TV Series of the Week

“Ironside” (1967-1975)

From that era when TV producers labored in vain to make shows all hip and with it.
Back story: After detective Robert Ironside (Raymond Burr) is paralyzed by a sniper bullet, he becomes a wheelchair-bound “consultant” for the San Francisco P.D.. Today he wouldn’t be called handicapped; he would head up the Differently Abled division.

Anyway, dig the happening club in this episode where the groovy people make like beatniks.
Dig also the jump edits, the wild angles, the Technicolor.
Every element is as vulgar and off point as that notorious LSD lecture
episode from “Dragnet.”
Wait, that’s Tiny Tim descending the stairs. He’ll do a number after the lady with the cymbals concludes her Edith Sitwell impersonation.
Ironside is appropriately baffled, making WTF? grimaces and rendering any effort to make the show hip a complete failure.
But it was cool in its own desperate way, thanks to non sequitur guest stars each week
(horror babe Ingrid Pitt!  pop idol David Cassidy!) and Quincy Jones’ wigged
out synthesizer score, composed for the show’s wild intro.

Movie Haiku of the Week:  Taxi Driver

Is it Iris or

Betsy I see when I write:

They. Cannot. Touch. Her.

I guess what we loved most about the original Hi-Fi and stereo system manufacturers—all the high-end outfits at least—was the Help Desk. If your tape deck sounded muddy or the frequency response just wasn’t all there, one of the girls could talk you through the steps for cleaning the head. Tubes not warming up? They knew the cause of that. These gals were a wealth of knowledge—woofers, tweeters, that sort of thing.

You ain’t no punk you punk! Ya wanna talk about the real junk? “Garbageman,” The Cramps

Nonetheless, I can’t help thinking that Lux Interior might have held some affection for photographer Karlheinz Weinberger’s “rebel youth.” These confused kids filtered American underground culture through a Swiss lens, circa early 1960s, and Weinberger was there to document it. The rebel dandies displayed an aesthetic located at the intersection where Tom of Finland, Midnight Cowboy, Hell’s Angels, and the Beatles (before they were the Beatles) experience a spectacular pile-up.

Nothing showing tonight.

Those two battle cruisers are making steam toward harm’s way, but there is a silver lining to some extent. Just imagine the damage this big devil could do if he were anatomically correct.

Speaking of Instagram, has anyone else tried Mega Instagram? I love it. Rather than merely altering colors, the filter actually converts the entire image to a past era. This shot of my local Target store’s toy department wound up as Woolworth, circa 1960. How do they do that?

I learned something today while taking some shots of the street outside my office. Turns out the reason Instagram photos are square is because, in the “panoramic” setting, the filter renders each photo way too retro/vintage. Probably just a glitch they will fix down the road.

Abruptly all the palm trees rose like parasols,
and green was the green that green to greenness gave.
Dimension crumbled, Time laid down its walls;
and all the world went wading toward the wave.

“Abruptly All the Palm Trees”  William Jay Smith

Image source: Wish I knew; I discovered it on Tumblr yesterday, and can’t find it now.

For those enamored of days gone by, Tumblr is a vast library of professional photos and illustrations that can capture various eras. But sometimes the indescribable immediacy of a home snapshot surpasses all of that. Here’s 1961, delivered to your doorstep.

source: Shorpy