Ugh. This movie is enough to make even someone who really, really loves Christmas (like me) begin to loathe it. Forget the bad acting, horrible sets and ludicrous plot. Think about the message. It's okay to barge in and completely supplant another culture with your own. Voldar, the supposed "villain" of the piece, is just a man trying to preserve his own culture. By the end of the film, the Martians are even becoming white (the green make-up became scarcer as filming continued)!

But, then, a ray of hope. The host segments. Memories of all those cool old Christmas specials, like Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer. And Gyspy's beautiful Christmas "essay." Oh, now I'm getting verklempt. Merry Christmas, everyone!

• Prologue - Christmas catalogues
• Host Segment 1 - The Wish Squisher and the new Island of Misfit Toys
• Movie Act 1
• Host Segment 2 - (Let's Have) A Patrick Swayze Christmas
• Movie Act 2
• Host Segment 3 - Christmas specials
• Movie Act 3
• Host Segment 4 - Christmas essays
• Movie Act 4
• Epilogue - The Gift of the Mads
• Bonus! Mystery Science Theater Hour Host Segments

Prologue - Christmas catalogues

• Throughout this episode, Crow has a big, red bulb on the end of his nose to make himself look like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Rudolph was one of Santa Claus' magical flying reindeer. His nose was a bright, glowing red, so, at first, was considered a bit of a freak by the other flying reindeer (that's rich). Until "one foggy Christmas Eve," Santa asked Rudolph to guide the sled through the poor weather. After that, all the other reindeer began to like him. Rudolph was created in 1939 by Robert L. May, a staff writer for mail-order/department store giant Montgomery Wards (see below) for a Christmas sales promotion. It was a big success and was made into a hugely popular song written by Johnny Marks and first recorded by Gene Autry, as well as a number of television specials (see below).
• "Yeah, that's Harry Connick's girlfriend." - Musician Harry Connick, Jr. (1967- ) was largely responsible for the revival of swing and big band music. Often compared to Frank Sinatra, he won the Best Jazz Vocal Performance Grammy for his work on the soundtrack of 1989's When Harry Met Sally. He began a successful acting career with Memphis Belle (1990). And it seems that the 'Bots are looking at a Victoria's Secret catalogue along with all the others. At the time, Connick would have been dating Jill Goodacre, one of the lingerie company's leading models during the late 1980s and early 1990s. They eventually married in 1994, at which time Goodacre retired from modelling.
• The catalogues the Bots are wishing over mostly belong to companies known for their pricey, high-end, top quality mail-order products:
  • L.L. Bean: Outdoor activity oriented clothing and products. Started in 1912 by Leon Leonwood (or L.L.) Bean, the company was one of the first to computerize its mailing list, in 1969. Based in Maine, Bean has grown to a billion dollar a year company with several stores across the States and a few international outlets, as well.
  • Neiman Marcus: This high-end specialty retailer is one of the more "classy" stores listed here, with expensive clothing and housewares. Founded in 1907 by Herbert Marcus, his sister Carrie Marcus Neiman and her husband Al Neiman, NM has grown considerable over the years, with outlets across the U.S.
  • Monkey Wards: "Monkey Wards," along with "Monty Wards," is a nickname for mail-order giant Montgomery Wards. In 1872 Chicago, travelling salesman Aaron Montgomery Ward decided to make his life easier by offering his buyers the opportunity to purchase his varied merchandise through the mail; as a result, he started the first ever mail-order business. By 1904, 3 million catalogues had been distributed. Eventually, in 1926, Ward opened an outlet in Indiana, leading to more than 500 stores over the years. Unfortunately, the mail-order business end began to fizzle; by 1985, the catalogue stopped distribution (Tom and Crow must be looking at an old one) and in late 2000, Wards declared bankruptcy and closed down not long after.
  • Fisher Nuts (not Fisher's Nuts as Tom says): Obviously, a nut distributor. Owned by John B. Sanfilippo & Son, Inc. since 1995. I haven't been able to find out more about them, except that, before Sanfilippo, they were briefly owned by Proctor & Gamble. Help!
  • Edmund Scientific: Mail-order supplier of scientific neat stuff. Created as the Edmund Salvage Company in 1942 by Norman W. Edmund. Edmund was an amateur photographer who couldn't find any order-by-mail lenses for his hobby, he saw a niche to be filled. It started off distributing only optical supplies, but eventually expanded to the other sciences. Now you can get cool stuff from them like telescopes, metal detectors, Geiger counters and robot butterflies.
  • Uncle Bob's Produce Ranch: You know, I'm pretty sure they're making this one up...
  • FAO Schwarz: The world's biggest toy store. It began small in 1862 Maryland by German immigrant Frederick August Otto Schwarz. Later, Schwarz moved his store to New York City until it grew into the children's heaven it now is. FAO is the leading specialty seller of toys and collectibles in the world, with more than 40 stores across the United States and many exclusive toys you can only buy there. The scene in the 1988 fantasy Big where Josh (Tom Hanks) plays on the giant keyboard took place in the New York FAO.
  • The Sharper Image: The Sharper Image sells expensive gadgets and gizmos. They're all cool and fun, but, for most folks, pretty useless or unnecessary items. Things like the Ionic Breeze Silent Air Purifier, the CD Shower Companion, the Power Tower Motorized CD Rack, portable DVD players, your own personal breathalyzer and, one of my favourites, the Sonic Molechaser. The company was started in 1977 by Richard Thalheimer. At first, it was just a part-time office supply business (with "the Sharper Image" promoting the quality of their copy machines). Later, Thalheimer decided to branch out to non-office items, beginning with the Realtime Watch, a water-proof jogger's watch. It was a hit and more and more items were added. There are several TSI stores, the first opening in San Francisco in 1981. TSI also has its own in-house development groups which has invented many items available exclusively through the company.
• "I want a Ted Williams inflatable signature bathtub pillow." - Baseball player Ted Williams (1918- ) is considered one of the finest hitters in the game. He played for the Boston Red Sox between 1939-60, during which he hit 521 home runs. He later managed the Washington Senators and the Texas Rangers. Nicknamed "the Splendid Splinter," he was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1966.

Host Segment 1 - The Wish Squisher and the new Island of Misfit Toys

• "Sleep! In heavenly peace!" - "Sleep in heavenly peace" is, of course, a lyric from the English version of the Christmas carol "Silent Night," originally written in 1855 by Franz Gruber and Joseph Mohn in German as "Stille Nacht."
• "Underoos that won't fit for two years." - Underoos were a popular line of kids' fun underwear from the late 1970s. Underoos were designed to look like the costumes of various superheroes, like Superman, Batman or Wonder Woman, complete with cape, when necessary. They always seemed kind of embarrassing to me.
• Rankin-Bass' Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys - Based mostly on the song of the same name (see above), Rankin-Bass' TV 1964 special Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer has become a must-see yearly classic. A stop animation special hosted by Burl Ives (see below), it tells the story of Rudolph (voiced by Billie Mae Richards) that everyone was familiar with, with a few new additions and some songs. With the help of Hermie (Paul Soles), a misfit elf who wants to be a dentist, Rudolph goes on a journey of self-discovery and self-acceptance. Along the way, they find the Island of Misfit Toys, populated by toys nobody seems to want, like a Charlie-In-The-Box (Carl Banas), whom Crow does a bang-on impression of here. When Santa finally uses Rudolph to guide his sleigh, he also agrees to find homes for the misfit toys. Rankin-Bass has produced a slew of these stop-action (and standard) animation specials, with the holiday based ones being the best remembered. These included Frosty the Snowman (see below), Santa Claus is Comin' to Town (1970), Rudolph's Shiny New Year (1975), The Easter Bunny is Comin' to Town (1977) and many others.
• Patrick Swayze's Road House board game - 1989's Road House is one of the greatest cheezy movies ever. It stars Patrick Swayze (more on him later) as Dalton, proud owner of a Ph.D. in philosophy from New York University who gives up his professorship to become... the world's greatest bar bouncer. He spouts Zen philosophy while beating the snot out of people. In a plot straight out of a western, Dalton must save a town from an evil land-owner (Ben Gazzara) exploiting the townspeople. If you haven't seen this schlock masterpiece, it's difficult to convey the sheer badness of it all. The dialogue given by Crow ("Hurts, don't it?" "You're my new Saturday night thing" and "It's my way or the highway") does appear in the film, although he misses the classic bouncer philosophy line, "Pain don't hurt." The evil guy is a big-game hunter with llama heads in his den. Hick chicks dance naked on tables. If you are a connoisseur of bad films (and if you're not, why are you here?), you simply must see this movie.
• The Easy-Bake Foundry - A less-than-fun variation on the best-selling girls' toy, the Easy-Bake Oven, introduced by Kenner in 1963 (and owned by Hasbro since a 1991 buy-out of Kenner's parent company, Tonka). The Easy-Bake Oven was a small, fully-functional oven which used a light bulb to do the cooking. It came with a number of cake mixes and you could watch your cake bake through the tiny window in the front. Over the years, there were variations in colour, size (the Super Easy-Bake made cakes twice as large) and name (for a while, it was the Easy-Bake Mini-Wave Oven), but it's stayed basically the same. There have been a few cake mixes available from brand names, like Betty Crocker, Oreo and M&Ms. More than 16 million Ovens and 100 million mixes have been sold since its introduction.
• Mr. Mashed Potato Head - A kinda icky version of Mr. Potato Head, one of the all-time classic toys, first released by Hasbro in 1952. At first, Mr. PH came only with a bunch of plastic ears, hats, noses, lips and so on that you stuck into a potato, which you supplied yourself, to make funny faces. Eight years later (I guess as potato prices went up), the package began to include a plastic potato body with holes in appropriate places. The year after his introduction, Mr. PH became happily married when Mrs. Potato Head came into being. The two also had a Baby Potato Head in later years. Mr. PH and his family have remained favourite toys all the way to modern day and Mr. PH was a character (voice by comedian Don Rickles) in the computer-animated features Toy Story (1995) and Toy Story 2 (1999).
• "...Pia Zadora in Santa Claus Conquers the Martians." - Mediocre actress/singer Pia Zadora (1954- ; born Pia Schipani) features in SCCTM as the Martian child Girmar. This was her first film role, followed quite a bit later by Butterfly (1981), for which she won a Golden Globe award (a little more on that later). Her next film role, however, was 1983's The Lonely Lady. Lady, it seems, was a truly bad film. It was the winner of more Raspberry Awards (the anti-Oscars, given out for bad movies) than any other film, only to be displaced by the 1995 abomination Showgirls. Pia's career never truly recovered, leaving her with a few later movie cameos as herself: Troop Beverly Hills (1989), Naked Gun 33 1/3: The Final Insult (1994) and National Lampoon's Favorite Deadly Sins (1995) among others. She also released a surprising number of albums, beginning in 1982 with Pia.

