Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

       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.

       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.

       With Batman Begins  starting a new series of Batman movies in 2005 and Superman Returns  promising a new series of Superman movies 2006, comic fans thought we might see the "dark knight" and "the man of tomorrow" joining forces in the 2000s. It did happen in 2016 but not with Routh and Bale. For the main villain of this "what if" version I chose The Riddler. After Christopher Nolan made his first two Batman movies, the plan was to have The Riddler be in the third installment. There were rumors that Leonardo DiCaprio (with whom Nolan made I nception ) was to play the character. I used a fan image someone posted online for the back cover.

       Last week I talked about the television series ED . I mentioned one of the reasons it wasn't available on home video was music rights, which means we also never got a soundtrack. A lot of great songs from the late 90s/2000 and some classics were featured in the show, including "Next Year" by the Foo Fighters, which was used as the theme song. The Stuckey Bowl logo on the back I found online was made by Adrian Olivia. Listen to the songs from the past here: ED soundtrack season 1 - YouTube

      This is a special multiple "what if" this week. What if Ed was released on home video and what if they kept the original casting. Ed ran on NBC for four seasons starting in 2000. I first tuned in because it had Julie Bowen from the WB series Three (see my blog from July 13, 2024 to learn more about that.). During the first episode I also saw Justin Long who I had enjoyed in Galaxy Quest the previous year. I became a fan of the lead actor, Tom Cavanagh, because of this show. All three have done well since the series went off the air so I was surprised it was never released on video. Apparently, music rights and two different production companies making the series are the reasons for that.      The commercials for the series before it aired had Donal Logue, who I had just seen in The Tao of Steve . When I tuned in for the first night, I was surprised to see Michael Ian Black doing scenes that the commercials had Logue in. The show was originally to ...

       In 2011 Warner Brothers Television hired David E. Kelley to write and produce a new Wonder Woman series for NBC. He was the man behind audience and critic favorites like "Ally McBeal" and "Boston Legal". In the pilot Wonder Woman was a superhero who was also publicly known as Diana Themyscira, the head of Themyscira Industries in L. A. but she was also Diana Prince, the bespectacled average woman who lived with her cat and was unlucky in love.  Adrianne Palicki played the lead role. Pedro Pascal played a police inspector, he recently played Mister Fantastic in Fantastic Four: First Steps (he also played Maxwell Lord in Wonder Woman 1984 ).       The pilot was hyped but early reviews from critics were bad and it never aired. An early cut was leaked online and bootleg copies were sold at comic conventions. Who knows what the series could have been. Above is my interpretation if it did get a full season.

       The Big Bang Theory show started on CBS in 2007 and lasted twelve seasons. The original pilot was different than the pilot that aired. Johnny Galecki and Jim Parsons were always cast as Leonard and Sheldon but instead of meeting struggling actress Penny, played by Kaley Cuoco, as their new neighbor, they meet Katie, played by Amanda Walsh, who is left homeless after breaking up with her boyfriend and Leonard offers their guest room to her. We are also introduced to Gilda, played by Iris Bahr, a fellow nerd and lab partner to Leonard who is jealous of Kate.      The character of Katie comes off as quite harsh, but I presume it would be softened as the show went on and she probably would have moved out of the guest room and across the hall from the boys. Katie was much like Sara Gilbert's character, Leslie Winkle, from the first couple of seasons. Who knows, if the original pilot was picked up the show might still have not been that much different...

        While filming the final season of the series "Parks and Recreation" Amy Poehler, Rashida Jones, Adam Scott, Katherine Hahn and Paul Rudd posed for a photo. They decided it looked like a David E. Kelley legal drama and was named "Philly Justice".  They soon gave their "characters" names and back stories. Between shooting scenes for their actual series, they would shoot scenes for their fake series. Writers worked on a script, props were made and Dylan McDermott (who wasn't part of "Parks and Rec" joined in the fun.  https://youtu.be/wUBYnswJUks?si=d21FZ8AHddB1dY-J

  After Smallville went off the air I heard there was going to be a Green Arrow series. I presumed it was going to be a spin-off of the Oliver Queen from Smallville but the network wanted to do something different. In my alternate dimension Oliver Queen is in season six of Smallville just like we know it but in 2008 he would get a spin-off series and the stories they had for him in seasons eight, etc. would be used for that. Characters from both shows would still cameo on both shows. It would be like what the Arrowverse became later. This time instead of just the cover and the booklet and added a slipcase that these shows often came in. Just print the last two images on card stock, cut, fold and paste at top and bottom.

  Some people that know me have been surprised by some of the bands I have included on my blog. Considering when I did the New Edition the only song I remembered by Bell Biv DeVoe was "Poison". Which brings me to today's post: Poison. Not a band I am associated with but thought deserving of a post. Most of the songs are from lead singer Bret Michael's solo album Songs of Life , primarily "Party Rock Band" where he reunites with C. C. DeVille. I chose two songs from Rikki Rockett's album Glitter 4 Your Soul , (which had fellow Poisoner Blues Saraceno) "Tear It Down" has Bret Michaels on lead vocals and "Life's a Gas" which has Rikki singing lead. To wrap up the album I put in "Something to Believe In #2" from Poison's 2003 album Best of Ballad's and Blues  which was mostly a collection of previous works but this song was a total reworking of a previous song ("Something to Believe In") with new lyrics and...

  I really enjoyed National Treasure and its sequel. There have been on again/ off again talks about a third since Book of Secrets came out in 2007. I extrapolated my sequel from dialogue in a deleted scene on the  National Treasure 2 DVD. I was originally going to call this Lafitte's Booty but that sounded too much like a Cinemax after hours movie.

        I am going to be away from my drawing table for a while so I am posting this early.           22 Jump Street is one of the few movies where the audience stayed when the end credits started to roll. Over the credits were clips from 23 Jump Street , 24 Jump Street , etc. Any one of these fake sequels would be appropriate for this blog. I started working on one when I realized that if 21 Jump Street came out in 2012 and 22 Jump Street came out in 2014 then 27 Jump Street would be out this year. Nice bonus for all you Bill Hader fans as well.

  In November it came to light that Daryl Hall had legal papers submitted against John Oates. On the 17th of this month Oates released a new album called Reunion . They hadn't done an album together since 2006 and their last album of original music was 2003's Do It for Love . However, in many people's minds they go together like corned beef and cabbage, like liver and onions, like red beans and rice, like bagels and lox; in short like beans and cornbread. But they are autonomous adults and if we want another album of them this might be the closest we get. The basis for this is Daryl Hall's 2011 album Laughing Down Crying  and I chose three songs from John Oates' 2011 album Mississippi Mile . Those being "He Was a Friend of Mine", "Deep River" and his cover the Coasters' "Searchin'". https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCHnLE0OxajHeJUyPXSI7R_-mF0GSUQV3&si=xCURFfjlAqs3Y7lM

  One of the fun parts of the movie Tropic Thunder  was the fake trailers for characters in the movie. Ben Stiller played Tugg Speedman, a popular action star and Scorcher VI was the latest of his blockbusters This is my interpretation of what the DVD cover would be. https://youtu.be/04B4mi1QfEM