Dick Clark: (opening apartment window as Batman and Robin climb past) Hey! Who’re you?
Robin: He must be new in Gotham City.
Batman: He’s from Philadelphia.
Dick Clark: How did you know?
Batman: You dipped your dipthong. People from Philidelphia are known for that.

Robin: We’re Batman and Robin. The crimefighters!
Dick Clark: Oh. Are you a vocal group?
Robin: What?!
Dick Clark: I thought perhaps you might be a singing duo.
–”Batman”, Season 2, Episode 1: “Shoot A Crooked Arrow.” (Original air date September 7, 1966.)

The Cat and the Little Robin … they do not always get along.

[Catwoman is about to feed Robin to a tiger.]
Robin: Catwoman, you are not a nice person.

Did he make it out? (spoiler alert: sadly yes) My entire family is sick, so that’s it for today. Catch you on the flip side!

If this is not the face of a boy who’s just been caught wondering himself, I do not know what is.

“If Robin crops up in one of the new Batman films, I’ll be chaining myself up somewhere and refusing to go to work.” –Christian Bale, 2008, allegedly

Elizabeth: obviously I am not going to tell the world that my pal Jerrid has a man crush on Christian Bale
Elizabeth: I am merely saying that he came up in my daily batman today
the Cappy: you could, I’m comfortable

Everyone? My pal Jerrid has a man crush on Christian Bale. Perfectly normal, perfectly healthy.

1. The Chipmunks – All My Lovin’
2. Darth Vader’s Theme on ukelele and toy whistle
3. Crispin Glover – These Boots Are Made For Walkin’
4. Burt Ward – Boy Wonder
5. Vincent Price – Roast Pork Recipe
6. Hulk Hogan – Hulkamaniac
7. George Takei – On The Road Again
8. Peter Sellers – Hard Day’s Night
9. KFC Employee Training Tapes – Original Recipe History
10. Tanya Tagaq – Qimiruluapi
11. Mario Bros. Theme Concerto
12. Calgon – Ancient Chinese Secret
13. Mike Tyson
14. Eddie Furlong – People Are Strange
15. Thundercats Voice Actors Out takes
16. Kim Basinger – 2 Naughty
17. Porter Wagoner – The Rubber Room
18. Rose Brooks – They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Ha Ha
19. Waylon Jennings – Dukes of Hazzard Out takes
20. Sammy Davis Jr. – Plop Plop Fizz Fizz
21. William Shatner – Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
22. Tipsy – Chop Socky
23. Charlie and the Gang – Nightman
24. Charlie and Dennis – Dayman
25. Tool – Faaip De Oiad
26. Mr. Spock – Out going message

Thanks to April Winchell for having such an awesome website.

I see those “Baby On Board” signs everywhere and I wanted to do something a bit more creative for my car. If you’re a SIMPSONS fan, you’ll get the “Be Sharps” reference!

…but they would regularly insert guest appearances into the show in something they referred to as “Wall-Climbing Cameos.”

You know the scene: Batman and Robin are slowly making their way up a wall, hanging onto a thin cord, Robin’s ass delicately tucked into the crotch of Batman….

Yeah… those.

Suddenly, someone peeks their head out of a window and asks the Dynamic Duo what the hell they’re doing.

The list of celebrities who appeared in these “Wall-Climbing Cameos” range from the expected to the bizarre.

And now… I share them with you! Enjoy!

Sammy Davis, Jr.:

Edward G. Robinson:

Dick Clark:

Drunk Santa Claus:

Lurch from “The Addams Family”:

Jerry Lewis:

Green Hornet and Kato:

Colonel Klink from “Hogan’s Heroes”:

Pow! Zap! Bam!

-Shady

The 1960s Batman was ridiculous, though I do remember loving it as a kid. This video leaves me with many questions: Why are Batman and the Joker wearing bathing suits over their costumes? Why does Batman label all of his gadgets and inventions? Why aren’t they fighting? What is in the trash can?

