You know, I was just thinking about JohnFN’s recent post about Hollywood and the aside he made about Modern Warfare 2 and how games are increasingly sophisticated in storytelling and increasingly influential in the culture. I know our old fogies here have some notion of how far games have come, but I would like to provide an example from Mass Effect 2, which is coming out in January. Of course, Modern Warfare 2 will also impress, leaving a few jaws resting on the floor.
I haven’t played a video game since Space Invaders came out, but I do get this phenomenon, and I think you’re right. These stories are better than most movies and that trend will continue. This is where it’s happening today. We’ll always have something like The Movies, but their influence on the culture will never be what it was in the last century.
I’m gonna noodle aloud here, so feel free to scroll.
Movies are more liberal because the director and screenwriter are in complete control. Characters’ motivations are whatever will get the movie from point A to point B. Movies don’t need to correlate to reality in any way—if they’re made by hacks, that is—and in fact, it is reality which is distorted so that in the context of the film the characters actions can make some sort of sense.
In video games, the player is the main character. It’s his choices that drive the plot, and his motivations have to make sense to him or he’ll be jolted out of his willing suspension of disbelief faster than an Obamacare supporter awaiting an MRI.
Given that, video game plots—no matter how fantastic—have to conform to reality at least in the realms of cause-and-effect, human nature, and—most importantly—morality. Moral obfuscation, which liberals like to confuse with nuance, has no place in video games.
And the more video games mirror real life, the greater they come to conform with the conservative worldview. Not because video game companies are members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, but because as my favorite quote goes, “the facts of life are conservative.”
Christmas Episodes were intended to be recycled, so they’d just run the same one year after year. They didn’t worry about Series Continuity in those days, particularly for sitcoms.
Ellie was removed from the show because they felt she was too assertive. She was kind of funny, and she wasn’t guranteed to roll over and go along with Andy’s plans. The network got a few complaints about her character, but more than that the producers felt that her personality conflicted with the deliberately nostalgic tone of the show, and decided to replace her with a more typical doormat kind of love interest. (And, yes, the show was intended to be nostalgic even when it first ran. Most people don’t realize that, but that was pretty much its appeal: A simpler life, away from the crazy go-go never-stop rush of the 1960s and all that consarned rock and/or roll)
Changing subjects:
I’m gonna’ shamelessly plug my site here: A few months back we discussed making conservative fan films of some sort, or fan-originals, perhaps, to serve as tools in the culture wars (A phrase which seems to have become dated in the last month or two – I suddenly don’t hear it anymore). Response to the idea was overwhelmingly “meh.” I think most of you didn’t care, I assume at least some of you didn’t know what I was talking about, and so on. Well, today we’ve posted an interview with Clive Young in which he discusses the whole Fan Film subculture and so on. For those of you interested, or who just want to know what it’s all about, check it out here http://www.republibot.com/content/fan-film-friday-interview-clive-young-talks-about-fan-film-subculture
R3, I won’t discuss details here, but ModCon may or may not being doing something along those lines, though quite a few of the details are different. Drop me a line (you still have my e-mail, correct?). You’re looking to do some writing and we may have need for writers on this project. No guarantees, but I’ think you’ll be interested.
I’m willing to volunteer some production or post/effects work to a worthy project. Will travel anywhere on the West Coast for a couple days of shooting. Click on my name to see my work, if you’re interested.
What you write makes sense. Wasn’t the show originally a spin-off of the old, “Danny Kaye Show,” however? I thought Andy Griffith had made some fame for himself with his, “What it was, was football” comedy bit, and then “Make Room for Sergeants” so they had him play a yokel sherrif that big city Danny Kaye encounters in an episode of Danny’s show. It was my understanding Griffith’s character was such a hit that they decided to write a show around it. In the first shows Andy is much more conniving and much more of a Southern stereotype. He’s barely a notch above Barney in the intelligence category. It seemed to me like the show evolved into Andy being a strong, honest, patriarchal character.
Have you seen “A Face in the Crowd” with Griffith, the sultry Patricia Neal and un-sultry Walter Matthau? A really good performance by Griffith and honestly could never quite see him the same after.
You’re close, Rufus. I saw the episode and remember it. It was the Danny Thomas Show. Danny blew into Mayberry and got a ticket for speeding, or illegal parking, or something. Andy arrested him, and then arraigned him (being both local cop and justice of the peace). When he saw how much money Danny had on him, he upped the fine, and Danny refused to pay, turning it all into a media circus, bringing in reporters to tell the story of the discrimination he was suffering at the hands of this power-crazed, redneck yokel. Finally Andy explained to the reporters that he didn’t feel Danny would learn a lesson if he paid a fine that was a lot of money to the local folks, but just pocket change to him. And Danny was so moved that he apologized on the air.
Yes, of course, Danny Thomas! I meant him! Marlo’s dad. If Marlo and her husband Phil are any example, maybe Danny was preaching from the canon of Marx at home.
