THE 100 COOLEST THINGS OF THE LAST 100 YEARS

THE 100 COOLEST THINGS OF THE LAST 100 YEARS

By Barry Dutter

1) McDonald’s French Fries. If I could only have one food to eat for the rest of my life, that would be it.

2) The episodes of the SIX MILLION DOLLAR MAN where he fought Bigfoot and the Fembots.

3) The sound that Speed Racer’s car made when it would jump through the air.

4) No list of cool things would be complete without a mention of the Fonz, but I should specify here that it a very specific era of Fonzie we are talking about: after he stopped wearing the windbreaker and before he put on those water skis and performed a life-threatening stunt over a certain pointy-finned fish.

5) The Batmobile from the 1966 Batman TV series. Coolest car ever!

6) In 1984, when Mr. T’s team lost the tug of war in the BATTLE OF THE NETWORK STARS, everyone assumed he would flip out and go berserk. Instead, he accepted defeat like a true warrior, saying simply, “Mr. T don’t make no excuses. The better team won.” I always thought he displayed a quiet dignity that we could all learn from.


7) Saturday morning cartoons were great, but I always had a soft spot for the Saturday morning live action shows like LAND OF THE LOST, BIG JOHN, LITTLE JOHN, FAR-OUT SPACE NUTS, SIGMUND AND THE SEA MONSTERS, and H.R. PUFNSTUFF.

8) Greatest children’s movie of all time: WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY. Gene Wilder’s performance in the title role was sheer genius.

9) THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW. The best show HBO ever put on the air.

10) Any comic book by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby.

11) The special effects in THE MATRIX definitely took things to the next level.

12) The early films of James Cameron, especially TERMINATOR 1 and 2 and ALIENS.

13) The rise of grunge music in the early 90s helped slam the door on bubble gum pop for almost a decade and produced some timeless bands like Nirvana and Pearl Jam.

14) One-hit wonders of the 70s. Who could forget such classic tunes as “Sky High” by Jigsaw, or “Brother Louie” by Stories, or “Rock On” by David Essex or…

15) Southern rock of the 70s, especially anything by .38 Special, Llynyrd Skynyrd, Little River Band, and the Atlanta Rhythm Section.

16) New Wave Music of the 80s, especially the Police, the Cars, the Cure, Depeche Mode, and New Order.


17) Saturday Night Live: The first two seasons with the original Not Ready For Prime-Time players: Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Jane Curtain, etc.

18) SCTV, the TV series. It was never as popular as SNL, but it was often  funnier.

19) The British Invasion of the 60s, starting with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and including such bands as the Troggs, the Animals, the Zombies, and the Hollies.

20) Freakies Cereal. Sure, it was the latest in a long line of Cap’n Crunch rip-offs, but it had great commercials and very cool toy prizes inside each box.

21) Jack Nicholson in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST. The best performance by any actor, ever!

22) The spy craze of the 60s, led by good ol’ 007 himself, James Bond.

23) Teen sex comedies of the 80s, especially RISKY BUSINESS, FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, LAST AMERICAN VERSION, and HEAVEN HELP US.

24) SEINFELD. The best sitcom of the 90s, and perhaps the most beloved of all time.

25) The movie DESTROY ALL MONSTERS.  Talk about an all-star cast: Godzilla (and his son), Rodan, King Ghidorah, Anguirus and Gorosaurus. Great actors, all.

26) IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD MAD WORLD. The film is slow in parts and probably too long by about an hour, but you will never find a funnier group of people in one movie. Jonathan Winters, Buddy Hackett, Milton Berhle, Sid Caesar, Ethyl Merman, Dick Shawn…

27) The Monkees TV series. I watched it as a kid, and I always wished I could grow up to be one of the Monkees -- live in a beach house, drive a cool car, chase girls, get chased by monsters and mobsters -- and lip synch songs, too!

28) Farrah Fawcett’s immortal “lion’s mane” hairstyle from the 1970s -- the greatest hairstyle of any woman, ever!

29) Wacky Packages trading cards. Sure, the gum tasted like cardboard, but the cards were hilarious.

30) MAD Magazine, especially in the late 60s/early 70s, when it had its last great creative burst.

31) The SIMPSONS (the first five seasons), FAMILY GUY, BEAVIS AND BUTT-HEAD and SOUTH PARK. Cartoons for kids of all ages.

32) The theme song from the cartoon COURAGEOUS CAT AND MINUTE MOUSE. Coolest theme song ever?

33) Wouldja believe GET SMART with Don Adams.

34) The Internet. How did we ever find pics of naked celebrities without it?

35) The Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog. (Sorry, Victoria’s Secret catalog, but the girls in the Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog are way sluttier!)

36) Classic TV commercials of the 70s, especially the ones for STAY ALIVE, BATTLESHIP, CONNECT 4, and CALGON.

37) STAR WARS: the first two movies from 1977 and 1980, before Jar jar and the Ewoks were introduced and it all went so horribly wrong.

38) The PLANET OF THE APES movies from 1969-75. They got worse with each one, but still, for kids in the 70s, they were as good as movies got.

39) GI JOE with the Kung fu grip.

40) The Evel Knieval stunt cycle toy from the 70s. It was even more fun than jumping over Snake River Canyon!

41) The sound made when one Rock ‘em Sock ‘em Robot knocks the block off another.

42) Lots of U.S. Presidents have cheated on their wives, but you have to respect JFK for using his presidential power to bang the then-hottest woman in the world, Marilyn Monroe!

43) 48 Hrs. (with Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte), the movie that redefined the buddy movie for the 80s generation.

44) The various dances performed by the Peanuts gang in A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS.

45) TV comedy/variety shows of the 70s, including THE SONNY AND CHER SHOW, THE RICH LITTLE SHOW, THE CAPTAIN AND TENILLE SHOW, and TONY ORLANDO AND DAWN.

46) Three great comic strips that all came and went in the 90s: THE FAR SIDE, CALVIN & HOBBES, and BLOOM COUNTY. They are missed. It seems we will never see their likes again.

47) Disneyland’s Space Mountain. Whoever had the idea of putting a rollercoaster inside a mountain was a genius!

48) Scott Baio’s list of conquests has never been topped by any man and probably never will: Nicole Eggert, Pamela Anderson, Heather Locklear, Denise Richards, and God only knows how many Playboy Playmates. Most importantly, he had them all in their prime!

49) STAR TREK 2: THE WRATH OF KHAN. No other STAR TREK movie before or since was ever as good.

50) The comedy stylings of legendary stand-ups like Steve Martin, Chris Rock, and George Carlin.

51) TRILOGY OF TERROR, the TV movie from 1973, featuring that deadly little Tiki Doll!

52) GOODFELLAS -- both the book and the movie. Each one made me want to become a gangster!

53) Any episode of the BRADY BUNCH where the kids sang.

54) Quisp Cereal -- gone too soon.

55) Going into a midnight showing of RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD with low expectations and finding out it was THE BEST ZOMBIE MOVIE OF ALL TIME!!!

56) I remember when Erika Eleniak left Baywatch, there was a lot of concern that the show would never find another girl with the same impact. Then along came Pam Anderson, and sex symbol history was made!

57) Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein (and Dracula… and the Wolfman!).

58) Any Three Stooges short with Curly. (No Shemps!)

59) Monty Python and the Holy Grail -- the funniest movie of all time!

60) Americas complete and total rejection of the Metric System in the early 1970s. It was a classic example of the people of the USA saying, “We don’t care how the rest of the world does it. We don’t care that it’s a more sensible system than the one we have now. We’re not changing for anybody!” 

61) Howard Stern’s move to Sirius satellite radio, which paved the way for his now-uncensored show to become better than ever.

62) The theme song to MISSION IMPOSSIBLE.

63) The old Warner Brothers cartoons where Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck used to go head-to-head -- especially the “Duck Season/Rabbit season” classics.

64) 70's R & B music: The Spinners. The O'Jays. The Stylistics. The Honey Combs. Earth Wind & Fire. So many great bands. So many unforgettable songs.

65) The arrival of Pop Rocks and Space Dust on the candy scene in the 1970s were certainly revolutionary.

