If you ever flip through the cable TV channels, you’ve probably noticed how many reality series cluster around an existing idea. Yes, there’s a lot of shows set in Louisiana. And quite a few set in Alaska, too. I once quipped that a network sees no use in wasting a field office on just one show, or two, or three. But what you see here is just a small portion of the Reality TV Venn Diagram by Margaret Lyons and Jen Cotton. See the full-size version of overlapping ideas at Vulture. And yes, I am aware that this is actually an Euler diagram, which shows existing sets and relationships, and not a true Venn diagram that would show all possible relationships. Link -via Metafilter

Alex Gross takes classic Victorian pictures and then repaints them into portraits of pop culture personalities like Aquaman, Bride of Frankenstein and Godzilla. His work will be exhibited at the Jonathan Levine Gallery in LA next month, so if you’re in town, stop by and support a great geek artist.

Link Via io9

Everyone is still buzzing about the news that the Arrested Development movie is finally in the works  after years of discussion, but in the aftermath of that bomb, it was easy to miss the news about another cult classic show becoming a movie as well. While not as many people are familiar with Party Down, it’s a great show that’s certain to result in a hilarious movie.

Are you guys familiar with the show, and if so, are you excited about the movie?

Link Via Geekosystem

YouTube user Kanaal Van Ronorozco makes TV display centers in the front or back ends of classic vehicles, such as this 2005 Porsche 996. It’s not a fabrication, but the actual rear of the car, right down to the brake calipers. With a push of a button, the brake lights flash and the screen opens or closes.

Link -via DVICE

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I’m not sure how many No Reservations fans we have here at Neatorama, but if you caught Bordain’s Christmas special, you’ll not that this animation was lacking from the final cut. That’s because executives found it a bit too creepy. Personally, I found the Samantha Brown scene to be far, far more terrifying than this animation, but she gives me the creeps anyway.

Via Laughing Squid

What happens when you combine one of the world’s greatest comic books with one of the cutest cartoons on TV? You get a great mash up piece like this one by Dan Hipp.

Link Via The Mary Sue

When TV characters cook, the results are often disgusting.

Drink: Flaming Homer

Show: The Simpsons (1991)

Origin: Homer is bored at home one night -forced to watch his in-law’s vacation slides- and he doesn’t have any beer, so he makes a cocktail from whatever he can find. He pours the leftover bits from several liquor bottles into a blender, along with the accidental addition of “Krusty’s Non-Narkotic Kough Syrup.” Homer thinks it tastes okay… but it’s even better after it’s lit afire by a stray cigarette ash. “I don’t know the scientific explanation, but fire made it good,” Homer says when he recreates the “Flaming Homer” at Moe’s Tavern. Moe then steals the idea and starts serving the drink (for $6.95) and renames it “The Flaming Moe.”

Food: Chocolate Salty Balls

Show: South Park (1998)

Origin: When the Sundance Film Festival comes to town, the soul-singing school cafeteria cook Chef (voice of Isaac Hayes) opens a stand to sell cookies to tourists. His most popular item: His “Chocolate Salty Balls.” It’s a blatant double entendre, and Chef even sings a song about them: “Hey, everybody, have you seen my balls? They’re big and salty and brown!” The song (which reached #1 in England) gives the recipe: cinnamon, egg whites, melted butter, flour, unsweetened chocolate, brandy, vanilla, and sugar. (Curiously, it doesn’t call for salt.)

(Image credit: Garnished Adventures)

Drink: Thankstini

Show: How I Met Your Mother (2005)

Origins: This cocktail, a martini, invented by booze-swilling playboy Barney (Neil Patrick Harris), combines Thanksgiving food with booze. It’s made from two ounces of potato vodka, four ounces of cranberry juice …and a bouillon cube for that poultry flavor. Barney remarks that it “tastes just like a turkey dinner.”

Food: Skip’s Scramble

Show: Arrested Development (2005)

Origin: On one episode, characters eat Sunday brunch at a bistro called Skip’s Church (the joke being that people “skip church” to go there). A brief shot of the menu shows standard brunch fare, along with an omelet called Skips Scramble. Its description: “Too many choices? Menu too big to swallow? Let Skip serve you up a scram that has something from every dish on the menu. It will knock you into next week!” Price: $47.95. The dish includes eggs, ten slices of bacon, ham, peppers, onion, sausage, and a chocolate glazed doughnut. (The menu also features the disclaimer that Skip’s Church is “not responsible for medical bills of deformities resulting from the digestion of its menu items.”)

(YouTube link)

Drink: Killer Shrew

Show: Mystery Science Theater 3000 (1992)

Origin: On an episode of the movie send-up show revolving around the 1959 movie called Killer Shrews, Joel (Joel Hodgson) and his robot companions devise the “Killer Shrew,” a cocktail that’s non-alcoholic but not very healthy. The recipe: combine chocolate chip ice cream, Cap’n Crunch with Crunchberries, Peanut M&Ms, pancake syrup, Circus Peanuts, Mr. Pibb, Marshmallow Peeps, Sweet Tarts candies, vanilla cake frosting, and Good & Plenty in a blender. Then, “pour into a plastic tulip vase” and throw in a wind-up toy shrew. Joel took a sip… and fell into a diabetic coma from all the sugar. (Note: If you throw in wax lips, it’s no longer a Killer Shrew; it’s a “Vulcan Mind Probe.”)

(Image source: iCarly)

Food: Spaghetti Tacos

Show: iCarly (2009)

Origin: One on episode of the popular nickelodeon comedy, Spencer (Jerry Trainor) had no idea what to make for dinner. So he invented spaghetti tacos, hard taco shells filled with noodles and marinara sauce. Since that episode aired in 2009, the food became a cultural phenomenon both on the show and in real life. In one episode, characters oversee a spaghetti-taco-making contest on a cable show, and in the real world, spaghetti tacos were the most-requested food item at American school cafeterias in 2010. “Spaghetti tacos made it possible to eat spaghetti in your car,” said Syracuse University pop-culture professor Robert Thompson in The New York Times. “It’s an important technological development.”

(YouTube link)

Drink: Bloody Awful

Show: Top Gear (2008)

Origin: This British show about cars and other manly stuff is co-hosted by Jeremy Clarkson, who came up with this recipe for what he calls “a man’s V8 smoothie.” And that’s not V8, as in the vegetable drink- that’s V8, as in the high-powered car engine, which he used to power a blender. Into that blender were placed a few pounds of raw beef with the bones, a dozen hot chilies, a half gallon of Bovril (a meat flavoring agent and tenderizer), two cups of Tabasco sauce…and a brick.

Food: Shepherd’s Pie Trifle

Show: Friends (1999)

Origin: In a Thanksgiving episode, chef Monica (Courtney Cox) makes a holiday feast, while Rachel (Jennifer Anniston) volunteers to make a trifle for dessert. The British dish is traditionally made up of cake, custard, and fruit, but when the pages of Rachel’s cookbook get stuck together, she inadvertently mixes in the ingredients of shepherd’s pie with the trifle, making for a disgusting crossbreed of the two. Joey (Matt LeBlanc), who has a huge appetite, doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with the dish, and eats the whole thing himself. “What’s not to like? Custard, good. Jam, good. Meat, good.” Ross disagrees, saying that it “tastes like feet.”

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The article above was reprinted with permission from Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader Tunes Into TV.

Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.

If you like Neatorama, you’ll love the Bathroom Reader Institute’s books – go ahead and check ‘em out!

No word yet on how it competes with the big office chains, but I hear their customer service is simply unbeatable.

Link Via The Consumerist

Rock stars aren’t generally known for their amazing acting skills, but that doesn’t stop television executives from working them into different cameo roles whenever possible. Mental Floss has a great article with some of the greatest (and most terrible) musician cameos ever made. My personal favorite was Michael Stipe in The Adventures of Pete & Pete. Any of you remember these episodes?

Link

Ever since NBC announced that Community would be put on a temporary (read:possibly permanent) hiatus, fans have been rallying behind the show. Here’s my personal favorite effort to bring support to the show.

What do you guys think about the show? Are you upset about the hiatus?

Link Via Buzzfeed

Figure 1. A page from the survey form that was given to male participants.

by Jennifer A. Zimmerman
Psychology Department
Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York

This study investigates what effect, if any, watching television has on people’s sexual behavior.

The Population Problem

For populous countries such as China and India, population growth is seen as a major and vexing problem. The governments of these nations worry that soon there will be more people than the land can support.

The Chinese Crisis

Chinese officials are developing elaborate, expensive plans for more effective family planning, including the development and delivery of better birth-control services. The Chinese State Family Planning Commission recently announced a series of new scientific and technological projects for the Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001-2005). These include the production of 15 new contraceptives and abortificant medicines.

The technologies under consideration in China have serious drawbacks. They are costly, and are likely to be implemented inefficiently. It could take many years — perhaps decades — before their intended effects reached a satisfactory, or even noticeable level. Some different, better method is sorely wanted.