Movie Act 1

• "Big John Call is Santa Claus in O Little Town of Deathlehem." - This is, of course, a reference to the Christmas carol "O Little Town of Bethlehem," about the birth of Christ. It was written in 1868 by preacher Phillips Brooks, inspired by his own visit to the Holy Land. A couple of years later, it was put to music by Brooks' organist, Lewis H. Redner. I don't think Joel is making fun of any specific series or film here, just the tendency of old murder mystery shows to use an over-dramatic pun relating to the plot.
• "This is really, really cheap animation; 'Clutch Cargo' was better than this." - The animated series "Clutch Cargo" (1959) told the daring adventures of pilot Clutch Cargo (Richard Cotting) and his sidekicks Spinner and Paddlefoot the dog. Clutch was willing to travel anywhere and unavoidably ran into evil-doers, whom he proceeded to defeat. Created by Clark Haas, CC was a series of 4 minute cartoons, often ending in cliff-hangers. In order to ease costs, the mouths of the characters were not animated. Instead, a technique called "synchro-vox" was used. The character's head would stay still, and the voice artist's real mouth was super-imposed on the image. This produced an extremely creepy effect.
• "Adapted from the novel by Eudora Welty." - Pulizter prize winning novelist and short story writer (1909-2001). Her first published short story was 1936's "Death of a Traveling Salesman." After writing several more stories, becoming more and more popular, her first collection of stories was published in 1941 under the title A Curtain of Green. Considered mostly (although not exclusively) a "Southern writer" (she hails from Mississippi), Welty won countless literary awards, including the Pulitzer for her 1972 novel The Optimist's Daughter. Her memoirs, One Writer's Beginnings was published in 1984. And, yes, the e-mail program is named after her, and, no, she had nothing to do with it.
• "It's delightful, it's delicious, it's Delugg." - The lyric "It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely" features in the chorus of the Cole Porter song "It's De-lovely." The song first appeared in the stage musical Red, Hot and Blue! (1936), sung by Ethel Merman and Bob Hope.
• "It seems like 'Santa Soul Train.' 'Well, that's a lovely dress you're wearin', ho ho ho, we got the Ohio Players comin' up next."
  • The funky visuals remind Joel of the musical showcase TV show "Soul Train" (1971- ). Essentially the African-American answer to Dick Clark's "American Bandstand" (1957-89), it was originally a local Chigaco series created by the show's producer and host, Don Cornelius. Like "Bandstand," musical acts would perform while young folks danced. Unlike "Bandstand," the acts and young folks were African-American. I assume Joel is doing an impression of Cornelius.
  • The Ohio Players were one of the top 1970s funk bands. Hailing from Dayton, Ohio, the horn-driven group was originally called the Ohio Untouchables when formed in 1959. After several member changes, they became the Ohio Players in 1967. Hits include "Funky Worm" (1973), "Fire" (1974), "Love Rollercoaster" (1975), "Who'd She Coo?" (1976) and "O-H-I-O" (1977).
• "Toys by Marx!" - Tom's right. Right there in the credits, the toys for SCCTM were supplied by Louis Marx & Company, the precursor to today's Marx Toy Corporation. Marx was begun in 1919 by Louis Marx and his brother David with absolutely no assets. By the time of Second World War, Louis Marx & Co. had become the world's largest toy manufacturer. Over the years, the company suffered some ups and down, being bought out by a number of other companies, until the creation of the present successful incarnations, the Marx Toy Corporation. Popular toys created by Marx over the years include the Yo-Yo (which Marx introduced to the world in 1928), the Big Wheel and other Ride 'Ems, their exclusive Playsets and the Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.
• "Reverend Schuller at the Crystal Tower... Cathedral... Fountain... Thing..."
  • Reverend Robert Schuller (1926- ) is a Protestant minister turned TV evangelist (one of the less offensive ones). Schuller first made headlines in 1955 when the congregation for his Los Angeles church grew to big, so he had to perform services at a drive-in theatre. Since 1970 he has hosted his own religious program, "Hour of Power," and, over the years, collected donations to build--
  • --the Crystal Cathedral. The Cathedral is a massive, mostly glass place of worship where Schuller preaches for the Reformed Church of America. It has 10 000 windows of tempered silver-coloured glass and has seating for 2890. Services (which include broadcasts of "Hour of Power") are shown indoors on a Sony Jumbotron TV screen and a similar set-up outside allows drive-in visitors to also attend. Now, that's the way to attend church! It also has one of the five largest pipe organs in the world.
• "This is the kookiest credit sequence since Mannequin." - The 1987 comedy Mannequin told the story of Jonathan (Andrew McCarthy), a man who falls in love with a mannequin he puts together for the store he works at. But, wait, it gets stranger! The mannequin comes to life, possessed by the spirit of Emmy (Kim Cattrall), an ancient Egyptian princess. And she changes back whenever anyone else shows up, which, I'm sure, leads to hilarity. Having managed to avoid this film so far, I have relied on Helper Jeremy Rabus to decribe it for me: "...at the beginning of the film, there's a huge earthquake as the gods turn Emmy into a statue. The credit sequence is a poorly animated cartoon that shows Emmy resurfacing as a statue, or with Columbus on his ship, and other historical settings of note, and finally the movie begins. This sequence really is kooky!" The film was inexplicably followed by a 1991 sequel, Mannequin 2: On the Move.
• "Big Brother's watching, kids!" - In George Orwell's 1949 novel 1984 and its many adaptations, Big Brother represents the totalitarian organization that rules over society, censoring behaviour and thoughts (with the help of the thought Police). Although his picture is plastered all over the place, Big Brother is not a real person, but rather a representation of all the ideals of the Party in charge. Big Brother constantly watches the citizens of this bleak work through omnipresent telescreens.
• "You're Rip Taylor." - The reporter does resemble actor/comedian Charles Elmer Taylor (1934- ) when he's in Rip Taylor mode. Taylor's style of comedy is over-the-top and "zany." He wears ludicrous clothes, a deliberately bad wig, tosses bags of confetti at the audience and cries theatrically over an over-sized hanky. This all started when his act was going poorly during an appearance on "The Merv Griffith Show" (1962-86); Rip freaked out, tore up his script (and Merv's), threw the shreds around, knocked over Merv's desk and ran out. When the show was broadcast, people thought it was a "bit," and adored it. Taylor has made many appearances on stage, including Broadway and Vegas. Movie appearances include Amazon Women on the Moon (1987), Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992), Wayne's World 2 (1993) and in a serious role in Indecent Proposal (1993). He hosted "The $1.98 Beauty Show" (1978-80) and has done cartoon voice work; he was nominated for an Emmy for his vocal portrayal of Uncle Fester on "The Addams Family" cartoon (1992-5).
• "All over the woooorld!" - Joel is quoting Denver stand-up comedian and radio personality Michael Floorwax. Apparently a favourite of the MST3K crew, he has a routine which climaxes with this "all over the world!" bit. (Much thanks to Helper Mario Lanza for tracking down this info. I never would've gotten this one on my own.)
• "It's Barbara Bush!" - Former U.S. First Lady to President George Bush (1925- ; maiden name, Barbara Pierce) and mother of later President George W. Bush. Became Honourary Chairman of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Litery during Bush, Sr.'s term as Vice-President. Published her autobiography Barbara Bush: A Memoir in 1994. She looked quite a bit older than she was, leading to a whole lot of jokes by stand-up comedians and sketch comedy shows at the time.
• "Ed Sullivaaan!" - Mrs. Claus is obviously getting a little thrill out of being on camera, so Tom sings this line from the song "Hymn For a Sunday Night" from the 1960 Broadway musical Bye Bye Birdie (later a 1963 motion picture and a 1993 TV movie). The story involves a publicity stunt in which a young girl is chosen to kiss rock star Conrad Birdie before he is drafted; this kiss will air live on the popular variety show, "The Ed Sullivan Show" (1948-71; originally called "Toast of the Town"). Upon hearing that their daughter is to be the lucky girl, the parents of Kim MacAfee are thrilled and sing "Hymn for a Sunday Night," which is, as Helper Elliott Kalan puts it, an "anthem about the mindless void that is TV, and their rapturous idolatry of it."
• "When she thinks of the mass media, she touches herself." - Rock band the Divinyls had a controversial smash hit in 1991 called "I Touch Myself." The song was about the female vocalist masturbating and featured the lyric, "I don't want anybody else/When I think about you, I touch myself." Naturally, people freaked at the song's subject matter, because, you know, sex is evil.
• "It looks like C. Everett Koop's children are employed here." - Their prominent beards (without any other facial hair) makes the elves resemble former Uniter States Surgeon General C. Everett Koop (1916- ). Considered a superb pediatric surgeon, Koop was noticed internationally when he successfully separated a pair of Dominican Siamese twins in 1974. He was made Surgeon General in 1981 by President Ronald Reagan and held the post in 1989. At first, it was assumed that he would be conservative, but surprised everyone with his progressive views on issues like smoking and AIDS.
• "I'm Batman!" - Batman is one of the most popular comic-book super-heroes of all time, probably second only to Superman. Created by writer Bill Finger and artist Bob Kane, Batman first appeared in Detective Comics #27 (dated May 1939), published by National Periodicals (later DC Comics). Young Bruce Wayne saw his parents gunned down by a mugger and decided to devote his life to fighting crime. He dressed as a bat to frighten criminals, who are "a cowardly, superstitious lot." His costume included a cowl and a big cape which sometimes resembled bat-wings. The martian doll's costume sort of resembles it, but Batman's isn't green... Based in Gotham City, Batman has also had a string of young men as sidekicks, all using the codename Robin. Batman and his supporting cast have appeared in too many adaptations to list here, but the version specifically referred to here in the 1989 major motion picture Batman, the first in a series of big-budget films. Near the beginning, Batman (Michael Keaton) holds a mugger (Clyde Gatell) over a ledge about 15 stories up. The mugger shrieks, "Who are you?!" The calm response is "I'm Batman!" Classic moment.
• "Meanwhile, at Oscar Wilde's house..." - Famed Irish-born poet, novelist, playwright and critic Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) was a leading literary figure of the Aesthetic movement, known for his outrageous manner and cutting, dry wit. Throughout his life, his behaviour, speech and (mostly importantly for this ref) dress grew more and more flamboyant. Later in his life, he was convicted of "gross indecency" for his homosexuality and imprisoned for two years. Important works include the 1878 poem Ravenna, his 1891 novel The Picture of Dorian Grey, an 1888 fairy tale collection titled The Happy Prince and Other Tales and his 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest, considered his masterpiece.
• "Where's Lady Momar?" "Qaddafi?" - Joel means the controversial leader of Libya, Colonel Muammar Qaddafi (1942- ). Gaddafi became leader of Libya in 1969 when he toppled King Idris in a bloodless coup. In an effort to separate Libya from Wester influence, Qadhafi expelled all foreigners and closed down the British and U.S. embassies. Gadhafi has also openly supported many revolutionary movements in other countries, including South Africa. The Colonel is very anti-West, but that's okay because the West is very anti-him. And all of the spellings of his name used in this paragraph are legit.
• "...those ridiculous Earth programs. It confuses them." "Especially 'Twin Peaks.'" - "Twin Peaks" (1990-1) was one of the most original, strange, surrealistic and talked about TV shows of the late 20th century. Created by David Lynch and Mark Frost, it was (to use the description from the twinpeaks.org FAQ) "part murder mystery, part soap opera spoof, part comedy, part supernatural drama, and part homage to classic movies." Taking place in the town of Twin Peaks, Washington, the show started off being about FBI Agent Dale Cooper's (Kyle MacLachlin) investigation into the murder of popular local high school girl Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee). While the investigation continued in the background, though, the show became more and more about the bizarre inhabitants of the small town and some of the strange, increasingly supernatural events they experienced. The show got stranger and stranger every week, with apparent alien abductions, supernatural visitations, visits to other, surreal dimensions, prophetic dreams, and people developing new personalities after getting hit on the head, with some of Cooper's more eccentric co-workers dropping by to liven things up. Laura's murderer was eventually revealed to be her father Leland (Ray Wise) possessed by a malevolent spirit named BOB (Frank Silva). Viewers either thought it was the most confusing thing they ever saw, or, like me, thought it was way cool and went around quoting from it extensively ("That is a damn fine cup of coffee!"). In 1992, a prequel motion picture was released called Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me ("fire, walk with me" was a recurring phrase on the show), showcasing the last week or two of Laura Palmer's life.
• "You know, Pia Zadora never got much taller than she is here..." - That's true. At her tallest, Zadora was only 5 feet tall.
• "I told you not to watch those silly Earth programs." "Like 'Firing Line.'" - Syndicated since 1966, and appearing on PBS since 1971, "Firing Line" is a weekly political interview program hosted by conservative journalist/author/pundit William F. Buckley. Acclaimed by conservatives and liberals alike, guests over the years have included many U.S. Presidents, Henry Kissinger, the Dalai Lama, Margaret Thatcher, author James Michener and comedian Groucho Marx.
• "Will you buy me a Golden Globe?" "Why, sure." - The Golden Globe Awards are given out every January in Hollywood in categories spanning film, television and music. The winners are chosen by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group which created the award in 1943. The Globes have a more casual feel than the Oscars. As Warren Beatty put it, "The Golden Globes are fun. The Oscars are business." Several times over the years, however, the HFPA has been accused of favouritism and giving into bribes. Pia Zadora's win for Butterfly (see above) is a prime example. Zadora's then-husband, Israeli multimillionaire Meshulam Riklis, few the members of the HFPA to Vegas to catch her stage singing and to attend an advance showing of the film. Later, Zadora got Best Female Newcomer for Butterfly, despite her performance being almost universally panned. You can find more about the whole sordid affair here.
• "Buy Polaroid?" - Joel's "advice" is apparently that the Martians buy stock in Polaroid, one of the world's biggest manufacturer of camera film and associated products, founded in 1937.
• "Something is wrong with our children..." "...on Saturn 3." - "Something is wrong on Saturn 3" was the promotional tagline for the 1980 science-fiction dud Saturn 3. It featured Farrah Fawcett and Kirk Douglas as a randy couple working alone on a remote mining operation based in Saturn's rings. Everything's just fine until Harvey Keitel shows up with a robot helper, Hector. Hector proceeds to go nuts and try to kill them all. Pretty standard fare, although there is a cool, creepy scene where Hector tries to wear Keitel's head over his own.
• "Time for Septoberfest." - Now celebrated all over the world, Oktoberfest was first held on October 17, 1810, by Bavarian King Max Joseph to celebrated the wedding of his son, Crown Prince Ludwig (later known as Mad King Ludwig). It became an annual event and spread across the world, allowing everyone to drink copious amounts of beer and act like Germans.
• "Guy looks like a Troll doll." - Considered good luck to own, Troll dolls are (deliberately) ugly little things with pot bellies and long, brightly coloured, wild hair (which often sticks straight up). A sort of Troll doll was first distributed by Helena and Martkii Kuukoski of Finland, but the Troll as we know it today is actually a Danish product. The first doll was created in 1959 by Thomas Dam for his daughter's birthday, being unable to afford a bought gift. His daughter showed it around to her friends and, before he knew it, Dam had to deal with a huge demand for the things. Eventually, Dam founded a company (Dam Things Establishment - I kid you not) with its own factory to keep up. Troll dolls have remained popular ever since, with many knock-off produced by companies around the world.
• "I had Jell-O today." - Ah, Jell-O! The soft, easy to eat dessert of choice among the old and sick. Jell-O was invented in 1897 by Pearl B. Wait of LeRoy, New York, when he developed a fruit-flavoured gelatin. His wife, May Davis Wait, came up with the name. Distributed by Kraft Foods, it comes in tons of flavours, from Raspberry to Watermelon to odd combinations like Strawberry Kiwi. Although it can (and is) enjoyed by every kind of person, it's usually foist upon hospital patients and those who stay in retirement homes. As their ads say, "There's always room for Jell-O!"
• "Everything I know I learned in kindergarten." - The title of the book referred to here is really All I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things (1986) by Robert Fulgham. Kindergarten is a collection of "Southern homespun wisdom" essays by Fulgham about appreciating both the little and the big things in life, with a "stop a smell the roses" look at everything from love to chicken-fried steak. Sort of like a really long Hallmark card. It has spawned a number of tongue-in-cheek imitators, including All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Watching Star Trek (1994) by Dave Marinaccio (which makes a lot more sense to me...).
• "Diarrhea is like a storm raging inside you." - From an old Pepto-Bismol ad where a clearly uncomfortable person clutches their stomach, thunder rumbles in the background and the voice-over gives the above line.
• "Desperate problems require desperate deeds." "Done dirt cheap." - Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap was the title of an album by Australian rock band AC/DC (1975 in Australia; 1981 US release). A song of the same name appeared on the album.
• "Cricket lighter away!" - Cricket lighters, introduced in 1961 by Swedish Match, were the world's first disposable lighters. Today, they sell 300 million lighters a year in 140 countries and come in a variety of funky styles.
• "They canceled 'Battlestar: Galactica,' I'm gonna kill myself." - "Battlestar: Galactica" (1978-9) began its life as a 1978 TV movie written and produced by Glen A. Larson. It told the tale of a fleet of spaceships peopled by humans on the run from the robotic Cylons, who were determined to wipe out humankind. The fleet's lead ship was the Battlestar Galactica, led by Commander Adama (Lorne Greene). The fleet's ultimate goal was to track down a lost human colony called Earth. The show was very popular, always dominating its timeslot; but at $1 million an episode (even more than it sounds in the late 1970s), it was deemed too expensive to continue and was axed. An attempted revived called "Galactica 1980" (1980) had the fleet reaching Earth, but it was so bad that nobody anywhere considers it canon. It has regained popularity recently, with comic books and a series of novel as well as a remake mini-series scheduled for early 2004. Tom mentions the show because the Martian ship's exhaust looks a lot like the exhaust from the small one-man vehicles used for combat in pretty much every episode. (In 1979, a 15-year old boy from St. Paul, Minnesota, named Eddie Seidel Jr. did in fact commit suicide, unable to handle the show's cancellation. More details here.)
• In quick succession, we get mention of three classic games, all produced by Milton-Bradley (currently part of Hasbro), and all still currently available:
  • "Hey, look, their ship runs on a giant Simon." - Introduced by MB in 1978, Simon (named after the game "Simon Says") was a portable electronic game consisting of four large coloured panels. The panels would light up one at a time, each with a different tone. The trick was to repeat the slowly growing sequence without making a mistake; if you did, you got a loud buzzing sound to let you know, and you had to start over again. It could also be played multi-player and I remember it being extremely addictive (to the point where you'd try to play it under your covers after bedtime - which was hard because it made so much noise).
  • "Stratego!" - Stratego was first produced by MB in 1961 and was essentially a boardgame equivalent of "Capture the Flag." Both players would hide a "flag" somewhere on the board and surround it with a 40 member army, consisting of several "ranks" of differing strengths. But, the trick was that the identities of everything on the board was hidden and you didn't know what you were attacking until you attacked it. Also hidden were "bombs" and "spies." When one flag was captured, the game was over.
  • "You sank my battleship!" - This line featured in the ads for Battleship, one of the most popular board games of all time. Introduced in 1967, Battleship was a two-player naval combat game where each player had a hidden 10 by 10 grid that they would place five different vessels on. Then each player took turns calling out a co-ordinate on the grid (for example, B-7 or G-9). The other player would indicate "hit" or "miss," allowing clever players to work out what vessels were where and blow them out of the water. Two electronic versions were available (one with just the sounds of battle and one which spoke), as well as a CD-ROM version and a special Star Wars edition.
• "Gentlemen, we can't all be the Honey Nut Cheerios Honeybee." - Introduced in 1979, Honey Nut Cheerios was the second variety of General Mills' Cheerios breakfast cereal. So, now, instead of tasting like little O-shaped bits of sawdust, it tasted like little O-shaped bits of sawdust with honey and nuts on top. Their mascot is, not surprisingly, a cartoon honeybee.
• "The Big Apple." "Des Moines?" - "The Big Apple" is, of course, the nickname for New York City, and not Iowa's capital city of Des Moines. The term first appeared in a 1909 book, The Wayfarer in New York, edited by Edward S. Martin. Cities are described as being the "fruit of the great tree" that is the Mississippi Valley, and New York is "the big apple" that takes more than its fair share of sap. Obviously, over the years the term gained a more positive connotation.
• "Wait a minute, he just described Huggy Bear." - The character of Huggy Bear (Antonio Fargas) featured on the police drama "Starsky and Hutch" (1975-9); he was a regular informant for undercover cops Starsky (Paul Michael Glaser) and Hutch (David Soul). An embarrassing stereotype of a 1970s black man, Huggy dressed the part. Gaudy coats with fur trim, that kind of thing. You can bet he spoke "jive," too.
• "I see Santa Claus!" "And he's kissing Mommy!" - A variation on the song "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" written by Tommie Connor. It was a huge hit on its first release in 1953 by then-thirteen year old Jimmy Boyd. In the song, a naughty boy sneaks down to check things out before Christmas morning and spies his mother kissing Santa "underneath the mistletoe." There's an implication that it's really the boy's father dressed like Santa, but that just rumour spread by those strange people who don't believe in Santa. We know better. The song has been a hit for many others of the years, including Perry Como and Spike Jones.
• "...a fat little man in a red suit." "Truman Capote?" - American author (1924-84; born Truman Streckfus Persons). After spending time as an office boy at The New Yorker magazine, Capote sold his first major short story, "Miriam," in 1945; it won him an O. Henry Memorial Award, the first of many literary awards throughout his life. Other works of note include the short story "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (1961; made into a successful motion picture later that year) and the acclaimed 1966 non-fiction account In Cold Blood, about the murder of a Kansas farmer and his family. Capote earned himself the nickname "the Tiny Terror," through a combination of his 5'3" frame and his eccentric jet-setting lifestyle. Also eccentric was his style of dress, often wearing one solid colour for his whole outfit.

