Wasting the day away with Shirley Hemphill

I can’t find the motivation to do anything worthwhile this morning. Linette’s sewing. Clementine’s drawing. And I’m sitting here at the kitchen table, unable to break free of YouTube. I’d started out with noble enough intentions – looking for footage of Shirley Hemphill doing standup. But, now, not having found anything, I’ve settled for a Shirley-themed episode of What’s Happening. It’s absolutely horrible, and I feel terribly guilty.

Speaking of YouTube, one day I want to put together a post that’s all about sitcom crossover episodes, where characters on one show appear on another. I love bad TV from 70’s and 80’s, and there’s nothing worse that crossover episodes. Here are a few short clips just to whet your appetite: Love Boat / Charlie’s Angels, Happy Days / Mork and Mindy, Bewtiched / Flintstones.

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12 Comments

  1. Posted February 7, 2009 at 4:42 pm | Permalink

    Imagine how on top of the world those actors were at the time. Boy, they’d really made it. Their lives were accomplished and significant. Everybody knew who they were. The people who’d been mean to them in their youths were lining up to be nice to them. Where are they now? Probably sitting at the kitchen table watching themselves on youtube, wondering why they were ever born.

    So don’t feel bad Mark. Your feelings are stupid.

    Did that help?

  2. Posted February 7, 2009 at 9:10 pm | Permalink

    Which of my feelings were stupid exactly? I suspect you’re right. Most of my feelings are stupid. But I’m not sure exactly what you’re referring to… Am I stupid for feeling guilty about watching What’s Happening when there’s so much work to be done, or am I stupid for saying that this particular episode sucked?

  3. Posted February 7, 2009 at 9:28 pm | Permalink

    Feeling guilty. I only said it because I usually feel better if somebody tells me my stupid guilty feelings are stupid. Thought maybe it might help.

  4. terry
    Posted February 8, 2009 at 1:22 am | Permalink

    I’ve been spending the evening watching girl ukulele players on YouTube so I think your time’s been better spent. My TV fetish continues to be fake rock bands like “The Sacred Cows” on Get Smart and “The Mosquitoes” on Gilligan’s Island. Did you know Paul Lynde was supposed to make a guest appearance on Gilligan’s Island before it was cancelled? That could have been the greatest episode of television ever.

  5. Ol' E Cross
    Posted February 8, 2009 at 9:24 am | Permalink

    I’m gonna take this as an open thread…

    My wife and I have been watching the first seasons of Kids in the Hall on loan from the library. And, we finally figured out why she agreed to marry me.

    The back story:

    As a freshman in college, my wife would set the VHS to tape Kids in the Hall everyday (it was being rerun on cable). She’d come home and watch it alone. As she said last night, while laughing loudly from muscle memory, “You have to understand, these were the only friends I had when I was a freshman. They were my friends.”

    More back story:

    I lived in Canada, Regina, specifically, from age 4 to 6. Then outside Buffalo then outside Detroit. I’ve spent my life within the reach of Canadian television and influence. (I’ve always had a few queens mingling with the presidents in my piggy bank.) I picked up manners and diction.

    So, I met my wife her sophomore year of college. The year after her lonely year where the Kids where her only friends. I seem to have developed various traits in speech and personality of all five Kids (yes, I am one-fifth gay). More importantly, if you perfectly amalgamate the physical traits of Bruce McColloch and David Foley, you get, exactly, me.

    Having spent her her freshman year with the Kids as her friends, when a sarcastic little man who said “a” with a touch of “ey” walked in, she didn’t stand a chance. My wife was conditioned to love me by Canadian television. Thank you CBC.

  6. Brackache
    Posted February 8, 2009 at 10:35 am | Permalink

    Holy shit, OEC. That’s uncanny!!!

    Do flying pig!

  7. Posted February 8, 2009 at 10:52 am | Permalink

    You should have never mentioned the physical similarity with the Beave, OeC.

    Never.

    And thank you for taking a perfectly good thread about the late Shirley Hemphill and deciding that it better suited your needs as an open thread.

  8. Posted February 8, 2009 at 11:06 am | Permalink

    No offense to the Beave, but, to get our conversation back on track, did you know that there was once a Magnum PI / Murder She Wrote crossover?

  9. Glen S.
    Posted February 8, 2009 at 11:06 am | Permalink

    30 Helens Agree: The Kids in the Hall was the best CBC show ever.

  10. Posted February 8, 2009 at 11:55 am | Permalink

    Now I feel terribly guilty that my saying your feelings of terrible guilt were stupid. Help!

    Didn’t Kids in the Hall do an A-team crossover? Or was that Silver Spoons?

  11. dragon
    Posted February 8, 2009 at 12:42 pm | Permalink

    Coming to a theater near you:

    Lettuce Head meets The Chicken Lady, a love story.

  12. Mark
    Posted February 8, 2009 at 1:07 pm | Permalink

    An A-Team feature film is in the works. No word as to whether Bruce McCulloch has been cast.

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