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Bully for Bugs (1953)
Very Best of the Bugs Bunny Cartoons
Like a zillion other Baby Boomers, I grew up watching Bugs and the gang sitting in my pajamas on Saturday morning. Countless great times from Huckleberry Hound to Rocky & Bullwinkle to Jonny Quest and on and on. Warner Bros.' Looney Tunes were the best of the bunch, then and now. Bully for Bugs stands in a class by itself, and that's not sayin' nothin. Only two gems you need to watch out for: The lift of the matador's nostril early on, and later, the grin the bull gets on his face when he realizes he can fire the rifle through his horns. And the slap fight. Lord help us, don't forget the slap fight.
Jack Paar and His Lions (1969)
Delightful look at the famous talk-show host and his love of lions.
First off, nobody is ever going to see this film; I'd be surprised if it was still in NBC's archive. Second, nobody is ever going to read this review. Thirdly, it's a documentary, so there really isn't a spoiler issue, but just to be clear, SPOILERS follow.
Jack loved to take home movies with those clunky 8mm cameras back in the 50s and 60s. He'd write the narration, and then do the narration. I remember seeing this movie on TV back in the day, and it was intelligent, warm, and funny.
He had a pet lion cub, Amani. Apparently, she was a cub of Elsa, the lioness featured in the movie Born Free. His family kept her as a big kitten, and that's how she behaved, and was a member of the family.
I remember part of the show had to do with her reticence around strangers, with the notable exception of former baseball player and sports commentator Joe Garagiola. Everybody pronounced his last name GARE-uh-gee-OH-la, but Jack for some reason insisted upon guh-RAH-gee-oh-la.
Anyway, footage showed him sitting on a couth, with Amani fawning all over his bald head. Couldn't get enough of him. She'd play in his lap, and stayed very close to him. She was just adorable.
I remember the emotional punch when Jack told us that Amani had contracted some disease and died while very young.
I've always liked Jack Paar because of this show. He was a bright and engaging man, and greatly improved the content of television overall. This show was an example of that.
The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson: Ed Ames, Myron Cohen, Luba Lisa (1965)
I can't believe nobody's ever posted on this!!!!
This show was one of the funniest moments ever on television! Ed Ames, who was then a regular on the "Daniel Boone" TV show, as Mingo the Indian, did a guest spot. Carson had his staff make up a wooden display with a cowboy painted on it with drawn pistol.
The idea was that Ames could demonstrate his tomahawk-throwing prowess. Well, he lined up to throw, and tossed the tomahawk expertly into the cowboy's crotch! This was perhaps the longest sustained laugh in the history of television, and it had all kinds of double meanings.
Besides the obvious "Oooo, that one hurt!" meaning, the tomahawk landed with the handle pointed upward, giving the cowboy a rather pronounced erect appendage, if you know what I mean.
But Carson's expert sense of timing made it twice as funny. Ames was hopelessly embarrassed, yet laughing too, and tried to retrieve the tomahawk, but Carson, with a cruel grin, held him back while the shot returned to the cowboy's predicament.
Carson and Ames are standing, just riding out the laugh, and Carson is absently playing with two tomahawks, and Ames just had to stand there next to him. As the laugh started to taper off a little, Carson said, "I didn't even know you were Jewish!" starting a whole new wave of laughter. He waited another bit, and then said to the camera, "Welcome to Frontier Bris!" referring to the Jewish ceremony for circumcision.
Tapes of this segment are all over the Internet, so please, don't miss it!
Night Gallery: The Diary/A Matter of Semantics/Big Surprise/Professor Peabody's Last Lecture (1971)
Don't p*** off the pagan gods, okay?
This is one of Night Gallery's "quickies," (lasting maybe a minute or so) in which the pedantic Peabody, very ably embodied by Carl Reiner, in boring his college students to sleep. He is giving a disrespectful lecture about some of H.P. Lovecraft's deific creations, among them Great Cthulu and Nyalathotep. Peabody makes no secret of his contempt, and through the window, we see the storm clouds rapidly gather. Peabody comes to the climax of his lecture, lightning strikes, and the good professor's head is transformed into something less than attractive. Like many of the Night Gallery episodes, this one has a lot of tension, but is a great deal of fun.