Tag: general silliness

Byron’s TV Listings, Nov. 27 REPRINT

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Retrospace: TV Guide #8: Feb 12-18, 1977

G’day, all! It’s Byron the Multi-Tasking Underpaid Quokka, introducing this weekend’s glorious TV fare, presented by Quokka University, while at the same time trying to manage this blog’s annual Christmas Carol Contest.

Tell you what: while you watch these wonderful shows, think up some Christmas carols you can enter in the contest.

6:30 P.M.  Ch. 92   SQUEAKY TOY CHAMPIONSHIPS–Sports

Live from an undisclosed location! Celebrity dogs squeeze the world’s loudest, annoyingest, and most unusual squeaky toys–far into the night. Commentators: Charles, Prince of Wales, and Redd Fox. With Grandpa Fritz’s Oom-pah Band.

6:45 P.M.  Ch. 04   ADVENTURES IN DATING with Noah Peel–Romance

Contestants will be matched up by “Mr. Single” Noah Peel and forced to go on at least one date together. Noah picks the time and place–at random, out of The Magic Dating Jar! Watch the hapless couple try to deal with “2 a.m. at the deserted amusement park”! Winners get a weekend with the June Taylor Dancers on Catalina Island.

7:00 P.M.  Ch. 12  MY MOTHER THE UNSETTLING ODOR–Sitcom

What if your mother came back to life as a queer odor that makes people really nervous? That’s what’s happened to mealworm expert Dib McCoy (Yuan Shih-kai) and his late mother (the voice of Ann Boleyn). This week: Mom revisits her local bridge club, causing a full-blown panic–and Dib gets the blame! Special guest star: Alan Hale.

Ch. 18   I LIVE FACE-DOWN–Detective Series

Inspired by decades of film noir cliches, follow the adventures of Harry Morbid (Jock Mahoney) as he gets slugged by bad guys, bugged by his girlfriend (Heather Locklear), and mugged by the gangs who infest his wretched neighborhood. This week: Harry’s only close friend (Jimmy Walker) runs off with Harry’s cat, Farfel (voice of Rowan Atkinson).

7:17 P.M.  Ch. 86  MOVIE–Chess

In Pawn to King-Four (1979), Bobby Fischer Wannabe (Johnny Cash) invents a new chess opening that flattens (literally!) all opposition and seems likely to lead to a world championship–if the KGB, the CIA, and the UJA don’t get him first! Song: “I’m Just a Poor Boy En Passant.” Trivia note: this was the last film ever directed by a hamster.

Well, boys ‘n’ girls, there you have it–just a sample of this weekend’s entertainment. Make sure you’ve got plenty of crispy leaves handy for snacks!

I love that squeaky toy show!   From 11/27/2021

Baby Quokka Eating Ficus Leaf on Rottnest Island Stock Photo - Image of herbivorous, eyes: 201938562

Mr. Pudding and His Newts (‘Oy Rodney’) REPRINT

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(Despite current events, I’m trying to do business as usual today. I would not like it said that Far Left Crazy stopped me.)

Oy Rodney – Lee Duigon

Violet Crepuscular, The Queen of Suspense, has injected new life into her historical romance, Oy, Rodney, with the addition of a new character whom, she declares, “is guaranteed to please–like where has he been all my life?” Diagram that sentence if you dare.

The new character is one Mr. Pudding, usually spoken of as “Mr. Pudding and his newts.”

Newts – what do they eat? What eats them? | nurturing nature

Here he is with a couple of his newts.

We are not sure what role Mr. Pudding will play in the overall plot. “His role will have to, like, evolve,.” Ms. Crepuscular phonogalates. “I’m leaning toward the ‘mad scientist with a plan to take over the world’ thing, but I’m open to suggestions. Even from you, dear readers! Yes, even from the likes of you.”

As for the characters who’ve been with us all along–Lord Jeremy Coldsore, Constable Chumley, Lady Margo Cargo, Willis Twombley the American adventurer who thinks he’s Sargon of Akkad… et al–well, who knows what will become of them? Does Ms. Crepuscular know?

(Waiting for an email or two to come pouring in…)

From July 2024

Byron the Quokka to the Rescue! (With TV Listings) REPRINT

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Vintage Johnstown: More TV Guide - 1967 | Tv guide, Tv guide listings, Vintage tv

G’day! Byron the Quokka here, trying to save this blog. At Quokka University we have made an extra-special effort to point you to the very best in weekend television. You wouldn’t believe what we had to go through, to get these shows!

Here’s just a sample of them.

8 P.M.   Ch. 06   ADVENTURES OF IZOD LACOSTE–Are they kidding?

The famous fashion designer discovers a lost city inhabited by maniacs! Major Fapp: Orrin Hatch.  Cannibalistic milk-maid: Heather Locklear. Featuring a special appearance by Tommy the Corgi as a German shepherd.

