Here’s the thing. When I was a kid, Saturday mornings involved two traditions – five hours of cartoons and at least four bowls of cereal. Froot Loops. Trix. Honeycomb. Alpha Bits. And the best of them all, Cap’n Crunch. Come on, you know you’ve had a few bowls of Cap’n Crunch in a single day. …
Read MoreAll articles filed in Ten for Thursday
At one time, this was just a catch-all grouping of clips. But since July 2013, it’s been the place where the best Times Union community blog posts have been found.
The ten worst superhero TV shows of all time
Let me state for the record. I am a major fan of superhero drama shows. Whether the shows are a retelling of the Les Miserables / Fugitive “man on the run” ethos (The Incredible Hulk) or just plain campy fun (the 1960’s Batman series), I do enjoy watching some costumed do-gooders battle the bad guys.…
Read MoreSaturday Morning Mel-O-Toons
They were probably the cheapest cartoons ever made for broadcast. Their source material actually came from phonograph records. In 1960, a company called New World Productions created over a hundred six-minute cartoons, called “Mel-O-Toons.” The cartoons, specifically designed for television broadcast, were a mixture of fairy tales, Biblical stories, folk legends and the like. The…
Read MoreK-Chuck Radio: Ten Songs that Broke My Heart
This is bad. That song should not have been on my driving CD. Here’s the background. Because I haven’t wired up my iPod yet to my Saturn Ion Cardachrome, I’ve been burning homemade CD’s through iTunes, and grouping them with themes like “Maple Leaf Rock” (all-Canadian rock and roll), “WHCL” (music from my college radio…
Read MoreTen French Rock and Pop Songs
One of the first followers to my Twitter account was Rob Madeo, he of the keyboardkrumbs.com blog. He made a comment about how there was no decent French rock and roll music. I postulated that yes, there was some very decent French pop and rock and R&B tracks out there. The discussion continued. But I…
Read MoreTen for Thursday – Spanish Motown, German Beatles and ABBA in Swedish
Once upon a time, back in the early years of rock and roll, artists were actually encouraged to record versions of their biggest songs in foreign languages. Why would they do this? It’s for the same reason that you don’t hear J-Pop or ye-ye music on FLY 92 in its original language. This is not…
Read MoreTen Great Coin-Operated Video Games of Ancient Times
A few years ago, I wrote an article for Toy Collector Magazine on a Virginia man who turned his home’s carriage barn into a huge video arcade. This man had over 100 different vintage coin-operated video games, and after I did the interview with him, he handed me a cupful of quarters and let me…
Read MoreTen “TRON” Mash-ups
Sébastien Barré is about as big a fan of the upcoming “TRON: Legacy” film as I am. Although we have some disagreements on the film – he’s psyched that Daft Punk is doing the soundtrack, while I’m still hoping Wendy Carlos can come back for a cameo appearance – he sent me a video clip…
Read MoreTen Examples of Rube Goldberg’s Influence
Rube Goldberg was an illustrator and cartoonist who is best remembered for creating designs that would take tons of carefully-angled and balanced items – one tipping into the other – to complete a mundane task. He drew cartoons to illustrate these points, and today something that shows various tips and tricks to reach an end…
Read MoreTen “Countdown” Music Video Clips
In America, the variety program every musician and band wanted to appear on was “American Bandstand.” In England, it was “Top of the Pops.” In Australia, the show of importance for breaking pop and rock hits was “Countdown.” The show, hosted by Molly Meldrum, drew monster ratings with every episode, and musicians were more than…
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Chuck The Writer 
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