$430 Adjusted For Inflation
Inspired by a comment CJ left yesterday, I recalled the first time I had ever seen a video game in a television show. It was an episode of one of my favorite childhood sitcoms (or at least the one which was on most frequently) Charles in Charge - the 1984 pilot, in fact. The scene I remember involved Douglas Pebroke futzing away at a Vectrex. I originally thought it was a non-functioning prop, like most arcade cabinets you see in sitcoms. This was due, at least in part, to the Vectrex being claimed by the crash of '83, and well overshadowed by the NES by the time I moved to the States. Thanks to the swarms upon swarms of retrogaming geeks on the Internet, sworn to preserving every offhanded mention of their favorite consoles, someone actually posted the scene to YouTube. Thanks to the depth of knowledge and keen eye of a YouTube commenter (a phrase which will never be uttered sans irony again,) we know that the game is Minestorm:
The Continental CPA
Co. TV Guide
For about half a second – well, five weeks, really – NBC aired a single-camera sitcom entitled Andy Barker, P.I. Starring Andy Richter (Conan's buddy and star of the of the genius and ill-fated office sitcom Andy Richter Controls The Universe) it was a send-up of police procedurals and noir films. Andy, an accountant by trade, opens his own firm and moves into the former offices of retired P.I. and hardboiled curmudgeon Lew Staziak (Harve Presnell, who you may remember as the equally curmudgeonly grandfather from Fargo.) He ends up taking on cases, usually from anachronistic femme fatales. His main support is Simon (Arrested Development's Tony Hale) a film geek video store manager, and Wally (Marshall Manesh,) the Afghan restaurant owner who may or may not have been a member of his home country's secret police, which at least in part explains his ownership of CSI-level surveillance equipment. Wally, with due post-9/11 concern, also displays the same sort of suspiciously overt patriotism Apu did when he bought citizenship papers from Fat Tony.
Co. TV Guide
The show was hilarious. The writers clearly knew their hardboiled territory and exploited it's every angle. After Andy gets his first case – a wife reporting her missing husband – Wally and Simon deduce that she's not really his wife as her story mirrors that of the plot to Chinatown. The set pieces are marvelous. Simon's tiny apartment has an enormous Vertigo poster. Wally's backroom looks like something out of Scorsese's paranoid thriller The Conversation. At one point, Lew figures there is a clue in his old office and he and Andy take a trip down memory lane: Lew's old office is an exact replica of the set to The Maltese Falcon.
The show was canceled after a month. Luckily, the entire six-episode run is available on Hulu.
Memories of the White Lodge
Growing up without a father was – hell, still is – oddly paradoxical. There was no big gaping hole where Dad should have been. While my mother had two subsequent husbands and a long-term boyfriend, none of them were filling (or were asked to fill) that particular role for me. On the other hand, father-son relationships on TV, although never in real life, really got to me. The most striking example I can remember was in an episode of Twin Peaks. Major Garland Briggs, played by Don S. Davis, recalls a vision he had to his rebellious son Bobby. His character's mixture of Adult Seriousness and the incredibly sincere, even wide-eyed, show of emotion buried itself in my heart like a hot stake. The reaction of his son, who is usually a colossally unrepentant bastard, made it hit all the harder.
Don S. Davis died 2 years ago today.
Now, I don't want to drag you down too much, so here's everyone's favorite Russian surf rock/psychobilly/whatsit band Messer Chups with “Twin Peaks Twist.”
My Backpack’s Got Jets
Family Guy hasn't been good for a few seasons now, but I sincerely recommend Something Something Something Dark Side (trailer), their Empire Strikes Back parody and sequel to their Star Wars parody, Blue Harvest (trailer). It's spot-on and made by people who, like me, truly love the original Star Wars series, warts and all. Plus it is almost entirely free of the cutaways that started to get old around, what, season 4?
You can watch the TV edit of it on Hulu, but you should get your hands on the uncut DVD version. Oh, and if you're wondering where the bizarre title came from:
Good Night, Everybody
There's really not much I can say to introduce or explain this scene. It's one of those rare cultural artifacts that defies explanation for its existence.
