“You muppets are good for nothing! You just lay around in the street all day counting…”

This is old, I guess, but I’ve never seen it before.

RIP Patrick McGoohan.

If you haven’t experienced The Prisoner, you’re missing out. From the Wiki:

…combines spy fiction with elements of science fiction, allegory and psychological drama.

It follows a former British agent who, after abruptly resigning from his position, is held captive in a small village by the sea by an unidentified power that wishes to establish the reason for his resignation. Episodes typically feature the unnamed prisoner, labelled “Number Six” by his captors, unsuccessfully attempting to escape from or change the authority of “the Village.”

Funny, smart, confusing and astoundingly colorful, The Prisoner made me feel empowered, stimulated and challenged.

I haven’t watched it in a while, but I have a suspicion that, like Network, it may be even more bitting and relevant today than when it was made.

I’ve been aching to buy the series so now might be the time. Here is the opening credit sequence.

And because I am not a number, I am a human being, I enjoy gazing upon Patrick McGoohan… because in addition to being smart and talented, he was white hot.

Be seeing you.

I do love the vintage section for finds like this.

From the box:

This drink and wet doll is an anatomically correct male

The doll does bear a resemblance to Archie, making it entirely more creepy than it should be. I do mean a resemblance in the FACE… I don’t know about other accuracies.

If anyone has time, can you reshoot Eraserhead with this thing? Thanks in advance.

Clicky.

i found a bag of airport, government and various municiple toy vehicles at goodwill. i peeled off the decals of the now-defunct airline, grabbed up some sharpies and went to town.

now when i put on arrested development, i can play too! wanna hop on?

did you know that sesame street debuted on my birthday, the year before i was born? that show was a big deal for my family. i have audio tapes of my dad coaching me to repeat things into the mic. he prompts:

“say ‘hi grandma.’ now say ‘i love you.’ don’t forget to say hi to grandpa. tell him to ‘send us cash.’ now what do you want to say to mr. hooper?”

my dad died two years ago today and i have to say, i don’t like it. i still feel like a part of my physical being has been severed and the empty space hurts really bad.

the worst part is the unsettling continuing shock. when it first happened, i was horrified of course, but there’s all of the in-the-moment stuff that you have to go through – travel, funeral, headstone… somehow, when all the tradition and ceremony ends, you know you’ve been through a hard time and there’s a finished feeling.

it was really then that the enormity of “forever” started to bitch slap me around, and it hasn’t stopped since. it’s funny to me that somewhere inside, i forgot that the funeral was only the end of the beginning of the loss of him. i still find myself thinking “wait… wait a second… you mean, NEVER?” and it aches deeper than anything i’ve ever felt.

mr. hooper died too, back in the day. here’s the clip of the cast explaining the permanence of death to big bird. it makes me sob, but it helps too. (btw, it starts with hilariously dated political chit chat between the adults.)

we both believed in “because” and finality, but he was a whimsical, imaginative guy. i used to archive some of the best emails i got from him. his death was a surprise, but coincidentally, this is the last email from him that i saved:

Considering where this nutty world is going, I have decided to come back in my next life as a Monarch butterfly, providing I can keep coming back each birth cycle. I will look beautiful. I will be able to travel. I love to fly and I will have many many good friends…we all will look the same so no one in our group will pick on us; what could be bad? Ok, I know I can get eaten by a big ass big bird etc or get caught by a stupid ass kid and put in a jar…

anyway, i miss him. thanks for listening.

i love this, even though it contains a handful of things that i normally don’t love so much: songs that list things, nostalgia, and homemade music videos featuring “say what you see” slide shows.

someone put this song on a mix for me when i was a kid, and i still like it. and, the video is pretty well done, so here you go:

i can’t stop watching this clip of the daily show. it seems wrong to laugh this hard at corruption and economic peril, but i can’t help it.

paul and i started late, but we’re just about to begin watching battlestar galactica season 3.

here’s some sweet etsy galactica gear:

frak tshirt by geekboypress.

impeach baltar onsie by teedious.

when the movie independence day came out, i read a great review by mick lasalle, containing this point:

These early scenes capitalize on the dark human tendency to enjoy watching people get bad news. The kicks keep coming: The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Robert Loggia) is told that the object heading toward Earth can’t be a meteor because it’s slowing down (“It’s slowing down?”)

he’s so right! the only thing more common to film (and tv) than watching people get bad news is watching people get bad news from afar. for instance the action of the bad news revelation happens on the other side of a window, or across a noisy room. we know what they are being told, and it is not good news, but they are far away from us and for some reason, it feels more perverted that way.

i’ve been fairly obsessed with this idea since i first saw the lame quasi-lifetime movie “just between friends.” thanks to hulu, i can show you the clip!

first we get to see christine lahti find out that ted danson is dead. then we get to see about 400 hours of full frontal aerobics by mary tyler moore, who is married to the now-dead danson, she just doesn’t know it until… let’s watch, shall we?

i know i’ve seen this done dozens of times since then. i’d love to put a montage of these scenes together. for fun. sort of like this genius tv carnage “gun and badge” montage:

anyway, let me hear from you if you have good examples of this, or if you know about any established term or convention for this technique.

p.s. independence day is so much better with rifftrax!

i’ve always liked alec baldwin, but the first time i loved him a little was his performance in glengarry glen ross.

the second was when he boxed gary shandling in the extras on the not just the best of larry sanders dvd. (maybe the best tv show ever made, with this dvd having the best extras i’ve ever seen.)

this clip from 30 rock pretty much completes the trifecta.

also, i wouldn’t hit just any alec baldwin… only fat alec baldwin, ’cause that’s how i like him.

yeah, i said it.

what!?