Rocking out at the Police Academy

The much-maligned 1984 comedy "Police Academy" was successful enough to spawn 5 theatrical sequels, a straight-to-cable sixth sequel ("Mission to Moscow"), two animated TV series and a re-boot that's been trapped in "development hell" for a decade.  One bright spot in the first film is the ridiculous closing riot sequence.  It's not as cartoonish as "The Blues Brothers," but it is a nice slice of early '80s visuals -- before neon and synthesizers took over.
To that end, the riot scenes actually have a dramatic-action-style soundtrack by Robert Folk.  No official soundtrack album seems to have been released until 2013.  A few samples (posted on YouTube) are below from the limited edition La-La Land Records release.

File 1
File 2
File 3

Fun Fact: "Police Academy 4" (featuring a young David Spade) ends with an otherwise unavailable Brian Wilson song, "Let's Go to Heaven In My Car."

Family Guy in Italian

Not really -- it's just Peter being an idiot.  This is so silly, it shouldn't be funny.  But it is.  Safe for kids!


#SNL4kidz

Norm MacDonald versus Charles Kuralt

Norm MacDonald was a writer/featured player on SNL before manning the Weekend Update desk.  His firing, and subsequent marginalizing by Hollywood, is insane.  He is one of the funniest men on the planet, as evidenced by this take on Charles Kuralt's retirement (1994).  Subsequent revelations about Kuralt's personal life only make this funnier.  As a newsman and storyteller, Kuralt was first rate -- read his autobiography, "A Life On the Road."  My favorite section is the one about the French cameraman trying to "airlift" footage.

UPDATE, 03/10/15: Jay Mohr was also on SNL when this sketch aired, and here he tells an illuminating story about Norm in the writer's room.  Mohr says the Kuralt piece aired in the Bob Newhart episode (2/11/1995), but it actually dates from the previous season's Kelsey Grammer show (4/9/1994).  Mohr tells another (non-Norm) story about THAT episode -- with the Frasier star -- here.  Beware the YouTube heading; I would not consider the episode a disaster, just the pitch meeting Mohr discusses.

SNL and Jasper Hahn

A totally forgotten Saturday Night Live recurring character, cartoonist Jasper Hahn was always getting himself into trouble.  This is hilariously ribald and charming, and the simple piano-plus-ink-drawing style reminds me of my Second City days.  On a side note, Horatio Sanz is a pretty great cartoonist.  You can watch one of his appearances here, and the other three appearances should follow in the playlist.  This is visually not safe for work... depending on where you work.

The lost episodes of "Cheers"

"Cheers" ran for almost 300 episodes from 1982-1993, but there's several one-off appearances by the cast that are not on the show's DVDs.

1) "Uncle Sam Malone": This was a short film for the U.S. Treasury, clearly written by outsiders.  I imagine they wrote this, then immediately turned around and wrote one for "Gimme a Break" or something, judging by some of the weak jokes.  Anyhow, I had heard tell of this for years, but only found it recently.  I believe this was produced during season 2 (1983).  More from another blog.

2) "Cheers" at the SuperBowl: Ken Levine explains this better than I, since he was there!

3) The DisneyLand 35th Anniversary: There's a weird crossover-flashback featuring Woody.  The kid playing him needs to be smacked.  It starts around 1:17 in.

4) Late Night With David Letterman: A cold open from 1990; this was reprised for Letterman's NBC finale (before Dave moved to CBS), which aired shortly after "Cheers" ended.  A bad year for NBC.

Dabney Coleman wants to sell YOU a Rambler

Look at Dabney Coleman, the slimebucket from "Tootsie" and many other hilarious 80s films (and the underrated, canceled-too-soon "Buffalo Bill" TV show).  This commercial is... cute.  The woman is Jean Hale, his wife at the time.  I drew his moustache on so you can tell who he is.  Looks perfect.

Here's the commercial...


...and here's a great scene from "Tootsie."



For good measure, here's a couple more Dabney Coleman commercials, from after he gained fame. The first, for the Dallas Times, looks to be from 1983 (when "Buffalo Bill" debuted)


And here he is for 7-11, around the time of "The Slap Maxwell Story"

Congratulations to George Harrison

As a kid (I'm talking 2-3), I did not know who George Harrison was. I only knew the weird photo on the fancy boxed set in my Dad's record collection.  The gold-leaf spine lettering and sheer heft of this package told me this was something IMPORTANT.  As I got older (4-5), I think I assumed it was classical music.  Finally, around age 6, I learned who he was and figured it out.

Finally, as an annoying middle schooler (12-13) I listened to the album for the first time.  There's 2 solid LPs of George's songs (which were usually passed over by John and Paul dating back to 1965).  The third disk, "Apple Jam," was literally just jamming.  And quite good.  George should have released this separately as a sort of "Super Session," and it still would have done well.  They do it in jazz all the time!  Anyhow, the only non-jam track is "It's Johnny's Birthday," a weird audio salute for John Lennon's 29th or 30th.  The melody stuck with me for years till I heard Cliff Richard's "Congratulations."

Say what you will about Richard, but he essentially invented rock and roll for British teens (teens like the Beatles).  He only had a couple stateside hits, but his influence on England's music cannot be denied.  He's not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; never been nominated.  He does not seem pleased by the "snub."  I guess if he gets in, you have to include other huge hitmakers-in-foreign-countries like Bryan Adams?

Anyhow, he recorded "Congratulations" in 1968 for the Eurovision song contest.  That's where every European country puts forth a song/performanace, and the whole world (except North America) watches, and the winning country gets to host the next year's contest, and if Israel wins, the Middle-Eastern nations cut off the broadcast early and announce the second-place country as the winner.  Weird.  It's SUPPOSED to be like the Olympics, where politics are put aside and everyone takes drugs.

"Congratulations" was so heavily favored to win, the papers started asking who would come in SECOND to the song.  Instead, in some bizarre twist of nationalism, one country threw its votes to a different country than expected and Spain ended up winning by ONE vote.  There's an entire documentary on the Francoist conspiracy that caused this, but it's apparently been debunked.  Either way, "Congratulations" remains a popular British hit that's identified with Eurovision, while the winner ("La, la, la") is not.