The 1978 Star Wars Holiday Special!!

Today on super crappy holiday themed theatre, we have The Star Wars Holiday Special starring... oh just follow the link and see for yourself. Somebody must have had pictures of these folks naked and cavorting with goats to force them to appear in this nightmare.



Plot: Uh, kids will watch complete and utter crap if you tie it in with a popular movie? Chewbacca's father is named Itchy and his son is named Lumpy, Carrie Fisher sings, there's some red Snuggies, and all manners of weirdness. It's a freakin' trainwreck. Enjoy!

Fa-La-La-La-La, La-La-La-La... Day 13

Today we have Emmet Otter's Jug-Band Christmas which stars the voices of Jerry Nelson, Melissa Rabbit, Frank Oz, Marilyn Sokol, Dave Goelz, Richard Hunt, Eren Ozker, and Jim Henson.


The program as originally aired no longer exists due to various edits made over the years. The video below is from a fan who laments these changes. For reference purposes, here's a list of the changes that have been made.





Plot: What do you do if you are poor otter with a great singing voice who wants to buy a gift for a loved one at Christmas?  You enter a singing contest with hopes of winning the $50 prize!!

Fa-La-La-La-La, La-La-La-La... Day 12

Today we have The Year Without a Santa Claus and The Little Drummer Boy.


'Santa Claus' stars the voices of Shirley Booth, Mickey Rooney, Dick Shawn, George S. Irving, Bob McFadden, Rhoda Mann, Bradley Bolke, Ron Marshall, Colin Duffy, and Christine Winter.





Plot:
Santa Claus has a cold and decides to stay home in bed this year.  Mrs. Claus and two of his elves decide to show Santa that the Christmas spirit is alive and well and how much he means to the world.



'Drummer Boy' stars the voices of José Ferrer, Paul Frees, June Foray, Ted Eccles, Greer Garson, and The Vienna Boys Choir.





Plot:
Aaron is an orphan whose only friends are a lamb, a camel, and a donkey. An unscrupulous man persuades Aaron to join his troupe of traveling performers and then sells his beloved camel without Aaron's permission. Aaron leaves the troupe and tracks down his camel, but in the process his lamb is badly injured. Aaron needs a miracle to save his friend.

Fa-La-La-La-La, La-La-La-La... Day 11

Today we have How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Santa Claus is Comin' to Town.


The 'Grinch' stars the voices of Boris Karloff, June Foray, and Thurl Ravenscroft.





Plot:
The Grinch hates everything associated with Christmas. He comes up with a plan to stop the celebration of Christmas in a nearby village and makes his dog an unwilling accomplice.



'Santa Claus' stars the voices of Fred Astaire, Mickey Rooney, Keenan Wynn, Paul Frees, Joan Gardner, and Robie Lester.


Trailer


Plot: This is the story of Santa's early years from being found as an infant on a doorstep, up to the time of meeting the future Mrs. Claus. Along the way, Santa teaches us that sometimes within a gruff exterior lurks a heart that will respond to an act of kindness.

Fa-La-La-La-La, La-La-La-La... Day 10

Today we have Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Twas the Night Before Christmas.

Rudolph stars the voices of Burl Ives, Billie Mae Richards, Paul Soles, Larry D. Mann, Stan Francis, Paul Kligman, Janet Orenstein, Alfie Scopp, Carl Banas, Corinne Conley, and Peg Dixon.




Plot:
Rudolph is the story of a young reindeer who is ostracized because he is different from the other reindeer. He and his "misfit" friends, learn that it's always best to be true to yourself even if others don't understand or appreciate your differences. One day those differences just might save the day!

Twas the Night Before Christmas stars the voices of George Gobel, Joel Grey, Tammy Grimes, Patricia Bright, Scott Firestone, Bob McFadden, John McGiver, Allen Swift, and Christine Winter.

I can't find a trailer, but here's the entire program.


Plot:
An entire town receives their letters to Santa returned unopened. Someone in their town has deeply offended Santa by writing a letter to the editor in the town paper denouncing his existence. Joshua Trundle decides to do something big in order to persuade Santa to change his mind about their town. Is it too late??

Ellery Queen!

I just found out that the 1975 television series Ellery Queen, will be released on DVD in 2010!


Ellery Queen

Michael K. | MySpace Video

If you are not familiar with this series, here is a website devoted to the show.

Does anybody know if Santa takes advance orders??

I Love The Muppets!

I know most of you have seen these already, but if not, enjoy!









Imagine if Snads had one of these!

Feedjit Foolishness II

I was browsing over my Feedjit results and discovered a couple that I'd like to share with you. I'm always very interested in the search terms that bring people over to HOTCOL. I'll warn you that part of today's edition is possibly NSFW.







