Arts & Letters

Mrs. Lex asked me to post this:

Remember what your favorite pub or cafe was like before they put in the TV screens? White Dot, the international campaign against television, have teamed up with the makers of TV-B-Gone, the key chain that turns off any television, to reclaim these public spaces. Now we are recruiting an army for direct action. Starting now, the White Dot website offers a form to enter the names of ruined eating and drinking establishments. Nominate the most diners and you can win a TV-B-Gone (there will be 200 lucky winners). Then, during TV-Turnoff Week (April 25 through May 1, 2005) you can join the Ruined Diner Liberation Army and zap these cafes back to life, leaving propaganda behind (some of it disguised as menus). We are reminding the owners that their customers come for breakfast or beer and some good conversation – not to be captive audience for advertisers. We also offer materials for owners who are proud to be TV-free.

A worthy cause.

UPDATE An Instalance, of all things, for a prank toy little better than a whoopie cushion? The level of teeth-gnashing this has generated is on a par with Social Security reform or motorcycle helmets or even fur clothing. Wow.

UPDATE II TV-B-Gone or Glock, YOU DECIDE!

Today, Jonathan & Shannon discuss heroes and my daughter tells me that, visiting her oldest sister, she finds her tivoing Perry Mason, the series my family watched together in my youth. The cable news networks are obsessed with trials that seem no more real than Mason’s (for all that they are). So, I thought I’d rescue another one of the essays I did during that short year in which I was unemployed – had sold my business and hadn’t started teaching. So, below is a recycled essay, a tribute to Perry Mason and to James Rockford. Yes, I watch far too much television. And my tastes are not those, in general, of this blog’s audience. But, you know, tv isn’t all that bad if you don’t turn your mind off. (I put this under our division of Arts & Letters – surely that is too lofty for such series.) And thanks for letting me do this kind of thing.

And, of course, I am not profoundly moved by Perry Mason. He does not, as real heroes do, show us the tragic nature of life, the clay feet and because of that the even greater transcendence. He is not real. But as good fiction can, he brought me pleasure. And as the representation of character often can, the series helped me understand myself and what I value better.

Addendum (to myself, I assume no one is still drawing this up). Googling for an old teacher, I found him used as a reference in this “Perry Mason: The Authorship and Reproduction of a Popular Hero” by J. Dennis Bounds. I haven’t read it, but didn’t want to lose it. Nice epigraph; Mason observes “That’s what I like about the practice of law–it’s an adventure. You’re looking behind the scenes at human nature. The audience out front sees only the carefully rehearsed poses assumed by the actors. The lawyer sees the human nature with the shutters open.” from: Erle Stanley Gardner’s The Case of the Caretaker’s Cat

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This image is from Superdickery.com which host an entire series of classic comic pages that are unintentionally hilarious when seen through our contemporary over sexualized viewpoint.

Check out the entire series.

(Update: Looks like the image above doesn’t show up in Safari but it does in Firefox, so your mileage my vary. Click here if you can’t see it.)

I must disagree somewhat with my co-blogger James Rummel’s earlier post on the cultural importance of Hunter S. Thompson’s works.

Those who’ve read my stuff in the past know that I’ve always been more than a little influenced by HST. For those of us who enjoy strong drink and occasional forays into the domain of high weirdness, the good doctor provided a vocabulary to describe the vague and sometimes horrible recollections of lost evenings. His prose could be simultaneously fascinating and stupid, hilarious and repugnant, right and wrong.

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Like most people, I really enjoy a well made movie. I share the view that many of the movies widely acclaimed as classics are indeed that. Among them, in no particular order, would certainly be the following: Casablanca (Warner Bros.), The Wizard of Oz (MGM), Singing In The Rain (MGM), My Fair Lady (Warner Bros.), 2001: A Space Odyssey (MGM)…I could go on and on. We all know them.

Once in a while you stumble across a movie whose quality stuns you, yet has won no award and hardly anyone you know has seen it. People used to call these movies ‘sleepers’, but I have no idea if that term is still in use.

Here are four movies I’d put in that category. Next time you feel like curling up on the couch and breaking out the popcorn, consider one of these. You won’t be disappointed. They each have a flavor all their own to fit the mood you’re in.

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