Got to thinking about Mission: Impossible, the classic series, the cool revival, and the prospect of a respectable Cruise feature at last (third time a charm?). Started surfing around and was stunned to learn that Tony Hamilton died ten years ago. I had no idea! He played Max in the 80s and worked “until his death from complications due to the AIDS virus in March of 1995.” I get really sad when one of my many favorite TV players passes on. Mission’88 should never have been cancelled. The network refused to give it a decent time slot and then leave it alone. It was better than most of what was on the tube at the time, and the Australian locations were fresh. Oh well, here are some other good shows that should’ve been given a better chance to stay on the air: The Yellow Rose (1983), Mancuso, FBI (1989), Ned Blessing: The Story of My Life and Times (1993), The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. (1993), The Byrds of Paradise (1994), and High Incident (1996).
Archive for the ‘Personalities’ Category
Should any of your IM Force be caught or killed
Sunday, May 1st, 2005Various & Sundry, part fifteen
Sunday, May 1st, 2005— Month of April workout totals: Swim-5; Bike-0; Run-4; Lift-0.
— Just when I was determined to boost the frequency of my fitness sessions to get in triathlon shape, the cookie began to crumble, everything hit the fan, the wheels fell off, and the pooch was screwed…
— What do you do with a Jennifer Wilbanks? Has she had time to contemplate what a thoughtless, selfish, and ultimately cruel thing she’s done? On the one hand, you have the family, with the job of loving and nurturing a very mixed-up woman old enough to know better. On the other hand, you have the authorities, with the job of ensuring effective deterrence and managing the limited resources of taxpayers. Court-ordered counseling? A public apology to volunteers? Ample community service among Hispanics? An invoice for the overtime hours clocked by each peace officer involved? Perhaps all of the above… Nevertheless, my hope is that she finds a new direction for her life and in some way learns to put others before herself. May she find the inner strength to use her inadvertent celebrity to do more good than the harm and pain she’s already caused. And one more thing: every sensational media outlet that milks the aftermath should donate the profits to assist the victims and families of actual abductions.
— Maybe I’m thinking about the Wilbanks affair because this morning I met six young people, three men and three women, who are leaving to spend the summer in Russia and Chile helping others have a better life. It’s an adventure into the unknown for them, but I can tell their real motive is to serve—to be Love in action.
— Speed bump. That’s the message from Indianapolis concerning Bruce. He’s still waging war against infection and having his ups and downs. It remains a difficult situation, now that he’s back on drugs that suppress his immune system (to prevent rejection of the transplanted kidney that’s miraculously kicked back in).
Nature abhors a shopvac
Wednesday, April 27th, 2005I spent the day with exterminators (don’t even ask!) and felt my livelihood slide one more notch toward crisis. All I want to do is watch “Alias” and “Eyes,” back to back (the two most entertaining dramas on network television, due to Ron Rifkin and Tim Daly).
Listen; partake not of quotations ye disdaineth, but believe
Monday, April 25th, 2005“Every noble work is at first impossible.” —Carlyle
His transplanted kidney declared a loss, Bruce nevertheless takes up the fight.
“An enterprise, when fairly once begun, should not be left till all that ought is won.” —Shakespeare
Branches of prayer extend as the roots of the faithful deepen.
“A good intention clothes itself with power.” —Emerson
Thirty-eight days later, when renal function is restored, doctors are heard to use the word “miracle.”
“The divine insanity of noble minds, that never falters nor abates, but labors, endures, and waits, till all that it foresees it finds, or what cannot find, creates.” —Longfellow
And to top it all off, a lost hat is restored!
