Medium Cool is a weekly series related to popular culture, mostly film, TV, and books, with some music and games thrown in. We hope it’s a welcome break from the anger, hate, and idiocy we see almost daily from the other side in the political sphere.
Arguments welcomed, opinions respected, fools un-suffered. We’re here every Sunday at 7 pm.
So the other day the show I was watching while I walk on the treadmill ended sooner than expected, and I ended up poking around randomly so I could finish my treadmill time for that day.
I found a show called Countdown. I’m enjoying it, and I like the characters, and of course the bad guys are very, very bad.
Tonight I thought maybe we could talk about shows, movies, music, hole-n-the-wall restaurants, books, comic books, poetry, etc – anything cultural that you stumbled upon without anyone recommending them to you.
Maybe we can find some gems in there!
Let’s go, who wants to start us off?
In case you are new to Medium Cool, these are not open threads.
Emmy Awards & Red Carpet Thread (actual awards at 8 pm ET, the red carpet starts now)
Dr Daniel Price (Saint Vincent)
The most accidental? The Red Green Show, decades before we emigrated closer to Possum Lake.
Phylllis
A Christmas Story. It was playing at the mall when I was home from college for Thanksgiving in 1983. I hadn’t heard a thing about it, but found myself drawn to the poster. ‘Hey, it’s the Nightstalker! Hey, it’s the chick from Slap Shot! Hey, its the…director of Porky’s?’ Ok, I’ll give it a go. Only a handful of people in the theater & we all laughed our asses off.
bjacques
In 1978, freshman year in high school, and my Dungeons & Dragons gang entered a road rally, but some of us couldn’t find the starting point, so we went to a movie theater instead. The movie playing was Animal House. I had seen the ads for it in the National Lampoon that I’d started buying a few months earlier but didn’t really know anything about it. I was barefoot for some reason, so my friends crowded around me as we went in. Also only 14 and the movie had an R rating I think. When we came out, my jaw hurt from laughing so hard.
Peke Daddy
Buckaroo Bonzai, Last Days of Man On Earth.
Melancholy Jaques
I’m pretty sure this show has been discussed here before, probably several times, but I definitely stumbled upon The Bureau, the French spy thriller show. It was one of those times I was looking for something else, saw the title, and gave it a whirl. It is one of the best shows of its genre I’ve ever seen.
WaterGirl
@Melancholy Jaques: French as in subtitles because they are speaking in French? Or French as in it’s about a French spy?
Phylllis
Ah yes, the days when tween/teenagers strolled in to R-rated movies of any ilk and no one paid a damn bit of attention.
JoyceH
In the 80s, I was working on my masters degree and had a final the next day. I had a paperback I’d got at the bookstore because the blurb was intriguing, told myself I’d read a couple chapters and then buckle down to studying. Well, I sat there and read that book until I got to the end, never studied at all. Next day I took the final, could tell walking out that I’d aced it. Came home and read the book again. Replay, by Ken Grimwood.
Splitting Image
I remember buying a bunch of Felt albums simply because I heard one of their songs playing in the CD store and had to have it. I seem to recall that it was “The Stagnant Pool”.
I used to listen to Top 40 radio back in the 1980s, so was often the first person in my circle to hear about a new band. I started listening to pop music just in time to hear the first albums by Cyndi Lauper and the Eurythmics. Still love them. As an adult, it’s hard to think of any music that I didn’t get at least some recommendations before I got into it. It’s difficult to discover John Coltrane without his reputation preceding him.
I’m not the most adventurous person anymore as far as my taste in books and movies are concerned. I feast or starve by good recommendations.
AM in NC
The wonderful French show Call My Agent (Dix Por Cent). Hubby and I were looking for a new show to watch and thought it looked like it might be ok. It was wonderful – funny, quirky, and we were so sad when we finished it. We came to really care about the characters. One of the few shows that everyone I recommended it to adored (even people who don’t like to read subtitles).
Citizen Dave
Similar to #1 and #2, I stumbled on Red Green and Christmas Story. Only watched a handful of Red Green, though. I like it, but an older work friend had the same contraction attitude and he would talk my ear off at work, so I never needed more from entertainment.
I truly stumbled onto Elvis Costello’s Trust album back in the day in the record store. With Rolling Stone one usually knew when new stuff came out, but Trust seemed to appear with no notice. Of course in that period Elvis had a new one every 6 months it seemed.
Math Guy
When I was a gradual student I lived two blocks from the movie theater. Needing a break, I walked over to see what was showing. Some movie I’d never heard of was going to start in 5 minutes so I bought a ticket. The Shawshank Redemption is one of the best movies I’ve seen.
Hungry Joe
Went to hear some band at Winterland (San Francisco). I’d never heard of the opening act: The Allman Brothers.
And that’s why I can’t remember the name of the band I went to see.
HinTN
It’s not a hole-in-the-wall but if you’re ever in Everglades City the Rod and Gun Club produces really good food and they serve it on a spacious screened porch overlooking the waterway. Said waterway being how our later tour boat for the 10,000 Islands got from the dock to the Gulf. We wanted lunch in a place at the end of the world. Does it count that Mr Google’s Map told me it was there?
Scout211
Your typo just made me LOL. ;-)
Math Guy
@Scout211: Off and on for 12 years . . .
mrmoshpotato
I want tacos now. :)
JaySinWa
@Dr Daniel Price (Saint Vincent): I’ve got your Red Green accidents right here. 300 of them.
youtube.com/playlist?list=PLB90DDA45E8C2EF45
More stuff here at the online lodge;
redgreen.com/
BellaPea
Well, for restaurants, Adopo Pizza in Knoxville, TN is an out-of-this-world experience. They are not exactly unknown–been written up in several magazines–but boy! If you are a pizza lover this is your place. Also great charcuterie plates, we took six friends last year and just chowed down. As far as TV shows go, Your Friends and Neighbors with Jon Hamm was absolutely hysterical. I laughed out loud during several episodes and I don’t do that much these days. I’m sure all of you can understand why I don’t.
JaySinWa
I kind of stumbled into “Good Neighbors” aka “The Good Life” along time ago. My wife wasn’t impressed, but it may have influenced my early retirement decision.
imdb.com/title/tt0075511/
Craig
1988 I was at my parents house on some break from school (Thanksgiving?). Bored to death. Called my pal from school, she was bored. The paper had a list of music in downtown Richmond. We decided to go some band I’d never heard of, at least they were on a good label, 4AD, and figured they’d be an ok synth/industrial band. Me and Tina grabbed a couple of Black Labels, stood around with the other 15 people out on midweek night. The band were setting up and didn’t seem synthi. Marshall amp, Les Paul guitar, drums, Ampeg bass rig, Tubby singer. Then they started-exploded. And that’s how I met Pixies.
pluky
Iron Chef, the original Japanese version. If ever one needs a definition of camp.
WaterGirl
@Scout211: Not a typo. That phrase is quite common in this college town.
NeenerNeener
I grabbed Nine Princes In Amber by Roger Zelazny from a paperback rack in a drugstore back when I was in high school. Had never heard of him at the time, but loved the book and have reread it multiple times since, plus the subsequent books in the series. I made the mistake of loaning my first copy to my best friend’s boyfriend, and of course, never got it back after they split, so I had to buy it again. Now you can get the whole series in an omnibus edition, which I also own.
piratedan
sometimes you just have to thank the book artists that create just the right amount of whimsy in their art work for books, right now I am working thru the Dungeon Crawler Carl series because as I was surfing thru Amazon looking for new items to consume, be it music, books or games, I saw the cover and it twigged that…. “that might be fun” box for me…. on book 5 atm, just the right amount of anti-hero comedy and a sentient talking cat… so there’s that.
As for music, I’m finding stuff old and young….
youtube.com/watch?v=86EoVyhuvd4 – Beretta76 – Blue Sky
youtube.com/watch?v=KY1Ylxa57P4 – Cowsills – She Said to Me
sometimes you just never know who or what will speak to you, I just have to remember to listen more often.
WereBear
Midnight Mass, the miniseries on Netflix. Just watched It recently for the first time, and blew me away.
Deep for any movie, much less a monster one.
HinTN
@NeenerNeener: Amber is an amazing set of stories. My best friend read Zelazny in HS but I didn’t get around to him until I was in my 50s. Yowsah
Scout211
Oh. Thanks. I am out of the student loop I guess.
narya
I stumbled across Firesign Theater when I was rummaging through the records at the public library in my hometown.
