Saturday, January 26, 2019

TOOBMUSIC - RATTLE OFF THE BANDS



Every so often, our Saturday offering is a Jukebox Saturday in which we share a few music videos (usually ones with some connection to Toobworld.)  Well, we’ve got a music theme today, but not the videos to go along with it.

ME-TV shared a little quiz about the fictional bands to found in the classic TV shows.  So I grabbed the pics (plus a few others) and thought to share them here…..

Perhaps the band that kicked it all off, from ‘The Andy Griffith Show’


From ‘Wonder Woman’


From ‘CHiPs’


From ‘Laverne & Shirley’


From ‘F Troop’


From ‘Petticoat Junction’


From ‘Happy Days’


From ‘WKRP In Cincinnati’


From ‘Gidget’


And proving that everything washed up on ‘Gilligan’s Island’ sooner or later…..


It's not a complete list; some of the other bands might not be part of ME-TV's line-up and so not worthy of publicity by them.  One group I would have included would be The Sacred Cows, working with the Groovy Guru in an episode of 'Get Smart'.


As my brother Iddiot "Jonathan Kiddrane" would say, "Keep smiling and rock on!"

BCnU!


 

Friday, January 25, 2019

FRIDAY HALL OF FAMERS - REUBEN CLARENCE KINCAID



Come on!  Get hapless!


Reuben Kincaid:

Free speech is great,
until it's someone else speaking.
"The Partridge Family"  

After David Cassidy passed away, Toobworld Central inducted the entire Partridge Family into the Television Crossover Hall of Fame as a group in a memorial tribute - not only for Cassidy, but for Suzanne Crough as well who also died in the last few years.

All of the qualifications for the musical group, mostly references in other shows which treated them as being real, should be taken as a whole.  But that doesn't apply to Reuben Kincaid, who actully appeared in several other TV series.

So for this Friday Hall of Famer during this month of January when we celebrate Classic TV, we’re inducting the harriied, hapless manager of the Partridge Family….


Reuben Clarence Kincaid
The Partridge Family
96 episodes



With his mother, Clara Kincaid

With the main four members of the Partridge Family
With Shirley Partridge
With Laurie Partridge 
With Danny Partridge
With Keith Partridge
Had to make sure I included Tracy and Chris!



Married... with Children
"How Green Was My Apple"
(1994)

The Manager


From the IMDb:
A borderline war between the neighbors over the rights to a fruit tree, with a lesson to be learned somewhere, if only they would stop fighting.


O’Bservation – The surveyor hired by the Bundys turned out to be Danny Partridge of the Partridge Family, which he strongly denied….


PEG BUNDY:
Hey, are you sure that you aren't....?
THE SURVEYOR:
Yes, I'm sure! I've never been so sure of anything in my entire life!
REUBEN KINCAID:
Let's go. Let's go, Danny. We gotta be in Pittsburgh by midnight! Come on, get happy.



Boy Meets World
"Rave On"
(1995)



From the IMDb:
Eric and Cory invite the entire school to a huge rave party at Chubbie's but scramble to make other plans when the rave is the same night as their parents anniversary.  




REUBEN KINCAID:
Excuse me.
I'd just like to tell you that I really liked what I heard.

GORDY:
Oh.
Nah, it was nothing.
We were just messing around.

REUBEN KINCAID:
No, no, no.
You guys really got something.
I mean, believe me.
I know what I'm talking about.
I used to manage a band.
Well, a few years ago.
It's a family group.
Still got the bus we toured in!

JEDIDIAH:
The name sounds familiar.
REUBEN KINCAID:
It sure would be nice to be able to be able to handle an act without a mother in it.
Well, so, call me.
You know, you guys could be bigger than the Beatles.

REGINALD:
Bigger than the Beatles.  Hmmmm….
Gordy, Reginald, and Jedidiah:
Nahhhh!




O'Bservation - The musicians at the anniversary party – Gordy, Reginald, and Jedidiah – were played by 3/4ths of The Monkees [Mickey Dolenz, Davy Jones, and Peter Tork.]

