Atari "Space Invaders" Championship Tournament
Everything old is new again. Likely there are dads here of new generations of gamers.
Atari’s National Space Invaders Championship in 1980
Back Bay Boston Before The Pru
Back before there was a Prudential Center on Boylston Street in Back Bay Boston (and the Massachusetts Turnpike running underneath it), there were rail yards. Lots and lots of rail yards.
Knowing When
After the Primary debates ceased to be fun anymore and I suspended my political campaign, I've been getting more and more excited about the upcoming NFL season.
Outside of rooting for my fellow Penn State alum Christian Hackenberg to get drafted by a decent team tonight, I care as much about the NFL Draft as I do about fantasy football. Which is zero.
With the almost-certainty of Jimmy Garoppolo playing quarterback for the New England Patriots while Tom Brady serves his four game regular season suspension, I can't wait for the new season to start.
NFL training camps will open in about ninety days, just after the Republican convention in Cleveland. TB12 will only have played his first couple of regular season games and we will have a good idea of whether or not this will be the "Fuck You" season that Patriots fans had hoped for last year, one that ends with another Super Bowl victory.
And not long after Brady returns from his suspension, we will finally know whether the next President of the United States will be Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
As it was for me during the late 1960s, I am once again blessed to live in interesting times.
Rhyming History
History may not repeat itself, but it does rhyme when the topic turns to TV careers and Republican politicians. From 1956 to 1962, Ronald Reagan hosted General Electric Theater and had his image beamed into more than 20 million homes every week. The successful run on TV gave Reagan a connection with American voters that his movie career never could. By the time Reagan ran for governor of California in 1966, the GE host was a household name. Reagan’s landslide victory shocked elites in and out of the political class and launched a conservative revolution that would last a generation.
50 years later, that revolution is being undone by another TV star who has been underestimated by elites while being elevated by working-class voters. The question now is whether Trump can prove his critics wrong again by winning the nomination and then defeating Hillary Clinton in the fall. The odds may be long for the New York developer and reality star, but no longer than the ones he faced last June when he first sought the GOP nomination.
[Joe Scarborough in The Washington Post today.]
What Ever Happened To Spanking?
Somehow, I don't think scenes like these from a classic Hollywood spank reel stand much of a chance of being included in contemporary movies, or television. Of course, there is always Fifty Shades Of Grey...
Welcome Back, Tyrion
[To Cersei] "You love your children. It's your one redeeming quality - that and your cheekbones."
Sunday Drive
I think it's safe to say it's Spring. I think. Let's go for a drive...
Point Taken: Watching The Sausage Being Made
I had an opportunity to be in the audience for the taping of the debut of "Point Taken", a new weekly PBS television show produced by WGBH in Boston, which promises to deliver reasonable dialogue about current events without all the noise. If you've been following my blog, you know by now that I am all about that, so I was pleased to accept the invitation.
I'm always interested in seeing how the sausage is made, and the invitation required only that the audience be prepared to sit still for at least two hours (which meant that bathroom breaks or early departures were out of the question). I can do that.
The premiere show, edited down to thirty minutes, was airing at 11 PM that same night, and since a lot of things were at stake here - like potential or continuing sponsorships, and syndication - the producers were under a considerable amount of pressure (and a hard deadline) to get it right.
Left to right: Monica Mehta, Tom Shattuck, Carlos Watson (host), Matt Welch, and Isabel Wilkerson
We (the audience) were seated very specifically by some optics-algorithm I was unable to comprehend. Once seated, we were directed to practice laughter and applause by the stage manager, as other production folks got their camera shots and angles just right. This all took the better part of an hour, until the director, hidden away in another room, was satisfied. The host, Carlos Watson, appeared, the guests were seated and introduced, and after a couple of false starts and re-takes, the show began. When I watched it later on television at home, the production was flawless.
The question on the table was "Is the American Dream dead or alive?" Guests Monica Mehta and Tom Shattuck argued Yes, and Matt Welch and Isabel Wilkerson argued No. And Carlos Watson kept them (and the thirty minute show) on track and in focus. The audience voted prior to and after the show, using clickers, and it looked like the "No" vote was larger than it had been prior to the show. So Monica and Tom prevailed. Good dialogue, among four bright in-touch people who know better than to shout over one another
I recommend "Point Taken" to you - it's available to stream here.
And look for me - I'm the tall guy with the white hair in the second row, on the right hand side of your screen. For about two seconds.