Molto Media

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Mad Mix

I’m a sucker for mash-ups, inventive arrangements, and the Mad Men theme. So
yay for the self-proclaimed “bunch of film/music nerds” behind Live Music Videos who’ve performed said theme (actually just an excerpt of the RJD2 track “A Beautiful Mine”) “with a twist” [2:18] — namely, by using it as instrumental backing for the pop standard “Nature Boy”. I don’t know if it ranks up there with Eminem’s appropriation of Dido’s “Thank You” for “Stan” or David Bowie and Bing Crosby’s legendary “Little Drummer Boy / Peace on Earth” medley; at the very least, though, it’s a thrill to hear the theme performed acoustically, and I look forward to more from this ensemble.


Related: Sounds Great • L Is for... • Sisters Go Bangles

Clorox Makes It Dirty

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A few weeks ago my sister alerted me to an inadvertently hilarious detergent ad that
ran during Mad Men. It popped up again the other night, and thanks to the narration’s awkward grammar it’s still danged funny. You’ll find the relevant lines in the first comment on this post in case you don’t catch them or can’t play the video. [0:37]


Related: F Is for... • Driving Miss Peasy • What’s in a Name

Emmys Given Sunday

Yes, I know it’s Monday night (or maybe later).

I’d hoped to “live-blog” during the Emmys but the Internet connection was down.
Still, I took notes, fleshed them out during commercials, and have since edited them into a review — in the spirit of Bests & Worsts or Cheers & Jeers, accompanied by certain exclamations I realized were recurring from my fingertips. So here, late and surely redundant to countless other postmortems in cyberspace, are my 2009
Emmys Yays, Heys, Hmms, & Huhs.

Hey! I’m just one letter off the Tetragrammaton.

The Opening

Yay! Neil Patrick Harris is already enjoyably smooth yet arch. It took me a few lines
to figure out that he was doing the faux-newsreel voiceover himself. And the white tux jacket is a bold yet winning choice.

I fall into the sliver of my generation who doesn’t have Doogie Howser nostalgia, by
the way. That series was on during my college years, when TV viewing was mostly limited to SNL, the news — just a few things going on like the Gulf War, the Clarence Thomas hearings, a couple of Presidential elections, the Rodney King riots, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the collapse of the Soviet Union — and weekly indulgence in Star Trek: The Next Generation. I think the adult NPH is a real hoot, though, on How I
Met Your Mother and in general from what I’ve seen of him.

Hmm… The song was a bit wan at the outset. And it’s hard for one guy, not hoofing
it much (partly ’cause he’s singing live, I think, so points on that score), to roam a huge stage minus a visible band or backup dancers and not look small. He ended strong and that staccato rundown of the various channels rocked, but some backing vocals might have made it sound meatier.

Hey! Jon Hamm is a very handsome man.

Hmm… So who does have quality opening montages nowadays, theme-song or
not? I watch approximately two sitcoms, 30 Rock and HIMYM, both of which oddly enough feature quick titles with vocals but no words — good ones, too, although 30 Rock’s is best skipped if you’re viewing episodes in succession on DVD. I don’t follow Desperate Housewives any more, but its original credits sequence was imaginative
and nicely executed. The recently departed Battlestar Galactica had an excellent theme. Big Love and True Blood, which I catch up on via disc, use actual songs quite effectively. Mad Men’s opening probably gets the gold right now for its music and visuals; I wouldn’t think of fast-forwarding past.

Soda-Pop Culture

Given the nature of the opening car ride on tonight’s Mad Men, I’m relieved that the
sad news later in the episode wasn’t more tragic in its scope. I post today not to discuss plot, however; AMC’s main attraction might be done talking about Patio, the diet soft drink introduced by Pepsi-Cola in 1963, after tonight, which means that my window to relevantly blog about it is closing.



I wasn’t familiar with Patio, but like most of the products featured on the series it’s real — albeit, of course, not handled by the fictional Sterling Cooper agency

Moe’d Man

I hadn’t tried it yet when writing about Mad Men the other day, but now that I’ve done so I cheerfully direct you to “Mad Men Yourself” on the show’s official website.

Here’s me:



You get just enough choices at each stage that the process doesn’t become a chore yet it still manages — in my case, at least — to produce a surprising likeness. I did think it was strange, however, that options for facial hair included a full beard and a goatee but not the kind of mustache-with-goatee combo I currently sport.

The artwork for “Mad Men Yourself” was done by the designer and illustrator Dyna Moe, whose portfolio is an absolute delight. Also on the Mad Men website are a cocktail guide to era-appropriate libations, a four-minute video recap of Season Two, and a stunning photo gallery of the cast as they’ll look in Season Three [all bad links].

Given the series’ return on AMC Sunday at 10 p.m., I’m pleased to report, NBC is tonight repeating Jon Hamm’s hosting turn on Saturday Night Live, which featured “Don Draper’s Guide to Picking Up Women”.


Related: Mad Mix • Ol’ Pointy Ears Is Back • Screen Savor

Screen Savor

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