Month: December 2010

They’re just trying to be friendly

BoingBoing’s Mean Monkey Mondays series ends today. I think the “Man’s Life” covers are the best, although this one doesn’t have any monkeys.

Denro asks, “Hey, is the brave guy trying to save the girl from the crazed turtles (snappers I assume!) or are the brave turtles trying to save the girl from the crazed guy with a knife?!?!?!?” What I’m wondering is if San Antonio is still the Texas home of love-happy girls. And if the woman on this other cover was torn apart by monkeys, how did she live to tell the tale? Maybe the parent who didn’t want her marrying the American with the knife had the monkeys attack her.

You’ll find some more “Man’s Life” covers, equally tasteful and informative, at this link. Some of the covers were painted by Norman Saunders, whose work I first saw in the 1966 Batman bubblegum card series that he did with Bob Powell.

Previously, Saunders and Powell were responsible for the infamous “Mars Attacks!” series, which was based on work by Wally Wood.

The grooviest girl in the world


© Henry Diltz/CORBIS

I’m in the middle of reading a Vanity Fair article from a few years ago about Michelle Phillips, whose look and style set the pace in 60’s youth fashion in America, the way Pattie Boyd did in England, before Twiggy came along.

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2007/12/phillips200712

I knew Michelle lived some wild times, but … whoo! She wasn’t much into drugs, which is why she’s alive today, but she sure pursued the free love part of the 60’s. Anyway, while reading the article I had one of those coincidences that everybody experiences once in a while. I was on this passage…

Michelle sat up and summoned a recent visit to St. Patrick’s Cathedral (her years in Mexico had given her an affection for Catholic churches) and came up with: “Stopped into a church I passed along the way / Well, I got down on my knees and I pretend to pray.” John, who’d loathed parochial school, “hated the line,” Michelle says, but kept it in for lack of anything better. Lucky he did; the line gave the song its arc of desperation to epiphany. Thus was born one of the first clarion calls of a changing culture, “California Dreamin’.”

…when this started playing as a random track on the Slacker music service.

I demand 50’s TV, on demand

On the Roku player I enjoy watching old TV shows, particularly from the late 1950’s. But Netflix is again yanking a favorite from Watch Instantly, forcing me to rush through as many episodes as I can in a few days. First, it was “Alfred Hitchcock Presents“, and now the latest victim is my beloved “Leave It To Beaver“.

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My favorite TV show way back in the first grade was “Have Gun, Will Travel”, which was one of the last network series that also ran on radio. I even had a “Have Gun, Will Travel” lunchbox. (We don’t talk about that unfortunate incident with the chicken noodle soup in the thermos.)

Fortunately, the adventures of the gunslinger-for-hire, Paladin, don’t have an expiration date on Netflix yet. Watching the series now, I can see why I liked it so much. Being a half-hour show, the stories aren’t slow and dragged out, the way they were on other westerns, especially “Gunsmoke”. It shouldn’t take too long to recognize the very young actress in this clip from 1958.

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