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Posts Tagged ‘nostalgia’

Links #783

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 6, 2025| Leave a Comment »

People don’t even dare to go on holiday any more as they fear that the ants will move into their home in their absence.  –  Manfred Verhaagh

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I’ve been re-watching The Avengers lately, and perusing a venerable fan site; in the process I discovered a mention of this song I believe I vaguely remember from the MTV era.  One interesting footnote: The Allies were a Seattle band, and I know this video was filmed there because I’ve been in that elevator many times!  The links above it were provided by Radley Balko; Mike Siegel; IncarcerNation (x2); Jesse Walker & Mike Masnick; and IncarcerNation (x2 again), in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Links #779

Posted in Current Events, Favorites, Links, Miscellaneous, Obituary, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , on June 8, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Somehow the body became secreted.  –  boss hog Kevin Catalina

I’ve been re-watching The Avengers lately, and while perusing a venerable fan site for the show I came across a reference to this video, which I’d never seen before.  The show went to color in its fifth season, and this “mini-episode” was made as a color test; it was broadcast in abridged form on US TV as an ad for the new season, and provides a nice little taste of the show’s style.  The links above it were provided by Missy Mariposa, Mike Masnick, Scott Hechinger, Jesse Walker, T. Greg Doucette, and IncarcerNation (x2), in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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Links #752

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Obituary, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »

I wanted her arrested for assault, not executed.  –  Talisa Coombs

This catchy number was one of my favorite songs from Sesame Street, but I hadn’t thought about it in years until a recent retweet by Elizabeth N. Brown recalled it to me.  The links above it were provided by Mike Siegel; T. Greg Doucette (x2); IncarcerNation; Scott Long; Dan Savage and Franklin Harris; and Tracy Quan, in that order.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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I Miss the Beatles

Posted in Biography, Miscellaneous, Music, tagged , , on October 11, 2024| 2 Comments »

I know, it seems like a fairly random thought, but it came into my head when I recently favored George Harrison’s “When We Was Fab” as my video of the day.  When I was very young, I had a big AM radio on my nightstand; every night my dad would turn it on for me to fall asleep to, then he’d come in later to turn it off.  So I can remember when “Let It Be” was in heavy rotation, and the DJs were talking about The Beatles breaking up.  But even though I was just a wee lass at the time, they were still a major cultural force through my formative years.  All four of them (but especially Paul and Ringo) had a string of hits throughout the early ’70s, and when Yellow Submarine was first shown on TV (IMDb says it was just two days before my birthday: October 29, 1972) I was absolutely fascinated.  My dad had just bought a new recliner, and I cut a door and windows in the big cardboard box it came in, and decorated the outside with my renditions of scenes from the movie; I kept that silly box in the garage for several years, until my youngest sister left it out in the rain.  A few years later I discovered the bargain record section at TG&Y, and it was there I found and bought the “Blue Album” and “Red Album” and played the hell out of them.  I can remember lying on the floor listening to the Blue one with Mae just a few months after John was murdered, an event I heard about on WRNO on the way to school; by general consensus, the radio was always on that station, New Orleans’ premier Classic Rock source, which had an annual “Beatles/Stones week” in which the first song at the top of every hour was from one of those two bands.  All through the ’80s they regularly appeared on MTV; that included John, via a couple of videos from Double Fantasy (1980).  And of course George was in the Traveling Wilburys and had a sideline producing movies such as Time Bandits (1981).  It was probably the early ’90s before I really started thinking of them only in the past tense, and then we lost George to cancer about two years after I started my escort service.  Anyhow, I don’t really have a point to make here; I guess I was just feeling a wave of nostalgia, and wanted to share it with y’all.

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Diary #735

Posted in Diary, Favorites, tagged , , on July 30, 2024| 1 Comment »

I’ve loved The Muppet Show since it first premiered in 1976, so when it became available on DVD in the Oughts, I bought each season as it came out.  Then when season 4 was announced I put it on my Amazon wishlist and waited.  And waited.  And waited.  And surprise surprise, it never came out, probably because Disney now owns the show, and they have a long history of simply stopping series in the middle if they don’t feel like they made enough money on the previous seasons.  It’s absolutely true that shows which predate the home video revolution of the mid-’80s are often delayed due to having to re-negotiate the music rights, but that delay is rarely more than a few years.  And once “streaming” became a thing, I knew I could kiss any chance of an official release of the 4th and 5th seasons goodbye.  I’ve periodically tried to find bootleg sets online because I’ve had excellent luck with bootlegs of other hard-to-find shows, but nope; it seemed I was destined to never see them again.  Then one of my generous gentlemen (who happens to be an IT guy) sent me the video in Sunday’s Links column, and in the process of thanking him I told him of my love for the show, and asked that if he ever saw the bootlegs available he would grab them for me.  He responded by asking me to take a picture of the back of my DVD player, and a couple of weeks later what should arrive in my mailbox but the last two seasons on DVD!  He had located them online, stored them in MP4 format, and saved them to DVDs for me!  The picture was to be sure my machine could play the MP4s, and it can!  So now I’m rather childishly excited about watching them, and as soon as Grace and I finish the dinnertime series we’re currently watching we’re going to start the Muppets from season 1.  And I wanted to let my gent know how very happy I am about that.

