Like We Have Time For TV

A TV legend and one of our favourites recently passed away. Patrick Macnee, famous in the '60s and '70s as John Steed, leader of The Avengers and The New Avengers, died aged 93. He will be sorely missed, not only for his sartorial elegance, his wit, charm and general savoir faire with the opposite sex, but for his incredible array of weaponry and impressive bad-guy-butt-kicking skills.

This leads us to a question that was posed by one of our readers the other day (well, truthfully, it was Kip the Mail Boy) which was: What do The Unbelievables like to watch on TV?

So therefore I shall post my TV choices and the others can post theirs later.

Well, sadly, we don't get an awful lot of time to watch the old gogglebox, but when we do, I tend to go for something funny, y'know, to lighten the mood. Being a crimefighter is not without its stresses and strains, so a little levity can ease the burden a tad. I like stuff like

The IT Crowd,


Father Ted, 


8 Out Of 10 Cats, 



Modern Life Is Goodish  



and Live At the Apollo.




I do like crime drama (natch), my recent fave being DCI Banks.




However, in my estimation, for real enjoyable and relaxing TV, one cannot beat a cracking episode of Tree Fu Tom. 

First you have Tom, a young lad who is able to magically shrink down and enter the forest world of Treetopolis, ruled by the kindly Oprah-like earth mother figure Treetog. Tom's best friend is Twigs, an acorn sprite, voiced by the great David Tennant (yes - Doctor Who number 10), aided and abetted by the sassy rancher-butterfly Ariella, the perpetually scared woodlouse Squirmtum (whose knowledge of caverns is unsurpassed) and the slightly unhinged wacky frog inventor Zigzoo. There's also a kindly old spider named Rickety and villainy in the form of the Mushers, Stink and Puffy. 

Sounds like a kids' show, ya say? Well, it is - or at least, that's what they want you to think. But Tom regularly interrupts the action to lead us through some physical movement exercises, cunningly disguised as magic spells, which are actually variants of Unbelieva-Fu that we taught Tom himself at one of our Unbelievinars™. What a great time we had. Especially when we all went out for burgers and shakes afterwards at Mel's diner in Pigeon Forge, TN. So watching an episode of Tree Fu Tom is like a warm, fuzzy trip back in time for me. Not only that, but Tennant's (Twigs's) throwaway one -liners and casual asides are straight up hilarious. To quote Bruno Mars, "don't believe me? Just watch."

He's Probably In The Cereal Aisle ...

Have you seen Clark? He looks sort of like this.

And he may - or may not - have a beard ...

Was I worried when Clark flew the coop all of a sudden? Not in the least.

"He's probably off to the store again or something," I told Jeff when he asked where Clark had gone.

But when the hours stretched into days (5 days to be precise) Jeff was a mite more concerned.

"Seen Clark?" he asked.

"You just asked me that," I responded.

"That was Wednesday," Jeff informed me.

"Wednesday? What are you talking about?" I was engrossed in my most recent copy of Dodgem Logic and turned the page while Jeff kept bugging me.

"Wednesday. When I asked you if you knew where Clark was. You said he'd probably gone to the store." he explained. "Today is Monday ..."

"What? Didn't you just ask that?"

"Yes. 5 days ago. Wednesday."

I lowered my magazine to my lap and looked up quizzically. "Really? Huh. That's an awful long time to be at the store. He must really be stocking up," I chided more to myself than at Jeff. "And he didn't leave a note or anything?"

Jeff scrunched his shoulders and made half-hearted gestures with his hands. "Nope ..."

"Well ... since it's been 5 days and no word from him, I guess we better, you know, do something. Or, at the very least, be a little concerned. Is his car outside?"

"Nope."

"Huh. We'd better put our heads together, then," I mused.

I got up and went to my office to check the latest on my computer. A few minutes later, I yelled for Jeff. We'd gotten an e-mail from Clark.

"See? Nothing to worry about. He sent us a photo or something"

"Of what?" Jeff wondered.

I accessed it and we both took a gander.

At first glance I thought Clark might be checking to make certain

Lucretia had her belt through all her belt loops ...

... but Jeff's take on what was going on made more sense.
(And seriously: Who would be caught dead like this checking proper belt loop etiquette?)

"Oh ... that's Clark all right" Jeff commented. "Looks like he's tussling with Lucretia Von Schploomph. Why does she have him flipped over her shoulder? Or ... is that him getting to second base with her? Again. What a show off ..."

