Spin dry.

Sorry readers, I gotta go with the flow. Just indulge me for a sec while I look at real shitty TV show spinoffs.

And just so I can get this out of the way, no matter what list I look up, what article I read or what pundit expounds what, Joanie Loves Chachi is ALWAYS top of every worst spinoff list. There.

But here's some stinkers that need raking:

The Woman From Uncle. No explanation needed.

Enos. Ok this needs a little bit of explaining: Dukes of Hazzard cop "Enos" moves to LA and is partnered with an African American.

Sabrina & the Groovy Ghoulies.

Gilligan's Planet. Mercifully a cartoon.

The Incredible Hulk: Married

The Oddball Couple. This is weird. A cartoon Odd Couple spinoff with animals.

Baggy Pants & The Nitwits. Yet another strange cartoon. It featured of all things, Gladys Ormphby & Tyrone, the Dirty Old Man from Rowan and Martin's Laugh In.

Peace off

So I was side tracked again and wound up reading about television. Most of whats written about the subject, at least about whats ON it, is like listening to a pro athelete talk about the "game". Yeesh. Anyway, the stuff I was reading was about real bad shows that are actually on tv, so . . . . . I had to go and find out some shows that didn't make a huge splash, or mercifully, never left the boardroom.

In no order, and I can't prove that these are really real ideas, after all the Internet is almost 100% correct, here are the winners:

Show Me The Salami, a Food Network show about the history of meat.

That’s Not Incredible,an ABC show about boring everyday life. The first show featured a guy who hadn't missed a day of work in 12 years.

Rango, an ABC western comedy starring Tim Conway and an American Indian called Pink Cloud.

Who can forget the Flying Nun? I can. In season 2 (it amazingly went 3 seasons) the show's star, the actual flying nun, Sally Field, was pregnant.

Saturday Night Live With Howard Cosell. This is the show which begat Saturday Night Live, when it ended after a few months, and gave us the Not Ready for Prime Time Players because on Cosell's show they were called the Prime Time Players.

Homeboys in Outer Space, I'm not even going to say anything, look it up.

Cop Rock, a combination of music video/broadway show theatre and cop show.

My Mother the Car, the name says it all, literally.

Kling Klang

Just a small post tonight to launch a new obsession- famous and little known recluses. A perfect fit for a history blog as all current recluses may be hard to find. My starting off point isn't a person but a group of people, and if the title didn't give it away, it's Kraftwerk.

Hailing from Dusseldorf, the electro / industrial / techno band was formed in 1970. Founding members Florian Schneider-Esleben and Ralf Hutter played together as a duo during school at the Düsseldorf Conservatory and brought their original uniquely German sound to the world's stage. Highly electronic sounding and sparse compositions featuring early synthesizers,computers and crude electronic gadgetry were the mainstays of their repertoire.

They built a studio called Kling Klang and began to record and experiment more and more. It was then ironically, in the mid 70's, when they began to be known that their reclusive behaviour started to emerge. Few people had their phone numbers, including staff at their record label. They never answered the phone and created convoluted schemes to relay messages. Their studio has no staff, mail is left unopened and are rarely photographed, except during live performances.

Despite infrequent live shows, and long spells between hits, Kraftwerk has released over a dozen albums and nearly 30 singles. Have fun with their website . . . http://www.kraftwerk.com/

Pie

Sometimes little gifts come your way in life. Maybe its that accidentally perfect cake (when there is no bloody reason it should be great), or your suggestion is actually listened to. Few enough gifts pass our way that we occasionally turn them down. Not so today! For today is the day the Frisbee was first sold.

On this day in 1957, Wham-O (wish I had a company called that) rolled out the first Frisbee flying disc. The Frisbee name was actually a contortion of the name Frisbie, of the Frisbie Pie Company of Bridgeport, Connecticut, William Frisbie Prop. His pies came in metal tins with the company's name stamped into the bottom. Local Teens would toss the tins in the air and eventually got good at tossing them and playing "Frisbie."

Sometimes around 1950 two entrepreneurs Walter Frederick Morrison and Warren Franscioni came up with a moulded plastic version with much better aerodynamics called the "Flying Saucer". I'm liking where this going. The partners split up and Walter Morrison modified it some more and sold the gizmo to Wham-O as the "Pluto Platter". Lord. Anyway, the rest, as they say, is history. Who better than to have the company that brought you the Hula-Hoop, Super Ball and the Water Wiggle. Hmmm. Better that Heinz anyway.

Boy oh boy.

I was going to come up with a doozie of a crappy game as the best of the worst but I got sidetracked. Truth is there were way too many bad games to pick a clear winner. What I did discover though was how many truly odd/unfortunate names for game systems there are out there. I give you my list, in no real order. They are-

APF "TV FUN" from the mid 70's. An odd little Pong type game console sold mainly in the UK. APF made a really cool home computerish gaming system called the Imagination Machine then too. That was a way better name.

Also out about the same time was Nintendo's Colour TV Game, Colour TV Game 6 and 15 and Colour TV Game Block Kizushi (what?)You think the marketing department might want to jump in right about now?

That's OK, because we have the era of the "Boy". Here goes. TV Boy, TV Boy 2, Super TV Boy,Cougar Boy (aka Mega Duck), Virtual Boy (not sure there), Wide Boy 64 (honest) and of course the actual Game Boy.

This fixation on naming handheld video game rigs boy is curious. Wide Boy 64 was actually an adaptor for their Game Boy to attach it to a TV, never sold to consumers.

Inflammable air, yeah right.

Henry Cavendish, British scientist,born in 1731, discovered hydrogen around 1766. He called it inflammable air. Wonder how he found that out? Anyway, he was not fond of people, particularly women and avoided contact as much as possible. He did attend one social function regularly, Royal Society Club meetings. But apparently he rarely talked to anyone. Fellow scientists eager to hear his latest discoveries were often met with a grunt. His aversion to publicity led to few of his discoveries actually being published. The famous Scottish scientist, James Clerk Maxwell, when looking through Cavendish's stuff after he died, found unpublished papers on subjects credited to other scientists, most notably Ohm's Law. One thing he did do and get credit for was an accurate analysis of air. Seems a safer oeuvre than fiddling with hydrogen.

Blah blah blah

The weekends are a time I head out to be with my family, recharge the batteries, catch up as much as possible on the US presidential campaign and dig up the messed up stuff I rant on about on these pages. I never knew that I would be finding so much stuff for the blog. I can't even keep up anymore.

I promised to show you my return to model building. Think that's easy to do? I've been mired in literally hundreds of choices; remember this is the first one, kinda special, virgin like. I can't choose wrong, even though I may disappoint ardent modellers in my execution, I have to find just the right kit. The pressure.

But whats got me madder than hell is sorting through the overwhelming pile of really wigged out recluses. There is just too much good stuff. This could be the rest of 2008 alone devoted to men and women who prefer their own company more than anything in the world.

And I'm gearing up to launch Wellboy, yes its evasive and it sounds slightly like a brand of shoe. But me patient, you'll know soon enough. As a kiss off to computer games, (just for now) I give you my "Oh Christ, what were they thinking" award winner for the screwiest early video game. Even odder than 8 man Tank. Honest. Check in tomorrow. I can't wait.