Throwback Thursday: That time Randall Park was a rapper.

The star of ABC's 'Fresh Off The Boat' use to moonlight as an emcee for Ill Again.



In honor of last night's broadcast premiere of Fresh Off The Boat, I present this vintage video of series star Randall Park, who plays patriarch Louis Huang on the show. Back in the day, circa sometime in the middle of the last decade, Randall moonlighted as an emcee for the LA-based hip hop group Ill Again.

Here's Randall dropping rhymes in this goofy music video for "Next":

Throwback Thursday: Sidekicks starring Ernie Reyes Jr.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the movies and TV shows of my youth, and it has led me down a deep, dark hole of fuzzy lo-res YouTube videos. You know how that goes. I thought it be fun to start sharing some of the fun vintage stuff I've remembered and re-discovered...

Sidekicks was an ABC series that starred a young Ernie Reyes Jr. as Ernie, a skilled martial artist and the last of his people, who is left in the care of Sergeant Jake Rizzo when his grandfather passes away. It was a spinoff of a one-time Walt Disney TV movie, The Last Electric Knight, and lasted one season, 1986-87. I loved it.

I had a blast going back and watching old episodes -- someone graciously uploaded them to YouTube -- and Sidekicks is as fun as I remember. I'm also struck by how incredibly goofy the show was. Hey, it was the eighties. A crotchedy cop, a little Filipino kid, some faux Asian mysticism, a bad synthesizer soundtrack, and a lot of ridiculous excuses to show Ernie deliver an asskicking every week.

Here's the pilot episode, divided up into multiple parts. You might recognize a young Don Cheadle as a menacing thug in the opening fight scene. Enjoy.