It's a song you know well

And we've ruined it completely, so we all say oh well..

Her boobs distract me

I just discovered the "literal video" phenomenon, even though it's been around for awhile. Searching youtube for "literal video" on youtube is a ticket to an afternoon's enjoyment, especially if you watched lots of MTV back in the 80s.

Here's the non-embeddable literal version of Crowded House's "World Where You Live".

First they ridicule you

Before I go on to English Settlement tomorrow (the next XTC album in alphabetical sequence), here's a futuristic TV report from the English Settlement era about being able to read the morning newspaper on your home computer. As Tom Servo would say "The news on your computer? It must be THE FUTURE!"



Of course, since it takes more than two hours to download using your 300 baud modem with a connection cost of $5/hr, so this new "telepaper" won't be much competition for the 20 cent street edition of the Chronicle.

Reruns and leftovers

I'm not aware of many Thanksgiving traditions,
but this is my favorite Thanksgiving VSE.

And this is my favorite Turkey Carol.
Always thankful for good things below.

One Arctic Circle

Doesn't this look like the cast of a new Fall dramedy on the CW?



I'm imagining something like Seventh Heaven meets The Brady Bunch about an Alaskan Governor who's suddenly vaulted into the national spotlight when she's selected to be the Presidential running mate for a maverick Senator from Arizona.

It would be a show with a long series of Very special episodes about Important Issues like drug addiction, guns and violence, pre-marital sex, environmentalism and teenage pregnancy. A new issue every week, happily resolved at the end of the show.

But after eight Very special episodes, they just can't compete with the hard-hitting CBS drama Chicago Hope so the network decides that Eight Is Enough, and cancels the series in early November, just in time for the Fall sweeps.

Welcome To Sunday Morning

Of all the VU-related clips on the youtubes, this has to be the strangest. It should have been extended to seventeen and a half minutes!

Bowsy wow wowsy

Maurice Gibb died five years ago today. Here is one of his rare lead vocals on "My Thing" from the 1970 Cucumber Castle TV special.



Looks like the Patriots won again.
Now they're 17-0, just like the 1972 Dolphins.
"Stick That Up Your Asterick*" as this sign reads.

It's in you, if you're into it

An animated video of Syd Barrett, who would be 62 years old today if he weren't, you know.


  
This clip is only 30 seconds long, so here are a couple more animated "Sydeos".

As God is my witness

For the last 29 years, there may have been debates about the second funniest Thanksgiving sitcom episode ever, but this will always be the funniest Thanksgiving show ever. No debate.



The entire "Turkeys Away" epidode is here, here, here, and here.
Happy Thansgiving everyone!

Writers versus Wrongers

I'm trying to understand how the strike by the Writers Guild of America affects me. I don't watch that many first-run network shows, and mostly watch sports and old reruns on TV. I could live without original shows for a long time without a whole lot of hardship.

Television writers going on strike are a lot like professional sports leagues going on strike. Sports and entertainment aren't really essential commodities. If people can't watch NHL hockey games or new episodes of "The Office", they will find other things to do with their time, and over the long haul, both the management and the workers end up losing, no matter who "wins" the settlement.

This is probably a short-sighted view, because there are bigger issues involved in the conflict between television writers and network management. The writers want a larger cut of DVD rentals and "new media" (i.e. internet) sales, which are becoming a more lucrative revenue streams for TV networks than first time, over the air, programming. This WGA video puts their fight in perspective.



So itt's not just first run episodes of "The Office" that you'll be missing. It's reruns of "The Office" and DVDs of "The Office" and iTunes downloads of "The Office" (NBC pulled their shows off iTunes a few months ago -- I'm speaking in the abstract).

By saying "this doesn't affect me, because I don't watch much television", I'm missing the most important part of the WGA argument. Networks are making lots of residual money from programs without sharing it with the writers who created the programming. Corporations invest their profits in the war machine while keeping everyone else blind. It's like The People versus The Man.

