Based on Greg Kihn Band’s Jeopardy, I Lost On Jeopardy was an early song parody from the master of the form, Weird Al Yankovic.
Today, Jeopardy is an American institution but, at the time this video was filmed, it was considered to be a nostalgic memory. The original Jeopardy ran from 1964 to 1975, with Art Fleming as the host and Don Pardo as the announcer. (Famously, Pardo went from announcing for Jeopardy to announcing for Saturday Night Live.) This video was shot on the original Jeopardy set, with Fleming and Pardo playing themselves. As you can tell, Jeopardy has changed considerably from what it once was. The version of Jeopardy that we all know and revere, with Alex Trebek at the helm, would not start until three months after the release of this video.
After Weird Al is kicked out of the studio, the man in the convertible is played by Greg Kihn, in a parody of the ending of the original video for Jeopardy. At the time, Kihn told The Washington Post that he didn’t mind the parody and that it was his idea to appear at the end of the video. As Kihn put it, “It was a vote of confidence. If you’re not well-enough known to be parodied, well, you’re just not well-enough known.”
This attitude seems to be true of most musicians whose songs have been parodied by Weird Al over the years. It helps that Weird Al rarely pokes fun at the original artist or the subject matter of the original song. It seems like one of the easiest ways to get a bad reputation is to complain about Weird Al parodying one of your songs. For instance, just take a look at Coolio (if you can find him).
This video was directed by Francis Delia, who also directed videos for Wall of Voodoo, The Bangles, and Timothy B. Schmit.
Gangster movies were nothing new in 1931. Josef von Sternberg’s UNDERWORLD (1927), Lewis Milestone’s THE RACKET (1928), and Bryan Foy’s LIGHTS OF NEW YORK (1929) had all dealt with urban organized crime onscreen (and Foy’s drama was the first “all-talking picture” to hit cinemas). But when Edward G. Robinson rat-a-tatted his way through Mervyn LeRoy’s LITTLE CAESAR, the gangster genre had finally arrived – with a vengeance! This highly influential flick opened the floodgates for a variety of films about mobsters, killers, and other assorted no-goodniks, and made an unlikely star out of the pugnacious Eddie G.
The film concerns the rise and fall of Rico “Little Caesar” Bandello, a small-time hood from the sticks who, along with partner in crime Joe Massara, moves to the big city and blasts his way up the ranks to become a gang boss. The diminutive Robinson exudes star power as the psychotic sociopath…
It’s never a bad time to have a look at the latest from Columbus, Ohio’s Brian Canini, and given that he’s got a veritable raft of new minis available, that “never a bad time” is, specifically, now. Each of the following is available for $1.99 from Canini’s Drunken Cat Comics self-publishing imprint at http://drunkencatcomics.storenvy.com/
Plastic People #9 continues Canini’s long-form narrative about the first murder in decades to occur in a plastic surgery-obsessed future Los Angeles. This time out our pair of detectives’ search for clues, motives, or both takes them to the First Church Of The Surgeons, a part-cult/part-nudist camp extolling the virtues of surgically-achieved “perfection” with a kind of religious zeal because — well, it’s a religion. Agreeably illustrated in Canini’s skillfully minimalist style, a few curious choices in terms of grammar and syntax aren’t enough to dampen my enthusiasm for what is one of the best…
Suffused throughout with a light touch that can best be described as genuinely tender, Maia Kobabe’s Lion Forge-published Gender Queer : A Memoir comes across as anything other than the seismic shift it is in terms of consciousness-raising — and maybe that’s what makes it one in the first place. Eschewing the polemic, Kobabe opts for the conversational and, as such, eir (Spivak pronouns — look ’em up if you must, I confess that I had to) story is universally accessible, but in no way represents a “dumbing-down” of its complex subject matter.
I’ll be the first to admit that as a straight white male I may just be the last critic on the planet qualified to comment on the story of a person slowly coming to terms with eir identity as a non-binary, asexual person, but by the same token, it’s folks in my shoes most in need…
Though he may not be a household name, Greg Kihn has been making and recording music since 1972 and he has a cult following to this day. His biggest hit came in 1983, with the song Jeopardy. With the help of this popular video, Jeopardy reached the number two spot on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart with only Michael Jackson’s Beat It keeping it from reaching number one.
In the video, Kihn plays a man who is on the verge of getting married but, after he has a dream in which the entire wedding party is transformed into a bunch of monsters, he gets cold feet. Fortunately, his bride-to-be got cold feet at the same time and, when they both find themselves in the same car, they drive off for a life of happy, unwedded bliss.
The video was directed by Joe Dea, who also directed two videos for Krokus and who has since gone on to be a very active television director.
One final note: This video and song were popular enough to inspire an early Weird Al parody, I Lost On Jeopardy.
