Friday Fun with Hanson: The Next Generation

It's been a long time since I posted something for Friday Fun, so this better be good, right?  It is, and - heck! - even NPR thinks so!  Enjoy the MMMBop kids all grown up and sharing their music video with their adorable little ones:

Fun but terrifying factoid: That earworm "MMMBop" came out in 1997 ... 20 years ago.
(By the way, you may remember how a few summers ago I was not above deploying "MMMBop" in psychological warfare.)

LOL: Honest Trailers vs. Rudolf the Red-Nosed Reindeer

It's December 1, so let's kick off the countdown to Christmas with some irreverent hilarity from the humorists of Honest Trailers:

Couch Potato Chronicles: Enough Politics. Let's Talk About X-Files.

Yes, the new X-Files miniseries is here, and even though - let's be honest - it's been kind of disappointing (except for that hilarious episode with the lizard guy), the sheer reunion factor is enough to make me keep watching.  Come on, Scully and Mulder are back, and they're bringing a 1990s nostalgia bomb with them!

So, in the spirit of things, the Cine-Mad Sibling and I name some of our favorite X-Files episodes that we (and you) can watch streaming online at Netflix.  Here they are in no particular order ...  

• "First Person Shooter." Yup, it's the one where Mulder gets stuck inside a video game.  The special effects haven't aged well at ALL, but the episode is a complete hoot.  Three words: "Jade Blue Afterglow."
• "Arcadia." Mulder and Scully go undercover as a married couple in an unsettlingly perfect Stepfordesque neighborhood where residents keep disappearing.  You'll never look at a pink plastic lawn flamingo the same way again.  The Sib and I quote this often-hilarious ep endlessly. "Woman, make me a sandwich!"
• "Drive." Bryan Cranston.  Nuff said.  Bonus: This was the episode that introduced then-X-Files writer Vince Gilligan to Cranston ... a meeting that would later turn into the incomparable Breaking Bad series.
• "Jose Chung's From Outer Space." The men in black have never been so good.  That's Alex Trebek!
• "Beyond the Sea." X-Files does Silence of the Lambs via Brad "Grima Wormtongue" Dourif.
• "Bad Blood." It's like Rashomon. With vampires.
• "The Unnatural." Baseball-playing aliens.  Because why not!  I love TV eps about baseball.  That one from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine ("Take Me Out to the Holodeck") is a lot of fun too, by the way. 

Finally, we'll point out "The Host," not because we like it per se, but because it totally creeped us out when we were kids.  I personally don't much care to ever see the Flukeman again. Like, EVER. 

We'll sign off with this, and get ready for some retro 90s tech hilarity:

A Contrarian's View on Star Wars Hype

I guess it does take some nerve to come right out and say this smack in the middle of the hype over the latest Star Wars trailer:

"... allow me the heresy of suggesting that all this craziness is over a movie. A movie that no one has yet seen. A movie based on another movie that was a great deal of fun 38 years ago and certainly stands as a major event in modern pop history, with or without the sequels, but that was — you may now ready the rocks for stoning — hardly a great work of cinema."

The writer then posits "the Footie Pajama Theory," which even though it does make sense, can't help but seem a little ... what's the word? ah, yes, condescending ... because of its very name.

Well, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion about Star Wars and everything else.  I'm going to allow myself the hope that the new movie is better than the abominable prequels and their most egregious error.  I'm hoping that when the new movie premieres we can all have a little fun along the way.  I'll leave you with this:

Kick Off Your Sunday Shoes!

Here's your 1980s nostalgia in glorious fashion as Kevin Bacon proves that he's still got it at 55 as he outdances people half his age. (Footloose is 30 years old this year?!)

Nerd Journal: Children of the 90s

Remember that 90s-pop-as-psyops post?  Here's a follow-up now that Hanson and you and I have grown up ... a little.  Fellow children of the 90s, enjoy: