Daniel85

I don’t think there’s a house in the world that’s never had at least one of Bill Cosby’s books. No-one ever reads ‘em, but I guess people just like having Bill’s reassuring, leonine head on their bookshelves. 

Not to be outdone by his onscreen dad, Malcolm-Jamal Warner put out a book in 1988 to capitalise on the popularity of the Theo Huxtable character.

The book is pretty much just Malcolm-Jamal Warner jiving on teenage problems, using some of his hundreds of thousands of fan letters to illustrate points about problems facing ’teens of today’.

It’s pretty banal stuff, but there are some hilarious letters printed. Before the Internet, writing fan letters must be how idiot 13 year olds got their kicks. Here are some of my favourites…

Here’s what I read. I read that Bill Cosby has all this Jell-O and Coke in his closets because  otherwise he’d be in trouble with the police and the government because he has to really use them like he says on the commercials.
- Alice, 12

How is it going to school with Rudy and Vanessa and all? It must be easy if you sometimes have to do second grade stuff with the little kids. I wouldn’t mind some of that.
- Andrew, 14

You are my eighteenth favorite star. Ahead of you is Lisa Bonet, Michael J. Fox, Michael Landon, Magic Johnson, Eric Dickerson, Pee Wee Herman, the guy from “Growing Pains,” ALF, Christie Brinkley, Bill Cosby, Bruce Springsteen, and some others I can’t remember.
- Aaron, 13

Ahhahahahahaha. That is so insulting. He doesn’t even know Kirk Cameron’s name, but he still likes him more than Mal-Jam.

Could you do something to let me know you got my letter. On the show, try to do this for me, wave or something, or say something about me because I never miss “The Cosby Show.” That’s my family show. Just say, “My friend Alan wrote me from Connecticut.”
-Alan, 11

My Cabbage Patch Kid is named after you. Theo, not Malcolm. I hope you don’t mind.
- Melissa, 10 

That is so 80s. 

Best fan letter ever: 

I wrote Michael Jackson and he wrote back and you’re not half as famous so I’m expecting you’ll write back, okay?
- Cody, 15

Have you ever wanted to date Lisa Bonet, and if you did how far did you and Lisa go? And did you ever think about dating Phylicia Rashad or is she just like a second mother to you?
- Jason, 15

That’s pretty desperate, Jason.

I like your show. I don’t watch it very much because I made a bet with my mom to not watch TV for a year for one hundred and fifty dollars. It ends on June the first.
- Dewey, 9

Who the hell makes a bet to abstain from watching TV for a year? He’s not even sticking to it, though, cos he still watches The Cosby Show, just not ‘very much’.

I changed my mind, this is the best fan letter ever:

Do you talk hoodlum? If you do, the next time I see you (like I’ve seen you before), I’m going to kick you in the neck and beat you with a chair. Hoodlum talk is ignorant.
- Gregory

Whoa. This guy certainly stands by his ideas about positive images of black youth.

Mal-Jam doesn’t care, though, cos he concludes the chapter this letter appeared in by saying:  

So, yo- let’s do ‘dis!

That that, Gregory! You don’t fuxtable with Theo Huxtable.

Here’s something of a confession from Mal: 

Fighting is a big part of growing up, at least for a guy. (After all, I can only speak from experience here.) Girls fight too. I see it all the time, and I guess it’s not so different.

He sees girls fight all the time? What kind of places was Bill Cosby taking Mal-Jam to after work?  

Sometimes I’m nervous about calling somebody up to go to a movie, or to hang out, whether it’s a guy or a girl.

There are some things even “The Cosby Show” can’t change. I thought that would be helpful for a lot of you to know.

I didn’t know Malcolm-Jamal Warner was bisexual, but there you go. More power to ya,  Mal-Jam.

Oh, and if you don’t know what this blog entry’s title is about, inflict some appropriate physical punishment on yourself for your lack of 80s TV knowledge, then watch this clip from The Cosby Show: 

New catalogue day has been kinda empty ever since Bandana Kid’s untimely passing, but there are still many things to be mocked in these little pamphlets of idiocy, and so we press on, extracting what marrow we can from the bones of life, day by day. Ashes to ashes and all that.

