Archive for the ‘Television’ Category
Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006
One of these days we’ve just got to dig out all of Mombo’s photos of the “Blackboard Comics.” How many years has it been? Quite possibly it could take forensic expertise to read the dialogue.
Just in case you aren’t familiar with this long-running series, it just happens to be one of the most awesome collaborative formats ever conceived. Anyone in the vicinity above the age of six is invited to add a frame to an evolving pictorial narrative until the evolving chalk drawing has filled it’s designated space, followed by prompt documentation before anyone in the vicinity under the age of six follows his or her urge to be similarly creative.
There’s nothing like drawing with real chalk on real slate. It’s in my blood. On New Year’s Day we decided to mess with perfection and develop our strip in reverse. It was a space-western vignette, of course, due to the prevailing supremacy of a certain defunct TV show.
Posted in Creativity, Family, Mombo, Television | Comments Closed
Saturday, December 31st, 2005
• The issue of a nuclear Iran fully ignites as a major global crisis and precipitates some type of military action before the end of the year.
— reference
• Despite the conventional wisdom that Academy members won’t choose two portrayals of dead musicians back to back, long-shot Joaquin Phoenix takes home an Oscar for his Johnny Cash performance when Hoffman, Strathairn, and Ledger split the “progressive” votes.
— reference
• Voters, upset with a blatantly hypocritical broadening of investigations into the governor’s partisan supporters, cast ballots to further reduce the number of Democrats in the Kentucky House.
— reference
• Aggragetors and reading lists for RSS feeds will hit a tipping point of mass appeal in the same way that Web logs did in 2005, making blogs an even more popular “spectator sport.”
— reference
• Senator Clinton enters the autumn with such an insurmountable lead in funding over Kerry, Edwards, and her other opponents that the media acknowledges her inevitable nomination and shifts its attention to who might successfully challenge her on the Republican side, leaving the door open for Bayh to exploit her “frontrunner” status and surge in polls by the end of the year.
— reference
• Critics shower Tom Cruise with praise for finally “getting it right” with his decision to put the fate of his M:I franchise in the hands of “Alias” creator J.J. Abrams, and the partners follow their summer box-office smash with an announcement that Abrams will scrap “Alias” to develop a new “Mission: Impossible” television series starring Ving Rhames as the team leader, with “the voice” of the mission controller to be Cruise himself.
— reference
Posted in Current Events, Movies, Personalities, Political Affairs, Presidency, Technology, Television | Comments Closed
Sunday, December 25th, 2005
• Nobody can recite the Holy Bible like Charlton Heston, and I do mean nobody. Christmas morning isn’t set until I watch his performance of the Nativity verses, filmed at the ruins of a Roman amphitheater. Sometimes I just want to shut my eyes and listen to the masterful shift of his voice characterization from Angel to Blessed Virgin to Shepherd to Magi to the 12-year-old Jesus in the temple doing “my father’s business.” And I always enjoy how he portrays the angel telling Joseph that Herod “is dead,” almost as if the heavenly being takes grim satisfaction in the opportune demise.
• My TV-Show Fantasy Wish List for Santa: I want a sprawling hacienda like Big John Cannon’s, on a ranch like The Yellow Rose, with a horse just like Jason McCord’s, and a fully stocked pull-down gun panel like the one James West had. When I need to be in the city, I’d like a Robin Masters Ferrari so I can commute to my urban pad, just like the apartment Jim Phelps lived in, with a big John Gnagy studio attached, plus a closet with an Alexander Mundy wardrobe. I suppose that’ll do for this year, Santa, unless you want to toss in a hovercraft, custom-built by Benton Quest. I’ve been really, really nice.
