Among the first spec pieces I wrote in an attempt to broaden my fledgling freelance career outside the comics industry after college was a short goof for a film magazine that revolved around what we now call mashups.
I hope to find it in my old, boxed-up files some day. While I can’t remember every mashup it contained, I’m pretty sure Tarzan of the Planet of the Apes was not one of them — even though it fit the premise of merging titles without adding anything new, and even though Tarzan of the Apes + Planet of the Apes is so obvious and pure in both its simplicity and its potential.
The United States Postal Service announced this past week that it would be releasing
a set of Batman stamps to commemorate the character’s 75th anniversary.
As with most stamps now, they’re self-adhesive — so Batman still can’t be licked.
I praised the pleasant surprise that was John Oliver’s hosting of The Daily Show
when Jon Stewart took a sabbatical last summer. And I was not alone. Many TV critics predicted that Oliver would be promoted from correspondent to host of his own show — probably someplace other than Comedy Central, since a third half-hour* of satirical news and punditry there wasn’t likely. That someplace turned out to be HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver.
Last Thursday was International “Talk Like a Pirate” Day, and Comedy Central’s @Midnight celebrated with an appropriate Hashtag Wars segment [bad link] . As current as it is, the show tapes a little while before it actually airs to allow for editing, so the producers post the subject of each night’s segment on Twitter at about 11:30 p.m. ET and invite fans to join the fun early. My old buddy and occasional Blam’s Blog commenter Arben noticed the night’s subject, liked it, and gave me a heads-up so that I could brainstorm along with him, then graciously let me to add some of his entries to mine for publication here for a total of our...
Top Twelve Pirate TV Shows
12. The Plunder Years
11. One and a Half Legs
10. So You Think You Can Penzance
9. The Avast-Me-Hearty Boys
8. Doubloony Tunes
Photo: Al Levine for NBC © 1982.
What’s most surprising about Don Pardo’s passing in August is either half of this sentence taken with the other: He was 96 and still working as the primary voice of Saturday Night Live.
