “Say, I don’t hear any­one laugh­ing! Are you peo­ple made of…” *looks around* “…WOOD!?”  It’s not that I dis­like Joey as a per­son, I just think it’d be bet­ter for every­one involved if he moved out. At least then the poor guy might have a chance at get­ting laid.

But if there is one character–ok, two char­ac­ters, but not by much of a stretch–that deserve to get the boot from Full House more than Joey Glad­stone, it is Nicky and Alex. If you don’t remem­ber them, they’re the cute but tal­ent­less shaggy-haired twins who were foist upon us from Becky’s gap­ing womb in Sea­son 5, car­ry­ing on the grand tra­di­tion of adding babies to TV shows because every­one loves babies, right?

I offered them up as a pack­age deal, which 47% of you jumped on:

Sorry lit­tle guys, but the two you were never as cute or inter­est­ing as one Michelle Tan­ner. We love our over-exploited twin child stars, but only when they’re play­ing the same per­son. Oth­er­wise it’s con­fus­ing and things just get boring.

Pop quiz: which one is Nicky and which one is Alex?

Answer: Nobody fuck­ing cares!

Also of note:

Your ani­mos­ity was divided evenly between DJ, Stephanie, and Michelle, who each got 10% of the vote. DJ’s a resource­ful girl, so I’d be the least wor­ried about her liv­ing out on the streets. She did, after all, move into the garage that one time because she was upset about not hav­ing her own room–which brings me back to Joey and why he’s kind of a self­ish prick for stick­ing around so long and tak­ing up valu­able bed­room space.

Not sur­pris­ingly, nobody voted to kick out Uncle Jesse and Becky, because HAVE MERCY!

I am, how­ever, a lit­tle shocked that some­one actu­ally voted to kick out Danny. Really? Not only does he make shit­piles of money (or at least we have to assume so, given his Wake Up San Fran­cisco gig almost single-handedly sup­ports eight other peo­ple) but that moth­er­fucker can cook AND he actu­ally enjoys clean­ing up after every­one. Plus, BOB SAGET. Respect.

Oscars Mixtape: Best Original Songs of the 1980s

With the 85th Annual Acad­emy Awards hav­ing come and gone, this week’s League topic was an  Oscar-worthy  one. But the thing is, I don’t really care about the Acad­emy Awards like I once used to. I can’t stand the pre­ten­tious­ness, the media hype, the scripted jokes. Not even Seth Mac­Far­lane host­ing this year was enough to get me excited about them, so I was more than happy to spend the evening catch­ing up on video games and casu­ally mon­i­tor­ing my Twit­ter feed as friends reacted to the win­ners and  Ann Hathaway’s nip­ples .

Any­way, for this post I thought it would be fun to look back on The Oscars of a time when they mat­tered more to me: the 1980s. More specif­i­cally, I was curi­ous about past Oscar win­ners for Best Orig­i­nal Song. (Another post about 80’s music? Gee that never hap­pens around here.) What were the big 80s movies that spawned the most mem­o­rable songs of the decade? And look­ing back on them, do I agree with the win­ners? It was a fun exer­cise and trip down movie mem­ory lane. I mostly came to the real­iza­tion that the 1980s Acad­emy had a hard-on for what we con­sider today as “soft rock” or “easy listening”–you know, the kind of music you’d hear at your dentist’s office.

I rounded up all the win­ners for each year and posted them below for, um, easy lis­ten­ing . I also shared a cou­ple of my ran­dom thoughts on each song, and whether or not I think it should have won for Best Orig­i­nal Song.

1980 — “Fame”

Film:   Fame (1980)
Per­formed by: Irene Cara

As much as I love 80’s movies about danc­ing AND musi­cals, I’m actu­ally not a big fan of Fame– hard to believe, I know. But I do love the title song by Irene Cara, which clings to that dying era of disco for all its worth. In 1980, Fame  won Oscars for Best Score  and Best Song (in fact, two Fame songs were up for the award: “Fame” and “Out Here On My Own”, both by Irene Cara), but lost for Best Orig­i­nal Screen­play, Best Adapted Screen­play, and Best Sound. That sounds about right. This is one of those movies I think is more mem­o­rable for the music. (For what it’s worth, my 80’s musi­cal movie about musi­cals of choice is A Cho­rus Line .)

1981 — “Arthur’s Theme”

Film:   Arthur (1981)
Per­formed by: Christo­pher Cross

My mom had a huge obses­sion with Dud­ley Moore back in the 80s, which means I’ve seen almost every Dud­ley Moore movie there is to see, includ­ing Arthur , mul­ti­ple times. I’m not sure I would have picked Christo­pher Cross’ “Arthur’s Theme” over, say, “End­less Love” by Lionel Richie, but Christo­pher “I’m so sen­si­tive because I’m kind of ugly” Cross seems to have had a lock on on those smooth, early 80s love bal­lads that made women like my mom drop their panties at the first slow, drawn-out string note.

