Ah, the jingle. Brainwashing at its most palatable. Like all aspects of advertising, jingles are carefully crafted to instill a need in you, the consumer. Without the company’s product, your life lacks meaning, and you are an inefficient, unsuccessful organism. You loser, you. Better do something about it right quick. The most insidious (and…
The 24th episode of Count Gauntly’s Horrors from the Public Domain will be running all this month on Fairfax Public Access. It’s hard to believe that two whole years have passed since we first started broadcasting from “the crypt” in April of 2013. Our second anniversary seemed like a good opportunity to take a look back…
In 2014, the University Mall Theatres, a second-run cinema in my town, created a Kickstarter campaign to fund the purchase of new theater seating. Donors who gave $250 would get their names engraved on a seat, as lasting testament to their generosity. What’s more, they would also receive a pass which guaranteed them free movie…
Small-Screen 66 – #55: Legends of the Hidden Temple (Nickelodeon, 1993-95) It’s a theme that we’ve returned to time and again on this page: I never had cable as a child. “90s kids” apparently remember a lot of early-90s Nickelodeon shows with fondness, but for the most part I only began to play catch-up in…
Small-Screen 66 – #56: The Munsters [and The Addams Family] (CBS, 1964-66 / ABC, 1964-66) “Unlike life’s messy questions, the answers in trivia are always clear-cut…binary…you can’t be sure that you shouldn’t have accepted that job in Fresno, but you can be 100 percent sure that the Munsters lived at 1313 Mockingbird Lane.” – Ken Jennings…
Small-Screen 66 – #57: Lost in Space (CBS, 1965-68) You should probably just get used to these delays in between posts. But don’t think I’m slacking off! I’ve simply been devoting my time to thorough research…which, in this case, entails watching a lot of TV (both the show du jour and those further down the…
Small-Screen 66: #58 – It’s Academic (WRC-TV [NBC 4], 1961-Present) Don’t quote me on this, but today’s selection just might be the only local TV series on this list, as opposed to a nationwide network or cable program. It’s also the closest I’ve come to being on “real TV”…yet. For the full story, we’re going to need…
Small-Screen 66: #59: Arthur (PBS, 1996-Present) “Listen to your heart, listen to the beat, listen to the rhythm, the rhythm of the street.” I promise this will be the last PBS series for a good 15 posts or so. I’ve previously written about Arthur several times on this page, and each time I’m astounded anew by…
Small-Screen 66 – #60: Trailer Park Boys (Showcase, 2001-08, Netflix, 2014) So apparently there are trailer parks in Canada. Trailer Park Boys is a mockumentary-style comedy which grew out of a pair of independent films directed by Mike Clattenburg in the late 90s. Like the films, the series chronicles the exploits of Ricky and Julian, two…
Small-Screen 66 – #61: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (FX/FXX, 2005-Present) And now we leap from virtue to depravity. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia follows five friends who own and operate a rundown Irish pub in Philadelphia. Though I probably should have put quotation marks around “friends.” And “operate.” And maybe “pub.” Anytime we see “the…