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Some forgotten TV shows

2012-06-01T19:43:00.000-05:00

Last night I somehow got into one of those internet things where I was trapped on imdb.com for a while, looking up forgotten TV shows. Sometimes I still wish there was some way I could see these again, but for the most part, they have never been released on DVD or even VHS. Anyone remember any of these?

The Manhunter: 1974. This one starred Ken Howard (later of The White Shadow). There was also a pilot movie before the series. He played a WWI vet who turned bounty hunter during the Great Depression. He kept a frikkin' arsenal of 1930s-era firearms tucked away in all sorts of clever hiding places in his car. I remember one scene in which he needed to transport a criminal but didn't have any way to secure him, so he stopped at the first hardware store he could find and bought a bear trap (bear traps being a standard in-stock item at hardware stores in Kansas during the Depression, apparently) and rigged it up with a stick and some rope in his back seat so the criminal's foot was in the partially propped-open trap. The bad guy said, "If I move, that thing'll break me leg!" He told the guy, "I guess you better not move, then." When I was 10 years old, that was high comedy. I still think it's pretty funny. This lasted 23 episodes (plus the original movie) before it got the axe.

The White Shadow: I don't think I need to say anything about this one. Most people probably remember it. I watched it regularly.

And while I'm on the subject of Ken Howard, did anyone ever see the TV movie he made about Father Damien? I thought that was a pretty good movie, but the only time I ever saw it was when it originally aired in 1980.

Lucan: 1977, 12 episodes. Somewhat of a ridiculous premise: a young boy is lost in the wilderness of Minnesota and rescued and raised by wolves. At the age of 10, he is found and brought back to civilization by a friendly doctor. The series begins when he is a young man, pursued by an obsessive cop who thinks Lucan committed a crime that he is really innocent of. He doesn't have any super-powers, but under stress reverts to more animalistic behavior--basically turning into a creature of pure fight-or-flight instinct--he can run very fast, jump quite high, and when angry his eyes turn red, if I remember correctly. And he is a fearsome fighter when cornered. When I was 13 I loved this show.

The Master: 1984. Okay, this show was pretty dumb, and the fighting sequences were terrible, but I really liked it. I never could see Timothy Van Patten as anything other than Salami from White Shadow, but even back then I would watch and love anything with Lee Van Cleef in it. He played a guy who was the only "occidental American" (in the show's words) to be trained as a ninja. He came back to the U.S. to look for his missing daughter, and hooked up with Van Patten's character who he began to train in the ninja ways, or something, and they got into all kinds of misadventures together. By the way, if you click on that link you can see a graphic of some old VHS release with Demi Moore's (as a teenager) picture on it. She was never on any episode of that show. The only reason for this that I can think of, and I'm just guessing, is maybe they used a photo of her for the Master's long-lost daughter. I also don't understand why imdb lists Van Patten as appearing in only 6 episodes, because he was in them all. It managed to struggle on for a mere 13 episodes before disappearing from the face of the earth.

It's Your Move: Also from 1984, this sitcom starred a young Jason Bateman as Matthew Burton, a teenage evil genius who was constantly scheming for money and to gain power over the dimwits who surrounded him. This show was hilarious. It lasted only 18 episodes, and culminated in a two-parter about a rock band called The Dregs of Humanity, who always appeared on stage in heavy, macabre makeup, often obscured by special lighting and fog effects. The catch was, the Dregs weren't real, but were essentially life-sized marionettes manipulated by Burton and his sidekick/assistant Eli. Unfortunately, I was never able to see the conclusion of this story and I don't know what ultimately happened with the Dregs. I also seem to remember a minor character who may have appeared on only one episode, a young girl named Enid, who either wanted to be or thought she was a horse. But I may be getting her confused with some other forgotten show.

Spencer: 1984 again. Two years before Ferris Bueller was a wise-cracking teen who broke the fourth wall and directly addressed the viewer, Spencer Winger was doing it. Spencer was played by Chad Lowe, who left the show after 7 episodes because of a contract dispute. He was recast with some other guy and the show was renamed and went immediately and directly down the toilet. Thirteen episodes total, but only the ones with Lowe are fit to watch. Really funny.

