Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:51 AM

Neil Hetzel buys a full Stormtrooper costume and goes to Wal-Mart. His friend takes pictures which are here.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:19 AM

Seth Stevenson, while discussing the new NetZero ad which apes/mocks the Mom-crashes-an-AOL-board-meeting, states he doesn't recall ad campaigns which mimicked competitors' campaigns. I emailed him to remind him of an early MCI ad. AT&T/Bell ran a "Reach Out and Touch Someone" ad featuring a middle-aged, African-American couple. The husband can't figure out why his wife is crying when their son just called with good news. It turns out that she's crying because the son said he loved her. In MCI's version with either the same or similar actors, the mother is crying because she just saw the size of the long distance bill.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:55 PM

Now I Want to See It Dept: John Podheratz says that Alexander is laugh-out-loud bad.

While I'm linking to the Corner, I'll link to this report about the President's Thanksgiving menu. My brother and any Texan not living in Texas will appreciate that the President chose Blue Bell as his brand of ice cream (which may be part of why he spent Thanksgiving in Crawford). When/If I start to make hugh amounts of sitcom money, my look-how-crazy-rich-he-is gesture will be flying in Blue Bell from Texas.

UPDATE:Apparently I can get 2 gallons flown in for $89.

UPDATE 2: Judging from this What Folks Say page, Blue Bell is no longer Texas-exclusive like it was when I was a kid but available through the South. I am happy to learn that Blue Bell still eats all they can and then sells the rest.

Update 3: A history of the Blue Bell and the Kruse family. Their strategy is to dominate the markets they're in before expanding to new ones.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:43 PM

Items Not Good Enough for McSweeneys.net #1:

Rejected Titles for the Sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11
"Director Michael Moore is planning a sequel to Fahrenheit 9/11 [...] dubbed Fahrenheit 9/11 and 1/2" - Reuters

• Fahrenheit 9/12


• Fahrenheit 9/11: Episode II


• Fahrenheit 9/11, Too


• Fahrenheit 9/3-D


• Out of Context, Shmout of Context


• Fahrenheit 9/11: Electric Bugaloo


• Fahrenheit Ka-Ching!!!!


• Fahrenheit 9/11 Meets Frankenstein


• Fahrenheit 9/11 Rides Again


• Getting Republicans 55% of the Vote


• Fahrenheit 9/11 Finds a Son


• Young Fahrenheit 9/11


• The Martian Chronicles

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 5:20 PM

I'm proud to announce a brand new segment to the Hooray for Captain Spaulding blog: Items Not Good Enough for McSweeneys.net.

Allow me to explain: When I posted the Rickles-Lincoln bit, I, on a whim, sent a copy to mcsweeneys.net. The submissions editor wrote back that he liked it but that they preferred to only publish unpublished stuff, including personal sites. Fair enough. I wanted to publish the piece on my blog since I was feeling guilty that the blog had been too political as of late. Plus it was cool to learn that folks from McSweeneys were reading my blog (or had friends who read my blog and then forwarded the better bits to McSweeneys personnel).

However, I will be, in the future, giving them first crack on some things. If rejected, they will come here. The intent of the segment is to mock the comedy piece, not McSweeneys. (For example, the first item I have to admit was a correct call on their part.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 4:53 PM

The Muppet Show is reportedly getting season sets according to TVshowsonDVD.com. I'm saddened to say that, based on my recent viewings of the Muppet Show, it doesn't really hold up. Perhaps my problem is that I'm no longer 4-7. Or that the episodes I saw didn't have the Banana Sketch (Wait a minute, you've never heard of the Banana Sketch?).

The fact that I can hold an entire season of the Muppet Show in my hand would have been unimaginable to me many a year ago. Yes, as my brother said, we are living in the future we dreamed about as a child (including getting to meet TV's Butch Patrick)*. As good a segue as I can think of to say that I have much to be thankful of, including you dear reader for reading my nonsense and dopey jokes.

I'm also thankful that Moe was not the boss of the Three Stooges or else there would not have been a Three Stooges act.

*One minor difference between now and the future I dreamed of as a child is that in my dream future the Star Wars sequels were better and there were twelve of them.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:30 AM

"Spread out!"
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 2:39 PM

Ann Althouse has noticed that Oliver Stone is laying the groundwork in Playboy and the New York Times to use, what I call, the Alfie excuse: "The political climate and those crazy moral-values red-states made my movie bomb." Blogger Steve Sturm suggests a benchmark for any movie using that excuse. Fahrenheit 9/11 made $150 million and so any movie that makes less can't blame the red states.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:00 PM

In other news, Yassar Arafat is still dead. By a crazy coincidence, he died on a major Jewish holiday.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:50 PM

The post below was slightly delayed because I honestly expected to find 500 sites of conspiracy theories and fan fiction about Chuck Cunningham and found absolutely nothing.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:48 PM

I also learned of Classic TV Toys, a company making Mego-style dolls of Happy Days, The Munsters and other shows. I was tempted to get a Mr. Woof-Woof doll until I saw the $250 pricetag. For $250, I expect the doll be personally delivered by Butch Patrick. For $250, I also want a better punchline for that joke.