A few days ago, Sue said that without writers, "all we are left with is a turned-off TV". At least a TV that only shows reruns, reality shows, news, sports, and other programming that doesn't use guild talent. It's probably no coincidence that the writers chose November to start their strike. It's not only sweeps month, but the worst sports month of the year. Nights and nights of meaningless regular season NBA and NHL games will turn anyone into a supporter of the writer's guild.

Did you know the National Lacrosse League was also on strike? I didn't either.

I don't want to change the world..

But I do know what to do. Everyone who guessed "four days" as how long it would take for me to resort to embedding YouTube videos to keep my daily quota in National Blog Posting Month guessed correctly.

In honor of the still-undefeated New England Patriots, who beat the Indianapolis Colts 24-20 today in the greatest regular season NFL game of the 21st century, here is a video of Billy Bragg performing "New England".



This video of Kirsty MacColl's cover of the song is also worth watching, but I don't know who told her that hat was a good idea for the video shoot!

War is Hell

I've been watching Ken Burns' The War on PBS the last two nights, and it's riveting and disturbing at the same time. The film is the story of the Second World War told from personal accounts. Like his other films, it's extremely U.S.-centric.

The first episode starts with the attack on Pearl Harbor, and works in chronological order through 1942 from the Bataam Death March to the Battles of Midway and Guadalcanal to the Japanese internment camps on the West Coast. Not exactly light entertainment, and this was only the first hour of 15-hours of coverage.

When you watch all those WWII documentaries on the History Channel about this battle and that battle that focus on the top-down strategies and tactics, it's easy to forget that those battles weren't fought by little plastic Risk armies, but real soldiers on both sides. And many of those soldiers died.



My main issue with Burns' last couple of high-profile PBS series (Baseball and Jazz) was that both series lost steam over the last few episodes. The coverage of the 19th Century and the Negro Leagues in Baseball was fascinating, but the last "inning" that covered the years 1960-1993 was a mess. And the final episode of Jazz (covering the same period) was even more of a mess. As a historian, I think Ken Burns works at his best when he keeps away from the post-war era, so this series might work better than the others.

Hey hey, we're the Flight of the Conchords

I've really been enjoying the HBO summer series Flight of the Conchords, which follows the adventures of New Zealand's "almost award-winning fourth-most-popular comedy-folk duo." The show stars Jeremy Clement and Bret McKenzie of NZ's fourth-most-popular comedy-folk duo Flight of the Conchords, who play themselves. This makes the show confusing, because viewers don't know if they're musicians playing themselves, or just actors who portray musicians in a TV show about themselves.

The show airs at 10:30pm on Sunday nights, and has a TV-MA rating for "adult situations" because many of the episodes have FOTC songs like these that center on relationships between adults.

Business Time
If You're Into It
I Am Not Crying
A Kiss Is Not a Contract
Most Beautiful Girl In The World

Jermaine has a deep soul voice like Barry White or Isaac Hayes that suits him well on songs like "Business Time" and "Most Beautiful Girl In The Word", while Bret's quavering Robin Gibb/David Bowie voice suits songs like "I Am Not Crying" or "Bowie's In Space ".

All in all, they're just trying to be friendly, come and watch them sing and play, but they're in the 25-54 marketing demographic, and they've got something to say. Here's Flight of the Conchords' topical song "The Issues (Think About It)".

The TV show allows Flight of the Conchords to be billed as stars of stage and screen, and now they have a CD out too. Earlier this month, they put out an EP on Sub Pop called The Distant Future, featuring songs from the TV show. Now they're stars of stage, screen, and record. These songs are also available for free on youtube (click the links above) and Sub Pop has an mp3 of "Business Time" available for download from their site. This version changes "netball practice" to "social sports practice", probably to "Americanize" Flight of the Conchords. Why does Sub Pop hate netball? It's just basketball without a backboard!

Anyway, FOTC are the Monkees for the new millennium, so check the show out on HBO if you have cable, or on youtube if you don't. Search for "Flight of the Conchords".

