The Black Hole..That is This Blog

I know, it's been almost a month since my last post.  It feels like this summer has been sucked into a black hole. Hey! Look what I have for you.  As promised to Dex, the complete "The Black Hole" coloring book (mostly uncolored).  Full of line drawings and games and coming straight to you from 1979 and Walt Disney.  Enjoy!

A Super Week

I've made comment over the years that "Superman: The Movie" was my Star Wars.  What I mean is, for most of my generation, "Star Wars" was the defining movie.  I saw "Star Wars" and enjoyed it, but it didn't have the cultural impact on me as it did other kids my age (commence stoning now). I only saw the movie once.  I didn't collect the toys. I didn't collect the cards. I didn't have the record album.  I was a comic book geek. 

I was mainly a fan of Marvel Comics.  For those of you unfamiliar, Marvel is Spider-man, The Avengers, Fantastic Four, Iron Man, X-Men, The Hulk, Captain America, etc.  All of the heroes that are popular movies now. No, not Aquaman. That's DC which along with our underwater friend had Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, the Flash, etc. In the 70's, the only place you could find your heroes off the page was on TV.  And when it came to TV, DC seemed to win hands down.  

There was "The Superfriends" on Saturday mornings.   

Sssssss-tupid

The sight of this VHS tape at a recent garage sale brought back memories of one of my childhood Kindertraumas. 

Don't Lose Your Head

When I saw this shrunken head hanging from a bar at an estate sale, I immediately grabbed it.  Well, first I made sure it wasn't real.

Christmas 1939

It's time for another visit with our 1939 family.  We see the family playing "spin the child", see their other children play with the Lionel train around the Christmas tree, and meet the latest addition to the family.  Not to mention lots of hats and one of the earliest appearances of what appears to be an aluminum Christmas tree.  In a scene around 3:49 we get to meet the man behind the camera.

Peanuts In-Depth

When I first saw stills from the newly-released Peanuts CGI movie, I was reminded of the Viewmaster slides I bought this past summer.

A Monster Mask Mystery

Sometimes when I start writing a post, it begins as one thing and ends as another.  Initially, this post was about trying to identify a mask, but it turned into a tangential examination of Halloween masks used in classic television shows and movies I recall fondly from my childhood.  In other words, I'm easily distracted.

Last spring, I drove a fair distance to attend what appeared to be an enormous estate sale chock full of retro goodies.  What particularly caught my eye in the ads for the sale were numerous Ben Cooper/Collegeville plastic Halloween masks. Once inside and after fighting my way through the crowd, I finally found the room with the masks, just in time to see a lady grabbing every plastic mask there. I pushed toward her to see if she'd left any, but she hadn't.  However, she had passed on a rubber mask which I grabbed.

Super 8 Disney

Before the days of live streaming video, DVDs or even VHS, your only option to view your favorite Hollywood movies in the comfort of your own home, short of waiting several years for them to appear on one of the 3 major networks, was to buy them on home movie film, in 8mm, Super 8 or 16mm formats.  Unless they were cartoon shorts, these films were usually extremely condensed versions of the movie or even just a few favorite clips compiled into 200 foot segments.  While we had a home movie projector growing up, it was limited to those films my father had shot documenting various vacations and holidays.  My parents never bought commercially released films and in fact I don't believe I even knew they were available.  Thanks to this 1980 Walt Disney Super 8 Home Movie catalog I found at the great film estate sale last year, I now have a glimpse into the world I missed.

The Legend of Sleepy Hollow

The 1980 television (loose) adaption of Washington Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" was actually pretty good, even though it wandered far from the original.

Starring Jeff Goldblum as Ichabod Crane, Meg Foster (she of the bewitching eyes) as Katrina Van Tassel, Dick Butkus(!) as Brom Bones and John Silvester White (Mr. Woodman from Welcome Back Kotter), the original broadcast was hosted by Steve Allen and Gary "Watchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis" Coleman.