• I don’t know how long ago the “Oyster-Stew Eve” tradition began, but now it wouldn’t be Christmas for me without it. We gathered once again last night at Mombo’s, and it was a full house with all the Hellyers in attendance. Bubb played the temperamental stew chef, but his main course was superb as usual. I could have done without the bizarre homily that gushed on about everyone’s favorite computer racketeer earning his media sainthood. Oh well, there’s got to be a reason church hierarchs would exile a pastor to the boondocks of rural Kentucky. After what I’ve learned about the downfall of the precious parish in Richmond, nothing is going to surprise me about the bewildering judgments of those running an institutional religion that long ago lost its way. Give me a simple family Christmas Eve, with loving hugs, wall-to-wall cousins, Yorkies under foot, Jaybon’s vino, mud room goodbyes, and the lasting brilliance of a Dadbo who combined the sleep-inducing benefits of warm milk for the kiddoes, with a dose of aphrodisiac for Mr. and Mrs. Claus.
Posted in Community, Dadbo, Family, Food, Holidays, Jay, Jerome, Mombo, Personalities, Scripture, Television, Wine | Comments Closed
Friday, December 16th, 2005
In the past 40 years, the very best broadcast television series—with the notable exceptions of Mission: Impossible and Seinfeld—have all been Western hybrids:
The Wild Wild West (western/espionage)
Kung Fu (western/martial arts)
The Yellow Rose (western/soap)
Ned Blessing: The Story of My Life and Times (western/literary)
The Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (western/fantasy)
And now, wholeheartedly, I can add another to my list—
Firefly (western/science fiction)
Well, to be accurate, perhaps not the very best from an objective standpoint, but my top favorites. You have to keep in mind that I have unusual tube tastes, and I’ve also never had premium cable channels like HBO, so I’ve yet to see an episode of The Sopranos, wasn’t able to follow the anthology series Dead Man’s Gun, or have had an opportunity to watch the currently running, critically acclaimed Deadwood.
Lonesome Dove might be the best evidence that the viewing public will always respond to a well-made, well-marketed Western (but that was just a mini-series, and made over 15 years ago, now that I think about it). It’s possible that the 20-year drumbeat of Gunsmoke scripts (better add Bonanza to that) sucked the life out of the genre for the mass audience, forcing it to mutate to survive. In that sense, the Western has never gone away, but diversified for niche audiences. The problem is that television, even in the age of cable/satellite channels and the explosion of niche marketing in just about every other realm of business, still hasn’t learned how to reap success with smaller segments of loyal consumers of entertainment. Notice how many of my favorite shows were cancelled prematurely, if not in a preposterously capricious manner.
This should finally change forever with the maturity of the Internet.
I hope I live long enough to watch Con-Geeki, that really good Frontier Polynesian Interstellar Grifter Comedy I’ve always longed for.
Posted in Business, Television | Comments Closed
Thursday, December 8th, 2005
— At tonight’s local GOP Christmas reception, several Republican heavy hitters put on a full-court press, trying to convince me to run for public office in 2006. It’s nice to know I’m on the short list, but the timing couldn’t be worse.
— While we’re on the subject of politics, I was happy to learn that Seth was elected Governor for the 2006 session of the Kentucky Youth Assembly (YMCA). Couldn’t have happened to a better man. Congratulations!
— I surprised myself at the pool today, coming within a second of my 50-yard PR. I haven’t even been practicing my sprints lately, so I don’t know what to make of it.
— Just had to hit the chuck wagon for second helpings, watching the “Firefly” pilot again to catch things I missed on the first viewing. I realize now that I was totally hooked by the time Kaylee got shot and willingly chomped down hard on the barb when I saw Zoe with her “mare’s leg.” I guess Joss Whedon has my number, and Brendan was the first to know it!
— Although I’ve never included John Lennon on my list of personal heroes, when I look back on his art, cultural innovations, and powerful position as a generational role model, I have to consider that he probably had a more profound influence on my life than I’d care to admit. 25 years?
— Bruce is dealing with some post-op pain, but says he’s feeling better every day. They took out the “rubber band drain” in his back, another good indication of progress. I hope he improves enough to be settled back in his home by Christmas.
V & S
Posted in Brendan, Exercise, Family, Firearms, Personalities, Political Affairs, Public Service, Television | Comments Closed
Wednesday, December 7th, 2005
We watched the “Firefly” pilot last night. This is from the box that Brendan loaned to us, and I want him to kindly tell me this is not the only group of available episodes.