I don’t have a whole lot to say today. There isn’t much going on. It is currently raining in NYC and is supposed to all week. The news is slow today as well. Regardless, I still feel the need to post something, so I figure I would post a clip from the 1960s Batman television series. Basically, this old show is ridiculous. Growing up in Oklahoma in the 1980s, I lived outside of a small rural town that didn’t even have a stop light and had a population of 1,200 people. We didn’t have cable where I lived. Occasionally, when I would visit a family member or friend in a major city with access to cable, I would watch reruns of this series on the Family Channel.

The show is the epitome of 60s camp with its bright colors, over-the-top jokes, questionable moral facade, and sexual innuendo. Focusing on the look of the series, it is understandable why the series was so colorful; it’s almost as if the producers were just so dazzled by the idea of using color and not being bound by an almost Draconian black and white template forced upon all television until the 60s. The vibrant colors and wacky story lines make it hard to imagine that this was a prime time series that was even nominated for three Prime Time Emmy Awards during its run.  Nowadays, I still have a soft spot for the series that lasted only three seasons, but I must admit, I can’t watch more than 20 minutes at a time.

Much like Star Trek, which ran concurrently for three seasons from 1966-1969 and shared many of the same attributes (though I wouldn’t compare them), the show was almost canceled after its second season but was saved at the last minute and able to develop a third. The trade off being that the budgets to both were slashed quite noticeably. The sets, stories, and costumes were even more sub par and both series’ fizzled out to a whimper. Fox had planned to purchase the rights to Batman and continue a forth season but the most expensive set, the Bat Cave, had already been dismantled by ABC causing the deal to founder.

This is a scene from the third season of Batman. My point here is not to show a scene that represents a high point for the series (this might actually be one of the lowest points), but to show how ridiculous the show got (It was always ridiculous). I am clearly selecting from the worst season, but it is indicative of the spirit the show maintained throughout its run. Enjoy! It’s pretty terrible.

At nights when I can’t sleep, I think about ridiculous themes and topics.   The one that kept me up last night was great TV theme songs.  All these, in my opinion, are songs that are good independent of (or in spite of in some cases) the TV shows to which they were connected.

I’m thinking of these themes more as songs and less as nostalgia bits, but if you enjoy them because they take you down memory lane, that’s cool.

Barney Miller — Gotta love that fat, funky bass line.

Happy Days — No, I’m not talking about the theme song made the show.  That was a trite piece of garbage.  Some of you may not remember but for the first season of the show, Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock,” an early rock masterpiece.  The clips in the show intro fit the spirit of the song, almost as if it were a video.

Batman — This song is one of the first songs kids try to learn when they get a guitar.  The show was campy, but cool.  The song has been covered by a number of bands, including respectable outfits like The Jam.

The Dukes of Hazzard — When I was 7, there wasn’t a cooler show on TV than the “Dukes of Hazzard.”  It was brilliant.  At 37 the show seems…well…embarrassing.  But theme song, sung by country legend Waylon Jennings, is still cool.  Had it not had such a strong connection to the show, it would have stood on its own as a solid country hit.

WKRP in Cincinnati (outro or closing theme) — That song rocked!  One of the best parts about it, though, was that the lyrics were completely and utterly uintelligable.  I’m not even sure they were sung in English.  Maybe they weren’t “lyrics” at all but simply grunts and groans.  This youtube video nails that.

Miami Vice — Because we were dorks, my good buddy, Mark, and I got together as many Friday evenings as we could for a year or two to watch “Miami Vice.”  Awesome stuff!  We so badly wanted to be Don Johnson that you could almost taste the mousse if you stood close enough to us.  Jan Hammer’s theme song was unquestionably cool…in our minds.  We drove around blasting it from the boom box on his front seat.  Man, we ate a lot of C batteries listening to that soundtrack.

The Munsters — I couldn’t tell you whether the deep brass instrument is some sort of tuba or a saxophone (maybe a tenor sax) but it make a one-of-a-kind sound.  The guitar was a brilliant bit of surf rock.  Too bad I couldn’t find a good copy of the original theme; this appears to be a remake.

