Hey! I have a new blog!

After reviewing old cartoons the last few days, I decided, now was the time to do a blog devoted to those memories of my childhood. Hence, the debut of the Saturday Morning Archives, which is up right now at http://saturdaymorningarchives.blogspot.com. Check it out! You'll be glad you did!

In theatres: The Expendables (2010)

In a year that has already seen similarly themed movies based on comic books ("The Losers") and an iconic 1980's TV show ("The A-Team"), Sylvester Stallone's "The Expendables" may in fact be the best of the three.

Barney Ross (Stallone, who also directed) is hired by an enigmatic government operative known only as "Mr. Church" (Bruce Willis, "Die Hard") to bring down the dictator of a small country. Said dictator, though, is actually fronting for an ex-CIA agent named Monroe (Eric Roberts), who's built up a sizeable nest egg. Monroe's bodyguard, if you will, Paine (Steve Austin, "The Condemned") does little more than stand around and look mean until the final, climatic battle sequence, which includes Paine throwing down separately with Ross and with the oddly named Toll Road (former UFC champ Randy Couture). With Austin & Couture, you know you're going to get some wrestling moves thrown in for good measure, and at one point, Ross actually has a vertical cross-armbreaker applied on Paine.

There's also a brilliant fight scene between Yin Yang (Jet Li) and turncoat Gunner Jensen (Dolph Lundgren, "Rocky IV"), and a great sequence on a neighborhood basketball court in which Lee Christmas (Jason Statham, "The Transporter") snaps open a phat can of whoop-ass on a half dozen weekend warriors, if you will, all in the name of avenging an ex-girlfriend (Charisma Carpenter, ex-Angel) who was beaten by her current flame after Lee came home to visit. And, yet, there are people who want to see martial arts legends Chuck Norris and/or Jean Claude Van Damme in a sequel? Do you really need them when you have Li & Statham, who previously worked together in "War" a couple of years back? I don't think so. Christmas is also proficient with knives.

But perhaps one of the best scenes in the movie came very, very early, with a meeting of 80's action icons Stallone, Willis, & Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a church, of all places. The mind boggles. Being the only one in the theatre for a matinee today, I had a hard time holding back the laughter at some of the classic one-liners. None of them from Stallone, of course.

The way the movie was promoted, you were led to believe that Stallone, Willis, Austin, Couture, Li, Statham, & Lundgren were all on the same side. Not entirely so. Toss in Mickey Rourke as a former teammate turned tattoo artist, hot off his villainous turn in "Iron Man 2" just 3 months ago, and Terry Crews (ex-Everybody Hates Chris), who is also currently in the comedy, "Lottery Ticket", and you understand exactly why some fanboys were marking this release on their calendars.

If memory serves me correctly, this was also one of the last films Brittany Murphy (ex-King of the Hill) worked on before her passing earlier this year. However, either her role was recast, or it was edited out of the film altogether, as there was no sign of her that I could detect.

Update, 12/19/23: Here's the trailer:



Will there be a sequel? Based on the fact that "Expendables" has been #1 at the box office the last two weeks, I'd say it's possible, but let's remember, too, that Stallone, in particular, is a little longer in the tooth than his co-stars, and if a sequel is going to get done, it'd have to be very soon.

Grade: A.

Saturday Morning's Forgotten Heroes: Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp (1970)

The spy craze of the 60's was nearing its end. The satirical Get Smart had ended, and the dramatic It Takes a Thief was entering its final season in 1970. Mission: Impossible would roll on for a few more years, of course, but now there was a spy satire tailored for the whole family.

Lancelot Link, Secret Chimp was an amalgam of music, blackout skits (a la Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In), and adventure when ABC made it the centerpiece of its 1970-71 Saturday morning lineup. Originally a 1-hour show, Link also had room for some Warner Bros. animated shorts that didn't quite fit in with the Bugs Bunny-Road Runner Hour over on CBS. Those cartoons were eliminated when Link was trimmed to a half-hour for its 2nd and final season the next year.

