The Next Big Thing: Transparent TV

Still puzzling over what to get that guy who has everything?  Well, here you go.  On sale now in L.A. for only 60 grand. Get 'em while they last - and before those tariffs kick in.

-----

Sentimental Journey: Back to Mayberry (2003)

Who wouldn't like to take a trip back to 1960?  That's the year the Andy Griffith Show premiered, beginning an eight-year visitation in the small town of Mayberry that still delights many hearts.  Located in a far corner of the state of make-believe, Mayberry was an old-fashioned place even then, home to many quaint, amusing characters.  It was small-town America with the sad and ugly parts left out; a place where good humor, homely virtues, and common decency still ruled.  How very far away it seems today.

Your Head Trucker swore off broadcast television thirty years ago, so I never saw this reunion special with Andy and company that was made in 2003.  But I'm enjoying it now - maybe you will, too.

 

The Mayberry Special departs at 7 o'clock on Track 1.  I've got my Pullman ticket in hand.  Who else wants to go? 

Bonus:  Marina Coates from Mockingbird Lane Design has done a brilliant job of portraying the Taylor home in 3-D. Check it out: 

-----

What We're Watching: Finding Lucy

This 2000 documentary about America's favorite redhead was produced by WNET for the PBS American Masters series, and won an Emmy Award.  I discovered it only the other day, and highly recommend it to all you Lucy fans out there.

-----

Just for Laughs: Jack Benny at the Supermarket

We all love Lucy, of course, and her comic genius will live on as long as there is some kind of machinery to play her reruns.  But it seems to me that a number of other great comedians are most undeservedly forgotten in the modern world, and Jack Benny is one of the all-time funniest.  If you are in need of a laugh or two, this should do the trick; the best part is the second half, where Jack runs afoul of sarcastic store clerk Frank Nelson.

 

For the record, this episode of the Jack Benny Program was broadcast on January 22, 1961. 

-----

What I'm Watching: Noel Coward on Acting

 A fascinating conversation between British director Michael MacOwan and his friend, the incomparable actor, director, composer, and playwright Noel Coward, circa 1965:

 

As it happens, the other night I came across a 1956 live television production of Coward's classic celestial fantasy, Blithe Spirit, starring Coward himself, Claudette Colbert, Lauren Bacall, Mildred Natwick (who played Madame Arcati in the first Broadway production, 1941), and Marion Ross (of later Happy Days fame) as the frenetic maid.  Unlike the luscious 1945 Technicolor version starring Rex Harrison, this one is in black and white, but a real treat for drama queens lovers, anyway.

-----

Forty Years of Sunday Morning

The celebrated TV newsmagazine CBS News Sunday Morning first aired on January 28, 1979, so Wikipedia tells me.  My, how time flies; seems to me as if it's just been around forever.  I can't say I've been a devoted fan of the program - even in 1979, when I was still struggling and starving my way through college, I was rarely up early enough on Sundays to watch it. I'm afraid that age has not improved my aversion to early rising, and now that I am retired, I rise or sleep at all hours, quite impartially, according to mere whimsy.

But when I have caught the show, here and there through the years, I have nearly always enjoyed it: a kinder, gentler news program, with a light, thoughtful touch that is sorely needed in the frantic, ranting world of today. Here are a few short clips to remind us of what television has been, and still can be.









And be it said to the show's renown, Sunday Morning has been the last, the very last refuge of the spirit of Poesie - a dead, despised, and forgotten art. For many years, the inimitable Charles Osgood valiantly led the arrière-garde; and now the distinguished Ted Koppel takes up the faded banner:

56 Up is Now Showing!

That's the good news. The bad news is, only in Britain, and nowhere else for the indefinite future. Which sucks big time.

I had never heard of this fascinating once-every-seven-years documentary, but a few years ago I came across it on Netflix and spent a day or two in rapt attention getting all caught up with the first seven episodes. It resonates with me because those kids - these adults - were and are about my own age. An ingenious idea, which if you've never seen the previous installments, just do it. Now. You won't be sorry.

The earlier segments are also on YouTube. Below is part 2 of the first episode: for fun, check out the two boys with their arms around each other about the 5:35 mark. One says, "I don't love her, I love him." And gives the other boy a little smooch on the cheek. Other boy says, "I don't love you, I love Christopher."

Unfortuntately, those two boys are not part of the group followed in later years. Don't you wonder, though, how they turned out, hmm?



Tip:  Don't go read the Wiki article on this series, it will spoil the lastest film for you if you do.  I took a quick look and backed out fast.

What's My Line?

Your Head Trucker fondly remembers this classy show from when it was still current.  A couple of clips here - the first one just takes my breath away, to think that this man actually was there in Ford's Theater that awful night - and lived to tell about it on television, for gosh sakes:



And then just for laughs, here's one of the more amusing examples of a guest whose occupation stumped the panel:

What Happened to That America? Part I

Your Head Trucker as a fashion plate of 1959.

Over on YouTube, somebody asked that question under this video that I blogged about the other day:



The person who posted the video responded, "It existed primarily in our televisions." Which is a pretty good answer, but I've not been able to get this exhange out of my head since then.

So here goes with a little meditation on the remembrance of things past. Apparently the questioner is not the only one who wonders about that vanished country: Matthew Yglesias quotes House Speaker John Boehner's complaint that "Barack Obama and congressional Democrats 'are snuffing out the America that I grew up in.'"

