Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

       You might be looking at the cast of this movie thinking "why don't I remember this?". The reason is because it was only shown at the Rome Film Festival in 2013 and never released in the theatres, on video or shown on television. The film was based on the popular satirical novel Gods Behaving Badly  by Marie Phillips, about the gods of Mount Olympus living in a flat in London. Since the movie was an American production, the Gods were transplanted to NYC. The critics ravaged the film. What if it was released? Would you be curious to see it?

       There are books of the month clubs, flowers of the month, etc. so why not songs of the month? Besides, I did hours and days of the week, so this seemed the natural continuation. You can go through all the months in one day here:  Songs of the Month - YouTube

       Danger Girl was a comic created by J. Scott Campbell and Andy Hartnell for Image Comics. It debuted in 1996 and the intention was to make a comic that felt like an action movie. Instead of the comic credits being on the first page, they appear after a prelude to the story as a two-page spread designed to look like the opening credits of a James Bond movie. One of the characters is even drawn as Sean Connery. When the Avengers cast Samuel L. Jackson as Nick Fury, it was because that was how the character was drawn in the Marvel comic "The Ultimates". The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen  was a movie based on a comic that made Connery quit acting. What if he did a different comic book movie? Would he continue acting? Who knows?      Although the head on the cover is Charlize Theron the body is of a cosplayer named Becky that was photographed by Michael Rodriguez at San Diego Comic Con.

       I had planned on posting this last week but hadn't put it in my weekly planner so I accidently posted The Munsters first so now is the time songs about days of the week. Since I wanted to have more than seven songs, I have one song for each day of the week AND songs that mention more than one day of the week. I start with "I Don't Like Mondays" from The Boomtown Rats, it is not based on a Garfield quote but something much more serious. In fact, if you want to just enjoy the song, don't research its origin. Tori Amos, who get did Wednesday's song "Wednesday", also recorded a cover of "I Don't Like Mondays". I end the week with Queen's "Lazing on a Sunday Afternoon" which seemed fair since I had The Kinks singing about "lazing on SUNNY afternoon" on my last song collection. The Stone Temple Pilots, The Beatles and the Electric Light Orchestra all sings about days of the week, even if they skip a day or two. ...

        The Munsters  was a hugely popular monster-comedy tv series in the sixties and re-runs. It had many remakes through the years, including a movie made by Rob Zombie, where he (of course) cast his wife, Sheri Moon Zombie) in the role that Yvonne De Carlo played in the television series. However, De Carlo was not originally cast as Herman's wife, Lily, in fact the matriarch wasn't originally named Lily.        The pilot that was originally filmed was quite different, indeed. Joan Marshall played Phoebe Munster and looked a lot like Morticia Addams, son Eddie was much more of a snarling wolf boy and was played by Happy Derman before being replaced by Butch Patrick. Fred Gwynne was Herman Munster from the start as well as Al Lewis as Grandpa. Beverley Owens from the series was also in the original pilot but was replaced part way through the first season. The recognizable theme music by Jack Marshall was not used originally used, the house ...

  In 1980, the ABC network aired a made-for-tv spy movie called Once Upon a Spy. It starred Ted Danson (a couple of years before he was Sam Malone on Cheers) , Mary Louise Weller (a couple of years after National Lampoon's Animal House ), Eleanor Parker (who I loved in 1946's Never Say Goodbye  with Errol Flynn) and Christopher Lee as the archvillain (as he had done the year before in a Captain America tv movie). It was a pilot for a series that never happened. Above is how I see the DVD release would look if it became a series, with some possible ideas for episodes mentioned on the back. The full movie has been uploaded many times on YouTube, if you want to view it.

            Time is important in music. The bassist or drummer usually keeps time. Morris Day's band was named The Time. Electric Light Orchestra had an album called Time . Another Birmingham band, The Moody Blues, had a concept album about the parts of the day. This post is what if a similar album was done with different artists music, starting with midnight, through the day to night. My selections can be heard here:  About Time - YouTube

        National Lampoon's Animal House was originally written with different actors in mind. D-Day was based on Dan Aykroyd. I remember hearing how he would ride his motorcycle from Canada to New York for SNL. a story that I have since heard might be apocryphal. Before SNL, John Belushi and Chevy Chase a stage in National Lampoon's stage show "Lemmings" in 1973. Belushi, Bill Murray and Brian Doyle-Murray had worked with Animal House co-writer Harold Ramis on National Lampoon's next stage show, appropriately called "The National Lampoon Show".        The producers really wanted Chevy Chase as Otter, but director John Landis didn't. According to Landis he used reverse psychology to get Chase to pass, telling to do this instead Foul Play . He told him that the frat comedy is a great ensemble  movie where he could share the screen with Belushi like the Lemmings show. If he did Foul Play , that would be a leading man type of role, with just...

