Ok, ok… so the gang of Dun (OK< OK< Sabre) Scranton Branch are a fictitious bunch, but there is an actual Scranton, PA so who are we to say that the company does not exist. We even drove within proximity to the town last spring. Anyway, two of the characters on the show are expecting and to satisfy my no Office blahs, I came across Jim and Pam’s Baby Blog. Here, you can read about hilarious sympathy pains, weird food cravings, and possible baby names (guess who has voiced his opinion multiple times… even suggesting both male and female variants). There are also multiple links to other historic events, including the wedding of the lovebirds.
Archive for the ‘TV Shows/Movies’ Category
Creed In The Stockroom With A Dundee
2009 -
11.12
IF YOU HAVE NOT WATCHED THE 11-12-09 EPISODE OF The Office… PLEASE SKIP THIS POST!
Tonight’s episode put me in the mood for one of those infrequent murder mystery game nights. But seeing that our poor hosts are under a self-imposed quarantine, this will have to wait…. get well soon. It seems that the gang from Dunder-Mifflin Scranton Branch are under the impression that the company is on the road to financial disaster. Much to co-manager Jim’s dismay, our beloved leader devises a plan to put the teams mind at ease: A Murder in Savannah.
Each associate is given a character with props to create using their imagination. Naughty Nellie Nutmeg, Nathaniel Nutmeg, and VooDoo Mama Juju are a few. Guess who gets to play Caleb Crawdad, handsome playboy. As usual, hilarity ensues in the face of turmoil.
The outcome of the company will likely take a few episodes to decide as will the undertones of the Andy/Kelly “Erin” relationship.
Perhaps it is all a ploy to advertise the newest edition of the classic board game Clue. And check out the cool new look of the Tangents homepage and check into starting a blog of your own… it’s FUN!
A New Site For $6,000,000…. Or Probably $48,000,000 By Now
2009 -
11.03
For a few years now, there has been a site dedicated to the ORIGINAL Bionic Woman (not the so called reboot that was a victim of the writer’s strike two years ago… that was definitely HORRIBLE). I have been a frequent fan of the site. Last week, a new site dedicated to the father (or should I be bold and say… husband) series, The Six Million Dollar Man, was started. You know… (or maybe you don’t know depending on your age and maybe afternoon rerun viewing of the 80s) the one about “Col. Steve Austin, astronaut… a man barely alive.” They rebuilt him following a tragic piloting accident making him “better than he was before. Better… Stronger… Faster.” The reluctant hero was endowed with a bionic arm, two bionic legs, and a bionic eye (although Lee Major’s now pitches an add for a “Bionic ear.”) I fondly remember playing in the yard with my brother and friends. Orders were given by “Oscar Goldman” for the mission of the week. Bionic action complete with the awesomely cheesy sound effects battling evil terrorists, fembots, and other evil doers. Although guess who ended up playing Jaime Sommers several times… only because my first name happened to be the same but spelled differently… somehow I think there was a little more to it than that, but I guess if I wanted to play with big brother…
But the site has brought back memories of rushing home from school to atch the reruns (I was only a year old in ‘74 after all).
Morning Guilty Pleasure
2009 -
10.06
This morning, I was able to catch most of Regis and Kelly (the ONLY celebrity focused morning show I enjoy watching). As I made mention of earlier, John Stamos is now in previews for Bye, Bye Birdie for its return to the Broadway stage since the debut 50 years ago (WOW!). Mr. Stamos will be playing the lead part of Albert Peterson. Dick Van Dyke originated the role of Conrad Birdie’s manager in the original production as well as the original movie. The cinematic experience does not do the stage version justice at all. Not sure why but like many musicals it is much better to have that live, theatrical experience. I honestly cannot think of many musicals that have translated better or at least as enjoyably on the screen. I guess I would say The Sound of Music only because it has been so ingrained into pop culture as a movie that many forget or don’t realize that is was Rodgers and Hammerstein’s theatrical swan song. That reason and the puppet show version of “The Lonely Goatherd” is my favorite part of the movie and IS NOT in the stage version.
