The Wilhelm Scream

Over Christmas, a relative tipped me off to a fascinating bit of movie trivia: A scream sound effect that has been used in over 100 Hollywood films from 1951 to the present, including everyone of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies.

Here's a compilation of uses of the scream, starting in 1953.



Here is a short interview about the history and significance of the Wilhelm Scream, in which we learn that the vocal talent responsible for the original effect may have been Sheb Wooley, of "Purple People Eater" fame.



Steve Lee, the movie historian and sound man in that last clip, has a page about the Wilhelm Scream on his Hollywood Lost and Found website, which was "created to promote interest in the history of Hollywood and the art of filmmaking - with special emphasis on Film Sound, Movie Props, and Locations." In the props section, you can learn things like what happened to those 500 tribbles.

Al Jaffee, call your office

If you're printing an ad on the back of a map, you really ought pay attention to what it looks like when you fold it up. Mark Evanier has a funny example from a New York tourist map. Go see it.

Woody Allen interviews Billy Graham

It really happened! Witty banter, serious respectful discussion of faith, sin, premarital sex, and popular culture, and both men handle questions from the audience. What Graham says about the harm caused by premarital sex wouldn't have been amiss at last night's Modest Proposals event which Dawn Eden described as a gathering of "Chastity All-Stars."

Part 1:



Part 2:



The interview is part of Woody Allen's September 21, 1969, TV special, part of the Kraft Music Hall series. The show includes stand-up by Woody, skits with a 25-year-old and gorgeous Candace Bergen, music by the 5th Dimension (Wedding Bell Blues), and ads for Libby with Tony Randall as a private eye. Click below to watch the entire special, interspersed with classic TV ads:


LikeTelevision Embed Movies and TV Shows

The Trouble with LOLtribblez

There's something about the Star Trek original series episode "The Trouble with Tribbles" that invites parody.

We've already seen the episode reinterpreted in the style of Edward Gorey. Now click the picture to see the whole episode, done up LOLcat style!

Soup for you!

I was doing my payday shopping at the Costco and was amazed to see Al Yeganeh's face looking at me from a box. He calls himself the Soup Man; Seinfeld fans know him as the real-life soup kitchen owner who inspired the "Soup Nazi" character. I was surprised to learn that he has soup kitchens all over the northeast and is selling packaged soups all over the country.

Well, I bought a 15 oz. box of turkey chili and brought it home (almost eight bucks!). Back at the ranch, I had to surf over to YouTube to see if I could find any clips from that Seinfeld episode to put me in a proper frame of mind to appreciate the soup.

Instead I found this clip of the real Soup Man. The New York City Fox affiliate sent over a chirpy blonde reporterette for a live remote from his new location on Trinity Place downtown. In the first segment he almost seems reasonable in his protest against the reporter's carelessness (she went behind the counter and touched his ladle!), and I love it when he responds to the reporter's comment about how the interview will giving his restaurant publicity for opening day. "You are getting publicity your own self. I am giving you publicity!" Things get a bit more heated in the second segment. No one appreciates a perfectionist.



I am happy to report that the turkey chili was delicious and that, despite the fact that I stuck my finger in to see if it was hot enough, no one smacked my hand, scolded me, or snatched my soup away. Perhaps soup in a box is the solution for those of us who lack the self-discipline to be worthy of soup from one of his stores. When I brought the box into the house, I thought of that phrase from the Latin Mass: Domine, non sum dignus ut intres sub tectum meum, sed tantum dic verbum, et sanabitur anima mea. ("Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof, but say the word, and my spirit shall be healed.") Which could be paraphrased and modified a bit to mean, "Al, I am not worthy that your soup should enter under my roof, but say the word, and my stomach shall be fed."

Drink Freshy! It's the low-calorie Feh soda!

More vintage commercial goodness from Roadsidepictures: a set of vintage soda pop bottles, bottlecaps, cans, and signage. In addition to Coke and Pepsi, all sorts of obscure brands and generics are represented in this collection: Cragmont (the Safeway store brand), Del Monte, White Rock, Witches Brew (a licorice soda!), Foodtown Imitation Grape Soda, and Coffeetime carbonated coffee drink.

Once, in the early '80s, I was staying at the Statler Hilton in Manhattan, and the vending machine carried only White Rock products. In desperation, I bought a White Rock Orange Soda. Nasty stuff, but the little water nymph on the can was cute.

This photo shows an old-fashioned 10 oz. Mountain Dew bottle (back when it was sold as a hillbilly drink) and a squatty, non-conforming 12 oz. bottle for non-conforming 7-Up.

I don't know where they marketed the soda in the picture, but it can't have been anywhere in the northeast. The can looks like something MAD's Al Jaffee would have worked up as a parody. Feh! is probably too regional an expression for Wacky Packages to have used it. Note to product designers: If you're going to use alternating colors for a product name, make sure that each color's set of letters spells something like "Yum!" or "Good!" not "Ecch!" or "Ebola!"

