CROSSOVERS, RESTLESS STYLE

'The Young & The Restless' will be celebrating its 35th anniversary on March 26th. In anticipation of that, Ashley Abbott and Felicia Forrester will be arriving in Genoa City, Wisconsin, on the 25th. (I hope the Alphabet Killer isn't on the loose there!) They'll be helping to launch the "Restless Style" product line.

BCnU!
Toby OB

ELABORACIÓN DE LA CERVEZA ENCIMA DE LOS NÚMEROS

Estrella Damm became the main sponsor for the Valencia Football Club in Spain near the end of last year. And because the club was in something of a bad situation at that point in time, the beer company wanted to make a declaration that they wouldn't bail out and would see them through the hard times.

So their ad agency came up with a blipvert which shows the soccer fans rising up on their chairs, office desks, rooftops and bus shelters to shout out "Amunt!", which means "Rise up!"

You can see the commercial at YouTube.
One of the people in the ad is a lonely lifeguard at a desolate beach. And the observation high-chair from which he makes his declaration has the numeral designation of "8", a number in the 'Lost' sequence.

So "The Numbers" not only show up in commercials, as we saw with that classic ad for Clark's Teaberry Gum, but in commercials from around the world.....

BCnU!
Toby OB

#2600 UPDATE: ONCE & AGAIN

The title of that old show "Do Over" would have worked even better......

::sigh::
I had so many topic options to choose from for Blog Post #2600.

1] The alternate TV dimension in which our TV shows - which are "real life" in Earth Prime-Time - are also "real life" (marking the behind-the-scenes look at the actors of 'Steptoe And Son' which stars Jason Isaacs).

2] My theory about 'Lost' Season Five and the Whispers.

3] The use of "The Numbers" from 'Lost' in a Spanish beer commercial.

4] Theories about Kinchloe of 'Hogan's Heroes'.

5] A Zonk about a Baldwin piano in 1840 'Dante's Cove'.

6] Or I could have just held off and waited until today to use it to celebrate the birth date of James Tiberius Kirk.

But noooooooooooo!

I had to waste it on a "Double Vision" theory combining two British sitcoms which I've never seen. Which of course means that I screwed it up.

It was just a couple of posts ago, but let's recap:

I wrote that Sheridan Smith, the actress who plays Janet on 'Two Pints Of Lager (And A Packet Of Crisps', made a cameo appearance in a 'Gavin & Stacey' episode as a take-out window clerk for a fast-food restaurant.

That part's fine, but then I tried to over-analyze the appearance in order to combine the two series in Toobworld:

"According to TV.com, her character's name was Rudi. So there goes the chance that she could have been Janet Keogh. Besides, Janet and the rest of the cast from 'Two Pints' were living in Runcorn in Cheshire. Stacey was originally from Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan in South Wales, while Gavin lived in Billericay, Essex, but she eventually moved in with Gavin. There's not much chance they'd ever get up to Cheshire just for fast food.

But in that second episode, Gavin's buddy Smithy went AWOL when he found out he got Nessa pregnant. So maybe that road trip of the guys took them up to Runcorn where they could have met up with Janet.....

Of course, there's still the matter of that name of Rudi.....

Janet was working in a bakery and then moved up to becoming the manager of the Archer bar. After it was closed down by the health inspectors, maybe she needed whatever job she could find to make ends meet for her and her child, Corinthian. (Her husband Jonny got killed off at the beginning of the seventh season.)

But after being the manager of Archer's, maybe Janet felt the fast food job was an embarrassment, so she used an alias there.....

However, that only works if Gavin's road trip to find Smithy took them to Runcorn......It would make for a nice little link between the two shows, not that they really needed one. All shows are one in the TV Universe."

My UK blogging buddy Rob of "The Medium Is Not Enough" (Link to the left, check it out!) wrote back last night. And since I'm not always sure visitors read comments, I wanted to make sure Rob's message was seen by everyone who travels in Toobworld here:

"Ooh, not sure about that. Trouble is, the character Sheridan Smith played was supposed to be Smithy's sister. Everyone at the drive-through called her Smithy, too. Plus she had something approaching an Essex accent. Good try, though, Tobes!"
Fair enough. I'm grateful for the extra info. I did give myself an out, using "maybe" and "could have" and "that only works if".... But still I'd much rather have something that could be viewed as a bit more solid in foundation.

