When I put together the list of the top 10 TV couples for my Valentine’s Day post, I had to leave someone out. And one of the last couples to be cut was Darrin and Samantha Stephens from Bewitched. Samantha was so in love, after all, that she didn’t even notice when Darrin was abducted by aliens and replaced by an entirely different person!
But anyway, I feel bad about leaving them out, so today’s Minisode Monday feature is Bewitched. This one features Dick York (the first Darren), as he tries to deal with the latest witchcraft-caused disaster to befall his family. Hilarity ensues, as always.
With last night’s Lost season premiere, time travel is all the rage in pop culture. But what do you get when you combine time travel with history and humor? Why, Peabody and Sherman, of course! They are intrepid time-travelers whom every child should know.
This week’s Hulu Hump Day video takes us back to the era of Don Juan. And to a time on television when an entire 5-minute segment could be nothing but an elaborate build-up for one of Peabody’s horrible puns. Watch and enjoy.
Just because this blog is about pop culture, doesn’t mean I don’t enjoy the finer things in life. I just want the finer things in life delivered to my living room on a television. Take painting: you can have your Picasso and your Rembrandt, but I prefer the world’s first and finest TV painter, Bob Ross.
Not only did Ross introduce thousands to The Joy of Painting, but he also helped fuel tens of thousands of peaceful afternoon naps with his laid-back PBS show. And his descriptions of “happy little clouds” and “happy little trees” remain a part of the language even today. Your kids needs to know Bob Ross for that reason alone. So here is a Bob Ross video for a new generation, combining painting and snowboarding. I dare you not to fall asleep.
Hey, hey, hey! Thanks to websites like Hulu, our children can experience important parts of pop culture history firsthand. It’s like teaching them to review primary sources for a history paper — without having to teach them to load a roll of microfilm into one of those annoying machines.
So I think part of my job for Pop Literate is to dig through the vast video archives of Hulu to bring you and your kids pieces of pop culture history. Today’s featured Hulu video: Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. In this clip, the kids use the wonders of live theater to take on the societal blight of graffiti. (After you’ve watched the clip, you’ll have the option of watching the entire episode.)
Minisodes are a great way to make kids more pop literate, in the time it would take them to find a clean pair of socks on their bedroom floor. The Minisode Network takes classic TV shows and distills them down to about 5 minutes. And that’s not as easy as it sounds, because the opening credits of some shows were like 3 1/2 minutes long.
For my first Minisode Monday, I’m offering an episode of Green Acres. If your children know only one ditzy Hungarian blonde, it should be Eva Gabor. Zsa Zsa got the men, but Eva got the comedic chops.
Incidentally, the little boy in the alien outfit is Buddy Foster, who you may recognize from such other roles as Mike Jones (The Andy Griffith Show), Wolf Boy (The Six Million Dollar Man), and Boy in Car (Foxes). Oh, and he’s also the brother of Jodie Foster, someone your kids might actually recognize.
Welcome to Hulu Homework, wherein I pick a classic clip and give you, my dear readers, an assignment. Today’s clip comes from Alfred Hitchcock Presents, one of the great TV dramas of all-time. And it features two actors, each of whom starred later in TV shows with their character name in the title. One of them may even be known to your children from a recent run on a reality series.
Your assignment:
1. Identify the actors.
2. Name the shows in which their character name appeared in the title.
3. Name the reality show on which one recently appeared.
Leave your answers in the comments. And no peeking. And if you want to watch the whole episode, you can do it here.
It’s Grammy day! And even though Pants on the Ground was released too late to be nominated, there will still be a lot of bumping and grinding (and maybe a little incidental singing) going on tonight.
While you wait, here’s a list of the Top Ten Grammy Moments to show your kids. They include a brief video from 1984, when Michael Jackson took home 8 awards and took off his sunglasses for Katharine Hepburn.
An old friend wonders how he is supposed to motivate a 13-year-old, when he himself is “stuck somewhere between my ambition and inertia.”
I think we all know how he feels. After a long day of feeling unmotivated to get out of bed, unmotivated to work, unmotivated to stop working long enough to eat lunch, and unmovitated to finish the day strong, most of us hardly have any energy left at all to motivate someone else.
The good news is that I’ve found a simple tool that will do the motivating for you, while helping make your kids more pop literate. It’s 40 Inspirational Speeches in 2 Minutes. If you don’t come away from this video ready to paint your face, grab a spear, stick your head out the window, and rush onto the football field to bring the state championship home to little Hickory, there’s something seriously wrong with you.
There’s a little game going around Facebook where people change their profile photos to the insanely good-looking celebrities they’ve “been told they look like.” It’s a travesty, of course — who’s going to change their profile picture to the guy from My Name Is Earl?
Anyway, in the course of this Facebook activity, a fan of Pop Literate discovered that one misguided little waif has grown up without any knowledge of Laverne and Shirley. Somewhere, Boo Boo Kitty is crying real tears.
But I am here to educate, not to condemn. And thus, I present the opening of the greatest buddy show of all-time. (You can see not one, but two pairs of iconic buddies in this clip: Laverne & Shirley, and Lenny & Squiggy. I somehow never noticed that they are both “L & S” names until just now.)
Note to children: Laverne helpfully labeled her clothing with a giant script “L,” to differentiate herself from Shirley. They do still teach you to read cursive, don’t they?
With all the talk of Jay and Conan and Dave, it’s easy to forget that your kids may not have the foggiest idea who Johnny is. And that’s a crying shame, because Johnny Carson is the consummate American pop icon. He not only became a major part of pop culture in his own right, but his comedy helped shape how we viewed the rest of pop culture.
There’s lots of Johnny to show your kids, but this clip is a classic. And now that we don’t get to see it every 5 years on a Tonight Show Anniversary Special, it’s likely your kids have never seen it at all. And nothing makes kids laugh like comedy about private parts, so you know they’re gonna love it.
