Picture This!

With the the inauguration of President Obama for a second term, we now look ahead to the many daunting problems facing this country in the next four years. One of the most pressing of issues is the growing polarization within our nation. Partisanship and division in U.S. politics and within the public have grown ever more intense in recent years. Progress is becoming hindered by political deadlock, civility and decorum are fast becoming scarce, and the public continues to lose faith in the effectiveness of their elected officials and the system.

Of course the one image that really sums up the current challenges of our modern divided society is the cover of one hit wonder Joey Scarbury's 1981 hit album "America's Greatest Hero" featuring his #2 hit "Theme from Greatest American Hero (Believe It or Not)" (and yes, no mention of that song can be complete without a mention of George's answering machine message). How did Mr. Scarbury predict the fractured political climate between red and blue states in 21st century America all the way back in the early 1980s? Alas, no one seems to have bothered to seek him out since then to ask.

One additional observation: someone with absolutely no prior knowledge of Joey Scarbury might assume, just based on looking at the cover, that this was some kind of spoken word album of Mr. Scarbury's political views (it sort of reminds me of Johnny Calhoun's unsuccessful spoken word album of his right-wing political views "These Things I Believe").

I Hate Mondays

For the past two weeks I have been weirdly fascinated, bordering on obsessed, with the above screen cap. I find it hilarious yet utterly terrifying. It's from a Onion Avclub review of the Halloween episode of the new Tim Allen sitcom "Last Man Standing" (aptly or uncreatively titled "Last Halloween Standing") that randomly caught my eye. From what I've gathered the Garfield costume was imposed upon the one daughter as a sort of anti-sexy Halloween guise (which she apparently later alters to turn sexy). I have not seen a single second of the show nor do I want to make any real effort to see an episode, though it sort of looks like "Home Improvement" with girls and Hector Elizondo, but I have to say this image should live on far beyond the show's run (which despite some pretty low reviews was still popular enough to recently warrant a full season order from ABC).

Picture This!

Just a warning, this may be my most obscure edition of "Picture This!" yet. So, the other night I was hanging out at my friend Matt's house. At one point the topic of discussion turned to vintage shareware games from the 90's and eventually we started looking up videos of them on youtube (well, how did you spend your Tuesday night, big shot?). I found it beyond disturbing that there was space in my brain devoted to remembering and quickly recalling the handful of times I played a profoundly shitty game like "Nitemare 3D" or the hyper esoteric "Heavy Water Jogger" on some cheap 1,001 shareware game CD in 1994 (yet after a week I still cannot retain the name of the guy in the cubicle next to me...priorities I suppose).

While a majority of the games I recalled had more nostalgia value than play value, there were still a few quality games that I remembered based on merit (motherfuckin' "Raptor: Call of the Shadows" represent). One standout game for the period was the vastly underrated 2D platformer "Bio Menace". It was basically a more adult knockoff of the classic "Commander Keen" games, but whole presentation was solid and game play was surprisingly fun if not wholly original.

I also noticed that the protagonist, the derivatively named, Snake Logan (he's the guy on the right if you're not sure) appeared to be the digitized doppelganger of....

The late great WWE wrestling legend, "Ravishing" Rick Rude (of course if it really was based on Rick Rude the programmers wouldn't have denied the ladies the "Sexiest Man Alive" by hiding that bod under a green shirt)

I know, another old school wrestling reference. With the recent passing of the Macho Man, I guess I've just been an old school wrestling sort of mind. Also I wanted to note that while looking for a suitable picture of the Ravishing one, I came across this sweet Rick Rude t-shirt (only 11 more months until my birthday!). Since I was completely surprised last week when somebody actually gave me the custom made Arnold Shirt that I flippantly mentioned as a possible birthday gift (a million thanks again, Desi!), I've come to the conclusion that the internet is a random wish granting machine and that I should be constantly making requests on it.

Picture This!

