NCAA D3 – UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AT WHITEWATER WARHAWKS ### 2. UNIVERSITY OF MOUNT UNION PURPLE RAIDERS (Defending Champions) ### 3. UNIVERSITY OF SAINT THOMAS TOMMIES ### 4. LINFIELD COLLEGE WILDCATS ### 5. WHEATON (IL) COLLEGE THUNDER ### Continue reading
Tag Archives: Balladeer’s Blog
D3 COLLEGE FOOTBALL RANKINGS: BALLADEER’S BLOG
Filed under college football, Uncategorized
COLLEGE FOOTBALL RANKINGS FROM BALLADEER’S BLOG
NCAA DIVISION TWO – 1. NORTHWEST MISSOURI STATE BEARCATS (Defending Champions) ### 2. GRAND VALLEY STATE LAKERS ### 3. FERRIS STATE BULLDOGS ### 4. UNIVERSITY OF WEST GEORGIA WOLVES ### 5. ASHLAND UNIVERSITY EAGLES ###
6. MINNESOTA STATE MAVERICKS ### 7. SHEPHERD UNIVERSITY RAMS ### 8. UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL MISSOURI MULES ### 9. HUMBOLDT STATE LUMBERJACKS ### 10. UNIVERSITY OF NORTH ALABAMA LIONS ### Continue reading
Filed under college football
HIGH SCHOOL CONFIDENTIAL (1958): TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT
High School Confidential
Before MST3K there was The Texas 27 Film Vault!
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the 1980s. Randy Clower, Richard Malmos, Ken “Tex” Miller and Joe “The Hypnotic Eye” Riley played machine-gun toting members of the fictional Film Vault Corps (“the few, the proud, the sarcastic”) who would show and mock bad and campy movies preceded by episodes of old Republic serials. They would also have comedic sci-fi adventures before and after commercial breaks.
ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday September 7th, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.
SERIAL: Before the movie our Film Vault Technicians First Class showed and mocked a chapter of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940).
FILM VAULT LORE: Randy Clower at E-Gor’s site on Texas 27 Film Vault groupies: “We were a bit wild during that time and having a cult show on late at night opened a few doors around the Dallas area which we were all more than willing to go through and explore.”
THE MOVIE: High School Confidential has a well-deserved reputation as one of the campiest Juvenile Delinquency films of the 50s and 60s. Some of the fun comes from the hilariously heavy-handed anti-marijuana messages sprinkled throughout the Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts
SUPERMAN VS LOIS LANE: ZACK SNYDER’s NEXT MOVIE
She also never expected him to get so much enjoyment out of killing her. Look at that smile!
(FOR A SERIOUS LOOK AT AUSTRALIAN SUPERHEROES CLICK HERE )
Another entertainment world scoop for Balladeer’s Blog. My sources in the industry – and by the industry I mean the business – have told me Zack Snyder’s next foray into pointlessly glum and operatically melodramatic superhero stories will see Superman killing off his love interest Lois Lane.
Unfortunately audiences may have quite a long wait for this little honey because first Kal El has to be brought back to life in the Justice League movie.
Snyder’s plan for a film trilogy about the last day in the life of Bruce Wayne’s parents will also get in the way since my sources tell me that Zack STILL doesn’t think that audiences understand Batman’s origin story. Continue reading
Filed under humor, Superheroes
COLLEGE FOOTBALL RESULTS FROM SEPTEMBER 3rd
*** HEADLINES ***
LANGSTON RULES THE WORLD – The NAIA tradition of upsetting higher division teams at least once a week continues! The LANGSTON UNIVERSITY LIONS were guests of the NCAA Division TWO team the LINCOLN (MO) UNIVERSITY BLUE TIGERS. The Lions proceeded to mar this game called the L.U. Classic, toppling the home team by a final score of 23-13.
THE JAVELINAS ALSO RULE THE WORLD – The NCAA Division Two team called the TEXAS A&M AT KINGSVILLE JAVELINAS took it on the road against the Division ONE team the UNIVERSITY OF THE INCARNATE WORD CARDINALS. When the dust had settled in this thrilling game the Javelinas had also brought down a higher division team, in this case by a count of 31-22. Continue reading
Filed under college football
COLLEGE FOOTBALL RESULTS FROM SEPTEMBER 1st
*** NAIA ***
MESS WITH FIRE AND YOU GET BURNED – The SOUTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY FIRE traveled to face the 19th ranked FAULKNER UNIVERSITY EAGLES (should be the Furies) in a game marking 10 years of the Faulkner football program. The Fire marred the celebration in what turned out to be a textbook example of defensive football. The final score was Southeastern University 10 Faulkner University 6. Continue reading
Filed under college football
GEORGIA TECH BRACING FOR LONG JOURNEY BEFORE IRELAND OPENER
Yellow Jackets Coach Paul Johnson is going into the Georgia Tech opener against Boston College on Saturday with a bit of an advantage, having coached in Ireland before; though, that doesn’t mean he has any more of a favorable position in the college football betting lines.
