Five More (Slightly Belated) Random 4th of July TV Marathons That Have Very Little to Do With The 4th of July

Is it safe?

The biggest problem with static, date specific, holidays like the 4th of July is that it falls on a weekend every two out of seven years thus greatly weakening their work stopping powers. It was only by the grace of a last minute change of heart by the boss that I actually got Friday off and the benefit of the three day weekend. Unfortunately there are many a workplaces that don't subscribe to the artificial three day weekend policy when it comes to weekend 4th of Julys. I say it's downright Un-American to nullify the classic July 4th three-day weekend just because of a technicality on the calendar. Denying a hard working American their patriotic right to celebrate their nation's birth by over-eating, over-drinking, playing around with dangerous explosives, and watching copious amounts of marathon television? What did our Founding Fathers fight for anyway then?

I must first apologize for the slight belatedness of this year's five marathons. I am quite aware that a good portion of the day and many a marathons have already passed before I realized my posting obligations (I've personally been soaking up the old "Twilight Zone" marathon since yesterday evening). While we may be getting a slightly late start, I assure you, faithful readers, that the following marathons are guaranteed to last at least through the late evening hours (and some well into the 5th). So without further needless delay here are this year's five most random marathons.

BET - Sister, Sister

Really? "Sister, Sister"? I know the BET lineup isn't exactly stacked with long-running, classic shows, but I really think they could have done better than "Sister, Sister". It's not that I have anything against those sassy Mowry sisters (the Williams sisters of the American sitcom), I watched my fair share of their five or so year run on the WB when I was in middle school. What exactly is there about the completely generic, white America friendly, nature of this show that just screams Black Entertainment Television. Comparatively,"Sister, Sister", makes "The Parent 'Hood" look like a Gil Scott-Heron spoken word album. I would have preferred a "Wayans Brothers" marathon or maybe some sort of day long, hastily put together, Michael Jackson retrospective.

Possible Spin for the 4th: I guess you can look at the cast of "Sister, Sister" as a sort of dramatization of the fulfillment of the American Dream. Tamara's well to do father Ray is a self made man with his own company and a giant house that everyone moves into. Tia's mother Jackée is enjoying the fruits of the American promise of upward mobility by moving into Ray's big house. Tia (the smart one) is a model student and upstanding example of how education and a strong family support system can improve anyone's station in life. Tamara's goofing off and constant partying also, in a away, demonstrates the American Dream that minorities can have entitled lazy idiot children just as well as rich old waspy families.

USA Network - James Bond

This is seriously one of the most weak-ass marathons I have ever seen. It's just five random James Bond movies from 9 am to 11 pm. I think there were just regular weekdays on Spike TV that played more Bond movies. This random fiver of movies, aside from failing in terms of length of marathon programming, also fails in terms of depth of marathon programming. For the first two you have "Dr. No" (the fairly boring first film) and "Thunderball" (vintage Connery); and then the next two jump ahead about four decades and three Bonds, to "The World is Not Enough" and "Tomorrow Never Dies" (adequate Bronsnan). Finally the day is capped off with the new "Casino Royale". It seems pretty obvious that the good folks at USA tried to slap together a "marathon" with the cheapest and easiest Bond films they could get their hands on. Makes you miss those old month long nightly Bond movies on TBS.

Possible Spin for the 4th: It's definitely a hard sell for the 4th when you have a marathon of Eurpeon movies about a British secret agent who travels to exotic locations that rarely include the United States. In addition, the most prominent Americans in the series have been: generally useless CIA second banana Felix Leitter and the bumbling Sherriff J.W. Pepper. I guess you can say that James Bond touches on general American values of resourcefulness, toughness, ingenuity, and heroism; but then again what culture doesn't value those traits (please no French jokes)?

Disney Channel - Hannah Montana

Disney Channel goes with the "showcasing your prestige show" route with its Hannah-thon. This is a preemptive announcement of the marathon since it's actually slated to begin at 1 pm tomorrow. So if you were ever thinking about watching a ten hour block of Hannah Montana on a Sunday afternoon, then this is your opportunity. Apparently it all leads up to the premiere of an hour long new episode, so it's a nice little pot of gold at the end of the long rainbow. If only all marathons could reward you like that.

