A while back I read the book Rin Tin Tin: The Life and The Legend by Susan Orlean (recommended). The book is a biography/ history of how one American soldier on the front lines of World War I found a stray dog, and how that dog became, literally, the biggest movie star in the world.
There's a possibly apocryphal story that at the first Academy Awards they had to re-do nominations and/ or voting because Rin Tin Tin, a skinny German Shepherd, came up as "Best Actor" (everyone kinda thought the awards were a bit absurd at the time). But what is true is that dog was also one of the biggest box office draws in Hollywood for a few years there before the movies learned how to talk.
While the original Rin Tin Tin passed and was buried in France, various other dogs took on the name and role, and through the 1950's, Rin Tin Tin was still a major pop culture fixture - a sort of family-friendly action star, now re-imagined for television as living on the frontier and starring in his own cavalry-themed Western.
Now... I'm not sure even my peers could tell you what breed Rin Tin Tin was with any certainty.
In addition to being very TL;DR, this post was difficult to write as this documentary covers horrific, very real deaths, and the aftermath, which - decades on - has no closure. There is a lot of human pain involved, a lack of justice and no easy answers.
In 1991, four girls were killed in the back of a yogurt shop in North Austin. Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, Jennifer Harbison and Sarah Harbison. The store was then burned.
I don't have any particular insight into the events other than knowing North Austin in the 80's and 90's. And my own opinions regarding several elements is probably bubbling over in the post.
Like all cities, Austin is home to some notable crimes.
My sophomore year of high school I was living in North Houston/ Spring. However, as a kid I spent six years living in Austin, from 1984 to 1990. Formative years - 4th through 9th grade.
I retained friendships despite the move, and one evening - more than a year after I'd moved away - a friend called. Without much prior chit-chat, she dove in and started telling me about four girls murdered in the Northcross area, a street of strip malls and a one-story shopping mall. I had never been in that yogurt store, but I knew the area, certainly.
Not to be too callous - but the murder rate of Austin was and is a fraction of what Houston sees any year., so at first I wasn't paying much attention. But she began describing what occurred, and she wasn't sensationalizing anything. The facts were enough, and required no dramatic flair. I didn't know if she was scared or sad or both. Or something else. But she was affected. And, of course, she was a teenage girl who worked in a shop, sometimes by herself.
And that's how I found out that four girls around my age had been murdered in the back of a yogurt shop in Austin.
The pic above is just the new pooch, Emmylou. No news there. I just like my dog, and y'all won't click if there's no picture.
It's not a secret that this here blog is used for many things, but that I've moved more personal stuff back to League of Melbotis. Should you wonder - nothing in particular personal is keeping me from blogging - it's just that this site is mostly movies, and I haven't watched many movies of late.
Why?
Well - I have a fairly recent new job and this last week was a crunch week. It wasn't miserable - I kind of liked it, honestly. But I also was tired and not in the mood for movies, exactly, at the end of each day. And my days were starting at 7:30 this week and ending around 9:30 PM. With large breaks for dinner, but nonetheless, stopping for a 2-hour movie wasn't really in the cards.
Comics
I've been reading comics again at a greater pace. This summer was DC's Summer of Superman which saw a lot of Superman material put out in celebration of the movie and to monetize casual fan interest. But we're also completionists, so this summer has not been awesome on my wallet.
Action Comics and Superman were already pretty good titles of late, but I feel like the titles are in a wave where now is a very good time to be reading Superman comics. We also have a new Supergirl title that is *very* promising, the confusing Power Girltitle is disappearing (I have a few issues, and... no thanks), and we're getting everything from original graphic novels to Treasury Editions (love those) to mini series and one-shots out right now. Include a Krypto The Superdog mini.
Sports
This summer I've also been watching a lot of Cubs baseball and WNBA, as mentioned over at the other blog. Cubs are gonna Cub, and after a remarkable first half of the season, we're now struggling, and will never catch the Brewers for the NLC title at this point (f'ing Brewers, man).
And the WNBA has been a trip to watch. There aren't that many teams, so I've been keeping up with a few, which means I've watched all the teams at least twice. Dallas has a player as good as Caitlin Clark. Paige Buckner, but it will take a while to build a team around her. Caitlin Clark has been injured all season - and I doubt she'll play again in 2025 - but the Indiana Fever have brought in reinforcements who have made them play-off eligible. But those players, too, have been victims of injury. Similarly, the Golden State Valkyries have been plagued with injury, taking out stars Kayla Thornton and Monique Billings. It's a rough season.