The Ireland game will mark the Yellow Jacket’s first game outside the United States. Johnson’s experience coaching in Ireland came when Navy played Notre Dame in Dublin.
This was during Johnson’s days as Navy’s offensive coordinator in 1996, and back then, Notre Dame was considered to be the underdog in a game where fans couldn’t perceive the notion of such a tiny school playing the whole Navy.
The Atlantic Coast Conference Opener is coming earlier than Johnson might have preferred, availing him no options for a dress rehearsal game. Continue reading
Filed under Uncategorized
WAR OF THE WORLDS (1988-1990)
WAR OF THE WORLDS (Television Series) – This short-lived series proceeded from a fun premise. In this program’s world the Martian invasions depicted occurring in 1901 ( 1897 novel), 1938 (Orson Welles radio version) and 1953 (first film version) were really three separate real-world attempts by extra-terrestrials (NOT Martians, however) to conquer the Earth. In an “X-Files before The X-Files existed” sort of way the world’s governments collaborated in an extensive – and successful – coverup to pass those invasions off as fiction.
The faux-Martian craft were presented as the explanation behind the first UFO sightings and their damaged spaceships and presumably dead bodies were being kept in hiding at various bases around the world for reverse-engineering and other studies. The leftover bodies from the 1953 invasion were really just dormant, thanks to the aliens’ latest attempts at immunizing themselves against the Earthly illnesses that were always their undoing in the past.
Those dormant aliens are now emerging from their sleep and attempting once again to conquer the Earth, this time by taking over the bodies of human beings thereby giving themselves full immunity. Human scientists, military and governmental forces battle the aliens.
Though all of that sounds derivative War of the Worlds actually managed to make it all seem fresh through quality scripting, fleshed-out characters and a capable cast led by Jared “Fantastic Voyage” Martin, Ann Robinson, Ilse Von Glatz and Richard Chaves. An added element of suspense lay in the fact that the aliens sometimes WON so viewers felt genuine tension. Pacing was a problem, however, and I would say the show’s episodes would have benefited from a half-hour run time instead of an hour-long format. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television
COOL FOOTBALL HELMET: UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT THE PERMIAN BASIN
UT-PERMIAN BASIN FALCONS
Location: Odessa, TX
Division: NCAA Division Two
Conference Affiliation: Lone Star Conference Continue reading
Filed under college football, Cool Helmets
MONSTER FROM GREEN HELL (1957): TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT
In the middle 1980s/
Way down on Level 31 …
Before MST3K there was … THE TEXAS 27 FILM VAULT!
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of this neglected cult show from the mid-1980s.
EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Saturday March 30th, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.
SERIAL: Prior to showing and mocking the movie Randy Clower and Richard Malmos, the show’s machine-gun wielding “Film Vault Technicians First Class” showed an episode of the notoriously campy sci-fi serial The Lost City (1935). That serial featured a super-scientific city lost in the middle of the African jungle plus zombified “giant” African tribesmen, ray-guns, a slinky femme fatale and a tribe of pygmies. There’s also a Great White Hunter as the hero and a mad scientist whose inventions include a machine that turns black people into white people! And the “colorization” is considered a REWARD for tribesmen who serve the mad scientist well! All this plus BOTH William Boyds in one serial!
THE TUNNEL WITH THE MINIATURES OF MULTIPLE VAULT DOORS THAT OPENED AS THE POV CAMERA FILMED THEM.
FILM VAULT LORE: One eye-catching element of The Texas 27 Film Vault was the POV shot down a tunnel of various vault doors which would open in turn as the camera approached them. It’s another aspect of the show that had Vaulties feeling deja vu when MST3K debuted years later.
The shot was achieved through miniatures, of course, and Randy Clower was kind enough to provide me with the behind-the- scenes photo shown above.
THE MOVIE: Monster From Green Hell was one of the many, many “Big Bug” films of the 1950s. Most of those “bugs” on the loose were mutated to giant size by atomic radiation but in this flick it was cosmic radiation instead which was the culprit.
Two scientists at a desert testing lab featuring the WORST paintings masquerading as scenery outside a window in film history are launching rockets with various life forms aboard. They do that to test the effects of exposure to cosmic radiation on those life forms. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts
