VIDEO WEEKEND - THE SIMPSONS & DISNEY

This wasn’t the first time the Simpsons have met a Disney character, but it’s probably the first official one.

Here are more Disney(ish) references combined with 'The Simpsons' to make a Super Six List:

We get the German version here…..

Here is a Spanish version but I’m not sure it’s actually from the show…..

Here’s a combination from ‘The Simpsons’ and ‘Family Guy’:

Here’s a weirdie….

And to bring it back around to Dumbo….

Th-Th-That’s all, folks!

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS - SUPER DAVE OSBORNE

From CBS News:
Comic actor Bob Einstein died Wednesday at his home in Indian Wells, California.

The older brother of actor and filmmaker Albert Brooks, Bob Einstein is best remembered for two characters he portrayed on television.

First was Super Dave Osborne, the clueless stuntman who made occasional visits to "The Late Show with David Letterman".

From KSLA:
Bob Einstein, an actor and comedian known for his hapless “Super Dave” stuntman character and stints on shows like “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” died on Wednesday at 76.

According to Deadline, he had recently been diagnosed with cancer and died at his home in Indian Wells, CA.

Einstein appeared on late-night shows as “Super Dave Osborne” across decades, starting in 1972 on “The John Byner Comedy Hour.”

The character, an Evel Knievel-like figure whose stunts always failed, would also make late-night appearances on the shows of Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel through the years.

From Wikipedia:
Super Dave Osborne is a character created and played by comedian Bob Einstein. Einstein's comedic depiction is of a naive but optimistic stuntman who frequently appears injured when his stunts go spectacularly wrong. 
 

Super Dave Osborne strode across the Toobworld dimensions.  Many of his stunts were seen on variety shows and talk shows, so they could be seen as being from Skitlandia.  At the same time, Super Dave would appear on those talk shows (Einstein staying in character) to present those videos, so those appearances qualify for Earth Prime-Time membership.  His TV specials and product commercials would fully be a part of the main Toobworld as well.  And then there are his appearances in the Tooniverse.

Let’s run down those many appearances on our TV screens.

Mostly from the IMDb:

The John Byner Comedy Hour
- Episode #1.1 (1972)
... Super Dave Osborne

Bizarre
(1981-1985)  

The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour
- Episode #1.5 (1988)
... Super Dave Osborne

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
- Super Dave/Park Overall/Mark Schiff (1989)
... Super Dave Osborne

Videosyncrasy
- Montreal International Tennis Tournament (1991)
... Super Dave Osborne

Super Dave: Daredevil for Hire
- The Fuji-tive (1992)
... Super Dave Osborne

The Super Dave Superbowl of Knowledge
Super Dave Osborne (voice)  

Super Dave's Vegas Spectacular
Super Dave Osborne  

Super Dave's All Stars
- Episode #1.3 (1998)
- Episode #1.1 (1997)
- Episode #1.2
... Super Dave Osborne (voice)

Super Dave
- First Annual Super Dave Swimsuit Edition (1991)
- Episode dated 21 October 1999 (1998)
- Episode dated 21 October 1998 (1999)

The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave
Super Dave Osborne

The Man Show
- Jimmy Asks Women 'What Do You Weigh?' (2003)
 ... Super Dave Osborne

Jimmy Kimmel Live!
- Episode #1.150 (2003)
- Episode #6.120 (2008)
- Episode #8.48 (2009)
... Super Dave Osborne

Super Dave's Spike Tacular
- Super Risks His Life in the Battle of the Decade (2009)
- Paint Ball Battle of the Decade (2009)
- Green Machine Record Breaker (2009)
- Explosive Debut... Welcome Back Super! (2009)

Wikipedia had more shows listed for his appearances….

From Wikipedia:

• The John Byner Comedy Hour (1972),
• first appearance of the character
• Van Dyke and Company (1976)
• The Redd Foxx Comedy Hour (1977)
• Bizarre (1980–1985)
• The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson (1980s), recurring
• Late Night with David Letterman (1980s), recurring guest
• Super Dave (1987–1991)
• Super Dave: Daredevil for Hire (1992)
• In Living Color (1993)
• WWE Monday Night RAW (1994–1995)
• Super Dave's Vegas Spectacular (1995)
• Super Dave's All Stars (1997)
• Hollywood Squares (1998–2004), recurring guest
• Super Dave's Spike-Tacular (2009)
• The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien (November 11, 2009)
• TNA Impact! (November 12, 2009)
• Norm Macdonald Live (March 26, 2013)
• Anger Management (April 2013)

From Wikipedia:
Super Dave was featured in Nike commercials in 1990, comparing his latest dunking contraptions to the Nike Air Flight basketball shoe, and appearing with such NBA stars as Reggie Miller and Gerald Wilkins (whom he called Roger and Harold, respectively, and got corrected). When his contraption went wrong, he either went through the wall, the ceiling, or face-planted into a backboard, then he would say he hurt or broke an unusual part of his body, to which Walden would optimistically go, "Well, of course you did!"

