I finally saw two posts from Elizabeth - The SB is back! (at least for today). So, girl, if you are reading this, one post was about being stuck on the road somewhere in Wyoming, presumably after the eclipse, as 100,000 people were all trying to depart at the same time, wherever this was. Denver, I think. Your other post was a picture of the sun, posted by a Scandinavian person. I don't think it was of the eclipse, but maybe so. It was a great pic either way. At any rate, as is the case at the moment, I have no idea if those posts were meant for me, but if they were I take it that perhaps you have been on a road trip yourself? Maybe having to do with the eclipse? Post more if you want to. I am right here, as always.
Today was Pearl's birthday, as noted yesterday. Because it was Thursday, I took her to her regularly scheduled appointment at the Hair Salon, but we did not end up doing much else, because that visit always takes a couple of hours and Pearl is often tired when it's over. So we will postpone the birthday lunch until tomorrow, when no other activities are scheduled.
That's all to report for today. No movie, but I did watch an episode of "The Loner" (Rod Serling's short-lived Western series starring Lloyd Bridges). Having finished the entire series of "The Outer Limits", I now need a new sci-fi fix to go with my Western one. As previously noted, Western TV shows abound - I've still got almost 90 episodes left of "Tombstone Territory" alone, lol - but good TV Science Fiction is hard to come by. The early 50s "Space Ranger" genre was made for children, and the revival of sci-fi in the 80s and early 90s is too slick for me - shot in color and not nearly Weird Enough. I liked "Quantum Leap" when it came out, but it would not work for me now.
I need Weird, because I was Born Into Weird. "Outer Limits" and "Twilight Zone" were on the air at the exact time that I was able to begin watching television. And even though I may not have grasped the intricacies of those shows as a small child, I still watched them every week.
Just for the heck of it, here's the very early TV shows I recall watching as a child : "Outer Limits" (which blew me away because it was so scary and weird), "Twilight Zone" (I probably watched both these shows with my parents, and "T-Zone" was by Uncle Rod, so my Dad would have watched even though he didn't like TV).
"Combat" was one of my early favorites. Big Time WW2 with Vic Morrow. That's because of Dad once again (and the influence of television - and Dad worked in television during it's beginning, at ABC in Hollywood).
"The Patty Duke Show". Little Me liked girls right away, and I thought Patty Duke was cute. And the show had a great theme song, and William Schallert was her nice guy Dad.
"Secret Agent" starring Patrick McGoohan. I bought this whole series on dvd a few years ago, and McGoohan is as bad ass as I thought he was back in 1964. And, it had one of the best theme songs ever, "Secret Agent Man" by Johnny Rivers, which became a big hit on Top 40 radio too.
TV was a whole lot different back then. What happened to TV was kind of like the same deal that happened to the music industry. Once the Old Studio Systems were broken up, and the mediums were opened up to everybody, the result - in both cases, music and television - was a tidal wave of Pure Garbage. Which is bound to happen when you open up the floodgates to the egotistical masses of culturally deprived, ill educated and suddenly "entitled" folk who fancy themselves creative.
The guys who originally ran the TV and Music Bizzes knew what the F they were doing, businesswise, and - even if their heads were wrapped around bottom lines rather than creative drives, they still trusted the very talented directors and actors and writers of the era to deliver them a quality product. They trusted their Artistic Personnel. And the same was true in the music industry. Corporate types ran the business aspect, and they trusted their producers, artists and publicists to create revenue.
And so, in both mediums, the heads of the companies trusted the Artistic Types to come up with a sellable product.
The result was the Great Television Era of the Mid-1950s to the Early 90s (with a few exceptions in years), and what was once known as The Music Business, where the execs were just as important as the artists, because there were Artists, and because the Executives left them alone - via the A&R Men, to just make their music.
Creativity ruled, creativity was trusted to sell product. And so, when I was a small child, I was lucky to be born into a Golden Age of great television - broadcast TV! - and also, thank The Lord, the greatest era of popular music that ever has been - the era of Rock 'N Roll, from 1963 until.......well, what do you think? Is Rock still alive? I think it is, but not by much.
What we need to revive it, is big budgets, and great producers and engineers that can help fledgling bands find their way. Same for new TV shows that are truly creative and not just "habit forming" like so many of the Shows Of The Day these days.
We need Big Money For Art - big budgets to develop talent, so that talent doesn't have to go it alone.
Then you might one day have another creative rennaisance, like the one I was so fortunate to experience as a child. /////
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