"See? Nothing to worry about. Our pal is just fine. He's just off on some sort of holiday or he's sowing oats or taking a load off or something."

But later that afternoon, we received additional notes from Clark with curious photos attached. Jeff told you about them Wednesday:

 Drowning? No. Fishing? You betcha.

"Outnumbered." Uh huh ... right, Clark.

"Well ... that settles it. It's official: I'm not worried about Clark. You're right, Michael - he's out and about letting off steam ..."

"He has been working rather hard lately ... I'll cut the guy some slack," I mentioned. "... but he better come back home with a carload of groceries. It was his turn to do the shopping last week. Still, I hope he had fun with Lucy and comes back in a good mood, refreshed and recreated ..."

P.S. I'm really glad Jeff mentioned the infamous Woman With No Name. I'll tell you about her in a couple weeks ...

 

It's Not Like You Were In Any Danger, Clark

Look. It's not that we weren't worried. We were - at least for a few minutes. When Clark took off unexpectedly we were a trifle concerned, for sure. He could have run into traffic, ferchrissakes. But we know our Clarkito knows how to take care of himself - he's one of us, isn't he? Jeez.

Our fears were allayed once we received his first email showing him, ahem, "doing battle" with Lucretia Von Schploomph. Yeah, right. The most testing part of that "battle" must have been deciding whether to stand or sit while she "assailed" him. And when I say assailed, I mean 'made out with'.

No, truth be told, there are many ladies we have encountered in the past who are more fearsome and deadly than Lucretia (bless her bodyguarding, buttkicking lil' heart) could ever hope to be. That's not to say anything bad against Miss Von Schploomph, heavens no. It's just that we all know she's actually a real sweetheart.

Yes, there's been a lot of crazy hellions littering our trail, and these ladies are just a few...

The ladies' track team from the University of Texas. Trust me, any woman who can run 400 metres and maintain her big hairdo is not to be underestimated. In the picture there you see (l to r) Cora Snickerdoodle, the fastest pair of pins this side of Usain Bolt; Gloria Weisenheimer, who stored a 9mm pistol in that beehive; and Heidi Bangtidy, an exchange student from the north of England who was skilled in the lost martial art of Ecky Thump. In the background is coach Fenella Flipoff, whose approach to coaching track was akin to driving a double-decker bus on a skidpan.

Penny Farthing, engineering graduate from Caltech, seen here being, ahem, restrained by two policemen after trying to steal all the coins from an entire seafront amusement arcade with a giant mechanical grabber of her own devising. Well, it was more of a souped-up Bobcat really. Fiendishly clever. 

(l to r) Sondra McDoodles, Cassie Mayweather, Donna Lee O'Hooley and Barb McStuffins, four ne'er-do-wells whose psychic abilities allow them to power and steer a boat just by using their minds. They use their arms as antennae to harness the kinetic energies in the sub-ether, so they say. Sounds like a lot of pseudoscientific hooey to me, but it seems to work. These ladies were very difficult to capture since they were awfully hard to handcuff.

Miss April Van Dal, whose skill with an eyebrow pencil went beyond that of your normal make-up artist, when she started to adapt them and other make-up applicators by adding explosives, poison darts, bullets, detonators, ink squirters and the like, as if she was some sort of James Bond type. She wanted to shut down the government in order to make them accede to her demands, which included $500,000 in $2 bills, a Maserati, a lifetime supply of mascara and her own show on CBS.

The infamous Woman With No Name, who communicated solely with the aid of the Face-O-Phone. Michael has a story about her which would make your toes curl.

These fearsome ladies are the alternative speed-mathcore metal trio Brutal Koala's Fist. We've never met them, nor do we wish to. Yeesh!

I'm back, not that anybody noticed I was gone. Sheesh.

Well, I'm glad to see that my crime-fighting colleagues were so distressed by my more-than-a-week absence that they were able to have a magazine party.
Never mind that I was gone.
Never mind that they had no idea where I was.
Never mind that I might have been in serious danger.
Did they even mention that my whereabouts were unknown? No, they did not!
Even though I did manage to send them this picture, engaged in combat with the notorious and nefarious female muscle-for-hire, Lucretia Von Schploomph...

Weee, second base! Er, I mean, Help!