There’s got to be more than this one little packet.
Please, please tell me there are more…
Posted in Brendan, Television | Comments Closed
Tuesday, December 6th, 2005
Dana and I decided to just go all the way with a “biopic grand slam,” and so we borrowed “Ray” from the library. Every so often I watch an Oscar-winner at work (Nicolas Cage in “Leaving Las Vegas” comes to mind) and I think, “Is this truly a performance that deserved an Academy Award?” This was definitely not one of those times. I’ll leave it to others more gifted than me to characterize Jamie Foxx’s phenomenal achievement.
As far as the movie goes, it makes “Beyond the Sea” look anemic by comparison—the difference between an obvious indie project and a big commercial picture with the highest production values. “Ray” is one of the best sounding Hollywood products in recent memory. The sound mixers deserved their awards every bit as much as the lead actor. Superbly directed, designed, and edited, the film is a technical masterpiece, but was it a better picture than “Million Dollar Baby?” No—because Clint delivers the full package that your heart is yearning for when you choose a movie like this. “Ray” has its moments—quite a few, and they’re exceptional—but failed to sustain a deep emotional connection for me. I cared more about whether Johnny Cash overcame his addiction in “Walk the Line,” and I really don’t think it was a function of who Ray Charles was or how good a job Jamie Foxx did.
I’ll continue to contemplate the similarities and contrasts of the four musical biographies I’ve discussed in my last two entries, and why one or another excelled in a particular area. In any case, each one of them is well worth the time, but now I plan to accept a couple new assignments in the spare-time department—the complete “Firefly” collection plus an early Paul Watkins novel…
Posted in Craftsmanship, Dana, Fiction, Movies, Music, Personalities, Television | Comments Closed
Monday, November 21st, 2005
Yesterday I went to church at the Salvation Army, which inspired me to write a Thanksgiving prayer, so I treated myself to a sandwich at my neighborhood hang and wrote it out. I saw Tim and Jo Ann, learning that they’d been able to buy the infamous “Banker’s House” on Perryville Road and were in the midst of moving. They said that if they didn’t do it before the holiday, they might be too busy until January (Jo Ann) or April (Tim). Yep, that sounds about right for those two. I wondered how far into seven digits the sticker price climbed. They asked me how Bruce was doing. Given Tim’s long, long recovery from his accident, these are two people who understand the meaning of “slow progress.”
Afterwards I puttered around at home, taped plastic around the air conditioner in the mud room, and managed to fit in a nice cross-country run on Mack‘s Trails with Milton and Jim before joining the Strocks for an evening of relaxation. Terie invited me to share a delicious birthday dinner for Marty—venison chili with cornbread and salad, followed by cake and ice cream (mounds of it!), plus a DVD thriller with Kathryn Morris.
Later on, Marty and I both realized we were still in front of the tube watching, for no reason, a Will Ferrell movie with Mike Ditka that stunk to high heaven—because we politely assumed the other wanted to—so we promptly re-adjourned in front of the PS2, enabling the Galactic Empire to capture Hoth, the ice planet, and closed our night with a burst of energy.
Moral of the story— If you’re going to eat two bowls of chili, birthday cake and Breyers, be sure to run hills for five miles first.
Or maybe eight.
Posted in Birthdays, Exercise, Family, Food, Friends, Home, Marty, Movies, Personalities, Playtime, Prayer, Television | Comments Closed
Wednesday, November 16th, 2005
“List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now. Post these instructions in your Livejournal along with your seven songs. Then tag (at least) seven other people to see what they’re listening to.”