HinTN
@narya: Antelope Freeway, one quarter mile…
ETA: Good on that liberry!
Craig
High School. Went out with my friends to get drunk and go to the dollar movie theater, didn’t matter what was playing. The movie was some weird funny Kung Fu magic movie. Big Trouble in Little China. What a blast. Great night.
NotMax
Hm.Only gonna list a few off the top of the ol’ noggin.
Filmwise, The Stunt Man, Who Is Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? and Little Big Voice.. (That last title is not a typo.)
TVwise, Wonderfalls and Big Wolf on Campus. (The latter filed under Guilty Pleasures.)
RevRick
I have to go way back in my time machine to think of shows that I chose without any priors. They would be The Avengers, The Prisoner, and Star Trek. Geek culture was not much of a thing back then, (the mid 60s) and those shows probably created it. But those were TV shows I wanted to watch without anyone telling me I ought to.
Mr. Bemused Senior
@HinTN: ah, Zelazny. I’m trying to recall the first story of his I read. Might be Lord of Light. Amber is great of course.
He collaborated with Alfred Bester, another of my favorite authors, on Psychoshop. Just the title and the authors gives you the idea.
NeenerNeener
@Mr. Bemused Senior: I see they’ve been kicking around a movie or tv show based on the Amber series since the late 90s. The last known holder of the rights was some production company owned by Stephen Colbert. Maybe now that he’ll be unemployed next year he’ll have some time to devote to that production company.
Craig
On an overnight High School trip to some government conference at UVA was watching TV with friends and was engrossed in some weird ass movie about hippies in space and an alien beachball. It was nuts. Took a couple of years(no Internet yet) to figure out it was John Carpenter and Dan O’Bannon’s Dark Star. O’Bannon would rewrite it as Alien.
kalakal
Back in 1990 tuned in to a (UK) TV show called Nightingales. Within 5 minutes I was laughing so hard it hurt.
A somewhat surreal comedy about 3 bored security guards with the night shift in a deserted office block. Great cast – Robert Lindsey, David Threlfall, and James Ellis with occasional guests – and some fantastic dialogue. Sadly it only ran for 2 seasons
Trivia Man
Bar in Chicago to see Trail of Dead. Opening act was La Femme, enjoyed them so much I went out looking for their work. Psychotropic Berlin is a fantastic album. Warning: cover art is NSFW
Trivia Man
@Phylllis: I was 18 but my friend was 17. We went to see Excalibur, I bought the tickets so he didn’t get carded. The ushers saw us go in, followed us and made us leave. Michigan in the early 80’s.
Trivia Man
In high school my musical tastes had recently shifted from Barry Manilow, Elton John, other AM radio top 40 stuff. I was into old school country and bluegrass music. I won a record album, pick one of 5. The only band I recognized was Black Sabbath (from a Cheech and Chong routine) so I walked out with Heaven and Hell. Loved it so when I got a Columbia Records subscription I got a couple others of theirs. Master of Reality and Black Sabbath changed the trajectory of my life. From there it was the Doors, Hendrix, and rock and roll. 3 years later I was managing a rock band in Los Angeles trying to make a million dollars. Spoiler: we didn’t.
frosty
We had an old tube radio in the 60s that could pull WBZ Boston all the way down to PA. I was the first among my friends to hear “Hey Little Cobra” by the Rip Chords.
The Stingrays and Jags were so far behind
I took my Cobra out of gear and coasted ‘cross the line.
Melancholy Jaques
@WaterGirl:
Both.
HinTN
I bought Jefferson Airplane Takes Off from a bin with no knowledge of who or what they were. Liked it quite well. Then came Surrealistic Pillow and my teenage mind was blown.
eclare
I saw my first Coen brothers film in college at a midnight screening. Blood Simple. I have loved every movie that they did ever since.
Laura
Way back in the mid-seventies before my senior year of high school I happened to turn on the tv to see a summer variety show called The Manhattan Transfer. As someone who loves singing (not that I am especially good), I fell in love with the vocal group. To this day they rank only below Steely Dan in my list of favorites.
Another happy accident for me tvwise is seeing a series description that sounded so bonkers to me that I streamed it. And yes, even though it was violent I loved it. If violence doesn’t turn you off, give Banshee a try.