(Update: Apparently Freshy was a Fresca knockoff for a line of Winn-Dixie store-brand sodas. Feh on a soda can wouldn't have registered in Winn-Dixie country, but it probably amused a few visiting Yankees.)

That "NO CYCLAMATES!" label takes me back. Remember the big controversy over cyclamates in the early '70s? Suddenly, saccharine became the artificial sweetener of choice, and then a few years later it was suspected of causing cancer. (Gilda Radner, Jane Curtin, Laraine Newman, and Linda Ronstadt sang about it on SNL.)

More: The pretty nymph on White Rock beverages is actually Psyche, from Greek mythology. "Psyche has the wings of a butterfly to depict immortality. Her story represents the pre-existence of the soul suffering in this life, going astray but remaining faithful to her ideals. She accepts her fate while showing courage and counting on love to lead her to life."

But the Witty Banter guys say, Soda = Death.

'60s signs

Boing Boing links to Roadsidepictures' set of black-and-white Polaroids of roadside signs taken in Washington state, probably in the early '60s. This one is of the Poodle Dog restaurant in Fife, Wa. Sweet.

Calypso Family Robinson

Seeing Jonathan Harris (aka Dr. Zachary Smith) on an episode of Bonanza has set me off looking for "Lost in Space" clips on the web. I found this hilarious mashup, which the uploader calls "Lost in Space on Acid." It's set to Harry Belafonte singing "Jump in the Line (Shake, Senora)."

Bleak Hoss

As I continued my couch-bound channel-surfing, I landed about 15 minutes into the first of three Bonanza episodes on TV Land. What I saw made me stick around for the whole show, and ultimately I watched all three.

I was not a Bonanza fan as a child, but the burning map that opened each episode seared itself into my memory. The premature death of Dan Blocker in 1972 was one of the earliest celebrity deaths I was aware of, and I remember the controversy over Bonanza continuing for another season without him. I also remember being puzzled by the fact that it was called Bonanza in the prime time, but the Sunday afternoon reruns were called Ponderosa.

What caught my attention was the sight of actor Jonathan Harris (you know him as the strange and sometimes evil Dr. Zachary Smith on Lost in Space), sporting chin whiskers and in the Virginia City jail. Playing a snooty Englishman, he was called "Mr. Dickens" by the other characters.

Yes, believe it or not, there was an episode of Bonanza featuring Charles Dickens as a guest at the Ponderosa. The episode's title was "A Passion for Justice," and its subject was copyright law and piracy. (That link leads to the Internet Movie Database entry about the episode, and in the user comments there is a good synopsis of the story and its background in real life; just overlook the constant misspelling of "copy-write.") Dickens did make a couple of tours of America, including a few years after the Civil War, and there were problems with mutual recognition of copyright between America and Britain.

In the episode, Dickens is giving a dramatic reading of Oliver Twist in Virginia City, but stops abruptly and angrily when he learns that the local newspaper publisher has been printing bootleg copies of his Old Curiosity Shop. When the print shop is vandalized that night, the townsfolk assume that Dickens is the culprit, and that is how he lands in jail.

Ben Cartwright knows Dickens isn't guilty, but the author is too proud to put up a defense at his trial. Adam and Little Joe do some detective work and catch the real vandal, Dickens is reconciled to the townsfolk and vice versa, and the episode ends with him completing his interrupted reading, followed by his recital of the Declaration of Independence as an encore.

The heart of the episode is a conversation between Dickens and Hoss, as they take a break from chopping wood at the Ponderosa. Hoss tries to explain to Dickens that the townsfolk aren't going to treat him like a king because he's a famous author back in England: "Folks around here judge a man by what he is, not what he was." Hoss tells Dickens that folks don't understand all his fuss about the copies of his book.

Dickens explains his outrage in terms Hoss can understand. Ben Cartwright built the Ponderosa from nothing, and he and his sons would defend it against anyone who would try to take it away from them. In the same way, Dickens' words represent his sweat and blood, and they're just as dear to him as the Ponderosa is to the Cartwrights. Later Ben lectures the townsfolk after Dickens' trial, calling the unauthorized copies a "rustling of his rights."

Piracy probably wasn't much of an issue back in 1963, when the episode first aired, but in this age of peer-to-peer file sharing, that's a message worth remembering.

The second episode I saw is worth a mention, too: "Rain from Heaven", guest-starring character actor John Anderson as a rainmaker named Tulsa Weems. (Seems fitting. One of the most dishonest and shifty people I ever met was from Tulsa.) Weems brings his wagon to drought-stricken Virginia City. He convinces several leading citizens to pay him to make rain, but they need Ben Cartwright's deep pockets to have enough for Weems' $200 fee. Cartwright doesn't believe in rainmakers; he sent Adam to buy some water-wagons to fetch water from Lake Tahoe for his ranch and the town.

Weems also has a very sick daughter, but as a proud mountain man, he refuses all charity. His rebuff of Ben's offer of a loan is violent enough to land him in jail, which entitles his family to be put up in the hotel at the town's expense. But his family is just as proud as their pa, and they run away to squat in the Cartwrights' barn. (They figure Ben owes them for refusing Tulsa Weems a chance to earn an honest day's work.)

Hoss demonstrates sacrificial love by snatching the girl out of the barn, over the objections of her proud mother and shotgun-toting brother. He nurses her in his room, using cool cloths to bring down her fever despite the risk of catching her typhoid fever.

Weems finally gets a chance to try his rainmaking techniques. He fires his cannon and shoots off skyrockets, but all in vain. The sky remains clear and dry, and he has failed, as he put it, to knock the devil out of the sky. Weems says that the devil has won, and the rain that might have brought relief to the land and health to his daughter would not come.

Ben rebukes Weems for using the devil as a convenient scapegoat for his own failures, and this is where the episode takes a surprising turn, surprising at least to a 21st century TV viewer. In poetic language, Ben calls on Weems to pray for his daughter. (I wish I'd recorded this so I could give you the exact quote.) After Weems' daughter recovers and the rains return a few days later, Weems chides Ben Cartwright for not believing in rainmakers. Ben's reply: "Oh, I believe in a Rain Maker: the one you were praying to last night."

After watching these two episodes (and a third, the Serlingesque "Twilight Town"), it's easy to understand why this series was so beloved. While too much of any kind of TV is a bad thing for children, I'd think that Bonanza and the Andy Griffith Show are a couple of programs that parents and children could profitably watch together.

The Bishop's Brownie Beanie

This morning I was feeling under the weather, so I stayed home from church. Instead of taking the opportunity for private devotions, I vegged out on the couch, just me and my remote and a 7-Up. ("You Like It. It Likes You." 7-Up always seems to pick me up when I'm feeling bad. I wonder if it's still lithiated?)

I flipped through the channels and happened upon an Antiques Roadshow repeat. I didn't catch the location or the name of the lady seeking an appraisal, but she told a funny and heartwarming story about the artifact she held in her hands. (Note: Later research reveals that this was probably the first of three episodes from Milwaukee.)

When this lady was a little girl, her family, like millions of others, were regular viewers of Bishop Fulton J. Sheen's Emmy-award winning TV show, "Life is Worth Living."

The little girl was in the Brownies and, as children often do, she lost part of her uniform: the hat. The hat was a chocolate-colored beanie with a Brownie emblem on the front and a little loop on top. (Here is a page about vintage Brownie uniforms with pictures of the beanie.)

So she was thinking about her lost beanie while watching Bishop Sheen. Suddenly she realized where her beanie was! She ran to her mother and said, "I know where my beanie is! Bishop Sheen stole it!"

The beanie was, of course, Bishop Sheen's violet pileolus, also known as a zucchetto. On a black-and-white TV, the cap would have appeared as some shade of gray, and it wouldn't have been possible to know whether the cap was brown or violet or some other color of similar intensity.

Her mother told the story in a letter to Bishop Sheen. ("Bishop Sheen stole it" was toned down to "Bishop Sheen has it.") The Bishop sent a letter in reply and included with it his pileolus, autographed inside with the inscription, "God love you." Sheen later told the story on his TV show, but advised the audience that that was the last cap he would be sending out.

So here was this former Brownie, on Antiques Roadshow some 50 years later, displaying Bishop Fulton Sheen's autographed beanie and letter, which she had framed along with a photo of him. Oh, and she did eventually find her Brownie beanie, and she had it with her on the program.

(Update: Neglected to say that she also had a framed photo of herself as a little girl, holding the autographed pileolus, which helped to satisfy the appraiser as to the item's provenance.)

I understand that Fulton Sheen is a candidate for sainthood. Perhaps, in addition to becoming a patron saint of television or apologetics, he could also be a patron saint of lost uniform pieces. (That website is interesting, if you've ever wondered how someone is canonized as a saint.)

(Update: Coincidentally, one of my regular blog reads also posted an item about Bishop Sheen on Sunday. Dawn Eden has an extended quote from Sheen's 1950 book Lift Up Your Heart on the deeper, enduring thrills of the spirit compared to the superficial and ephemeral "thrills" of the flesh. Thanks to Dawn, despite missing church, I received some spiritual nourishment nevertheless.)

Why the picturephone failed

David Szondy has a new page in his delightful collection, Tales of Future Past. It's about the picturephone and why it failed to catch on. The 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey featured Dr. Heywood Floyd talking to his daughter (and the bushbaby she got for her birthday) over picturephone from a space station in earth orbit, but in real life, the picturephone was a marketing failure:

The picturephone was a disaster. People queued in droves to avoid buying it. What happened? Part of the reason was the cost. Picturephone was not cheap: $125 per month plus $21 per minute. Also, there was the problem of how you use a picturephone when you're one of the very few people who have one. Without a compelling reason to think that people were going to sign up for picturephones real quick you're faced with the reality that there's a whole lot of nobody to talk to out there.

Whatever the reasons, the picturephone limped along briefly and then was quietly pulled at a loss of $1 billion.

Szondy explains some of the technical issues that made analog videotelephony so expensive, and also explains why, now that the digital version of the technology is much, much cheaper, picturephones still haven't caught on:

Having worked with videophone systems myself, and having answered the phone first thing in the morning after being up all night with a cranky baby, no tea, unshaven, and generally looking like hell, I can attest to what the missing factors are: 1) People really do not want that much intimate contact and 2) Videophones are a pain.

Calvin and Hobbes's Watterson reviews Schulz bio

Bill Watterson, who wrote and drew the delightful Calvin and Hobbes, might be thought of as the polar opposite of Charles M. Schulz, at least when it comes to merchandising. While I've seen plenty of unauthorized window stickers of Calvin defiling a Chevy logo or Calvin kneeling before a cross, I don't think I've seen any authorized C&H merchandise, other than compilations of the strips.

But Watterson, like Schulz, explored a side of childhood that most cartoonists skim over. So it's interesting to read Watterson's review of David Michaelis's new biography of Schulz in today's Wall Street Journal:

Undoubtedly the most fascinating part of the book is the juxtaposition of biographical information and reproduced "Peanuts" strips. Here we see how literally Schulz sometimes depicted actual situations and events. The strips used as illustrations in "Schulz and Peanuts" are reproduced at eye-straining reduction and are often removed from the context of their stories, but they vividly demonstrate how Schulz used his cartoons to work through private concerns. We discover, for example, that in the recurring scenes of Lucy annoying Schroeder at the piano, the crabby and bossy Lucy stands in for [first wife] Joyce, and the obsessive and talented Schroeder is a surrogate for Schulz.

Reading these strips in light of the information Mr. Michaelis unearths, I was struck less by the fact that Schulz drew on his troubled first marriage for material than by the sympathy that he shows for his tormentor and by his ability to poke fun at himself.

Lucy, for all her domineering and insensitivity, is ultimately a tragic, vulnerable figure in her pursuit of Schroeder. Schroeder's commitment to Beethoven makes her love irrelevant to his life. Schroeder is oblivious not only to her attentions but also to the fact that his musical genius is performed on a child's toy (not unlike a serious artist drawing a comic strip). Schroeder's fanaticism is ludicrous, and Lucy's love is wasted. Schulz illustrates the conflict in his life, not in a self-justifying or vengeful manner but with a larger human understanding that implicates himself in the sad comedy. I think that's a wonderfully sane way to process a hurtful world. Of course, his readers connected to precisely this emotional depth in the strip, without ever knowing the intimate sources of certain themes. Whatever his failings as a person, Schulz's cartoons had real heart.

I was intrigued by the description of Schulz as "shy and alienated during his school years, retreating from nearly every opportunity to reveal himself or his gifts. Teachers and students consequently ignored him, and Schulz nursed a lifelong grudge that so few attempted to draw him out or recognized his talent."

Sue-happy together

Flo and Eddie (Mark Volman and Howard Kaylan) of The Turtles give a chalk-talk (really a marker talk) about seven managers, multiple lawsuits over eight years, and their boneheaded, impulsive business decisions. "We trusted everybody, we believed, and we'd sign anything."



Via Mark Evanier, who writes, "A friend of mine in the record business told me that these four minutes should be required viewing for anyone who's thinking about becoming a professional musician. It's a tale that is, alas, not unique."

Not to be a tease with the title of this post, here are The Turtles on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, singing "Happy Together."



What a sunny song!

The dark side of Charles Schulz

There's some controversy over a new biography of Charles M. Schulz by David Michaelis.

David Michaelis first contacted the family of Charles M. Schulz seven years ago about writing a biography of Schulz, the creator of the “Peanuts” comic strip. It turned out that Schulz had read Mr. Michaelis’s biography of N. C. Wyeth, and that Schulz’s son Monte also liked the writer’s work. He ended up helping persuade the rest of the Schulz clan to cooperate with Mr. Michaelis, granted full access to his father’s papers and put aside his own novel writing to help him.

But Monte Schulz said that when he read Mr. Michaelis’s manuscript in December, members of the family were shocked by the portrayal of a depressed, cold and bitter man who was constantly going after different women.

“It’s not true,” Monte said. “It’s preposterous.”

The Times story suggests that not all of Schulz's kids disagree with Michaelis' perspective. What Michaelis says about Schulz's life and art makes sense to me.

“He was a complicated artist who had an inner life and embedded that inner life on the page,” Mr. Michaelis said in an interview. “His anxieties and fears brought him Lucy and the characters in ‘Peanuts.’”

“A normal person couldn’t have done it,” he said.

What I loved, as a child, about this comic strip, particularly the paperbacks with the earlier years, is how the strip dealt with disappointment, with insecurity, with feeling like a loser, because that's how I felt, too. That had to come from somewhere in Charles Schulz's life story.

Here is the December 2000 Time piece by Michaelis about Schulz mentioned in the New York Times story.

