Here’s a nice book that may have two different fandoms scrambling to grab a copy:
Gaiman, Neil. Doctor Who: Nothing O’Clock. Borderlands Pres/Gauntlet, 2018. First edition hardback, #109 of 500 signed, numbered copies, a Fine copy in a Fine dust jacket, still in publisher’s shrinkwrap. Bought from the publishers at the usual dealer discount.
Please note that I’ll have copies of this for sale in the next Lame Excuse Books catalog (currently in preparation).
Including the KTMA intro, which I had never seen before. It’s a chance to see and hear just how the intro has changed over the years.
This news just broke via MST3K Kickstarter mailing list: They’ve been reviewed for a 12th season by Netflix!
Comedian, actor and director Jerry Lewis has died at age 91.
It’s hard to evaluate the work of someone who absolutely dominated their field for an extended period of time and then almost immediately went out of fashion. Lewis was far and away the most successful comic actor of mid-century America, appearing in an extremely successful series of movies with Dean Martin, then having a successful solo career as both a actor and director.
But after The Nutty Professor, it was a long, long slide. Between 1963 and 1980, you had Rowen & Martins Laugh-In, Lenny Bruce, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Richard Pryor, Saturday Night Live and Robin Williams, yet in Hardly Working (intended as a “comeback” film), Lewis was doing the same tried physical shtick. (Roger Ebert called it “one of the worst movies ever to achieve commercial release in this country.”) In between he directed the amazingly ill-conceived and incomplete The Day the Clown Cried, about a clown (Lewis) entertaining children on the way to the gas chamber in Auschwitz. Surviving footage suggests it is every bit as awful and cringe-worthy as you’d imagine.
In the meantime, he taught an acclaimed directing class at USC attended by (among others) George Lucas and Steven Spielberg, and was a familiar face for decades of television viewers for his Muscular Dystrophy Labor Day Telethon. And he turned in the occasional fine dramatic performance, such as in The King of Comedy.
For someone who smoked as much as he did, had as many health issues, and battled prescription drug abuse, 91 is a very rip old age indeed.
Here’s a very early footage of Lewis and Martin from what I think may be the very first MDA telethon:
Here he is making his appearance as nutty professor alter ego Buddy Love:
And here’s a long, interesting piece on Lewis I linked to once before.
Here’s a blast from the past: A young Joel Hodgson appearing on David Letterman before creating Mystery Science Theater 3000.
No wonder Letterman had him on: they both share some of the same goofy Midwestern sense of humor…
Blimp catches fire and crashes at the U.S. open.
Now let me apologize for even mentioning golf…
Adam West, star of the 1960s TV Batman and later a voice actor playing a lunatic version of himself as Mayor Adam West on Family Guy, has died at age 88.
Though far from my favorite version of the character, the TV Batman was silly fun.
Mainly this post is just an excuse to throw up a few random videos:
With the new MST3K reboot dropping today, Paste Magazine ranked every episode of MST3K on one ginormous page that reportedly crashes Chrome.
I don’t agree with all their rankings (Manos: The Hands of Fate is much too low), but they’re generally in the ballpark.
In way of remembrance, here’s Joan jett covering the theme to the Mary Tyler Moore Show (“Love is All Around”) live on Letterman.
It was either that or the entirety of the “It May look Like A Walnut” episode of the Dick Van Dyke Show…
At least up through season 20…