Take this guy for instance. Notice how one of his arms is more pumped to the max than the other? He’s noticed it too, and can’t stop looking at it! I guess that’s the arm he uses to masturbate to the very thought of himself.

And now, just in time for Christmas, the Orgasm Poolchair!

This ‘remote control flying saucer’ in the Go-Lo catalogue is something I would’ve gone nuts for as a kid, and then been infinitely disappointed when it didn’t work at all. Seriously, does this thing look like it can fly to you?

The remote control does look kinda like a cop’s radar gun, though, so maybe I’ll buy it just to go stand on the highway freaking people out.

Don’t really have anything major to blog about today, so this entry’s just a mixed bag of random things not worthy of their own entry that still fall under the prevailing Christmas theme.

Christmastime is always awesometime over at X-E, and Matt has found a truly wondrous snowglobe featuring Darth Vader building a snowy replica of the Death Star. It reminded me of this fantastic picture from the back of Hasbro’s Holiday Darth Vader action figure from last Christmas: 

Shouldn’t he have made a Snowtrooper?

My local Safeway has half-heartedly gotten into the Christmas spirit…

And doesn’t everyone look all the more joyful for it?

Finally, from the ’harried dad frantically Googling’ department comes the funniest search engine hit I’ve had this Christmas season:

HOW TO MOUNT PLASTIC SANTA TO CHIMNEY

I love how it’s all in capitals, as if the searcher is ’shouting’ at his computer (remember all those news reports and magazine articles about ‘Netiquette’ in like 1996?) for handy hints on how to get the FUCKING SANTA TO MOUNT WHILE IT MOCKS ME WITH ITS FUCKING HO HO HO LAUGHTER!!!!!!11111seveneleven

As a huge Michael Jackson fan, I was naturally PUMPED to hear that he’s heading back to the studio for a 2007 album release. I was just as PUMPED back in 2001, of course, and Invincible turned out pretty shit. But still, there’s always a part of me that hopes the King will return.

Anyway, I hit up Youtube for some footage I had heard about of MJ in the studio with will.i.am of the Black Eyes Peas, and as so often happens with Youtube I went on a merry journey through videoland. One of the things I found was the following bit (origin unknown) where Michael Jackson is answering fan questions in an Internet chat room, back in 1995. World Wide Web! The future! 

Some idiot asks the standard ‘if you could be a superhero, which one would you be and why?’ Insightful, probing questions here. Anyone would expect MJ to come back with something weird like ‘I am a superhero’, or ‘Peter Pan is my superhero’, but instead he proves himself a closet comics fan by talking about how much he likes Morph of the X-Men, because he can ‘become all things’ and ‘is very mysterious’.

Seeing as this is 1995, I think Michael’s exposure to the X-Men probably comes from the X-Men: The Animated Series (in which Morph was a recurring secondary character) rather than the comics. Still, it’s nice to learn that MJ’s an X-Fan, even if it does conjure up images of him and Macaulay Calkin in their PJs on Saturday morning, eating Cap’n Crunch and watching cartoons.

Star Wars and Christmas have a long, infamous history together. The Star Wars Holiday Special is pretty much the most mocked thing in pop culture, but even that begins to look like Citizen Kane compared to 1980’s ‘Christmas In The Stars, the Star Wars Christmas Album’.

Poor old Threepio and Artoo. They’re always roped into doing the crappiest promotional stuff. I guess it was a smart move on George Lucas’s part to make the droids such central characters, so that he could pimp them out for stuff like this that not even Mark Hamill would touch.

We know, Mark. We know.

Before the world fell in love with E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, R2-D2 was the man. Droid. Among several forgettable holiday ditties on the Star Wars Christmas Album, as well as one totally bizarre one (”What Can You Get A Wookie For Christmas (When He Already Owns A Comb”), there’s a little gem that really sums up the general worldwide love for R2-D2… “R2-D2, We Wish You A Merry Christmas”.

