PCBEEUSA - Freedom on the Web

Just heard that Mitch Miller has died.  Actually, I was suprised to hear that he was still alive!  He was 99.

Who was Mitch Miller?  He hosted a live TV show many, many years ago.  The original Karaoke!  He would have a choir of singers on stage, belting out old classics, while the words flashed on the screen below.  So the viewers could literally sing along.  I watched many an episode of this show with my Grandma, who also introduced me to Lawrence Welk (I actually learned how to Polka watching that show).

I went to You Tube to find a video to post here, and to enjoy a little nostalgia.  Watching the video (it is posted below) I saw…Johnny Carson!!??  Don’t know if he was a regular or some kind of special guest.  Also, part of Mitch’s crew was a crooner named Bob McGrath.  Sound familiar?  Think Sesame Street.  And of course the lovely Leslie Uggams who got her start on his show.

What I remember most was Mitch Millers unique way of conducting.

Those were the days!

I was a pretty good student in high school.  In my sophomore year I had good grades and realistic dreams of going to college.  I was also rather sickly that year, and missed a considerable amount of school.  I was able to make up my work and exams with all of the teachers, except one. My biology teacher, Mrs. Tetlow (who must have been 70 or 80 years old) was going to fail me because I had been sick and had missed so much class time.  Made no difference that my grades were good, there was a rule that anyone who had missed that much time had to get a failing grade. 

The only reason I passed biology was because Mrs. Tetlow died about midterm, and the replacement teacher, a bright and eccentric young man, decided to grade me based on my performance.

That young man was named Edwin F. Evert. 

I heard on the news that a 72-year-old eccentric botanist was killed by a grizzly bear in Yellowstone National Park.  His name was Edwin F. Evert.

 Is it the same man?  Well, can’t be too many people with that name.  In one news article it did say he taught high school biology in Chicago.  And the age is right.

The most compelling thing is, as I am writing this, I am looking at his signature in my yearbook.

And I don’t even like seafood.

But I was hooked on the Discovery Channel’s reality show “Deadliest Catch,” where they followed crews of brave, crazy crab fishermen  up near the Artic Circle.  The reason for the  fascination is obvious.  These men worked literally day and night for several weeks, if they filled the storage tanks with crab and got them to the port in time, they could make tons of money.  If the fishing was bad or they guessed wrong, they went home broke.

I finally understand why seafood is so expensive.

I found myself cheering when the crab traps were full and my heart sank when they came up empty.  I got to witness what appeared to be real life drama when the men did not get along, or when the stress was too much for them.

And drama is what the networks are looking for.  Drama equals ratings. 

Then came the ultimate drama.

A few times, I watched breathlessly as men fell overboard and were rescued against all odds.  Men would slip and fall or get hit in the head with heavy equipment, risking serious injury, hours away from any kind of medical treatment.  Yeah, exciting.  Like watching Star Trek, only this was real.  In Star Trek, the heroes always made it back.

Then, one episode– mayday.  One of the ships had gone down and the other crews searched desperately and listened helplessly to the radio during while the Coast Guard scoured the seas.  But there was no rescue this time.  Men died.  Only a few survived.  Although this was not one of the crews that the series followed,  they had, ironically, shot some video of these men before they had left on the fateful voyage,  joking with each other about not making it back.  For weeks they re-ran that episode, along with one where one of the survivors told the terrible story of how he watched his friends and fellow crewmen die when he could not help them.

I’m sure the ratings soared.

For me, it was no longer fun after that.  I watched it less and less.

The problem with reality TV is that it won’t let you go.  One of the dramas that unfolded while I was watching surrounded one of the captains, a loveable curmudgeon named Phil Harris.  He got extremely ill during one of the voyages.  When they got back they got him to the hospital where he discovered that he had nearly died.  His days of a crab boat captain was over.

Well, it hit the news this week that Capt. Phil passed away.  I look at the photos and the video with that same spooky feeling I get when I look at pictures and video of loved ones who have passed on.  Even though I stopped watching the show, it still got to me this week.