Brett Somers, RIP

Sorry I've been away (not that there's anyone reading this).

Brett Somers, a favorite of Match Game fans for her sharp-tongued wit, has passed on to join her old pal Charles Nelson Reilly, who died earlier this year. Somers was 83.

A surprising detail: She separated from husband Jack Klugman in 1974, but they never divorced.

Here's a little clip of Brett and Charles from Match Game '74.



At this somber time, I could say, "Prepare to meet your Maker," but I think I'll close with, "Get ready to match the stars!"

Off to D. C., A-SAP

It's a tough job, but someone needs to do it. As a regular feature of this here blog, I'm going to post a daily comic strip that has successfully made me laugh out loud. A mere snigger or smirk will not be sufficient. Here's the first one, from syndicated reruns of Al Capp's Li'l Abner.

Until I figure out how to widen the blog, you'll have to click through to see the full sized versions.



This is part of a story thread that begins with a hot dog length war, leading to Mammy Yokum's invention of the "Endless Hot Dog". When Mammy Yokum accidentally overcharged an Important Visitor (who is only seen from behind, carries a golf bag, and has a "U. S. 1" Washington, DC, license plate) by a nickel, she feels obliged to return it at all costs. The concept was
covered by the mainstream media:



I'm glad United Media is still offering Li'l Abner (and Peanuts) for syndication.

Potrzebie potshots

How can you not like a blog named "Potrzebie"? If I'd been thinking, I'd have called this blog "Pop Culture Potrzebie."

Mark Evanier sent us over to look at an entry about Mad cartoonist Wally Wood, a brilliant print ad he did for Alka-Seltzer, and a TV commercial based on it. But I was drawn to an earlier entry, a childhood memory from blogger Bhob Stewart about a sharpshooter who performed a demonstration for an assembly at his high school circa 1954, and what happened when he volunteered for one of the sharpshooter's stunts.

Bhob has a huge collection of pop culture related links that I want to explore, so I'm adding his Potrzebie blog to my list of links.

Phi phun

Cool, in a nerdy sort of way: An entire website devoted to phi, also known as the golden number or golden ratio, a number that turns up in nature, in the Fibonacci series, and in architecture as an ideal proportion. The page on the relationship between phi and the number five is quite interesting.

Pudenda on a plane

pudenda: (1) Feminine gerundive adjective of pudeo (to feel shame). That of which one ought to be ashamed, shameful, scandalous, disgraceful, abominable. (Used as a noun) A scandalous woman. (2) Neuter plural gerundive adjective of pudeo. The private parts.

So a young woman named Kyla Ebbert, a college student and Hooters waitress, gets on a Southwest Airlines flight, heading from San Diego to Tucson on a day trip for a doctor's visit. An FA named Keith tells her that her attire is inappropriate and that she'll have to catch a later flight and find something decent to wear in the meantime.

I saw her appearance on Friday's Today show. Although it doesn't appear on the online video, when the story ran live, when Ebbert sat back down, NBC superimposed a small oval where her crotch would have been visible under her very short skirt, if you could call it that. (Looks like the top cut off of a pair of white jeans.) NBC was afraid of the viewing public seeing what the FA worried his other passengers would see.

Looking at her outfit, as worn on Today, and seeing the un-ovaled video, I think I know how she transformed herself to look slightly less trashy on national TV. Watch the video and look at her when she's standing up. Based on the position of her hips, the top of the band of fabric she calls a skirt can't be much higher than her pubis. She then pulled down her shirt to cover what should have been covered by her skirt. How low her skirt was would have been more evident had we been allowed to see her from behind, particularly as she sat down.

Look at the screen cap of her sitting down. (And will you look at the simpering smile on her mom's face!) That small dark circle is the button on the waistband of her skirt, right at the top of the skirt. When she sits down, she's sitting on the entire skirt. No way is any of that covering her posterior. In fact (sorry for the bluntness) with her skirt in that position, she could probably use the toilet by just pulling up her shirt in back.

Having seen this mode of dress, my best guess is that she had the bottom of the shirt gathered above her navel, the skirt's top pulled up to her hips, somewhere below her navel, and showing everyone what Britney Spears showed everyone when she carelessly emerged from that car. Quite right for the flight attendant to require her to adjust her clothing.

As to what was she thinking, wearing that on a plane: My theory is that she was going to see the gynecologist, was on a tight travel schedule, and didn't want to waste any time having to undress.

Dawn Eden has a great take on this story, as always wittily making a profound point, in this case to the woman she calls "That Big-Chested, Long-Legged Hooters Hottie Who Almost Got Kicked Off a Plane."

That embarrassment is a gift, TBCLLHHWAGKOP. Instead of suing the airline, you should be paying it out of gratitude for showing you the truth of what you are doing every day — treating yourself as a walking commodity, and others as consumers.

(Great headline, too: "Runway Muddle.")

A true LOL cat

I promise not to post too many of these, but this one truly made me laugh out loud.

