I love it when actors (especially actors from my favorite genre shows) wander into the realm of singing. Or sing/speaking. Agent Scully is not the first to do this. Nor is she the most impressive. That title would, of course, go to the inimitable William Shatner. Don’t believe me? You’ve obviously never heard him speak “Rocket Man.” All I have to say to that is, Why The Hell Not?

Anyway. So back in the late 90s, when I was both deeply entrenched in the nerdy wonder of The X-Files as well as falling further and further down that rabbit hole of the spurious, subversive downloading culture (yes, I was a very naughty wolf in those glorious underground geek days of late-night raiding of FTP sites with a 56K modem and a 6-pack of Mountain Dew), I came across a track on someone’s site, labeled “Gillian Anderson Quattro Extreme.”

Exsqueeze me? Baking powder? Gillian Anderson, as in Dana Scully on a music track? Yes, please!

And so I downloaded the track. And fell in love. I would later learn that the version of this song that I first downloaded was slightly mislabeled and was, in fact, the Qattara remix of “Extremis,” a song by HaL that originally featured Ms. Anderson way more than the remix does. I love the remix a lot more than the original because it has that driving electronica beat that I love…the beat that has gotten me pulled over on more than one occasion for encouraging my lead foot to drop more precipitously than usual.

However, the link below is to the video for the original song. I had never seen the video until a few months ago. I don’t think it ever played on any mainstream video channels here in the States. Once you watch it, you’ll understand why. Agent Scully apparently had dreams of being a naughty wolf, too.

I’ve read a lot of criticisms of Anderson for this song as well as for the collection on which it was originally featured, Future: A Journey Through the Electronic Underground. This 2-disc set was compiled by Anderson to feature music and musicians that she was very much into at that point in her life. Agent Scully was into electronica? Who knew, right?

I think some of the criticisms are unfounded. I do believe that the original version of “Extremis” is one of the weaker offerings from this compilation, but still has its merits. Plus, I really dig Anderson’s exquisite speaking voice. I also think that her selections are holistically strong and representative of what was a great cross-section of the electronica scene at that point in time: Fluke, Massive Attack, The Future Sound of London, The Chemical Brothers, Brian Eno, William Orbit (who would help reignite Madonna’s career on Ray of Light, which I still think is going to be her pinnacle). These are names that I would encounter many more times as I made my way through similar compilations and soundtracks, but I heard them all first thanks to Agent Scully and her crazy underground sound.

Of course, take what I say about music with a grain of salt. I once bought a Marilyn Manson CD and Debbie Gibson’s greatest hits at the same time.

So, hope you enjoy. If you don’t like the music, I at least hope you enjoy this wonderfully bizarre video. If anything, you can see how many times you can catch sight of Anderson’s beauty mark to the left and slightly below her nose. Chris Carter always insisted that it be covered by make-up when she was in character. Apparently, FBI agents aren’t supposed to have beauty marks. Again, who knew?

Back in the halcyon days of Saturday Morning Cartoons, ABC ran these cutesy little PSAs during commercial breaks designed to teach children useful life lessons like how to choose healthy snacks, brush their teeth properly, or dispose of bodies without leaving evidence.

Okay, maybe not so much on that last one.

The host of these PSAs was Timer, some kind of jaundice-y looking globule who liked to sing and dance while wearing silly accessories (but no clothes).

I loved “Time for Timer” breaks. They were funny, short, and always had a catchy tune. But my favorite was the “Hanker for a Hunk o’ Cheese” song. I don’t really know why, but sometimes I’ll still catch myself humming this strange, silly tune. Thankfully, no one has caught me doing this. Yet.

So big and thick, no room for a stick.

Oh, those were far more innocent times when we could sing that tune and not feel like we were offering ourselves up to some horrible fate just for the crunchy-coated goodness of a Klondike Bar.

Actually, who am I kidding? I always giggled at the Klondike Bar theme, my filthy little mind titillated beyond comprehension by the subliminal meanings behind it all.