Now many will say that reality TV is what it’s all about.  Yes, I still watch Ghost Hunters, and exciting shows like “Destroyed in Seconds” or the ones about the wild police chases, but even when you see an accident where someone dies, well, it’s all at a distance;  you don’t know the person.  You feel bad, but you can still sleep at night.  When a major character on your favorite fictional drama is killed off, you may be a little saddened, even grieve a little bit, but you know that the person was not real, and that the actor is likely to turn up in another series in a few months.

But Capt. Phil is gone for real.  Reality TV is real.  Too real.  And, as bad as I may feel, I cannot imagine what his friends and family are going through, seeing him in the news and on TV in the countless re-runs will certainly be aired.

Sometimes, that’s not entertainment.

My wife and I saw Denzel Washington in “The Book of Eli” last weekend.  A couple of weekends before that we saw “Avatar,” in 3D.  Both great movies.

For the movies that we don’t get to see in the theaters, we have a Netflix account.  DVDs come in the mail and we can stream some movies online.  Not to be outdone, sometimes we’ll connect a computer to a projector and project it on the wall, a bigger image than the biggest flatscreen TV.

To me, a good movie is an experience.  I like to sit in the center of the theater when possible, to get the most out of the stereo.  And Donna and I are usually the last to leave the theater, because we’re part of a very small minority of people who actually hang around and read the credits. Sometimes the music is really nice, and  occasionally, we have been rewarded; the funny after credits ending of “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” and the big hint after the credits in “Iron Man.”

So I really don’t get pirating movies online, especially before the film comes out.  I want to see the big movies on the big screen.  And then there’s the strange contradiction that I hear from some people.  ”Why don’t they make more movies like this?”  they say while watching a bootleg.  Well, if you watch a bootleg, no one makes money on it and there is just that much less incentive to make those movies.  After all, it is business.  Movies are made to make money.  If they don’t make money, they won’t get made.  If you don’t buy a ticket, buy a DVD or pay for a rental, they won’t make money.

Sometimes it’s just the “cool” factor.  That you managed to “beat the system.”  Years ago, before home video tape, a friend of mine got his hands on a pirated copy of “Star Wars.”  He was so proud of it.  No matter that you had to have an expensive, professional player to watch it.  He showed it to me.  It was noisy and grainy, and, since the person who made the recording did not have an anamorphic lens,  the Death Star looked more like the Death Egg.

Another strange story.  A young lady I knew was watching a bootleg copy of “The Passion of  The Christ” (that was wrong on so many levels!).  If you recall, everyone in the film spoke in Aramaic, the language of that place and time, meaning you had to read the subtitles.  The person who made the bootleg did it by sneaking a camera into the theater.  In the process of recording, he neglected to capture all of the subtitles.  So she got what she paid for.

I may surprise a few people that I am a very big fan of comedy.  I mean real comedy.  Puns.  Slapstick. Good clean humor.  I still watch the Honeymooners.  I have a collection of 3 Stooges shorts.  I still remember the day I met Sid Ceasar in the lobby of the Drake Hotel back in the 80′s. We talked for several minutes while he bemoaned the “potty mouth, drop your pants” humor that had become so popular.   One of my favorite films of all time is “It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.”  And I have been a big fan of Mel Brooks movies (at least up to “Silent Movie,” after that he kind of went off the deep end, I think).

I just read today where another great “Golden Age” funny man had passed on.  Soupy Sales died at 83.  Even some baby boomers may not remember Soupy.  I watch the old kinescopes on You Tube and I still laugh.  It was when TV was young and they sort of made it up as they went.  Soupy would improv and joke and you could hear the cameraman and director laugh.  It was Soupy and 3 puppets, White Fang, Black Tooth and Pookie.  And I loved them all.

