Variety shows aren't my thing, but Jiminy Glick terribly interviewing celebrities definitely is

I don't care for variety shows, except for Muppet Show clips (or the occasional Carol Burnett Show sketch clip) and sometimes SNL, which, if you think about it, is really just a '70s-style variety show, but without a scantily clad resident dance troupe, and that makes you wonder about an SNL in a parallel universe where, since 1975, a goateed Lorne Michaels implemented a group of Fly Girls on his show, and all those Fly Girls are white. Variety shows are such an outdated and creaky form of TV. I always feel like I need to be 78 years old and fond of prune juice in order to enjoy a variety show from start to finish.

When the Miami-based Sábado Gigante said "¡Adiós!" after 53 years of old-fashioned TV, it was a sign that even non-English-speaking variety shows are doomed. Yet that hasn't stopped NBC from pushing for the variety show to come back to American TV, first with the now-defunct Best Time Ever with Neil Patrick Harris and now with the summertime replacement show Maya & Marty. The Tuesday night show pairs up two great comedians from completely different eras of SNL: Martin Short and '00s SNL regular Maya Rudolph. She's a Prince song-covering, TCM-watching pre-'90s-showbiz nerd type who genuinely enjoys the cheesiness of variety shows (Maya & Marty is her second attempt at a variety show, after the one-off Maya Rudolph Show special). Meanwhile, Short's best shtick, prior to his one season on Dick Ebersol-era SNL, took place on SCTV, the classic sketch show that constantly ripped apart the cheesiness of variety shows, whether it was through Short's Jackie Rogers Jr. character or Eugene Levy as Gene Shalit incongruously doing musical numbers with Catherine O'Hara as Rona Barrett and Joe Flaherty as Gene Siskel. Despite the pairing of Short and Rudolph, which sounds nice on paper, Maya & Marty does not look enticing to me, except for one element, and it's the only part of Maya & Marty I've been watching online: the return of celebrity interviewer Jiminy Glick.

Way before Ali G trolled politicians or Zach Galifianakis embodied fake awkwardness between two ferns or Eric Andre caused a genuinely uncomfortable Lauren Conrad to walk out on him or Stephen Colbert pretended to know nothing about hip-hop while interviewing an in-on-the-joke Eminem, there was Glick, Short's funniest character and an interestingly late addition to Short's repertoire. Glick and his weird, Merv Griffin-ish voice didn't appear first on either SCTV or mid-'80s SNL and instead emerged from a much later and completely forgotten venue: Short's 1999 daytime talk show. I tuned in to The Martin Short Show for only one reason: to see Short badly interview the likes of Ted Danson and a Dharma & Greg-era Jenna Elfman as Glick. It was far more entertaining than Short doing polite interviews for real as his normal self.

Close to "Rome"

(Photo source: Poetic and Chic)

"Rome, Italian Style," which I named after one of my favorite SCTV sketches, is an hour-long block I launched on A Fistful of Soundtracks last summer as a way to give some airplay to the badass and lush Rome album, the '60s Italian film music-inspired project produced by superduperproducer Danger Mouse and Magic City composer Daniele Luppi and featuring Jack White and Norah Jones on vocals. Besides the Rome tracks, the 11am block (which airs every weekday except Friday) also features '60s and '70s film and TV theme covers and tracks from outside the film and TV music world that were modeled after '60s and '70s film and TV scores.

The following tunes that I found on Spotify aren't currently part of the "Rome, Italian Style" playlist, but they ought to be.

Jones' new breakup-themed album Little Broken Hearts, which was produced by Danger Mouse, feels like a companion piece to Rome.

Both the Blue Harlem and Lena Horne tracks are covers of "Meglio Stasera" from the first Pink Panther. For some reason, the shots of Selina Kyle atop the Batpod in The Dark Knight Rises made me flash back to the first few seconds of this:

The illest Knight Rider theme cover ever

Like According to Jim, Knight Rider is a show that just won't die. It's been revived five times: three times in TV-movie form and twice as a weekly series. Not even the presence of the hot Smith Cho from Ping Pong Playa could get me to watch the latest attempt to revive Knight Rider, which everyone agrees was an epic fail.

Knight Rider is an example of Not-So-Great Show, Killer Theme, even though the banter between the Hoff and his lover sidekick KITT made it more enjoyable than most old Glen A. Larson shows. Like on all other Larson shows, the theme was co-written by Larson, who used to sing in the '50s and '60s with an SCTV Five Neat Guys-ish group called the Four Preps, and his regular composer Stu Phillips.

Beatmakers and beatboxers can't get enough of the Knight Rider theme, as evidenced by the year when Busta Rhymes and Timbaland & Magoo both dropped remixes that sampled the theme, as well as Panjabi MC's "Mundian to Bach Ke (Beware of the Boys)" and this sweet little recent cover by Nathan "Flutebox" Lee, whom I first caught on Current TV earlier today (Googling him led me to his Knight Rider theme cover).

New AFOS episode: "All This Has Happened Before"

Because Battlestar Galactica's fourth season is finally in full swing, episode WEB93, "All This Has Happened Before," will feature highlights of Bear McCreary's terrific music from the show, and it will begin streaming Tuesday, April 15 (midnight, 4am, 10am, 3pm, 7pm and 11pm). I wish all the tunes on the episode's playlist could be Galactica score cues, but because the Internet radio airplay laws only allow me to put four McCreary tunes on the playlist, I had to pad it with selections from scores to other remakes (Ocean's Eleven, 3:10 to Yuma).

All the Galactica score cues during this ep come from the show's season finales. WEB93 will conclude with McCreary's intriguing cover of "All Along the Watchtower" from last season's stunning cliffhanger, "Crossroads, Part II." (McCreary discusses recording the "Crossroads, Part II" score here.)


During WEB93, I mention that the Galactica producers didn't want the music during their remake to sound like what Stu Phillips wrote for the previous incarnation of Galactica. As Galactica miniseries composer Richard Gibbs said in the liner notes for the miniseries score CD, he avoided typical space opera score elements like a "sweeping, swooping orchestra, strong melodic themes, incredibly detailed flourishes," and it's an approach McCreary emulated when he took over as composer in season 1. What I like most about the music of the current Galactica is that it still manages to sound exciting even without orchestral bombast (example: the powerful taiko and strings combo in the "Prelude to War" theme from "Pegasus"). McCreary seems to understand that minimalism doesn't mean you have to turn the score into musical wallpaper, which is what happened with much of the original music on the Rick Berman Star Trek shows.

McCreary's score for the latest Galactica ep, "Six of One," was really good, particularly during the officers' farewell to Apollo on the port hangar deck. Frak! I wound up with a lump in my throat. (The next Galactica will feature something equally sob-inducing--a naked Dean Stockwell. Great. It's like we're being punished for seeing Grace Park dance around topless this week.)

Also during this AFOS ep about scores from remakes, I snark about Hollywood's creative bankruptcy. Speaking of which, a Ben-Hur miniseries is apparently in the works. I'd rather watch a remake of the SCTV Ben-Hur.

Next AFOS episode: The feature film score music from Galactica's tonal opposite--Star Trek.