YouTube: One Lucky (Or Rich!) Fan

Supermarionation Stuff and Buzz, My Dalek

Who else would find this for you?

Eh? Eh?

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R.I.P.: Alice Ghostley

Actress Alice Ghostley Dies at 81

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Alice Ghostley, the Tony Award-winning actress best known on television for playing Esmeralda on “Bewitched” and Bernice on “Designing Women,” has died. She was 81.

Ghostley died Friday at her home in Studio City after a long battle with colon cancer and a series of strokes, longtime friend Jim Pinkston said.

Ghostley was an inspiration to Paul Lynde.

See latter-day Ghostley in this YouTube clip of Designing Women. Alas, nothing from her 1960s heyday…

Previously in this blog:
What? They’re Making A Movie I Want To See?!!?
That Funny, That Nasty, That Charming Man

YouTube: Gerry Anderson Documentary

The Making of the 21st Century (Part 1 of 4)
The Making of the 21st Century (Part 2 of 4)
The Making of the 21st Century (Part 3 of 4)
The Making of the 21st Century (Part 4 of 4)

Documentary on the making of Thunderbirds & all the other worlds of Gerry Anderson. Features interviews with Gerry Anderson, Ed Bishop, Francis Matthews, Christine Glanville & Derek Meddings. Edited by myself back in 1991 to a radio documentary from the 1980’s.

This is a wonderful little documentary filled with images I’ve never seen before! Taken from a VHS tape, showing some wear.

I’d never seen the A.P. studios before.

Special effects master and pioneer Derek Meddings

One-legged on a scary catwalk: No OSHA!

One of those exciting Derek Meddings explosions!

Look at how large the Angel Interceptor cockpit area was!

Another great Meddings explosion! No one could do it like him!

Terrahawks: behind the scenes

Look at the puppet’s size next to the light meter!

JOE 90 Club Mix 1986 7 inch vinyl

improved quality recording

Ex + Mart Thunderbirds Ad HQ

its a no strings deal

A snarky ad featuring a sorry-assed imitation Scott Tracy:

No! This is Scott Tracy, dammit:

(Of course they would have to use an imitation. The real Scott has too much dignity!)

Previously in this blog:
Gerry Anderson category
Supermarionation category

It’s Breakaway Day

The faithkeepers at FAB Gear USA sent me an email reminder:

Hi Everyone,

Happy Breakaway Day! As you may recall, Earth’s moon was ripped out of orbit by a massive nueclear explosion 8 years ago – on September 13th, 1999. We here at Fab Gear always raise a glass to the 311 souls lost on Moonbase Alpha on this day, and hope you’ll join us. May the wind alwyas be at their backs, and may the road rise to meet them.

We’ve got lots of new merchandise arriving every week, please do keep checking the website.

Thanks again for everyone’s well wishes and support, we truly appreciate it!

Have a great weekend, and remember to party like it’s 1999!

Anthony & Rob
http://fabgearusa.com

Go watch the documentary on YouTube.

May we never forget!

It’s All About Noticing Things

Pay attention. This is important. Very.

‘You have an extraordinary genius for minutiae,’ I [Watson] remarked.

‘I appreciate their importance. [. . .]’ [Holmes said.]
— The Sign of the Four, Chapter 1, The Science of Deduction, pg. 7

‘lt is my business to know things. That is my trade.’ [Holmes replied.]
— The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes; The Blanched Soldier, pg. 165

From the DUH! School of Intellectualism comes this:

Study links attention problems to early TV viewing

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Watching television more than two hours a day early in life can lead to attention problems later in adolescence, according to a study released on Tuesday.

The roughly 40 percent increase in attention problems among heavy TV viewers was observed in both boys and girls, and was independent of whether a diagnosis of attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder was made prior to adolescence.

The link was established by a long-term study of the habits and behaviors of more than 1,000 children born in Dunedin, New Zealand, between April 1972 and March 1973.

There you are as a kid, merrily sucking at what Harlan Ellison rightly termed the Glass Teat, being stimulated at a pace that no human being could ever sustain, in an entertaining manner than no single human being could accomplish. It’s like being on a fun ride at high speed.

Then comes school.

Which goes at the pace of human beings.

The contrast is like going from that zooming fun ride to being sick in bed miserable with the flu.

