NJCAA
ONE-POINT WONDER – The ERIE COLLEGE KATS took it on the road against the COLLEGE AT BROCKPORT GOLDEN EAGLES. The Kats converted their 9-0 1st Quarter lead into a 16-2 advantage by Halftime. The 3rd Quarter ended with Erie College on top 23-2 but the 4th saw the Golden Eagles furiously rally only to fall just short as the Kats held on to win the game 23-22. Continue reading
Filed under college football
For this installment of my examinations of Greek comedies I will focus on one of the ancient Greek comedians whose entire corpus is very, very, VERY fragmentary, touching briefly on all of their known works. For background info on ancient Greek comedy plus my previous reviews click here: https://glitternight.com/ancient-greek-comedies/
ALCAEUS – This comic playwright came along for the tail end of Attic Old Comedy. Alcaeus’ career ranged from approximately 405 BC to the 380s BC and we have fragmentary remains of eight comedies from an unknown total body of work.
1. TRAGI-COMEDY – This play gave comedic treatment to the traditional rivalry between comedy and tragedy on the ancient Athenian stage. The comedy had fun with the inherent tensions between the two dramatic forms, including the fact that tragedy took pains to preserve the audience’s suspension of disbelief while comedy reveled in bursting the dramatic illusion via constant meta-theatrical breaking of the fourth wall.
Tragedy was the long-standing, prestigious and revered art form while comedy was the comparative newcomer and was still perceived as an upstart medium by the established writers of tragedy. One might also think of the Strauss opera Capriccio with its light-hearted rivalry between the music and the libretto in operas, with a writer of each claiming greater importance. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Greek Comedy
In the middle 1980s/ Way down on Level 31 …
Before MST3K we had The Texas 27 Film Vault! (I often emphasize this to cut down on freakouts by people who don’t pay attention to the broadcast dates and accuse this show of ripping off MST3K, which is impossible because this show came first.)
EPISODE ORIGINALLY BROADCAST: Per another Texas 27 Film Vault fan Saturday June 15th, 1985 from 10:30pm to 1:00am.
SERIAL: Before showing The Crybaby Killer our members of the Film Vault Corps (“the few, the proud, the sarcastic”) showed an episode of the Mascot Serial The Phantom Empire (1935).
In that classically campy serial Gene Autry played a singing cowboy who saves the world from an advanced underground civilization that comes complete with killer robots who wear cowboy hats.
FILM VAULT LORE: The movie ticket give-away this week was for Prizzi’s Honor.
THE MOVIE:
THE CRY BABY KILLER (1958) – Jack Nicholson made his film debut in this Roger Corman production. Jack plays a JD who mistakenly thinks he has shot two rival gang members to death and, believing he has nothing to lose, grabs hostages and holes up in a standoff with the police. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Movie Hosts
THE DAY OF RESIS (1897) – This sci-fi novel was written by Lillian Frances Mentor. The main character is Enola Cameron, a strong-willed 20-year-old American woman from a well to do family. She purchases a very old goatskin document describing a hidden African kingdom called On.
The goatskin also features a rough map of the route to On. Enola proclaims that men don’t have a monopoly on leading lives of adventure and names herself the commander of a co-ed expedition to find On.
The participants consist of her lady friends, mixed male and female relatives and Henry, who is in love with her. In a gross element common to a lot of stories back then, he is also her cousin. Enola boldly leads the expedition to Africa and a march to the interior.
At length the party reaches the mountain range which supposedly conceals the Kingdom of On. Enola and company manage to find the secret tunnel that leads to the enormous canyon which houses On. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Science Fiction
A YEAR AT THE TOP (1977) – What a cast! PAUL SHAFFER, GREG EVIGAN, Gabriel Dell (from the Dead End Kids/ Bowery Boys/ East Side Kids/ Little Tough Guys), Priscilla Morrill (Lou Grant’s wife Edie), Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas, Julie Cobb (Lee J. Cobb’s daughter) and Nedra Volz in her usual “sassy old lady” role.
This Norman Lear series lasted just 5 half-hour episodes. Paul Shaffer actually left his gig as a musician on Saturday Night Live to take this role, but luckily it got canceled so quickly he was still able to go back to SNL.
Even worse, Greg Evigan turned down a role on Welcome Back, Kotter to star in this TV Turkey. But at least B.J. and the Bear lurked in his 1970s future. I’ll let you readers decide if that’s good or bad.
A Year at the Top sports a premise that sounds like it could work … as a made-for-tv movie, NOT a series. After three pilots – one as early as 1975 but still with Shaffer and Evigan – the producers went ahead with a tale centered around two would-be rock stars who sell their soul to the Devil’s son in exchange for the titular year at the top of the music industry. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television
Previously, Balladeer’s Blog examined the Big Five Monster Cereals (Count Chocula, Frankenberry, Boo Berry, Fruit Brute and Yummy Mummy), now I’m taking a look at the forgotten Cereal War between two Quaker Oats brands – Quisp and Quake.
