dimland radio 7-20-19 show notes

Those Live Action Superhero TV Shows Of The 70s Were Lame

 
Sure, Lou looks impressive, but that wig!

I was accused of being a millennial last week on the Facebook. On a comic book fan group page someone posted the meme you see above. That led to this exchange…
 
See? I can be polite.
Even as a child, when I watched The Incredible Hulk, starring Bill Bixby as Dr. David Banner, I thought it was lame. I was disappointed that the big green monster was so weak and that wig was so crappy. The Hulk of the comic book could leap through the air for miles and he could topple entire buildings. One time he did this…

 


Ferrigno’s Hulk, muscular as he was, was a wimp by comparison. And the comic book Hulk could talk. No, he wasn’t a brilliant conversationalist, but he wasn’t just a growling, raging brute. CGI would have helped that. And that wig was horrible.

I talked about how formulaic the show was and that same basic formula was used in other TV series. Series such as The Fugitive and Kung Fu. I never watched The Fugitive, but I did like Kung Fu’s exploring of Taoist philosophy.

There were other super-hero shows. There was the horrible Amazing Spider-Man and very lame Captain America. DC Comics had its representative in the 70s with Wonder Woman. That show was only barely watchable mainly due to Lynda Carter running in slow motion. I know. Patriarchy.

But they were all disappointed and really could have been improved with some good CGI. And better writing. And better wig making.

I mean, the Hulk’s wig was truly awful.
Old Faces, FaceApp, And The Russkies

Ah, such character.
I knew about the supposed Russian dangers of downloading the so-hot-right-now application FaceApp, but I did it anyway. (As you can see above.) I was curious to see how I might look at 75 or so, I’m guessing.

The app is pretty impressive in how it produces a very natural and, as far as I can tell, accurate old face. Time will time, I guess.

And the worries of Russian underhandedness, which arose soon after the explosion of old faces appearing on social media, may be groundless.
 
Whoa! Even more character!    
Before I did the FaceApp experiment, I had tried an inferior face-aging applications. It made me look marginally older, but it wasn’t as well done as the Russian face-aging magic.
 
Somewhat old man Fitzsimons shouts, “Get off my lawn!”
A Dimland Radio Pedantic Moment: The Dark Knight (2008)

Actually, there were two moments of which to be pedantic involving Christopher Nolan’s second installment in his Batman trilogy, The Dark Knight.
 
The homage in The Dark Knight to the original TV series.
The first is a school bus crashing into the front of a bank in the middle of the day and it gets no notice by the passersby. I’m sure Gothamites are pretty jaded, but no one stops to look at a school bus crashed into a bank? They just walk on by?

The second moment was provided by a friend of mine, Tim, who noticed an inconsistency in motivation of the aforementioned Gothamites. Midway through the film, at least two people (one a cop) are willing to kill the Wayne Enterprises accountant the Joker said if killed in the next 60 minutes he wouldn’t blow up a hospital. However, during the film’s climax a ferry boat full of law-abiding citizens can’t bring themselves to use the detonator, provided by the Joker, to blow up a second ferry filled with convicted criminals. Doing so would save their own lives, some of them had their children with them, but, no, they couldn’t do it.

Seems just a little contradictory when compared to that earlier sequence.

A Man Or Man?

Did he say “a man” or just “man” when he uttered one of the most significant statements in human history? Neil Armstrong says he said a man, but it doesn’t sound that way.

For 50 years now, we’ve wondered about it. If he hadn’t managed to get that “a” in the statement, it makes what he says redundant in that “man” would be the same as “mankind”. Was he nervous? He was stepping on another world approximately 250,000 miles from earth, nervousness would be understandable.


We might never know for sure, but, if he didn’t say “a man”, we still know what he meant.

Moon Landing And Inconsistent Conspiracy Theories

It’s the 50th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Mission, which successfully landed men on the moon and brought them home alive. It is possibly the human species’ greatest achievement. And, of course, there are those who don’t believe we did it. They think the thousands and thousands of people involved in faking the mission have managed to keep their mouths shut all these years. That includes UFO conspiracy theorists’ favorite astronaut Edgar Mitchell. It also includes the Russians, who surely would have blown the whistle if they had any doubts to the veracity of the 1969 event.