Ch. 10  SPECIAL AGENT 717–Spy thriller

As the World Economic Forum heats up, Col. Babycakes (Junior Sample) tries to thwart a scheme to kidnap the June Taylor Dancers. Can Agent 717 (Arnold Stang) save the world from a fleeting bout of incredulous dismay? Cameo appearance by Alvin the Octopus taking Alfred Hitchcock for a walk.

8:08 P.M.  Ch. 13  NEWS FOR NUDISTS WHO TALK BACKWARDS–Niche programming

Would you believe this was 2017’s top-rated news show? The ratings have slipped since anchorwoman Leslie Oop started to wear clothes and speak normally, but the rest of the studio crew and the reporters in the field are still barely comprehensible. (That’s a joke, my friends!)

8:30 P.M.  Ch. 34  MOVIE–Classical Tragedy for really smart people

In “Tarzan’s Vegas Gig” (Spanish-Canadian, 1987), the ape-man plays the Vegas nightclubs as a stand-up philosopher while a vampire (Haystacks Calhoun) stalks the city. What happens when the two of them try to buy the same flower shop? Featured song, It Must Be the Diuretics!

Ch. 61  JIMMY FRAUD PRESENTS–Game show

At last, a game show for people who literally have nothing better to do! Ideal for heavily sedated patients in a hospital. “In fact, they might not even need sedation anymore!” says Jimmy. Each contestant gets 50 tries to guess what’s in Jimmy’s cardboard box–and if you grovel, you get another 50 tries! In-House Poet: Some guy Jimmy went to high school with, but can’t remember his name.

Quokka: [PHOTOS] This wildlife photographer's love for Quokka has made the animal an Instgaram famous star | Trending & Viral News

There! If these shows don’t stirrup interest, I’m riding out of here! That’s a pun, son. It’s making the rounds on Rottnest Island and we’re all laughing ourselves silly over it.

From June 2022

I Am Not Violet Crepuscular (‘Oy, Rodney’) REPRINT

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Image result for images of silly romance novels

Just because Ms. Violet Crepuscular’s books are so hard to find doesn’t mean I’m writing them. I am not Violet Crepuscular. I have a beard; she doesn’t. I’ve never read a romance novel, except for her inimitable Oy, Rodney. That having been settled, we move on to

CHAPTER CL

Every trial in Scurveyshire is the Trial of the Century. This time the defendant is the merry poacher known as Mickle the Merry Poacher and the plaintiff is Lord Nodule, demanding justice. This is the first case to be tried by Lord Jeremy Coldsore as Justice of the Peace.

“I demand justice!” barks Lord Nodule. “This peon, this excrescence on the body politic, this walking bubo known has Mickle the Merry Poacher, has been poaching on my land for 15 years and I want him stopped! I demand he be punished by drowning!”

The first witness is Constable Chumley, the arresting officer. “Oh, aye,” he testifies, “Mickle been doddlin’ the cairns swofty-like aforementioned deedle.” He is dismissed from the witness stand as soon as possible.

Several of Mickle’s neighbors, and six of Lord Nodule’s tenants, testify that the Merry Poacher has never actually succeeded in poaching anything. “He couldn’t catch a cold,” swears the Widow Flibbert. But the defendant, when he is finally sworn in, insists he has been very successful indeed.

“Caught me a centaur, once’t!” he boasts. “Let’s see anyone top that!”

“What did you do with it?” Lord Jeremy wonders.

“Was gunner eat it, wasn’t I! Only then I found a note on my door from Black Rodney tellin’ me I had to let it go, so that’s what I done.” The crowd gasps.

“I object!” Lord Nodule roars. “Ask him about the badgers!”

“Badgers? Ain’t never caught no badger,” Mickle admits.

“My lord, there are no badgers in Scurveyshire!” interjects the shire’s game warden, Officer Foffle.

“Caught me a Elf once’t, too,” says Mickle.

The public defender, Mr. Potash, moves that all charges be dismissed. “My client is obviously mad, my lord.” He produces a notably ridiculous-looking gadget. “This absurd contraption is one of Mr. Mickle’s homemade snares. You can see it’s perfectly useless for any purpose whatsoever.” Mickle scowls at him.  “I call on you to find him Not Guilty by reason of demonstrable idiocy.”

“He still ought to be drowned,” grumbles Lord Nodule. “What’s this shire coming to, anyway?”

Lord Jeremy sees no alternative but to dismiss the charges. Lord Nodule glares at him.

