Good day to you, beautiful degenerates. Reverend Mayhem here, subbing in for the intrepid Horatio Cornblower. Grand Admiral Cornblower is currently on detached service with the Bey of Backscratchistan’s Navy.
We will preserve the time-honored Rites of The Mock Draft:
1. First come, first served, subject to my whims and fancies;
2. For now, please wait 10 picks or 30 minutes before making another one. That will be revised up or down depending on how much participation we get; and
3. Moderator Overlord Supreme (me) gets final word on what is allowed and what is Vile Heresy.
ON TO THE TOPIC!
I love Horatio’s Monday Mock Drafts, and so I briefly considered “Worst Substitutes and Fill-Ins”. However, after “Apple sauce for oil/butter/lard in any recipe,” “Sammy Hagar,” and “Me”, the list runs dry fairly quickly.
Then I considered “Best Replacements”- Harry Morgan for McLean Stevenson on M*A*S*H, Chocolate milk for regular on cereal, and of course “The Replacements” starring Keanu Reeves and Gene Hackman.
Finally, I considered something banal like “Best Sauce”, until I realized that some People Who Shall Remain Nameless would start arguing that enriched uranium is a sauce and it would rapidly descend into Anarchy.
So this weeks topic is:
Favorite Semi-Obscure Movie/TV/Book/Video Game!
I love The Replacements.
You can keep your Rocky IV and your Bull Durham and your Longest Yard. The finest sports comedy ever made was The Replacements.
Fuck you, watch Rocky IV again and tell me it’s not a comedy.
The Replacements barely broke even at the box office and critics were dismissive. It is largely forgotten today. But with Reeves, Hackman, Rhys Ifans and John Favreau, it is a classic. Weekend before the season starts, it always gets a watch.
So what obscure work of entertainment would you like to bring to the attention of the Seething Masses? Preach your gospel on this street corner.
Read this far too much as an impressionable young lad…
Has Balls chosen Psych yet? If not, I’ll choose Psych.
https://youtu.be/zmWJxA3TMeo
How do people NOT know about Psych???
Way too many people don’t know when I make references.
Considering how vociferously the Psych creator’s assistant complained about The Mentalist when I met her at jury duty, not nearly enough people knew about it.
This is getting REALLY esoteric, but does anyone remember a game for Sega Genesis that was essentially a Q*Bert clone, where you skated around cubes and it occasionally shouted “COME ON, BOYYY!” at you?
I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the game but remember it being a lot of fun.
Tangibly related to the Sega Genesis comment, I only beat Sonic 2 (back when consoles came with a game!) for the first time in college in the early 2000s because I had a genesis emulator which allowed me to save the thing and turn it off without having to start all over again
I discovered Led Zeppelin IV right around the time I got Sonic 2, so Sonic and Zep will forever be inextricably linked in my mind. Memory’s a funny thing that way.
Legend of Zelda (1986)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyMKWJ5e1kg&ab_channel=ZeldaDungeon
for Legend (1985)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=als5pGB3Tfg&ab_channel=JohnDoe
Goddamn, is Mia Sara gorgeous in this. And Link, is a FAR better character than Tom Cruise’s dumbass.
“Strangers With Candy” was always fun & twisted.
Debuts for both Amy Sedaris and Steven Colbert, I think…
F. Murray Abraham plays Stalin in a comedy about his bastard. I watched it then watched it again in the same sitting.
Everyone remembers Kids in the Hall but the show that followed was CODCO, which ran for a few years. Below is an example of a running skit whereby 3 older lady’s social life revolved around going to dead folk’s wakes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBe8aj5d-hI&ab_channel=GerryPorter
The line that I remember that still makes me laugh-“You had to slam the whiskey bottle on the breakfast table to get him out of bed in the morning but he wasn’t a real drinker.”
I’m going to go with another sports video game: Wayne Gretzky Hockey 2
The Sega hockey got all the love, but WGH2, while not much to look at, was the first hockey video game I remember where the players actually played their positions in a sort of sensible and realistic way. You could score goals in a variety of ways, there wasn’t One Secret Trick (although wraparounds were implausibly effective, they weren’t a sure thing).