So as I mentioned in my response to Rob, I should have gone with a far simpler splainin which works even better when it comes connecting Sheridan Smith's role in 'Two Pints' with that in 'Gavin & Stacey':

"I'll fall back on the 'Patty Duke Show' "Identical Cousin" theory: Since Janet's maiden name was Smith, then she and Rudi Smith were cousins who looked exactly alike."

And there's nothing unlikely about the idea that Janet Smith was raised in Runcorn, Cheshire, while Rudi "Smithy" Smith was raised in Billericay, Essex.

(Full disclosure: I also suggested that somebody in the previous generation may have been philanderin'. But again, that's too much supposition. We'll keep it simple with the Identical Cousin theory.)

My thanks to Rob for being so observant, and especially for visiting Toobworld!

One other note - all that talk about Cheshire and Essex - and the mention of Killingworth in that post about the 1822 copier - made me homesick for Connecticut!

BCnU!
Toby OB

"Regret is part of being alive."
Kerr Avon
'Blake's 7'

TODAY'S TWD: HAPPY BIRTH DATE, JIM! (220 YEARS FROM NOW)

[Riverside, Iowa]

#2600: TWO PINTS FOR GAVIN & STACEY

Here's a shout-out of thanks to Scotty at TV Tanline.

TV Tan Line posts screencaps from the shows that he's been watching - 'Lost', classic 'Star Trek', 'It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia', 'The Tudors', 'Wonder Showzen', 'Doctor Who', 'Hotel Babylon', 'Penn & Teller's Bullshit!', etc.

And I'm learning more about a lot of shows I might never have seen otherwise, like 'That Mitchell & Webb Look', 'Human Giant', 'Skins', and the twofer for which I'm grateful: 'Gavin & Stacey' and 'Two Pints Of Lager (And A Packet Of Crisps)'.
While displaying the frame grabs from the second episode of the second season of 'Gavin & Stacey', TV Tan Line added the factoid that Sheridan Smith, the actress who plays Janet on 'Two Pints', was making a cameo appearance in the episode as a take-out window clerk for a fast-food restaurant.

According to TV.com, her character's name was Rudi. So there goes the chance that she could have been Janet Keogh. Besides, Janet and the rest of the cast from 'Two Pints' were living in Runcorn in Cheshire. Stacey was originally from Barry in the Vale of Glamorgan in South Wales, while Gavin lived in Billericay, Essex, but she eventually moved in with Gavin. There's not much chance they'd ever get up to Cheshire just for fast food.

But in that second episode, Gavin's buddy Smithy went AWOL when he found out he got Nessa pregnant. So maybe that road trip of the guys took them up to Runcorn where they could have met up with Janet.....

Of course, there's still the matter of that name of Rudi.....

Janet was working in a bakery and then moved up to becoming the manager of the Archer bar. After it was closed down by the health inspectors, maybe she needed whatever job she could find to make ends meet for her and her child, Corinthian. (Her husband Jonny got killed off at the beginning of the seventh season.)

But after being the manager of Archer's, maybe Janet felt the fast food job was an embarrassment, so she used an alias there.....

However, that only works if Gavin's road trip to find Smithy took them to Runcorn......
It would make for a nice little link between the two shows, not that they really needed one. All shows are one in the TV Universe.

BCnU!
Toby OB

And that's Inner Toob Blog Post #2600!

ECHOES: TIME ENOUGH AT LOST

MICHAEL DAWSON

'LOST'

HENRY BEMIS

'THE TWILIGHT ZONE'

The Island probably wouldn't let him die either......

BCnU!

Toby OB

TUNING IN THE NUMBERS

"Meet Kevin Johnson".

No, not really. That's the title of last night's episode of 'Lost'.

In the eight episodes of this half of the fourth season, a lot of people have said that they noticed that "The Numbers" have been missing from the show.

I think the producers are just not making it too obvious anymore, that's all. Sometimes "The Numbers" are backwards - like Miles' demand that Ben pay him 3.2 million dollars.

