I have an idea!

[Isaac Sauvage]

i propose that we send a PROBE to pinball nirvana! i think we can even propose the various crazy lifeforms to be encountered, check it out:


steve and sleepy-- a couple of... interesting people living in their own demesne, quite impervious to outside reason or information.

ike savage-- some asshole who never got over the fact that life moved on past his blowhard sermons upon the VP scene.

jonpurplehaze-- who IS this guy, exactly? where does he come from and what is he doing for us?

ruby the travis bickle-- bringing slackness to a level UNFORSEEN until now.

davee and who are is that other guy?-- people who ACTUALLY talk about pinball. HOLY SHIT!!

 

[sleepy]

I gotta be me. But for reasons good or bad, that sometimes becomes an argument.
And JPH. I think he might be "Charlie".

 

[LeeVanCleef]

That's because I'm a slack motherfucker. And I got a probe for ya!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

I gotta be me. But for reasons good or bad, that sometimes becomes an argument.
And JPH. I think he might be "Charlie".

touché... and true of us all. maybe i can think of a better insult next time. :)

btw who's charlie?

That's because I'm a slack motherfucker. And I got a probe for ya!

from that vid, i just checked out their version of the cure's "in between days."

i liked the punk-inspired instrumentation but wish the singer had followed suite more. a voice like billy idol's or some screechy garageband singer would have been pretty interesting IMO.

btw see if you like this one, justin thyme for the holidays. the lead vocal is certainly the least important part.


Sleighing Bells - The Found Sound Orchestra

 

[sleepy]

Who's Charlie?

How about...."Good Morning Angels!"?

 

[LeeVanCleef]

."Good Morning Angels!"?

{in unison} Good morning, Charlie! Don't worry, Arne... I was on board. I had two Angels represented by posters on my bedroom walls (but not the one you'd think!). I'm assuming Little '70s Nicky was the one kid upset there wasn't a Kate Jackson poster, so he erased the whole thing from his mind.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Yeah, I watched that cover, too! I don't know... I'm a pretty big Superchunk fan so I enjoyed hearing Mac McCaughey sing that one. You want to hear a weird moment in which I felt like I was in an MC Escher painting? Throughout most of the '90s, I lived within walking distance of a college dive bar my friend owned off the campus of WSU. Worked there and drank there, both to excess. So one afternoon I'm enjoying a fine Miller, flipping through a copy of Barowner's Monthly or some such crap that was laying on the bar and was reading an article about the nationwide live music scene. The story concluded with a quote from Superchunk's lead singer saying something like "It's a weird scene out there. One night you might be playing a club for 2,000 people, the next night you're in a bar the size of a closest that some college kid in Kansas booked you in to." And that was the bar I was sitting in as I read the story. My pal Jake had somehow convinced Superchunk to play at Kirby's which has a legal capacity of 65 people and was easily doubled the night they played there.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

dose guys jus didn' know how goods dey had it!


meh... i barely knew what charlie's angels was when i was a kid. i think i was probably lusting after nerdy girls and the next-door types... the patty dukes if you will.

 

[sleepy]

Charlie's Angels was a come-on. In spite of being sold "as a T & A show", it never was that. Like "Police Woman".

Bill, you don't have a Farah poster on the wall? I walked past her on Venice Beach one day. She was standing alone on the sand looking towards the sea. I guess she and Ryan owned a condo on the boardwalk. This was a couple of months before she passed on.

Does that count?

 

[Itchigo]

Shh, it's a secret.....

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Patty Duke? She was an old, dumpy broad by the '70s... had probably already popped that chubby Hobbit kid out of her Easy-Bake oven. If you wanted the "girl next door" you still had to ask Charlie for Cheryl Jean Stopplemore's phone number.



Well, hello there, old friend! You still owe me some gym socks! Yep, that is the same make and model Cheryl Ladd poster I had over my bed. Now are you telling me this Norwegian-blonde cornfed girl from South Dakota isn't someone you'd want living next door? And that's really the closest one comes to "nerdy" and "girl-next-door" in the discofied '70s. They all still had a "Charlie's Angels" sheen to them. I guess that, if you wanted girl-next-door in our age group, you could always choose Amanda, the pitcher from The Bad News Bears. But that only works until you find out that being next door to Tatum O'Neal would be a little tough unless you were already living... as Arne stated... in a nice mansion off of Venice Beach.

On reflection, I think I had a thing for Gilda Radner. Is that "nerdy"? Could be "Jewy". Either one sounds like my preferred profile. That could explain why I got engaged to a nerdy Jew last weekend.

