How Big Was It?

You tell me.

This article's from the January 7, 2022 Tulsa World.  PS as far as I know, the boneheaded idea to sell Bigfoot Hunting Licenses never made it into law.

See you next year!

What You Wanted for Christmas

Forty years ago, anyway.

Did a lot of you campers yearn for tech treats like this one?  I had to settle for a single knife-switch splitter, plus a simple signal duper (one input to two outputs).

This ad was in the November 1982 issue of Video Review mag, which I read semi-religiously.

  

Homey Traditions

Hero Homes

Valhalla, the idealized afterlife home for Norse warriors, is known from 10th- and 13th-century epic poems of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark. The general depiction involves daylong battles followed by nights of drink and feasting. Lesser known is the tradition that only half of eligible combatants enter Valhalla; the others have been chosen by the goddess Freyja for her own battlefield, Fólkvangr. Nevertheless, all warriors will rise to fight alongside Odin during Ragnarök.

***

According to tradition, King Arthur was slain at the Battle of Camlann by his son-nephew Mordred. This historical conflict took place AD 537.

Later narrators Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas Malory say that after being gravely injured at Camlann, Arthur was borne away “to the Isle of Avalon to be cured of his wounds.” Folk beliefs, written down beginning in the 10th Century, proclaim that Arthur will return “to save Britain in its darkest hour.”

This legend was not only held among the “lower” classes. In 1554, Philip II of Spain married Mary I of England, and swore that he would resign the kingdom if Arthur should return.

This entry concludes our look at some Hero Homes of myth and history. Remember, the greatest Hero of all wants to come home ... into your life.

Merry Christmas!  See you Monday.

  

Super Homes!

 Hero Homes

            Fans of DC’s Silver Age are familiar with Superman’s Arctic Fortress of Solitude. Only super-muscles could lift the giant Golden Key to its door.

(When unused, the Golden Key was supposedly a directional marker for airplanes.) The Fortress held trophies from super feats; separate rooms dedicated to family and friends (including a decoy Clark Kent room); a lab full of exotic equipment and experiments; an armory (including the Phantom Zone Projector); and the miniaturized Bottle City of Kandor, which Supes had sworn to restore to normal size.

Many tales involved Fortress visitors ignoring safety protocols—firing a weapon or releasing a dangerous critter from Superman’s Interplanetary Zoo.

 Superman #187, from 1966, was an 80 Page Giant reprinting many Golden Age tales. The cover proclaimed “A Super-Scoop! Superman Unlocks Secrets of the Fortress of Solitude!” These stories included previous locations for Superman’s retreat, including underwater and the outskirts of Metropolis (for public tours, no less!).

PS I learned about the Fortress and Kandor at an early age.  I was 6½ when this photo was taken, holding the now-classic Superman #158.

PPS and here's a cheat sheet.

See you Thursday.

  

Singin' 'bout Home

 Hero Homes

 Images of homecoming still move us today, as reflected in pop songs like

·        The Beatles:  “Two of Us”—“on our way back home”

·        Tom Jones:  “Green Green Grass of Home”

·        Ed Sheeran:  “Castle on the Hill”

·        John Denver: “Take Me Home, Country Roads”

·        Grand Funk:  “I’m Your Captain”—“I’m getting closer to my home”

·        Simon & Garfunkel:  “Homeward Bound”

·        Bruce Springsteen:  “My Hometown”

·       Bon Jovi:  “Who Says You Can’t Go Home”

Hope you make it back home before curfew!  See you Monday.

  

Phoning To Or From New York?

Hero Homes

The ending of E.T. The Extraterrestrial shows him reunited with his folk.  

We never learn what his “home” is like in the 1982 movie, but an authorized tie-in called E.T.: The Book of the Green Planet was released in 1985.  It depicted E.T.’s homeworld as a lush green paradise.  

1999’s Star Wars: The Phantom Menace included a brief shot of three members of E.T.’s race cheering for Queen Amidala.

One Hero Home is a real-world location! 177A Bleecker Street in NYC may sound innocuous, but a quick Google Maps search will reveal that Dr. Strange’s lair, his Sanctum Sanctorum, is an actual place.

            Inuit beliefs across far North America include the paradisical afterlife Qudlivun, and several places of misery and pain, Adliparmiut and Adlivun.

 See you Thursday, fellow seekers!

  

On Their Way Home

 Hero Homes

There’s a mounted statue of Wenceslaus I, Duke of Bohemia, in Prague. He’s the “good king” of the Christmas song. Although he died in AD 985 and was declared a saint soon after, he’s not necessarily at rest. Folk legend holds that if the Czech Republic is ever in mortal danger, the statue will come to life, leave its pedestal, and raise an army to defend his homeland.

            Beethoven, Strauss Jr, Borodin, Sibelius, and Smetana are just a few classical composers who composed works in honor of their homelands.  And don’t forget compilations of folk music like those of Liszt, Brahms, Vaughan Williams, or Folkways’ Anthology of American Folk Music.

