Happy Links!

Jane Luk dropped by this week and brought an avalanche of links with her! Ian has posted them on the Sneaky Dragon Facebook page and now it’s my turn to post them here. Let’s see what Ian has up his sleeves.

Jane came to visit us all the way from Toronto – from a completely different province and a completely different time zone. Ian has found us a link that tells us how time zones came to be:

This infomercial was later spun off into a TV series, Stanford and Son.

Ian continues pushing his CN Tower/second sun concept, but also points out that the CN Tower is a fun place to jump off of:

Fun place to jump off of??? That was terrifying! Holy crap. (pant, pant)

Ian talked about the controversial bike lanes that clog Vancouver’s already narrow and over-crowded streets. Here’s Vancouver in 1907 when bike lanes weren’t as much an issue as horse lanes!

Life was slower than. Cars would soon change the whole make up of city life. You couldn’t have people and their dogs and dray carts running around willy-nilly then.

Our guest, Jane, played a bad girl in a popular video game called Deus Ex Human Revolution. Here’s the trailer:

Hilarious that they make “trailers” for video games. But what do I know? I’m sure they outsell movies by millions of dollars. Also, what the heck does the title mean exactly? “God in the Human Revolution”? O-o-o-o-kay.

Here is a classic cartoon that rankles Ian:

Ian feels the show wasn’t very PC, but let’s face it, they were a bunch of savages. Throwing spears at a sleek, supersonic jet. Pffff!

Ian found this clip to remind me of my days as a newspaper delivery boy: dressing in 1920s clothes and singing 80’s songs. It sure brings it all back.

Yep, it sure brings it all up.

We all know that Ian loves video games; me, not so much. When Jane was younger she played Tetris. Like this?

Not a very good player there. That was frustrating to watch. I was, like, “Put the red one there! Put the red one there! No-o-o-o!”

Both Jane and Ian performed in Fiddler on the Roof. Ian played Mazel Tov, the tailor, and Jane played Esther, who is probably visible in the large crowd scenes in this clip:

Tradition pretty much sucks.

Jane told us about seeing George Lucas and his new girlfriend on Oprah. Ian has found photographic evidence:

I don’t know. There’s so much money sitting there talking to each other. They all seem pleasant…but also like robots.

I don’t remember this, but apparently I talked about a Batman musical. It was probably a goofy joke, but Ian made me pay for it with this. Click here for the link if you dare! (Sorry, this video doesn’t allow embedding.)

Ian and Jane spent some time talking about improv and Ian brought up this show, an early attempt at bringing improv to your TV screen. Unfortunately, nervous executives meant Kwik Witz featured scripted “improv”. Can you enjoy neither fish nor fowl?

Answer: no. Improv needs immediacy, which excuses its looseness of structure. You can’t fake immediacy.

Talking about Kwik Witz naturally led to Whose Line Is It Anyway?. a more successful attempt to translate improv to the television. Popular Whose Line player, Colin Mochrie, featured on this short-lived show written by his wife Debra McGrath before he hit the big time.

Wow, the nineties. Just, wow.

Finally, Ian regaled us with Happy Days spin-offs. And there were a lot of them! Holy cow! (Some you may have even heard of.) As Ian pointed out, most of these “spin offs” didn’t feature regular cast members, but characters who made one or two appearances on the show (usually with very tenuous connections) to promote a new series. Pretty cheap.

First, Laverne and Shirley.

I remember them being on Happy Days and it seems like there was some back and forth with characters from both shows making cameo appearances on each others shows. Still, it’s not exactly Rhoda.

Second, Mork and Mindy. This one is odd. Mork appeared in one episode of Happy Days – and that episode turns out to be a dream – and then Mork turns up in Boulder, Colorado in the late ’70s? That’s a spin off???

It wasn’t much of a concept to hang a show on as it turns out.

Third, the short-lived series Out of the Blue. Never heard of it? Me neither! Nine whole episodes aired of this clunker featuring a guardian angel named Random (!), who has to live with a family of, most likely, cute and sassy kids (including twins – “Nooooooooo!”).

Once again, a one-time appearance on Happy Days during the latter part of its TV run (in a dream episode, natch) and then shows up in Chicago in the late ’70s makes this not much of a spin off.

Fourth, Blansky’s Beauties. Nancy Walker made an appearance on Happy Days as Mr. Cunningham’s cousin and then a week later she’s in the future, working with dancing girls in Las Vegas!

This show didn’t last very long. Because it was terrible.

Fifth, and possibly most horribly, Fonz and the Happy Days Gang, a cheap, badly animated cartoon series that put the gang into outer space. This show puts the ecch into blecch. Also, it features two comedy reliefs. Always a bad sign.

So awful.

Finally, the only true spin off from Happy Days: the immortal Joanie Loves Chachi.

I enjoyed the early seasons of Happy Days, but I’m afraid I’d given up on it by the time it was in its death throes, so I never saw Joanie Loves Chachi, but it seems like the network misjudged the popularity of some of its characters. Wasn’t Joanie just Richie’s pesky little sister?

Well, enough of that! I think we’ve spent more than enough time examining the TV droppings of Happy Days.

Till next time!