Andy was a victim of Ronny Howard’s leftist ideology. I can forgive him because Opie worked some mojo on him. I know he has been a consistent democrat but I like to think that he’s one of the old school dems – the kind that actually like their country, not the extreme statists that run the party now. If Andy Griffith really thinks that government is the answer to everything, I just don’t wanna know.
Exactly CW! His show was a tribute to all things good and still funny. You can’t get more conservative than Mayberry. I still think Opie held him hostage and forced him to make that commercial. Hey, it’s my fantasy world, let me have it.
Kit knows this,of course…the SEC Championship is tomorrow,Florida versus Alabama.The winner will go to the national championship game ,to most likely play Texas.Keeping that in mind,consider this:Carlos Dunlop,star defensive end for the Gators,got picked up for DUI the other night,and has been suspended by Coach Urban Meyer.Apparently,young Mr.Dunlop decided that a few pulls on the bottle took priority over his teammates and the most important game of his life…meh..ROLL TIDE!!!!
Good on Meyer, fortunately cut more from the Paterno cloth than Bowden. Could be wrong, but don’t envision Saban acting similarly if it was one of his key players … unless they were playing Chattanooga of course.
Because I have a cold and am feeling crotchety today, I will come out and speak my mind. As a kid raised on a farm, I hated the Andy Griffith Show. I basically hated all TV shows with rural, small town settings, except for Lassie. I found them all condescending.
It never surprised me that Opie grew up to be a pinko. It never surprised me that Don Knotts appeared in Pleasantville, a movie devoted to trashing all traditional sexual morality. And if Andy Griffith isn’t an open lefty, I figure it’s just because he’s pandering to his fan base. I always knew they hated us, and were laughing behind their sleeves the whole time.
Floyd,the best scenario for us BCS haters would be for Texas to lose to Nebraska,and put TCU (of the Mountain West Conference!)in the title game against Florida or Bama
OK, hate on Opie. That’s cool. And hate on Andy if you must. (I choose to put that particular telescope to my blind eye). But we can take comfort in the knowledge that both Hal Smith (Otis Campbell) and Howard McNear (Floyd the barber) served honorably in World War II. In McNear’s case, he enlisted as a private in 1942, at the age of 37. Remember when it was cool to be patriotic?
Oh that’s right! I had forgotten about McNear’s service in WWII. I admire the producers of “The Andy Griffith Show”, or whomever made the decision to keep McNear on the show post-stroke. Actually, I think I heard once that it was Griffith’s decision. McNear was a very funny man and it was nice that he was given an opportunity to continue something he clearly enjoyed.
@ Lars: I’m pretty sure “The Beverly Hillbillies” was supposed to be Condescending. “Green Acres” too. In fact, I like both of those shows better than The Andy Griffith show. The Andy Griffith show is pretty much exactly what it was: a pointless slice of nostalgia for people who were afraid of change in the sixties. (As Harlan Ellison called it in “The Other Glass Teat”, “Kansas City, around 1900,” which does sum it up.) On the other hand, Hillbillies and Green Acres became increasingly more surreal as they progressed, becoming more popular and vastly funnier as they went along. An interesting thing is that all these “Rural” comedies – Hillbillies, Green Acres, Mayberry RFD, and the rest – were all cancelled in 1970, despite high ratings. They were considered poison for advertisers, as no one on the shows ever bought, wanted, or needed anything, and they always portrayed that happiness comes from within. I think “Gomer Pyle, USMC” was the only one to survive the purge, for a time.
Which doesn’t mean you should like ‘em, just putting that out there.
“Green Acres” is one of the most surreal things out there. That show was a riot and I still am amazed by some of the bizarre stuff they did. I love the running gag about the Harvard School of Chiropody! Funny thing about “Green Acres,” it showed the city folks for the rubes they were and the rural folks as their betters. By the way, if you think about Eva Gabor’s accent when she sings the theme song… That’s pretty much how my mother-in-law sounds all the time.
1970 was a damn weird year for TV. It was the year that TV went from being “that thing that we watch in between work and sex” and became “A Force Driving Culture,” at least in the minds of the powers that be/were at the time. First of all, you had the death of all the rural comedies – and there were a bunch of them, all pulling serious ratings, even the hippies really liked ‘em. Then you had the concerted move to reduce violence on TV, which was one of the contributors behind the cancellation of shows like The Wild Wild West and Get Smart. Both those shows were clearly on their last legs by that point, to be fair, but each could have easily gone another season. Most of the more high-concept sitcoms of the period disappeared then, too, for reasons I can’t quite fathom (“I Dream of Jeanie” being the saddest of those lost). It was aloso the year that the FCC posted a whole bunch of new regulations about cartoons, which meant basically the death of the saturday morning adventure show, like Johnny Quest (Already long gone by then, but still) and the original Superfriends and whatnot. You couldn’t kill people, show fighting, show guns, or anything like that. You could still show superheroes, but you were very limited as to the superheroics you could show. Added to which, shows now had to have about 60 seconds of defineable educational content per ep. This was intended to be incorporated in to the show as a whole – like Fat Albert did – but most shows weren’t up to the challenge, and so they just made unrelated PSAs that they tacked on to the episodes : “Hi, I’m Superman, and I’m here to tell you that if you see a downed power line, you should never stick it in your mouth, no matter how tasty and delicious it looks!” The new rules made no distinction between realistic violence and loony-toons-styled violence, so of course all the classic cartoons got cut to ribbons.
Between that and the 1969 decision banning shows that were inspired by toy lines, they basically sentenced an entire generation of kids to watching crap like “Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space” and that terrible “Dr. Dolittle” cartoon. Horrible.
The rules stayed in effect until around 1983, by the way, when the “Toyline” rules were thrown out, and it was 1985 when they finally ditched the “No dying” thing in some circumstances, though most people making cartoons were still cautious about going there for fear they’d animate stuff that would disappear from the airwaves when the next administration came in.
That’s weird, R3, because growing up in the 70s I saw all sorts of cartoon violence. (Unless I missed the one where Daffy was actually vivisected.) You sure it wasn’t 1980?
Melody was really hot. Quit hating on the Pussycats. “The Groovy Ghoulies” is the cartoon that really sucked, that and “Grape Ape” and “Speed Buggy”…yuck!
You had to bring up Grape Ape..I was always hoping an anvil from an old school Road Runner/Coyote toon would fall out of the sky and put him out of his misery.
Maybe that was one of the reasons Star Wars was such a big hit with the younger crowd – lots of blasting away and lightsaber inflicted amputations. You know, all the cool stuff mommy gov’t wouldn’t let you see on TV.
No, Mike, I’m sure. It was 1970. What, you’ve never heard people complaining about how Loony Toons were “Cut to Ribbons” on network TV?
If you watched ‘em syndicated on a local TV station – and there were lots of those in 70s – you might have seem ‘em uncut, since the FCC rules generally only applied to broadcast networks. Thus, local channels could still run old sitcom and stuff. For a time, the UHF stations had more lattitude than the broadcast networks. Imported shows – like Star Blazers – had slightly more lattitude, too, but not much. They couldn’t show people dying, but they tended to have somewhat more involved stories and complex characters. (By comparison to Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, anyway)
Things got so bad in the 70s that they started cancelling children’s programming if there was any hint of controversy. For instance, “Land of the Lost” nearly got pulled because David Gerrold’s script had Will and Holly discussing whether or not they believed in God. “I guess so, most of the time.” The show continued, but he was no longer allowed to write about stuff like that. The (Generally crappy) Star Trek cartoon actually did get cancelled because of public outcry about them portraying the devil in a positive light in the episode “The Majiks of Megas II.”
Not disagreeing with your year marker, R3, but like Mike I got to see all the great Looney Tunes stuff that eventually did get cut to hell, fortunately after I got to see all the Elmer/Daffy and Road Runner/Wile E. stuff, plus my fave of all time.
Now, though, just gimme back my Speedy Gonzalez!!!
Speaking of cartoons, does anyone know why the big obnoxious ox in Popeye catoons name was changed from Bluto to Brutus? That has always bothered me, though it seems quite trivial. Just curious.
I believe they got into trouble with Disney, which claimed the name was to close to “Pluto.” So they made it Brutus. Later, for some reason, it went back to Bluto, all in all a better name.
As a bit of trivia, Bluto had not been a character in the original Popeye comic strip. He was invented for the animated cartoons, in order to provide a recurring, recognizable villain. Then he was incorporated into the strip.
>>I, for one, would love to see the Oscar stripped from him, even the Nobel. Yeah, I’ll be standing over here holding my breath. At least an apology. On worldwide TV. In HD.>>
Didn’t want to threadjack at the global warming section, so comin’ here to see if anyone else enjoyed the HD jokes on 30 Rock last night. Damn that show for making me love it so much despite its stars.
I was just reading a story on a Denmark Parliamentary speaker calling into question global warming (THE DEBATE IS OVER!!). I’m going to put in bold the part that I’m so impressed by:
“The problem is that lots of people go around saying that the climate change we see is a result of human activity. That is a very dangerous claim,” Parliamentary Speaker and former Finance Minister Thor Pedersen (Lib) tells DR.
Seriously on a 1 to 10 scale how bad ass would it be to be named Thor?? I’m going with 93 on a 1 to 10 scale. Oh yeah here is the whole story if you are interested:
@ Eric: Yes! I’ve been ragging on the show pretty hard this season, it’s just been sub-par from the getgo, but man, this episode made me take it all back, this was the funniest thing they’ve done all year, possibly the funniest thing they’ve done in two years.
@ Rufus: A television is an electronic device whereby electromagnetic signals broadcast in some means by an entertainment network are re-assembled in to moving pictures and/or sounds in the privacy of your own home for the ammusment of yourself and your cats, assuming you forget to turn it off when you leave. I realize you have little interest in these matters, so I figured I’d take the opportunity to explain it to you. And your cats.
By the way,did anybody see the clip of Bama Bob Gibbs at the White House daily briefing insult that black female reporter?She was asking a perfectly valid question about that WH social secretary,and ol Bob was so condescending…RASCIST!If Ari Fleisher had done it the networks would have been all over it.
I can’t take him seriously when he has that fat biotch on whose name I missed because I was at the Gym and I believe Charlie Crist’s twin both gloating…..talk about dumbing down the show? WTF? I am watching a deer hunting show. Happier.
I really can’t take O’Reilly. I’ve never been a fan of his. I tried watching him earlier this week and still can’t do it. I get the impression he is trying to be some sort of everyman, regular guy to his audience. I think he ends up being a condescending jerk. I hate that people think he’s a conservative when he’s just a self-promoting, audience exploiting loudmouth.
Let me ask a serious question: when do I have to stop eating leftover turkey? I’ve eaten nothing but turkey for lunch and dinner for the last week, and I’m not done with it. Is it still good if it smells good?
I’m almost done with the mashed potatoes, so no worries there.
Mike, your left over turkey should be good for a week. That is assuming your turkey was from Thanksgiving and it’s been kept pretty cold in your ‘fridge.
Honestly, I’m sick of the leftovers after having it in sandwiches and a casserole. I hate wasting food but consoled myself with the knowledge that turkey is cheap this year. I pitched it today. If you’re tired of it and want to move on, go ahead.
Dude what I did with ours is I made Turkey Shepherds pie..dressing on bottom, the green bean caserole on top of that, the turkey and then covered it with gravy and then I took what was left of the taters and smeared them on top. Lets just say nothing was left. Whatever else we have left I am tossing tomorrow after we come back from Christmas shopping and shopping for my Christmas Baking. I make the best Molasses cookies EVER!
That sounds good, Stephanie. But it also would stretch the turkey, and I need to eat it fast. I’m eating nothing but turkey (3 sandwiches a day) and potatoes and I’m starting to panic.
Mike, as the Widow said … one week. I’m still food safety certified from culinary school, and if you keep eating that stuff you’re going to be hitting the porcelain a lot. It’s one thing to reheat the bird to 160 degrees, for awhile, but going cold turkey will give you a burning you-know-what, if you keep eating it.
Well I had my Mom in Law here and we ate most of the pie…she and hubby did. I tossed the scraps. Taters gone. If I were you I’d start thinking of tossing the leavings.
That pic looks like it’s from season one with Miss Ellie. Whatever happened to her?
I think, I THINK, I am NOT sure, but I think that the writers/producers did not think they had good chemistry.
I liked Ellie more than Miss Crump – but Miss Crump did have that encounter with Steve McQueen when they took on the Blob.
Ellie was ok, but a bit too modern. I didn’t like Helen any better though, I thought she was a bit too apt to jump to conclusions and yell at Andy.
She was no Helen Crump.
Season one had the only Christmas episode in the show’s entire run. I’ve always wondered why. And also wonder why Leave it To Beaver never had one.
You know, I was just thinking about JohnFN’s recent post about Hollywood and the aside he made about Modern Warfare 2 and how games are increasingly sophisticated in storytelling and increasingly influential in the culture. I know our old fogies here have some notion of how far games have come, but I would like to provide an example from Mass Effect 2, which is coming out in January. Of course, Modern Warfare 2 will also impress, leaving a few jaws resting on the floor.
David,
I haven’t played a video game since Space Invaders came out, but I do get this phenomenon, and I think you’re right. These stories are better than most movies and that trend will continue. This is where it’s happening today. We’ll always have something like The Movies, but their influence on the culture will never be what it was in the last century.
I’m gonna noodle aloud here, so feel free to scroll.
Movies are more liberal because the director and screenwriter are in complete control. Characters’ motivations are whatever will get the movie from point A to point B. Movies don’t need to correlate to reality in any way—if they’re made by hacks, that is—and in fact, it is reality which is distorted so that in the context of the film the characters actions can make some sort of sense.
In video games, the player is the main character. It’s his choices that drive the plot, and his motivations have to make sense to him or he’ll be jolted out of his willing suspension of disbelief faster than an Obamacare supporter awaiting an MRI.
Given that, video game plots—no matter how fantastic—have to conform to reality at least in the realms of cause-and-effect, human nature, and—most importantly—morality. Moral obfuscation, which liberals like to confuse with nuance, has no place in video games.
And the more video games mirror real life, the greater they come to conform with the conservative worldview. Not because video game companies are members of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy, but because as my favorite quote goes, “the facts of life are conservative.”
Christmas Episodes were intended to be recycled, so they’d just run the same one year after year. They didn’t worry about Series Continuity in those days, particularly for sitcoms.