Super 8

I took my son to the movies today to see "Super 8".  If you're unfamiliar with the movie, it's set in 1979 and is in the genre of such 80's movies as The Goonies and Stand By Me.  In case you're not quite sure of when the movie is set, writer-director J. J. Abrams not so subtly reminds, and in some cases, hits you over the head with this fact.  Less than 5 minutes into the movie, you've been treated to E.L.O.'s "Don't Bring Me Down" and Wings' "Silly Love Songs" along with a potpourri of 70's product placement.

The movie revolves around a boy obsessed with winning a film contest by filming his own monster movie on super 8 film starring his friends.  While filming a pivotal scene at a train station, the boys, and camera, witness a train derailment that unleashes....well, I won't spoil it for you.

I have to admit, one of the reasons I wanted to see this film was my own devotion to the super 8 format.

When I was child, about once a year, my parents would borrow a super 8 projector from friends or relatives and we would drag out our own collection of films chronicling past vacations.  Years later, I decided I wanted to shoot some of my own super 8 film and document some of my own family's adventures.

Back in 2005, I found a Sankyo Sound XL-40S super 8 camera at a garage sale for $10.  It was originally produced in 1975.

I promptly joined 8mm forum and learned where to buy and develop super 8 film.  Unfortunately, I also learned you could no longer buy sound film.  But buying silent film is fairly easy, your choices spanning eBay, private sellers, or directly from Kodak.  Getting it developed was a little trickier.  As it turns out, there is only one place left in the United States that develops super 8 film, Dwayne's Photo in Kansas. 

I ordered 1 roll of film.  After all, I had no idea if the camera worked and at $15 for a 3-minute cartridge, I wasn't going gamble any more.  As it turned out, the camera worked perfectly and I shot my kids in many summer activities -- playing in the sprinkler, the pool, and camping.  But I didn't know whether I had captured anything until I sent the cartridge to Dwayne's for development.  When it came back, I immediately got out my Elmo ST-600M super 8 projector I picked up on eBay years before and threaded it up.  I was very pleased with the results and ordered more film with the intent of filming those scenes that I felt played best on super 8 film -- Halloween, Christmas, vacations, all those events typically filmed when this camera was state of the art.  It costs another $15 to develop, so the costs average out to $10 per minute.  Not a cheap investement, but a fun one.

J. J. Abrams clearly wanted to accomplish 2 things -- he wanted desperately to create a movie in the 80's style of Steven Spielberg and he wanted to create a movie that kids today would remember years from now.  I can't say I was blown away by the movie, and to me, it missed it's mark matching E.T. or Raiders of the Lost Ark.  But while on the surface it might seem it was aimed at my generation, I think it was aimed at the kids of today and for what it's worth, my son said he loved it and wanted to see it again.

I'd love to see a revival of super 8 film as a result of this movie and I suspect there might be a little bump in the sales of cameras.  It remains to be seen whether the interest, and the movie, will be lasting.

Bo' Ling for A Happy Marriage

One of my favorite movies is "A Christmas Story." I won't go into an overview of the movie, I think everyone has seen this one. It's on for 24 hours on TBS every Christmas Day.

The year is never actually established, however, the Radio Orphan Annie Decoder Ralphie receives is the 1940 model. Because of the era, I've always obsessed about the objects they have in the house, particuarly, their radio. The radio is a 1940 Westinghouse model 780-x. The majority of scenes from the movie were shot in Toronto, and this is actually an exclusively Candian model.

Even without the movies influences, I've always wanted an old console radio, but couldn't justify the cost of most I saw at antique malls. Several years ago, I finally came across an affordably-priced 1941 model Philco at the (now sadly closed) Arnold Antique Mall for $40. When I got it home, I found the only thing wrong with it was the speaker had become disconnected. After a 20 second warmup, it hummed to life bringing in AM stations along with shortwave broadcasts from around the world, not to mention a mysterious broadcast that simply counted off the time, second by second.


While my radio wasn't a match for Ralphie's, I still wanted to complete the look. I had long wondered what that metallic orb was that sat on top. An antenna of some sort?