Muppet Halloween

How about a Muppet Halloween?

How about a Muppet Halloween in Italian? 

How about Beeker being carved like a pumpkin?

Vampire Muppets

As for myself, I am neither in the "Team Edward" nor the "Team Jacob" camp. Although Count Chocula does provide 8--count them, 8--essential vitamins and iron, the only count that counts is Count Von Count (SIX counts in ONE sentence--Bwa ha ha ha)

Sparkly AND Purple!

How could you not love the count? Here's a clip of him with Liam Neeson on the set of Transylvania 6-5000. 

"I've counted to Twenty on the West End."

Certainly, when it comes to Muppet Vampires, the Count is number one (see what I did there?), but there are others. 

When Joss Whedon needed a vampire version of "Angel" for his Buffy spin-off series, he went to Brian Henson for help. And the Muppety mash-up that resulted was definitely one of the highlights of the final season. 

Kind of makes you wonder, does the Count have a soul? Who would win in a battle between the Count and Angel? Should they have gotten Janice to replace Buffy in the final season of "Angel". (It couldn't have been worse than seeing the back of her head and the "you just missed her" BS they used in that episode.) 

???

By Wil Woods (AWESOME)

The only way any vampire muppet could be better than the count is if Vincent Price rose from the grave and personally sired Kermit the frog.

A Month of Muppets

Yes, that's right. I'm kicking off a month (more or less) of Muppets in anticipation of their new movie that will be released on November 23!

As a kid I LOVED THE MUPPETS. Sesame Street was my best friend and I had many of my own puppets that I would play with endlessly, making my own shows, or performing The Muppet Show from Cassette recordings. (With a little refresher I could probably recite whole shows.)

So without further ado, welcome to Muppet Month! OKAY, GO...................

...

Seven Days of Sleestaks: SEVEN

What can be said about this? Seriously What?

And just in case that wasn't enough (or random enough):

Seven Days of Sleestaks: SIX

Damn you dirty sleestaks!

Yes, they will take it back! BWA HA HA HA HA HAAAA HAAA!

Seven Days of Sleestaks: FIVE

This is how you know Kim Jong Il is evil. He hangs out with Sleestaks. Enough said.

And just look how happy they both are together! Oh the humanity. 

(I think this is by an artist named Arve Opsahl.)

Seven days of Sleestaks: FOUR

The Lost City


Sleestaks live in the lost city. That's all you need to know. Where the Sleestaks live you don't want to go. Trust me. 

Holly and Will being intense:

Yeah, Here they come. You'd better walk briskly away!

Seven Days of Sleestaks: THREE

The Library of Skulls

How cool is it to have a library of skulls with colored lights in them. That is so much better than books! Books are cool, but skulls with lights = freaking awesome! Do books emit "sacred smoke" that leads to hallucinations with the added side effect of removing all language barriers. I think not! Do books predict the future? NO! Do books have different specializations? Do books have a special "index skull" to help find information? N....well, I guess they do. Um. but they don't light up in groovy colors!

There's even a "Sleestak librarian". Maybe that's what that hissing is just the Sleestak librarians shushing everyone!

Seven Days of Sleestaks: TWO

ENIK!

Remember Enik? I know, I know. He wasn't technically a sleestack; he was an Altrusian. The Altrusians were the ancestors of the sleestaks. He was kind of orangy-brown and he wore a shiny orange blouse. He was a groovy.

Look at Holly! She always looked like this:

Oh Holly, why couldn't you be as dreamy as Will?

Ah, Will. *Sigh* you were just so dreamy. A little overly emotional, but I guess everyone in the land of the lost was. You were probably only a foot taller than Chaka making you five feet two inches, but that didn't matter. *Sigh*

What were we talking about?

Seven days of Sleestaks: ONE

Sleestaks were awesome! For some reason, for a young kid in the seventies, they were a little scary. They didn't speak, they moved really slowly, but the had a certain je ne sais quoi. Something that was just a little creepy. I think it was just the raspy wheeze they produced and the inhuman way they moved. Okay, so I'm not getting it across. Yeah well, I'd like to see you trapped in prehistoric times surrounded by dozens of those slow moving raspy humanoid lizard folk! Let's see what you'd think then, huh!

I think, here, in this picture, they are conducting an orchestra or something. SCARY!

On the Television

Another show that I just loved was "On the Television". Anyone Remember that one? It was described as "a fake Siskel and Ebert reviewing fake TV shows". My favorite sketch that they did was "Our Maid Imelda" about the deposed Imelda Marcos taking a job as a maid. Not very PC I guess but FUNNY. I can't believe I found it on Youtube!

Hm, it used to be funny. I don't know what happened!

There was also "The Valery Hopper Show"

I also liked the one about the neighbor being a sock puppet that was a take on Bewitched.  Hey, I'm easily amused. I found it! I found it!

.

Out of Control

Since I'm stuck on kids shows I had to put Out of Control from Nickelodeon. That show was so much fun! Boy is it hard to find pictures of it.

