The Adventures Of Rin Tin Tin (Yo Rinny!)

I am reading this right now.

Which got me thinking of this show, The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin from my childhood.






What have I learned so far from reading Rinny's biography? Well, the first Rinny was brought back from France as a pup, along with Rinny's sister Nanette, by a soldier named Lee Duncan at the end of World War I. Want to know where Lee Duncan got the names? Go here.

Speaking Your Truth

"Recy Taylor died ten days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up."
-Oprah Winfrey, Golden Globes, 2018





Oprah Winfrey's speech at the Golden Globes; the Republican Party's worst nightmare.

Listen up GOP. We are coming for you- you who dismiss us, you who demean us, you who patronize us, you who try to control us, and you who undervalue our worth. You, who helped put a bigoted, sexist, racist, demented man into the White House. You, who enable said man in a desperate attempt to hang on to your power over us. We are coming for you.

No Time To Post

I've been binge watching Fringe  before Netflix stops showing it on September eleventh.  I will be watching episodes from the final season today.

Is This The 2016 Or The 1952 Olympics?

If you read certain newspapers or listen to certain sports announcers, this year is the 1952 Olympics.

1. Chicago Tribune

2. NBC Sports

3. NBC, again

Hello, John-Boy

October 14, 1972, The Waltons television series premiers on CBS.        

TV Guide April 28, 1973.

 

So It Begins

October 8, 1966, the first episode of Star Trek is aired on NBC

Starship USS Enterprise (NCC-1701)

Music Is the Soundtrack Of Your Life

-Dick Clark

Fifty-seven years ago today the ABC television network began broadcasting American Bandstand. It was a big part of my preteen and teen years.  Dick Clark had everyone on his show and in this clip from 1967 we have Jefferson Airplane.   I find the interview questions Dick Clark asks after Grace Slick finishes singing to be both amusing and condescending.

This Just In

A Fox News channel expert says something so ridiculous even true blue Fox New fans don't believe it.
(Not really, true blue Fox News fans willingly drink the Kool-Aid Fox News serves them without ever asking if something toxic has be added.)


"Fox News man is 'complete idiot' for Birmingham Muslim comments – David Cameron"
-The Guardian

Today's Big Kerfuffle Headlines

So HGTV was planning to air another "two brothers flip houses" program when the brothers they picked turned out to be anti-gay bigots hiding behind their religion. What has been interesting for me is the Google headlines. Depending on what you read, the brothers were fired either because they made anti-gay remarks or because the rest of us are anti-Christian:


Keene Sentinel, Keene, New Hampshire- Benham brothers lose HGTV show over gay 'agenda' remarks

My comment on this: That will lose you a TV show every single time.


BRnow.org (Biblical Recorder) - HGTV cancels Benham brothers' show for Christian conviction?

My comment on this: No, they got cancelled because they made bigoted remarks.


CNN- Should the Benham brothers have lost their HGTV show over their remarks?

My comment on this: Yes, because bigots should not be rewarded for being either ignorant or hateful. Especially when one is too ignorant to even know that what you are spouting is hateful.


In an attempt to diffuse the situation the brothers sat down with CNN where they claimed:

The Advocate- Benham Brothers: 'We Love Homosexuals

My comment on this: Of course they do, as long as neither one of them marries one.


The story doesn't end there:

access Atlanta.com- Faith-driven critics protest HGTV's decision to cancel show

My comment of this: Go for it, little buckaroos, but you probably won't get anywhere.


For a good overview of this story and why the petition started by Faith Driven Consumer to get the brothers back on the air will fail:

Time magazine- HGTV Abandons Show With Anti-Gay Hosts: What You Need To Know About The Scandal



UPDATE
Well, well, well. If you read the access Atlanta.com article a group called Faith Driven Consumer is quoted as saying:

"HGTV has effectively instituted a litmus test for employment and viewership with the network and said that those who hold to pro-life, pro-natural marriage and anti-pornography views are not welcome or respected at their network. This is a blatant example of anti-Christian viewpoint discrimination."

I went to the Faith Driven website out of curiosity and since I use FireFox as my browser this came up:

Hey there Firefox user! We need your help to encourage true tolerance and openness at Mozilla. You’ve probably heard about Mozilla’s recent intolerance toward people with a biblical view of marriage. Last week – following a firestorm of protest from gay activists – the tech company known for its internet browser Firefox compelled its new CEO to step down simply because he, as a private citizen, contributed $1,000 to California’s pro-marriage Proposition 8 campaign…six years ago. Faith Driven Consumer reached out to Mozilla to clarify what their policy is toward faith-driven employees, asking them to respond to three specific questions: 1. Will faith-driven employees be discriminated against and forced into the closet for their personal views on marriage? 2. Is there a “pro-gay marriage” litmus test for working at Mozilla? 3. Will the next CEO be required to openly express support for gay marriage as a condition for being hired? While we wait to hear back, let’s make sure they HEAR from YOU

Someone sure likes the phrase "litmus test" over there.

