Saturday, September 6, 2014

Friday, September 5, 2014

WE HAD A TIME: Vulture is doing a big My So-Called Life feature this afternoon, including articles on the show's fashion and Angela's voiceovers, with more to come.  Go now!  Go!
ONE NIGHT THE OOMPA LOOMPAS GRABBED ALL THE SHOES ...  "Hey, you should read this thing on Reddit," is probably the laziest from of blogging I've got, but Paris Themmen, who played Mike Teevee in the original Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, did an AMA this week, and, yeah:
Milo_K: Hi Mr Themmen. Do you have any views on Mr Wonka's ethics during the factory tour? Did it annoy you that Mike never got a chance to give back the Ever Lasting Gobstopper? 
ParisThemmenAMA: Okay, that's an interesting one. Because Charlie and Grandpa Joe bounced around the Fizzy Lifting Drinks ceiling prior to Mike's indiscretions in the TV room, it has been suggested that I should have won the contest (I was the last to go before Charlie). No one has ever pointed out to me before that I never had the opportunity to return the Gobstopper. The Gobstopper, by now, would have been a couple of microns tall. In my opinion, the whole thing was rigged from the beginning. Charlie even lives in Wonka's town! The fix was in.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

FEARLESS:  R.I.P. Joan Rivers, who proved that a woman could be both beautiful and funny, and did not need to play well with others, in order to get ahead in the world.

The chapter in Gerald Nachman's book is a nice mini-bio, and there's also the documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, streaming on Netflix.
DINGER MONTAGE! Would you like to read a summary of a "Korean baseball movie about a dinger-smashing gorilla?"  Yes.  Yes, you would.
EGOTKCH:  Your Kennedy Center Honors recipients this year?  Tom Hanks, Lily Tomlin, Sting, Al Green, and ballerina Patricia McBride.  FWIW, Tomlin is just missing the "O" to EGOT, Hanks has Emmys, Oscars, and a Tony nomination, but no Grammy, and Sting has Grammys, Emmys, and three Oscar nods, with Tony nominations seeming to be in the picture for this year.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

A TURTLE-HEAD POKING OUT:  The nominees for America's Best Restroom of 2014 have been released, including LA's The Grove, Chicago's American Girl Place, and near-to-Phila's Longwood Gardens.  Among the past winners is what's apparently the place to be if you ever need to shake down the thunder from the sky while visiting South Bend, Indiana.
IN WHICH PISCATAWAY REPRESENTS WHEREVER THE HELL DAENERYS IS THIS SEASON:  Big Ten football promo, GoT-style.
PEOPLE ALWAYS SAY HOW YOU SHOULD BE YOURSELF. LIKE YOURSELF IS THIS DEFINITE THING, LIKE A TOASTER OR SOMETHING. LIKE YOU KNOW WHAT IT IS, EVEN:  As part of its salute to the television of 1994-95, Vulture's Margaret Lyons ranks the top 100 episodes of the season. It has, as you might have guessed, a lot of MSCL, H:LotS, ER, Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and The Real World: San Francisco, though I might disagree with the specific order. Plus, stuff like this:
22. Melrose Place, "The Big Bang Theory" (May 22, 1995) 
This is the one where Kimberly blows up the building. Greatest season finale ever, basically. (A furious drunk Allison chugging vodka and screaming, "Go away!" puts it over the top.)

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

TIME OF THE SAISON:  Perhaps more accurately than most lists to which this blog links, Thrillist ranks the fifty states by the beers each brews.

Sunday, August 31, 2014

WHO YA GONNA CALL?  Ghostbusters is back in theaters this week, and yes, it remains a charmer, even if many of the effects have not aged well at all.  Two thoughts from my viewing of it yesterday:
  • I'd forgotten how much smoking there is in the film--Stantz pretty much constantly has a cigarette dangling from his lip, and it's kind of shocking to see.
  • Perhaps because Ghostbusters II was such a staple of afternoon cable growing up (which 'ships Janine/Louis), I'd forgotten about not only how much the first film 'ships Janine/Egon, but how explicit it can be about that.