The Indian Innovation

This past year, an official in India proposed that televisions be given to the nation’s citizens, because televisions are an effective form of birth control.

The official explained that people would rather watch television than engage in sexual intercourse:

In a mark of frustration over India’s perennially stalled family planning efforts, the country’s health minister has come up with a somewhat Orwellian proposal: distribute telvisino sets to the masses to keep their minds off procreation…. Chandreshwar Prasad Thakur suggested last month to the Indian parliament that “entertainment is an important component of the population policy.” To drive down birth rates, he said, “we want people to watch television.” Population experts, meanwhile, say the minister’s proposal betrays the false assumption that India’s poor breed merely because they have nothing better to do. [Science, vol. 293, September 14, 2001, p. 1987.]

Perhaps for political reasons, the proposal was received with skepticism.

To Test the Television Theory

Is television-watching in fact an effective method for preventing sexual intercourse? If so, there are phenomenal implications for family planning.

Prior research strongly suggests that sexual intercourse is a cause of pregnancy. Therefore, if television prevents people from engaging in sexual intercourse, it might also prevent pregnancy. Furthermore, a decrease in the number of pregnancies might produce a lower birth rate. With that in mind, this study set out to determine whether television-watching is an effective form of birth control.

Methods

The study consists of two parts — a review of the literature on population, fertility rate, and television use; and a survey.

The study concentrates on North America, because that is the region in which television use is most widespread among a large population. If television-watching does prevent sexual intercourse, the effect should be most easily discerned in North America.

The survey consisted of eight questions. Each question involved a choice between two activities, where each activity was illustrated with a picture. Thus each question involved looking at a pair of photographs.

Figure 2. A page from the survey form that was given to female participants.

Female participants were shown photographs of males. Male participants were shown photographs of females.

For each pair of pictures, the participant was asked to choose between two options:
<> Engage in sexual intercourse with the individual in picture A; or
<> Watch individual B on television.

Figure 1 shows a page from the survey form that was given to female participants. Figure 2 shows a page from the survey form that was given to male participants.

Participants/Procedure

The subjects who took this study were college students in a physiological psychology course and a psychology-capping course at a liberal arts college in upstate New York. The sample group consisted of 35 individuals: 30 females and five males. Their ages ranged from 18 years to 22 years.

Beforehand, a prospectus for the study was submitted to the college’s Institutional Review Board (IRB), where it received approval.
The surveys were administered in a classroom setting. Subjects were asked to answer the questions honestly, and were told that all answers would remain anonymous. The surveys were collected after everyone was finished answering all of the questions.

Results, Part 1: Analysis of Historical Data

Figure 3. Number of television sets in use in North America

An analysis of several decades’ worth of statistical data concerning (a) the number of television sets in use in North America and (b) the birth rate in the United States reveals a simple relationship. As the number of television sets increases, the birth rate decreases. This is shown in Figures 3 and 4.

In the period since televisions were introduced into the American home, the average number of individuals per household has steadily decreased. In 1940, before television was available, 7.1 percent of households consisted of one person, and 9.3 percent consisted of seven persons. In 1940, these two types of households comprised nearly equal percentages of the total number of households. By 1950, 10.9 percent of households had one person, while only 4.9 percent had seven persons. By 1990, the percent of one-person households had increased to 24.5, while only 1.2 percent of households had seven persons living in them. This data is represented in Figure 5.

During the entire period, the national birth rate was decreasing.

Based on this information, one can conclude that as television-watching increases, the birth rate decreases.

Results, Part 2: The Survey Results

Figure 4. Birth rates in the United States.

The survey was designed to test a hypothesis — that individuals would rather watch members of the opposite sex on television than to engage in sexual intercourse with them.

The survey results were impressively clearcut.

All 35 subjects reported that they would rather watch the opposite sex on television than engage in sexual intercourse with them. In making an aggregate 240 choices, not one participant preferred sexual intercourse to watching television.

The test was re-administered four weeks later. This was done to investigate the re-test reliability for this instrument. There were 23 students in this new sample — 21 females and two males. Here too, all participants specified that they would prefer to watch members of the opposite sex on television than to engage in sexual intercourse with them.

Discussion

Figure 5. Percentage of all households that have 1 Person, 2 Persons, 3 Persons, etc.

As mentioned above, statistical analysis indicates that as the number of television sets increases, the birth rate decreases. In light of our survey results, this otherwise perplexing fact now makes sense. When people have access to a television set, they would rather watch television than engage in sexual intercourse.

Also as noted above, if individuals are not engaging in sexual intercourse, then they are less likely to get pregnant (this is especially true of females), and this in turn is likely to effect a decrease in the birth rate.

Conclusion

Television is an effective method of birth control. If the Chinese and Indian governments supplied televisions to every household, each country would see a dramatic drop in its birth rate.

References

“China to Make Population, Family Planning Law,” (article dated October, 2001). Available at http://www.cpirc.org.cn/e-policy5.htm

“Population, Top Challenge in China’s Western Development,” (article dated October, 2001). Available at http://www.cpirc.org.cn/enview1.htm

“SFPC Identifies Key Projects for Tenth Five-Year Plan (2001-2005),” (article dated October, 2001). Available at http://www.sfpc.gov.cn/en/enews20011017-3.htm

_____________________

This article is republished with permission from the March-April 2002 issue of the Annals of Improbable Research. You can download or purchase back issues of the magazine, or subscribe to receive future issues. Or get a subscription for someone as a gift!

Visit their website for more research that makes people LAUGH and then THINK.

I don’t know about you guys, but I hope this one ends up panning out.

Link

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Those of you who grew up on Pete & Pete are certain to appreciate this great shot for shot remake of the intro by the band Tara Melos.

Via BuzzFeed

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This great Doctor Who mini-episode premiered on the recently canned Doctor Who Confidential. It’s not a full episode or anything, but it’s pretty fun.

Via Geekosystem

By now, I’m sure you’ve heard that Arrested Development will not only be getting made into a movie, but that they’ll also be making a few more new episodes. To celebrate, enjoy this great collection of Arrested Development fan art.

Link

If you’re interested, you can sign the petition at the link. If not, well, it probably won’t happen anyway, so don’t do anything.

Link

I know it’s been off the air for a while now, but the X-Files still has a huge following, enough that we even carry this great parody shirt in the Neatoshop. If you’re a fan of the show, then you’ll love the Mental Floss coverage of it.

Link

Tomorrow’s Pioneers

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If you love American television programming, but wish you could use it to teach your children the perils of the evil Western fascist dogs, then Tomorrow’s Pioneers might just be your new favorite kids show. The show features a female host and a few costumed characters, including a knock-off Mickey Mouse character, entertaining children with ideas of antisemitism, anti-Americanism and Islamic extremism. As if that weren’t enough, many of the costumed characters are martyred, most notably, the Mickey Mouse character is killed by an Israeli interrogator, providing youngsters with a deep, long-standing hatred for Palestine’s sworn enemies. Nothing like getting your propaganda into your kid’s minds before they’re too old to think for themselves.

Source

Boohbah

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If you thought the Teletubbies were strange, just wait until you get a load of this show that their creator released after it. According to their website, the Boohbahs are “five magical atoms of power” who live in a Boohball, which is a glowing white ball that can travel from country to country whenever a child calls it. The Boohball features a spinning recharging pod where the Boohbahs can recharge their energy through the laughter of children they play with. Since this show was made for kids between the ages of three and five, I’m going to go ahead and say this show is actually just supposed to entertain kids with bright colors and weird effects –just like the Teletubbies, since all of that background story is way beyond the scope of any kids in their demographic.

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Oobi

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Technically these are puppets, but really, it’s a show about hands wearing eyes and occasionally tufts of hair. The hands don’t ever use complete sentences, but just enough words to express what they need to make themselves understood. While I could see how that idea could be helpful for toddlers who have the same language barriers, seeing creepy hand puppets holding things in their mouth and whispering “guess” is surprisingly unsettling for most adults –myself included.

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Ludwig

(Video Link)

This one might be utterly bizarre like many of the other shows on this list, but at least it’s incredibly adorable. The basic story involves Ludwig, a forest-dwelling crystal that plays music and will periodically sprout arms, legs or gadgets out of his sides as needed, interacting with the other animals in the forest as a narrator (the only person who talks in the series) describes the action. After seeing some of the other shows here, I think we can all agree that there are a lot worse things your kids could be watching.

Source

LazyTown

(Video Link)

This Icelandic show features a lethargic town that is made entirely of puppets who love junk food and video games. The only exceptions are the villain, Robbie Rotten, the mayor’s niece who is new to town, Stephanie, and a fitness superhero who lives in a blimp above town, Sporticus. Stephanie and Sporticus make it their personal mission to inspire the residents to become more active and healthy, but lazy and anti-social Robbie Rotten wants to put a stop to their actions and fill the town with more junk food. Of course, the irony is that in trying to stop the heroes of the show, Robbie Rotten spends more energy than any other character on the program.