Oddly, I've kind of fallen into the New York Liberty camp. Did not see that coming, but here we are. I kind think they're the most fun to watch, as Sabrina Ionescu and Jonquel Jones rule, Natasha Cloud makes it seem effortless while absolutely delivering, and when she's healthy, Breanna Stewart is dynamite. But YMMV.
I have a few beefs with the WNBA as a league, from player exhaustion, to how flopping has made playing inside almost impossible, to horrendous reffing across the board (which has led to the flopping to no small degree), but overall - it's good basketball. And rather than pick a team, I've more or less just found favorites on several teams, and watch *a lot*. Up to 5 or 6 games per week.
We'll see what happens in the playoffs, but it's hard not to the Lynx are just going to crush everyone.
According to Superman lore, today is the birthday of Lois Lane, star reporter of The Daily Planet, former girlfriend, and now wife of Superman/ Clark Kent/ Kal-El. And all-around troublemaker/ kick-ass character.
It's no secret we're big fans of Lois here at The Signal Watch. She burst into comics on the sixth page of Action Comics #1, then going on a date with Clark where she was immediately kidnapped by a mobster - leading to her first meeting with The Man of Steel.
She's been a part of Superman's adventures since that moment, and continues to appear alongside him in his adventures in comics, radio, books, television, movies, video games and more.
This year has been dense with great takes on Lois, in the movies, TV and comics.
Loni Anderson, star of TV and movies, has passed at 79.
Anderson will be best remembered as Jennifer Marlowe, the beautiful, secret brains behind the radio station in the classic sit-com, WKRP in Cincinnati. The character essentially blew up the idea of the ditzy blonde, which was insanely prevalent in the 1970's and 80's.
I really don't know much about her other than that she was a major part of a favorite show of my youth, was on a private-eye show with Lynda Carter, and was one of the loves of Burt Reynolds.
The word that comes to mind, over and over, when watching Christmas at Sea (2025) over on the Hallmark Channel is "awkward".
The concept of a cruise where people get on a boat to share oxygen with working actors while also desperately celebrating secular adult Christmas a month early with hundreds of tipsy strangers is just kinda... awkward.
The folks who they recruit for the show? We'll get into that.
Trying to make something of a 3-day cruise? And try to film it and make it look natural when it so clearly is all staged and stage-managed? Awkward.
I've long withstood the slings and arrows of others' discomfort by throwing on Hallmark movies at Christmas - which led to me spending the first half of 2025 watching 70-odd Lacey Chabert movies. But for a few years I've been aware that the Hallmark company now has basically Christmas Cons in Kansas City each December over two separate weekends, and now there's a Christmas Cruise, where one can set sail with Hallmark devotees and a handful of stars from Hallmark movies.
Terry Bollea, better known by his wrestling nom de guerre "Hulk Hogan", has passed at 71.
Hogan, a consummate performer, helped the World Wrestling Federation go mainstream as the the WWF's programming found it's way across basic cable packages and onto late-night broadcast on NBC in the 1980's.
In a kayfabe world of heroes and heels, Hogan went from heel to hero, defeating multiple ethnically coded villains, like The Iron Sheik. He reigned supreme over the WWF, WWE and helped draw interest in wrestling to help it become the mega-industry it is today.
Through the 1980's, Hogan's persona was turned into a cartoon, Hulk Hogan's Rock'n'Wrestling - starring animated versions of Hogan and a clutch of other popular WWF wrestlers. Fun fact: Hogan's cartoon persona was voiced by TV star Brad Garrett.
There were dolls, figures, t-shirts and vitamins (the vitamins tasted awful).
As a kid, I wasn't really into wrestling but in 1989 a 14 year old me had $15 and accepted a last second invite to see WWF's second-tier when they came to town, and we had a snarky-teen ironic blast. So when Hogan came through in Spring 1990, I went with a bunch of buddies who were unironically enjoying wrestling. The episode we saw aired as April 28, 1990's Saturday Night's Main Event.
