Barney Miller premiered fifty years ago today, January 23rd, 1975. This is definitely high up on my list of most favorite television series ever.
Here's one of my favorite episode, "Hash". This is the one when most of the detectives get stoned from eating cannabis-laced brownies...
Happy fiftieth Captain Miller and the staff of the 12th Precinct!
I spotted this clip yesterday and it is definitely one of the better pro-candidate videos that I've ever come across. This is the kind of thing that the more creative types of candidates' supporters should aspire toward. For a lot of reasons I really like this one.
Behold "The Dukes of MAGA":
So, about who I'm supporting in this election. Something I've very rarely tipped my hand about throughout the history of this blog...
As many readers know, I have a rule. It's one that I initiated after my own run for public office years ago, and the TV ads I made for that campaign. Here it is: I do not vote for a candidate if he or she runs a negative campaign commercial targeting an opponent. I made three commercials and each of them was positive, upbeat, humorous at times and serious when need be. There was another candidate in that race who went negative and I did NOT want to be like that. I went full-throttle the opposite direction. And I discovered something: when you're positive, you find creativity that you never knew existed. If I'm going to vote for someone, that person has to demonstrate that not only is he or she not in the race for the power, but also that he or she has vision and imagination.
That being said, at the moment I plan to be casting my vote, for the very first time, for Donald Trump.
If Trump runs a negative television commercial, he's lost my vote. So far though, he hasn't done that.
For now I intend to vote for Trump, and his running mate J.D. Vance. In my sincerely held belief, Trump was the most effective and proactive president that the United States has had since Ronald Reagan. His first term was an astounding success and I believe his second will be even better. He made some mistakes, especially with the people he chose to be on his staff and appointments. I like to believe that Trump has learned better. You won't find me wearing a red "MAGA" hat, but my heart is definitely inclined toward that direction. "Make America Great Again": what is wrong with that? Trump in 2017 began doing just that and I believe he stands to be an even better statesman in 2025.
As for the opposition: Joe Biden has been the worst president in any living memory. For all intents and purposes there has been no competent leadership in the White House for the past three and a half years. Kamala Harris however would be even WORSE.
In case anyone's curious, I'm independent. Have been for a very long time now. I don't fit in the political parties' scheme of things. That kind of thing never really had any appeal for me. It means that I'm an outsider more often than not but I get to live with my conscience that much more. I'm unaffiliated with any party. And right now, even if I don't vote for Donald Trump, he certainly has my support.
Who knows. Maybe I'll end up making a pro-Trump video too.
Right when the world needs laughter the most, Weird Al comes through for us.
The last time that "Weird Al" Yankovic released a new song, other than "The Hamilton Polka" or the end credits tune from his movie, was ten years ago this week when his Mandatory Fun album dropped. That was the final album he was contracted to produce and he said at the time that he'd probably release singles via digital platforms from now on. But that hasn't happened yet...
Until today.
This morning Yankovic unleashed "Polkamania" upon the world. It's one of his polka medleys of other artists' songs. It shows how out of the loop I am though in that I can't recognize any of these tunes that Al incorporated. And I was kind of hoping his new song would be something like a straight-up parody or a style parody... but maybe it's true, that modern music has become too homogenized to be able to readily pick out any outstanding work. And so far as style parodies go, well... is there any unique style that Al hasn't done? I think the guy has spoofed every form of western music except for contemporary Christian, and the guy is too respectful than to do that.
But even so, it's a new song by my all time favorite recording artist. Just at a time when we all could use something to make us laugh and smile. For a few brief minutes, all is right with the world.
Well, anyhoo, here is "Polkamania", which despite my unfamiliarity with its components is really a quite catchy song!
The man was and forever will be a legend!
The guy just shined in everything that he did. He was always a class act. Modern comics could learn a lot from Bob Newhart's style and demeanor.
Well, as noted, a lot could be said about Newhart's life. And there is so MUCH of his body of work to draw from in his memory. So I'll close out this post with a great lil' sketch from several years back. One that has become a classic among those of us who have been involved in the field of mental healthcare.
