MUSIC FROM SPACE: Richard O'Brien - OVER AT THE FRANKENSTEIN PLACE

The previously-mentioned Rocky Interactive Horror Show also features Richard O'Brien performing a few acoustic versions of the songs from the cult classic film, including this really nice take on Over at the Frankenstein Place. (It also features O'Brien performing Sweet Transvestite in drag, but I'll let you do the Googling for that one yourself.)

Richard O'Brien's TIME WARP MASTER CLASS

Wait, is it a jump to the left and then a step to right, or do you put your hands on your hips and then do the pelvic thrusts that drive you insane? Rocky Horror creator Richard O'Brien explains (and does a really weird, vaguely John Wayne-ish accent) in this Time Warp Master Class segment from the Rocky Interactive Horror Show PC game released in 2000.

Gary Coleman is with the angels now

Here are the opening titles to The Gary Coleman Show, a 1980s cartoon series that starred Coleman as an angel who comes to Earth to do good deeds. Gary Coleman, RIP.

Happy Towel Day!

A very happy Towel Day to you and yours! This is the day when fans honor the memory of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams by carrying a towel with them.

Why a towel? Well, as Adams pointed out in the first book in the series, a towel "is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough."

Pictured: Towel Day in Innsbruck, Australia, where Adams claimed he first got the idea for the Hitchhiker's series while lying drunk in a field.

Do you know where your towel is?


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STRANGE TOONS: SKYWHALES

Skywhales is a 1983 short film that does a really remarkable job of depicting the culture of another world, all without a single word of human language spoken. While the look of the film is arguably a little dated, this is a brilliant example of world building, taking us to a strange and eerie place that seems like it's been around for a long time before we got there. That's Red Dwarf's Robert Llewellyn handling the hoots and grunts of the various aliens.

YOU ALL EVERYBODY!

Not sure what this was originally created for (a DVD extra?) but here's the music video for You All Everybody, the song by Lost's one-hit wonder band, Drive Shaft. The lyrics (all 11 words) come from an inside joke among the show's writers, where they would obsessively quote a baffling remark made by an audience member on The Phil Donahue Show: "You all everybody, acting like it's stupid people wearing expensive clothes!"

"Alternate" LOST endings

If you were curious about those endlessly-promoted "alternate" Lost endings that were supposed to appear on the post-finale Jimmy Kimmel wrap-up show, they've now turned up online, and... Well, turns out they're just some modestly amusing little comedy skits. I'm sure I'm not the only one who was a little annoyed by these things. After all that hype, I was expecting some real endings, not SNL on an off night. I feel like I got punked.

Captain Jack sings SPRINGTIME FOR HITLER

If you missed the Producers remake a few years back, you missed Torchwood's own Captain Jack, John Barrowman, in this showstopping performance of Springtime for Hitler.

How LOST began

As we count down the minutes to the Lost series finale this evening, let's take a look back at how it all began, with the still-terrifying opening sequence from the pilot episode. I am gonna miss the heck out of this crazy show.

SHATNER SUNDAY: The original TREK cast pimps for KFC

Not sure how I missed this baby, back when it was new. It's an ad for KFC featuring the original Star Trek cast, as they appeared back in the 1960s. I don't know if they accomplished this through actors in masks or if it was done with CGI or what the heck. Even if it doesn't look entirely convincing, it's very impressive.

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The LOST auditions

The other day, Io9 posted a fun collection of the original Lost audition tapes. It would be cool enough to see the actors trying out their characters for the first time, but this is even better - we see several of the actors auditioning for other characters. In the clip above, for instance, we have Matthew Fox as a rather scarily intense Sawyer.

NAPOLEON DYNAMITE: THE ANIMATED SERIES

Jered and Jerusha Hess, the team behind Napoleon Dynamite, are now at work on an animated series based on the hit indie quirkfest. John Heder and other cast members from the film are expected to return for the show. Gosh!

Marilyn Manson is quite a LOST fan

Shock rocker Marilyn Manson is apparently just as obsessed with Lost as the rest of us, if not more so. He has painted a not-bad portrait of John Locke:

What's more, Manson has posted a photo of Naveen Andrews on his Facebook page, with a caption stating the photo depicts the exhausted-looking Andrews "After a long, hard night of making music with the Marilyn Manson."

HELPING JOHNNY REMEMBER

Helping Johnny Remember from ashleigh nankivell on Vimeo.

Filmmaker Ashleigh Nankivell works some CGI magic on an old educational short, remaking it as a genuinely nightmarish little delight.

Via Boing Boing.

Did HEROES rip off its carnival plot from a comic book?

It's been a rough week for Heroes creator Tim Kring. Not only did the show get canceled, but now Kring finds himself being sued (along with NBC) for 60 million bucks by cartoonist Jazan Wild.

Wild claims that Heroes ripped off last season's carnie plotline from Wild's comic book, Carnival of Souls. Frankly I don't think Wild has a very strong case. I mean, Wild did not invent the spooky carnival as a setting, nor did he invent details like the House of Mirrors, ferris wheels, et al. Admittedly some elements do seem like strange coincidences, but there's nothing there to make me believe there was any deliberate imitation going on, any more than I believe that Lost's creators were ripping off a TV pilot from 1977.

