Will & Mist (02-01-2019) Repeat

The King's Depths

Introduction: The following piece I wrote on October 6th, but after completing it, and just before pressing the "upload" button, it struck me as being in bad taste given what little we knew of the U.S. president's overall condition at that time....

U.S. President Donald J. Trump was admitted to Walter Reed National Medical Center on Friday, not after already being tested and confirmed as COVID-19 positive, but after feeling unwell throughout the night. He was advised to seek serious medical treatment, immediately. The president has long downplayed the severity of the virus, and has ignored the deaths of more than 200,000 Americans. Deaths but a little inconvenient: for him, and for the people who've died. Yesterday he exited Walter Reed and took a joy ride in his armoured vehicle to show his faithful, who stood outside with their banners of support and reaffirmation, that the king had beaten the unseen and not-real plague.

Later in the day Trump went home triumphantly to the White House and waved with laboured breath to the crowd. All was good again in the Great Kingdom.

If this were a Brothers Grimm story, how might it end? Most of us would not wish something like this on Mr Trump, but, given his mean nature toward his fellow man and woman, one can have fun with a fanciful tale....

"King Trump, while dining late one night on food fit for kings, felt a great disturbance in his belly and breast, a rumbling of which he recalled from days and nights before. He sweated all over, and he gasped for life. His minions rushed him to the town's physicians, who, with armour and tools, battled for him through the night, only to lose the king of kings in the darkness.

His faithful villagers did not fret for long at the sight of their immobile once-proud King. They ate him all up."

Post Script: I understand that this tale is even darker in the original German.

Movie Admission: It's No End of the Line

Going through the archives uncovers interesting bits from one's past. The above is my admission ticket to a standout film from 2006's TIFF (Toronto International Film Festival) event:

End of the Line

Talented Montreal-based filmmaker Maurice Devereaux had made a few feature length films, but End is his best, a summit of sorts; a horror film of some real horror.

The screening I attended at the now-gone Cumberland 3 cinema caused some serious audience jumps. I remember having a smile on my face at times. A smile brought on by a film made out-of-pocket by a dedicated Canadian filmmaker who showed his Hollywood big brothers how it's done -- big budget not needed. Without studio-mandated script notes to get in the way, End of the Line pleases through singular vision.

Two people in my immediate circle of friends have a copy of the flick on DVD. I'm guessing home video sales were good.

Joe Kubert Original Panel Art (1963)

 A friend of mine is a comic book collector and no minor authority on the subject as a whole. Last summer he asked me to take some snaps of three panels of original art from Our Army At War, a comic book anthology series that ran from 1952 to 1977.

The three pics below are from issue 133, published in August of 1963, and feature the fine artwork of Joe Kubert (and the story script of Robert Kanigher).

From top to bottom: pages 11, 12, 13.

As of this writing, these panels are on auction. ("Six thousand dollars?! I'm in the wrong business.")

Picturing: A Flowery Moon (Toronto Tonight)

A Forever Question: Two Words in One!

“Since before your sun burned hot in space and before your race was born, I have awaited a question."

Sir. What does "alot" mean?

Picturing: Late Sunday Afternoon Moon (Toronto)

Football Gives the Boot to Ice Hockey

While working away here at home I'm running Premier League football matches. The one playing right now features Liverpool F.C. and West Brom. (Liverpool is leading 1 to 0 at about the 40 minute mark.)

My football streaming habit is changing me.

Courtesy of dazn.com there are sports of all kinds. But ice hockey, my "absolute favourite team sport", has been taking a hit. I can no longer watch it. One of my teachers in art school was a Brit; a lady from London. She said to the class one day, something off the topic of artistic rendering: "No team sport is as exciting as ice hockey."

But I'm losing to football.

I wouldn't care if the NHL (National Hockey League) folded. Actually, for me, that league, with its dinky-sized ice surface and its predilection for fistfights, cannot compare with international or Olympic ice hockey. Yeah, the good ol' NHL game. Many times I've heard people say, "I can't stand the fighting". Not often have I seen football players duking is out. They know they're playing on the pitch, not the playground.

Back to the match....

Sunday Fun: The Interns Intro (1970) Repeat

How I discovered The Interns I do not remember, but I do remember making sure I caught the CBS medical show every week on the Sony black-and-white portable upstairs. To this then young one the subject matter was adult at times -- there was an intense episode which featured a prison -- but for some strange reason I could handle the material, even if no doubt I did not always understand it.

Seeing this intro brought back the memories, sometimes in "chill" form. I remembered so much of it, especially the climactic bit where the intrepid young medics run into Broderick Crawford.

The cast: Mr Highway Patrol, of course; Christopher Stone; Stephen Brooks; Hal Frederick; Sandy Smith; Mike Farrell; and Skip Homeier. (Even then I was familiar with some of these actors as I had seen them in other television series'.)

