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Stupid DC Question
Mar. 26th, 2019 08:14 pmDid JASON TODD ever appear in the Gotham TV series? Yes, I did NOT mean Dick Grayson.
This past week, somebody put out a graphic combining the new Steve Trevor from the Wonder Woman movie with the current Captain America (who as we know, has the real name of Steve Rogers) with the title Steves on a Plane.
Being the airplane/comics nerd that I am, I could not let that go past. So to Super-Team Family: The Lost Issues, I proposed the All-Steve Squadron, which includes the above and...
* from DC's War Heroes, Steve Savage the Elder, better known as Balloon Buster
* from Avon Comics of the Fifties, Steve Savage the Younger (Captain Steve Savage)
* from TV and Charlton Comics, Steve Austin (The Six Million Dollar Man)
* and from Archie Comics, Steve Stacey: Sky Detective.
I guess I need to get into Steve Stacey. He had a very very brief career. He only appeared in 16 PAGES in the anthology Blue Ribbon in 1941. His series was an okay idea for a comic, but the writing and visuals didn't work so it's no surprise to me that it ended.
In the story, Steve was a flight instructor who broke up a sabotage scheme against his flight school, and as a result, he got recruited into the Civil Aviation Authority as an investigator. In the course of his adventure, he also saved the life of a female student pilot named Joyce Barton--who appointed herself his assistant. Together, they fought mob hitmen, air pirates, Nazi sleeper agents and the like.
There wasn't much backstory for either character. It was alluded that Steve was previously a competitor in air races, and before that, flew for the U.S. Mail.
Because of the various discussions and whatnot about the 50th Anniversary of the Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, I think I'll start off with what I said about my view of the Beatles in general about eight years earlier:
I suppose I have a rather skewed view of the band compared to most people. You see, I was a baby in their heyday (I was born around the time Revolver came out) but they had already broken up by the time I was allowed to listen to the radio in the early Seventies. So I knew all four of them as solo artists FIRST. It wasn't till much later in life that I got the message that these guys were THESE GUYS and so on.
The media establishment was so quick to move on that their songs as a group were largely out of circulation for some years. Besides, Paul kept on making hit records with Wings. There was no point to look back at that time...unless you were looking back to the Fifties in the wake of American Grafitti and Happy Days. It took the Disco backlash, Elvis' death, the Beatlemania Broadway show (anybody remember that?) and the Sgt. Pepper's movie/soundtrack to start a Beatles nostalgia trend in earnest.
Anyway, I come from a time warp with regards to that realm of pop culture. I'm like a baseball fan who has to remember that the Dodgers once played in Brooklyn, or a car nut who must be prompted that GM used to have a brand of cars called LaSalle. Well, I'm not THAT bad. After all, I can ask my brother (who played a role in his High School's Beatles-based revue).
--So, what about the album itself? Really I took my own sweet time getting to it. You see, my sister had the vinyl of the movie soundtrack, which of course threw the original narrative of the album out in favor of a contrivance of both it AND Abbey Road. So my own views of what the songs were and what they meant were very very wrong, on many levels.
I only got to hear the songs that were on the album that were not remade for the movie in the early Eighties when a family friend let me borrow her vinyl of the Beatles LP--and I never heard the Beatles LP all the way through till just after the start of this Millennium when on a road trip with my brother. The new PBS special about the album's making swung my compass on it completely around.
The new remaster is going on my Xmas Wishlist.
FP
I Shouldn't Mind That I'm Too Old...
May. 2nd, 2015 07:37 pmMy Research Addiction brought me to the website of a classic rock radio station that regularly polls listeners and then publishes the results of these polls. I've just pored over the latest "favorite songs of all time" list, and while I expected that the songs of not only my childhood AND my high school years would be old enough for "classic rock", it turns out that the music of my COLLEGE years qualify now as well! It shouldn't have surprised me but it did.
The good news is that now I've found a bunch of acts I've probably HEARD but don't so much KNOW about.
FreeWill Takes A Load Off
Feb. 24th, 2015 03:57 pm"Don't worry, even if things get heavy, we'll all float on." So sings Modest Mouse's vocalist Isaac Brock on the band's song "Float On." I recommend you try that approach yourself, Sagittarius. Things will no doubt get heavy in the coming days. But if you float on, the heaviness will be a good, rich, soulful heaviness. It'll be a purifying heaviness that purges any glib or shallow influences that are in your vicinity. It'll be a healing heaviness that gives you just the kind of graceful gravitas you will need.
And here on Saturday I have the prospect of making my office and workshop portable for a lecture at HobbyTown at Turkey Creek.