Source

Yo Gabba Gabba!

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You’ve probably already seen this show, or at least some of its characters, but if you’ve never paid attention to the program, you might not think a few dancing singing monsters are really all that weird for a typical kid’s show. But what makes this program particularly bizarre are some of the lessons they try to teach kids through song, for example, “Don’t Bite Your Friends,” and “All My Friends Are Insects.” Of course, with guest stars like Sarah Silverman, Jack Black, Weezer, and Elija Wood, it’s not entirely surprising that this show has enough quirky humor needed to appeal to adult viewers.

Source

Have any of you looked at shows you watched as a kid, or shows your kids watch now, and found yourself asking WTF? If so, share your favorite weird kid shows in the comments.

Maybe, according to a new study, that found kids perform poorly at certain tasks after watching fast-paced cartoons:

Lillard and Peterson randomly assigned 60 4-year-olds to three groups: one that watched nine minutes of a fast-paced, "very popular fantastical cartoon about an animated sponge that lives under the sea;" one that watched nine minutes of slower-paced programming from a PBS show "about a typical U.S. preschool-aged boy;" and a third group that was asked to draw for nine minutes with markers and crayons.

Immediately after their viewing and drawing tasks were complete, the kids were asked to perform four tests to assess executive function. Unfortunately for the denizens of Bikini Bottom, the kids who watched nine minutes of the frenetic high jinks of the "animated sponge" scored significantly worse than the other kids.

Link

Previously on Neatorama: 10 Neat Facts About SpongeBob SquarePants

Dan Meth, the same artist who told us what prescriptions our favorite Pooh characters needed, has recently put together this graph of the relative intelligence of all the characters on Cheers. I personally agree with his assessment, what do you guys think?

Link Via Laughing Squid

You may think you know Scooby-Doo, but unless you’re a die-hard fan, there’s a good chance you haven’t even heard of half of the movies and you probably haven’t seen most of the TV shows. That’s nothing to be ashamed of –after all, the series has been running for almost 42 years straight. So for those of you who haven’t caught up on decades worth of episodes and movies, here’s a run down on the different incarnations of the franchise in honor of Scooby’s September 13^th birthday.

Image via abibrooks [Flickr]

Whining Sometimes Does Help

I know a lot of our readers take issue with how overprotective many parents have become in the last few decades, but if you like Scooby-Doo, then this is one time you might be able to forgive them. As it turns out, the idea for the show arose after parent organizations, particularly Action for Children’s Television, began protesting the violence of Saturday morning cartoon shows. The pressure was so high that many of the most popular Hanna-Barbera shows, including Johnny Quest, were cancelled due to the protests.

As a result, CBS was scrambling to come up with a Saturday morning cartoon line up that parents would be able to get behind. The first successful new show was The Archie Show, which was based upon the Archie comic book. One of the most popular parts of the show was the musical numbers performed by The Archies during each episode. To capitalize on this idea, Hanna-Barbera was hired to come up with a show that would feature a teenage rock group that solved mysteries between gigs.

Image via informatique [Flickr]

Mysteries Five Was Just Too S-S-Scary

The first version of the show was called Mysteries Five and it featured five teens, Geoff, Mike, Kelly Linda, W.W., and their dog Too Much –who played the bongos in their band. Eventually it was decided that Too Much should be a Great Dane. The character designer, Iwao Takamoto, then consulted a Great Dane breeder to learn more about the breed’s distinguishing characteristics. He then promptly ignored almost everything he learned, designing Too Much with overly bowed legs, a sloped back and a double chin, making him look much more humorous than the real dog breed.

By the time the show was ready for review, Geoff and Mike were merged into a character who eventually became Fred, and Kelly, Linda and W.W. were all renamed to “Daphne,” “Velma,” and “Shaggy” respectively. The show’s title was also changed to Who’s S-S-Scared?

When CBS saw the storyboards for the show, they thought the artwork looked to spooky for young viewers and decided to pass on it.

The creators quickly scrambled to come up with something more acceptable and soon decided to make the show funnier by focusing on Shaggy and Too Much and decided to drop the rock band angle of the show. The CBS executive in charge of the children’s lineup was listening to Frank Sinatra’s song “Strangers in the Night,” on a way to one of the development meetings when he was hit by the singer’s scatting “doo-be-doo-be-doo.” And thus Scooby-Doo was born and the show was quickly retitled Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! When the newest incarnation of the show was presented to CBS, it was immediately approved.

Image via TheNixer [Flickr]

Hearing Voices

Have you ever thought that a certain Scooby Doo character’s voice sounds vaguely familiar? You’re probably right. Many of the original voice actors from the show have loaned their voices to other productions throughout the years. Most notably, Scooby Doo’s voice was provided by Don Messick, who also voiced Astro from The Jetsons, Boo Boo Bear and Ranger Smith from The Yogi Bear Show, Muttley from Wacky Races, and Papa Smurf from The Smurfs. He also voiced Scrappy Doo after the character’s first year in the series.

Regular cartoon viewers may also recognize the voice of Fred, who was performed by Frank Welker. Welker also was responsible for the voice of Slimer in The Real Ghostbusters, Doctor Claw in Inspector Gadget, Hefty Smurf in The Smurfs, a variety of characters in both the G.I. Joe and Transformers cartoons, Garfield in post-2005 Garfield cartoons, and he even does the voice of Nibbler in Futurama.

Of course, Shaggy’s voice is also pretty well-known to most readers –he was performed by radio DJ Casey Kasem (pictured).

The gals on the show were not performed by such successful voice actors, but it is worth noting that Daphne’s voice changes after season one because the original voice actor, Indira Stefanianna Christopherson married and retired in 1970. Her replacement, Heather North, voiced Daphne for over 25 years, retiring in 2003.

Image via Alan Light [Flickr]

A Working Format

While Scooby Doo may be a classic these days, the idea really wasn’t all that original. The original episodes were largely based on the sitcom Dobie Gillis and the radio show I Love a Mystery. In fact, each character directly related to Dobie Gillis characters, Fred as Dobie, Velma as Zelda, Daphne on Thalia and Shaggy on Maynard. Shaggy even looks like a cartoon version of Maynard, featuring a similar hairstyle and a goatee. The premise was also very similar to the Famous Five book series where four kids and a dog would set out to solve a mystery that was almost always created to divert attention from the villain’s true goal. Sound familiar?

Of course, Scooby-Doo’s success led to it becoming an influence on other Hanna-Barbera cartoons of the 1970’s, most notably, Josie and the Pussycats and The Funky Phantom.

Image via prayitno [Flickr]

Revitalizing A Classic

Image via fuzzcat [Flickr]

While Scooby-Doo episodes and movies are still being made, the original series as we know it ended by 1978, a few years after the show switched networks, moving from CBS to ABC. That was by no means the end of the iconic character though, instead, ABC launched Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo in 1979 to help bolster the show’s slipping ratings. After the first year of the series, Fred, Daphne and Velma were dropped from the show and the series was changed to comprise of three seven-minute-long adventures, rather than one half-hour-long story. Another big change –in the Scooby and Scrappy series, the supernatural villains were actual ghosts, not criminals in costumes.

The show changed formats again in 1983, when Daphne was brought back in and the show was adapted into two eleven-minute mysteries per show. Velma and Fred periodically appeared in these episodes, but not all the time.

In 1985, the show was completely reworked to become The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo, which featured  Daphne, Shaggy, Scooby and Scrappy working alongside with the new characters of Flim-Flam and Vincent Van Ghoul (the cartoon version of Vincent Price –who did voice the character). The show depicted the characters traveling the world to capture the 13 most terrifying ghosts on earth.

The network stopped playing new Scooby-Doo episodes for the next two years after the final episode of The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo in 1986. But in 1988, they brought out an entirely new incarnation of the show called A Pup Named Scooby-Doo, which featured the original characters as junior high students. The show was much more comedic than the originals and was heavily inspired by classic cartoons by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett. This show was a success and managed to last until 1991. This would mark the end of new Scooby-Doo shows until the 2000’s.

While new episodes of the show weren’t being released, reruns were being played constantly at first on a variety of networks and then exclusively on Cartoon Network and Boomerang after 1998.

After the live-action movie came out, the Cartoon Network and Warner Bros. felt it was time to bring Scooby back and they launched a new version of What’s New Scooby-Doo? in 2002. First-run episodes were played on Kids’ WB on Saturday mornings and then reruns were played on Cartoon Network. The show is largely similar to the original version only it includes modern technology and cultural icons, making it easier for modern kids to relate to.

In 2006, this new incarnation of the show was replaced by a new show, Shaggy & Scooby Get a Clue! The plot involved Shaggy inheriting money and a mansion from his rich uncle who went into hiding after fearing that villains were trying to steal his secret invention. The main enemy is named Dr. Phibes and is based on Dr. Evil from Austin Powers and Vincent Price’s character from The Abominable Dr. Phibes. While Scooby and Shaggy usually foil the plots alone, Fred, Daphne and Velma periodically make guest appearances.

