It's high time I started a feature on the blog that is simply a bunch of stuff and bits that I found interesting over the past few days/week, but about which I haven't had the time to write a proper post. Therefore: link burp.
• You've been saying there aren't enough 14-part Star Wars documentaries out there in the world. You can stop saying that quite so much.
• Exciting news for anyone who enjoys The Criterion Collection and the ease of use of Hulu: Criterion comes to Hulu plus.
• Radiohead is releasing their new album this Saturday. Exciting. That they're releasing a "newspaper album" as well? Very exciting. And head-scratch-inducing. What's a newspaper album?
• I enjoy Pantone's colors (I often drink from my favorite Pantone mug). I enjoy cookies. Finally someone made some Pantone Chip Cookies.
It's always surprising when I meet someone who's managed to avoid seeing "It's a Wonderful Life," simply because it's so ubiquitous this time of year. And I've never minded that saturation because it's actually an incredibly well made film. And that's thanks in no small part to Jimmy Stewart.
While I didn't see "It's a Wonderful Life" this year, there usually isn't more than a month or two gap between me seeing one Jimmy Stewart film or another. From his work with Hitchcock, to "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (another Frank Capra great), to "Harvey," his films, his manner, and even the way a suit hangs on him have all been pretty massive influences on me and my work.
So when I was searching online for the audio version of "It's a Wonderful Life" this year (thanks to my wife for alerting me to the broadcast), I was delighted to stumble across the Jimmy Stewart Museum in Indiana, Pennsylvania. I was not delighted to see that the economy has hit the museum just as hard as everywhere else.
Speaking as someone who came from a small town in Ohio obsessed with Ulysses S. Grant (who lived there as a boy), I can attest that small museums and curiosities like this are one of the things that make small towns great. Seeing these dusty displays, thinking of the process the curators went through including this or that knickknack, all of these stories within stories are worth far more than any donation asked at the door.
If you've been as affected by Jimmy Stewart's work as I have, or if you're just a fan of small town museums in general, please donate to the museum. Even $10 can go a long way for a small operation like this.
After all, the old Building & Loan made a comeback with just one Momma dollar and one Poppa dollar.
A study in derivations and distractions: For reasons soon after forgotten, I was trying to explain a Sesame Street series of sketches over the phone. Moreover I was trying to explain a single sketch, "Upstairs Downstairs" (I believe this is the title), starring an increasingly fatigued and exasperated Grover who runs, true to the title, upstairs and downstairs, exclaiming each destination as he travels. The moronic repetition and Grover's frenetic, panting delivery endeared this sketch to me for life.
But in order to put the sketch that I was explaining (or attempting to explain) in context, I needed (or rather, my tangential brain required me) to explain Masterpiece Theatre, hosted by Alistair Cook, from which flowed the parody host of Monsterpiece Theatre, Alistair Cookie, played by the smartly smoking jacketed Cookie Monster.
Sadly, I couldn't find that exact sketch, the Monsterpiece Theatre parody of Upstairs Downstairs, though I was able to find the parody of "The 39 Steps" (the above "The 39 Stairs," similarly themed to the sought-after clip, though emphasizing teaching numbers rather than "up" and "down").
That film, parodied so succinctly by Frank Oz's hand up a puppet's rump (two puppets: as he is both Cookie Monster and Grover), was directed by Alfred Hitchcock (for an extensive overview of the film and an obsessive, ongoing dissection of all films in the Criterion Collection, you can peruse this blog), from the book by John Buchan.
I read the book sometime during my freshman year of college and it's been on my bookshelf since. Still, less than two years ago, I purchased another copy of the book. Not because I loved the book so much (though I enjoyed it), but because I came across an edition too beautiful too pass up. This hardbound edition is impeccably designed, with gold edged pages and gold foil stamping on the cover and spine, and, more importantly, is illustrated by one of my lifelong favorites, Edward Gorey.
Gorey is of course better known to some for his brilliant work on the introduction to the (for an appreciable run) Vincent Price hosted "Mystery!" That title sequence was one of my introductions to what animation could be, though I see it so rarely in American television and film: seemingly two-dimensional characters that, while moving and living in the world of sound so often reserved for the cute and the bumbling, are not clowns... these characters did not exist for sheer comedy (while not ignoring comedy at the same time). I have never been able to shake this minute-long revelation (following it with Vincent Price's dry throated greeting didn't hurt in insuring its impact).
Not to leave these out of the meandering path of this post, here are some other Monsterpiece Theatre parodies I came across while snooping in vain for Upstairs Downstairs:
Posts
