"Oh my...I can't believe it's not clutter"

There are numerous blogs and websites devoted to nostalgia, especially of the retro variety. This is probably a result of the many baby boomers being bitten by the byte bug. My own nostalgia blog is informed by info from others research and postings. I know I’m not speaking just for myself when I exclaim the immense joy I get out of re-hashing the visuals of a package of Goofy Grape or hearing the roller-rink rock n roll of ELO. But where does this come from?

This morning, Kelly and I were discussing the art of Feng Shui, specifically the metaphysical aspects of “clutter.” And, completely aware of my completist-driven collection of DVD’s and VHS’s (consisting of ALL my favorite films and TV shows organized in the order release, not viewing), my scientifically-organized Hanna-Barbera comic books (which I began carefully curating after I discovered the ability to easily find them for a price on the world wide webs, resulting in the replacement of worn and tattered with good to near mint copies of same), my obsessive price- conscious acquisition of books about film, cartoons, and politics (the third rail of my loco motives), and finally, my thirteen tubs of newspaper clippings, gifts, memorabilia, collectibles, and whatnots from each chapter of the ever-unfolding, unpredictable narrative I call “MY LIFE.”

In a verbal defense of this behavior (which, by the way, was about as long and tedious as the above sentence), I actually had to stretch the limits of human logic to justify a monthly storage unit expense which could soon double. But, at least in my case, the “clutter” begins with the mental aspects.

Please allow me to wax in generalities. I am speaking of myself but I have a hunch many people of my time frame may find some “aha” moments in this. Or “uh-hem.” Or “Oh shit.” Or the most popular: “Oh shut the hell up.” I digress.

The internets, the paragons of modernity and progress, have basically been the breeding ground for much of this retro-grading. This manifests itself in two ways. First, the groundswell of the above mentioned forums detailing memories aided and abetted (appropriate terms here) by you tube clips, music files, Amazon/ebay postings, and Google images can be daunting and readily available for perusal with one search….which leads to another search. We can all relate. Facebook has provided a perversely necessary tool to disseminate these memories. I created this blog for these purposes and find myself bypassing it and going directly on my Facebook wall, leaving said blog feeling neglected and unwanted.

Secondly, the voluminous amounts of NEW information, true or untrue that is cast out on our beloved webs is, well, overwhelming. No matter what your interest, you can find the topic being discussed ad nauseum on millions of pages or feeds. Today, a Jack of all Trades becomes a Jacked-Up info junkie unable to leave his bedroom. Or just burned out. So rather than trying to decipher fact from fiction, trying to belabor a point to someone who may possibly be located in the insane asylum you will surely end up in, or simply valuing your sanity and realizing you can’t solve all the world’s problems….there is the simplicity of the past.

Now, of course, the sixties and seventies were not simple. In some ways, they were even more complex than today. But we could probably take one historical event from, say, 1973 and with a certain amount of time and money, collect all written and broadcast materials about that event. When it comes to video, many things of that era were just not kept…they are gone. But there is a FINITE end to it…somewhere. Today, Sarah Palin can stub her toe and we could send to the moon and back simply the first sentences of all items consisting of evaluation on that fascinating topic. (As a side note, I am a burned out political junkie…I still follow the news but have cut out most of the wasted time on what as basically become red vs. blue gotcha pr-d to death pablum.)

So when I find myself perching on the precipice of a three-hour debate regarding health care or paternity suits, I hear the calling of my newly found facebook friend from New Hampshire who just posted the cover of Gold Key’s The Munsters issue number 4 and an accompanying analysis of 12 cent price point. The resulting three hours ending in a video file of Tony Orlando and Dawn playing Robin Hood and His Merry Men was no more of a valuable time suck than some endless back and forth on the latest American Idol controversy.

I look back fondly at there being only three TV stations (and the PBS affiliate). At prime time (remember that?) starting at 7:00 you had a choice of two sitcoms, a family adventure or McNeil-Lehrer report. Simple. When something newsworthy happened, there was the network evening news, the morning shows, the newspaper or weekly newsmagazines. An interrupting news bulletin was REALLY news. And the follow-up journalism/criticisms/analyses/wrap-ups would not be packaged and ready for consumption two weeks later. Jeez, I remember VH1 doing an “I Love the 90’s” special in 2002. Come on.

So to go back to the Feng Shui discussion, I was justifying physical “clutter” with the concept of mental “clutter.” Which feeds which? It’s true that the acquisition of the material items has been suspended due to the time spent surfing about those items I still have not collected- or gathering more useless info on the items I already have. And this retro surfing is enhanced by the revulsion and, let’s face it, fatigue of the barrage of information related to everything nowadays. I could just get rid of my collections and start over. That would be the simplest and most painful solution. The “mental” clutter would probably follow due to the resulting nervous breakdown. Which would lead to a New Life with New Interests. Throwing out the “mental” clutter would give me time to re-evaluate my priorities in life. In that case, the “physical” clutter may sit in a closet and storage unit for awhile. Then, in ten years, I will rediscover it after I have produced three successful screenplays: one about a frustrated filmmaker, one about a psychotic comic book collector, and one about the undoing of a major political figure due to his unnatural hoarding instincts.

