September 13, 1975

Posted on September 13, 2023 by admin

A curiosity in my personal chronology: I remember what I was doing from 10 pm to 11 pm Central on Saturday, September 13, 1975. I was 14 and the start of high school was just a few weeks behind me, but that wasn’t so important that evening. During that hour, I was parked in front of our living room television, a black-and-white set because my mother didn’t convert to color until it was impossible to buy black-and-white. That didn’t bother me a bit.

Because the Internet never ceases to amaze, it took me only a few seconds to find the local TV schedule for San Antonio that day, to confirm what I already knew: the 10 pm slot on Channel 12, which was the ABC affiliate, was given over the Space: 1999. Not just any episode of that show – sold to U.S. markets in syndication, so not in prime time – but the first episode, “Breakaway.”

As the most expensive British television program up until that time, the show got quite a buildup, so it was no accident I tuned in. Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, as I recall, had plugged it on The Tonight Show not long before. (That too is online, at least as difficult-to-hear audio.)

So I watched that evening, and every week for a short time afterward. The physics of the premise — the Moon blown out of orbit and traveling the stars — was like something out of the Irwin Allen playbook, but even so the show started with some promise. As time passed, however, its essential dopiness became all too clear.

I think of this when I recall that I saw the first episode of Saturday Night Live on October 11, 1975. Or rather, the last two-thirds of it, switching channels after Space: 1999 was over at 11 Central. My reaction was, What is this? Then I think I remembered that a live comedy show had been slotted for that time, as it had been promoted as well. Within a few weeks, I didn’t bother with Space: 1999 any more, and took up SNL, as many of my peers did.

Despite its failure as science fiction, Space: 1999 did have one thing going for it, something I occasionally still enjoy. Namely, the kick-ass introduction.

Visually, it teases with quick-cuts of the episode ahead, as well as reminders of how the hapless residents of Moonbase Alpha got into their situation, and a sequence that fixed the fictional events of September 13, 1999 in one’s mind (and, lots of crashing space ships!). Aurally, there’s a rousing blend of orchestral passages, jazz and a funky electric guitar by British composer Barry Gray (d. 1984) that had early ’70s all over it.

The Demise of Cousin Oscar

Posted on September 7, 2023 by admin

Unlike Wednesday morning’s thunder but no rain, Thursday morning provided rain but no thunder. At least, none that I was awake for. Not a lot of rain, but enough to kick off a cool cloudy day.

Not long ago I watched an episode of All in the Family on a whim, as the series is available on one of the streaming services I pay for. I was curious to take a look at the program, so famed in its time, with my older eyes – older now than any of the characters.

I didn’t watch it every week back in its heyday, except maybe during the fall of ’73, when CBS had its remarkable Saturday line up: All in the Family, MASH, Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Newhart and Carol Burnett.

As I was 12 that year, Saturdays weren’t yet for social occasions; that would come later, sometimes causing me to forego television I would have enjoyed, such as a number of episodes of the original-cast SNL. It was years before I saw the Killer Christmas Tree sketch, for instance.

The All in the Family episode I watched recently, “The Saga of Cousin Oscar,” originally aired on September 18, 1971, as the first episode of the second season. Even though the show had found its footing by then – All in the Family became No. 1 that season, probably as a result of word-of-mouth that summer — I’m fairly certain I’d never seen “Cousin Oscar” before. As a 10-year-old, I wasn’t paying attention to that kind of word-of-mouth.

As a start for a season, the episode was a good one. It was actually funny at times. The main reason, I believe, is that there was very little in the way of discussions, or arguments, about the issues of the day, except maybe a comment by Mike complaining about the funeral industry. That’s often the case with comedy, and especially this show: the lower the level of tendentiousness, the funnier it is.

The titular character Oscar, a ne’er-do-well cousin of Archie’s, was described in the first act, but not seen, as he was reportedly sleeping late upstairs. Why he had no other place to go at that moment wasn’t entirely clear, but it was clear that Archie considered him a moocher and planned to kick him out. Commercial break.

