While I’m waiting on my copy of “Heavy Metal Parking Lot” to arrive, I got to thinking about some of the other it’s-funny-’cause-it’s-true documentaries I’ve seen over the years…and here’s one that’s an absolute classic. I think the concept has been used in a couple of sitcoms, but this is reality…and it’s hilarious.

The kiddies may get a kick out of ‘em, but 3-D flicks such as “Shark Boy And Lava Girl” just don’t work much magic on a normal-sized TV screen. Unless, of course, you’re sitting five inches away from the screen with nothing to distract you, 3-D just doesn’t work too well when you’re in your living room surrounded by furniture, toys, empty pizza boxes, and the rest. Surely this is something that works to a much greater effect on a widescreen box. And even then, I’m not sure. Truly, the thrill of 3-D is being hit with those images on a giant screen in the dark theatre.

I will say that my fave 3-D feature is “The Mask,” a godawful b-movie horror romp that seems like it was half-written on some bad acid. The story sucks, and the non 3-D bits are rather dull, but boy when that movie demands , “PUT THE MASK ON NOW,” you’re really whisked away to some surreal crap that scared the bejesus out of me the first time I ever saw it as a kid on TV (the local McDonald’s was handing out the 3-D glasses as advertised in the local newsrag if I recall correctly). I have a copy of it with glasses on an old Rhino-issued VHS tape with Elvira hosting. By the way, is it OK if I never found her sexy in the least bit?

I’ve really been enjoying being able to watch “The Greatest American Hero” again thanks to good old DVD. Lots of genuinely funny moment between the Ralph Hinckley and Bill Maxwell characters (the Hinckley character’s name was briefly changed to “Hanley” for an episode or two after John Hinckley did his wicked little trick), and Connie Sellica never looked hotter. Definitely up there on my list of all-time TV babes (though why she decided to shack up with John Tesh in anyone’s guess). The series is one of Stephen Cannell’s finest creations, even though there was a planned “Greatest American Heroine” spinoff that thankfully never aired, but whose pilot can be seen on the first season of “GAH.”

The real beauty here, though, is checking out William Katt’s stunt double. And really, this could have only happened with the glorious DVD pause and frame advance buttons. Sure, you may have been able to pull it off on some VCRs, but for full-on clairty nothing’s gonna beat the DVD. Anyway, anytime Katt takes off into the air (sometimes even when he’s running to take off), the stunt double comes in. The people who made this show obviously never dreamed that such things as DVDs would come along years later to really zero in on these things, and therefore they didn’t really seem to care much if the double resembled Katt in any way. The dude is much bulkier for one thing. I mean, he really fills out that supersuit in ways Katt never could. Then there’s the killer Harpo Marx wig the guy is wearing. Totally out of whack, and wooly as hell, this thing hardly looks like even a wig, let alone real hair, it’s that bad. I tell you, I’ve had as much fun just frame advancing the stunt double’s moments on screen as I have watching the episodes themselves. Some good unintended hilarity if ever there was some.

Come back Connie, I forgive you.

Of all the animated shows on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim, the one that’s managed to fly almost completely under the radar – despite being one of the funniest series in recent years – is “Home Movies.” The show’s lead character is eight year old Brendon Small…who is voiced, in what can only be described as an eerie coincidence, by a very funny man who’s also named Brendon Small. “Home Movies” has, season by season, eased its way onto DVD thanks to the fine folks at Shout! Factory. Small took some time to chat with Bullz-Eye about his time at the Berklee College of Music, how the improv nature of “Home Movies” sent many an editor to an early grave, and what’s going on in his life these days. Here’s a clip.

Bullz-Eye: So, getting back to “Home Movies,” you first met up Loren Bouchard when he was working on “Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist,” on Comedy Central.

