Fred and Loathing on The Internet

An unprecedented blog topic! A bit controversial I might say. At least when it comes to topics for the fredlambuth.com blog. I would know about just what is controversial in this tiny media landscape. Based on my web traffic, I would guess that I am at least fifty percent of all visitors to this god forsaken blog. Oh well. Nobody’s perfect.

I do not foresee too many other ‘actor’ tagged topics for the fredlambuth.com blog. Instead this one will probably be lumped into the ‘series’ category. It could also go to the ‘film’ category on the strength of our blog topic’s subject’s career. What is that subject? Or unofficially (in the data model so far) who is this subject?

Judd Hirsch! Accomplished actor of stage, screen, and broadcast! An actor that has given me a touch of familiarity every time he appears on screen. They just do not make actors like this guy anymore. Maybe some of the more neurotic actors of my generation will age into this type of acting archetype. Judd Hirsch was born to be an old funny wise Jew from New York City. Until that happens, he is the best among current actors for striking the balance between laughter and tough wisdom.

You know, I think I did set a second field for ‘subcategory’ for the blog_post model. Having film+actor or series+actor, or even series+film could be done. Geez, I wish the management of the fredlambuth.com developers could get their shit together. The talent that provides the content on the blog has...

What we will be talking about on the blog today might be the most childish subject yet. That level was already low, with sophomoric thuds like Harley Davidson & The Marlboro Man. Movies that have no reason worth mentioning decades later other than my personal musings about how they affected me when I was a very passive yet absorbing audience between birth and preteen years.

Today what will be discussed is the 1986 animated feature film GI Joe: The Movie. The nearly ninety minute cinematic production that was not released to movie theaters. That fact would have made no difference to me. I did not know who GI Joe was until several years after the movie was released. That was not for a lack of trying though. It was a film I had seen only glimpses of on TV. Or possibly on a recorded VHS cassette at a friend’s house. Exactly how I do not remember. What I do remember is knowing I never saw the whole thing and knew it sounded like it was awesome.

By the time I was making an earnest effort to wake up early on Saturday mornings to watch the full gamut of cartoons available to me (especially the ones that lend themselves well to really cool toys) GI Joe was already out of print. So to speak. GI Joe had its heyday around the time I was born. What I experienced through toys, animated shorts, and even a few Marvel comics, in the early 90s was an aftershock to a much larger sensation from a decade prior. Was GI Joe one of the actual Saturday morning cartoons of my...

Topical humor among television comedies set in the late twentieth century has been a subtext weaved behind several of my blog posts. Quite a few of the blog posts centered on television series have mentioned my childhood interest in discovering the meaning to adult jokes that escaped my grasp. Names of current-ish politicians that did not reach the mass fame of say JFK, LBJ, or FDR were ones that often just missed my reach. Sometimes Woodrow Wilson or Chester A. Arthur would seep into my intellect in my elementary school days. (Although I learned of those presidents and their chronological position because of The Simpsons and Die Hard With a Vengeance, respectively.)

Names that utterly baffled me- until I put an earnest effort on reading up on US politics- were famous presidential race losers. Famous losers were the butt of topical sitcom jokes that did not land on children watching a TV show produced before their time. Names like Walter Mondale, Adelai Stevenson, Thomas Dewey, or Hubert Humphrey. Those names were sure to draw a laugh when they were summoned for a punchline. Usually in reference to a feature they had that made them so unelectable. (I knew Dukakis was a wimp before I knew he was the Democratic candidate that lost to Bush Sr in 1988; a famous wimp!) I would say the names of the losers of any presidential race have about five to ten years of cache before topical jokes no longer become topical. They become the jokes for people into politics or...