![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Private Eyes Are Watching You
Jun. 2nd, 2018 06:25 pmOur landlord is selling the building where we live, and we have to leave by the first of next month. We had been thinking of moving anyway, but it's complicating the process. I don't think anyone likes moving, but do they have recurring bad dreams about packing like I do? Actually, I've been so concerned about finding a new place, as well as other unrelated things, that I haven't even been thinking that much about packing, but I'm still dreading it. I did get an extension on my temp job, so if it lasts until the current projected end date, I'll have had it for more than a year. It seems to be easier to find a new home when you have a job.
On Tuesday, Beth and I went to an underwater puppet show. It's something she'd heard about on WNYC, and I knew nothing about. The puppets were spongy and mop-like, giving the effect of sea creatures swimming around. It was accompanied by a solo pianist playing Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique. Pretty reminiscent of one of the more abstract segments of Fantasia. After the show, they let us go backstage and see the workings of the puppets in the tank.
Thursday was our fourth Kevin Geeks Out show, hosted by Kevin Maher. Each show has a theme, although the different presenters can go in very different directions within that theme. Most of it is clips from and discussion of movies and television, although some other media occasionally sneak in as well. This time, the topic was detectives. One presentation was on the hard-boiled detective genre, focusing largely on Sam Spade and including clips from two versions of The Maltese Falcon. (It was made three times, but he said the second one was terrible.) It's a genre where I haven't read any of the authentic stuff, but pretty much every writer has done an homage or parody of it at some point. Robert Rankin's recurring character Lazlo Woodbine, who narrates in the first person no matter how the rest of the book is written and purports to only work in four locations (he usually ends up in more, but makes excuses), comes to mind. We saw some bits from a cartoon with Garfield as Sam Spayed. Yeah, they went there.
Another, by Maher himself, was on how pretty much every private detective on TV in the eighties was a Vietnam veteran, including the Equalizer, Magnum P.I., Simon & Simon, and the A-Team. There was a discussion by Gena Radcliffe (who apparently knows our friend Tavie; it's weird how many previously unknown connections we're discovering) on cartoons that ripped off Scooby-Doo, all made by Hanna-Barbera themselves, with mystery-solving teenagers and a talking animal or other similarly gimmicky character. The presenter mentioned how so many of them have a character who looks and sounds like Shaggy, but this is never addressed even when they cross over.
There was one that covered Cadfael, a British show based on a series of books about a monk in twelfth-century England who did primitive sleuthing and forensic analysis. I don't think I'd heard of it before, but it's a fascinating idea. Another addressed Dick Tracy, and the bizarre special where Leonard Maltin interviewed Warren Beatty in character as Dick, years after the movie flopped. It gets particularly weird when the character talks about Beatty. The final presentation focused on Murder, She Wrote, and included clips from an exercise video Angela Lansbury released during the time she was on the show.
Aside from moving, my other plans for the future include the Oz Convention in August, for which I'm currently trying to work out my rooming situation. I'd wanted to bring a costume, but most of the ideas I've had so far weren't totally practical, especially considering that I'm flying there. I considered Orpah, the merman from The Giant Horse of Oz, but I don't know what to use for the crutches, and even if I did I couldn't easily bring them on the plane. I do have another idea, but I don't know if I'll end up doing it.
On Tuesday, Beth and I went to an underwater puppet show. It's something she'd heard about on WNYC, and I knew nothing about. The puppets were spongy and mop-like, giving the effect of sea creatures swimming around. It was accompanied by a solo pianist playing Berlioz' Symphonie Fantastique. Pretty reminiscent of one of the more abstract segments of Fantasia. After the show, they let us go backstage and see the workings of the puppets in the tank.
Thursday was our fourth Kevin Geeks Out show, hosted by Kevin Maher. Each show has a theme, although the different presenters can go in very different directions within that theme. Most of it is clips from and discussion of movies and television, although some other media occasionally sneak in as well. This time, the topic was detectives. One presentation was on the hard-boiled detective genre, focusing largely on Sam Spade and including clips from two versions of The Maltese Falcon. (It was made three times, but he said the second one was terrible.) It's a genre where I haven't read any of the authentic stuff, but pretty much every writer has done an homage or parody of it at some point. Robert Rankin's recurring character Lazlo Woodbine, who narrates in the first person no matter how the rest of the book is written and purports to only work in four locations (he usually ends up in more, but makes excuses), comes to mind. We saw some bits from a cartoon with Garfield as Sam Spayed. Yeah, they went there.
Another, by Maher himself, was on how pretty much every private detective on TV in the eighties was a Vietnam veteran, including the Equalizer, Magnum P.I., Simon & Simon, and the A-Team. There was a discussion by Gena Radcliffe (who apparently knows our friend Tavie; it's weird how many previously unknown connections we're discovering) on cartoons that ripped off Scooby-Doo, all made by Hanna-Barbera themselves, with mystery-solving teenagers and a talking animal or other similarly gimmicky character. The presenter mentioned how so many of them have a character who looks and sounds like Shaggy, but this is never addressed even when they cross over.
There was one that covered Cadfael, a British show based on a series of books about a monk in twelfth-century England who did primitive sleuthing and forensic analysis. I don't think I'd heard of it before, but it's a fascinating idea. Another addressed Dick Tracy, and the bizarre special where Leonard Maltin interviewed Warren Beatty in character as Dick, years after the movie flopped. It gets particularly weird when the character talks about Beatty. The final presentation focused on Murder, She Wrote, and included clips from an exercise video Angela Lansbury released during the time she was on the show.
Aside from moving, my other plans for the future include the Oz Convention in August, for which I'm currently trying to work out my rooming situation. I'd wanted to bring a costume, but most of the ideas I've had so far weren't totally practical, especially considering that I'm flying there. I considered Orpah, the merman from The Giant Horse of Oz, but I don't know what to use for the crutches, and even if I did I couldn't easily bring them on the plane. I do have another idea, but I don't know if I'll end up doing it.