Parker Lewis Can't Lose: 73 epiodes and it's not on Netflix? WTF?!

By the way, why hasn't the full run of Benson been released on DVD? And why isn't Forever Knight on Netflix?

The Famous Teddy Z: 1989, a sitcom starring Jon Cryer. Married With Children ran for, what, like 65 years and this only lasted 20 episodes?

Stressed Eric: This was a British animated sitcom from 1998 that ran for 13 episodes and which someone thought would be good for American television. I knew that from the first minute of its broadcast in the states that it was doomed. I watched every episode they aired here, but they showed only a few of them. This is probably the only half-hour sitcom-like show that made me laugh so hard I thought I was going to pass out from lack of oxygen. Good news, though: I discovered that you can watch six of the episodes for free online at Hulu. I haven't yet, but I will. I only hope one of them is the one with the exploding horse.

Does anyone remember the 1990 TV series version of The Flash? A curious thing that I remember about this show was that, although it was set in contemporary times, all the cars were old, like from the 50s. I don't know why they did that, but it was cool. Also, Amanda Pays.

Oh yeah, and I almost forgot TV101. 1988, 13 episodes, starred Jason Robards' son Sam. I thought that was a cool show, too.

And of course, let us not forget the great Max Headroom. Far too smart for its time. Even in this watered-down format, most people just couldn't take such a dystopian cyberpunk view of the future, which deep down they knew was going to really happen, and happen soon (20 minutes into the future). I so miss this show. Also, Amanda Pays.

I think it's one of those Coke/New Coke/Classic Coke type conspiracies

2012-05-30T17:33:00.000-05:00

Does anyone else remember when you used to go into a music store, and have to decide if you were going to go all the way and spend $17 for the CD, or if you were just taking the cheap way out and get the record for $9.99?

My curiosity is killing me

2012-05-30T17:29:00.000-05:00

I am just dying to know what make of car is being kept underneath this cover. Aren't you?

The bullnettle

2012-05-27T21:07:00.003-05:00

With all the flower photos I have been taking around my house, for lack of anything better to photograph, I felt compelled to shoot this fine specimen. This plant also has small white blossoms, but they are past the flowering stage now. I know from experience that these don't grow much in the S.A. area, but they are common and cursed out here in the sandhills.

Once I mentioned this plant to a co-worker, and he had never seen one, so I cut one off and took it to work with me the next day to show to him. He was impressed, I guess, if that's the right word. I put it back in my truck and he asked me why I didn't just throw it in the trash. I told him I wasn't going to take a chance with it escaping into the wild in S.A. because I didn't want to be responsible for that.

There are lots of "regular" nettle plants that grow in the S.A. area, but the pain they can inflict if you accidentally bump into one is so minimal that I don't even consider them as real threats. If you ever bump into one of these, you will know about it.

This plant is called a bullnettle. By the way, I learned from my grandmother that those big clumpy-looking things on them, which she called "bullnettle nuts," are technically edible, but in my opinion getting at the "meat" is more trouble than it's worth. Although I have done it, to satisfy my own curiosity. I used leather work gloves and two pocket knives.

Dave, if you read this, this plant also probably grows in the area of your new home. They are very hard to get rid of, and I learned from a very young age to simply avoid them. When I was a kid, we had one very large specimen--it would have put this one to shame--that kept coming back after it was cut off. So one day my dad decided to dig out the root. The thing he eventually pulled out of the ground was about 4 feet long and probably 5 inches thick at its thickest point, and he didn't even get the whole root. He cut it off deep in the ground and re-buried it, and that was enough to finally kill it.

Once when I was a teenager, I was helping my dad to herd our cows and as I was running around to cut them off and head them in the right direction, I was paying too much attention to the cows and not looking where I was going. I ran right over one of these that was waist-high on me and got the full effect of it in both legs. Man, that hurt.

Z/28

2012-05-26T16:12:00.003-05:00

A phone shot from yesterday.

The eyes! The dead, staring eyes!

2012-05-25T18:35:00.001-05:00

I stumbled across this inexplicable scene of papier-mâché horror today somewhere on W. Laurel. At least they died smiling.

Old safe

2012-05-23T19:36:00.002-05:00

I saw this on Steves near S. Presa last Friday.

Riverwalk expansion construction

2012-05-21T15:02:00.003-05:00

I took this with my phone today. This is a shot of some of the Riverwalk expansion construction from a spot that most people will never go--and really have no reason to go there--unless you live there or are reading the water meter. The location is about right here. For a long time this meter never got used, until the construction began and then the meter was replaced with a new one and now it gets used all the time. I think it was originally for irrigation of the riverbank area but I'm not completely sure.* It's most likely now being used for the construction work, because all of the new Riverwalk irrigation is going to be with recycled water. If you ever go by some place where they're doing construction and you see a network of purple pipes all over the place, that's the future irrigation system. All irrigation pipes, meters, etc., are that color of purple. If you click to enlarge and look closely just to the right of center, you can see the Tower of the Americas peeking over the treeline.

By the way, all of the S.A. golf courses used recycled water for irrigation, too. The Toyota plant and some of the other businesses that cover a lot of area also use recycled irrigation water--for example that big bakery out on highway 87 east.

*There are a lot of old irrigation meters scattered around that were put there long ago, before the recycling project began, and are now just sitting there, unused for years--even decades. Many of the islands in the downtown area were originally equipped with irrigation, but then later they were bricked or paved over to reduce water usage, and the old meters are still there, doing nothing.

Lantana close-up

2012-05-21T14:29:00.003-05:00

Lantana in my "front yard," if you can call it that. Today's camera practice. In the area where I live, which is known as "the sandhills" because of the extremely sandy soil, lantana does not grow wild. Our property was briefly owned by someone else before we bought it, and although whoever it was never put a house on it, he did install a water meter and a septic tank before putting it back up for sale. I think he must have planted this lantana bush too, because it's the only one I've seen growing anywhere around here.

We meter readers usually refer to this as !@#$%^& lantana because of the way it likes to swarm over water meters. I've also seen a lightly bluish-purple variety growing in yards and flower beds around S.A., and I would actually like to get some of that because the color is much more agreeable to me than orange and yellow.

I adjusted the contrast on this because the intense sunlight here tends to bleach the colors out. I also scaled it down to 1024x768 because I didn't think a big 3000+ pixel graphic was really necessary.

By the way, I was going to only buy a 4 gig card for this camera, but they had a 16 gig card on sale for only $5 more, so I got it instead. Even at the high-res setting, that 16 gig card will hold well over 7,000 pictures. Holy cow.

Smoke angel

2012-05-20T21:16:00.002-05:00

My first attempt at photographing smoke. I'll try a better setup some other time. Not good enough to put on my Flickr photostream, but okay for the blog, I guess.

Another flower

2012-05-19T20:27:00.000-05:00

I don't know what this flower is, it's just another of those flowers that I always see. So I'm kind of ashamed I don't know the name of it. I found a flower on the internet called the coneflower that looks similar to it, but the coloration wasn't the same. I'm going to have to get a good book on Texas wildflowers so I can ID all these things.

I took a walk around the place today with the camera to see what I could see, and well, there isn't much to photograph in the back of the place--just very dense brush. I kept my eyes on the ground to see if I could find a copperhead back there in the leaves, but not today. I ended up taking 66 photos and there were only two that I thought were fit for anyone to see, and they are both of this flower but from different angles. You can see the other one at my photostream.

Sunrise reflecting from the Alamodome

2012-05-18T20:45:00.000-05:00

I took this about 7:00 yesterday morning from S. Cherry. The fuzzy ghost at the bottom is either my gloved finger or part of the new case that I recently got for my phone. It was obscuring the camera lens and I was still figuring out how to work around it. I worked it out today with a couple of other pix.

