This is quite possibly the coolest thing I’ve found on the Internet in at least a year:
I recently delved a bit into the blaxploitation genre by watching four of the acknowledged classics — Shaft, Superfly, Coffy, and Foxy Brown — and while I can’t really say they were good movies, they did display a sort of sleazy charm and cocky attitude that I found supremely entertaining. And I’ve always liked Lando Calrissian, even if Uncle George had no idea what to do with him in Return of the Jedi. A pre-Rebellion buddy-story about him and Han Solo would be a lot of fun. If only this trailer was for real!
It’s been a while since I posted a TV Title Sequence, and there’s one that’s been on my mind the last couple days. As it happens, this one is very MTV-esque, so it can double as a Friday Evening Video, for those who enjoy those and missed seeing one this week… two for the price of one! Just another little favor from your friends here at Simple Tricks and Nonsense!
If you don’t remember it — and really, why should you? — Booker was a short-lived spin-off from 21 Jump Street, that early hit for the fledgling Fox network that brought Johnny Depp to the public’s attention. As I understand it — and I could be totally offbase here, as I was never more than a casual fan and occasional viewer of Jump Street — Depp started talking about leaving the series early on in its five-season run and Richard Greico, who had a similar look, was brought on in the third season as a possible replacement for him. When Greico’s character, Dennis Booker, proved to popular and Depp was placated by some behind-the-scenes negotiations, Booker got his own show, which lasted a single season. (Depp ended up leaving Jump Street at the end of the fourth season, which coincided with the end of Booker‘s run as well.)
Although I generally enjoyed Jump Street, I never got into Booker much. Greico annoyed me on an almost cellular level, no doubt because of the way my girlfriend at the time used to react whenever his face popped up somewhere. (I was so easily threatened by virtual competition from media heartthrobs in those days, and I was so not a Richard Greico type, that I couldn’t help but loathe the guy on general principles. I had similar issues with Johnny Depp back then, and several members of Duran Duran as well.) It didn’t help that the only episode of Booker that made an impression on me was such a blatant rip-off of Die Hard that I’m amazed nobody got sued. But the opening credits… ah, I liked the opening. I used to tune in every week just to catch that one-minute sequence, and then I’d go find something else to do. It’s a near-perfect marriage of sound and imagery, in my opinion.
The sound is Billy Idol’s “Hot in the City,” of course, specifically the “Exterminator Remix” from the 1987 compilation album Vital Idol. Billy Idol was another one I didn’t much like at the time — I’ve since come to appreciate him quite a bit — but this song was awesome. Strangely enough, the official music video for the song bears a lot of resemblance to Booker‘s opening credits. Apparently Bruce Willis movies weren’t the only thing the producers were ripping off. I can’t find an embeddable clip, but you can see the Idol video here.
And just as a bonus, here’s the music video for the original version of “Hot in the City,” which was first released in 1982:
I like the original, but this is a rare, rare case in which I think I prefer the remix. I like that pounding bass line at the beginning…
No doubt my teenage self would be surprised and disappointed to learn this, but the truth is I don’t read a lot of science fiction anymore, and even when I did, my interests tended toward the less-respectible, less-than-serious stuff: movie tie-ins, old pulp heroes like Doc Savage and John Carter, and space opera. So-called “hard” SF or the tomes with literary and/or philosophical aspirations rarely caught my interest. Which means I’m usually at something of a disadvantage when I’m confronted by those lists of the Great Works that occasionally circulate, because I just haven’t read many of the Great Works. Even so, I always feel the compulsion to throw in my two cents anyway because, you know… they’re lists. And lists, by their very existence, demand that you comment on them, because they’re inevitably just some other person’s ideas of what constitutes greatness, and we all know that mileage varies. Especially when you’re contrary by nature, as I tend to be.
Anyhow, here’s one such list of 100 SF books that everyone supposedly needs to read, discovered and meme-ized by the always-reliable Jaquandor. Following his lead, I shall bold the titles I’ve read, italicize those I own but haven’t gotten around to reading, and color red the ones I do not own but hope to read one of these days. I’ve also added a twist by striking out the handful of titles that I know I never want to read. And of course, there will be commentary. So… onward!
The other day, my dad, watching me make a sandwich while my kitty-boys twined themselves around my legs and tried to coax me into dropping some lunchmeat into their greedy, adorable little paws, made the following quip:
“Anyone who thinks they’re ready to be a parent ought to try living with three cats first.”
You know, every once in a while, Dad displays a startling level of insight.
***
(Incidentally, have I mentioned I have three cats now? I didn’t set out to become a crazy cat guy or anything, but the way this situation developed… Basically, this new female cat showed up in our barn a couple years ago. She was obviously young and, although a bit stand-offish, much friendlier than the usual transient barn cats we get around the Bennion Compound. Our working hypothesis is that she had been somebody’s pet, rather than a feral animal, and some jackass didn’t want her anymore and dumped her, and then she somehow found her way to us. Well, there are a lot of other cats in the neighborhood and it didn’t take long before the poor thing was knocked up and very, very confused and unhappy. As I said, she appeared to be young, and possibly didn’t understand what’d happened to her. In the past, when the feral cats who hang around have had kittens, my parents and I haven’t found them until they were already mobile and quite wild. In this case, mother and children were accessible, and irresistible in the wake of Shadow’s death not long before. Three of the kittens ended up imprinting on me. Evinrude, Hannibal, and Jack — a.k.a. my kitty-boys — are now indoor-outdoor cats who pretty much have the run of the Compound, while their mother mostly stays out in the barn and wants as little to do with her brood as possible. And somehow, just like that, I’m a crazy cat guy.
I won’t mention Mom and Dad’s two cats, who bring the grand total around the Compound to six. Shadow would no doubt be appalled if he knew his territory had been overrun with the other kind. And yes, animal activist types, they’ve all been fixed.)
Scanning around the TV dial this morning while eating my Post Cherry Almond Crunch — I highly recommend that stuff, by the way; it’s available in jumbo boxes from Costco — I had quite a range of viewing options. I could have watched Good Morning, America blathering about Chelsea Clinton’s wedding; The Today Show blathering about Chelsea Clinton’s wedding dress; The Early Show on CBS blathering about some missing kid whose stepmom is the prime suspect in his disappearance; or Pork Chop Hill, an old war movie starring Gregory Peck and featuring Norman Fell — a.k.a. Mr. Roper from Three’s Company — in a supporting role.
So did you hear about that fabulous, multi-million-dollar celebrity wedding happening this weekend? What? Chelsea who? No, no, I’m talking about Lisa Simpson! One of my Facebook friends pointed out that today is the big day for Bart’s little sis:
Holy crap, does time fly. Seems like only yesterday we were living in a world without wristwatch communicators, picture phones, and humanoid robots whose heads spontaneously burst into flame and melt down like cheap candles in front of a blowtorch. Hey, wait a minute…
(Seriously, it does give me a strange feeling to think that the real-world calendar has caught up to one of The Simpsons‘ “future episodes,” which seemed so funny and so far away when they first aired. I imagine the cognitive dissonance I’ll be experiencing five years from now — 2015 was, of course, Doc and Marty’s destination at the end of Back to the Future — will probably leave me in a corner of the room, rocking back and forth and muttering to myself about parallel dimensions and curves in the spacetime continuum…)