The most recent version of the show, Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated is unique in that while each episode contains its own mystery, the show is a serial built upon the ultimate discovery of one great secret.

Image via JD Hancock [Flickr]

Scooby the Movie Star

No matter how old you are, if you’ve ever been a fan of Scooby-Doo, then you’ve almost certainly seen at least one of the movies. That’s because they started making movies featuring the character all the way back in 1972 and there have been tons of flicks since then.

The first Scooby-Doo movies were created for television by CBS. Each one starred celebrities (real or imaginary) as guest stars. Guests included Josie and the Pussycats, Sandy Duncan, Phyllis Diller, The Harlem Globetrotters, the Three Stooges, Don Knotts, The Addams Family and Batman & Robin.

In the mid-eighties, Hanna-Barbera created three more movies, this time featuring just Scooby, Scrappy and Shaggy. These flicks were similar to the early Scrappy-Doo episodes and featured the gang running into real monsters and ghosts.

As the show halted production in the early nineties, so did the movies, but they started back up again in 1998 with the direct-to-video films Scooby-Doo on Zombie Island, Scooby-Doo and the Witch’s Ghost, Scooby-Doo and the Alien Invaders and Scooby-Doo and the Cyber Chase. These films were notably darker than many of the other animations and the characters faced real supernatural villains instead of criminals pretending to be monsters. Since then, more animated films have continued to be added to the lineup almost every year, some featuring real monsters and some featuring detective stories.

The Scooby-Doo movie that most people are familiar with (although many fans wish they could forget it) is the full-length live-action version released in 2002. This movie featured some of the top teen stars at the time, including Freddie Prinze, Jr. as Fred and Sarah Michelle Gellar as Daphne. Scooby was a computer animation. The movie was such a success that they released a sequel two years later.

In 2009, Cartoon Network premiered a live-action prequel to the films called Scooby-Doo! The Mystery Begins. It did not feature any of the original cast, but this same crew was also used in another made-for-tv movie in 2010, Scooby-Doo! Curse of the Lake Monster.

Image via thisiscow [Flickr]

Character Changes

After so many years of cartoons and movies, it’s not surprising that the characters have gone through a number of changes. One of the biggest differences occurred when Daphne, originally inclined to be nothing more than kidnap fodder, started to perform karate and other defense techniques in the late 90’s movies.

Another change, Shaggy became a vegetarian after the 2002 television series because Casey Kasem, a dedicated vegetarian, demanded that Shaggy follow his way of eating. So much for his habit of eating anything under the sun.

A Pup Named Scooby-Doo gave the characters a little bit of a background story, including the fact that they all hailed from Coolsville, something that stayed in effect throughout the years.

In Scooby-Doo, Mystery Incorporated, the characters were first able to explore romantic feelings between one another, but it’s hard to say if this should count towards the regular story line because creators considered this a reboot of the other shows and the characters have different names of their parents.

Image via World of Oddy (Flickr)

Do you dig Scooby-Doo? And if so, which version is your favorite? Personally, I loved the original series, but I could never stand Scrappy-Doo, even so, I’d take a billion Scrappy episodes over the live-action movie.

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3

Television has controlled our mind for long enough! The engineers at Haier have turned the table on the boob tube.

Behold, the "Brain Wave" remote control that lets you change the channels .... with your mind!

Brian Heater of Engadget gave it a spin: Link

If you aren’t familiar with the show, none of this really matters -but if that’s the case, you should go rent the DVDs from Netflix and then return here promptly after viewing.

Via Geekosystem

While those of you with kids might have gone to see the Smurfs movie, I’m assuming the rest of you haven’t. From what I’ve heard, you aren’t missing much if you haven’t seen it, but I can’t talk from first-hand experience because I haven’t gone either. Regardless of what you think of the new movie, it’s always nice to look back at the things that made The Smurfs so great in the first place.

Image via It’s Meng! [Flickr]

What’s In A Name?

You may have wondered where the heck the word “smurf” came from and why the characters use it so often in the show, but as it turns out, the original characters weren’t “smurfs,” they were “schtroumpfs.” The whole thing started when the creator of the comics, Peyo, was at lunch with a fellow Belgian comic artist named André Franquin. If you’ve ever had a moment where you forgot the name of something, then you’ll understand Peyo’s frustration when he couldn’t remember the word “salt.” Being a goofy guy, he instead pointed at the salt and asked his friend to pass the schtroumpf. Franquin responded, “Here’s the schtroumpf — when you are done schtroumpfing, schtroumpf it back.” The rest of the meal, the two joked around using the word “schtroumpf” periodically throughout their conversation.

From Schtroumpfs to Smurfs

Now you know why the characters use their name so much in conversation, but suddenly, the question of how the comics became The Smurfs instead of The Schtroumpfs. Well, as I said, this all happened in Belgium, where the native language is French. The first language the comic was translated to was Dutch and while the name could have stayed the same (do you really need to translate an imaginary word?), Schtroumpfs didn’t quite sound right to Dutch speakers, so the name was instead changed to smurfen. When the comic was translated to English, the word “smurf” sounded good, so it was based on the Dutch version.

Image via Stephen and Claire Farnsworth [Flickr]

From Minor Diversion To Lead Characters

The first introduction of the Smurf characters started in Peyo’s earlier comic, Johan and Pirlouit. This strip took place in the Middle Ages and incorporated elements of sorcery and sword fights. In 1958, Peyo started a new series of the strip, which revolved around the characters searching for a magic flute. At one point in the story, the characters run into a number of schtroumpfs, small creatures with blue skin and human-like features. The smurf characters were a smashing success, so Peyo wrote them their own strip that first appeared in 1959. Although the smurfs would periodically interact with Johan and Pirlouit, the spin off was largely based on their own stories.

Why Is There Only One Girl?

Technically there are two girls, Smurfette, who everyone is familiar with, and Sassette, who first appeared in the fifth season of the cartoon. According to the smurf back story though, there are actually no smurf females. Smurfette was actually created by Gargamel in part of an evil plan to cause jealousy amongst the smurfs and Sassette was created by the smurfs using the same magic formula they stole from Gargamel. Sassette was intended to provide Smurfette with a female friend, but because Sassette was a pretty big tom boy, the two didn’t get along at first. If you’re wondering why Sassette is so much smaller than the adult smurfs if she’s not supposed to be a baby, it’s because all adult smurfs stand 3 crab apples tall, but they only had two crab apples worth of clay when they created her.

Strangely, after making sure the two female characters were both made from clay and magic spells, season 8 featured another female, Nanny Smurf, with no background story explaining her creation. Nanny Smurf was Grandpa Smurf’s gal, but she disappeared in a haunted house for 500 years before the smurfs rescued her. She only lasted one season and appeared in one episode in season 9 before disappearing forever again.

If you’ve been itching for more female characters in the comic, Peyo’s son who is the current writer of the French comics has promised that he will be introducing more females in upcoming years.

Image via Scottobear [Flickr]

What Is A Smurf Berry?

Most people seem to think that smurf berries aren’t real, but as it turns out, they are really supposed to be the berries from the sarsaparilla tree. Interestingly, in the comics, the smurfs don’t eat smurf berries, but instead gorge on the leaves of the plant.

Classic Cartoon Voices

If you’ve ever watched the cartoon and thought that Papa Smurf or Gargamel’s voices sounded familiar, you’re right, you probably have heard them somewhere else. Papa Smurf was voiced by legendary cartoon voice actor Don Messick who also did the voices of Boo Boob Bear, Ranger Smith, Astro, Muttley, Scooby Doo, Scrappy Doo and Droopy. As for  Gargamel, his voice was performed by Paul Winchell, a professional ventriloquist who became a voice actor later in life. Some of Winchell’s more famous roles included Dick Dastardly (that’s right, he and Mesick worked together before) and everyone’s favorite spring-tailed predator, Tigger.

Image via DNNYA17 [Flickr]

Do you guys dig The Smurfs? What about the movie, if you’ve seen it, what did you think?

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, Smurfs Wiki #1, #2, #3

If you’ve been looking for some paper dolls to play with that are actually designed for adults instead of kiddos, then BuzzFeed has a great collection of them for your paper-playing pleasure. Time to get printing!

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What do you guys think? Is this a realistic request or just plain over dramatic?

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Viewing movies in the movie theater is a problem for many deaf people as theaters just don’t offer that many subtitled screenings. Now however Sony is developing glasses that will provide subtitles to films within the glasses themselves.

Sony has been working on subtitle glasses that should allow deaf viewers to have their own personal subtitles without other viewers having to be distracted by them. While it seems like a pretty simple concept, the real trick is ensuring that the viewer doesn’t constantly have to switch focus from the glasses, to the screen, to the glasses, to the screen. These glasses manage to provide the subtitles in such a way that they appear to be projected on the screen, in the same field of view as the action of the movie.