Host Segment 2 - (Let's Have) A Patrick Swayze Christmas

• "'Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas'?" "Oh, yeah, yeah, based on my favourite movie, Road House." - For more on Road House, see above. For now, let's talk about Patrick Swayze. Having attended several dance/ballet schools in his youth, dancer, choreographer and actor Patrick Swayze (1952- ) first performed as a dancer professionally in Disney on Parade as Prince Charming. After a run on Broadway in Grease and several film appearances (his first movie being 1979's Skatetown, U.S.A), he became an overnight sensation playing a sexy dance instructor in 1987's Dirty Dancing. Working more or less steadily since, Swayze is a decent enough actor, with rather uneven choices of projects. Good films include Ghost (1990) and To Wong Fu, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar (1995) (as a transvestite). Bad films include the post-apocalyptic waste of film Steel Dawn (1987), Point Break (1991), Next of Kin (which we'll cover in a minute) and, of course, Road House.
• "We'll gather at the road house with our next of kin." - 1989 was a banner year for Patrick Swayze. As well as the infamous Road House, that year he also released what is arguably his second worst film, Next of Kin. Swayze plays Chicago cop Truman Gates. Truman comes from a family of hillbillies. No, really. His brother Gerald (Bill Paxton) is killed by a group of Chicago gangster types and his other brother Briar (Liam Neeson, doing an awfully good accent for an Irish lad), decides to dispense some hillbilly justice. Truman is caught in the middle, torn between helping his brother and preventing him from doing anything illegal.
• "And Santa can be our regular Saturday night thing..." - As mentioned above, a similar line appears in Road House.
• "Well, no, it's just that I've never heard of a action sequence in a Christmas carol before." - Crow's carol may be the first to contain "a action sequence," but it certainly wasn't the last. Hardcore punk band the Vandals, on the 1996 album Christmas with the Vandals, recorded a song titled "Oi to the World" about how punks and skins should try to get along, at least during the holidays. It features the lines, "On the rooftop with the nunchuks, Trevor broke a lot of bones/But Haji had a sword like that guy in Indiana Jones." The song was re-recorded by No Doubt for the 1997 album A Very Special Christmas Volume 3.
• "It my way or the highway, this Christmas at my bar..." - Yet another line from the Road House, as, again, mentioned above.
• "I'll have to smash your kneecaps if you bastards touch my car." - Yeah, in Road House, Swayze has this car he's very protective of. He tells the bad guys to leave it alone, but do they? Nooooo...

Movie Act 2

• "Uh, polka dots and moon beams, sir." - The song "Polka Dots and Moonbeams," written in 1940 by Jimmy Van Heusen and Johnny Burke is a jazz/easy listening standard, recorded over the years by dozens of artists, including Tommy Dorsey, Frank Sinatra and Oscar Peterson.
• "Ah, splendor in the leaves." - Refers to the movie title Splendor in the Grass (1961). Splendor was about an emotionally broken girl, Wilma Dean Loomis (Natalie Wood) rebuilding her life in the 1920s U.S. Midwest. It was remade as a 1981 TV movie, with Melissa Gilbert in the starring role.
• "What is this, a Bergman film all of a sudden?" - This shot (a forest, with a little girl, dressed up warmly, looking vaguely Nordic) is reminiscent of certain period-piece movies of Swedish film-maker Ingmar Bergman (1918- ); for example, The Virgin Spring (1960) and The Magic Flute (1975). Bergman (whose other films include such cinematic classics as The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1957), Shame (1968) and Scenes from a Marriage (1973)) often used surrealistic imagery.
• "Hello... Hello... Helloooo... Hello!" - Traditional greeting from the Three Stooges comedy team. Each Stooge would pop his head around a corner one at a time and sing out, "Hello." When all three were done, they'd call out "Hello" together.
• "Who's your daddy?" - Lyric from the 1969 song "Time of the Season" by the Zombies; it became their biggest hit. It has since been covered by a number of other groups, including Big Blue Missle and the Nylons. It also appears on the soundtrack of Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999), performed by Argent.
• "Woah, Maynard Ferguson playing a ballad there." - Canadian-born jazz trumpeter (1928- ) made his debut in 1950 with Stan Kenton's Orchestra. Described as boisterous and enthusiastic, he was well known for his ability to hit ridiculously hit notes with ease. Over the years, he has led several jazz bands including Birdland Dreamland and the Big Bop Nouveau Band. He has distressed his fans and followers with his occasional foray into more commercial projects, like his renditions of the themes from the films Rocky (1976) and Star Wars (1977).
• "Oh, Liz Taylor's wedding ring." - Actress Elizabeth Taylor (1932- ) has been in way too many movies to list even a respectable percentage of them here. A brief sampling includes: There's One Born Every Minute (1942; her first film, aged 10), Lassie Come Home (1943), National Velvet (1944), Giant (1956), Cleopatra (1963), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The Mirror Crack'd (1980) and The Flintstones (1994). Also numerous are her husbands, who all tend to give her wedding rings with gemstones only slightly smaller than the Sydney Opera House. Her husbands (so far) have been: Conrad Hilton, Michael Wilding, Micheal Todd, Eddie Fisher, occasional co-star Richard Burton, Burton a second time, Senator John Warner and Larry Fortensky.
• "The Hope Diamond." - At more than 45 carats in weight, the Hope Diamond (sometimes called "the Blue Hope") is one of the largest diamonds in the world. Originally owned by King Louis XIV of France, it was stolen during the French Revolution. The next known owner was Londoner Henry Philip Hope (from whom the stone gets its current name), who acquired it during the 1830s. After taken possession of the diamond, Hope's luck seemed to go bad, as did that of the next several owners, leading to the myth that the stone if cursed. It has been kept at the Smithsonian Institution since 1958.
• "You know, you're the Gilligan of your time, Dropo." - Gilligan (no full named revealed) was the rather idiotic title character on the popular syndicated sit-com "Gilligan's Island" (1964-7). Played by Bob Denver, sailor Gilligan was one of 7 castaways stranded on a desert island in the vicinity of Hawaii. Gilligan's main purpose on the show was to get hit by his friend and boss, the Skipper (Alan Hale, Jr.) and to screw up almost every attempt to get off the island, leading to the long-time question of why the other castaways didn't kill Gilligan or, at least, lock him up somewhere.
• "Rosebud!" - The view of the city in the film looks a little like a snowglobe, leading to this reference to Orson Wells' 1941 classic film Citizen Kane. At the beginning of the film, title character Charles Foster Kane (Wells) lays dying in bed. He whispers the word "Rosebud" and dies, dropping the snowglobe he holds, which then shatters on the floor. The quest to discover what "Rosebud" meant led to reporters reviewing his life in flashback.
• "Now..." "...is the winter of our discontent..." - The famous "Now" speech from William Shakespeare's play Richard III (first performed 1592). The line is actually the first of the play, spoken by Richard, Duke of Gloucester, later King Richard III. In this opening speech, Richard details his plot against his brother Clarence, heir to the British throne. This opening line is often performed with a dramatic pause after "Now."
• "And now, Red in the Silent Spot." - During most episodes of "The Red Skelton Show" (1951-71), host and comedian Red Skelton would perform his routine as his silent clown/hobo character Freddy the Freeloader. This bit was called the Silent Spot. I guess Droppo, by himself, mugging for the camera is vaguely remeniscent of Red's routine. If Red Skelton had been talentless and unfunny.
• "Tor? 'Time for go to bed.'" - The episode just before this one featured the 1957 film The Unearthly, which co-starred Tor Johnson as mad scientist servant Lobo. Lobo wasn't a very articulate fellow and delivered the classic line, "Time for go to bed."
• "C'mon Cindy! I mean Skipper! This shot has been in so many sit-coms, I'm confused!" - Yep. This shot of two characters hiding somewhere (usually mishearing something which then leads to that episode's "plot"), then peeking out to make sure the coast is clear, is a sit-com staple. "Cindy" refers to Cindy Brady (Susan Olsen), the youngest of the three daughters on "The Brady Bunch" (1969-74), and "Skipper" would be the Skipper (Alan Hale, Jr.) from "Gilligan's Island" (1964-7).
• "They came to rob Las Vegas." - They Came to Rob Las Vegas was a 1968 film (original title, Las Vegas, 500 milliones) about an attempted heist of some Vegas gambling money.
• "Now they can't watch Nick at Nite." - On the cable network Nickelodeon, one programming concept in Nick at Nite. Several evenings a week, Nickelodeon shows a classic TV show. These have usually (but not always) been sit-coms, such as "Gilligan's Island" (1964-7), "The Andy Griffith Show" (1960-8) and "The Brady Bunch" (1969-74). This group of shows is referred to by the network as Nick at Nite.
• "Kid's the MacGyver of his time." - "MacGyver" (1985-92) starred Richard Dean Anderson as Angus MacGyver, a man who was able to use his scientific knowledge and inventiveness to build weapons and gadgets out of everyday materials, an ability he'd use to help those in trouble. The man could make explosives out of chewing gum. Lock him in a cell, and he'd find a way out using pocket lint. He could build a radio out of three pounds of sand and a coconut. Oh, wait, that's the Professor from "Gilligan's Island"...
• "Jacob's Ladder, the lost scenes." - The film Jacob's Ladder (1990) was about postal worker and ex-Vietnam vet Jacob Singer (Tim Robbins), who starts have hallucinations and flashbacks. The visions become more and more frequent until he finds it difficult to distinguish between fantasy and reality.
• "Apparently, that spaceship's a lot bigger on the inside." "Like a TARDIS." - The TARDIS is the name of the space/time travel machine used by the alien hero, the Doctor (I'm not gonna list all the actors who've played him here), on the long-running sf series "Doctor Who" (1963-89). The TARDIS (short for Time and Relative Dimension (not Dimensions) in Space) had the outward appearance of a British police call box; it was supposed to change shape to match its surroundings, but the Chameleon Circuit broke down prior to the series beginning. Despite its small exterior dimensions, the TARDIS was huge once you entered it, going on for miles, including a vast assortment of room like laboratories and indoor pools. This made the ship "dimensionally transcendental."
• "Very Jungian." - Refers to the works and concepts of Swiss psychologist and psychiatrist Carl Jung. Jung's works are often heralded as a better alternative to the works of the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, with whom Jung was once collaborator. Jung developed the concepts of extroverted and introverted personalities, archetypes and the collective unconscious. And, no, I'm not going to explain all of those here. Go read a book.
• "'Monkey Patrol.' In colour." - There is, probably mercifully, no such program as "Monkey Patrol," but "Fill-in-the-blank Patrol" has been a popular title format, especially during the 1950s and 60s. For example, we've had "Space Patrol" (1951-2), "Highway Patrol" (1955-9), "African Patrol" (1957), "Border Patrol" (1959) and "The Rat Patrol" (1966-8). Also, in the early days of colour television, when a lot of people still had black-and-white sets, it was common for the pronouncement "In colour!" to follow the name of a show, to let people know what they were missing and encourage them to buy new, colour TVs.
• "These are like cheap versions of the 'Lost in Space' sets." - "Lost in Space" (1965-8) is part of notorious producer/director Irwin Allen's ouevre. "Lost" was a rather popular science-fiction series about a family (and a couple of others) whose spaceship is thrown off course, making them, um, lost in space. Like most Irwin Allen series (others include "Land of the Giants" (1968-70) and "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (1964-8)), the show started off pretty good, but, with Allen's insistence that more "monsters" be added (at the expense of plot), it became laughable by its end. Also like most Allen series, it was kind of cheaply made. In fact, Allen tried to re-use as many props and sets as possible, often on more than one program. The major motion picture version of Lost in Space was released in 1998; this version had top-notch incredible effects, but still lacked in plot.
• "Don't call me Chief!" - Line used often by Perry White, managing editor of the Daily Planet newspaper, the paper where Clark Kent (AKA Superman) works in the comic books, as well as Superman's appearances in other media. This line is often directed at Planet photographer Jimmy Olsen; Jimmy still always calls him "Chief." The gag seems to have originated on the old "The Adventures of Superman" TV show (1952-7), but soon carried over into the comics.
• "Betty, have you ever read the book Alive?" - In 1973, a plane of Uruguayan rugby players crashed in that country's mountains. In order to last until rescuers found them, the crash survivors were forced to eat their own dead. Ick. Their story was told in the 1974 book Alive by Piers Paul Read. The book was adapted into two movies, Survive! (1976) and Alive (1993).
• "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas." - "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" is another favourite holiday song. Composed in 1951 by Meredith Willson, it has been recorded by many artists including Bing Crosby and Perry Como.
• "Ice Station Zebra: The Early Years." - The novel Ice Station Zebra was written by Alistair MacLean (sort of the original Tom Clancy) in 1965. A British meteorological station on the edge of the polar ice cap experiences a fire, putting all stationed there in peril. An American nuclear sub is sent to help, but they discover that the fire is sabotage. Technothrills ensue. Made into a film of the same name in 1968.
• "Looks like Eric Heiden gone horribly wrong." - Eric Heiden (1958- ), 3-time overall world speed skating champ. Won all five men's gold medals in speed skating at the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. The remark refers to those frighteningly tight outfits speed skaters wear to help them approach light speed (idiot disclaimer: no, not really light speed, you goof).
• "What is this, the end of The Shining?" - In the climax of the 1980 horror film The Shining, an insane Jack Torrence (Jack Nicholson) chases his family through a garden maze during a huge snowstorm. According to Helper Tim Kynerd, this scene is different from the original 1977 Stephen King novel, which instead features topiary animals that come to life when you turn your back on them. The 1997 TV mini-series remake apparently also features the topiary.
• "Suzy Chapstick: The Early Years." - Suzy Chapstick was really 1968 bronze medal Olympic skier Suzy Chafee. Chafee did a series of commercials for Chapstick brand lip balm, where she was show skiing, then way-too-happily applying the balm. For the ads, she was dubbed "Suzy Chapstick."
• "No, that's the Children's Television Workshop." - The CTW was founded in 1968 by, among others, Joan Ganz Cooney, who was inspired to produce superior children's programming after doing a study on TV for preschoolers for the Carnegie Corporation in New York. The following year, the CTW created and began production on the best children's program ever, PBS' "Sesame Street" (1969- ). The CTW went on to produce many more excellent shows for youngsters, including "The Electric Company" (1971-7), "3-2-1 Contact" (1980-92), "Square One TV" (1987), and "Ghostwriter" (1992-5). In 2000, the CTW, realizing that television was only one small part of what they now produced, changed their name to Sesame Workshop.
• "Isn't that the 'Jeopardy!' theme song sort of in a minor key?" - Torg's theme (not to be confused with Torgo's theme) does sound a little like the theme to "Jeopardy!" (various incarnations since 1964), the most popular game show on TV. As well as being the opening and closing theme, the tune is used while the contestants write down their answers (sorry, questions) for the Final Jeopardy round. The ditty was composed by "Jeopardy!"'s creator, talk-show host Merv Griffin.
• "Hey, it's the robot that walked from Hawaii to Gilligan's Island!" - From the Feb. 10, 1966 episode of "Gilligan's Island," "Gilligan's Living Doll." The experimental Air Force robot (Bob D'Arcy) actually parachuted onto the island, but the castaways program it to walk back to Hawaii with a distress message. The robot is successful, but the message is garbled because Gilligan (Bob Denver) jammed his rabbit's foot into the robot for good luck.
• "It was after the apocalypse. No one was prepared for the... Robot Holocaust." - Tom is doing an impression of the narrator for the 1987 straight-to-video post-apocalyptic Robot Holocaust, seen as MST episode 110. The ponderous voice over from the narrator describes the "Robot Rebellion of '33" and points out that "the world had been brought to its knees by the... Robot Holocaust!"
• "Oil-can. Oil-can!" - Line from the 1939 MGM classic film The Wizard of Oz. While in Oz, Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) encounters the Tin Woodman (Jack Haley), a silver coloured man made completely of metal. He has rusted still from a rain storm and is barely able to squeak out the plaintive cry of "Oil-can! Oil-can!" Dorothy finds the oil-can and de-rusts the Woodman. A similar scene appears in the original novel by L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), but rather than calling out "Oil-can!", the Woodman merely "groans" to get Dorothy's attention; he is then able to tell her to get his oil-can from his nearby cottage.
• "Bah." "Humbug." - From Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843) and most of its adaptations. The miserly Ebenezer Scrooge's favourite insult seems to be "Humbug!" often preceded by the extra scoff of "Bah!" A "humbug" is anything that is fraudulent or deceitful, which pretty much matches Scrooge's view of Christmas.
• "War! Huh! What is it good for?" - This is a line from the chorus of the anti-war song "War," first recorded in 1970 by its composer, R&B singer Edwin Starr. It has also been performed by Bruce Springsteen (1986), Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker in the film Rush Hour (1998) and by the cast of "Xena: Warrior Princess" (1995-2001) on the 2000 musical episode "Lyre, Lyre, Hearts on Fire." I'm not kidding. It was a good episode. Seriously.
• "Your Downy softness." - Downy is a popular brand of liquid fabric softener produced by Procter & Gamble. Their ads often touted the "Downy softness" clothes had after being treated with the stuff.
• "To your post!" "VFW Post 309!" - The VFW is the (U.S.) Veterans of Foreign Wars organization. Back in 1899, veterans of the Spanish-American War and the Phillipine Insurrection started local support groups to help them secure rights and benefits. Slowly, these groups started to merge until they became one large organization, the VFW. Their branches are referred to as "Posts," with Post 309 based in Peru, New York.
• "Walk this way." "If I could walk that way, I wouldn't need the box." - Crow is doing his (admittedly vague) impression of comedian Groucho Marx. The "if I could walk that way" gag is an old one, used to great effect by Groucho. Help! Can someone pinpoint what film Groucho might have first used this in?

Host Segment 3 - Christmas specials

• "Aaahh, Ricky! Get me a Scotch!" - Crow is doing his impression of Lucille Ball's character of Lucy Ricardo from the classic 1950s sit-com "I Love Lucy" (1951-7). When Lucy got in a fix or got caught doing something she wasn't supposed to, she would often whine pathetically to her husband Ricky (Desi Arnaz), "Waaaaah, Ricky!"
• "Couldn't we watch a more cheerful movie, like The Sorrow and the Pity?" - The Sorrow and the Pity is the English title for the 1971 French film Le chagrin et la pitié. Chagrin is a four and a half documentary about France's role during the Second World War, both as collaborator and home of the French Resistance. It is mostly made up of interviews with survivors of Nazi atrocities. Apparently a brilliant film, but hardly "cheerful." Of course, compared to SCCTM...
• Grinch Who Stole Christmas - The proper title of this classic cartoon 1966 TV special is How the Grinch Stole Christmas!. Based on the 1957 Dr. Seuss children's book of the same name, Grinch tells the story of the Grinch (voiced perfectly by Boris Karloff), a green, crabby person who loathes Christmas. Meanwhile, the nearby village of Whoville celebrates the holiday in spades. He decides to dress up at Santa Claus and steals all the Whos' decorations, gifts and food, thus ruining Christmas for them. The Grinch is amazed when this fails miserably and the Whos are still happy. In one of the best moments in cartoon history, the Grinch realizes what Christmas is all about, his heart grows three sizes and he joins in the celebrations after returning everything. Grinch was made into a live-action feature film in 2000, with Jim Carrey as the Grinch.
• "Yes, my little huckleberry friend." - "My huckleberry friend" is referred to several times in the lyrics of "Moon River," a song sung by the character Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepurn) in the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's. Composed by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini, the song was later a hit for others, including Jerry Butler and Andy Williams.
• There now follows, in a row, multiple references to old Christmas movies and TV specials.
  • Mr. Magoo's Christmas Carol and Jim Backus
    • Mister Magoo was a popular cartoon character (voiced by Jim Backus) known for his bumbling through life despite the fact that he was nearly blind but refused to accept it. First appearing in the short film Ragtime Bear (1949), Magoo "starred" in a number of classic story adaptations, including one 1962 TV special doing Charles Dickens' Christmas tale A Christmas Carol (1843). Magoo played the role of Ebenezer Scrooge, the cynical old man who learns to appreciate Christmas through the help of a series of spirit visits.
    • Actor Jim Backus (1913-89), the voice of Mr. Magoo, performed in pretty much every medium in his life. Radio, film, TV, Broadway and cartoons. Appearances include the films Rebel Without a Cause (1955; as Jimmy Dean's father), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963) and Angels Revenge (1979; the experiment in episode #622) and a regular role on the sit-com "I Married Joan" (1952-5). He is best known, however, for two roles: Mr. Magoo and rich snob Thurston Howell III, one of the castaways on "Gilligan's Island" (1964-7).
  • Frosty the Snowman and Jackie Vernon
    • Based on the 1950 song of the same name, Frosty the Snowman (1969) was another of those great Rankin-Bass holiday TV specials. Featuring more traditional animation (instead of stop-action), it told the story of how Frosty the Snowman (voiced by Jackie Vernon) "came to life one day" and went on a trip to the North Pole so he wouldn't melt. Frosty featured in three other TV specials in 1976, 1979 and 1993 (when he was voice by John Goodman).
    • The voice of Frosty, actor Jackie Vernon (1924-87) didn't appear in a whole lot else. He had a handful of television guest spots and appeared in the films Microwave Massacre (1983) and Amazon Women on the Moon (1987; as himself).
  • Rankin-Bass' Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Burl Ives
    • We've already covered Rudolph.
    • Entertainer Burl Ives (1909-95) narrated Rudolph in the guise of Sam the Snowman (although if you see an original version of it, you'll notice that he's credited as BURI IVES). This former footballer's ballad singing career got off to an early start when Ives first sang in public for a soldier's reunion at the age of four. By 1944, he had his own radio show on CBS called "The Wayfaring Stranger," becoming very popular and cementing his reputation as one of America's greatest folksingers. He had several top ten hits including "Lavender Blue (Dilly Dilly)" (1948) and "On Top of Old Smoky" (1951). He also had a fairly successful action career, with his first appearance being as a singing cowboy in 1946's Smoky. Other films include So Dear to My Heart (1948; the first performance of "Lavender Blue"), East of Eden (1955), Our Man in Havana (1960), The Big Country (1958; for which he won an Oscar), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and the TV mini-series "Roots" (1977). As Joel points out, Burl was not dead at the time of the episode.
  • A Charlie Brown Christmas and Dolly Madison cakes
    • Another of the all-time great Christmas specials, A Charlie Brown Christmas (1965) was the first TV special to star the characters of Charles Schultz's comic strip "Peanuts." Charlie Brown (voiced by Peter Robbins), tired of Christmas commercialism, takes it upon himself to direct the school holiday pageant. Predictably, things go wrong, and Charlie Brown loses hope until his friend Linus (Christopher Shea) gives a rousing reading from the Bible about the birth of Christ and lifts his spirits. A sad, lonely little Christmas tree also figures into all this. An essential part of the holiday season (at least in North America), ACBC also had a really cool jazz soundtrack performed by the Vince Guiraldi Trio.
    • Dolly Madison Cakes, currently owned by Interstate Bakeries Corporation, was founded by Roy Nafzinger, who named the company after former First Lady Dolly Madison; Madison was famous for her huge parties which included a fine selection of desserts and baked goods. Beginning in the 1950s, "Peanuts" creator Charles Schultz gave Dolly Madison permission to use his characters as its new advertising logo. As a result, all the early "Charlie Brown" TV specials were heavily sponsored by Dolly Madison. And thanks to Helper Joshua_P._Munn for letting me know that "Zingers come in a wide variety of flavors from chocolate (like Ho-Hos) to butterscotch frosting to raspberry. All sort of caky with 'creme' filling..." Still need help! with Koo-Koos and Fuzzies, though. Can anyone help me out? (An interesting aside regarding advertising for ACBC. As well as Dolly Madison, Coca-Cola was also a major sponsor, with mentions in the special itself. In a early scene, Linus crashes into a Coke billboard, and, during the last verse of the gang singing "Hark the Herald Angels Sing," the words "Merry Christmas from your local Coca-Cola bottler" appear at the bottom of the screen. After laws were passed banning advertising from appearing in children's programming, both these bits were cut and have never been broadcast again. That's why the final scene seems to cut off abruptly.)
  • It's a Wonderful Life: the lame Marlo Thomas version - Frank Capra's delightful It's a Wonderful Life (1946) told the life story of George Bailey (James Stewart), a man who always wanted to leave his hometown and see the world but, usually because he's helping someone else out, never gets to. One Christmas, after a series of personal disasters, George feels his life is worthless but his guardian angel, Clarence (Henry Travers), shows George what a terrible place his world would be if he'd never been born. Seeing the effect he's had on those around him, he wishes for his life back and all is well again. In 1977, Marlo Thomas (1937- ; best know for her sit-com, "That Girl" (1966-71) and being married to talk-show host Phil Donohue), starred in a TV remake of IAWL called It Happened One Christmas. Most of the character genders were swapped, with Thomas playing Mary Bailey Hatch and Cloris Leachman as the angel, Clara. It was exceedingly lame.
  • Miracle on 34th Street: the David Hartman version - Another "must-see" holiday classic, the original Miracle on 34th Street starred Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle, a department store Santa who claimed to be the real thing. He is eventually taken to court to prove his identity. It also starred Natalie Wood as the less and less skeptical little girl Susan Walker, and Maureen O'Hara and Fred Gailey as Susan's mother, Doris, and her beau, John Payne. The version referred to here is the 1973 TV movie starring Sebastian Cabot as Kringle and David Hartman (1935- ; better known for later hosting "Good Morning America" (1975- )) as Payne. Doesn't sound too good. Miracle was remade once more as a theatrical release in 1994.

