Two things changed while I was away on the Crossing: someone came and took away some trees, and my office internet connection went to crap.
You’re no doubt dying to know about the second one, right? I have Google Wifi and it had been working just fine. Big strong connection handed off around the house through the little pucks. They made a mesh! Then I got home and found my internet was sloooow, and pages that used to load so fast the monitor would jump from the impact now loaded slowly. I troubleshooted around and discovered something that might have eluded a casual user: wife had unplugged the upstairs waypoint.
But plugging it in didn’t do much, and what was once a GREAT connection was now OK, according to the app. OK in this case meaning 3 mps, which is conversational speed.
So what do you do when nothing really changed but nothing works anymore? You’re stuck. You hit the reddit page and the help page and read a dozen stories that sound like yours, but aren’t, and even if they were, they don’t help, because the post’s author ended up moving his third waypoint to a rafter in the garage. OKAY THANKS.
The trees were a simpler issue. My mother-in-law suggested getting rid of some tall piney things on the south wall, and I thought: no! They’re a privacy screen, and I have a memory of going outside in the snow in 2002 and knocking off the snow because they’d been bent. We can't get rid of them! I have a memory attached to that wood!
But she said she would pay for new bushes; at that point my wife saw New Possibilities, and I shrugged memory schmemory. What I didn’t realize was the extent of the plan, which meant eliminating my Overhanging Bower. When we moved into Jasperwood there was a tree branch over the back steps, and I strung lights, and it was great. It was the place I always wanted to live in: little lights on a tree branch over the back steps, rustic but elegant. Over the years I would replace the lights, fight with the extension cords, curse, reset the power outlet, and so on - for the last five years the lights were probably on about 15% of the time, but in my mind I saw the picture of what they looked like when they worked, and since A) no one ever took the back steps, especially at night, and B) I rarely looked out the window to see if they were working, well, whatever.
What I didn’t realize: the tree branch was supported by the trunk of a tree that had died at some point, and over the years it rotted and sagged until the tree branch with the lights was so low I had to bend down to get under it, which is really saying something. So yeah, I guess it had to go.
New:
This meant an opportunity for some landscape lighting, and I will spare you the problems with getting the new transformer to get power; another dead exterior outlet. The fun came when I hooked up the lights to the cord. I’d bought the good stout low-voltage lighting cord, having had bad experience with the thin stuff. Turns out the landscape lighting industry decided to switch the connector interface, and the new lamps would not work with this grade of cord. So I swore and took back a messy coil of cord with the UPC label taped on, thinking: no way they’ll take this back.
"Hi, this doesn’t work with your low-voltage landscape lighting. The connectors were changed. The old connectors came in on the side, and they’d work, but the new ones go around the cord like a handshake, and the power points can’t pierce the plastic."
The clerk stared at me. She said:
You want this back on your card
"Yes yes, of course, thank you! Back on the card."
But the cord still works.
"Yes, it’s not defective. Except it doesn't - no, the cord is fine."
Went back to the Cord Department, and was looking at 14-2 grade. An employee in a motorized wheelchair whirred over and asked if I needed help, and I said I was wondering whether the 14-2 worked with the new connectors, because the 14-4 sure didn’t.
She stared at me. She said:
Let me get someone from lighting.
Someone from Lighting came over. Burt. Burt, the Man from Lighting. I explained my situation, how Hampton Bay had come up with a new connector standard - much better, really, it made a stronger connection - but it wouldn’t take the 14-4, and I was concerned that the 14-2 would be too thick. You never know.
He stared at me. He said:
Let’s go look.
So we went to the lighting aisle and he took out a lamp and tried it and it worked.
"14-2 it is," I said, a happy man. Because I’d used JARGON! Men say things like that, you know. It makes us real men.
Why are you staring at me?
And now: obscure shows that didn't last. There were so many.
You’ll recognize both, I hope. The lesser of the two - in terms of fame - did a lot of 60s and 70s TV, including Star Trek. The song is a George M. Cohan song - Harrigan, of course.