I don't get it

2012-05-17T19:51:00.002-05:00

Another phone photo, so it was very overexposed in the bright sun yesterday, but that's a caricature of Ben Franklin with a pipe wrench, or that's what it's supposed to be, anyway.

Is there a Franklin/plumbing connection of which I am unaware?

Another song from my childhood

2012-05-13T21:16:00.002-05:00

Okay, I can tell you why I remembered this one. I don't remember how it started, but I saw a picture of the group of Greasers from The Outsiders and couldn't identify them all, so I looked it up on imdb.com (the one I couldn't ID was Rob Lowe). I saw in the credits that Gailard Sartain had been in it, so I looked him up to see what all of his acting credits were. Then I hopped over to Wikipedia and looked up Hee Haw, which led me to this song.

For some reason I was always fascinated by that guy playing the snare drum. My favorite Hee Haw girl was the one in the black dress with the long black hair. What was her name? I wonder who that skinny woman with the big glasses was. I don't remember her.

Squirrel drinking from bird bath

2012-05-13T20:55:00.000-05:00

Taken through the front door glass. High zoom (partly digital), so the quality isn't all there, but not bad I guess. I retouched this one a little.

Two more pix

2012-05-13T16:23:00.000-05:00

Another black-eyed susan. I know I already posted one yesterday, but they grow in wild abundance around my house and give me lots of opportunities to practice macro photography. This one was not edited at all, unlike the one I posted yesterday, which I cropped and adjusted the colors a little to make it brighter and deeper. This one is SOOC (straight out of the camera), with some tiny feeding insect on it.

Here is another of my cameras, a Pentax Spotmatic F, mid-70s era (Pentax stopped making the Spotmatic in 1976, and I think the F model was the last of the variations, or nearly the last). Of course this one is fully manual with no zoom capability. I also have an early-90s era Minolta but the Pentax has more character. When I get roped into taking pictures of some family event, I usually load the Minolta with 100 or 200 ISO film and use it for outdoors, and load the Pentax with 400 ISO for use indoors without a flash.

My wife and I purchased the Minolta when we were first married so we would have a good camera for preserving memories. The acquisition of the Pentax is more storied. Back in the early 90s one of my cousin-in-laws was busted for possession of an illegal substance that starts with "m" and of course all his property was confiscated by the state as part of their war on drugs racket. Everything, that is, except his boat, which was docked at Canyon Lake and was therefore overlooked since he didn't offer any information about it. This camera was in the boat. He gave my dad the boat and all its contents in return for bailing him out of jail. My dad wasn't really interested in learning how to properly use the camera so he turned it over to me (my dad kept the boat). I was able to gather from reading a book on photography that this camera had a light meter and required a battery for the meter to operate, so I took it to a camera shop that used to be on Gulfdale to find out what battery I needed. The original battery that this camera used is no longer made because it was made with mercury, and had a kind of odd rating of 1.3 volts, but the guy there had already worked on this model and made a small conversion that allowed it to use a modern 1.5-volt battery of the same physical size, which didn't cost me very much at all. I was able to download a pdf of the original manual recently, which was nice.

I'll have to ask my wife where all our photos are stashed. I might be able to find a few that are fit to be scanned and shared.

New camera and some sample pix

2012-05-12T19:38:00.001-05:00

I have been almost desperate for a decent digital camera for some time now, and have been doing a lot of research and deciding how much I could afford to spend. Today I got a Canon Powershot SX150 at Best Buy. The price had been marked down to $149. This is only a wild guess, but I think the price reduction on this one must be because it's about to be replaced by a newer model. Original price for it was $249.

I still have a lot to learn about using it--by the way it's definitely not a DSLR, but it's somewhat more sophisticated than a basic point & shoot. Anyway, you can expect there to be a lot of gratuitous amateur photography here in the future.

