Regarding music posts: PLEASE NOTE that since my previous host FileFactory has made itself useless, I am slowly but surely updating to DRIME. Please be patient, and email me with comments or questions to msuperfan1956@gmail.com – note that comments sent through Blogger DO NOT allow a personal response.

Thursday, May 04, 2023

Bah-Bum-BUMM!

Yep, that's the dramatic feeling you will thrill to when you hear ...
Come with us now to the dazzling World of Tomorrow!  Visit the Tenth Planet! Dance under the Moonbeams, or pass away a Martian Summer! Beware the Mysterons and the Nasty Little Green Men!

01 - Followers of the Space Race - The Positions - 1982  (3:24)

02 - Mysterons - The Perfectors - 1980  (2:43)

03 - Lunapark - Starter - 1981  (3:50)

04 - Lost in Space - Platinum Blonde - 1985  (4:02)

05 - In the Stars - Oxo - 1983  (4:12)

06 - Tenth Planet - Solid Space - 1982  (2:47)

07 - Alien Nights - The Scooters - 1981  (3:07)

08 - Taking the City by Storm - The Haskels - 1980  (2:15)

09 - Mars with You - The Woz - 1983  (4:09)

10 - Universe in Time - IQ - 1983  (3:53)

11 - Blast Off - Class Action - 1984  (4:16)

12 - Martian Summer - Johnny Warman - 1981  (4:40)

13 - Moonbeams - Naffi - 1982  (2:28)

14 - Do You Read Me - D-Day - 1983  (3:25)

15 - Life on Earth - Silent Treatment - 1983  (5:24)

16 - Why Me - Planet P Project - 1983  (4:05)

17 - Planet X - The Puget Sound - 1986  (2:06)

18 - Space Brothers - JFA - 1988  (1:43)

19 - Space Race - Mi-Sex - 1980  (3:43)

20 - Martian Man - Lora Logic - 1982  (4:15)

21 - Alien Beach Party - The Delinquents - 1981  (4:06)

22 - Nasty Little Green Men - Classix Nouveaux - 1980  (3:15)
                   

https://www.filefactory.com/file/s0sicuq0g7w/MA-158.rar

Hope you return from Planet X in time to get Monday's comp!
  

Monday, May 01, 2023

Welcome to the MUSICAL MONTH OF MAY 2023!

All this month, here on the Super Blog and on the Record Round-Up, we'll have a new music compilation every Monday and Thursday. (Some are reissues because they've been updated or had lapsed links.)
                           
Here's an updated version of The Insect Lounge, which brings back memories of the overnight then-now-music broadcast on KSCS, Edmond, OK.

The original post, with excruciating details, is here.

Since 2017, I've come across a 1984 article about the radio station at (now) KUCO.
Since the original post: In July 2022, I came across the original typed cassette insert in a box of blank cassettes.  I used the insert to arrange the tracks in their “correct” order—the way the tape sounded until I wore it out.

To preserve the historicity of the original cassette recording, Tracks 3-4-5-6 — Tracks 9-10 — and Tracks 13-14 are crossfaded.


See you Thursday!
 

Thursday, April 27, 2023

A WATCHMEN Oopsie

 A WATCHMEN Oopsie

It’s a small thing, but Watchmen is such an intricately planned, scripted, and drawn creation that I was amused to find a continuity boo-boo on the ding-dang second page of the first issue.

            Above is the entire page 2.  Look at the bottom row of panels, Panel 6 and Panel 8.  Detective Steve Fine is the blond cop in the trench coat with the ciggie in his mouth.

Look at the smashed mirror in the panels. This is supposed to be the same smashed mirror. But the holes aren’t the same.

See you Monday for the first instalment of this year's MUSICAL MONTH OF MAY, with new comps every Monday and Thursday!

  

Monday, April 24, 2023

Flaws in Perfection

I hope you can agree with me that Jonny Quest is in many ways the quintessential kids' adventure cartoon.