In those last two episode examples, David Madden is listed as having played “The Manager”.  But it’s O’Bvious that he was Reuben Kincaid.


In 1992, Madden reprised his role of Mr. Kincaid for the very first sketch in the pilot episode of 'The Ben Stiller Show'.  This time he was actually credited as Reuben Kincaid.  


The Ben Stiller Show 
"Pilot"
(1992)

Reuben Kincaid


From the IMDb:
“U2: The Early Years” in which Ben Stiller impersonates Bono of U2. Dave Madden plays the Partridge Family's manager Mr. Kinkaid as U2's first manager.


ANNOUNCER:
It's Ben Stiller's Rockumentary: U2, The Early Years.
BONO:
It was difficult when we were starting out.
We had this horrible old manager who didn't understand what our music was about.

REUBEN KINCAID:
I loved those boys like they were my own sons.
They came to me, you know.
Oh, yeah.

BONO:
Mr. Kinkaid used to drive us about in this ramshackled, old, multicolored school bus.  Taking us from gig to gig.
Screaming about how we were gonna make it big in show business.

REUBEN KINCAID:
Yeah, I was full of ideas back then.
BONO:
He wanted to get a little girl to play tambourine with us, but we nixed that one.
REUBEN KINCAID:
With Bono, it was always about "the message." So I gave him a message.
If Joel Wasserstein doesn't have fun at his bar mitzvah you're not getting paid.
Comprende? 

BONO:
Thank you.
Well, I hope you're all having a good time here at Joel's bar mitzvah.
We're all real proud of him.
Look at him, the very vision of manhood.
How about Leo Krumpnik, who made that great gefilte fish sculpture, huh? Everybody taste the gefilte fish sculpture.
It's great.
Okay, Joel, get up here.
Come on up here, Joel.
I hope everybody's ready to dance the hora and the hokey-pokey.
I don't wanna see anybody sitting.
Let's give him a hand.
Joel.
Yeah, today Joel is a man.
Okay, Edge, play the blues! Thank you, Joel! I'll tell you something else.
I'm sick and tired of what's going on in Northern Ireland.

REUBEN KINCAID:
Okay, so it wasn't Carnegie Hall.
You gotta start somewhere.


Reuben Kincaid’s management of U2 happened in Skitlandia, but who knows?  Maybe a more serious version of that chapter in Reuben’s life did play out in the main Toobworld, but Bono would actually BE Bono.


Speaking of alternate Toobworlds….


Over in the Tooniverse, Reuben Kincaid could be found managing the Partridges… in the year 2200 AD, in the same time frame as the Jetsons apparently, but where the mother of the Partridge clan is Connie Partridge.

An added bonus;


It could be that Mr. Kincaid should be considered more than a multidimensional, having appeared in the main Toobworld and in Skitlandia.  He could be seen to be a multiversal.  He was cited in a "Sally Forth" comic strip:


And it's not just the mention, he was seen parodied in another comic, from Mad Magazine:


Welcome to our latest member, Reuben Kincaid, a true multidimensional!

Reuben Kincaid: 
Good day.
Danny: 
It was until now.  


BCnU!

Thursday, January 24, 2019

MISSING LINKS - 'COLUMBO' & 'WAREHOUSE 13'


Last October, I did a Missing Links post connecting the ‘Columbo’ episode “Suitable For Framing” to “The Fatal Cliche”, an episode of ‘The Thin Man’.

Me thinks ‘tis time for another one.....

First, we’re going to need some information... information.... information about the show making the connection:


From Wikipedia:
‘Warehouse 13’ is an American science fiction television series that premiered on July 7, 2009, on the Syfy network. 

The series follows U.S. Secret Service Agents Myka Bering (Joanne Kelly) and Pete Lattimer (Eddie McClintock) when they are assigned to the secretive Warehouse 13 for supernatural artifacts.

The series posits that there have been a dozen incarnations of the Warehouse before the present-day 13th in South Dakota. Warehouse 1 was built between 336–323 BC under Alexander the Great as a place to keep artifacts obtained by war.  After Alexander died, the Warehouse was moved to Egypt, establishing the practice of locating the Warehouse in the most powerful empire of the day, under the reasoning that it will be best defended there.