“You haven’t heard the last of this, Coldsore!” he declares. “I shall be with you on your wedding night!” [Editor’s Note: I think that’s what Frankenstein’s monster said to his creator, Victor Frankenstein, in Mary Shelly’s classic horror novel. What was Ms. Crepuscular thinking when she penned that line?]

The chapter ends abruptly with a recipe for aphid jelly. I cannot bring myself to repeat it.

Byron’s TV Listings, May 8 2021 REPRINT

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Vintage 1960 Tv Listings Related Keywords & Suggestions - Vintage ... | Keyword suggestion, Tv guide listings, Tv guide

G’day! Byron the Quokka here, with another weekend’s worth of spectacular TV brought to you by Quokka University. Just don’t ask us where we get it!

Without any further ado–we’re just about out of ado, anyhow–here’s a sample.

8:06 A.M.  Ch. 2  GUMBY’S STOCK MARKET TIPS

You won’t get rich, but you might get entertained. What the heck, it’s only money. Let Gumby and Poky show you how to invest it.

8:08   Ch. 3   WANTED FOR FRAUD: GUMBY

Anyone with information leading to the arrest and conviction of Gumby, please contact the Channel 3 Fraud Squad. $15 reward!

8:15   Ch. 5   CROCKED NEWSTALK–News and Commentary

You have to be noticeably intoxicated before they let you join this panel. Tonight’s celebrity drunkard: Big-game hunter Hap “Oops!” Chandler. Tonight’s topic: “String Theory: Who ****ing Gives a ****?” With Xi Jin Ping and his orchestra.

9 A.M.  Ch. 12   MOVIE–Waste of time

“Hamlet Prince of Denmark, Michigan” (2002)  Re-adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in modern dress and setting, with Hamlet as the son trying to inherit a shoe store after his father is murdered by Brownies. Hamlet: Alec Guinness. Father’s Ghost: Ben Dover. Ophelia: Zsa Zsa Gabor. Polonius: the Bowery Boys. With Henny Youngman’s Joke Machine.

Ch. 32   MY MOTHER THE GUNSLINGER–Western

While a rogue shark picks off Dodge City’s innocent swimmers, Sheriff Flimsy (John Gielgud) must ask Ma (Shari Lewis) to buckle on her guns again to deal with a mysterious stranger who shoots everybody. Dusty the Dog: James Whitmore. Sid the Horse: Alva Toffler  Mary Ellen the Beetle: Linda Hunt.

Well, there you have it–just a taste of what awaits you when you tune into Quokka UTV.

Living with Fantasy from 2010

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Fantasy writers are perceived as having lively imaginations. Who can deny it? But when it comes to actually putting over one’s fantasies, and making people believe in your fantasy and even order their lives around it–well, we just can’t compete with those folks in science, the government, and the news media.

Our fantasies are clearly labeled as such. No one would dream of introducing a bill in Congress to fund an expedition to Bell Mountain. That money is already spoken for by other fantasies. Here are two of the more outrageous examples.

“Man-made global warming is real–but big government can control it.”

“Life on earth arose spontaneously from non-living materials like mud and gravel, and by an infinite series of totally random mutations, went from bacteria to Beethoven.”

Those are big fantasies! Nothing ever cooked up by C.S. Lewis or J.R.R. Tolkien comes even close to these for sheer audacity of the imagination.

It’s staggering to realize that millions of people–who would never, never expect to see Mr. Toad in his motorcar passing them on the freeway–have actually been brought to believe in these colossal fantasies. You’d think they would just burst out laughing at a statement like, “Paying teachers’ union members higher salaries, and granting them tenure and fabulous pension packages, will improve your children’s education,” but they don’t. They don’t even crack a smile.

Maybe it’s saying too much, to say that anyone actually believes that particular fantasy. But people act like they believe it.

When it comes down to the serious business of telling whoppers, we fantasy writers are pretty small potatoes. But we like to believe that our fantasies, at least, are edifying: and never cost our readers anything beyond the price of a book.

I Wouldn’t Let My Dog Read This Book REPRINT

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Image result for images of animals reading books

All right, so I don’t have a dog. I wouldn’t let my cats read it, either.

Oy, Rodney! by Violet Crepuscular is one of those awful romance novels, but with an added twist: the author has hired goons–formal job description, “literary consultants”–to go into bookstores and make thinly veiled threats. The plot ain’t nothin’ to write home about, either.

Can young Lord Jeremy Coldsore, 5th Viscount Atropine, win the love of the aging but still quite homely Dame Margo Cargo, the richest woman in Scurvyshire? Or will the mysterious stranger who looks like Ed Begley, but isn’t, get in first? What is the awful secret concealed under the Vicar’s plastic wading pool? And how come there’s no character in this book actually named Rodney?

I haven’t read the book, so I can’t answer those questions.

