Craig McNamara writes

During their 5 decades of performing together on radio and TV programs, Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding have portrayed befuddled newsmen, quirky interview subjects, didactic soap opera characters another media mainstays.  But of all the targets of their deadpan, underplayed style, one the best has been their commercial parodies.  Sure, that sounds like faint praise, what with the glut of commercial parodies all over TV and the internet these days, but Bob & Ray appropriated the language of advertising with an insightfulness that's easy to miss while you're laughing at their off-kilter dialogue. Their commercials for fictitious sponsor Monongahela Metal Foundry -- "Casting Steel Ingots With The Housewife In Mind"  -- make a mockery of advertisers' attempts at consumer relevance.    Their Einbinder Flypaper slogan -- "The Brand You've Gradually Grown To Trust Over The Course Of Three Generations" -- was a typical heritage-hyping appeal and yet resonat...

The story of this movie has a surprise ending, one that's more interesting the movie itself  – and was literally decades in the making. In 1974, as a ninth-grader enrolled in Film In The Cities, a filmmaking program of the St. Paul school system, I created an animated film starring my ersatz Spider-Man character, The Human Fly.  I had originally planned to draw it in traditional animation style, cell by cell, but when my instructor figured the cost of acetate sheets for even a short movie, it was suggested that I instead use cutout figures against drawn backgrounds.    After storyboarding a very simple story – the Human Fly breaks up a mugging – I set to work drawing the necessary figures and poses, and hinging their limbs with threads attached to the back of the cutouts.    Over a couple of months, I animated the figures, edited the film, and added a soundtrack of "action" music and sound effects. At my instructor's suggestion, I wrote and recorded a conve...

We all have someone we look up to, someone who inspires and awes you, who motivates and challenges you by their example.   Mine was my best friend.   I met Jeff Vlaming when we both worked in the advertising department of our college newspaper. We hit it off right from the start, and for the next 40 years, we kept each other laughing and endlessly discussing movies, TV shows, books, comics, and music.   I’ve never known anyone else like him, his talent bursting out in all directions at once.    Jeff sold his first TV script while still living in Minneapolis. When he and his wife, Kathy, made the move to California, he beat the odds by getting his first staff writer position on the critical favorite,  Northern Exposure . From there, he moved to  The X-Files  and began a long career writing and producing for many popular sci-fi and horror genre shows, including  Weird Science ;  Xena, Warrior Princess ;  Battlestar Galactica ;  R...