Have you ever gotten a cheese ball for a New Year’s party, and you’re all proud that you got one, but nobody gives a shit about the cheese ball?
NOBODY CARES ABOUT THE CHEESE BALL!!
I would say that’s a thing that you only really care about when you get older, but NOT FOR ME!!
I actually would buy these balls even when I was having parties in college! (And, yes, I bought another one this year. This one has bacon in it!)
I blame my cheese ball obsession with a TV special from probably the 96-97 New Year’s Eve.
You see, In the 90’s, they had this show on TNT called Rudy and Gogo’s World Famous Cartoon Show. It was created and voiced by Barry Mills and Jack Pendarvis, who went on to other success, with Adult Swim, Adventure Time and SpongeBob, respectively.
Rudy and GoGo was mostly just puppets jumping in a swirling void and screaming. (A bit like a more friendly version of “Candle Cove,”if you know what that is, except this thing actually happened.)
The host Puppet was named Rowdy Rudy Moore. He was, obviously, named after Rudy Ray Moore, who was the star of Dolemite(1975) and The Human Tornado(1976), and other Blaxploitation movies.
The character, Rudy, on this show though, is not the one who gives the strong Black representation. Rudy was actually a super white puppet who looked like a mix of Conan O’brien and Howdy Doody. His best friend, though, was Jumpin’ JB Weaver, who is a Black puppet, and gave kid’s lessons about Black History.
That may already sound pretty diverse, but it gets more diverse.
Their pet is GoGo Goat. She was…well she was a goat, played by black and white footage of a goat. She ran for president once! (Some might consider this show a bit odd,but I don’t see that. It got very popular on college campuses!)
They had a puppet skeleton friend named Boney Bonerton who would occasionally interrupt the show to promote his album “Boney Bonerton Just sings” (Which sounded good but I don’t think it was real.)
You can read about the show on it’s Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rudy_and_Gogo_World_Famous_Cartoon_Show
The crux of the show was that, normally, Rudy and GoGo would show old Popeye cartoons, and Little Rascals shorts owned by Ted Turner. But, this one time, they let the puppets stay up late and do a marathon of cheesy movies owned by Ted Turner!
Ted Turner was running TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network, and CNN. But I don’t think he paid attention to anything other than CNN, because you got great shows like Space Ghost Coast to Coast on Cartoon Network and THIS thing on TNT!
Now I’m gonna try to remember the movies that were on this marathon:
WHEN DINOSAURS RULED THE EARTH: This is the ONLY movie I didn’t see on this marathon. I still haven’t seen it,
but, from what I know, it’s pretty much like One Million Years BC with Raquel Welch, except without Raquel Welch. And the effects weren’t by Ray Harryhausen, so, it can’t be as good, but it’s a cave girl vs. dinosaurs movie by Hammer studios from 1970, which automatically makes it better than most movies coming out today.
THE BLOB: Now, this one, I’ve seen MANY times. At family gatherings, every time my uncle would say Bullitt was the best Steve Mcqueen movie, I would bring up THE BLOB and he would get upset and have another drink. There was a pretty crappy sequel in the 70’s (Directed by Genie’s lover, Larry Hagman!) and a pretty decent remake in the the 80’s,but this is the one you should watch instead of Bullitt.
QUEEN OF OUTER SPACE: There is a LOT to unpack about this movie. It stars Zsa Zsa Gabor. She actually isn’t the Queen of Outer Space. Zsa Zaa Gabaor was a big deal in the 60’s. She was on the last episode of BATMAN! I liked her sister, Eva, even more! She was in GREEN ACRES. (Which may not sound as cool as BATMAN, but it was.)
I’m told a lot of gay people like this movie, and a lot of gay people like Batman.
More power to them. I don’t know much about that, but I know this movie has an amazingly crappy spider puppet.(I always love movies with those. I actually know the other movies this particular spider was in, but I talk enough about puppets in this column, so, I’ll save that for another day.) I’ve read that this movie was written badly on PURPOSE! So it’s supposed to suck! But if you watch it, you won’t be able to tell if it accidently sucked or tried to. It was like the Sharknado of the 50’s.
I saved the best for last.
THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO!: This movie was filmed in Supermarionation. You might think you don’t know what Supermarionation is,but you probably do. When the creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, made the movie Team America: World Police. they filmed it in Supermarionation. I think it was supposed to be a tribute to Jerry and Sylvia Anderson, a British couple who made these weird puppety tv shows and movies.
It’s about the Tracy family, a team of marionette superheros. They live on Tracy Island and they fly jets, and fight bad guys when they have to. It’s a pretty common story, but the puppets make it work. They tried to remake it with people, in the 2000’s, but that DID NOT work. You need the Supermarionation. It’s the kind of story that only works with super-charged marionettes, and Rudy and J.B are just that, a weird-ass combination of marionettes and puppets. (I wish some guy would have come up with a name for that!)
And maybe this marathon needed Rudy and Gogo to make it work. I would have watched these movies either way, but they made it even cooler.
So, without any further ado, to prove it happened, allow me to present to you a promo for The Rudy And Gogo’s Flaming Cheese Ball special. (And please don’t set your cheeseball on fire this year! Especially if it has bacon in it!)
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