I was entirely sure I knew what would happen next. I’ve seen enough sitcoms in my life.

Sure enough, like the luckless guest in “The Kipper and the Corpse,” Oscar checked out sometime that morning. Now the Bunkers had to deal with that, including a series of long-distance calls to other relatives, trying the raise money for Oscar’s funeral, which Archie doesn’t want to pay for. I’m not giving much away when I note that in the end, he’s stuck with the bill, though it’s played as him reluctantly doing the right thing.

A lot of sitcoms could have done that story. I could imagine a cousin of Fred Sanford’s doing the same. Plautus could have done the story too. Maybe he did, and the scroll waiting to be discovered at some buried site in the Near East.

Some observations.

Archie was incredibly bossy, which I suppose fits, but more remarkably everyone else goes along with it, including Mike.

One forgets what an involved process long-distance calls used to be.

Edith, of course, had more sense than Archie, and more empathy too, a pattern that persisted throughout the series. Plautus could have done that as well.

No one even mentioned the possibility of cremating Oscar, a cheaper option. I know it wasn’t as common then, but it did happen. Or, for that matter, having Oscar buried in a potter’s field at county expense (Mike’s suggestion) and then holding an inexpensive memorial service. It was either all or nothing when it came to a funeral.

This was before residential sets were often depicted as more expensive than the characters could afford (viz., Friends). I marveled that there was supposed to be enough room upstairs for Oscar to have his own bed to die in.

In terms of sets, the show had a remarkable economy: the living room and the kitchen. I can only remember a handful of times the upstairs was seen, including one memorable moment when Archie got on Mike’s case – nonpolitically, mostly demented – about the right way to put on socks and shoes.

The show could have used more material like that.

Rotary Botanical Gardens, Janesville

Posted on July 27, 2023 by admin

Time for another summer break. Good to take those when you can. Back to posting around August 6. Or maybe the 7th. Not good to structure summer too much.

Didn’t get around to seeing either Oppenheimer or Barbie lately, though I’m much more likely to watch the former in a theater. I actually read The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1987) back when it was fairly new, and before that (’83) took an undergraduate seminar on the Manhattan Project, which involved much interesting reading, of course, and watching an excellent documentary, The Day After Trinity (1981), all of which inspired awe and dread.

As for Barbie dolls, I share the indifference that most men feel – though I suppose if there are men who like My Little Pony, there must be secret Barbie admirers as well, and not just out of solidarity with Ken. Ann, on the other hand, has a sentimental attachment to the dolls, even nostalgic feelings, whatever that can mean at 20. So she went on the movie’s opening night, helping it set its high box office. She reported enjoying it.

I did get around, yesterday, to finishing The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Well worth watching, though uneven to the end. The arc of Midge and Susie and Joel formed the core sympathetic heart of the show, to good effect. The older characters – Abe and Rose and Moishe and Shirley – pretty much went off the rails in the later seasons, which was too bad. Old people are just a hoot, eh?

Still, Abe did have a few touching moments toward the end of the last season, especially at dinner in the company of other old men, with mortality as the unnamed character at the table. My favorite minor character was Lenny Bruce, and his appearance in the last episode was a heart breaker, with addiction the unnamed character joining him. The drug that killed the real Mr. Bruce in 1966 was reportedly morphine, which strikes me as a little old-fashioned for the 1960s, but the comedian always did things differently.

Last Sunday I stopped at the Kansasville Wisconsin Veterans Memorial Wayside Park again for a quick look at the adjacent cornfield.

Much higher than a month ago. It’s a little hard to tell from the Drought Monitor, but I think that part of Wisconsin is on the border of moderate and severe drought. The corn looks healthy enough to this non-farmer, however. Northern Illinois/southern Wisconsin’s gotten some rain lately, including a storm that blew through yesterday around noon.

