Tony Joe White is a southern blues/rock singer who is pretty much known for only one song. It's a cool song, and the album it's taken from, Black and White fuckin' rocks and I highly recommend it should you see it somewhere--you won't be disappointed.

The fact the young Tony Joe White resembles a rather young Joe Don Baker doesn't influence me at all. Really. (I should mention that these days, TJW resembles Don Imus, while JDB resembles the Sta-Puft Marshmallow Man, just in case you were wondering.)

In this YouTube video, he and Johnny Cash perform Poke Salad Annie. You won't regret clicking on the PLAY button.

By contrast, I offer one of the Cr.T.O.T.I.O.T.D. (Crappiest Thing on the Internets of the Day) for your viewing--whatever. In this clip from Soul Train, Joe Tex has a bad experience on the dance floor. Enjoy the disco ball, funky dancing, bad lip-synching, and massive amounts of polyester...or don't.

Posted by: Victor at 09:09 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Once upon a time, Betty Boop and Cab Calloway performed together.

Minnie the Moocher was filmed in 1932, before the Production Code of 1934 forced Betty to give up her short skirt & garter and change into a knee-length dress with a back (and, presumably, a bra). As you might imagine, the Code was Betty's death knell. Sex sold, even in cartoons from the 1930's.

This cartoon opens with the earliest known footage of Cab Calloway and his Orchestra performing a one-minute introduction to Minnie the Moocher. The plot of the cartoon is pretty simple: Betty decides she hates her parents and runs away with a friend, then she gets the bejeebers scared out of her and she returns home. Simple, eh?

Yeah, but one wonders where Max Fleisher got some of his ideas. Calloway appears before Betty and Bimbo in a puff of smoke as a rotoscoped walrus and conjures up visions of ghosts & skeletons while singing about drug use & having a sugar daddy in front of a constantly changing background. The demons & witch that scare Betty home seem almost tame by comparison.

Cab Calloway went on to make two other Betty Boop cartoons: The Old Man of the Mountain in 1933 (which also features a one-minute long live-action introduction by Cab Calloway and his Orchestra performing the title song) and Snow White, also in 1933, four years before the Disney version. Alas, there is no live-action footage of Cab Calloway performing the featured song, St. James Infirmary Blues, although he does appear as a rotoscoped Koko the Clown.

If you have some extra time, check out those two cartoons. In them Max Fleisher comes up with some of the most original and clever visual stunts and situations ever commited to film...and, yeah, the Production Code of 1934 killed those, too.

Posted by: Victor at 10:17 AM | Comments (8) | Add Comment
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Have you heard about the Star Trek fans' internet dating site, Trek Passions?

It was after a wildly unsuccessful run with Esquire.com Personals, a paid service affiliated with the men's magazine, that "S" (he asked that his name not be used) sought out Trek Passions. The final straw came when he was rejected by a woman with whom he had nothing in common. "She was the complete and total opposite of me in every way," he confesses. When the self-proclaimed "Spock-like personality" turned out not to be "fashionably ironic," she was disappointed. (He doesn't think his day job as a janitor helped his cause any.)

"S" says that he's been told: "Weird people should date other weird people - the normals don't quite understand."

Your basic Spock-like personality here, seeking a woman with a personality somewhere in the Deanna Troi to Subcommander T'Pol range. will consider B'Elana Torres to Kira Nerys types depending on extenuating circumstances. No tribbles, please.

I've been in way too many relationships where the girl I'm with thinks "He's great, except for that Sci-Fi fascination" . . . I'm so done with that, and just looking for someone who can enjoy an hour of Trek with me instead of in the other room.

This one's short and to the point:

Take me to your bedroom, earthling. I live ST:OS, ST:TNG, BSG and BDSM.

Now, I know some of my readers have probably already opened up another window and are feverishly typing their intros as we speak. On the other hand, some of you geeks might be skeptical, like Conan O'Brien was:

Trek Passions received a boost back in March, when, on his late-night talk show, Conan O'Brien quipped: "The fans say the dating website is going great and any month now they hope a girl will join."

My pictureÂ’s a stretched horizontally; IÂ’m not nearly that wide in real life, jeez. Just bought STNG 1 and 3 collectorÂ’s on DVD. . . . I like characters and episodes more than series, although STNG and Voyager have the best decorating, I mean, where would you rather be quartered; on PicardÂ’s Enterprise or KirkÂ’s? . . . To sum up my personality lets just say that if there were Hobbits in the Trek series I would identify strongly and have the same values. I also probably look and act like one, except IÂ’m bigger.

Well, stop wondering. Even if I didn't have a boyfriend already, you wouldn't catch me posting my Janeway inspired picture on the internet, trolling for über-nerds in some cyberspace version of the Mos Eisley Cantina.

I would simply wait until the next Creation convention, hang out by the comic tables, and bat my eyelashes like one of Mudd's Women.

