Showing posts with label black and white TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label black and white TV. Show all posts
Saturday, February 18, 2017
Tuesday, December 27, 2016
Unknown William Shatner
- as the deer longs
- for the running waters my soul
- longs o God for you
- I recall pouring out my
- soul within me
- how I used
- to walk in the great procession
- leading to the house of God
- among the
- shouts of joy and
- praise in crowds keeping
- the feast day
- why are you sad my soul sighing
- within me deep call out to deep
- in the roar of your cataracts
- all your surges have passed over me
- all your waves
- my very bones feel
- the blow as my enemies mock me
- as daily I am taunted where is
- your God why are you
- sad my soul sighing within me
- hope in God for I shall yet praise him
- again he who saves me from shame
- my own God
Monday, November 17, 2014
Best monsters from The Outer Limits
As a kid, the only thing that scared the shit out of me worse than The Twilight Zone was The Outer Limits.
The Outer Limits was way better, is why. It had monsters, lots of them. The Twilight Zone had Philosophy. It had Rod Serling making pronouncements on the emptiness of life in the 20th century, the blinding pace of progress, the depersonalization of society, and all those things nobody had a clue about back then.
This show had monsters in the basement with really ugly legs. It had terrified women hiding in the shadows. The way this chick is acting, that creature is probably her husband who swallowed a nuclear bomb and got a little bent out of shape. Radiation was a very big thing back then.
Sometimes we laughed at the monsters. I think we laughed at this one, or laughed at the guy holding it on to his own face to make it look really scary and dangerous while this pile of poo or whatever it is pulsates in the corner. This guy obviously had it coming, because he was a Mad Scientist cooking up some sort of goo to make himself invincible.
It just goes on and on while he holds this thing on his face and the poo pulsates.
There are always actors on these shows who look familiar. This guy was in My Big Fat Greek Wedding, wasn't he? He couldn't be, he'd be 156 years old by then. But he looks like him.
I love the reactions of people to the monsters. This is what makes the show so good. The edging away, the terror, the screams. Big tough men, construction workers and wrestlers, start to shriek like little girls.
Here we have a monster montage. The guy in the hard hat is truly terrifying.
This is some years before Nimoy got his big break. I have no idea about the headgear, if he's in space or just some sci-fi beekeeper.
And here's his best bud, who had no qualms about taking jobs for bitter rivals like Outer Limits and Twilight Zone. A job's a job, right, Bill? This also applies to the Loblaws commercials he made in Toronto between the demise of Star Trek and the rise of T. J. Hooker. Better than living out of your truck, like you did for a while, eh, Bill?
This is one of my all-time favorites. It looks sort of like a leaf-shaped cookie cutter. I've never seen anything less scary in my life, and yet, it has the power to blow papers all over the office.
I really wanted to make gifs of that classic opening: "There is nothing wrong with your television set." This REALLY scared me as a kid because my brother Arthur told me it was true: they did control the horizontal; they did control the vertical. I was paralyzed with terror and stuck to my chair, so I never could test the theory. The opening lasted about a minute and a half, so wasn't a good candidate for giffing. Just try to imagine a theramin playing the theme song.
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Order The Glass Character from:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
Saturday, August 16, 2014
And you are the Weaver's bonny
No, that's not Big Daddy from Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, though you may be excused for making the comparison. It's Burl Ives, who, surprisingly, starred in a complete turkey of a TV show in the mid-1960s.
As good an actor as Ives was, and he was very good with the right part, there was something oppressive about him, a little adenoidal contempt in his speaking voice that took something away from his folksy charm. In his one-and-only, one-season attempt at a TV sitcom, he played one O. K. Crackerby, supposedly the richest man in the world. In the opening credits, he buys a hotel just because it's there. In one sequence he sits in a rocking chair whittling, but you get the feeling he could just as easily stab you in the throat.
In this memorable scene from the intro, he takes one look at his new hotel and commands: "Paint it!" Somebody should have dumped a bucket of whitewash on the whole show.
This is folksy on an endless loop. You can't say the man isn't trying, he does what he can with very weak material, but he did a lot better playing Santa in the Holly Jolly Christmas special. I've tried to describe Ives' voice, which was unique. Not at all what we think a folk voice should be, almost baleful. He excelled at morbid songs like Long Black Veil. (I've also been trying to find one called That's All I Can Remember, just a kick-ass morbid jailhouse execution song). I've always wanted to say about him, "folksy my ass". There was some sort of legend that he got up and walked out of the classroom in school and never came back. Like Bob Dylan, he was singing in front of people at age four. He sang one about the devil's nine questions, an old Child ballad that in actuality has only eight questions in it (maybe to see if you're paying attention?), and the accompaniment consists of two chords, strumming perhaps three strings per chord. At least until all that Little Bitty Tear business, he was a minimalist.
