HAT SQUAD VIDEO TRIBUTE - ART DONOVAN

Art Donovan, the football player and teller of tales, died last week.  He was 89.

In the early nineties, he appeared as himself in an episode of 'The Adventures Of Pete And Pete'.......

Good night and may God bless.......

BLIPVERTS - THE BIRTH OF THE CUBA LIBRE

It's time to pay the blls.....

The history behind this blipvert may be fact; it may be legend... in the real world.  But it happened EXACTLY this way in the history of Toobworld......

BCnU!

THE HAT SQUAD - REMEMBERING KAREN BLACK

Karen Black, the bravely offbeat actress who burst into the public consciousness in such iconic counterculture films as "Five Easy Pieces" and "Easy Rider," has died. She was 74.

Black, who was found to have ampullary cancer in 2010, died Thursday at West Hills Hospital, said her husband, Stephen Eckelberry.

With compelling, close-set eyes that gave her a distinctive appearance, Black built a film resume that included prostitutes, murderers, waitresses, transsexuals and thieves. She imbued the portrayals of her often vulnerable, working-class characters with pathos and occasional humor.

- Rebecca Trounson

Los Angeles Times

Most of Ms. Black's best-known work was for the Cineverse - "Easy Rider", "Five Easy Pieces", "Nashville", "Day Of The Locust", and "Airport '75", among others.

But for Toobworld, it was her three roles in the ABC movie of the week, "Trilogy of Terror", that she will be best remembered.

Especially for that last story, "Amelia"......

Good night and may God bless......

LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES - DIMITRI TIOMKIN

DIMITRI TIOMKIN

From Wikipedia:

Dimitri Zinovievich Tiomkin (May 10, 1894 – November 11, 1979) was a Russian-born Hollywood film scorecomposer and conductor. He is considered "one of the giants of Hollywood movie music." Musically trained in Russia, he is best known for his westerns, "where his expansive, muscular style had its greatest impact."  Tiomkin received twenty-two Academy Award nominations and won four.

In addition to the cinema he was also active in composing for the small screen, including such memorable television theme songs as 'Rawhide' (1959) and 'Gunslinger'. Although he was also hired to compose the theme for TV's 'The Wild Wild West' (1965), the producers rejected his music and subsequently hired Richard Markowitz as his replacement. A cover version of the theme from 'Rawhide' was performed in the 1980 cult musical film "The Blues Brothers", the in-joke that the composer is a Ukrainian-born Jew being lost on the crowd at the cowboy bar.

Tiomkin also made a few appearances as himself on television programs. These include being the mystery challenger on 'What's My Line?' and an appearance on Jack Benny's CBS program in December 1961, in which he attempted to help Jack write a song.

AS SEEN IN:
'The Jack Benny Program'
"Jack Writes A Song"

O'BSERVATION:

Today's episode links to tomorrow's presentation (due to that song).

BCnU!

BOOKWORLD SKED ALERT - "A GIRL AND HER CAT"

Here's a note from Team Toobworld member and fellow crossoverist Caeric ArcLight:

Reading my first Honey West book. So far she's talked about calling Perry Mason if she has trouble and compares a big dude to King Kong.  It was 'This Girl For Hire.'

Honey West was born in BookWorld, but has her greatest claim to fame in Toobworld, thanks to the portrayal by Anne Francis.  In the TV Universe, Honey West can make connections with 'Burke's Law' and perhaps even with "The Maltese Falcon"!

Those examples supplied by Caeric won't be the only crossovers to be found in BookWorld when it comes to Honey West.  Win Scott Eckert, torchbearer for Philip Jose Farmer's great concept of the Wold Newton Universe, and Matthew Baugh will be teaming up the sultry sleuth with Thomas Hewitt Edward Cat the infamous cat burglar from the TV series 'T.H.E. Cat'.  

You can read about their upcoming Moonstone publication here.

It sounds like a winner!

BCnU!

THEORY OF RELATEEVEETY - A BRIDGE TO F TROOP

In a perfect Toobworld, the most light-hearted of sitcoms should be able to co-exist with the darkest of dramas.  What could help to keep it from being too jarring would be the passage of Time between each series.  (And I'm talking about the Toobworld timeline, not the passage of Time in the real world, although that applies in this case as well.....)