Or one of them is hidden in other numbers. The combination to Ben's safe was 36-15-28; the middle number was "15", part of the sequence. (The entire combination was a clue in the online game of "Find 815", according to Lostpedia.)

There was at least one such example of numerical play in last night's episode.....

Just before Michael crashed his car into that dumpster(?), he tuned in the radio to a Mama Cass song. When he adjusted the volume, it was on seventeen. And the channel was listed as one.
But if you look at that picture quickly, it looks as though the digital read-out is "17 - 1", which would be "16", another one of the numbers.....

BCnU!
Toby OB

TODAY'S TWD: COPY THAT!

Here in the Real World, "Xerographic office photocopying was introduced by Xerox in the 1960s, and over the following 20 years it gradually replaced copies made by Verifax, Photostat, carbon paper, mimeograph machines, and other duplicating machines." [from Wikipedia, of course!]

But as far as Toobworld is concerned, the first copiers were introduced in the mid-1800s, probably in England. They were huge ungainly machines, the type that would be appreciated by the likes of George Stephenson and Michael Faraday.
This was verified by a recent TV commercial for Altoids, in which an 1800s serving girl finds out that the copier was broken yet again. However, the taste of an Altoid mint was a slap to her cerebellum, and she realized that the copier was probably only jammed.

Sure enough, it turned out that a goat had found its way into the copier and was eating all of the paper. Thus, the wench was spared Lord Whippington's punishment with the thumbscrews.

Just to keep things tidy in this corner of Toobworld, I'm going to suggest that the village seen in our historical Tiddlywinkydink was that of Killingworth. Killingworth served as the site of an 1822 meeting between the foremost scientists of the day, including the aforementioned Stephenson and Faraday (as seen in the 'Doctor Who' episode "The Mark Of The Rani".)
It was probably a rebellious Luddite who put the goat in the copier in the first place, in order to disrupt that meeting!

BCnU!
Toby OB

"LOST" IN THE SHUFFLE?

"The Numbers" of 'Lost' have been in existence in that sequential order probably for ages.

And we can find them not only in other TV shows besides 'Lost', but also in commercials as well.

Here's the number "16" as seen in the classic "Teaberry Shuffle" ad for Clark's Gum from back in the late 1960s.

BCnU!
Toby OB

AUSTEN CUTIE LIMITS

"You have to understand....
I'm from Iowa.
I'm not as free-thinking and adventurous as you are."
Michelle
'Dante's Cove'

My friend Michael, half of Team Markhael, told me I had to check out a show from the here! channel called 'Dante's Cove'. It's a gay, Gothic soap opera that takes that 'Dark Shadows' zeitgeist into the 21st Century with a very liberated sensuality (if not good acting. Oh well, can't have everything!) The backstory - about the use of a type of witchcraft known as Tresum in a Florida Keys-styled tropical resort - is what is most important for Toobworld. So even though the acting and the writing kind of bite, I'll stick with it through this series of disks.

It is nice, though, to see that the character named "Toby" is the best looking of the bunch. Usually we're relegated to being the comic relief! (Or as kids, as pets, or as escaped slaves.....)

With the second season, episode one, the show introduced Michelle, the girlfriend of the artist Van (short for Vanessa). Take a look at this picture of them both....

Doesn't Michelle (on the left) look like she could be related to Kate Austen of 'Lost'?

I'm not saying they could be sisters - even though Michelle does have a sister back in Iowa, we know that Kate doesn't. (Or at least it's never come up in the series so far. And after blowing up her house, killing her step-father, dealing with her ailing, vengeful mother, and having her life dragged out in court, one would think any siblings would be mentioned by now.)
But hey! Michelle could be Kate's cousin, from Iowa just like Kate. Definitely not an identical cousin, like Patty and Cathy Lane of 'The Patty Duke Show', but near as*.

Just another Theory of Relateeveety in Toobworld....

BCnU!
Toby OB

*Looking at the cast list for 'Dante's Cove', I guess the character of Michelle will become a Recastaway. Erin Cummings (pictured above) is only in five episodes of the series and then Jill Bennett takes over the role.

Seems pretty O'Bvious to me - her appearance will be transformed by the use of Tresum magic. (Unless of course an actual splainin is brought up within the show.)