Possible Spin for the 4th: I guess Hannah can bee seen as a wholesome, ideal, all American, girl next door. I'm not sure what kind of songs Hannah sings, but I'm sure they're not subversive or Anti-American. On a deeper level, one might read the constant tension and conflict between her real identity and her stage persona as demonstrating the complex duality of our great nation; the rich and varied tableau of the American population and landscape and our historic and current struggles to reconcile our realities with the lofty goals of equality and prosperity that we were founded on. Or something like that.

Discovery Channel - The Deadliest Catch

This appears to be another case of a channel showing off their money programming via marathon. I've never actually seen a full episode of this show but I'm amazed by the surprising success of it. I mean, wouldn't the novelty of watching crabbers pulling in cages full of crustaceans in inclimate weather wear off after the first season at the most? It's not like fishermen are dying every other episode right? Is it really the deadliest catch when there's no dying on camera? All the marketing would seem to indicate that every episode involves the crew braving towering "Perfect Storm"-esque waves and fighting sea monsters straight out of "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea". The risk can't be that high, otherwise the price of a mediocre dinner at Red Lobster's would be astronomical.

Possible Spin for the 4th: Well, few things are more American than straight up hard working ambition and gumption. From the harsh beginnings of the early settlers, to the gritty patriots that fought for Independence, to the hearty pioneers of Manifest Destiny, to the men who've walk on the moon; daring Yankee ingenuity and ambitiousness (as demonstrated by the fearless crew) is what made this country into the superpower it is today.

TV Land - Andy Griffith Show, Roseanne, Leave it to Beaver

TV Land is taking an interesting route by cobbling together three shows to form one long marathon. Looking at the schedule, Andy, Roseanne, and the Beaver are working in rotating shifts. Currently, it's Andy Griffith until 8 when Roseanne takes us through the night until the Beaver takes over sometime tomorrow morning (actually. if these schedule is accurate, there will be a slight 4 hour break from the marathon from 8 to 12 for an airing of some show called "She's Got the Look" and Oliver Stone's "Born on the Fourth of July"). I like how the shifts were set up. Andy Griffith and Leave it to Beaver, with their sugary, idealistic 50's-60's sensibilities and story lines clearly belongs in the daytime hours; while the gritty, decidedly unromantic, modern day suburban slice of life that is "Roseanne" belongs after dark.

Possible Spin for the 4th: All three shows, despite their differences are pretty choice examples of middle class Americana. Leave it to Beaver basically set the standard (although a completely ridiculous and unattainable one) for the ideal American suburban life. Andy Griffith showed a similarly idealized, portrait of small town life as simple and light as its whistling theme song. Roseanne, while being in sharp contrast to the other two shows was still cut from the genuine American sitcom cloth, showing the daily trials and tribulations of average working class Americans.

Death of a Salesman

Really? Billy Mays, too? It's not enough that this past week has been the most prolific celebrity death spiral in recent memory, we have to throw in the beared one as well? It's enough to suspect that there's some sort of real life version of "The Dead Pool" going on. Ed was old and Farrah was ill, but the completely unexpected and sudden deaths of two seemingly healthy middle aged guys with everything to life for starts to smell a little fishy. I vaguely remember someone once telling me that if you can make it through this relatively dangerous period from about 50 to 65 where statistically many of the heart attacks, life threatening illnesses, and accidents happen, the odds are you'll live to at least to 80. If I was around 50 right now I'd be staying up late, totally ridden with anxiety. MJ's health is (as with almost everything with his life) a mystery, but a strapping model of fitness like Billy Mays just suddenly keeping over? What hope is there for the rest of us?

For all the tragedy, you know what the worst thing about losing Mays is for me? The fact that now that he's gone, the title of king of the infomerical unofficially goes by default to this unsavory character:


The most prominent figure in late night product pitching has been changed from a clean cut, family man with an ever present smile and gregarious attitude who sold his wares not by deception but by his sheer, booming enthusiasm and genuine belief in the product, to the above pictured smarmy degenerate who's entire selling method consists of an aggressive fast talking hard sell with a healthy dose of insult and condescending attitude towards the audience.

Don't get me wrong, I'm still endlessly entertained by Vince and I eagerly await his next miracle product, but he really is the kind of shady character that gives late night commercial guys a bad name. For timeless class and respect, you couldn't beat Billy. For me he'll always remain the undisputed "King of Shop".

