There's no time to lose, National Gorilla Suit Day is almost over!
But today we celebrate another milestone!
Twenty-five years today, Family Guy premiered after the Super Bowl!
Since it was 1999, I was only 12, and not old enough to stay up that late to see it or the Simpsons episode that followed it. I did see that first episode eventually, and I was immediately hooked with the show. It was the Simpson's edgier Gen X cousin, actually airing on network tv unlike South Park and Beavis & Butt-Head.
It was one of many prime time animated shows that popped up in the late nineties after the success of King of The Hill, like Futurama, Mission Hill, the Dilbert cartoon, and the rest. It was swiftly cancelled after three seasons, after a season of changing timeslots because while it had high ratings when it premiered, Fox tried to see it it would be successful outside of Sunday night.
It wasn't.
But as we all know, the story didn't end there. DVD sales and constant reruns on Adult Swim gave it a new life with a new audience and made its triumphant return in 2005 and hasn't left the airwaves since.
And once again, Fox is testing the waters to see if it'll succeed outside of Sunday night, moving it to Wednesdays starting March 6th. Blame Fox actually having more than four animated shows going on at once (Simpsons and Bob's Burgers are staying where they are, with The Great North, Krapopolis, and Grimsburg all playing musical chairs in programming slots this year) and one of the shows had to go somewhere.
Will it be the new anchor show to fill the hole The Masked Singer or one of its copycats are gonna leave? Only time will tell!
Unlike a lot of shows that get meme'd to death, Family Guy's impact on pop culture doesn't rely on screenshots (the most notable one being Peter surprised to see someone at the door), but more in short clips taken out of context. When I'm rewatching it, I have to constantly say, "Oh, it's from THIS episode" since most of their cutaway gags have nothing to do with the episode they're from and could've been slotted in anywhere.
Probably my all time favorite was the one where Peter turned the house into a giant puppet.
If not in short, random gags, Family Guy is probably best known for keeping random bits of 70s and 80s culture preserved for all time.
From Surfin' Bird
To Conway Twitty
To KISS
Even to The Hudson Brothers Razzle Dazzle Show.
Unlike a lot of clips that get run into the ground because the gag is because of how long they are, you NEED to see the whole thing of this one. It just gets crazier every moment, and that was just the theme song to an actual show back in the seventies! One of the Hudson Brothers is Kate Hudson's dad. I forget which one.
One of my favorite shows from my childhood was The Banana Splits Show.
For those not in the know, it was a variety show that was produced by Hanna-Barbera back in 1968 that starred the titular group as a fictional rock band doing funny skits and fooling around in their clubhouse. You had Fleegle the dog (Paul Winchell), Bingo the ape (Daws Butler), Drooper the lion (Allan Melvin), and Snorky the elephant (he only honked). After Beatlemania, fake rock/pop bands were all the rage like the Archies, The Monkees, and the like and Hanna-Barbera wanted their own slice of the pie. And like most fake bands, how they sounded when they talked vs how they sung were wildly different.
Here's a music video of one of their songs.
And here's a video of some of their sketches:
See? The kids of the 60s were easily fooled, I guess. If the style of the costumes and sets seemed familiar, they were made by Sid Marty Krofft in their first TV gig. The show only ran for 31 episodes, and would've continued on if the Kroffts weren't offered a better deal to start their own show. HR Pufnstuf was made in its place and the rest was Krofft history.
Since it turns 50 years old this year, it's admittedly before my time, but I used to see it in the early mornings on TV back when I was young. I want to say it was on TBS? I know it didn't see it on Cartoon Network since my house never got it until at least 1996. The sets, the costumes, the colors really hit a bunch of my buttons and I couldn't get enough of them. It was a long stretch of time before I rediscovered them on Boomerang around, jeez, seven years ago? And it was worth the wait, it was like waiting for the bus for summer camp all over again.
But you can never forget that famous theme song:
I love that intro so much. They're just dicking around an amusement park, it's every kids dream. The first season they're running around Six Flags Over Texas (the OG!), but the second season they were doing stuff in the now-defunct Coney Island in Ohio:
The second season also made Snorky furry for some reason. But like most things concerning the Kroffts, we don't tend to ask what led to their creative decisions. And like everyone else, I wanted one of those Banana Buggies for myself.
And since that theme song is stuck in your head, I can't let that go by without mentioning the time Liz Phair covered it for Saturday Morning Cartoons' Greatest Hits, one of my favorite albums ever.
