Every so often on some cable channel or another, I catch Ray Lampe, a cooking tutor who calls himself Dr. BBQ. What he prepares looks so good, I'm tempted to see if my health plan will cover his services.
Here's a short documentary on what this man does for a living. Basically, he travels the country and tells people in parking lots how to cook ribs…a noble profession. This runs a little less than five and a half minutes and you may have to watch a short commercial to get to it.
Okay, here's "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" in German. Notice that Dick Van Dyke, dubbed into German for this, still sounds more British than he did in Mary Poppins.
Oh, goodie! Another of those JibJab videos where the concepts, animation and production values are terrific and the words in the song parody don't rhyme very well…
You know, you forget how many wonderful movies had scenes that involve balloons. Here's a brief retrospective. (Credit to Jerry Agostell for letting me know about this fine compilation.)
You probably saw this segment from when The Colbert Report was over in Iraq. It includes Mr. Colbert's head being shaved at the order of President Obama…
Now, to see what went on when Obama taped his inserts, go to this page.
From November 21, 1956: Ralph Edwards on This Is Your Life surprises Lou Costello. Or at least he does a show about the life of Lou Costello. I get the feeling Lou wasn't particularly surprised…like maybe someone had tipped him off about it. But he also seems overwhelmed at the outpouring of love from friends and family on the program, which provides a pretty good overview of his life. This runs 24 minutes.
Continuing Lulu Week here on the ol' blog, here's a Little Lulu cartoon from 1946. Unlike most of the prints around these days, this one actually has the original title cards…almost. For reasons unknown, on one of the title cards, they did an optical mask to crop off something — and I can't imagine what. Anyway, this is Bargain Counter Attack with voice work by Cecil Roy and the ubiquitous Jackson Beck. Cecil Roy was a radio performer (a lady, I'm told) who specialized in little girls and boys.
Not much else to add. If you don't have time to watch the whole cartoon, you might at least enjoy the opening titles…
Hey, we seem to have a theme week going here. Here's another performance by the British pop star, Lulu. This one's quite a revelation. I didn't know white people were even allowed to sing this song.
The video quality on this isn't great but it's amazing it exists at all. In 1966, NBC debuted a new variety show — The Sammy Davis Jr Show. The first week with a stellar list of guests was a smashing success…and then the second week, things got a bit odd. That was when The Sammy Davis Jr Show stopped, for a while, having Sammy Davis Jr on it.
Mr. Davis had a contractual commitment from which he could not escape. He could not appear for a month or so on his own series so friends of his filled in. This is the second episode and the host is Johnny Carson. It is perhaps worth noting that not long before, Mr. Carson had had a vaguely similar problem. When NBC wanted him to take over The Tonight Show from Jack Paar, Carson had a contract to do a game show on ABC and couldn't get out of it. So for six months, guest hosts helmed The Tonight Show and then he started.
Just before the end credits, Johnny explains a little about why Sammy is in absentia. If you don't want to watch the whole show, view his monologue and then move the slider ahead to catch the last three minutes. The program, by the way, was directed by Johnny's brother, Dick Carson.
It features some interesting performers including Diahann Carroll, Bobby Van, Mickey Rooney and a frighteningly young Joan Rivers. I was most excited to see Don Alan, a great magician who in the fifties hosted a fun, forgotten syndicated show called Magic Ranch. One of Mr. Alan's last TV appearances (he retired in '83 and died in '99) was on a program I wrote and he was very entertaining, in front of the cameras and off. There are still a lot of guys out there doing tricks he popularized (like the Invisible Deck) and doing jokes and patter that he created.
Sammy Davis, you might care to know, finally returned to the show that bore his name and resumed normal host duties. By then it was too late, though. The series didn't last, which proves a basic rule of television. If you star in a TV show, you kinda need to be there.
Here's another musical number with Lulu from The Red Skelton Show in 1968. It features her. It features The Tom Hansen Dancers, one of whom is the gentleman who fixed my leaky roof years later. And it features Burl Ives. Mr. Ives was one of my favorite musical performers but he was not, shall we say, "gifted" in the terpsichore department.
I once heard a choreographer refer to a proposed number on a show we were doing as a "Burgess Meredith job." Since Mr. Meredith was not at all part of our cast, I asked what that meant. The choreographer said that was her term for having to stage something with someone who couldn't dance one entire step without being off the beat and awkward. Like all who staged dances for a living, she did a lot of Burgess Meredith jobs…once in a while, even with Burgess Meredith.
I assume Tom Hansen staged this one. He did a pretty good job camouflaging the fact that Burl Ives was almost as bad a dancer as…well, he's not quite as dreadful as me but he's close. There's one point in there where all he has to do is walk and he still manages to start on the wrong foot. And just think: This was done on tape so they may have done it twenty times and this was the best take.
Nevertheless, I'm still a fan of Burl Ives. I still have a crush on Lulu. I'm still grateful to whichever of the dancers fixed my roof. And I've got to get me an outfit like the ones they're wearing.
Back in the eighties, shortly after I bought the house in which I now reside, I had a nightmarish year due to heavy rains and a leaky roof. No matter how we patched or even reroofed, H2O was still pouring in and destroying things like my whole heating or electrical system. Finally, one fine day, a carpenter who worked for my contractor found the entry point. Rain was getting in via a termite-munched board that was nowhere near any of the spots where the water was emerging. The offending plank was replaced and that leak was gone for good.
Shamefully, I do not remember the name of the heroic craftsman who finally, after so many others had failed, located and repaired the problem. He was a former dancer on, among other programs, The Red Skelton Show. We talked a lot about Red (with whom I'd had some memorable encounters) and about variety shows (the writing of which was then my main source of income). We also talked about dance numbers from the Skelton show and I'm fairly sure he mentioned this one, which was from 1968. It features the British pop star Lulu, who every guy my age had a crush on for at least an hour or two, and it's all extremely 1968.
I have no idea which one he is but I believe one of the boy dancers in this number is the fellow who saved my house and sanity. And I'm pleased to say that at least the house is still here…
An interview from the Webby Awards. Do you think she (or anyone there) understands that she isn't pointing the microphone where Beaker's voice is coming from? When a friend of mine did this on a show once with Kermit, he had the good sense to have two microphones.
A new TV series debuts tomorrow on TruTV, the cable channel formerly known as Court TV. The show is called Man Vs. Cartoon and rather than explain it, I thought this video would explain it properly…
I haven't previewed the show but if you've ever wondered about the physics involved in the inventions of Wile E. Coyote — or if you've longed to see the products of the Acme Company properly tested — here's your chance.
It is amazing that this clip exists. As you may know, NBC destroyed all the tapes of the first decade and a half ofThe Tonight Show. What little exists of Johnny Carson's early years of that program is mostly grainy, eighth-generation black-and-white snippets. But here, miraculously, we have almost eight minutes from September 1, 1964…and in full color.
It's a segment with Stan Zabka, a musician who had worked as the Associate Director of The Tonight Show. Apparently, because of that job, Mr. Zabka was able to get his mitts on a copy of either the whole show or just his segment on 2" videotape and that's how this survived when all else was lost. So here's your chance to see what the program looked like in 1964, just shy of Carson's second anniversary as host. Thanks to Kevin Segura for letting me know about this little treasure.
Here's a trailer for a film I want to see…