Moonset

A USA Today story about two new documentaries on the moon landings dramatizes the passing of the years.

Filmmakers realized "a part of history was about to pass them by," said Edgar Mitchell, 76, who spent 1½ days on the moon in 1971. "We're all in our 70s now — better grab us before we're gone."

Of the 12 men who walked on the moon, only nine survive, and those men are all in their seventies. Within a couple of decades the men who went to the moon will have passed into history. Around the middle of this century, the moon landings will have disappeared from living memory. Will future generations even believe that we went to the moon?

This is terribly sad to me. As for most late Boomers, the space program was part of the backdrop to my childhood and the inspiration for this boy's dreams. I grew up watching launches and listening to the commentary of Walter Cronkite on CBS, Frank McGee on NBC, and Frank Reynolds and Jules Bergman on ABC.

To turn this post back toward pop culture, have we seen any breaking news coverage in recent years as dignified and informative as the network space shot coverage of the '60s and '70s? I don't think so. I would dearly love to watch it and relive it all again. I'm on a hunt for video from that coverage, either excerpts on the web, or whole broadcasts on DVD. Drop me a comment if you know where it can be found.

Until I find some of that video, here's this. If Buzz Aldrin wasn't already my hero for being on the first moon landing and continuing to advocate for manned space exploration, I'd love him for the way he dealt with this conspiracy wacko, five years ago when he was about 72 years old:

Pret à Peppermint Patté

Good grief, as it were.

At this week's Fashion Week in New York, more than 20 designers are bringing the Peanuts characters to life in a charity couture show. "At first I thought, 'Snoopy, fashion?'" says Jeannie Schulz, the widow of creator Charles Schulz. "But he was designing clothes that became part of the characters' personalities, and that is what designers are looking for."

Click the link to see sketches of a very short dress with Charlie Brown's trademark yellow with black zig-zag, a shirt modeled after Peppermint Patty's red and white striped shirt, but see-thru where the white stripes should be, and a cocktail dress with feathers inspired by Woodstock.

That was in Newsweek. Here is the press release.

"Good grief" turns into fashion relief as MetLife presents a group designer fashion show featuring exclusively designed fashions for Snoopy on September 7 at 6 p.m. as part of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Bryant Park. Many of fashion's most renowned designers have confirmed their participation, including Heatherette, Isaac Mizrahi, Betsey Johnson, Pamella Roland, and Project Runway alum Laura Bennett. Each designer has taken inspiration from their favorite Peanuts character to create a couture runway outfit, making a bold leap from initialblack-and-white sketch to vibrant, colorful ensemble.

"I love Peanuts because it represents a theme in my childhood to do with not fitting in, with being an outsider," said Mizrahi, who designed a dress based on an outfit Brown would have worn-had he been a woman. "The Peanuts characters, especially Charlie Brown, made the issue of being different easy to understand and gave it a resolution. The outsiders were as wonderful and glamorous as the insiders." Roland, for her part, was inspired by Peppermint Patty for her design.

I just want to see what they come up with for Pigpen.

The runaway snooze button

I'm definitely a nightowl, and mornings are not my bag. The position of the snooze button on my alarm clock is programmed into my arm's muscle memory. It's too easy to snooze my way through seven or eight alarms and all the extra time I allowed myself to sleep. This gadget would solve that problem:

Not only does this alarm clock wake you up, it BASE jumps off your night stand and runs away to make sure you are really awake. You need to chase it down to turn it off.

It's called Clocky and for all the extra smarts and jumping ability, it's only about $50.

Man hugs

Spot on and too funny: The proper way to execute a manly show of affection:



One of many helpful how-to videos at VideoJug. (It's British, so it's automatically funnier.)

Gorey tribbles

You love Edward Gorey's whimiscally macabre artwork and Star Trek: The Original Series? Edward Gorey loved Star Trek, too:

Edward Gorey watched television for the first time this summer, or so he claims, and in the process the 52-year-old artist became a "Star Trek" fan. He watched the science-fiction program re-runs twice a day, five days a week and once on the sixth day, and despite this faithful viewing he has yet to see the TV show's most famous episode, "The Trouble With Tribbles," which is about these furry little creatures in outer space, or so he says.

That was from a 1977 Boston Globe story about Gorey's work as a set designer for a stage production of Dracula. It inspired Shaenon K. Garrity to imagine how Gorey might have drawn the story of the Tribbles. It is dead on and hilarious, especially if you know and love both Gorey and Star Trek. I won't spoil the visuals, but here is one of the captions:

By morning, the mass of mewling fluff had become quite suffocating.

(Hat tip to Ephemeral Isle.)

What's it all about, Alfie?

One of my favorite columnists, Thomas Sowell, makes a good point about a classic '60s film:

With all the old movie favorites being shown again and again on television, it is remarkable that the old movie classic "Alfie" is seldom shown. Could it be fear that the scene where cold-blooded Alfie breaks down and cries at the sight of an aborted baby is something that would unleash the furies of the feminazis?

