Shine A Light On Me

Did you bastards know there’s an official Midnight Special channel on YouTube releasing entire unedited episodes (as well as clips)? Holy shit, it’s a treasure trove!

Timestamped performances for this episode are here. I mostly just watched Sly and the Family Stone, obviously.

BONUS: Here’s another recently released episode with Mott the Hoople and The New York Dolls. Not sure who the guy is in the back playing the Thunderbird for the Dolls. Arthur Kane appears to be in a cast and is obviously miming …

Shit

My parents wouldn’t let me stay up to watch Starsky & Hutch, but I still get a thrill when I see an old Gran Torino.

I’m Not Trying to Be Elvis

I noticed this was leaving the Criterion Channel, and figured I’d watch it. I never really knew much about Orion (Jimmy Ellis) or listened to him at all, dismissing him as an Elvis impersonator. I know y’all aren’t Elvis (RIP PBUH) devotees like I am, so I don’t know if you’d find it as fascinating, but I was transfixed. Also, there is a ZINGER about 3/4 in, that they focus on for about 5 seconds, that discusses who his real father is (you can guess), and why he may sound EXACTLY like Elvis when he sings. As someone who has listened to a lot more EP than you have, I mean Exactly.
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Andy Kaufman’s Helpful Hints

Renfield and I caught the new Kaufman documentary at the Indie Memphis Film Festival yesterday, which of course sent me down the YouTube rabbit hole later. These clips are not in the movie, but a good sampling of some of the things he did to enrage the locals during his Memphis wrasslin heel stint in 1982. Hilarious.

The guy they keep cutting back to is Dave Brown, weatherman and co-host (along with Lance Russell) of the local wrestling program on our NBC affiliate.

Children of Despair

In the 50’s or 60’s, Marshall McLuhan coined the term “class transvestism” to describe the then-recent trend of leisure-class youth wearing jeans, which previously had been worn mostly by people who actually worked for a living.  I think the term also applies to some current well-heeled parents who expensively dress their children like storybook orphans or 18th C. French peasants.  It’s just not cool to look rich, but you need to be rich to look poor in a non-Walmart way.  Throw in some kids who are very good at looking grim, and you’ve got something that looks straight out of the rollicking Werner Herzog.

There are more videos about clothes.  They’re all hilarious.

But wait!  There are toys too.

Bad Idea

I don’t want to say how this came up in a conversation recently, but it did, and it still makes me laugh.