This is the Hogan match-up we saw. You may catch 1/2 second glimpses of me and my brother in the audience.
Hilariously, my brother was not planning to go and had no ticket, and we'd purchased floor tickets months before. Shortly after we arrived, I looked across the ring and there was my brother, standing with the homecoming queen. I was so confused - but I guess her dad had bought tickets and she knew Jason is up for whatever, and so there he was, Forrest Gumping his way through life.
My memory is that Hogan was obviously the best athlete and showman of the people we saw that night, and we saw errrbuddy. It was a long, long night as they recorded two or three shows worth of wrestling.
Prior to blowing up on TV, Hogan had done well in the ring and wound up as a minor villain in Rocky III. He would go onto have a TV show, Thunder in Paradise, and star in a series of very bad movies. And at the same time Ozzy was in The Osbournes, Hogan brought cameras into his house and started Hogan Knows Best. Which was canceled as the Hogan family kind of imploded.
In the years after, Hogan's life and career sort of spiraled. His wife left him for a guy who looked just like Hogan in his early prime. He was caught in a sex tape scandal. He became involved in ugly politics. I dunno.
It's unfortunate. For a while he was a curious everyman of an entertainer who appealed to kids and adults alike. The last decade and change, he's mostly been famous for being unpleasant. But at one point in my life, I owned an official Hulk Hogan bandana.
Ozzy Osbourne, musician, occasional provocateur and Gen-X's metal-dad, has passed at 76.
Osbourne has been ailing for years, and only a few weeks ago played his final show, which was widely watched and discussed. The line-up was full of star power, and the concert was scheduled to be Osbourne's final show before retreating from the public.
Osbourne's work with Black Sabbath and as a solo artist was enough to make him a major figure in rock, but he also was prone to outlandish antics, all of which will be rehashed over the next few days. And, then, he and his family were early Reality TV pioneers with The Osbournes on MTV. which recast the prince of darkness as a fun, befuddled dad.
But, man, Ozzy could sing. Everyone else is still playing catch up.
So, I'd never seen Gypsy before in any form. A snip of the Natalie Wood version was on once and we agreed we'd watch the full thing at some point and... we did not.
This film, Gypsy (1993), was a TV movie that aired in December of my Freshman year of college, so I am not shocked I was unaware of it existing. All I really knew about Gypsy was:
Jamie once played a small part in a community theatre version of the play
Broadway queen Audra McDonald is currently receiving rave reviews for her portrayal of Momma Rose.
It's sort of about the ultimate stage mom
It's the origin story of a real life stripper turned writer turned pop figure, Gypsy Rose Lee, who was a fixture in American culture from the 30's to the 60's
This TV movie was an adaptation of a Stephen Sondheim musical of the same name, which was originally on Broadway starting in the late 1950's and ran for some time. The musical, in turn, was based on Lee's own memoirs, which had been a popular book.
He was the voice actor for John Redcorn on King of the Hill, appeared on Parks and Rec, and was in many other productions.
I met Joss once somewhat by accident. I was attending a small swap meet/ convention, and I guess Joss was packing up his table to leave just as I showed up late. He saw that when we locked eyes I knew who he was due to what I assume was a stupid grin, and... as people so often do seeing an amiable lumbering fellow, shoved a box of stuff for me to carry. And so it was, I was briefly assisting Jonathan Joss on his way out to his car.
Anyway, I was so f'ing pleased to meet the guy, who cares about carrying a box or two?
Today I learned he was murdered by a former neighbor at the site of his former home. It seems to be a textbook hate crime, and I find myself helplessly furious that this happened. Hopefully justice will be swift and certain.
Watching Pee-Wee as Himself (2025) is a strange journey. There was a lot I didn't know up until when he joined The Groundlings, and then there was what I did know - including the two arrests. But in the end, the film kind of unravels a bit in a way that seems almost inevitable - surely director Matt Wolf laying the trail to let us know this is coming.
Beyond that, the doc faces the same problem that I found with the recent Steve Martin documentary. It's a lengthy film, it criss-crosses the years and draws connections, but the subject is so practiced at maintaining their inner-selves, and their privacy, that even at the end, you feel like you barely saw anything even after 3 hours.