I have to admit that, when I first heard that Blumhouse was going to be producing a sequel to 2017’s Happy Death Day, I wasn’t surprised. After all, every successful horror film gets a sequel. That’s just the way the business work. However, I will admit to being very skeptical.
I mean, the first film was a genuinely clever and witty mix of Groundhog Day and Scream. It was often laugh-out-loud funny and, in a perfect world, Jessica Rothe’s lead performance as Tree Geldman would have been nominated for, at the very least, a Golden Globe. It was also a surprisingly effective horror film. The Baby Face Killer was as frightening as she was ludicrous. Still, at the end of the film, it was hard not to feel that Tree’s story was finished. When I heard there was a sequel, I was like, “What? Is she going to start reliving a second day with a new killer over and over again?”
Well, it turns out that I was partially correct about the plot but I was pretty much wrong in my skepticism. This is a sequel that works surprisingly well.
In Happy Death Day 2U, Tree once again finds herself having to live September 18th over and over again. However, this time, it’s not just so Tree can become a better human being and discover who is targeting her. This time, we actually find out why Tree ended up stuck in that time loop in the first place. It turns out that Carter’s (Israel Broussard, returning from the first film) roommate, Ryan (Phil Vu), has built some sort of experimental quantum reactor and, whenever it’s turned on, it can create time loops and send people to alternate realities. It’s all very science-y and director Christopher B. Landon is smart enough not to spend too much time lingering over all the details. Everyone in the film agrees that quantum reactor does what they say that it does and that’s really all we need to know.
Anyway, Tree is once again reliving her birthday but now, she’s reliving it in an alternate reality. That means that there’s a bunch of little difference to deal with. For one thing, even though someone is still determined to kill her, it’s no longer her roommate, Lori (Ruby Modine). For another thing, Carter is now dating the wonderfully shallow Danielle (Rachel Matthews). Perhaps the biggest change of all is that Tree’s mother (played by Missy Yager) is still alive in this alternate reality.
Not wanting to lose her mother for a second time, Tree decides that she wants to stay in this new reality. But, to do this, the time loop that was opened by the big science thing needs to be closed. Otherwise, Tree is going to be doomed to keep reliving the same day over and over again….
And it get even more complicated from there. Happy Death Day 2U is an extremely busy film, mixing Back To The Future-style science fiction with the Groundhog Day/slasher film plot of the first film. And yet, surprisingly, the sequel actually works really well. If the first film was a horror film with elements of comedy, this sequel is a straight-out comedy that cheerfully satirizes both the horror and the science fiction genres.
Jessica Rothe gives another wonderful performance in the lead role. Her fury upon discovering that she’s going to have to relive September 18th all over again is both funny and relatable. The film’s emotional heart is found in Tree’s relationship with her mother and the scene where Tree discovers that she now has pictures that document years of new memories with her mom is wonderfully played Rothe and is one of the best in the film. That scene brought tears to my mismatched eyes. I lost my mom a little over ten years ago so, in that moment, it didn’t matter that there was a Babyface Killer out there or that there was some sort of quantum reactor doing something. At that moment, I knew exactly what Tree was feeling and the movie’s emotions became very real.
Happy Death Day 2U took me by surprise. While it may not have the freshness of the first film (and really, that’s to be expected when it comes to sequels), it’s still a heartfelt and entertaining mix of comedy, horror, and science fiction. Unfortunately, it did not duplicate the first film’s box office success so it may be the final Death Day film.
“He’s this fictitious character who was the only way that ZZ Top was going to get to play another ballad. The way he came up was, ‘How would a ZZ Top fan allow such a beautiful, lush bed of sound into their realm?’ The pretty music had to have a rough boy in it. He’s there. On El Loco we did ‘Leila’ which is ZZ Top-meets-the-Beach Boys. I don’t think it worked as well as, say, a synth programmer meeting a rap guy in an alley in New York. The only thing is, how long is it going to be before somebody says, ‘Hey, man! You the rough boy?’ How are you going to answer that?”
— Billy Gibbons, on Rough Boy
Today’s video of the day is the video for Rough Boy, a.k.a. ZZ Top In Space.
After spending the previous four ZZ Top videos changing lives and saving relationships, Billy Gibbons’s car, the Eliminator, achieved it’s final destiny by becoming a space shuttle and breaking free of the Earth’s atmosphere. In this video, the Eliminator docks into a space station, where it gets washed and impresses a robot about whom it can truly be said, “She’s got legs.” In fact, that’s all she’s got.
Rough Boy has a notably slower tempo than many of ZZ Top’s other songs and the same thing can be said of this video. It’s a good video but it still feels different from what we typically think of when we think about ZZ Top. This video says that the Eliminator and the band have both earned the right to take it easy and enjoy a good sponge bath.