Early Comedy Central staple:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvL90AKLRKE
Vegetarian vampire duck. I don’t know if they ever showed it here, but we loved this when we lived in Scotland.
https://youtu.be/g9ZVWMPuZ2c
I vaguely remember watching this as a kid.
It was on Nickelodeon along with Danger Mouse, which was another great show.
Danger Mouse was underrated
Every once in a very blue moon, for some reason, this theme song starts playing in my head..
I watched it a bit in high school — YTV showed it just before or after Doctor Who reruns.
Gonna take one more real quick, duck the rules – Duckman. Loved it so much bought the entire set on Bluray.
THATS a name I havent heard in a long time.
That’s good pickin’.
Wizardry 8 for PC. Great rpg, similar to the Might and Magic series, but you could actually have a ninja and a pirate in your team – AT THE SAME TIME!
Anyone recall The Jon Stewart Show 1993-95? I thought it was great and Stewart was really amazing and was stunned when he was taken off the air. The show would have been good for just the musical guests alone-acts and bands that just weren’t ever invited to play on other shows.
I always liked “Bob N’ Margret” even though it never caught on in the States. (I’ve heard it was more popular in Canada, though)
“Rocko’s Modern Life” was fun, too.
I loved that show along with Two Angry Beavers.
3. Need to add a video game to my roster, so I’ll take “Two Crude” aka “Two Crude Dudes”. It was a scrolling fighter game where you could pick up pretty much *anything* and use it as a weapon. One time my brother managed to pick up an enemy tank.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UErpVgQKRMI
Ok, it’s been half an hour and I’m disappearing into meetings for a while, so…
I don’t know what’s cool and what’s obscure, ESPECIALLY in terms of music, but i assume these guys are not well known, so I’ll go with EMEFE as my next pick:
https://youtu.be/EMqSjWfCzqs
For my second pick, I’m going with I Went Down, an Irish movie featuring Brendan Gleeson in a wonderfully funny role.
Have you watched Frank of Ireland? It’s got a pretty fun Brendan Gleeson cameo.
No, but now I’m going to look for it.
It’s on Amazon Prime. I really enjoyed it.
Dark comedy is hit and miss but I lost my shit several times watching Death To Smoochy for the first time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX81TTs2poI&ab_channel=PedroBenetone
I didn’t abide Smoochy…but Robin Williams dark as fuck here?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vjIBX5RrG4Q
I hated Smoochy the first time i saw it and then damn appreciated it a helluva lot more on the rewatch.
With my second pick, I will go with one of my all time favorite movies that has not been seen by enough folks, Baseketball
https://twitter.com/samstein/status/1417139099736096769?s=19
Whoops, wrong link, but fuck those guys too.
https://youtu.be/yFOvldn_IRw
1. Replacements was a great movie.
2. Rocky IV isn’t a comedy; it is a self-parody.
3. For draft pick: the novelization of Batman: No Man’s Land. If you are a comic book fan or a Batman fan, you should check it out.
“What if I’m a Bateman fan?”
For video games, I’m going with Earl Weaver Baseball.
I think it counts as obscure, because people wax nostalgic for Hardball! or RBI Baseball and others, but I rarely hear EWB mentioned.
And it was fantastic because it was an actual baseball simulator. It wasn’t for those players who wanted to get so good at button mashing that their entire team batted .650 with 80 HRs each, it was for those of us who wanted realistic scores and stats. It was also pretty customizable for its day — you could design your own ballparks, etc.
I also loved the “Earl’s advice” feature, and the Weaver quotes on the box. Earl was ahead of his time in appreciating that your most precious commodity in baseball is your 27 outs, and so you’d better think carefully before throwing one away on a sacrifice bunt or risking one on a steal attempt.
We bought our son a video game system called Turbo Grafyx 16, that claimed to be the first with 16 bits. It wasn’t really, was a modified 8 bit, but at the time it was a huge leap forward. It came with a game called Keith Courage in Alpha Zone, which was mad fun. Another good game was the Legendary Axe, and it had a great golf game too. I don’t think it did real well, because Sega Genesis came out right after it was released, with way better marketing. We still have it, and it’s still cool!
