A wee bit of an overreaction from Mr. Spidey, don’t you think? As one YouTuber points out, “Saving the world at three different camera angles.”

 
(via Mister Honk )

 
This Burger King commercial from 1980 falls into the “what the fuck were they thinking?” category. Sir Shake-A-Lot shimmies like a speedfreak after snorting a line of crystal meth the length of John Holmes’ blue-veined-blood-bomber. Sir Shake needs some Thorazine, quick! The dude is fried.

 
John Cassavetes, who died 22 years ago today, was the title character in the short lived TV show Johnny Staccato, which aired for one season in 1959. In the episode “The Poet’s Touch,”  jazz musician and detective Staccato mingles with the beatniks of Greenwich Village and gets propositioned by the stunningly beautiful and bohemian Sylvia Lewis.

Miss Lewis has had a long career as a dancer and actress and is still very much alive. Check out her homepage here.

As Staccato enters a building there’s a sign for The Helen Hayes Equity Group, a sly homage to a theater company where many of Cassavetes acting peers got their training.
 

 
A tantalizingly brief clip of a collaboration between fashion giant Yves Saint-Laurent and composer/arranger/ key Serge Gainsbourg collaborator, Jean-Claude Vannier. A version of L’enfant la Mouche et les Allumettes from Vannier’s 1972 LP L’enfant Assassin des Mouches (pictured above) is performed as rather surreal accompaniment to the fashion goings-on from The Roland Petit Show in 1971. Wish it went on longer.
 

 
Bonus: A few songs from the wonderful aformentioned LP
 

Le Roi Des Mouches Et La Confiture De Rouse
 

Les Gardes Volent Au Secours Du Roi
 

L`enfant Au Royaume Des Mouches
 
With thanks to Justin Meldal-Johnsen !

 
Something tells me this is going to cross over far beyond the 4-11 year olds market.
 

 
“Sometimes each of us would be thinking “Oh god, I know where we’re going,” and both of us would race to get there first.”—Mike Nichols

Over the weekend, Tara and I watched a 15-year-old PBS America Masters documentary on the incredibly brilliant 50s/60s comedy duo of Mike Nichols and Elaine May. Titled Nichols & May: Take Two, it features thoughtful discussions of the pair’s work by the likes of Steve Martin, Jules Feiffer and Tom Browkaw. What made the hour-long piece so especially exciting to watch was, well, finally getting to watch them do these great routines that I have listened to over and over and over again on records. Most of it was new to me (visually speaking, that is) and I was just ecstatically happy to see it. (Not to mention how absolutely stunning Elaine May was! Wow! What a fox!)

When I was a kid I absolutely adored Nichols & May. As Steve Martin remarked about their albums, there was really something quite musical about their comedy that leant it to repeated listens. Robin Williams compares the dance of their wit to a beautiful ballet. What they created together wasn’t really like anything else, either before or since. Their comedy albums weren’t stand-up comedy at all, of course. Nichols & May were actors and writers performing their own material, often the result of improvisations (a hallmark of their live act). Both of them have really great, expressive voices and their classic routines are absolute perfection, as honed and as precise as language can be used. Much of their material begins with seemingly random, meandering or nervous conversation that eventually comes into sharp focus. They were great at portraying pompous idiots with nothing to say and no qualms whatsoever about saying it. Although hardly risque, Nichols & May were “grown up” and probably the first satirists to include riffs on post-coital pillow talk and adultery in their repertoire during the Eisenhower administration.

A large part of the appeal for ardent Nichols and May fans was the cultural signifiers they—well, their stuffy, insecure characters—would casually drop into their routines. College-educated, upscale fans who made the high IQ duo such a success on Broadway would feel a part of the “in crowd” when presented with material referencing Béla Bartók or Nietzsche, although no one was exactly excluded by their brainy comedy, either. Routines about phone calls from foreign countries, getting ripped off by funeral homes and psychotically nagging mothers could be enjoyed by anyone, but the high falutin’ grad school references were the dog whistles that garnered them their staunchest fans. Amusing to consider that these “sophisticates” were usually the very people skewered most savagely by the double-edged sword of Nichols & May’s humor.

Often, it was Elaine May’s characters who set about psychologically torturing the hapless male creations of straight-man Nichols. Gerald Nachman relates several examples of May’s emasculating wit in a pre-feminist era in his book Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s. One tale is told of May getting wolf whistles and noisy kisses from two guys who followed her down the street. “What’s the matter? Tired of each other?” she asked. One of them yelled back, “Fuck you!” and she fired back, “With WHAT?

Get a copy of Nichols & May: Take Two at Mod Cinema.
 
Below: “Aren’t you even curious about me?” “No, not at all.”
 

 
In their famous “Telephone” sketch, Nichols plays a hapless man, stranded and down to his final dime, trying to use a pay phone with disastrous results. May plays three different telephone operators, none about to give him his “alleged die-yum” back. To SEE them do this… Ah! I was in heaven:
 

 
Much, much more classic Nichols & May comedy after the jump…

 
This is seriously a fantastic idea!

Pleated-Jeans writes:

There are plenty of people out there who are still upset about the cancellation of Arrested Development (ahem…me included). In an attempt to keep the show a hot online topic (and hopefully feed the demand for an Arrested Development movie), Pleated-Jeans gives you the Arrested Development themed Clue board game, complete with box art, game board, suspect cards and weapon cards.

 
Go to Pleated-Jeans to see more hysterical Arrested Development board game images.