On several occasions in the late 1990s, he has appeared in commercials for Haggar Clothing. Some notable stunts he was in were going through an extreme car wash, and falling off a motorhome with lots of heavy debris landing on him to show that their cotton-based clothing will never wrinkle.

The Extreme Adventures of Super Dave (2000)

On the ABC television show Happy Endings, Super Dave Osborne is referenced in season 1 episode 8 entitled, "The Girl with the David Tattoo".  

Even if the specials were contested as being outside of the main Toobworld, that reference marks him as being part of Earth Prime-Time.

Unfortunately, I checked the script for that episode and I can't find any mention of Super Dave Osborne.  There is a line "That's super gay."  It could have been mis-heard.

Super Dave with Future Hall of Famer Mr. T

Super Dave with Ray Charles
(One day he might be in the Hall)

I have to admit, I never considered Super Dave Osborne for membership in the Television Crossover Hall of Fame until I read of Bob Epstein’s death at the beginning of the year.  But even so, I probably would have kept bumping him back had I not started this Friday Hall of Famer feature.  And had I started the Monday Memorial TVXOHOF Tributes earlier, he would have already been in.

By the way, the other character he's known for is Marty Funkhouser from 'Curb Your Enthusiasm', which stars last week's inductee Larry David.

Better late than never, I guess.  Welcome to the Hall, Super Dave…..

THEORIES OF RELATEEVEETY - THE MARCH BROTHERS

For today's theory of relateeveety, we cross the Atlantic to meet the March brothers.....

COLONEL MARCH
'Colonel March of Scotland Yard'

From the IMDb:
Colonel March of The Department of Queer Complaints investigates unusual cases, locked-room murders, and mysteries concerning the supernatural.  

From Wikipedia:
Colonel March of Scotland Yard is a 1950s British television series based on author John Dickson Carr's (aka Carter Dickson) fictional detective Colonel March from his book "The Department of Queer Complaints" (1940).  Carr was a mystery author who specialized in locked-room whodunnits and other 'impossible' crimes: murder mysteries that seemed to defy possibility. The stories of the television series followed in the same vein with Detective March solving cases that baffle Scotland Yard and the British police. The department itself is sometimes referred to as "D3". Boris Karloff starred as Colonel March.

Colonel March was born in 1887 and lived to be 81 years old, dying in 1969.  I am not sure his first name was ever revealed.

Unlike his brother George, Colonel March was never married, except to his job.

GEORGE MARCH
'The Saint'
"The Gentle Ladies" (1963)  

From the IMDb:
They are three charming ladies - not so young but not too old. What is the secret they dread the world will discover when a blackmailer descends on them?

In a quiet English village the Saint meets the elderly Warshed sisters who are pillars of the community. Nonetheless they are harboring a dark secret from their past which is exposing them to being blackmailed by one Alfred Powls. When the Saint discovers this he resolves to assist the three gentle ladies and find out the reason for the blackmail.  
George March was the lawyer for the Warshed sisters and he had a long-standing love for Florence Warshed.  In return for his help in covering up how Powls actually died and who the sisters really were, he asked Florence to marry him.  She gladly accepted the proposal, even if it did seem like it was another form of blackmail.

George was the younger brother, born in 1902.  He and Florence had over a decade together before he passed away in 1977.
It's doubtful that George ever knew exactly what kind of work his older brother did for the government.

BCnU!

WIKI TIKI WEDNESDAY - PAINT BY NUMBERS

Lieutenant Columbo:

You see, my wife, she paints a little.  

She buys those canvases with the numbers on them. 

You seen them around? 

Yeah, you fill in the spaces 

with the paints that have the corresponding numbers. 

They turn out pretty good.

'Columbo'
“Playback”

The Real World, Earth Prime, lost the creator of this part of our popular culture this week….

From CNN:
(CNN) The man behind the American pastime of paint-by-numbers pictures died on April 1 at the age of 93. According to his son. Dan Robbins created the first pictures and helped popularize paint-by-numbers kits in the 1950s.