How obscure is obscure? Because I’d like to start with Dirty Work. And he’s definitely doing that dog.
https://youtu.be/Sczun-f_Uiw
Dirty Work totally counts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkvfo9cCTIM&ab_channel=TheEnforcerOS
It is definitionally impossible for Norm Macdonald to be in a bad movie. His presence may not make it great or even good, but at least ensures it rises to “interesting failure.”
I also love the Replacements.
Indeed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHsTlrOFULU
William S. Burroughs is really only known for Naked Lunch, which many feel is unreadable. The last few books he wrote, Cities of the Red Night, The Place of Dead Roads and The Western Lands constitute The Red Night Trilogy and are much more accessible. If you like blood, drugs, Westerns and a lack of sentimentality, they might be for you.
I feel like “blood, drugs and a lack of sentimentality” could have been an alternate motto for this site. Westerns can be made to work
Forever Knight.
Part of USA Network’s “Crime Time after Prime Time” lineup, it featured Geraint Wynn-Davies* as an 800-year-old vampire trying to redeem himself and become human again while working as a homicide detective in Toronto. A typical episode would have some current case Nick was working on remind him of something he’d encountered in his past, so the B story was usually flashbacks.
It certainly had its cheesy elements, and it’s best not to talk about the changes they made for Season 3. But it was one of the few shows that didn’t try to pass Toronto off as Generic City, U.S.A., had a great supporting performance from John Kapelos as Nick’s likeable but clueless partner Detective Don Schanke, and lots of whimsical touches like Nick driving a 1962** Cadillac convertible because it had a lot of trunk space in case he was stuck away from home when the sun came up, and his former vampire master being a creepy late night talk radio dude.
*-The pilot actually had Rick Springfield in the title role
**- I am told that while it was referred to as a ’62 in the show, they actually used ’61s, but I am not a car guy
#3 A low budget indie film that most probably have never heard of:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Hw4bAUj8A
Amazing it lasted this long.
Never heard of it, but it looks like it would be scary if you let yourself buy into it and dumb if you went in all cynical and too cool for school.
Just kidding. That movie scared the shit out of me.
Too mainstream.
Low Gravity Man for NES. Fairly simplistic, linear game but it had the added features of up and down. Played it a ton.
That and Blaster Master.
2. The Stoned Age. A silly little film that would probably not hold up well in a rewatch, but featured an extremely young Clifton Collins Jr. (the ONLY person from this film you will have ever heard of) and a KILLER soundtrack.
This is a great pick! To this day, my friends refer to random dudes as Tack.
Also, Torrance!
Pirate Radio – North America, or The Boat That Rocked – Europe
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1131729/
Solid movie; great soundtrack. It’s like the Cornetto trilogy had a baby with Bridget Jones, but without Pegg or Witherspoon.
Plus, Rhys Ifans.
Excellent value pick
Formula 51, aka The 51st State. Samuel L. Jackson. Robert Carlyle. Rhys Ifans (again). Emily Mortimer and MEAT LOAF.
LIIIIVERPOOOOL! LIIIIVERPOOOOL!
NES Ice Hockey.* My All Skinny Guys lineup had a run comparable to the 60s Boston Celtics.
* Obscure for the Caribbean, old as fuck fir everyone else, I guess.
Oh, that was a fun game. The way you could hold your shot, and the longer you held before releasing the harder it would go.
I’d like to thank the good Reverend for so capably filling in while I drink beer and margaritas and eat far too much in a tropical paradise.
I’ll jump in quickly and take Better Off Ted. Not sure it,’s exactly obscure around these parts, but it was a great show and deserved more than it got.
And with that, to the pool!
My grandparents had a PC, like the most archaic imaginable (Commodore 64). I used to play Kickman until my brains leaked out of my ears. It was pretty much that or Family Feud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KUfjPRL1txc
For a brief moment — summer of ‘02, I think — MTV broadcasted a show called 3 South about a couple losers entering their college freshman year.
I don’t have any particulars to share, it was just a pretty fresh animation comedy for the moment that is really probably helped by its brief existence.
My siblings and I always did that “bunny ears” thing behind each others’ heads, too.