1982 — “Up Where We Belong”

Film:   An Offi­cer and a Gen­tle­man (1982)
Per­formed by: Joe Cocker & Jen­nifer Warnes

How to win an Oscar for Best Orig­i­nal Song in the 80’s: per­form your song in a duet with Jen­nifer Warnes. This song won an Oscar, along with her other famous duet, “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life” from Dirty Danc­ing,  which we’ll get to in a minute.   This is another song that makes me think of my mom, who was really into those cheesy 80s love songs. In fact, at one point she owned a whole set of pastel-colored cas­sette tapes she bought from Time-Life Music called “Secret Love” that was full of songs just like this. She’s also the rea­son I’ve seen this movie more times than I care to admit. It’s not so bad, I guess; I like Deb­o­rah Winger. But if I were in charge of the Oscars that year, you  know  I would have cho­sen “Eye of the Tiger” by Sur­vivor, which lost out to this gag-fest of a ballad.

1983 — “Flashdance…What a Feeling”

Film:   Flash­dance (1983)
Per­formed by: Irene Cara

YESSSSSSSSSSSS. This song, you guys. Not only do I love Flash­dance , I LOVE THIS GODDAMN SONG. Like, you have no idea. It’s #1 on my list of cheesy moti­va­tional songs of the 1980s  and every now and then, if you get enough drinks in me, I’ll belt it out at karaoke. I def­i­nitely agree it should have won that year, con­sid­er­ing it was up against yet another song from Flash­dance (“Maniac” by Michael Sem­bello), some crap I’ve never heard of , and fuck­ing Yentl . A+, Academy.

1984 — “I Just Called to Say I Love You”

Film:  The Woman in Red (1984)
Per­formed by: Ste­vie Wonder

Wow, this was a tough year for Best Orig­i­nal Song. Look at the other con­tenders here:

• “Against All Odds”  - Phil Collins ( Against All Odds )
• “Foot­loose” — Kenny Log­gins ( Foot­loose )
• “Let’s Hear it for the Boy” — Deniece Williams ( Foot­loose )
• “Ghost­busters” — Ray Parker, Jr. ( Ghost­busters )

I know you fan­boys would have wanted me to declare Ghost­busters my fan­tasy win­ner, but I would have gone Phil Collins on this one. I’m sorry, but that song–along with most Phill Collins songs–is just fuck­ing fan­tas­tic . To steal a joke from my buddy Scott : My friends thought I’d never get over my Phil Collins obses­sion, but take a look at me now.

1985 — “Say You, Say Me”

Film:   White Nights (1985)
Per­formed by: Lionel Richie

I love ya, Lionel, but NO to this song. Not when I know “The Power of Love” from  Back to the Future could have won. I don’t care how lus­cious your mus­tache is–I’d rather ride Huey Lewis’s train even if I have to pay with a credit card.

1986 — “Take My Breath Away”

Film:   Top Gun (1986)
Per­formed by: Berlin

Who doesn’t love Top Gun? I’ll try to under­stand if you don’t, but just know you’re not any­body I could ever be BFFs with. I’m not a huge fan of this song, which I always found kind of depress­ing, but I can  under­stand the Acad­emy want­ing to give an award to Top Gun for  some­thing .   How­ever, this was another one of those years where some really tough deci­sions had to be made. “Take My Breath Away” was up against “Some­where Out There” from  An Amer­i­can Tail and Peter Cetera’s “Glory of Love” from The Karate Kid Part II. I would have fought for Glory of Love’s honor, all the way. It’s one of my favorite songs of all time. In fact, I’m lis­ten­ing to it on Spo­tify and singing it like a damn fool as loud as I pos­si­bly can RIGHT NOW. My cat is more than a lit­tle freaked out.

1987 — “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life”

Film:   Dirty Danc­ing (1987)
Per­formed by: Bill Med­ley & Jen­nifer Warnes

NOBODY PUTS BILL MEDLEY & JENNIFER WARNES IN A CORNER! Again, another duet with Jen­nifer Warnes, another Oscar. You know, I don’t even know what the hell Jen­nifer Warnes does out­side of singing shitty duets that win Oscars. I sup­pose I could look her up and what she’s all about, but I just can’t muster the enthu­si­asm. While I do love me some Dirty Danc­ing and “The Swaze,” I actu­ally loathe this par­tic­u­lar song on a deep, deep level. How­ever, I used to love this song when the movie first came out, but so did the rest of Amer­ica, which means it was EVERYWHERE. Back in 1988, my ele­men­tary school even put on a tal­ent show where no less than ten acts all used songs from Dirty Danc­ing, and guess which one was the most pop­u­lar? It haunted my life, it haunted my dreams, and nowa­days it haunts my tele­vi­sion every time I see one of those fuck­ing San­dals commercials.

Do I think it should have won for Best Song that year? Eh, sure, why not. I try to remem­ber that I too once loved this song, but if I could go back in time, I’d def­i­nitely pick Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now” from the movie Man­nequin instead. That’s right up there with Peter Cetera’s “Glory of Love” in my book.

1988 — “Let the River Run”

Film:   Work­ing Girl (1988)
Per­formed by: Carly Simon

Here’s some­thing you prob­a­bly don’t know about me because I don’t think I’ve ever men­tioned it on this blog, but  Work­ing Girl is one of my favorite movies of the 80s. I love Melanie Grif­fith, who I just find adorable (pre-plastic surgery, obvi­ously), and of course Har­ri­son Ford and the always great Sigour­ney Weaver. And Joan Cusack! And Alec Bald­win! And a coked-up Kevin Spacey! And the fact that this movie takes place in New York City in the 80s. I love films that take place in 80s-era NYC. It’s just a great movie all around, and I love the big “fuck you” moment Tess gets to have at the end.

Any­way, it was slim pick­ins for Oscar music this year, with only two other con­tenders, both from movies I’ve never seen. I have no prob­lems with Carly Simon’s inspi­ra­tional “Let the River Run” win­ning for Best Orig­i­nal Song. When you hear it in the movie accom­pa­ny­ing those breath­tak­ing shots of the Twin Tow­ers, it’s almost enough to make me cry.

1989 — “Under the Sea”

Film:   The Lit­tle Mer­maid (1989)
Per­formed by: Samuel E. Wright

Ah, the start of Disney’s come­back era! This year there were two songs from The Lit­tle Mer­maid up for Best Song–this one, along with “Kiss the Girl.” Per­son­ally I would have picked “Kiss the Girl,” but both songs are pretty good. I’m cer­tainly glad Randy New­man didn’t win.

Any­way, I hope you enjoyed this look back at Oscar-worthy music from the 80s as much as I enjoyed pre­tend­ing to have bet­ter taste than The Academy!

Because you know you still love Top Gun and that damn song…

Won­der­ing what this is all about?  This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was sim­ply, “The Oscars.” Here’s how my fel­low Lea­guers inter­preted the topic:

• Top Hat Sasquatch rounds up past Oscar win­ners who have action figures!
• AEIOU and Some­times Why totally stole my idea for an Oscar the Grouch-related post. Great minds…
• That Fig­ures lists some of his favorite “Oscars.”
• Branded in the 80s hosts his own Acad­emy Awards and rewrites Oscar history!
• The Com­bat Work­shop show­cases a model plane I’m glad is nick­named “Oscar” cuz I can’t pro­nounce its real name.
• Achieve­ments in Gam­ing plays a board game called Hol­ly­wood Blockbuster.
• For­tune & Glory Days shares some of his favorite win­ners for Best Orig­i­nal Score.
• Hench­girl breaks down (hilar­i­ously) the Five Kinds of Fringe Oscar Winners.

River Phoenix and other actors I had a huge crush on in the 80s!

Over at Cult Film Club , things are get­ting per­sonal (and a lit­tle weird) as I relive the days I spent in my bed­room day­dream­ing about hot young actors from my favorite movies. In my list of  Top 10 Movie Crushes of the 80s , I reveal all the movie stars who cap­tured my nerdy, pre-teen heart and whose pho­tographs dec­o­rated the pages of my “Crush Book.” 

Long-time read­ers shouldn’t be sur­prised who my #1 crush is, as I men­tioned him in my first post and many times through­out this blog since. There’re a cou­ple of uncon­ven­tional picks too, and by uncon­ven­tional I mean please don’t judge me–I CAN’T HELP WHAT I FEEL!

My official reaction to the Megan Fox = April O’Neil news.

From Vari­ety :

After push­ing pro­duc­tion to do more work on the script, Paramount’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Tur­tles” reboot looks back on track as the stu­dio has tapped Megan Fox to star as April O’Neil.

Megan Fox to play April O’Neil in Michael Bay’s TMNT movie? Every­one get some pop­corn and get ready for @shezcrafti to react.

— Team Hel­lions (@TeamHellions) Feb­ru­ary 22, 2013

Enjoy the show.

Also:

In what is pos­si­bly the BEST COMMENT EVER on this blog, Shawn Robare humbly sug­gests, “Maybe they hired her sim­ply as the mold­ing model for the Tur­tles hands, they’re going to mold her toethumbs and use them to make more accu­rate fin­gers for the Turtles.”

Look what you made me do, Shawn.

Bare Ass Optional: Discussing 1982’s ‘The Beastmaster’

Today over at Cult Film Club we’re dis­cussing one of my per­sonal favorite movies,  The Beast­mas­ter ! Released back in 1982 ( the golden year for sci-fi and fan­tasy films )  The Beast­mas­ter  is a mid-grade fan­tasy film that stars Marc Singer as the tit­u­lar hero and famous faces Rip Torn, Tanya Roberts, and John Amos.