The last place we went in Janesville early this month was the Rotary Botanical Gardens. Saw it on an electronic map, looked it up, decided to go. That’s the way to find places in our time.

We were well rewarded for the effort. How often do you see golden Hakone grass (Hakonechloa macra) pushing through a pile of small boulders?

That flow of grass was part of one of the Rotary Botanical Gardens’ centerpieces, its Japanese garden. Good to find those in the heart of North America.

Complete with the styles of bridges that tend to be in Japanese gardens, across a large pond.

I don’t believe for a minute that evil spirits are too cowardly or disoriented to cross a crooked bridge; or rather, I don’t believe that belief is the origin of the design. I believe it is aesthetics for the sake of aesthetics.

The Rotary is a large place. Besides the Japanese Garden, it includes (among other sections) an English Cottage Garden; an Italian Garden; French Formal Rose Garden; Scottish Garden; Alpine Garden; a Shade Garden; a Sunken Garden; Fern & Moss Garden; and seasonal displays.

Bursting blossoms rise from the grounds. Or so it seems.

Along with arrays of other glorious summer blooms.

Curious name, Rotary. Do Rotarians have anything to do with the Rotary Botanic Gardens? Yes, they do.

The garden opened in 1991, occupying “the site of an abandoned sand and gravel quarry on Palmer Drive,” the garden’s web site says. “In 1988, the original site between Lions Beach and Kiwanis Pond was covered with debris and used as storage for the Parks Department and a BMX bicycle racetrack.

“The Gardens’ founder and original visionary, retired orthodontist Dr. Robert Yahr [d. 2021], approached the two Rotary Clubs in Janesville and inquired about their interest in developing a botanical garden for the community to enjoy.”

That they did. Nice work, Dr. Yahr.

Springtime Thursday Musings

Posted on April 20, 2023 by admin

Warm again early in the day. Thunderstorms rolled through in the morning and again in the afternoon. Cool air came back late in the day.

Ahead of the rain, we walked the dog around a pond, where a good many red-winged blackbirds flitted around. Hardly our first encounter with them, though there don’t seem to be as many after spring is over.

Moths are back in the house. How did this happen? There’s no lasting victory over moths, looks like. So I put out fresh glue traps, and some dozens have been caught. I still see a few flitting around, and slap them when I can, but I hope they too will either die in the traps, or die mateless and without descendants.

Rabbits are back in numbers too, often in the back yard, but I leave them alone. The dog does too, seemingly not interested in chasing them any more. Such is old age.

Completely by accident, and speaking of rabbits, I learned that today is the 44th anniversary of a swamp rabbit attacking President Carter’s boat (which wasn’t known till later in 1979). Even better, I learned that the photo of the incident is in the public domain, being the work of a White House photographer. This copy is via the Carter Library, though I don’t remember it being on display there.

With the looming deadline for renting more Netflix DVDs in mind, I watched part of the disk I currently have at home, Judgment at Nuremberg. I don’t remember why I put it in the queue, except that I’d never gotten around to seeing it, and Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster are always worth a look.

I didn’t realize that William Shatner was in it until I saw his name in the opening credits. As it happens, he plays a captain. In the U.S. Army, but still a captain.

I also didn’t know that Werner Klemperer played a part, one of the defendants. Naturally, I had a silly thought when he entered the courtroom: Col. Klink was put on trial at Nuremberg? No! His incompetence consistently aided the Allied cause. Call Col. Hogan as a character witness.

I’m reminded of something I once heard about Klemperer on stage: “Kevin D. told me that, during a production of Cabaret at the Chicago Theatre in the late ’80s, Werner Klemperer played [a Jewish merchant not in the movie version], and got the biggest applause of the night. ‘Everyone knew it was because he played Col. Klink,’ Kevin said.”