Jumbles of photos from a childhood are interesting, but don't tell a story. Talking heads commenting on what they're already framing are useful, and provide color, but it feels very carefully managed - we're told it's carefully managed. We keep seeing the collections, but there's no discussion of what's in there, or why (and as a collector, I know there's a story behind everything). We see his parents, but they won't ever come out and discuss them beyond "his dad was macho and may not have liked Paul's lifestyle". His mother is a non-entity.
Both Paul Reubens and Steve Martin, who agreed to let themselves be known via documentary, still want to control, and so we get a look through a very narrow lens, which is better than nothing, but it feels more questions are raised than are satisfied. If you want to spend time with how Pee-Wee came to be - then we've got a great film for you. If you want to know Paul Reubens, that may not really happen.
Format: YouTube - someone posted this a bit and no one took it down
Viewing: First
Director: Colin Bucksey
blogger's note: if it seems like I'm blazing through the Chabert movies, I am. We're getting close with 7 non-Christmas movies left, and then 5 Christmas movies. It is a journey, y'all. But it is inspiring me for what I'll do next. And while I have enjoyed my time with Ms. Chabert, and I have plenty to say on it (which I'll sum up at the end), it also feels like I'm in the home stretch after 62 Chabert movies here since the Christmas season kicked into gear.
Man, made-for-cable TV movies of the 1990's are buckwild. It's easy to forget if you haven't seen one in a while.
When Secrets Kill (1997) is based on a Patricia MacDonald novel, and she's a prolific mystery author who does quite well. I have no idea how true to the book this is, but it is wacky.
The version I watched was commercial free and seemed like it was encoded from VHS tape, complete with bad picture and warbly, distorted audio, which made for some tough viewing. And, of course, the 1990's ever-present synth score.
I associate 1990's cable flicks with Lifetime Movies, which were such a weird mix of noir and domestic concerns aimed at an imagined audience of women (babysitters stealing babies, babysitters stealing husbands, babysitters stealing babies and husbands.). And, certainly, a Bio-Mom returning falls into this realm. But this aired across multiple channels, so I don't know who owned it.
Our plot: A couple (Gregory Harrison and Roxanne Hart) are mourning a stillbirth of a much-wanted baby. On Mother's Day, their adopted tween-daughter (Chabert) doesn't show up for brunch, and they head home as Mom doesn't want to celebrate anything. After a brief fight at home, Chabert's birth mother appears at the door without invitation. This is, of course, stressful.
George Wendt, actor most famous for his run as Norm on TV's Cheers, has passed.
For the duration of the show's 11 seasons, Wendt played barfly Norm Peterson - a guy somewhat beat up by life but who was quick to shrug it off with a quippy one-liner.
He also appeared in numerous films, memorably in Fletch and House. Post-Cheers, Wendt worked steadily, often doing single episodes of TV or brief appearances in movies. He would go on to play Santa at least four or five times, including in Santa Buddies and the A Colbert Christmas: The Greatest Gift of All - uncredited here for reasons I was unclear on. He was a wildly popular SNL host, and is why, today, we all still say "'da Bears".
It's hard to explain to today's kids what the world was like when everyone watched network TV, and of network TV shows, Cheers remained an absolute monster hit for its entire run. Norm was a common denominator for any conversation. Enough so that when someone licensed the idea of Cheers and put bars in airports that looked a bit like the set, they put a Norm dummy on a stool so you could sit next to him while you waited to make your connection to Duluth. Apparently that went poorly.*
I cannot imagine what he made over the years on residuals from re-runs, but for twenty years after the show aired, it was still on all the time.
Wendt was much beloved, and seemed an okay guy. We'll miss you, sir.
*Sadly, when I went into the Cheers bar in Minneapolis, the figures were no longer a feature.
I find it amazing that when we're discussing the best stuff on television, it's so often wildly depressing stuff or puzzle boxes we all know are going to have endings that do not deliver. I guess it feels good to feel bad.* And I like a good drama, too. But as my 9th grade English teacher, the great Ms. Fort said to me "life is tragedy or comedy. There is no in-between." Ms. Fort was a smart, smart lady, so I've always believed it.
And because I think comedy holds an equal place to tragedy, and I feel I learn as much from what makes me laugh as what makes me bummed out, I'm sad to see HBO's Danny McBride helmed series, The Righteous Gemstones, come to a close after four seasons.