I didn’t have to fight very hard with my co-hosts Pax­ton Hol­ley and Shawn Robare when I sug­gested we cover it in Episode 4. A half-naked, oily-chested Marc Singer? Bone-crushing bird crea­tures? Bare asses hang­ing out every­where? FERRETS? If The Beast­mas­ter isn’t Grade A, top-quality Cult Film Club mate­r­ial, I don’t know what is.

ShezCrafti Fun­fact #27: I totally had a crush on The Beast­mas­ter when I was a lit­tle girl. There’s just some­thing about that leather jock strap that does it for me.

Episode #4 — The Beastmaster

Head on over to the Cult Film Club pod­cast to hear us blather on about how much we freak­ing love this movie, or you can lis­ten right here.

Bare ass optional.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

This one goes out to someone who’s never seen The Goonies.

Last week I was emailed by a friend who admit­ted to never hav­ing seen The Goonies, which I have pre­served in a screen­shot because I’m still hav­ing a hard time believ­ing it’s true:

My imme­di­ate reaction:

Now bear in mind, this per­son (who shall go name­less) is over 30, loves comics, adven­ture, the 80s–basically all the same stuff you’d expect your typ­i­cal Goonies fan  to like–and what’s more sur­pris­ing, my friend is even more dialed into pop cul­ture than I am. SO HOW IS THIS POSSIBLE? I don’t think I’ve ever met any­one I’d con­sider my peer who  hasn’t seen The Goonies. Right now I kind of feel like one of those National Geo­graphic explor­ers who dis­cov­ered an uncon­tacted tribe from an iso­lated region of South Amer­ica. Say­ing you’ve never seen The Goonies is kinda like say­ing you’ve never eaten a Reese’s Peanut But­ter Cup.

In my friend’s defense, at least they’ve rec­og­nized the lack of Goonies in their life as a rather seri­ous pop cul­ture blind spot and has sought help from a pro­fes­sional such as myself. As I’ve men­tioned on the Cult Film Club pod­cast, and many times through­out this blog, The Goonies is one of my favorite movies of all time. In my dream pop cul­ture road trip , I travel to Asto­ria, Ore­gon just to do the truffle-shuffle out­side Mikey’s house. “Man…you smell like Phys Ed!” is one of my favorite six-word movie quotes . I try to yell  HEY YOU GUYS!  when­ever an appro­pri­ate oppor­tu­nity arises. And if you par­tic­i­pated in  my recent Goonies poll , you’d know I am Team Mouth. I fuck­ing love The Goonies, is what I’m say­ing. And I am hon­ored to have been asked for  my opin­ion when this per­son is some­one who’s own opin­ions I greatly value.

To that end, I am going to make good on my friend’s request. I am going to explain exactly why I think  The Goonies is so awe­some, and what’s more, I’m going to do it in a way that I know is extremely rel­e­vant to this person’s interests.

So here you go, my unini­ti­ated friend. These are the Top 10 rea­sons why I feel you NEED to see this movie:

#10 — Because you’re always fight­ing for truth and justice.

So I know you will appre­ci­ate The Goonies’ plight. It’s about a group of mis­fits who find a centuries-old trea­sure map and go on a wild adven­ture to find the “rich stuff” in order to save their houses from a pair of rich, greedy devel­op­ers who want to turn their neigh­bor­hood into a golf course–and did I men­tion they’re chased by a fam­ily of mob­sters along the way?

 #9 — You will learn how to say use­ful things in Spanish.

Because I know you are a per­son who val­ues edu­ca­tion above all else.

#8 — It’s full of things that just don’t look safe.

You’re always tak­ing the time to warn me about the unfore­seen dan­gers of this world, which I cer­tainly appre­ci­ate. This movie pos­i­tively  oozes  unsafe. So much so that you might even learn some tips yourself.

#7 — This catchy-ass Cyndi Lau­per song.

And more impor­tantly, this Cyndi Lau­per video because it has a cameo by ANDRE THE GIANT:

#6 —  These girls.

You will have fun decid­ing which one you like/dislike more.

#5 — It’s easy to relate to.

Because deep down we are all out­casts, just like The Goonies.

 #4 — It’s also a super­hero movie.

Well, kind of. Okay, not really. But I assure you this guy is SUPER.

#3 — There’s toys!

I don’t feel an expla­na­tion is nec­es­sary here.

#2 — It’s the best non-pirate movie about pirates ever.

Going by the stuff you post on your blog, I know you are a fan of pirates. You owe it to your­self to see this movie if only for the awe­some pirate-y action toward the end.

And you just gotta love a pirate named “One-Eyed Willie.” You’re a perv like me, so I know you’ll appre­ci­ate the penis joke.

#1 — The Goonies hate cephalopods, too.

Never for­get who’s on your side!

The infa­mous Giant Octo­pus attack only appears in cer­tain tele­vised ver­sions of  The Goonies , but is included on the DVD as a Spe­cial Fea­ture. And hoo boy is it spe­cial! Data (whom you’ll rec­og­nize as “the Asian Goonie”) defeats it with a moth­er­fuck­ing cas­sette tape that plays 80’s music  under­wa­ter . Like I said, SPECIAL.