In the staged revival of Cabaret I saw in 2002, Hal Linden played the same part, and likewise got a vigorous round of applause on his first appearance. For playing Barney Miller, I figure. Such is the power of TV.

Adios, Netflix Disks

Posted on April 19, 2023 by admin

No more rental DVDs from Netflix? The bastards. Actually, that’s me just grumbling about change. I’ve been thinking of canceling for a while now, and there’s no use in getting overwrought about entertainment anyway. The operative word in fanboy is boy, after all.

Inertia has been a factor in preventing my cancellation, but so has the notion that streaming doesn’t have some of the more obscure movies and TV shows that are on DVD. Just a hunch, since I’ve never done any actual research on the matter, except look at a few articles like this.

I took a look at the list of my total rentals, which is a subpage of my account. Netflix doesn’t forget. Not until September, at least, when the FAQ section says such lists will be wiped. How many all together? Six hundred and sixty-three disks over 18 years, or nearly 37 each year. So three a month. Considering that sometimes more than one person has watched each disk, I suppose I’ve gotten my money’s worth.

If I’d really wanted to get my money’s worth, I would have quit about six or seven years ago, when rentals had dropped to maybe once a month or so. There were far more in the early years, when (for obvious reasons) titles like SpongeBob SquarePants, Barbie Mermaidia and Drake & Josh appeared in the queue. Obtaining kids’ entertainment was one of the reasons we signed up in the first place, along with finding Japanese titles, though as the years passed, demand in the household for each waned as everyone sought out other sources.

I’ve been active across the years as well, ordering such titles as (in rough order) The Alamo (2004), Ocean’s Twelve, Animal Crackers, Pee-wee’s Playhouse, The Lavender Hill Mob, Chocolat, The Man in the White Suit, Allo ‘Allo, Howl’s Moving Castle, The Blue and the Gray (miniseries), The Bridge on the River Kwai, Inserts, Rome, the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, The Great Race, A Night to Remember, That ’70s Show, Downfall, From the Earth to the Moon, Northern Exposure, The Cat’s Meow, The Battle of Algiers, Jeeves and Wooster, NewsRadio, Ripping Yarns, Bend It Like Beckham, The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), Mad Men (the seasons before I started watching them as broadcast), John Adams, Them!, Firefly, The Steel Helmet, Red Sun, SCTV, Fall of Eagles, Homicide: Life on the Streets, Life on Mars (UK), Slings & Arrows, Fargo (TV series), Bicycle Thieves, In Bruges, Closely Watched Trains, The Office (UK), The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, Alexander Nevsky, The Phenix City Story, The Artist, The Lost City of Z and The Pride of the Yankees. Just to name a few.

Just looking at the complete list stirs some nostalgia. More than, say, a list of my earlier rentals at Blockbuster or Hollywood Videos would, if such a thing existed (in the digital bowels of the NSA, perhaps?). The end of Netflix disks could be the end of renting physical media, which for me goes back to – 1989? I was a late adopter of VHS, as you can tell. Having no TV or VCR in ’80s, until I had a girlfriend who did, had that effect.

Go back much further and renting wasn’t an option anyway. I finished college 40 years ago next month. I’m glad that at no point in high school or college did any of my friends or I ever say, “Let’s go rent a video.”

Antiques of Naperville

Posted on June 30, 2022 by admin

Back on July 5, since of course the stretch from Canada Day to Independence Day at the very least ought to be a row of holidays.

At a shop called Antiques of Naperville, which is tucked away on a side street in that suburb’s downtown, there is a sign that says:

Take All The Photos You Want
Please
Tag Us @Antiques of Naperville
#shopdoggibson #brownbarnantiques

Sure thing. This doesn’t count as a tag, but it is a mention. I took the place up on its offer of no-limits photography, because there was so much stuff around. Interesting stuff. That’s all I ask of an antique store. Not every shop allows pictures, but is that not a mistake in this age of social media?