NOTE: All Ladd-related trivia mentioned above (real name, place of birth) was not fetched from IMdB. Nope, I still had it memorized. I had a real Cheryl Ladd problem when I was a kid. I think I bought her single. I bet she had to deal with some serious concussion issues after this performance. Why, this is worse than NFL and MMA combined!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

harsh words for poor miss duke. harsh, peculiar words. (kent brockman moment)

well i was obviously talking about patty from her old sitcom, when she was a teenager. see, bill... i was a kid... for me there was the TV and the radio. my spy satellite in to what was actually happening in hollyrock was nowhere near completed yet. but come to think of it, there was also... velma from scooby doo. maybe jane curtin. some of the guest stars from star trek. EDIT: diane keaton! yes... that's it. like from sleeper or annie hall, for example.

in any case, congratulations, old man! :D



EDIT2: nurse margie cutler from M*A*S*H!! (sadly it seems she passed away of breast cancer just last year)

 

[sleepy]

Oh Boy Bill. You've opened Pandora's Laughing Place with those reflections.

Now are you telling me this Norwegian-blonde cornfed girl from South Dakota isn't someone you'd want living next door?

No. Not when she slipped into her MJ act. All I can say about it is, back in the late 70's, there was a digital FX known as "The Duplicator". This is an image repeater that can turn a single performer into a chorus line. And there were only two performers who used it for their tv specials that I know of. Her, and MJ.

And Gilda. I'm pretty sure I met her at that odd corner redneck country bar that used to be down the street from me. "The Red Castle", now a Mexican Candy Warehouse, open to the public. She introduced herself as "Dia Pigg", a reporter for "The Hollywood Reporter", a local rag of no particular importance...

"Dia" was a friend of "Donna". I met "Donna" through my Brother. "Donna" was an old, dumpy broad...this was in the 70's. But she was older than her years due to drinkin'.
She was very aloof and didn't want intrusions into her privacy, likely because she wasn't who she said she was.
"Donna" was a drummer in other venues who only tended the bar locally (no gig) and who lived next door to Michael McDonald and his family.

"Dia" wore a similar Jewish hat to the one that Lennon wore on the "Hey Jude" album cover, though it was trim like a straw hat, but it was black felt with flowers around the brim. Very cute Delta Dawn. She was at The Castle with maybe only three other people in the joint including me. Now, "Donna" was so secretive, and yet she made a specific effort to introduce me to "Dia". And "Dia" was unaccountably Very Interested in talking to me. "Dia" would be there on a Wednesday or Thursday night, but never on Fridays or Saturdays, and she was only around for a couple of weeks.

I double-checked The Hollywood Reporter at the time, and there were articles that were written by a "Dia Pigg" (I didn't believe her name at first). But I can't find any trace of her on the Internet. Perhaps a nom de-plume to go with that 39 cent glass of Millers-on-tap?

 

[sleepy]

Oh yeah. She did remind me of Gilda Radner.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

harsh words for poor miss duke. harsh, peculiar words. (kent brockman moment)

well i was obviously talking about patty from her old sitcom, when she was a teenager. see, bill... i was a kid... for me there was the TV and the radio. my spy satellite in to what was actually happening in hollyrock was nowhere near completed yet. but come to think of it, there was also... velma from scooby doo. maybe jane curtin. some of the guest stars from star trek. EDIT: diane keaton! yes... that's it. like from sleeper or annie hall, for example.

in any case, congratulations, old man! :D



EDIT2: nurse margie cutler from M*A*S*H!! (sadly it seems she passed away of breast cancer just last year)

Thank you for the felicitations, sir! Beginning of a great adventure and all that!

But it's things like this, Nic, that make me wonder when the aliens that sent you here to spy on us will be recalling you to prepare for the invasion. Everyone who grew up in the '70s knows that's a picture of Mrs. Kotter (or Mrs. Kah-TEHR, if you're Horseshack), not a picture of Nurse "hey, isn't that Mrs. Kotter?" from MASH. I considered Diane Keaton, but she's only "nerdy" by '70s standards. I don't know... seems like a fine line to walk.

Velma? Yeah, that'll be one to tell 'em about on the mothership ride home.

EDIT: 70s nerd poster girl? Only one correct choice... Bailey Quarters from WKRP. The cure to Suzanne Sommersitus.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

impressive. (not that i watched that show)

kotter was that show with the horseshank gang, right? i remember margie cutler appeared on that, but her hair was different or something. i know the main guy on that show went on to become a big star... on the poker circuit. (gabe kaplan)

yes bill, it will always be "margie cutler" for me because of her unique entrance on M*A*S*H. maybe you should rewatch that sometime!

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Yes! Stuff exactly like that!