The Interns and I enjoyed just one season.

Boxing Day 2020

A Christmas of Fifty Years Ago (From 3 Years Ago)

Christmas sure is great when you're a kid. This morning I thought about my favourite memories. Quickly I nailed one: 1970.

(After reading that, pretend you have a faulty memory. "He posted about the Christmas of nineteen-ninety.")

My favourite present that year was the AMT "Star Trek U.S.S. Enterprise Space Ship Model Kit".

(Star Trek was sparking hot. The series had finished its NBC network run only eighteen months earlier. Toronto television station CFTO was running/stripping the episodes at 5pm on weekdays.)

It was not a simple plastic model kit as it was "lighted". Small light bulbs, included in the box, could be inserted into the top and bottom of the primary hull (the saucer-shaped portion) and at the front-ends of the engine nacelles (those long tubes). The former were capped by green-tinted discs, and the latter were topped-off by amber-tinted domes. My mother helped me with the wiring and the insertion of the lamps' power source: a D-cell, not included with the kit, sat in the secondary hull (the bottom tube-like section).

Building a model kit is fun, but seeing the completed AMT U.S.S. Enterprise suspended from my bedroom ceiling was a trip, and it looked great with the bedroom light off.

I remember something else from Christmas Day 1970. My dad was in the process of carving the turkey when he looked over at the Zenith television: "I'm surprised this is on today." (The episode was "The Return of the Archons".)

Fond Christmas memories.

The Merriest of Days - In Moderation

Goes nicely with a little chocolate - in moderation.

Will & Mist (19-12-2018) Repeat

Corona Christmas Time (The Loveys)

My brother Peter is a talented singer/songwriter. It runs in the blood. When I was about 12 years of age I cowrote a catchy little ditty. I find myself humming it even today, at times. Three years ago I wrote another song, more a fragment, to celebrate a certain bliss.

Now to the show:

Peter wrote "Corona Christmas Time" (an Official COVID Christmas Song) for his group The Loveys.

If you listen to it and think he's a John Lennon fan, you are not imagining anything.

Oh: The lyrics are pretty biting. Good!

Book: The Twilight Zone (Grams)

The Twilight Zone

- Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic -

Written by

Martin Grams, Jr.

OTR Publishing, LLC  2014

David Beckham on Life and Living

"I respect all religions, but I'm not a deeply religious person. But I try and live life in the right way, respecting other people. I wasn't brought up in a religious way, but I believe there's something out there that looks after you."

Yeah, in my case, my accountant.

George Takei on Life and Living

"I intend to live life, not just exist."

Unfortunately, for a lot of people it's too easy to just exist.

Picturing: CN Tower Today

Sunday Fun: Fawlty Towers Opening

"Basil!"

When I hear Mr Fawlty's name called by his trouser-wearing wife, Sybil, I know I've checked into the right hotel.

Like many great concepts, Fawlty Towers was inspired by a real-life equivalent. In the early 1970s the Monty Python gang checked in for three weeks at the Gleneagles Hotel, in Torquay, Devon (England), an establishment owned and 'operated' by a Mister Donald Sinclair. What the gang could not help but notice and ignore was their host's eccentric and irrational quirks: inhospitable behaviour. His guests, his lifeblood, seemed to annoy him to no end by way of existing in one of his suites and periodically in his dining area (and holding one's knife and fork in the wrong hands).

Springboard to a brilliant series. A one of a kind.

The sitcom, a form I generally despise, was created by former Python but always funny John Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth (who onscreen would play hotel assistant Polly Sherman).

The always dependable hotel staff provided a steady stream of laughs.

John Cleese played Basil to such perfection that one might think that the actor had a little "Basil" in him. His childish rants and meltdowns were something to behold. Sybil could cut him to pieces, reminding him that he's her husband, not her very young son. "My little nest of vipers" was one of many retorts to his ruling wife; under his breath retorts were about the best he could do.

Manuel, performed to legend by German-born actor Andrew Sachs, was the inn's Spanish waiter. His understanding of the English language was but a step above my understanding of French. One can imagine the potential for errors when diners would place their orders. Basil would sometimes discipline him with a simple cuff to the head. Funny, but not funny, but hilarious.

"He's from Barcelona." Could a television series get away with lines like that today?

Imagine a show today placing an order for an episode like "The Germans". (Nein!) Actually, some furor was generated earlier this year when that classic, and very funny, episode was pulled from the BBC-owned platform UKTV. Imagine. The horror of comedy! The episode was almost immediately returned to the shelf for regular viewing.

By the way, Fawtly Towers lasted just 12 episodes; not through cancellation by BBC2, but due to Mr Cleese's understanding that there is such thing as a series overstaying its welcome.

"Go away."

Picturing: CD Surface Sound