The purveyors of a certain web site will be happy to learn that Series 3 of the Happy Days dolls includes a "Shark-Jumping Fonzie". I am hereby now starting the rumor that Series 4 will include a Chuck Cunningham doll.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:34 PM

At the toy store yesterday, I saw a beanie toy of Guy Smiley, the host of game show parodies on Sesame Street. As tempted as I was to get this, it had the same problem I see with a lot of the plush Sesame Street toys made by this company: the doll usually does not fully resemble the character it's supposed to portray. In the case of Smiley, the nose is off and the hair's wrong (compare to the picture here).

The Smiley doll is apparently part of a 35th-Anniversary set which includes Sherlock Hemlock and the Amazing Mumford. I have to wonder/hope if we can look forward to dolls for Roosevelt Franklin, Harvey Kneeslapper, the "How'd-ya-like-to-buy-an-O" guy, Don Music (with a little piano to bang his head on), and the Jewish Muppet who was always the straight man in Grover-as-waiter sketches.

(As you can probably tell, Sesame Street Encyclopedia is my new all-time favorite site.)
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:27 PM

"Don Rickles could play Abraham Lincoln." -- Tom Hanks on performance capture technology, Entertainment Weekly, November 12, 2004.

Four score and seven years, that's the last time this fat guy in the front row could see his genitalia. Do you eat cannonballs for breakfast? Look at the size of this man. What are you, Irish? Oh, Welch. Like that's better? No, you're all right; give this man a big hand for being a good sport.

So four score and seven years ago, our forefathers---the queer in the back is saying "Four fathers? Where?" And the Jew, he's like "Four fathers? For the same price I can get you seven fathers!"

Now we are engaged in a great civil war. The Polack is wondering "What's civil about it? Everyone's shooting at us." We are met on a great battlefield. Well, most of us are. The Polack's in his tent trying to figure out how to put his pants on. The Jew's trying to sell tickets. The Italian guy, he's taking bets. The Irish guy is looking for someone to sell him a drink. The black guy keeps trying to plant cotton. The Chinese guy keeps trying to plant rice. And the queer's trying to get the drummer boy to "examine his musket".

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. Not that the Puerto Rican kid over there cares; he's just hoping I'll talk long enough to keep you from noticing that he's stealing the hubcaps off your wagons.

The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here. And look gang, I make fun of our differences because it's ridiculous, the bigotry and the nonsense. We need to come together, all of us, Jew, Gentile, Irishman, black man; we need to come together as a nation -- and do something about those goddamned Mexicans! I'm kidding, we need the Mexicans -- Why? Why do we need the Mexicans? Oh, yeah, somebody has to pick our crops now that I'm freeing the slaves.

Look I poke fun but every politician, big and small, needs an audience. Will Rogers once said, "I never make fun of the little guy, only the big ones." Well, folks, you're some of the biggest people I know. Good night!

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 1:04 AM

I think no matter what our views are about the results of the election that we can all come together as a nation to say that we can't wait for the new Marx Brothers and WC Fields boxed sets coming out on Tuesday.

We can also agree I LOVE YOU EGG.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 11:22 AM

On Thursday, Slate ran a series of articles called "Why Americans Hate Democrats" where writers were encouraged to give a post-mortem on the election while avoiding the "It's just a jump to the left. And then a step to the riiiight" cliches that Timothy Noah debunked. The subtitles like "The unteachable ignorance of the red states" or "More policy plans, please" caused the same response:"Har! Har! Har..Oh, wait, you're serious."

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Posted by Daniel Frank at 10:10 AM

"Don't blame us - we voted for Carter!" Lileks takes advantage of the election to plug his new book on 70's interior decoration.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:55 AM

What's interesting about the Doonesbury's of yesterday and today is that Trudeau seems to have bought into the Nixon-refused-to-challenge-the-1960-election-although-urged-to-by-Eisenhower story. When Republicans were using it as anti-Gore talking point, historian David Greenberg wrote an article that it was slightly more complicated than that. Specifically, Republicans (if not Nixon) did issue challenges and there's some evidence that Eisenhower withdrew support for a challenge.

The main reason to question this story is that our source for it is Nixon himself and it follows the structure of other Nixon I-took-the-high-road-despite-advice-from-others stories. As odd as it is for Trudeau to say that Nixon has a lot of class, it's even odder that he's essentially taking Nixon's word for something.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:48 AM

I don't want to say I had trouble understanding my ballot but I think I voted for Grover Cleveland.
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Posted by Daniel Frank at 9:45 AM

I can't find video for it but here's a transcript of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's appearance on Crossfire Monday.(Scroll to the bottom.)
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