Oh, and, hey there wackadoodle!  Re: Contacting Mozilla.....Humm, no.

Mad Men

The wait has almost been as hard as waiting for Santa to show up when I was a child.  Three day to go.

Car 54 Where Are You?

There's a hold up in the Bronx,
Brooklyn's broken out in fights
There's a traffic jam in Harlem
That's backed up to Jackson Heights
There's a scout troop short a child,
Khrushchev's due at Idlewild*
Car 54, Where Are You?
-Theme from television show, Car 54 Where Are You? (1961-1963)

In the news today:

1. 8 dead, 108 reports of people missing in mudslide.

2. Egyptian court sentences 529 people to death.

3. 6 dead, 18 injured when gunman open fire inside a Kenyan church.

4. 100 Congolese refugees die when boat overturns.


(Sigh) Today I prefer Francis and Gunther's world.



*Now know as John F. Kennedy International Airport.

Fifty Years Ago Sunday

CBS is celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Beatles first appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show this Sunday by broadcasting a two hour special, The Night That Changed America: The Beatles, A Grammy Salute, staring Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr. I will be recording it to watch Monday morning just to avoid all the commercials that will surely be jammed in between the performances. I can not believe it has been fifty years since the The Beatles first appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show. I won't say that it feels like it happened yesterday, just that I'm surprised it was so long ago. To commemorate this big event I have decided to re-share a post I wrote ten years ago about my experience of that night. I hope you enjoy it.

Sunday,February 8th, 2004
Quote
It'll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'.
-Bob Dylan

It was forty years ago today Ed Sullivan had the Beatles play. I remember seeing them for the first time on Ed Sullivan and I remember exactly where I was when I did. I don't remember where I was because of the event, like someone remembering exactly where they were when they first heard Pearl Harbor had been bombed or when they heard John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, or Bobby Kennedy had been shot. I remember the event (the Beatles on Ed Sullivan) because of where I was at the time.

It was the second Sunday in February of 1964 (February 9th) and I was in a bed on one of the wards of Denver's Children's Hospital. About five minutes before the show started a nurse reached up and turned on the TV set perched high on a shelf on the wall of the entrance to the ward. She then switched the channel to CBS. There were 20 kids in 20 beds. Ten beds side by side down one wall and ten beds side by side down the wall on the opposite side of the room. I was in the seventh bed near the end of the row of beds on the right side of the room. Every kid in that room knew who the Beatles were and could not wait to see them. The room was noisy with the chatter of 20 kids excited by what was about to happen. The chatter kept up as the acts before the Beatles performed. We did not care about them we were waiting for the Beatles. Then Ed Sullivan announced, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Beatles!"

I remember leaning forward to see around the kids in the beds between me and the TV. My mother and four other mothers visiting at the time had wandered down to the end of the room where the set was and huddled under it watching the flickering images on the screen. I remember being mesmerized by what I was seeing. These guys looked like no one I had every seen before with their matching collar-less suits, stovepipe pants, pointy boots, and long hair. Then my mother turned her face back to the ward and looked around. (She later said that she turned around because she realized there was total silence behind her. Something she had never heard during her visits before then.) She said urgently to the other mothers, "Look at the kids. Look at their faces."

I pulled my attention away from the screen and looked at everyone else. Every kid was leaning forward like me, some farther forward than others, with mouths open and a look of rapture on their faces. I knew that a moment before I had that same look. I scowled at my mother and sat back, I wasn't there to entertain the grownups.

So, what did I think? With all my vast musical knowledge I decided they weren't that great. Their music at the time would have been considered bubble gum music a few years later. I did not become interested in the Beatles until I heard the songs off the Rubber Soul and Revolver albums. Songs like, Norwegian Wood, Nowhere Man, Eleanor Rigby, Got To Get You Into My Life. But at the same time, something about them that night was mesmerizing. Could it be that every kid in America who watched the Beatles that night subconsciously understood what the Beatles represented? That the times they were a changing.

Just Finished A 9 Hour Torchwood Marathon

I'm Torched.

Kaaan-an-an-as!

Where the wind comes sweeping down the plain
And the wavin' wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain
-From the song Oklahoma by Rodgers and Hammerstein

This is a screenshot from the August 7th 2013 episode of ABC News. As you can see someone did not study a map of the USA before labeling the states on this slide. I also wonder about our educational system as any American child over the age of twelve should be able to distinguish one state from another.  Although, I must admit I probably could no longer  label all the Midwestern states correctly anymore, they were my bugaboo in school, but I do remember being told to check my work before turning it in.

How To Look Like An Idiot On TV

English comedian Russell Brand was on Morning Joe yesterday morning promoting his worldwide comedy tour “Messiah Complex." MSNBC's news anchors Mika Brzezinski and Brian Shactman, along with BBC's Katty Kay, ended up looking like a bunch of airheads by the time it was all over.