And even earlier by The Dickies.
Amazing to see people who have only learned about this show through Kick Ass.
Each episode had a variety of segments. You usually had a few short segments with the Banana Splits themselves, but they also had a live-action serial called Danger Island:
It was about a group of explorers fending off pirates with the help of a native man named Chongo. ("Uh-oh, Chongo!" was the famous catch phrase of the show) Notably starring Jan Michael Vincent and directed by a before-he-was-famous Richard Donner, this was usually the best segment in the show.
And depending on the episode, the cartoon you saw were either The Three Musketeers
or The Arabian Knights.
They were pretty much the same cartoon, but in different settings. A team of heroes, an animal sidekick and some kids fighting bad guys. In syndicated runs, some of these segments (usually Danger Island) would be replaced by shorts from the Atom Ant/Secret Squirrel Show. The Boomerang cuts thankfully restored everything.
In addition to those segments, sometimes you saw really bizarre ones like Hold The Bus.
I can't explain that, either. All I know is that it's one of the oldest videos on all of youtube.
In 1972 they starred in The Banana Splits in Hocus Pocus Park, their only full-length adventure.
After YEARS of looking for it, someone uploaded the whole thing to youtube and I immediately had to watch it. It was mostly animated with live-action wraparounds and sadly what you see above is only the live-action parts. I'm gonna cut to the chase, that's the best part as the rest of the movie is a boring, plodding mess.
The plot is that a little girl the Banana Splits were giving a tour to was kidnapped by a witch that lived in a cartoon forest and the band rushes in to rescue her. There's lots of arguing and dumb puns and schemes that go nowhere. The two henchmen that try to fend off the Splits end up teaming up with them, rescue the girl, and then they hold a concert. The end.
Lot of great faces though. Like this one with Drooper:
And these:
Good thing I managed to screen cap as much as I could, as I'm afraid it's lost to the ether again.
I was warned that I wasn't going to like it, and I didn't listen and I hate that I didn't listen. It's still worth watching not because it's the only time the Banana Splits have been animated, but all of the early Kings Island footage is frankly incredible. There's not a lot of good footage of theme parks before the 90s with all the advances of camcorder technology, and the footage in that cut of the movie is as crisp as you can find it.
They've had a few attempts at revivals over the years, like some shorts that aired on Boomerang several years ago:
Plus this really creepy video from Web Premiere Toons that was made during the early days of internet videos where we had to watch on a dialup connection.
The video cuts off before the audio does and I'm honestly scared by it.
And just last year, they teamed up with the Suicide Squad of all things in a comic.
I'll tell you, that story is NUTS and certainly worth the read. They're just as dumb and corny as you remember, but now they're realistic animals and they're packing heat.
How much do I love the Banana Splits despite much of it being not that good?
I currently have a poster of this hanging over my couch. Yes ladies, I'm single.
And I managed to pick up two of Funko's Dorbz Ridez of Fleegle and Drooper (my favorites) from New York Comic Con a few years ago. Since all four of them were limited to 300 pieces each, it’s gonna be kind of a hassle to get Bingo and Snorky’s since those two were never released outside of San Diego Comic Con and their going rate is around $60 each.
And that's all a buildup to my latest mail call:
Banana Splits Funko Pops!! Ever since the Dorbz were made I’d been begging Funko to make pops of these and this year they finally delivered! When SDCC came around, they announced these guys and I was so excited...until I saw that they were limited to 4000 pieces each, with a small portion of that being released to their online store...which tends to sell out their exclusives within minutes. If I know my math, 4000 is a lot more than 300 and even though exclusives with that large of a run tend to not go for much money on the secondary market, I already resigned myself to paying far more than their original $15 price tag for each of them. These were going to be another one of my white whales, like the Frankenberry pop turned into.
But as luck would have it, I was on the Funko shop on the first day of comic con, thinking the sale list that was leaked to collectors was fake, there they were available to buy. There were not many things I have done in my life as fast as I bought these, folks. I know consumerism is the devil and I almost gave myself a heart attack over literal stuff, but I managed to beat everyone to the punch. Hell, I went to a toy show the next weekend and I talked to vendors that were pretty mad that they missed it and I got to rub it in their faces.
I'll confess that Bingo was never my favorite, but his pop won me over. It look fantastic and his big grin is what draws me in. When people tell you that Funko Pops look bland and ugly, I advise you to point to these guys. These are three inches of sculpted art, and I'm sticking to that.
