THE THROWBACK MACHINE: It’s a TV Christmas special that kills time! | Return machine
Longtime Throwback readers with fond memories, rejoice, for here’s something I ran out of space for in a vacation column from last year, the 1984 NBC TV special “A Christmas Dream. “with Mr. T and Emmanuel Lewis.
One is a big tough guy and the other is a cute little boy? Add a little Christmas magic and you surely have something to occupy the kids for an hour, right?
But all the ’80s kids sitting in front of the Curtis Mathis who wanted to see Mr. T try to take down Airwolf by shooting Webster from a cannon mounted on the A-Team van were going to be mightily disappointed with this sugary TV candy. where, in a move that wouldn’t even sound like a 4-H club skit. These two don’t even play themselves.
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Instead, Mr. T is a New York Santa Claus named “Benny” who takes it upon himself to win the $ 1 donation from a small child wandering the streets unsupervised who doesn’t believe in the magic of Christmas. because he’s a key kid whose parents bought him a skateboard even though he’s afraid he might fall from it.
“I’m not going to lose this one,” Mr T growls into a phone at the “coming soon” premiere, with all the harsh gravities of criminal drama he can muster, even though he doesn’t say not actually that line anywhere in the stage. Weird, because this line effectively portrays Mr. T as a Buckaroo Banzai-style convenience store that has “connections” all over town if he needed to, say, disrupt a human trafficking network run by Adam Ant, d ‘stopping drug dealers on speedboats with Edward James Olmos, or⦠take Webster to FAO Schwartz so we can go “aww” while he puts on big cowboy hats.
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It’s at FAO Schwartz, where Tom Hanks got zapped by Photon pistols in “Big”, where magician David Copperfield just hangs out in the “magic department” and performs a trick that I remember seeing when I was a child where he pushes a cigarette in a neighborhood. What I couldn’t remember is that he turns on the store and shoots just to prove it’s real.
And guys, this is pretty much the last bit of cheerful, pure “cutie” you’re going to get out of it, because after that this special hits dying skates with a blah Hansom Cab all the way to Rockefeller Center, a full performance. ice skating, a backstage Hangout with Willie Tyler and Lester, and a real Mr. T mannequin that’s probably still stored in the basement of NBC’s archives next to that orange robot from âRiptideâ.
Meanwhile, your kids, who are desperately waiting for the firepower of 1984 pop music from maybe, say, anyone involved in “Do They Know It’s Christmas,” are instead being treated with the tips. from Maureen McGovern’s Broadway, just so you can watch them all lose interest in that set of cars under the sofa they never touch.
After a Nutcracker-themed encounter with the Rockettes so boring that I dozed off trying to think of something funny to say about it, we finally get to this big party with the friends Mr. T n ‘keep on talking, where he recounts his own hard-scrabble, The Christmases of his youth on wellness, a time when (ahem) âIf you wake up on Christmas morning and find your parents alive⦠Merry Christmas. ” Someone’s got a punch on the horn for that one.
Mr. T then takes Lewis as if he’s a Cabbage Patch Kid for a version of “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” that goes beyond “cute” in surreal realms, as he dances like a wind-up toy, eyes clearly locked on her offscreen dance teacher the whole time.
We cut the ad to see Mr. T, Mohawk finally bared from underneath his knit cap, wearing a beige suit as he took a seat on a crowded stage to, and I’m not making it up, run a show. for kids choir as he tells a story about what happened on another very important night, a long time ago⦠the time he fought Rocky Balboa. OK, that’s not what he said, but I guess he needed a producer in his headset reminding him to keep him holy.
And folks, if you’re looking for a Nativity story that’s, let’s just say, off the beaten track, well, go ahead; although the kids sitting on the floor look terrified, and why Mr. T continues to rub his hands like someone has just put a juicy T-bone in front of him will remain a mystery.
McGovern once again, for a steamroller on “O Holy Night,” a song where all those god-oh-night gods can really come out from under you if you let them, and she really leaves them, before Lewis perches next to it. of Mr. T as a human puppet and chirps a piercing “Silent Night” that makes Alvin and the Chipmunks sound like Motorhead.