Then, and only then, can I know that I gleaned everything I need from those books, films, and life experiences to create something meaningful. And there is no need to hold on to them. No need to re-hash or re-watch or re-read. No need to have a “wall of memories”. I’ll just have three dvd’s with commentary, the resulting novelizations, the reviews of those films, the memorabilia from the making of those films, the documentaries and behind the scenes clips, the 6-volume reality show sets about my triumph in “removing the clutter”, the resulting self-help book titled “Removing the Clutter”, and an Academy Award.

I’ll have either that to replace all the other stuff. Or I can make a decision right now to divest myself of all of it in one fell swoop. Yes, all of it. Well, except that Dell issue of Huckleberry Hound with the balloons on it. Oh, and two-disc Dr. Strangelove, can’t part with that. While I’m at it I may need information from that book on Watergate for an upcoming screenplay..and well, come to think of it…there’s the--

Gotta go! While I’ve been writing this, Kelly has cleaned out her spare bedroom and we need to go to Goodwill. Oh, well.

The Great Nutrition Turn-on: "Mulligan Stew"

Is this my first blog of 2011? It's about time!!

Anybody, remember this catchy theme?



Anyway, with all of the talk of funding cuts for public education and school programs, I am reminded of a multi-media (sort of ) approach to nutrition education that really worked for me. When I was in 5th grade, in 1973, I loved Saturday morning programming and I loved comic books. Well, evidently, some genius came up with a great way to reach the young members of the FGA chapter (Future Geeks of America).

One day, in my little country schoolhouse, our teacher handed out this comic book:



It had puzzles and activities and stories. And you followed along with a Saturday morning show. It was syndicated and followed the regular network programming. Fortunately, we had TV out in the country. This series was a very typical early 70's show with loud polyester, cheesy music, record-cover graphics, lsd-influenced animation, obnoxious (yet polite) kids, and token adults with porn 'staches.....kind of a low rent "Zoom" meets "Electric Company". Shot on 16 mm, it had the effect of being a driver's ed instructional video on acid. Speaking of porn, I think the character actor at 2:14 was featured in "Debbie Does Dallas."



"You gotta eat breakfast"..

What would a seventies kids show be without tambourines?



Just a fond remembrance. I don't have much else to say. My comic is in tatters, so I ordered a new one online. And thank God for Youtube.

More blogs to come this year. Lots stored up. Let's get this puppy moving.

ROCKY MEMORIES

All these new facebook friends from my high school days in Seguin, Texas dredge up a lot of old great memories. So I decided to take a drive to Lake McQueeney, where I lived from 5th grade through high school, and check out my old haunts. As I'm driving, I'm listening to my Billy Joel "Glass Houses" CD.
This was THE album (or cassette tape at the time) for me my last couple of years there. I was not a music guy in school, wasn't really up on the latest rock, pop, whatever. I was a film and TV geek (when geeks were not fashionable but were outcasts and estranged) so my musical memories veered more toward the soundtrack varieties.

I practically memorized the lp's and cassette soundtracks from Altman's "Popeye" (Harry Nillson), "Somewhere In Time", "Grease", the rousing John Williams scores from "1941". With SNL and Animal House being THE huge thing, Bill Murray's "Meatballs" soundtrack (with "Makin' It") and of course ALL albums by "The Blues Brothers" were devoured. And the comedy of Steve Martin.















I was always ashamed to admit my love of the "Xanadu" soundtrack (ELO) with its disco awfulness until I recently found out a Broadway musical is on the boards based on it. Was I ahead of my time seeing as how all these are now fondly remembered as unsung classics? Yea, sure, maybe.

But NO music from the time rocked as much as "Rocky Horror Picture Show". I see a lot about it this Halloween season with the "Glee" takeoff and all. Rocky was around for five or so years before I saw it. It was in '80 I think. But the midnight screenings were still pretty fresh. One of my friends had a dad who had a vhs copy of it. I didn't hang around to watch it because I had no idea what it was. Then one night I was invited by the drama gang to go to San Antonio on a "field trip" to a midnight screening a la "Fame". At the classic, now demolished, Central Park Fox. How my parents let me go to this day I will not know. We get in somebody's car...a Pinto or a Mazda of some sort, I can't remember...and head to the big city of SA.

The Fox theater was a classic seventies theater with the two screens and the long middle aisle cutting through the audience. This was perfect for the performance I was about to see. The audience was actually dressed as these strange characters, parading down the aisle, and singing the songs WITH THE FILM, in the area in front of the screen. WTF? I remember feeling very estranged that evening...out of place. I had no idea what the plot was of what I was watching. I just remember the images and the feeling and the music within those theater walls lined with small stones.

But that was the first time I ever did anything where I felt like I was part of an "in" thing. So of course I bought the soundtrack. And listened to it, over and over. So much so that today, I can still remember the words to the songs even though I can't remember what I ate yesterday. And as I plop that CD in, driving to my past today, I sang loud and ROCKED! Anyone who knows me knows I don't do that often. And I proclaim it to be GREAT rock n roll and I verify that with my friends who know music much better than I.

I went to a few more "event screenings" in college, but probably never attended more than five in my life. But it stayed with me.

Today, there is something quaint and innocent about that transvestite and all his cannibalistic tendencies. At least there were no emo vampire teens.

Ode to The Flintstones

At midnight tonight, “The Flintstones” will turn fifty years old. September 30, 1960. The program premiered on ABC on the prime-time schedule and lasted six seasons. It was the first animated sitcom. It was the first original prime-time cartoon. History was made….thirty years before Homer Simpson came along.





I’ve had a love affair with this cartoon since I was in tiger-skin diapers. I couldn’t tell you why. That’s the beauty of it. I can’t tell you the famous quotes from whichever episode in whatever season. I couldn’t tell you which artist had Fred with a protruding bottom lip versus a overlapping lip. I couldn’t tell you which comedy writer developed the famed “Yabba Dabba Doo”. I’m not a “Flintstones” trivia expert at all. But that show informed so much of my life



I guess it was the beautifully simplistic line renderings of the early Hanna-Barbera cartoons. The bright inks and colors. The jazzy Hoyt Curtin background music. The brilliant sound effects and transition cues. Or the laughtrack. I loved that friggin’ laughtrack.

It’s visceral. I spent twenty years actually living my life, dating women, acting, making money in sales…you know, normal stuff….and now, three years shy from the big fifty…with no wife, kids, career or political affiliation…I find myself constantly ruminating on the past….the sitcoms, the cartoons, the cheesy films. With the advent of social networking tools, we become self-absorbed, inward-looking freaks of human nature. I’m not gonna write about “The Flintstones”….on their big day…I’m gonna write about ME! Or not.



Somewhere seeing “The Flintstones” and other Hanna-Barbera creations on television appealed to me when I was a kid. HB also created Yogi Bear, The Jetsons (the second prime-time family), Top Cat and Jonny Quest..all for TV. They pioneered the “limited animation” concept…a cost-saving way to animate for the quantitative demands of television. Jay Ward (“Bullwinkle”) was successful at this at the same time, writing great scripts animated by Gamma Studios in Mexico.



But HB was the shizit (or something like that, as the kids say)…It was Hollywood…the jazzy music, the great character voices…and since I had no brothers or sisters (cue the violin music), my best friends were these characters…or rather the PRESENTATION of these characters….as I said, I couldn’t tell you a plot or anything from a Snagglepuss or Touche Turtle cartoon…it’s just about the FEEL…of it.

Of course, I got older and graduated to Saturday morning cartoons, with the breakfast cereal and Hot Wheels ads….waking up at six in the morning, sitting through the farm report…to watch the 7:00 rerun of whatever pablum the huckster’s were selling us. But at that time it involved….Scooby Doo, Wacky Races, Speed Buggy, Hong Kong Phooey, Roman Holidays, and the ORIGINAL Sealab 2020. Looking at those masterpieces now, I see them for what they were….poorly animated, unoriginally conceived babysitters.

But it was innocent…no judgment, no critique…it was what it was, to quote some of my more “centered” friends.

Oh, yeah…”The Flintstones”….I found out that Alan Reed…who did Fred’s voice was actually an ad specialty salesman like my dad…and me. Weird.


And I have almost all “Flintstone” comic books….nearly all the Gold Key and Dells…all the Marvels….I didn’t collect all the Charltons…I remember being PISSED OFF that they inked Fred’s tie black instead of the blue as it was in the cartoon. And then I was so disappointed when I realized that in the later Gold Key issues, Fred’s tie was black as well. This is what happens when you are a kid who was a nerd before the term even became “hip” (as it became thanks to a sitcom about the fifties….I haven’t figured that one out yet either.)



I digress. The world is nuts. It was nuts in the sixties and the seventies. But it’s a different kind of nuts now. It’s technology information overload anything goes sarah palin kind of nuts. And the comfort I find…..in these simple colors…these clean line drawings…that laugh track…those boings, bwaps, and Curtinized theramined noises from heaven….take me away from the Calgon of Current Catastrophes.


My dad was an artist…drew cowboys and characters for advertising….I don’t think he admired me much for “copying” the Hanna-Barbera characters…but I was known in high school for zapping a Fred Flintstone out on pen and paper in milliseconds. I still can. Means nothing. But I can.