What he was most famous for was the old pie in the face routine, that became a staple of slapstick comedy.  Truth be told, I always wanted to experience that.  I even wrote up a skit for my Sunday School class where I would get a pie in the face, but it never got off the ground. 

There’s one more for the bucket list.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to see the UniverSoul Circus here in Chicago.  It was as great as the first time I saw it a few years ago.  That first time, I was expecting a fun and entertaining African-American themed program, and it was.  But I was also impressed by the fact that it was a also just a great circus!

This morning, I awoke to the amazing news that our president had won the Nobel Peace price, only the third sitting president to do so.  In the many reports that I saw heard and read, no where was it mentioned that he was Black.  He is simply the President of the United States.  And we are all quite proud of him.

In 1965, I was a sophomore at Crane High School in Chicago.  There were not a lot of us geeks there at the time.  I made acquaintance with another rather geeky young man named Leonard.  We soon realized that we had many interests in common, from chess and comic books to bowling and science fiction, so we became fast friends.  At some point we also discovered that we actually shared the same birthday, September 29th, the same year, 1950.  So we decided to celebrate our birthday together.  That first time, we probably had dinner and went bowling or something like that.

That was the start of a long standing tradition.  Except for a couple of years when Leonard was in the Army, and I was back home in college, we have celebrated our birthdays together (once I had a birthday party in my dorm room on campus and sent an audio recording of it to him, all the way to his base in Germany).  The tradition is that we do it alone, no wives or girlfriends, and our spouses have always been very understanding and respected that.  Sometimes we would go to a club or bar (that pretty much ended after we got married), usually we’d have a nice dinner, go bowling, go to a movie or find a quiet place to pay chess.  Then we would end the night reminiscing.

One year I got tickets to a murder mystery play that was an audience participation kind of thing.  Because I bought the tickets on the phone with my credit card, they actually knew my name and where I was sitting.  The setting of the play was supposed to be a dinner function in the basement of a church, and the characters kept thanking me for providing the meat for the meal.  I played along, of course.  To this day, I’m sure that the other people at the table thought we were part of the cast.

Tonight, for our 44th celebration, we went to see the movie “Surrogate” at the Hollywood Blvd. theatre in the southwest suburban Woodridge.  You sit in comfortable, individual chairs at a bar or table, and they serve you dinner while you watch the movie.  Great fun, and the movie was good too.

This year we turned 59, and we’re trying to come up with something special for our 60th next year.  Of course, as we get older, the outings get tamer.  Back in the day we’d stay out all night.  Tonight I was home by 10:00 PM.

I keep saying that one day I was going to compare birth certificates to see who was really older.

So, happy birthday to me and happy birthday to my buddy and brother Leonard.  God willing, we shall celebrate many more–together!

In this rarely seen footage, a 14-year-old Michael Jackson appears on TV’s Dating Game!

Hard to believe it’s the same person!

Found this through a really cute website called www.upchucky.com

Every baby boomer in America is remembering Walter Cronkite.  He was there when Kennedy was assassinated, when King was assassinated and when Neil Armstrong stepped onto the surface of the moon.

I was, and always have been a big fan of the space program.  I would be late for school on the morning when there was a launch.  Walter Cronkite seemed to be a much a part of the space program as any astronaut; he was always there.  I will never forget his reaction when we landed on the moon.

I can hardly believe it.  Spongbob Squarepants has been on the air 10 years.  I remember the first time I saw that show.  “How dumb” I thought.  The next time, I thought, “how silly.”  The third time I watched an entire program.

No, I am not a Spongebob fan, but I realize how little child-appropriate entertainment there is out there. 

When I was growing up, cartoons were for kids. I got tired of “South Park” after the first season when the novelty wore off.  I really like “Family Guy,” but the shows are getting more and more offensive. 

Spongebob is a kids cartoon.  No sillier than “Huckleberry Hound,” “The Flinstones,” or any of the other shows I grew up with.  From what I have seen, Spongebob is clean simple fun, and the children seem to love him.   So, long live Spongebob!