Go Ahead, Make Me Neigh: Clint Eastwood on Mister Ed

Before Clint Eastwood became known as someone you wouldn’t dare screw with, he was susceptible to talking animal hijinx. A decade before he was The Man With No Name, and even longer before he was Dirty Harry, Eastwood’s first credited movie was Francis In The Navy, the last in the “Francis The Talking Mule” series (Eastwood can be seen starting at around 1:45)..

And during Eastwood’s days as a TV star, playing cowboy Rowdy Yates on Rawhide, he was bullied by none other than Mister Ed. I never got into Mister Ed, largely because by the time I started to watch Nick At Nite, they were showing the programs that aired for the first time when Mister Ed was on Nick At Nite. However, seeing one of the biggest badasses of all time on a sitcom, especially with a talking horse, was something I could not pass up.

Borgnine Lives

Tom Keiser reflects on Ernest Borgnine:

There are too many memorable roles associated with the late Ernest Borgnine to count.

Some of you may only associate his booming voice with his role as Mermaid Man in SpongeBob SquarePants, where he was committed in his golden years to still fight EEEEEEEEEEE-VILLLLL!!!!!! Baby boomers and Generation Xers probably know Borgnine from his TV roles in “McHale’s Navy”, “Airwolf”, and, um, “The Single Guy”. Others still may know of him from some of the films they show on TCM, such as his supporting work in Johnny Guitar, Bad Day At Black Rock and From Here To Eternity. And speaking of his role as Fatso Judson in From Here To Eternity, Ernest Borgnine appeared as himself in “Boy Scoutz N The Hood”, one of the greatest Simpsons episodes ever. And oh yeah, he starred in a lot of crap too.

Tecmo Bob’s Your Uncle: Aussie Rules Football

Last year, my friend Jason got me into Australian rules football.  Jay is not big on sports; he once asked a Miami Dolphins fan if they wore teal and orange because they were losing.  However there was something about the game, which was as rough as American football, but with less safety equipment and more punting, that intrigued both Jason and myself.  The fact that longtime Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Redskins punter, Sav Rocca, was one of the best Australian rules players of the 1990’s, further piqued my interest.

Just how interested was I in footy, and what does it have to do with the cool early-90's NES graphics above? Find out after the jump!

“Yankee Rhythm Every Time"

After over 150 years Morse code has become all but obsolete for most things.  You no longer have to be proficient in sending Morse code (at least a steady 5 words per minute, or a blistering 20 wpm if you want to master it) to get an amateur radio license, nor do most maritime military bodies even listen for it anymore.


However, you might be that guy who can only express himself fully by using dots and dashes (or dits and das).  If that’s the case, android, you can do worse than watching International Morse Code - Hand Sending, a 1966 film by the United States Army that is more entertaining than any military filmstrip has a right to be.

How entertaining, you ask? We'll let's find out together, after the jump!

The Video Game System I Trashpicked From 1977, Or “Why Didn’t I Sell This On eBay?”

This post was written by our brand new contributor, Tom Keiser. Tom is from South Jersey and also writes for NetworkAwesome.com and TheAwl.com. You may recognize him as Joe Flacco's high school mascot.

I consider myself a pretty good trashpicker. Over the years I procured dozens of VHS boxing tapes and hundreds of old Reader’s Digests at a time. The recession of the last few years has not been kind to the art, although people are starting to throw out better things as the economy improves. But looking back, I did not fully appreciate my greatest coup until after it was gone.

It was the winter of 2006, and I was walking through an affluent Philadelphia suburb, where I see a box full of RCA memorabilia. This isn’t too rare, as RCA was one of southern New Jersey’s leading employers into the 1980’s and 90’s. What was more intriguing, among the Zippo lighters and travel bags and RCA employee uniforms, was a Studio II video game system, built in Deptford, NJ (where a Sam’s Club currently stands, if I’m not mistaken), complete with at least a dozen cartridges in an old plastic shopping bag.

The RCA Studio II was introduced in early 1977, and even then it was practically obsolete. The Fairchild Channel F, which made its debut the previous year, already had color graphics and relatively better sound quality. By the end of the year, Atari would destroy both systems and corner the market until the Video Game Crash of 1983.