Celebrating the Unpopular Arts
 

The Super Seventies (and Beyond)

We talked about the history of superheroes on TV a couple of weeks ago, and got through the 1960s. Naturally we can’t leave off there, so here’s part 2, covering the ’70s and ’80s. After Batman ended, the networks moved on to other genres. There were a lot of westerns, WWII shows, sitcoms, cop shows, doctor shows, detective shows, and a handful of sci-fi shows, some of which were close enough to superheroes for me.

Gorillas I Have Loved

Tuesday was, as we all know, National Gorilla Suit Day. A brief synopsis for the latecomers: Back in the 1960s, MAD Cartoonist Don Martin told a tale in which benighted protagonist Fester Bestertester rails against a fake holiday invented by the gorilla suit manufacturers’ cabal in order to sell their product, and is hilariously punished for this affront in a myriad of ways. He named January 31 is National Gorilla Suit Day.

Batmania and the Super Sixties!

Last week I wrote about Dick Gautier, and mentioned that one of his first major roles was on Mr. Terrific, CBS’ ill-fated attempt at grabbing some of the heat generated by ABC’s Batman. That got me to thinking about the fallout from Batmania. There were a few shows, specials, and most especially cartoon series that tried to get some bat-mojo going. I thought I’d dig up some of the ones I remember.

Dick Gautier – A Remembrance

Dick Gautier, best known as Hymie the Robot on Get Smart, passed away this week at age 85, so I thought it would be appropriate to give him a proper acknowledgement. In comedy, the “straight man” doesn’t always get their due; if they do their job right, they make it look easy, and their partner gets all the laughs, but it takes great timing and delivery to set up a joke, and Gautier was good at it.

My Year in Junk

This is the time when everyone publishes their year-end review or their best of the year or whatever column. There’s always the entertainment round-up, best new this, best new that.

Truthfully I’m a bad blogger when it comes to this sort of thing, because rarely, if ever, do we ever get anything NEW. Julie and I are low-income; we live on a very tight budget and he entertainment budget is next to nothing so we are always buying discount or used. This is the Junk Shop, after all, and as it turned out 2016 was kind of a cool year for us turning up oddball bits of this and that on the cheap. These are just a few of the things I came across this last year that I thought were great fun, and not very expensive at all. Some of it’s even free.

“Baby, It’s Cold Outside” with Play-By-Play

It’s the winter holiday season, and time for the annual round of internet comedians snarking about that old song, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” There’s usually an equal contingent of self-described “anti-PC” zealots defending the song, but it seems to me that both sides rather miss the point, preferring to parse individual words and phrases without looking at the whole thing in context. So here’s some context.