Sadly, not even perfection is perfect.  My grown-up eyes caught a couple of continuity goofs in a couple of episodes.
In this one, a hot-air balloon gets snagged on the titular peak or mesa.
The balloon is anchored at the camp of Race, Jonny, and Hadji.  In the screengrab above, you can see that Race is doing something to the tether of the balloon.
He's using a control lever the adjust the tension of the cable.
The only problem is, in other close-ups of the reel, it ain't got no control lever!  Huh???

*   *   *
In "The Dreadful Doll," there's a laugh-inducing goof.
Race gets locked up in a room whose door opens inward.
Boy, if only he could pull the door open and crawl under that board!
But it's a magical door, I guess!  Jonny has to remove the board from the outside, before Race can open the door inwards and leave.

Who's dumber ... the bad guys for rigging the door that way ... Race for falling for it ... or me, for worrying about it?

See you Thursday for the last of this year's April Foolishness!
  

Thursday, April 20, 2023

Liberty in the Living Room

One day I chanced to look upwards.  I noticed the Liberty Bell in our living-room ceiling.
Below is a close-up.  It's about as big as your outspread hand.
Below is a clipart bell superimposed,
And bour last image is my freehand outline around this strange, accidental artifact.
You can see it, can't you?  I'm not mad for liberty?

See you Monday, fellow Fools for Freedom!
  

Monday, April 17, 2023

Lost Atlantis -- Found in the Fridge

Sometimes you see interesting shapes in semisolid foods.  Could be a pool of oil in your peanut butter.  Or the monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey in your butter dish.  Or a particularly forbidding lunar landscape in your bowl of oatmeal.
                                        
Mashed potatoes don’t count, Roy Neary!
  
Back to our house … At Thanksgiving time we got ready to eat some pumpkin pie.  THANK YOU JOYCE!  We didn’t use whip-cream-in-a-can (too many itchy trigger fingers and open mouths).  We went with good ol’ Cool Whip.
But when I got ready to put the top back onto the tub, I paused at a familiar shape.  It made me think of Ignatius Donnelly, and Otto Muck, and Plato—that is, I thought of Atlantis!
Specifically, it reminded me of Thera, aka Santorini, the little Greek island which blew its top and might have ended the Minoan Empire.
What do you think?
See you on Thursday!



Thursday, April 13, 2023

Silly Bull!

Some of the folks working on the 2016-2022 CBS show Bull had a sense of humor.
What kind of Magic Seat Belt will go UNDER your trenchcoat to buckle, without needing a waist-high hole in that there trenchcoat?
And what kind of slipshod legal firm will OK the misspelling "interogatives" on the cover of a brief?

But some of the things you notice about Bull can be charming.
In the May 12, 2022 episode "The Envelope Please," Smokestack Labs LLC has written a check to Bull's company for 44 million bucks.
Note the signature on the check, as shown in this close-up.  No, that's not some character on The West Wing.  It's the Founding Father who was a judge and first governor of New Hampshire.

See you Monday for a trip to Atlantis.
  

Monday, April 10, 2023

Our Day Won't Come!

With apologies to Ruby & The Dramatics' 1963 classic song, "Our Day Will Come."
I like to vary the lunch I take to work.  Sometimes it's these egg rolls.  But I was intrigued to read the expiration date on the inner bag.
Because February 2023 didn't have a February 29!

See you Thursday with some silly CBS show's silly behavior.
  

Thursday, April 06, 2023

LAW & ORDER Can't Spell

You know, you get used to seeing typos. Some are funnier than others. Some are merely inept, like the dozen or so weekly seen on the newscasts of Channel 9 here in OKC.

Others are more jaw-dropping, simply because you'd think that a lot of people would have to have seen the goof before it gets onscreen!
The above is from the 21st episode of Season 7.  The episode title is "Passion."   In case it don't jump out at you, the town is named "Greenwich."
The above is from the first episode of Season Two, concerning the bumping off of Max Greevey and the search for the murderers.  Now, this was McCormick's first ep of L&O as Dr Elizabeth Olivet.  So you would THINK that her agent, or SOMEBODY, would have made sure her name was spelled right!

In case you weren't sure, her first name is Carolyn, not "Carloyn."

