Did you noticed that in the Marvel movies such as "Fantastic Four", "Spider-Man", "Ghost Rider" and others... they all seem to be true to the comics and cartoon versions, all except for "X-men"... which is so watered down from the comics or 90's cartoon version.

Why in the world are they making the X-men movies in such a conservative manner? None of the X-men characters wore their original comic-book super hero uniforms in these movies. The X-men all wore the same black outfits, and the super powers have little special effect compared to the other Marvel movies.

Instead of Rogue being an attractive looking adult female, she is now a disturbed teenaged girl... and her powers has no special effects, except for when the person she touches skin shows a lot of veins. But that's her mutant power, she can't fly, nor does she have super strength.

Wolverine lacks the aggressive attitude and short temper he had in the comics and 90's cartoon. Although I alwayed believed Chris Benoit would have been a better Wolverine in the X-men movies because he had the aggression, looked like Logan, and he's a Canadian just like Wolverine/Logan... they even nicknamed him the Rabid Wolverine in WCW (but with no relation to the X-men character.) But the possibility of that happening went down the drain a couple of weeks ago.

If you've seen the Marvel movies then you should understand my concern with the X-men films being to bland. These characters are supposed to be Mutants, and yet, they act like regular people. Why?

Storm in this film is petite, this character should be about 5' 11". Halle Berry was the wrong person for this role, but they gave her the part to attract her fans. The "Storm" character should have been played by Niaomi Campbell or someone of the height with stunning good looks.

Magneto looked like a grumpy old man, and his personality was boring. I've alwayed viewed Magneto as a man in his late 40s/early 50s with white hair likewise with Professor Xavier. But the actor who played Magneto looked to be in his late 60s/early 70s. Also what happened to "Juggernaut" being Xavier's half-brother? There's no doubt the movie was hastely put together, Juggernaut was suppose to be a massive size like The Hulk was. Oh, well.

There is a lot of things wrong with those X-men movies, but people still pay to see these movies, and having Marvel believe that they've done an excellent job when the movie sucked. Tim Burton would have been a better director because he's excellent with directing fantasy films. Just look at the first Batman film from 1989 in which Burton directed, maybe Marvel should have put him in charge in the Marvel movie's outcome.

My favorite Marvel stories was always the X-men, but the movies completely blow. They are making the X-men films so serious that it's like watching Star Trek.

Posted by Lionel at 2:53 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 5 December 2007 11:32 PM EST

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I've been thinking about this off and on for a while now. When was the very first "non-cable" TV show that used curse words?

Generally the words "ass" and "bitch", because I never heard these words prior to the 90s. To find the answer, we'll have to go back to 1987. Of course Fox-TV debuted in 1986, but the programs weren't out of the norm. In one year FOX Television brought forth a new ranchy sitcom called: "Married With Children". This show was a trendsetter, never have there been a show like this. So this marks the beginning of television downfall.

Two years later (1989) on the same FOX network came an animated comedy series: "The Simpsons", again, there was never an animated program that had characters behave so rudely. There would have been though, "The Garbage Pail Kids" was scheduled to debut on CBS Saturday Mornings in 1986 but it never did... probably because the Garbage Pail Kids looked hideous, and it promoted bad manners... so it was pulled before it aired.

So *The Simpsons* marked the "Toilet Humor" in animation... but it never began using the swear words that I've mentioned above. The animated "toilet humor" trend followed with Nickelodeon's "Ren & Stimpy" and MTV's "Beavis & Butt-Head" and from there it became even more stranger with South Park, Family Guy, need I say more?. In "Beavis & Butt-Head" the swear word "ass" and "bitch" was used often, but this was cable televison... not analog broadcasts, so I wouldn't count this as the first. Read on and you'll find out, I'm merely blueprinting the moral decline on regular television, not cable or satellite.

Okay, here's one you probably never heard anyone mentioned. "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" was the trend setter to being the first sitcom to have "hip-hop" as it's theme, along with "rap soundtracks" during the episodes.

Can you think of any sitcoms with "hip-hop" themes and soundtracks prior to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air which debuted in 1990?

"Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" came out in the fall of 1990, and all of the black sitcoms at the time had general themes and soundtracks in the episodes, none of them sounded "hip-hop." And futhermore, Fresh Prince was for the general audience. It's strange, these days sitcoms aren't done in front of a live studio audience... but they'll play fake laugh tracks to let a person know what's funny.  

Shortly after the success of "Fresh Prince" came various black sitcoms from Fox Television, all having "hip-hop" themes songs and soundtracks. Shows like "Martin", "Living Single", "South Central" (remember this?), and a few others. The difference between "Fresh Prince" and the other Fox sitcoms was that his show was family oriented and clean humor. But the Fox sitcoms were ranchy and they centered more on "relationships" and "sex" and the humor was not for kids.

In pre-90s television, they used inside jokes that only the adults who watched them understood, but it went right over the kids heads because they thought the character was talking of about something else. For example, in one episode of the Cosby Show... Cliff was in bed with Clair and the room was cold, they were covered in blankets. Clair was coming on to Cliff, and she told him to turn off the light... and then Cliff said something to the effect of: "I would, but I'm too stiff right now." This was at the end of the episode. My point is that the adult viewers got the inside joke, but the kids did not. Inside jokes was even done on "Pee-Wee's Playhouse" and other shows that only adults got the joke. But you can forget about insider jokes with today's TV sitcoms, they just say and do whatever and could careless. They used to regulate themselves on the quality of their content, but now they want you to regulate what your kids watch by putting those TV Rating at the top corner of the screen. This gives them the freedom to say whatever even if a child is watching, and people wonder why the most youths in this country are acting like brats. The TV Media shapes real life, everything we talk about to how we dress and act is all based on what we saw on television. 

Now, The very first show to have used curse words on national television (I'm assuming) was: "Martin"... when I first heard Martin say "bitch" and "ass" I knew this would be the trend setter. I had thought those cuss words were major, and I was shocked to have heard it on national television.

So there's your answer... "Martin" was the first show to use major cuss words on national television for it's time.

How about Talkshows? Hey, don't let "Jerry Springer" fool you into believing his show was the trend setter for outrageous and controversial Talkshows. "The Richard Bey Show" was the real trend setter, his show was way out there. It wasn't syndicated until 1995 when Springer's show was growing popular... Richard Bey arrived on the syndicated scene too late... and when they saw his show, they assumed it was a mere rip off. In 1996, Richard Bey was cancelled.. and Springer's show remained, but it's a shadow of it what it use to be.

Talkshows reached it's peak in 1996. There were about 15 (or more) Talkshows on during 1996 from 9am to 6pm, there were so many that the remainder of them aired in the late night hours. The following year (1997) many of them were cancelled, because I'm guessing that the Talkshow idea had saturated television.

They were all doing "Ricki Lake Show" kind of topics, and no one was being original in ideas... and the Jenny Jones Show controversy also contributed to the major hack job on Talkshows in 1997.

In 1998, a court show debuted by the name of "Judge Judy"... after it's success followed more of them. There was a real fake one name "Moral Court" with "Larry Elder" as the judge. This was passed off as a real court show but it was FAKE... you can see reruns of it on "ION-TV" (formerly PAX) at 6pm weekdays.

Now ever since 1998, Court Shows had taken over daytime television.

I can go on and on. American Idol... It became now a popular show because of the british guy's accent "Simmon Cowell" and his rude remarks to contestants.

Now, in almost all new contestant shows... there is always 1 snobby judge with a british accent. Have you noticed? And yet, another new trend.

What is my point in this post? My point is that television are saturated with shows that follows a trend. They test us with 1 unique show to see how the ratings do, and if the ratings is high... different variations of it pop up on other networks, and they milk it for all it's worth until the ratings decline. It's evident with reality shows, and it's sad to say but I don't see reality programs going away any time soon.

Want to know the true reason television has gone downhill? The old TV programmers has either retired or died out.. and new younger programmers replaced them. These new programmers tried to fix something that wasn't broken, they've squeezed the credits to the sides and bottom of the screen, so now we won't know the real name of an actor or the year the program aired.

They have included those annoying pop-up "promo ads" in the TV programs, so we no longer can watch TV shows without promo ads in the footage. The station's logo used to pop up a few times during a program (sometimes not all all) 11 years ago. Now, the network's logo is there all the time except when showing commercials.

Another thing I've noticed is that the new TV network and station programmers have no regard for their viewers.

Just 18 years ago when a TV station cancels a show, it was the norm to announce the cancelletion and then introduce the new show. For example, if you tuned into a show such as "Popeye" every weekday at 2pm... then Monday you tune in again at 2pm to watch "Popeye", but instead, you are greeted with the following voice-over announcement: "Popeye will not be seen today, so that may bring you The Flintstones." And then The Flintstones would air in this 2pm timeslot. This was the norm with all television shows in the pre-90s era. (You can see two examples of this in "Volume 7" of my collection, very nostalgic.)

These days they don't care to at least inform us that a regularly scheduled program has been cancelled. We go to watch our favorite show in anticipation only to see a different show in it's place without giving us the heads up in advance. The next day we tune in to see if the favorite program is there, but it's not... and we realize now that it has been replaced and this current program is now regularly scheduled. Even though it sucked when a good show gets cancelled, at least they would let us know of the cancellation a few seconds prior to the new program beginning.

I remember how disappointed I was in 1990 when WNYW-5 in NYC cancelled "Diff'rent Strokes" and replaced it with the then *new* Montel Williams Show at 5pm weekdays... but just before they aired Montel Williams we were greeted with the typical cancelletion announcement.

I have accepted that it will never be the way it was before, and I find comfort in watching my old video/dvd collections... so all isn't lost, which was why I created Videomercials to show people how far television has fallen since the glory days. Thanks for reading.

Posted by Lionel at 7:20 PM EDT

Updated: Friday, 6 July 2007 2:41 PM EDT

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I used to be a wrestling fan during the 80s and into the late 90s. But by 2001 I started to tune out once I found out that Vince McMahon was buying WCW and later ECW.

These days I tune in once in a while just to see what they're up to at WWE (formerly WWF), but I tuned in last week to learn that Vince McMahon had died in a car explosion. I see wrestlers giving their personal regards to Vince and they all had sad looks on their faces. Of course his "death" (in such as tramedic way) wasn't in the news media, no one was commenting on it. I said to myself, heh, another tasteless storyline by the WWE. So I tuned in today/yesterday to see an empty arena with just Jim Ross and Jerry "The King" Lawler with (yet again) looking as depressed as ever. I actually thought the empty arena was apart of the storyline of Vince McMahon's so-called "death", but I'm watching and I see Chris Benoit in a match with "The Big Show" and then I see"Royal Rumble" as the event and I thought that was odd because Royal Rumble was usually held in January.

During the match I see a little pop-up on the bottom of the screen of Chris Benoit, his wife, and son. And it said how he and his family died but it didn't say anything else. 

So this even "sadder" tribute wasn't for Vince after all, but for Chris Benoit. I know people who watch WWE at least once every 2 weeks must have been confused as I was last night. I did a search online to discover that Benoit really did die. But then I went over to a wrestling newsgroup to find out more information on Benoit to discover that the 'Sensational Sherri Martel" had also died 10 days prior of Chris Benoit's death yesterday. Again I was shocked.

In case you didn't know, Sensational Sherri is best known for being Randy "Macho Man" Savage's manager or ring-side helper in the late 80s and early 90s. Ironically, Miss Elisabeth was also Macho Man's manager prior to Sherri... and guess what? Both women have died prematurely. I can't help but assume that the wrestling business (especially WWE) is under some kind of hex. It must be, too many strange deaths over the years, and for the most part, they all were under 50 years old... 

And here's something else I've find out from the news... the deaths of the Benoits is being reported as a double-murder suicide. 

"Investigators believe the 40-year-old Benoit killed his wife, Nancy, and 7-year-old son, Daniel, over the weekend, then himself on Monday."

The folks at WWE had just made a tribute to a man who might have murdered his family and himself. Unbelievable! Obviously they didn't know this because it was just revealed near midnight, but they should have waited a few days before doing tributes.

