The Monster M*A*S*H

On last night's Adventure Club Podcast I performed a song I originally written here back in 2004.

It's a parody of Monster Mash all about the spinoffs of the TV series M*A*S*H. I try to sing it like Dracula, but I sound more like a cross between The Count from Sesame Street and and Italian Bela Lugosi.

You can hear the whole episode here, but I figured I would post just the song below:

LINK

The Monster M*A*S*H 
by Guy Hutchinson

I was watching M*A*S*H* late one night
When my eyes beheld an funny sight
from my funny bone, laughs began to rise
And suddenly to my surprise

It wasn't M*A*S*H*
It was AfterMASH
this AfterMASH
about a hospital staff
some guys from M*A*S*H*
were in this new cast
but it's not M*A*S*H*
It is After MASH

Colonel Potter had tried to start a new life
Retired from the Army spending time with his wife
But it got boring sitting around day after day
So he applied for a job- at the V.A.

Sorta like M*A*S*H*
but this was AfterMASH
The AfterMASH
Before the ratings crashed
It was like M*A*S*H
They called it AfterMASH
I prefer M*A*S*H
But, I'll watch AfterMASH

Klinger was stuck, spent time in jail
Potter came along and posted bail
offered him a job and Father Mulcahy, too
and soon enough their careers were through

Not from M*A*S*H
but from AfterMASH
because after M*A*S*H
was nothing but trash

Around the country people started to shout
They didn't understand what AfterMASH was about
They looked at the screen and shook thier fists
And said, "Whatever happened to Alan Alda?"

He was on M*A*S*H*
but not on AfterMASH
Why not AfterMASH
He didn't need the cash
From AfterMASH
It went off the air in a flash
Not much else rhymes with M*A*S*H
So, I'll repeat AfterMASH

Soon it was over, AfterMASH was canned
but another spin off was about to land
this one too had ratings that would falter
it starred Gary Burghoff and was called W*A*L*T*E*R

Radar from M*A*S*H
This parody is redundant-mash
kind of stupid-mash
hasn't been funny for three stanzas-mash
should have stopped earlier-mash
oh God, make it stop-mash
what does this even have to do with Halloween-mash?
I think I'll go watch Trapper John MD

Guy Hutchinson 2015

Art For Art's Sake

The top of the MGM logo has some words in foreign:

 It reads "Ars gratia artis" the American translation is "Art For Art's Sake".

I suppose they were thinking of that famous booze ad:

It's one of the best Art Carney ads I have ever seen, second only to the one he did for his paintings:

How to write a Cracked.com article

When I was a kid Cracked magazine was the number 2 humor magazine for kids. I have no stat to back this up, but it has to be true.

While most of my friends had silly "It's not as good as MAD" hang ups, I didn't care. I bought both MAD and Cracked (and Crazy) whenever I had enough money.

Well, eventually they went under and became a website that was, for a time, very funny.

What in the hell happened?

It's paint by numbers nonsense. Slightly above the quality of this site, sure... but they have actual advertisers.

Here is how the Cracked.com articles usually go:

The title is usually quite presumptuous. It always claims to have some "amazing" facts or "secrets" or whatever and assumes you don't know them.

You probably do.

Comedy. Who needs it?

Poorly written paragraph of "secret" info that's widely known? CHECK! Image stolen from some other site? CHECK! Random sentence that sounds almost like comedy? CHECK!

Good gravy!?! Why on earth do you need to go to 3 pages to read an article that has less words than your average Tweet?

Because Cracked.com needs the page views! Keep clicking. There may be a joke in there... if not, read the comments. Between the vaguely racist and awkward comments, there may be something that might get a smile from ya.

Go to Cracked.com if you please. I'm sticking with this:

Muppet Magazine

I used to love this magazine. I had a subscription in the 1980s and I would stare at the pages for (what seemed like) hours, taking in every silly detail.

 Mr. T meets Animal? Perfect!

 Fozzie meets The Fonz? Eh, that doesn't make much sense.


One of the things I didn't like about the magazine was that they often did parodies of fine artwork:

I didn't get it. I was a kid. Why would I understand this? If I knew fine art I wouldn't be reading a magazine full of puppets.