Initially I thought the band was called "The Conchords" and the show was their flight, but they are actually known as "Flight Of The Conchords". I think there should be more bands of the "(article)(plural noun)" form and fewer bands of the "(article)(noun)(preposition)(article)(noun)" form. They should rename themselves "The Conchords", which would be a good name for a comedy folk duo. Flight Of the Conchords isn't as good a name for a comedy-folk duo.

Once in every lifetime

One of our local PBS affiliates has started showing "The Young Ones" on Sunday nights at 11pm (same time-slot they used to have on MTV back in the mid-1980s). The show seemed daring and different back then, and hasn't lost it's edge over the last 25 years. It's still completely unlike anything else that's ever been on television!

They only made 12 episodes (the same number as "Fawlty Towers"), and the two seasons were two years apart, so they're almost like two different shows. The 1984 season had a bigger budget, but I think the 1982 season is a lot weirder. Each episode is like a 35-minute odyssey!

The Young Ones episodes were highlighted by a series of unrelated scenes that expanded on the so-called "plot" and a musical interlude (so the show would be classified as "light entertainment" and have a larger budget than a standard sitcom) where bands of the day like Madness or Dexy's Midnight Runners would play their latest hits. This dates the show in places (the cast didn't succumb to 1980s fashion, but those musical guests sure did) , but the songs were always my favorite part of the show: seeing a teenage Neneh Cherry singing with Rip, Rig & Panic or middle-aged (even back then!) Lemmy playing "Ace of Spades" with Motorhead. BBC America always cuts the songs out when they play the episodes (either for length or licensing), which I find kind of annoying.

Another favorite part of watching the show now is spotting all the "before they were famous" guest actors: Chris Barrie, Robbie Coltrane, Lenny Henry, French & Saunders, Fry & Laurie. Without "The Young Ones", there probably wouldn't have been "Blackadder" or "Absolutely Fabulous" or "Red Dwarf" or many others. It was probably one of the most influential comedy series ever (British or otherwise).

Rick(to Madness): Do any of you lot know "Summer Holiday" by Cliff Richard?
Suggsy (lead singer): You hum it, and I'll smash your face in!

Route 66 continued

Bob Dylan and the Hawks performing "Like a Rolling Stone"
in 1966, from the PBS movie No Direction Home.

Judas!

M.A.M.I. in the U.S.A

John Sebastian and Friends, from a 1986 TV show called "Deja View".



The lineup:
Guitar, harmonica, vocals: John Sebastian (of the Lovin' Spoonful)
12-string guitar, vocals: Roger McGuinn (of the Byrds)
Keybords, vocals: Felix Cavaliere (of the Young Rascals)
Vocals: Ronnie Spector (of the Ronettes)
Drums: Richard Manuel (of the Band)
Bass: Al Anderson (of NRBQ)

Five future rock & roll hall of famers on the same stage. With all that talent, this song is wrong on so many different levels! Firstly, the title is grammatically incorrect (it should be "You and I Go Way Back"). Also, it has one guitarist (Al Anderson) playing bass and another one (Roger McGuinn) dancing like Mr. Bojangles. And finally, this was probably the last performance footage of Richard Manuel. One of the all-time greats reduced to being a hired hand (he isn't even featured in the archive footage). RIP Richard. I only hope he was compensated well!

By a network of my peers

Most of the Premier League and FA Cup matches have been carried, but today's FA Cup final between Chelsea and Manchester United was only available live (in the USA) on pay-per-view. This left me with three options to watch the final.

1) Pay $25 for the PPV broadcast.
2) Go to a pub (like the Englander) and pay a $20 cover to watch the broadcast with obnoxious ManU supporters.
3) Wait until Tuesday and watch it recorded on FSC.

