Quote: Voltaire's "Candide" on Proper Priorities

"Il faut cultiver notre jardin." ("We must cultivate our garden.")

And if one does not have a garden, one can start with a flower pot.

Blog Post: Amazing Stories, Not! (x3)

Bay Street Video, the wonderful Bay Street Video, here in Toronto, stocks lots of old television series, specials, and documentaries. A few years ago I grabbed Steven Spielberg's misdirected half-hour anthology series, Amazing Stories. Like many video collectors, large and small, I watched two or three episodes before filing a television series to the back of the class. Forgotten. Until I pulled out all DVDs and Blu-ray sets last month to do a little reorganizing. While refiling the discs, Amazing Stories - Season One got called back to the front. Last night I cleared some time and ended up watching three episodes back-to-back, although that wasn't my original plan. Was my series watch of three due to my morbid fascination with a train wreck? Indeed it was.

Let me tell you a story....

In September of 1984 my radio blared some, what seemed like, amazing news: "Steven Spielberg will be producing a television series called Amazing Stories."

I couldn't wait. Well, I could, since I had just started film school, and the intensity of the first year of any such program would allow me to forget about any addition to a platform, television, however exciting it may be with the imagined misguided mad scientists and stomping giant robots, which was the first image that came to mind from my radio's waves. In my late teens I had essentially disregarded the tube as "appointment" "a waste of time every week". Any new program had to earn its stripes with me... even more so these days.

The year flew by, the summer job, my first in this great city of Toronto, and a modicum of anticipation energized the tummy. "The year of the anthology series" broke in September of 1985 with reboots of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone, and the booting of Amazing Stories. A high school buddy of mine, Jonathan, who tripped to Toronto with me, and who was now a student at OCA (Ontario College of Art), arrived as planned to see what all the potential fuss might be. I had the big colour television, you see. Impressive, eh? The set's impressive screen size just set us up for thirty minutes of letdown.

"Ghost Train"

Steve? Spielberg? That's it? A freaking train?!

I love trains, but....

Infantile. The bit at the end with the train conductor and the boy's mother was embarrassing. (Spielberg at his patented worst.)

The series not only started off on the wrong rail, it continued its journey with two equally-underwhelming episodes: "The Main Attraction", which was funny enough for the first go-around, but one that lost any magnetism after just a few minutes; and "Alamo Jobe", grueling and drooling, galloping, bleating, in its twisted righteous self importance — a misprinted and rejected Classics Illustrated comic bucked by a horse.

Jonathan and I stopped there. Our train had arrived, and it was time to get the hell off! And get off, we did... if you'll pardon the expression.

John Williams' Amazing Stories theme music, while a fine piece on its own, leaving one with just one guess as to who wrote it, was wildly inappropriate; no fault of the composer, I'm sure.

Last night I watched a random selection of episodes, ones I missed back in 1984-85 ....

"One for the Road" —

I wasn't sure what the point of the story was, other than a pipsqueak version of the worst Twilight Zone episode. ("We get it! Ha ha!") While nicely directed by Thomas Carter, he refrains from overdoing camera technique, any effort by him is thwarted by a script that should never have gone to "mimeo". (Screenwriter Bob Gale had an interesting opinion on that Amazing issue, which I will get to before I wrap up this piece.)

"Gather Ye Acorns" —

An example of an idea that probably looked appealing when fastened in Spielberg's binder of archived story ideas, but one that should have been killed after the first draft teleplay. ("Well, it seemed like a good idea, but it's just not going to work" should have happened.) However, Mark Hamill was good, successfully rendering a man at different times in his extended lifespan. No surprises in this one... a core theme of Amazing Stories, it would seem.

"Mirror, Mirror" —

The episode last night that showed promise: its opening was culled from an old Hammer Studios horror film. Oh, that should have been a bad omen in that there's no way that level could be maintained throughout the episode's remaining 22 minutes. Yep, no go. Sam Waterson is a fine actor, but it just didn't work. ("Gee, that's nothing. When I see my reflection in the mirror each morning, images crack more horror than what Martin Scorsese could give the viewer. Martin Scorsese? That's it?! I'll direct my own scenes, thank you.") Oh, Helen Shaver and Dick Cavett help, somewhat. Anything to help bolster a hopeless script, one that should have been left lying as simple ideas on yellowed binder pages. Perhaps only kids would be scared by this one. Now that I think about it, Amazing Stories probably appealed most to young people. They may be today's defenders of the series. That is until they give it a rewatch.