Oldenday VI
Wednesday, April 20th, 2005When I was a preteen, Dadbo brought home a carload of aerospace magazines from work. Did I cut out all the cool pictures of rockets and supersonic aircraft? No… I cut out and saved the marketing symbols and corporate trademarks. I can’t explain it, but I always had an affinity for letters and graphics (the GE emblem on the refrigerator intrigued the heck out of me), but I had no clear comprehension of either the fine or applied arts, any sense of the distinction, or what an artist actually did for a living, other than maybe draw cartoons, paint signs, or think up a few crazy advertising ideas like Darren Stevens. My junior high art teacher had worked as a commercial artist before switching to art education. She didn’t actually instruct me in any specific graphic arts techniques, but I did gain one valuable thing from her—she made sure I understood that commercial art was a viable aspiration for a talented person. But there was something else between the lines, as though it was our secret, this notion that commercial art wasn’t exactly noble, that it wasn’t real art. Hmmm, so what was real art? Didn’t have a clue. Norman Rockwell? For petesake I didn’t even realize who Bob Clampett and Ralph Bakshi were poking fun at when they created a cartoon character called Go Man Van Gogh (the wild beatnik artist on “Beany“). I just knew that I was fascinated by comics and advertising art and loved to study lettering and draw words as pictures. I remember painting the word “ICE” with watercolors, adding the archetypical mounds of snow and ice-cycles around the letters. It was almost a right of passage. Weird, eh? I had four different art teachers in four years of high school. I hate to be unkind but each one of them was worthless. I had talent, so there was no reason to spend time with me. It was more important to babysit the goof-offs who took art as a “cake” elective. No wonder I sent off for the Famous Artists home test. I don’t think I even realized how desperate I’d become. What others might have viewed as crass merchandising was a Godsend for me. The individual attention I got from instructors in far-off Connecticut was something I’d never experienced before. And even though the course introduced me to both the fine and applied arts, there was something about commercial art that made me feel at home. When I saw the classes offered by UC I didn’t get the same electricity from reading about figure drawing, painting, or printmaking like I did from discovering that I could take design fundamentals, typographics, photography and film/animation. I was pumped! I wanted to go to college so bad I turned cocky and couldn’t wait to blow my hometown and head for the big city…
Various & Sundry, part fourteen
Tuesday, April 19th, 2005— It’s a perplexing day when the media decides to focus on the naming of a new pope instead of the monumental story of the year: that Lance Armstrong will retire!
— Joan tells me it’s difficult for her to read this log on her computer because each entry is a single, horribly long horizontal line of text that scrolls endlessly. Must be a problem with her browser settings, and I hope it can be fixed. Don’t stop reading, Sis! I can’t afford to lose 50% of my fan base!
— I have no idea how it ended up in the library of the University of Indiana Medical School, or why it’s on display, but Marty and I couldn’t deny ourselves a close look at the death mask of John Dillinger. It’s got to be one of the creepiest damn things I’ve ever seen, not because of the casting itself, but how it was so amateurishly hand colored. And while we’re on the subject of creepy, you’ll find a whole archive of death masks at Thanatos.net.
— I remember Joe scolding me the time I made a condescending remark about Pookie, explaining that he just needed to find his identity as a dog, and, if we gave him a chance, he would. I never thought about Pookie the same way after that, and now it gives me a bit of pleasure (within the sorrow) to know that he got the second chance that Joe could see and I couldn’t.
— Bruce is breathing on his own and striving to gain the upper hand against his numerous infections. I try to accept how often they put him through yet another test, but that’s just the nature of modern pharmacological care. They try to match the drug to the bug. Dana is by his side at the hospital while I hold the fort at the studio. According to her latest report, he’s able to maintain a good, steady rate of respiration and cough productively, much better that when the ventilator was removed before. They’ve taken away the special bed that rotated and vibrated his chest. The PT seemed pleased that he’d gained strength since the previous therapy. The nephrologist cancelled the scheduled dialysis. Nobody has made an official statement that he won’t require it again, but the kidney numbers are normal. My son is a freakin’ warrior! God bless him up one side and down the other!
Oldenday V
Monday, April 18th, 2005I regret that I didn’t pursue animation. Yeah, I know, it’s not fashionable to have regrets. I suppose there are self-actualized individuals who’ve genuinely reached the point of “no regrets,” but I reckon that with most people who purport to have no regrets, the claim is wishful horseshit. You have regrets when you fail to go after a skill or livelihood that necessitates beginning when you’re still young. For me it’s sailing, horseback riding, martial arts, and animation. Don’t get me wrong; it’s never too late to start doing anything you’re passionate about, but you have to face the fact that there are certain things that require a lifetime to get good at. Now I admit it’s true that Yukio Mishima didn’t start to train in the martial arts until he was 40, and still became a kendo adept, but he also flipped out and disemboweled himself in public, so I don’t think I’ll suggest him as a role model. There have been rare exceptions among artists (like Grandma Moses? Who else?), but the fact is I made choices that removed me from the world of animation, even though I’d art-directed a corporate animation for Rand-McNally at the age of 24 and had come to the attention of Chicago’s top animator. It’s not complicated—I out-smarted myself and stopped animating, just like Dadbo decided to become an engineer instead of pursuing veterinary medicine. Regrets don’t have to be debilitating, but most likely there will be something you’ll abandon and wish later you hadn’t. Just make sure it isn’t one of the “big things.” Never turn away from your true passions. So… I can’t sail, cycling is the closest I get to real riding, I’m still an Aikido white belt, and I’ve learned to live without animation, even though I still dream of having gotten rather good at it. I contemplate taking the time to study Tex Avery, Jay Ward, the TerryToons, and all the classic cartoon arts or immerse myself in the works of Jordan Belson, Saul Bass, or Hayao Miyazaki. Fortunately I still hold on to my greatest touchstone. I continue to draw with my own hand…
Oldenday IV
Sunday, April 17th, 2005You would have thought that I’d get at least one decent art teacher during my years in high school. No dice. And so I continued my bizarre attempt at artistic cultivation. I developed my own comic book characters, illustrated home-grown stories, and advanced my “Wanted Posters” into a state that was clearly an attempt at pushing my facial skills as far as I could handle without proper training. Nobody had ever told me about anatomy or life drawing. I absorbed the daily comics (I hated “Dondi” but studied the drawing). The unique intro to The Wild Wild West and the long-forgotten Lone Ranger animated series fascinated me. I became more and more interested in animation. I poured over the drawings of political artists—Herblock, Hugh Haynie, and Paul Conrad. I entertained the notion that I wanted to be an editorial cartoonist, and wrote letters to prominent exponents of the art form. But then something happened that would change everything. I saw an an advertisement from the Famous Artist School and responded. A representative actually paid a visit to our home and I begged my parents to let me give it a shot—the correspondence course that would give me the art instruction that I’d never managed to acquire. They said, “Okay,” and I will forever be grateful for this simple consent to expose me to legitimate art educators. I acknowledge now that the home-study “Course for Talent Young People” was an experiment, an attempt to market the successful adult course to a younger market. That meant nothing to me at the time. This was the school endorsed by Norman Rockwell! How could they deny me this opportunity? Well, they didn’t, even though my Mom had to cajole me into keeping up with the lessons. But a sea change had occurred. I was formally introduced to the world of art at last, fine and applied, and I was soon ready to make an informed decision about the direction of my artistic development. When my grandmother gave me a bulletin of classes from the University of Cincinnati, I was ready to choose a course of action—commericial art. No surprise. This was it! Everything else fell to the wayside…
Oldenday III
Friday, April 15th, 2005I don’t know if I really liked school as a kid, but rather accepted it as my fate. It did have one nice thing going for it—ample opportunity to draw. Because we were Catholics, we went to school six days a week, although the Saturday religious instruction (catechism) was only in the morning, which wasn’t so bad because we were used to it, and we got to hang out with our top chums, the Vagedes boys. But maybe the best thing about Saturday mornings was that we got a comic book. I didn’t know that Treasure Chest wasn’t “cool.” I looked forward to the wholesomely didactic magazine (given out one per family before we went home each Saturday morning) because it was a comic book. Super heroes would come later. “Treasure Chest” introduced me to the longer pictorial narrative form and the art of the visual cliffhanger. Looking back on it, the staff that produced it was clearly packed with talent. I never saw another issue of it after 1964. With the move to a new town, a few dimes to spend, and the proximity of my junior high school to a retail rack of Superman, Batman, and Aquaman, I made the seismic shift to the world of DC Comics. Other than being shown how to use pastel chalk by family friend Mr. Smalley, I still had received no direct exposure to fine arts instruction. I was almost a teen, and I’d had no educator who could demonstrate to me genuine artistic technique, even though I’d had a series of teachers who rather negligently but wholeheartedly supported my effort to become self-taught. And so I continued with my own strange mix of preferred influences: Reed Crandall, Doug Wildey, Bob Clampett, Alfred Andriola, Curt Swan, Bob Kane, and Frank Frazetta. Actually, I could have chosen much worse…
Just keep going
Friday, April 8th, 2005It’s now hitting me that it’s rather dangerous to enter the IU medical library and sit down in front of a keyboard, given my internal whirl of emotions and a state of French-roast-induced mental hyperventilation. Oh well, here goes…
Even in the year 2005, at one of the top hospitals in the Midwest, medical decision makers still don’t routinely punch catheters into a sick man’s torso and drain it like a dirty crankcase. They have to seriously think about it first. And then they have to assemble a crack professional team. Neither will they go in blind, but insist on using precise, x-ray imaging to guide them. That’s why Bruce had to endure yet another wait as technicians fiddled with the CT scanner.
But over the next few hours an astonishing sequence unfolded. After coming through surgery (with multi-hued banners rippling in the wind), he was soon off the IV sedation, breathing on his own, and writing truncated notes on the paper he’d asked for with sign language. By evening his ventilator tubes had been removed and he was insightfully recounting his ordeal. When we marveled at his vocabulary he dismissed it with a quip: “For all you know, Art Buchwald could be in the next cubicle.” I was moved not only by the return of his wit, but by all the other honest, pure-hearted expressions that he earnestly and meticulously communicated to each of us who paid a visit.
He told us that he wanted, more than ever, to view “The Passion of the Christ,” so he could be reminded of someone who had suffered more than he.
I am indeed proud of my courageous son and how he persevered though his silent trial and emerged with love, optimism, humility, wisdom, and good manners. I think it was Winston Churchill who said, “If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
Oldenday I
Saturday, April 2nd, 2005Although my mom provided a truly rich atmosphere for mental play and my dad revealed for me his familiar world of nature, I look back at times with wonder and some amusement that I ever arrived at any sort of creative legitimacy, given the odd character of my early visual stimuli. I always had chalk and my own blackboard, and was given free reign to inhabit the world of my own imagination, sharing it with a captive sibling audience. I suppose we were rather sheltered. It was no surprise they thought I was a real artist. I recall almost no access to books with “serious” artwork. A bound collection of Currier and Ives reproductions was about as close as it got. I don’t remember any childhood visits to art museums or even going to a library before attending school. There was really nothing about art to learn on television, except for the exposure to Walt Disney, or a glimpse of illustrations in the books read by Captain Kangaroo, or, eventually, Jon Gnagy’s “Learn to Draw.” At least I understood that Yogi Bear and the Flintstones wasn’t about art. We didn’t get a daily newspaper. And so it was a monumental event in my life when Uncle Art delivered a stack of Saturday Evening Post magazines and a year’s worth of old Sunday comics. I must not have had a bit of interest in anything else until it was fully absorbed. For a time, that was the pinnacle: Walt Kelly, Al Capp, Milton Caniff, and, of course, those magnificent Rockwell covers…
Various & Sundry, part thirteen
Friday, April 1st, 2005— Month of March workout totals: Swim-7; Bike-3; Run-3; Lift-7.
— Time to boost my running and cycling mileage. Plenty of mild weather ahead; no more excuses for the recent pitiful stats.
— Today at my Rotary luncheon I sat next to a retired English professor who’d served on a nearby ship during the battle for Iwo Jima. It caused me to think of Josh, with the profound hope that in 60 years, he, too, might be enjoying a pleasant meal with his friends.
— We’ll be heading back to Indiana tomorrow to visit Bruce. His ongoing exhaustion remains a concern to us. We can’t overlook the steady improvement, though, even if the pace has been tortuous.