FreeWill Has A Word For Everybody
Jan. 21st, 2014 02:38 pmI understand the appeal of the f-word. It's guttural and expulsive. It's a perverse form of celebration that frees speakers from their inhibitions. But I'm here today to announce that its rebel cachet and vulgar power are extinct. It has decayed into a barren cliche. Its official death-from-oversaturation occurred with the release of the mainstream Hollywood blockbuster The Wolf of Wall Street. Actors in the film spat out the rhymes-with-cluck word more than 500 times. I hereby nominate you Sagittarians to begin the quest for new ways to invoke rebellious irreverence. What interesting mischief and naughty wordplay might you perpetrate to escape your inhibitions, break taboos that need to be broken, and call other people on their BS and hypocrisy?
There is a store in Downtown Knoxville that is now in trouble for their use of the F-Bomb in their display window posters. The citizens fought long and hard to lure them into opening a store, and now they feel betrayed and dissed by the shopkeepers, even though this probably had nothing to do with the circumstances.
While context is very important, it is also important to be mindful of the life of words beyond context.
Recapsulation and Foreshadowing, Maybe?
Dec. 31st, 2013 03:15 pmhas the key to the next and the last.
But you won't solve this riddle
till the end is the middle,
and terran sands disappear with a blast.
What Curiosity Gets Me
Dec. 28th, 2013 07:08 pm
I was wondering why a couple graphics from my old World Peacekeepers post had broken, and I found this. It looks like there will be a real WORLD PEACEKEEPERS TV cartoon series for 2014.
No further details are available yet.
My Life As A TV Fan Part V
Aug. 16th, 2013 10:00 pm1980-81 Season
* Favorites: Private Benjamin, M*A*S*H, House Calls, That's Incredible, Real People, Games People Play, Magnum P.I., WKRP In Cincinnati, Mork & Mindy
(The only show that DIDN'T continue from this season to the next was Games People Play...and that was mainly because it was just an offshoot of NBC Sports' omnibus show Sportsworld. So as not to duplicate my efforts unnecessarily...)
1981-82 Season
* Added To Favorites: Simon & Simon, Best of the West, The Fall Guy, Bosom Buddies
From Last Night's 60 MINUTES
Jan. 14th, 2013 03:34 pmThere was a part that meshed directly with the "firmware" portion of POI's Machine. Law offices, prosecutor and defender divisions are now commonly using analytical computers to research cases and collect evidence in the "discovery" phase. How much you want to bet that The Machine already is looking in on every single one of these systems to tell who's being investigated...and who's doing the investigating? Maybe even to recruit potential future assets?
Useless Fact
Jul. 25th, 2012 01:01 pmHave You Ever Seen Me? Would You Want To?
Jul. 12th, 2012 01:45 amThe other day, I got a circular from Oldies.com with their latest offerings of antique movies on DVD and I was flabbergasted with how many old aviation movies--some I never heard of before!--that are available. Titles like Atlantic Flight, Mercy Plane, Lost In The Stratosphere, Navy Born and The Flying Fool...and suddenly I was thinking, "There has to be enough content here between this and old aviation promo and training films to make up a TV series!"
Maybe I'm not exactly the kind of guy you'd want to see hosting a TV show. Thing is, I wouldn't do it ALONE. I'd get a "crew" together, just like they did with Mystery Science Theater 3000 and they still do with Wolfman Mac's Thriller Drive-In and Off-Beat Cinema, just to name a few. Yes, this pipe dream has me on a set, which I'd call the "Doofer Room", with posters on the walls and aviation props and old airliner seats and who knows what else bric-a-brac-wise. I'd have a set of costumes, from the basic airline Captain to bush pilot to military fatigues to space gear. Maybe, on occasion (if I could swing it), I'd shoot an episode at one of the airports in the area, or at the Museum of Aviation in Sevierville.
The chances of me actually doing something like this is miniscule. I wonder if somebody beat me to it, tho'.
My Life As A TV Fan [Primetime] Part II
Jul. 7th, 2012 03:33 pmSeventy-Four/Seventy-Five was a year heavy on the adaptations, Planet of the Apes, Born Free, Paper Moon, and so on. The best of these, and arguably one of the best drama shows of the whole decade, was Little House On The Prarie, which, while a hit, was very low-key compared to other hits of the era. I personally didn't watch a lot of it till it hit syndication, tho' I did see some when it was new.