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The Space Age

Posted in Diary, Favorites, tagged , , on February 16, 2024| 2 Comments »

As regular readers know, we don’t watch regular TV or “streaming”; when we want a TV series we buy it on DVD and then watch it at our leisure.  Typically, we watch an hour at dinner and then a couple before bedtime while the edibles kick in, and when we’re done with one series we move on to another.  And though we didn’t really plan it that way, lately we’ve been watching a lot of shows from the Kennedy era and immediately after.  The pattern was ushered in by Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955-1965), but since then we’ve watched Thriller (1960-1962), The Flintstones (1960-1966), and The Outer Limits (1963-1965).  I’m not old enough to remember any of these series from their initial runs, but I discovered and enjoyed all of them in syndication, then obtained the discs later; I think most of my favorite shows were discovered that way, years after their first broadcast, and a lot of them are from the ’60s and early ’70s.  But watching a number of shows from the early ’60s relatively close together has had a kind of synergistic effect, and I’ve found myself going through a phase of nostalgia for the period – its music, its movies, its cars, its fads, and other assorted bits and pieces of that odd little interlude, no longer the ’50s but not yet what we think of as the ’60s.  It won’t last long; in just a few days we’ll be moving on to more modern shows waiting in the wings.  But in the meantime, I’m rather enjoying feeling nostalgic for a time just before I was born, which I know only through the medium of recorded entertainment.

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O.B.I.T.

Posted in Fiction, History, Philosophy, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , on February 5, 2024| 1 Comment »

People with nothing to hide have nothing to fear from O.B.I.T.
–  Byron Lomax (Jeff Corey)

Generally speaking, The Outer Limits was not as devoted to social commentary as its contemporary The Twilight Zone.  This is not a knock; the flavor of the featured tales reminds me very much of Silver Age sci-fi comics like Mystery in Space and Strange Adventures, more thrilling than cerebral, and though the technobabble nearly always has holes one could pilot a flying saucer through, the same could be said of The Twilight Zone.  The episodes were for the most part skillfully directed and shot in an elegant film noir-inspired style, enhanced with superbly creepy music and performed by some of the top small-screen talent of the day such as Martin Landau, Robert Culp, David McCallum, Sally Kellerman, Vera Miles, Robert Duvall, William Shatner and many others.  But while the stories rarely fail to entertain (though modern viewers used to CGI may find the clever-but-cheap special effects wanting), they’re generally short monster movies or unchallenging morality plays rather than incisive examinations of the issues of their day.  Of course, there are exceptions, and one of them is O.B.I.T., one of those rare teleplays which are more relevant today than when they were filmed.

The Outer Band Individuated Teletracer (O.B.I.T.) is a top-secret surveillance device which is able to tune in on any individual’s unique biometric signature in order to spy on that person regardless of walls or distance.  It is used to monitor the staff at a vital Defense research installation, and when one of its operators is brutally murdered the U.S. Senate subcommittee which oversees the facility sends one of its members to investigate.  What he discovers is a base plagued by tension, discord, and serious mental health issues, all driven by the administration’s incessant prying into every private life; though the existence of the machine is a closely-guarded secret, it is obvious – and terrifying – to all that the government clearly has some means of surveillance unimpeded by locks or whispers.  Of course, this being The Outer Limits, the machines (which the investigation soon reveals are both numerous and not solely restricted to US  government usage) are an alien device surreptitiously introduced into human society as a tool of conquest.  In the climactic scene, when the disguised alien is revealed, this is what he has to say:

The machines are everywhere! Oh you’ll find them all, you’re a zealous people. And you’ll make a great show of smashing a few of them. But for every one you destroy, hundreds of others will be built. And they will demoralize you, break your spirits, create such rifts and tensions in your society that no one will be able to repair them! Oh, you’re a savage, despairing planet, and when we come here to live, you friendless, demoralized flotsam will fall without even a single shot being fired. Senator, enjoy the few years left you. There is no answer. You’re all of the same dark persuasion! You demand – insist – on knowing every private thought and hunger of everyone: Your families, your neighbors, everyone — but yourselves.