 
Back in the day before pop promos, the BBC’s chart show, Top of the Pops employed dance troupe Pan’s People to fill-in for those artists who couldn’t appear on the show.

Pan’s People were the legendary dance goddesses of the 1960s and ‘70s, who are still worshipped by the writers of Lad’s Mags, and by the over-familiar contributors to self-congratulatory pop culture list shows, like I Love the 70s. And less we forget, Pan’s People were also responsible for convincing many a middle-aged dad, in the 1970s, that pop music wasn’t the devil’s plaything.

Pan’s People made their first appearance on TOTP in April 1968, replacing The Go-Jos, the original trio of dancers who had graced the chart show with their interpretative dancing since 1964. BBC bosses decided a change was needed and cast Louise Clarke, Felicity “Flick” Colby, Barbara “Babs” Lord, Ruth Pearson, Andrea “Andi” Rutherford and Patricia “Dee Dee” Wilde as Pan’s People:

London born Louise Clarke had attended the Corona Stage School where she did child modelling work and was also chosen for some minor roles in films and television.

Ruth Pearson also attended the Corona Stage School. She originally came from Kingston in Surrey and at the age of seven won a place at the Ballet Rambert.

Wolverhampton born Babs Lord began dancing an early age and after initially taking lessons at her mother’s dance school, she later attended the Arts Educational Trust stage school. At the age of eighteen Babs joined a group of young dancers called The Beat Girls and made weekly appearances on BBC2’s music show The Beat Room. Babs later appeared with The Beat Girls in the 1965 British film Gonks Go Beat.

Originally from Farnham in Surrey, Dee Dee Wilde had arrived back on British shores a few years earlier, aged seventeen, after spending most of her childhood in Africa. Prior to joining Pan’s People, Dee Dee enjoyed a stint with another dance troupe that included a tour of Spain.

American Flick Colby came from New York and originally trained as a ballet dancer. Within months of arriving in Britain in 1966 Flick, together with Andrea Rutherford and the four other girls, had formed Pan’s People. The fact that Flick also handled the group’s choreography ensured that Pan’s People remained a pretty much self-contained unit of strong-willed young women who were hungry for a little success.

During the next eighteen months Pan’s People only appeared a few times on British television, but they had more success in Amsterdam with a spot on a Dutch TV series. They got their lucky break in 1968 when the BBC finally decided to sign them up as TOTP’s new dancers. Initially Pan’s People made only semi-regular appearances on the show, perhaps once or twice a month. However, it soon became clear that Pan’s People were proving a huge hit with viewers. So by 1969 the girls were dancing on the TOTP every week and were now an integral part of the show.

As the new chart run-down was released on a Tuesday and TOTP went out on a Thursday, Pan’s People only had 24-hours in which to choose a song, work out their moves, and learn their routine. The tremendous pressure led Flick Colby to quit in 1971, and focus solely on the troupe’s choreography. Pan’s People thereafter remained a 5-piece until Louise left to start a family (Pan’s People were allegedly banned by the Beeb from getting married) and was replaced by 17-year-old Cherry Gillespie in December 1972, who was presented to the group as a Christmas present. Very enlightened.

After Pan’s People split in 1976, Flick remained choreographer for TOTP and created the shows dance groups Ruby Flipper, Legs and Co. and Zoo. Only Legs and Co. was successful out of these. Flick’s style was often criticized as far too literal (most notably in Pan’s People’s version of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s “Get Down” - see below), but it fitted with the times and she did create the group’s very recognizable dance language:

By the mid 1970s Pan’s People had almost invented their own sign language to accompany song lyrics (now commonly referred to as ‘Pan Speak’).

For example:

“You” - Index finger pointing towards the camera.
“Stop”- Arm half outstretched with palm facing camera - like a policeman halting traffic.
“Love” - Both hands held over heart.
“Think”- Index finger pointing towards temple with a ‘thinking’ facial expression. Head cocked at 30° angle towards finger.
“Know” - Index finger pointing towards temple with a ‘smiling’ facial expression. Head cocked at 30° angle away from finger.
“I” or “Me” - Index finger pointing towards oneself.
“Don’t” - Index finger pointing upwards about 30cm in front of face, then move forearm in a windscreen wiper motion. Half smiling, half chastising facial expression.
“No” - Arms crossed just in front of chest with hands at neck level, palms facing outwards. Now uncross your arms until they are vertical, palms still facing outwards. Same facial expression as with “Don’t”.

Here are a few moments of Pop Heaven from Pan’s People, firstly their short film interpretation of John Barry’s “Theme from The Persuaders”, then the classic dog dancing to Gilbert O’Sullivan, ‘a best of’ and The Chi-Lites’ “Homely Girl”. Enjoy.
 

 
Previously on DM

Legs and Co. meet Lalo Schifrin

Interpretive dance to AC/DC’s ‘TNT’

 
Bonus clips of Pan’s People getting their groove on, after the jump…
 

 
With the current uprising in Egypt, and the recent events in Tunisia, it is timely to have a look at Videograms of a Revolution, which documents Romania’s popular revolution that led to the overthrow of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Complied by Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica from over 125 hours worth of amateur footage, news footage, and excerpts from a demonstrator-controlled Bucharest TV studio in late December 1989, their documentary tells the story of “how the mediated image not only records but engenders historic change.”
 

 
With thanks to Ana Lola Roman
 

 
My gawd is this commercial funny for Zappies’ brand new battery operated Doctor Who Ride-in Dalek. £199.99 for your kid to ride around in a little car that says: “Exterminate all humans.” Seems worth it to me.