TV Party for Monday, June 13th 2005

What better way to relax after a tough day at work than with the mind-altering substance of your choice and three hours with the Grateful Dead? Well, if you can’t think of anything better than that I suggest you get comfortable and set the TV on KCTS at 8 for “The Grateful Dead Movie”. Thirty years ago in 1974, the band decided to take a break from playing together. Knowing that this might be the close of an era, they filmed five consecutive concert nights in San Francisco at Bill Graham's Winterland Arena. The director and crew captured the concert, interviews and backstage camaraderie with seven cameras, and on the final night the band invited former Grateful Dead drummer, Mickey Hart, to join them on stage.

Jerry Garcia spent two and a half years editing this 'love letter to Dead Heads,' a two hour and fifteen minute project complete with animation. The film was originally released in 1977.

One word of warning, it’s pledge drive time again, so your buzz will be harshed by George Ray and whatever Deadhead he drags in off the street every 20 to 30 minutes, so be prepared with plenty of snack foods, lava lamps and whatever else you need to keep the groove going.

If hippie twirl-dancing music isn’t your bag, head up to BET at 8 for the 1988 Keenan Ivory Wayans blacksploitation spoof “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka.” Wayans plays Jack Spade who returns from the army to his old ghetto neighborhood when his brother, June Bug, dies. Jack declares war on the powerful local crime lord Mr. Big, who should not be confused with the Chris Noth character from "Sex and the City". His army is led by John Slade, his childhood idol who used to fight bad guys in the 70s. The cast contains classic blacksploitation actors Bernie Casey as Slade, Isaac Hayes as Hammer and Jim Brown as Slammer, and features John Vernon, best known as Dean Wermer in Animal House, as Mr. Big.

At 10 it’s time to look inside the secret lives of food. You didn’t know food had secret lives, did you? Well, thanks to the Food Network you do. In the first episode, “The Secret Life of Sugar” we learn that the average American consumes nearly 153 pounds of it a year! Host Jim O’Connor travels to Hawaii to get a taste for the yummy sweetener right from the cane, then gets a first hand look at how its used in everything from gourmet appetizers to highly prized artworks.

The second episode dives in to one of my favorite dessert treats, Pudding. Jim dives in to the origins and varieties of one of America's comfort foods, and its probably a lot older than you thought. So cook up a pot – chocolate is my favorite – and settle in for some foody history.

If you have a favorite show you'd like to see highlighted on "Scott Chicken's TV Party" please throw up a comment in the ol' Blog and I'll see what I can do. And if you'd like to listen to the broadcast version of this little diddy head over to Super CFL and click the "Listen Online" link on the left!