Daniel85

3:02!

Gotta love bad Neighbours acting. This scene was referenced practically every 30 seconds by my brother and me around the time it aired (probably 4 or 5 years ago now). I was chuffed to find the clip on YouTube.

I always laugh whenever I see this ad. It’s for TSR’s Dungeon game, a board game based on the fantasy tropes of D&D.

There is just something so awkward about the framing of the picture. It looks like the jocks are playing the game just to humour the little geeky kid… like they’re about to kick his ass or something. And the geek knows it, too:

“That’s a twenty, gents. Looks like Kragamor The Destroyer wins the day again, heh, heh.”

“Your ass is grass, Poindexter!”
“Yeah, when we get back from shopping for more geometric-print sweaters, you are DONE!”

BONUS: Clip from the final episode of Freaks and Geeks, where the AV Club invites bad-ass Daniel to join their D&D campaign.

Holy shit, people.

I’ve been searching for this ad for years, and never managed to track it down. Someone’s finally uploaded it to YouTube.

The Wobbies World commercial is a pillar of Victorian childhood. A flagstone! A bulkhead!

No-one I know ever actually went to Wobbies World, but we all saw that commercial about 5 times a day every day of our lives. Did any of you guys ever actually get to go to Wobbies World? Please fill me in if you did.

In hindsight, Wobbies World looks incredibly lame. But how awesome did it seem as a kid?! I would’ve given my Game Boy to go on that frickin’ bubble helicopter.

I don’t understand how Wobbies World assumed the exalted position of desire it did amongst early 90s Aussie kids. Surely we were smart enough to see that the place was a complete shithole? Nevertheless, I can remember harboring an intense need to go to Wobbies World. Maybe it was cos Disneyland seemed impossible, Warner Bros Movie World perhaps a little less so, but still mostly unattainable… but Wobbies World was a definite maybe. Nunawading’s in the Melways, dad could drive there!

Or maybe it was just that incredibly hypnotic music. I love how it finishes at the end of the commercial. Tik-tik-whoo.

Some more points, because I’m not done dissecting this relic of 90s Victorian kidhood: 

What’s the deal with that stupid mannequin dressed as a fireman? They couldn’t even afford real animatronics, so they just pinched a dummy from the bins behind K-Mart. Oh, and that early shot where it zooms in on the dummy’s face is frickin’ terrifying.

“Bring your friends, and mum too!” (But dad can fuckin’ stay home.)

And I’m sorry, but a slide isn’t a ride. It’s playground equipment. Just had to call bullshit on that one.

P.S. I tried to find the clip from The Late Show where they parodied this commercial (with a funpark named Piss Weak World), but it’s not on YouTube. Instead, please accept this equally hilarious Late Show spoof of Channel 9’s old “We’re Still #1″ campaign:

This is undoubtedly old news to everyone by now, but…

Yep, the best fucking show in the history of television is being revived. I don’t like how the new logo looks like some kind of energy drink logo, or a sequel to Halo or something, but it’s hard to care too much when we have the sheer awesomeness of Gladiators returning to our screens.

The original series intro will prove incontrovertibly my claim to the show’s unassailable awesomeness:

Everything about that is awesome. (I know I’m overusing the word ‘awesome’, but I wholeheartedly believe that the word was actually coined by a Druid seer many thousands of years ago to describe Gladiators, which he had seen in a vision of the future.)

The intro looks like it’s straight out of Kevin Sorbo’s Hercules or Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers: The Movie (two other examples of sheer 90s awesomeness)… and the theme song is incredibly reminiscent of Joe Esposito’s “You’re The Best” (from The Karate Kid).

The shot of Taipan shredding on his guitar on the peaks of Olympus is further testmament to the unrivalled coolness of Gladiators.

I first got wind of this when I was in the States and saw that they were reviving American Gladiators. I hoped and prayed that Australia would follow suit, and then a couple of weeks ago I started seeing promotional posters all around Melbourne. Happy boy, happy boy.

I always loved in the original series how there would be these roided-up gym freaks who’d come on, convinced they could mix it with the Gladiators, and then they got totally thrashed on the Roman Rings or the pyramid. That’s what we call hubris, motherfuckers. And then there’d always be some little 5′6″ baldheaded tough-nut high school maths teacher who’d absolutely carve it up. (GHS alumni: Do you think Mr. Truscott would’ve been the greatest Gladiators contestant ever?)

The best thing about the original series was when they did the International Gladiators comp. There was one British Gladiator (Wolf?) who was a totally batshit crazy geezer, and he had a rivalry going with Vulcan. It was epic. I thought those two were gonna kill each other.

Best show ever.

(Edit: My brother just told me that this is old, old, old news and everyone’s known about it for months. Oh well. I’m still excited.)

Thanks, Mick. Mint!

Remember Extreme Darren? That character was the only good thing about that crappy “Big Bite” show. Chris Lilley is a genius. He’s Australia’s Sacha Baron Cohen.

There are a bunch of Extreme Darren bits on YouTube, but most of them are taped off the TV with a camcorder. I hate it when people do that. This is the only one I could find that you can actually see and hear: 

And speaking of Razor Scooters, here’s mine rusting away in the backyard.

Hard to believe that I originally paid $270 for it, back in those heady days of Y2K. Well, I didn’t buy it; my dad did. That’s one good thing about having a guilty ’school holiday dad’.

I’m so glad Channel Ten is running Cops again.

There really is nothing quite like seeing disadvantaged, disenfranchised folks getting excessive forced by some gung-ho agents of the establishment. (”Speak up, boy! Answer me when I have my foot crushing your windpipe!”)

Blacks, Latinos, white trash… even bears get a raw deal:

“Hello, I’m Officer Dibble. I’m just responding to a call we had from a Ranger Smith at Jellystone Park on a domestic cave disturbance…”

I was planning to write a tongue-in-cheek obituary for the creator of instant noodles, but today I learned that someone I actually deeply care about passed away, and I lost the black humour.

Iwao Takamoto, animation legend, has died. Anyone who’s ever been a kid will probably be familiar with his work. He contributed so much to the design of so many great Hanna-Barbera cartoons.

Chances are you’ll remember his name, too, if you’re a credits-watcher like me. Before I really knew much about the industry, and was just a kid enjoying the ‘toons, I always used to look for Iwao in the credits, just cos his name was different to the usual ‘Bob Smiths’ and ‘Chuck Brubakers’.

I don’t really know what to say, but Mark Evanier always does a bang-up job eulogising industry greats. It’s just a shame we’ve lost so many recently that Mr Evanier’s been working overtime on obituaries. Check out what he has to say about Iwao Takamoto here, and go watch some Scooby Doo or Jetsons or something.