(today's zomby) AND A REALLY NEAT REMIX OF THE "PARKS & REC" THEME SONG!

And as promised, here is a really neat remix of the Parks & Recreation theme song entitled "Hampden Park" by E-Dubble.

(today's zomby) AND THE MOURNFUL, TALKY MUSIC OF RED SOVINE!

Yes, today's cartoon is rather shamelessly "of the moment," so I thought I needed something decidedly un-trendy, even anti-trendy to balance it out...

That'll do nicely, Red.

Red Sovine (1918-1980) (awesome real name: Woodrow Wilson Sovine) was a popular West Virginia-born country singer of the 1960s and 1970s who specialized in making incredibly depressing songs about death and heartbreak, often involving truck drivers. Many of Red's most famous songs were "recitations," i.e. spoken-word pieces which combined a narrative poem with a musical backing. In fact, Sovine dubbed himself the King of the Narrations. Like many, I discovered Red's unmistakable work thanks to a frequently-aired TV commercial for a posthumous greatest hits album:



You can see how a commercial like that might stick in a person's mind. It's hard to imagine someone like Red Sovine making it in the slick, image-obsessed world of country music today. That's a lot of what I like about the guy, as shamelessly sentimental and hokey as his records might seem. He made more conventional C&W recordings, but to really know Red Sovine is to listen to his recitations. Here's his most famous and successful record, "Teddy Bear," a song whose narrative is so pitiful (handicapped boy with dead trucker father and poverty-stricken mother) as to put Charles Dickens himself to shame.



You think that's sad? Dig this next one. (And listen for a reference to zombies at the 3:20 mark.)

(today's zomby) AND TOM HANKS RAPS!

And speaking of bizarre iterations of classic American TV shows...

Hop hop pioneers Dan Aykroyd and Tom Hanks

Admit it. You probably don't think about the 1987 film version of Dragnet with Dan Aykroyd. and Tom Hanks all that often do you? I probably think about it more often than most people, since it was the only Hollywood movie premiere I've ever witnessed. I was an impressionable Midwestern kid on vacation in California with my family, and our tour group just happened to be driving by when the stars were arriving for the premiere. The bus driver stopped and let us watch as the stars got out of their limos and walked to the theater. To me, it seemed like a big deal. As a souvenir, my parents even got me a copy of the movie's soundtrack album. (On cassette, of course. My father complained bitterly about the $6 or $7 it cost.) I think I might still own it. On that very same trip, during our tour of Universal Studios, we got to see a bit of Jaws: The Revenge being filmed, too. That was not quite as exciting, since all they were filming that day was what looked like a very large swimming pool (meant to represent the ocean) with an equally large blue backdrop (meant to represent the sky). Why they needed a fake ocean and a fake sky when the real ones were readily available was beyond me.

But getting back to that Dragnet soundtrack! Certainly the oddest track on it was a novelty rap tune called "City of Crime" by Tom Hanks and Dan Aykroyd. The latter performs his verses in character as Joe Friday, while the former mainly just yells. The background music, which is suspiciously reminiscent of AC/DC's "Back in Black," was created by Dan's brother, Peter Aykroyd.

Anyway, here's a vintage slice of 1987. Enjoy!



Say what you will about "City of Crime," at least it's not as bad as the hip hop output of Tom's son, Chet Haze.

(today's zomby) AND THE TEN CUTEST ACTRESSES FROM 1960s TELEVISION!

Believe it or not, jokes about bearded gurus who live on mountaintops used to be a mainstay of American humor, as I've pointed out before. It's kind of nice that Ziggy is keeping the tradition alive and reminding us that the character is a product of the 1960s.

And speaking of that tumultuous decade...

I thought it was time for a good old-fashioned pop culture list. So here (in no particular order) are...