The main problem I have is that the writing has been consistently terrible for these guys. I know that it's not high art and aimed at kids, but it could seriously better. Like if they were given the Pee-Wee's Playhouse or the Aquabats Super Show approach of tongue in cheek surrealism, the Banana Splits could be great again! Cartoon Network clearly has the costumes still lying around somewhere, and since reboots are all the rage lately, I feel like it could be done!
And it can be like the old show, where they have different segments. Like, a cartoon, an adventure serial, some fake commercials or music videos, and some Banana Splits shenanigans. I might be an audience of one for this, but I'd be front row center watching every day! Who's with me?
So I recently got into that great series Doctor Who.
If you still aren't aware of what this show is, Doctor Who chronicles the adventures of an alien (The Doctor) and his various companions as they travel through time and space. Sometimes they save the universe from catastrophe. Sometimes they battle monsters like Daleks, Cybermen, or these things:
For the love of God, DON'T SCROLL AWAY!!!
The rest of the time they travel through time and space because it's really, really cool. Whatever scrape the gang gets into, they don't use brute force. No, they use their intellect and that neat little gadget called the Sonic Screwdriver.
Since the show has been around since 1963, there have been 11 actors that have played The Doctor, with the current incarnation being played by Matt Smith. How does this show cover actor changes, you ask? By having someone just appear out of a door when the last one is killed off? By having the new guy just call himself The Doctor while everyone goes along with it like James Bond? No, they use something called regeneration.
Thanks to Ye Olde Wikipedia, regeneration occurs when a Time Lord (The Doctor's species) is mortally wounded and the body molds itself into a new physical form to heal itself. This new physical form brings new changes to the character: New body (in an ironic twist, each regeneration brings a younger form), new quirks, new fashion choices.
The guy he replaced wore a celery stalk on his jacket.
They say that a Time Lord can regenerate 12 times, but this rule, as with many traditional rules of the universe, has been broken several times with characters like The Master coming along.
With that out of the way, I come forth with a new feature on the blog: Doctor Whosday! Yes, every Tuesday I'll update this thing with a Doctor Who-centric entry. And what's a good a place as any to start with the show's iconic theme song?
With 11 Doctors, there's a theme song for each one (4th Doctor had two themes), and choice for the best one is pretty much up to personal preference. My favorites? 11th, 10th, 1st, 5th, 4th (2nd theme), 7th, and 4th (1st theme) in pretty much that order.
There are a couple of thing that I wanted to write for today. Stuff happening in my life, completing the Summer Burger Challenge Entry, the passing of Greg Giraldo & Tony Curtis, some crap about Pogs.
But I think most of all, I want to celebrate that today, September 30th, marks the 50th anniversary of the Flintstones, America's Favorite Non-Yellow Cartoon Family!
And now, here are some videos showcasing the greatness of the truly landmark show!
It's the official first day of Summer, so you know what that means: Year 3 of "Soundtracks For Summer," my summer blog series that highlights songs that define "summer."
We begin the 2010 edition with "Holiday Road," better known as the theme song to National Lampoon's Vacation.
Sung by Lyndsay Buckingham of Fleetwood Mac fame, this is a song that's absolutely perfect for road trips, especially ones where EVERYTHING'S hilariously going wrong. I know because I took one of those myself a few weeks ago to Atlantic City.
Tip of the Trade: If you don't have EZ-Pass and accidentally bypass the toll lanes in New Jersey, don't assume they can't tell. Because they can. I don't know HOW an empty parkway was able to get a real close zoom on my license plate, but they did. It turns out this happened three times. In addition to the toll (Fifty Cents/One Dollar), they whack you for an additional $25! Yeesh. Thank goodness I got hit by the tolls when leaving & coming back from LI, because the Verazzano believes that it's not raping your wallet ENOUGH. $11 "Leaving New York Toll" my ass.
Where was I? Oh, right, the song. You're lost, your GPS can't help you, Christie Brinkley is following you in her car, and every street looks the same. On top of it all, the place you're driving to turns out to be closed the whole time. That's what this song means: The Journey, not the Destination, is what makes a roadtrip awesome. Okay, the destination is WHY you're road-tripping in the first place, and it might be pretty awesome, but it's the journey that makes it. I think.
