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K1 Christmas

Kathleen Aerts, formerly of K3, turns “Somethin’ Stupid” into a Christmas song, of sorts.

K3 fan Theo Hendriks, pictured here, wrote and said that Kathleen is his favorite. Kathleen’s replacement, Josje, is on the left. It’s good to see Kristel Verbeke and Karen Damen looking bright and happy again, because they were so miserable at Kathleen’s farewell performance.

For myself, I’m miffed that Kathleen left the group, but I feel that Kristel and Karen are so strong together they could have carried on just fine as K2. That doesn’t mean Kathleen was any less essential to the success of K3, but it seemed to me that she got tired of the ride. So when she quit the group I was disappointed, but not surprised.

Follow-up: Theo sent another picture of himself, with Kristel. It’s at this link.

Verizon’s knock at att

tastewar reminded me of Verizon’s ad featuring the Island of Misfit Toys. It doesn’t knock the iPhone, just the network that supports it.

I was a Cingular customer when the iPhone was first announced three years ago, and I was surprised when the AT&T brand name prevailed. It’s completely outdated. “American?” No, international. “Telephone?” OK, I guess that still applies. “Telegraph?” Uh, no.

Last spring I switched the family from AT&T to Verizon. My basic Samsung flip phone had been handy for checking e-mail, but it got so slow as to be useless. Obviously, the phone didn’t slow down, the GSM EDGE network had. When I visited the AT&T store at the big local mall it was apparent I was no longer part of a customer demographic they wished to serve. It was 3G or nothing, and I was a voice customer.

The incredible success of the iPhone — my buddy Bismo is a fan — makes AT&T seem like a winner, but its monopoly can’t last. Once Verizon starts rolling out the LTE 4G network that uses the former UHF TV band, I bet you’ll find the next generation of iPhone there, and then AT&T will be in a world of hurt.

Name the girl

I’ve just made an addition over on my Hollywood page. In the intro of the video is this scene…

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/DEC/HelenMack.flv 512 384]

… and I recognized the girl immediately. She made a big impression on me when I first saw her as a wee lad, in the weak sequel to a gigantic old movie. In fact, I’ve been intending to feature this actress, along with another 30’s “B” movie favorite, Jean Rogers, who was in the first two Flash Gordon serials.

Hermey or Herbie?

Hard to believe it’s been 45 years since the secular, stop-motion Christmas favorite “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” first appeared on TV. As a kid’s show, Rudolph is both unusual and inspired. For example, King Moonracer, ruler of the Island of Misfit Toys, seemed to have been based upon Aslan, who symbolizes Christ in “The Chronicles of Narnia.” So perhaps there’s a religious element to the show, after all.

The most significant aspect of Rudolph was the groundbreaking introduction of a gay elf with an oral fixation. This clever subtext was lost on most people for many years, just as John Lennon’s reference to a–holes filling the Albert Hall wasn’t obvious.

Curiously, the controversy most often mentioned about the elf character in Rudolph isn’t the question of him being gay, but whether his name is Hermey or Herbie. The answer is here, in an article by Rick Goldschmidt:

http://www.tvparty.com/xmasrudolph.html

One thing I should make clear is that the elf who wants to be a dentist is named Hermey. Why everyone is calling him “Herbie” I will never fully understand.

OK, so it’s supposed to be Hermey. But what I don’t understand is why Goldschmidt doesn’t understand, because the answer is obvious the first time the character’s name is spoken by Boss Elf. The ReadSpeak captioning on the DVD of Rudolph has it right, but listen to the pronunciation.

Quite clearly, it’s “Herbie.” Boss Elf says “Hermey” the second time, but then two of the elves seem to say “Herbie.” So why is there any confusion about the confusion?

Why FiOS?

Had a nice chat today with a helpful customer service rep at Verizon. Seems that being such an early adopter of FiOS, I was missing out, not only on some HD channels, but some bandwidth, and I was paying $14/month more than I should be. Here’s how it looks now.

Looks good, except that “about 50 miles” is almost twice the distance from here to Boston.