Bleep blorp I am familiar with Gabriel Kaplan of the Welcome Back Kotter we shall use his prominence as a World Leader of Pokering during the course of our invasion bleep blorp

How do you not know your Kotter? Your "Up your nose with a rubber hose"? I'm not saying this because you really missed out on something... it was fucking awful. But it was everywhere! Along with Judeo-Christian entertainment program involving angels and a priest named Charlie bleep-blorp It'd be like a kid today not knowing anything about Hannah Montana. Is that still a thing, or did that little girl finally get that stripper job she always dreamed of? There was a kid in my Catlick school class whose family were real Catlick: eight kids by the time I met him and not a single TV to do the babysitting... and he still managed to learn his great '70s Italians Arthur Fonzarelli and Vincent Barbarino. Hey, if your family was a band of deep-cover Soviet agents who were never activated, you can share that with us! Putin's radioactive-poison-tipped umbrella can't reach to Ohio! Probably not!
PS: Dude, if you haven't watched WKRP, you truly are missing out on one of the best comedies of the '70s. Funny as hell, deeper than it should have been. They did a laugh-free episode covering the people who were trampled to death at the Who concert in Cincinnati and pulled it off admirably. Fortunately, Youtube has plenty of it. Well worth searching for. This one is one of many hilarious moments, covering the station's attempt at a turkey giveaway and a timeless punch line.

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="

" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[sleepy]

Kotter? Godawful?

Let me tell you. After I started working in '76, I wanted to try out "one of those 70's kind of nights". So I went to a performance of the musical, "Let My People Come" at The Whiskey (yes, the same Whiskey A Go-Go that once featured The Doors). The musical, about all aspects of so-called 'modern sexuality' was well-reviewed, so I went, partly for the spectacle, and partly to bask in the vaulted ambient residue of the Gods of Rock.

I took my seat at the table and tried my first and last Rum & Coke. There was an announcement that "one of the performers had been taken ill and will be replaced for the evening by Robert "Juan Epstein" Hegyes. Let's all give Bobby a hand!"

"Juan Epstein" walked out onstage totally naked with big hair, sat down, leaned back, reached down with his hand, and for a few moments, performed a meat puppet. Then the show began. I eyed the lovely blond female lead and nursed my rum & coke. She made eye contact several times for several minutes it seemed, but in spite of a full room of patrons and my seat at some distance in the darkness, to no one else.

On a side note, a few years ago when I went to the McCartney Walk of Fame ceremony, we were in line for six hours sitting on the sidewalk up against the wall of The Capitol Records building where the event took place. There was a dead ringer for Brian Epstein walking around us wearing an eye patch with a "Yo-Ho-Ho" and a sea-legs swagger, a "George" and his girlfriend who flew in from Japan and stood just in front of me in line strumming his Rickenbacker expertly. And that lovely blonde wearing a black tights pantsuit. I don't know her.

On the podium to the far left of McCartney stood a perfect John Lennon double with the same hair and white suit that Lennon wore on the "Abbey Road" cover. This appearance has never been explained.

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

meh... what if we're highly compatible upon manners and style, so to speak... but completely different upon tastes...?

would that be a regular roman tragedy, or would there be a potential meeting of iconoclasts, once upon a time...?

 

[LeeVanCleef]

meh... what if we're highly compatible upon manners and style, so to speak... but completely different upon tastes...?

would that be a regular roman tragedy, or would there be a potential meeting of iconoclasts, once upon a time...?

Nice try, ET! But you're not dodging out of this one! I'm not discussing taste so much as where the heck were you in the '70s? I'd ask some multiple-choice questions, but Google's ruined any chance of making that work. So let's settle for an essay question: Starsky or Hutch? And please explain your choice. Now I know that tests like this can be kind of tough on non-human sentient life forms such as yourself. So let's make a deal; you don't go all "Leon" on me and I won't ask about your mother.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="

" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


I've watched enough alien invasion movies to know that you may just be a MacGuffin, someone to lead my investigation astray while the real alien brings about wrack and ruin. Just because you're the most obvious choice doesn't mean you're out of the woods on this one, Arne! Hey, when you saw McCartney, was Linda there in the disguise of a musician? Because no one would have been able to point her out dressed like that.

Someone who doesn't like WKRP turns this into a Greek tragedy, Oedipus, because that means the mother-fucker don't know his comedy! Which actually makes sense. Not a lot of belly-laughs in Oedipus. Oh, hell... I brought up your mother! Don't shoot! Don't shoot!

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

now, bill, if you could just complete your lewis black impression by trembling in rage and bulging the veins in your forehead, that would be perfect!

where WAS i in the 70's? i think my favorite TV night was fridays, when they ran stuff like the rockford files, M*A*S*H, bob newhart, mary tyler moore in a killer bloc of TV. shanana was a favorite as well, and probably helped my signing. (i was a finalist for the role of oliver twist in the local HS play, but didn't have the experience or confidence to get it).

when i watched TV during the day time, it was probably various cartoons and old 60's series like wild wild west, star trek, brady bunch, gomer pyle's island and much, much more.

but i think most of the time i would just go outside and play... lots of stickball, army, and trying to kill myself on my go-cart. physically that made me feel a lot better than staying home and spending a lot of time watching TV, you know? remember that pleasant, tired feeling from spending the whole afternoon running around as a kid?

i'm certainly familiar with husky & starch, kotter, battlestar galactica, charlie's T & A show, the bionic man, wonder woman and all that stuff, i just didn't watch it much. i might have been pulling your leg a little bit earlier about misremembering things, but i made myself laugh when i typed out "the horseshank gang," etc. :)

how 'bout chu?

 

[Isaac Sauvage]

btw i just randomly bumped in to this. a comparison of gil elvgren's reference photos vs. the finished products:
http://imgur.com/gallery/SKKUt

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Now don’t go getting on your high horse with me, young man! I, too, stuck a ball with a stick and pedaled the bicycle. And I also made room for lots of TV-watching, radio listening and book-reading. Sounds to me like you just sucked at time-management. How about homework? Did you do that? That could be why I had the opportunity to more fully explore the polyester horizon of the 1970s. Oh, and sports. Did you spend an inordinate amount of time watching people poke at a ball with a stick? Taking televised sports out of a young'uns diet frees up hours of time. Plus, there was a lot of learning by osmosis. Most of the TV I enjoyed in the 70s was playing in the background while I went to town on my awesome-mega Legos collection. So, yeah, MASH, MTM, The Newhart Show and Carol Burnett were all on Saturdays (that’s right… not Fridays but Saturdays, ET!), but MASH was the only one I stopped to actually watch. The rest was just background noise that sublimated its way into my noggin while I was either constructing a three-foot tall rocket or building a rolly-polly prison. Hey, it ain’t easy being a Renaissance Man. You gotta put some elbow-grease into it! Then there was the night they first showed The Godfather on network TV. I must have been about 10 or 11. I started out playing on the floor of the den during the wedding. By the time Sonny was kicking the shit out of Carlo (which now looks pretty fake on Jimmy Caan's part) I was sitting next to my mom, fascinated... and hooked!

I had a tough relationship with ShaNaNa. I was already hip-deep in oldies with my American Graffitti soundtrack so, while ShaNaNa was performing some pretty good songs they just weren't as good as the originals I was already listening to. And the comedy sketches... well, they weren't exactly up to par with that crazy fucking sketch show that was on late-night Saturdays. Wish I could remember what it was called.

Oh, yeah... photo model or drawing, makes no nevermind to me... I'd bang either one and feel perfectly fine with my choice.

 

[LeeVanCleef]

Speaking of The Godfather on TV, my addiction led me to a truly rare event. NBC broadcast The Godfather: A Novel for Television that recut movies 1 and 2 so that it was presented chronologically... first the young Don Vito part (Deniro) followed by the mumbly Don Vito part (Brando) and wrapping it up with Al Pacino. This would seem to go against the director's vision, except the director aided in the project since he was running out of cash and coke to make Apocalypse Now. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Godfather_Saga

 

[sleepy]

Yeah. They stiffed you and me and everybody else with that "Son of a Buck!" version.
But I saw the real deal at the theater, on $1 night.

And I dunno. I can't find a picture of any of that stuff I mentioned. I shoulda' taken my camera with me.

Yeah, I watched those, and All in the Family. Else the movies on local stations that weren't so crazy with the censorship, and the adult programs on local PBS Ch 28.
Else, my game was to put on headphones and an appropriate album and watch tv to catch accidental comedic dialog. Like what some folks are doing with "Dark Side of the Moon" and "The Wizard of Oz". Back then, I bought a portable mono radio with TV Sound capability that I hooked into our hi-fi Quad system to get theater sound,
and sometimes I would tune to a different tv program in place of using an album.

Did you have "Bowling for Dollars" on your local tv? We had it hosted by Chick Hearn, the late voice of The Lakers.

Did you have "Dialing for Dollars" on your local tv? This was a daily phone contest show hosted by Alan Sloane. Mostly for desperate housewives looking for some easy money. Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention made their first tv appearance on this show in 1966, in full Mother's drag. Alan Sloane was the source for the Johnny Carson character of the host of "The Mighty Carson Art Players", the greasy pitchman host with the hair. Usually with Carol Wayne.