— Stalin supposedly scoffed, “How many divisions does the Pope have?” More than adequate, as we’ve come to see, with the collapse of Soviet Communism in the 1980s, due in part to the bold stand for human freedom taken by this Polish priest turned world leader.
Seeing Danny
Thursday, March 31st, 2005March goes out
like a lamb (he pronounces too smugly).
What a glorious day to walk to campus and swim my first laps since making the decision to switch from the Wellness Center pool. I saw a friend on the way, so we chatted, although I should correct myself and point out that a conversation with Danny can hardly be called a “chat.” In 10 to 15 minutes we touched on Bruce’s ordeal, prayer, grace, the soul, despair, suicide, Socrates, Hunter S. Thompson, Hemingway, St John of the Cross, the death of Terri Schiavo, eternity, Thomas à Kempis, and the origins of monastic life. There’s never been time for “small talk” when Danny and I see each other, which isn’t often enough. When I got to Centre the water temperature and chlorine level were just right. The sun was pouring through the skylights. Even the shower-head couldn’t have been in more satisfactory adjustment. When I tested the speed of my freestyle stroke, I matched my personal-best, single-lap sprint time. Perfection.
Various & Sundry, part twelve
Friday, March 25th, 2005— I woke up this morning with a distinct phrase in my mind: magnesium fusion triggers. Look, I don’t drive the thing. I’m just ridin’ shotgun…
— Marty called last night and we talked about a subject that’s totally captured his excitement, the new Sony PS Portable. Hey, you’re allowed to get excited about something like this when you’re thirteen. For me, at that age, it was probably Art Linkletter’s “The Game of Life,” or something like that. However, I can’t help but think of this quote from Ben Stein: “I tremble for the day that the next generation has to provide for themselves with what they have learned from their video games.” Relax, Ben. They’ve probably learned more than I ever learned from watching too many hours of “The Avengers,” “The Prisoner,” “Hawaii Five-0” and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.”
— From what I can discern through the Associated Press, Josh and his 623rd Field Artillery unit was with the convoy that came under attack on Sunday morning, but it stayed with the trucks during the battle and sustained no casualties (from a Bruce Schreiner byline story).
— The new brochure we created for the Brass Band Festival is a major hit, according to our friend who’s retiring as director of the Visitor’s Bureau. I told her I hoped our work makes a good impression with her successor. She said she thought it would and will put in a good word for us. Sounds promising, but the new person brings strong connections to her former employer, a previous client of ours turned competitor. All I can do is stay positive and make my case at the appropriate time. I’d insert a link to the Festival, but the site is just too ugly. Wait a second! This is a job for Website Makeover™ Man!
— Dana and I are heading back up to Indy today to check on Bruce. Normally I have my Rotary Club meeting, but we’re dismissed for Good Friday, so we’ll deal with any urgent matters in the studio and then hit the road before it gets too late.
— I decided to google for “magnesium fusion triggers” and found myself reading an overview at GlobalSecurity.org about special weapons facilities on the Indian subcontinent. OK, so what am I supposed to be more scared of, the metastasis of the World Wide Web, unchecked nuclear proliferation in South Asia, or my own dadburn subconscious?
Various & Sundry, part eleven
Thursday, March 24th, 2005— Now that the corner has been turned, and Bruce’s life has been preserved, he faces a difficult future, short- and long-term. A tough row to hoe, as they say. Today it appears as though the doc has given up on salvaging his transplanted kidney—too little function, too much chronic deterioration. This means more dialysis, a process which Bruce grew to loath, and will surely dread to accept back into his life on any regular basis. It may be several more hours before his awareness clears enough for him to evaluate his choices (or lack thereof). He’s being moved from intensive care to progressive care, and taken off anti-rejection drugs, narcotics, steroids, and sedatives, plus he’ll be down to a single tube—oxygen. One of the reasons they doped him is because he became combative and ripped out the nasal/gastric tube at least twice (as I might have, too, had I been in his situation). Or maybe I have that backwards (side effects of medication causing aggressive behavior and colorful use of language). In any case, the outlook is encouraging, but I’ll keep up my prayers. It’s likely that there will be more bumps in the road…
— If I came up with an idea for a new method of capital punishment—slow death by starvation—would it be declared cruel and unusual? If authorities came into your home and discovered all the pets were dead, would they say, “…within his rights—slow death by starvation.”? Sorry, just thinking rhetorically here. (Did I do the punctuation correctly on that?) “…I can’t imagine why, the world has time enough to cry.”
