Was watching a little bit of TV this weekend and came across Rocky 3. This is one of those movies that you can watch over and over again because it moves at a fast (and unrealistic) pace. People love Mr. T, the "Eye Of The Tiger" song, and the famous semi-homosexual run on the beach between Rocky and Apollo Creed. My favorite part though is this. I'm not sure who got the Oscar for best actor in 1982 but Sylvester Stallone deserves some mention after this scene.
Two quick notes:
1.) I highly recommend taking your finger and switching between Rocky's open eye and the eye swollen shut. It shows you the scene in two very different ways.
2.) If anybody can tell me what Rocky is saying between the :16 and :21 second mark and also between the :34 second mark until the end, I'm impressed. It sounds like he's saying "we have more to do" but his sobbing and screams get in the way.
Friendly's Ice Cream and Baskin Robbins may be the two big name ice cream places growing up in the 80's but to me, there's an ice cream place that I hold near and dear to my heart...Carvel.
Although Friendly's has interestingly named sundaes like the "Jim Dandy" and "Reese's Peanut Butter Cup", and Baskin Robbins has a gazillion flavors along with the iconic Cappochino Blast, Carvel was just your simple ice cream place. Mainly based in New York, it was a family owned company and it was THE place to go to get a Fudgie The Whale, Cookie Puss, or Tom Turkey cake. My favorite were the flying saucers.
Sadly, there are not too many Carvels around anymore but their commercials live on here...
After looking at the above, the eyes and nose of Cookie Puss looks like a set of testicles and a flaccid penis. I love the grandfatherly voice at the end. He died a few years ago at the age of 90 I think.
Lastly, here's a the classic Carvel jingle that will stay in your head the rest of today...trust me. This is actually a very sexy ice cream commercial if you admire the steam and sweatyness of the desserts here.
Watch closely at the end of this clip. Looks like someone cranked up the volume in John Clayton's earpiece a tad too loud. I made the exact same reaction when I heard country music for the first time.
I was flipping around on TV earlier this week and came across the movie "American Beauty". I'm not going to rehash the plot or go into how deep the movie is and the great acting performances. I just have one question...
Thora Birch's character (Kevin Spacey's daughter in the movie) complains about how she's saving for breast implants. Did you SEE how big they already were in movie? She even gets nude in the movie and shows them off! This is almost the entire basis of her and Wes Bentley's relationship (her boyfriend in the movie).
I've lost all respect for her character now and the movie is taken down a step. I'm kicking myself for not noticing this the other times I've seen this movie.
I used to love boxing. There were many great names and fighters in the late 80's and 90's. Mike Tyson, Evander Holyfield, Razor Ruddock, Riddick Bowe....heck I liked old George Foreman, Tommy "Rocky V" Morrison, and "Smokin'" Bert Cooper.
Although boxing today isn't as exciting as it used to be (at least in the heavy weight division), one constant has remained and his name is Larry Merchant.
Larry Merchant has been announcing boxing fights as long as I can remember. Jim Lampley, an announcer I can't stand, and he have been doing most of the top fights for the last 20 years or so. As much as I purely hate Jim Lampley, I have the ability to hate Larry Merchant even more but unlike Lampley, I have come to love Larry Merchant as well. Confused?
Larry Merchant can sound like he just found out his entire family was killed earlier in the day. He has no personality, rarely smiles, and just has this depressing auro around him.
Below are some of my favorite Larry Merchant moments.
1.) This gets interesting around the one minute mark and watch Floyd's face as Larry is asking the question. He basically dresses him down for the next minute. Beautiful...
2.) This is even better...don't ever interupt a Larry Merchant post fight interview. I love the boxer's face though. He should be on his way to a hospital rather than answering mundane questions.
On a side note, this is my favorite dressing down of a reporter ever. Its James Toney slamming Jim Grey, the biggest weasel of all reporters. The longest, most random rant ever starts at :25 seconds in and ends with Jim Gray almost getting bitch slapped at the 1:51 mark. Jim is a pro though and calmly walks over to Evander Holyfield and leads with a typical negative question.
When getting ready for work I'll flip between CNBC and VH1 Classic. The other morning I saw a video for a song I love that I didn't know a video even existed for. That song is the classic "The Rain" by an even more classic named artist Oran "The Juice" Jones.
The song is in two parts. The first part is the a nice high falsetto voice of a guy stating that he saw his woman (and "him") walking in the rain and stated that things will now never be same. I love high falsetto singing voices by the way (see the Bee Gees, Frankie Valli, and "Please Don't Go Girl" by the New Kids On The Block.)
The second part of the song is a rap where the guy completely rips the girl apart. Some of things he says are things I'll still use today...but never to my wife.
"I gave you things you couldn't even pronounce." "You without me is like corn flakes without the milk!" "This is my world, you're just a squirel trying to get a nut!"
Seeing this video for the first time is almost like the first time I stumbled across a very scrambled channel 26 on my parent's cable system back in the early 90's....pure bliss.
Super quick from last Friday...I'm still going to update the site on a regular basis...just not daily like I tried to in the past. Expect 2-3 posts per week and I might add more to that but just quick posts of funny things I tend to find on the web. Also, you now have a whole net set of songs to listen to. Moving along...
With Joaquin Phoenix oddly announcing his retirement from acting last week to pursue a movie career, it made me think of one his first roles when he was known as "Leaf" Phoenix. This movie had it all...tense action, a love story, some humor, and a very annoying robot. That movie is Space Camp.