But I guess they couldn't wait because Vince McMahon probably felt bad at his fake death storyline and how it backfired on him with the deaths of two wrestling personalities within the same month of his phony storyline and having his workers pay tribute to him, not knowing there will be 2 real deaths in his wrestling business weeks later.

I went over to Alexa.com to learn that "Vince McMahon" was the most searched for keyword in search engines. Great job Vince, now you've got millions of people actually believing that you've actually past away and feeling sorry for your family...

I wonder how they will treat Vince's death when it actually happens?
I remember how the comedian "Red Foxx" would pretend to have a heart attack throughout his career as a joke, and when he grabbed his chest and fell to the floor on the set of his new TV sitcom (in the early 90s) the cast of the show actually thought he was joking until he didn't get back up... how embarrassing for Red Foxx. And it's even more embarrassing for Vince McMahon. 

The whole thing is bizarre, and the way TV has become so distasteful it will only get worse. It was not like this 15 years ago (1992), they at least had some class back then.

I've said it once and I'll say it again... the TV sitcom "Married With Children" signaled the moral decline of television... it all started in 1987 and declined from there. 

Posted by Lionel at 12:57 AM EDT

Updated: Tuesday, 26 June 2007 8:55 AM EDT

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I think it's about time that I start introducing 50's and 60's commercials to my library; I want to cover every TV decade so this site can appeal to other groups besides the seventies, eighties, and nineties crowd.

In the very near future (I'm not saying when) my entire collection will have a "Videomercials.TV" watermark on the bottom corner of the footage. I didn't want to resort to do this but I have no choice, or else I will be out of business. I'm discovering an increasing amount of individuals either reselling copies of some of my volumes and claiming to have compiled them or they're being uploaded on websites. And they certainly haven't told their visitors where the footage came from else I would have gotten extra traffic from these sites.

Some of them are even putting their site's logo in the commercials, but no one stops to think where it came from and who compiled it. I obviously had plenty of time on my hands to be able to make so many of these volumes and to maintain this website. And the way I see it is if they can brand the footage, then why can't I? It's only fair. But certainly, my branding will discourage the copycats and the exploiters who upload footage from my collection. 

And I'm sure none of them are dedicated enough to sit there and edit in a little over 200 commercials for 3 to 4 hours. It isn't fair to me. I know there are jeering and jealous people who wish only the worse for this website and even though they hate it, they'll come back to observe it, and to see if I've been "SHUT DOWN".

The watermark logo in the footage will brand my entire collection to prevent individuals from "stepping on my toes" and purposely exploiting this service. This is also necessary to prevent people from trading me copies of commercials from my own collection (which has happened before.)

I wanted the commercials to be plain and original as the day it was broadcasted, but this concept is now proving to be a failure for my business... it's like what mom use to say: "It takes one bad apple to spoil up the whole bunch."

I don't think people realize that I'm in this for the long haul, and that this is not some "fly by night" or some "here today, gone tomorrow" type of service. They'll know when they see "Volume 100" listed on "Page 10" which is a very realistic goal considering the backlog of commercials that I haven't got around to making into a volume yet.

I'll keep you posted on any other developments.

Posted by Lionel at 1:12 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 20 June 2007 9:48 PM EDT

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I wonder how many people that were born after 1982 realize that small indie stations were once common and in most large cities. Everything from original shows to a crop of movies and reruns, etc. like you see on TV Land  or Nick at Nite. There was something cool about that, now everything is owned by a greater or lesser network, it seems.

Heck, in the beginning, even network affiliates had to fill time on their own. Leading to the monster theater and captain video stuff local stations during the golden TV age.

The interesting thing is that once people in TV were desperate to fill time in the new medium. Now, there is so much content flying around that even rapidly multiplying cable niche channels can't hold it all.

Oh well, at least with cable and TV stations going to the way there are, syndication is forever - yet those little stations - and some network stations that had to fill time (remember the first FOX affiliated stations, before there was a network? FOX 5 in NYC? WTXF 29 in Philadelphia?) that kept Star Trek on everyone's TVs in syndication. They made kids of several generations grow up laughing at The Little Rascals, or Tim Conway in "McHale's Navy," or Colonel Klink on "Hogan's Heroes".