When the movie was remade in 2004, starring Jude Law, that scene was excised.

A non-rhetorical question, as I don't keep up with present-day pop culture (happily stuck in the past, thanks): Is there a recent movie that deals forthrightly with the consequences of Alfie's promiscuous lifestyle or the realities of abortion?

Amiga ahead of its time

Ars Technica has started a series on the history of the Amiga microcomputer, a personal computing alternative to the IBM PC and the Apple Macintosh that emerged in the last half of the 1980s. I remember a couple of computer enthusiast friends having these, and the graphics and sounds the Amiga could produce were very impressive for its time.

Part 1: Genesis begins with a flashback to the final day at Commodore in 1994, then traces the roots of the computer back to the video game console craze of the late '70s.

Part 2: The Birth of the Amiga tells how the computer emerged from the early '80s crash of the video game market. It seems funny to think that there was a time when video games fell out of favor, but it happened. To make the investors happy, the original product was designed to look like a game console, but it had the capability to be expanded into a true computer. When the video game business collapsed, the investors asked the engineers to redirect their efforts to the personal computer market and were pleased to learn the engineers had had that in mind all along. Interesting, too, how the development team kept their plans below the computer industry radar, through the use of code names and a diversionary tactic -- a sideline of developing add-ons to the Atari gaming system.

Part 3: The First Prototype covers the creation of a working model and its introduction at electronics industry trade shows. The article also delves into the Amiga's technical innovations that later became standard: application programming interface, multitasking microcomputer, a true windowing system. The third installment ends with Amiga's acquisition by Commodore.

The stories aren't all technical, and they include insights into the people who created Amiga, their work habits, their backgrounds, the way they approach problems. Very interesting, and I look forward to future installments.

Disney dissed LBJ

One of those funny, improbable stories that turns out to be true: Walt Disney discreetly wore a Goldwater lapel pin when accepting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and it's believed he flashed it at the president during the ceremony. Link found at Mark Evanier's blog.

Jack Kirby honored

I'm a DC man myself, but I should at least acknowledge this Sunday New York Times piece about Jack Kirby, the mind behind so many of Marvel Comics' famous characters. This was interesting:

The frenetic action and the rooftop fighting so common on the superhero set did not just materialize out of nowhere. Mr. Kirby remembered much of it from his Depression-era youth on New York’s Lower East Side, where, he once told an interviewer, the incessant fights among rival gangs were often staged up and down fire escapes and during running battles across tenement rooftops.

The Times piece itself seems to have some pieces missing. The writer doesn't explain his description of Kirby as a "an abused and neglected genius" or provide any examples of this assertion: "Marvel took his talents for granted and denied him the credit and compensation he clearly deserved."

G. O. Fizzickle Pogo

Happy 94th birthday to Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo. Mark Evanier, webmaster of the official pogopossum.com website, writes about growing into an appreciation of the comic strip.

The dialogue was inaccessible to my toddler mind and even when I could decode what I could decode, I wasn't sure what they were all yelling about. In a way, it was frustrating the way it's frustrating to watch certain TV shows with the sound off. You can tell something interesting is being said but it drives you up the ever-lovin' wall to be denied it.

That was how I felt about Walt Kelly's swampland comic strip up until the age when I started to "get it." I knew it was funny. The characters were so alive and expressive. You could tell just from their poses that wonderful things happened in their world. You could also tell that the guy drawing all them amusing pics was a man of great humor and wit.

As Carolyn Kelly promised, the cover, table of contents, and first chapter of G. O. Fizzickle Pogo, has been posted, wherein we learn how pointless it is to tell a turtle that something is as plain as the nose on his face.

If you follow this link and scroll down, there is a synopsis of G. O. Fizzickle Pogo. I'd forgotten that this one included a Little Orphan Annie parody. Albert poses as Lulu Arfin' Nanny with his eyes "blunked out."

For Better, For Worse, For Ever

Not a big fan of the strip, but this is worth noting for its implications for the newspaper comics business. Lynn Johnston is retiring from writing For Better or For Worse, her long running strip that chronicles the Patterson family and which, unusually for comics, had the characters age almost on par with the real-world calendar. (Gasoline Alley is the only other strip I can think of where characters grew up, grew old, and spawned new generations of characters.)

Although Johnston won't be writing much new material, she will be producing some framing strips to introduce story lines from the first decade of the comic. And her characters will stop aging.

Q: Traditionally, cartoonists who wanted to retire from the daily grind of newspaper strips had two options: hand their creation over to another cartoonist [what’s called a “legacy strip”] or quit and take the strip down with you, the choice of Bill Watterson (Calvin and Hobbes) and Gary Larson (The Far Side). Why not follow their lead?

A: Initially that was my plan, and I had sort of speculated on what type of work would fill that space, because that little piece of real estate in the newspaper is a pretty coveted one. Then when Universal Press [her syndicate] said that they felt there was real opportunity to run the older strips, I thought about it and decided that their argument was a good one. Because there were many, many papers that did not pick up the strip in the first 10 years, so in a lot of markets those first 10 years were never seen.