Lancelot Link, a Humphrey Bogart soundalike (voiced by Dayton Allen), was a top agent for APE, a simian analog for Smart's CONTROL, but Link was no Maxwell Smart by any means. CHUMP, the analog for KAOS, had one glaring problem. Too many chiefs running the show, in particular, Baron Von Butcher (Bernie Kopell, using his Conrad Siegfried voice from Smart), whose schemes always fell apart. Link was also the lead singer for the simian rock group, the Evolution Revolution (music producer Steve Hoffman, who'd worked with the Grass Roots, among others, provided Link's singing voice and sang the show's theme song), featured in one segment each week, introduced by an Ed Sullivan parody, Ed Simian (Dayton Allen again). Malachi Throne (ex-It Takes a Thief) serves as narrator for the Link episodes.

Lancelot Link enjoyed a brief revival a few years back when Nickelodeon acquired the rights to the series, albeit in its 30-minute form, and it was last seen on TV Land back in 1999 when that network experimented with a block paying homage to the Saturday classics of the past, specifically the 70's. No one's really sure what happened to the chimps used on the show after production ended, but TBS tried to recapture the spirit of the series with 2003's prime time entry, The Chimp Channel, a short-lived sitcom that satirized the television industry. Channel was tuned out, unfortunately, after a handful of episodes, never to be seen again.

Could Lancelot Link live again, as the series marks its 40th anniversary in 2010? Only if Lance, Mata Hairi, Baron Von Butcher, and the rest are in CGI form. Hollywood seems to have turned its back on concepts like Link after Chimp Channel failed.

Rating: A-.

Edit: 7/18/14: Here's the intro:

"An old fashioned night at the ballpark", 2010 style

The Tri-City Valleycats, contending for their first division title in the NY-Penn League in 4 years, decided to do something novel on Saturday night for their game against the Aberdeen Ironbirds. They went old-school.

On a normal night, the PA system is blaring with the latest in country, pop, hard rock, and hip hop. Valleycats shortstop Ben Orloff, for example, normally has Kenny Chesney's latest hit, "Summertime", playing when he comes to bat. After the 5th inning, the grounds crew will rake the infield, then groove to the beat of Miley Cyrus' "Party in the USA", from last year. None of that was on Saturday's playlist.

Instead, the Valleycats opted for an organist playing in the PA booth between innings, and the usual promotions, such as the "Mayors Race", which has 3 'Cats staffers wearing papier mache masks of Troy Mayor Harry Tutunjian and his Albany & Schenectady counterparts, Gerald Jennings & Brian Stratton, respectively, were given the night off. Lou Gehrig's famous retirement speech and Abbott & Costello's legendary "Who's On First?" routine were shown on the video screen. "Who's On First?" is still funny even today, by the way. They even pulled out a decades old ad for Purina Dog Chow that probably hasn't seen the light of day since the 50's. The PA announcer explained how the word "fan" came to be in sports parlance (originated in England). They also ran an interview with Willie Mays culled from some cable sports show of recent vintage. While the on-field promotions were suspended for one night, they still gave away t-shirts by having staffers walk the concourse and throw the shirts down into the bleachers.

At the end of the night, the crowd went home happy, as Tri-City defeated Aberdeen, 4-3, on a bases loaded wild pitch in the bottom of the 9th. With two weeks left in the season, including today's game vs. Aberdeen, the 'Cats are in position for their first playoff berth since reaching the league championship series vs. Staten Island in 2006. The Stedler division leaders, the Vermont Lake Monsters, are on the verge of a total collapse, but, as we've all learned over the years, nothing is ever certain until the final out is recorded.

You can learn a lot from a troll.......

Google's newsgroups are littered with "trolls", self-serving online pranksters whose primary mission is to irritate as many people as possible for their own amusement. They act childish, and have no remorse for their actions. One troll, however, actually opened a doorway of knowledge in pointing out a recent television trend, which is the real reason for this post.

The troll in question, whom we'll call "Lester", mockingly took umbrage over the recent decision of Fremantle Media, the current rights holder to the Goodson-Todman family of game shows, to appoint actor-comedian-radio personality Steve Harvey as the incoming host of Family Feud, beginning next month, succeeding John O'Hurley (ex-Seinfeld). Harvey currently has a morning radio gig in New York, with Feud being his first TV gig since the end of his self-titled sitcom on the WB. We'll all find out together if he has the chops to be a top-of-the-line game show host.

