Today, we celebrate the birthday of a great American: Joe Don Baker! No, it’s not a holiday yet. But it should be! (Though my friend Shaun told me that you do get the day off if you’re a hooker or a brewer.)
As you should already know, Joe Don Baker is the star of Mitchell, the greatest 70s cop/detective movie ever made. Don’t believe me? Peep this collection of clips from the films MST3K treatment, and thou shalt believe.
Still not convinced? Infidel! Then check out the hot merging action in this quote-unquote car chase scene.
Please also consider this sampling from the latter-day Joe Don Baker oeuvre, Final Justice, in which our hero roams the island of Malta dressed in a 5-year-old’s idea of a sheriff’s outfit.
No Holiday Horrors today. Why? Because it’s Christmas Eve! And I don’t wanna miss out on presents from Santa cause I was naughty and mocking Neil Diamond again.
One of my favorite holiday traditions is to watch the “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians” episode of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 as many times as possible. If you want an entry point to this wonderful, wonderful show, watch this episode around the holidays and thou shalt be hooked. It starts off on a high note, with the robots telling Joel what they want for Christmas (Tom Servo wants “a Ted Williams signature inflatable bathtub pillow” and Crow wants “to decide who lives and who dies”), and just keeps going up from there.
This episode has many highlights, but if I had to pick one, it would be Crow’s stirring new Christmas carol, “Let’s Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas”, inspired by his love of the movie Roadhouse. It is probably the only Christmas carol to include an action sequence, unless you count that one deleted verse of “White Christmas”. (Irving Berlin thought it’d be fun to have a few lyrics where the singer karate chopped guys in the junk, but Bing Crosby wasn’t into it.)
Sadly, the real Dalton passed away earlier this year, which makes this song so much more poignant. But where he’s gone, pain don’t hurt. And really, he hasn’t gone anywhere! Dalton is still ripping dude’s throats out–in our hearts.
The first thing I think of when I think of Thanksgiving is the annual Macy’s Parade, that weird marriage of huge balloons, showtunes, and Willard Scott. In the magical world of the Macy’s Parade, there is nothing so bizarre that it can’t be shoehorned into something else.
The greatest thing, in retrospect, is that “artists” who appear in it are only rarely well known. They’ve been placed into the festivities either because they’re on a new NBC show, starring in a new Broadway musical, or have an agent who knows a guy who knows a guy. When viewed through the lens of time, it makes for a great review of has-beens and never-wases.
Sadly, I don’t have any old parades in the Vast and Dusty Scratchbomb VHS Archives. But we’re all in luck, because the site X-Entertainment.com has a veritable cornucopia of video from many years, ranging from the mid 80s to the early 90s. Just go there, search for “thanksgiving”, and you can’t go wrong.
I’m partial to the 1989 entry, which is heavy on ALF content and features a truly horrifying Marvel Comics float/musical sequence, among other atrocities. The 1985/1986 page has a terrifying appearance by Phyllis Diller as an inebriated Mother Goose. Both pages have addenda with many classic ads, as do most of the other Thanksgiving reviews. Go there and get lost for hours. It’s a lot better than talking to your family!
The second thing that Thanksgiving invokes in my mind is the Turkey Day Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Marathon that used to air each year on Comedy Central (back when they invested in non-racist puppet shows). MST3K used to air ’round midnight most evenings, so it was great to get a chance to watch it in the middle of a lazy holiday. Or attempt to sneak a few viewings of it while not alienating the rest of the family.
Almost as good as the endless string of episodes: The special Turkey Day bumpers produced for it, which were always hysterical. Here’s a collection of some of the better ones, although I personally would have included the turkey fact given by Crow “Turkeys have enough tryptophan to knock you on your sorry turkey-eating ass.”