SPOILER SPACE







Warminster, Pennsylvania arrived from google.com on "Hairballs on the Carpet of Life" by searching for dessert hairball recipe.

This had me really puzzled and a bit queasy at first, but I found a Halloween recipe for a Hairball Salad With Saliva Dressing . I'm going to assume that this person had an actual dessert in mind and will not be chowing down on what the cat coughed up.

Sunnyvale, California arrived from google.com on "Hairballs on the Carpet of Life: Gagstastic emails part V" by searching for wife hairball vagina.

Wow! I mean, um... gee....


*stares at wall and blinks rapidly*


Um, did you actually have sex ed, or are you just making it up as you go along?


*stares at wall and blinks rapidly again*


So...um... do you insert them?


Do you tape them on like some bizarre version of a merkin?


Please tell me that your wife doesn't pretend to give birth to them?


Just how drunk or high does one have to be to get to a place where this sounds like a good thing to do?


You know, I've cleaned up my fair share of hairballs and I can honestly say that I've never once looked at one and thought...

Flashback Friday!

Here's a few mysteries that I recently added to my DVD collection. There's a link under each movie to its IMDB page with pictures and other information about each film.


Murder On The Orient Express- 1974


Murder By Death-1976


Death On The Nile-1978


Evil Under The Sun-1982




Have a good weekend!!

Notice/Retro Music: THM-SRTE

Just a reminder that I am going to be gone for a couple of weeks. Today is the first day of The Hairball Multi-State Road Trip Extravaganza.

Since I missed Flashback Friday, here's a few songs before I go:



Low Rider by War



Convoy by C.W. McCall



Rockin' Down The Highway by The Doobie Brothers



Ventura Highway by America



On The Road Again by Willie Nelson

Goodbye!! *dabs at eyes and waves*

Retro Music: Cruisin' in the Olds...

My friend Joe of the blog 70s-Child, did a post about 8-Track tapes last Friday. While reading the comments, I remembered the free 8-Track tape that came with the Oldsmobile my parents bought. This is the only song I remembered from that tape, and it's been playing in my head since last Friday. Mr. Hairball is getting very tired of me singing this song. *grins*


For those of you on dial-up who can't do YouTube, here's the lyrics.



Hues Corporation - Rock the Boat


Would you believe that someone is selling what appears to be the same tape on Ebay?

Flashback Friday- Potluck Edition

Just a heads up that my posting is going to continue to be sporadic for the rest of the summer. I had planned to do more posts this week, but I hurt my arm earlier this week and yesterday was the first day I felt like trying to type.

I've also got The Hairball World Tour coming up in a couple of weeks. Okay, "World Tour" is not quite right, lets say The Hairball Multi-State Road Trip Extravaganza. According to Mapquest, it looks like it will be about 1800 miles (2,896.82 kilometers) round trip. Reserve your tickets now! *grins*




Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell- Ain't no Mountain High Enough



The 5th Dimension - Wedding Bell Blues



Gladys Knight & The Pips- Midnight Train To Georgia



Golden Earring - Radar Love



Loverboy- Working For The Weekend



Rick Springfield- Jessie's Girl



Have a good weekend everyone!

Have you called her?

Sorry about the condition of the first two pictures. The pamphlet is part of the stuff that belonged to my late grandmother and none of her old cookbooks and papers were stored properly.


Do you think we should tell him that she's right behind him? Perhaps he knows that already since the two phone receivers are connected by the same cord.




So you haven't bought a gift yet for your mother? How about a snazzy new phone? ( Click to enlarge to read about phone technology in 1975!)



Here's a great gift to go along with her new "telephone answering set". *laughs* You're going to have the rap song stuck in your head like I do!



These "reach out" commercials always got to me. I can remember watching TV with Mama Hairball and we'd look at each other and both be crying when these came on. *sniff*

Happy Mother's Day to all of my readers who are mothers!
Whoot Shimmy Shimmy Whoot!

Flashback Friday!-Night Gallery

One of my favorite shows from the 70's is Night Gallery. I currently own the first two seasons and I am looking forward to buying the third when it is released. Seeing these shows on DVD is real a treat after watching some of the episodes that were altered for syndication.

Below are a few of my favorite episodes. I apologize for the length of these. If you are interested in watching these, you might bookmark this page of my blog so that you can watch at your own convenience.








I'm also a big fan of the pilot movie, and my favorite segment from that is The Cemetery. Unfortunately, I have been unable to locate a video of this online that doesn't have some kind of audio problem. Hulu doesn't have the pilot in their collection of Night Gallery episodes.

Have a good weekend everyone!

Food posts, weather, etc...

