Month: December 2010

Hey, you got Chuck in my Cake!

Well, that was a fun coincidence. My younger sister’s family was here today for our annual post-Christmas get-together to exchange presents. Pandora was playing on the Roku HD, and Eric had a present in his hand to give to my sister as a family gift — the first season of “Chuck” on DVD — when this song came on Pandora.

My sister’s family recognized it immediately as “Short Skirt, Long Jacket” by the band Cake, but we recognized it immediately as the “Chuck” theme from the opening credits of the show. Bismo, who introduced us to the series, had told us the tune came from somewhere else, but ya know, I never bothered to look it up, so it caught me by surprise. My sister’s family knew it only from Cake’s original version, and we knew it only from “Chuck”! One thing that isn’t in the theme is the obvious nod to “Sweet Jane” by Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground.

“Short Skirt, Long Jacket” isn’t heard in the series pilot. We all watched it tonight, and it was a big hit, as I knew it would be.

It’s the post-Christmas blahs, Charlie Brown!

  • Another Christmas, another 2-volume box set of Fantagraphics’ “The Complete Peanuts”. With the release of the strips from 1977 and ’78, the series now covers the time from when my parents got married, through the first full calendar year after I graduated from college.

  • Time Magazine has an interview with Lee Mendelson, the producer of the “Peanuts” cartoons.

    http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,2039669,00.html

  • With Monte Schulz’s new book, “The Last Rose of Summer”, being published soon, here’s something of interest that Monte co-wrote with his dad — the TV movie, “It’s the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown”, from 1988, starring Monte’s kid sister Jill.

Have Yourself a Glam Christmas

Denro notes that in England it’s been a holiday tradition in recent decades to get snockered and sing-scream “Merry Xmas Everybody”, by the 70’s British Glam Rock band Slade. You’ll find it in part 8 of this video, the finale to the stellar Christmas 1973 edition of Sir Jimmy Savile’s “Top of the Pops”, posted on YouTube by one of its best members, NYrainbow.

The new “Doctor Who” series features a Christmas episode every year, including one that will premiere Christmas night…

… and a couple of the past installments of Who have included bits of “Merry Xmas Everybody”.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2010/DEC/DoctorWho.flv 512 288]

The Head Monkees

One of my most memorable movie-going experiences was in the early 80’s, when I saw “Head” for the first time. Denro and I were at a little art cinema in Cambridge, Massachusetts, called Off The Wall, that later succumbed to the ascendancy of VHS. “Head” is the cult favorite with the pre-fab four, The Monkees, that picked up where their TV show left off. This clip from the movie has the superb “Porpoise Song”, by Goffin-King.


The Monkees – Porpoise Song (From Head)

Robbie Leff pointed out this 1968 interview with The Monkees talking about “Head”, in surprisingly good quality that looks as though it could have been recorded yesterday.