Posted by: annika at 10:56 AM | Comments (16) | Add Comment
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1 Interestingly, theres as actual online Mos Eisley Cantina. This is actually kind of cool. I bet they have a lot of those Klingon weddings, like on the Simpsons!

Posted by: E.M. at July 02, 2006 01:13 PM (qx/RL)

2 Try as I might, can't find any scantily clad pics of Uhura.

Posted by: Scof at July 02, 2006 04:13 PM (COaYC)

3 I think it is a great idea - If I was more star trek inspired and I was single, I'd consider looking there. As it is, I met my spouse on-line on one of the very old Prodigy bb's - rush limbaugh's, actually.

Posted by: Beth Donovan at July 02, 2006 05:08 PM (9FPYz)

4 Gimme a fuckin break, like they didn't invent 25th century pocket pussys and sex androids that are better than the real thing! Why would these guys NEED women?

Posted by: Casca at July 02, 2006 07:20 PM (2gORp)

5 Speaking of Hollywood, check out this socialist, anti-American loooove! Being so uber-evolved must be quite the aphrodisiac.

Posted by: Radical Redneck at July 02, 2006 09:10 PM (8qdYC)

6 MY EYES, MY EYES!!

Posted by: Casca at July 02, 2006 10:07 PM (2gORp)

7 My wife and I went to a Sci-Fi convention recently and the big costume contest is always a hoot. This one featured three Princess Leah's in the dancing girl costume and they ranged from about 180-240 lbs. They should have had a special category for "most likely to be mistaken for a dirigible."

Posted by: kyle8 at July 03, 2006 03:28 AM (1jWFc)

8 Kyle8, I know!! Jesus H, man! Everytime I see one of those, I wanna yell out "Hey! It wasn't Jabba wearin' the suit, ya freak!"

Posted by: ElMondoHummus at July 03, 2006 08:10 AM (xHyDY)

9 It's the very same reason that I avoid Whalemart like the plague. C'mon people, do you really need a fucking McDonald's in there? Hell even if they got rid of the morbidly obese, I'd still be off put by the hordes chattering like monkeys in their savage tongues. Durkha, Durkha, Mohammad, Allah.

Posted by: Casca at July 03, 2006 11:40 AM (rEC2k)

10 Man, I've said it dozens of times: Wal-Mart's like a cross between Dawn of the Dead and a cattle drive: Super-sized humans in a zombie-like trance. Totally... that's why I avoid Wal-Mart. Cas: The Wal-Marts around me have Subways installed. I wonder if they're not subliminally saying "Our customers need to make like Jerrod". Back on topic: I'm pretty geek, man, but even I recoil at the thought of trolling for dates through a Star Trek-centric service. Although catch me on certain days, and my resistence might be lower... And what's with that line outta the CSMonitor story?: "Weird people should date other weird people - the normals don't quite understand." Ok. Once, and one time only for those supposed anti-stereotyping stereotypers in the MSM: Science Fiction fans Are. Not. Abnormal.. We fans Are. Not. Weird (well, maybe the ones who dress up are, but man, those guys are really out there...). We have our own obsessions, true, but how's a guy who's memorized lines out of ST:TOS any different from a guy who can recite box scores for any given World Series from memory? No, I can't do either... but lines from X-Files, I might have a shot Another rant at the story: Who the HELL writes "May the Force Be With Them" in a story about Star Trek??!! Hel-lo!!

Posted by: ElMondoHummus at July 03, 2006 01:38 PM (xHyDY)

11 Casca you sound like John Rocker...

Posted by: Scof at July 03, 2006 06:00 PM (COaYC)

12 "it`s not exactly "scifi". It`s simply on the SciFi channel." hmmm, there's a new rubric i've seen occasionally: "speculative fiction."

Posted by: annika at July 03, 2006 06:38 PM (fxTDF)

13 BTW, can't wait till the new Battlestar Galactica's return. Even if that show were not SCI_FI it is absolutely the most kick ass writing on TV since perhaps the old Playhouse 90 in the early 1960's.

Posted by: kyle8 at July 04, 2006 07:03 AM (SLmNP)

14 This still says it all.

Posted by: Dave J at July 04, 2006 07:07 AM (S6J6x)

15 "Casca you sound like John Rocker..." Why, because I often feel like a stranger in my native land? Because I swim in a sea of the culturally ignorant?

Posted by: Casca at July 04, 2006 09:17 AM (2gORp)

16 Beth: Ok. You got me there. Anni: I've seen that term tossed about too. Don't see any advantage to sticking a new moniker across several well-established and accepted categories, but then again, the language isn't alive unless it morphs and evolves, right? Dave J: Best Triumph skit ever! Best Star Wars skit too!

Posted by: ElMondoHummus at July 04, 2006 12:45 PM (xHyDY)

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