Mad Men TV Show

Trivia Newton-John #5

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:49 +0000

I recently posted on old school D&D, so I’m still ruminating on the memories. I wonder if anyone can tell me the name of this module from back in the day?

We’re talkin’ 1980 here, so only D&D geezers will probably remember this one from nearly thirty years back.

Leave your answer in the comments section. Be the first to guess correctly and win a nice Trivia Newton-John Award to place proudly in your blog’s sidebar. When the correct answer is given, I will post the award for the winner. Good luck!

***Update***

We have a winner! Congrats to Atom Kid. Collect your trophy!

Casualties of the 80s

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:49 +0000

Some musical acts from the 1970s transitioned nicely into the 1980s - Hall & Oates, Aerosmith and Prince found their niche in this new decade and flourished. Others… well, let’s just say things didn’t work out too well.

For example, if you were in a stanky booger nosed funk band, you had a choice: get Caucasian or die. The Ohio Players died, meanwhile the once-funky Kool & the Gang took a page from the Lionel Richie playbook and hung in there.

Hush Puppy wearin’ 70s guys like Seals & Crofts and Gordon Lightfoot were ancient history- not glossy and synthetic enough. However ex-hippies like Steve Winwood rolled with the changes and were successful.

And now, disco was dead and new wave was in… so what’s a band like The Village People to do? Answer: Try to fit into the New Romantic movement in such a way that twenty-five years later people are still laughing at them.

Some bands just completely chunked their former image (and credibility). One of the worst transitions had to be Grace Slick. How in the hell did she go from “White Rabbit” to “We Built this City”?!?!

And how do you go from being The First Lady of Acid Rock…

…to this and still look in the mirror without crying uncontrollably?

Oh well, I guess that’s just part of the music biz. You either stay in step with the times (no matter how awful they may be) or go bye-bye like The Ohio Players.

However, it still made me a bit sad to see a band like Heart get Wang Chunged. “These Dreams” was a far, far cry from the kick ass “Barracuda” (see previous post on the song), “Magic Man” and the incredible Zeppelin-esque “Love Alive”.

Reflections on Contempory Music (and Why It Sucks) Part 2

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:49 +0000

I won’t rant on and on in this installment. Instead, I’ll just throw out one word:

MELISMA

This is when pop diva wannabes sing sixty notes for a single syllable - it’s octave showboating and a form of auditory abuse. It’s on display with basically every American Idol contestant and almost every pop/hip-hop/R&B song on the radio.

Message to young pop stars: Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston have been there and done that. Move on. No more of this nonsense - not on American Idol, not while you’re singing the National Anthem, not ever! You are fracturing words into a soulless slur of syllables.

Your vocal gymnastics have become predictable and alienating. A steady note can be transcendent - try it sometime. Your amateur warbling is a trite, self-indulgent form of exhibitionism.

I’ll admit, very rarely a song can be enhanced by a dose of melisma. Roberta Flack could pull it off sparingly to great effect. But, most of the time “there isn’t any musical justification of what they are doing. Their runs interfere with the flow of the melody, of the lyric, of the harmonies, sometimes of the rhythm itself. It’s frequently a very vulgar and ugly display.” (quote from NPR)

So quit it.

(BTW: Frank’s singing book can actually be found here in its entirety - I’m talkin’ to YOU Jennifer Hudson!).

Even More Ways to Kill Time

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:49 +0000

Cool-mo-dee recently turned me on to the Obamicon site where you can easily take any picture and turn it into the iconic Obama poster. I have to confess that I got carried away and started trying it with pictures of everything from Tusken Raiders to Isaac on The Love Boat.

Of course, there’s really no limit to the amount of time you can waste playing with pictures on the internet. For instance, there’s the Warholizer, turning any lame picture into an Andy Warhol artwork.

Ahhh, the internet. It really does make you stupid!

D&D- I Knew Thee Well

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:49 +0000

Man, when I was in junior high, I was big time into Dungeons & Dragons. I had dozens of modules, miniatures, dice galore, and basically every book from The Dungeon Masters Guide to The Monster Manual. Although I don’t recall any girls playing it, I don’t remember it being a “geeks only” business either. Whatever the case, I lived and breathed D&D for a couple years.