So, I want to thank Fred and Barney and Wilma and Betty and Dino and Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm for giving me, not only a false sense of security about the “real” world….prehistoric times bode well in the current but not the future….oh, but hey are the future…what? Snap! ( As the kids say.)


I don’t know what it is....but all these HB characters represent some kind of simplicity, some kind of animated logic….a sense of place in a world losing its place….There is a whole generation raised on South Park and Family Guy…and I don’t get it…not because I’m a prude…but because it’s cruel, mean-spirited, and ugly….I go to indie films for that….cartoons…I’ll stick with Fred.

Pufnstuf at North Star Mall

North Star Mall is turning 50 years old this month. There is a celebration going on with a time capsule being opened. I put together some memories and photos for an Express-News submission.

For some reason, what always sticks in my mind is the red tile on the floor It was brick or saltillo, I can't remember. And the popcorn smell in the Walgreens. The high ceiling in the main "drag" by Luby's (still there)

And field trips to see movies at the General Cinema Theater: "Scrooge" with Albert Finney and "Oliver." I saw the feature "Pufnstuf" based on the cult Saturday Morning series. Many years later, I remember going to see "The Jerk" or "Black Hole" (not sure which) and being turned away due to the theater filling up and having to endure "Scavenger Hunt" in twin theater.

I remember one time going to see Anissa Walker ("Buffy") from "Family Affair." The crowds were so unruly and large for this doomed young starlet, that she had to be carried around on someone's shoulders.

The following pictures, taken by family friend Jimmy Kafka, detail an event I attended which featured HR Pufnstuf and many Krofft characters along with the iconic SA fixture Captain Gus. This must have been at least 1971 or so as "Lidsville" wasn't released until that fall.

The Rockstar arrives sans Witchiepoo - HR Pufnstuf:

The Krofft brothers denied it, but here is Pufnstuf tripping:

I just asked Pufnstuf if I was on acid at the time:

A couple of characters from another Krofft show: "Lidsville":

Trying to swing with a star:

The North Star Mall "Mascot" was hot.

No event would be complete without Captain Gus. He hosted the local Channel Five kids show which featured Popeye cartoons and Little Rascal shorts, "Ahoy Mateys".

Captain Gus. All these kids had been on his show at one time or another.

The politically incorrect "Frito Bandito" was replaced by this character-WC Fritos, a child-hating drunk.

I couldn't wait to get some Pufnstuf:

Puf was checking out the North Star - didn't even notice me there. Damned stoned dragons.

Future Tea Party members await their LSD-inspired puppet icons:


Coming of age- Not only did I have to deal with the North Star-let, but Pebbles was growing up as well.

A Colossal Mess of Roman Proportions

Forty years later, I finally have the answer. The fact that this is a topic that has remained on the fringes of my consciousness for so long speaks volumes about my neurosis. But thanks to the World Wide Web (as it's called), someone finally addressed this issue.

In 1969, I purchased this one-shot Gold Key comic:


I noticed in the publisher information that it was created by "Total Television" which were the cartoon producers behind "Underdog", "Tennessee Tuxedo", and "Go Go Gophers". They were animated by Gamma Studios, a cartoon factory in Mexico that was contracted to make cartoons for General Mills cereal ads. And this place also animated the Jay Ward cartoons: "Bullwinkle and Rocky" and "George of the Jungle". Many people are confused by this, thinking that these were all made by the same creative teams. They just looked alike.

Anyway, I never saw an animated version of this. Or even heard or read of one.

So two years later, on Saturday morning on NBC, we have "The Roman Holidays", a Hanna-Barbera sitcom with similar characters (and even a lion). I bought the first issue of that comic book.



But thanks to Scott Shaw's blog, based on information from Mark Arnold's book, we have an answer. I am grateful, that I am not the only uber-geek over forty who obsessed over this.



So buy Mark's book. Support my fellow cartoon geeks.

Powder Puff Comedies

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Chevy Chase in his finest comic performance:


The "drug of choice" in the early 80's, at least for comic fodder, was the white stuff. It was almost an obsession with filmmakers leading up to the penultimate "Scarface". But in today's politically correct world, wacky comedies can only rely on masturbation and murder. Does that mean today's comedy writer's get inspired by....well, self-gratification and homicide? Oh-well. Here are three examples I remember vividly from that era.

"National Lampoon's Heavy Metal" with a voice cast from SCTV including Eugene Levy, Harold Ramis and John Candy:



"Jekyll and Hyde...Together Again" starring Mark Blankfield, written and directed by Jerry Belsen, who wrote for Dick Van Dyke and Odd Couple:



"Modern Problems" with Chevy Chase and Nell Carter:



And here I thought The Great White Way referred to Broadway.