Author: photog

The Honeymooners – Complete Series Review – Episode 5 – A Matter of Life and Death

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This episode is basically a comedy of errors.  The same week that Ralph goes for a physical examination at his doctor, Alice’s mother’s dog Ginger is brought to the vet by Alice.  Alice hides the vet visit from Ralph because it cost ten dollars and she knows Ralph will resent the expense.  When the vet’s report is delivered to the house Ralph assumes it’s his diagnosis.  The report says the patient has only six months to live due to a condition called arterial monochromia.  His symptoms will be loss of hair and blue tongue.  It is recommended that he be kept comfortable on the floor near the stove for warmth and given a daily pill with a saucer of milk.

After lamenting his fate he decides that he must provide for Alice by selling his sad story to the newspapers, thus providing her with $5,000 in her bereavement.

And unbelievably he is successful in his plan although the newspaper warns him that if he doesn’t die in six months they will prosecute him for fraud.  Eventually Alice gets wind of the plan and when she reads the vet’s report she starts laughing hysterically and tells him it’s the dog’s diagnosis and that arterial monochromia is called by excessive scratching at fleas..

Ralph is at first ebullient when he finds he’s not dying but immediately panics when he realizes he may be sent to prison for fraud.  Of course he immediately comes up with another scheme.  With Norton dressed in a checked jacket, wearing glasses and carrying a doctor’s bag the boys head for the newspaper office where they inform them that a miraculous therapy will cure Ralph.  He returns the check and heads for the door.  But the editor raves that this story is even better than the old one and begins pumping “Dr. Norton” for details of his medical history.  Of course disaster ensues and finally Ralph has to admit that he mistook the report from a veterinarian for his own diagnosis.

All turns out well when the paper realizes that a story making fun of Ralph’s stupidity will be more entertaining than the original story.

I believe the highlight of the episode is Norton finding Ralph fainted upon the floor and believing him to have died suddenly.  He starts mourning for the poor little fat kid who’ll never wear his little hat or his little socks and finally he picks up a pair of Ralph’s pants and says. “He’ll never wear these little pants again” as he spreads out the huge pants across the screen.

Definitely a good episode all around.  And I believe Doctor Norton may have been the inspiration for Cosmo Kramer’s Dr Van Nostrand.

Guest Contributor – Tregonsee – 24AUG2025 – Hollywood

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Sadly it seems that Mr. Whedon wants to get a little more, shall we say physical, with the talent if the Rumors out of the Buffy Series are true. This has always been an issue in Hollywood, sometimes they chase the ingenues and sometimes they chase the beefcake.
That aside what Whedon did is loved the material. He loved Captain America, he loved the Avengers and he wouldn’t change the material (more than a smidge or two). This strategy doesn’t always work. Brad Bird Loved/Loves the Barsoom mythos (and clearly knew it well based on how he plotted it). He gave Dejah Thoris more of a part (and far more of a costume) than in the original books, but he didn’t eviscerate/geld John Carter as a hero to do it. Here the issue was the Disney Princess based marketers couldn’t bring themselves to market A Princess of Mars . They couldn’t even bring themselves to call it John Carter of Mars they had no clue how to sell it and so its existence and nature was known only to the more rabid part of the Barsoom fans (e.g. myself). I took my wife and daughters (college/high school age for the girls) and they loved it. They wondered why the heck there was practically no one in the giant IMAX theater on a Saturday PM showing.

Loving the material is a start but is NOT enough. Peter Jackson LOVED Lord of the Rings but was constrained to make 3 movies (albeit nearly 9 hrs in standard form). He loved the Hobbit too but was given FAR to free a rein. In the interests of adding female characters and filling out 3 long films, he padded the heck out of The Hobbit and made a sloppy mess. George Lucas made the original 3 Star Wars films and loved his material and did fairly well until the damnable Ewoks. This is likely because he had his wife (later divorced) riding herd on him as editor. When he made the Prequel Trilogy no one could tell him no and loved himself a little TOO much and he made crap. Many years later Disney said “Hold my beer” and made the sequel trilogy that makes the prequels look like Casablanca or Citizen Kane.

So it looks like the recipe is get a director and/or screen writer that loves the material. Then make sure there is a check to their choices so they don’t go straight up fan boi/fan grrl.

And for heavens sake Disney, please try something NEW. There’s like 20+ marvel movies/tv shows, at least 11 Star wars movies plus hours of TV, Princess movies by the dozens and 4 Toy Stories with a 5th on the way. Try something new and exotic (for you) it can’t hurt more than the last dozen or so flops. And for the love of all that is Holy Send Kathleen Kennedy on an all expense paid 1 year trip to an isolated portion of Borneo with no phone or internet connections. And let Star Wars lie fallow for a couple years that horse (or wookie) is well and truly dead.

 

The Library is Full of Them

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As I mentioned in an earlier post Disney (and by extension Hollywood) realizes that they’ve alienated the male half of the human race.  And as I gleefully mentioned this is all their own fault and it’s hilarious that it’s a surprise for them.  And after torching two of the most valuable male-oriented intellectual properties (Star Wars and the Marvel Cinematic Universe), instead of trying to fix the problems and repair the damage to these brands they’ve decided to bury their losses and start from scratch with brand new franchises.