66) The BUFFALO BILL SHOW with DABNEY COLEMAN. Just one of many great shows that was gone before it’s time -- like THE BEN STILLER SHOW.

67) Hugh Hefner’s life. His whole life, from the time he founded Playboy to the present.

68) CBS’ Saturday Night line-up in 1972: All in the Family, M*A*S*H*, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, The Carol Burnett Show. The best TV line-up in the history of television. 

69) No matter how many video games come and go, for me, they will never top MS. PAC-MAN!

70) Classic candies: TART N TINIES, SWEET TARTS, and SPREES!

71) BUBBLE YUM definitely took the concept of chewing gum to the next level.

72) In the days before VCRs, DVRs and DVDs, I will never forget my father waking up my brother and I to watch a late-night showing of WAR OF THE GARGANTUAS when we were kids. The movie kind of sucked, but was more about the anticipation than the event itself.

73) Halle Berry pocketing an extra $500,000 to show her boobs in SWORDFISH is surely a cinematic milestone. That’s $250,000 per breast!

74) The theme song to HAWAII FIVE-O.

75) Angelina Jolie’s lips. ‘Nuff said.

76)  The original DIE HARD. It changed action movies FOREVER!

77) Staying up till midnight to watch the TWILIGHT ZONE five nights a week.

78) KOLCHAK THE NIGHT STALKER -- one of the great lost shows of the 1970s. That show was part of the proud tradition of networks airing spooky shows (like GHOST STORY or THE X FILES) on Friday nights. 

79) THE HOBBIT -- the original book by JRR Tolkien which was much more entertaining than the somewhat bloated LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy that came later.

80) Julie Newmar -- the sexiest Catwoman who ever was and ever will be.

81) Zim-Zam -- perhaps the greatest backyard game of all time.

82) My LANCELOT LINK, SECRET CHIMP lunchbox. Wish I still had it!

83) The Boardwalk in Wildwood, NJ. You have to see it to believe it.

84) The video for “Centerfold” by the J. Geils Band -- the first time that I recall that anyone had the idea of putting sexy, scantily-clad girls in a music video. Truly the J. Geils Band were visionaries.

85) The San Diego Comic Con.

86) The rise of “jiggle TV” in the 1970s, where all the girls had to do was “jump and giggle.” Having such shows as CHARLIE’S ANGELS, THREE’S COMPANY, and WONDER WOMAN made going through puberty much easier!

87) The monster in the 1983 horror movie THE THING.

88) The animated movie MAD MONSTER PARTY. It used to play on TV all the time when I was a kid, and I watched it every time.

89) Singer/songwriters of the 70s, including Billy Joel, James Taylor, Carol King, Paul Simon, and Jackson Brown.

90) Springsteen. Born to Run. (as a guy from New Jersey, I’m required by law to list that one, though I actually enjoy Born in the USA more as an album.)

91) The first Superman movie with Christopher Reeve in 1979. Has any other actor ever played a superhero so well?

92) Coolest kids’ books of all time: WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE, CLIFFORD THE BIG RED DOG, and HAROLD AND THE PURPLE CRAYON.

93) The disaster movie craze of the 70s: EARTHQUAKE, THE TOWERING INFERNO, THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, AIRPORT, etc etc. These movies generally had all-star casts, great special effect, and cool gimmicks like SENSURROUND!

94) Kim Kardashian’s butt. That is one of the top wonders of the world, comparable to the Great Wall of China or the Great Pyramids of Egypt.

95) 3 classic candy bars: Marathon Bars, Charleston Chews, and Kit Kats.

96) Count Chocula. Coco Puffs. And Cocoa Krispies. The one-two-three punch of classic chocolate-flavored cereals. (Sorry, Cocoa Pebbles, but you just don’t make the cut.)

97) Raquel Welch -- best sex symbol ever?  Yep!

98) New York-style pizza.

99) Marvel super-heroes like Spider-Man and the Hulk -- with their very human flaws and personality quirks, they were always so much more relatable than the one-dimensional DC heroes.