Twilight Zone — Some of my funnest memories as a young kid were of staying up entirely too late to watch “Twilight Zone” re-runs with my Uncle Bob.  That show scared the crap out of me when I was a little guy, but it’s probably my all-time favorite TV series.  Everyone knows the eerie theme song.  It’s the little tune we hum or whistle when someone does or says something completely bizarre. I love it so much, I’m giving you the show intro, with Rod Serling’s voice over, and the theme music (instrumental.)

“The topic of privacy and what you do and don’t write on your blog–both your personal blog and a workplace blog–interests me as a question of privacy, but also of voice, of how bloggers present themselves. After all, blogs are personas. We emphasize particular aspects of ourselves, allow things we want to share to be revealed, and try to obscure those we consider private, want to hide, or are not aware of.”

-Susan Mernit.

from here.

“I know this sounds opaque, but I heard British novelist M John Harrison yesterday describing how the construction of identity is changing because “culture,” the factors that acculturate people, have been smeared all over the planet by the Internet. And he sees this is as a challenge for novelists because literature is a description of how people are; it’s about structures of meaning and feeling. And the structure of literary language needs to respond to, or even *lead,* new structures of meaning and feeling.”

-Bruce Sterling, speaking at this year’s SXSWi.

“It’s nice to meet you, Ben.”

Young Ben Linus = Evil Harry Potter!

Speaking of evil…

It’s Cthulhu Cthursday!

Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoons.

Lex Luthor would like a little of that bailout cash, please (starring Jon Hamm).

Comic Book Legends Revealed!

Grant Morrison, fresh off Final Crisis, discusses the new Batman and Robin and his upcoming series about them, Batman & Robin. Depending on who you talk to, the identity of these two new heroes is either a matter of heavy speculation or total foregone conclusions. The new Robin is obviously Damien, the just recently discovered son of Bruce Wayne (whose mother is the daughter of Ra’s al Ghul), but who is the new Batman going to be? There’s been quite a bit of foreshadowing that would seem to indicate that it’s the first Robin, Dick Grayson AKA Nightwing, but a recent theory and interesting bit of speculation (that came with a fantastic set of annotations for Batman RIP, almost rivaling Tim Callahan’s) I read has me wondering if and kind of hoping it will be Tim Drake, the latest/current Robin.

“Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life, and a secret life.”

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Reconstructing Atticus Finch.

The Mark Twain guide to better blogging.

What is reality? Who are we?

And some mad linkage stolen from the geniuses at Mercenary Writers:

Winner of the “worst postmodern article title” award.

Ten literary one hit wonders.

Ten spectacular second novels.

Ten cursed second novels.

The National “Secret Meeting” (mp3)

High Places “From Stardust To Sentience” (mp3)

Clinic “Distortions” (mp3)

Rogue Wave “Eyes” (Yeah Yeah Yeahs cover)(mp3)

“Some complain that e-mail is impersonal — that your contact with me, during the e-mail phase of our relationship, was mediated by wires and screens and cables. Some would say that’s not as good as conversing face-to-face. And yet our seeing of things is always mediated by corneas, retinas, optic nerves, and some neural machinery that takes the information from the optic nerve and propagates it into our minds. So, is looking at words on a screen so very much inferior? I think not; at least then you are conscious of the distortions. Whereas, when you see someone with your eyes, you forget about the distortions and imagine you are experiencing them purely and immediately.”

-Neal Stephenson, from Cryptonomicon.

We’ll see you tomorrow, unless of course Cthulhu gets us first and reality gets all distorted. Or something.

Frank Zappa & the Mothers Of Invention “Boy Wonder Sessions” [zip]

Here’s a strange one for you: Burt Ward aka TV’s Robin from the 60’s Batman show recorded a fan record with Frank Zappa. I found this on some message board last year, then listened to it once I got to LA and it makes surprisingly good bus music. The zip includes outtakes and alternates, so enjoy the awkwardness. Judo Chop!