See you Monday, fellow silly people!
  

Monday, April 03, 2023

TIE Fighters at the Capitol

WELCOME TO APRIL FOOLISHNESS 2023!

Some of you may know that I work for the Great State of Oklahoma.  They're still working on wrapping up the big Capitol refurbishment.  Evidently we're at the stage when Imperial TIE fighters do a flyover!
This is a view from above the West Door.  There is an odd vertical line of shapes painted across the parking lot.
To me they look like TIE fighters.
A bunch from STAR WARS.
Here I have circled them.
And here's a trimmed shot with contrast changed.  I'm not crazy!  They REALLY ARE THERE!

Come look for yourself ...  See you thursday!
  

Thursday, March 30, 2023

Lost Skits of Mazeppa


One of the things I did with my handy-dandy cassette-corder was hold the mic up to the TV and record whole programs.

I’ve lost the tapes on which I saved some Mazeppa shows, but I remember some. The following are burned into my cheesy memory, but did not make it into the wonderful LOST TAPES OF MAZEPPA video series.

Mr Mystery Campaign Song from Randy

 In the fall of 1971, Mr Mystery was running for Oklahoma Governor. His campaign slogan was taken from the Tulsa World’s classified section, “white space increases readership.” (Jim Millaway played Mr Mystery, who wore a stocking-cap ski mask which covered his face and head.)

This was a tape sent in by a viewer named Randy. It was an instrumental track of “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head,” with Randy singing along:

White space increases readership,
Vote for Mr Mystery, he’ll take the voters on a trip!
Oops, my tongue began to slip!
[spoken] Bye!

Duchess Party Barn
                                     
Sherman Oaks hosted an episode of “Tulsa Teen Town Topics.” Every time he asked his guest a question, the guest responded with, “At the Duchess Party Barn tomorrow night at 7 o’clock.”

I never found out what happened!

How to Drink Seb’m-Up Cool!
                                   
This was a brief blackout in which Coach Chuck endeavored to teach us just that. He popped open a bottle of Seven-Up and chugged it in about four seconds. He started to say, “Now listen here …” but before he could say more, he erupted with a belch so earthshattering that he fell to the floor, unconscious.

Fire Up the Songbird, Penny!
                                 
One person remembers this “Shy King” segment in this way: “Once, he started, for some unknown reason, a weird sketch on his Tulsa late show that was about Sky King, a show you're going to have to look up because it was stupid and forgettable. At any rate, there was a table top full of tiny plastic trees and a model plane. There had to be a small plane. It WAS Shy King, after all. So Gailard sez the catch-phrase from the show: Let's fire up the Song Bird, Penny! And he proceeded to pull out a blow torch. He certainly did NOT know what this was going to do to the little plastic trees and plane on the table top. It was glorious.”

The way I remember it: The model plane was sitting on an otherwise-empty piano bench. It had probably been drenched in lighter fluid or something. Shy’s voice pealed, “Fire up the Songbird, Penny!” A match dropped onto the plane. It burst into fire. BLACKOUT.
                                     
Here's my attempt of what that looked like.

And with this post, MARCH MAZEPPA MADNESS forever fades into the sunset. Believe it or not, I have run out of Mazeppa! But never fear, Mr Sartain! You’ll forever keep and anarchic, silly, slapstick part of our hearts!

"Why can't this night go on forever?"

PLEASE  GO  TO  MAZEPPA.COM  AND  BUY  MERCHANDISE!

See you on Monday to commence 2023's APRIL FOOLISHNESS!
  

Monday, March 27, 2023

Vote for Mister Mystery!

As you should know, Mister Mystery ran for Tulsa's mayoral post. Now, heretofore never revealed, is the campaign song which I wrote for him, but never shared with anybody ... until now.
In case you wondered, you're supposed to sing this to the tune "Close to You," as made popular by the Carpenters.

After this, you probably long to "boo" me too.  But I was only 15, so gimme a break.  See you on Thursday with the last-ever post of the last-ever MARCH MAZEPPA MADNESS!
  

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© by Mark Alfred