But then there were other editors, like at the Toronto Star, the Vancouver Sun, the Chicago Tribune, who have been wonderful supporters right from Day 1, and I didn’t want to sell those editors the same material without adding something new. So that was my thinking. It would not only give me the satisfaction of still being in touch with the characters, but I would also be providing some new material for the editors and readers.

This is an interesting compromise, and probably a good one from the perspective of Johnston, her syndicate, the newspapers, and her fans. Not so good for cartoonists looking for a chance to break into newsprint. There's only so much space for comics, and it's shrinking all the time.

Pogo on the radio

Tomorrow would have been the 94th birthday of Walt Kelly, creator of the classic comic strip Pogo. Today, Walt's daughter Carolyn Kelly will be interviewed on the pop culture / nostalgia radio program Time Travel. The show will air this afternoon from 4 to 5 p.m. Eastern time on WRNJ, and should be available on the Time Travel program archive page sometime soon.

That archive page has interviews with June Foray (the voice of Rocky the Flying Squirrel and Natasha), Noel Blanc (son of voice artist Mel Blanc and a voice artist in his own right), Phil Vischer (creator of Veggie Tales), and Joan Ganz Cooney (creator of Sesame Street).

It also has an interview with Mark Evanier, whose years in the television and comics industries makes his news from me one of the best pop culture blogs I've found. Mark doesn't just appreciate the pop culture we grew up with, he worked alongside the people who created it. Mark is also the webmaster for the official PogoPossum.com website. Right now his homepage has several videos of Tom Lehrer performing "Werner von Braun," "Pollution," and "National Brotherhood Week." Mark's blog is a daily read for me, and that's how I found out about the Carolyn Kelly radio interview.

POST-SHOW UPDATE: Carolyn Kelly released an exciting bit of news at the very end of the program. Starting this weekend she'll be posting pages from G. O. Fizzickle Pogo, the paperback compilation of strips from 1957-58. She says it's to tide us all over until the first volume of the Fantagraphics series is released in December. The Fantagraphics series will be a hardcover compilation of the complete daily and Sunday strips, starting at the beginning. Fantagraphics has been doing the same thing with Peanuts (they're now up to the 1964 strips) and Walt Kelly's Our Gang comic books.

(It's funny to think, as visually different as Peanuts and Pogo are, the age difference is only two years one year. They started in 1951 and 1949 1950 and 1949 respectively. I'm using syndication as the birthdate for the strips, although I know both strips had a "prehistory.")

G. O. Fizzickle Pogo gets its name from the International Geophysical Year, the 18-month period for the measurement and study of planet Earth. Pondering an 18-month year leads to speculations about one and a half birthdays and one and a half Christmases. Howland leads an expedition to map the world by skiff, equipped with a blank globe. The Sputnik launches are reflected in this book as well.

Playback singers

It's interesting to see how the same pop culture element evolves in two different countries. Take singing in the movies in Hollywood and Bollywood. Both the American and Indian film industries had to cope with the reality of beautiful actresses who couldn't carry a tune, a problem when it came time to cast a musical.

In Hollywood, such singers were rarely acknowledged publicly. Their names became answers to trivia questions. Marni Nixon, whose singing was dubbed in for Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady and Deborah Kerr in The King and I, is probably the best known.

In Bollywood, there's a name for the job: playback singer. These singers are credited, compete for awards, and have fans in their own right. This very catchy song, "Mera Naam Chin Chin Chu," is acted by Helen, but sung by playback singer Geeta Dutt.

Growing up Freberg

Remember the Encyclopedia Brittanica ads featuring a teenage boy with glasses, long blond hair and a somewhat smug attitude?




Turns out the writer and voiceover for the commercial was comedian Stan Freberg, and that's his son Donavan Freberg pitching the benefits of Brittanica.

Donavan has a blog. A couple of blogs actually, one of which is NSFWHOAE*, so I won't link to it. The other is a fascinating and funny memoir of his very unusual childhood, growing up in the Spanish-style mansion he calls "Stan Simeon," 911 North Beverly Drive. He explains in one entry why at a young age he had "bags under my eyes the size of Louis Vuitton steamer trunks".

I cannot ever remember, from the age of 1-6, ever going to bed before midnight.

My parents were night people, so it would follow suit that I would be too.

If I wasn't playing Asteroids with Blondie in the recording studio lounge, or in bed with mom watching Starsky & Hutch while eating Cap'n Crunch and half and half, or swimming with my sister in Sean Cassidy's pool, I was with my best friend.

Daddy.

My father picked me up when I was born and did not put me down until I was thirty.

We had endless adventures together.

And
they
all
took
place
at
night.

He writes about showing up for school at 10 a.m., his daily morning present from his parents, and how, at age five, he was given his new name. His old name had been "Baby Boy" until then. (Bad case of writer's block.)


* Not Safe For Work, Home, Or Anywhere Else