I could probably waste a whole post on why I preferred Chico & The Man to The Jeffersons, both of which premiered that year. But I can be much more succinct: Norman Lear's shows BORED me. I got into Chico & The Man when NBC Daytime ran it as a lead-in to the soap operas the following years; Mom was addicted to NBC's soaps and so on time off of school I saw that often.
The Rockford Files also came that year, tho' I didn't start watching that till a few years in, I remember.
1974-'75 Season
*Favorites At-The-Time: Emergency!, Happy Days, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Wonderful World Of Disney
*Eventual Favorites: M*A*S*H, The Rockford Files, Chico & The Man
Seventy-Five/Seventy-Six continued the theme of adaptations to television, which included The Swiss Family Robinson (which broke my habit of following The Wonderful World Of Disney), Rich Man, Poor Man, Ellery Queen, and The Invisible Man.
When Things Were Rotten and The Bionic Woman were my two favorite new shows of that year. We also liked Welcome Back, Kotter--but who didn't? Later on in the season, we got Laverne & Shirley, and perhaps the show that not only set the trend for variety shows for the rest of the decade, but wore out the genre for a generation, Donny & Marie.
1975-'76 Season
*Favorites At-The-Time: Emergency!, Happy Days, The Six Million Dollar Man, When Things Were Rotten, The Bionic Woman, Welcome Back Kotter, Chico & The Man
*Eventual Favorites: M*A*S*H, The Rockford Files
MORE TO COME.
To Read Content, You Must Write Content
Jul. 6th, 2012 06:17 pmThis blog, and likely the ones after it, will only be personal by degrees. I'm still dealing with the aftereffects of the death of my mother back in April; life with Dad is kind of strange. It's hard to tell when Brave ends and Numb begins. Neither of us is self-medicating, but aside from brief bursts of humor we are neither happy nor super-depressed.
I'm trying to remember how I coped long ago when my grandparents died. But that was decades ago. I don't know how different I am today.
* * *
I'd had this grand idea to poke through Wikipedia at the history of television and about my own relationships and fandoms with the shows. I realized that making it a regular series, year by year, would take quite a piece and a lot of text. So I'm going to take something of a middling approach.
I'm starting with the season BEFORE the first one I was old enough to watch primetime programming: 1972-'73. Lots of shows that were in primetime that year became staples in syndication, of course. Also, there was a mechanism between primetime and syndication that the networks had well into the Eighties but dropped when syndication companies got big enough to produce so much of their own content. They re-ran primetime show episodes in daytime (or late-night) slots, often only the following year from initial broadcast. This was how I saw things like Sanford & Son, The Partridge Family, The Brady Bunch and some others before my parents would let me stay up past 8PM. In fact, my elementary school used to let us students watch some shows between classes, while the teachers and their aides graded papers.
1972-'73 Season
*Favorites At-The-Time: Emergency!, The Wonderful World of Disney
*Eventual Favorite: M*A*S*H (tho' it was YEARS before I was allowed to watch it!)
The following season would bring in two shows that would engage my fandom and set a lot of my psychological tendencies for life: Happy Days and The Six Million Dollar Man.
People who weren't alive back in the early Seventies don't realize what a cultural phenomenon Happy Days was and how much something like it was needed at the time. It was like a national reset button, a reminder of what America is and is supposed to be, and the American character. Yes, it was silly, and much too aware of its impact on pop culture for its own good. Heck, that's why the show HAD to Jump The Shark.
What little kid in the Seventies did NOT want to be The Six Million Dollar Man? While Happy Days looked to the past for its optimism, this show built it into an action hero's anatomy...piece by piece. We had a lot of problems, but maybe technology could solve them. What if everybody had telescopic vision and parabolic hearing? What if we had power-boosted limbs and super speed? What if we all had COMPUTERS? Was this the future we wanted?
1973-'74 Season
*Favorites At-The-Time: Emergency!, Happy Days, The Wonderful World of Disney
*Eventual Favorites: M*A*S*H, The Six Million Dollar Man
MORE TO COME.
Nerdity Zeroes In On Target--Again
May. 22nd, 2012 11:33 am
It isn't so much the movie itself but the fact that the studio threw it into a threat-rich theater environment, with The Avengers and The Hunger Games still playing. Maybe if they had waited a week or two?
The Last Dance
May. 17th, 2012 01:19 pm( From Here To Outer Space )
( Probably Her Most Epic Hit )
( The Flipside, including 'Heaven Knows', which was a hit in its own right )
A stage show, or possibly a "permanent" theater, based on/cast from former contestants (and not WINNERS) of American Idol, The Voice, America's Got Talent, The X Factor, The Sing-Off and other such shows.
