ALEC AS A.L.F.

Once I got home from work this morning, I went online to check out the various Super Bowl commercials from last night's game. After an hour, my brain was quite mushy, so that may explain why I've chosen the Hulu.com blipvert "Alec of Huluwood" to be the best commercial of the bunch.

It's a great example of what makes Toobworld different from the real world. ALEC BALDWIN IS AN ALIEN! And the difference? He and his alien cohorts plan to gobble up our brains.

I don't think they have an established plan in the real world......

Another alien celebrity is Dennis Rodman, as established in an episode of '3rd Rock From The Sun'. And Kevin Sorbo is really the demi-god (actually a pan-dimensional being) known as Hercules (as revealed in a behind-the-scenes episode of 'Hercules: The Legendary Journeys').

BCnU!
Toby O'B

MUSICAL TOOB: SONGS TO LEAD A LIFE OF DANGER BY

In the 'Secret Agent' episode of "The Not So Jolly Roger", John Drake took a job at a pirate radio station over three miles out at sea in order to find out who killed another agent who was investigating the transmission of military secrets.

A lot of songs were played during the episode, most of them written specifically for the episode and performed by fictitious bands. (Not all of them, however.) Most of these songs were apparently composed by Rick Minas, who also got mentioned during the episode for performing one of those songs, "Don't Try To Change Me".

I tried to keep track of the playlist as best I could and here are the numbers which, for the most part, you can only hear on Toobworld radio:

Ted Astley - "The Scorpion"

The Copperfields - "John Hardy"

The Stormsville Shakers - "It's Alive"

The Zephyrs - "No Word From You"

The Intuitions - "Though I Know"

The New Generation - "The Key To My Heart"

The Skylarks - "Change Your Ways"

These are the artists who were named, but I didn't know what the names of their songs were: The Master Minstrels & The Surf Boys.

"Look Before You Leap" and "It's Love I Should Have Tried" were two songs that were played but I don't know who the artists were.

As I said, most of the groups were fictitious. Apparently there was a group called The Stormsville Shakers, and Rick Minas did get credit for one of his songs on air. Another performer named during the show was Patsy Ann Noble, once a teen singing sensation from Australia and still working today as an actress under the name Trisha Noble. (I know her best from 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' as a woman who came on to Ted. But she also played Padme Amidala's mother in two of the later 'Star Wars' movies.)

In the climactic final scenes, one of the DJs at the station, Suzy Wade, put on Patsy Ann Noble's record "He Who Rides The Tiger" and announced that it was so quiet you could hear a drum solo. Mrs. Jansen, who was holding a gun on her, realized that Suzy must have sent out a coded message for help and that led to a nice little cat-fight between the two women... all to the music of Patsy Ann Noble.

There's an in-joke in that - Suzy Wade was played by Patsy Ann Noble! So while she was singing over the radio via record, she was also beating the crap out of her former boss.

As it turns out, I didn't need to worry about keeping exact records of the songs Drake played. (Don't tell my IDD pals!) There's a great website dedicated to 'Danger Man' and 'Secret Agent' in which the webmaster has all of the information about the songs, including the versions of them that he's been able to track down. (And "The Not So Jolly Roger" is his favorite episode, so he's given it a lot of scrutiny.)

BCnU!
Toby O'B

MINDING THE ZONKS

A few days ago I posted a list of crossovers I'd like to see, one of them being a match-up between 'Psych' and 'The Mentalist'.

At least twice so far, 'The Mentalist' has teased that it's similar to 'Psych' by having pineapple references - an air freshener in a killer's truck, a pineapple pizza delivered to the CBI offices.

But those were merely in-jokes that needed no splainin; 'Psych' has now upped the ante with a full-out Zonk.

In this past weekend's episode, Shawn told Gus that he would smooth over his latest altercation with his Dad by hanging out with him and watch a couple of episodes of 'The Mentalist'.

Not a big problem in overcoming that. It's certainly easier than trying to fix that 'Gossip Girl'/'Gilmore Girls' Zonk from the other day.

All that Shawn said was that the show's name was 'The Mentalist'. He never said anything about Patrick Jane or the CBI or even Red John. So 'The Mentalist' could refer to any type of TV show. More than likely, it's a magic show on the order of those Criss Angel specials, something with a Uri-Geller type of performer. Or the Amazing Kreskin.

To keep it totally Toobworld, maybe 'The Mentalist' stars the Amazing Yappi from 'The X-Files'.

Of course, the life story of Patrick Jane would make for interesting television, at least for a TV movie......

BCnU!
Toby O'B

FANFICCER'S FRIEND: LUIS MONTOYO

Although Fanficcer's Friend is no longer a regular feature here at Inner Toob, that doesn't mean I won't post one every now and again....

Putting away some pictures in my hard drive, I found this of Ricardo Montalban from one of his early movies in which he played a bull-fighter. Fanficcers could always use this if they were to write about the earlier life of his character of Luis Montoyo in the 'Columbo' episode "A Matter Of Honor".

Just sayin', is all......