Spock shock

In this commercial for the German version of the SyFy channel, modern special effects are used to recreate a 1960s-era Mr. Spock, and... Well, I'm going to assume that Leonard Nimoy didn't sign off on this one. He's very protective of the Spock character, and in this ad our beloved Vulcan is behaving in a most illogical (and seriously creepy) manner.

Get PORTAL for free!

Until May 24th, Valve is offering free downloads of Portal, one of the most acclaimed games in years. Hurry, before they run out of cake!

Details emerging on Wachowski siblings' latest mind-warper

Last December, we heard a flurry of weird news about the Wachowski brothers: we learned that they are apparently at work on a sci-fi movie about the Iraq war. We learned that lefty political commentator Arianna Huffington is in it. And we finally confirmed that Larry Wachowski had officially become a woman.

Not much has been heard from the Matrix creators since, but now the Onion AV Club has offered a few updates. The site says that the pair have finished a script and are now shopping the film around, and it describes the project as a "'hard R' love story that takes place in the near future, then flashes back several years to the current war to explore a homosexual relationship between a U.S. soldier and an Iraqi."

The site also quotes Jesse Ventura, who confirmed he has a role in the film:

"Wait til you hear what they did. They brought me, and they brought Arianna Huffington in after me. Arianna was there, and they had her looking like Cleopatra. What they did… Do you remember what John Travolta looked like in that horrible film Battlefield Earth? They put multicolored dreadlocks on me all the way to here. They gave me this crazy beard that was hanging down pointed, looked like Travolta, right? And they put a third eye in the middle of my forehead. Because what this is, is this is a hundred years in the future, and they wanted me to talk about the current war in Iraq and how I felt about it. And so I got to vent, looking like this maniac in this whole outfit."

This is sounding like a fascinating debacle. I'm one of the few who enjoyed the craziness of the last two Matrix movies, so I suspect I'll find plenty to enjoy in this movie. I'm getting a distinct Southland Tales vibe from this thing.

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RIP, RJD

I am sad to report the death of classic power metal screamer Ronnie James Dio, who succumbed to stomach cancer this morning after battling it since late last year. His was a long and amazingly varied career (he was recording doo wop back in the 1950s!) but I first encountered his voice in the Butterfly Ball clip, seen above. The clip was made as an attempt to launch a feature film. The film never happened, but the clip became a fixture on kids TV in the 1970s.

RIP, RJD.

HI-FI PIZZA OF THE APOCALYPSE 10: STAR WARS MONSTER MASH-UPS

Inspired by this apocalyptic moment from an old Daniel Clowes Eightball comic, Hi-Fi Pizza of the Apocalypse is a Monsters and Rockets feature where we chronicle the Hollywood rehashes, recyclings and recombinings that serve as ominous portents of the End Times.

When I was growing up, I was an absolute maniac for all things Star Wars. I desperately wanted to live in that universe, and it seemed cruelly unfair that I was stuck in a world without lightsabers and landspeeders. But over the years George Lucas has really pounded the last vestiges of Star Wars fandom out of me, with the Special Editions and those depressingly cruddy prequels and all the rest of it. At this point, the zombie Stormtrooper toy pictured below pretty much captures how I see the franchise: it died a long time ago, but it just won't stop coming at you. And it's hungry for your brains.


There are also Frankenstein Vaders, a gargoyle Yoda and werewolf Chewbacca. Yes, these things exist.

Baby sloths: Cute things, or THE CUTEST things?

Meet the sloths from Amphibian Avenger on Vimeo.

Posting videos of baby animals is a bit of a departure for Monsters and Rockets, but I saw this clip and simply couldn't resist. Such is the power of the baby sloth. Seriously, baby sloths are so adorable they don't even seem like they can be real. It's like they escaped from the Jim Henson workshop or something.

SHATNER SUNDAY: Shatner hypes Loblaws, is menaced by penguin

I have to say, posting this old Shatner commercial for Loblaws feels like a lowblow. The 1970s were a rough, mostly Trekless decade for the Shat, and a toxic combination of typecasting, hubris and dire financial straits led to some really questionable career moves. He arguably reached his nadir with this 1974 commercial for the Loblaws grocery chain. With his tacky 1974 suit, sad little comb-over and desperate hucksterism, he comes across as more Herb Tarlek than James Tiberius Kirk.

While Shatner's career has since rebounded in a big way, he still does some cruddy little local ads. (Hey, at least he's not being pestered by some weirdo in a penguin suit anymore.)

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Adam Sandler to rip off FUTURAMA episode

Futurama	Weeknights, 9p/8c
Space Invaders
www.comedycentral.com
Futurama New Episodes Futurama New Episodes Funny Demon Zombie TV Show

Remember that episode of Futurama where New York was attacked by characters from 1980s video games? Well, Adam Sandler's production company is making an entire movie based on the idea. (Actually, they're making a movie based on the short film Pixels. But Pixels basically swiped the idea from Futurama.)