Byron’s TV Listings REPRINT

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CTVA - US TV Listings - 1960

G’day! Welcome to another weekend of Quokka University TV, live from Rottnest Island. I’m your host, Byron the Quokka. We always show a TV Guide page to get you cranked up for our offerings. I do wish I could watch Make That Spare, from the Paramus NJ Bowling Center–and Prehistoric Women! Uncle Shinbone thinks it might be the best movie ever made.

Well, here are some of our listings. Sit back with a handful of nice chewy leaves, and enjoy it!

8:14 P.M.   08, 09  HOWLER MONKEYS (Nature). A glorious 28 minutes of Costa Rican howler monkeys screeching at the cameraman, the late Ivan Pitfall.

8:15  11  Barney Dottle, Police Defective (Crime Drama) Barney thinks he’s hot on the trail of a desperate gang of armed robbers, but his continual misinterpretation of clues leads him to arrest the attendees of a PTA meeting. Barney: Jack Palance. Mrs. Dogless: The Lennon Sisters.

12  Movie–Classic Tragedy

“The Naked and the Clothed” (1957) The Bowery Boys are caught napping when Nikita Khrushchev, posing as just another neighborhood character, tricks them into revealing America’s funniest military secrets. Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall. Khrushchev: Himself. Timon of Athens: Tim McCarver.

13  Battle of the Brains–Public Affairs

Pinky Lee hosts a debate between former U.S. Senator Biff Boff and Rep. Rosie Hejaz on the topic, “Should prayer be allowed in churches?” With Willie Sutton and his orchestra, and the June Taylor Dancers.

8:32 P.M.   03  Bowling For Dear Life–Sports/Drama

If you really need that medicine, you’d better bowl a strike! Up for grabs tonight: life-saving medicine, parole from Chateau D’If Prison, ownership of a home, graduation from law school, and other goodies. Join host Willis Twombley  as he reminds the contestants, “No pressure!”

840 QUOKKAS ideas in 2021 | quokka, happy animals, cute animals

Some readers have complained that they can’t trust these TV listings unless my picture is published with them. So that’s me, right up there–and it’s TV time!

Lord Jeremy Proposes Marriage, Almost

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Image result for images of silly romance novels

What with all the computer agita yesterday–and more this morning, on the other machine–I thought I might dip into Oy, Rodney. And this is what I read.

The vicar’s smart-aleck nephew, Desmond Wiggly, goes out to the backyard wading pool and doesn’t return. There are drag marks leading under the pool. Constable Chumly is summoned. He examines the scene and remarks, “I tell ‘ee, them’s a right rawn figgety shawm,” and declines to investigate further. There is serious talk of replacing him with someone who can speak recognizable English.

Lord Jeremy Coldsore, meanwhile, realizes that the only way he can stave off ruin and bankruptcy is to marry Lady Margo Cargo, the richest widow in Scurveyshire. As a pretext for seeing her, he returns her lost glass eye. She invites him into her parlor and serves him extremely unpalatable biscuits baked by her grandmother in Bedlam. His appetite is not improved as she pops the one glass eye out of the socket, wipes off the one he has returned to her, and pops it in.

“Surely, Lord Jeremy, you must have had another reason for coming here to see me,” she coos. Lady Margo is big on cooing.

Jeremy nods: for him, this is the moment of truth. But all he can manage to say is “Abba-dabba-gmmph.”

Meanwhile there is a new mysterious stranger in the neighborhood. This one looks like Ralph Meeker. No one knows what he’s doing there.

Quokka U. TV Listings

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Meet the Quokka

As promised, boys ‘n’ girls, here are more TV listings. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Quokka University has its own TV network–but I’ll let Byron the Quokka explain.

[Enter, laughing] G’day! Don’t ask me how we got all those TV shows–I don’t know, and I don’t want to know. Just enjoy the listings–and if anyone asks, I haven’t been here today.

1 p.m.

02. Movie, “Dadburn!” (1952) A middle-aged seamstress (Linda Hunt) comes to terms with herself and becomes a professional assassin. Scotty: James Doohan. Number One: Barbara Billingsly.

03. Literary Mischief. E.M. Forster takes Virginia Woolf to the drive-in movie, unaware that J.D. Salinger has hidden a body in the back seat. Forster: Godfrey Cambridge. Woolf: Loretta Young.

07. What’s My Delusion? (Game Show) Host: Angela Merkel. The wildest delusion gets the wildest prize.

1:30 p.m.

04. Mid-Day News with Harpo Marx.

07. Sports. “Fishing with the Sadducees.”

09. The Gallumphing Gourmet (Cooking). Making hamburgers with ingredients that don’t exist. Guest: Clairvoyant Claire and the voice of Emperor Tiberius.

[Hey! Where did Byron go? Something tells me his heart isn’t in this.]