Heh. Titillated.

See? Filthy, filthy Loba.

Honestly, though, there was a time when I would have done quite a bit for one of these tasty treats (nothing too filthy, please; I was just a kid when these commercials first aired!). Not so much anymore. Ice cream just doesn’t excite me the way it did when I was a wee pup. Now if Klondike were to come out with a rum-based concoction guaranteed to knock me off-kilter, then we might have a different story to tell right now.

For now, though, here’s a Klondike Bar commercial perfectly suited to my literary tastes…and strangely and sadly relevant in light of Gary Coleman’s recent passing. It’s quite a bizarre commercial, actually.

Oh, and don’t worry…I don’t expect any of you to tell me what you’d do for a Klondike Bar. I already suspect I know what some of you would do…naughty little denizens…

To be honest, I’ve been off my game for so long regarding the lair that I wasn’t even sure if I was going to do a Flashback Friday this week. Then the unfortunate news from yesterday regarding Rue McClanahan’s passing provided me with the prompting I needed.

I adored The Golden Girls. No, correction. I adore The Golden Girls. I’ve said it many times before, but it bears repeating: This is one of a select few sitcoms from my childhood that I can still watch without wanting to wretch from the cheese overload. True, it’s got ample slices of cheddar and Swiss spread throughout its seven seasons, but there’s something more that makes it palatable. This show, with all its overtly 80s style and fashion, is timeless in wit, in topic, in humor.

And how the stars aligned so perfectly the day they were casting these roles that we were gifted such an amazing ensemble! Bea Arthur, Estelle Getty, Rue McClanahan, and Betty White made Dorothy, Sophia, Blanche, and Rose not just hilarious but real. You believed that this quartet could actually exist, that they were going through the same things that the rest of us were going through or were destined to go through at some point. They were just doing it with way more humor than the rest of us (and way larger shoulder pads, too).

This show was also a standing weekly ritual in our house. No matter what else was going on, every Saturday night my parents and I came together to watch the latest episode. And we always laughed (sometimes I would even get caught laughing at jokes that my parents thought would be too “grown-up” for me to understand; awkward way for my parents to keep track of how quickly their little girl was growing up, fo’ sho’).

Dorothy was my favorite. But that’s almost like saying air is my favorite of the things I need to survive. I loved them all almost equally. It’s just, I think I’m a little more like Dorothy than any of the others (Prophets know I’m nothing like Blanche). Although I have my fair share of Rose moments.

It’s strange and most definitely depressing to think that a show like this would probably never be able to exist in today’s television market. We’ve become a society that not only doesn’t respect age, but shuns it and any who dare to show its signs. How else can we explain why people willingly get a paralyzing toxin injected into their faces? Where would the Golden Girls, with their love of cheesecake and their discussions about menopause, fit in among the anorexic plasticized perfection of those Desperate Housewives or the McDreamies and McSteamies and McBoobies of modern prime-time television?

There is a shimmer of hope. Betty White, now the Last Girl Standing, has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity recently, with several appearances in movies, that wonderful Snickers commercial, and even the honor of becoming the oldest SNL host in the show’s 35-year history. She continues to prove that humor and grace are supremely more beautiful than cheek implants, tummy tucks, fake tits, butt lifts, or whatever else the Hollywood elite are doing to keep people from noticing that their talent, just like their beauty, is skin-deep and thoroughly unconvincing when examined closely.

So, there you go. Flashback to a favorite sitcom from my youth and another glimpse at the vitriol that roils just beneath the placid surface of Lake Loba. Bonus! Want another bonus? How about a few show clips and bloopers? Not only are they funny but they show a quartet of women who were able to laugh at themselves and each other and who genuinely seemed to like each other’s company. That’s not just golden…that’s priceless.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh85R-S-dh8&hl=en_US&fs=1&color1=0x006699&color2=0x54abd6&border=1]

Nothing too profound for this week’s Flashback, but I thought it might be bad form to miss another Friday without dropping something on you (sorry about last week…stupid work, keeping me from blogging!).