In this week's episode of 'The Bridge' ("The Beast"), we learned that Detective Sonya Cross' sister was murdered when she was eighteen years old.  (Sonia was fifteen at the time.)

The killer was a brain-damaged man named Jim Dobbs.  And Sonya now keeps examples of his child-like drawings on her refrigerator.  

I have no idea if we'll learn more about Dobbs, but even if we do I doubt the show will delve into his family tree so far back that we learn about his great-great-grandfather.

So I'm going to make a theory of relateeveety - Jim Dobbs is descended from former US Cavalry soldier Hamilton Dobbs, who was stationed for a time at Fort Courage in Kansas after the American Civil War.

As usual, this is a connection that can't be proved, nor can it be disproved... so far.

BCnU!

LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES - THOMAS JANE

THOMAS JANE

From Wikipedia:

Thomas Jane (born Thomas Elliott III; February 22, 1969) is an American actor and comic book writer, best known for his roles in Padamati Sandhya Ragam (1987), Boogie Nights (1997), 61* (2001), The Punisher (2004),The Mist (2007), and Hung (2009–2011).

He has also portrayed a fictionalized version of himself in the Fox television show Arrested Development in which the show's characters have not heard of him, and do not recognize him as the star actor that he is.

AS SEEN IN:

'Arrested Development'

"The One Where They Build A House"

 

BCnU!

THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR LINKING

Over in the Television Crossovers Forum on Facebook, Robert Wronski of the TVCU posted this question:

Crossover or no? 'Farscape' - "Different Destinations" (2001) (TV Episode)
When John is tied up and Scorpius has boots on and has them resting on John and he is playing "Home On The Range" on the harmonica, the bottom of his boots say "ANDY". This is from the bottom of Woody's boot in "Toy Story".

For me and the Toobworld Dynamic, that wouldn't work.  Woody and "Toy Story" exist in some kind of off-shoot dimension of the Cineverse.

So I offered Robert a different splainin as to why the letters for "ANDY" were to be found on the bottom of Scorpio's boots:

In the written language of either the Scarrens or the Sebaceans, the glyphs in "ANDY" probably mean something totally different.

It could have been that "ANDY" was the name of the company that made those boots for Scorpius.  Or maybe that's how the name "Scorpius" looks in one of those two languages.  (Scorpius was a Scarren/Sebacean hybrid.)

So that's a nice simple splainin, and Toobworld Central is all about invoking Occam's Razor.

"But where's the sport in that?" as Hank Spim might say in 'Monty Python's Flying Circus'.

Exactly.  Simple splainins are the best, but a lot of the time there's no fun in them.

So here's a different take on those boots - who they originally belonged to, and how Scorpius ended up with them......

Andy Travis used to be the station manager for 'WKRP in Cincinnati' from 1978 until some point before 1990.  ('The New WKRP In Cincinnatti' had Donovan Aderhold as the station manager in 1991, but there was Steve DeMarco in between Donovan and Andy.)

After he left WKRP, Andy Travis probably kicked around in the business for a few more years.  You know, "packing and unpacking, town to town, up and down the dial".  And from this point on it's pure speculation as to what happened to him.

But I'd like to think that he made a sizable sum of money - he could have inherited it, but it's better for Toobworld if he won the money in Vegas, preferably at the Montecito!  (Andy always did look like a gamblin' cowboy!)

With all of that money and still with a love of radio, Andy may have bought his own radio station, perhaps somewhere in the desert of the Southwest where he could hang his Stetson and call it home.

Such a station would be KXKVI in Los Feliz.

This is not the Los Feliz suburb of Hollywood.  It is stated often enough that it's located in the desert country of the American Southwest.  I'm thinking it would be located in New Mexico.  Andy Travis was originally from Santa Fe, where he first got his start in radio and rose to the position of station manager.  (He was also the station manager at a station in Albuquerque.)

Owning a station like KXKVI would have given him the opportunity to take it easy in life and still get what he dreamed of when it came to the perfect radio station.

He just wasn't told about the station's link to one of the 31 planets in the Andromeda galaxy......

The previous owner of KXKVI, Alan Maxwell, once experimented with microwave transmissions at the station back in the early 1960s.  This caused a "Galaxy Being" to cross over through space from his world to Earth Prime-Time.