A
Trivia Man
Early days of ESPN, I was always up late and I stumbled across Australian Football. Great highlights package every week, wildly entertaining. Later I found a local team and played for about 5 years. There is a team that practices right around the corner from me, I tried last year and played a couple games but my age is catching up to me. Get ready for the Grand Final! Just a couple more weeks!
eclare
@JoyceH:
Whoa. I have not thought about that book in a long time.
Trivia Man
I used to rummage in the bargain bins at Wherehouse Records, found several for $1 but the one I listened to most was Gap Mangione. Chuck’s older brother. Eventually I wore it out and I have never seen it again. Even online, it seems to be non-existent. White cover with some colorful line drawsings. And a track Hill Where the Lord Hides.
Dmkingto
@Hungry Joe: I may have mentioned it previously, but my eldest sister worked part time for Bill Graham in mid-late 70s – including being in charge of the “down” staircase for the Last Waltz at Winterland. Her boyfriend that she moved to SF with ended up being one of Graham’s top guys. One of their friends was the guy almost beaten to death by Jon Bonham, Peter Grant, and John Bindon after one of Zepplin’s shows that Graham put on in Oakland.
New Deal democrat
Way back in the Cretaceous period when I was a teenybopper, I was a big fan of The Doors. Not just the lead singer, mind you, but the entire band. In fact, the thing I always wanted to listen to over and over was Ray Manzarek’s keyboards.
Well, a few weeks ago I was going down a few random rabbit holes when I was served a YouTube offering of a 2012 tune called, “Break N a Sweat,” by a young electromic musician who goes by the stage name Skrillex – in collaboration with The Doors.
Huh?!? In 2012? What on earth are they talking about?
Turns out Skrillex’s parents were also big Doors fans, and as a little boy he became one too. So when he signed up for a project for new and classic artists to get together, he knew who he wanted to collaborate with.
And all three remaining musicians agreed to it.
So he plays the electronic track, and while guitarist Robbie Krieger inquires as to how fast the beat is, Ray Manzarek says, “Well, okay, let’s go back to square one . . Give me a tempo like this….” And in less than a minute proceeds to lag down a classic Doors keyboard riff that becomes the hook to the entire finished song.
And I heard my first infectious Doors melody in over 40 years.
Here’s the actual improv session I refer to above:
reddit.com/r/cringe/comments/4iuz4t/skrillex_collaborating_with_the_doors_the_doors/
And here is the finished electronic collaboration:
reddit.com/r/EDM/comments/10udtw5/skrillex_the_doors_breakn_a_sweat/?chainedPosts=t3_4iuz4t
mrmoshpotato
Pollster is a concert-listing website that I used to check on weekly. They had (have?) everything – from national tours to tribute bands who were coming to town to bands performing at summer street fests.
Over many years I would keep seeing a band coming to town whose name I thought was hilarious – not a tribute band or street fest band.
Hot Tuna
I eventually looked into who they were when they were going to be playing the Old Town School of Folk Music.
Oh! A band formed by members of Jefferson Airplane! 🤯 I gotta get a ticket; there is no way this show can’t be bad!
It was an acoustic show with just Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady. (I don’t remember them having a drummer with them.)
AND IT WAS AWESOME!
Just look at that parking lot
I remember when taking road trips, first with my parents going to see relatives and later on when I was older just driving somewhere, maybe for school, a new job or just to go somewhere, twisting the dial to the radio to see what could be picked up. Way before Bluetooth, satellite radio or even cassette players. You might find a top 40 station or crop reports on the price of wheat and corn or maybe get to listen to a half of the local high school football game. Across the South & Midwest I was preached at quite a bit. That sure didn’t take.
I don’t have any specific stories of any station or call letters to share, just thinking of the fun it was twisting the dial wondering what might come out of the speakers,
Trollhattan
An offhand comment about Letterkenny in Paste Mag had me seek it out (Hulu) and off I went, for an improbable 12 seasons of Northern Ontario hijinks and wordplay.
Now my gift to you. We owe SO much to funny Canadians, eh?
Another Scott
@Trivia Man:
Made me look again. ;-)
Archive.org has several of his albums. This one has the song but the cover doesn’t match your description.
(Audio samples only, unfortunately, but maybe it will help you track it down.)
Hope this helps!
Best wishes,
Scott.
zhena gogolia
@mrmoshpotato: I got tinnitus from them.