I just looked over my recent posts and realized that I have not done any food posts this week. I haven't really cooked all that much lately. I've kinda been in a funk. Maybe it's the heat. The local weatherdude is predicting that Friday's high will be 102F/39C. I am going to try and get my grocery shopping and errands done before noon tomorrow to escape the worst of it.

I did make a pork roast earlier in the week, but I think the recipe needs more work before I do a post about it. Mr. Hairball for the third week in a row, asked me to make him some brownies. I think he's in a rut or something! Anyway, I used some of that Hershey's special dark cocoa that Kelly of Evil Shenanigans recommends, and I was very pleased with the results. I also made some baked mac and cheese, but I've already blogged about that too. Perhaps next week will be better in terms of food posts!

Flashback Friday is already set up in the queue for a trip back to the 70's.

See you then!

Putting the word out

I'm a big believer in putting the word out when I need something or have a question. If you start to think about all of the people you know and all the people those people know, etc... you very soon have a large pool of knowledge/resources to draw from.

I inherited my grandmother's 1961 Singer sewing machine with a nice big cabinet that the machine folds down into. (It's the 503A model for those of you who are into vintage sewing machines.) A few moves ago, I had neglected to remove the machine from the cabinet before moving day so this task was accomplished about 30 seconds before the cabinet was loaded into the back of the U-Haul. I handed the screws off to Mr. Hairball who tucked them into his shirt pocket. Well, the screws got lost somewhere between state A and state B and were never found again. The machine is still usable but, without the screws to hold it into place, I can't fold it down into the cabinet so that the top of the cabinet can be used for another purpose. Currently, the machine is setting on the floor of our study/craft/kitty/whatever room so that I can use the top of the cabinet to store my beads.

Has anybody out there had to replace these screws and can I just get something from the hardware store or is there something rather unique about these screws that would make that difficult? I'm feeling kinda paranoid about just trying this on my own without knowing somebody else who successfully replaced the screws. I'm really scared that my machine will fall out of the cabinet and be damaged!

Here's some pictures to help illustrate what I am talking about.



I took all my beading stuff off of the top so you can see better. That's a cat bed underneath.LOL


Here's a closeup of the top. Sadly the cabinet has accumulated a little damage over the last 48 years!



If you remove the piece with the round circle in the middle, you will find these hinges folded down. There are holes on the back of the machine these hinges fit into and then a screw holds each one in place. If you look closely, you can see that they have a flat part on them where the back of the screw sits after being tightened down. Obviously, the screws need to be the kind that do not end in a point.Click to enlarge the picture if you find it hard to see what I'm talking about.

Now for a quick story.

I loved Barbie dolls back in the 70's and would frequently bring them with me when we would go visit someone. Because of this, my late grandmother discovered that Barbie dolls did not come with undergarments. She was most disturbed by this revelation. I guess she thought that playing with dolls that didn't wear underwear would be a bad influence on me or something. She decided that we really needed to make Barbie some undergarments. Somehow I convinced her that since Barbie was made of hard plastic it was okay that she went commando underneath her fancy dresses and pantsuits. She'd still bring it up every so often that we needed to get in the sewing room and make my dolls some undergarments. LOL Even though we were at odds over Barbie's lack of undies, she did teach me to sew some very simple outfits for my dolls. I have some very nice memories of making doll clothes with her. :)

Designer Snuggies for all!!

I am obviously not watching nearly enough TV to have missed this wonderful development in Snuggie technology. Whoot!


Wookies back in '78 were rocking their Snuggies!! Advance it to 4:24 to see the Snuggie content.


If you prefer to see the whole thing in all its glory, here you go. The original commercials are included which is kinda fun. At about 42:00 there's a commercial for the ILGWU that I remember very well.

Hat tip to the folks at Ridiculous Infomercial Review for this important Snuggie update.

Stop putting old songs I like on commercials!!

I saw a Tums commercial this past weekend featuring this song.



I like this song and it really bugs me to now think of antacids whenever I hear it. Thanks a lot GlaxoSmithKline!

* Goes off to find some antacid not made by these clowns.*

Flashback Friday!

Sorry about the ads that play before the NBC clips.









I apologize for the length of these two clips. If you just want to see "the dress in the window" scene, go down to part II. The scene starts at about 3:20.


Part II


Have a good weekend everyone!

Flashback Friday!

Here's some of the products and TV shows I'll never forget from the 70's.

Slinky


Mary



Kool Aid


George and Wheezy

Jeffersons Opening TV Theme - Amazing videos are here


McDonalds


Bob and Emily

Bob Newhart Show Opening Theme - The most amazing videos are a click away

Enjoli


Evans family Sorry, I can't find a high quality video that I can embed!

Pringles



M*A*S*H


Coca-Cola


WKRP in Cincinnati






Have a good weekend everyone!