One of the things I've been doing with my extra post law school "down time" has been getting around to knocking out some of the more obscure titles in my casual quest to see every Best Picture winning film. It's not really a motivated goal or anything and I doubt I'll ever muster enough enthusiasm to rent and watch "The Broadway Melody of 1929" or "Cavalcade"; basically it comes down to if my local library has it for rent and if I can't find anything better to do. That being said I recently watched, over the span of a week, "How Green Was My Valley" and "Mrs. Miniver", Best Picture winners of 1941 and 1942 respectively and two of the most forgettable and lowest regarded Best Pictures this side of "Crash".

While both pictures essentially lived up to their mediocre billing and ended up being hard 3 star ratings, one of the things I noticed was the male lead for both films Walter Pidgeon

bore an noticeable resemblance to...

"Mad Men" star Jon Hamm (especially when he's all Draper-ed up). It seems lately the Hamm-ster has been trying to leverage his TV success into setting up a big screen career, but it remains to be seen if he will ever come close to putting up the impressive feat of headlining consecutive Best Picture winners. Looking at his upcoming IMDB credits ("Sucker Punch", "Bridesmaids") at least 2011 may be a wash.

Picture This!

I had just recently finished watching my Netflix copy of 1958 Best Picture Academy Award Winner (and overall poor man's "My Fair Lady") "Gigi" and was about to put it in the return envelope when I noticed something about the the iconic title font that I had never noticed before.

Now am I crazy or is a title font like that better suited for a disturbing "Saw"-like horror thriller than a lavish, G-Rated, period piece musical? I guess with a winking Leslie Caron head doting the "I" it never looked all that menacing on the poster, but really in this context it reminds me of a grittier version of the title font for "Cujo".

Perhaps in another universe "Gigi" is actually a gruesome piece of unsettling torture porn where it turns out that, in addition her striking beauty and youthful, charming personality, the title character hides a unquenchable homicidal blood lust; a secret that her handsome, love stuck beau Gaston (among many others) figures out far too late.

Any producers out there who feel like desecrating a classic, get in touch. I'll whip up a treatment in no time.

Picture This!

I'm sure somebody has already mentioned it, but if a rushed, exploitative made-for-tv movie is ever made of the Gulf Coast Oil Spill Disaster the obvious choice (if the producers could swing it in the budget) to play vilified BP CEO Tony Hayward would be:

Academy Award nominated British actor, Colin Firth. I even have the title already thought up: "Black Gold: The Gulf Oil Spill Disaster". You better believe the title credits would begin the with second tier Soul Asylum hit "Black Gold". Even way back in 1993, the band was able to predict that our exponentially demanding modern day energy requirements would soon lead to increasingly riskier and extreme energy extracting operations and greater environmental trade-offs...in an accessible, mainstream radio friendly, alternative rock sound. If this current disaster does indeed get turned into a movie and Mr. Firth gets on board he could take great pride in being the latest in a long and distinguished line of "made-for-tv movies about unlikable corporate CEOs" like:

"MASH" regular Mike Farrell as former Enron CEO Ken Lay in "The Crooked E: The Unshredded Truth about Enron". Until I recently looked it up, I thought Brian Dennehy played the Lay role, but it turns out he played some over-the-top fictional character in the film called: Mr. Blue:

Pimp.

And Anthony Michael Hall as the Machiavellian founder of Microsoft Bill Gates in "Pirates of Silicon Valley"; a film that really jumped the gun in proclaiming the ultimate demise of Apple Computers. Considering that at the time of the film, 1999, everyone was rocking Windows 98 and the iPod was still two years away from coming out, it wasn't the most ridiculous of assessments. Also, Hall as uber-nerd Gates was a brilliant return to form for anyone who still had lingering doubts that he could still play geeks after his shocking turn as the evil jock antagonist in "Edward Scissorhands".

Picture This!