But conspiracy theorists persist. Now they are claiming the current moon probe, sent up by China, now exploring the far side of the moon shows that the Apollo missions were faked. China’s mission is showing the surface of the moon is brown, not grey! Oh, my lack of god, no! NOOOOOO!

Sigh.

I don’t know why the moon appears brown in the photos from the Chinese moon mission. Image processing? The moon is brown on the far side? Someone hoaxed the brown color? That’s not the moon’s surface? I don’t know.

But scroll down that page on that, as far as I can tell, not satirical conspiracy website and you will see a contradictory conspiracy theory that there are, and have been for decades, colonies secretly built by humans on Mars and the moon! And many of the 8 million children who go missing every year are in the colonies doing slave labor!

Sigh.

So the theories contradict each other, as long as they go against accepted knowledge it’s OK.

Cool Thing: 50th Anniversary of Apollo Mission 
 
My homage drawing.

Don’t listen to the conspiracies. Humans did it. We landed men on the moon. And that is way cool!

Music heard on the show…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram‘ by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: ‘Only In America‘ by Naked Raygun & ‘Remote Control‘ by Red Guitar
Second ad break bumpers: ‘Girls On Film‘ by Duran Duran & ‘I Don’t Know Why You Don’t Want Me‘ by Rosanne Cash
Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook‘ by $5 Fiddle

That’s it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.


You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

Images used under Fair Use.

dimland radio 7-13-19 show notes

Peptiva Ad And Poor Advice

There is an ad for the dietary supplement running on the TV, in which a woman is texting her friend about always suffering bad stomach problems when she eats. Her friend gives advice, but make good advice.

My talk included me touching on probiotics, complimentary and alternative medicine, integrative medicine, Dr. David Katz (who developed Peptiva), and actual medicine. I maintain there is no such thing as alternative medicine. If it works, it’s medicine.
Cool Thing #1: Late Night With David Letterman

I wrote about Late Night with David Letterman on Warehouse Find, the official blog of Nostalgia Zone, this week (Click here.) Well, there are lots of videos for he watching on the YouTube. And this link will take to the very first episode of Late Night. And that’s a cool thing.

Cool Thing #2: Gang Of Four’s “Appearance “On Late Night


As I watched that first episode of Late Night, I spotted something pretty cool. You can see it it the image above. It’s a screen capture from that first show. It shows a wall in New York city with several bills posted on it. There are a few for Late Night, one for Miles Davis, and a few for post punk legends Gang Of Four (there are two full posters in the lower right).
 
So, it can be said Gang Of Four appeared on Letterman’s ground-breaking show. True, they have appeared of Dave’s CBS talk show the Late Show, but that show wasn’t the same thing. Late Night was cool and so was this “appearance”.
 
A Lame Attempt To Blackmail Me
 
I received a scam email from someone attempting to get me to send them $500 in bitcoin to them or else they would release video of me “enjoying” some online porn. I was given 50 hours to comply, otherwise everyone on my email list would be sent that video.
 
I didn’t comply. It’s far more than 50 hours. Have you seen such a video yet?
 

Pedantic Moment: Geico Ads
 

Geico Insurance has lots of ads. Their advertising budget must be huge to support so many different ad campaigns. One campaign caters to baseball rivalries and two of the ads bring out the pendant in me…
 
The ad featuring rival fans of the Washington Nationals and the New York Mets has a landscaper (the Mets fans) sculpting “Go Mets” into the lawn of a Nats fan. I think the landscaper will soon be looking for a new job.
 
Another ad has an Atlanta Braves fan choosing to sit between to crying babies rather than sit next to a Philadelphia Phillies fan. The things is the babies are obviously twins and the man and woman holding the fussy ones are obviously together, so why the empty seat between them?

Cool Thing #3: STEVE
 
“Steve is looking good tonight.”
There is an unusual atmospheric condition related to the auroras. Amateur scientists/astronomers have helped the pros figure out what this phenomenon might be. Occasionally, a single thin purple ribbon of light can be seen in the night sky. The amateurs took to called it Steve. Professional astronomers used the inform the amateurs gathered to help figure out what was going on.
 
It’s not completely settled but they are close. The pros decided to call the phenomenon Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement or STEVE. Cool!
 