Whilst poking around on YouTube a while ago, I discovered that someone has been posting episodes from one of my earliest sci-fi obsessions. Yes, Loba is dipping all the way back into the year I was 9 for this one (although I thought I was younger than this…oh well), to bring you Misfits of Science.

Basic premise is that these two groovy California scientists, Billy Hayes and Elvin Lincoln (played respectively by Dean Paul Martin and Kevin Peter Hall), bring together these…well, misfits of science, to fight for truth, justice, and the right to dress in the most stereotypically gnarly 80s ways imaginable.

Billy is a “normie,” but Elvin creates and takes a super-secret potion that allows him to shrink from 7 feet down to, I think like 8 inches (thus becoming the first instance in history of a dude choosing shrinkage). The rest of the team is formed by “Johnny B” Bukowski (played by Mark Thomas Miller), a rad rocker dude with glowing eyes who can run super fast and blast lightning bolts from his fists thanks to being struck by lightning during one of his band’s concerts; Gloria Dinallo (played by Courteney Cox), a typically confused teen with typical teen issues…oh, and a pesky telekinesis problem; and Jane Miller (played by Jennifer Holmes), Gloria’s parole officer and Billy’s love interest. Throw in the dad from ALF and you’ve got your cast! Yeah. Oh, that I was clever enough to make that up.

This was a hot mess of pure 80s cheese all the way through. But I didn’t care. I loved this show. I tuned in to watch every episode that aired on NBC, and I remember being devastated when the show just disappeared. It was tough being a child of the pre-Internet information saturation, I tell ya! There was just something about the Misfits that I couldn’t get enough of. I’m not sure what it was though.

Oh, wait. It was Courteney Cox.

Even though I have a strong suspicion that she’s no longer completely biodegradable, I still adore her, and that all started with Misfits of Science. I was so happy when she re-appeared on NBC on Family Ties, totally related to her character on Friends (I, too, find it difficult to sleep if I know that there are still shoes lying out in the living room!), can’t get enough of Gale Weathers (okay, that’s somewhat of a lie…stop making Scream movies!!), and even own Masters of the Universe on DVD (Tom Paris and Gina Dinallo, w00ts!!1!). I even watched a few episodes of Dirt, but I can’t bring myself to watch Cougar Town. The thought of Courteney Cox being old enough to qualify as a “cougar” makes me feel old. Say it ain’t so!

[Loba Tangent: Seriously, Courteney, please stop with the plastic surgery. You’re beautiful as you are…but foreheads are supposed to actually move and your mouth isn’t supposed to stretch from one side of your face all the way to the other. Unless, you know, you’re going for that oh-so-sexy “New and Improved Joker Smile” look.]

Okay, back to the Misfits. It was a silly show, indeed, but it was fun silly. Well, I thought so at least. Of course, I was 9 at the time. What the hell do 9-year-olds know? At that age, I was running through mud puddles and wishing that Scooby Doo was real (I still regularly do one of these things, but I’m not telling which). But check it out for yourself if you don’t believe me. Just remember: If Johnny’s eyes are glowing, all your batteries are going to be dead and you’d probably better move out of the way of his fists…and if Gloria goes all negative colors, you’re about to either be hit by something or she’s about to fling you across the room. Don’t say I didn’t warn you either way…

I know this is going to sound strange coming from someone so eager to talk about her anthropomorphized car (hi, Sammy!), but anthropomorphized food really creeps me out. All I can think when I see talking food is that we’ve given personalities to things we’re going to eat. Not only that, but we’ve given them personalities as a means of encouraging us to eat them. It feels eerily cannibalistic to me.

But that’s exactly what happened back in 1986 when the California Raisin Advisory Board introduced us to the Claymation Sensation known as the California Raisins. The first commercial was the California Raisins singing the Marvin Gaye song, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.”