As a sign of the times, Quaker Oats had developed two new types of breakfast cereals but rather than name the pair themselves, they went to advertising agencies and Jay Ward Productions, creators of Cap’n Crunch, to come up with two advertising mascots for the new cereals.
Ward, famous for Bullwinkle and Rocky plus other characters, quasi-cannibalized his own Moon Men figures from his most famous series. The result was Quisp, a zany alien, as the name and mascot for one of the new cereals. For the other cereal, Ward came up with Quake, a muscular miner in a hardhat.
In a gimmick that the General Mills Monster Cereals mentioned above would later imitate, the animated Quisp and Quake would be rivals, each one insisting that their cereal was clearly the superior product. That tongue-in-cheek rivalry was even more successful than the Quaker Oats people had hoped.
The series of cartoon Quisp vs Quake commercials so appealed to their target audience of children that a true Battle of the Boxes broke out in grocery stores across the nation. Kids, as kids will do, badgered their parents to get the cereal represented by their preferred mascot even though there really wasn’t all that much difference between Quisp and Quake cereal. Continue reading
Filed under Neglected History
TIMEBOMB (1991) – With Alien: Earth being streamed in recent weeks, it has brought with it the usual remarks from Alien franchise fans about what a raw deal Michael Biehn got when his character Corporal Hicks was killed off with Newt in between films.
And THAT put me in mind of Biehn’s virtually forgotten action/ sci-fi film Timebomb from 1991. While very good it’s not a classic and it does incorporate a lot of elements that had already been done better in movies like Total Recall and in future flicks like The Bourne Identity.
Still, though, it’s a valentine for fans who miss R-rated 1980s action movies and features Michael in his prime, once again portraying an appealing hero up against forces that seem beyond human ability to overcome. Plus, he and his costar Patsy Kensit started a relationship while filming Timebomb if you’re interested in such things. Continue reading
Filed under opinion
HEADLINES
DIVISION THREE OVER DIVISION TWO – Three NCAA D3 teams shamed higher Division Two teams yesterday. The UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AT OSHKOSH TITANS beat the ROOSEVELT UNIVERSITY LAKERS 38-21 ### Next, the BREVARD COLLEGE TORNADOES survived a 38-34 visit from the ERSKINE COLLEGE FLYING FLEET ### And the UW-LACROSSE EAGLES beat the WAYNE STATE WARRIORS 31-22.
SINKING NUMBER SIX – In the NAIA, the 14th ranked ST. THOMAS UNIVERSITY BOBCATS (should be Tomcats) hosted the number 6 team in the nation – the GEORGETOWN (KY) COLLEGE TIGERS. The Bobcats stunned GC, leading them 3-0, 17-0 and 17-7 in the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Quarters, respectively before putting them away 26-7 in the 4th.
ANOTHER NUMBER SIX GOES DOWN – Down in NCAA Div 3, the number 16 UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN AT WHITEWATER WARHAWKS took it on the road against the country’s 6th ranked UNIVERSITY OF MARY HARDIN-BAYLOR CRUSADERS. The Warhawks were on top 13-6 at Halftime, then shut out UMHB from there to topple them 26-6. Continue reading
Filed under college football
This weekend’s light-hearted, escapist superhero post here on Balladeer’s Blog continues from my 2021 look at the earliest Iron Fist martial arts stories.
MARVEL PREMIERE Vol 1 #25 (Oct 1975)
Title: Morning of the Mindstorm
Villains: Angar the Screamer and Khumbala Bey
Synopsis: This issue picks up right after Iron Fist (Danny Rand) stopped the Skrull robot called the Monstroid before it could kill Princess Azir from Marvel’s fictional Arabic nation Halwan. Lt. Rafael Scarfe and the rest of Azir’s New York City police bodyguards are grateful, but the princess’s hulking Halwan bodyguard Khumbala Bey feels shamed and attacks Iron Fist.
Soon, Azir stops the fight and returns to the Halwan consulate in New York City. Next, Iron Fist learns that Colleen Wing has been abducted by minions of his archenemy Master Khan, who is secretly running a plot in Halwan. On Master Khan’s orders, Daredevil and the Black Widow’s old foe Angar attacks our hero with his Mindstorms. Iron Fist defeats the villain. Continue reading
Filed under Superheroes
NCAA DIVISION TWO
TIGER ON TIGER VIOLENCE – The BENEDICT COLLEGE TIGERS welcomed the storied TUSKEGEE UNIVERSITY GOLDEN TIGERS last night. The Golden Tigers led 14-7 to end the 1st Quarter but Benedict College was up 28-17 by Halftime. After the break, the Tigers outscored Tuskegee 17-7 to win the game by a final score of 45-24.
NJCAA
UPSET IN THE RANKINGS – In this game the ITAWAMBA COLLEGE INDIANS took the field against the visiting number 12 team in the nation – the EAST MISSISSIPPI COLLEGE LIONS. At the Half the Lions were on top 17-3 but Itawamba College came out of the locker room ready for a comeback. The 3rd Quarter saw the Indians tie things up at 17-17 before winning it in the 4th 34-24. Continue reading
Filed under college football
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