Show Notes

Time for some Fun-Truckin’ with this week’s Curated Content show notes!

Cue up the Fleetwood Mac…

Act I

Conversion vans were once a dominant force on the road; now, not so much. MeTV posted a nostalgic look back, worth checking out for the slideshow.
Apparently, NFL quarterbacks driving conversion vans was a thing recently.
The Van is a legitimately terrible movie released at a point where drive-in theaters had become especially seedy. The company responsible for releasing the film, Crown International Pictures, was notable for releasing films that today would be categorized as “grindhouse” or “exploitation,” though they were also the US distributor for Sonny Chiba’s Street Fighter series. Some of their films became fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000.
Rhino Records released The Van on DVD a few years back. I bought it for a dollar, which seems about right.
SuperVan was condensed into a tidy three minute digest by Everything Is Terrible. Three minutes is really all you need from this one. The music in our episode is “Ridin’ High,” from SuperVan.
Here he is- Charles Bukowski, the author of Barfly, being a total creep in SuperVan!
There was an attempt at creating a Conversion Van Marketing Association, but it seems to be largely defunct these days.

The American Motor Company was, at the time, responsible for production of the Gremlin, the Pacer, and the line of Jeep products, which was far smaller than it is today. Chrysler turned Jeep into an entire family of SUVs, while most of AMC’s other lines were shelved.
This is really all we need when we talk about the AMC Pacer. Long live the Mirthmobile!

The “Swagger Wagon” was part of a larger campaign tagged “Mommy Like/Daddy Like.” Rachael Drummond and Brian Huskey were selected for the campaign after an audition in which they were asked to improvise.
Drummond gets asked to play “mom” characters frequently, as her IMDB page can attest, but she seems to be a pretty good sport about it.
Huskey, meanwhile, has a pretty eclectic list to his name, though he may forever be known as one of the original Sonic Guys.
Jody Hill also directed the divisive Observe and Report, which features a pretty great fight scene scored with Queen’s “The Hero,” from Flash Gordon.
The company that produced the second “Swagger Wagon” video, Skunk, is also responsible for a number of SNL digital shorts in addition to the aforementioned Macklemore video.
AdWeek has more on the controversy surrounding the ’14 “Swagger Wagon” here.

New episodes go up on Mondays. See you then!