Trollhattan
@Hungry Joe:
My first Winterland show was John Mayall and Albert King opened. Mind=blown.
Once part of a video crew taping an Ambrosia show. Opening was some Irish outfit named U2.
Dmkingto
I randomly wandered into an Edward’s Theater near South Coast Plaza in Costa Mesa. It was where they showed arty or less mainstream films. Bought a ticket for Reservoir Dogs – for all I knew it was about dogs. Totally blew me away. It hadn’t hit big yet, no one I knew had heard of it or Quentin Tarantino.
And for a totally different cinema experience, I randomly saw Akira Kurosawa’s Dersu Uzala: The Hunter as part of an illicit double bill (in the days when multiplexes didn’t allow theater jumping). I think I had vaguely heard of Kurosawa from some film nerd friends, but I had never seen one of his films. I absolutely loved it, the cinematography was fantastic. Unfortunately, if I saw it today I imagine it would put me to sleep. No idea what the other movie was. One odd thing is I don’t know what state I saw it in (as in one of the 50 united states – not state of mind). I think I saw it on my way to or from a summer research project up at Mt. St. Helens in 1985, so probably Oregon or northern California (I drove up to St. Helens from Orange County).
eclare
@Just look at that parking lot:
I remember those days.
Tehanu
Browsing at the library when I was 14, the classic age, came across a book with a little man on the cover with some animals, opened it, read the first sentence,* felt something like a rocket going up inside my head, slammed the book shut and crushed it to my chest, ran to the checkout desk and checked it out. I’m now re-reading it for probably the 100th time.
* “When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.”
Trollhattan
@Melancholy Jaques:
+1 Thought it was a hoot.
Craig
@Trollhattan: that show is crazy. So much word play, and repetition. To Be Fair
HinTN
@Dmkingto: I rented Reservoir Dogs on vcr from my local beer store. Had no idea what was coming. Boy Howdy! Mrs H and I saw Pulp Fiction in a theatre. We were laughing hysterically, which was not how the rest of the patrons were responding.
Trollhattan
@Just look at that parking lot:
All my family road trips were in cars with an a.m. radio and 4 inch speaker controlled 100% by the parents. Seattle to Bumfuck Iowa and back can comprise a surprisingly large fraction of your young existence.
Trollhattan
@Craig: To be fair….
Confident I don’t need to tip Shorsey.
You’re goin’.
mrmoshpotato
@zhena gogolia: I got tinnitus from my first concert. Been using earplugs ever since.
rikyrah
Fashion Show illustrates that the past isn’t really the past, and it’s certainly not ancient history. https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP8SSwtfM/
Craig
@Trollhattan: pitter patter
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Back about 10 years ago, I stumbled upon an Elementary rerun on TV. A modern retelling of Sherlock Holmes, it stars Johnny Lee Miller as Sherlock and Lucy Liu as Dr. Joan Watson. I ended up watching the first 4 or 5 seasons, before dropping off from watching it. I remember liking it quite a bit and thought it had great chemistry between the two leads and was a great take on the Sherlock Holmes characters and stories
Melancholy Jaques
@HinTN:
Had the same experience with Pulp Fiction. My friends and I were laughing a lot. Walking out when the movie ended, we got a lot of looks from the others.
Craig
@Melancholy Jaques: I happened to be at the US premier of Pulp Fiction at the NY Film Festival. It’s a funny movie. During the Mia overdose/adrenaline shot scene there was screaming on the floor. Shouts for a doctor. Someone had a heart attack. Unsettling to say the least. The paramedics came, stabilized the guy and took him to the hospital. The ran the film back to the beginning of the scene and off we went. Strangest screening I’ve ever been at.
Dmkingto
@eclare: My brother turned me on to Blood Simple and the Coen brothers in 1992. I was telling him about Reservoir Dogs (see my comment above). One of the major studio releases that year was Unforgiven. It was touted as having an anti-violence message, despite copious violence. I thought Dogs did a much better job of that – particularly since most of the violence is off screen, but the after effects linger throughout the film. He recommended I see Blood Simple. So I went up to the video store and rented it. What a great film, and it does a great job of showing how violence spins out of control and its consequences.
mr perfect
Movies: A little gem called The Dancer Upstairs with then an unknown outside of Spain Javier Bardem having to solve the terrorist attacks of a Shining Path style revolutionary group while he and his superior are fending off government’s desire for the military to take over the investigation. Married to a woman from a wealthy family but a cold marriage, he finds himself attracted to his daughter’s dance instructor. You can feel the tensions rising throughout the movie. Hard to find nowadays.