— As an avid watcher of Brian Lamb’s “Booknotes,” I was disappointed when he wrapped the 800-show series on C-SPAN. Listening to writers talk about writing makes me want to write. Listening to politicians talk about politics doesn’t make me want to run for office. Listening to artists talk about art definitely makes me want to make art. Now the only other good interview show with the classic all-black set is Charlie Rose. I think Rose is at his best when he’s talking to artists. Not that he doesn’t demonstrate the same level of skill when interviewing journalists and politicians, but I guess he tends to insert more opinions that sometimes irritate me. His recent conversation with Daniel Day-Lewis and his astonishingly brilliant and beautiful wife, Rebecca Miller (daughter of the late Arthur Miller), was just about as good as television ever gets. How in the world does he get these creative people to relax and describe the inexpressible aspects of their talent and craft? His style is totally different than Lamb’s, but they both make it look so easy. Not the performance (if that’s what you can call it), but the technique of coaxing the guest to say things that are genuinely interesting. I made the mistake of watching a perfunctory interview with Clint Eastwood, leading up to the Oscars, and the interviewer managed to avoid steering him to a single topic that was remotely enlightening… quite a feat, actually.
Political passion trumps good manners once again
Wednesday, March 23rd, 2005Bruce has experienced the medical turnaround that he needed. Somebody’s been praying out there, and you know who you are! His wife, mother, and sister have been at his side, with so many others close to him in spirit. Today’s news is so much better than it’s been since Monday. Although I’m sure it was nothing compared to Dana’s ordeal, yesterday was a rather exhausting day for me emotionally, and not made any better by someone who called to ask about Bruce, and then, when the subject turned to my nephew Josh’s situation, launched into a scathing denunciation of the President of the United States and his Iraq policy. Even if I’d had the inclination or energy to disagree (which I certainly did not), what could I possibly have said to affect an opinion impervious to what others have already stated so ably in support of winning the war… others more influential than me, such as John McCain or Joe Lieberman; or more intellectually gifted than me, such as Jonah Goldberg or Christopher Hitchens; or more deeply thoughtful than me, such as Tom Friedman or Ben Stein? And for cryin’ out loud, it just wasn’t a decent time to kick-start that old debate.
Now (tough) vs later (really tough)
Friday, March 18th, 2005I saw part of an interview with
Dennis Quaid. The other person, referring to scenes from a recent movie, remarked that he was in great physical shape for his age. Now, let’s put aside the fact that a Hollywood star can devote months of preparation before going in front of a camera, including personal trainers, nutritional advisors, plus hours a day in the gym leading up to a shooting schedule. Nevertheless, Quaid said something in response which was pretty powerful: “I got fit in my twenties and I never really let myself get out of shape.”
Important note to young people of either gender: It’s much easier to maintain youthful fitness than to rebuild it later in life after its been lost. Even if you haven’t been an athlete, it’s much easier to get in shape in your twenties and work to preserve it, versus putting it off until later, when you inevitably begin to dislike how your body is aging.
This may sound like a lecture, but uncles are allowed to instruct now and then, especially when it’s based on direct experience. Trust me, everybody over the age of 40 wants to be in good shape. It’s just a matter of whether you have a 20-year momentum to work with, or whether you have to start basically from scratch.
The world of Randas Batista
Tuesday, March 15th, 2005You don’t have to explore the Web very long to discover a site that’s distinctive, substantive, and full of talent—
Jeffrey Luke’s Brazil Diary is one of them…
Various & Sundry, part ten
Saturday, March 12th, 2005— We had no business doing it, but we purchased a DVD recorder for our TV/cable configuration at home. Dana’s testing it out today. My question is this: If I’m supposed to transfer my entire collection of Mission: Impossible from VHS to DVD in order to save space, does that mean I get to watch all of it during the dubbing?
