Short bleatage here, since it’s a column night and blah de blah et cetera, usual excuses.

Woke up very early and went to the studio, turned on the machinery and typed an insight from a dream concering an upcoming film by the director of “The Sixth Sense.” It seemed terribly important:

M Night Sham latest movie twist is that end of the world is actually caused by Tim Allen – not actor Tim Allen but actual tim allen

Then I went back to sleep.

I hope I haven’t spoiled anything for anyone.

It was the last day of school today – wrote about that over at buzz.mn, so I don’t want to repeat all the soppy nostalgia I penned there. My overwhelming emotion upon filming the bus leaving the stop this morning was finally, I can conclude the Spring Video. It always ends with the end of school, and I’ve been waiting for this moment so I can crunch the damn thing down and put it on DVDs and back it up and sweep the endless footage off the hard drive . . . except that I’m tapeless now, and trashing the raw footage means that those moments not used in the family videos are gone for good. I have the feeling that it’s not the final products that will really fascinate her in years to come, it’ll be the outtakes.

Modern life: there’s a blooper reel and deleted scenes.

As I may have noted, I gave (G)Nat a Flip camera to record her day. I didn’t get any schoolroom footage, but she shot the bus ride. What a nightmare. There are three kids of kids: some act normally, some put their hands in front of the cameras because it’s cool to ruin the shot, and some take over and mug like maniacs. The video shows a child bursting with a frightening amount of self-esteem; not only does she hog the camera and make horrible faces with her tongue hanging out, she keeps saying “hello Mr and Mrs Lileks, you’re hot. You’re sexy.” O the horrors of the bus. I asked (G)Nat who the devil that kid was, and she got all red and said “that was weird and embarrassing.” No doubt. The rest of the stuff was charming – friends saying hello, kids saying THAT’S A VIDEO CAMERA? NO WAY, the shy kid who sits alone offering up a wan smile.  She shot about five minutes in class, and it’s like watching secretly filmed footage of a tribe that hasn’t had contact with civilization. You rarely see your kid’s world unmediated by your presence, so it was fascinating. And boring: after a while, kids run out of goofy expressions. Several of them flashed peace signs, including the kid who has informed (G)Nat that John McCain just wants WAR.

Where do they get these ideas.

Speaking of deleted scenes, here’s a video via the ever-neat Neatorama, an interesting clip with a song I hated then, and hate now, and will hate until the sun gutters out into a dark ball of coal, by which time mankind will have left this planet, developed faster-than-light travel, and devoted itself to the task of spreading through the galaxy to neutralize all the bad 70s sitcom themes we leaked into the innocent void. Ugh. In the original version of “Welcome Back, Kotter” there’s a sound after John Sebastian oozes the words “welcome back,” and it sounds like some 70s instrument that could simulate the mental state one gets from a brief and satisfying moment of easy gas-passing. It’s a guitar, obviously, but it’s so frickin’ seventie, and it's always bugged me. There. Got that off my chest. After 30 years! I'm free! Anyway, this version it’s interesting for the technology, as people often say about things that aren’t otherwise interesting. It's creepy deepy - they are so not alive, as the kids would say - but interesting.

(Note: while editing this page, I get occasional WIDGET NOT FOUND messages. If that's what you see, the video is HERE.)

I had no idea: Chuck Jones directed – and voiced – a Pogo TV special. It’s not very good.

 I’m not surprised. I know this is heresy, and I’ve said it before, but as much as I love the holy heck out of so much of Jones’ work, he wasn’t flawless, and benefited from the input of others.  June Foray as Pogo: gah. It does remind me how rare and precious animation was in my childhood, and how I would have been enthused beyond belief if this had come along a few years later when I discovered Pogo, and how I would have felt that creeping sense of disappointment that doesn’t quite spoil it all, but reduces your expectations as you watch.

For that matter, Pogo eventually disappointed – the day the Spiro Agnew horse entered the strip, over the shark she went, but for a very long time it was something quite special, and Walt Kelly had the sense to populate his world with characters who kept his pessimism and misanthropy in check.

When I was a kid reading the strips in collections - its syndicated run was coming to an end - my favorite characters were ABP, or Anybody But Pogo. He was fine, he was gentle and amusing, but a finer cast of characters hasn't been assembled in the comics. Churchy, Howland, Albert - blessed Albert, the most American of the bunch - Porky, the Deacon, the little skunk-minx who would have slapped Pepe LePew so hard he would have reset to the Second Republic - all wonderful.

Bun Rabbit annoyed me all to hell, though.

It made me think of my childhood friend who also loved Pogo, and sci-fi, and comics, and who disappeared after grade school. I tracked him down last year and shot him an email and the response, more or less, was "nice to hear from you, sincerely," and little more. He writes a great deal about environmental theology, and I wondered if my reputation had exceeded me, somehow. I had somehow slipped into the Moorlock camp.

His father came to my mother's funeral. He was a rangy white-haired Nordic man who'd been in POW camps. There was always something very rational and scientific about him, and I'm sure I squandered about 427 chances to learn something interesting, if only I'd asked. But who asks your friend's dad about the war?

All that from a moving drawing of Pogo.

(via Cartoon Brew, which links to the rest of the show.)

I watched “Frenzy” the other night, because it was Hitchcock. I’d seen it before, but I wanted to check if my initial reactions – it’s a nasty greasy ugly thing – were correct. They were. It’s a nasty, greasy, ugly thing. The late sixties and early seventies reveled in the grot; among the lesser talents, art was just pimple-popping, but you’d expect more from Hitch. Then again, he’d been sliding down for years, and then again again, why wouldn’t he take advantage of the relaxed standards to make a movie that meshed with modern styles?  You can’t keep pretending that the world is all Cary Grant falsely accused of being something less than Cary Grant. Aside from the usual objections (the unlikeable protagonist, the wretchedly graphic assault, the hardy-har misogyny) I was struck again by the music. The last time I watched it I noted this, and I’m sure I wrote about it – but that’s okay. If the Bleat repeats itself every half-decade, that’s better than showing up here daily banging the same tin drum with clueless enthusiasm. Right? Certain topics are close-orbiting comets, and others loop around every five years or so. Anyway: it wasn’t just the music, but the sound of the music. Echoey. Early seventies movies had echoey soundtracks, especially if they were British, and especially if they were composed by Ron Goodwin.

(clip removed b/c they're only up for a day. Sorry!)

New Motels - start here. Only three, but the third one pays off. See you at buzz.mn.