TVSquad

It's always odd when pop culture personalities show up in comic books. It's the print equivalent of the Harlem Globetrotters showing up on Gilligan's Island.

This comic book is from 1984 and features The Avengers meeting...David Letterman! He was on NBC back then doing Late Night and in the comic The Avengers go on the show. For some reason.

[via Pop Candy]

It's weird to look back at the Michael Jackson Pepsi ad from 1984 (the one that actually aired) and think that it caused so many problems in his life. US Weekly got hold of the footage that never aired, of Jackson's scalp catching on fire, causing second and third degree burns to his scalp and face. The magazine claims that this accident is what led to MJ's addiction to both painkillers and plastic surgery.

This is surreal footage, and at first I thought it was footage from the TV movie made about Jackson's life, but it's real. That's Miko Brando in the hat helping Jackson. Brando has been on Larry King Live many times recently. After the jump, the ad that aired. It's worth noting that Jackson went on to do other Pepsi ads after this.

Two things about Darren Rovell's CNBC.com story about the famous Apple Macintosh Super Bowl ad shocked me:

• That it aired for the first and only time (at least as an ad, not a cultural icon) 25 years ago today, during the broadcast of Super Bowl XVIII (when the Los Angeles Raiders crushed the Washington Redskins, for you sports fans); and
• That the Super Bowl was once played as early as January 22.

The NFL season has slowly gotten longer and longer, hasn't it? Anyway, Rovell has an interesting interview with Mike Murray, Apple's marketing manager for the then-brand-new Mac. The best thing to come out of the interview was the fact that Apple's board of directors hated the completed ad, which was inspired by George Orwell's novel 1984, and never wanted it to air. But they couldn't sell back their 60-second spot and had nothing else to put there.

So, basically, a lack of productivity on the part of Apple's marketing department allowed us to see what became the most famous Super Bowl ad ever. You can see the ad after the jump.

Let's do a little "Whatever happened to..."

Commercials can be a really strong jump start for memories and nostalgia. In fact, I think they can sometimes trigger a certain feeling in us even more than TV shows because they were repeated 700 times when we kids and we remember them strongly, even though we don't see them any longer.

After the jump we catch up with three classic commercial icons from the 80s. One famous for swinging a hammer, one famous for getting confronted by his dad, and one famous for fishing.

This is no laughing matter. John Gilmore, executive director of Autism United, said today that CBS must apologize for an insensitive remark made on the Julie Chen-hosted reality show Big Brother during last week's episode. One of the contestants, a man named Adam, said that if he was the show's big winner, he would use the money to start a hair salon for people with developmental disabilities. Adam went on to say he wanted a beauty shop "so retards can get it together and get their hair done." When Sheila, another contestant, protested, "Don't call them that," Adam declared that, "Disabled kids. I can call them whatever I want. I work with them all day, okay?"

According to CBS's Big Brother web site, Adam is a public relations manager for an unnamed foundation. The 29-year-old is from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, but is now living in Delray Beach, Florida.

(S02E01)

Keisha, Chris' unrequited love, is getting ready to move out of Brooklyn:

Chris: Hey, where y'all movin' to?

Keisha: We're going to this place in California. It's supposed to be really, really nice. Palm trees, and lawns, and no violence and no crime.

Chris: Well, what's it called?

Keisha: Compton.