100) The Mighty Heroes cartoon series (1966-67). Their names are legendary: Strong Man. Tornado Man. Cuckoo Man. Rope Man. And who could forget -- Diaper Man!

THE OLD EDDIE MURPHY ATTEMPTS A COMEBACK IN TOWER HEIST -- BUT DOES HE SUCCEED?

By Barry Dutter

Eddie Murphy stopped being funny around the turn of the century, leaving fans to wonder happened. How does a brilliant comic lose his edge? Recently, it looked like Eddie was making an attempt to get his comic mojo back as he shifted from crappy kids movies to an adult comedy.  But did he still have his "raw" edge?
It’s very telling that the trailer for his latest movie, TOWER HEIST shows Eddie being sprung from prison to embark on more misadventures. Long-time film-goers will never forget that Murphy made his movie debut in the classic 48 Hrs, where he played a convict who was released for two days of wild hi-jinx. The implications from the new trailer are obvious: This is Eddie going back to his roots. If you liked Eddie as the fast-talking fowl-mouthed horny convict, he’s back! Or is he?
Murphy’s movie career has been overshadowed by the fact that the first three movies he made are the three that were most beloved by his fans: 48 Hrs., TRADING PLACES and BEVERLY HILLS COP. He has spent most of the past 30 years squandering any good will that his fans may have left for him. I can’t think of any performer since Burt Reynolds who worked so hard to chase away his fans with a string of bad movies, each one worse than  the one before.
Sometimes it seems like Eddie’s number one career goal was to make more bad movies than his idol, Richard Pryor. (I would say Eddie succeeded at that goal.)
Eddie is perhaps the greatest living example of the fact that most comics stop being funny as they get older. No none knows for sure why it happens. Maybe it’s the same reason that rock stars write music that is less and less memorable as they age. Maybe comedy is a young man’s game.
Perhaps as you get older, become more successful, have more happiness, you lose your edge. Maybe your mind isn’t as sharp as it used to be.
Whatever the reason, it’s an indisputable fact that comedians in their forties, fifties and sixties are never as funny as they were when they first burst on the scene in their teens, twenties and thirties. We’ve seen it time and time again. Look at Jim Carrey. Chevy Chase. Bill Murray. Dan Aykroyd. Steve Martin. Even brilliant comics like Rodney Dangerfield and George Carlin were not as creative and laugh-out-loud funny in the latter part of their careers as they were in the beginning.