After recently watching the music video for "Red Skies" by the Fixx, I came to two conclusions. One, while the whole video is laughably outdated (the bassist in the cape seems particularly out of place) and stylistically looks more like one of those embarrassing "music videos" you once shot with your friends at Six Flags; it was was probably viewed as totally, unironically, slick and awesome in 1982. Second, the lead singer, Cy Curnin, bears a striking resemblance to...

Leading summer blockbuster cinema auteur and generally "awesome" guy, Michael Bay.

You know for a guy who prides himself on being at the cutting edge of cinematic special effects and technology, his hair cut has been firmly frozen in time since the mid 80s.

Picture This!

So one of the featured stories on the Yahoo! front page was a link to some article about Michelle Williams sharing her grief about the death of ex boyfriend and baby daddy Heath Ledger in the new Vogue issue. Unfortunately the headline of the link and the accompanying picture is sending me some mixed messages.

Click to enlarge

I have always considered Michelle Williams to be one of the more insufferably serious and generally un-fun celebrities around today, but that accompanying picture looks about as happy as I've ever seen her. I just have to say it's a bit incongruous with the "I thought we had lost everything" quote directly to the right of it. I don't know, maybe there are more solemn and introspective looking shots in the magazine.

Also, where would the internet be without a steady stream of "animals doing human stuff" pictures like that surfing dog on the bottom right?

Picture This!

Long time NY Lottery commercial spokesman Ralph Buckley; whose name and picture, for someone that is so well known and recognizable to anyone who watches television in the New York/New Jersey area, was unusually difficult to locate online (although there was no shortage of articles and glamor shots of fellow NY Lotto fixture Yolanda Vega)

has always reminded me of...

Legendary Duke Men's Basketball Coach, gold medal winning US National Team coach, and walking typo Mike Kryzewski.

I wonder which of the two have been responsible for more unlikely millionaires?

Picture This!

Today's edition of "Picture This!" is an especially esoteric one, connecting multiple decades of pop culture obscurity.

As I mentioned to my friends a while back, 80's British pop singer Yazz of "The Only Way is Up" fame rocked an awfully similar look to:

90's diet guru, motivational speaker, and general crazy person, Susan Powter!

Apparently none of them look like this anymore, but then again none of them are famous anymore either. Perhaps there is a correlation. Regardless, put any one of these crazy eyed, blond, short haired women in a bright pastel colored, Designing Women-esque power suit with massive shoulder pads and you've basically captured the exact opposite of what I want in a woman in terms of beauty and aesthetics.

Picture This!

With my recent rash of Super Nintendo related nostalgia combined with the end of classes, I found myself firing up the old emulator and going through some of the classics. Just the other day while I was playing and reminiscing, I came to the sudden realization that:

The outrageously gay box cover for the 1991 SNES classic beat' em up "Final Fight" bears an uncanny resemblance to another classic piece of homoerotic cover art:

Hall and Oates' monster 1982 album "H2O" (the correlation between the mustaches is just plain eerie).

"Maneater" indeed.

Picture This!

So around the end of last year I noticed the most recent effort from The National "Boxer" kept popping up on a bunch of people's best albums of 2007 lists. Never heard of them. I'm not really hip to that "independent rock" that some of the young kids are listening to these days and frankly I don't know how all these long haired bands and not traditionally good looking girls are ever gonna make a dime with that kind of sound. Nevertheless what it did remind me of was the short lived 70s band "Boxer" who's only claim to fame was one of the most inappropriate and hilariously misogynistic album covers by a band not named the Scorpions. I had five minutes to kill,

So through the magic of computers...

Boxer, round 2. Say what you may but there's definitely more to look at here then some old wedding photo. This definitely would have sold a few more records...or alienated all their fans...whichever.

Also I probably should have done some NSFW warning and linking; but I figure shame on you for idly surfing the net reading blogs while at work and school. Is this what the internet was made for?

Picture This!

Giants Quarterback Eli Manning after losing the game, and basically any chance at the division, to the Cowboys yesterday

uncannily similar to...

A bemused Jim Halpert