Ellie was removed from the show because they felt she was too assertive. She was kind of funny, and she wasn’t guranteed to roll over and go along with Andy’s plans. The network got a few complaints about her character, but more than that the producers felt that her personality conflicted with the deliberately nostalgic tone of the show, and decided to replace her with a more typical doormat kind of love interest. (And, yes, the show was intended to be nostalgic even when it first ran. Most people don’t realize that, but that was pretty much its appeal: A simpler life, away from the crazy go-go never-stop rush of the 1960s and all that consarned rock and/or roll)
Changing subjects:
I’m gonna’ shamelessly plug my site here: A few months back we discussed making conservative fan films of some sort, or fan-originals, perhaps, to serve as tools in the culture wars (A phrase which seems to have become dated in the last month or two – I suddenly don’t hear it anymore). Response to the idea was overwhelmingly “meh.” I think most of you didn’t care, I assume at least some of you didn’t know what I was talking about, and so on. Well, today we’ve posted an interview with Clive Young in which he discusses the whole Fan Film subculture and so on. For those of you interested, or who just want to know what it’s all about, check it out here http://www.republibot.com/content/fan-film-friday-interview-clive-young-talks-about-fan-film-subculture
R3, I won’t discuss details here, but ModCon may or may not being doing something along those lines, though quite a few of the details are different. Drop me a line (you still have my e-mail, correct?). You’re looking to do some writing and we may have need for writers on this project. No guarantees, but I’ think you’ll be interested.
I’m willing to volunteer some production or post/effects work to a worthy project. Will travel anywhere on the West Coast for a couple days of shooting. Click on my name to see my work, if you’re interested.
Republibot 3.0,
What you write makes sense. Wasn’t the show originally a spin-off of the old, “Danny Kaye Show,” however? I thought Andy Griffith had made some fame for himself with his, “What it was, was football” comedy bit, and then “Make Room for Sergeants” so they had him play a yokel sherrif that big city Danny Kaye encounters in an episode of Danny’s show. It was my understanding Griffith’s character was such a hit that they decided to write a show around it. In the first shows Andy is much more conniving and much more of a Southern stereotype. He’s barely a notch above Barney in the intelligence category. It seemed to me like the show evolved into Andy being a strong, honest, patriarchal character.
Have you seen “A Face in the Crowd” with Griffith, the sultry Patricia Neal and un-sultry Walter Matthau? A really good performance by Griffith and honestly could never quite see him the same after.
You’re close, Rufus. I saw the episode and remember it. It was the Danny Thomas Show. Danny blew into Mayberry and got a ticket for speeding, or illegal parking, or something. Andy arrested him, and then arraigned him (being both local cop and justice of the peace). When he saw how much money Danny had on him, he upped the fine, and Danny refused to pay, turning it all into a media circus, bringing in reporters to tell the story of the discrimination he was suffering at the hands of this power-crazed, redneck yokel. Finally Andy explained to the reporters that he didn’t feel Danny would learn a lesson if he paid a fine that was a lot of money to the local folks, but just pocket change to him. And Danny was so moved that he apologized on the air.
Very Marxist, when you think about it.
Yes, of course, Danny Thomas! I meant him! Marlo’s dad. If Marlo and her husband Phil are any example, maybe Danny was preaching from the canon of Marx at home.
It was “No Time for Sergeants” one of the best military comedies ever. Unfortunately not available on DVD. But it appears from time to time on TCM.
I thought yall had banned Andy for voting wrong. Well, I’m still happy to see him.
Andy was a victim of Ronny Howard’s leftist ideology. I can forgive him because Opie worked some mojo on him. I know he has been a consistent democrat but I like to think that he’s one of the old school dems – the kind that actually like their country, not the extreme statists that run the party now. If Andy Griffith really thinks that government is the answer to everything, I just don’t wanna know.
Exactly CW! His show was a tribute to all things good and still funny. You can’t get more conservative than Mayberry. I still think Opie held him hostage and forced him to make that commercial. Hey, it’s my fantasy world, let me have it.
I can just see Opie there with a BB gun to Andy’s head. Yeah…that’s how it happened!
I like your updated ’shoe’ avatar!
Kit knows this,of course…the SEC Championship is tomorrow,Florida versus Alabama.The winner will go to the national championship game ,to most likely play Texas.Keeping that in mind,consider this:Carlos Dunlop,star defensive end for the Gators,got picked up for DUI the other night,and has been suspended by Coach Urban Meyer.Apparently,young Mr.Dunlop decided that a few pulls on the bottle took priority over his teammates and the most important game of his life…meh..ROLL TIDE!!!!
I would love to see Texas v. TCU for the nat’l champ. Won’t happen, but it would be great.
Good on Meyer, fortunately cut more from the Paterno cloth than Bowden. Could be wrong, but don’t envision Saban acting similarly if it was one of his key players … unless they were playing Chattanooga of course.
Actually I didn’t.
Busy week.
But, ROLL TIDE!!!
@ David: Done.
Because I have a cold and am feeling crotchety today, I will come out and speak my mind. As a kid raised on a farm, I hated the Andy Griffith Show. I basically hated all TV shows with rural, small town settings, except for Lassie. I found them all condescending.
It never surprised me that Opie grew up to be a pinko. It never surprised me that Don Knotts appeared in Pleasantville, a movie devoted to trashing all traditional sexual morality. And if Andy Griffith isn’t an open lefty, I figure it’s just because he’s pandering to his fan base. I always knew they hated us, and were laughing behind their sleeves the whole time.