Ok… back to my original topic. During the interview, Reege made mention of the fact that Ann-Margrock (err.. Margret) played the young girl, Kim MacAfee in the movie. Shortly after the movie was filmed, Ms. Margret would be Presley’s leading lady in my mother’s favorite Elvis movie, Viva Las Vegas. However, Mom was not aware that she was in the cast of Birdie.
Here’s a few more tidbits: one of our fellow tangenteers has played the role of pop singing idol/draftee Conrad Birdie. I assisted in the directing of my high school alma mater’s production a few years ago. AND there was a veery short lived sequel (4 performances) entitled Bring Back Birdie which was set twenty years following the events of the original. Twenty years is quite a LONG time to wait to attempt a comeback.
Here There Be Trekkers
2009 -
10.05
Tonight was our first dress rehearsal complete with newspaper reviewer and minus one key character from the production… UGH! I dunno… week of opening with 4 rehearsals to go and one of the major cast members is at a meeting but I guess it must have been important. So we had a fill-in read lines from the audience. The reviewer for the Crescent is very personable and has been exceptionally favorable in a few of the WCCT shows he has critiqued and the first show I was in with the Village Players. He even quoted a line from a review of one of my characters: “A gleefully unrepentent psycho” or something like that. He must have remembered seeing Grease?
Before we began, the subject of Star Trek: The Motion Picture was addressed by Mr. Greer. Particularly, the Enterprise’s fly over, around, and into the behemoth ship that took what seems an eternity to sit through. We then focused on the number of Trek fans in the cast of which there are many. The youngest female in the cast is named Katherine Janeway after the first female character to lead a Star Trek television series as captain of the U.S.S. Voyager. Another has a husband who has thousands of Trek books. I used to read the novels from time to time but have since lost track unless there is a really special one.
A third really got my interest soaring. It seems that she is a relative of DeForest Kelley (R.I.P) who played my personal favorite character of all Trekdom: the inscrutable, crusty, curmudgeonly Dr. Leonard H. “Bones” McCoy. She, however, did not inherit the searing blue “Kelley eyes” as her brother had.
Ok… back to the rehearsal. I think that with the absence of one of our actors, it went awfully well. Hopefully, this will be the LAST time we are minus a performer. But how fun was that to discover something new about so many in our small cast? Hopefully, our kindly reviewer does not print TOO much about the murder mystery in his article… no spoilers. As soon as I see it, I will make note of it in another post.
3 Days, 22 Hours and counting…
Absolute Power Corrupting Absolutely
2009 -
08.15
There have been various interpretations on the old theme of superhuman powers being transferred to another person. Last night, I revisited one of those in a season 1 episode of Smallville. During a freak accident during a lightning storm, Clark Kent’s powers are passed to one of his high school classmates. Clark gets to discover what it is like to be a “normal” teenager while “Eric” comes to discover that being the world’s most powerful adolescent is not all it is cracked up to be. Looking at the show, I realized that it is a spin on the old classic adage of Nature vs. Nurture.
Clark’s initial reaction to his loss is one of confusion and fear. Being able to lift the family truck out of the mud, driving a stake into the ground with his bare hands, and other tasks that would be impossible for mortal men were a snap for the Boy of Steel. However, the sight of his own blood sends him into near shock. Over time, he learns to embrace his “normalcy” and not be afraid to engage in a game of two-on-two without fear of accidentally using his powers to injure one of his friends… even if one of them is Lana Lang’s quarterback boyfriend. One of my favorite moments from the episode is Lana’s observation that Clark doesn’t seem to “have the weight of the world on his shoulders.”
On the other hand, Eric takes a totally different approach to his new-found gifts. He flaunts them in front of people on the street. He flirts with a girl right in front of her boyfriend and flings him across the school parking lot smashing him on top of a parked car. When a powerless Clark attempts to intervene (his nature or is his nurturing), he receives a few bruised ribs and a cut to the head. Eric’s parents are terrified of the “freak” he has become and determine to send him away to be studied and to find out what happened to him. Overnight, the teenager has acquired strength and abilities he could only dream of before but is totally unprepared to handle them.
