When my youngest brother was a wee ‘un, one of his favorite shows was Super Ted. What the hell is Super Ted, you ask? It was a surreal British kids’ cartoon. For some reason, our local grocery store chain stocked the series in its tiny video department. My mom rented one of the tapes for my brother, and it was an instant hit.
Tag: TV
I’m Not Dead Yet
Coffee Book
5 3/4 x 5 1/2 inches, 12 sheets/24 pages
90lb cream Stonehenge paper stained with instant coffee, stab bound with ribbon and accented with aged brass brads
7 August 2006
I haven’t been either terribly busy or a total lazy-ass. I just haven’t had much to say lately. I’ve transcribed a few more letters (they’re uploaded, but not linked yet) and bound another little book, and I finally found the itty bitty ABC book I made last year, and got some better photos of that.
Instant review: How Art Made the World
I’ve watched the first disc (episodes 1-3) and am impressed with it. It’s very well put together. Art programs that appeal to both people who are in the art world and those who have no knowledge of it are rare. I think this is one of them, though. Even my neighbor, who swears she’s not artistic (ha!), enjoyed it and found it fascinating.
I got a kick out of the underlying premise that art is created by humans, and that humans were created by art. An ouroboros of sorts. I wrote something similar a few years ago:
However hard we may try, we cannot separate ourselves from the social structures that make us human. Art is the re-presentation of human experience. Art is dependant upon culture and culture is dependant upon art; man creates art and art creates man. Art is a dialogue between ourselves and our fellow humans concerning the world around us. Even if the “subject” of art is not linked to the human experience, the fact that it is created by persons with uniquely subjective outlooks on life makes it about the human experience.
I know the idea is not original, and that it has been around for a long, long time, but it’s not one that was ever discussed in my art history classes. It wasn’t until I got into the study of anthropology and history that the broader cultural aspects of art were addressed, in terms of why it exists and how it came to be.
Notes from the Grammar Police
Dear Slim-Fast People,
Please advise your advertising department that the correct phrase is “fewer calories,” not “less calories.” I’m sure y’all don’t want to be portrayed as a bunch of ignorati.
Thank you,
The Grammar Police
Rain, Rain, Go Away
It’s storming. It’s been raining on and off and on and off and on and off for days, and according to weather.com, it’s supposed to continue in the same pattern for the foreseeable future. Ugh. There are even some rumbles and flashes of lightning, but nothing consistent enough or far enough away–I’m not stupid enough to go stand outside in the lightning!–to motivate me to try to get a photo. Instead, I’d rather just grumble about the bloody weather.
Instant Review: Black Books
I just got the first season of Black Books from Netflix. I haven’t laughed that hard in a long, long time. I nearly made myself sick. And, I’m not sure why. I suspect that others might not find it quite so riotous as I did. I think it just catered to my weird sense of humor, in all the right ways. Whatever the reason, I found it to be deeply, deeply funny from start to finish.
And, now, I’m going to get off the computer, because it’s starting to get a little nasty outside. I think maybe I should burn hecatombs to the weather gods, so the electricity won’t go out again. Eeep!
Speaking of Perplexing
Why is the winner of the last American Idol singing jingles for a car company? How on earth could that possibly be a good career move? Not that I’m complaining, or anything, because the sooner his career hits the toilet, the sooner it can be flushed.
Little House on the Prairie
We’ve all seen the Little House on the Prairie television series. I grew up with it, and with the books. I thoroughly and (mostly) unreservedly loved both. It’s been years since I’ve seen the series, and I missed the Disney miniseries that aired a couple of years ago. When I was in high school, my Little House books were lost in a move, so it’s been even longer since I’ve read them. Via the magic of Netflix, I’ve been able to watch not only the Disney miniseries, but the original series and its pilot, and I have some rambling and disjointed thoughts and observations.
Left to right: Caroline, Carrie, Laura, Charles, Grace, and Mary Ingalls
I don’t have satellite or cable TV, and my TV reception is not good enough to get ABC, so I did not see the 2005 miniseries when it aired. I didn’t even know it existed, until I searched Netflix for the original series. I watched the miniseries, and was impressed with it. The sets, costumes, and actors were wonderful. The script was pretty good, and coincided fairly well with my recollection of the books. I don’t know how true to history the depiction of the Osage was, but it was believable. My only quibbles, and they are small, are that the music and the new age crap were out of place.