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Kung Fu, which aired from 1972-1975, was an unusual blend of the social questioning of 70s America, an emerging fascination with the martial arts, and the introduction of Eastern thought into American pop culture. It was one of the last Westerns of American television and thus straddled a great cultural shift that occurred during that era. It was also a fine show that earned high ratings and continues to entertain legions of fans to this day. Let’s take a look at some things that you might not know about the series.

1. Kwai Chaing Caine’s last name is a reference to the Cain of the Bible. Cain, having murdered his brother, was marked and cast into the wilderness. So, too, was Kwai Chang Caine marked by the dragon and tiger branded into his forearms and wanted for murder in China. The $10,000 bounty on his head was a constant source of trouble for Caine throughout the series.

2. David Carradine shaved his head once, when shooting the pilot movie. He never cut it again for the rest of the series. So it’s possible to gauge when an episode was shot during the series by looking at Carradine’s hair.

3. Caine must walk a strip of rice paper to demonstrate the lightness of his footsteps. To prepare David Carradine for this task, kung fu consultant Kam Yuen had him step on eggs without breaking them.

The training turned out to be unnecessary. When it finally came time to film the rice paper scenes, no one could locate rice paper. The directors tried butcher paper, but it wouldn’t tear under the feet of Radames Pera, the actor who portrayed Caine as a child. They even attached sandpaper to Pera’s feet, but the paper stayed intact. Finally they pre-tore the strip of paper and had Pera walk over it. To show the adult Caine walking without leaving a trace, they simply left the butcher paper untorn.

4. David Carradine had no martial arts training before the show began shooting, but he was a skilled dancer. It was only during the final season that Carradine began to study kung fu aggressively. By that time, he was so skilled that he rarely used stunt doubles.

5. The fight scenes had to be carefully choreographed to be realistic, shoot well, and most importantly, comply with the network’s rules on violence. David Chow, the martial arts director for the show, explained at the time:

ABC absolutely bans any more than three hits on a person, all kicks below the belt, more than two areas of bleeding on a single person, any pouring of blood (but dripping is okay!), instruments entering the body, and any scenes of a man dying with his eyes open.

6. The show was rather inexpensive to produce in part because it made use of Warner Brothers aging and then unused Western sets. The Shaolin Temple did require some thought, but was just a redressing of the castle set from the 1967 movie Camelot.

7. In one scene in the pilot movie, Philip Ahn (Master Kan) challenges Radames Pera (young Caine) to snatch a pebble from his hand. This scene was shot at least fifteen times because Pera, faster than Ahn, successfully snatched the pebble, over and over again. Finally the director told Pera to try to take the pebble with his right rather than left hand, which was farther away from Ahn. Then Ahn was able to close his hand and keep the pebble.

8. Philip Ahn started a very successful restaurant named Moongate. Children often approached him there and asked if they could try to snatch a pebble from his hand. He obliged their requests.

9. David Carradine was the son of John Carradine, a highly accomplished actor in his own right. He appeared alongside his son David in three episodes of Kung Fu. The elder Carradine played an old blind preacher named Serenity Johnson.

10. You may know actor Keith Carradine as FBI agent Frank Lundy from Dexter. He’s also David Carradine’s younger brother. Keith Carradine played a younger version of Kwai Chang Caine in the pilot movie and early episodes of the show.

11. You may also recognize some of the guest stars who made appearances in the show. Jodie Foster starred in the episode “Alethea” at the tender age of 10. William Shatner played a treacherous Irish ship captain in “A Small Beheading.” Harrison Ford was a business manager in the episode “Crossties.”

Sources:
Anderson, Robert. The Kung Fu Book. Las Vegas, NV: Pioneer Books, 1994. Print.
Pilato, Herbie J. The Kung Fu Book of Caine: Exploring Television’s Most Mystical Eastern Western Drama. Rutland, VT: Charles E. Tuttle, Co., 1993. Print.

Images: ABC, Showtime

This graphic makes you think, but how true is it? When I watch TV, it’s usually crime shows, in which successful, independent woman are over-represented as cops, lawyers, scientists, politicians, and criminals. Maybe it all depends on the shows you choose to watch. Link -via @John Farrier

“For years, I had people praising Lost to death, and now they say: ‘I’m so pissed at you for the end of Lost.’ I think a lot of people who were upset with the ending, were just upset that it ended. And I’ve not yet heard the pitch of what the ending should have been. I’ve just heard: ‘That sucked.’”

List

A Little Background On Lucy

Lucy’s first foray into the acting world occurred when she was only twelve and her Shriner step father encouraged her to participate in the chorus line of the group’s next show. Shortly after, her mother enrolled her into the John Murray Anderson School for the Dramatic Arts in New York City, where she studied alongside Bette Davis. While Davis excelled in the program, Ball didn’t and she was sent home only a few weeks later when one of her drama coaches told her she “had no future at all as a performer.”

Determined to prove her instructors wrong, Ball returned to New York when she turned 18 and started working as a fashion model. Eventually, she decided to move to Los Angeles and start working in the movie industry. She appeared in a number of small movies throughout the 30s and 40s, eventually garnering the title “Queen B,” referencing her exceeding number of appearances in B movies.

Launching A Media Empire

In 1940, Lucy met Desi Arnaz while filming Too Many Girls. At their first introduction, Desi was not impressed, but when they met again later the same day, he quickly became smitten. The two eloped later that year.

Unfortunately, while the two were passionately in love, there was always turbulence in their relationship. Only four years after the couple married, Lucy filed for divorce. Before things were finalized though, the couple reconciled.

Aside from working on B films, Lucy kept herself busy by performing on radio shows. In 1948, she was cast as Liz Cugat in the program My Favorite Husband for CBS Radio. The program was a hit and it wasn’t long before CBS approached her about reworking the show for television.  While Lucy agreed, she insisted that the station cast Arnaz as her husband. Desi and Lucy quickly started their own production company, Desilu Productions, and produced a pilot episode for CBS.

CBS wasn’t sure the public was ready for a white woman and Cuban man to portray a married couple on television and after filming the pilot episode, they declined to pick up the show. Undeterred, Lucy and Desi took the act on the road, performing a vaudeville act starring Lucy as a zany housewife who wanted to work in her husband’s entertainment show. The tour was a hit and CBS quickly agreed to put I Love Lucy on their television lineup.

During their negotiations with the station, Lucy and Desi agreed to take pay cuts as long as their production company retained the rights to the show once it was aired. At the time, reruns were practically unheard of, so CBS gladly agreed, thinking the concession was no big deal. To protect their investment, Desilu filmed all of the episodes on actual film instead of kinescopes, which allowed for long-term storage of the episodes. As a result, the show is one of the only ones of the era to not have any missing episodes.

It wasn’t long before I Love Lucy became one of the most popular shows on television, dominating the ratings throughout its run. Once the show started airing, it practically never went out of syndication again and Desilu netted a fortune rather quickly.

Where No (Wo)Man Has Gone Before

Lucy and Desi divorced in 1960, just two months after taping the final episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour. While the couple remained friends all the way up until Desi’s death, Lucy had already started working on her next show, The Lucy Show, and since Arnaz wasn’t involved with the project, everyone agreed that he should sell his shares to his ex-wife. This left Lucy as the first woman to be the head of a television production company. And the company’s show lineup was often just as revolutionary.

When you consider the fact that I Love Lucy always used more expensive film studio techniques that were completely unorthodox for TV shows to use, it’s not entirely surprising that the studio was also willing to take on a few shows that would require much higher budgets than other studios would be willing to deal with. That’s why the company’s list of productions included such high-value classics as The Untouchables, Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. Their studios were so nice that many other notable shows, produced by other companies, were filmed there, including My Three Sons, The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Andy Griffith Show.

While the shows produced by the studio cost more to make, Lucy had an excellent eye for finding ideas that would have high syndication and re-run values, ensuring the company would always recover a profit on their high production costs.

Fighting For Intergalactic Peace

To some extent, it’s kind of amazing that we even have Star Trek at all. When ex-cop-turned-writer Gene Roddenberry came up with an idea for a show about an interstellar spaceship in the 23^rd century, he called it Star Trek to himself. But when he went to studios to sell the idea, he pitched it as “Wagon Train to the Stars,” because he knew his experience writing for Old West shows was one of the only things that would help get the series approved. If the studios actually pushed for this idea, the show might have ended up a lot more in the style of Firefly than the classic sci-fi standby we all know.

Fortunately, one of the studios Roddenberry pitched his idea to happened to be Desilu. Herb Solow of Desilu approved the idea and sold the idea to NBC, who paid for the first pilot, “The Cage.”