"STOP IT!!!"
Earlier today I was going through a bunch of photos and came upon one showing me with "Weird Al" Yankovic: arguably the most successful recording artist in the history of pop culture. I say that because not only has Al earned multiple gold albums and several Grammy awards for his work, he has also been part of many other endeavors throughout a career now going back more than forty years. And awhile back he said that he might still give us a song parody or two every year from now on (but I'm hoping he produces at least one more full album :-)
I could have met Weird Al in October of 1996. My best friends in college were driving four hours each way between Elon College and Asheville to see a concert on the Bad Hair Tour. Ed and Gary tried their best to get me to come with them. But I stupidly stayed home because it was going to be very late when they came back from the concert and I just HAD to be up early the next day for history class. That following morning I went by their dorm room. And they told me that they had met Weird Al! Ed's dad had called up a radio station doing promos for the concert and told them the hard-luck story about how his son was driving so far to see the show. The station guys asked Ed's father how many backstage passes did he want. And that's how they got to meet Al after the show.
I literally kicked myself in the @$$. I've been a fan of "Weird Al" Yankovic since 1984, when I was nine years old. And because of my pride I had missed the opportunity of meeting my musical hero.
I made a vow that someday I would make up for that, and meet Al in person.
Five years later, a week and a half before 9/11, I got to interview Weird Al via e-mail for TheForce.net. That's how I already had his address. In 2003 Al and the band were on the Touring With Scissors tour. There was a performance scheduled for Charlotte, two and a half hours away. I wrote to Al and told him about how I missed meeting him seven years earlier, and I humbly asked if there was a way I could make good on the promise I'd made to myself.
He wrote back a few hours later and asked how many passes did I need for after the show.
And that led to the very first time that I got to meet "Weird Al" Yankovic. But it would not be the last! So far I have gotten to meet he and his band five times. I think it could be easily said that I've fulfilled my vow :-)
So I went looking for pics from the other times Al and I have met. Unfortunately the photo of that first time is somewhere on another hard drive that I don't have convenient access to. But I've got photo of the four other occasions. I thought that it might be fun to put them together on one post.
This first pic is from 2010 when Al was in Knoxville,Tennessee. And Al remembered me from seven years earlier! Here we are together, with me wearing the shirt from our local theatre guild's production of The King and I.
The third time we met, it was 2011 in Charlotte during the Alpocalypse Tour Here's Al and I and my girlfriend at the time:
A year after that Al and his troupe were in Raleigh, North Carolina. Here is Al and my lifelong best friend Chad (the guy who introduced me to Al's music when we were in fourth grade) and me. It has meant so much that Chad and I got our pic together with our favorite musical artist :-)
And finally, here's a pic from 2013, also in Raleigh. Al had come to a bookstore there to promote his children's book. Quite a few people came out to see him and have him sign their copies. I had something for Weird Al to sign also: the vinyl Yoda puppet that I'd had since 1981. Al always finishes his concerts with "Yoda", his parody of "Lola" by The Kinks, so I thought this would be a pretty neat thing to get his John Handcock on. Al's eyes lit up when he saw the puppet! He had one of these in his first special on MTV. He was more than happy to sign it and he even put it on his hand to see if it would still fit (it did indeed):
Unfortunately I missed meeting him during the tour stemming from his Mandatory Fun album. But Ed and me have seen Al perform twice since that last photo: during the Strings Attached Tour (which Al performed while backed up by a full orchestra) and then the second vanity tour in 2022.
You'll have to ask Ed how many times he's seen Weird Al in concert. It's gotta be close to ten.
Who knows, maybe someday I'll get to meet Al again. He has always been a super nice guy. There needs to be more people like him in this world.
EDIT 5/17/2024: I finally found the very first pic of Al and me together! From August 2003:
I'm wearing a "What Would Al Do?" shirt that I made myself. He thought it was pretty funny :-)
It was on this date in 1974 that filmmaker Mel Brooks released his western spoof upon an unsuspecting world. And comedy was never the same again...