Movie Act 3

• "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" - Line from a sketch on the Sept. 22, 1970 episode of "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (1969-74). It starts off as a skit about trouble in a Welsh mining community but, when someone exclaims, "I didn't expect a kind of Spanish Inquisition!", there is a jarring dramatic chord and three men burst in wearing funny looking red costumes and yell, "Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!" The Inquisitioners begins to threaten those present, but it doesn't go well and they have to burst in dramatically twice more before moving onto some profoundly unsuccessful torture (involving Comfy Chairs and Cushions). The skit also appears in the Monty Python film And Now for Something Completely Different (1971).
• "Santa Claus, you're coming with us!" "You're coming to town." - Reference to the Christmas song "Santa Claus in Coming to Town," written by J. Fred Coots and Haven Gillespie in 1934.
• "It's just a Wham-O Air Blaster." - Wham-O, founded in 1948 by Arthur "Spud" Melin and Richard Knerr, is the undisputed king of classic "fad" toys, being the official producer of Frisbees, Hula Hoops and Hacky Sacks. One of their most popular toys was the Air Blaster. It looked like a real ray gun and, when you pulled the trigger, it shot a blast of air at your enemies, taking them down instantly. Well, okay, maybe not, but, in its time, the Air Blaster was an absolute must-have toy. Wham-O discontinued the Blaster in 1970 due to rumours that some stupid kids were putting the gun in their ears or the ears of other and pulling the trigger, a sure route to hearing damage. Stupid kids.
• "The Twilight Zone..." - The spooky chord and the rapid zoom-in on the frozen Mrs. Claus is reminiscent of episodes of the fantasy anthology series "The Twilight Zone" (1959-65). At the "frozen" point, series creator and host Rod Serling would often take the opportunity to introduce us to the characters and point out that they are trapped "in... the Twilight Zone."
• "Me, oh, my, oh, me, oh..." "Down by the bayou." - From the Cajun-style country song "Jambalaya (On the Bayou)," composed and first recorded by Hank Williams in 1952. The song is about what fun there is to be had "on the bayou" (not "down by the bayou"), with the repeating exclamation "me oh my oh." The song has been recorded by many other artists over the years, including Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Fats Domino and, oddly enough, the Carpenters.
• "Old man, take a look at my elf, I'm a lot like you." - Should be "Old man take a look at my life/I'm a lot like you." Lyric from the chorus of the Neil Young song "Old Man," from his 1972 album Harvest.
• "Next week on 'Barnaby Jones,' 'Mrs. Claus of Death'!" - "Barnaby Jones" (1973-80) starred Buddy Ebsen as the title character, an elderly retired private eye who comes out of retirement to avenge his son's murder and then decided to stay active again. Barnaby had to be 70 years old if he was a day, but somehow always managed to outrun 20 year old perps by walking sort of fast. "Mrs. Claus of Death" sounds like a typical episode title; real titles include "Trial Run for Death," "See Some Evil... Do Some Evil" and "Murder in the Key of C."
• "Earth girls are easy." - The 1989 oddball comedy Earth Girls Are Easy starred Geena Davis and Julie Brown as Valerie and Candy, a couple of air-headed California valley girls who meet three aliens, Mac (Jeff Goldblum), Wiploc (Jim Carrey) and Zeebo (Damon Wayans), when their ship crashlands in Valerie's pool. Wackiness ensues as the girls show the aliens how humans live. Eventually, when the aliens leave, Valerie goes with them, having fallen in love with Mac.
• "So, it was '69, I was stationed in Phnom Penh; Charlie had us pinned down near Hue. [Yes, that's how it's spelled. Thanks to Helper Matt Kremer.] The only thing that kept me going was Laotion Gold we got in Saigon..." - Seems that Santa is a veteran of the Vietnam War. Phnom Penh is the capital of Cambodia (sometimes called Kampuchea) and Saigon was the capital of South Vietnam. Cambodia, South Vietnam, North Vietnam and Laos were all connected by a system of mountain and jungle trails called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The Trail made it easy to smuggle weapons, soldiers and black market materials (like the mentioned Laotian gold, a type of heroin) among all four countries. "Charlie" was the American forces nickname for North Vietnamese soldiers.
• "Suddenly Salad." - Suddenly Salad is a Betty Crocker product (see later. It's basically a pasta salad in a box which comes in a variety of flavours, including Ranch & Bacon and Caeser.
• "And Spam?" - There are so many interesting facts about Spam that someone could write a book about it. Oh, wait, someone has! Developed in 1937 by Hormel Foods, Spam is short for SPiced hAM, which is essentially what it is: some pork products with salt, sugar and preservatives. Yet somehow it has gotten mocked by, well, everyone over the years, while still being a best-seller. It comes in a metal tin, coated with some mysterious gelatinous substance. It has come to mean "junk mail" on the net due to its repeated mention in a sketch on "Monty Python's Flying Circus" (1969-74) in which a restaurant serves everything with Spam, from "egg and Spam" to "Lobster Thermidor à Crevette with a mornay sauce served in a Provencale manner with shallots and aubergines garnished with truffle pate, brandy and with a fried egg on top and Spam." A type of "Spam sushi" is immensely popular in Hawaii. There are just too many facts to share!
• "You know, that Dropo plays a little broader than Larry Storch." - Actor Larry Storch's (1923- ) main claims to fame are being the voice of classic animated character Koko the Clown beginning in 1961, and starring in TV comedies "F Troop" (1965-7; a sit-com set in a fort during the old west) and "The Ghost Busters" (1975; a short-lived effort preceding the 1984 major motion picture by a decade and related in no way other than name). His portrayal on "F Troop" of Corporal Randolph Agarn was way over the top. Then again, everything on "F Troop" was way over the top.
• "Pills for dinner." "What are we, Judy Garland?" - Actress Judy Garland's (1922-69; born Frances Gumm) first credited film role was in 1936's Pigskin Parade, but she really became a star when she appeared as Dorothy in MGM's The Wizard of Oz (1939), for which she won a special Juvenile Oscar. She then appeared in a slew of musicals for MGM including Easter Parade and a bunch with her friend Mickey Rooney. In order to keep her energy up and her weight down, MGM kept feeding her barbiturates and sleeping pills, getting her thoroughly addicted. Over the following years, Garland continued to appear in movies (most notably the 1954 version of A Star is Born) and on television (with a short-lived variety show, "The Judy Garland Show" (1963-4)), but concentrated mostly of her singing career, producing dozens of albums and winning 5 Grammy awards. She never got over her drug addiction however and died in 1969 of a barbiturate overdose.
• "Who's this kid, Ira Flatow all of a sudden?" - Ira Flatow (along with his buddy Dead Ernest the talking skeleton) was one of the host of the PBS children's science program "Newton's Apple" (1983-98). Presumably, he would explain things to kids in a simple, step-by-step manner, like the brat is doing here for the airlock.
• "Stellaaaa!" - Line from the Tennessee Williams Pulitzer Prize winning play A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), as well as its numerous film adaptations (1951 and 1997, with TV movies in 1984, 1995 and 1998). Character Stanley Kowalski desperately calls after his wife Stella when she leaves him, once halfway through the story (she comes back to him) and again at the end (for good).
• "Da-da-da-da-da! Boom! Da-da-da-da-da! Pow! Da-da-da-da-da! Choke!" - Reference to the campy 1966-8 TV series version of Batman (see above). During big fight scenes, the show's main theme, which Tom is singing, was usually played and, whenever one character hit another, a large comic book style sound effect appeared across the screen (including non-hitting sounds like "Choke!" or "Eeeeouch!").
• "Ah, Mr. Claus... you have a nasty habit of surviving." - Typical villain remark from James Bond and other spy films. When the hero, yet again, escaped a nefarious deathtrap and confronted the usually heavily accented villain, the baddie would complain something like, "Ah, Mr. Bond. You have a nasty habit of surviving." And, in an update, I've discovered that the line actually appears in 1983's Octopussy starring Roger Moore as James Bond. The villain, Kamal Khan (Louis Jordan) indeed says (and I quote): "You have a nasty habit of surviving."
• "Meanwhile, on the Soyuz 7 space station..." - The Soyuz ships were not really space stations, but the Russian series of manned space flights (similar to the American Apollo program). Soyuz 7, with a 3-man crew, orbited the Earth for almost 5 days in late 1969. It had docking equipment and was intended to dock with Soyuz 8, also in orbit at the time. Although the passed close to each other, the docking never happened.
• "Orrin Hatch." - (1934- ) Republican Senator for the state of Utah since 1976. Also records his own patriotic and religious music, which somehow disturbs me...
• "Oh, it's a Tokyo apartment." - Tokyo, capital city of Japan, is one of the most densely populated cities on the planet. As a result, apartments are ridiculously small and ridiculously overpriced. Check out Tokyo Apartment Rentals for an idea how small. And, of course, in much of Japan you can also get a hotel room about the size of a roomy coffin.
• "It's the guy from Deliverance." - The 1972 film Deliverance is about four businessmen out for a weekend canoe trip in the Deep South of the US. The trip turns into a disaster as they run into unfriendly locals who threaten and degrade them. I think the Martian with the beard probably resembles the character referred to only as "Mountain Man" in the film (played by Bill McKinney).
• "When I call my captain, I touch myself." - A new variation on the above gag.
• "Voldar will be back!" "In Dial M for Martian."
  • At the end of each of the films in the James Bond series, the ending credits feature the phrase "James Bond will be back in..." followed by the title of the next movie planned. Helper Paul Andinach points out that, since 1987's The Living Daylights, the phrase had been shortened to "James Bond will be back." As Paul points out: "Until then, they always knew what James Bond would be returning in, because they were just picking titles off the list of Ian Fleming's Bond stories. After Licence to Kill, they ran out of titles, and from then on they've been in the more normal situation of not knowing what the next film would be called until they started making it."
  • Dial M for Murder told the story of a man who plans his wife's murder and, when things go wrong, must fall back on an increasingly complex "plan B" during the course of the police investigations. Originally a 1952 play written by Frederick Knott, it has been made into a two motion pictures (the 1954 Alfred Hitchcock film and 1998's A Perfect Murder) and a 1981 TV movie.
• "Here in Betty Crocker's test kitchen..." - The character of Betty Crocker was created by General Mills to be the imaginary "writer" of a letter sent out to winners of a 1921 contest. Since then, the uber-housewife she has become their "spokesperson," portrayed by many different women over the years. She has appeared on radio and TV, has published many books and has become an official sub-brand name for General Mills (the most prominent product are Betty Crocker cake mixes). The "Betty Crocker Kitchens" do get mentioned occasionally in promotional materials.
• "I'll never sm-- Oh." - Tom is starting to sing "I'll Never Smile Again," composed by Ruth Lowe in 1939 and popularised by Big Band/Swing era acts like Frank Sinatra, Tommy Dorsey and Count Basie. A sad, melancholy song to go with Momar's expression.
• As the Martian leader walks into his home, the guys sing the theme from "The Dick Van Dyke Show" (1961-6). The opening of the show featured Rob Petrie (Dick Van Dyke) entering his own home in similar fashion, only Rob would always trip several times on his way in. Damn that ottoman! Although it turns out that there were two openings and sometimes Rob would notice the ottoman and hop out of the way just in time; the show alternated between the two openings. Thanks to Helper Elliott Kalan for that extra bit of trivia.
• "But I get it per diem." - The legal term per diem (Latin for "per day") refers to the payment made to someone of daily expenses and/or fees.
• "They've been reading The Bell Jar." - In poet Sylvia Plath's semi-autobiographical novel The Bell Jar (1963), a bright young woman writer suffers a mental breakdown; the novel then tells of her road to recovery (Plath never recovered from her own mental difficulties in committed suicide the same year at age 30). Not a happy book.
• "Tony Danza is a fine actor. Sinbad is funny. Blake Edwards makes a really good film."
  • Tony Danza (1951- ; born Antonio Iadanza) is only very, very occasionally a "fine actor." He received an Emmy award for a guest appearance on the legal drama "The Practice" (1997- ) and was acclaimed for his Broadway revival of Eugene O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. He is best known, however, for his sit-com appearances: the excellent "Taxi" (1978-83) and the dreadful "Who's the Boss?" (1984-92). The former boxer has also done a number of films, including She's Out of Control (1987) (again, dreadful) and Angels in the Outfield (1994).
  • Comedian and actor Sinbad (real name, David Adkins; 1956- ) started stand-up in 1983. His big break came on repeated appearances on "Star Search." This led to a role on the short-lived "The Redd Foxx Show" (1986). He has become increasingly popular over the years, with many TV specials of his own and getting roles in a number of films, including several for Disney. Lots of folks find his loud, boisterous style annoying. He does, however, pride himself on being a "family" act, never cursing during stand-up.
  • Movie producer and director Blake Edwards (born William Blake McEdwards; 1922- ) has made many acclaimed and popular films in his time, including Operation Petticoat (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), 10 (1979) and Victor/Victoria (1982). He is also responsible for the "Pink Panther" series of films (beginning with 1963's The Pink Panther), about the bumbling, yet insanely lucky, French police officer, Inspector Clouseau. Edwards, unfortunately, milked the "Panther" films way beyond any rational level, losing him a lot of credibility.
• "Will you come in children?" "And sign in, please." - The classic game show "What's My Line?" (1950-75) featured a celebrity panel trying to guess the identity of a mystery guest. At the beginning of each show, the host would say, "Will our mystery guest come in and sign in, please." The guest would then enter (hidden from the panel) and write their name and occupation or claim to fame on a black board for the audience to see.
• "His name is B.F. Skinner; he's going to put you kids in a box." - Burrhus Frederic Skinner (1904-90) was a behavioural psychologist. His main claim to fame in that field is the invention of the "Skinner box." The Skinner box is a small, sound-proof chamber used to examine the behaviour of an animal isolated from all outside stimulus. There's usually a food-dispenser attached which will only give the animal food when it presses a bar under certain conditions. Many people were under the impression that Skinner raised his own daughter in one of these boxes for two years. In reality, Skinner had just designed a special crib (higher sides for safety, some climate control) and some people, not having a clue what a real Skinner box was, assumed that he was subjecting his own off-spring to behavioural testing. Dolts.
• "What is that, an outtake from 'TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes'?" - Beginning in 1984, Dick Clark and Ed McMahon began hosting "TV's Bloopers and Practical Jokes." Celebrities would "drop by" and share bloopers from their TV shows or movies. Sometimes, they would organize elaborate practical jokes to play on each other. While the bloopers were usually entertaining, the set up when guests would introduce the clips and the forced laughter afterwards were painful to watch. The practical jokes were pretty stupid. too.
• "Yellow moons, pink hearts, green clovers..." - The cartoon mascot for General Mills' Lucky Charms cereal is Lucky the Leprechaun, a small man dressed in green who capers about constantly (much like Dropo). Lucky Charms was various coloured marshmallows in its cereal (including the ones listed above), which Lucky lists in every Charms ad.
• "Bennies... dexies... x..." - All drugs that can be taken orally. Bennies and dexies are both kinds of amphetamines (also nicknamed uppers and speed). Amphetamines are powerful stimulant drugs that increase activity throughout the central nervous system. X (or is that "Ex"?) is sometimes slang for Ecstasy. More and more popular every years, Ecstasy, formerly called MDMA and created in 1914, is a mind-altering drug and a neurotoxin (that's the technical terms for "It'll rot your brain"). Effects of the drug include increased heartrate and blood pressure, feelings of closeness to fellow users and long-forgotten memories resurfacing. Ecstacy is also most commonly known as E in the United Kingdom.
• "Mmmmmm, that's good pill!" - I'm pretty sure this is an impression of the character Art Fern, created and portrayed in sketches by Johnny Carson during his years on "The Tonight Show" (1962-92). Art was the host of "The Tea Time Movie" and his bit involved telling us all about that week's movie (always something that sounded horrible, like Dracula Gets Bombed on a Wino). He dressed awful and he spoke in a funny voice, often proclaiming, "Mmmmmm, that's good [whatever]!" This is actually a nod to comic legend Jackie Gleason who used this line, spoken in the same style as his character of drunken playboy Reggie van Gleason III who, after taking a drink, would proclaim, "Mmmm, that's good booze!"
• "What's with the Mister Rogers music?" - The "plink-plink" music in the movie does sound a lot like the insipid background music from the long-running PBS children's program "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" (1966-2001).