What makes Lucretia so dangerous is that nobody expects a demure damsel, a fetching female, a gorgeous gal to be one of the most lethal bodyguards in the biz. Get too close and it's too late.
Does it not look like I'm in the process of being maimed if not killed? Well, I was-ish. I mean, something could have gone wrong and things could have ended badly, as shown in this picture I somehow was able to send to Jeff and Michael...

Mmmmm...Er, I mean, Glub glub, I'm drowning!

Did they come running to my aid? No, they did not! Not even when I sent this picture of me battling Lucretia and some unknown assailant (I believe she was Swedish but I never got around to getting her name)

Ha ha ha ha! Er, I mean, Oh dear, I'm outnumbered!

Okay, maybe the email I sent these pictures in could have had a different subject line than, "Check it out, suckers". Or "I'm (obviously) fine". Or "Do NOT come and try to help me, seriously DON'T, I mean it". But still! They made no effort whatsoever to come and try to help me, meaning I had to get home from the airport by myself.
Ugh!
Sure, I survived (heh heh!) but I'm lucky. That's right; lucky to be alive!
Harumph.

Good Reads: The Girls And Kip

(... continuing the reading preferences of The Unbelievables and staff this week ...)

Lastly (and no real surprise here) the reading material preferences of The Unbelieva-Babes jibes with what you would think ...

Kip The Mail Boy's likes on the other hand ... well ...

... let's just say interesting and all together different.

Loyal to a fault ... but Kip The Mail Boy can be one strange puppy.

We're at a loss with this one ... some New Zealand rugby publication ...

There are no words.

*shiver*

Even More Thumping Good Reads ...

Jeff is correct: With all the cases we take on and all the due diligence needing our attention, our free times for casual, relaxed reading come few and far between.

Oh, sure ... we have Playboy and SI and GQ and nude volleyball periodicals at our disposal in "the library." (Hokay ... truth be told I peruse the nude volleyball mag more than Clark and Jeff.) But there's so much more. And our literature proclivities are just as wide and varied as each of us.

For example ... some of my favorite reading pleasures ...

Personally, I enjoy keeping up with what our "neighborhood nemesis" is into. I caught one prankster brushing up on Bobby Fuller's story, to see if he could glean any tips on how to exponentially "up" his bad guy game.
 
The joke was on him, however - the tome was nothing more than a biography of Mr. Fuller and his group The Bobby Fuller Four ...

Hey ... we're men. And men like sports. All kinds of sports. So it makes perfect sense we get excited when stories like "Centeres Who Get Me Guessing" and "I Crocked My Best Pal!" are on the front page of one of our favorite rags Football Weekly.

Nothing soothes like crochet, I always say. And knitting does it for me, too. At first, the guys looked a little sideways at me when I subscribed to a few craft mags but they came around when Clark saw you could take a couple balls of yarn and a pair of needles and fabricate a nifty robot. And Jeff was thrilled at the "Weave Your Own Food!" sections.

Cryptozoology isn't just for the wisenhiemers with big heads, you know. With spiffy pop-up 3D pages, anyone can get into mythological beings like the Abominable Snowman and the Loch Ness Monster. 

(Or ... are they really mythological ... ???!?)

Again, we keep up with our foes and their habitual inclination and tendencies. (It's fun when we get to turn the tables and use some of the bizarre stuff we know they're studying up on on them ...)

Yup. More knitting rags. (You don't think I pull ideas for my crocheted shorts out of thin air ... do you?

I don't care what anyone says: Dodgem Logic is the bee's knees when it comes to innovative escape plans, extrication maneuvers when you're in a tight spot and other ideas to get out of a pickle.

Of course, all three of us appreciate the finer details of weaponry and the latest refinements and cutting edge technology ...

But there are also those times when you don't care for any mental heavy lifting, if you know what I mean. That's when some of the fluff is a welcome balm, ripe for inducing relaxation. One of my favorites? Strange Recompense ...

And ... hey! Did you know there's more to your dreams than you give credit?

You would think, with all the dangerous situations we encounter and no good thugs we bust that something like this wouldn't be conducive to reading R&R ...

... but it is! Good stuff in that rag!

So ... what do The Unbelieva-Babes and Kip The Mail Boy indulge in? You'll find out Friday ...

Thumping Good Reads

Ooops! Sorry, folks, Jeff here. I was meant to check in with you all yesterday but I got side-tracked a little, I had a thing, y'know, it was one of those, uh... I had to see a man about a, y'know, uh...