Fortunately I found an option (4). Download TVUPlayer, and watch the FA Cup Final for free on my computer from the comfort of my home. TVU is an embedded player that lets you watch television broadcasts on the internet. They offer around 100 channels, but since they're based in Shanghai, 90% of the channels are in Chinese. One of the English language channels on TVU is Star Sports out of Hong Kong, who were broadcasting the FA Cup Final live.

After downloading the player and selecting Star Sports, I started seeing a bunch of blue and red guys moving back and forth on my laptop screen. TVU is peer-to-peer television where the quality of the signal is based on the number of people watching, and since a lot of folks around the world were watching the Cup Final, the stream was near broadcast quality.

And it was kind of empowering to be able to watch something for freethat the cable company and local British pub were charging $20-plus to watch. The match itself was kind of dull though. The red guys and blue guys moved back and forth on my computer screen for the whole 90 minutes of regulation without putting the ball in the net. One reason that a lot of people don't like soccer is because many high-profile World Cup and FA Cup Finals seem to end in scoreless 0-0 draws that go to penalty kicks. Which is as anticlimactic as determining the World Series champ via a home run hitting contest. Luckily, this FA Cup Final didn't go to penalties. Didier Drogba scored in the 116th minute (26 minutes into the 30 minute OT) to give Chelsea a 1-0 lead, which they maintained til the end. It's nice that it was settled in open pay too, because no one wants to see a goal-kicking contest!

Manchester United clinched the Premier League title a couple of weeks ago (the same day the Yankees signed Clemens -- good day for the forces of evil) so they were going for the "double" (Premiership and FA cup titles in the same year) . The forces of good were working against them today, so they were held back. And TVU won my battle against the evil forces that make you pay twenty bucks to watch English soccer in the USA. It was a win all around!

Turkeys on the Wing

The famous "Pink Floyd" scene from the WKRP "Turkeys Away" episode. One of many scenes deleted from the season one DVD.



My favorite exchange:
Mr. Carlson: Do I hear dogs barking on that thing?
Johnny: I do

Town to town, up and down the dial

One of my favorite shows I've been wanting to see on DVD is WKRP in Cincinnati. It's been stuck in musical licensing limbo, because the rights for the songs used in the show (most of which were integral to the plots) would have been prohibitively expensive to obtain. That's also why the show hasn't been in syndication for awhile.

The first season was released on DVD this week, but with its original songs replaced by generic soundalike songs. So the legendary Thanksgiving episode doesn't have the scene with Johnny playing Pink Floyd's "Dogs", Jennifer's doorbell doesn't play "Fly Me To The Moon", etc. etc.

On one hand, it's nice to be able to watch this classic show (it hasn't even been in syndication for awhile, thanks to music licensing), but many of the songs were an important part of the show, and having the show without the music is like having the pictures without the sound. Apparently it's a combination of Fox wanting to keep the costs affordable, and music publishers asking too much to re-license the original songs.

Hopefully this set will sell well enough that the studio will spring for the music licenses on later seasons. That "Tiny Dancer" episode just doesn't make much sense without the song "Tiny Dancer"! At least most of the dialog is still intact: "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!"

I started the funniest joke in the world

An imaginary Bee Gees vs. Monty Python youtube mashup..



Narrator: This man is Robin Gibb... writer of jokes. In a few moments, he will have written the funniest joke in the world... and, as a consequence, he will die ... laughing.

RG: I started a joke, which started the whole world crying, but I didn't see that the joke was on me

Narrator: It was obvious that this joke was lethal... no one could read it and live ...

RG: Then I started to cry, which started the whole world laughing.

Policeman: I shall enter the house and attempt to remove the joke.

RG: And I fell out of bed, hurting my head from things that I'd said.

Commentator: There goes a brave man. Whether he comes out alive or not, this will surely be remembered as one of the most courageous and gallant acts in history.

RG: Til I finally died, which started the whole world living. Oh if I'd only seen, that the joke was on me

Commentator: This morning, shortly after eleven o'clock, comedy struck this little house in Dibley Road. Sudden ...violent ... comedy.