Robbins' son, Larry, said his dad was working as a package designer for the Palmer Paint Company in Detroit when he came up with the idea for paint-by-numbers in the late 1940s. He worked there as a graphic artist and sold children's paint that was washable.

From Wikipedia:
Paint by number or painting by numbers are kits having a board on which light blue or gray lines indicate areas to paint, and each area has a number and a corresponding numbered paint to use. The kits were invented, developed and marketed in 1950 by Max S. Klein, an engineer and owner of the Palmer Paint Company of Detroit, Michigan, and Dan Robbins, a commercial artist.

The first patent for the paint by number technique was filed in 1923.

Paint by number in its popular form was created by the Palmer Show Card Paint Company. The owner of the company was approached by employee Dan Robbins with the idea for the project. After several iterations of the product, the company in 1991 introduced the Craft Master brand, which went on to sell over 12 million kits. This public response induced other companies to produce their own versions of paint by number. The Craft Master paint kit box tops proclaimed, "A BEAUTIFUL OIL PAINTING THE FIRST TIME YOU TRY."

Paint By Numbers made other appearances in Earth Prime-Time in other TV series as well, one time even before the concept was created!

Murdoch Mysteries
Monsieur Murdoch (2011)

DETECTIVE WILLIAM MURDOCH:
Any picture is simply a collection of shapes and shadows, the components of which can be broken down to individual units.
All we have to do is assign each unit a numeric value according to where it falls on a grey scale.
CONSTABLE GEORGE CRABTREE:
I see how the picture can be converted to numbers.
But how do we convert numbers to a picture? 
DETECTIVE MURDOCH:
We paint in each square or unit.

There were over 64,000 squares to painted in and Constable Crabtree and Constable Higgins put a lot hours into the project….

CONSTABLE CRABTREE:
I don't find this so bad. I think this could be a recreational activity. Think about it. It allows anybody to be a painter. You just need to know which colour to put where. 
CONSTABLE HIGGINS:
This is in black and white. 
CONSTABLE CRABTREE:
Yes, but it doesn't have to be. And it doesn't have to be squares. You could have whichever colour in whichever shape you like. We could call it "paint by numerical value". We could sell small kits.

But Detective Murdoch only saw the process as a means to an end – for catching a killer.  Constable Crabtree saw the potential in merchandising “Paint By Numbers” but Higgins sneered at the idea and so George never followed through the idea.

I only found four instances in which “Paint By Numbers” was cited.  For the next one, The Toobworld timeline has to jump ahead to the mid-century.

Happy Days
The Deadly Dares (1974)

JOANIE CUNNINGHAM:
Dad won’t let me paint. 
MARION CUNNINGHAM:
Howard!
HOWARD CUNNINGHAM:
Well Marion, she keeps putting threes into the number two spaces.  And now “Blue Boy” has yellow eyes! Gainsborough put all those nice little twos into his eyes for a reason!

[Howard checks on Joanie’s progress]

Now you put the fives in the number three places!

JOANIE:
Well I used up all my threes in the one spaces!

[Howard gives up.]

I’m going out to watch Milton Berle.  He wouldn’t put a three in a one space – not even for a laugh!

Here was Joanie's finished painting....

And apparently there were Paint By Number artworks on display all the time in one particular show….

Hot in Cleveland
Magic Diet Candy (2013)

VICTORIA CHASE:
So what are you doing? 
ELKA OSTROVSKY:
Oh, I'm just looking at some of my old paintings. 
VICTORIA:
What, you did these? 
ELKA:
I did all the artwork in this house. 
VICTORIA:
That's amazing! Oh, I wish I could paint like this. 
ELKA:
Well, you can. It's as easy as one, two, three. One is yellow, two is blue, and three is red. 
VICTORIA:
Wait a minute. We have paint-by-number art on our walls?

Back in the Real World, the connection between TV and Paint By Numbers continued….

From Wikipedia:

In 1992, Michael O'Donoghue and Trey Speegle organized and mounted a show of O'Donoghue's paint by number collection in New York City at the Bridgewater/Lustberg Gallery. After O'Donoghue's death in 1994, the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of American History exhibited many key pieces from O'Donoghue's collection, now owned by Speegle, along with works from other collectors in 2001.  

