Swine Flu Scare of the 70's

Here are a few swine flu vaccine PSA's from the scare in 1976, because no matter how fast you are you can't stop the swine flu. You don't want your chihuahua infected, do you?

1976 Swine Flu PSA:

God vs. The Madden Curse

The cover athlete for the next Madden video game was revealed yesterday by EA Sports - Troy Polamalu AND Larry Fitzgerald. Setting aside the game mechanics and strictly the history of Madden cover athletes, Madden '10 is the first Madden game after the retirement of John Madden himself, the first cover with 2 cover athletes, the first cover featuring a wide receiver or a defensive back, the second cover featuring a defensive player (05' with Ray Lewis), the second cover featuring a player (Fitzgerald on NCAA 05) who has appeared on both NCAA Football and Madden (Shaun Alexander NCAA 01/Madden 07), and the cover with the most hair featured EVER.

Every year this whole Madden Curse discussion is brought up. If you're not familiar with it, since 1999 athletes instead of John have been featured on the cover and that season tends not to bode well for the athlete. ESPN just released a good Fact or Fiction article about the curse.

If you've seen either Polamalu or Fitzgerald on the field or in an interview, you've probably noticed their tenacity on the field is contrasted with their quiet and humble demeanor. It's rare these days to see such an attitude in the professional sports, especially an NFL defenseman or wide receiver. When asked yesterday about being a Madden cover boy, Fitzgerald commented that he and Troy are both 'firm believers in The Lord' and that 'The Lord controls your destiny.' It's great to see someone make an exclamation of faith in the face of superstition. You can check out that interview below:

ESPN-Fitzgerald's Not Afraid of the Madden Curse:

Spinal Tap: Unwigged and Unplugged?!

I'm really bummed out I just found out about this, because this tour just passed through Seattle on Monday. Unwigged and Unplugged features Christopher Guest, Michael McKean, and Harry Shearer performing acoustical sets as well as Q & A sessions. I didn't like A Mighty Wind a whole lot, but there's no denying this trio is quite funny and musically talented. No Marty DiBergi here, but it looks like a great tour.

A Preview of Unwigged and Unplugged:


View the Spinal Tap Reunion from 1992

Stonehenge!



Big Bottom

Preacher Transforms into a Fighter Jet

If you haven't seen this yet, Dr. Shine morphs into an F-14 Tomcat from Top Gun. I bet he's one righteous brother. Wonder if he's prayin' with the boys. You could say God's love takes his breath away.He's got the need, the need for Seed Faith International Church. I can come up with these all day.

Dr. Shine and Dee Dee: God's Top Gun of Deliverance

2 Loser Teams Take Different Directions on Their Image

The big news this weekend was the 1-10 Washington Nationals displaying a major uniform fail with the unveiling of the 'Natinals' jersey. Whoever made this goof-up may have just as well printed 'Expos'. Maybe in 30 years these can be throwback jerseys for a 'turn back the clock' game.


In other news today, last year's record breaking 0-16 Detroit Lions unveiled their new logo - a fiercer lion. They're trying to follow the trend of past teams in recent history such as the Cardinals, Falcons, Seahawks, and Bucs to try to improve their image and record. We'll see who the Motor City drafts this weekend, maybe they should look at one's ability to break dishes.

Michael Bay Feeds Us Some Transformers 2 Footage

Michael Bay posted online footage from Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen that was shown at ShoWest this year, a motion picture industry convention where production companies advertise their films to theater owners. We get to see some fighting in the woods, more dialog that's embarrassing to listen to, and more robots. The most notable is the first footage of Devastator as well as Jetfire.

UPDATE 4/20/09: Bay had the video pulled, but I'm sure you can find it somewhere. He said to wait till Wolverine and Star Trek for more footage

Here's the footage in all explosive glory:



Jetfire, also known as Skyfire, has had a huge image overhaul for this film. He's made the transformation from a white Macross-like being to a senior citizen with a cane and metallic beard that transforms to an SR-71 Blackbird.

Compare the two looks:

80's Jetfire:
















'09 Jetfire:



80's commercial for the Jetfire toy:


Jetfire from the cartoon:

Great Moments in Film: Glengarry Glen Ross

The 1992 film adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award winning play about desperate real estate agents fighting for their jobs features one of the most powerful motivational speeches on celluloid. The all-star performance garnered an Best Supporting Actor nomination for Al Pacino and a Venice Film Festival Best Actor for the late Jack Lemmon.

Alec Baldwin provides electric rhetoric during this scene in what I believe is his best performance: Warning! Strong & Explicit Language


For you fans of 'It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia,' here's a video of Artemis performing an excerpt of this speech for an audition. Hilarious!

Boom! Happy Trails John Madden!