There actually was a bit of a space camp fad in the mid 80's. You could apply to go to what I'm assuming was Cape Canaveral in Florida and take part in a camp for kids to simulate going up into space. It lasted two weeks and it promised an experience of a lifetime. I thought about doing it but then realized that being away from home for two weeks would make me sad. Lucky for me, they made a movie right around the same time and believe me, it made me so glad I never went.
Space Camp was pretty much about a bunch of kids who accidentally got sent into space thanks to the above mentioned robot's love for Joaquin Phoenix's character who really wanted to go into space. The robot was savvy enough to actually send a real shutting into space but didn't realize that none of the snotty brat teenagers had any real experience. Space Camp actually taught me a lot about space travel.
1.) There's a limited amount of air on a space ship and you could die if you run out of air. Again, I was 9 when this came out and didn't comprehend things like this.
2.) You could be burned to a crisp during re-entry to the Earth's atmosphere.
3.) Driving a space shuttle is very much like a video game....a fun one at that.
The cast in this movie is quite spectacular. It runs the gambit of the wide range of actors...take a look.
1.) Joaquin Phoenix - he'd go onto classics like Gladiator and semi classics like We Own The Night.
2.) Kate Capshaw - she was in Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom and later married Steven Spielberg. She actually looks pretty hot here.
3.) Lea Thompson - another hot chick, she was in the Back To Future movies and a movie I never understood called "Casual Sex?".
4.) Kelly Preston - another hottie, she was best known in Twins but has shown on late night Cinemax movies from time to time. Has settled down and is now married to John Travolta.
5.) Larry B. Scott - the name might not ring a bell but he's been in two iconic movies. He was the black gay guy in Revenge of the Nerds and also was a member of the Cobra Kai in the Karate Kid. Throw this movie into his resume, and he's looking pretty good.
6.) Tom Skerrit - One of my favorite actors, you can find him in the first Alien, the Christopher Walken classic "The Dead Zone", and in the underrated movie "Contact". He scored major squeamish points for making out with a barely legal Drew Barrymore in the first Poison Ivy movie.
Here's a clip of the movie. Its the scene where they accidentally get blasted into space.
Mind you, I would be COMPLETELY FREAKING OUT if I was sent into space and not laughing while floating around aimlessly. Then again being trapped in close quarters with Lea Thompson and Kelly Preston wouldn't be that bad...
When I was a little kid, I would visit my Dad at work and in his office building was a soda machine full of Crush brand soda. My two favorite flavors were grape and orange. Back then a can of soda cost 40 cents (I'm getting old).
I don't know if they make Crush soda anymore. When people think of Orange soda, they usually think of Sunkist and when people think of Grape soda, they think of Welches. Orange Crush soda, this is my ode to you although the REM song by the same name is pretty good too.
Below is an old commercial for Diet Crush soda. I like how they assume that drinking diet soda will cause you to lose a lot of weight or at least have a model type figure.
Four things I like here.
1.) All soda commercials seem to feature soda cans that are really really sweaty.
2.) At 19 seconds, the special effect to make the can of soda burst through the bowl of oranges. I'd like to see how many times they had to shoot that to get it just right.
3.) The lady taking off her shirt at the 25 second mark is nipping out. I wonder if this was shot on a cold day.
4.) How many takes did that lady throwing the soda can take? She waits until the last second to throw it, does it super quick, and the guy has lean back and reach completely back to snag it. I'm impressed here.
Today we now have a new leader of the free world and in honor of saying goodbye to the Republican party being in control, I thought of this song.
I love Journey...actually that's not exactly true. I like Journey, but I LOVE Steve Perry. Journey can tour all they want these days but its not "my" Journey until Steve Perry plays with them again. So for now, I have to live in the past and there's nothing better than this song from 1983. the original video has it all...from the band miming the playing of their instruments as well as dramatic poses from Mr. Perry and the band themselves.
Sadly You Tube does not allow me to post the original version of Separate Ways on a website.
For what its worth the link to the video is http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxxOyGK1pMk but the live version is almost just as good...
There's not much to comment on as the song itself tells the story. These guys could play their balls off and I challenge anybody to try and recreate this song live and make it sounds just as good as the original. Still, there are some random things here to mention.
:14 - I love the walking backwards strut Steve Perry pulls off here.
:23 - The fact that yellow jumpsuits with black tee shirts were ever in style is amazing.
:50-:53 - nothing makes me laugh more than hand gestures by singers. A great fist clench here.
1:32 - Another band member sporting the yellow and black look. Check out that bass too without the frets at the top.
Tomorrow is the big day and the new leader of the free world will either be John McCain or Barrack Obama. Since this a pop culture blog, I'm not going to get into political issues at all. I will post a couple political items I've seen lately that I think are hilarious.
First is Barrack POSSIBLY giving McCain the finger at a rally.
I personally don't think he is but try it yourself and see how weird it feels to scratch your face with your middle finger.
Anyway, below is I think one of the wittiest things I've ever seen. Somebody took Bush's State of The Union Address from 2004 and turned it into something different...listen closely and you'll be rewarded by watching the whole thing.
Hungieman was conceived and born on Long Island, NY. I love all things pop culture but despise senior citizen drivers and Tiger Woods' goatee. I hope to update this enough to have you come back from time to time.