Learn more here and here.

Music heard on the show…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram‘ by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: ‘One Step Ahead‘ by Split Enz & ‘Baby Have Some Faith‘ by 54-40
Second ad break bumpers: ‘Eye In The Sky‘ by The Alan Parsons Project & ‘Face The Face‘ by Pete Townshend
Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook‘ by $5 Fiddle

That’s it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.


You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

Images used under Fair Use.

dimland radio 7-6-19 show notes

More Talk About My California Trip

Yep. There were a few things that I didn’t get to last show. I know, I know. But at least there will be less photos this week. That’s something. Right?

Corrections

There were a couple misspeaks on my part last week. Placerville is east, not west, of Sacramento. And Robyn is Douglas’s, not Michael’s, girlfriend’s friend.

Some People Have All The Luck

Just a few weeks before I received my jury duty notice earlier this year, a co-worker received his notice. It would be his first time. I helped him apply for a postponement, which he was granted.
 
His new start date for his week of jury duty was July 1st.
 
Turns out. He didn’t have to serve a single day and Ramsey County still considered his jury duty service complete. Lucky duck.
 
I explain on the show.
 
Our Fourth Of July Tradition
 
A spontaneous suggestion one Fourth of July a few years ago has led to this unusual tradition in our household: My wife paints my toenails. This year the color is pink.
 
Why, yes, that is a Farrah mug sitting next to the TV.
The photo is as close to naked as world will ever see me.
 

Trump’s Verbal Gaff, Social Media’s Glee, And A Facebook Friend’s Unintentionally Ironic Posting
 

So Fearless Leader arranged a Fourth of July celebration at which America unzipped its pants in order to take its weapons out to show the world how tough it is. Too many it was a pointlessly expensive gesture. However, it did provide social media with plenty of joy at the fact our president misspoke during his speech. He stated that there airports during the American Revolution that need to be taken by our army.
 
Social media loved the mistake and made as much fun of it as it could. Some of it was pretty clever.
 
I have a Facebook who has been a very vocal proponent of the man-child in the Oval Office and a vociferous critic of Democrats and liberals on her social media platform. The day after the president made his gaff, during the firestorm of humorous responses to that gaff, she stepped right smack in the middle of the Irony Zone. She posted a link to an article critical of Americans for forgetting the history of their country.
 
Do you see the irony?
 
I did.

I couldn’t resist. I had to comment.

Cool Thing #1: Minnesota Twins’ Home Run Record

The Twins just broke the record of most home runs hit before the All Star Break. The old record, held by the Hated Yankees, was 161. The Twins have reset that at 165 with one more game to be played before the break.
 
In your face, Hated Yankees!

For One Afternoon During My California Trip, I Wore A Blue Shirt

Michael wearing Dodger blue and a Twins button.
In order to get my friend Michael to wear the 1987 World Series Champions Minnesota Twins button while we made our second visit to downtown Placerville I agreed to wear a LA Dodgers item. Michael had me wear a Dodgers shirt.
 
Dodger blue, a Lincoln Highway marker, and me.
I wore it without any worry of reprisals. Maybe I should have worried though. We were in San Francisco Giants territory. However, I received no grief from any Giants fans. In fact, I did receive a “Go, Blue!” cheer. Go figure.
 
Speaking Of The San Francisco Giants

As I said, while I was in California I was in Giants territory. And Michael told us we would be seeing ugly orange with black trim Subarus all over the place, while we were in Placerville.
 
But the only one I saw while there was the one Michael pointed out to us while we were heading back to his place after our Sunday afternoon trip into town. And I barely caught a glimpse of it.
 
Damn! That really is orange.
However! When I got back to Minnesota I saw two in the week or so since I’d been home. That’s twice as many as I saw in California. One was parked behind Nostalgia Zone and I parked right next to it. The other was spotted parked on a side street near my home. There’s a neat coincidence about the name of that side street and that most despised car.
 
You’ll have to listen to hear the coincidence. I can’t give everything away on the blog.
 
Cool Thing #2: How To Tell A $100 Bill Is Genuine

The current American $100 bill has several ways to check that it is authentic. Holograms, security strips, watermarks, etc have been employed by the US Treasury to protect against counterfeiting. But there was one other security measure of which I had no idea.
 