After a Super Bowl ring, 20 years worth of video games, and 30 years of booth commentating, Pro Football Hall of Famer John Madden announced today that he's calling it quits and putting down the headset from the press box. Gone is the overuse of the telestrator, trailer/bus, fear of flying, turducken, onomatopoeia, and ramblings about non-football related material during boring games. Although Madden's comments were often questionable and obvious, you never questioned that he knew football. He was always entertaining to listen to, I'm definitely going to miss him. He'll be replaced by Cris Collinsworth, who's emerged as a presence in NFL media and replaced Madden's voice in the video game. Madden said today that he "was one that always believed you never say you're going to retire before you do, because once you say it, then you've already done it in your mind and you've already quit." I think it's ironic he's retiring after his 'idol' Brett Favre finally retired. He should have said this earlier, maybe the Jets would have prepared for the aftermath a little earlier. I think Frank Caliendo's going to have to find a new schtick as Madden is his main moneymaker. Here's to hoping for more tough actin' Tinactin commercials.

ESPN-Madden talks on his retirement:


Boom! Tough Actin' Tinactin:


Madden on Madden 09:



MadTV-Frank Caliendo as John Madden for Vagisil:

The Tax Day Cometh...

Happy Tax Day! You can smell the sarcasm emanating off of that statement. Hope you haven't waited till the 11th hour. I'm glad school financial aid submissions were due awhile ago so that it forces me to do my taxes early. Here's some April 15th goodness....

Taxman from The Beatles cartoon circa 1967:


Tax Day for Springfield. I'm sure it's still like this, but technology makes it a lot easier these days. Wish they had the part where Flanders does his taxes:

Everyone Poops: The Movie Trailer

With the buzz for Where the Wild Things Are coming to theaters later this year, a new book adaptation has arisen - Taro Gomi's 'Everyone Poops'. The timeless classic about one of the essential parts of life is now coming to a theater near you. How will they turn a such a short piece of literature into a feature film? In all seriousness if they ever made this movie, it would be the end of that production company.


I remember this book as a kid, but my parents taught me with Alona Frankel's 'Once Upon a Potty.' I remember the book even came with my very own thrown. Here's a video adaptation of the book:


Parents.com has listed its 14 Favorite Potty Training Books

Last but not least, if you haven't seen this potty training video from Japan, it's a classic:

What Might Have Been Where the Wild Things Are

The trailer for Spike Jonze's live adaptation of the children's book Where the Wild Things Are recently was released. I stumbled upon a bit of info about Disney's attempt at adapting this film into an animated feature in the 80's. At this time, Tron had recently been made and the use of computer graphics were being toyed around with to create a complete animated feature film. The characters were going to be 2D traditionally hand drawn with the backgrounds being rendered in 3D. John Lasseter directed this test shot below. I'm not sure if Disney was actually going to make this into a film, but I know Lasseter wanted this demo to be a means to an ends to create The Brave Little Toaster to look like this. Disney animators apparently didn't like it, Lasseter got fired, and The Brave Little Toaster ended up completely 2D. It's crazy that all this was part of the history that led Lasseter to create Pixar.

Here's the Disney test shot, the Max character looks like one of the Lost Boys from Peter Pan:


If you forgot the story, here's a reading w/ animations of the books pictures:


Here's the trailer for Jonze's film, not sure how a 20 page book turns into a feature film:

Would This Convince You to Eat Bananas?

What a bizarre Dole commercial from Japan:

Dreamt of Playing Spider-Man on Broadway? Seattle, Here's Your Chance!

So apparently someone's come up with crazy idea of turning the story of Spider-Man into a full blown Broadway musical. Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark will be directed by Julie Taymor (Frida, Across the Universe, The Lion King on Broadway) while U2's Bono and The Edge will be responsible for the music and lyrics. I know nothing about theater, but this sounds ridiculous to me and I'm sure it'll make a ridiculously huge load of money. Anyways the show just released its schedule for open casting calls for both primary and understudy roles for Peter Parker, Mary Jane, and a 'Lead Female Villain.' Seattle's on the list for April 20th from 10 AM-6PM at the Theatre Puget Sound.

Here's what they're looking for:

PETER PARKER – Male. 16-20’s. Must have a great rock tenor voice. Can be nerdy with understated sex appeal and a good sense of humor.

MARY JANE – Female. 16-20’s. Beautiful girl next door. Strong pop/rock singing voice required.

LEAD FEMALE VILLAIN – Female. 25‐35 years old. All ethnicities encouraged. Must have an amazing rock voice. Think Sinead O’Connor with a Middle Eastern /Bulgarian/Greek twist. Foreign and/or world music types are great. Foreign accents are great.

The show's to open in Broadway in February 2010.

They tried this at Universal Studios once....