A true cultural impact. They scared kids of the seventies and eighties out of their wits when they stayed up to watch the old horror films, Public Service Ads, and not to mention all the syndicated cartoon shows that they aired.

In the early nineties when I was still in Brooklyn, NY before moving to Florida (and didn't have cable TV btw) usually at nights or when it was raining, my "Cable Ready TV" would pick up various UHF TV stations from Connecticut, Long Island, and New Jersey.

By 1993, Independent TV in the New York City market was pretty much crap... so when my little indoor antenna picked up those unknown "out of area" stations I was more than happy.

The very first station it pulled was a connecticut station "WTXX TV-20", it aired the "Home Shopping Club" from morning to 3:00pm, then cartoons would air from 3 to 6pm, and then sitcoms and dramas would continue through 10pm.

It was a breath of fresh air seeing an indie station that was indeed "independent". I actually stayed up real late to see what this station aired, but by 6am the signal gotten weak as daylight became brighter... and by 7:30am the signal was completely gone, as if it was never there.

Disappointed, I went out and bought a new indoor antenna to see if the signal would come back, it didn't, but I left it hooked to the TV. As the night approaches I was receiving faint signals from WTTX-20, Connecticut's Channel 26, NBC 30, Connecticut's FOX 29, WMBC-63, WNJN-50, and WLNY-55. The strongest of the signals was WLNY-55, probably because it was a Long Island station.

Yet again, I stayed up late flipping the channels to see what was showing and I saw TV movies (such as "Playing With Fire" with Gary Coleman), old sitcoms, and misc TV programs. But as usual the signals would vanish by sunrise. Within a year I bought 6 different indoor antennas to get these stations to stay but with no luck. I also found that if it was raining real hard during the day the signals would come back even stronger... then I realized it had to do with the atmospheric changes.

The fun ended in 1995, however. One day I tuned in to WTXX TV-20, and noticed a "UPN" logo at the bottom and they were calling themselves "UPN 20". Everything that was original about that station was replaced with UPN slogans and promos. Other stations I tried to get that was once "independent" were either UPN or WB affiliates.

There was no reason for me to tune into these stations anymore, it was over.

When I was in Ft. Lauderdale, FL in 1995-97... stations like WSVN-7 would still air late night movies on the weekends at 2am, I can't remember what WSVN called this time slot... but it was similar to what indies would call their late hour movie blocks.

In 1998 they attempted to bring back indies and I remember WAMI-69 debuting. The station was nick-named "Miami", and it aired local and old programs... one local program was called "Neil At Night", it was the radio shock jock "Neil Rogers", they were showing us two half-hour sets of his 4-hour daytime radio show at night on WAMI, once at 8:30pm and another at 10:30pm.

They even had WAMI Kids, a cartoon block which was really "Fox Kids" but with young teenagers as the hosts, and it was similar to how The Bozo Show and DJ Kat Show was formatted... little skits in between cartoons.

Well, WAMI-69 is no longer an independent as of 2002... it turned into Telefutura, a spanish network. 

There is another independent station in South Florida called "WPPB-63" it is nicknamed "BEACON-TV", but this station is not what I would call a real independent. It's programs are all educational and it's from the school board. It airs "Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids", but the episodes are from Barr? videos.. and parts in the episodes that wasn't educational was edited along with the laugh tracks. So it's basically a learning aid for kids rather than entertainment.

Today, I'm in Tampa, FL... and guess what? There is a real indie station here called "WMOR Channel 32" (More TV-32). And it doesn't "credit crunch" or squeeze the credits to the bottom or sides of the screen, but you do hear a voice-over during the credits just like the independents of old use to do. This station airs movies every night at 8pm, weekend movies begin at 12pm. Late weekend nights they show old "b-movies", this station really fills in that gap for people who miss independents. I am glad WMOR-32 and WLNY-55 in Long Island never sold out to becoming a network affiliate... I hope they will stay independent.  

Posted by Lionel at 3:26 PM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, 25 July 2007 11:05 PM EDT

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