Month: June 2012

Richard Dawson passed away on Saturday from cancer.

He played Newkirk, the RAF corporal and trickster of the merry band of German POWs known as Hogan’s Heroes. Here he is, in a classic scene where the boys concoct a fake radio broadcast with Newkirk doing an impression of Hitler:

He was also a regular on the game show Match Game (love the wah-wah guitar on that show’s theme song!), where he sat beside Betty White:

He made his mark on game shows as the heavy-on-kissing-the-guests host of Family Feud. Here’s one match from the all-star edition of Family Feud, in which the cast of The Waltons compete against the cast of The Dukes of Hazzard:

That run as one of the biggest game show hosts of the 1980s set him up to be the quintessential 80s “nothing personal, it’s just business” movie villain, Damon Killian, the host of the game show The Running Man. Only Dawson could deliver the only successful comeback to Arnie’s classic threat, “I’ll be back”: he paused for a moment and quietly said “Only in a rerun.”

Requiescat in pace, Mr. Dawson.

In his memory, I’m going to totally kill your productivity today with this — The Running Man, in its entirety. Enjoy, at least until YouTube has to take it down:

A few days ago, I wrote that Eduard Khil, better known to the internet as the “Trololo Guy” for a video of his 1976 lyric-free song performance that made a splash in 2010, was in critical condition after suffering a stroke. The reports are coming out that he died in a hospital in St. Petersburg.

Here’s the video that made him internet-famous:

Russia Today posted a tribute to Eduard Khil, which tells his life story.

Eduard Khil performing in 1965.

Requiescat in pace, Mr. Khil, and thanks for all the tro-lo-los.

Click the photo to see the original.

When your phone needs charging and the only outlet is way up on the wall (it’s probably for a wall-mounted monitor), you have to get inventive.

From the incredibly unconvincing “punk” characters at the start of the commercial (with even more unconvincing hair) to the decidedly non-punk bands and songs in the compilation (for starters, what is Huey Lewis and the News’ I Want a New Drug doing on this album?), Punk is pretty much punk-free, but at least the promo is hilarious.

Even the fake punk rock in that anti-punk-rock episode of Quincy, M.E. was better:

Somebody needs to write a love song titled Don’t Treat Me Like Potato.