Left to right: Carrie, Mary, and Laura Ingalls, circa 1894
Jack, who was a bulldog in real life (the 19th century bulldog was most closely related to today’s Pit Bull), was depicted as an Australian Shepherd. There was a subplot that revolved around Jack’s bicolored eyes. Allegedly “Indians” called such dogs “spirit dogs” and feared them, which accounted for the Ingalls not being attacked by the local Indians. Um, no. Also, the “Enya on the Prairie” music was horribly out of place.
I went online and hunted up some critiques of the miniseries. It was a mixed bag, with some folks feeling it stuck more closely to the books than the original series and others feeling it had strayed too much. Interesting. There was pretty universal praise of the depiction of the Osage and universal condemnation of the new agey bits. So, my reactions were not out of line.
There was also criticism of which bits of the Ingalls story the creators decided to focus on. Some folks quibbled with the decision to leave Carrie out of the picture (she was born while the family was in Kansas territory). Others felt the miniseries should have shown the later parts of the Ingalls’ lives, after they’d left Kansas territory and moved to Minnesota. They didn’t like that the miniseries did not follow the same plot line as the original series.
Laura Ingalls and Almanzo Wilder, circa 1885
Now for the interesting (to me, at least) part. I next watched the original pilot. I’d never seen it before, and assumed it would cover the family’s move to Plum Creek. Nope. It followed the exact same story line as the 2005 miniseries. In fact, the majority of scenes in the new shows followed the old pilot almost identically. The main differences between the two was the reason given for the family leaving Kansas territory and the depiction of the Indians.
In the pilot, the family were forced off their land because the government re-negotiated its treaty with the Indians, and the family were on the wrong side of the new boundary. In the 2005 miniseries, the family were accused by settling the land illegally, without having filed a proper claim. I don’t recall which is true; maybe neither is. I’m not sure it really matters much in terms of the telling of a successful story. (And, that’s what the original books were. They were stories, not strict autobiographies.)
The handling of the Indians differed between the two series, as well. In the original pilot, they are treated as flat characters. They’re just generic mid-70s teevee Indians. Caricatures. In the 2005 miniseries, the Indians are more completely depicted. They are families with children as well as a nation facing pressures and conflicts both within and without.
One thing that struck me anew while watching all the incarnations of the stories is the breadth and depth of the role pioneer women played. They weren’t just meek and mild cooks and child tenders. They helped build houses, plough fields, and harvest food. And they did it in corsets and several heavy layers of clothing, even when the weather was blisteringly hot. These women were no delicate flowers. If they had been, their families would have never survived, much less flourished, under such harsh conditions.
So, anyway, now I’m working my way through the original series. I’m about half-way through the first season, and it’s just as charming–and ham-fistedly cheesy–as I remember it being. It’s good, good stuff.
Charles Ingalls and Caroline Quiner
Caroline Quiner and Charles Ingalls
I included photos because I found them fascinating when contrasted against today’s popular representations. Doesn’t Pa resemble Abe Lincoln in that last photo?
Yoplait Sucks
Why does Yoplait suck? Well, there are a lot of reasons, starting with the fact that it is overly sweet and of a mucous-like consistency. I personally find the taste and texture to be thoroughly offensive; however, they are not as offensive as Yoplait’s newest commercial. In it, Yoplait asks you, the consumer, to consider their yogurt as a tool in your perpetual weight loss arsenal. Cuz, you know, all women are always on a diet because all women are fat and disgusting, no matter how objectively UN-fat they might actually be.
Case in point: the woman in this Yoplait commercial. She’s so thin that the daylight shining from between her thighs is nearly blinding, and she has a washboard sternum. But, yet, she’s so scared of her big, fat ass being seen in public that she eagerly subjects herself to Yoplait Candied Snot.
Random Nit Picks: Little House Edition
I’m through with season 3 of Little House on the Prairie, and have begun season 4. It’s been thoroughly enjoyable, my personal issues with Michael Landon notwithstanding. However, I have a few Picts to bone:
- Melissa Gilbert was not a very good actress in the first season. About halfway through the second season, she started to get her sea legs.
- I can’t imagine folks would’ve left their horses to stand in harness for long periods of time. Horses aren’t cars, and you can’t just park them out front and leave them standing in the hot sun for hours on end.
- Speaking of sun, I’ve been to Minnesota a time or two, and they have dirt and grass and trees there. Specifically, they have black dirt, green grass, and green trees. It’s woodlands/prairie there. What it is not is an endless, red dust bowl. Nor are there mountains there. And, while it does get warm in the summer, it’s not generally blistering hot, as one might think when seeing Michael Landon sweat himself to death on nearly every episode.
