There’s still plenty more here that requires my attention, both paperwork and household repairs. But I’ve gotten through enough of it that I can return to doing some light blogging. I’m hoping to be able to also indulge some light jogging this year.
My German-made Thorens turntable is now 39 years old, and so far it has required only minor maintenance that I have taken care of myself. This video is about restoring a German-made 1959 Volkswagen. Whatever happened to white sidewall tires?
When my parents ran a florist shop in Wisconsin for a few years, my father bought a ’59 Volkswagen bus for the business. There’s a brief glimpse of one that looks exactly like it at 6:00 into the video. There was no gas gauge, and when the gas started to run out you had to turn a valve on the floor to open a small auxiliary tank, then look for a gas station.
I have just made one of my occasional checks of YouTube to see if the complete Rolling Stones in Mono playlist is still there, and yes it is. The Rolling Stones have 2.5 million subscribers on YouTube, but I am one of only three subscribers to the mono collection. This is crazy! It isn’t a playlist that some fan threw together, it’s official. I bought the set for $110 as a collection of 96 kHz/24-bit FLAC files. In MP3 quality it will cost you a hundred bucks, and the CD set goes for over $200. But here it is, complete for free.
Been too busy to switch mental gears back to my now fully up-to-date WordPress installation, but here’s something I can post quickly, that I know will interest at least one of you. It’s a documentary about master comic book artist and designer Alex Toth. Almost as much time is spent discussing his difficult personality as his art.
Ten days ago I spoke here about Maus. It’s been revealed that one week before then, on January 10, Maus was banned from a school district in Tennessee.
Jonathan Pierce, the board member who initiated the vote to remove Maus from the eighth-grade curriculum, said during the meeting that the Holocaust should be taught in schools, but this was not the book to do it.
Today happens to be Holocaust Remembrance Day. So now the question is, what Holocaust books does the McMinn County School Board allow in its schools? Being Tennessee, gotta wonder if they’re teaching “Intelligent Design” as scientific fact.
Peter Robbins, the best-known voice of Charlie Brown, has taken his own life. It’s being said that Robbins was the first voice of Charlie Brown, but I am not certain of that.
It’s both fun and frustrating, tracking old films and TV shows — the ones that are still covered by copyright — from one outlet to another. I was in the middle of watching every episode of the original The Outer Limits from 1963-64, in order and commercial-free, on Amazon Prime. Before I could get to the second (abbreviated) season, the series was no longer included with Prime subscriptions.
I didn’t know where it could be found for free viewing until replacing Fire TV with Roku, and there it was, with commercials, on the Roku Channel. I intentionally skipped one of the second season episodes, saving it for last. Then, with only the final episode remaining to be seen before returning to the skipped episode, The Outer Limits disappeared. But where? I don’t know.
Eight of the very best episodes are in a LaserDisc box set I own. The episode I skipped is, by far, the most familiar and renowned. “Demon With a Glass Hand,” written by Harlan Ellison. This picture was taken when resorting to Plan B, and watching it on LaserDisc.
Robert Culp and Arlene Martel in Demon With a Glass Hand
Having not watched “Demon with a Glass Hand” in a long time, I was able to see something new in it. In a moment of, “it’s so obvious!” I realized it is a perfect template for a video game.
The action starts at street level, with Trent capturing and interrogating an alien invader. He learns how they are arriving on Earth, and how to kill them, which requires hand-to-hand combat. He has the goal of destroying the alien’s method of entry and, along the way, he must find the fingers that are memory modules for the computerized glass hand that is mysteriously grafted onto his arm. There is a terrible secret that can’t be revealed until the hand is complete. From there Trent enters the famous Bradbury Building. He must defeat the aliens he encounters at each level, with new aliens continuing to arrive as he climbs upstairs, floor by floor. He meets the only other human in the building, a girl who is told by the hand how to help Trent.
My resident video game expert informs me that Ellison was involved with a game version of his story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream.” Being so perfectly suited for adaptation as a video game, I don’t know why “Demon With a Glass Hand” wasn’t given the same consideration.
If you have never seen “Demon With a Glass Hand” here is a copy on Daily Motion with a link to — WTF?? — InfoWars! I have no frickin’ idea why the demonically possessed Alex Jones has been associated with this video.
Another complete copy I found, on Vimeo, requires getting permission to embed it, which I’m not going to request. If you would prefer that copy, here’s the link: https://vimeo.com/637062245