Well there you have it, friend. If none of this con­vinces you The Goonies is awe­some and that you are less cool for not hav­ing seen it, then I have failed as your des­ig­nated 80’s movie spirit guide and must now go eat a Baby Ruth to cope with my shame.

According to your votes, Andy is the most worthless Goonie.

Wel­come to Feb­ru­ary, the month you don’t care about unless you’re black, in a rela­tion­ship, or live in New Orleans. (Feb­ru­ary can fuck off as far as I’m con­cerned, but  GO RAVENS! ) Since we’re in a new month, I’ve offi­cially closed my Goonies poll which asked, “Who is your favorite Goonie?” Thanks to every­one who voted .

All in all, I wasn’t really sur­prised at the results:

For most of the month, Data and Mouth were locked in a dead heat, but in the last few days The Pinch­ers of Peril finally clinched in Richard Wang’s favor.  (Just for the record, I am Team Mouth.)  Chunk truffle-shuffled his way into third place, and the rest of the votes were divided between Mikey, Brand, and Stef, who were–ahem–good enough. Which means…

Nobody voted for Andy.

NOT A SINGLE ONE. At the very least I thought she’d get “the hot vote” from one of you fools who used to crush on her, even though Stef strikes me as more expe­ri­enced (pro­tip: ugly girls are inse­cure, and thus more likely to put out), oth­er­wise Troy wouldn’t be throw­ing pen­nies down wells wish­ing he could get laid. No won­der Andy doesn’t know how to play the bones , if you know what I mean.

Then there’s her annoy­ing habit of scream­ing at any­thing that moves (omg a rake!) and set­ting off booty booby traps because like all dumb bitches, she’s inca­pable of fol­low­ing sim­ple instruc­tions, espe­cially if there’s some­thing sparkly and expen­sive nearby. Speak­ing of sparkly and expen­sive, HOW DOES SHE NOT KNOW BRAND DOESN’T HAVE BRACES? That’s how I know she’s stu­pid.

There can be no other con­clu­sion: Andy is the most worth­less Goonie.

You’ll wish ‘Space Stallions’ was a real Saturday morning cartoon, too.

Here’s some­thing super cool I’ve been mean­ing to share for a while that any lover of Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toons and 80’s pop cul­ture can appre­ci­ate: Space Stal­lions !

As dark­ness is cov­er­ing the mul­ti­verse, far away in the galaxy of the wild stal­lion, a spark of hope is born. Guided by the light of Mother Mus­tang, the Space Stal­lions must defeat the Demon of dark­ness, Destructo.

Though I’ve had this book­marked for a cou­ple of months, I’ve been hes­i­tat­ing to blog about it. At the time I thought I had stum­bled upon some­thing so  amaz­ingly amaz­ing  and  uniquely unique  that nobody else knew about, only to find out it’s been  cov­ered by the likes of iO9 , Top­less Robot ‚ and other sites much big­ger than mine MONTHS before I dis­cov­ered it. Cue  Price is Right fail horn .

But after think­ing on it some more, and liv­ing with the knowl­edge this car­toon fea­tures A FUCKING MAGIC SWORD THAT TRANSFORMS INTO A KEYTAR,  I decided there’s no way I was NOT going to put Space Stal­lions on my blog. Some­times you just have to make gutsy edi­to­r­ial deci­sions.  (Also, I was in des­per­ate need of some fresh con­tent. I’m really scrap­ing the bot­tom of the bar­rel today, kids.)

Space Stal­lions, sadly, is NOT a real Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon from the 80s, but a 3D-animated film from 2012 by two stu­dents of Denmark’s famed  The Ani­ma­tion Work­shop , named  Thor­val­dur Gun­nars­son and  Jonatan Brüsch .  I actu­ally dis­cov­ered the  mega-awesome theme song  first on Band­camp, and for a time believed that’s all there was of Space Stal­lions. Imag­ine how my mind was blown when I also found out there was an actual ani­ma­tion and char­ac­ters to go along with it.

Had it existed dur­ing my child­hood (and I so wish it did), Space Stal­lions would have eas­ily taken their right­ful place along­side the Rankin-Bass clas­sics like Thun­der­Cats and Sil­ver­hawks.

Now if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’ve come up with a wish­list of my own Sat­ur­day morn­ing car­toon ideas I’d love for some tal­ented ani­ma­tor to tackle:

Some­one please make one/all of these happen:

B.E.A.R.A.C.U.D.A.S.

Fear­some beasts of land and sea, these guys are either fero­cious armored bears that trans­form into fero­cious armored fish, or fero­cious armored fish that trans­form into fero­cious armored bears.  I didn’t bother com­ing up with it, but the acronym would be some­thing awe­some that reflects that.

