From BBC2’s comedy The Trip.

Thanks Gord Fynes!

 
Is MSNBC doing the dirty work of its future owner Comcast?

Phil Anschutz,  major shareholder and content partner with Comcast, donated large sums of money to the First Amendment Alliance, one of the largest outside groups targeting Democrats in the 2010 midterm elections. The Anschutz Corporation, wholly owned by Phil Anschutz, gave $50,000 on 9/24/2010 to the First Amendment Alliance. The two candidates targeted by the First Amendment Alliance? Jack Conway and Michael Bennet. Keith Olbermann gave to Jack Conway’s campaign along with Raul Grijalva and Gabrielle Giffords.

Read about the behind-the-scenes dirty dealings at Crooks and Liars.

And more here.

 
One of the coolest fake bands in TV history. From ‘Get Smart’.

The Sacred Cows were session musicians Jerry Scheff (bass) John Greek (guitar) & Ben Benay (guitar) They played the band and recorded the music. John Greek also recorded with real band The Beautiful Daze; played guitar on The Seeds’ 45 ‘Wind Blows Your Hair’ and played on four cuts on the Uni Lollipop Shoppe LP.

Don’t just stand there being placid
Get into some psychopathic acid
I’ll take you to a place that’s purple and paisley
There’s no problem everybody is crazy
Come on get rid of your frustration
Get into our hate generation
If you are ready…...

Get Smart season 3 episode 15. Larry Storch plays the Groovy Guru.
 

 
What?

 
After Monty Python’s Flying Circus ended in 1974, the BBC wanted to find other avenues for their team of talented comedy writers and performers.  One of the first ideas, was a proposal for a Michael Palin series. Palin was keen to try something different, but was unwilling to take-on any planned project without his writing partner and fellow Python, Terry Jones. With an offer to make a pilot, the pair came up with Tomkinson’s Schooldays, a hilarious spoof on Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

Partially inspired by Palin’s own experiences at public school, the show starred Ian Ogilvy as the School Bully, Gwen Watford as Mummy, Jones as the Headmaster, the Bear and Mr Moodie, and Palin as Tomkinson and in a selection of other roles. The pilot proved a major hit, and led to a series of Ripping Yarns - each a brilliant single story episode, with an all-star supporting cast (including Denholm Elliott, Joan Sanderson, Roy Kinnear, Judy Loe), covering such derring-do tales as bank robbers (The Testing of Eric Olthwaite), POWs (Escape from Stalag Luft 112b), Agatha Christie-type whodunnit (Murder at Moorstones Manor), stiff upper lip heroes (Across the Andes by Frog), and misadventure on the high seas (The Curse of the Claw).

A second season was commissioned, but only 3 episodes were made, as budget costs and a lack of nerve from the BBC unfortunately led to Ripping Yarns cancellation. This BBC documentary, directed by Maria Stewart for the Comedy Connections series, gives a fascinating and revealing insight into the making of one of British TV’s finest comedy shows.
 

 
More on ‘Ripping Yarns’ after the jump…
 

Johnny Ramone street mural by Austin artist Fe De Rico
 
‘Mouth To Mouth’ was a short-lived MTV talk show hosted by stand-up comic Steve Skrovan. This was aired in 1988. Viva Johnny, Joey, Dee Dee and Marky.
 

 
The truth is uglier than you imagined.

Dispatches, Channel 4’s flagship current affairs strand, exposes the full and unreported horror of the Iraqi conflict and its aftermath, revealing the true scale of civilian casualties and allegations that even after the scandal of Abu Ghraib, American soldiers continued to abuse prisoners; and that US forces did not systematically intervene in the torture and murder of detainees by the Iraqi security services. The programme also features previously unreported material of insurgents being killed while trying to surrender.

 
Parts 3, 4 and 5 after the jump…

 
We totally had one of these. Always good when it threw the last few records out of the slots due to momentum once it got going. Good times.
 

 
Bonus 8 track selector after the jump…

Sammy Davis Jr leads Max Harris’ ‘Dee Time’ orchestra in an utterly-unrehearsed version of the then-new Bacharach/David number ‘This Guy’s In Love With You’. The band is sight-reading, Sammy’s winging it, and the result is magic.

‘Dee Time’, hosted by Simon Dee, was a British variety show that aired in the late 1960’s.

Watching this clip tonight revived my love for Sammy. I read ‘Yes I Can’ as a kid and Sammy, along with James Brown and Chuck Berry, was one of the Black cats who really shook up my cracker ass. I grew up in the South at a time when most my white friends hated “niggers”.  I didn’t. Whitebread American suburban life in the sixties deadened my soul. Rock and roll and rhythm and blues changed all that. Sammy Davis Jr. was accused by some of being an Uncle Tom, a sellout to the man. But, for kids like me, seeing Sammy on hipster TV like ‘Laugh In’ was the beginning of a process of breaking down age old racial barriers that reached its apotheosis with the powerful energy of Hendrix, Marvin Gaye, Huey Newton and Martin Luther King. I didn’t give a shit what anybody said, Sammy Davis was a god.

This video is sublime.

I’m seein’ Andre 3000 in a biopic of Sammy’s life. Right?
 

 
In what is beyond the shadow of a doubt UK pop crooner Paul Young’s finest moment I have somehow found the mythical and difficult to obtain Dangerous Minds toaster post. I guess this was a top 20 hit in Blighty back in ‘78. Fine topic for a tune,really. Any song wherein actual toast is used as an instrument is just fine by me. Every time you go away you take a piece of toast with you.
 

 
Thanks again, Tony Coulter !