NBC rejected the pilot, complaining that it was “too cerebral,” but they took the highly unusual decision to pay for an additional pilot to be shot. While there is some speculation as to why the station would make this call, most people agree it had a lot to do with Lucy pushing them into it. She was, after all, one of the most powerful women in television at this time.

The second pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” scrapped all of the characters from the first, with the exception of Mr. Spock. The new characters introduced in this episode included Captain Kirk, Lt. Commander Scott and Lt. Sulu. NBC approved of this second pilot and added the show to their 1966 fall line up. By the time they show the first official episode, Lt. Uhura was added to the crew, marking the first time an African-American woman was given such an important role in an American TV show.

The first episode of Star Trek was premiered as part of a “sneak peek” block of television. The show had great ratings during that premiere, playing against mostly reruns. Reviews were mixed, but some of them were exceptionally negative, like the Variety review that said the show “won’t work” because it was “an incredible and dreary mess of confusion and complexities.”

When the show started playing against other new programs, its ratings quickly started to drop and by only a month or so, it was ranked 51^st in the ratings out of 94 programs. If the show premiered a few years earlier, this would have been an immediate death sentence. Fortunately, the network had just started to work on recording viewers’ demographic profiles and Star Trek scored remarkably high when it came to reaching young, educated males –one of the most highly sought after demographics of the time. Viewers of this group were particularly excited about the show’s serious discussions of controversial and contemporary social issues –one of the things Roddenberry and Lucy were most interested in exploring throughout the course of the show.

Around this time, Lucy decided to sell her network. According to her daughter, before negotiations began, one of her studio chiefs advised that she get rid of Mission: Impossible and Star Trek. Ball insisted they stayed, saying, “No, I like them.” Soon enough though, Lucy would no longer go to bat for the sci-fi series. She decided to sell the rights to her studio to Paramount Pictures. As a result, Paramount Television now owned the show and to them, it was nothing worth sticking their necks out for.

While the network decided to keep the show due to its great demographic ratings, they decided to move the second season to 8:30-9:30 PM on a Friday. This made it particularly difficult for those young, educated men to tune in. Unsurprisingly, this made their ratings drop even more.

By the end of the second season, the show was doing so badly in the ratings that William Shatner was already preparing for work on other projects. Luckily, the news of the show’s ratings caused speculation that it would be canceled  and inspired fans to organize together in an unprecedented effort to keep the show alive.

The show’s viewers were already so passionate that in the first season, it received more fan letters than any other show besides The Monkees. When news came that the show might be canceled, this number skyrocketed. While the first season ended up driving 29,000 fan letters, the fan’s letter writing campaign resulted in the station receiving 116,000 letters between December 1967 and March 1968. Many of the letters came from such respected supporters as the Governor of New York, Nelson Rockefeller.

As if letter writing weren’t enough, over 200 Caltech students marched to NBC’s headquarters in January of 1968, urging the network to keep the show on the air. Berkley and MIT students led similar protests in their respective locales. The Smithsonian even contacted the network during this time, requesting a print of the show for their archives, and the only show honored with such a request at that time.

Unsurprisingly, NBC decided to keep the show around, but their announcement of the show’s continuation was particularly unusual. After one of the show’s episodes, they announced on television that they were renewing the show and requested viewers stop writing. Funny enough, this resulted in thousands and thousands of thank you letters in return.

Images via esthereggy and Coneee [Flickr], and The LA Times

The End of The Beginning

Despite the fact that the anti-cancellation campaign was an unheard of success, NBC seemed determined that Star Trek shouldn’t survive its third season. They moved the show to the Friday night “death slot” of 10 PM, when practically none of the younger audience would be around to watch it. In addition, 29 of the network’s affiliates stopped carrying the show altogether. As if all that weren’t enough, the station also reduced the show’s budget by 10%. As a result, the show had fewer outdoor shots, fewer guest stars and fewer writers. Despite the fan’s attempt to launch another letter writing campaign on behalf of the show, NBC cancelled Star Trek on January 9, 1969.

Fortunately, Desilu’s foresight for shows with a high syndication value once again paid off. With three seasons under its belt, Star Trek had just enough episodes for syndication and the rights for the first season had already been purchased by Kaiser Broadcasting.

Syndication saved the memory of the ill-fated show, offering it better time slots and a much larger audience then it ever had on NBC. By 1970, Paramount Television was advertising that the show managed to significantly increase the ratings of stations that picked it up and the Los Angeles Times said the show had the most enviable ratings of any syndicated show.

Image via Atomic Q [Flickr]

In 1972, fans got together for the first Star Trek convention in New York. The show’s syndication ratings continued to increase rerun after rerun, unlike any other show because fans liked to rewatch episodes dozens of times. By 1987, when The Next Generation started airing, Paramount Television was making over $1 million from each episode in syndication. The Chicago Tribune quipped, “Since that dark day in 1969 when NBC brought the programming hammer down on Star Trek, there probably hasn’t been a 24-hour period when the original program, one of the original episodes, wasn’t being aired somewhere. ”

And to think, none of it would have been possible if it weren’t for a pushy redhead who happened to like the idea of a sci-fi series that explored cultural issues of today. Consider that next time you see another rerun of the sixty year-old sitcom staring Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, Associate Content and Memory Alpha

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I know I urged you all to support a switch to Bear Week yesterday, but that’s not to say I don’t enjoy Shark Week. I particularly enjoy festivities of any kind when they are paired with delicious themed drinks and snacks. If you feel the same way, then be sure to enjoy these great food and drink recipes on BuzzFeed.

Food and Drink Links

Did you know the guys who created Pete & Pete wrote Snow Day, Alvin and the Chipmunks, and The Tale of Despereaux since their show was cancelled?

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Every now and then a new app comes out that makes me wish I owned an iPhone and right now, Comedy Central’s new Head-In-A-Jar app has me really feeling that way. You can not only create a personalized head of yourself, you can make one of all of your friends and coworkers to set up your own head museum.

Link Via Laughing Squid

(Video Link)

If you guys have IFC, I highly recommend checking out one of their newest shows, Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings. Essentially, the show follows around these two video-makers who create hilarious local commercials that are pretty much all destined to become viral successes. The one above is my favorite so far.

Have you guys checked it out? If so, do you like it?

Show Link

If you love Firefly and you love art, then you’re bound to love these great Firefly art nouveau posters made by designer Megan Lara. The set of 4 posters, which features Kaylee, Zoe, Inara and River, is going for $29.95. The Saffron poster is sold separately.

Link Via The Mary Sue

The other night I turned on TV and caught half an episode of the original Star Trek where Captain Kirk meets Abraham Lincoln. Seriously. Sometimes even our favorite science fiction and fantasy franchises can be quite silly. Check out this list of unintentionally hilarious lines from science fiction and fantasy. What are some favorites of yours?

Sometimes our favorite movies and TV shows feature some hideously ridiculous dialogue. Sometimes nonsensical and melodramatic speech is part of why bad movies are such a guilty pleasure. Here are the 10 awesomest lines of unintentionally funny dialogue from science fiction and fantasy movies and television.

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Dave Forbes created this 60″ LED tv coat that’s powered by a 12V battery. Unsurprisingly, he designed it specifically for use at the Burning Man festival.

Personally, I’d rather carry around a tablet or laptop so I could watch television myself, but I guess I’m just greedy like that.

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These dorky comics by Adam McCauley are great for anyone who loves puns, particularly those that involve classic sci fi jokes. There are more at the link, including a few Star Wars ones as well.

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If you’ve ever had a hard time keeping track of the companions on Doctor Who, then this handy infographic should be able to help. To view the full graphic, be sure to click on the link.

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LEGO artist/designer Nathan Sawaya, known for his life-sized LEGO sculpture of Conan O’Brien and amazingly detailed gray brick version of Mount Rushmore,  has unveiled his newest brick-terpiece: a bust of Stephen Colbert!  Check out these and other awesome LEGO sculptures at the link.

Link -via Urban Vinyl Daily

There are two reasons for the decline, according to Nielsen. One is poverty: some low-income households no longer own TV sets, most likely because they cannot afford new digital sets and antennas.

The other is technological wizardry: young people who have grown up with laptops in their hands instead of remote controls are opting not to buy TV sets when they graduate from college or enter the work force, at least not at first. Instead, they are subsisting on a diet of television shows and movies from the Internet.

I had forgotten that there are places in which people can pick up several TV channels by using just an antenna. If I lived alone, I would give up TV entirely because I don’t have time to watch it. Link -via TYWKIWDBI

We take TV remote control for granted, but did you know that the first TV with remote control was made 50 years ago? Here’s an ad for RCA Victor’s wireless wizard remote control (billed as the greatest advance in television since color television itself / the ultimate in performance and convenience).

Hit play or go to Link [YouTube] – via Bits and Pieces

Fernando Reza created these wonderfully designed business cards for fictional companies from television and movie plots.You can buy a print of the work for $25 on his site.

How many can you name?