Originally, artifacts are items connected to some historical or mythological figure or event. Each artifact has been imbued with something from its creator, user, or a major event in history.

A new concept is introduced in Episode 43 (Season 4). Mrs. Frederic shows Claudia an artifact being created—a silver bracelet worn by an ordinary person who exhibits extraordinary courage. 

From the Warehouse 13 wiki:

The creation of an artifact is simply the meeting
of an object, a person... and a moment
.”
MRS FREDERIC

Every artifact in this Warehouse is
an extension of a person
.”
MRS. FREDERIC

Artifacts are mysterious relics, fantastical objects, and supernatural souvenirs that are packed with enough energy to somehow move and affect other objects. Some artifacts in the ‘Warehouse 13’ series are supernatural relics that rationalize beliefs held in ancient and medieval times about the relics themselves. Usually these items are collected and stored in Warehouse 13, but some are used as tools by Warehouse personnel, or simply can't be moved from their current location.

Mrs Fredric explained that artifacts are born through the meeting of a person, extraordinary event and an object at the right moment and time.

Artifacts in general either require a human to activate them or they don't. Some artifacts would remain passive and not operate at all without the presence of a human.

Some artifacts are capable of going dormant for several years at a time, making it difficult for them to be tracked and identified by Warehouse agents. As such artifacts can travel far and wide without being noticed by the Warehouse until they reactivate again and cause mischief. The precise time-frame of dormancy and reactivation can vary but once an artifact has found a suitable location or individual to influence it will reactivate.

Over a period of time in contact with their original owners, some artifacts appear to have absorbed or been imprinted with certain characteristics and personality traits of their former owners.

For more, click here:

I would imagine there could be a lot of artifacts from ‘Columbo’ episodes which could be imbued with powers because of their relationship to either the murderers or to the victims.  Murder weapons especially could have been charged with supernatural energy by being the instrument of death.
  • “Any Old Port In A Storm” – Vintner’s Winner’s Cup
  • “Lovely But Lethal” – Carl Lessing’s microscope
  • “Dagger Of The Mind” – jar of theatrical cold cream
But there was one episode in which there were a lot of inanimate objects which were “witnesses” to the murder.  And if not all of them became catalyzed into being artifacts, then at least two of them could have been….

‘COLUMBO’
“SUITABLE FOR FRAMING”



From the IMDb: 
A wealthy art collector is murdered, and all signs point to a robbery gone wrong. But the nephew's alibi is a little too convenient, and Columbo pulls a fast one to ferret out the killer.

From the blog “The Columbophile”:
The scene is masterfully constructed and perfectly scored. A chilling strings crescendo accentuates the stunning crime as the camera jumps between the faces on the paintings on the walls. A spiralling, manic piano solo then takes over as Kingston trashes the joint. It’s shock and awe TV at its 70s’ best.

Without showing the actual death of Rudi Matthews by his nephew as he is struck by the bullet and collapses to the floor, it still is one of the most unnerving murders in the show’s history because of the music and the closeups of those paintings bearing silent witness to Dale Kingston’s heinous act.







As I stated, I don’t think of all them became artifacts.  But how could the Degas pastels of the ballerinas NOT be transformed?  They were not only “witnesses” to the murder of Uncle Rudi, but they were present when Dale later murdered his accomplice, Tracy O’Connor.


We’ll never know if the powers of those pastels were ever activated.  Eventually they, like all the artwork in Uncle Rudi’s estate, became the property of his ex-wife, Edna Matthews.  Dictated by the terms of the will, Edna was to distribute them to schools and museums, which was what she always wanted Rudi to do anyway. 


(I’m sure there are plenty of fictional museums and art schools seen in other TV show episodes which could have been the beneficiaries of Edna’s largesse.  Perhaps some of them showed up at the Lytton Museum as seen in the ‘Columbo’ episode “Old-Fashioned Murder’!  But as for any other schools and museums, there’s a post for another day.)

Just one more thing….

What type of power could they have been imbued with?  Well, I like to set up a possible premise, then offer it to Team Toobworld so that they might run with it.  But if I had my druthers, I’d have those Degas pastels donated to the Lytton Museum.  Because with them having been present at two murders already, they could have now some affinity with the compulsion to kill.  Without realizing it, Ruth Lytton might have suddenly acted on long-buried fantasies of killing her overbearing brother and the thieving security guard because of a supernatural urging by those pastels.

Who knows where the pastels went next, or were they snagged, bagged, and tagged by the Warehouse 13 agents at some point after November of 1976?  For alls we know, those pastels are now tucked away in the Dark Vault of Warehouse 13.


Only Prime-Time will tell….
BCnU!

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

WIKI TIKI WEDNESDAY - SONDHEIM & THE MIZNER BROTHERS



'FRASIER'
"DESPERATELY SEEKING CLOSURE"



SAMANTHA PIERCE:
We are taking the Concorde to London
for a party at Alec Guinness' place.

DR. FRASIER CRANE:
Well, I'm not so sure -#
SIR Alec Guinness? 

SAMANTHA PIERCE:  
I know it's a long way to go, 
but Stephen is going to be there 
and he'll play some songs from the new one.

DR. FRASIER CRANE:  
I don't know if -#
Stephen Sondheim?
 

SAMANTHA PIERCE:  
Guess who's singing with him.
DR. FRASIER CRANE:  
No, please, don't tell me. 


This episode was first televised December 9, 1997, 22 years ago already.  (Hard to believe!)  So “the new one” by Stephen Sondheim was a project in development by then and apparently due to open sometime after 1998 was underway.


But if Toobworld followed the Trueniverse with this bit o’ History, things didn’t go as planned…..

From Wikipedia (combined articles):
During the late 1990s, Sondheim and Weidman reunited with Hal Prince for “Wise Guys”, a musical comedy following brothers Addison and Wilson Mizner. 


Wilson Mizner (May 19, 1876 – April 3, 1933) was an American playwright, raconteur, and entrepreneur. His best-known plays are “The Deep Purple”, produced in 1910, and “The Greyhound”, produced in 1912. He was manager and co-owner of The Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles, California, and was part of the failed project of his older brother, Addison, to create a new resort in Boca Raton, Florida.  

Addison Cairns Mizner (December 12, 1872 – February 5, 1933) was an American resort architect whose Mediterranean Revival and Spanish Colonial Revival style interpretations left an indelible stamp on South Florida, where it continues to inspire architects and land developers. In the 1920s Mizner was the best-known and most-discussed living American architect.  Palm Beach, Florida, which he "transformed", was his home, and most of his houses are there. He believed that architecture should also include interior and garden design, and set up Mizner Industries to have a reliable source of components. He was "an architect with a philosophy and a dream."  Boca Raton, Florida, began as Mizner's project.  


From the Sondheim website:

Following his 1919 arrest for running a gambling joint on Long Island, Wilson joined Addison in Palm Beach just before the 1920s land boom got underway. After the land boom burst, Wilson left Mizner in Florida and went back to California. Settling in Hollywood, Wilson managed and co-owned the Brown Derby Restaurant. He also wrote screenplays for several early talkies.

Curtain down for both brothers came in 1933. The 62-year-old Addison died in February. Three months later Wilson - only 57 and unrepentant - also died, a quipster even at the very end.

- Jerry Floyd


Back to Wikipedia:
Taking considerable liberties with their lives, William and Addison are the protagonists of Stephen Sondheim's musical Road Show (alternately known as “Wise Guys”, “Gold!”, and “Bounce”).   


A Broadway production, starring Nathan Lane and Victor Garber, directed by Sam Mendes and planned for the spring of 2000, was delayed.  


Renamed “Bounce” in 2003, it was produced at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Although after poor reviews “Bounce” never reached Broadway, a revised version opened off-Broadway as “Road Show” at the Public Theater on October 28, 2008. Directed by John Doyle, it closed on December 28, 2008.


Maybe things might have gone differently – at least in Toobworld – if Frasier had gone to that party at Sir Alec Guiness’ place.  A word from Frasier in the wrong ear…..


BCnU!