Click here to see the security measures, including the one that was new to me. Pretty cool.
 
Some Silliness In Placerville

While enjoying the Placerville Brewfest, I spotted a couple moments of bullshit. One was a booth taking space away from another brewery or food vendor in order to give it to a cold reader. The picture will clue you in on how I felt about a “fortune teller” being included in the brewfest.
 
“Not for me.”
A more permanent display of bullshit is a store peddling nonsense. The store is called Vibes Up and its website is a smorgasbord of pseudoscientific gobbledygook. Just check out the screen captures. (I hope they are readable.)
 

Ugh!

 
 

Music heard on the show…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram‘ by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: ‘Electric Lash‘ by The Church & ‘Escape From The Planet Earth‘ by The Alleycats
Second ad break bumpers: ‘Debaser‘ by Pixies & ‘Tears‘ by The Chameleons UK
Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook‘ by $5 Fiddle

That’s it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.


You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

Images used under Fair Use.

dimland radio 6-29-19 show notes

A Trip To California

This is going to be a different kind of blog for me. It’s a photo blog. This will work best if you look at the images as you listen to the show. 

 
Cool Thing #1: Flying!
Cool Thing #2: Lizard! (It’s on top of the retaining wall that is farther back. Right edge with the dark background. It looks like a little alligator.)
A fun bunch! Day trip to Lake Tahoe.
Lake Tahoe. Now that’s a beautiful lake!
Michael on the left, Douglas on the right.
Me and the lake.
The group heading on a little nature hike.
These ladies walked away with an interesting anecdote.





The Beacon restaurant on the shore of Lake Tahoe.
The scourge of Canada geese. Even here.
The shirt I wore for Brewfest. This was given to me by Douglas and the design is one of his.  
We’re ready to sample the brews!
The bell tower dressed for the Brewfest.
Sampling a brew.
Cool Thing #3: A Lincoln Highway marker.
A meta moment!
The meeting of the beer hats.
“I’m done!”
See? You could easily spot Michael in a crowd.
Cool Thing #4: Praying Mantis
Inside the Bookery.
The Bookery’s restroom.
Placerville Hardware
Found my favorite licorice. Shame about the anti-GMO bullshit.
Pizzas on my last day in California.
One last stop: In-N-Out

Michael and his better half Missy – Fantastic hosts!
 
Music heard on the show…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram‘ by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: ‘(The) One I Love‘ by REM & ‘No Language In Our Lungs‘ by XTC
Second ad break bumpers: ‘Terror Couple Kill Colonel‘ by Bauhaus & ‘North Country Girl‘ by Pete Townshend
Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook‘ by $5 Fiddle

That’s it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.


You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

Images used under Fair Use.

dimland radio 6-15-19 show notes

All Quiet In The Neighborhood

It’s been quiet. Maybe a little too quiet.

Going To California

There won’t be a new show next week, because I’m going to California to meet up with a couple friends I’ve only known online. It should be interesting and a lot of fun.
 
Unless they turn out to be serial killers. Then it would really be interesting.

Weren’t The Confederates The Bad Guys?


I recently watched the 1940 Western Virginia City. It stars Errol Flynn, Randolph Scott, Miriam Hopkins, and Humphrey Bogart. There’s a decided sympathy shown to the Rebels who were trying to get $5 million in gold from Nevada to the Confederacy, so the the War for States Rights could continue.
 
Yep, the War for States Rights. States Rights to keep slaves
 
The film even starts with a dedication to the Rebels. That indicated to me that this movie might have been based on actual events, but I couldn’t find anything that confirmed this story was true.
 
Why would Hollywood show sympathy for the South when it comes to the Civil War? There was The Birth Of A Nation (1915), The General (1926), Gone With The Wind (1939), and other films that all overlooked the fact the war was about whether or not rich Americans could own people. I guess the studios didn’t want to alienate Southern movie-goers.
 
There’s also a horse falling stunt that made me recoil. Errol Flynn’s character, a Union captain, is being chased on horseback by a group of Confederates, when he comes to quite a steep drop. It’s almost a cliff it’s so steep. He decides to attempt the decent, but midway down the horse he’s riding starts falling head over hooves.
 