I think this guy is a Texas Spotted Whiptail lizard. I just got lucky and spooked him into some leaves as I was walking down the driveway. I took several pix of him, and in this one I caught him with his eyes closed. Blinking? The way this camera works in auto mode is it uses optical zoom until the optical zoom is at its maximum, and if you keep zooming from there it switches to digital zoom. I try to stay away from digital zoom but this one still looks pretty good even with some digital zoom involved.

Indian Blanket. This one and the one below I cropped for a better aspect.

Black-Eyed Susan.

This is my favorite for today. By the way, anyone want a puppy? We have three, all male, two black and one brown.

I'm really happy how sharp these turned out.

Poured what over the topic?

2012-05-10T20:00:00.001-05:00

link

Okay, but

2012-05-08T15:32:00.003-05:00

What if you have a door that you can lock without a key? Then you'll just lock yourself out of your house. Also, why on earth do you keep your shoes in the refrigerator?*

*Let's avoid the obvious quip: "so he'll have some place to store his keys." Thanks.

Yikes

2012-05-07T19:16:00.000-05:00

Click. Design your own settings if you want. This map is based on a ground zero of the Tower of Americas, with a bomb the power of the first U.S. h-bomb. Try the presets and see just how piddling the Nagasaki bomb was compared to what's possible now.

A good improvised terrorist bomb would utterly destroy downtown. And that's no exaggeration.

A great xkcd comic

2012-05-07T15:31:00.002-05:00

Even if you don't usually read the web comic xkcd, I recommend checking out this one, because it's quite imaginative, uses very clever rhymes, and is also funny.

I'm not really familiar with the"modern major general" song, although I have heard it, so I just used that "Super***" song. Sing it out loud to yourself and it will be even better.

Bad analogies

2012-05-04T21:20:00.003-05:00

My Ear-Trumpet Has Been Struck By Lightning has some of the worst analogies written by high school students.

Except...I really like #6. I think I might steal it someday.

Christopher Bowes official video: David Tennant's Hands

2012-05-04T20:32:00.002-05:00

Christopher Bowes is the lead singer of Alestorm, the pirate metal band which I've mentioned before. This is completely different. Bowes goes into crooner mode while playing along with an electronic organ. The full album is available for a free legal download; link at YouTube. I got quite a good laugh out of this.

A rare post about art

2012-05-03T22:13:00.001-05:00

As great a work of art as da Vinci's The Last Supper is, it has always seemed somehow awkward to me. Just now I have realized why. I suppose Leonardo wanted to get everyone's faces in the picture, and that's why it is the way it is, but doesn't look a little too much staged?

It's like when on a TV show, there's always one side of the table that is vacant: the side toward the camera. It's easier to film that way, and let's face it, no actor on a TV show wants to sit with the back of his head toward the camera. That's what Da Vinci's painting looks like to me.

I just realized this because I have just seen The Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist by Nicolas Poussin. Doesn't it look so much better? A close, secluded, poorly-lighted room rather than that bright, airy space of da Vinci's. And let's face it, if you were one of the apostles, wouldn't you move your seat somewhere nearer Jesus if you saw that one whole side of the table was empty?

Signs

2012-05-02T19:23:00.002-05:00

Clearing out some work pix.

I'm familiar with the phrase "cleft of the rock," but I'm not sure what a "clift" is.

Intrust?

And some big flower that I thought I'd grab with my phone.

I've been looking (online) at some digital cameras, and pretty much decided what I want. I had intended to get one on Monday, but unfortunately the repair to my car is taking longer than expected and I'm going to be grounded pretty much all week. The good news is the warranty is paying for the fix. I don't intend to take a camera with me when I'm working, but I am planning on combining my new hobby of geocaching with some photography (my intended other new hobby).

I also dug out the old Pentax Spotmatic that I acquired some time ago and got a new battery for the light meter. I had also intended to have a roll of test film developed by now to see how it does, because I haven't used it in a long time, but I kind of ran out of things to photograph around the house.

I like the old Pentax because it's completely manually operated. The digital camera I'm looking at has plenty of automatic functions but can be switched to manual, and also has a macro mode. I'm hoping the car will be ready by Friday, so maybe I can do something Friday afternoon or Saturday.