— Last night Dana and I made pizza, opened a bottle of Australian Merlot (Black Swan), and celebrated 27 years since our first date. Positioned precisely six months across the calendar from our wedding anniversary, this special observation enables us to have two celebrations each year that honor our enduring partnership in all things.
— After hearing a remark by Charles Murray that the movie Groundhog Day is an “Aristotlelian moral fable” of profound significance that will stand the test of time as a great work of art, Dana and I watched it again and enjoyed it enormously. Yes, I’m aware that among some people, Murray (no relation to Bill) has a negative reputation (unfair, in my opinion), but how can a guy who lists P.J. O’Rourke and James Clavell among his favorites be all bad?
For all those forunate enough to read this
Friday, March 11th, 2005I can never explain exactly how these odd exercises get started, but it germinated while Dana and I were watching C-SPAN during breakfast. It took root in the shower and before long I was compelled to complete my list.
— — —
THE 30 MOST INFLUENTIAL MEDIA INNOVATORS OF MY LIFETIME
Edward R. Murrow, Ted Turner, Brian Lamb, Rush Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch
Ronald Reagan, Don Hewitt, Steve Allen, Ben Bradlee, Matt Drudge
Oprah Winfrey, Roone Arledge, Jack Anderson, Phil Donahue, Johnny Carson
Woodward/Bernstein, Garrison Keillor, Huntley/Brinkley, Lorne Michaels, Lucille Ball/Desi Arnez
Tom Wolfe, Barbara Walters, Walter Chronkite, Al Neuharth, MacNeil/Lehrer
Mike Royko, Jeff McNelly, Bob Edwards, Charles Schultz, Norman Lear
— — —
For reasons I can’t explain to myself, I’ve left out the world of cinema, music, theater, and pure entertainment (the full spectrum of mass media). There seemed a need to have an overall public affairs orientation to it. Each figure meets the requirement of both influence and innovation, although some are weighted more to one than the other. Yes, it gets shakier and more subjective as I move down the list, and I’d be interested in the opinion of others. It wouldn’t be that hard to expand it to 50 names, to find room for many others worthy of consideration, such as: Jacques Cousteau, Ken Burns, Jann Wenner, Clay Felker, Charles Kuralt, Jim Henson, Paul Conrad, Malcolm Forbes, Daniel Shore, and Roger Mudd, etc., etc.
What do you think? Did I neglect the obvious? Who would you strike? Who would you add?
If you like this kind of history-of-mass-media material you’ll like the cybernewseum.
Damn. Some people probably get paid for thinking up stuff like this.
! ! !
One Earth Tour comes to Danville
Wednesday, March 9th, 2005The rhythmic perfection and exuberant athleticism of the KODO performance at Centre last night was powerful, mesmerizing, and deeply satisfying. I knew the word “Kodo” from my book by Kensho Furuya (Kodo: Ancient Ways— Lessons in the Spiritual Life of the Warrior/Martial Artist), but I wasn’t sure whether it literally meant “Ancient Ways.” The KODO artists boldly but reverently exalt “Taiko,” the traditional Japanese drum, which is the ancient symbol of rural Japan. Their musical interpretations connect at a fundamental human level that must be experienced to fully appreciate.
Trivia: What television theme features the Taiko? Answer.
The account of Don Andrés Serrano
Sunday, March 6th, 2005I’m reading what seems to me to be a jewel of a book by the poet and writing scholar Robert Graves. It’s called “The Islands of Unwisdom,” a novel of Spanish colonization in the South Pacific that takes place roughly in the same time period as Clavel’s “Shogun.” I don’t know very much about Graves other than he was a contemporary at Oxford of Tolkien and Lewis, but apparently had a less than admirable private life. He supposedly dismissed his historical novels as mere thrillers, but I find “Islands” quite captivating. I have no appetite for sentimentality in historical fiction, prefer it to be based on actual characters who lived, and enjoy insights into the clash of cultures, especially East and West. This work fits nicely into that niche, and I may also investigate his “Count Belisarius.”