‘Hey, Hey we’re the Grungies’: Pitch-perfect ‘Ben Stiller Show’ sketch skewers 1990s Seattle
As the son of Anne Meara and Jerry Stiller–both alums of Second City–Ben Stiller was an early inheritor of the improv tradition that today is…
Television
‘Benji Takes a Dive’: Watch America’s favorite canine become the first dog to scuba dive
Dogs have done some pretty stupid shit for our entertainment. Toto, Air Bud, Beethoven, Lassie, Spuds Mackenzie–they may have been famous film and TV canines,…
Serge Gainsbourg’s pop art science-fiction cartoon ‘Marie Mathématique’
Incroyable! Hosting the legendary French pop show Dim Dam Dom in 1965, Sandie Shaw introduces the first installment of “Marie Mathématique,” an animated short made…
Watch Bob Dylan’s seldom-seem ‘Hard Rain’ TV concert, and the better version that was shelved
When Hard Rain, Bob Dylan’s much ballyhooed NBC TV special aired on September 14, 1976, I was nine years old. I’d “discovered” Dylan earlier that…
‘I did one and I’ll never do it again’: Tom Waits’ dog food commercial
Tom Waits is in some sense the poster boy for the notion of willful independence from the clutches of corporations tempting musical artists with advertising…
Penderecki’s ‘The Devils of Loudun’ is the sleaziest, most depraved opera you’ll ever see
Obtaining the original cut of Ken Russell’s The Devils is still a royal pain in the ass. But it’s easy to see this gorgeous TV…
David Bowie talks Burroughs, Iggy and Ziggy, 1982-83
What we have for you here are two early ‘80s interviews with David Bowie for the New Zealand TV show, Radio with Pictures. Though the…
‘The Good Morty’: Pitch-perfect ‘Rick and Morty’-themed Chick tract parody
I’ve been a big Rick and Morty fan ever since the show debuted on Adult Swim in late 2013. (For the big Science March last…
That time Bill Murray interviewed William S. Burroughs on Ken Kesey’s farm
Bill Murray, Ken Kesey, and the video crew at the First Perennial Poetic Hoo-Haw, 1976 (photo by Clyde Keller) “Everybody with his fucking hand out,”…
The superstars of Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’
The Portuguese release of ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ (via Discogs) In 1993, the BBC documentary series Arena devoted four episodes to “Tales of Rock…