I don’t know if I have a picture of me and my sibs that doesn’t have bunny ears!
MTV is so terrible now, and they’ve had so many incredible shows. The State, Sifl and Ollie, Wonder Showzen… the list goes on and on.
#2 going with a videogame. Obscure now, but not at peak:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_%26_Conquer:_Red_Alert_2
I have this installed on my laptop and will still play skirmishes.
Damn I loved Red Alert 2. One of the few PC games I’ve ever enjoyed.
Dollman – introduced me to the great Tim Thomerson
Yes, I know it was after Trancers, but for some reason I did not see that one till after I had seen this movie.
1. Sledge Hammer!
Hard to imagine the networks even taking a <i>meeting</i> to hear the pitch for this show, let alone produce two seasons’ worth of episodes.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sledge_Hammer!
why don’t you caaaaaallllll his name?
Solid pick!
“Go Farther In Lightness” by Gang of Youths.
Just a terrific mix of good old-fashioned heart-on-the-sleeve, earnest, Springsteen-ian rock n’ roll with a healthy dose of Australian cussin’ mixed in.
https://open.spotify.com/album/0leVOEw8L2TnAfLGwkFnab?si=mrw6r_ekRMeEu3jw4KgbAg&utm_source=copy-link&dl_branch=1
“Straight To Hell” was an absolute mess of a movie that featured Joe Strummer, Grace Jones, Elvis Costello, Dennis Hopper, Courtney Love and several other movie folks wandering about the desert and even in front of the camera now and again!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKmFR7kbB1I&ab_channel=TrailerTrash1978
While we’re on the topic of mock drafts: https://www.capfriendly.com/expansion-draft/seattle
The Night Stalker with Darren Mcgavin. 70’s TV at its finest. Decades before A Christmas Story too.
Oh, that was good! Kolchak? Was that his name?
That is correct!
“Get a Life!” on Fox. Perhaps the weirdest show ever put over the airwaves (relative to the times, anyway).
Hey, it was no “Herman’s Head,” but it was entertaining nonetheless.
good choice!
Night After Night with Allan Havey. Loved that show.
I almost suffered a seizure after seeing Havey pop up in Mad Men as the squarest guy ever.
Kelly’s Heroes. Oft forgotten in Eastwood’s repertoire. The amount of talent in this movie is amazing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AEj3LA2vSo
YES
Dead Man (1995), starring Johnny Depp, Gary Farmer, Lance Henriksen, Michael Wincott, Crispin Glover, and a few other notables. Directed by Jim Jarmusch.
It’s a weird, quiet chronicle of a nebbish accountant who journeys into the heart of darkness in the Wild West. Soundtrack is basically just Neil Young fucking around on his guitar. It’s dark, slow, and brooding and I love it.
https://youtu.be/nn2nQMfLqwg0
Yes! Plus Robert Mitchum as the scariest boss ever. That movie is wonderful.
Since this is not a pick, and “Serpico” is a yoooge movie.
Yes, officer Serpico’s integrity is otherworldly, but he has to be the movies’ top +1 at a party. Cop with long hair who cozies up to hippies and other Village bohemian types is
A
Ma
ZING.
I remember that I used “Serpico23” as a handle waaaaayyyyyy back in like, aol chat halcyon interweb days.
The “23” for Bernard Gilkey, obvs
This movie is the comic and Southern baseball culture classic that every goddamned body else thinks Bull Durham is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI7qnrfNvQw
I have not thought about that movie in a LONG time.
Stud Cantrell would fit in the Clubhouse – fuck ’em if they can’t take a joke
Oooh, this is a good topic! I’m going to go with Eurotrip.
A pre-Justified Jacob Pitts, the gorgeous Michelle Trachtenberg, a super catchy tune about infidelity, and the worst twins ever. What’s not to love?
Eurotrip was hilarious. I showed it to a few of my friends and the only comment besides laughter was, “Man, they were NOT shy about tits in that movie.”
Scotty Doesn’t Know remains both my favorite in-movie original song AND favorite cameo
Morton & Hayes. Too good.
Morton & Hayes 1st Episode Introduction (Rob Reiner) – YouTube