Well, you’ve got to admire their optimism.  Maybe they haven’t heard the old saying about the definition of insanity being doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  But it’s their money (or their stockholders anyway).

But in a sense, they’ve got it half right.  Half of their problem is that sequel after sequel has drained all the life out of their franchises.  So new stories and characters is a good direction to go in.  People like to be entertained and meeting new characters is part of that entertainment.  And even though there are only a few overarching plots to an adventure story it helps to change the names of the heroes, villains, magic rings, super-weapons and princesses from story to story.

So far, so good.  But now comes the tricky part.  Listen up Disney:

DON’T MAKE THE HERO A GIRL-BOSS.  THE GIRL IN THE STORY IS THE LOVE INTEREST OF THE HERO.  SHE IS THE REWARD FOR THE HERO SAVING THE DAY.  SHE MAY TAKE UP A BOW OR A DAGGER IN A PINCH BUT SHE’S NOT THERE TO SAVE THE HERO AND SHE’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE IN CHARGE.

I hope I was clear there.  Use the traditional hero saga as the backbone of the story and find a writer and a director who can work with such a story in a creative and entertaining fashion and you will make billions of dollars.  Just as a for instance Joss Whedon directed the first Avengers movie.  It made $1.52 billion worldwide at the box office.  That’s a lot of money.  And part of the reason for that enormous sum is because Whedon knows how to make likable characters in a movie.  He blends humor, action and drama in the correct proportions and at the right moments.  In other words, he’s not a hack like all of the DEI directors that have bungled the last several years of your franchise flops.

Now, granted he is demanding and sometimes slightly abusive toward the “talent.”  But they’re getting paid millions of dollars to dress up in spandex and fool around in front of a green screen.  The least they could do is take a little hectoring from a prima donna director to earn those millions.  So anyway, my advice for Hollywood is to find the few creative talents out there; directors like Whedon and Christopher Nolan.  And purchase the film rights to books that millions of people love.  And don’t mess with the stories and characters.  Put them faithfully on the big screen and then instead of trying to recreate success with endless sequels move onto another story!  Did you know there is more than one book in the library?  There are several.

I know it’s a radical departure. But it’s just so crazy it just might work!

What Keeps Us Human

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I’ve been reading the latest analyses of paleolithic hominin DNA and from what I’ve gathered it seems to be the case that the present human population is a non-homogeneous collection of various hybrid populations between Homo sapiens (“modern” humans) and Homo neanderthalensis, Homo denisovensis and very likely Homo erectus.

Of course, human evolution is such a hot-button topic today that getting paleontologists to use words like hybrids to describe human lineages makes them squeamish and nervous.  Everyone is afraid of the accusation of racism to erupt if someone hints that human beings of different ancestries aren’t all exactly the same.  But they really should all calm down.  Hominin species have been walking the Earth for something like seven million years and during that time various groups have become isolated, evolved different characteristics and then just as easily recombined and formed hybrids that in turn become isolated and start the process all over again.

The latest information I’ve seen shows that there is a strong correlation between Neanderthal DNA and modern populations in northern Europe and northwesten Asia.  And there are strong correlations between Denisovan DNA and modern populations of Australian aborigines and Papuan New Guineans.

The ancient DNA that has been found is restricted to specimens that existed in cooler climates so the complicated story of hominin mixing and isolating in Africa and other tropical areas may never be reconstructed (although recent work with fossil protein materials may change that in the future).  But I think it’s clear that humans have in the past and will continue in the future to recombine their populations in various ways in reaction to local conditions that select for fitness.

Of course, those selection pressures have changed drastically over the geologic time our genus has existed.  Human society has also evolved and culture has as much to do with evolution now as climate had in the past.  Human behavior is now dictated by things like propaganda, government policy, industrial planning, resource scarcity and even internet influencers.

But hopefully men and women will still try to find mates that will allow their offspring to have the best chance of surviving and carrying on the race.  It still makes sense for a man to want a woman with empathy for his children and enough sense to teach her children to obey their parents and follow the simple rules written on those stone tablets that have guided our civilization for the last several thousand years.

And it makes sense for a woman to want a man who isn’t too lazy or selfish to provide for his family and who enjoys coming home from the hunt and retires to the fire in his cave and tells his little tribe about the mammoth that he hunted and the saber-tooth tiger that hunted him.  And draws a picture on the walls of his cave to celebrate that story.

And the most important trait that both men and women should be selecting their mates for is their minds.  Our brains have been our hallmark for millions of years.  Homo habilis; the tool maker.  That’s us.  We’re the monkeys that came down from the trees, stood up straight and looked at the world straight on and began changing it to our liking from day one.  Fire.  The wheel, the wagon, the chariot, the ship, the saddle, the plow, the heat engine, automobiles, airplanes, rockets. Stone weapons, saws, knives, hammers, axes, levers, firearms, lasers.  Gold, silver, copper, tin, iron, steel, uranium, the atom bomb, the hydrogen bomb.  Wheat, oats, millet, rice, maize, cattle, horses, sheep, goats, donkeys, chickens, ducks, white mice, guinea pigs, rhesus monkeys, yeast, mammalian cell culture, CRSPR gene editing, bioengineering.

Let’s just hope that our “civilization” never forgets what keeps us human.