Wait, who died?

I'm sure you've already heard the news repeatedly over every type of media known to man; so it's almost a completely moot point to announce it. It's really the most epic of celebrity deaths in that it was so unexpected, so surprisingly tragic, go global that it became one of those "I know where I was when I heard..." sort of passings. This was basically our generation's Day the Music Died, the death of Elvis, the assassination of John Lennon, the suicide of Kurt Cobain. A shocking event that mournfully closes out an era. It's all so surreal that I still have a difficult time believing it actually happened. I just expect it to be some weirdo stunt, another bizarro chapter in a life defined by sharp eccentricity. However, it looks like the news isn't changing. The cold hard, undeniable fact remains: Flemish singer and television presenter Yasmine is died.

Insensitive punchlines at the expense of other recently deceased celebrities aside, it really was a big deal that MJ died. Just when you thought there was nothing else Michael Jackson could do to shock you, he goes off and unwittingly ends up doing the most startling, unexpected thing imaginable. In the coming days I'm sure there'll be various tributes and reflections of an artist that was once so spectacular and dominant that he was referred to as "The King of Pop". Hopefully they'll shine a dazzling lighting on an unparalleled body of work that shaped and influenced pop music to this very day; a body of work that has been buried and obscured under twenty years of scandal, disturbing behavior, and humiliating weirdness. Hopefully people will realize that in this modern age where if you can manage to get a handful of kids of buy an actual cd gives you the #1 album in the country and where fame is freely given without talent (sometimes specifically because of a lack of it), the passing of Michael Jackson was the passing of the last great superstar.

I think given the events of today, the super extended version of Michael Jackson's obscenely bloated, 40 minutes long, Thriller knock off "Ghosts" from "HIStory" is quite appropriate. I still think his heavily costumed portrayal of the bigoted old white guy is the best acting he's ever done.

Michael Jackson - Ghosts
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That's really all I have to say on the matter. Oh and RIP Farrah Fawcett, sorry you got hosed. For a decade defining icon like you, dying any other week would have guaranteed you the front pages and a host of tributes. Unfortunately, many of us don't choose our untimely deaths. To think, Ed McMahon got a bigger send off than you. I mean how many teenagers came of age masturbating to posters of Ed McMahon?

Bored Photoshopping: Mike Jarvis Cocker

Every once in a while two completely disparate parts of my mind will come together, form an unholy union, and give existence to some strange square peg of a joke or idea that never quite fits anywhere. I'd like to see the interesting Venn diagram of college basketball fans and Britpop enthusiasts that immediately got the above picture. At least, this thought was a simple enough connection. I can't imagine the type of people that would have immediately understood the groan inducing reference I once made between Pavement's "Shady Lane" and South Korea's recent tendency towards hiring Dutch soccer coaches for their national team ("...the coach when he arrived he was Dutch, Dutch, Dutch").

That's some adaquete clone stamping, don't you think?

You make me wanna cry...

When I was around seven years old or so growing up in the Bronx, I remember often going to my friend Dave's apartment which was part of our building complex. I recall playing a lot of NES and Gameboy games while there since my household didn't have them yet (the best we could manage at the time was a fairly outdated Atari 7800). While my distant memories of hanging out at Dave's consist mainly of playing co-opt Double Dragon II in his living room and taking turns on his Gameboy playing hours of Tetris, one other prominent memory is "playing" with his older sister's copy of the "Miami Vice" Board Game.

At the time we really had no idea what "Miami Vice" was or even how to play the game. We just found the large vibrant map of downtown Miami and the colorful candy-like car shaped plastic player pieces fun to play around with. Like all kids who grew up in the age before rendered 3D graphic games, we would actually push the little cars around and pretended to be driving using the power of our "imaginations".

Although I was a completely oblivious pre-adolescent at the time, aside from the car pieces and the game board, I was also drawn to the bad ass shots of Tubbs and Crockett on the cover and throughout the materials of the game. While the show may have been canceled at least for a couple of years by that time and I had no clue of ascetics or style, the seven year old in me still found something inherently cool about the two guys on the cover wearing suits and sunglasses, casually brandishing large firearms, and sitting in front of a menacing sports car. I guess it's the ultimate testament to Michael Mann's groundbreaking, highly influential, visual style and production when some kid, years after its last episode, is transfixed by dogeared images of the show on an old board game. I, like mid 80s America before me, found the whole thing to be unprecedentedly cool.

