It is oh so hard to go through two days of posts, thinking of a comment one wants to make about every post, and then finally getting to the end and forgetting all those witty, insightful things.
CD Player at Home: Midler
Experience the Divine, which I couldn't resist yesterday when I picked up a copy of
Wicked for a friend.
VCR: A tape where I timeshifted
Catch Me If You Can and
All That Jazz (hoping it is an unbowderlized version) from a couple of the multiple movie channels I get with the new digital cable I just hooked up. More on that later.
As long as HE (i.e.
Harlan Ellison) is a topic of discussion today (as opposed the SHE, with whom FS Charles Pogue also has some acquaintance), I must do the obligatory name-dropping by mentioning that I gave HE a ride to the Kalamazoo airport in 1973--and got lost on the way. My most vivid memories of the writers' conference we were both attending at the Kellogg Mansion:
1. The Kellogg ghost. Late at night, reading stories for discussion the next day, you could here eerie sounds coming from the attic: snap, crackle, pop.
2. The conference center mainly held Christian conferences, Bible studies groups, etc. The looks on the faces of the staff when HE would get a long-distance call and proceed to thunder for all to hear: "YOU CAN TELL PARAMOUNT TO GO F*** THEMSELVES!!!"
3. The dismissive comments I made about Gus Hasford's rough-draft of his story "The Short-Timers", later expanded to a novel and filmed by Kubrick as
Full Metal Jacket.
TV Shows that got canceled: I don't think anyone mentioned
Paper Moon. It was delightful, featuring Christopher Connelly (who had played Ryan O'Neal's brother on the
Peyton Place series) and a pre-
Taxi Driver Jodie Foster as Addie Prey--a sweet little hick, although she was attending the Lycée Française de Los Angeles at the time.
They filmed it on location in Kansas et al, with non-union locals taking many of the bit parts. Low key. No laugh track. I particularly remember the episode where Addie entered a Shirley Temple look-alike contest. The series was strong on characters, a bit weaker on fabula and syuzhet.