There. I’ve said it.
Man Lars, is there anything happy you do like? It’s A Wonderful Life, Andy Griffith, Charlie Brown….Did I miss anything?
You crack me up though and I still like you, ya grumpy old cuss.
Helen Crump IS Hedda Gabler.
“Is there anything happy you do like?”
[Thinking.]
Nope. I got nothing. Happiness is just the way they soften you up so they can smack you in the back of the head with a sock full of rocks.
Wait. I do like Christmas trees. As long as they have multi-colored lights and ornaments, and don’t try to be too artsy.
Well here’s wishing you a Christmas full of multi-colored light filled trees.
Not even “The Farmer’s Daughter?”
Love that movie!!
Never saw it. Did fall in love with the late, lamented Inger Stevens in the TV version, though.
Lars, that’s only because you had a y chromosome in your 23rd pair and a pulse.
Sorry about your cold, Lars. Feel better soon!
The Waltons? Before they all left or croaked?
I couldn’t stand The Waltons. They reminded me of everything I disliked about Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Huh. I’m a Yankee, so Im not reminded of anything but big families, which I like. Never cared much for John-boy, though.
I’ve never seen an episode. Don’t feel like I’ve missed anything.
“I’ve never seen an episode. Don’t feel like I’ve missed anything.”
Well I’m glad that’s settled, then.
Floyd,the best scenario for us BCS haters would be for Texas to lose to Nebraska,and put TCU (of the Mountain West Conference!)in the title game against Florida or Bama
OK, hate on Opie. That’s cool. And hate on Andy if you must. (I choose to put that particular telescope to my blind eye). But we can take comfort in the knowledge that both Hal Smith (Otis Campbell) and Howard McNear (Floyd the barber) served honorably in World War II. In McNear’s case, he enlisted as a private in 1942, at the age of 37. Remember when it was cool to be patriotic?
Oh that’s right! I had forgotten about McNear’s service in WWII. I admire the producers of “The Andy Griffith Show”, or whomever made the decision to keep McNear on the show post-stroke. Actually, I think I heard once that it was Griffith’s decision. McNear was a very funny man and it was nice that he was given an opportunity to continue something he clearly enjoyed.
Thank you Rich. I always did like you best.
Fickle.
@ Lars: I’m pretty sure “The Beverly Hillbillies” was supposed to be Condescending. “Green Acres” too. In fact, I like both of those shows better than The Andy Griffith show. The Andy Griffith show is pretty much exactly what it was: a pointless slice of nostalgia for people who were afraid of change in the sixties. (As Harlan Ellison called it in “The Other Glass Teat”, “Kansas City, around 1900,” which does sum it up.) On the other hand, Hillbillies and Green Acres became increasingly more surreal as they progressed, becoming more popular and vastly funnier as they went along. An interesting thing is that all these “Rural” comedies – Hillbillies, Green Acres, Mayberry RFD, and the rest – were all cancelled in 1970, despite high ratings. They were considered poison for advertisers, as no one on the shows ever bought, wanted, or needed anything, and they always portrayed that happiness comes from within. I think “Gomer Pyle, USMC” was the only one to survive the purge, for a time.
Which doesn’t mean you should like ‘em, just putting that out there.
I love the anecdote about losing their sponsors!
“Green Acres” is one of the most surreal things out there. That show was a riot and I still am amazed by some of the bizarre stuff they did. I love the running gag about the Harvard School of Chiropody! Funny thing about “Green Acres,” it showed the city folks for the rubes they were and the rural folks as their betters. By the way, if you think about Eva Gabor’s accent when she sings the theme song… That’s pretty much how my mother-in-law sounds all the time.
Cool, now I have another reason for liking it.
“…a pointless slice of nostalgia…”
I think most shows could do with making fewer points. Entertainment is nice, sometimes.
I just want to say I really miss old school Flintstones.
Stephanie,
Which movie did you enjoy (if any)?
THE FLINTSTONES starring John Goodman and Rick Moranis
or FLINTSTONE VIVA ROCK VEGAS with Mark Addy and Stephen Baldwin.
I think the second one was better cast, I’ll have to rewatch the first one, though.
Didn’t see either. I am talking the toon. The play on the Honeymooners. That was classic TV there.
I know, good show.
good show.
“Derek!”
What is “Derek!”?
Can someone explain that to me?
Rufus here; “Derek!”
DEREK!!!
Seriously! WHAT? IS? DEREK?
Stephanie mistyped one day and wrote derek instead of what she meant. At least that’s what I remember.
Oh yeah I forgot….ARGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Too funny..LOL!
“Derek!” is more specifically what an iPhone will think you mean when you type “eeeek!!”. It helpfully corrects it for you; hilarity ensues.
For anyone trying to reproduce this, the number of “e’s” is crucial.
You guys knew I was on my IPhone din’t cha!
