Thursday, December 30, 2021

Advances for the Year 2000! I Can't Wait!

In this article from the December 31, 1967 Tulsa World, we'll learn what "the experts" say will have come about in that fabled Year of the Future, AD 2000.
SUCCESSFUL FORECASTS:
  • #11, regarding high-altitude cameras, is a good projection of car/phone GPS, and services like Google Earth
  • #20, 3-D printing
  • #30, pervasive surveillance
  • #33 "educational" propaganda -- FB anyone?
  • #38 birth control (though abstinence still works!)
  • #68, recoverable rocket boosters
  • #70, home video recording and playing
  • #72, video chats
  • #76, internet search engines
FAILURES in PREDICTION:
  • #15, protecting the environment
  • #16, weight control
  • #48, "physically nonharmful methods of overindulging" -- hah!
Please continue to investigate the list yourself.  Have fun -- see you next year!  
  

Monday, December 27, 2021

A Tyrannosaurus for Christmas!

From the February 1984 issue of the magazine Working Mother:

Beats a hippo any day!  But I imagine either one would necessitate a snowshovel-sized pooper scooper.

See you Thursday!
  

Friday, December 24, 2021

Over-Completing Songs

           I suppose I’m the only person who has heard a song and thought that the lyrics were too short.  That is, the song has only one verse or two, and instead of being more creative, the band just repeats that one or two verses several times.

             This really bugs me.  Sometime it bugs me enough that, out of sheer obsessiveness, I’m compelled to come up with my own extra verse.

            In Peter Beagle’s divine The Last Unicorn, on the title critter’s lonely quest, she comes across a spoiled princess.  This royal she-brat, as part of an arranged marriage, follows a weary (to her) ritual in which she goes into the forest to summon a unicorn with her supposed regal virginity.  Dreary though the princess is, her would-be incantation is quite affecting.

I am a king’s daughter,

And if I cared to care,

The moon, that has no mistress,

Would flutter in my hair.

No one dares to cherish

What I choose to crave.

Never have I hungered,

That I did not have.


I am a king’s daughter,

And I grow old within

The prison of my person,

The shackles of my skin.

And I would run away

And beg from door to door,

Just to see your shadow

Once, and never more.


            In 1979 I wrote music to these verses.  To my undying sorrow, when Beagle was a guest at SoonerCon, I was too chicken to sing my version for him.

            Many years later, in 2019, I committed the ultimate fan profanity by writing my own third verse:

I am a king’s daughter,

And if my life should end,

The stars will bleed to shadows

And darkness will descend.

Although my reign was glorious,

My wealth has turned to tin.

Empty gnaws the hunger

You have left within.


            Now it’s time to call the lawyers at Apple Corps.  Remember the 1970 Badfinger song “Without You,” covered by Nilsson, Mariah Carey, and others?  It, too, suffers from a too-skimpy lyric.   They are:

 

Well I can’t forget this evening

Or your face as you were leaving,

But I guess that’s just the way the story goes.

You always smile, but in your eyes

Your sorrow shows,

Yes, it shows.

 

No I can’t forget tomorrow

When I think of all my sorrow,

When I had you there but then I let you go.

And now it’s only fair that I should let you know

What you should know.

 

I can’t live

If living is without you

I can’t live

I can’t give anymore

 

(repeat ad nauseam)

 

            Here is my heretical third verse:

 

Ev’ry night I dream about you

But I still wake up without you –

I sit up in my bed and wonder why –

Even though my friends all said you’d say good-bye

I still cry ….

 

            What songs have you improved?  Merry Christmas!

 

Monday, December 20, 2021

I Want King Arthur for Christmas!

And you can have him too, if you believe Geoffrey Ashe.
This is from the December 28, 1982 Oklahoman.

I think Riothamus is a good candidate.  I have this copy of Ashe's The Discovery of King Arthur, which is an elucidation of this theory.  You can read the excerpts of various documents and decide for yourself.

See you Thursday, fellow Anglophiles!
  

Thursday, December 16, 2021

Ah, for the Olden Days of Only a Handful of Earths!

These two pages are from Amazing Heroes #36, cover-dated December 1, 1983.

Eight Earths ... not a hundred, not fifty-two, but eight.  Ain't that sufficient?

I really wish that writers were creative enough to tell stories in just a couple of little old universes.  Instead of blowing whole cosmoses up every few years, they could try blowing up some preconceptions like continuing story arcs, neurotic heroes, and obsessive hyper-continuity.

Call 'em imaginary stories, or "what if?" and otherwise have some characters that have the same costume or girlfriend or backstory for a year or so.

Rant concluded.  See you next Monday!
  



Monday, December 13, 2021

The Eggheads Like MAGICAL MYSTERY TOUR

At least, that's what I gleaned from this review in the December 1967 Saturday Review.

I even agree with Mike Jahn that Sgt Pepper isn't the be-all and end-all of Western Civilization.  Don't string me up!
  
See you Thursday.
  

