Farmer Ted's Sister Rocks!

Hey!

Did you catch our Song Of The Day this morning? No? Well, here's the video:



That's Mary C And The Stellars performing "Get Me Through."

Guess who Mary C's older brother is?

Anthony Michael Hall!

But that's not all!

The Secret Talents Of Steven Seagal

The good thing about iTunes shuffle is that sometimes things you'd totally forgotten about pop up. That's what happened to me yesterday and I felt like I had to share

Did you know that Steven Seagal, he of the ass kicking and ponytail, is also a singer? He released an album some years back called Songs From The Crystal Cave. Segal has described it as "outsider country-meets-world music-meets-Aikido" and it reflects many of Segal's Buddhist and pacifist beliefs. Stevie Wonder guests on the album. Intrigued? Here's a song from it:

What do you think? Should he quit his day job to focus on music?
 

Calling Dr. Frasier Crane

Did you watch Frasier? Were you aware that a good number of the callers to The Dr. Frasier Crane Show were celebrites? Neither was I until I read it on BuzzFeed.

Here's a video montage of all the celebrity callers on Frasier. It's a pretty diverse group that includes John McEnroe, Eddie Van Halen, Jodie Foster, and John Cusack:

The Man, The Myth: Dolph Lundgren

I was catching up on some old magazines lying around my house when I ran into something very interesting. Dolph Lundgren, who scared the crap out of me as Ivan Drago in Rocky IV when I was a kid, is actually a pretty complex guy. (Seriously, I had a nightmare about Ivan Drago as a kid. He and Brigitte creeped me OUT.)

I learned a few years ago that he's actually crazy intelligent: he has a master's degree in chemical engineering and was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to go to MIT to study. In case you don't know, Fulbrights are awarded to international students, scholars, teachers and the like to come to top US schools to study. A whole slew of Pulitzer prize winners and Nobel prize winners are former Fulbright scholars. So this is kind of a big deal. Dolph TURNED DOWN the Fulbright to get into acting. Wrap your brain around that.

Here's what I didn't know until I read this interview in Entertainment Weekly: he quit science because he hooked up with Grace Jones in New York. He was working as a bouncer and got assigned to her one evening and wham! they started dating.

She took him to her shoot on the James Bond film, A View To A Kill, and the director was so impressed that he cast Dolph as a KGB henchman. Dolph started taking acting lessons and started auditioning, got the call to meet with Stallone for Rocky IV, got the part, and voila! Huge movie star. I mean, after Rocky the man was He-Man, Master of the Universe. Does it really get any bigger than that in the '80s?

Incidentally, during one of the fight scenes, in one take he punched Stallone so hard he actually bruised Stallone's HEART MUSCLE. They had to stop filming for three weeks while Sly recovered.

Also? He has an IQ of 160 and he helped invent the water filtration system used by NASA on the space shuttles. Oh yeah, that's right Dolph Lundgren is an honest to God rocket scientist. Remember THAT the next time you watch Universal Solider.

And if you never heard the story about the attempted break-in at his home a few years ago, you should read the EW article. I remember when it happened and that it was awesome. So is the picture I found of him with Grace, you're welcome internets.

[image 1 | image 2 ]

Fun Fact About Doctor Beverly Crusher

Thanks to Netflix Instant I've been recently addicted to watching every episode of Star Trek: Next Generation. (Yes, I know, geeky, shut up.) And watching these episodes reminded me of a fun fact.

Gates McFadden, the red headed Doctor Beverly Crusher, was actually a dancer before she started acting. She actually choreographed the movement for two of my all-time favorite films from the '80s: the characters in the film The Dark Crystal (the creepy Skeksis? McFadden's movement work) and the dance sequences in Labyrinth.

I found this out some years ago when playing with the special features on my DVD copy of The Dark Crystal. There's an interesting bit on the development of the puppets and a super young McFadden (who then went by her first name, Cheryl, rather than her middle name, Gates) was all dolled up in dance gear and was going over some techniques.

Enough typing, back to Trek watching.

[image]

This Should've Been The B-Side To "Nobody's Fool"

Who's that dapper young band in the following 1983 commercial for Pat's Chili Dogs?



Why yes, that is Cinderella, a whole three years before the release of Night Songs.

I Can't Believe Paul Shaffer Wrote That

During the Tony Awards on Sunday I learned something surprising. Did you know that Paul Shaffer, Letterman's sidekick, co-wrote the song "It's Raining Men?"



Paul Schaffer?! Crazy!

And while I'm on the subject, if you didn't catch the Tony's, I'm not surprised, but you did miss the genius that is Neil Patrick Harris. Here's his opening number for ya:

Who Voiced That?

Cracked.com has an awesome article entitled 8 Actors You Won't Believe Voiced Famous Cartoon Characters. I knew that Vin Diesel was the voice of the Iron Giant, but did you know that Uncle Phil from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air was the voice of Shredder in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon? I sure didn't!



And Fergie from the Black Eyed Peas was the voice of Sally Brown, Charlie Brown's sister! What?

And Howie Mandel was the voice of Gizmo in Gremlins. No way! Go hit the Cracked site for a bunch of neat video interviews and whatnot with all these famous voices.

Was I the only one totally blown away by some of these people's hidden talents?

Conan Fun Facts

We know you're gearing up for the Conan reboot. Here are some fun facts about the original.

1. It was co-written and directed by John Milius, who also wrote the screenplay for Apocalypse Now. Milius also wrote and directed Red Dawn, and multiple episodes of the HBO show Rome.

2. The other Conan writer? Oliver Stone. Yes THAT Oliver Stone. Seriously.

3. Arnold's first line is about 20 minutes into the film and it's this classic line.

The new film is out late this summer.

Captain EO

Speaking of musicians turned actors, in the late 1980s there was a Disney attraction called Captain EO. It was a short film starring Michael Jackson and Anjelica Huston and it was filmed in "4-D." 4-D is 3-d (not the red/blue kind) plus lasers and fog and stuff timed to the film to make it more audience interactive. It was fairly groundbreaking and was the most expensive film made if you figured out the cost per minute of the short film (Wikipedia says it was $1.7 million per minute).

I remember seeing it at Epcot with my family as a kid and was blown away - I was a Michael fan but the technology was pretty slick for the time.

But did you know that George Lucas produced it? And that Francis Ford Coppola directed it? And that James Horner wrote the orchestral score for it? That's some serious pedigree for a short Disney parks film.

It was resurrected last year at the Disney parks (without the laser show I hear) because of the passing of Michael so if you missed it in the '80s you can still catch it.

Here's a brief clip of one of the two music numbers for your enjoyment. That borg looking babe is Anjelica Huston.

Anyone else catch this show back in the day?