The Great Space Coaster

I almost forgot about this one. I LOVED it. Nothing better than good puppets.

No gnews is good gnews.

Far Out Space Nuts

And this was another thing entirely.

The Lost Saucer

Remember this one? 

Maybe not the best of writing, but boy, Ruth Buzzi and Jim Nabors sure where fun!

Here's a funny to go along with the pics. Get it? 

Cereal Continued

This picture is titled "Cereal Mascot Reunion" and it's by Bob Sheridan

( from bob-sheridan.com )

The Black Hole

This movie was not the best, but it has a special place in my heart (and no, not because my heart has a big black hole.

My Precious

This isn't very retro....

but it really makes me laugh.

Remember the Rankin and Bass Gollem?

Cereal Fixation

There is apparently a web comic that goes along with my fixation for lost cereal...

BEASTMASTER!

For my sister on her birthday.

DAR!

AWESOME!

Now where can I buy her a ring like that?

Quisp!

Tik-Tok of Oz: The First Robot

Some consider Frank Baum's Tik-Tok from the Oz books to be the first robot to appear in literature, though he was not called a robot. (The word robot was first used in print by Karel Capek in his play titled R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots) which opened in Prague in 1921.)

Tik-Tok re-imagined in Marvel's OZ comics

Tik-Tok was created by the brilliant inventors Smith and Tinker. They only created one such mechanical man and, alas, did not pass along their knowledge. He worked by three different sets of clockwork that had to be wound: one for speech, one for movement, and one for thinking. He was certainly "magical" in the sense of being incredible and a product of the land of Oz (yes, I know, he actually came from Ev not Oz, so sue me), but what makes him the first robot and not some enchanted creature is, I believe, twofold.

First of all he was not enchanted, but simply beautifully engineered. He was purely mechanical and not created, as some folks in Oz like Jack Pumpkinhead, by using the powder of life. And as for reason two, he is not alive. The Tin Woodman, in contrast, was at one time a "meat man" but his body was replaced by tin as he kept chopping off his own limbs. The fact that Tik-Tok is even in the plaque his inventors labeled him with (emphasis added):

Smith & Tinker's

Patent Double-Action Extra-Responsive

MECHANICAL MAN

Fitted With Our Special Clock-Work Attachment

Thinks, Speaks, Acts and Does Everything But Live

Manufactured Only at Our Works at Evna, Land of Ev

All Infringements Will Be Promptly Prosecuted

According to Law

We are also reminded again and again by other characters that Tik-Tok is not alive. Although he's not alive, Tik-Tok doesn't long to be (like Pinocchio or many literary robots that would come later). He seems content not to be. 

So there you have it. The World's first Robot, created by Smith and Tinker in the land of Ev. (He now resides in Oz.)

Awesome Wonder Woman Cover

Not sure if this qualifies as retro, but Wonder Woman will be 70 this December.

Wonder Woman

Everyone knows Wonder Woman.

But do you remember the make over she got back in the late 60's? Wonder Woman became a mod boutique owner with no super powers. She gave them up to stay in the world of men. She had to learn martial arts from a blind guy named I Ching.

It's alright, girl friend. I don't know how much I would have wanted to wear American flag panties in the late 60's either.

Hugo Man of 1000 Faces

Remember Hugo?

He was a little creepy.

The Six Million Dollar Man Intro

The gems that are available on the interwebs.

Here's the intro for the TV show, this is the one I remember.

Here's the intro for the movie that came before the TV show (with Dusty Springfield singing from what I understand.)

And here is a perfectly geeky remix...

WE HAVE THE TECHNOLOGY.

And They Had Dolls....

..... And there were dolls you could get (this was before we coined the term action figure to make playing with them all the more manly)

And you could look through the back of Steve's head and it was just like you had your own bionic eye 

c

6 Million Dollar Sasquatch

I was trying to explain to a younger friend exactly how cool the Six Million Dollar Man was the other day. Here's the basic conversation.

Me: The Bionic Man was named Steve Austin.

Him: Like the wrestler.

Me: He was hurt in some kind of accident. He was like an astronaut or something and they had to give him bionic limbs and a bionic eye. Actually he's the six million dollar man, not the bionic man. It was The Bionic Woman.

Him: She probably cost more than that.

Me: She was a school teacher; I don't know why they picked a school teacher. She was in an car accident I think.

Him: You think they would have picked an astronaut or something.

Me: I guess it was the 70's. Woman were only allowed to teach school or be receptionists or secretaries back then. (I was kidding, mostly. But I was trying to be funny, not an asshole. I'm naturally and asshole but I have to try to be funny.) She didn't have a bionic eye; she had a bionic ear. You could always tell it was working because she would brush her hair back behind her ear, I think there was a switch behind it to turn it on. Oh and there was a bionic dog named Maximillion.

Him: Really?

Me: And a bionic Sasquatch, I think the Soviets made the bionic Sasquatch. It was the Cold War and all.

Him: Now you're just making this shit up....

I shit you not.

It's hard to believe that all that awesome is all but forgotten.