AracadeBots

Nor­mal arcade machines that trans­form into giant mechs empow­ered by the moves and spe­cial attacks of their own video games. They’re con­trolled by a group of teens who hang out at the arcade all day and one day dis­cov­ered the secret code to make them work. The only down­side is they STILL have to shell out quar­ters every time, so they’re forced to live nor­mal kid lives and do things like work and chores in order to make the nec­es­sary coin to keep sav­ing the world.

SnailBlazers

Half-snail, half-human super­heroes who run at lightning-fast speeds and leave behind a trail of glow­ing, toxic slime. Being snails, they’re able to use their shells for pro­tec­tion as well as carry around an arse­nal of cool weaponry. Really, my whole ratio­nale behind this one is to know whether or not it’s pos­si­ble to make snails cool.

And it should also go with­out say­ing, all of these are set in the 1980’s.

Something that pisses me the Freak off.

One of the great­est com­edy spe­cials I ever saw was John Leguizamo’s Freak ,  which orig­i­nally aired on HBO back in 1998. Part stand-up com­edy, part auto­bi­og­ra­phy, Leguizamo is bril­liant as he recounts and reen­acts all the character-building, inti­mate details of his life–like the first time he got laid, which was to an old woman with gigan­tic, bat-like “coochie lips”–with humor and bru­tal honesty.

The old­est son of Latin-American immi­grants, Leguizamo was raised in poverty in some of New York City’s rough­est neigh­bor­hoods, which makes for a melt­ing pot of crazy char­ac­ters John brings to life with out­ra­geous impressions–like his deaf and gay uncle Sandy who “invented Spang­lish Sign Lan­guage,” which for me are some of the fun­ni­est bits. And of course, John’s very raw, hold-nothing-back por­trayal of the love/hate rela­tion­ship he has with his father. Leguizamo effort­lessly slips in and out of char­ac­ter as he paints a tacky, vel­vet por­trait of his Latin-American upbring­ing and even­tual rise to fame, com­mand­ing the stage with sto­ries, song, and dance, all set to an awe­some sound­track. In short,  Freak  is one of the best, most enter­tain­ing one-man shows I have ever seen. I was already a John Leguizamo fan before I saw it because of movies like  To Wong Foo  and  Romeo + Juliet,  and to a MUCH lesser degree, the Super Mario Bros. movie (which is TERRIBLE, obvi­ously, but John Leguizamo has the weird abil­ity to fill me with an irra­tional love for it). Oh, and did I men­tion it’s directed by Spike Lee?

I’m sorry, I really don’t mean for this to turn into a review, but I feel it’s impor­tant for me to demon­strate exactly how much I love Freak  so that you’ll bet­ter appre­ci­ate WHY I’M SO PISSED OFF right now as I hold this piece of shit DVD copy of it in my hands.

Let me back up a bit.

Until recent years, Freak  wasn’t avail­able on DVD or in any other for­mat. For the longest time, the only copy I had was on a shitty, worn-out VHS that I had recorded off HBO back in the day. As far as I knew, that was the only copy in  exis­tence  because even pirated copies of this thing were impos­si­ble to get. (Trust me, I was look­ing.) It wasn’t until the lat­ter part of the 2000’s that a tor­rent copy of Freak even­tu­ally started mak­ing the rounds and some­one who shall go name­less got me a copy, for which I was infi­nitely grate­ful. Between my old VHS and the, uh, “sur­prise” dig­i­tal ver­sion I got later, I have prob­a­bly seen  Freak dozens of times. I can watch this show over and over again and still find some­thing new to love about Leguizamo’s per­for­mance every time. 

So now let’s get back to the rea­son I’m so pissed off. A few days ago I was think­ing about Freak again and kind of regret­ting that I never picked it up on DVD. At the very least I wanted to own it for that awe­some, pop-artsty cover design.  I spent over ten years wish­ing that some­day I’d be able to watch it in higher qual­ity than the shitty, worn-out VHS tape I recorded off HBO so long ago and then in 2011 this DVD was even­tu­ally released. It had been on my Ama­zon Wish­list for-fucking-ever (we all have Wish­lists full of those “some­day” items, don’t we?) and I finally,  finally decided to treat myself.

And now I’m going to tell you why this DVD is a waste of $12 despite it’s glow­ing 4– and 5-star reviews on Ama­zon .

First of all–and this is the minor com­plaint, believe it or not–the video qual­ity of this DVD is atro­cious. It is VHS-transfer qual­ity at best, and when there is even the slight­est bit of motion on the screen, every­thing looks blurry and has scan-lines run­ning through it, like this:

John’s per­for­mance is pretty ani­mated, to say the least. He moves very quickly, break-dances at times, and often runs around like a retard (I mean that in a lov­ing way) .  And all of that would be so much more enjoy­able if it didn’t look like com­plete ass. This shit is unac­cept­able.   But like I said, the video qual­ity is not even my #1 com­plaint. 