Link via Laughing Squid

Rosie Perez

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After graduating high school, Rosie Perez moved to Los Angeles and started attending LA City College with hopes of becoming a marine biologist. She was a killer dancer though and soon found herself working on Soul Train in the late 80s. After a few seasons, she went on to perform at the club Funky Reggae, which is where she was spotted by Spike Lee who soon cast her in his film Do The Right Thing.

She continued working in the dance field and earned three Emmy nominations for her choreography on In Living Color and she choreographed music videos for Janet Jackson, Bobby Brown, Diana Ross and LL Cool J. Of course, Rosie is best know for her acting, starring in White Men Can’t Jump, Untamed Heart, Fearless and more. She’s even appeared on Broadway, where she was able to combine her dancing and acting talents.

These days, she focuses most of her energies on activism and President Obama even appointed her to the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS this year.

Sources: Star Pulse, Biography.com, Wikipedia

Carmen Electra

Born Tara Leigh Patrick, Carmen’s parents knew she was destined for fame and they enrolled her in creative and performing arts classes since she was a youngster. Before she was even 18, she had already moved to LA and started dancing on Soul Train in 1991. Her big break came when she snuck into a nightclub and was spotted by Prince, who asked her to audition for a new female singing group he was forming. While she failed that the audition, she soon met Prince a second time and he asked her to be a solo artist on his record label. He also asked her to change her name to something more exotic, suggesting Carmen Electra after Bizet’s opera, Carmen, and the Greek princess Electra.

Her music career failed, but she was able to land a job on Nickelodeon’s All That, and she soon posed in Playboy, which helped her land a role on Baywatch and in MTV’s Singled Out. Since then she’s starred in a number of TV shows and movies, although these days her biggest roles seem to be in parody films like Disaster Movie and Meet the Spartans.

Sources: Wikipedia, Hot Carmen Electra

Image via Rafael Amado Deras [Flickr]

Nick Cannon

Nick Cannon started young. He was only eight when he started doing comedy acts and at 11, he was performing his act on public access. At only 15, he moved to Hollywood and joined the cast of Soul Train while performing his comedy routine at night. Like Carmen Electra, he was also recruited for Nickelodeon’s All That and he served as the warm up stand up comedian before the sketches were underway. Soon enough, he was added to the cast and the writing crew, making him the youngest staff writer in the history of television at age 17.

In 2002, he starred alongside Will Smith in Men in Black II and was soon cast as the lead in Drumline. The same year, he also released his debut album. These days, while still working on movies, music and  his marriage to Mariah Carey, he is also the host on America’s Got Talent.

Sources: Star Pulse, NickCannon.com

Image via Loren Javier [Flickr]

Jody Watley and Jeffery Daniel

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Jody Watley was a Soul Train dancer since she was 14 and was immediately recognized as a trend setter in both fashions and dance styles. Jeffery was a little older when he started on the show, but also was a featured dancer at the very beginning of the show.

Dick Griffey, and Don Cornelius wanted to start a disco trio and the two dancers were selected to be part of the new group Shalamar. While the group had a string of hits throughout the seventies and eighties, many of which sold over a million copies, they are best remembered for inspiring Michael Jackson. Michael was a huge fan of Soul Train and of Shalamar and eventually hired Jeffery to teach him some choreography. Jeffery was actually the person who created the moonwalk and you can see the dance move in their 1982 performance on BBC’s Top of the Pops, a year before Michael stunned the world by performing it on television.

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3

Jermaine Stewart

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Before releasing hits like “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off,” Jermaine Stewart started his career off as a dancer on Soul Train. He was on the first generation of Soul Train shows from the early seventies, when the show was still filmed in Chicago instead of LA.

Stewart soon started doing backing vocals and acting as a dancer for Shalamar and then moved on to doing the backing vocals for Culture Club’s Colour by Numbers. He did such a great job that Boy George and the rest of the group helped him land a recording contract with Arista Records.

Stewart had a string of hits throughout the eighties, but he slowed down in the nineties, and his last album was never released after the title track single sold poorly. He passed away from AIDs in 1997.

Source: Wikipedia

Fred “Rerun” Berry

You may remember Rerun and his catchphrase “hey hey hey” from the show What’s Happening!!, but before he played the iconic seventies TV character, Fred Berry was another dancers on the early Soul Train episodes in Chicago. His excellent dance moves eventually got him a spot in a Los Angeles break-dancing crew called the Lockers, who once appeared on Saturday Night Live. Within a year, he found himself cast on What’s Happening!! Berry’s character ended up being one of the most popular on the show, which led him to be typecast eternally as Rerun.

While the success of Rerun prevented Berry from being able to find other acting gigs, he eventually embraced the character and started wearing his classic red beret and suspenders in public and even legally changed his middle name to Rerun. Since then, he’s been hired to do a number of cameos as Rerun in various movies and TV shows.

Sources: Answers.com, Wikipedia

Do you watch Soul Train? If so, what’s your favorite part of the show? I personally love the outfits and some of the outrageous couples dances, but it is always fun to see people you recognize dancing like crazy.

Using a combination of four studies, scientists have shown that television shows can instill a sense of belonging in people with low self-esteem who have been rejected by friends or family. This is called the social surrogacy hypothesis, which figures that in order to fill the emotional void of social deprivation, a person will establish relationships with fictional characters (as teenagers, many of us had a similar type of relationship with late-night Cinemax).

One study showed that subjects who were experiencing feelings of loneliness felt better after turning on their favorite television programs. Another had subjects writing essays about either their favorite shows or some other random subject as a control. The subjects who wrote about their favorite shows used fewer words expressing loneliness than the control group.

The article is surprisingly SFW. Link

On November 26, 1956, a television revolution took place. A price-bidding game allowed coupon-clipping housewives to finally feel as smart as the PHD-holding contestants seen on the many quiz shows popular at the time. And when the quiz show scandal of 1959 broke, The Price Is Right managed to maintain its integrity and take its place as a legendary show destined to become the longest running American game show in the world. But how did The Price Is Right get started and how has it ensured such eternal success? Read on  to get a full taste of the brilliance and luck that has allowed The Price Is Right to reach such incredible levels of game show domination.

Image via beITRON [Flickr]

The First Run

Did you know Drew Carey is actually the third host of the show, not the second? That’s because before Bob Barker was hired to host The New Price Is Right (the “New” was dropped from the title within the same year it premiered), the original show started Bill Cullen and was created by producer Bob Stewart, who also invented such classics as Password and The $10,000 Pyramid. Steward was inspired to create The Price is Right after watching an auctioneer in New York City.

Unlike the current show we all know and love, this was a much more basic format. There were no Showcase Showdowns or pricing games. The entire show consisted of contestants bidding on expensive products, attempting to get as close to the actual retail price without going over (similar to the first round of the current show except this would keep going for a long time and the item would be expensive rather than the dish soap and soup cans they start off with now). If a contestant worried they were getting too close to the final price, they could seal their price and stop bidding. The contestant who was closest without going over won the prize, which was usually rather big and sometimes pretty crazy.

“How big and crazy?” you might ask. Well, remember the Simpson’s episode where Bart wins an elephant? It turns out that was based on an incident that occurred during this first version of the Price Is Right. The elephant, and its “extra ivory,” was a bonus prize for a grand piano. In actuality, the show meant to give the contestant the cash equivalent of $4000, but the winner wanted a real elephant, so he was eventually given a live pet flown in all the way from Kenya.

A few other grandiose prizes included fully furnished homes in brand new subdivisions, small business franchises, business stock, a Ferris wheel, a private island, a 1926 Rolls Royce with a chauffeur, a mile of hot dogs, a live peacock to serve as a color guide to a brand new TV and a full barbecue pit with a live Angus steer.

This first version lasted until 1965, and viewers had to wait seven years before it was reworked into the modern format and added to the programming schedule again.

Image via Adam Foster [Flickr]

New And Improved

The New Price Is Right premiered on September 4, 1972. It contained some of the old elements of the show, but added a number of new elements that we still enjoy to this day. Even though the early incarnation of the show doesn’t count towards its record of aired shows, there have been over 7,300 episodes aired and the program has still managed to become second only to the Mexican television show Sabado Gigante when it comes to the longest-running game show in the world, and it is the longest-running game show in America.

The modern version starts out with a bidding game and then moves on to more games until the guests get to compete for a chance to bid on the grand prize showcase at the end of the game. During the Showcase portion of the game, the guest that comes closest to the price of their showcase without going over wins and gets to keep their showcase. If they come close enough to the price of their showcase, they not only win their grand prize, but the one offered to the other player as well.

Image via Douglas Coulter [Flickr]

Barker’s Prohibitions

You probably know that Bob Barker’s charisma played a big role in keeping the show alive so long (he has 17 Emmy awards to prove it) , but you might not know that he had such a major role in the show behind the scenes. Barker invented many of the pricing games on the show, including three baring his name that were retired after he left the show. He also put a lot of restrictions in place that stayed in effect until Drew Carrey became the host.