By the way, this is probably the only non-Fleetwood Mac thing Lyndsay Buckingham's known for, aside from getting constantly bumped on "What's Up With That?!"
BTW, I'm also taking reader submissions for future "Soundtracks For Summer" entries. If you've got an idea, pop me an email at beamingforbunnies@gmail.com OR comment on this entry OR at the Facebook Fan Page with the name of the song, and a reason or two why it defines "Summer" for you. You'll be glad you did.
Hey, hey, it's February! What does this all mean? Fine, I'll tell you: The 28th will be the blog's second birthday, so I've decided to declare this month
SIMPSONS MONTH!
If you're no stranger to this blog, you'll know that I absolutely adore the Simpsons, and it's about time that it gets its formal due on this thing. It's currently in it's 21st season, and I'm happy to tell you all that I'm one of those rare folk that has seen every episode (452 as of 2/1/10) and DOESN'T bitch that it hasn't been good in X amount of years!
So, in the coming days, expect entries on the following:
-The most underrated episodes
-My favorite episodes
-My least favorite episodes
-My favorite characters
-A review of the 20th Season DVD
-A review of Simpsons Scene It!
-A review of The Simpsons Game (Wii)
And possibly more! Since February is also when the 2010 Winter Olympics are being held down there in Vancouver, expect an entry on that.
Until next time, to tide you all over, here's a video of Moby's Hip-Hop Remix of the "Mr. Plow" song.
I've been doing some research for my upcoming "50 Greatest Animated Theme Songs" countdown when I stumbled upon this video of someone's Top 10 80's Cartoon theme songs:
It's basically "Nine 80's Shows You've Never Heard of...And Jem." You'd think that kind of video would feature the themes for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, GI Joe, Transformers, or Thundercats, but nope. Who ended up winning? Jayce & The Wheeled Warriors.
For those of you who think themselves as too important to watch a ten minute video, the rest of the themes are: Visionaries, Dinosaucers, SpiralZone, Mighty Orbots, Galaxy Rangers, M.A.S.K., Defenders of The Earth, Pole Position (seriously?!)...and Jem.
Looking at the info of the vid, the creator had picked his criteria on the theme song alone, and not the entire show itself, and I'll admit that I agree with him. I've noticed that theme songs from the 1980's had a unique trait not found in any other decade, which is that they could take the lamest premise ever and make them incredibly kickass. They made you PUMPED to watch the show, and you wouldn't care until fifteen minutes in that it sucked hard. I was quite surprised about how many of them were ripoffs of Thundercats, Masters of The Universe, and/or GI Joe.
"Dude, they're like GI Joe, only they drive vehicles that spit out smaller vehicles, and they wear MASKS!"
"Some of the GI Joes wear masks, too!"
"But it's the 80's, so they're going to wear big-assed square robot masks! Square, large and bulky is the future! No one is going to have electronics that are are small, curvy and practical."
"(sigh) Gnarly."
Take the first theme seen in the video, Visionaries. It was a show based around figures that looked like this:
Toys with holographic animals on their chests for no exact reason. But according to their theme song? Totally fucking nuts. The animals jump out of their chests and beat up...the bad guy's chest animals. I once knew a girl who had a chest animal, but I think it was just her excuse to not go out with me.
Then there was the seventh theme in the vid, Defenders of the Earth, who consisted of Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Mandrake the Magician, and Lothar The Token 80's Minority Guy along with four generic kids defending the Earth. They were all bound by their sense of justice, adventure, and the fact that they were all owned by King Features Syndicate and it was an easy way to exploit these unrelated characters. Robot Chicken righteously mocked the series by having them be part of a Neighborhood Watch Association, with their jurisdiction of "The Earth" only being their block.
As Lots of synthesizers, guitar riffs and F-list glam rock singers usually spruced up any 80's theme song. But in the decades beyond the 80's? If the show had a lame premise, the theme song quite reflected that.
There's also the fact that theme songs have been getting shorter and shorter to fit in more commercials. While I do despise this grim fact, there have been many an 80's cartoon whose theme had nearly a quarter to half of its run time devoted to exposition of the series. Not in song or in tune, either. Someone just speaks the premise of the show and throwing off the entire groove of the song. This is all because the main plot, if there was any, wasn't going to devote any of their own damn time to do it. They just wanted you to see which character or accessory was blandly animated that week and persuaded you to beg your parents to buy it.
I don't think any of those themes will show up for my list. Maybe Jem. But that's pushing it.
