Random Video Links to Watch and Learn
Saturday, March 31st, 2007
Some of you may have missed this footage that appeared as a super-secret hyperlink in last week's post about Richard Lamparski. This is Jason Bateman, long before he would redeem himself with Arrested Development, alongside a fully clothed Alyssa Milano, shilling for Nintendo at the Ice Capades. Yikes!
I've started up a new web page devoted to collecting video footage of old talk shows from the four corners of the internet. My respect for Tom Green has dwindled to almost zero in the past few years as every project 
he involves himself in has become increasingly bad, but the respect has grown a great deal thanks to his fly-by-night internet talk show hosted from his Los Angeles condominium. In this series of clips we see him interview Ed McMahon - the two of them get increasingly drunk on scotch - as the goosed showbiz legend tells tales of the old Tonight Show.
Another site with a similar mandate of culling like-minded footage in one place for viewer convenience is my cartoon clip site. Currently profiling this ad for ABC's 1971 Saturday morning line-up. In the late seventies and early eighties, ABC would run a Friday night special hosted by any number of flavor of the month celebrities excitedly promoting the new fall line-up of Saturday morning cartoons. Here's a taste of one such special hosted by Weird Al Yankovic and co-hosted by (presumably) non-union teenagers dressed as Scooby and Scrappy Doo. Depending on your temperament, it's either far less annoying or way more annoying than you'd expect. What was CBS' Saturday morning line-up like in 1965? For kicks, this is, perhaps, the most famous Canadian short film ever made. Creepiness quotient: 100% Awesome Quotient: 100%. Over and out.
I found this tape at a thrift store several years ago. It appears to be have been made in 1988 by a high school student (or maybe college- do they even have "world religions" courses in high school?) for a friend of his (a possible romantic prospect?). In any event, Jimmy seems to have some decent skillz with the synthesizers and drum machines, but I'm guessing by his lyrics and vocals that he was probably Barnes & Barnes' number one fan. I wonder what Shannah's response was to these songs? And I wonder if Karen and/or Lori were previous conquests that didn't work out? I mean, what other reason would a guy set Sylvia Plath's "Mad Girl's Love Song" to music, at the request of some chick, other than for a potential hook-up? We'll probably never know for sure. It would seem, though, that Jimmy probably handed out a fair amount of these tapes, as this one is recorded over an old Outfield cassette (notice the tissue paper still crammed in the record protect holes). Classy move, Jimmy!! I mean, those keyboards couldn't have been cheap. You'd think he could afford a decent blank tape! At least he managed to scrounge a j-card from a TDK SA-X 90. I bet Shannah would rather have had the tape as-is, without Jimmy's goofy songs recorded over it!