BCnU!
Toby O'B

AS SEEN ON TV: LAFAYETTE

As I mentioned in Sunday's edition of "As Seen On TV", all week we'll be showcasing historical figures from the American Revolution, but as seen in the Tooniverse. The website for 'Liberty's Kids' has plenty of such portraits for those historical figures who interacted with their regular characters. And it's from there we'll be drawing our inspiration.
First up is Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, also known as the Marquis de Lafayette or de La Fayette. He was a French military expert who came over to the colonies to help the Americans in their fight against the British. Ten years before he died, Lafayette returned to America and visited the 26 states that made up the union. And many of those states named cities after him in honor of his service to the country.

BCnU!
Toby O'B

SPIKE.COM & THE SUPER BOWL BLIPVERTS

Got this notice during my evening nap before work:

Spike.com will have all of the Super Bowl commercials up as they air at spike.com/superbowl, as well as all the ads of Super Bowls past. They're helpfully listed by ad, and are easily embeddable and sharable.

Spike editors also threw together a couple “top 10’s” that I think you and your readers will get a kick out of, like Top 10 Funniest, Top 10 Sexiest, and Top 10 of all time.

* The Top 10 Funniest Super Bowl Commercials of All Time:
http://www.spike.com/blog/10-funniest-super/73124

* The Top 10 Sexiest Super Bowl Commercials of All Time:
http://www.spike.com/blog/top-10-sexiest-super/72988

Enjoy the blipverts, True Believers!

BCnU!
Toby O'B

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME "LOST"-BALL?

Timed for the Super Bowl, both 'Monk' and 'Psych' had football themed episodes this past Friday. Adrian Monk had to solve a murder in the parking lot outside Summmit Stadium during a playoff game between the Condors and the Wildcats; while Shawn and Gus looked into the death of a place-kicker from the Los Angeles Thunderbirds.

And both of them featured major characters wearing the Numbers from 'Lost'! On 'Monk', Captain Leland Stottlemeyer wore a #8 Condors jersey, which was the number for a player named Blaylock. Here he's seen with Monk and special guest star Bob Costas (TV Crossover Hall of Fame, 2002) who added a goofy dimension to the life of his tele-version: he seriously believed a calico kitten was trying to kill him. And here's young Shawn Spencer, circa 1987, wearing #15 on 'Psych'.

Number 15 belonged to Shawn's football hero, Sammy Winslow, who would be coaching the T-Birds when Shawn grew up. (It's a theory of relateeveety that Sammy Winslow may have been related to Carl Winslow and family on 'Family Matters'. But we're not going to push it.....)

Thanks to young Shawn's insights, Winslow was able to change his "tells" and eliminate the number of pick-offs he threw the rest of that season.

And in thanks, he gave Shawn the game ball from that day.
BCnU!
Toby O'B

TOOBWORLD 411

Okay, I'm putting this out to my readers. Maybe it will jog their memories.

I just got around to watching the football-themed episodes of 'Monk' and 'Psych' from Friday night. On 'Monk', the local pro football team was the Condors.

Now I KNOW I've heard that name used before by a fictional pro football team in Toobworld. But I can't find any notation of it in my record books. (Yes, I'm a train-spotter for TV trivia!)

Does it sound familiar to anybody else?

BCnU!
Toby O'B

FROM ONE "GG" TO ANOTHER "GG"

On a recent episode of 'Gossip Girl', Blair evaluated how good a match she would be with Yale as her college: "I am so better fit for Yale than that Rory."

That was an in-joke, making a reference to Rory Gilmore of 'Gilmore Girls', who went to Yale during the course of her series.

But there was no mention in Blair's comment that 'Gilmore Girls' was a TV show. So it could be that she was referring to Rory as a real person.

The easiest splainin would be to say that she was referring to some other Rory, maybe even a guy named Rory. But I like the challenge of accepting it to be about Rory Gilmore.

I'm thinking that during an orientation visit to the Ivy League school in New Haven, Ct., Blair was introduced to Rory, who was acting as some kind of upper class mentor. And it looks as though despite Rory's best efforts, Blair did not cotton to her at all. And that, once having heard about what Rory accomplished while there, Blair probably saw her snooty self as being able to do so much better at Yale than Rory did.

So that Zonk should go directly to Yale and not collect 200 dollars!

BCnU!
Toby O'B

GERRY STANDING VS. THE STANDING OF TREES

Channel 21, the public TV station on Long Island, has now caught up to the BBC with their broadcast of 'New Tricks'. Hopefully there won't be much lag time before they can start showing the next season - whenever that is.

In the season finale, "Mad Dogs", Gerry Standing's fear of trees resurfaced. I'm not really sure when we saw it crop up last, but I'm thinking it might have been when they found the "sunken treasure" in the quarry lake off the M25 while investigating a 1979 kidnapping in that area.

This is a great example of TV as a teaching tool. Instead of just accepting that Gerry's afraid of trees (as is a man in a recent Traveler's Insurance commercial), I decided to look it up and see if it is a real phobia.

And you know what?

Dendrophobia is the fear of trees or the fear of the forest. It is a real phobia and far more common than most people may think. Unfortunately, it is not talked about often because those who suffer with it also fear ridicule from others.

BCnU!
Toby O'B