1. Sibelius: Violin Concerto, Op. 47 — Jascha Heifetz and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra
2. Tchaikovsky: Manfred Symphony, Op. 58 — Riccardo Chailly and the Concertgebouw Orchestra
3. Fauré: Requiem — Charles Dutoit and the Orchestre Symphonique de Montréal
4. Grieg: Sigurd Jorsalfar, Op. 22— Neeme Järvi and the Göteborgs Symfoniken
5. Romances for Saxophone — Branford Marsalis and the English Chamber Orchestra
6. Best of Mission: Impossible, Then and Now — Original TV Soundtracks by Lalo Schifrin and John E. Davis
7. That’s All There Is — Eric Copeland (Cooler)
I actually doubt if there are seven people who read this Weblog (and most of those who do have already been tagged), but, regardless of that, I’d like to know what music these clansfolk and friends are currently enjoying…
• Marty S
• Seth D
• Nic D
• Kristi H
• Josh D
• Holly H
• Rita D
• Lee S
• Andrew W
• Alyx D
• Jerome D
Posted in Family, Friends, Music, Personalities, Television | Comments Closed
Wednesday, October 19th, 2005
Almost two weeks ago Joan alerted me to E-Ring and thought it might be shaping up as a 21st-century COMBAT! replacement. I finally got around to watching the last half of it tonight. It has a dynamite ensemble cast, but the minutes I saw were a far cry from the classic WWII squad series that starred Vic Morrow and Rick Jason back in the 60s. The best surprise was to see that Kelly Rutherford had surfaced again. If Joan had told me about KR being on the show, THAT would’ve gotten my immediate attention!
Posted in Family, Joan, Personalities, Television | Comments Closed
Tuesday, September 27th, 2005
Joan and I joked on Saturday about coming to the HUB as a couple of beatniks on open-mike night. That made us think about the demise of Bob Denver, who we remember as Maynard (to most of America he was Gilligan). Don Adams passed away yesterday. The back-to-back deaths of these 60s-comedy icons got me to thinking about how far we’ve travelled since sitting in front of the tube as adolescents. “Get Smart” was a cool, funny show, Agent 99 had sex appeal to spare, and I never felt self-conscious about watching it. It won Emmys, like our favorite drama, “Mission: Impossible.” On the other hand, wasting your time watching a show like Gilligan’s Island” was inexcusable. Mombo would scold us for being glued to the TV set. Shows like Denver’s became known as “glue” in our household, and you couldn’t deny the obvious if stuck in one. There weren’t a lot of choices if you felt like watching television in the 60s, and even after all these years, it’s hard to believe I allowed myself to “glue down” and watch so much junk like that. Now they’re called classics, and people in Hollywood trip over each other remaking them as major motion pictures.
Posted in Family, Mombo, Movies, Personalities, Television | Comments Closed
Wednesday, September 21st, 2005
After tasting my smoked salmon again, I decided that it
didn’t come out so badly (it should get better with some
practice). I unpacked, reorganized, and sorted through my
email. Read over and thought about the report James
prepared on Mombo’s Trust. Got a nice reply from Kyle (no,
by Heaven, he’s not a God-cursed Spaniard!) and learned
that BCA accomplished his assigned missions. Checked out
the “Invasion” pilot on ABC. Wasted my time; it stunk…
Posted in Family, Food, James, Mombo, Television | Comments Closed
Tuesday, August 9th, 2005
Walie wanted to play with toys all day. APS replaced our crashed hard drive with an even bigger one. I had a 150-yard PR time in the pool during my midday workout. The American economy continues to grow. I solved the cascading style sheets problem in the preliminary Website for Kentucky Trust Company. Dana had an informative talk with a local man who recovered from a case of pancreatitis worse than what Bruce has. Seth helped me put the finishing touches on “Pirate Revenge,” the final segment of my goofy “Houseboat Trilogy” (originated as a teen not much older than he). Discovery landed safely and the astronauts held a press conference. Josh had another night’s sleep at the Blue Bank Farm.