I think Alan Maxwell eventually died from his exposure to the radiation emitted from the Galaxy Being.  And his widow was convinced by Alan's brother Gene not to say anything about it or risk never making the sale.

So it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that Andy Travis bought the station.  With others to do the actual work, he was free to putter around in the transmission shed where Alan Maxwell conducted his experiments.  But somehow Andy did something like... oh, I don't know - maybe reverse the polarity of the neutron flow? - and caused the transmission to now beam back to Andromeda instead of the other way around.

Sadly, I think Andy Travis has to be sacrificed in this non-canonical adventure of Toobworld.  Without the protection of a space-suit or a space-ship, Andy would have died in the highly irradiated atmosphere of that Andromedan world.  

(That world was probably Hermethica, which was populated by energy beings.  One of that planet's criminal element, known as The Wire, escaped its own execution by fleeing through the communications device of one of its executioners and then arriving on Earth.  Sound familiar?  Since that happened before the events at the KXKVI radio station, the rulers of Hermethica banned any other citizen of their world from making such a trip.  So the Galaxy Being knew it had transgressed the Law and was as good as sentenced to death.)

So Andy may have perished on Hermethica but his clothing may have proved of interest to the examiners.  And some unscrupulous Hermethican may have stolen them from their version of evidence lock-up (maybe at their version of a Torchwood facility - after all, anything worn by Andy Travis would be considered alien to those energy beings.)  And eventually those boots would be sold to Scorpius during his travels through the galaxy.

And long way 'round, that's how he got the boots marked "ANDY".

Admit it - wasn't that splainin a lot more fun than the simple version?

SHOWS CITED:

• 'WKRP In Cincinnati'
• 'Farscape' - "Different Destinations"
• 'The Outer Limits' - "The Galaxy Being"
• 'Doctor Who' - "The Idiot's Lantern"
• 'Las Vegas'

BCnU!

LEAGUE OF THEMSELVES - LU PARKER

LU PARKER

From Wikipedia:

Frances Louise "Lu" Parker (born December 3, 1970) is a broadcast journalist and former Miss USA fromSouth Carolina.

Her first television broadcasting job was for WCSC-TV in Charleston, South Carolina, where she was an education reporter and fill-in anchor.

In San Antonio, KABB TV hired Parker to serve as a weekend anchor and reporter. Parker was promoted to main anchor in 2000. In February 2003, she became the host for "Great Day SA", which is San Antonio's top-rated live entertainment morning show. In January 2005, she moved to Los Angeles to join Frank Buckley as co-anchor for KTLA's "KTLA Prime News" on weekends. In 2007, Lu began to co-anchor the weekday "KTLA Morning News" at 5:00 A.M and 6:00 A.M. with Cher Calvin. In January, 2008 she became the main weather anchor for KTLA Prime News. She later returned to anchor the weekend evening news alongside Lynette Romero when Markina Brown was hired as the new weeknight meteorologist. Lu Parker is currently anchoring the KTLA Morning News Weekend edition alongside Chris Burrous.

Parker has made appearances on "Larry King Live" and E! Entertainment Television. 

AS SEEN IN:

'Major Crimes'

"The Deep End"

SYNOPSIS:

Parker reported live outside police headquarters when an internationally renowned swim coach was arrested for having sex with minors.

Here's Lu Parker's behind the scenes report on her fifteen seconds of Toobworld fame:

BCnU!

STARSKY & ZONK IV

'PERCEPTION'
"DEFECTIVE"

FBI agent Kate Moretti was highly suspicious when her soon-to-be ex-husband, prosecutor Danny Ryan, teamed up with Dr. Daniel Pierce on a case.  She couldn't understand why "you two are running around like 'Starsky and Hutch'."

We've disabled this particular Zonk in the past.  Here's the basic premise:

Ever since 2004, there has been a movie in Toobworld about two cops named Starsky and Hutch, just as there has been in the real world.  But in Toobworld, that movie is about two "real-life" detectives.

Agent Moretti may not have known about the two "real-life" cops before the movie came out, but it's pozz'ble, just pozz'ble, that she and Danny went to see the flick at some point during their marriage.

BCnU!