And it takes them til now to notice that?! I understood that as a frikkin kid in elementary school. Which is why I was a rotten student (the fact that things were taught without showing their connection to real life was at least half the problem too). School, when compared to TV, was boring. It was a torture and a torment. And back then, TV wasn’t as hyperactive as it is today. In fact, the most hyperactive show back then was one specifically designed to encourage learning in children: Sesame Street! (Given the floodtide of stupidity and rising illiteracy since that show debuted, I’d have to say: Massive Fail!)

Sometimes I wonder just how much of the human race are actually zombies from the neck up — seemingly alive, yet brain dead. (Given the epidemic of drugs, I also have to wonder how much of that brain-deadness is innate in human beings and how much was self-created through chemical destruction of neuronal connections. And how long will it be before someone wakes up to create that study?)

Here’s a great example of someone waking up to challenge dogma. This issue is so important it compels me to do the unthinkable: embed a YouTube video in my blog for the second time.

There’s Nash, surrounded by people who are seemingly as bright as he is. After all, they’re all in the same college together, so the others have to be intelligent too, right? Yet he notices something that goes against what the others have simply accepted. And it doesn’t happen in a classroom. It happens in life.

And how many things do you pass by in your daily life not noticing? What have you accepted as fact that actually isn’t? Why accept what is instead of what could and should be?

Quote Of The Day: The Genius Of Jack Kirby

Jack Kirby, a Comic Book Genius, Is Finally Remembered

He created a new grammar of storytelling and a cinematic style of motion. Once-wooden characters cascaded from one frame to another — or even from page to page — threatening to fall right out of the book into the reader’s lap. The force of punches thrown was visibly and explosively evident. Even at rest, a Kirby character pulsed with tension and energy in a way that makes movie versions of the same characters seem static by comparison.

Kirby was — and is still — so far ahead of everyone. He will be stolen from by generations to come as the tools to create dramatic imagery via software becomes more powerful, affordable, and spreads out to the masses.

Jack Kirby (Mike Royer inks) panel from his neomythic New Gods epic series

Previously in this blog:
Another Thing That Will Ensure I Die Poor…

What? They’re Making A Movie I Want To See?!!?

According to the Paul Lynde MySpace Page(!), this is in pre-production. Produce it! Produce it!

Previously in this blog:
That Funny, That Nasty, That Charming Man

These Were Our Toys. And We Never Had School Shootings.

Maybe we weren’t kewl, but we were happy!

See a crisper image here.

Dailymotion: Coronet Blue

Coronet Blue

Because it keeps getting taken down at YouTube.

And because if some goddammed Suit sees that people want this, maybe it will finally appear on legal DVD.

Update: The perils of posting without completely viewing. This is not just the opening theme visuals, but the closing theme credits too! The best Coronet Blue clip yet! Download Helper is your Firefox friend!

Previously in this blog:
YouTube: Coronet Blue Theme Back Up!
REAL Must-See TV: Coronet Blue!
The Greatest TV. Ever.

YouTube: More RARE Gerry Anderson

The Investigator (Seg 1 of 3)
The Investigator (Seg 2 of 3)
The Investigator (Seg 3 of 3)

Gerry and Sylvia Anderson made this pilot for a live action/puppet series back in 1973 (or thereabouts), relatively cheaply in Malta. No series resulted.

This was added by some generous saint to YouTube just yesterday. Grab it before it disappears! Download Helper is your Firefox best friend.

SPOILER ALERT!

I tried for two years to get this via P2P. That’s how rare it is. This is from a slightly-faulty VHS tape without any color correction.

After all that time, was it worth it?

Well, to see it, yes. In terms of its actual story value, no. It’s pretty lame and the script has dialogue that is like gravel against teeth.

Sylvia Anderson did the voice of Jill — and she sounds like Joe 90! Shane Rimmer was the voice of John, and he notched his voice up so he sounded like a teenaged Scott Tracy. I think the Jill puppet resembles Karen Black (photo). John unfortunately looks like the Gay Bob doll!

The gas-powered radio-controlled car is pretty remarkable, but it just looks ridiculous against real-life settings. It also betrays just how low-budget this endeavor was: there are no close-ups of the puppets in the moving vehicles (car, motorboat).

It’s difficult to see how this could have ever sold for a series.