O. K. Crackerby on amphetamines. To be honest, these clips were not very good material for gifs, so I had to play around with the settings. I just liked the hokey name, which sounds almost like a breakfast cereal: the O. K. is obvious, but Crackerby is remeniscent of cracker barrels and even "crackers", po' white trash who made a killing somewhere. And not hunting possums. (This was, don't forget, the era of the Beverly Hillbillies.)
My favorite of the bunch, a grey square that appears between the end of the scene and the commercial. Probably had more audience appeal than the show. If Burl had been allowed to sing, it might have boosted the ratings, not to mention the quality. Even Andy Griffith pulled out his guitar once in a while.
Order The Glass Character from:
Thistledown Press
Amazon.com
Chapters/Indigo.ca
Monday, March 5, 2012
Tin Man: I'd oil him any day
Does tin really rust? Do we really care? As a kid, I was pretty fascinated with this guy. He was my favorite character, and I loved that scene where Dorothy oiled up his arthritic joints and set him free.
The Wizard of Oz came on TV once a year, and everyone looked forward to it with rabid anticipation. Even though we had to watch the whole thing on a small screen in grainy black-and-white (in fact, I had no idea most of it was in color until decades later), the so-called-blase kids of the '60s clamoured for this kind of fantasy, which was already 25 years out of date.
What the hell WAS a "tin man" (or "tinman", as he was more properly called) anyway? A lion you can understand. Even a scarecrow. But here was this mysterious metallic guy, who rusted solid while trying to chop some wood in the rain. He made squeaky little sounds that only the Scarecrow (who was really smart: hehheheheheheheheh) could understand.
(Causing my brother to say, on at least one occasion, "He-e-e-e-e-y! The Scarecrow's not supposed to be smart!" Another time, he even said, "That guy was already on. At the start. You know, on the farm." Weird.)
But it gets stranger: in the original L. Frank Baum series of kids' books, he was called the Tin Woodman. Even more confusing for kids in a relatively high-tech era. I have to confess I am still not sure what a woodman is: someone who chops wood for a living, or lives in the woods, or is made of wood like Pinocchio (no, strike that)?
But listen: this isn't where it started, at all. Back when I was trying to find images to illustrate the Dylan Thomas poem, And Death Shall Have No Dominion, I found myself in strange and disturbing territory.
There are some pretty gruesome images in the poem of bones cracking and people getting stretched on a rack. (This must have been written during one of his rare sober periods.) So I found myself wandering into the dark territory of Medieval torture and the Spanish Inquisition.
No, I won't get into that Monty Python sketch (though I was tempted: but it's Monday, and it would be too much work. Another time.) But when you see these things - do I even need to tell you what they were for? - it's enough to put you off your breakfast.
(Hint: this one opens out like an umbrella.)
Right. So what's the connection to the Tin Woodman? Not much, except they all seem to be made out of metal (and rusty metal at that).
I can see one of the King's lackeys oiling up this head-smasher so it would work more efficiently, or perhaps take longer.
I cannot tell you what I saw in this picture at first glance: suffice it to say that I never knew Woodie was so well-endowed. Oops, that's his arm, isn't it?
There were a lot of early stage productions (and a few silent film versions) of this story before it became a bouncy, quirky MGM extravaganza in the 1930s. Here the Straw Man, somewhat resembling a chemo patient, greets the Tin Woodman with immense affection. The two share the common trait of being inanimate, after all.
The original illustrations by W. W. Denslow portay the Tin Man as a reasonably friendly figure (despite his lack of a heart). A little on the skinny side, but MGM got that empty barrel chest just right. (Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom. . . "What an echo!")
But then I found this one, which looks more like something out of a Whitley Streiber book. Is that big-headed, obviously alien figure putting his heard in, or taking it out? The tin guy's immobile face reveals nothing.
And this one, well, shit, he's a ROBOT and couldn't be anything else. I don't know how you could warm up to him or even want to apply the oil can to his seized joints. He's all cogs and gears and iron-clad Uggs, and if you look closely, he has a moustache. A sort of oven door on his chest should bear the inscription, "Insert heart here."
People made out of tin. The Borg on Star Trek. That hideous moment at the end of The Fly (the one with Jeff Goldblum) where he fuses together with the teleporter and emerges dragging chunks of machinery.
I don't know what it all means either, but it's cool.
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