Viewing Tragedies in Proper Perspective

Weird, Retro, Whatevermas!

You can’t look good in that sweater.

 

You guys know I’m a fairly traditional sort of holiday observer, right?  No, really, it’s true.  STOP LAUGHING!!!

The Talking Dead

(You may stop selling.  I have already voted, by mail.) “Chaaange!  CHAAANGE!”

Because Presidential elections follow a week after Halloween, it’s fun to make visual associations between traditional zombies (the walking dead) and politicians (the talking dead).

UNconventional

Sidse Babett Knudsen, as PM Birgitte Nyborg

Ah, politics.  The fakeness, lies and weasel-words.  The facade of assumed importance.  The grand parade of lifeless commodities.

Into Sure Wood

(The best Robin Hood in movies was Errol Flynn’s, performed in 1938.)

I grew up loving stories about Robin Hood.  Were these tales based on the exploits of a real outlaw?  There might have been a number of Robin Hoods in the original region, including some women.  It’s an open question if he really lived or not, but what an inspiring symbol.

A Christmas Clip Show

Head Full of Strange

… and happy to share.

 I saw King Kong (1933) as a young child – on TV

Thanks to a couple of comments on the last post, I’ve been thinking about some of the truly bizarre television shows that knock around in my memory.

Lessons From TV

Mass media impacts lives, and each generation adopts current technology for the sharing of information, communication and entertainment.  Five years ago, during my last round of college, I realized how differently my younger colleagues in class were experiencing media than I had.  I use the Internet, but I’m a different animal.  I was part of the first television generation.

Yet Another Reason

…to remain invisible.

I ran into this by accident when looking for something else.  I had completely forgotten it.  Well, it was 25 years ago.  This was my first “union” job in Hollywood, after I had earned the SAG card.  I got paid a few hundred dollars to shout “YAY!” in the background

The Vortex of Audio Horror

When I was a kid I liked a comic book about a muscular guy in the year 4000 who wore a, well, “tunic”.  Kind of homoerotic, but my sexuality was ambiguous when I was eight.  Magnus, Robot Fighter was an orphan raised by a kindly sort of Zen robot to be able to break steel with his bare hands.  He needed to do this because humanity was being taken over by evil robots run by a mega-corporation, and people needed a champion.

Maybe I Need a Hug

Saints preserve us, I’m going to talk politics, sort of.  I try not to, because the way people talk politics is so limiting, exclusionary and insensitive I get upset and angry just being exposed to it.  I’m married to an ex-news writer, but I generally ask her to don headphones if she intends to watch news in my presence.

My Trigger

I was reading Zeenat’s post about daily methods for reinforcing your inner upside (http://positiveprovocations.com/2011/02/21/top-9-ways-to-be-positive-and-happy-everyday/).  The first one listed was to Carry a positive Trigger.  She was writing about having a token of something that makes you happy with you at all times.  When you get sidetracked, you can use it to get back in the game of life.  She did not realize that by saying this she reopened a beautiful memory from my early childhood.  I’ve had a positive trigger inside me since I was three!  It’s Trigger

All Things New (and Doctor Who)

As of next week I will have been blogging for a year.  Since this time last year I’ve moved to a new home thousands of miles from the previous one, begun a new profession, and published over 100 thousand words in this space, but that’s not all.  I’ve also become a WHOVIAN, a fan of the British (BBC Wales) TV show “Doctor Who”.

Cute Little Devils

When I was a child, kids went out “Trick or Treating” with other kids.  Adult escorts were only employed to take infants door-to-door so they could also participate.

Caged

The warehouse of unopened boxes in Citizen Kane (1941).

I’ve been thinking about a kind of imprisonment many of us struggle against – the cage of material possessions.

Technical Difficulties

The world’s most famous television test pattern was introduced by RCA in 1939 and was still in use until the 1970s.

The Best Unturned Stones

La Liseuse (The Reader) by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

It’s a holiday weekend, but I’m going to be working my tail off pulling extra shifts.  I won’t have time to visit with you lovely people for a few days.  Just in case you’ll miss me, here are my picks of FIVE GREAT EARLY POSTS

The 18 Degree Tilt

Eugene opens his thermos.  When he attempts to pour himself a glass of milk, it comes out at an angle, missing the glass.  When Ernie Kovacs presented this trick, it had never been done before.

Most Evil Job Ever

Some of my readers urged me to write about another odd job I held once, but at the time I deferred because it was an unusual experience of real evil, the kind that swims in the dark river of sludge beneath all capitalism.

The Village Martinet

The On-Camera Martin Clunes

British TV shows are better than American ones.  I’m sorry, there’s no other position to take.