Join superheroes Batman (Robert Lowery) and Robin (John Duncan) as they help Commissioner Gordon (Lyle Talbot) battle the Wizard a villainous madman who steals a top-secret remote device allowing him to control all the moving vehicles in Gotham. Between The Wizard trying to destroy them and Bruce Wayne’s love interest Vicky Vale (Jane Adams) working to uncover their identities The Dynamic Duo careen from one nail-biting cliffhanger to the next as they set out to save Gotham and foil The Wizard’s plan for world domination.

Batman and Robin – The Complete 1949 Movie Serial Collection is available at Amazon for $14.99. To Order click here
Amazon Product Pages contain a lot of other details on this product as Customer Reviews, Sales Ranking, Special Offers, Alternate products that customers are going for and much more.Want to read these details? click here

Want to get some other Format / Binding / Version? You can search for them from here

Other Products of Interest

• Batman – The Complete 1943 Movie Serial Collection
• Superman – The 1948 & 1950 Theatrical Serials Collection
• Adventures of Captain Marvel
• The Phantom – Serial
• Batman – The Movie (Special Edition)

This is just eerie.

Julie Newmar is a Living Doll!

I knew Julie Newmar was something special and it didn’t take the Batman television series to convince me. My first exposure to the classy Julie Newmar was on the old My Living Doll television show starring Bob Cummings that ran from September 27, 1964 to September 8, 1965. My Mom watched anything Bob Cummings was in so we watched My Living Doll and Ms. Newmar captured my imagination way back then. It’s one of the first times I remember looking at an actress on TV and thinking: ‘Wow, she’s absolutely beautiful!’

Ms. Newmar was born Julie Chalene Newmeyer in Los Angeles, California. Her mother, Helen Jesmer, was a Ziegfeld Follies dancer and her father, Donald Newmeyer, was a former pro football tackle for the Los Angeles Buccaneers.

She has appeared in numerous films and on Broadway, winning a Tony Award for Marriage Go-Round.

Julie Newmar & Burt Ward

Among her many TV appearances over the years include such shows as Star Trek, in the ‘Friday’s Child’ episode. Other appearances included It Takes A Thief, Get Smart, The Monkees, Beverly Hillbillies, F-Troop, Twilight Zone, Route 66, The Defenders, Person To Person, Phil Silvers, Bionic Woman, Bewitched, Love American Style, McMillan & Wife and dozens of others.

In My Living Doll she appeared as AF709, or, Rhoda The Robot. She was an android who was left in the care of one Dr. Bob McDonald, played by Cummings who was to complete her education and programming and, in a sense, instruct her to become the ‘perfect woman’.

Of course, she is probably best known to us Boomers as Selina Kyle, aka Catwoman on the 60’s Batman TV show. She appeared 13 times on the series. She opted out of the ‘66 Batman film to take another role being replaced by Lee Meriwether. In the Batman series Eartha Kitt portrayed Catwoman in the last season. Since that time Michelle Pfieffer and Halley Berry have played the character but no one will ever replace Ms. Newmar, not even Angelina Jolie, who Ms. Newmar has publicly suggested appear in the next Batman film as Catwoman.

As Adam West likely surmised, Ms. Newmar looks good at any angle.

Do blog Gibizada:

O canal americano CW, o mesmo de “Smallville”, vai produzir uma série sobre Robin, o menino-prodígio, antes de ele se tornar parceiro do Batman. É o que diz a revista Variety. A idéia é fazer um programa para substituir “Smallville”, que parece já ter cansado depois de sete anos no ar. Com o título de “The Graysons”, a série focaria a adolescência de Dick Grayson e, possivelmente, o período em que ele era acrobata de circo, com a família. Na imagem acima, você vê Burt Ward, o eterno Robin da clássica série de TV dos anos 60, que, esperamos, saia em DVD algum dia.

A nota foi encontrada aqui.