Posted in Creativity, Current Events, Dana, Exercise, Family, Mombo, Movies, Pets, Pirates, Space, Studio, Technology, Television | Comments Closed
Wednesday, August 3rd, 2005
Live helmet-cam coverage on C-SPAN 2 of a complex, unrehearsed spacewalk by two astronauts, requiring the coordinated efforts of the Shuttle Discovery crew, the International Space Station crew, and Johnson Space Center controllers—with one spacewalker pausing at the end to visually scan the surface of California until he was able to detect his hometown. (“My Goodness, what a long road from there to here…”) For a lifetime space-program geek, it just doesn’t get much better than that!
Posted in Current Events, Space, Technology, Television | Comments Closed
Monday, August 1st, 2005
— Month of July workout totals: Swim-7; Bike-5; Run-7; Lift-0; Yoga-0.
— The yew shrubs (taxus) in front of our porch had gotten totally out of control the past couple years. I figured I needed to either yank them out or do something radical with their appearance. On Saturday I sat and stared at one of them for half an hour, and then I attacked it with my old lopping shears. We’d seen pictures of how landscapers sculpt these bushes in the oriental style, then began to notice examples (Chicago, Cincinnati) in proximity to “Arts and Crafts” residential architecture. It was worth a try. I was pleased with the result, especially after I used shoe polish to camouflage the pruning scars. I have no idea how old these plants are, but they’ve reached nearly six feet in height and have to be dealt with.
— Bruce is doing better, now that he’s back in the hospital. It’s hard for me to see how they could discharge him last week without ensuring the continuity of treatment essential for his improvement. Much of the routine care he needed fell into disarray or was changed. If it hadn’t been for family…
— While Dana was having her Indianapolis adventure, I was trying my hand at topiary arts, making more stabs at getting back into triathlon condition, and spending some time at David’s range with my two carbines. The 1894s clobbered my shoulder until I learned to hold it correctly. David helped me take off the scope that Dadbo put on it, and that restored it to the desired simplicity. I’ve decided to learn to use this nice rifle with the naked eye. I don’t think I’d ever be comfortable with scope hunting, so I don’t intend to start that. If I can’t get a kill shot with open sights I intend to let the moment pass. The .30-caliber M1 was fun to sight in and proved to be far more accurate than I was expecting, probably due to the influence of some negative Rick Jason remarks published in a book about the “Combat!” series. Or maybe I just happened to get a particularly good example of the WWII-era design. I checked my notes and can’t believe I purchased that gun in 1993. That I just let it gather dust must have something to do with Dadbo dying less than a month later. (Interestingly, my father and Rick Jason were almost exactly the same age. I only just learned that he died in 2000 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, but I don’t know any details.)
— Josh should be back in the States on leave by this weekend. There’s a tribute planned for the following Friday evening at Eagle Nest. That should be a memorable gathering and celebration. To top it off, it’s the World Premiere of “Pirate Revenge,” the family short we shot at Lake Cumberland a dozen years ago, but it was never completed as the last installment of the Clan Pirate Trilogy. Marty and Coleman were babies, Brendan was a squirt, and Dadbo made his final contribution to family creativity as “Frank, the old fisherman.” My, how time does fly…
V & S
Posted in Art, Brendan, Dadbo, Dana, Death, Exercise, Family, Firearms, Friends, Home, Marty, Personalities, Pirates, Television, Time | Comments Closed
Thursday, June 23rd, 2005
I guess I was somewhat familiar with the actor Derek Jacobi, but it took listening to the audio version of “Gates of Fire” (Steven Pressfield’s riveting story of life among the Spartans), for me to recognize the supreme awesomeness of his abilities. Since I liked “The Islands of Unwisdom” so much, the time is right to finally partake of the 1976 mini-series I, Claudius, which brings Graves and Sir Derek together.
• “Derek Jacobi is brilliant—his soldiers are terrifyingly gruff, and his breathless account of the fighting is so vivid that one can almost smell blood. With a lesser reader, the novel’s structure might have been confusing, but Jacobi’s ability to subtly alter the timbre of his voice and the style of his delivery to differentiate narrators makes it perfectly clear.”