But a "spring cleaning" photo that features John Ritter and Gonzo ACTUALLY cleaning springs? BRILLIANT!

The interviews often read like a story with the credit "as told to".

 Sweetums visited Drew Barrymore because he had "a crush on her". Makes sense.

Punky Brewster stopped by to make sure Kermit dressed like a goof.

There were also some crazy cartoons, like this one where Sam Eagle is a politician and Kermit is Matthew Broderick in War Games:

The ads are always fun, too. Check out this one where an army of giant chipmunks lord over smaller chipmunks:

Where else would you learn that Weird Al had declared the accordion "the Official Instrument of the 1984 Olympics"?

Saturday Morning TV 8/17/1985

I found an old TV listing from 1985. 

 Ahh, the memories. I decided to see what I would watch as I ate a bowl of Fruity Pebbles on the living room couch... constantly worried my Dad would walk in and make me eat at the kitchen table.

I circled the shows in red:

 At 5am... yes kids, we used to get up early on Saturday, at least I know I did. You HAD to. The rest of the day was all boring shows for adults.

I would start my morning with Abbott and Costello. Not sure if this was the cartoon or some live action work. Id be happy either way.

5:30 it would be Nick Rocks! This was like MTV for kids. Usually they showed some sillier videos that MTV wouldn't bother to show.

Oh yeah, MTV used to show videos.

At 6am I would be stuck. Baseball Bunch is on in 5 minutes, but Nick Rocks is over. I didn't really like Pinwheel, so I probably wouldn't watch 5 minutes of that.

I'd pop on the Atari and save the world. I would probably have my younger brother run back and forth to the kitchen to check the microwave clock until it was 6:05.

Then we could enjoy The Baseball Bunch where Johnny Bench would teach baseball with the help of the San Diego Chicken and the Kool Aid Man.

Because of channel 17's wacky schedule I'd be forced to flip before the end of the show.

NOTE: This paper was from Warsaw, Indiana. I lived in NJ, but we had wacky stations there too.

6:30 am I would watch the Jackson 5 cartoon and then at 6:45am I would flip over for the generic promise of cartoons. If that didn't pan out I would be back with the Jackson 5.

Regardless, at 7am I would be onto The Snorks. I know, the cool choice is Justice League, but I'm keeping it real.

Snork 4 life.

7:30am I would catch the second Superfriends show and then at 8am I would laugh at Dave Coulier's antics and hope against hope that he would say "cut it out".

If he did I would probably jump up and down on the couch. Jubilation!

At 8:35am I would probably see what the first experiment Mr. Wizard had before turning on the "wrestling". Not sure what federation this would be, but I wouldn't care. This was the summer after the first Wrestlemania and I would have watched any wrestling that came on the TV.

An hour later I would be late for the 9:30am Batman, which I hope would be one of the one's with Burgess Meredith as the Penguin. He was almost as funny as Dave Coulier.

At 10am, back to Nickelodeon for the second showing of Nick Rocks. Sure, I just saw this a few hours ago but now I could see it AGAIN. \

Plus, now I knew which videos were good and which weren't so I could probably schedule a game of Pitfall or two during the dull ones.

The morning would start to wind down by 10:30, and i would probably have to go cut the lawn or something soon. But if I was lucky, I would stay on the couch for a little longer.

I had to see Mister T... the listing is wrong, BTW, the star was Mr. T, the cartoon was Mister T.

Then I would check out You Can't Do That On Television and hope Moose got slimed.

After that, Saturday Supercade! This was a cartoon with segments on Donkey Kong and Q-Bert and the like.

Then I would try and watch some of the Mexican wrestling film "Samson in the Wax Museum" where El Santo is inexplicitly called Samson.

And I would hope that Sunday was Softshell Sunday at my house.

Me and my imaginary Indiana family couldn't resist the allure of Taco John's! It's TACORRIFFIC!

What's Going On In This Picture?

I have no idea.

I found this on eBay where many old photos are sold without any context provided. I guess people find 'em in drawers of distant relatives and put them up for auction. Here are some I have found lately: