Turkish Star Trek

Some have called this the first Star Trek movie ever made. Gulp! It's surely a close knockoff in certain ways. Music is blatantly stolen, as are sound effects. That's good, because it anchors us in a kind of reality.

I think this was made on a budget of $200.00 or so, whatever that is in the Turkish currency of the day. Where they got the tatty costumes for the monsters is beyond me. But back in 1974, this was prime entertainment in Turkey, and to tell the truth, it's every bit as entertaining now, if for different reasons.

This is all over YouTube, of course, but in fragments. I looked at a lot of them before deciding to post the whole thing. Don't ask me what it means, because there are no subtitles; the video title lies. But who cares? We're too busy saying things like, "Gawd, that's Uhura?"

Just hearing the Star Trek characters speak rapidly in Turkish is amusing, and I nearly posted the inverse, an original Star Trek episode dubbed into Turkish. The voice actors couldn't be more inappropriate, which is where the ha-ha-ness comes from.

But do you know where the ha-ha-ness DOESN'T come from? Lame English subtitles that really aren't funny at all. Too many videos are ruined by this, along with sappy music superimposed on breathtaking natural scenes. Why gild the lily? It stomps all over the amazement you feel at such sublime ineptitude. Certain late-night-monster-movie TV shows are the worst at this, breaking in at every opportunity with stupid remarks like, "Woah, look at that, dude!" and "Yeah, like the monster isn't going to see them!"  One host named Elvira used to have her head pop into a corner of the screen every five minutes and say something snappy (meaning, totally stupid and unnecessary). Why would this enhance anybody's viewing of anything?

So this is a pretty pure experience. I think this movie has a little bit of every Star Trek episode ever made in it. It also includes a kind of Turkish stock figure, a tourist who ends up blundering into all sorts of bizarre locations/situations (including the Starship Enterprise). I won't attempt to spell his name.

 

  

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Rainbow horses

I know your soul is wild and free

Out of nowhere this gust of wind
brushed my hair and kissed my skin
i aimed to hold a bridled pace
when with love itself i came face to face 

pullin' back the reins 

trying to remain 

tall in a saddle 

when all that we had well 

ran away 

with a will of its own

i know your soul is wild and free 

                like this galloping inside me
                tossed by instinct and where we land
                is vast and certain of all that's planned 

you know, i finally learned to break the run 

and gently harness the love of someone 

yes, and equal parts of wait and trust 

is in control of the both of us

pullin' back the reins
trying to remain 

tall in a saddle 

when all that we had well 

ran away 

with a will of its own 

k d lang

The art of the feline tattoo

There's a story behind this, a crappy one.

I spent most of the day working on a post I was very proud of. I accidentally discovered the exquisite cats of Japanese painter Kazuaki Horomito in a Facebook video, and quickly copied and embedded it on my blog. Or so I thought.

Then I happened to look at it. Less than half of it had posted. The whole lower half was gone. I was beside myself. I scrambled around to find some actual Horomito, and the internet was full of it. Everyone loves this stuff, and no wonder!  I assembled what I felt was a nice representative sample of his exotically tattooed cats, but then I thought I'd better take another shot at posting the video.

Jesus H. Christ. The whole thing disappeared! The entire post that I had worked on so painstakingly all day, making sure all the photos were the right size, etc., - down the fucking toilet.

Normally there's automatic backup when this happens. But this time, nothing. Just nothing at all. Since I am so stupidly committed to my useless work that nobody sees anyway, I scrambled around on YouTube and found an absolutely wonderful slideshow of Horomito, but it was set to the inane kiddie song, The Cat Came Back. No, I am not kidding! "Gimme a meow. Say, MEOWWWW!" I had prayed I would never hear that monstrosity again once my children were potty-trained.

 And the artist's name was spelled Horotimo.

So I ended up with this, inadequate, but at least an introduction to the images, which I was just about to delete out of my recycle bin forever.

Strangely enough, I keep thinking about The Waltzing Cat by Leroy Anderson, a better fit (for the cats are surely whimsical, just not sickeningly coy and cutesie). So listen to this while you're looking at them.

Jesus H. CHRIST!

Christ in a rowboat, what a scene. Crap on a cracker! Shit on a stick. Words fail me.

A bowl full of happiness: Sea Monkeys on parade

My latest attempt at animation, using images I've collected over the years. I have to admit I have a favorite: the guys in the pink velvet suits. I'm having tons of fun with this, with no talent whatsoever. Why wait for talent? The clock is ticking. I can't draw, paint, or any of that, but I can put images together in a way which amuses me. 

Bentley animation

 

My first attempt to animate my cat Bentley. After my experiments with Meryl Streep and Shirley MacLaine at the Oscars, their faces bordering on total hysteria, I thought, well, why not my cat? He is so sweet and photogenic that it was almost easy. Seven frames does limit the range of expression, however. From sleep, to alarm, to sleep.

Bentley's on TV!

Bentley never ceases to amaze us with his awareness of things. We've seen him watch TV before, ads and things like that, where patterns move rapidly. Cartoons are a favorite. But this time it was a show on CBC's The Nature of Things, all about the domestic cat. For the first five minutes he sat demurely, facing the TV with his ears alertly pricked. Then suddenly he jumped up on the TV stand as if he wanted to become part of the action on the screen.

Obviously he knew these were cats, but because we adopted him so young, I'm not sure how many cats he has actually seen or interacted with. But he knew. At some point he even looked around behind the screen, as if he thought the cats were actually there. Then he pawed at the screen the way he sometimes paws at the window. This carried on for at least half of the hour-long show, meaning my cat has a longer attention span than most humans.

He often did look like part of the show, which was a bit eerie. He fit right in. It gave the program an oddly 3D look. The first gif looks a bit like one of those silhouettes of a movie audience watching a romantic encounter on-screen.

Until that old geezer/cat expert comes on-screen, it looks for all the world as if Bentley is scratching at a real fence.

Bentley doesn't just want to be on TV. He wants to be in TV. 

What the hell is happening in my neighborhood?

I hear noises in the house, all the time. Hums and buzzes and low-key, ultraviolet, infrared sounds below the threshhold of consciousness. I seem to be able to hear things that other people can't.

I had a hearing test a couple of years ago, and they put a headset on me and played noises that got softer and softer. I had to hold my hand up when I heard one. They were about to pack it in when I held my hand up one last time.

"Wait. No one hears that one."

But there was "one", one more that people don't hear, just a few molecules of sound that were more of a tap than a noise. The air was ever so slightly disturbed.

I'm definitely hearing something, these nights, and I know it will be worse in the summer when I have the windows open.

This is my second attempt to record/post the night noises, and I think this one is more identifiable as an aircraft, but that depends on what you think. Turn the volume up high.

Myself, I can't play it any more. I'm too creeped out.

"Thank God he's alive!"

Our old friend Bosley the (former) Mystery Duck is alive and well! He disappeared over the worst of the winter, along with most of the mallards. Now he's back, fat and happy. His markings are so strange and ornate that we keep thinking there are more like him, but we've never been able to pin it down.

I was so curious about this duck that I sent a gif of him to the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology and asked if they would try to identify it. I was amazed to get a prompt reply. They believe he is a hybrid of a domestic fowl called a magpie duck, raised for meat, and one of the more promiscuous mallards in Como Lake.

His featherings are exotic, and because of that, and his sheer size, he sticks out like a sore duck thumb, but we love him. It's his loyalty, I think. He and the mallard flock are closely bonded. No doubt one of his parents fled the barnyard when he/she realized what was coming next. "Duck dinner," as Wimpy used to say. "You bring the duck."

Very dear to me

Cat Puts On Bunny Hat

It might be food (but probably not)

And here is the latest edition of "it might be food". You have probably noticed (or not!) that one of my recurrent obsessions is "bad old food": specifically, horrendous recipes from the post-War era that people must actually have prepared and eaten. In some cases, it's almost understandable: food rationing was a reality, giving rise to such monstrosities as "apple pie" made entirely of Ritz crackers, and "mock duck" (cheap chuck beef pounded thin and wrapped around bread stuffing, tied with string, and baked.) Real meat was almost nonexistent, except for the canned/processed variety made of lips and ears and other floor-sweepings. 

Gelatinous things abound. Molds seem to be an obsession. My mother had an entire set of copper jelly molds hanging on her kitchen wall. I confess to you right now: I have a jelly mold (they're never called Jell-o molds, though that's all you do with them). It's shaped like a strawberry and it's hanging on my kitchen wall. I just thought I should have one to have a proper kitchen. I sent away for it, I remember, to the Jell-o Corporation, sending boxtops or whatever, and two dollars. I also have a very nice recipe box made of blonde wood, which I also sent away for, God-knows-how-many years ago. It has an image of a giant cartoon Chip-it burned into the front, causing me to cover it with stickers which I have to replace every few years because they peel off. These days I use those nice free ones from the Humane Society.

I wonder if this sending-away stuff hearkens back to my childhood, when I had to send so many box tops to Battle Creek, Michigan, to receive my swell plastic submarine (operated with baking soda to make it go up and down) from the Kellogg Corporation.

Old things stick, they stick around. Or they did. I don't know if they do now or not. I'm too old to know what younger people do. We look back at these recipes, and - ugh, they seem horrendous, but I did eat similar things back then: creamed chipped beef on toast; fried bread; pork hocks (jellied pigs' trotters); and Jell-o molds of all kinds, usually with cottage cheese heaped in the middle (which no one ate) and pointless sprigs of parsley that were always thrown away. 

There IS a good Jell-o mold called Sunshine Salad, not very sweet, but you have to like pineapple and grated carrot, which I do. The gelatine is tart and contains nuts.

My gif slideshow maker, which has been working overtime lately, doesn't like these recipe things because they are all different shapes and sizes. So long as the ratio is the same (i. e. if they're all 8 x 10 or 4 x 6), it's cool. These were wildly different, so I had to put up with white borders, but the hell with it, it's Friday and who has the time or the inclination to try to get everything to be the same ratio? I've done a couple of these presentations - cuz I like doing them - and in this case, I really tried to pick recipes I haven't included before. That isn't too difficult, because the list seems to be endless.

By the bye-bye, if you like this sort of thing, you'll probably love the YouTube channel below, which is entirely dedicated to testing (and eating, or trying to eat) vintage recipes. I just discovered it in the last two minutes and plan to explore it further.

https://www.youtube.com/user/GlamorousHousewife

Pac Man meat loaf

I am sorry for this. I was putting together a post about terrible recipes, and the rabid urge to animate swept over me once again. I couldn't contaminate my post with such a thing, but somehow couldn't delete it either. At least you were warned.