I always liked this one better:

I don’t know who else voiced the rest of the Raisins, but the “lead” Raisin was voiced by Buddy Miles, probably most famous for being the drummer from Jimi Hendrix’s Band of Gypsys. Jimi Hendrix to Raisin? Eh, whatever pays the bills, right?

A whole bunch (hehe) of these commercials hit the airwaves over the next several years, some featuring just the generic raisin group. Some, however, featured recognizable popular artists, like Ray Charles and even this classic, featuring…well, I’m sure you’ll figure it out on your own:

And, of course, there was the marketing blitz. Albums, lunchboxes, T-shirts, posters, school supplies, even a Saturday morning cartoon (sigh…what the hell happened to Saturday morning cartoons?). I think there might have even been a video game. I can’t even fathom the hours of fun that must have provided! Also, if you look back at the top of this post, you’ll see my little collection of the promotional figures from Hardee’s. Mmm, Hardee’s.

All this worked wonders for both the California Raisin Advisory Board and, ironically, the Toilet Paper Makers of America, who noticed a significant increase in the sale of their products, especially whenever a new California Raisins commercial hit the airwaves.

Sorry. That was graphic and probably only funny to people with potty humor. Might cheer someone up if they’re down in the dumps though. Okay, I’ll stop now. These are shit jokes anyway.

Heehee…

Nothing too profound this week, denizens. Kind of swamped by…everything, really, and dreaming of the joy of that summer I spent in Mickey Mouse Ears.

Late on the posting today. I hit the road early this morning and I haven’t really had much of a chance to stop since 5 a.m. Spent a large portion of the day driving, Sammy burning up the miles in high style as I burned my way through several of my favorite podcasts.

In between a couple episodes, however, I hit some of my favorite playlists. One is called “Old Skool Happy.” It’s filled with some of my favorite old school rap and go-go music. Fun, bouncy, and nothing like a lot of the negative, derogatory, misogynistic crap that passes as rap these days. No, these songs are from greats like Big Daddy Kane, Salt-n-Pepa, Eric B. and Rakim, MC Lyte, Biz Markie, Queen Latifah, EU, Junkyard Band, Grandmaster Flash, Heavy D, Whodini, Sugar Hill Gang, Sir Mix-a-Lot…Old Skool Happy.

Then there’s Kool Moe Dee’s “Wild, Wild West.” I don’t know why, but there’s something about this particular song that represents perfectly the part of my life in which these were the only artists that I listened to. It’s strange with a catchy beat, an easy-to-remember chorus, and a video that gives a whole new meaning to “Urban Cowboy.” I remember standing around with friends while waiting for our turn at kickball during PhysEd, rapping all the lyrics to this song over and over. A few years later, it would be the lyrics to “Tom’s Diner,” whispered during study hall. Such is the life of teendom.

It is with mixed pride and embarrassment that I admit now that I can still rap almost all the lyrics to this song. This and MC Lyte’s “Lyte As a Rock” are two songs that I can break out any time, any place. In fact, a spontaneous rendition of “Wild, Wild West” at the back of a martini bar in Chicago secured my nickname of “K-Dub” with my boss and coworkers. Before you ask, no, it wasn’t a karaoke bar. Who needs karaoke when you’ve got martinis?

Will Smith tried to ruin this song just like he tried to ruin the television series of the same name with that crapfest of a movie he and Kevin Kline made back in the 90s (for which Smith did a version of this song, sampling parts of the original). Thankfully, I successfully avoided ever spoiling my memories of the original by ever listening to the full version of Smith’s “remake.” I am a purist, dammit, and it’s either the original or nothing.

So, here for your listening and viewing pleasure, Kool Moe Dee’s “Wild, Wild West”…

And, because I’m in a particularly giving mood this evening, here is the video to MC Lyte’s “Lyte as a Rock.” Meh to the video, but I absolutely heart this song.