THE TEN CUTEST ACTRESSES FROM 1960s TELEVISION SHOWS

Elizabeth Montgomery (Bewitched)

Yvonne Craig (Batman)

Barbara Feldon (Get Smart)

Beverly Owen/Pat Priest (The Munsters)

Tuesday Weld (The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis)

Barbara Eden (I Dream of Jeannie)

Tina Louise (Gilligan's Island)

Carolyn Jones (The Addams Family)

Diana Rigg (The Avengers)

Mary Tyler Moore (The Dick Van Dyke Show)

(today's zomby) AND THE POWERS OF TEN!

ZOMBY!!! returns... uh, a little earlier than expected:

So November didn't work out the way I'd planned it, but you know who can put my problems in perspective? Charles and Ray Eames!

Mr. & Mrs. Eames doing something

One of the definitive "fun couples" of the Twentieth Century, Charles (1907-1978) and Bernice "Ray" (1912-1988) Eames were pioneers of American design who worked in a variety of fields, including fine art, architecture, furniture design, and film. Still today, I covet one of their best-known creations: the iconic Eames Chair:

Technically "Eames Lounge and Ottoman." Cost: $3579.

But I'm not here today to talk about fancy furniture. I'm here instead sing the praises of the Eames' most famous short film, Powers of Ten (1968). I've watched this countless times, and I never get tired of it. I guess I just like the whole planetarium/science museum vibe of this piece. There are so many disparate elements at play here. Elmer Bernstein's memorably chilly score contrasts with the affable, plainspoken narration by physics professor Phillip Morrison. Sad to think that Bernstein, Morrison, and both of the Eames are dead now, but here's the movie which will place all of human existence into its proper context:



I've long felt that the "Galaxy Song" from Monty Python's The Meaning of Life would make a great companion piece to Powers of Ten. Same basic subject matter, but an entirely different approach:



P.S. Yes, The Simpsons did a nifty parody of Powers of Ten some years back:



I'm with you, Homer. Wooooooooowwwwwww! A big part of the appeal of Powers of Ten is its "mind blowing" trippiness, cool in that late 1960s way. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey also came out in '68 and had a similar effect on its audiences. Appropriately, The Simpsons does a little mash-up of the two films by using "Thus Spoke Zarathustra" on the soundtrack.

(today's zomby) AND IF YOU LIKE HALLOWEEN, YOU WILL HATE THIS WOMAN!

Where exactly is Zomby now?

Only two more days until that holiday of holidays, Halloween! And you know what that means! Yes, it's time for vehemently anti-Halloween invective!

Above: Carol Kornacki is not, in fact, having a stroke.

Some people seem to have beamed in our world directly from the realm of sketch comedy, and such a person is televangelist and author Carol Kornacki. In her voice, her mannerisms, and her message, she seems for all the world like some ridiculously over-the-top comedic caricature from late night television. But she's quite real, I assure you. Apart from her books and her appearances on religious TV shows like Benny Hinn and The 700 Club, Ms. Kornacki likes to spread her particular and peculiar version of God's message through YouTube videos. Her self-related backstory is astonishing, as she describes a childhood of eating out of garbage cans and washing blood off the walls of the family homestead.

In other words, Carol Kornacki is too good to be true. God bless this woman. Go visit her website, carolkornacki.org right now!

One of Ms. Kornacki's specialties is speaking out against the evils of Halloween. I thought that today, as we're all preparing for the Big Day, I'd ask you to spend a few minutes -- or hours, whatever -- listening to Carol's many, many arguments against the seemingly "innocent" holiday. Who knows? You might even change your mind. She's very entertaining either way. If she'd been called by the Law instead of the Lord, she might very well have been another Judge Judy.






And there's so much more where this came from! Check out "The DARK TRUTH about Halloween," part one and part two!

(today's zomby) AND BEANS!!!!!!

Third thought: Not even MasterCard!

I hadn't done a voodoo zombie one in a while. So here's one of those. Side note: Does anyone still have computer monitors that look like that? And speaking of clever segueways... Lewis Arquette loves beans!

I don't know what it is about this little speech from Waiting for Guffman, but I never get tired of it.