This was the place I found the Charley Weaver bartender doll, previously posted. Nearby him were these ties — and somehow they’re in the same bric-a-brac milieu as ol’ Charley.

Divers reading material.

Dell. We always had many more Gold Key comics than Dell, but there were a few around the house.

Paperbacks. Not that old. We had this book when I was young and I read it. And the next one.

Something we didn’t have: Shiva.

Shiva is the Destroyer, and it occurs to me that destruction doesn’t have to be dramatic and fast, does it? Sometimes — often? — usually? — destruction is gradual, happening off in a quiet corner or nook, but inexorable all the same. Such as for the objects in an antique shop, for instance.

Characters more friendly than Shiva.

I have to say it: Very interesting, but stoopid. You bet your sweet bippy.

“As seen on Antiques Roadshow.” This very thing, or just one like it?

A traveling game of chance, its sign said, used by con men. No doubt.

Items no longer needed by drivers, fortunately.

Yuriko pointed out the inhabitant of a chair in the shop.

For a moment I thought it was a doll or cushion of some kind, but then one of the dog’s paws twitched. It was a living dog. Probably the most inert dog I’ve ever seen, and a lot of dogs are inert a lot of the time. This dog paid no attention to any of the people shuffling through the shop, and barely acknowledged it when Yuriko petted him.

Thursday Grab Box

Posted on May 5, 2022 by admin

Lake Michigan was active but not stormy on Saturday. Views from Loyola.

There’s a coffee-table book in this: chain-hung Chicago signs.

High-res images, of course. Can go on the same coffee table with Austin neon.

Also Chicago. Specifically, on the street. Make that in the street: a Toynbee tile-like embedment doing its part to remind us of the beleaguered Ukrainians.

Recently I started reading Illegal Tender, subtitled “Gold, Greed and the Mystery if the Lost 1933 Double Eagle,” by David Tripp (2004). A remainder table find some years ago; nice hardback. As it says, the book tells the intriguing (to me) story of the 1933 Double Eagle, which tends to make lists of the world’s most valuable coins, along with the likes of the Brasher Doubloon, the 1804 Bust Dollar and the 1913 Liberty Nickel. Coins so special that their names are capitalized.

On that particular list, I hadn’t heard of the 723 Umayyad Caliphate Gold Dinar, but wow, what a name, with images of ancient treasure in distant lands woven right into the words. The 1913 Liberty Nickel was the MacGuffin in an episode of the original Hawaii 5-0. Namely, “The $100,000 Nickel,” which first aired on December 11, 1973.

“A rare 1913 Liberty Head nickel, one of only five ever made, is to be auctioned at a coin show held at the Ilikai Hotel,” says the imdb entry on the episode. “European master criminal Eric Damien gets con artist and sleight-of-hand expert Arnie Price freed from jail so that he can switch a cleverly-made fake with the original before the auction. But things do not go as planned, as Price, fearing capture, tries to dispose of the nickel in a news rack, and the chase is on to recover the nickel before anyone else finds it.”

Naturally, McGarrett and his men recover the nickel. I don’t remember that specifically, even though I saw that episode either that day or on repeat, but that’s a safe assumption for the denouement. I do remember that I’d heard of the nickel before, probably in a Coins or Coinage article.

I think the episode at least partly inspired one of the Super 8 movies I made with friends David and Steve in junior high, The $300,000 Dime, which I think involved Swiss operative Hans Lan foiling the theft of the titular dime. Sadly, this and the other Hans Lan story, The Assassin, plus the SF non-epic Teedees of Titan and a couple of others whose names I’ve forgotten, are lost as the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, except that no one cares.

An Excellent Story for Earth Day, Mrs. Maisel

Posted on April 13, 2022 by admin

It’s about time, backyard croci.

Today was warm, cloudy and windy, until the clouds let go a lot of water, and then another -y adjective came into play, rainy. Tomorrow will be rainy, windy and chilly, and it won’t get warm again till after Easter, I hear.