Brendon Small: Yeah. “Dr. Katz” was kind of wrapping up – I think everyone was kind of ready to let it go, they’d done 4 or 5 seasons, maybe 6 – and that was kind of winding down. And Loren had the opportunity to produce his own show. And I was in the right place at the right time. The odds of getting a show on the air are about a billion, jillion to one, and, luckily, we got one on the air. And that was on UPN, during what I call The Cartoon Boom of ’99, where, like, “Family Guy” came out and all that stuff…a bunch of shows that went away. But we snuck over to Adult Swim (on Cartoon Network) and kept our heads down and nobody noticed us and we got to do four seasons without anybody kind of noticing anything. And we were, like, “They keep on ordering seasons! I don’t know what we’re doing, but somebody likes it!”

BE: Was it hard to get into the mindset of playing an 8 year old…or was it, in fact, surprisingly easy?

BS: You know, it was easy because I didn’t play him as an 8 year old. I think that, in the first few episodes, it was a little bit cutesier. And I was ashamed of that. So I wanted to not play him as cutesy, because that made me sick to my stomach. But it wasn’t difficult. The hard part with me and Bill Braudis when we were writing for “Home Movies” was trying to figure out what to do with Brendon, because we would have to put the story on his back for the most part, and he was kind of a straight man for McGuirk, but we found that we could make him funny and stuff. So, basically, our M.O. was to make him a wise-ass. Always. It’ll be easy. It’ll be fun. And I’ll just play him as whatever age I am at the time, as a wise-ass. Which is kind of what I am, anyway, so it’s incredibly easy.

BE: The feel of the show…the improv feel of the show…is decidedly unique compared to other animated series. How did that come about?

BS: Those are techniques borrowed from “Dr. Katz.” So Loren, being a writer and producer on “Dr. Katz,” brought his know-how from that, and we all kind of tried to make that work for a different show, with more of an ensemble feel, a lot more action, and just trying to tighten up the screws and make it go a little bit faster than Dr. Katz. So that was the whole thing. Dr. Katz used a script, but, when given the opportunity, they would choose improv over the script…though I recall the scripts being terribly funny. Doing a 22-minute episode, we wanted to just make sure that we had a lot of funny jokes there, just in case we weren’t feeling that funny, or we were hung over and couldn’t think that quickly, so we wanted to make sure we had a solid script to work off of…but we also wanted to be able to preserve the conversationalisms that we liked about Dr. Katz during those early seasons of “Home Movies”. So I think you’ll see that come together a little bit more during Season 3. And the ratios of improv versus script are always different…sometimes 70/30, sometimes 50/50…

Click here to read the rest of the interview with Brendon Small.

Over at The Futon Critic, it’s being reported that production has stopped on “Threshold,” CBS’s entry into the ever-growing field of sci-fi drama. Good lord, America, have mercy on this great show! I mean, the cast includes Carla Gugino, Charles S. Dutton, Peter Dinklage, and Brent Spiner, for God’s sake; you’ve got a sexy woman, a well-respected character actor, a sci-fi legend, and, um, Peter Dinklage. (Actually, he’s such a good actor and so funny that, when the camera isn’t focusing on his height, you can totally forget that he’s vertically challenged…)

Meanwhile, good riddance to bad rubbish with “The Night Stalker” being cancelled. Stay tuned to Bullz-Eye.com for the review of the original version of the show on DVD, but, trust me, you didn’t miss anything with this new version. It might’ve been okay in and of itself, but it bore so little resemblance to the Darren McGavin version that it might as well have been called something else altogether. All it really did was borrow a title and some character names…and that’s really about it.

Mr. Miyagi is dead.

I just got the CNN Obituary via E-mail a few minutes ago.

Man, I’m gonna be bummed for the rest of the day.

