Rokusjesdag

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.

The Blues Brothers break in the new Boston House of Blues

Elwood and Jake

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.

Jim Belushi, Dan Ackroyd

Bismo even got some face time on local TV!

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/FEB/BismoAsElwood.flv 400 300]

The ‘Peanuts bird’ before Woodstock

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.

Ford 1961 ad with Charlie Brown1961 Ford ad with Charlie Brown

1961 Ford ad with Charlie Brown1961 Ford ad with Charlie Brown

1961 Ford ad with Charlie Brown1961 Ford ad with Charlie Brown

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.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/FEB/FordPeanuts.flv 400 380]

And here’s another gem. Color videotape from 1961, with Lucy introducing Tennessee Ernie Ford, sponsored by Ford.

[flv:http://www.dograt.com/Video/2009/FEB/PeanutsFordIntro.flv 400 300]

Hot for Teacher, 1930

If there is only one Our Gang movie to be seen, “Teacher’s Pet”, from 1930, and the eleventh talkie in the series, is the one to see. From the nostalgia of the one-room schoolhouse, to the wonderful interplay between Miss Crabtree and the kids, this one really clicks. June Marlowe, although not the best actress of the day, or even as good as Jackie Cooper was an actor, was nevertheless perfect as Miss Crabtree, using her silent movie training to express herself beautifully with facial expressions and body language.

“Teacher’s Pet” was the first video I captured and posted on my old website in 2002. If you click here your Windows Media Player should open up and show it to you. Here’s a new and much improved transfer.

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Note: For this video to play just right, you’ll need Adobe Flash player 10

For all of the attention given to the next generation of Rascals, with Spanky, Alfalfa (who my father knew), and Darla, my personal attachment is to the earlier troupe, with Jackie, Chubby, Mary Ann and Wheezer. And although some people feel that Farina, Stymie and, later, Buckwheat were stereotypes, the important thing is that Our Gang was integrated.

As I’ve said before, the music of Leroy Shield (it’s not “Shields,” just as Charles M. is not “Schultz”) is, for me, an integral part of why I favor the earlier gang’s stories. Here is an example that is a particular favorite. If I knew nothing at all, listening to this exquisite 75-second track would stop me cold and leave me asking, “Who wrote this? Where is it from?”

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/FEB/Wishing.mp3]

See Emilys Play

Mr. D.F. Rogers of Massachusetts writes…

Hey, who played the yeoman with Dr. McCoy? The one in the ultra mini skirt who meets Don Juan on the planet where your wishes come true!

Good question, Denny! That’s Emily Banks. There’s a little something about Emily at this link. She seems to have dropped out of the TV acting scene in the mid-80’s. Emily appeared in an episode of Dragnet 1970, as an English teacher at a junior college which, thanks to Netflix Watch Instantly, I was able to watch instantly.

Emily Banks in \"Dragnet\"

And following a train of thought, the Pink Floyd song “See Emily Play” was produced by Norman “Hurricane” Smith, after he left his position as EMI recording engineer for The Beatles.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2009/FEB/Emily.mp3]

A school girl named Emily Young inspired the song, written in 1967 by the late Syd Barrett. Today, Emily is a noted sculptor.

Emily Young