This has not been a good week for living. First Ed McMahon, then Farrah Fawcett, and Michael Jackson… and now the most legendary of all, Billy Mays. Inventor, lover, promoter, fur covered nerd. Billy Mays came to prominence as the picthman for OxiClean and other useless “As Seen on TV” products.
I never even got to try out the Super Slider Station 
He’s no Ron Popeil, but he will be remembered.
But wait there’s more…
I can’t believe one of the last Google searches I did before he died was “Corey Feldman Michael Jackson.” I just wanted to goof on the Feld, but I have to admit I went through my own Michael Jackson phase. I had the red leather jackets (zip off sleeves). I had the sparkly glove. I couldn’t moon walk, but I wasn’t bad at walking backwards.
So, this is what I ended up finding in my search…
A sad little tribute to say the least, but if you think about it those are the deepest tributes possible. It’s like imitation being the best form of flattery… well, geekier is the best for of imitation.
Here’s some more fun…
Corey Feldman really is the oddest of MJ fans.
In 1988, we couldn’t get enough of boys named Corey, in fact we needed more, much more: Haim, Feldman, Corey Hart, noted chemist Robert Corey, Corrie, Indiana. They were in lockers, trapper keepers, Corey hotlines. And by 1989 we were done them, Coreyed out as the case may be. Both Cory Haim and Corey Feldman’s careers were all but over by 1990. They weren’t even 21 and they were all but used up by Hollywood. What happened? How could we have forsaken the two Coreys? Where did the Coreys go wrong?
The main problem was the Corey to Corey dynamic itself. To say that “there can be only one” is actually incorrect. Truthfully, there can be only one main Corey. In 1989, there was a paradigm shift in the Corey infrastructure, which could ultimately lead to rupture in the space/time continuum, not to mention the implosion of two teen idol careers. Let’s look at the successes of the Corey Haim/Corey Feldman paring. Lost Boys: success. License to Drive: success. Dream a Little Dream: dismal failure. The key difference is that Corey Haim is the main Corey in License to Drive and Lost Boys, while Feldman is the sidekick. Dream a Little Dream switched their roles to disastrous results. And unfortunately, they never switched back. Feldman kept his “leading man” role throughout their many undertakings with “classics” such as National Lampoon’s Last Resort and Dream a Little Dream 2.
The reason the former dynamic worked so well is because Corey Haim is better looking and Corey Feldman is the better actor. When little girls tacked pictures of the Coreys to their wall, and assuredly they tacked both, it was only Corey Haim that ever really had a place in the hearts. Feldman was just a convenient Corey backup: the best man at their wedding. In teen movies, the lead male simply has to be someone that the audience can stand looking at for 90 minutes. So, where did Feldman fit in? As the better actor, he got all the funny sidekick lines. While not handsome, he was charming for what little screen time his average looks could afford. Switch it around and you have to stare at Feldman for an entire film, while Haim butchers every punchline.
Speaking of fake Kung Fu, I present you Kung Fu Bandito…
I thought this was a real game but some sort of hack right up until the part he whips his penis out (Although, that could easily be a down, forward, punch attack).
Ever since my David Carradine tribute, people have been asking me if the Five Point Exploding Heart Technique is a real kung fu move. The simple answer is “no.” The slightly more complex answer is “Of course, it’s not real, are you some sort of mental!” A good rule of thumb is if a martial arts move involves some sort of flying, laser beams, or chi energy, it probably is not the real deal. However, it did get me thinking about my favorite fictional martial arts styles. These are some of best moves to watch and to pantomime with friends in grand pretend battles.
If you’re a big guy doing some fake fighting, you’ve probably broken out some Shaq Fu (as well as a wide array of Andre the Giant signature wrestling moves). Around the time Shaq was pretending to be a genie, he also got really into pretending he could fight. While Shaquille O’Neal is fully capable of picking me up and dunking my ass through a basket, I don’t think I have to worry much about his basketball kung fu style. There are no Shaq-urikins or inferno kinks, and Shaq is certainly not a martial arts expert. Although, I definitely wouldn’t mess with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
Iron Fist is one of the most proficient martial artist in the Marvel universe. The iron fist maneuver focuses all a person’s chi energy into the hand, creating an iron-like impervious punch. It may be hard to believe, but the iron fist is a very real maneuver, however, to attain the powers of the iron fist one must plunge their hand into the molten heart of a dragon. So, good luck with that. The DC answer to Iron Fist is Richard Dragon. He uses a dragon amulet to focus chi energy (hmmm… sounds familiar). Richard Dragon, along with Lady Shiva and Batman, know the most powerful martial arts move in DC comics, the leopard blow. The Leopard blow is depicted different by almost every artists, all we know for sure is that it’s bad ass and can kill almost instantly.
Of all the girls with bangs, Jenny Lewis is the girl with bangs held above all the rest. My friend just saw her perform and said the show was like a sea of bangs with Jenny as their captain. Indie kids may know Jenny Lewis lead singer of Rilo Kiley, but nerds like myself known her far better from The Wizard and very special episodes of Growing Pains (she was the girl that called Ben “Ben-ja-min”).
In fact, she ran the gambit on 80’s sitcoms, Golden Girls, Just the Ten of Us, Roseanne, and Mr. Belvedere. Always playing the cute girl for some boy on the show to pine after. And that’s how she entered a young geeks mind. Through mildly charming acting and squeaky clean girl next door appeal, Jenny became one of the first girls we fantasied about. This was right before the greasy gross pinups, when a boy’s fantasies still had a certain hand holding innocence.
It’s her performance in The Wizard, the movie that introduced the world to Super Mario Brothers 3, that will forever immortalize Lewis in our hearts though. When Jenny Lewis screamed, “He touched my breasts,” that was perhaps the first time we thought about breasts. And why did Lucas need to keep his power glove off her, what depraved thing would Jenny possibly do with a power glove?
“I love the power glove. It’s so bad.”
And, of course, when Super Mario came down on the big screen, we were well into true love.
But the best reason, Jenny Lewis is a nerd girl we love is that there’s, at least, a 50/50 chance that Fred Savage took Jenny Lewis’s virginity. How many girls can say that? Savage: a young Hollywood mover and shaker. Lewis: the fresh faced red head. How could she have possibly resisted the lure of the Savage? Coincidentally, Lewis met her Rilo Kiley counterpart Blake Sennett on the set of Boy Meets World. Ben Savage anybody? Do the Savage connections ever end with her?
The only real problem I see with Jenny Lewis is that she hasn’t aged much in 20 odd years. So, as cute and sexy as she may be now, it’s hard not to still see the 12-year-old girl. While, she started our prepubescent fires, that old image is more than a little creepy now.
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