Host segment 4 - Christmas essays

• "They end up in Marshall Fields window displays..." - The first Marshall Fields department store was founded in Chicago in 1852. Now owned by Target, they have dozens of stores across the eastern United States. Another high-end product place, with many exclusives, includes limited edition chocolates from Frango.
• "...overpriced little gift shops in Vermont and Door County, Wisconsin." - Yes, Virginia, there is a Door County, Wisconsin. Bet you it's quaint and picturesque.
• "...in front of a circuit board loading microchips in a Segavision with you little wooden hammers?" - Video game company Sega was founded in 1951 Japan by American David Rosen. Originally called Rosen Enterprises, the company (later renamed Sega for "SErvice GAmes") produced "amusement-type games," eventually getting into the video game market when video games came into existence. Sega also produced several game consoles over the years: the Sega Master System, Genesis, Saturn and Dreamcast (but no actual "Segavision"). Hedging their bets, they have also developed games for other video game systems.
• "...take an example from the Keeblers. Now there's some fairies who know how to market!" - The Keebler Foods Company is the second largest cookie manufacturer in the US. Founded in 1853 and currently a division of Kellogg, they would have us believe that all their "uncommonly good" products are baked by the Keebler Elves, cartoon mascots who toil day in and day out at the Hollow Tree Bakery. Get these guys a union.
• "...join the Century of the Pacific." - During the late 20th century, it was trendy to call the upcoming 21st century "the Century of the Pacific" due to the increasing economic influence of the Pacific Rim countries: Japan, the west coasts of Canada and the US, China, etc.
• "A Child's Christmas in Space." - Tom's rip-off of "A Child's Christmas in Wales," a 1955 short story/essay by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. In this much beloved piece (which you can read here, Thomas reminisces about a childhood Christmas in rural Wales. It inspired a 1986 TV movie of the same name.
• "Oh, to see the rosy face of Santa in the porthole offering me a Coke and a smile." - Our current image of Santa owes quite a bit to the Coca-Cola company. Every year between 1931 and 1964, Coca-Cola illustrator Hadden Sundblom created a new portrait of Santa, helping to cement his image (red suit with white fur trim, long white beard, sack of toys over his shoulder) with the American (and international) public. In all of these ads Santa, of course, was enjoying an icy cold Coke and often winked at his "audience."
• "Oh, the humanity!" - On May 6, 1937, the German passenger blimp Hindenburg approached for landing in Lakehurst, NY after sailing across the Atlantic ocean. For reasons not yet fully explained (there are several theories), the ship burst into flames, killing 35 of the passengers and crew. The event was being broadcast live on radio and, when the Hindenburg exploded, announcer Herbert Morrison, understandably, freaked out, yelling in shock and horror. His most famous remark from this is, "Oh, the humanity!"
• "...office parties were like something out of a Playboy cartoon." - Playboy magazine (you know, the one with the pictures of nekkid women... oh, and articles, which is the real reason guys buy it) generally has a few small cartoon scattered throughout its pages. These are usually cheap gags to do with sexual innuendo. In pre-sexual harassment suit days, the kind of office happenings seen in Playboy cartoons of the day (sex between bosses and secretaries; drinking copiously on the job) were sadly common.
• For those readers, like me, who don't drink (and probably a few who do), here's some of the less common alcoholic beverages Joel lists in his essay:
  • Galliano - A vanilla and spice flavoured brandy made in Italy.
  • Amaretto - Also Italian; a liqueur flavoured with almond.
  • Midori - A brand name of musk melon liqueur. Bright green. Apparently, though, Midori didn't come on the market until the 1980s, so wouldn't be available at a 70s office party.
  • German crockpot gin - Probably just a type of spiced rum drink made in, well, a crockpot.
• The song playing as part of Gypsy's "essay" is, of course, the traditional English Christmas carol "The First Noel," about the birth of Christ.

Movie Act 4

• "Here, on the Mike Douglas set..." - Mars apparently has the same decorator as "The Mike Douglas" (1961-82), a daily talk show host by entertainer Mike Douglas (not Michael Douglas the actor). Typical bad 1960s and 70s decor. Ghastly.
• "Sounds like the music from The Ghost and Mr. Chicken." - The Ghost and Mr. Chicken (1965) starred Don Knotts as Luther Heggs, a wannabe reporter who spends the night in a supposedly haunted house. Hilarity ensues. I'll just have to take Joel's word for it that the music is similar.
• "What is this, a Ritz Brothers movie?" "No, it's better." - The Ritz Brothers were Al (1901-65), Harry (1907-86) and Jimmy (1904-85) Ritz (real last name Joachim), a comedy act of the 1930s and 40s. They appeared in several films beginning with 1934's Hotel Anchovy. In later years, they often had cameos as themselves in films like Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1979) and Mel Brooks' Silent Movie (1976). Much like other comedy teams, like the Three Stooges, you either loved 'em or hated 'em. Tom seems to hate 'em.
• "It's Joe Biden, Howard Metzenbaum and Ted Kennedy as you've never seen them before." - Three former or current senators in the United States. All three were Democrats and represented Delaware (Biden; born 1912), Ohio (Metzenbaum; born 1917) and Massachusetts (Kennedy; born 1932). I don't know if they've ever served together on a committee or anything, but it seems probable. It is interesting to note that all three offically endorsed Al Gore in his unsuccessful 2000 Presidential bid.
• "Something stupid this way comes." - "By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes," is a couplet spoken by the Second Witch in Act 4, Scene 1 of William Shakespeare's play Macbeth (1605-6), at Macbeth's approach. Something Wicked This Way Comes was also used as the title of a 1962 novel by fantasy writer Ray Bradbury (and the 1983 movie adaptation).
• "Ed Grimley's here." - Dropo is hopping around in the same way as Ed Grimley, a character created by comedian Martin Short. Ed first appeared on the 1982-3 version of the sketch comedy series "SCTV." He was a manic individual, always truly excited about every little thing and wore pants that came up to his chest. He spoke in the voice that Mike is doing here and had several catch phrases including, "I must say," "most excellent," and "mental," as in, "I'm going totally mental, I must say." Ed also appeared on "Saturday Night Live" (1975-), during Short's 1984-5 stint (during which Ed developed an obsession for "Wheel of Fortune" host Pat Sajak) and on his own very funny Saturday morning cartoon, "The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley" (1988-9).
• "Put on the nuclear curtain." "Then put on the Carpenters." - In 1968, after a time with the band Spectrum, brother and sister Richard and Karen Carpenters formed their own musical duo called, simply, the Carpenters. They were one of the most successful music acts of the 1970s, with their pop/adult contemporary style giving them 12 top ten hits, including three number ones. The Carpenters were listening so easy, you couldn't even tell you were listening. Hits included "(They Long to Be) Close to You" (1970), "Top of the World" (1973) and "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" (1977). In 1983, at age 32, Karen died from complications due to anorexia nervosa, which some people blame on her brother's supposed domineering nature.
• "Here's Johnny!" - In the 1980 film adaptation of Stephen King's 1977 classic horror novel, The Shining, an insane Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) tries to get at his family, who have locked themselves in a bathroom. He hacks at the door with an axe until he has enough room to show his face to them and calls out, "Here's Johnny!" This is the line that second banana Ed McMahon would use on every episode of "The Tonight Show" (Carson's era 1962-92) to introduce host Johnny Carson.
• "Dropo's gone... Your suit is missing... "Gates has been confirmed..." - Seems to refer to former U.S. Director of Central Intelligence, Robert M. Gates. He was confirmed in the position in 1991 and help the post until 1993. There was some controversy over his placement due to his possible connection with the Iran/Contra scandal which was being investigated at the time. As of this writing, he is the President of the Eagle Scouts organization.
• "Poor Dropo's dead, poor Dropo..." - A take on the song "Pore Jud is Daid" from the Rodgers and Hammerstein 1943 stage musical Oklahoma! (and its subsequent adaptations). In the song, the hero Curly tries to convince his nemesis Jud Fry (whom everyone fears and hates) that people would suddenly all say what a nice guy he was if he were to kill himself. Everyone would gather round at a moving funeral service and say what a shame it was that "Pore Jud is daid, pore Jud Fry is daid." Jud's stupid enough to consider it, but not stupid enough to do it.
• "You know, if Charlie Callas and Jamie Farr had a son..." - The Martian in the middle looks like a bizarre amalgamation of these two comedians.
  • Goofball comedian Charlie Callas (1924- ) was a regular of variety shows like "The Andy Williams Show" (1969-71) and "The ABC Comedy Hour" (1972). His broad style of comedy made him a semi-fixture in Mel Brooks films, like High Anxiety (1977) and History of the World: Part I (1981). He was also the voice of Elliot the dragon in Disney's Pete's Dragon (1977) and played... um... Sinestro (believe it or not), Green Lantern's nemesis on the 1977 TV specials called "Legends of the Super-Heroes."
  • Comic actor Jamie Farr (1934- ; born Jameel Joseph Farah) has appeared on stage and screen (including the Cannonball Run films (1981, 1984)), but is best known as the cross-dressing Corporal Max Klinger on the long-running Korean War sit-com "M*A*S*H" (1972-83).
• "I want my MTV." - From early promotional bits for MTV, the American music video channel. The phrase was created by MTV's developed Robert Pittman, based on an old 1960s cereal slogan, "I Want My Maypo!" It was used as a lyric in the Dire Straights 1985 hit "Money for Nothing."
• "We secretly replaced the light bulbs with Folgers crystals." - Folgers (a Proctor & Gamble company) is a coffee manufacturer. One of their biggest products is an instant coffee they refer to as "Folgers crystals." To show how great their instant coffee is, in ads they replace a restaurant's normal coffee with their crystals; people, supposedly, cannot tell it's instant.
• "Here at GE, we bring Dropo to life." - General Electric (GE for short) was formed in 1892 by the merging of the Thompson Houston Company and the Edison General Electric Company. Current owners of the NBC television network, they manufacture a large amount of products, including every type of household appliance, aircraft engines and (most importantly here) light bulbs. Their motto is, "We bring good things to life."
• "Not since the pie fight scene in The Great Race!" "Not since the mud slide scene in McLintock!" "Not since the wagon race scene in The Hallelujah Trail!" "Not since the chess playing scene in The Seventh Seal!" "Not since the orgy scene in Caligula..." - Several (mostly) chaotic movie scenes:
  • 1965's The Great Race, directed by Blake Edwards (see above), starred Tony Curtis as the Great Leslie, showman extraordinaire. Leslie embarked on a round the world car race in 1908 against the villainous Professor Fate (Jack Lemmon). This tribute to the Laurel-and-Hardy-type comedies of yesteryear featured a massive pie fight scene during a visit to a pie factory in the little country of Pottsdorf.
  • The western/comedy McLintock! (1963) starred John Wayne as George Washington McLintock. The film was a tribute to the Shakespeare play The Taming of the Shrew and McLintock "tamed" his wife (Maureen O'Hara), his daughter (Stephanie Powers) and some political land-grabbers. One scene is a wild fist-fight involving all the film's major participants that takes place during a mud slide.
  • Another western/comedy, The Hallelujah Trail (1965) told the story of a 40 wagon shipment of whiskey destined for a group of Denver miners. Several groups interested in the booze (a temperance group, the cavalry escorting the whiskey, the miners and a group of Indians) all meet in the middle of a dust-storm. Things get wacky from there. I haven't found out anything about a wagon race scene in particular, though. Help!
  • Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (1957; original Swedish title Det sjunde inseglet) is not a comedy. Or a western for that matter. Seal is a dark, surrealistic drama in which a knight coming home from the Crusades (Max von Sydow) plays an ongoing game of chess with Death (Bengt Ekerot) for a longer life. There is much delving into the mysteries of life while the game is played.
  • Caligula (1979), produced by the adult magazine Penthouse, told the life story of Roman Emperor Caligula (Malcolm McDowell), focusing on the insanity and debauchery of his reign. There are about a million different cuts of this film, ranging from the monstrous 210 minute hardcore version shown at the Cannes film festival, through the more common 160 minute version (also pretty hardcore), to the more timid (but still pretty adult) 90 minute version. The longer versions include an infamous orgy scene involving what seems to be most of the principle actors, but the nudes are actually other actors edited into the scene.
• "Santa's doing his Ali! 'Float like a butterfly...'" - Santa's bobbing and weaving like a boxer in this scene and Muhammad Ali (1942- ; born Cassius Marcellus Clay) is one of the most famous boxers of all time. Winner of a gold medal in boxer at the 1960 Olympic Games, Ali first became world heavyweight boxing champ at the age of 22. This was the first of three periods as world champ (1964-67, 1974-8 and 1978-9). He was also a very visible personality in the media; he became known to one and all, even those who never followed boxing. Ali's claim that, in the ring, he would "float like a butterfly, sting like a bee" became a common expression. A number of biopics have been made of his life, including 2001's Ali starring Will Smith.
• "I protest." - Überhelper Heather Holder feels it worth mentioning Joel's "protest" at the Native American drummer toy here. "Right about this time, there was a big wave for political correctness towards the Native Americans, and a lot of them were protesting movies, tv shows, etc. that portrayed them in a negative light."
• "It's kind of like the final scene in Killdozer." - Based on a 1944 short story by Theodore Sturgeon, the 1974 TV movie Killdozer took place on a Pacific island during World War II. A crew of construction workers accidentally rouse an evil spirit (possible an alien presence) which proceeds to take over all their equipment and vehicles, including... the Killdozer!! Ahem... excuse me. Somehow, I suspect the original short story is better.
• "All together now! With a-one and a-two..." - The confetti and other crap floating around make this scene look like something out of "The Lawrence Welk Show" (1955-82). One of the show's trademarks was a massive amount of bubble pumped from a hidden machine; this was supposed to make the set look like the inside of a giant champagne glass. Accordion-playing host Lawrence Welk spoke with a thick German accent, which is why this line is spoken the way it is.
• "Don't forget to read them their Carmen Miranda rights."
  • Everyone who has ever watch an American produced police or legal drama has heard Miranda rights read: "You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law..." And so on. The reason these are called "Miranda rights" is the 1963 court case of Miranda vs. the State of Arizona. Ernesto Miranda was arrested by police in Phoenix, Arizona, on a charge of rape and murder. After a two hour interrogation, Miranda signed a full confession. However, because the police forgot to tell him his rights, the Supreme Court decided the confession was invalid. Miranda was still convicted due to other evidence, but since then, those standard rights have been dubbed Miranda rights and the police always make sure they read them when making an arrest.
  • Carmen Miranda (1909-55; born Carmo Miranda da Cunha), however, has nothing to do with your rights when arrested. Dubbed "the Brazilian Bombshell" by Americans, Miranda was already a huge star in Brazil before beginning a movie and singing career in the United States. Her first starring role was 1940's Down Argentine Way, which helped cement her image as a fiery-blooded Brazilian lass who wore huge elaborate hats covered with fruit (these were not enlightened times). She made several more films before returning home, where she had trouble being accepted due to her "Americanization." Brazil still had a national day of mourning when she passed away, though.
• "Arsenioooooo Hall!" "Woof woof woof!" - This is the way comedian Arsenio Hall was introduced by announcer Burton Richardson on Hall's talk-show (1989-94). The audience would then pump their fists in the air and bark. Yes, bark.
• "Hey, look, it's Jackie Gleason and he's mooning us!" - Comic actor Jackie Gleason (1916-87) starred in several movies (including the Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and its sequels (1980, 1983)) and television series. His best known role is bus driver Ralph Kramden on the sit-com "The Honeymooners." The opening credits of the show had a drawing of the moon with Gleason's face on it.
• "Hooray for Sanity Claus!" - From dialogue in the Marx Brothers film A Night at the Opera (1935). While discussing a legal document, Otis B. Driftwood (Groucho Marx) explains, "It's all right, that's in every contract. That's what they call a sanity clause." Fiorello (Chico Marx) laughs and answers, "You can't fool me. There ain't no Sanity Claus!"