Not only did I think he was hilarious on those early seasons of “Happy Days,” but I even remember his show “Mr. T and Tina,” from the late ’70s. And has anyone ever seen his movie w/ Jay Leno…? Not great. But that guy always had charisma in anything he did…

So long, Pat. Wax on, wax off, indeed…

There are just too many films released these days… especially bad ones… especially during the holiday season, and this year isn’t any different. This weekend’s films got an early jump on the box office by opening in theaters the Wednesday before Turkey Day, a pointless move considering that all of the new releases are still going to get trounced by “Harry Potter & the Goblet of Fire.” Still, if you’re looking for something new to check out this weekend, you’ll have plenty of choices with three comedies and two dramas opening nationwide. The films with the best chances of making a lasting impression have to be the politically charged “Syriana” and the musical “Rent” – based on the Tony-award-winning Broadway act – but “The Ice Harvest” may just interest enough people to land a spot in the Top 3. And if you still haven’t seen “Jarhead” or “Walk the Line,” this may be the perfect chance to do so before December’s killer line-up.

Well, apparently some action happened today at the Macy’s parade wherein a giant balloon got caught around a streetlight and sheared it off, causing it to fall and hit a woman and an 11-year-old girl. Of course, Bloomberg was there to say that the winds were well within the safe range after a similar accident happened a few years back when a Cat in the Hat balloon tore off a hunk of steel as well, causing it to fall off into the crowd. After that incident, they apprarently had some new laws passed stating that winds could only be within a certain range for the balloons to be “safe.” Guess they’ll have to append that one again.

In other Thanksgiving news, I didn’t watch the parade, but instead got readily shnockered with other family members and took the Nazz’s advice to “forget all about it a while.” This worked like a charm. I’m just trying to decide if it was all down to the beer, the vodka, or the uhhhh….what else did I have to drink today?

Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey have officially separated.

So here, then, are the top 6 jokes that can be written based solely on the information contained within the Associated Press article about the separation:

6. There is no truth to the rumor that Simpson will be recording a cover of Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” Her management assures us that “spelling is not Jessica’s strong suit.”
5. At the time we went to press, MTV had not officially confirmed the greenlighting of “Newlydivorced: Nick and Jessica.”
4. ABC will be re-running last year’s hour-long holiday spectacular, “Nick and Jessica’s Family Christmas,” but it will be split into two 30-minute specials.
3. Jessica Simpson will be penning a sequel to her best-selling book, “I Do: Achieving Your Dream Wedding.” It will be called “Well, I Did…But It Didn’t Take: How To Divorce a Pop Star. ”
2. Lachey’s former bandmates in the boy band 98 Degrees issued the following statement to Nick: “Nice work on derailing the gravy train, dumbass.”
1. In a statement to the press, Simpson and Lachey announced, “After three years of marriage, and careful thought and consideration, we have decided to part ways.” A subsequent addendum was later issued, clarifying, “Actually, Nick did most of the careful thinking.”

Does this mean we have to feel sorry for Ana Lucia too? The creators said that they would find a way for her character to regain trust back from the viewers, but that had to be the biggest cheap shot in the history of television. After finding out that Ana Lucia used to be a police officer back in Los Angeles, it was also revealed that she lost her pregnancy during a shooting that curbed her for several months. It doesn’t surprise me at all that her pre-crash career had something to do with pushing people around, because she does it so darn well, but the ghost of that baby will definitely be floating above her head for the rest of the season, and there’s something about that I just don’t agree with.

And while Ana Lucia keeps Sayid bound to a tree, the rest of the survivors make their way back to camp, led by Mr. Eko and a near-dead Sawyer. The call for help steals both Jack and Kate from their “friendly” three-hole game of golf, and after Jack sees the way Kate reacts to Sawyer’s gun wound, I think it’s safe to say that the kind doctor is most certainly the odd man out. He does have Ana Lucia to think about, but if the latest interview with the show’s writers is any indication, the person that she hooks up will be the least expected.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say it will either be Sayid or Michael, only because those two are the least likely out of the bunch. Then again, the latest interview also indicated that we would be surprised when Ana Lucia’s past job was uncovered, and I wasn’t at all. Next week looks to get back on track with some more of Kate’s past. Let’s all hope the second season finally takes off from here…