Secret Indemnity
Along with the scene discussed in this previous post, my other favorite Justice League Unlimited moment comes from “The Great Brain Robbery.” The episode is your standard Freaky Friday scenario: the Flash and Lex Luthor have switched brains and chaos ensues. The Flash manages to, for the most part, get by undetected although not without raising a few eyebrows:
Luthor, on the other hand, is screwed from the get-go. The Justice League almost immediately figure out the trouble and begin to hunt down him through the satellite. Taking a quick break from attempting to escape, Luthor has, what is in my opinion, the single funniest line in the entire series:
Dubbed
Co. Trekmovie.com
Sir Patrick Stewart was knighted today. I really don't know which living actor deserves this honor more than Sir Patrick Stewart, but I may be saying this due to my deeply personal affinity for him. I watched Star Trek: The Next Generation constantly while growing up; it was comforting sight when, as a kid, I would be left alone in the apartment for hours on end. To this day there are few things I enjoy more than kicking back with some TNG. Certainly Sir Patrick has much, much more to his name than Star Trek, but Jean Luc Picard was a constant presence during my formative years, and that is how I remember the actor best. We should all be lucky that, unlike Sir Alec Guiness – who could not have done more to distance himself from Obi Wan Kenobi – Sir Patrick has embraced his role in pop culture as much as “serious” acting. Now, I know you're going to see the following video on every blog mentioning this story, but I can't resist:
I've had the honor of seeing Sir Patrick as a stage actor, not doing Shakespeare, sadly, but that's in the works. About six years ago, I was lucky enough to see him on stage in a Broadway production of Harold Pinter's The Caretaker. I was a David Lynch fanboy at that point – well, a bigger one, anyway – and in the midst of slogging my way through the second season of Twin Peaks, and was thus more excited about seeing the show's co-headliner: Kyle MacLachlan. Sir Patrick stole the show, naturally, but it took me a few years to sincerely appreciate his performance. His character was a booming homeless man prone to swinging between grandeur and hopelessness. The fear and mental damage he projected was palpable, and yet the furor and strength it was covered up with seemed just as real. It's been years, so I have trouble recalling all but the emotions attached to the performances, but few stage actors have ever hit me on a gut level in the way he did that night.
Co. BBC
Also, I hadn't realized until now, but that performance was a Dune mini-reunion! Sir Patrick and Kyle MacLachlan played Gurney Halleck and Paul Atreides/Muad'Dib in David Lynch's 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert's novel:
Congratulations Sir Patrick Hewes Stewart, OBE.
Companion Piece
After being fully aware of the phenomenon for most of my adult life, and denying myself for the last five years, I have finally started watching Doctor Who. A forum thread regarding the latest story arc and my favorite plot device – hubris – coupled with the series' availability on Netflix has thrown me head-first into the world of Daleks, sonic screwdrivers, and all the other goodness.
One of my favorite aspects of Doctor Who, and one which I discovered long before encountering the show, is the theme. The series has existed for almost fifty years, but the theme to it has remained just about the same: a high-pithced theme played over a rocking bass line. Originally created via tape music/musique concrète methods in the 1960s, it was later recorded on analog synth and for the current series. There's an entire Wikipedia entry discussing both the history and musicology of the theme. Of course, someone on YouTube has spliced ten opening sequences (all except the 2010 one) together for your enjoyment:
...and lest we forget, acid house pranksters/revolutionaries the KLF mixed the theme with “Rock and Roll (Part 2)” to purposefully create the perfect and perfectly obnoxious Number 1 single. It worked. They released it 1988 as “Doctorin' the Tardis” by the Timelords.
Ur-hip
Moments into my senior year of high school, 9/11 quickly transformed cell phones from contraband into fashionable calculators, with the ubiquity to match. There was another revolution taking place, however. Portable music formats were still legion. Those of us who couldn't afford CD (and, later , MP3 CD) players still carried tapes. Flash-basedMP3 players were just coming into vogue. Quickly, the former - maxing out under a gig - would be replaced by the hard drive-based players, pioneered by the iPod. MP3 CD players vanished around the dawn on the hard drives, along with the minidisc's use as a casual music player.
Now here's a look at where all this history began, courtesy of the 1960's sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. As an aside, Maynard G. Krebs, the cool cat with the air-bongos, was the first counterculture character (broadly stereotyped, natch) with a regular role in a television show. The actor, Bob Denver, would also go on to play Gilligan in Gilligan's Island.
Back on topic, the ill-fated minidisc had one unbeatable feature: lighting quick seek times. The times yielded at least one artifact taking advantage of the feature. Gescom, formed of artist Russel Haswell and half of Autechre (Rob Brown, specifically,) released an album entitled, appropriately enough, Minidisc. Composed of 45 quick compositions in 88 tracks, the album would be played on random/shuffle, creating new chaos each time. It wasn't spectacular in any iteration, but if I could backhandedly compliment it, the mediocrity really had nothing to do with experimental distribution. It was a genuinely interesting way to take advantage of a trivial (from the everyday point of view) feature and create a continuously unique composition. This is both representative of the music itself, and my issues with it:
Just Practicing, Mr. Flintstone
The Flintstones, its well-earned merits notwithstanding, was a cartoon focusing on socialization towards suburban consumerism. While it may have been based on The Honeymooners - which focused exclusively on blue-collar urbanites - the Flinstone family always had the latest cold- and warm-blooded pieces of consumer technology available. Yes, they made for some brilliant “it's a livin'!” sight gags, but it also reinforced the necessity for having all these items in your new Levittown home. Considering this, I am still amazed that anyone is shocked when they see these commercials for the first time:
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