Video Arts: “Assert yourself”
From the wiki:
Video Arts is a British-based video production company which produces training videos for companies. It was founded in 1972 by John Cleese and a group of other television professionals. The videos are noted for using humour to explain business concepts and for featuring well-known British actors. Past productions have featured Cleese, Dawn French, Prunella Scales, Hugh Laurie, and Robert Hardy.
Cleese sold the company in 2007, presumably before this one was made, so don’t watch it because it’s relatively crap, but here’s one from the 90s which features Cleese as St. Peter offering a postmortem to a recently deceased unorganized manager. It’s called “The unorganised [sic] manager” whose laptop is comically enormous.
And here’s one from what appears to be the heyday of Video Arts featuring a very Archie Leach-like Cleese as a salaryman fed up with the inanity of meetings. It’s titled “Meetings, Bloody Meetings”.
Two observations: 1) There are clearly giant piles of cash to be made from producing entertaining and tasteful vignettes for corporate use. A quick look at the catalogue shows that most of these pieces can be purchased for something insane like a grand or four for a DVD or e-learning CD-ROM. Serious cash. 2) It’s hard not to think that ‘The Office’ may have taken a cue or two from Video Arts’ astute lampooning of the corporate culture.
Re-
We spend our lives rereading and rewatching and relistening and relearning. We eat the same things over and over. We end up loving people who remind us of other people. We perform these rituals, this spacetime origami, because the basic fact of our n-dimensional existence is this: Most things can be recalled and some things can be revisited but precious little can be relived.
The Taco Bell of Tiny Broken Dreams
I love all Taco Bells. But I love this Taco Bell the most. It’s the one across the street from the Warner Bros. lot in Burbank, and for the six months I worked on the lot, I ate here more often than not.
I love it because the management decided at some point in the mid-90s to start lining the beams of the restaurant with the headshots of the young up-and-comers dragged from across the road by fussy stage moms for a quick bite. But then the beams filled up and the project came to a halt probably soon after it started, and the result is a time capsule of nascent celebrity frozen in the least likely yet tastiest of all places. Oh God it’s so depressing, I love it.
Perhaps you’ve heard of Marty York, for God’s sake? Does Courtland Mead ring a bell? Oh, I’m sorry, when you stuff yourself with fourthmeal where Jennifer Banko once barely touched her Mexican pizza, friend, you stuff yourself on hallowed ground. This here is Hollywood history.
Tristar Pictures (1984)
Like a warm blanket. Yummy.
Condiment Gun
True story: one of the few times I’ve done mushrooms was years ago on a camping trip with an ex-girlfriend and I freaked out so bad with the delusion that nearby campers fully intended to hack us to bits that I retreated to the tent with only a bottle of ketchup and a bottle of mustard to defend myself. In my world, this magical elixir of primary colors in just the right ratio was enough to stave off the bad guys.
If only this condiment gun had been around at the time, I could’ve avoided the humiliation.
Buy here on Amazon. Your life may depend on it, hippie.
via the always amazing tofutti break
Silver Lake Walker: The Mural
If you spend any time in the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles, you know the Silver Lake Walker. Bare-chested and George Hamilton-tan, the guy walks the streets faster than most people run, every day in the same green trunks and nothing else but a newspaper and a flip-phone. The LA Weekly did a piece on him, if you’re interested. Backstory: he’s not schizophrenic, he’s a family practice physician named Dr. Marc Abrams and he walks to stay in shape.
The other day, I’m walking in my neighborhood not to stay in shape, but to get a burrito and I see a guy painting a mural with various depictions of the Walker around town. (Detail image here.) I get my burrito. Shrimp. Really frickin good. Not five minutes later, I see the Walker and he’s heading in the direction of the mural. “Oh shit,” I think to myself. “He’s gonna be pissed.” And I grab my dog and my iPhone camera and get ready to capture the meltdown.
But it doesn’t come. The Walker simply walks by and barely even glances at his monument.
I stop to talk to the muralist, and ask him whether the Walker knows who or why. The muralist is a local guy named Nicky Gagliarducci and with his scarf and blazer on despite the heat, he’s maybe the artistiest dude I’ve ever seen. Could’ve played the part of Diego Rivera’s protégé in a biopic, the one who sleeps with all his mentor’s women. Story goes, Local, the restaurant next door, commissioned him to do the mural. Didn’t ask the Walker, didn’t tell him why, just wanted it. At one point earlier, when the Walker walked by, Nicky stopped him long enough to ask if it was cool. Apparently, he was unphased, said whatever and walked on.
The movie combo game
- I describe a film plot based on two movies.
- You tell me the combined title.
For example: Plot: suburban family gets mad at a hairy mountain-beast for satirizing them in his roman-a-clef.
Title: Deconstructing Harry and the Hendersons.
So reblog or comment with an answer to the following, but ONLY if you write your own too.
Plot: A conman accidentally teaches an Austrian family about the joys of song. But soon after they form a marching band and perform to a wildly appreciative audience, they’re forced to flee the country.
The Sound of Music Man?
PLOT: A newly engaged couple, whoose car breaks down in an isolated area, come upon a strange residence where they seek aid from a nerdish florist and his giant man-eating plant who demands to be fed.
Answer: Little shop of Rocky Horror Picture show
My post: Two pot smoking half-wits from New Jersey travel back in time to stop hollywood from making a movie about their comic book character personas.
Answer: Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back to the Future
New plot: A delusional young man buys a life-size sex doll over the Internet, and falls in love with her. The family intervenes by sending the doll to a mental institution after an apparent suicide attempt, where she befriends the other patients and battles her personal demons.
Answer: Lars and the Real Girl, Interrupted
This is fun. New movie combo: A mentally unstable Vietnam vet begins a one-man war with the police force in a small town in Sierra Leone to recover a rare pink diamond. Also, he wears a red headband and blows shit up.
“The Love You Save” on The Jackson 5ive cartoon
In my top three TJ5 songs mostly because of the vocalized bassline at the beginning (and because, like most of them, the bassline is impeccable).
The Jackson 5ive was a Saturday morning cartoon coproduction of Rankin/Bass and Motown that ran on ABC from 1971-73. From the wiki:
Because Michael Jackson owned many pets in real life, a few pets were added as extra characters to the cartoon. They included Michael’s pet mice, Ray and Charles (alluding to singer Ray Charles), and his pet snake Rosey. Other than the mice chirping, the pets never spoke, but usually either attributed to assistance or mischief on the show.
No idea what’s the story with the horse and the stodgy white man, but I’m guessing it involves a funky little dance. No matter what the story, go ahead and dance along. Feels good.
Jackson 5 “I Want You Back”
I’ll just say this: The LP of Thriller came with one commemorative sequinned glove when I got it in 1982. Yes, I wore it.