1970 was a damn weird year for TV. It was the year that TV went from being “that thing that we watch in between work and sex” and became “A Force Driving Culture,” at least in the minds of the powers that be/were at the time. First of all, you had the death of all the rural comedies – and there were a bunch of them, all pulling serious ratings, even the hippies really liked ‘em. Then you had the concerted move to reduce violence on TV, which was one of the contributors behind the cancellation of shows like The Wild Wild West and Get Smart. Both those shows were clearly on their last legs by that point, to be fair, but each could have easily gone another season. Most of the more high-concept sitcoms of the period disappeared then, too, for reasons I can’t quite fathom (“I Dream of Jeanie” being the saddest of those lost). It was aloso the year that the FCC posted a whole bunch of new regulations about cartoons, which meant basically the death of the saturday morning adventure show, like Johnny Quest (Already long gone by then, but still) and the original Superfriends and whatnot. You couldn’t kill people, show fighting, show guns, or anything like that. You could still show superheroes, but you were very limited as to the superheroics you could show. Added to which, shows now had to have about 60 seconds of defineable educational content per ep. This was intended to be incorporated in to the show as a whole – like Fat Albert did – but most shows weren’t up to the challenge, and so they just made unrelated PSAs that they tacked on to the episodes : “Hi, I’m Superman, and I’m here to tell you that if you see a downed power line, you should never stick it in your mouth, no matter how tasty and delicious it looks!” The new rules made no distinction between realistic violence and loony-toons-styled violence, so of course all the classic cartoons got cut to ribbons.
Between that and the 1969 decision banning shows that were inspired by toy lines, they basically sentenced an entire generation of kids to watching crap like “Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space” and that terrible “Dr. Dolittle” cartoon. Horrible.
The rules stayed in effect until around 1983, by the way, when the “Toyline” rules were thrown out, and it was 1985 when they finally ditched the “No dying” thing in some circumstances, though most people making cartoons were still cautious about going there for fear they’d animate stuff that would disappear from the airwaves when the next administration came in.
That’s weird, R3, because growing up in the 70s I saw all sorts of cartoon violence. (Unless I missed the one where Daffy was actually vivisected.) You sure it wasn’t 1980?
Melody was really hot. Quit hating on the Pussycats. “The Groovy Ghoulies” is the cartoon that really sucked, that and “Grape Ape” and “Speed Buggy”…yuck!
You had to bring up Grape Ape..I was always hoping an anvil from an old school Road Runner/Coyote toon would fall out of the sky and put him out of his misery.
Maybe that was one of the reasons Star Wars was such a big hit with the younger crowd – lots of blasting away and lightsaber inflicted amputations. You know, all the cool stuff mommy gov’t wouldn’t let you see on TV.
No, Mike, I’m sure. It was 1970. What, you’ve never heard people complaining about how Loony Toons were “Cut to Ribbons” on network TV?
If you watched ‘em syndicated on a local TV station – and there were lots of those in 70s – you might have seem ‘em uncut, since the FCC rules generally only applied to broadcast networks. Thus, local channels could still run old sitcom and stuff. For a time, the UHF stations had more lattitude than the broadcast networks. Imported shows – like Star Blazers – had slightly more lattitude, too, but not much. They couldn’t show people dying, but they tended to have somewhat more involved stories and complex characters. (By comparison to Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, anyway)
Things got so bad in the 70s that they started cancelling children’s programming if there was any hint of controversy. For instance, “Land of the Lost” nearly got pulled because David Gerrold’s script had Will and Holly discussing whether or not they believed in God. “I guess so, most of the time.” The show continued, but he was no longer allowed to write about stuff like that. The (Generally crappy) Star Trek cartoon actually did get cancelled because of public outcry about them portraying the devil in a positive light in the episode “The Majiks of Megas II.”
Not disagreeing with your year marker, R3, but like Mike I got to see all the great Looney Tunes stuff that eventually did get cut to hell, fortunately after I got to see all the Elmer/Daffy and Road Runner/Wile E. stuff, plus my fave of all time.
Now, though, just gimme back my Speedy Gonzalez!!!
Speaking of cartoons, does anyone know why the big obnoxious ox in Popeye catoons name was changed from Bluto to Brutus? That has always bothered me, though it seems quite trivial. Just curious.
I believe they got into trouble with Disney, which claimed the name was to close to “Pluto.” So they made it Brutus. Later, for some reason, it went back to Bluto, all in all a better name.
As a bit of trivia, Bluto had not been a character in the original Popeye comic strip. He was invented for the animated cartoons, in order to provide a recurring, recognizable villain. Then he was incorporated into the strip.
I think you’re right about local tv stations having more leeway—that’s where I saw the good old ultra-violence.
A few months ago I caught a new Tom & Jerry. Pathetic.
>>I, for one, would love to see the Oscar stripped from him, even the Nobel. Yeah, I’ll be standing over here holding my breath. At least an apology. On worldwide TV. In HD.>>
Didn’t want to threadjack at the global warming section, so comin’ here to see if anyone else enjoyed the HD jokes on 30 Rock last night. Damn that show for making me love it so much despite its stars.
I’ve never seen the show. What is an “HD” joke?