Thursday, December 09, 2021

Shoppin’ Silly, the Amazon Way! #5

We all know that websites, especially sellers, use algorithms to analyze our transactions. They then tailor “suggestions” targeted to our presumed buying practices.

But sometimes those algorithms produce silly results!

While I really like Stephen King's writing in "The Body," I don't think it (or its original publication in Different Seasons) merit being listed as a reference book.
Even less so do I agree with the sorting algorithm which placed these JFK-assassination books in "Humor & Entertainment."

The moral is, Don't take computer suggestions without a little good ol' human dubiosity!  See you on Monday.  Happy shopping!
  

Tuesday, December 07, 2021

A Late December!

Here are the pages for December from the PsychoFLAIRapy calendar. Sorry to be tardy!

Those crazy PsychoFLAIRians, as you've noticed, wear nothing but G-strings and bikinis all year round.

PS -- as a special reward for sticking with us through the entire year of "1971=2021" calendar pages ...
Here's the BACK side of the December calendar.  It's proof that my talents don't run to freehand sketching.
  

Monday, December 06, 2021

No CODs for This Shopping List!

In December 1971 I thought it a neato, keen-o idea to concoct some anarchic kid's demolition Xmas list.

Pretty hyperbolic, huh?
Check out the back side of this typed sheet, on which I wrote the item prices before totaling them up on Dad's 15-pound electric adding machine.

And what do YOU want for Christmas, my precious?  Ponder that while waiting for Thursday's post!
  

Thursday, December 02, 2021

Get Ready for Some Hope!


As we get ready to celebrate the greatest gift of all -- hope for everybody -- here's a new compilation of Christmas music.  Here are the tracks:

01 - Joy to the World - Cathedral Brass - 1998  (1:23)

02 - The First Nowell - The Elizabethan Singers - 1965  (4:09)

03 - I Wonder as I Wander - Radhika Miller - 1990  (3:17)

04 - Away in a Manger - John Edwards-Rondal Wallace - 2003  (3:19)

05 - Lullabies for the Baby Jesus - Mitzie Collins, Glennda Dove & Roxanne Ziegler - 1986  (3:14)

06 - Gloria! To God Sing Gloria! - arr Lloyd Larson - 2008  (3:40)

07 - What Child Is This - Jill Justice - 1990  (4:48)

08 - Santa Claus Is Coming to Town - The Fab Four - 2002  (2:07)

09 - Hark! The Herald Angels Sing - London Festival Choir & London Symphony Brass Ensemble - 1987  (2:19)

10 - Lux Hodie...Orientis Partibus - Joel Cohen - 1975  (3:00)

11 - Concert Variations on “Adeste Fidelis” - Anna Maria Mendieta - 1993  (4:37)

12 - Bring a Torch, Jeannette, Isabella - John Edwards-Rondal Wallace - 2003  (2:41)

13 - Sweet Child of Glory - Mary O'Hara - 1962  (2:03)

14 - Children, Run Joyfully - St. Louis Jesuits - 1977  (2:36)

15 - Fantasy on “O Come, Little Children” - Joseph Martin - 1997  (4:21)

16 - Hallelujah to the New Born King - His Love, Reaching - 1975  (1:38)

17 - Ding Dong! Merrily on High - London Festival Choir & London Symphony Brass Ensemble - 1987  (2:06)

18 - Zither Carol - James Galway Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Singers, Chapel Choir Of King's School Canterbury - 1986  (2:54)

19 - Silent Night - The Elizabethan Singers - 1965  (3:07)

20 - I Wonder as I Wander - Kathleen Battle - 1986  (2:57)

21 - Twelve Days of Christmas - The Swingle Singers - 1987  (2:56)

22 - Go Tell It on the Mountain - Cambridge Singers, City of London Sinfonia - 1993  (3:13)

23 - Sound Over All Waters - Theresa Thomason and Paul Halley - 1998  (4:12)

24 - Hark! - The Fab Four - 2008  (1:44)

25 - For All Eternity - Classic Fox Records - 2006  (1:48)

26 - All Is Well - Michael W Smith et al - 2010  (4:09)

Don't forget that things don't have to end dark and lonely.  Check out the light of the world, he's pretty cool!

See you on Thursday!
  

Monday, November 29, 2021

Superboy TV, Part 4

PART ONE


As elucidated in these earlier installments, this is a promo packet sent to syndicating stations for the 2nd season of Superboy.  It's courtesy of Ranger Roger, aka Mark Barragar.  I'm sad when I recall that it's been 10 years now since Mark's death.  Sah-LOOT!



Above are the front, unfolded interior, and back of this big folder.

The material for this post comprises the stuff provided for print ads -- for local newspapers or the rags' Sunday supplements, etc.
That's why the top-left corner of this legal-size folder says "Print Advertising."  Now, brace yourselves for a lot of now-quaint letterings, logos, and clip-art-type treasures!
















This week!  Next week!  Tuesday!  Thursday!  All new!  The head spins!

When your mind straightens out after all this dizzying promotion, come back on Thursday for some what-have-you.
  
All original content
copyright
© by Mark Alfred