It's probably the number-one movie that has been said "it could never be made today." Which makes it all the more special. Blazing Saddles is unadulterated political incorrectness as only Brooks and his crew could have made it.
How much does this movie mean to me? I have owned a copy of it on every home media format going back to VHS. It was the very first DVD that I bought. Later on I bought it on Blu-ray and today I keep it loaded on my iPad Pro (along with the complete Star Wars saga, The Thing, and Airplane! among others).
There are two movies that I distinctly remember from early childhood and each of them was run on CBS (the network our family's television was almost always tuned to) every year: The Wizard of Oz and Blazing Saddles. Try finding a broadcast network that would show it today though! Even HBO Max is now carrying a "trigger warning" when you watch Blazing Saddles on it.
Well, so much that could be said about this film. I think I'll celebrate today by watching it again for the hunnerd zillionth time.
Last night Tammy, my miniature dachshund, got on the sofa. And she brought along one of her Christmas toys: a plush dachshund toy, which came courtesy of my cousin Lauryn and her husband.
So she got up under her blanket, on my lap, and I noticed that she and her toy each had their tale protruding out:
Which one is Tammy?? In real life it really does look like there are two dogs in my lap.
It doesn't help resolve matters that the toy is almost precisely the same size as Tammy. She could make serious trouble if she wants to :-D
The other week my very good friend Eric Smith (yes, the same one who also made a campaign commercial during that VERY wacky school board race years ago) approached me with a project. Could I help him pull off an April Fools stunt this year? I said absolutely, that it would be an honor and a pleasure to work with him.
Along with being an expert welder, Eric is also a professional Santa Claus (the reason his beard is so big and bushy). And he's a certified beer expert (no really, you can get certifications for that) who regularly posts videos on YouTube as "Beer Santa". So he came up with the idea for Duke's Mayonnaise Beer.
Here's the video he published two days ago. Looks and sounds pretty convincing aye? :-)
Maybe next year I'll come up with another prank. It's been too long since I've pulled off something. I think my favorite was when I got everyone thinking that I was joining the Amish and turned this site into "Plain Blog by Brother Christopher Knight". And then there was that other year's prank that got the Vatican's attention... but we won't go there.
So on your way home this evening, stop by your local grocer and pick up some all-natural Duke's Mayonnaise Beer. Made by Sloof Brewing in Piedmont, Georgia.
When I first heard of Weird: The Al Yankovic Story what came to mind most was "Daniel Radcliffe?!?" But he did not phone it in at all. Radcliffe plays Weird Al with energy and conviction and of course beaucoups of hilarity. The rest of the casting is spot-on perfect too, especially Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento and Evan Rachel Wood portraying Madonna.
(Look for Yankovic himself playing one of the Scotti Brothers, and just wait'll you dig that crazy pool party scene.)
I had wondered what exactly would happen with a Weird Al biopic. Would it be a fairly serious take on Al and his illustrious career, or would it be a straight up mockery of the genre. It is indeed a parody of that class of motion picture, albeit with enough sprinkling of facts and trivia to leave one bewildered as to where real life blurs into fiction. Case in point: Al's mom really did buy accordion lessons for her young son. And his father actually was named Nick (but fortunately that is all that Al's dad has in common with his on-screen incarnation).
Well, best not say too much about this. It's better if you go in cold, just like you would with any work of "Weird Al" Yankovic. And you can do so for free! Just click on over to the Roku Channel.
And I've seen the movie in its entirety twice now. But I've watched the scene where Dr. Demento sends Al on an LSD trip about two dozen times:
It's the latest film The Batman movie but with Adam West! Check out the Batmobile!
Not too much to report this evening. It was a fairly busy day on the job. Peer support certainly does not lack for drama!
I didn't know what to post tonight until I read some sad news. Bill Fries passed away a few days ago at the age of 94. He was an ad executive who started acting in his own commercials as the character he created, C.W. McCall. Then he decided to have his fictional character become a singer and he sang about life as a trucker.
So he was an executive pretending to be an actor who was pretending to be a singer who was pretending to be a trucker. That's a lot of mileage out of one character!