Bob Gale, as quoted in Joseph McBride's excellent book, Steven Spielberg: a Biography ....

"Steven never could make up his mind what the show was going to be, whether it was going to be scary or whether is was going to be fantasy. Every month Steven would change his mind about what direction we should go. Television is not a director's medium, and it's great that Steven got all these directors in there to do these shows, but the scripts weren't any good. He should have spent more time getting the best writers in the world to contribute, and then worrying about the directors."

Fluttering whimsy, from which Amazing Stories suffers wholesale, is good for an episode or two: anything more indicates scripting problems and a lack of purpose.

What a waste of production management.

Amazing Stories started and ended its life a train wreck. To the scrapyard! No, not the DVD set!

How We Peg Things: A Banana in the Head

Simon's Notes: a Book Report

William Barker Elementary School — CFB Borden — Mid 1970s

During recess one day I was talking with a friend about a book report that we had to produce. During this conversation at the mouth of the school's loading dock, I looked down at the concrete below me. There was a moistly-yellow banana peel laying limp.

When I hear or read "book report" I think of bananas. And banana peels.

Time for a banana!....

Athot for the Day: The Reality of That Type

Pierre Poilievre and his people lack perspicacity.

Snip: Traffic from These Countries Now

Further to my post from minutes ago, the above graphic illustrates what countries the clicks to this site have come from in the last two hours. I've long loved statistics. The list notes the top 11. Let's not overstate it by listing 20.

Brazil 652

Iraq 396

Bangladesh 243

India 174

Argentina 162

Pakistan 140

United States 113

Chile 110

Türkiye 110

Indonesia 103

Canada 96

France 96

Spain 94

Mexico 91

Philipines 85

Saudi Arabia 85

Uzbekistan 83

Kenya 80

Malaysia 79

Other 1.98k

Back to my alternate reality....

Snip: Page Views of 4,003,636

Have no fear, dear readers, regular and drop-ins, my ego is fully in check, even if not exactly in cheque. I awoke this morning to a bit of data convincing me I am right to keep feeding this machine of bits, pieces, and images. My somewhat neglected cat agrees, I think....

Postscript: Since snipping that title card above minutes ago, the counter has gone to "4005305". Next piece....

Picturing: Great Lakes Freighter Saguenay Stern

As I posted on Sunday, I have been starting to scan 35mm slides. The results are impressive, certainly for a consumer machine, the HP FilmScan 5" Touch Screen Film Scanner. As before, I've not yet run these through Lightroom, but the basic image files can stand on their own.

Picturing: Model Lisa at a Self-Storage Locker

In late 2024 I was hired to shoot still photos for a self-storage company here in Toronto. Model Lisa was great to work with, which helped make the shoot fun and efficient. Since then I've posted two pictures from that day, and had decided that was enough. After editing the above photo, however, I figured two was not enough since I was happy with the result here. Three makes perfect.

To Supersede the Constitution of the United States

Ten years ago I read How Democratic Is the American Constitution?, a most enlightening book by scholar Robert A. Dahl. Here is a sampling from its Introduction:

"And if our constitution is as good as most Americans think it is, why haven't other democratic countries copied it? As we'll see . . . every other advanced democratic country has adopted a constitutional system very different from ours. Why?"

That's one heck of a hook. And it was.

Now we're seeing that there may be an answer to Mr Dahl's question: it too easily can be bypassed, or outright ignored, by unpatriotic 'Americans'. Is it possible that The Constitution of the United States is, through no fault of its own, not worth the paper it's written on?

I recommend, highly, that citizens of the United States of America read How Democratic Is the American Constitution?, or any such book. Now's the time.

