Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

       250 years ago, the United States was fighting a bloody war with Great Britain to gain independence, yet the two nations are still inextricably linked, especially in pop culture. Influences from movies, music, etcetera go both ways. So it makes sense that the Commonwealth would have songs showing mixed feelings of the U.S. (for the sake of simplicity I will define the Commonwealth as any country that had Queen Elizabeth on their money).         I open the album with "Kids in America" who is English and was an adult when she recorded this song. David Bowie follows with another song of American youth. The Scottish band Simple Minds follow, Brits Supertramp have a spot of "Breakfast in America" and The Clash say how they feel about the U.S.A. Aussies AC/DC give their appreciation of American thighs in "You Shook Me All Night Long". E.L.O. are "Calling America" while The Proclaimers of Scotland look forward to a "Letter from America"....

       If you sat through the end credits (if you sat through the film at all) of Bubba Ho-Tep , the last words on screen were "Elvis Returns in Bubba Nosferatu: "Curse of the She-Vampires" ". The first didn't break any box office records so no sequel happened. but BH-T has gotten a cult following and director/screenwriter Don Coscarelli has wanted to do the sequel for a while. The original star, Bruce Campbell, was not interested and Coscarelli considered Kurt Russell for the role. Russell's first collaboration with director John Carpenter was as Elvis in a TV movie. Paul Giamatti was slated to play Col. Parker and Angus Scrimm playing take off of Boris Karloff. I can't imagine what the final product would be like but above is my best interpretation of it.

       Since today the United States celebrates declaring independence from Great Britain 250 years ago I put together this collection. To start off, all rise for the National Anthem. Written by Francis Scott Key in 1814, it is traditionally played before baseball games. This version Jimi Hendrix adapted for his appearance at Woodstock. "The Liberty Bell March" belongs here for two reasons: it was written by John Philip Sousa, who has USA in his name and it's named after an American icon, as seen in National Treasure . Ironically, when most people hear it, they think of the British comedy troupe Monty Python. "Yankee Doodle Boy" was written by George M. Cohen in 1904. I chose the version from the 1942 movie, Yankee Doodle Dandy , where James Cagney played Cohen. "Saturday in the Park" is by a band named after an American city. Since a lot of Americans will be in parks today frying hot dogs and drinking Coca-Cola, this seemed appropriate. The song ...

       When the movie The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the Eighth Dimension ended, there was a teaser that he would return in Buckaroo Banzai Against the World Crime League . The small but loyal fan base waited but, mostly because of one man (look up David Begelman), that didn't happen. Rumours would pop up once in a while that Rauch and Richter (the people behind the original) were working on a sequel. Rauch did write a comic book version and a novel for the sequel, which were different from each other. This is my take on if Buckaroo got the respect I think he deserved and the sequel got made in the '80s.

       There have been compilations of songs from The Police before, but I noticed they tend towards only songs by Sting. What if the other two lads got their chance to shine? Here is a collection of music written by Copeland and Summers no songs that they wrote with Stingo. I had initially wanted to include Andy Summer's love song "Sally", but just like "Baby, You're a Rich Man" by the Beatles was put together from two separate pieces written by Paul McCartney and John Lennon, "Be My Girl" by Sting was put together with "Sally".       Hear songs by the drummer and guitarist here:  THE POLICE Greatest Hits Copeland & Summers - YouTube

       The original IT Crowd show would be hard to duplicate. The American network NBC, however, tried in 2006. The pilot recruited Richard Ayoade to reprise his role as Moss and Joel McHale was cast as Roy, the part originated by Chris O'Dowd. I like Joel McHale, he was great on Community , but as loser nerd Roy? The original script was used for the American pilot and it suffers from comparison. I felt the same way about the American version of The Office , and yet as the show went on, they let characters grow and change into something different that worked for their cast. Maybe the same would have happened with The IT Crowd but it didn't make it past a pilot, There was also a German adaptation in 2008 that lasted six episodes.