Author: DOuG pRATt

Tish Tash

Tonight TCM showed Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? It’s a wild follow-up farce to another fantastic Fifties farce, The Girl Can’t Help It.

http://youtu.be/dioNDDIqNOY

Jayne Mansfield starred in both movies, and both were the product of the far-out mind of the man they called Tish Tash. Fans of the classic Warner Brothers cartoons know the names Tex Avery, Bob Clampett, and Chuck Jones. Frank Tashlin was their equal, but he left the cartoon biz after WWII and found greater success directing comedy films.

Here’s one of Tashlin’s best toons, Porky Pig’s Feat. It features Carl Stalling’s trademark use of Raymond Scott’s most famous tune, Powerhouse. This is wonderfully wacky stuff, as only the boys of Termite Terrace could do.

http://youtu.be/AvBX9gqQ3-Q

Death of a pencil pusher

Gene Colan has died. Gene had been ill for a long time, and his death came almost exactly one year after his wife Adrienne tragically took her own life. Gene Colan spent his entire life doing what he loved, drawing pictures and illustrating stories. He was one of the best ever at his craft, and he leaves behind thousands of pages of wonderful art for comics fans to enjoy now and forever. Thank you, Gene.

D.F. Rogers with Gene Colan
Dennis F. Rogers with Gene Colan, 2009

Crime boss caught!

Big, big news in Boston, with the capture of James “Whitey” Bulger, hiding in plain sight in Santa Monica, CA.

Follow-up: More details are coming out. Apparently, Whitey made a couple of slip-ups. First, he was the only one yelling in Santa Monica when the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup, then he tweeted, “going to Costco to buy a 3-pack of v-neck tees.” 😉

Further follow-up: It’s confirmed that Bulger was lured out of his apartment with a Bruins championship cap. He’s lived there since at least 1999, and it’s across the street from an FBI training center! 😉

More further follow-up: I don’t get it. I think Bulger and Greig look great! Obviously, retirement has agreed with them. Why all the talk about Whitey not being well?

Winter remnant

It was an extremely tough winter here in Massachusetts. In February, when I was up on the roof shoveling snow, I wondered if there would be any damage left behind. Tonight, I know the answer is probably yes.

It’s raining very heavily, and Eric noticed water in the basement. It was coming down from the chimney wall, and I ended up in the attic (which is really more of a crawl space), and found a leak in the roof where the chimney goes through. The kitchen faucet has a bizarre problem, and I can see it was caused by the plumber doing a crappy installation job years ago.

A couple of days ago the automatic garage door wouldn’t open, and I found a broken wire in the electric eye transmitter that opens the door if the beam is broken. I redid all the wires and now it works. I was hoping that would be my only household emergency this week. Oh, well….

What large servers you have!

Today at work I was watching a not very useful video about VMware virtual networking. When I looked to see what else YouTube had pulled up as related material, what I saw between NIC teaming and the Cisco Nexus was a surprise.

That little blue ghost in the upper right corner of the screen shot is Ghostery. I recommend giving it a try. So far, it seems to work best with Firefox 4.