"Grandpa, tell us the story again about the man whose life got flipped, turned upside down": 10 amusing tweets related to TV theme music

--recent New York Times Magazine profile subject and Office star/writer Mindy Kaling

--Patton Oswalt and A.V. Club writer Noel Murray on TCM's TV ratings graphics music

--Patton Oswalt and John Fugelsang on CSI and The Who

--God_Damn_Batman

--fake lyrics for the instrumental theme from The Good Life, a.k.a. Good Neighbors, the subject of one of The Young Ones' funniest Vyvyan scenes:

--Jonah Hill, looking into the future

--New York Daily News writer Josh Greenman on the July 31, 2011 debt debate

--HitFix's SNL and Fringe recapper Ryan McGee

An Oakland Raider busts out the Carlton Dance

I'm not a fan of the Silver and Black, but the highlight of yesterday's Raiders/Texans game amused me: Raiders wide receiver Johnnie Lee Higgins* celebrated a touchdown by doing the illest shout-out to a sitcom I grew up watching. His choice for an end-zone dance was the hilarious Carlton Dance from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (photo by Brant Ward of the San Francisco Chronk).


Before he played Carlton, Alfonso Ribeiro was best known for his slick dance moves on Broadway and in commercials with Michael Jackson back when he was black, so it's funny that Ribeiro's most famous dance move today is a much less slick-looking move in which he had to pretend to be a less skilled dancer. The Carlton Dance is a parody of what has to be the whitest-looking dance ever. Every rhythmically challenged white person in the '80s did it, from Bruce Springsteen and Courteney Cox in the "Dancing in the Dark" video to the clubgoers at the Tech Noir in the original Terminator.

Whenever Ribeiro would bust out the Carlton Dance, everyone in the studio audience would lose their minds. Twelve years after the last time Carlton shook his ass back and forth to Tom Jones' "It's Not Unusual" on NBC, that dorky dance still makes crowds lose their minds, judging from yesterday's reactions from the Raider Nation, the TV sports reporters and the blogosphere.

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* When Higgins scored another TD, he bust out what SacBee blogger Jason Jones (not the soon-to-be-ex-Daily Show correspondent) called "one of Big Daddy Kane's patented dance moves." After the game, JLH identified this second dance as the "Hooka Hooka." He also did the Humpty Dance for a TV sports reporter in the locker room. The guy's got quite an arsenal of end-zone dances. A hater said on a message board that JLH's "idiotic dances need to be penalized." Looks like Reverend Shaw wants to expand his anti-dancing crusade from Bomont to the NFL.

The five greatest fake names from TV

These overly fake-sounding names for imaginary personas always end up being used either by bands (there's a British metal band that's actually called Cletus Van Damme) or message board posters (on the Film Score Monthly boards, I post under a fake name from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air). They're all easier to pronounce than Blagojevich, a name that must be giving late night talk show hosts anxiety attacks.

1. Fuzzy Dunlop
Herc's fake CI on The Wire. Sometimes The Wire is funnier than most sitcoms.

2. Shecky Shabazz
A stage name the Fresh Prince creates at the last minute for his wack stand-up act.

3. Rafael De La Ghetto
A legendary street poet made up by the Fresh Prince to impress the shawties, with some help from Geoffrey the butler: "Cannon to the right of them, cannon to the left of them, cannon in front of them, volley'd and thunder'd!"

4. Cletus Van Damme
One of The Shield's few running gags: an alias only Shane would come up with.

5. Santos L. Halper
The credit card account name Bart Simpson winds up with after he applies for a card as Santa's Little Helper.