With news of a wedding in the next series of Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, that fine “purveyor of internet whimsy,” Red Scharlach has leaked some “exclusive footage” of the nuptials, as she explains on her Tumblr Blog:
OMG, I’ve discovered some EXCLUSIVE LEAKED FOOTAGE from season 3 of Sherlock! I know that some of you are technically avoiding spoilers, but I thought that this was IMPORTANT FANDOM NEWS and you’d want to know about it IMMEDIATELY. Just don’t let Moffat and Gatiss hear about it. They might get annoyed that we know their secret plan.
(Alternatively, the whole thing may just be a sloppily constructed fake based on a famous movie scene. I’ll let you make up your own minds…)
O, they do make such a lovely couple, and I wish them all happiness in their life together.
Wait… Dusty Springfield appeared on The Dating Game? Apparently so!
Wonder why she seems so disinterested? Such a distinguished set of cheeky chappies to choose from. I do hope Dusty wasn’t really obliged to go on a skiing vacation with “Bachelor # 2. I kinda doubt it. That might have gotten awkward (During the credits a voice over says “Celebrity dates are subject to availability.”)
Of historical note, “Bachelor #1” was Milt Kamen, a stand-up comic who was Sid Caesar’s TV stand-in and who allegedly invented many of the bits Caesar is famous for.
In honor of Public Enemy’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame tonight, here’s a clip from the Life Goes On TV series where “Corky” shows his more rebellious side and “fights the power.”
And, yes, I’m probably going to Hell for posting this.
California Highway Patrolmen John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd force Brian Wilson to get out of bed and on his board after issuing him a citation for failing to surf in one of the more iconic music/comedy crossovers of the 1970s. From the Lorne Michaels produced Beach Boys TV special, It’s OK.
Mike Love… he sure do look flamboyant here, don’t he?
In an almost mythical ABC After School Special from 1987 titled The Day My Kid Went Punk, a wholesome all-American family (with Love Boat‘s “Doc,” Bernie Kopell as the worried dad) has to deal with uh… tragedy when their “normal” son starts wearing black lipstick, cuts his hair into a Mohawk and generally goes for an extreme “Goth Eye for the Straight Guy” make-over…
“Nice kid. Quiet. Plays classical violin…”
“Oh, really? Well a Ziggy Ziggy Sputnik lookalike is sitting outside in the lobby for us hire him as our daycare counselor.”
“Who are you talking about? Who is Ziggy Ziggy whatsit?”
Just the above image made the viral rounds a few years back, but this is the longest clip yet of this elusive bit of cult TV to appear on YouTube. Who has the entire thing?
In this clip from 1994, Morton Downey Jr. drops his usual maniacal bluster and manages to get up close and personal with Tiny Tim. The result is a compelling and at times grim interview.
Downey’s seedy bedroom manner lures Tiny into the confessional and the cuckolded singer doesn’t tiptoe through the tulips, he dives head first into the flower bed as he grapples with failed romance and fatherhood. The whole thing is more than just mildly creepy.
Two years after this was filmed, Tiny died of a heart attack at the age of 64. I doubt that he ever came to terms with the one thing that appeared to genuinely bewilder him in life: women.
This is what cultural revolution looked like in the early 1960s: youngsters dancing in a cramped television studio, as smartly dressed men and women mime love songs.
From its opening line: “The weekend starts here!” Ready, Steady, Go! was one of the most revolutionary and influential programs on British TV.
Between 1963 and 1966, Ready, Steady, Go! brought pioneering performances by the biggest pop names to millions of homes across the country. The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Dusty Springfield, Lulu, The Animals, Cilla Black, Gerry and The Pacemakers, The Searchers, and even Peter Cook & Dudley Moore—who later parodied the show in their film Bedazzled.
The miming eventually stopped in April 1965, after the show moved to a bigger studio and artists were asked to play live—most notably now legendary sets by The Who, Jimi Hendrix, Manfred Mann and The Walker Brothers. It gave the show an immediacy and power its rivals could only dream about, but by 1966, as the beat revolution moved on, Ready, Steady, Go! was canceled.
Ready, Steady, Go! had an unprecedented influence on shaping musical taste, and youth fashion, and in 2011, The Kinks’ Ray Davies paid homage to RSG! with a recreation of the show at the Meltdown Festival.
You could say it all started with Adolf Hitler. That was who John Cleese could impersonate when he was at school. Highly wrought, apoplectic impressions of the deranged Nazi leader. It brought Cleese laughs and popularity, which all made the shy young schoolboy feel less awkward and less self-conscious about himself, and particularly his height.
Being Hitler was also a release for his anger, his frustrations, and it allowed him to develop his natural comic skills. Most importantly, it offered Cleese an alternative career to the one his family expected.
‘When I was 16, everyone told me, “John, the thing to do is to get a good qualification. You go in an accountant’s office now and by the time you’re thirty-seven, you’ll have several letters after your name, you know you’ll be able to get married…” It was that kind of feeling. Fine. It’s one type of life, but it was laid down to me as a sort of golden pathway leading up to the A.C.A.’
A sense of duty saw Cleese study Law at Cambridge University. He soon found it frighteningly dull, and after 3 years, was more proud of a 12-minute sketch he had written and performed for the Cambridge Footlights than his knowledge of libel laws or past trials.
The sketch was the start of his long and successful career as a writer and performer, firstly in Cambridge Circus, then The Frost Report, At Last the 1948 Show, to Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the brilliant Fawlty Towers. Each of these shows, in their own way, allowed Cleese to vent the anger he could never express in his public life.
‘I know something’s manic in me,’ thirty-six-year-old Cleese explained in this BBC profile. ‘Yes, there is something manic somewhere in me, and I think it’s something to do with being trapped in a shell of lower middle class reasonableness, politeness.
‘Sometimes I get very angry and I find it frightfully difficult to be angry, and I think anger in particular—people talk to me at parties, and they really do talk, talk at me. And I have fantasies of picking things up, cheese dips and…[mimes rubbing the dip in someone’s face].
‘But I’ve never had the courage to do it.’
Broadcast in February 1976, after the highly successful first season of Fawlty Towers, this profile of John Cleese includes interviews with the great man himself, his then wife and co-writer, Connie Booth, as well as performers, writers and friends such as Tim Brooke-Taylor, Antony Jay, Alan Coren and David Frost, who said of Cleese:
‘I think it was the element of benevolent-sadism in his work really, in the sense that his humor can be immensely cruel—and the nice thing is that he means it.’
No, this wasn’t Black Sabbath’s attempt to make their own Yellow Submarine, this is actually just a (pretty darned brilliant) parody from the short-lived Comedy Central series, TV Funhouse.
The band goes on vacation in Hawaii to unwind after a tour. Ozzy, naturally, is portrayed as a befuddled idiot, Bill’s drunk as hell and Geezer and Tony are stuck-up, disapproving snobs. Produced by Robert Smiegel, animated by John Schnall and written by Metalocalypse co-creator Tommy Blacha.
Some drug-damaged YouTube commenters—and no doubt Ozzy himself—seem to think they remember this from the 1970s!!!