In 1979, Bob Barker went vegetarian and demanded the show stop giving away anything on the show made from leather or fur. He also ensured that showcases could no longer show fake meat props on the barbecues. From that point on, he also started signing off every episode by saying, “Help control the pet population—have your pets spayed or neutered.” This is one tradition that Drew Carey has upheld with the utmost respect although furs and leather are now back on the prize list.

Interestingly, Barker’s first episode started out with a prize of a fur coat, but you won’t see that on any reruns or DVDs because he has kept the stations from releasing any shows showing episodes with fur coats.

Barker did more than just preach about the importance of spaying and neutering though. He even started his own foundation, the DJ&T Foundation (named for his mother and his wife), that is dedicated to controlling the dog and cat population. The organization helps support low-cost and free spay and neuter clinics around the country. Barker still funds the foundation to this day.

Animal population control isn’t the only cause Barker was dedicated to though. In 1991, he instilled another prohibition on the show banning any foreign automobiles from being given away as prizes. He did this as a patriotic measure during the first Iraq War, but once again, this rule has been lifted since his retirement and cars from all over the world have now been offered as prizes.

Image via laksge [Wikipedia]

Seeking A Successor

In June of 2006, Barker announced his intention to retire from hosting the show. His decision coincided with the show’s 35^th anniversary and his 50^th anniversary of hosting shows on TV (He previously hosted Truth Or Consequences). During that time he was named in the Guinness Book of World Records, once for being TV’s Most Durable Performer for doing 3524 consecutive performances on Truth Or Consequences and once of being the Most Generous Host in Television History for giving away over $55 million in cash and prizes, although by the time he retired that number had risen to $200 million. Obviously, his successor had some mighty big shoes to fill.

Producers looked all over the place for new hosts and Rosie O’Donnell seemed to be the top contender until she insisted that the show be moved to New York so she wouldn’t have to move. Drew Carey was hesitant to host the show at first, so CBS producers actually had to convince him that he would be good at it. Reading comments on forums about the subject, you might see a lot of people upset that Carey was replacing Bob, but they all seem to be glad that at least he’s not Rosie. And that seems alright with Drew, who never thought he could contend with the original host anyway, “You can’t replace Bob Barker. I don’t compare myself to anybody… It’s only about what you’re doing and supposed to do, and I feel like I’m supposed to be doing this.”

Barker’s last episode premiered on June 15, 2007, but reruns continued to air until Drew Carey’s first episode premiered on October 15.

Image via sexiestgeeksalive [Flickr]

Show  Records

If you read the part about crazy prizes on the earlier version and thought there is no way the current game could compete, you might be right about wackiness, but not about monetary value. While CBS used to impose a prize cap on their game shows, it was revoked in the late 1990’s. Since then, there have been some incredibly lucky winners. Vickyann Sadowski won both showcases, including two cars and ended up scoring $147,517, making her the single-day winnings record holder for daytime network game shows. But the records don’t stop there. The show once held a prime time Million Dollar Spectacular series for a few weeks in 2008. Adam Rose managed to win both showcases, a $20,000 prize during one of the challenges and a bonus $1,000,000 for getting so close to the right value on his showcase. His final winnings? $1,153,908.

While Terry Kniess may not have won as much as either of those contestants, his accomplishment is even more impressive: Terry is the only person to have ever guessed the exact price of their showcase down to the dollar. Thanks to his incredible ability to notice patterns and a little bit of luck, he guessed the approximate value of the showcase and then used his and his wife’s pin numbers to round out his bid. The guess was so perfect that behind the scenes everyone was frantically trying to find out how he cheated and when Carey announced that he was right on the money, he seems angry –something which seriously irritated home viewers.

Image via dayseraph [Flickr]

Despite his flub when announcing Terry’s incredible accuracy, Drew still seems to be doing an alright job with the show and ratings certainly aren’t suffering –the show is still one of the top daytime game shows. So what do you think, should Carey stay on or is the price wrong these days?

Sources: Wikipedia #1, #2, #3, #4, Variety, JS Online, Esquire and CBS

Andrew Shears created this US Map with a TV show to go with each state. It’s good to see that TV sometimes happens outside of New York and California! Shears also explains why he choose each show. You can enlarge the picture at Thinking Pseudogeographically. Link -via The Daily What

Barney Gumble

Barney was based on a drunkard character named “Crazy” Guggenheim that was in the “Joe the Bartender” sketches of The Jackie Gleason Show. Matt Groening wanted him to be the most pathetic sitcom sidekick ever and he always wanted to break the unspoken rules of television that made it taboo to have alcohol serve as the source of comedy. As for his name, it was based on another popular comedy character, Barney Rubble of The Flintstones.

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Bart Simpson

While Bart’s name is just an anagram of “brat”, the character was largely based on Matt Groening’s older brother. On top of that, the character is an extreme version of a bratty child, and Groening incorporated all of the bad traits from Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn and Dennis the Menace.

Bleeding Gums Murphy

Image via Hans Reitzema [Wikipedia]

Bleeding Gums’ character design is loosely based on the now deceased saxophone player LeRoi Moore, who played for the Dave Matthews band. His character is believed to be a homage to saxophone player Sonny Rollins, who quit his jazz career to play by himself on a bridge.

Bumblebee Man

Bumblebee Man is the Simpson’s version of a popular Mexican television character known as El Chapulin Colorado (The Red Grasshopper). The show’s producers said that whenever they watched Telemundo, the character seemed to always be on the screen, which served as inspiration for Bumblebee Man to always be on TV as well.

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Charles Montgomery Burns

Image via James Duncan Davidson [Wikipedia]

The city’s most diabolical millionaire was based on a number of tycoons including the Rockefellers, but a main inspiration for the character was Fredrik Olsen, a reclusive mogul who owned a number of companies, including Timex. Another source for Mr. Burns personality came from Matt Groening’s his high school teacher, Mr. Bailey.

The look of the character was based on Fox founder Barry Diller (seen above) and a praying mantis.

Doctor Julius Hibbert

When Doctor Hibbert first appeared, he wasn’t based on anyone specific, but when The Simpsons were moved to the same time slot as The Cosby Show, the staff thought it was appropriate to make him a character of Dr. Huxtable, Cosby’s character on the show.

Duffman

Bud Man’s superhero advertising character is a direct inspiration for Duffman. The catchphrase “Oh Yeah” came from the song of the same name by Yello, which was a popular advertising tune during the eighties, which fit right in with Duffman’s persona.

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Jimbo Jones

If you like the bully, John Bender, from The Breakfast Club and you like Jimbo, there’s a reason for that; Jimbo is based on the Brat Pack character. His name, on the other hand, has a source much closer to the show’s heart…he was named for executive producer James L. Brooks.

Krusty The Clown

Image via Carl Lender [Wikipedia]

Many Simpsons fans already know that Krusty the Clown was based on a television clown that Matt Groening watched as a child, named Rusty Nails. On the other hand, fewer people know that Krusty’s biography is largely based on the life of comedian Jackie Mason (seen above), who was the son of an orthodox rabbi. Mason voices Krusty’s father, which must have been cathartic for him during the first episode he was cast in.

Moe Syzlak

Moe was largely based on a two people, one of the main inspirations was Louis “Red” Deutsch, a boxer-turned-bartender made famous when tapes of prank calls made to his bar were released to the public. Two Jersey City pranksters repeatedly called him and when he started to catch on, he started angrily threatening the callers and their families. This played directly into Bart’s phone relationship with Moe throughout the series.

Another inspiration for Moe was comedian Rich Hall, who was friends with writer George Meyer.

Nelson Muntz

Nelson was also based on John Bender to some extent, and his name is not only a reference to the full nelson wrestling hold, but also to Judd Nelson, the actor who portrayed John Bender in The Breakfast Club. Nelson has even more in common with John Bender than Jimbo does, particularly when it comes to personality and his home life.

Professor John Frink Jr.

Originally the geeky inventor we’ve all grown to love was supposed to be a mad scientist, but when Hank Azaria first voiced him, he did an impression of Jerry Lewis’ Nutty Professor and everyone loved it, so the writers changed the script around to make him more goofy.

Troy McClure

While it’s easy to see that Troy is more of a stereotypical Hollywood wash up than a caricature of any one specific person, his name is based on two B-movie actors: Troy Donahue and Doug McClure. Doug’s daughter said that while her dad considered it an honor to have such an iconic character named after him, she still enjoyed talking back to him by calling him “Troy.”

The Yes Guy

Although he has no real name, every fan is familiar with the mustachioed character that constantly says “yeeeessss.” The character is a tribute to Frank Nelson’s many appearances on The Jack Benny Program and other shows of the period. His trademark was the same “yeeeeesssss” that Yes Guy is known for.

There are tons of Simpsons characters out there, who’s your favorite? And do any of you know any other stories behind the characters?

Source: Simpsons Wiki