            The source of the name “Camelot,” in tradition a fabled headquarters for King Arthur, is unknown. The place was first so designated in the 1100s by Chrétien de Troyes, and in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. Folktale and poesy transformed it into a castle-town hosting the Knights of the Round Table and a wide-ranging court, as depicted in the 14^th-century Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Other theories hold that the name derived from Camlann, supposedly the site of Arthur’s final battle. 

Only in the 1970s did Camelot gain a reputation as a silly place.

See you Monday!

  

Rest Your Weary Bones

Hero Homes

More Hero Homes from comics and real life (they ain't the same!).

The 35-story Baxter Building was the Fantastic Four’s base, one of comics’ rare publicly identified superhero HQs. Constructed for heavy-duty use, it was nonetheless destroyed in 1985 by John Byrne. After much tribulation a new iteration was constructed on the same land, subject to round-robin ownership, including Peter Parker’s corporation. Only time (and new Marvel dictates) can foresee what’s next for the iconic edifice.

“Requiem” by Robert Louis Stevenson:

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be;

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

Wonder Woman’s mystical, mythical home was introduced as Paradise Island in 1941. The crash of Steve Rogers onto the island during WWII violated the island’s restriction against males. Originally idealized as the home of peaceful but capable females, the battles of “man’s world” have entered the Amazons’ island refuge ever since. But the Amazons have their own internal conflicts, depending on the creative team. Its canonical location has varied, from the Pacific (the Bermuda Triangle) to the Aegean Sea. Recently it’s able to magically relocate. The name Themyscira was bestowed after the 1987 reboot. The 2001 Our Worlds at War storyline destroyed the original Themyscira. Are you surprised that it was magically rebuilt soon after?

See you Thursday.

  

Welcome to Hero Homes!

This month we will look at some of the roosts, starting points, and ending spots of brave folks and heroes of pop culture and mythology.

Hero Homes

James Fenimore Cooper coined the term “Happy Hunting Ground” in 1823’s The Pioneers as an idealized afterlife imputed to American Indian belief. Washington Irving used the term also, leading to its use in popular culture.

The second photo is an Indian petrograph discovered in Utah.

The Batcave, Bruce Wayne’s crimefighting lab and refuge, was introduced in the 1943 Batman movie serial.  Over the years it’s accrued computers, crime-busting trophies, several Bat-vehicles, and a medical pod for quick patch-ups.  Bat-lore has narrated its earlier use as a stop on the Underground Railroad or an explorer’s hideout.  It’s accessed by water, from a public highway, elevator, or Bat-Pole.

The 1946 film The Best Years of Our Lives narrated parallel stories of three WWII vets returning to their hometown. Reintegration to civilian life isn’t easy; one is an amputee, and all bear invisible wounds. The movie’s compassionate yet unstinting presentation was honest for its time, earning nine Academy Awards, including a record two Oscars for the same performance, awarded to Harold Russell.

See you Monday!

  

Mystery Tramp, Not Mystery Date

As we'll learn from this article in the January 14, 1992 issue of the Globe, rubbing burnt cork on your face and carrying a bindle was for more than Trick-or-Treat.

Now, it is true that guys with Secret Service ID were behind the wooden fence on the Grassy Knoll.   But nobody else has said that the "tramps" were the one with those credentials.  You already know that The ONLY Secret Service guys in Dealey Plaza were the ones in the cars.

Post your theories in the Comments section ... if you dare!  See you Thursday.

  

The Lone Gunman Shoots Back

... According to this news brief from OMNI magazine's June 1983 issue.

Ensuing decades of analysis have weighed in on the side of "no proof of shots recorded."  The sounds on the recording don't match up with either the timeline of events in Dealey Plaza, nor with how a gunshot would be recorded in this medium.

However, that this recording don't document the shooting -- this has no relationship to how many shooters nor where they was!

See you Monday, fellow headscratchers!

  

Did the LADIES HOME JOURNAL Remember It Right?

Only you can decide, after reading this feature from the November 1983 issue.

The article isn't quite fawning, but it follows the usual pattern of emoting with its subjects.  It isn't intended as a political or moral survey, so I think it stands up A-OK.

Are you ancient enough to recall getting the news?  Like the kids mentioned here, I didn't quite understand what was going on.  I had just got back to my first-grade classroom after lunch when a voice came over the intercom telling us to all go home.

After walking home, I couldn't figure out why Mom's soap operas weren't on the TV.  It was the right channel, but no As the World Turns that Friday!

See you next time.

Doofuses on Parade

Here's the infamous JAMA article sourced from the autopsy guys.

This is the May 27, 1992 issue.

Infamous because some of the Dallas docs' memories are misrepresented, and the guys who were at Bethesda doing the cutting were not braced over their inconsistent and changed-from-other-tellings stories.  Do a little digging and you will find elicitations of such things.

We don't allege the autopsy guys were intentional criminals, but other folks with stronger backbones might have protested then, or later, regarding the unreported full-body exams and X-rays which are required, and which some folks allege happened ... but where are the records?

But piling onto honest questioners and asserting your divine right to be correct does not cover Burke and company in glory.

See you Monday.