Got an email pitch the other day, one of very many. There was a fair amount of verbiage to it, but the heart of the matter was this line: Are you interested in speaking to XY, a holistic health expert, about the sharp rise in the use of anti-anxiety drugs and why taking hemp extract is better for your health?

The short answer is, no. A longer answer would also be no. And I feel not a jot of anxiety about my decision.

And another pitch, at about the same time:

We think this is an excellent story for Earth Day that your audiences will love. The nationally acclaimed eco-feminist artist XX is celebrated as the real-life Marvelous Mrs. Maisel of the art world.

Is she now? Got into art one drunken night when she was on the outs with her husband? I know that show has won some Emmys, and I’m enjoying episodes of the recently dropped fourth season (once a week), but it’s still interesting that the publicist believed it would be a widely enough known reference to make such a statement, silly as it is.

Thursday Grab Bag

Posted on April 7, 2022 by admin

Sluggish progress toward spring here. But some progress. Plants in a nearby park.

The croci in my own yard have been very slow this year — no blooms even now. I don’t keep an exact track every year, but that seems a couple of weeks late. Some years, I remember seeing their very first green sprouts at the end of February. And of course, croci don’t mind a little snow.

On a bench in the same park. What is that thing?

A Soofa sign. The company web site says it makes electronics for advertising or as part of “smart city” communications. This doesn’t look like that, and it also looks inactive. Since I’d never noticed it before, it could be that it isn’t operational yet.

Or is it? According to a park district web site I couldn’t access fully — but could see a bit of, from my Google search — you can charge devices there. Solar-powered, and the top does resemble a solar panel. Wonder how much juice it has these many cloudy days.

The latest snack food to enter the house: Calbee brand Takoyaki Ball-flavored corn snacks. Though Calbee is Japanese, not a product of Japan, but rather Thailand, where ingredients and labor are no doubt cheaper.

No octopus, which is the main ingredient of actual takoyaki, is listed among the ingredients. Still, it’s flavored to taste like takoyaki, which it does, though the simulation isn’t quite spot-on. A little too sweet, Yuriko said, and I agree. Sweetened for North American tastes? Just how many North Americans are going to buy takoyaki-flavored snacks? But not bad.

Calbee, incidentally, began as a candy company in postwar Japan (1949) and acquired its name in the mid-50s, a portmanteau of “Calcium” and “Vitamin B1.” Soon the company found its way into crispy snack foods, especially wheat crackers. I suppose that was something of a novelty in Japan at the time, compared with rice crackers, which go way back. Calbee’s early confections caught on, and so the food technologists there have been working hard to make new varieties of snacks since then.

I see that the fifth season of Better Call Saul has appeared on Netflix. That’s good. I’ll watch it. Once a week or so, that is. That’s how new TV should be, according to Leviticus, I think, though it doesn’t apply to shows that might have been watched every day after school.

Pre-Chekov

Posted on March 1, 2022 by admin

The other day I watched an episode of mid-60s sitcom I had heard of, but never had seen before. It was playing on a nostalgia channel I have access to. A show that only lasted a season, which makes it unusual as a rerun (and why no Camp Runamuck, which was on precisely the same season?).

I decided to watch the whole thing because in the first minute or so, Chekov showed up. That’s what came to mind instantly when I saw him. It took me a few minutes to remember the actor’s name. About two years before he started on Star Trek; just a young-ish character actor at the time (29).

In that episode, he played a Swedish character. His dialect wasn’t so different than the faux Russian he would later do, though you could tell he was trying to add a bit of Swedish to the sound. I’m not an expert on Swedish, but I suspect that the sound wasn’t particularly authentic. But why would it have to be?

As for the show itself, it wasn’t that bad. Or that good. Mildly amusing, occasionally, and decidedly dated. Being only a little older than the show itself, I completely understand how that happens.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: television