Michael O’Donogue was the dark maestro behind some of the more offbeat scripts in the first years of ‘Saturday Night Live’.  He also appeared on the show and in fact he was in the very first sketch with John Belushi.  Perhap his most famous routine was to do impressions of celebrities having steel needles plunged into their eyes….

On that cheery thought….

BCnU!

 

SPECIAL GUEST APPEARANCE - TUESDAY IS THEO'S DAY

I was caught unawares for today.  So I'm going tocall on the help of one of my Facebook friends whom I've showcased here in the past.

Theo Solorio is a very talented artist interested in the realm of funny animal comics.  Her characters are - to my eye - in the style of Don Bluth's work.

But here's the catch - she creates funny animal characters based on her two favorite TV shows - 'Columbo' & 'Seinfeld'.

And she does an excellent job recreating scenes from those shows.  I'm mostly familiar with her art based on 'Columbo' episodes in which Columbo is a fox, but today I want to showcase one of her 'Seinfeld' paintings.

Remember the episode where they couldn't find where they parked their car in a garage?  Theo has made an excellent version of that... with a bonus twist.  (Click to enlarge)

Take a look at who's peering around the pillar in the background!

BCnU!

MAILING TOOB - A MAGNUM & GILLIGAN CROSSOVER

I got a Facebook message from Randy Cranin, one of my Iddiot brethren, yesterday:

“Magnum PI Reboot, S1 E19, featured a long shot of Robin Master’s new yacht. Behind it was The Minnow.”

And thankfully he supplied me with the screencap.

‘MAGNUM, P.I.’
“BLOOD IN THE WATER”

From the IMDb:
Magnum and Higgins are stranded at sea after being "yacht-jacked," and must reach land before Higgins bleeds out and the culprits return to finish them off.

He also shared it to a Facebook page we both belong to, the Crossovers Forum.  There, fellow member Matt Hickman responded:

“’Rescue from Gilligan's Island’ has a S.S. Minnow II that wrecks on the same island ‘The Castaways on Gilligan's Island’ has a plane called the Minnow III and a Minnow IV that is used to shuttle people to the resort on the island from cruise ships.  So it's likely this is The Minnow V or VI.”

Outside the Box, I’m guessing the screenwriter was a fan of Gerry Anderson’s ‘Thunderbirds’!

This incarnation of ‘Magnum P.I.’ is not part of the main Toobworld.  This takes place in Toobworld2, the Land O’ Remakes.  There have been no remakes of ‘Gilligan’s Island’ yet, so although the characters may exist in this world, it’s yet a “given” that they suffered the same fate in Toobworld2, either back then or – as is the case so often with remakes – many years later.

I’d like to think that this Minnow does belong to somebody from the family tree of Jonas Grumby, the “Skipper” of the original Minnow.  And apparently his family’s fortunes improved considerably over the years, to be able to berth right next to Robin Masters’ yacht, the T.R. Belle.

Which leads me to imagine the fate of the Castaways in the dimension of Dark Toobworld, the Evil Mirror Universe of ‘Star Trek’ fame.  (Primarily – there’s also visits to that dimension seen in ‘Hercules: The Legendary Journeys’ and ‘Buffy The Vampire Slayer’ among others.)

Perhaps in that world, the Skipper and his first mate Gilligan learned that among his passengers were a married couple named Thurston and Lovey Howell.  And… that they were carrying a trunk-load full of cash. 

Being from the Evil Toobworld, what happened next came naturally to the Skipper and his might sailing man, Gilligan.  They killed all of their passengers (probably sparing Mary Ann and Ginger but only long enough for them to suffer a fate worse than death.)  They made the Minnow look as though they suffered all of those casualties while caught in a freak storm, and then they limped back into port – making sure to store away the trunk somewhere else before they reported the “tragedy” to the authorities.

At this point, it would become like a ‘Columbo’ episode.  Just before the police and the harbor master arrived, probably the Coast Guard as well, Grumby told Gilligan to run up the pier to greet the cops and lead them back to the boat.  As Gilligan did as he was told – stupid to the end – the Skipper shot him in the back.  And then he drew the machete across his own forearm, deep enough to draw blood.

He then told the police that he had no choice.  The official report stated that one Willis “Willy” Gilligan had gone mad on the three-hour tour and attacked and killed the passengers and even tried to kill his own Captain, boss, and friend.  With no other witnesses to the foul deed, Jonas Grumby was able to live off his ill-gotten gains. 

But that’s Dark Toobworld.  I’m sure nothing like that could possibly happen in dimension of Toobworld2….

Nudge Nudge Wink Wink.