Finally his parents show up, or at least actors playing his parents, and the kid leaves, but not until he finally handed over that dollar and Mr. T made a joke about it that I don’t understand. because it looks like he skipped a line.
Even more than the Kenny, Dolly and Carpenters Christmas specials before this column, âA Christmas Dreamâ really left me a little depressed. Even those previous specials all had albums they were promoting and had a sparkle of wacky humor. But why is there something like this other than to fill time? No child would be fooled by this.
I can only hope that in 1985 NBC came together for a special Christmas where Remington Steele helped Punky Brewster learn the true meaning of Christmas by teaming up with Stingray and the Misfits of Science. Ahh, we can hope. Or should I say, dreaming.
My Town: Coles County Clint Walker’s Memories From The Archives
Cosmic blue comics
From the Journal Gazette of November 22, 1992, this photo of Cosmic Blue Comics in Mattoon; where I spent practically every Saturday afternoon for about two years. That little back room that you see just to the right of the Coca-Cola sign was where they kept the many, and I mean a lot, long boxes of past numbers. I still have my bagged copy of “Tales of the Beanworld” number 1 that I found there. Unfortunately, this place is no more than a “green space”.
Arcade Mattoon
Pictured is Bob Murray of Shelbyville from June 2, 1982, Journal Gazette, displaying his dominance over the arcade game TRON at the “Carousel Time” arcade in Cross County Mall, which would later become Aladdin’s castle, shortly. soon after not to be a thing anymore. I spent pretty much every Saturday in this playroom, maybe with the exact same hairstyle. No overalls, however. I was more of the “Pacific Ocean” type.
Icenogle’s
In the photo, extract from the Journal Gazette of November 28, 1988, the Icenogle grocery store. Being from Cooks Mills, we didn’t often shop at Icenogle … but when we did, even as a kid, I knew this was how a grocery store is supposed to be in a perfect world, and it is not just because they had parquet floors, comics on the magazine rack or a lot, and I mean a lot, of collectible cards in wax packets.
Cooks Mills
I had long left Cooks Mills by the time this Showcase article on Adam’s Groceries appeared in the Journal Gazette on June 13, 1998, but there was a time when I could very well have been one of those children on this photo; because if it was summer and you had a bike and lived in Cooks Mills this is where you ended up. At last report, they still had Tab in the Pepsi-branded cooler in the back. I’m seriously considering asking my guy for some money if I could afford to reopen this place.
Mr. Music
In the photo, July 16, 1987, Journal Gazette, this advertisement for Mister Music, formerly located in the Cross County Mall. I wasn’t buying records at that age, but eventually I would, and that’s where it all went downhill. If you don’t think it sounds “cool” to go out to a record store with your friends on a Friday night with a fresh hot driver’s license in your wallet, you are right. But it’s the best a geek like me can do. Wherever you are today, owners of Mister Music, know that a Minutemen album that I found in your cheap trash has changed my life.
Sound source Guitar throw
Portrait of the author as a young man, about to throw a guitar through a target in that year’s Sound Source Music guitar throwing competition, April 18, 1994, Journal Gazette. Look at my grunge era hoodie, and yes … look good, these are Air Jordans you see on my feet. Addendum: despite what the cutline says, I haven’t won a guitar.
In the photo, taken from the online archives at JG-TC.com, April 18, 1994 photo, Journal Gazette of Sound Source Music, guitar throwing competition winner and current JG-TC editor Clint Walker.
Vette’s
Here today, gone tomorrow, Vette’s Teen Club, June 20, 1991, Journal Gazette. I wasn’t “cool” enough to hang around Vette’s back at “the pinnacle”, and by “cool enough” I mean, “not proficient enough in parking lot fights”. If only I could get on with it now.
FutureGen
FutureGen: The end of the beginning, and finally, the beginning of the end, since December 19, 2007, JG-TC. I would have liked to have been more careful at the time. I probably should have read the newspaper.
“The Throwback Machine” is a weekly article that reviews items of interest found in the JG-TC’s online archives. For questions, comments, suggestions, or his âSong of the Dayâ recommendation, contact him at [email protected]
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