Could describe, more fun to show, though if you don’t watch you won’t appreciate the Kenneth portion as much. Cue to around 13:40 or so.
Oh, now I get it. Looks like a funny show…
Despite the wacked-out politics of its two main stars, one of the funniest shows on TV … dammit.
Q: What do you call an eye doctor who works on islands off the coast of Alaska?
A: An optical Aleutian.
That was funny.
I was just reading a story on a Denmark Parliamentary speaker calling into question global warming (THE DEBATE IS OVER!!). I’m going to put in bold the part that I’m so impressed by:
“The problem is that lots of people go around saying that the climate change we see is a result of human activity. That is a very dangerous claim,” Parliamentary Speaker and former Finance Minister Thor Pedersen (Lib) tells DR.
Seriously on a 1 to 10 scale how bad ass would it be to be named Thor?? I’m going with 93 on a 1 to 10 scale. Oh yeah here is the whole story if you are interested:
http://politiken.dk/newsinenglish/article851820.ece
@ Eric: Yes! I’ve been ragging on the show pretty hard this season, it’s just been sub-par from the getgo, but man, this episode made me take it all back, this was the funniest thing they’ve done all year, possibly the funniest thing they’ve done in two years.
@ Rufus: A television is an electronic device whereby electromagnetic signals broadcast in some means by an entertainment network are re-assembled in to moving pictures and/or sounds in the privacy of your own home for the ammusment of yourself and your cats, assuming you forget to turn it off when you leave. I realize you have little interest in these matters, so I figured I’d take the opportunity to explain it to you. And your cats.
Very funny!
I can still sing the theme from “Green Acres”!
In falsetto with a Hungarian accent? I’m impressed!
Mrs. Firefly and I do it all the time. She does a great impersonation of her mother.
By the way,did anybody see the clip of Bama Bob Gibbs at the White House daily briefing insult that black female reporter?She was asking a perfectly valid question about that WH social secretary,and ol Bob was so condescending…RASCIST!If Ari Fleisher had done it the networks would have been all over it.
(from my sister, the Kollege Perfessor)
Q: How do you get someone with a Ph.D. in Philosophy to get off of your porch?
A: Pay for the pizza.
Oh, fine:
Q: What do drummers have in common with groupies?
Ouch!
A: They both like to hang out with musicians.
Really hating on Bill OReilly right now.
Now the jerk has two America haters on who are
apologists for global whining and hcr. He has
jumped the friggen shark.
People often mistake Bill O’Reilly for a conservative, probably because he’s on FOX News.
I can’t take him seriously when he has that fat biotch on whose name I missed because I was at the Gym and I believe Charlie Crist’s twin both gloating…..talk about dumbing down the show? WTF? I am watching a deer hunting show. Happier.
I really can’t take O’Reilly. I’ve never been a fan of his. I tried watching him earlier this week and still can’t do it. I get the impression he is trying to be some sort of everyman, regular guy to his audience. I think he ends up being a condescending jerk. I hate that people think he’s a conservative when he’s just a self-promoting, audience exploiting loudmouth.
He’s a demagogue. He doesn’t have any sort of consistent philosophy.
Let me ask a serious question: when do I have to stop eating leftover turkey? I’ve eaten nothing but turkey for lunch and dinner for the last week, and I’m not done with it. Is it still good if it smells good?
I’m almost done with the mashed potatoes, so no worries there.
Mike, your left over turkey should be good for a week. That is assuming your turkey was from Thanksgiving and it’s been kept pretty cold in your ‘fridge.
Honestly, I’m sick of the leftovers after having it in sandwiches and a casserole. I hate wasting food but consoled myself with the knowledge that turkey is cheap this year. I pitched it today. If you’re tired of it and want to move on, go ahead.
Leftover mashed taters make for amazing potato pancakes — mmmmmmmmm-mmmmmmm!!!
Dude what I did with ours is I made Turkey Shepherds pie..dressing on bottom, the green bean caserole on top of that, the turkey and then covered it with gravy and then I took what was left of the taters and smeared them on top. Lets just say nothing was left. Whatever else we have left I am tossing tomorrow after we come back from Christmas shopping and shopping for my Christmas Baking. I make the best Molasses cookies EVER!
That sounds good, Stephanie. But it also would stretch the turkey, and I need to eat it fast. I’m eating nothing but turkey (3 sandwiches a day) and potatoes and I’m starting to panic.
Nothing better than cold, left-over turkey on wonder bread slathered in mayo! Lots of salt on the turkey.
Mike, as the Widow said … one week. I’m still food safety certified from culinary school, and if you keep eating that stuff you’re going to be hitting the porcelain a lot. It’s one thing to reheat the bird to 160 degrees, for awhile, but going cold turkey will give you a burning you-know-what, if you keep eating it.
Problem solved! (Or postponed, same thing.) Sliced up the rest and froze it. I always forget that I can freeze cooked meats.
Well I had my Mom in Law here and we ate most of the pie…she and hubby did. I tossed the scraps. Taters gone. If I were you I’d start thinking of tossing the leavings.