This song is notable for lead vocals by a very David Cassidy-sounding Jon Bon Jovi (back when he was still known as Jon Bongiovi). I believe this album was actually his first professional appearance.

Like all good Christmas songs, this one has a little bit of opening dialogue to set up the backstory. C-3PO surreptitiously invites R2-D2 to ‘plug into the central computer’ (euphemism?). The dialogue is peppered with the kind of pseudo-scientific lingo found throughout all Star Wars… stuff like ‘phase vector’ and ‘quaver converter’ (I didn’t make those up, they’re in the song).

The lyrics run from hilarious to even more hilarious, with such lines as “Our chimney’s big and round, so you can come right down” and “We’ll go in by the fire, and warm your little wires”.

In between those Bon Jovi-sung bits, there’s a choir of children singing ‘R2-D2 we love you, it’s true!’ It really is true, though. Who doesn’t love Artoo?! No redeeming message of peace or harmony or joy to the world here, just sheer idol worship. Great stuff.

The song ends with C-3PO on the verge of actually admitting his endless love for R2, but instead choking it back and saying ‘Merry Christmas’ instead. I think Threepio’s favourite Beatles song is George Harrison’s ‘I Want To Tell You’.

But don’t take my words for it, you have to hear this masterpiece for yourselves…

Click to plug R2-D2, We Wish You A Merry Christmas.mp3 into your sockets!

(The Rapidshare download thing is not as complicated as it looks. Just click on the ‘Free’ button and then wait for the countdown to end so you can download it.)

I don’t think any Geelong locals would disagree when I say that Bay City Plaza is by far the king of the two shopping malls in Geelong’s CBD. Market Square has always been the poorer cousin of Bay City Plaza, although it has gotten better lately with the advent of JB Hi-Fi and EB Games. Still, for many years it’s been a boring, useless mall that no young person would willingly enter. 

Probably the thing that annoys me the most about Market Square is Harris Scarfe, the dumbest department store in the history of retail. They stock hardly anything, and what they do have is overpriced and from dinky brands that no-one cares about. I think Harris Scarfe is just a big scam to take advantage of country folk who’ve come down to the city and don’t know any better (or are afraid of the bright lights and flashy decor of bigger stores).

One thing Market Square does know how to do is celebrate Christmas. Bay City always stuffs Santa’s Village somewhere out of the way, usually upstairs. They can afford to snub Santa, though, with all their cool stores. Market Square, on the other hand, knows the only way it’s going to draw people in during the Christmas shopping season is to put on the biggest fucking extravaganza imaginable every year.

There’s always a big fuss about Santa’s arrival at Market Square, with a big parade and everything, but I loathe humanity far too much to stand on the street in the heat with the… is there a word for ‘throng’ or ‘crowd’ that rhymes with ’street’?

Anyway, Santa’s all settled in at Market Square, holding his usual pride of place in the centre of the mall:

That’s the same old tree that Market Square pulls out every Christmas. I wonder where they store it during the year. It’s pretty big, although my skewed childhood memory has it as more on par with one of the California redwoods, busting out of the ceiling and whatnot.

Here’s the set-up from ground level. I wonder if maybe they’ve scaled down this year, cos my memory from past years has the thing taking up way more floorspace than this. It could just be that it’s only November, and I usually see it during the height of Christmas action in mid-December, with hundreds of people milling around the centrepiece. Their seasonally-coloured clothing just kind of blends into a heaving biomass that looks like part of the display. Naked without the teeming hordes of shoppers, Santa’s throne room is pretty unimpressive.

I missed out on the reindeer, unfortunately. They only brought the poor things out in the pre-summer weather for a couple of days and then whacked them back in the freezer for next year. Bringing reindeer Down Under to please the gawking masses is almost as bad as all those assholes who keep huskies and malamutes as pets down here.

I still have to check out what Bay City has done for Christmas this year. There’ll be photos, if I return. Bay City security is pretty tight.