Tartakovsky off DARK CRYSTAL sequel; Spierig Bros. on

File this one under news I missed during the month I wasted trying to get Blogger to put my site back online. The brilliant (if damn hard to spell) animator Genndy Tartakovsky (Samurai Jack) is now no longer attached to the Dark Crystal sequel, while Daybreakers helmers Peter and Michael Spierig are now aboard.

I have to admit, I'm not entirely unhappy to see Tartakovsky go. The guy is a genius, but his stuff is very much his stuff, and it's hard to imagine him really adapting his style to fit the Dark Crystal universe. On the one hand the guy actually managed to make Star Wars: Clone Wars great, but on the other hand he did it by basically turning it into Samurai Jedi.

3D printing for the masses!

Perhaps, like me, you've heard about this 3D printing stuff and really wanted to try it for yourself but had no access to the technology. Well, the good folks at Shapeways have now made it possible for anybody to print 3D objects. Basically anything you can make a 3D computer model of, they can print. Send them your model, and they'll send it back as a physical object.

The prices aren't cheap, but the results look pretty good. I'm eager to try this out, and when I do I'll report back on my findings.

A very baffling TWILIGHT ZONE Day to you and yours!

Why is today Twilight Zone Day? Well, nobody really knows. The show didn't start or finish its run on May 11th, it's not the day that Rod Serling was born or died. Nobody even knows how the holiday got started, or who created it. It's a rather weird mystery... Which is entirely appropriate, really.

To celebrate this most baffling of holidays, here's a Rod Serling blooper clip. It's really strange to see Serling goofing around like this. I always kind of imagine him waking up in the morning wearing that suit, and sitting down at the breakfast table with a cigarette as he makes clipped but incisive commentary about the dark nature of man.



The folks at CBS have been nice enough to post a number of episodes of this classic series for free online, so now's your chance to return to the land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas.

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More movie marquee mashups!

Today I saw a couple of new movie marquee mashups that I wanted to share:

THE LOSERS BACK UP PLAN

KICK ASS DEATH AT A FUNERAL

Restored animated shorts from the silent era

Now, this is just neat. UCLA has posted a selection of restored animated films from the silent era, and you can choose to see them without sound, with music or with informative commentary tracks. There are some real lost treasures in this bunch.

- Via Cartoon Brew.

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SHATNER SUNDAY: Shatner has a transporter accident

In this peculiar little British power ad from the 1980s, a Wrath of Khan-era Captain Kirk suffers a transporter accident that... Well, let's just say that Scotty probably caught hell for this one.

The TWILIGHT ZONE alphabet

For the upcoming Twilight Zone-inspired group show at LA's Gallery 1988, artist Dave Parillo created this simply terrific Twilight Zone alphabet, featuring many of our old friends from the land of both shadow and substance, things and ideas. (Click image to embiggenate.)

Via Super Punch.

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A CGI Jerry Lee Lewis covers Bruce Springsteen's PINK CADILLAC

Fasten your seatbelt for this crazy CGI music video from a few years back, featuring classic rocker Jerry Lee Lewis covering Bruce Springsteen's Pink Cadillac. (That's the Boss himself doing backup work for the Killer... And don't those nicknames make this sound more like a mob hit than a music video?)

MIND'S EYE

Gregory Godhard's 1998 short film Mind's Eye is a seriously trippy piece of animation, although I would strongly advise against watching it when you're stoned. This thing + drugs = your head exploded all over your keyboard.

Previously: Wild Beasts' music video for their song Brave Bulging Buoyant Clairvoyants, which screwed with your brain in a similarly dizzying manner.

(Via Metafilter.)

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Happy dance

Godzilla shares in the joy that Monsters and Rockets is back. (Seriously, folks... I spent an entire month in tech support hell.)

Let's get this relaunch started the right way...

We're gonna kick things off with the opening titles for that 1990s sci-fi classic, Homeboys in Outer Space. Hard to believe it's not on DVD!

It's alive! ALIVE!

Yes, Monsters and Rockets is finally back online, after an entire month of being down.

What happened was:

In April of 2009, I bought the url monstersandrockets.com and I launched this site. I spent the next year blogging my little heart out, having a lot of fun and attracting a pretty good audience. But what I didn't realize was that my url was up for renewal this April. Blogger.com (my hosting company) never sent me a reminder notice, they just yanked the site the day the url expired.

I've spent the last month trying to get the site back online. I'd send emails to Blogger and they would direct me to Enom.com, then the folks at Enom would say it was really Blogger's fault, then I would write to Blogger and they would tell me to do a lot of really complicated stuff, and when that stuff didn't work they would direct me to their goddamned message boards so I could ask other random dorks online for tech support, then the random dorks would tell me to go mess with Enom again. This crap went on for day after day after day, and more than once I was tempted to just give up.

But I persevered, and now I'm back at last to share this absolutely fascinating story with you. Yippee!

If I had it to do over again, I doubt I would've used Blogger to host this site. They make it relatively easy to set up a site, but an absolute nightmare if anything goes wrong. Seriously, directing people with tech support questions to your message board? You're freaking Blogger, guys. Bite the bullet and hire a few smart guys to man the phones in Bangalore. Jeez!