2:45 "Ah, Greeta." "Dieter." Whoever got to record the German-language clips for this putative West German 3D porn movie must have had a blast. I'm no German language expert, but it doesn't sound super authentic, right down to pronouncing "Greta" in a way that it rhymes with "Dieter."
3:55 "The old-school red-blue 3D glasses." I remember them well! And their history goes back a long way, all the way to the 1850s! Or, if you believe Alan Moore, to Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World.
5:20 Herb and Les's friendship: We've talked about Herb and Les's weird friendship before; it was definitely more prominent in Season 1 when they were the Suit Axis aligned against the Dungarees in episodes like "Turkeys Away" and of course "The Contest Nobody Could Win."
7:25 Fragile masculinity: For the definitive take on Herb and his fears about his masculinity, check out HMOTD 021: Huggable Herb, which has, over time, become one of my favorite episodes of the podcast.
8:25 "Isn't that how Houdini died?" Snopes takes on the story and deems it a "legend" but in any event history does tell us Houdini died of acute peritonitis brought on by appendicitis which worsened by... not heeding the warning of his wife to get the hospital sooner, which fits this episode so perfectly anyway!
10:15 "You're just... whipped!" I don't think Google ngramming "pussywhipped" would produce much useful data, given the term's likeliness not to be in printed media, but here's the episode capsule of the SNL episode with the "P-Whipped" sketch from December 1990. Check out this murderer's row of classic sketches: Tom Hanks joins the Five-Timers Club, Carl Sagan's Global Warming Christmas Special, Sabra Shopping Network, and musical guest Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians! Those are some intense high school feels for yours truly there.
14:35 "Whooee, that's good bacon!" I giggle every time I hear that misplaced cart with the Porkers' Paradise ad.
15:30 The porn theater: We went into a lot of the topics in this portion of the episode in our Monday Post, so check that out. Keep in mind that many of the links in the section of Show Notes below may be considered NSFW depending on your particular place of W.
16:30 "Porno chic": Here's the 1973 New York Times article that introduced the concept of couples going to the porn theater together. In an era rocked by extreme cinematic experiences like The Exorcist and the opening up of the movies to outlaw cinema (remember, Midnight Cowboy had won Oscars with a brand-spanking-new X-rating from the new MPAA just a few years before), the idea of hip couples going communally to porn theaters for a good time didn't seem so outrageous! Good to see that the Times has been doing trendy urbanite thinkpieces for going on four-and-a-half decades now, by the way. Also, please don't judge my deep knowledge of the titles of early '70s artsy porn; we all contain multitudes, and I'm just as God made me.
18:10 Auto Focus: Greg Kinnear is, I feel, definitely the weak link in a strong cast, and it does suffer from the prototypical Scorsese/Schrader rise-and-tragic-fall plot structure.
18:50 "You talked about the Pee-wee Herman arrest on Netflakes!" Rob appeared with our friends Dylan Clark-Moore and Caroline Diezyn on the Netflakes Podcast to talk about the Netflix original film Pee-wee's Big Holiday and I highly recommend checking it out as soon as you've finished listening to this HMOTD episode. It's fantastic not just for Rob explaining the impact of Pee-wee's '80s output but also covering Pee-wee's (and Paul Reubens's) deeply and classically queer aesthetic.
Here's a Rolling Stone article from 1991 on the theater arrest and its aftermath. Reubens also got into trouble with the law in 2001 over his collection of vintage queer erotic art, which was seized by the LA city attorney because it was deemed to include obscene images of children. This article in the Village Voice takes a look at the "physique" and "photography" magazines of the '50s and '60s, their appeal to a gay man of Reubens's age, and why Reubens got into trouble over his collection.
22:18 "This is the point in Boogie Nights where everything's going to videotape..." Boogie Nights more or less perfectly tracks to the WKRP era, by the way: 1977-1984, and covers many of the same issues we've discussed: "mom-and-pop" operations facing off against big money, the enervating hangover of the '70s turning into a faster-paced '80s, and so on.
23:21 "I've seen better." What, I wasn't going to include the bit near the end of Bachelor Party where Tom Hanks has a climactic fistfight with Tawny Kitaen's rich evil boyfriend in a 3D theater?
24:00 The early-'80s 3D fad: 1983 was PEAK '80s 3D. Aside from that reference in Bachelor Party (1984), in 1983 there were Jaws 3-D, Amityville 3-D, Spacehunter: Adventures in the Forbidden Zone, and the immortal Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn.
25:00 The guy in Mallrats who couldn't see the sailboat: I, too, am stereographically impaired, so I always identified with Ethan Suplee in Mallrats.
25:30 William Castle: The King of B-Movie Gimmicks! By 1975, those gimmicks were definitely looking a little long in the tooth, though... a million-dollar life insurance policy for a cockroach?