          The 1978 movie National Lampoon's Animal House had great music. It turned me on to Sam Cooke, for which I am grateful. When I bought the soundtrack, I was disappointed that it was only 37 minutes long. This version is my remedy. The official album has the two songs Stephen Bishop wrote for the film. Director John Landis used Bishop in a small roll in his second movie, Kentucky Fried Movie , listed as "Charming Guy". In Animal House , he played "Charming Guy with Guitar" singing "I Gave My Love a Cherry", this I wanted to include.       The actual album includes snippets of dialogue with some of the songs. For the most part I prefer the original songs without the dialogue. However, "Rama Lama Ding Dong" starts with Otis Day saying a preamble which I like. The singing voice of Otis was Lloyd Williams but DeWayne Jessie played the character. The actor became so well known for the role, he legally changed his name to Otis Day and t...

          "The Doctor returns in DOCTOR DETROIT II THE WRATH OF MOM ".  That's what it said at the end of  Doctor Detroit . It might have just been a joke, I don't think anyone expected a sequel to come out but didn't stop me from thinking about it. Just like Animal House and American Graffiti (which did get a sequel) on screen captions said what happened to the characters so I went from there. I figure the only actors to return would be Aykroyd, his wife Dixon, their friend Drescher and Kate Murtagh, who played Mom (and was the waitress on the cover of Supertramp's Breakfast in America ). I would hope for cameos from T. K. Carter, Lynn Whitfield and Lydia Lei.  More high jinks would ensue, and Dan could play some outrageous characters while in disguise.

       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.

           In 1988 the Traveling Wilburys released their first album Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 . The group consisted of George Harrison, Tom Petty, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and Bob Dylan. In 1990 they released Traveling Wilburys Vol. 3 . What about 1989? Roy Orbison had died before Volume 1 was released and Bob Dylan was busy, but the other Wilburys were working with another rock idol of theirs: Del Shannon. To make a volume two I compiled songs from Del Shannon's Rock On! (which was co-produced by Jeff Lynne), Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever (which was produced by Lynne, Petty and Mike Campbell), Jeff Lynne's Archair Theatre and George Harrison's Best of Dark Horse 1976-1989 .      I open the album with Del's "Walk Away" which was written by him, Tom and Jeff. Next is "I Won't Back Down", written by Tom & Jeff, with Tom, Jeff and George all playing and singing. Third song is "Cockamamie Business" from George. Following is "I...

     This is kind of a double "What If". What if An American Werewolf in London  was made in the 1940s and what if the Universal monster series went a different direction. Since this is the time of Sherlock Holmes in Washington , The Falcon in San Francisco  and The Saint in London , I figure the movie would be called The Wolf Man in London . The original Mummy movie had Boris Karloff as Imhotep but the 1940 sequel had Tom Tyler as the mummy Kharis. The main characters were Steve Banning and Babe Hanson, played by Dick Foran and Wallace Ford, searching for the lost tomb of Princess Ananka. The sequel to that film, The Mummy's Tomb , took place 30 years later (1970?). I imagined the Jack and David characters from An American Werewolf in London  being Steve and babe from The Mummy's Hand . Lon Chaney Jr. would have a small part as Larry Talbot passing the curse to Steve. Since Universal horror movies reused actors in different roles, Claude Rains, who played ...

       In 1983 Jeff Lynne had decided he wanted to stop doing Electric Light Orchestra, although in 1986 they released Balance of Power , with only Lynne, Richard Tandy and Bev Bevan as the band. However, in 1990, Lynne released his first solo album, Armchair Theatre , which had Tandy performing on six songs. Bevan had wanted to continue doing E.L.O. so in 1989 he formed Electric Light Orchestra Part II, with Louis Clark arranging the strings as he had on previous E.L.O. albums. Kelly Groucutt and Mik Kaminsky started their own band: Orkestra. They had six songs on the soundtrack of 1989's Summer Job which were on Orkestra's first record, Beyond the Dream , released in 1991.      When I did my first "what if Jeff Lynne included contributions from other band members" E.L.O album in July 2023 there were songs I wanted to include but avoided because I only wanted to use songs sung by Lynne or Groucutt since they were the lead vocalists on the earlier E.L....

     Quentin Tarantino's movie  Once Upon a Time in Hollywood follows the career of an actor named Rick Dalton, as played by Leonardo DiCaprio. His early break a tv western called Bounty Law . It is similar to Steve McQueen's series Wanted: Dead or Alive. A s an aside, Damian Lewis has a cameo as Steve McQueen in the movie. Tarantino has said he would be interested in making an actual tv series of Bounty Law  and has already written five episodes. Until that happens, you'll have to make do with this DVD cover from a dimension where Rick Dalton really was a star.