Further suggested reading: The Constitution of the United States

Picturing: Great Lakes Freighter Saguenay (Toronto)

My first scan from a slide using the HP FilmScan 5" Touch Screen Film Scanner. I'm pretty happy with the results. The colour is nicely saturated, as is the amount of density and fine image detail. For a consumer machine, that's all most users would need or want. I did very little image manipulation; it's pretty as-is. Next, Lightroom.

Postscript: with 'reversal' film, which is what slide film is, image results tend to be best when the camera's exposure setting is at about one-third of a stop under so-called 'normal'.

Picturing: Beauty and the Creep, Toronto Style....

... from the north-west corner of Bloor Street West and Huron Street, Toronto, condo encroachment.

Picturing: Through an Archway at Oxford University

No, I didn't attend Oxford University, but I could have — if I had done a little better in school.

Film Design: An Irwin Allen Panel Comes to Life

If you are familiar with the old Irwin Allen television shows Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1964 - 1968), Lost in Space (1965 - 1968), or The Time Tunnel (1966 - 1967), you probably remember what I refer to as "The Irwin Allen Panel". There were lots of them. In the early 1960s the 20th Century Fox studios prop department bought surplus U.S. Air Force equipment and made some modifications, including taking the indicator lights and hooking them up to a series of chaser-boxes, thereby producing sequenced blinking lights.

The equipment was already "old" but that did not stop producer Irwin Allen from utilizing them for his futuristic television programs. (It makes sense: 1960s aliens in silver face paint no doubt would operate 1950s Earth equipment.)

By the way, the panels have appeared in many television series, including Lost (2004 - 2010). My guess is they are still available for rent.

When designing my (as of yet unfinished) short film Hyper-Reality, I used the panels in question as a guide. The story requires a retro look. I had a lot of fun conjuring up this piece of fanciful equipment, but credit must go to Dennis Pike for the hours of construction, and wiring the many light bulbs ― "blinky lights" necessary to sell this machine as coming from a 1960s Irwin Allen lowbrow television program. (The panels also made an appearance in the producer's 1974 blockbuster feature film, The Towering Inferno.)

The photo affixed above features a crew member operating a piece of projection equipment. He rotates a tinfoil-covered roller, which in turn reflects light onto the back of a translucent sheet.

I had a great crew.

Picturing: A Lemon-Yellow Sports Car Parked on Bloor

As I ran a few errands this morning on Bloor Street, here in the great city of Toronto, I was armed with my usual: a Canon camera. A sporty-looking car was parked on the south side just west of Spadina Rd/Ave. She was a pretty little thing, bathed in sunlight broken by a tree.

When I prepped this picture minutes ago, a page came up identifying the car. I was taken aback since I hadn't even requested an image search of any kind. Okay... it's a Triumph Spitfire. That detail I had not known. Thank you! (Scary stuff.)

Video Clip: Last Night's Special NHL Overtime Goal

I haven't followed the NHL (National Hockey League) in years, but minutes ago I found out that the Montreal Canadiens defeated the Buffalo Sabres in overtime last night... it was Game 7, the series-deciding match.

My beloved Habs will move on to play the Carolina Hurricanes in Round Two, the "Eastern Conference Final".

Any wagers?....

Postscript: My claim of no longer following the league is authentic, but I was aware that Montreal was playing Buffalo. By the way, that goal was a "clink goal" — which is the best kind if your favourite team is the clinker'er, certainly when employing a series-deciding clink.

Athot for the Day: Perspective on Cinema

People who say that Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957) is the worst movie ever made, clearly have never seen Endless Love (1981).

Reading: Diary of a Low-Born Cleric (Michael Coren)

... I'm just a few days into "2024", but Diary of a Low-Born Cleric (2026) is already shaping up to be yet another enjoyable and enlightening read from Michael Coren.

I've read two previous books from the author and cleric: The Rebel Christ (2021) and Heaping Coals - from Media Firebrand to Anglican Priest (2024).

Picturing: Toronto Fire Truck Speeding Up Spadina Rd

My shutter speed was set high, hence the freeze. (The vehicle was starting to slow down.)

Picturing: From Inside Paupers Pub, Toronto

Food's coming!....

Picturing: About to Enter Paupers Pub This Morning

Paupers Pub, Toronto, 11:15am today. We're on our way in....

The breaky was great! (As was the beer.)