As you head down to your local school gymnasium or church hall or post office tomorrow to make your decision on the future of this great state, just remember: 

YOU’RE THE VOICE, TRY AND UNDERSTAND IT!
WHOA-OH-OH-OH-OHOHOHOHOH. WHOAOHOHOHOHOH1234567OHOHOHOH.

Found these in K-Mart this morning. 

There’ve been a lot of new limited edition M&M’s colours in the last couple of years, but this is the first to have an actual purpose other than dirty moneymaking. Mars has jumped on the ‘make food products disgustingly pink for breast cancer fundraising’ bandwagon, along with Masterfoods’ tomato sauce and Mount Franklin bottled water (among others).

Don’t get me wrong; I support breast cancer. I mean… the fight against it. Not the disease itself. I just don’t wanna see pink ketchup. That’s gross.

That sultry siren Miss Green is on the bag, declaring ‘I’m a lover and a fighter!’ You go, girl!

The pinkness has been diluted by the inclusion of white M&M’s. I guess Mars realised it would be too weird to have an entire bag of pink M&M’s.

Okay, I’ve done my bit. Now the existence of pink M&M’s is confirmed for posterity. Maybe this blog entry will settle a stupid argument about M&M colours in 20 years.

Our mailbox contained a hefty sheaf of Christmas catalogues this morning. (Enough that if they’d been delivered to our doorstep there would’ve been an audible thud.) Naturally I ignored the flash of the Target catalogue and the style of the Myer catalogue, going straight for the crappiness of the Warehouse catalogue and hoping for some Bandana Kid.

Nothing. No bandana in sight.

It’s probably just that my theory about all his pics being taken on the same day was right, and they’ve run them all now. I think we’d all like to believe, though, that this brave soul has passed on to a greater place. A place full of eyepatches and battle-axes and plastic AK-47s.

So no Bandana Kid pics, but here’s one of a decidedly creepy Santa from the same catalogue that broke a nation’s heart:

Bandana Kid would’ve been perfect for the role. He had a bigger belly than this guy, at least.

Survey for ex-GHS types: Dr Edward Reilly- Santa Claus?

McDonalds’ latest attempt to pretend that they’re concerned about kids’ health and well-being is the ‘Music Happy Meal’, which comes with a little iPod-looking thing called a ‘music stick’ containing 30-second song clips.

When I heard about this, I just expected a bunch of crappy  pop songs by the likes of Kelly Clarkson and Ashlee Simpson, but I was surprised and awe-struck to find that one of the songs available is the 1994 smash hit ‘I Like To Move It’ by Reel 2 Real.

It’s good to see that they’re introducing kids to the classics. They’re only missing ‘Boom Boom Boom’ by The Outhere Bros, and ‘Whoomp! There It Is!’ by Tag Team. I can actually see why they used ‘I Like To Move It’, cos it was featured in that movie Madagascar last year, but one of the other music sticks inexplicably contains Lou Bega’s ‘Mambo No. 5′ (a song I’d hoped never to have to hear again). 

The music sticks themselves are pretty cool for Happy Meal toys. They’re fairly loud, and come with a clip so self-loathers can proudly display them on their belts and walk around getting beaten up.

I do like the idea of being able to blast ‘I Like To Move It’ from my hip at any time, though. If anyone gives me any guff throughout the day, I can just push the button and give them a dose of Reel 2 Real.

Each music stick comes with a set of dance steps for performing to the songbyte:

McDonald’s and dancing, historically, have not gone well together. Anyone who’s seen the 1988 E.T. rip-off Mac and Me will know what I’m talking about. The movie features a bizarre 10 minute breakdance contest scene in a McDonald’s store, all while a group of ‘men in black’ chase down the little alien who needs to drink Coke (not just any soda, only Coke) to live. I will review Mac and Me for Retro Junk someday, and it will be the best thing ever written.

Since I can’t dance, here’s Spider-Man to show you how it’s done…

(That’s his ride in the background. One does have to represent, after all. Spidey rolls with Barbie dolls.)