There’s something about the sponsor ad at the end that makes me miss something about America.
A running gimmick in the show consisted of Harrigan, Sr., commenting on some situation in Latin, Harrigan, Jr., replying, "Which means?", and Harrigan, Sr., translating his comment, usually humorous, into English. (The exact same gimmick had been used continually in a television show some years earlier, Colonel Humphrey Flack.
Flack info at the link, if you wish. Another Desilu show - man, they made a million.
Perry married actress/comedian Jo Anne Worley on May 11, 1975. They divorced in 2000 and had no children.
Perry is currently married to actress Joyce Bulifant.
All the basics are back! It's been a while. If you want something laughable and eye-rolling, with all the conventions - hats-on fights, ridiculous cliffhangers, hapless gal fridays, moon men, electronical mcguffins - well, sorry.
This one's good.
You know what it is, don't you?
Right!
Look at that peculiar type:
Give him credit for not expecting that a simple mask over the eyes is sufficient to hide his identity. He’s taking no chances.
And of course:
Yes, that's right: Brak from Space Ghost. Well, the original. And many other roles, including some Trek.
Now, a word: there was also a Green Lama, who was perhaps the only Buddhist crime-fighter of the day. The “Green” attribute had a meaning I can’t quite grasp.
Anyway. We first meet our heroes putting together a new engine for the Black Beauty, and we go right into a bromance about how grateful Mr. Britt is for Kato and how grateful Kato is for Mr. Britt’s rescuing him from that orphanage. Mr. Britt praises Kato’s scientific knowledge, and Kato has fun with some BS obsequiousness. Kato, by the way, was Japanese. But it’s 1940. And so:
Got it, everyone? So chill.
Anyway, they finish building their secret car, and Kato built it a new horn that sounds “just like that green hornet we saw in Africa.”
What have these guys been up to.
It’s off to the Sentinel, the newspaper Mr. Britt runs:
There’s no crime wave, by the way. These things usually start with a crime wave, but not here. The only conflict in the first few scenes concerns Young Playboy Mr. Britt’s stewardship of the paper, and the fact that some Civic Leaders want the paper to resume its crusading editorials. Britt is flippant: sorry, let someone else take care of crime. I’ve got things to do! No, I won’t stop that robber - what’s the worst that could happen, he could shoot my Uncle Ben?
Then this happens:
He could have instructed his reporters to write about the allegations that swirled before the damn failed, but he’d nixed the story. Now he feels guilty. One of his reporters warts him that the same company that built the dam with cheap material is using the same cheap shortcuts on a tunnel, and Britt thinks “I wonder if there’s anything to that.” And we might think “he’s going to investigate as the Green Hornet!”
But there isn’t any Green Hornet yet.
The worker who was going to give the newspaper the skinny on the cheap construction gets blown up. So now the Sentinel starts writing about the story, and The Unknown Leader of the Syndicate says it’s time to deal with Britt . . . by buying the paper. The fiends! There’s a slow motion chase, and we meet some of the bad guys:
Cold-hearted smirky killer and sleazy geeker.
Then, out of nowhere:
I mean, there’s nothing about his decision to become a vigilante. No ah-hah scene, no dark night of the soul - just this. Down to the garage, in to the super-speedy Black Beauty car, and off to do justice!
You have to feel sympathy for guys who are starting out in the vigilante biz, though. No one knows who they are. And so:
And by him I mean me! Well, some thugs show up and kill the guy the Hornet was talking to. Naturally:
So now he’s really Robin Hood. He goes to Tunnel #4 to see proof of cheap construction. An air compressor fails, which will lead to an immediate collapse of the entire construction project - but the Hornet braces the bad guy and asks for the names of the rest of the Syndicate.
Alas:
There’s a difference to this one. It’s not so campy. I like it.
But I usually do. At the start.
That'll do; see you around.
Below, a detailed look at the old Lexington in New York. More than you might want to know.