- Speaking of dirt, why is there so bloody much of it? The entire Ingalls homestead is surrounded by hard-backed, baked dirt. Much of the town is, too.
- What is up with Carrie? The girls who played her were terrible actresses, so I can understand why her character wasn’t ever very well developed. But, surely they could’ve done something with her?
- In one episode, Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash played a couple of grifters with hearts of gold. I’d never seen this episode before, so it was bittersweet to see them looking so young and vibrant. What a lovely bonus!
- Bunny, the horse, was supposedly a girl. Only, Bunny was clearly sporting an, um, Willie. So to speak.
- Did I mention that the grass is always brown? And, the dirt?
- The set dressing was too sparse. I know the Ingalls were poor, but surely their home collected “stuff.”
- When did Laura learn to swim? In the camping episode, she can’t, but in Remember Me, she can.
- Also, in the beginning of this episode, Mary is sporting piggy tails, which are a huge improvement over her normal hair-do.
- Short haired dogs cannot have poodly-haired puppies.
- Speaking of dogs, I really can’t stand the convention of using them in place of wolves. German Shepherd Dogs do not even remotely resemble wolves. Seriously.
- Again, the brown grass and dusty, red dirt.
- Also, did I mention that it is not always summer in Minnesota. They have winters there. And, when they do have winters, they consist of more than one isolated blizzard.
- When the family (and half of Walnut Grove, it seems) packs up and heads to Dakota territory, there is no real way to tell how long they’re gone. It sure doesn’t seem like that long, but the Ingalls return to find their house festooned with cobwebs and the mill owner, Lars Hanson, dying of a stroke. Walnut Grove has turned into a ghost town. But, the land surrounding the Ingalls homestead is still nothing but hard-packed, brown dirt. Not a single weed has grown in their absence.
Art History
I love art history. I find it endlessly fascinating, because it encompasses just about every aspect of human existence. I realize that not everyone–not even, necessarily, other artists–are as enamored of art history as I am. So, it was gratifying to hear a friend mention that she’d been watching the BBC’s How Art Made the World on PBS. We had a brief discussion about human vs. animal perception, idealization (e.g. the Venus of Willendorf vs. the Kritios Boy), and the flow of artistic conventions from the Egyptians to the Greeks (Greek Kouros and Korai vs. Egyptian sculpture).
It was incredibly cool to watch her get it, and to see the sparks fly and the synapses connect. Folks, that is why art history is such an amazing thing to study. A good teacher can forever make a positive influence on the way his or her students view and interact with their world.
There are also bad teachers, who make their students want to hide under their desks and cry. Class, meet Professor StuffyPants. I managed to make it through two semesters of survey and one of Medieval before giving up on him. At the end of it, I felt like I deserved some sort of medal for perseverance. With profs like him, it’s no wonder that my fellow art students weren’t very interested in taking more than the bare minimum of art history classes.
He did a disservice to a huge number of students by disrespecting their intelligence and generally acting like a jackass. He had the opportunity to inspire hundreds of kids–art students, no less, who ought to have been an easy sell–but he wasted it. His students would have been better off with him telling them to go home and watch PBS, instead of attending his lectures.
Only dreaming
I stayed up way past my bed time last night, watching a truly awful interpretation of The Swiss Family Robinson. Why do I do these things to myself? I loved the MacGyver aspect of the book, so, since I’ve been on a bit of a pioneering bender, I’d added the series to my Netflix queue. (Yes, these are the aforementioned discs that were shipped to me out-of-order.) I assume the series was created for cable teevee, but I don’t know which company to hold responsible. Really, it’s that bad. I can’t even recommend it for the cheese factor. That’s two hours of my life I won’t be able to get back.
Because I was up so late, I slept in this morning. That’s rarely a good idea, because when I do, I inevitably have bad–or at least weird and disturbing–dreams. Usually they involve things like being chased around abandoned amusement parks by Sleestak and/or Stormtroopers. This morning’s weird and disturbing dream was caused by yesterday’s bout of template ugliness. I dreamt that the CIA were forcing me to control people’s behavior with style sheets. Not being any sort of coding genius, I had to figure out, by trial and error, how changing tiny variables would affect people. I don’t remember any more of the dream than that, but I woke up feeling just a little panicked.
I think it’s time for me to toddle off in search of caffeine.
red paper boat 