—AudioFile
Posted in Awe, Fiction, History, Personalities, Television | Comments Closed
Tuesday, June 14th, 2005
With another successful surgery behind him, Bruce is back in a critical care room until he’s stable enough to return to his “home away from home” on the seventh floor (Solid Organ Transplant unit). When they “hosed him out” this time around, a major section of large intestine had to be removed, along with his gall bladder. As he faces down the pain with his characteristic stoicism, he’s optimistic that this is the turning point that will put him on a firm path to recovery.
ps — Meanwhile, I don’t care about Michael Jackson or his brothers. I don’t care about the jurors. I’m not interested in their private circumstances. I don’t want to know speculative opinions about their motivations. I couldn’t give a rat’s ass if they decided to exonerate him, admonish him, coronate him, or personally administer a lethal injection. (I just wanted to make that clear.)
Posted in Current Events, Family, Personalities, Television | Comments Closed
Friday, June 3rd, 2005
When Brendan spoke of “building a narrative out of noncontiguous events,” it was as if he was talking about the tapestry of stories that my brothers and I have been weaving all our lives. Stories… they’ve been part of my creative identity from the beginning. Wanting to tell them was as natural as drawing. First it was with chalk and blackboard (my artistic genesis), and then it expanded to comic strips, “scrips,” and my early childhood writings (the Summer family’s life on a farm and the adventures of Gordon Antent, leader of shipwrecked souls). But whatever artesian well of infatuation might emerge and run its course, there was always a distinct narrative world that continued to evolve at the pace of my maturing regard for the human condition, and there was never any doubt about the fact that this was a story project that was meant to endure. As is typical with any creative momentum that has an origin in early life, it’s difficult to define how naive concepts gain an inertia that survive childhood play. And it was always a collaborative enterprise from the start, involving a sibling give-and-take of ideas that would find enough consensus to mold the stories and character profiles in a semi-permanent fashion, until the next burst of development. It all grew out of an activity that, for us, was a powerfully stimulative pastime—playing with little plastic men. Current hobbyists and collectors would refer to them as “playset figures.” The next generation would know them as “action figures.” But most families like ours wouldn’t expend limited resources for the elaborate playsets on the market, with their carefully planned and crafted groups of figures, buildings, props, and accessories (few would dispute that the Marx Toy Company was the high-water mark in the genre). We fit into the merchandising strata at a level called “dimestore toys,” cheap, simple bags of men (rarely women) with few if any accouterments. We envied the friends and cousins who had Marx
playsets (WWII Battleground, Blue and Gray, Fort Apache, Alamo, Ben-hur, and TV spin-offs like Davy Crockett, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, and The Rifleman), but we could make do. We had imagination to spare and we had each other, but most of all, it really wasn’t about the toys. It was about the dramatic stories, and the heroic personalities, and the exotic homelands, and the interactivity of brotherly minds, and the continuity of our boyhood traditions, and ultimately… the fascinating nonlinearity of it all.
Olden…
Posted in Brendan, Creativity, Family, Movies, Playtime, Television | Comments Closed
Friday, May 20th, 2005
I realized that our financial pinch has been going on for over a year. Lots of reasons for it. I just need to identify and deal with them, one by one. We’ve been giving away a lot of work, that’s for damn sure. I watched Rose interview Lucas tonight and was taken with the film maker’s remark about when he got started. He just expected his films to flop because nine out of every ten movies made are failures, but he learned the value of persistence and the importance of manipulating the system to one’s advantage, because talent and intelligence aren’t enough.
Posted in Business, Movies, Personalities, Studio, Television, Time | Comments Closed
Monday, May 9th, 2005
There are instances when I watch Public Television and wonder why I’ve subjected myself to such unbearable realities, while simultaneously being unable to imagine having spent the time doing anything more important. With “Memory of the Camps,” tonight was indeed one of those instances.
Posted in History, Priorities, Television | Comments Closed
Sunday, May 1st, 2005
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).
Posted in Angst, Death, Personalities, Television | Comments Closed
Wednesday, April 27th, 2005
I 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).
Posted in Angst, Business, Home, Personalities, Studio, Television | Comments Closed