It was an actual horse doing the roll. It’s very difficult to watch, but the horse appears to survive the fall as it immediately jumps up on its “feet”. Yikes!
 
During my talk on my shock at the treatment of that horse, I was reminded of The Godfather and the infamous scene with a horse’s head (a real horse’s head) being left in the bed of a Hollywood studio executive. That’s shocking enough as well, but what’s even more shocking is that I am now older the actor Abe Vigoda was when he played to role of Salvatore Tessio! How is this possible?!
 
Abe at 50.

 

Me at 54.
 
The Valsalva Maneuver
 
No, that’s not what they call that horse stunt in Virginia City. It’s something one can do to equalize the pressure in ones ear as one is flying in a pressurized cabin.
 
I haven’t flown very often, but the two occasions I traveled by air I suffered quite the sharp pain in my ears. The first time it happened I marveled at the prospect that everyone who flys experiences such pain, but they all seem to take it in stride.
 
Well, that can’t be. I learned that some air travelers are susceptible to this discomfort and, obviously, I’m one of them. So, when you fly chew gum, yawn and swallow, or try the Valsalva Maneuver when you feel your ears plugging up, especially as your flight descends.
 

The New Documentary Always Amazing And The Justification Of Belief In Magic
 

A brand new documentary that follows the life, career, and friendships of magician/comedian The Amazing Johnathan is available on YouTube. It’s an entertaining and truly touching look at this nutty performer’s rise in the world of entertainment, an unexpected friendship, and dealing with a terminal diagnosis. It is well worth a watch.
 
Something is said in an outtake interview clip played during the end credits that sparked a topic for the show. It’s the notion that those who want to believe magic is real cling to in their justification of their belief. They point to all that is still unknown to science. It’s in there, they believe, that magic could exist.
 
That might be true, but, so far, of all the things that were unknown and are now known because of science, none can be attributed to magic. To quote Tim Minchin: “Throughout history, every mystery ever solved, has turned out to be not magic.”
 
Here’s Tim Minchin’s Storm and a bit on magical thinking and the media’s obsession with balance by Dara O’Briain. Both were referred to in my talk.

A Dimland Radio Science Zero: WHO

No, not the greatest rock band ever, but the World Health Organization. Normally, the WHO would be consider a Dimland Radio Science Hero for all the good work it does to fight the spread of disease and the keep the world population in good health, but recently the WHO has given promoters of alternative medicine something to point at as legitimizing their use of medicine by magic.
 
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is being included in the WHO’s medical diagnostic guidelines. TCM is not science-based. It medicine by magic. And it’s inclusion in the guidelines is, according to Dr. Steven Novella, ” a full-throated endorsement of pseudoscience in medicine.”
 
For that, the WHO is a Dimland Radio Science Zero.
 
Learn more here.
 
One Creepy But Cool Thing: The Dancing Pig (1907)


Little is known about this short film from 112 years ago. It’s called The Dancing Pig and it shows a young woman being harassed by a man-sized pig in top hat and tails. Then the young woman turns the tables on the pig and gets it to dance with her. The film lasts about two minutes and ends with a closeup of the pig making faces and sticking out its tongue.

 
It’s pretty creepy, but it’s also pretty cool. The image of the pig smiling has been grabbed as a image from popular internet memes, so it might be familiar to you.

Music heard on the show…

Dimland Radio opening theme song: ‘Ram‘ by The Yoleus 
First ad break bumpers: ‘Highwayman‘ by The Highwaymen & ‘Talking Doll‘ by The Screaming Blue Messiahs
Second ad break bumpers: ‘In Between Days‘ by The Cure & ‘Destination Unknown‘ by Missing Persons
Closing song: ‘Angler’s Treble Hook‘ by $5 Fiddle

That’s it! See you next Saturday night for Dimland Radio 11 Central, midnight Eastern on www.ztalkradio.com you can also download my show from the z talk show archives page. You can email your questions and comments to drdim@dimland.com

Please subscribe on iTunes! Just search for Dimland Radio in the podcast section. And if you could leave a good rating and a positive review it would be awesome.


You can also go to my CafePress store and buy stuff with my artwork on it and have me do a portrait for you if you like. Find out more here and here.

Images used under Fair Use.