While the cynical, pop culture educated, twenty something me doesn't find "Miami Vice" to be nearly as uniformly awesome as I had as a child; beneath the slick, outdated, 80's cheese and pastels there still exists an admirable core of classic coolness to the whole show (which Michael Mann ambitiously attempted to recapture and mostly failed with the 2006 movie). And that intangible, timeless coolness is what I felt when I came across this random closing clip from an old "Miami Vice" episode:

I inadvertently came across that scene while initially searching for a clip of Godley & Creme's video for "Cry". After giving it a view, I just want to say that as groundbreaking and iconic the original video for "Cry" was, that "Miami Vice" clip on its own would have been a 10 times better music video. The show takes one of the absolute (lyrically) wussiest songs ever written, focuses on the awesome musical qualities of the song, and sets it so an unbelievable six minute stretch of television that includes:

• The aftermath of some sort of massive shootout.
• Majestic long shots of Don Johnson driving around in a sports car around the dunes of Miami.
• A tense desert meeting with a shirtless, blazer wearing Ted Nugent.
• A deadly shootout with a shirtless, blazer wearing Ted Nugent.
  
• Shots of Edward James Olmos looking his stoic, mustachioed best.
• A meeting with a beautiful foreign woman on a beach
• Said woman being arrested unexpectedly via helicopter

For it's time, a police procedural show ending on this sparsely dialogued, extended, music video-like conclusion seems downright mind blowing. This really was setting the bar for all the other slick knock offs that would eventually follow. I looked it up and apparently the clip is the final part of a Season 2 episode called "Definately Miami". Although it's available to watch in its entirety, I don't really want to know anything more about it. At this point it beautifully exists in an ideal, context-less vacuum and I think any more information about the plot or why Ted Nugent's in the middle of the desert shooting at people would only spoil it for me.

Zack Attack!

If the Internet hasn't already shown it to you, you should check out the above appearance by one Mr. Mark-Paul Gosselaar, or should I say Zack Morris, on last night's "Late Night with Jimmy Fallon." While I've dismissed nearly everything Fallon has done in his career from his giggly run on SNL to his failed movie career to his selection as Conan's replacement, I have to admit this was a total home run. Actually congratulations should be given to both men involved, Fallon for his astounding commitment to bringing back all the members of "Saved by the Bell" and for Gosselaar to being a complete champ about coming back in character and absolutely nailing it. In my opinion, the whole affair went beyond just a memorable late night performance and should be considered landmark television.

Seriously, when has any legitimate actor ever made a full appearance on a late night talk show, completely in a character they last played almost two decades ago promoting a project they are currently doing in reality? I'm not talking about some has-been or bit player coming on for a little sketch or cameo. This isn't Abe Vigoda doing his usual shtick or J.J. Walker coming out and saying "Dy-no-mite!". Gosselaar was there on legitimate grounds to push the new season of his TNT show "Raising the Bar", but absolutely remained completely entrenched in his Zack Morris character for the entire interview.

The truly impressive part was just how devoted and faithful the whole bit was to the original source material. The entire segment was obviously scripted and predetermined but any real fan of "Saved by the Bell" would have been impressed with the attention to detail by the writers. The "Late Night" writers could have just played it lazy and just made broad references to the show that anyone would have gotten but in this case you can tell that they actually watched enough of it.

On the surface the wardrobe was spot on, vintage Morris head to toe. The writers and Gosselaar had the smug attitude, the smile, the eyebrows, the total lack of inner monologue, all down pat. The whole deal about how Mark-Paul Gosselaar is actually the created stage name and persona of Zack Morris was a fairly ingenious way to keep him in character while still referencing his current work. It's also has a sort of intriguing meta bent to it that's far smarter and more sophisticated then every "Saved By the Bell" episode combined. The interview hit on all the big Zack Morris references from the vintage giant cellphone to the time-outs, to the performance of his hit Zack Attack single "Friends Forever"; but again the really delightful parts were in the details.