Nurture: Jonathan and Martha Kent discovered a toddler inside a rocket ship in the middle of a field and raised that child with morals and responsibilities. Clark was not meant to score touchdowns with his power but for something more. As his powers advanced over time, the Kent’s were determined to hide these gifts and use them when necessary and secretly in order to protect their adopted son.
On the flip side, Eric was an awkward kid and constantly degraded by his parents; particularly his father. It may seem cliche to paint Clark in the best possible light and to show his counterpart in shadow. But I think the point here was to show how two different people from different backgrounds deal with extraordinary circumstances. A very good episode from the beginning of the series.
OK… nerdy sidebar: Shawn Ashmore who played Eric also was in the X-Men films as Bobby Drake/Iceman. His twin brother, Aaron played a certain cub reporter for the Daily Planet in the past two seasons of Smallville. Such a nerd!
Big Red Robin And The Crazy Technicolor Quilt
2009 -
07.13
I recently started to catch up on some of my DVR viewing (hours and hours of programming, someday when I’m more free….). I watched one of the tens of episodes of Batman: The Brave and the Bold that harkened back to the 60s series. The pre-credits teaser found the Caped Crusader and the Boy Wonder up against a villain known as Crazy Quilt. The villain was using a weapon that fired deadly multi-colored beams of light at the dynamic duo. Robin uses a piece of reflective glass to throw the beams back at the baddie rendering him blind.
Years later, Crazy Quilt escapes from Arkham Asylum and vows revenge on Robin. Now, we are presented with an older, but not a lot wiser version of the crimefighter. He no longer patrols Gotham City but is the guardian of a community known as Bludhaven. The last thing he wants is his old mentor coming to town to swoop in and save the day. He grew weary of the “Old chum” bit, felt he had nothing more to learn from the World’s Greatest Detective, and wanted to escape the Shadow of the Bat. However, as Bats reminded him, Speedy (The Flash’s protege), Aqualad, and Red Arrow all served with older heroes before setting out on their own. Once again, the team regrouped to battle an old foe.
Since there have been a total of three characters to assume the role, I was curious as to which Robin we were getting.
- Dick Grayson is the original and probably the most known. Bruce Wayne’s youthful ward reached adulthood and became Nightwing.
- Jason Todd inherited the role and was murdered by the Joker (ironically, this came after a nationwide 900 number poll in which the public decided the fate of the hero).
- The most recent Robin is Tim Drake. I know little about him apart from his name.
- In this episode, we have a pre-Nightwing Dick Grayson.
The look and feel of the cartoon very closely resembled the classic series. Several of the BEST devices of the show were there. Notice I said BEST! No bat shark repellent spray here and no exploding rubber shark for that matter. But we had the classic bat traps and the obligatory “Holy delusions of grandeur, Batman!”
A very fun episode!
Papa, Can You Hear Me?
2009 -
06.19
This weekend being the one in which we all honor our fathers, I thought it would be fun to take a peek at fictional dads who have been presented in television. In the beginning, it seemed as if families were shown as perfect, squeaky-clean and conflicts could be resolved in 30 minutes or less. Conflicts like how to get your son to eat brussel sprouts (don’t think I’ve ever had the opportunity to taste them).
I’m not sure when the switch from perfect family to more realistic family took place. I’m thinking in the 70s with All in the Family. I think ultra-conservative Archie Bunker was one of the first fathers to have more to solve than a scrape on the knee or to ease a bruised ego.
Today’s popular, fictional fathers seem to be lovable buffoons who somehow manage to fumble and stumble through parental misadventures but somehow come to a somewhat happy ending. Homer J. Simpson has been working at the power plant, drinking Duff beer at Moe’s, and going home to his interesting family for 20+ years. A highly inflated picture of the blue-collar everyman… must still be working.
My own father is a combination of the three, not so much the idealised father of 50-70s television more like the Al Bundy type… HAHA. Wouldn’t trade him for anything, although…