The MAIN rea­son why I’m so pissed off is because this record­ing has been dubbed over with com­pletely dif­fer­ent audio not only for every song that was fea­tured in the orig­i­nal, but also for some of John’s speak­ing parts–to the point where I sus­pect a dif­fer­ent voice actor filled in alto­gether. WHY, WHY, WHY? Keep in mind, I am extremely famil­iar with Freak, hav­ing seen it as much as I have. I KNOW what that audio should sound like. The orig­i­nal record­ing fea­tured a bunch of awe­some pop/rock songs like Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” Al Green’s “So In Love With You, and the amaze­balls Freestyle song, “Don’t Stop the Rock,” among oth­ers, all of which John busted some seri­ous moves to. You know what this DVD gave me instead? Generic-sounding stock music that only vaguely resem­bles the orig­i­nal songs that made this per­for­mance so mem­o­rable to begin with.

This copy­right shit has gone too far.

It’s pretty sad when you can’t even buy a DVD nowa­days with­out the worry that it’ll sound com­pletely dif­fer­ent from what you remem­ber. Take The Won­der Years , for exam­ple. The DVD col­lec­tion of that show has been stripped of its orig­i­nal open­ing theme song, as well as a lot of the 60s-era music that orig­i­nally fea­tured in the episodes. This is also why you won’t hear Frank Sinatra’s clas­sic “Love and Mar­riage” dur­ing the open­ing of Mar­ried With Chil­dren any­more. THIS IS A TRAVESTY, peo­ple. The worst part is I don’t even know who to blame. And dammit, I  need some­body or some­thing to blame.  I just wish we lived in a world where artis­tic integrity was val­ued more than split­ting pussy hairs over copy­rights.

My advice? Pirate the shit out of this movie.  Prefer­ably find your­self a copy of the 1998 orig­i­nal. That’s the only way you’ll get to expe­ri­ence it the way you were meant to.

You are now entering The Busey Zone.

I learned three impor­tant facts about Gary Busey (a.k.a The Poor Man’s Nick Nolte) today:

1. Gary Busey is still bat-shit crazy.

2. Gary Busey has a YouTube chan­nel called “The Busey Zone.”

3. Gary Busey wants to fuck an inner tube.

If you only watch one thing on YouTube today, please let it be the first 23 sec­onds of this video. I promise it is worth watch­ing for the bizarre, early 80s-esque intro sequence alone. And if you’re brave enough to con­tinue, you’ll be rewarded with Gary Busey describ­ing in great detail how you can “pump fuck” an inner tube with­out any­one noticing.

No shit, this is part of the actual quote:

“Get some rub­ber hos­ing that you can put around the hole of the inner tube. It looks like a round mouth. What you can do is find plea­sure by your­self with an inner tube in a beau­ti­ful body of water with trees, with birds fly­ing around and chirp­ing, doves honk­ing at you, it’s just beau­ti­ful and puts you in a roman­tic mood. But no one’s there but you.  And the inner tube.  So what you do insert yourself–your plea­sure body parts–into that hole on the inner tube, and then you can push and pull the inner tube and just smile and just smile and act like nothing’s hap­pen­ing. And that way you can PUMP-FUCK that inner tube from the top of the river to the bot­tom of the river!”

Had I known Gary Busey’s videos were THIS FUCKING AWESOME, I would have sub­scribed a long time ago.

[Hat tip to UPROXX ]

My favorite spaceman is the one who gave us MTV.

This week’s League assign­ment was yet another single-word prompt: “space­men.”

I’m late with my response this week (because Ni No Kuni hap­pened ) and a lot of my fel­low Lea­guers have already beaten me to some great top­ics, like E.T. and Astro­naut Bar­bie (which I was totally going to make fun of, you thun­der steal­ers). Also, I’ve been com­pletely Star Wars –ed out since the news that J.J. Abrams will be direct­ing Episode VII nearly broke the inter­net Fri­day, or else I’d write about that.

So instead I thought I’d boldly go where no man has gone before–before 1981, that is. On August 31st of that year, MTV made tele­vi­sion his­tory when its first-ever broad­cast, the MTV Moon Land­ing , appeared on tele­vi­sion screens across Amer­ica and intro­duced an entire gen­er­a­tion to 24-hour music television.

This is what those kids saw:

Though I’m too young to remem­ber the orig­i­nal Moon Land­ing (I wasn’t born until Sep­tem­ber that same year), it’s an iconic TV spot that MTV played in heavy rota­tion through­out the 80’s, and to this day, why MTV still gives out “Moon Man” stat­ues at its annual Video Music Awards.

(By the way, does any­one know if it’s pos­si­ble to get a replica of one of these things? Because I’d totally Fla­vor Flav it as a neck­lace.)

Between hav­ing an older sis­ter, and par­ents who’d let us watch pretty much what­ever we wanted, MTV entered my life at a very young age. My ear­li­est mem­o­ries of it are from around the time I was five, so we’re talk­ing 1986 or so. I couldn’t tell you what the first music video I ever saw was, but I do dis­tinctly remem­ber squeal­ing with delight when­ever Peter Gabriel’s video for  Sledge­ham­mer came on. I couldn’t get enough of those danc­ing naked turkeys .