The introduction of his relationship with Kelly Kapowski was a clever parody of how he introduced her in the very first episode ("Kelly Kapowski: loves volleyball, windsurfing, and at one point me.") complete with the same remote controlled life sized poster. When talking about their eventual falling out he referenced "slimeball" Jeff, that older guy who managed the Max that she briefly dated. The great line about how she moved to a "different zip code", dark times hanging out with Johnny Dakota at the Attic, Stacy Carosi from the Malibu Sands Resort were coming out so fast that it took a second for the more savvy members of the audience to recognize. Finally the pitch perfect performance obviously couldn't have gone as well if Mark-Paul Gosselaar didn't look EXACTLY THE SAME as he did when he was in high school! The guy's freakin' 35 years old! Did he get into Dick Clark's private stash or something?

Overall, just flat out well done. I had my reservations when I first heard about Fallon's quest to reunite the entire cast of "Saved By the Bell". I feared it was some disingenuous co-opting of early 90's camp to score cheap laughs. However if an eventual re-union can be as totally faithful and in character as this appearance then I'm all for it. Hopefully this sets a new precedent in late night guest appearances. How infinitely more watchable would late night television be if the guests all came as their past alter-egos and pushed their new work instead of boring us all to sleep with their mostly awkward banter and discussions of the unremarkable minutiae of their celebrity lives? Imagine Sean Penn coming out and showing clips from his new movie as Jeff Spicoli or Julia Louis-Dreyfus talking about the new season of "The New Adventures of Old Christine" as Elaine Benes. Totally mindblowing.

The Internet Never Forgets

My senior year at NYU was probably my favorite school year ever (although I faintly recall kindergarten to have been quite pleasant and 6th grade wasn't all that bad as well). While nothing resembling outrageous Rothian standards, between all my AP credits and my early core class heavy schedule, by the end of junior year I had completed all my essential requirements for my Communications major, leaving me with an already light senior year schedule that I had to fill with wacky, superfluous electives. I went to school a maximum three days a week (I got it down to two by the spring semester) and when I happened to be there I was either taking guitar lessons or developing film or workshopping poetry. It was sort of like a year long day camp...that cost about $30,000. By the end, all my frivolous class taking even gave me enough credits for an unexpected minor in creative writing.

One of my light elective classes was a digital art class where we learned basic level Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and had some lectures about art and composition. Aside from all the neat posters we got to make and print out on the fancy giant printer, the rudimentary Photoshop skills I learned are still used by me today (sadly, as a communications major, this was probably the only piece of useful, substantive education I received during my whole 4 years there). One of the ongoing assignments during the semester was for everyone in class to create and maintain a simple photo blog on Blogger that they would have to update with one interesting image every week. We all dutifully maintained our little blogs (mine was called "Amazing Victor's Blogosphere") and when the semester ended we all just abandoned them, to lie fallow and forgotten on the endless plains of the Internet.

This would be the case for almost the next three years or so until I recently found some of my old digital assignments while sorting around the files of my old college laptop. It was then that I wondered if my temporary little site still existed. I put the name in on google and, lo and behold, there it was, a mass of 1s and 0s frozen in time, perfectly preserved since September of 2006, waiting for the next update. I had also forgotten that after I submitted my final picture, I had randomly uploaded two other entries: some random shots of me unkempt and unemployed post college (my how things have...remained exactly the same) and some shots from a College Bowl meeting that stands as probably the only known photographic documentation of an actual NYU College Bowl meeting.

This blast of digital nostalgia also helped me gain some perspective on just how unfathomably vast and full of crap the interest is. There's an entire world of users out there leaving random web footprints that'll out last the Pyramids. Every fleeting web page, bog, social network profile, web board comment, etc., no matter how inconsequential is probably preserved in the infinite folds of the web. You wouldn't believe the number of immacuately preserved websites for forgotten movies of the past still exist (looking to download some sweet desktop backgrounds or AIM icons from the movie "Paycheck"? I know I am!). It's an interesting thought that your "LOL" comment on the Star Wars Kid Youtube video from 2004 will likely be around far after you've disappeared. The ancient Greeks would be so pissed that immortality in the 21st century is a few clicks away; they had to spend all their lives chipping away on marble slabs, creating sculptures and shit.

I have to admit, however, there are even some limits to the internet. I'm pretty sure my geocities webpage from 1997 consisting of an all cap "Welcome to Victor's Home Page" greeting, lime greenback background, a picture of Mr. T and a free web counter is lost forever.