Strangely, you have to go upstairs to see the R. Crumb’s Underground exhibit at the Mass College of Art in Boston.
Robert Crumb original art isn’t often available for public scrutiny, and not everything at this show — which runs through next Saturday, March 7 — is original. There’s a good mix of material, very nicely presented, with almost none of Crumb’s overtly pornographic stuff — which is good, considering that today was Family Day at the gallery.
In the photo at the right, facing left, is my old friend Morris, who showed me R. Crumb comics when we first met, 38 years ago. One of the niftier examples of Crumb’s work at the exhibit is a collection of thread spools he decorated with faces. That’s Morris looking into the case.
This is the sort of drawing that I suppose most people who know of R. Crumb associate with him, but it’s actually representative of only his earlier work, and is fairly atypical of what he did starting in the 70’s.
Here’s a relatively early appearance of Bill Griffith’s character Zippy the Pinhead on an R. Crumb cover from 1975.
Tonight at 10 ET, on the USA Network, watch “Burn Notice” and be on the lookout for Paul Howley and his family. Here are viewing tips from Paul:
As some of you may know, Paul and Mal Howley and their daughter, Cassy Wood, recently got paid to be “extras” in a TV show (Burn Notice) that was being filmed in Miami, Florida. Mal and I will most likely be just blurry background characters, but you should be able to spot Cassy because she walks very close to Jeffrey Donovan (the star of the show) several times.
There will be a few scenes that take place in a nice public park in Miami and Mal and I can (possibly) be seen as picnickers sitting on a blanket. (We are such good actors that you’ll be convinced that we are really having a picnic.) Mal is wearing a pink plaid skirt and a pink shirt and Paul is wearing blue jeans (what a surprise!) and an ugly yellow t-shirt that the wardrobe department made me wear. We turn up later in the episode in a marketplace scene and we’re wearing the same clothes.
In the final scene Jeffrey Donovan (Michael) is walking towards his girlfriend and his car and when that shot begins, Mal and I are directly behind him, walking away from him. Cassy can be seen in one “park scene” as she walks right by “Michael” while he’s using his cell phone. Cassy is wearing a lime-green shirt and a white skirt. In another park scene, Cassy is walking with a guy who has his arm around her. Cassy is wearing a red shirt and a white skirt. Later, in a beach scene, Cassy is sitting on a beach chair wearing a black dress with purple and white flowers on it. You’ll recognize Cassy because she’s a petite woman with long dark hair. (Cute as can be!)
“Burn Notice” is seen on USA Network on this coming Thursday (February 26th) at 10PM Eastern time. Please be advised that this TV show may not be suitable for young viewers.
Here is a brief synopsis of what the TV show of “Burn Notice” is about:
WHAT IS BURN NOTICE?
When spies get fired, they don’t get a letter from human resources.
They get BURNED…
This summer, USA Network presents the second season of Burn Notice, a sexy, action-packed original series starring Jeffrey Donovan as Michael Westen, a blacklisted spy. Dumped in his hometown of Miami without money or resources, Michael struggles to put his life back together and find out why he’s been burned. In the meantime, he uses his unique skills and training to help people in need … mostly people who can’t get help from the police.
Burn Notice also stars Gabrielle Anwar as Fiona, a beautiful ex-IRA operative who happens to be Westen’s ex-girlfriend. Bruce Campbell stars as Sam, Michael’s closest buddy in town, a washed up military intelligence contact who is keeping an eye on Michael for the Feds. Also starring is Emmy® Award-winner Sharon Gless as Madeline, Michael’s hypochondriac mother, who couldn’t be happier to have her boy back in town.
Joining the cast this season in a recurring role is Tricia Helfer (“Battlestar Gallactica”) as Carla, the woman who may be behind Michael’s burn notice.
Created and written by Matt Nix, Burn Notice combines the best of the action/thriller elements with surprising humor and an iconic new breed of spy.
Thanks, Paul! I will, of course, set the FiOS DVR to record the show.
BTW, Bruce Campbell is in the series. He’s an old pal of director Sam Raimi, and he’s been in all three of the Spider-Man movies. Campbell has also done some very funny commercials. The one I’m thinking of has him sitting at a piano, but this isn’t that one, but it’s still good.
My little Roku streaming video-on-demand player is so nifty I could kiss it. Nobody else has, that I’ve seen, done a direct video capture off of a Roku, so I’ll do one here. I don’t want to present an idealized view, so I used WiFi rather than ethernet, and I made the recording during the peak evening period, when there always seems to be congestion and the buffering can slow down before the video starts playing. Netflix is very good, however, about picking up where you’ve left off. This is a glitch-free run-through. Everything is the result of a button click on the remote, although now I realize that I neglected to demonstrate a simple pause and continue.
[MEDIA=24]
The quality rating is for the end-to-end connection, with four dots being the best. There’s a separate WiFi signal strength rating. Scanning can be done in three speeds, or you can manually click between individual preview pictures.
Picking up on a theme from earlier this month with June Marlowe in “School’s Out”, that’s the late Sue Randall playing Beaver’s too-good-to-be-true teacher, Miss Landers. Kids have always had innocent and safe crushes on teachers, of course, but over the past 20 years something seems to have changed. The number of women teachers who have developed what is delicately described as inappropriate relationships with students is shocking. Priests abusing kids in private was covered up for decades, if not centuries, but a teacher running off with a student isn’t something that happens unnoticed, and fifty years ago it would have been even bigger news than it is today.
Vera Miles, who I consider to have been a second only to Grace Kelly in the looks department, is seen with Francis (Mayberry) Bavier, in the first installment of the anthology series “Alfred Hitchcock Presents”. In 1940, fifteen years before he appeared on TV, Hitchcock introduced the long-running radio series “Suspense”, as heard here, in an entry I made back in the fall of ’07.
Another follow-up to a previous post is a bit of remastered Star Trek that you can compare to a transfer from VHS I made, by clicking here.
Hey, there’s Bismo as Elwood Blues. Saturday night, Bismo and his partner Jake were at the new House of Blues in Boston, where, I’m told, Dan Ackroyd and Jim Belushi put on a great show.
As many fans of the Peanuts comic strip know, fifty years ago Charlie Brown and company first appeared in ads and commercials for Ford cars. Courtesy of Denro, here is a brochure for the 1961 Ford Falcon.
The affordable Falcon was very popular, but the name conjures an image of a powerful bird of prey, while the Falcon was actually a rather underpowered, compact economy car. Our family owned a 1965 base model 2-door Falcon that I remember fondly, mostly because it was the first car I drove when I got my driver’s license.
Cartoon Brew has an animated Peanuts TV commercial for the ’61 Falcon. Somebody put it on YouTube, but the shape of the image is wrong, so I fixed it here. The narrator’s voice should be familiar if you’re over 40.
Is it the art to a forgotten 60’s psychedelic record jacket? A video test pattern? A celebration of diversity in the age of Obama? No, it’s a representation of the springtime that’s hidden within winter, as submitted by D.F. Rogers to a photo contest run by The Boston Globe. Dennis said nothing about it to me, but he was found out nevertheless!