(I still can’t.)

As a card-carrying mem­ber of the MTV Gen­er­a­tion, I watched MTV reli­giously from the mid-eighties to around the time I started col­lege. I miss those lose lazy sum­mer days when it was too hot to play out­side, giv­ing me a per­fectly valid excuse to lay around watch­ing Beavis & Butthead   while ignor­ing my chores. Then, some­how, grad­u­ally and almost with­out warn­ing, MTV just stopped being impor­tant to me.  Where once we had a net­work full of awe­some shows like Yo! MTV Raps and  Headbanger’s Ball   in addi­tion to, you know, actual music videos,  we now have a cesspool of retar­da­tion such as  16 and Preg­nant and Jer­sey fuck­ing Shore .

Back then, even the non-music-related shows were awe­some. Remem­ber Liq­uid Tele­vi­sion and the bizarre cool­ness of Aeon Flux ? Or how about all the awesome/hilarious game shows, like Remote Con­trol and Sin­gled Out  ? (You ain’t cool unless you knew who Chris Hard­wick was before Nerdist .)  Twelve-year-old me used to day­dream about being a con­tes­tant on Lip Ser­vice because I totally know all the words to K7’s “Come Baby Come.” (And still do.) 

But any­way, this is not meant to be a “get off my lawn” post about how much MTV sucks now. I mean, every­body already knows that, right?  Instead, this is a lov­ing trib­ute to the MTV I used to know, and the Moon Man who reg­u­larly landed in my liv­ing room and blew my god­damn mind with awe­some music and unique programming.

Remem­ber when the VMAs used to, like, actu­ally mean some­thing man?

Oh sure, we had our embar­rass­ing teen pop acts and one-hit won­ders in the pre-Bieber era, too. I thought it’d be fun to dig up a cou­ple of my favorite per­for­mances from the MTV Video Music Awards vaults!

Guns N’ Roses Per­form­ing “Wel­come to the Jun­gle” (1988)

A 7-year-old child should not be allowed to wit­ness such raw sex and power, but I did, and I’d like to think I turned out bet­ter for it.

Paula Abdul Per­form­ing ‘For­ever Your Girl (Med­ley)” (1989)

You know, Paula was never a great voice, but GODDAMN that woman could dance.

Vanilla Ice Per­form­ing “Ice Ice Baby” (1990)

If you were to time-travel back to my bed­room in 1990, you’d find me glued to the screen, strug­gling to under­stand that funny feel­ing I had while watch­ing this.

Faith No More Per­form­ing “Epic” (1990)

One of the best songs ever. This is not open for debate.

En Vogue Per­form­ing “Free Your Mind” (1992)

This per­for­mance right here is like the 1990’s per­son­i­fied. God, I miss these bitches.

Shit. I was sup­posed to write about space­men, wasn’t I?

Now that I’ve man­aged to com­pletely go off-topic, let’s get things back under con­trol. This week’s assign­ment from The League of Extra­or­di­nary Blog­gers was sim­ply the word  “space­men.”  Our leader, Brian, is really stretch­ing the lim­its of his cre­ativ­ity lately with these top­ics. Here are a cou­ple of my favorite spacemen-related posts writ­ten by fel­low Leaguers:

• Good­will Hunt­ing 4 Geeks shows off his space­men action fig­ures. I’ll give you ONE guess which toy is my favorite.
• The Man Who Stares at Toys men­tions my favorite alien beings from Aqua Teen Hunger Force !
• That Fig­ures went in a really cool direc­tion with this post about Levi’s jeans circa 1995 “Space Man” commercial.
• For­tune and Glory Days cov­ers one of my favorite 80’s movies, E.T. The Extra Ter­res­trial .
• What­ever I Think Of! talks about Spec­tra, Astro­naut Bar­bie, and other incred­i­bly lame space-themed toys for girls.

This trippy synthesizer animation is totally mesmerizing me today.

To steal a line from Gin & Juice, Moog’s got the cul­ti­vatin’ music that be cap­ti­vatin’ me.

This is essen­tially a glo­ri­fied ad for the new Moog Sub Phatty syn­the­sizer, but it’s awe­some nonethe­less. And you don’t even need to be on drugs to appre­ci­ate it. This is exactly the type of thing I love look­ing at, which is prob­a­bly why I enjoyed the also-trippy-as-balls musi­cal game Dyad as much as I did .

In honor of the new Moog Sub Phatty ana­log syn­the­sizer Fly­ing Lotus & Adult Swim vet­eran, Adam ‘Lil­fuchs’ Fuchs col­lab­o­rated on a short ani­ma­tion called Moog Sub Phatty: New Machine For Liv­ing. You can hear the new Sub Phatty ana­log syn­the­sizer in Fly­ing Lotus’s orig­i­nal score for the ani­ma­tion, called ‘Such a Square’.

 [via Giz­modo ]