Fellow entertainer Wayne Brady has made that transition, and fairly easily at that. In the last decade, Brady has gone from being part of Drew Carey's repertory company on Whose Line is it Anyway? to hosting his own ABC variety show, a 2-year run with a syndicated talk show, and was the original host of Fox's Don't Forget the Lyrics, which returns in syndication next month with singer Mark McGrath replacing Brady, who has gone on to the revival of another cherished game show, Let's Make a Deal. In landing the Deal gig, Brady became the first African-American to host a network game show in nearly 20 years, the last one being sportscaster Ahmad Rashad, who hosted something called Caesar's Challenge for NBC around the early 90's. Harvey becomes the 2nd, and there's another one on the way.

Actress-comedienne Sherri Shepherd, part of the roundtable on ABC's The View, is reportedly in line to take over GSN's revival of the Chuck Barris classic, The Newlywed Game, taking over for singer Carnie Wilson, who is leaving after 2 years. The irony here is that the ribald, often risque content of Newlywed presents a challenge for Shepherd, who is also a born-again Christian. "Lester" wasn't aware of this development when it was raised a couple of weeks back, although he did acknowledge that Carnie was leaving the show.

What prompted "Lester"'s rant is the common thread of African-Americans being hired to host classic game shows. He used the "N" word to describe Brady & Harvey, but as I noted at the start, "Lester", at his core, is a troll. Even when he's trying to spur some actually serious discussion, no one wants to pay him any attention because of his stale routines, which include asking what game show a recently deceased star will host, or claiming that someone had "an accident" or allegedly drank "boar semen", and claim it actually happened without having any evidence to support his claims. Instead of flooding the newsgroups with his juvenile writing, "Lester" should find something a little more rewarding for his talents. I hear that tabloids like The Globe are hiring..........

Co-Weasels of the Week: Francisco Rodriguez & Taryn Terrell-Galloway

The common link betwen this week's weasels is domestic violence, which got both of them in trouble with their respective employers.

Taryn Terrell-Galloway is known to WWE fans as "Tiffany", who has transitioned from being a figurehead executive to a "Diva" (female wrestler in WWE parlance). Taryn was arrested on Sunday after a heated dispute with wrestler-husband Drew Galloway (ring name: Drew McIntyre). WWE suspended Taryn indefinitely, and her absence from Tuesday's taping of Friday Night Smackdown fueled speculation that her contract may be terminated, leaving Drew to be the family breadwinner all by himself. It's just too bad for "Tiffany" that the aggression she allegedly used on Drew wasn't used often enough in the ring when she needed it the most.

Meanwhile, Francisco Rodriguez, aka "K-Rod", found himself in handcuffs on Wednesday after the Mets' 6-2 loss to Colorado. Rodriguez went after his prospective father-in-law. Police sources claim that the father-in-law chastised K-Rod, telling him to "stop acting like a baby", which set off the mercurial closer, who has had 3 other incidents since joining the Mets last year. It has also been reported that K-Rod also had similar issues while with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, with whom he won a World Series title in 2002 as a rookie. The Mets reportedly plan to enroll Rodriguez in an anger management course, after having suspended him for Thursday & Friday's games. Oh, by the way, the Mets won both of those games, giving the overworked bullpen a mini-vacation.

Anger management might be needed for the Galloways, too, either on the advice of a judge, a marriage counselor, or Vince McMahon, or all three. It may be the only thing that saves Tiffany's job.

David L. Wolper (1928-2010)

He was one of the most prolific television producers of the 60's & 70's. It can also be said that David L. Wolper, who passed away on Tuesday at 82, was the father of the television miniseries.

Wolper worked mostly in television, but did have a few feature films on his resume, most prominently "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory" (1971). Television viewers will remember him for the Emmy award winning, groundbreaking 1977 miniseries, Roots, its sequel, Roots: The Next Generation (1979), the National Geographic series of specials, the sitcoms Welcome Back, Kotter & Chico and The Man, and the documentary series, The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau, which was run periodically on ABC during the 60's & 7o's, often narrated by another television legend, Rod Serling (Night Gallery, Twilight Zone). Wolper also earned acclaim for the 1964 special, The Selling of the President 1960.

Today, you don't see the kind of programs that Wolper was known for, except maybe for PBS and certain cable networks. The broadcast networks just don't see money (ad revenue, that is) in documentary specials anymore. Rest in peace, David.