It started with Mika Brzezinski's insulting introduction of her guest.

Mika: Alright, joining us now, he's a real big deal, I know, I'm told this. I'm not very pop culture, sorry. Comedian, movie star, author, and host of the show, Brand X, Russell Brand.

What was very interesting to me was how these news anchors deflected anything serious Brand had to say. At the 2:16 minute mark Brand explains what he talks about in his new comedy tour:

Russell Brand: I'm talking about Malcolm X, Che Guevara, Gandhi, and Jesus Christ. And how these figures are significant culturally and how icon are appropriated and used to designate consciousness and meaning, particularly posthumously.

Mika: And what brings all those people together?

Russell Brand: They're all people that died for a cause. They're all people whose icons are used to designate meaning, perhaps not in the manner in which they intended.

Mika: Ooooh, I kind of like that. That sounds dead serious, then.

Russell Brand: Well, it's funny if you do it as a joke.


At the 3:47 mark:

Brian: I’m going to ask a serious question, I’ll try, I’ll try,  everyone asks what do you like better, TV, movies, or standup….

Russell Brand: …There are challenges in all those different disciplines. The thing I enjoy most is stand-up comedy because you're direct with your audience. You can’t be misinterpreted, people can’t get confused. You know what happens if you work in media? People like to, uh, change the information so they assume(?) some particular agenda. If you’re in a room with people then what you’re saying is clear. If you say something that people are confused about you can explain it to them then. If you say something as a joke people can’t pretend you’re saying it serious. So I like having direct communication with people because I believe people are very, very intelligent but the information gets manipulated a lot, people like to cause, you know, fake stirs and stuff.

Brian: Funny, the accent , when I see him in person, it’s totally fine, forget Sarah Marshall or the TV show, it’s fine. But on satellite radio in the car I can’t understand a single joke....

Later when Brand pretends he is a news anchor and begins questioning the others about Edward Snowden and Bradly Manning the others defect his questions and, again, start talking about his accent and other dumb ass stuff.

By the end Brand is taking them to task.

At the 7:47 mark:

Russell Brand: Look beyond the superficial. That's the problem with current affairs. You forget about what's important. You allow the agenda to be decided by superficial information. What am I saying? What am I talking about? Don't think about what I am wearing, these things are redundant. They're superficial.

Mika: I'm distracted....

Yes, Mika, and that is how you and most so-called news shows want the rest of us to be, too.

Ginsberg & Ginsberg

I don't know if you watch Mad Men but I never miss an episode. Last season they introduced a new character, copywriter Michael Ginsberg. Ginsberg is Jewish, very talented (another character in the show calls him lightening in a bottle), and a little nuts. The second I heard his last name I thought of poet Allen Ginsberg and wondered if giving this character the same last name as Allen Ginsberg was done on purpose. Now after watching last Sunday's episode, A Tale of Two Cities, I am sure it is not an accident.

In that episode Michael Ginsberg has a bit of a mental breakdown when asked to make a presentation to a client. He crouches on the floor and hysterically starts babbling about his fears and hallucinations.

I'm not scared, I'm a thug! I'm a pig! I'm part of the problem! Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds!...listen, Man, I can't turn off the transmissions to do harm, they're beaming them right into my head.....

What popped into my own head while listening to him? Poet Allen Ginsberg, of course. Why? Because Allen Ginsberg spent time in a metal hospital and because thinking about Allen Ginsberg led me, inevitably, to thinking about his great poem about madness, Howl; which begins with these words:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked..

Today I reread Howl and this section jumped out at me:

...who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinister intelligent editors, or were run down by the drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,...

I think we can safety say that poor Michael Ginsberg has definitely been run down by Absolute Reality in this episode. The question is will he survive or will one of the best minds at Sterling Cooper & Partners be destroyed by madness?

Calling Doctor Freedman

Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice; pull down your pants and slide on the ice.

Actor Allen Arbus died last Friday at age ninety-five. Although he was not part of the main cast, Arbus was an integral part of the television show M*A*S*H in the role of psychiatrist Doctor Sidney Freedman.

Before he became an actor Mr Arbus was a fashion photography and is credited with giving his wife Diane Arbus her first camera.





Back in 2006, in a bit of Hollywood surrealism, Modern Family actor Ty Burrell played Mr. Arbus in the film Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus.

Allen Alda once said this about Mr. Arbus as Doctor Sidney Freedman, "I was so convinced that he was a psychiatrist, I used to sit and talk with him between scenes."

And that ability to make you believe, ladies and gentleman, is what makes a great actor.


His New York Times obit is here.

Can Spring Be Far Behind?

Woke-up with this theme song playing in my head this morning.



I think I've had enough of Winter.

Mad Men

Season six starts April 7th with a two hour premiere. Read all about it here.

I May Be The Last Time Lord But I Am Never Ever Bored

Muppet parodies!