My Life and Code

I'm a huge fan of most things 1970s, and I recently heard of this movie via a post on Reddit. It's about a sniper who has his sights set on the crowd at a football championship game (they're careful to never refer to it as a Super Bowl). It's sort of in the vein of those 1970s disaster films, except it's not really about a disaster. But it has that same vibe. While I liked the film, here's the problem with it: editing. Or, more specifically, the lack thereof. I have no problem with character building. I have no problem with a movie taking it's time to establish a plot, or characters, or whatever. But by the time this film actually got along with the plot, I paused it to see how much time had passed, and it was halfway through the film.  In fact, at the time of this writing, if you look the film up on Wikipedia, the summary of the film written there starts at the midway point of the film . The opening credits sequence was an early red flag. A long....long.......

As big a fan I am of both classic television and the 1970s as a whole, it's a little surprising that I'd never watched the TV show Taxi . Granted, my fascination with the '70s is relatively recent (probably less than 15 years), but it's taken me this long to finally get around to watching it. I've just begun watching the series for the first time, and am reviewing each episode as I do so. If you're interested (or just plain bored ), you can check out my reviews at one of my other blogs, Classic TV World ,  here .

From the "Who Really Thought This Was a Good Idea?" department comes The Ethel Merman Disco Album . I went spelunking for bad albums a week or so ago and found this, released back in 1979. I'd heard of it before but this is my first time listening to it and...gee, where to begin? According to  the Wikipedia article , each of the songs was recorded in just one take with Ms. Merman's usual vocal arrangement, with the disco instrumentation added later. Also, there were apparently 14 songs recorded for the album, of which only 7 made the cut (with an additional being included with a CD reissue). That means there are 6 unreleased songs from this. I'd love to hear them. The album is available on iTunes, but without the CD bonus track. The album is typical of the genre, if that genre is Celebrities Releasing Music Outside of Their Wheelhouse . In some cases music itself is outside of the celebrity's wheelhouse, but Ms. Merman was an established singer. Still,...

My brother-in-law asked for this movie, The Devil’s Rain , for Christmas last year. I ordered it for him on Amazon without giving it much thought. It was only after I’d given it to him that I learned anything about it. First of all, it’s a movie from the ‘70s, and if you know me or have spent much time on this blog, you know I have an affinity for that (very kitschy) decade. Plus, it’s got Ernest Borgnine and a post-Star Trek / pre-Star Trek movies William Shatner. I had to watch this. And now I have. And wow, what a mess. And that’s saying a lot, because a film from the ‘70s featuring two icons of ‘70s film and some truly ‘70s subject matter (the supernatural — it seems the country was obsessed with the supernatural back then) hits all my “Cheesy Seventies Movie” checkboxes. My level of expectations was understandably low: I wasn’t expecting an Oscar-caliber film here. So what went wrong? Well, to start, the movie begins in the middle of a tense, dramatic situation that we know ...

This, here, is the last of Leonard Nimoy's five albums.  Five  albums. Some of my favorite bands haven't had five albums, yet somehow Leonard Nimoy did. It's also the only one of Nimoy's albums not to be available on iTunes. It may have something to do with one or more of the cover tunes featured on it. Where to begin...okay, so, Leonard's not exactly the best singer. And when I mentioned to a friend of mine that I was listening to this, he asked "Why do you hate your ears so much?" Included here are covers of  Proud Mary  by Credence Clearwater Revival, and  Everybody's Talkin'  by Harry Nilsson, either one of which could be the reason why this isn't available on iTunes. I just noticed that Leonard's headshot is different in each of the squares on the album cover...that very sparse, minimalistic album cover. Apparently, that new world of Leonard Nimoy's has some wide margins and a lot of purple. I have to admit that I find so...

I’ve already written about ‘70s novelty albums based on  Lenny and Squiggy  and  The Odd Couple , but this one is the piece de resistance of albums based on Garry Marshall shows: the way too optimistically titled Laverne and Shirley Sing.  Personally, I think a much more accurate title would have been Can  Laverne and Shirley Sing? While the album is long out of print, it was re-released on CD a number of years back, but that too is now out of print. But, shockingly, it's currently available on iTunes. Being a lover of obscure/weird/bad music, I paid the $7.99 plus tax to get it. And...wow...just...just wow. In all fairness, Penny Marshall (Laverne) and Cindy Williams (Shirley) are both talented individuals. It’s just that singing really isn’t one of their talents. But is it really that bad? To be honest, they're not horrible , it's just that the album sounds like two people singing karaoke. As for the songs themselves, they're mostly covers of 195...

This is the second of three posts I'm doing concerning odd albums from the 1970s. It seems like if you were a television celebrity in the '70s you were sure to get one of two things: a variety show special or an ill-conceived album. Here, we have the latter. The Odd Couple Sings . Do they? Do they???  Well, sort of. Tony Randall (aka Felix)  sings. Jack Klugman (aka Oscar) not so much, and he even admitted as much. And it's evident from the very first track, entitled Johnny One Note , which seems to tell you right from the beginning "Look: Jack can't sing. I know it. Jack knows it. Now you  know it." How bad is it? Well, in the aforementioned opening track, Jack sings one note through the entire song. I'm not sure exactly which note that is , but it sounds like when you go to the doctor, and the doctor brings out a tongue depressor and tells you to say "Ah", and you say "Ahhhhhhh" with your tongue sticking out. Now imagine that fo...

The 1970s were a weird, weird time. It’s one of the reasons I have such a fascination with that decade. This is the first of three posts I’m going to do on novelty albums from the ‘70s, all three based on TV shows from producer Garry Marshall. And this first one is, IMHO, the most palatable of the three. Lenny and Squiggy Present Lenny and the Squigtones  is played for laughs. Recorded in front of a live audience and released in 1979, the album features Michael McKean and David Lander in character as Lenny and Squiggy from Laverne and Shirley . Several times on that series they performed as Lenny and the Squigtones , and this time they’re joined by a drummer and by future Spinal Tap guitarist Christopher Guest. Included here is the track Night After Night  which had been performed by the duo on the show during a Shotz Brewery talent show. But it’s not just music. The album also contains comedy bits that are interactions between Lenny and Squiggy. I gotta admit: this one ...

Superfriends  was a cartoon by Hanna Barbara that ran from the early ‘70s to the mid ‘80s. It was very much a product of its time and is very  cheesy by today’s standards. And I love it. So I was happy to find these two figures at Target recently on separate trips. They are re-releases of pervious figures but modified to more match their cartoon appearance. Apparently, these had been released as an exclusive somewhere else a few years ago but now they’re back, but at Target. I already own the non-Superfriends versions of these but being a fan of all things ‘70s I had to pick these up.