When O.B.I.T. was first broadcast in November 1963, the security state was a mere toddler; its tools were largely limited to hidden cameras and microphones, and eminently-corruptible human snitches and busybodies.  I hardly need to point out that this is no longer the case; using biometrics to identify individuals is no longer science fiction, and the number of means the government and large corporations have to track, trace, watch, eavesdrop on, and judge every last one of us would’ve been unbelievable to a TV audience of the Kennedy era.  Millions of people in the developed world, acting individually or collectively, feel completely justified in digging into the affairs of those who have different beliefs from them, in hope of discovering some transgression or mistake that can be used to destroy the victim’s life with the help of faceless, merciless corporations and institutions.  The irreparable rifts and tensions which are the inevitable product of a panopticon are already here, and growing more dangerously-intrusive all the time.  And we didn’t even need malevolent aliens to do it to us.

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Diary #697

Posted in Diary, tagged , , , on November 7, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Though I love all the presents y’all send me, some of them just make more striking illustrations than others, which is why I’m featuring the Cthulhu chia pet rather than the assorted Halloween-themed placemats & table runner, or the complete set of The Dick Van Dyke Show, or the CD of Jean-Michel Jarre’s Oxymore, or the DVD of Tales That Witness Madness (an early ’70s horror anthology I’ve wanted to see since I first read about it in Famous Monsters of Filmland when I was a kid), or Black Sabbath (a Boris Karloff horror anthology which somehow scaped my notice until recently), or a collection of lesser Hammer films.  Because even though all those things are awesome and I thank everyone who sent me gifts or cash for my birthday, a Cthulhu chia pet is just so absurd it would have been wrong of me to fail to show it to y’all.

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The Eye of Childhood

Posted in Biography, Favorites, tagged , , , on June 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »

One of the things Grace and I have always enjoyed is watching TV shows, usually science fiction or fantasy, together.  And over the past three years we’ve established a pattern: about ten PM we each prepare a snack – I a cup of tea and a little dessert, and she a bowl of soup – and take some edibles to relax, and then we watch a couple of episodes of whatever show we’re doing at the moment.  Over the past few years we’ve watched or re-watched Doctor Who, Farscape, Deep Space Nine, Space: 1999, Blake’s 7, Babylon 5, Mission: Impossible, The Wild, Wild West, Enterprise, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Star Trek, and currently The Six Million Dollar Man, plus a number of shorter series we knocked out in a week or less.  Some of these I first saw as an adult, but others (like our current show) I haven’t seen since they first aired when I was much younger, and those are the ones I’m finding most interesting.  It’s hardly incisive criticism or inspired analysis to point out that children see and enjoy different things in a movie or show than adults do, or that young adults and older adults may enjoy different things about the same show.  But what’s fascinating is that ofttimes it’s almost like watching a different show.  Even as a young lass I enjoyed watching good characters, though obviously I lacked an adult’s ability to appreciate the nuances of character development and interaction, and of course a lot of the subtler jokes and dialogue flew right over my head.  But for the most part, it was the ideas in these shows which ignited my imagination.  Even when I watch shows I haven’t seen in the neighborhood of half a century, I still clearly recall some plot points, characters, terminology, and even exact lines or phrases.  Yet there are other bits I don’t remember at all despite their really grabbing my attention in our current viewing.  Sometimes that means rolling my eyes at things I thought were really cool when I was ten, but sometimes it means gaining a new, adult appreciation of a childhood favorite.

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Links #663

Posted in Current Events, Links, Miscellaneous, Music, Tyranny, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 19, 2023| Leave a Comment »

You’re going to kill me.  –  Lisa Edwards

Since every one of this week’s links, all provided by Cop Crisis, was just horrible, I’m sure y’all will understand if I inject some levity by way of the video.

From the Archives

I find paywalls distasteful, and so many people find this blog valuable as a resource I just can’t bring myself to install one.  Furthermore, I find ad delivery services (whose content I have no say over) even more distasteful.  But as I’m now semi-retired from sex work, I can’t self-sponsor this blog by myself any longer.  So if you value my writing enough that you would pay to see it if it were paywalled, please consider subscribing; there are four different levels to fit all budgets.  Or if that doesn’t work for you, please consider showing your generosity with a one-time donation; you can Paypal to maggiemcneill@earthlink.net or else email me at the same address to make other arrangements.  Thanks so much!

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