Epilogue - The Gift of the Mads

• "Angels we have heard are high, softly sipping old champagne! Ooooooreo! Inexpensive knish!" - The guys are singing a humourous variation of the Christmas carol "Angels We Have Heard on High," originally a traditional French carol. The proper words are, "Angels we have heard on high/Sweetly singing o'er the plains... Gloria in excelsis Deo." (Oreos are, of course, the popular cookie from Nabisco made of a cream filling between two chocolate wafers.)
• "Oh, Richard Basehart!" - Richard Basehart (1914-84), the eternal object of Gypsy's affections, is described by film critic Leonard Maltin as a "square-jawed, talented, but humorless" actor. He began his film career in 1947 with Repeat Performance and appeared in such films as He Walked by Night (1948), the 1956 version of Moby Dick, The Brothers Karamazov (1958) and Being There (1979). One of his biggest claims to fame is his stint as Admiral Nelson on the Irwin Allen series "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea" (1964-8).
• The Deep 13 gift exchange is a twisted version of the classic Christmas short story "The Gift of the Magi". Written in 1906 by author O. Henry (hence Frank's exclamation of "Oh, Henry!"), "Magi" tells the story of a Della and Jim, a young couple deeply in love, but dirt poor. They each sell something dear to them to buy each other gifts; Della cuts off and sells her beautiful long hair and Jim sells his pocket watch. However, Della buys Jim a chain for his watch and Jim buys Della a set of combs for her long hair. They realize the true gift is that they were both willing to give up something so important for each other. Leave it to Clay and Frank to get it completely backwards.
• "...I took the liberty of hawking your Rolex..." - Rolex watches are among the most expensive and most reliable in the world. Hans Wilsdorf registered the name in 1908 and since then, the company has introduced many famous firsts: the first water-proof watch, the first self-winding watch and the first watch with day-date display.
• "It's called Final Exit." - The controversial book Final Exit by Derek Humphrey was first published in 1991. Jokingly referred to as "the ultimate self-help book," Final Exit basically teaches you how to kill yourself, through methods like taking certain pills or suffocating yourself with a plastic bag. (For a modest fee, this guy will send you a suicide kit, consisting of a plastic bag, some rubber bands and a guide telling you how to use them. Seriously.) The book also gives advice on how to convince family members to help you off yourself ("Bring the kids, we'll make a day of it.").
• "God bless us, everyone." - Line spoken by the character of Tiny Tim in Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol at Christmas dinner, as his parents toast the season. It is repeated as the last line of the story. "And so, as Tiny Tim observed, 'God bless us, everyone!'"

MST Hour Host Segments

For those who never saw the syndicated hour-long version of MST3K, here are transcripts of the Host introductions and wrap-ups from the "Mystery Science Theater Hour." Each is followed by cultural references if any appear.

• Part 1 opening: Season's greetings one and all. Come in, come in, to the "Mystery Science Theater Hour"! Tonight's episode from Forrester and the sycophantic Frank is a holiday romp called Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. This cinema verité masterwork offers something for everyone from the tiniest infant to the most wizened, crumpled shell of a person. You know, Christmas depresses millions, but I must admit I sky during the holiday and when I see some slump-shouldered Gloomy Gus walking forlornly through the festooned mall area of my home town, I want to shake them and say, "Suck it up! What have you got to be sorry for?!" But I resist. Now, for today, stoke the fire, spike the eggnog and sit back because here comes Santa Claus!... Conquers the Martians.
  • "...here comes Santa Claus!" - "Here Comes Santa Claus" is one of the most popular modern Christmas songs. First recorded in 1949 by Gene (The Singing Cowboy) Autry (who co-wrote the song), it hit gold that year and was eventually recorded by over three hundred artists, selling 80 million records.
• Part 1 closing: Well, ho, ho, what have we here? Will this alien robot destroy our noblest philanthropist? Can Santa overcome the aliens' dour philosophies or will he fall prey to the petty whim of the times, as did Schubert and Van Gogh, Rob & Fab? And the frosty Christmas spirit has infected the Satellite of Love... as it infected me last night. Normally, I can drink anything, but I swear I got a bad Tom and Jerry. Goodness, I'm going on as if you cared. Until next time, always remove the plastic lining. Cheers!
  • Schubert: German composer Franz Schubert (1797-1828). Despite his early death at age 31, Schubert managed to compose over 2500 pieces, including more than 500 songs and nine symphonies, four of which were written before he was twenty. Despite his volume of work, Schubert spent his later years in borderline poverty. Important works in his 8th Symphony (the Unfinished) (1822) and the beautiful "Ave Maria" (1825).
  • Van Gogh: Dutch postimpressionist painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-90). Stereotypical "tortured artist," falling in love with cousins and prostitutes, cutting an ear off as a present to one of those prostitutes, and shooting himself. Despite works such as his 1889 Starry Night selling for tens of million of dollars nowadays, van Gogh sold only one of his paintings while still alive.
  • Rob & Fab: Rob Platius (1967-1998) and Fabrice Morvan (1966- ). These were the two talentless yabos who pretended to be the band Milli Vanilli. MV had a few annoying but highly successful singles around 1989, including "Blame In On the Rain" and "Girl You Know It's True." They even won the Best New Group Grammy for that year. Shortly after, it was revealed that the pre-fab dance-pop duo were, in fact, only lip-syncing to their songs. They had to return their Grammy but later, despite their deep lack of talent, the boys released their own album in 1992, Rob & Fab, using their own voices. No one noticed. Pilatus died of a drug and alcohol overdose in 1998.
  • "...a bad Tom and Jerry..." - The Tom and Jerry is a holiday cocktail, sort of like egg nog with a liberal addition of booze, like rye, bourbon or brandy. It is not named after the cartoon cat and mouse; it goes back much farther. One possible source of the name comes from the roguish "heroes" of the 1821 Pierce Egan novel Life in London; The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorne, Esq., and his elegant friend Corinthian Tom. They liked their titles long on those days.
• Part 2 opening: Season's greeting, my friends! Whether you view Santa Claus as a spritely minister of good yuletide cheer or a skulking gnome unfit to play ambassador to any religion, it's doubtful you'd want to see him kidnapped by Martians. But that's exactly the danger facing him in the second half of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. In part one, the Martian Kimar is concerned that his kelly green brood is watching too much Earthen television. On a tip from an elder, he heads to Earth to kidnap Santa Claus. Once on Earth, they level their weapons at some innocent moppets and demand to know Kringle's whereabouts. Kimar abducts the children and they're all off to the icecap, where the children escape, are terrorized by an unfortunate looking polar bear and are captured once again. To be sure, Santa is a wily elf, but will Kaymar get the drop on the old bird or will Santa get shot in the struggle? Let's watch!
• Part 2 closing: Well, hohohohohoho, all's well that ends well, eh? Did you know that the delightful "Hooray for Santa Claus" theme song was released as a single? And that Santa Claus Conquers was also released as a Dell comic book? Well, as those charming stand-up comedians say, "Give me more of that." Until we meet again, keep both hands on the rails. Feliz Navidad!
  • "And that Santa Claus Conquers was also released as a Dell comic book?" - Dell Comics (in business between 1929 and 1973) were pioneers in the history of comic books. Their first publication, The Funnies, was the first periodical to specialize in comics not reprinted from newspaper strips. During their run, Dell printed a lot of licensed material: Warner Brother, Disney and Walter Lantz character, Pogo, Popeye and so on. They also did several TV and movie adaptation comics, including, yes SCCTM.
  • "Feliz Navidad" is, of course, the Spanish equivalent of "Merry Christmas." It was also the title of a popular song by Jose Feliciano, from his 1970 Christmas album.

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