TV: Keeping Up Appearances, a British comedy about living in a small English village and coming across as sophisticated and a cut above all others. Hyacinth Bucket (she pronounces her surname as Bouquet) comes across as highbrow to the exhaustion of her hen pecked husband and the village townsfolk yet tries to hide her working class roots and is frustrated with her two sisters supposedly lack of class, one who is married to a slob named Onslow. She brags about her rich sister but can’t explained her cross dressing brother in law. Comedy only the British could come up with.
Music: The Clash – Sandinista. This album followed the heavily influential London Calling and was called a magnificent failure. I don’t think so, while LC is a great rock’n’roll album, Sandinista is a great world music album which I believe gets better through time. Joe Strummer’s father was diplomat and Joe’s knowledge of what was happening with political struggles in what we call third world countries shows in his lyrics. If you haven’t listened to Sandinista or haven’t listen to it lately, give it a go. With six sides of music there is a lot of misses but also some great tracks.
Food: The President New Makri, Greece. I have been to Greek restaurants throughout North America and believe me, no one does it as well as the Greeks in Greece. The best we found was in a small seaside resort outside of Athens we called White Chairs but the real name is The President. At 230 lb I love my food yet this restaurant will feed you enough food to feed an army. Could never finish all they fed me. Too bad the hotel we stayed at near there didn’t have a refrigerator in suite.
Dmkingto
@HinTN: I did burst out laughing at one scene in Reservoir Dogs – and I was the only one in the theater laughing. It was the scene when 3 of them pull guns on each other – their stupidity just seemed hilarious to me.
Matt McIrvin
@RevRick: I remember one holiday in college I was back home with my parents watching their cable TV and stumbled across the Sci-Fi Channel when they were showing The Prisoner, and for some reason, I had not heard of the show before despite being a big science-fiction fan. I was immediately blown away by this strange thing.
Trivia Man
@Just look at that parking lot: The Albuquerque Dukes had a hell of a reach. More recently on early morning commutes in Wisconsin I picked up AM radio from Denver, Dallas, Louisiana, Detroit, and even Boston. Static for sure, but still fun to try and guess where it was from ads, traffic, and weather reports.
Trivia Man
@Another Scott: That’s the one, thanks. With no actual album name it is harder. I’ve found some of these brief mentions but not the full album. I must have mentioned it on here before, my memory is not what it once was. I have talked about it so seldom I just assume it is a new story to everyone. After 35 years I occasionally tell my wife a new story. But not often.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Matt McIrvin:
Reading about it on Wiki, sounds like it was ahead of it’s time, considering what most 60s television was like
Another Scott
@Trivia Man: 35 years is great! 😃
Archive.org let’s one “check out” books. I don’t know the details, but you might need an account to do things like that for the album.
Good luck!
[edit] it’s on eBay – ebay.com/itm/284804886726
Best wishes,
Scott.
Kayla Rudbek
@Tehanu: for me, it’s been Diane Duane, Lois McMaster Bujold, Jean Johnson, R.J. Blain. Duane, Bujold, and Johnson were library discoveries (I still remember that the first Bujold book I read was Mirror Dance which was on the new book shelves and it was in the middle of the series so I had to go back and get the rest to figure out who this Miles Vorkosigan person was).
Blain does her books in ebook first, so I don’t remember where/how I came across her books. I do love that in her books, stalker werewolves can have a bounty set on them, and the CDC is a very powerful organization (yes, there’s a ton of wish fulfillment in her books. They are romance books, they’re supposed to have plenty of wish fulfillment!)
And Linnea Sinclair wrote one of the best cyborg romances I’ve ever read, Games of Command.
PJ
Lodge 49. I can’t remember why I started watching it but I was hooked immediately – the combination of depiction of the decline of the middle class and enshittification of everything with esoteric mysticism totally won me over. Just great writing, acting, and direction, a real work of love. Best TV show ever. Which is not unrelated to why it was canceled after two seasons.
Trivia Man
@Another Scott: It wasn’t my imagination!
