How circuitous a journey even the most sedentary of us can partake: I was trying to teach the boy about battery life conservation when I had the novel idea of ensuring he’d never learn by racing the two of his gifted R/C vehicles, only to discover that both worked on the same 27 MHz frequency. I then remembered an old Speed Racer toy (from the マッハ ゴー ゴー ゴー branding, it must’ve been an import, with which I was wont to feed my bachelor emptiness) in an accessible box; but how to introduce this relic from my past to someone whose cars are computer-generated, driven by dogs or transform into robots, and talk? He’ll sit through anything, of course, so I looked up the series online, and there it was, without any confusion as to which service had secured its rights.
One search away was the more sentimental favorite, a pristine fan edit—though regrettably, remastering always seems to dump the original titles—whose saga of heroes and epic battles will probably never be topped, if it hasn’t by now.
This episode in particular had a profound effect upon me when I was but a small child watching reruns of this syndicated show in the 80’s: I wondered why the villain couldn’t find the micro-library with his initial X-ray scan, and Spidey had it hidden in his webshooter all along (also reused animation). This lack of continuity struck me [even then] as an egregious flaw in presentation, stayed with me throughout the years, and put me on the path towards seeking consistency in all things.
I’ve just seen the latest Christopher Nolan epic, but alas, even as cosmic a journey as that requires a return home, where relativity really kicks in and I am instead draped on a metal folding chair in front of all 22 episodes of SciFi’s turn-of-the-century response to Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentleman. The series apparently pioneered hi-def, though you couldn’t tell from these recordings, so I’m left to appreciate it mainly for the ass-kicking Rebecca Fogg character, who probably owes more to Emma Peel than Lara Croft, but nevertheless is deplorably left off most lists of peers. I like the theme, too. Haven’t heard one like it since.
I think “Daddy Dearest” was the only episode I actually saw during its short-lived run in 1989, because with only eight of them, it probably wasn’t ever syndicated afterward. (Then again.) And after all these years, serial killers several times a week, this first experiment in primetime profiling still came to a jarring end.
My favorite of the lot, however, was the mysteriously-titled “And They Swam Right over the Dam”, where a couple of pediatricians set out to liberate their patients from overindulgent parents. Richard Kind (Larry’s cousin Andy one DVD ago on Curb Your Enthusiasm), the all-White team’s gopher, takes them down without so much as a fight, and reminds us how much stranger things were back then.
What a great movie. I had to get this in here before I put it aside for my recent acquisition of the entire Unsub series, because yeah, my pace lately isn’t likely to keep up. It’s a Boorman, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but he did seem more focused here, even if it was Marvin’s influence, and I especially loved the dream-y quality of that moment when his character just hides while a pursuer is caught by the police. This is a perfect example of taking source material to new creative heights; I’m ashamed to remember having only been entertained by Payback.
A while back when this short season of television from my youth (and the months spent trying to swim like the titular character in the neighborhood pool) were remastered I almost plunked down another credit card charge to regain access to those cobwebbed sectors, but thanks to my peers at large, I can do so without the inevitable buyer’s remorse, or physical glut. I won’t, however, make the same mistake next time—Buck Rogers it is—and not confirm the source of the rips.
There’s talk that a new iteration of Aquaman is looming in the “Dawn of Justice”, and I’m not sure I want to see a Dothraki/Klingon/Spartan Atlantean, even if they think it’ll save his reputation. (I insist he was secretly hooking up with Jayna on the Super Friends.) If anything, it’s an opportunity to explore and expand upon a rich mythology that’s accompanied human civilization and left at least one ten-year-old boy hanging onto the unsolved mystery of Mark Harris’ origin.
Twentieth anniversary of the eponymous publication, but actually it’s been more than thirty years since I saw it carelessly sold on the shelves at Kroger. In a way, I pity the youth of today, whose introduction to pornography all pretty much comes via the Internet, depriving them of memories and psyche-shaping experiences such as these, the lengths we had to take to see breasts, like braving the undeveloped tracts past Douglas Avenue for a legendary shack, trying to pinpoint the exact position between the rockers on the cable box which would supposedly unlock the Playboy Channel—and accompanying Mom to buy groceries.
Tonight on yet another over-the-air retro network (seriously, they expect me to pay for dross like reality TV when I can watch this), I was reunited with that episode of the Six Million Dollar Man where Steve and a posse pursue a family of aliens with special abilities, the patriarch of which I had remembered fast-forwarding time to flee, but turns out he was only creating an illusion of themselves headed in another direction. Mystery of almost four decades solved.
A year or so later I’d be smitten with the proto-Robotech Micronauts toy line, but as ultimately unrewarding as it may be to eBay another magnetic Force Commander, it’s the Michael Golden art in the Marvel comics that still astounds me. And thanks to speedy seeders out there, I can bask in their beauty again.
The Flash is set to be the new Spider-man, as I’ve always felt he deserved. I would’ve gone nuts for this as a wee lad—and consistency being my thing nowadays, my favorite incarnation of the wall-crawler really is the 70’s TV series—as cool as I thought even the laughable effects were at the time:
A being who can move so fast as to put everyone else in slow-mo, essentially freezing them from his perspective of time, then speed back up at will, is basically a god, isn’t he? I don’t think I really could appreciate this in 3rd or 4th grade as I drew up plans for my own career as a superhero, relying on running (I must’ve won a race or two in PE against my African-American classmates to inspire such confidence, which is more than I can say about my recent performance at the Mother’s Day picnic) with “magnesium flares” in my shoes.
[My last post featured fellow Mission: Impossible star Peter Lupus.]
I’ve just seen the latest Christopher Nolan epic, but alas, even as cosmic a journey as that requires a return home, where relativity really kicks in and I am instead draped on a metal folding chair in front of all 22 episodes of SciFi’s turn-of-the-century response to Moore’s League of Extraordinary Gentleman. The series apparently pioneered hi-def, though you couldn’t tell from these recordings, so I’m left to appreciate it mainly for the ass-kicking Rebecca Fogg character, who probably owes more to Emma Peel than Lara Croft, but nevertheless is deplorably left off 
I think 
What a great movie. I had to get this in here before I put it aside for my recent acquisition of the entire Unsub series, because yeah, my pace lately isn’t likely to keep up. It’s a Boorman, so I shouldn’t be surprised, but he did seem more focused here, even if it was Marvin’s influence, and I especially loved the dream-y quality of that moment when his character just hides while a pursuer is caught by the police. This is a perfect example of taking source material to new creative heights; I’m ashamed to remember having only been entertained by Payback.
A while back when this short season of television from my youth (and the months spent trying to swim like the titular character in the neighborhood pool) were remastered I almost plunked down 