25:45 IMAX: IMAX debuted at the 1970 Osaka World's Fair, and the first permanent IMAX theater was indeed in Toronto at Ontario Place the following year.
27:37 The Combat Zone in Boston: A fairly detailed Wikipedia entry about the part of town that, as a child, it was clear I was Never, Ever to Go To, and a piece from a web exhibit on gay life in Boston that talks about the drag queen par excellence of Boston in the postwar period, Sylvia Sidney (!!!). (In case anyone's forgotten, Sylvia Sidney was the old-time Hollywood star who played Mama Carlson in the pilot episode of WKRP.) The story of how Boston's Sylvia got her drag name is amazing.
28:10 "Even Cincinnati had its own vice district": [Rob: Here's a short piece in Cincinnati Magazine about Cincinnati's dedicated vice district, which had its heyday between the 1880s and the First World War. And here's a story about the Cincinnati police's attempt to ban prostitutes on bicycles--complete with high-speed velocipede chase.]
30:00 "It's so much a Kate Beaton cartoon!" Specifically, this wonderful one.
33:10 Times Square: Here are some comparison shots between Times Square in the early '80s and in 2016.
36:22 Times Square Red, Times Square Blue: Here is Samuel R. Delany's memoir of gay Times Square in the '80s.
37:30 Mom and Pop Porn Theaters: Another classic Mr. Show sketch. I tried to pick the least lewd bits of the sketch, but they also fit well in our discussions of urban renewal in the person of Tom Kenny's "Mr. Tink" and the fall of old-timey porn in "one of those X-rated CD-ROMs."
39:05 We Got It Made: Correction, Bonnie Urseth was not the maid but one of the bachelors' girlfriends, Beth.
44:03 Earl "Madman" Muntz: Look upon his works, ye mighty, and despair. And here's a clip from the Madman Muntz documentary.
51:50 "Come on, Gil!" Gil Gunderson is one of the few late-season Simpsons introductions that I unabashedly love. [Rob: Does Season 9 still count as "late-season" Simpsons?] I've sure by this point he's married Selma, been revealed as alien, and was in Homer's '00s EDM band when he was a teenager or something.
53:05 "Here's our Big Guy!" God, I still lose my shit at "Yes! I'll sit here because it's my chair." Richard Sanders is the underrated MVP of "Who's On First?"
57:25 Mickey Morton: Here's his IMDB. And I feel appropriately chastened by the dozens of you who were like, "Mike hasn't heard about Legends of the Superheroes?" It was a chance for Adam West and Burt Ward to reprise their roles in 1979 as Batman and Robin along with a bunch of actors from the Batman '66 series and DC heroes who'd never appeared on screen before in a combination comedy live action special and, wait for it... celebrity roast (!!!) hosted by Ed McMahon (!!!!!). It's the kind of cultural blind spot I get for being born in 1975, because you know this thing never got re-broadcast.
1:00:25 "I'm Andy Travis, this is my brother Randy, and this is ol' Venus of course." Very Larry, Darryl, Darryl of Howard Hesseman here.
[Rob: Eagle-eared Friend Of The Podcast Leah Biel points out that Andy's brother would be named Randy Travis, as in country music legend Randy Travis. This doesn't seem to be an intentional joke: the singer Randy Travis was born Randy Traywick and adopted the stage name Randy Travis... right around 1981! Is it possible he was inspired by Andy Travis? Seems a funny coincidence, like a musical act named Rob Newhart or Ralex P. Keaton...]
1:05:30 "A Mile In My Shoes": Remember, the defendant in the case that Herb is on jury duty for was thought to be Italian, which made everyone think he must be guilty.
1:06:55 The Sopranos: I actually confused two episodes of The Sopranos that are both universally deemed the worst in the show's run: "Christopher" from the fourth season about the crew's interactions with the Columbus Day controversy and Indian casinos, and "Johnny Cakes" from Season 6, where Patsy and Burt try to shake down a Starbucks-like chain coffee shop.
1:08:22 Twitter account of Italians angry over food: It's actually "italians mad at food" at @ItalianComments on Twitter, and speaking as an Italian-American who eats Sunday gravy and other bastardized American versions of Italian cuisine, I find it endlessly hilarious.
[Rob: Is it OK if I find it hilarious too, or is it an in-group only thing? I also love Scottish Twitter for what it's worth.]
1:15:15 Jersey Shore: Speaking of minstrelsy... but I'm sad to say, I actually love Jersey Shore. It's the only dumb "reality" show I ever got into because yeah, I grew up around guys like Pauly and Vinny and The Situation. It feels like coming home.
1:18:40 E.F. Hutton: Here's the classic form of the E.F. Hutton commercial, and here's the story of their rise and fall.
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