Like the video for Sleeping Bag,Rough Boy was directed by Steve Barron. Barron is officially credited with having directed 74 music videos, including the famous animated video for a-Ha’s Take Me On.
Sometimes, it’s hard not to feel that the Lego movies are their own worst enemy.
I mean, they’re just so cute and fun and likable and cheerfully dorky that it’s easy to overlook just clever they often are. Everything is Awesome may have been a cute song but it was also a pitch perfect parody of mindless conformity. And yes, The Lego Batman Movie got a lot of laughs out of Will Arnett’s guttural growl but it was also the best Batman film since The Dark Knight and it also had a lot to say about how lonely it can be when you’re an extremely paranoid super hero. As for The Lego Ninjago Movie …. well, give me a minute and I’ll think of something. Uhmmmm …. it had that cute kitty! Woo hoo!
Beyond all that, all of the Lego movies — from the best to the less-than-the-best — celebrate imagination. They celebrate being an individual and the joy of creating your own world as opposed to just conforming to someone else’s rules. As much as I loved Chris Pratt as Emmett and Elizabeth Banks as Wyldstyle, the heart of the first Lego Movie is to be found in the scene where Will Ferrell essentially realizes that he’s being a jerk when he won’t let his son build what he wants to build.
That said, the main appeal of the Lego movies is that they’re incredibly cute. Just take The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part for instance. Especially when compared to the first Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie, this sequel has its flaws. Admittedly, some of those flaws are unavoidable. Just the fact that we start the movie knowing that everyone is in Will Ferrell’s house means that the sequel can’t take us as much by surprise as the first Lego Movie did. Though the film’s original directors, Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, wrote the script and contribute some genuinely witty dialogue, the sequel’s pacing occasionally seems a little bit off. There’s a few slow spots, the majority of which are really only noticeable when you compare the sequel to the flawlessly paced first film. And yet, in the end, it’s such a cute movie that it’s easy to overlook those flaws.
The sequel begins immediately where the first ended, with Will Ferrell decreeing that both his son and his daughter are now allowed to play with his Lego collection. Jump forward five years and this has basically led to chaos. The Lego Universe is now a Mad Max-style wasteland. Not surprisingly, both Wylstyle and Batman have really gotten into their new dystopian lifestyle. Meanwhile, Emmett remains just as blindly cheerful and optimistic as ever. He still feels that everything is awesome.
Or, at least Emmet feels that way until all of his friends are kidnapped to the Systar System, where Queen Watevra Wa’Nabi (Tiffany Haddish) wants to marry Batman. Determined to rescue his friends, Emmett decides to travel to the Systar System himself. Helping him out is Rex Dangervest, who seems like the type of adventurer that Emmett has always dreamed of becoming. Chris Pratt voices both Rex and Emmett and the film has a lot of fun playing with Pratt’s post-Guardians of the Galaxy stardom. Rex is not just an intergalactic explorer. No, he’s also a cowboy, a dinosaur trainer, an archaeologist, a first baseman, and — we’re told — a script doctor. (Those, of course, are references to Pratt’s roles in The Magnificent Seven, Jurassic World, and Moneyball. Interestingly enough, his work in Passengers goes unmentioned.) Rex pressures Emmett to become more cynical and ruthless in his efforts to save his friends and destroy the Systar System and Chris Pratt does a great job voicing both roles. Indeed, if nothing else, this film will always stand as a tribute to the incredible and unending charm of Chris Pratt.
If Lego Movie 2 never reaches the glorious heights of the first film, that’s because the element of surprise has been lost. There’s no moment in the sequel that’s as memorable as when a live action Will Ferrell suddenly showed up in the first movie. (In the second movie, Ferrell appears in a flashback and has a brief voice cameo as President Business. Maya Rudolph does show up as his wife but the sequel’s live action scenes just don’t have the emotional impact of the first film’s.) But, with all that in mind, it’s still an undeniably cute and entertaining movie. All of your old favorites back — everyone from Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill as Superman and Green Lantern to Alison Brie as Unikitty to Charlie Day as the astronaut. (Sadly, Liam Neeson did not return as the Good Cop/Bad Cop and his absence is felt.) The film is full of clever parodies, my favorite being the references to Mad Max: Fury Road. There’s more than enough witty lines, visual gags, and sweet moments that Lego Movie 2 will hold your interest and bring a smile to your face.
At the box office, Lego Movie 2 fell victim to the same Lego fatigue that took down the Lego Ninjago film and it did not become quite the phenomenon that the first movie did. Regardless, it’s still a worthy sequel. I wouldn’t quite say it’s awesome but it’s definitely a lot of fun.
Through the Shattered Lens 