In memory of Bill Fries aka C.W. McCall, and in honor of all the one-hit wonders of the Seventies, here is "Convoy":
So, Duke fell to North Carolina last night. I now have no one to cheer for in this tournament. Kansas always seemed too overhyped to me, and they beat Villanova yesterday. Or maybe I'll root for UNC tomorrow night just because they're still from my neck of the woods.
Mike Krzyzewski made a mistake in announcing his retirement well before the season. He should have waited until after the tournament. Instead he made this entire season about himself and his ego. When it should have been about the players and the program in general. He fell victim to hubris, and I really thought more of him.
Even so, let's never forget that he contributed a lot to the game. Mock him all one wants, but the man deserves respect.
Okay, that's everything substantive I have to say today. Currently I'm enduring hay fever and all kinds of exotic antihistamines are floating around inside my biochemistry, working hard to keep the mast cells from unloading their allergy-induced contents. So I'm feeling pretty hopped-up at the moment.
So since it's Sunday, and I haven't posted a Sesame Street sketch in a WAY long time, here is a timeless classic: Bert and Ernie in "Water Dripping"...
Day 27 of writing a blog post each day during Lent! It's now well past the halfway mark. It's also significant because 27 is my lucky number. I appropriated it from "Weird Al" Yankovic but strangely enough 27 has shown up a LOT in my life.
Today, I did nothing. Couldn't get to work 'cuz the dog and I were both under the weather (I had no idea fried chicken could carry cholera, or that's what it felt like). So I don't have much to offer but since we've mentioned Weird Al, here's one of his greatest ever music videos: "Amish Paradise"!
Speaking of "Weird Al" Yankovic, next month he kicks off his "The Unfortunate Return of the Ridiculous Self-Indulgent Ill-Advised Vanity Tour". And best friend Ed has secured us some tickets. This tour will be like the previous vanity tour: no straight-up song parodies, mostly the lesser-known songs from Al's mammoth repertoire. So there won't be "Amish Paradise" but there may be "Craigslist" and "Biggest Ball of Twine in Minnesota". Want to see Al perform? Mash down here!
Two and a half days later and Rush Limbaugh's absence from the airwaves continues to haunt. I tried calculating how many hours I listened to him over the years, and couldn't do it. From summer of 1992 until I started college at Elon three years, I was listening to him at least nine hours a week. In the past few years I sort-of rediscovered him and listened as much as possible. There was none like him before, nobody compared when he was with us, and it is doubtful that anyone will ever really succeed him.
It wasn't just his brilliant commentary, it was also the hysterically funny comedy that was a huge part of Limbaugh's show. Especially the song parodies. Most of them came courtesy of a chap named Paul Shanklin. There were a few others also. I remember one guy who was in the Bay Area. Another was from Massachusetts.
So in Rush's memory I thought it would be appropriate to share some of the song parodies and other material that he played on his show.
I forget who made this one. It might have been Shanklin. "The Philanderer", a spoof of "The Wanderer":
"In A Yugo", parody of Elvis Presley's "In The Ghetto":
This next one is a clip from "Weird Al" Yankovic's movie UHF, Rush played it on his show every so often. The commercial for Spatula City:
One of my personal favorites: "They're Coming To Take Ross Away", a parody of "They're Coming To Take Me Away" by Napoleon XIV. And I liked Ross Perot!
The Barnacle Brothers 60-Second Sale spot:
And finally (but far from the only remaining parody that Rush did on his show), "Al Gore Paradise", a send-up of Coolio's "Gangsta Paradise":
If I spot any more I'll post 'em here! :-D
...make it this one. This is GENIUS. Wish I'd have thought of it :-D
Awright, we could all use some laughter right now, no matter who you are. And in the past few days I've come across some really good videos worth sharing.
First there's this parody of "Sweet Child O' Mine", performed by Guns N Helmets featuring Axl Rose Grogu aka "Baby Yoda":
And then there is this fine piece of work: heavy metal guitar accompanying televangelist Kenneth Copeland (who has always been pretty creepy to me):