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): I’m guessing by what you wrote you haven’t seen the Prisoner. Yes, Patrick McGoohan was ahead of his time.
Do yourself a favor and watch it.
jimmy higgins
Anent the post title:
youtu.be/9roXS0b_Y5M?si=MkxIV43_ELHUBJ0O
stinger
@JaySinWa:
One of my favorite shows of all time! “Oh Fraulein, Oh Fraulein, Oh Fraulein, Oh Fraulein, Oh Fraulein, Oh Fraulein, Oh Fraulein.”
stinger
@Tehanu:
What a wonderful story! (And a wonderful story!)
rikyrah
Is COUNTDOWN finished?
Was the latest episode the cliffhanger?
Jacel
Film Serendipity: In the later 1980s I was visiting a former coworker and her husband in New Hampshire. After I flew in and got to their house they turned on the TV to check the weather and it was on (a Canadian channel) to start with and for the next two hours a slow paced movie hooked us all. I still have no idea of the title (this was over the air TV) but the plot involved a small company in a Western province being squeezed by a corporation run by the “big boys in Toronto”. While trying to figure if they had any way of keeping their independence, the small company’s finance people came up with a way that they could solve their problem by forcing the far bigger corporation to be bought by them. My friends and I at some point looked at each other and exclaimed, ‘THEY’RE INVENTING THE LEVERAGED BUYOUT!” The film might have been titled “Leverage”.
Music Serendipity: In the late 1960s, there was a wonderful and witty classical music show on Berkeley’s KPFA radio station, which was aired a little after I needed to leave for school. So I set up a reel-to-reel tape recorder to capture “The Tuesday Morning Club” show. One morning, the host (pianist Julian White) hadn’t showed up, so the station’s engineer filled the hour by putting on the station’s advance copy of “The Beatles” (aka “White Album”). So when I came home that afternoon, I was able to listen to the latest Beatles album a week before its official release.
hueyplong
This is a bizarre “stumble” but it probably qualifies. I was reviewing hard copy bank documents in a class action case, one of the most boring things imaginable, in St Louis. After a leak break, I returned to where co-counsel was sitting and told them the guy at the next urinal looked exactly like Chuck Berry. One of them said it was Chuck Berry, a firm client, and asked me if I wanted to go see him play at a club that night and maybe hang out with him in his dressing room afterward.
And that’s how it played out. I have his autograph on the back of my social security card. Few days have played out more surprisingly.
Trivia Man
@Jacel: Fantastic story! I hope you invited friends over to listen.
NotMax
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
Mind blowing then, mind blowing now. On several streaming services.
Matt McIrvin
@NotMax: And perennially relevant.
I never saw the attempted remake with Jim Caviezel but it sounds like I didn’t miss much.
Matt McIrvin
@Trivia Man: I had not heard of TikTok-viral rap duo Flyana Boss until we saw them live opening for Janelle Monáe (this not being the kind of thing I naturally encounter), but I thought they were brilliant. Extremely raunchy and brilliant.
Matt McIrvin
I don’t know if it counts as a “recommendation” or not, but my introduction to my favorite author of all time, the Polish science-fiction luminary Stanisław Lem, was my mom grabbing a paperback of Cyberiad off of a drugstore shelf and giving it to me because the cover illustration made her think it was something I might like. She’d never heard of Lem and indeed thought he might have been the fictive creation of the “translator” (no, it was really translated from Polish, though it must have been a damn difficult job).
Miss Bianca
Way late to the game, but notable “stumbles” that come to mind for me are:
The Silver Metal Lover, by Tanith Lee – found in one of those weird little general store/gas station/souvenir shops on the AlCan as I was hitchhiking up to Alaska in the summer of 1984;
and Meeting of Minds, this weird Steve Allen PBS show that featured a “round table” of historical figures in a group discussion, that I found on our PBS channel as a teenager. (I didn’t know Steve Allen was a comedian *or* a musician till much ater in life! I thought of him as the straight man/interlocutor he was for this show!
stinger
@Miss Bianca:
I think he wrote those episodes, too! A genius talent!
eta: And composed the theme music for the series!
Shana
@AM in NC: We loved Call My Agent too
Kosh III
We’ve watched The Bucket Woman for years, it never gets old. “Our Daisy” was also in an ep of Doctor Who.