In high school and most of college, I was way too interested in… let’s just say less creative endeavors. Gary Gygax and Bugbears were a distant memory.

By the end of college, I guess I settled down a bit and rediscovered D&D and got to playing it again pretty regularly. I noticed it had changed a lot - now there was Forgotten Realms, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Al-Quadim, a bunch of stuff written by a guy named Ed Greenwood, etc. It was still the same game, except now it was a bit more advanced.

Well, once again I got off the D&D boat after a few years due to the demands from work and family… and haven’t been back since. My wife and I just unearthed our box of character sheets, Monstrous Compendium, and the like from the attic. I’d forgotten how much damn fun it was and it really got me wondering about the status of D&D today. Is it still the same game I played 15 years ago?

When I first started blogging I wrote a post called Whatever Happened to Dungeons & Dragons? (which featured a D&D commercial with Jamie Gertz!), but I was mainly just playing around. Now I’m serious. What has happened with Dungeons & Dragons? If it’s still around, would I even recognize it? An enquiring ex-dungeon master wants to know.

Retrospace Sells Out

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:49 +0000

You may have noticed a few ads here and there on Retrospace. Trust me, I’m not dumb enough to think blogging is going to somehow yield vast riches. No, the ads are there more as an exercise in self deception- if I can even earn a nickle, maybe then I can rationalize the time I spend on the site.

I remember (although I am embarrassed to admit) sticking a bunch of ads on posts within the first few months of starting up Retrospace. I barely had any visitors, and it was a greedy pathetic waste of time. Now that I often get greater than 1000 visitors each day, I figured I’d give it another whirl.

I will say that I friggin’ HATE pop-ups when I go to a site. If I get a pop-up, I will never go back to a site no matter how good it is. I am that easily annoyed. Hopefully, the ads on Retrospace will not annoy you too bad, and hopefully, you’ll hardly notice they’re there. Cheers!

Twisted Impressions

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:49 +0000

I’m sure many of you have seen these unintentionally hilarious comic book panels. To our modern, cynical, sardonic, sarcastic and jaded minds these are a riot!

I’m not going to attempt to explain that last one. You either get it or you don’t. (swiped from RetroLife)

Now, let’s see how your modern psychobabble steeped mind interprets one of the most famous Brady Bunch subplots (from the episode: “Today, I Am a Freshman”).

Here’s the breakdown:
Marcia is getting older and is now entering high school.
She invites many of her pretty and popular friends over to the house.
Peter erects a volcano which spews a foamy discharge all over the girls.

Freud would have a field day with this.

Goodbye Miss Brahms

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:49 +0000

20 July 1943 - 26 February 2009

Not being British, I guess I’m not as familiar with Wendy Richard’s work as many of those across the pond. However, I will say that I’ve been watching Are You Being Served? since I was too young to know Mr. Humphries was gay.

Thanks to PBS, I can’t name many other shows that I’ve been able to continue to watch over the decades unabated. In fact AYBS? has been with me so long and is so steeped in nostalgia, that (not unlike The Brady Bunch) I really can’t tell you if the show is any good or not - it just is what it is, and I like it.

Wendy has a great deal of films and television shows on her résumé which I don’t know enough to comment on, so I’ll leave that to other bloggers. Instead, I’ll just leave you with a pic of Wendy on the set of Help! with some dude.

dear diary

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:48 +0000

January 11, 1960: Susan Sontag writes in her diary:

I: You know why you find it so hard to stay alive? You’ve been running without gasoline?
S: How? Is honesty the gasoline?
I: No, honesty is the smell of the gasoline.

group therapy live on TV

admin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 14:57:48 +0000

Airing live on Playhouse 90, April 22, 1960: John Franken- heimer’s direction of the Rogert O. Hirsen script, Journey to the Day, in which six patients in a state mental hospital are brought together for group therapy. The play was based on actual conditions at two mental hospitals, one in Ohio and the other at St. Vincent’s in NYC. Mike Nichols plays one of the roles, as does Steven Hill. That’s Frankenheimer, standing, and Nichols seated in the center. Mary Astor stands behind Nichols and Steven Hill has his back to us, at left. I’ve ordered the playscript and look forward to reading it.