Pop Culture from an Alternate Dimension

  When Josie and the Pussycats was at the movies I didn't go because it didn't look like "my kind of movie". When it came out on video I watched it because I was a little curious and I worked at a video store. It turned out not only to be very funny but quite clever as well. It actually has a similar message as John Carpenter's They Live. People that haven't seen J&tP might be surprised to hear that. Anyway the movie has a fictitious band putting out an album called Pretend To Be Nice. All the songs are on the soundtrack which has some good original music. Besides The Pussycats songs it also has two parody songs of a boy band played by Donald Faison, Seth Green, Breckin Meyer and Alex Martin. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lhy4RPpzzYNqgUQCw6RJsyBpnnjPtCCE0&si=vnMS9n9hSVWjsJti

  Despite being one of the great superhero teams the Justice League has not fared well in live action. In 1979 there were two tv "specials" of Legends of the Superheroes that saw the return of Adam West and Burt Ward as Batman and Robin surrounded by other great DC heroes. The less said about that the better. In 1997 CBS made a pilot for a Justice League show. I have heard that it didn't air and it aired once in 1997. I don't know which is right. CBS had done a series of The Flash in 1990 which only lasted one season but still has a following. The Flash in this pilot is quite different however. He can't keep a job and his roommate kicks him out. The Green Lantern is Guy Gardner but looks like Hal Jordan in Guy's costume wih Kyle Rayner's logo. The creators of the pilot might have been trying to capture the humor of Giffen/DeMatties run of the Justice League but it doesn't come off the same. Who knows, if it made it to series maybe they could have fixed...

  My friend Stefan asked me what songs I would put in a movie that just had incidental music. That got me thinking, he chose Star Wars,  I chose Blade Runner . As much as I love the Vangelis score I could imagine the studio saying "C'mon Ridley we need to get some popular musicians on the soundtrack so we can make a profit." Stefan's rule was that the music had to be from the year the movie came out and no more than two years before. For the opening I have "Cruiser" by The Cars, when Deckard is chasing after Zhora "Unchained" by Van Halen would be playing, Sammy Hagar's "Surrender" would underscore Deckard with Rachel in his apartment, "Misunderstanding" by Genesis when Deckard calls Rachel from Chinatown, when Roy Batty is talking to Leon "Refugee" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers would be playing and Foreigner's "Urgent" playing during Batty's running after Deckard. The other songs are more ba...

  I just got back from Jamestown (where BTTF III was filmed) where they are having a celebration of Back to the Future so it seems an appropriate time to post this. I have seen two movies dealing with alternate earths that mention Back to the Future stars Eric Stoltz. Even the tv series Fringe did that. It seems to be the ne plus ultra element of an alternate dimension so I might as well provide the DVD cover. I also made sure to reference Melora Hardin who was originally cast as Jennifer.

 Two years after the extremely popular album Heartbeat City was released Cars members Benjamin Orr and Ric Ocasek each released a solo album. These two albums include contributions from four of the five members of The Cars. Orr's album The Lace  had Cars guitarist Elliot Easton playing on all the tracks. From this album I chose the songs "Too Hot to Stop", "Stay the Night", "Skyline" and "The Lace".  Ocasek's album This Side of Paradise not only had Cars keyboardist Greg Hawkes playing on it but he also co-wrote "Hello Darkness" with Ocasek. Benjamin Orr also supplies backing vocals on three songs. "True to You" has Ocasek, Orr, Hawkes and Elliot Easton performing on it. I picked ""True to You", "Emotion in Motion", "Look in Your Eyes", "Mystery" "True Love" and "Hello Darknes" from Ocasek's album.

  In 1975 Doc Savage: the Man of Bronze  produced by George Pal was released in the theaters. He had high hopes for it. He had purchased the rights to all 181 original stories of the pulp hero and even teased at the end of the movie "Watch for Doc Savage's next thrilling adventure The Arch Enemy of Evil". They already had that script and another one by famed science fiction author Philip Jose Farmer waiting to be filmed. Unfortunately, the film failed to do well at the box office so future sequels were scrapped. It didn't do much for the actors' careers either. Only two had much of a career afterwards. William Lucking, who played Renny, worked steadily in movie and television. Even if you don't recognize the name his face will be familiar to most people. Paul Gleason, who played Long Tom, also worked pretty regularly but is most known as Richard Vernon from The Breakfast Club.

  Since I was in the woods for the last week I thought I would do a quick while I was away (to paraphrase The Who).   The song "I'm the Greatest" was the closest we ever got to a Beatles reunion in the 1970s. It was on Ringo's eponymous 1973 album. Ringo sang and played drums, John Lennon wrote the song, did backing vocals and played drums, George Harrison played guitar and to top it, famous "fifth Beatle", Billy Preston, from the Get Back sessions, played organ. The idea for a sleeve for the 45 of the song has been in my head for quite a while. So here is the front and back of a proposed "Beatles" single. I almost didn't do it because when I was thinking about possible Beatles album from the 70s I noticed there were already a variety of sites with their versions. Here is an example of one such site that is a lot of fun:  What If - Misc: The Beatles - Out The Blue 1973