But perhaps the saddest example of this phenomena is Eddie Murphy. In the early 1980s, Eddie was unquestionably the funniest man alive. Whether it was in his SNL skits, his comedy albums, in movies, or doing his raunchy stand-up routines, there was no one funnier.
He was at the top of his game. His first few movies were blockbusters; each one a major crowd-pleaser.
Over time, Eddie walked away from SNL and turned his back on stand-up, leaving movies as the only outlet for his humor.  And, over time, his movies got less and less funny (and made less and less money).
Some time around the mid-1990s, the worst thing that could ever happen to a  comic happened: Eddie decide to start making family films that his kids could watch.
That was the beginning of the end for the former fowl-mouthed funnyman. From 1998 to 2010, Eddie made a string of primarily kids movies that became blander and less funny as time went on.
Eddie had started his movie career with his best role, that of the slick con man Reggie Hammond. By 2005, he was playing a human spaceship named Dave. (That's an idea so stupid and lame, the old Eddie wouldn't even have bothered making fun of it on SNL!)
By the time he came out with a kids movie called Imagine That in 2009, even families had stopped going to see Eddie Murphy movies. Sure, the Shrek movies still made a lot of money, but let’s face it, kids do not go to see Shrek movies because Eddie Murphy (or Mike Myers) is in them. Kids really don’t care who does the voice of Donkey.
By 2010, it seemed like it might be all over for Eddie as a movie star. Then he pulled a surprising career switch when he decided to go back to his roots and make an edgy comedy, where he would once again play the type of street-hustling convict character that made him famous.
The movie was called TOWER HEIST. It was originally conceived by Murphy as a vehicle for him to team up with all the major black comics of this generation (just as he had teamed up with many of the top black comics and actors of the 1980s when he made the dreadful HARLEM NIGHTS in 1989.)
Due to scheduling conflicts, Eddie was not able to get Chris Rock, Jamie Foxx, Martin Lawrence, et al. Instead, he ended up with a mixed-race cast that included Ben Stiller and Matthew Broderick, who is about as pasty and white as a man can be.
Murphy reportedly came up with the basic story for the movie before handing it off to a team of writers.
Anyone who has followed  Murphy’s career knows that the films he conceives and writes himself are usually among his worst (NORBERT, ANOTHER 48 Hrs, VAMPIRE IN BROOKLYN, the fore-mentioned HARLEM NIGHTS.) Naturally, hearing that TOWER HEIST was another Murphy brainstorm would lead one to be worried.
And then there’s the fact that Murphy hasn’t been genuinely funny on film since the year 2000, when he made THE NUTTY PROFESSOR 2, and I’m being very generous in calling that so-so sequel funny.
For most of the 90s and 2000s, Murphy had settled into playing parts where he wasn‘t even trying to generate any laughs. Seeing Murphy play a straight man to a bunch of talking animals in not one, but two, DR. DOLITTLE movies was surely a sad sight for any fan.
So it was with some curiosity and some hesitation that I approached Murphy’s comeback vehicle, TOWER HEIST. The previews looked somewhat promising. Murphy flirts with the fat chick from PRECIOUS. Not hilarious, but amusing. Would this movie be a return to the horn-dog Murphy of his early films? I knew I couldn’t get my hopes up too high, though, because TOWER HEIST was a PG movie, not an R like his early ones.
In other words, Murphy was still making a movie his kids could see. It’s just one he wouldn’t have to be as embarrassed about as usual.
I saw TOWER HEIST and found it disappointing. Murphy plays only a surprisingly small role. He appears in a few brief scenes at the beginning of the movie, then he disappears for a long stretch, and then he’s in the last 45 minutes or so. So I would hardly call this a starring role for him.
Still, many great comics have successfully stolen movies with much smaller parts over the years.
The question is, did Murphy deliver that old magic in his small role?
The answer is: not really.
For starters, the script is all over the place. What starts out being a heist movie tries to get clever when the gang realizes they will have to steal something other than money. They wind up trying to steal a car made out of gold, a dopey “only in the movies” plot device that was taken from an old episode of SPEED RACER.
There are a few double-crosses, and a complicated heist, but ultimately the movie is uninteresting.
As for Murphy-- he’s okay in the movie. In the beginning, you’re so psyched to see him doing something “adult” again that you laugh out of the hope that the old Eddie is back. But as the movie goes on, you see that this is not really the case
This is middle-aged Eddie, the one who has been surrounded by sycophants for the last 30 years and doesn’t really know what’s funny any more. There is a common mistake that unfunny people make in the movies that if you say something loud, that automatically makes it funny.
That’s basically what Murphy is doing here. He says a line loudly, and you laugh because it’s Eddie Murphy, and then you stop and think, “Wait, that wasn’t even a joke. That was just a guy talking loud.”
TOWER HEIST isn’t a total embarrassment -- Murphy probably won’t want to take this one off his resume, the way I’m sure he would love to do with 95% of the movies he has made in the past decade.
But as a comeback movie, there’s not much to it.
I guess I just have to get used to the idea that Murphy will never again be as fresh and funny as he was in 1982.
This was a nice try -- it’s good to see Murphy actually put a little thought into a role instead of just hacking it out. But this was not the comeback movie we thought it would be.
Audiences seem to feel lukewarm about the movie. It started off strong, but word of mouth spread real quick. The movie only made $75 million at the box office, a far cry from Eddie’s 100 million + smash hits of yore.
I guess we should be thankful that Eddie even tried to make a “grown-up” movie for a change. This one was not the home run we all hoped it would be -- more like a base hit. But maybe it has whetted his appetite to being funny again. We will see.
Sadly, I think TOWER HEIST was only a temporary break from the crappy kids movies. Murphy is currently in pre-production for his next movie, an adaptation of the 1970s cartoon show HONG KONG FOOEY.

Phooey, indeed.