Alright. I will fess up. I was reading. Magazines. Sometimes a guy has to just kick back and spend some time catching up on his reading material. We Unbelievables subscribe to some magazines, yet we get very little time to just relax with a copy of our favourite magazine and just chill, you know?

So what was I reading? Well, if you insist.

Bonnie Logan and June Wilkinson, two of our Unbelievababes, who went on to bigger things and are now working the "Park and Lock It" on the Vegas Strip.

Photography tips. That's Clark on the floor there.

Fitness advice...

As soon as the guys aren't lookin'... those two "Giant Posters" will be on my bedroom wall.

There were a couple more in the pile of magazines in the mailroom that intrigued me. I am not sure which of my compadres subscribed to them, but I am guessing that THIS was Michael's...

and I suppose, by process of elimination, this has to belong to Clark.

He can spot a piece of beef a mile off.

S.M.U.D.G.E.: Not Quite As Dumb As A Bag Of Hammers ...

S.M.U.D.G.E.: Even their logo is dippy.

One of the things we knew about S.M.U.D.G.E. (Scientific Modification Using Digital Genetic Enhancements) from the very start? They're sketchy as all get out.

And that's not just the general consensus of just The Unbelievables. That's coming from governments and other agencies world-wide, both local and international: FBI, MI5, Scotland Yard, The Christmas Island 3 1/2, The Girl Scouts of America, The Harlem Globetrotters, more. Their methodologies are not only heinous but questionable.

And The Unbelievables have first-hand experience knowledge about the organization as it turns out.

Something not generally known was the hoopla surrounding the inclusion of none other than George Takei into our little band of suave gentlemen. Long ago, S.M.U.D.G.E. infiltrated our ranks behind our backs. Remember the "Flared Jean Funk" case detailed back in January of last year? Where George Takei himself sought what it took to become a member of our ranks? As it turned out (it was something we didn't reveal to the general public at the time for rather obvious reasons) George was coerced by S.M.U.D.G.E. in an attempt to "get inside." How did S.M.U.D.G.E. do it? Just like this:

Working their so-called genetic mutation "magic" they took the real George Takei ...

... and melded his DNA with the head honcho alien from Close Encounters Of The Third Kind ...

Yeah, I know. Weird.

The result?

A "reasonable" (in their estimation) facsimile of George Takei ... which doesn't really make sense. (Actually, it's not a bad likeness. But ... they already had George, in the flesh brain-washed with their evil ways. They didn't need to clone a copy of him to try to weasel into our ranks.)

See what we mean? S.M.U.D.G.E.'s modus operandi is suspect and shaky right from the get-go. And that was and still is their undoing: Coming up with stuff that simply doesn't make sense. They have the tendency to come up with a perfect plan then tweak it in the weirdest way. Head-scratching to be sure.

But what really made the floor drop out from underneath them as legitimate bad guys was when they tried convincing the America public Mel Gibson was the inspiration for fast food giant Burger King's "The King" mascot:

You no doubt remember all the controversy that erupted on television and airwaves and office water coolers nation-wide over that one ... right?

What? You don't remember?

That's because there wasn't any controversy. Not one whit, not a hint.

It was a
 sham from the very start and it died a quick death. Not even Mel himself knew about it. He finally found out word of the scam years later. (And if it takes that long for word to come 'round, it doesn't bode well for your evil ne'er-do-well R&D department, if you know what I mean.

Thus, S.M.U.D.G.E. isn't much of an organization which knows how to pull the trigger and capitalize on its threats ...

Chalk up another one for the no-good, bumbling bad guys ...

P.S. We're seriously questioning Billy Ray Cyrus mole/informant worthiness of late ...

P.P.S. The quick among you will have noticed this particular post debuted on Sunday (rather than the usual Friday) as a wrap-up. The reason? Unbelieva-Babe fraternization. I don't think any more need be said ...

Not Clones, Exactly ... But Hideous Nevertheless ...

When Jeff mentioned S.M.U.D.G.E. was up to its old tricks,  I pooh-poohed the suggestion.

There was one thing looking into the allegations, however, that convinced me otherwise.

This:

This is obviously their work. 

Playing their nefarious reindeer games to cause someone to look like Jack Nicholson's Joker from Batman ... well ... that's taking things to the extreme.

S.M.U.D.G.E. had gone too far. Something had to be done.

I gave Billy Ray Cyrus a call ...