Which, of course, is nonsense; the America that Boehner (born 1949) and others remember so nostalgically disappeared long before anybody ever heard of Barack Obama.  I came along about five years after Boehner did, and I too remember that world, which, unlike previous eras, is preserved forever in television shows, documentaries, and even commercials.  At the push of a button, the click of a mouse, we can return there at any time of the day or night, and many people do. 

Some time back, in the middle of an article about country megastar Alan Jackson, the writer mentioned that when Jackson isn't touring or working on a new song in the studio, he likes to relax at his country place near Nashville with simple pastimes, like watching reruns of the Andy Griffith Show.  And I understand my fellow Southerner's fondness for that program; I have some DVD sets of it myself that I watch from time to time, as well as other old shows from the era when Dinah was singing the praises of Chevrolet.  I was there - I remember - even though I was just a young tyke, and of course my perceptions of the world were obscured by my innocence and ignorance of many grown-up matters.

And the nostalgia for that past time is nothing new at all.  By the dawn of the 1970's, I very well recall, there was already a general sense that as a society we had moved into a new and different era, one that in some respects was not nearly as pleasant or attractive. 

Continued below the jump

That's Gay: Commercials

Bryan Safi goes undercover to investigate gay characters in TV ads:



Ah but in France, they're a little more open about teh gayz - as in this commercial for Mickey D's:

Yeah, I know it's like so 15 minutes ago - just haven't had a chance to post it until now.

Funny thing is, as charming and delightful as it is - some of the bitchy queens big-dog gay bloggers have barfed all over it for not being in-your-face enough. 

But I'm lovin' it.  Makes sense to me.  Thanks, McD - I'm gonna run out and get me a quarter-pounder right now.  Seriously.

In Memoriam: Art Linkletter

The legendary Art Linkletter has died at the age of 97, after a long life starting from surprising origins.  I used to love watching his House Party show in the afternoons when I was a kid.  Among his other talents, he had a real knack for making people laugh - and who will deny that that is one of the greatest gifts of all?  And never a vulgar or suggestive word needed, either.

I think Art would want us to remember him with fond laughter.  Here are some clips guaranteed to make you laugh out loud, introduced by Bill Cosby:



Art is survived by his wife of 75 years, Lois.  Amazing.  See my truckbuddy M. Pierre's blog for a great picture of the two.

Why America Is Swarming with Gays

OMFG.  Golden Girls!  Why didn't I realize this before?  It's all Bea Arthur's fault, and the rest of those perverted dames.  And Glee is completing the work of destroying America's moral fiber - as Christwire makes so clear:

Recently, I wrote about studies that revealed the dangerous influence that the 1980s tv show “The Golden Girls” had on American men now in their 30s, 40s and 50s (see “The Golden Girls: How One TV Show Turned A Generation Of American Boys Into Homosexuals”). The link between watching the Girls and increased risks of homosexual behavior was made abundantly meaningful. In a nutshell, the Golden Girls turned a generation away from procreation. It made our American boys into the most raunchy, campy, carnal people on the planet. If, as a society, we could have returned to the 80s with what we know now and stop that show, American culture might be drastically different today.

As I write about Glee now in 2010, I can’t help but think that America is on the threshold of another dramatic cultural shift. If we let this show continue, our children will find a way to watch it. It is a drug that is that addictive. If our children continue to watch, they will undoubtedly be influenced by its radical same-sex messages. A generation from now, when these children become adults, what kind of country will the United States be? How many middle-aged men will find themselves in a dead-end Glee-based lifestyle? Will they be ostentatious and sensitive, their dreams smashed up against a wall crying out to have that giant hole in their souls stuffed with some musky foreign thrill? Will they be violating what’s left of our traditional cultural landscape with unimaginable high-tech perversions, drenching, nay drowing the bright young men of tomorrow in their relentless sauces of net porn and showtunes, maximized liberties and stem-cell party drugs? Will male sports just become an excuse for gay locker room orgies? How long until these types also legislate to destroy the beauty of marriage, the safety of religion, the rights of the righteous? Look into the eyes of a young Kurt Hummel. Is that not the face our of future’s polymorphously perverse intellectual terrorist? Change the channel my friends. Change the channel and change the world!

Well now you know, you raunchy, campy thing, you.  But check out Christwire's homepage before you comment.

Honk to Joe.My.God.

Canada's election countdown begins

Along with Americans, Canadians will be going to the polls this fall too, on October 14th. This will be third time in four years that our neighbors to the north have gotten the chance to vote their parliamentary representatives--and thus, their Prime Minister--into or out of office.

The current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, a Conservative, pledged at the last election in 2006 to revisit the issue of same-sex marriage, which was enacted into law nationwide by the previous government; but when a motion to reopen debate on the subject failed in Parliament in December, 2006, by a vote of 175 to 123, Harper indicated that he would not pursue the matter further.

During the last eight long years of the Republican regime in the States, I've sometimes thought wistfully of the fact that under a Westminster system like Canada's, an unpopular government can be booted out at any time, theoretically, without having to wait for a fixed election year. Though of course I know the reality is that a government in power usually calls for a new election at a time that is most likely to benefit the ruling party, natch. In Britain, remember, Thatcher, and later Blair, stayed in office for a decade or more.

I'm not up on the fine points of Canadian politics; it will be interesting to see whether the result of their election mirrors the outcome of ours, whether to the right or to the left. But here's a disturbing bit of news: the ruling Conservative party has already begun airing political ads during hours reserved for children's programming.

Is nothing sacred anymore? Not even Sponge Bob Square Pants? I ask you.