At the same time, I understand- get out while the getting is good. The responsible thing to do is leave people wishing there had been more, while also properly closing things up.
On Sunday, The Righteous Gemstones finished its fourth and final season, closing the door on less than forty episodes and one of the funniest, most vulgar and profane shows I've seen, while somehow including stellar storytelling, genuine character moments, shockingly heartfelt beats and - underneath it all - somehow managing to sell religion and faith as an option better than any actual televangelist.
I can't recall if Steven told me to watch Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man first, or Jamie informed me we were going to watch it. But watch it we did.
I was a bit skeptical. Marvel puts out a new Spidey cartoon almost every year, it seems, and then they disappear without much notice. Someone is watching them, but whenever I dip in, it's hard for me to get into it. Not so with this show.
YFNSM is 10 episodes, and it's the first time in a long, long time I got the vibes from a Spider-Man property that felt truly like the Spider-Man I liked in the comics growing up, and then in the Marvel Essentials I read in my 20's. A working class kid of great intellect, a lot of imposter syndrome, and abilities that are as much curse as gift. It takes place in an American New York with all sorts of people intersecting and interacting, and while there are people with strange technology and weapons, Spider-Man is really the only one with inherent powers and a secret to keep.
However, this is a very alt-universe version of Peter Parker and Spider-Man.
wrapping it up at the end of the 50th Anniversary special
The past few weeks have felt like the lady in your office who declares "it's February and I celebrate my birthday... all... month... long..." And when you don't usually celebrate your own birthday, it can feel like a lot.
NBC has decided that Saturday Night Live's 50th Anniversary is at least as important as a general election, and so it's been non-stop hype for the anniversary and for the special that aired Sunday night (02/17/2025). Former cast members appeared on talk-shows, in the media, and in general. And it's been great seeing former stars of the show make appearances promoting the event and maybe reclaim some of their glory while talking to, say, Savannah Guthrie or Andy Cohen.
And I do think Saturday Night Live is an institution - maybe not the one demanding respect the way it's been insisting on for the past couple of months, but certainly SNL is the U.S.'s hub for comedy, a constant, there week after week. It's the mountain to reach for young comedians, and it's the launching off point for some brilliant careers, and the high point for others. It manages to comment upon culture, politics, and the zeitgeist of the moment in a way that even the late night talk shows rarely achieve with their monologues and bits. It's hard to know how many ideas and catch-phrases that are tucked away in all of our brains as easy reference points were sourced from SNL.
The first time I ever saw any SNL, I was in 4th grade (circa 1984), and it was the night we were literally moving into our house. My parents were assembling my bed and told us to watch TV while they quickly got furniture and blankets together. I was about 9.*
A lot of ink will be spilled over Lynch, and, in my opinion, rightfully so. Whether you liked or disliked Lynch's work, he carved a path through cinema and television that was so singular, discussions of movies that went deep would often bring up his work as if by force. Maybe that's because from Eraserhead to the weather reports he did from his home, Lynch's work was so clearly of David Lynch, it was impossible to ignore.
I have seen some of Lynch's work, but not all. Like a lot of people my age, I learned who he was through Twin Peaks, and in high school saw Fire Walk With Me, Blue Velvet and Wild at Heart. I've caught up with much of his work since, finally seeing The Elephant Man, Dune and more. In recent years I finally watched The Straight Story, which I highly recommend.
The dreams that Lynch put to screen have been and will be much imitated, but I hope they really just inspire the next wave - and I think they already have.
Like a lot of folks, I am deeply grateful for Twin Peaks hitting my life at just the right time, in both the early 90's and again a few years ago. I needed the wonder, mystery, tragedy and uncanny state that the show provided. I'm grateful for the world of nightmares, the story of true love of Wild at Heart, and the acknowledgement of the dark we keep at bay out here in the world that permeates all of his work. For the dreams within a dream that are Mulholland Drive.
His fearlessness as a filmmaker, and someone who told us that to love people and love the little things is what staves off the darkness seems so simple - but he knew it's not, and he showed us both.
I'll miss knowing that Lynch, as Gordon Cole, is out there telling people to change their hearts. We'll see you under the sycamore trees.
Curiously, not a superhero show. Or, if it is, worst superhero ever.
I'd not watched any of the Yellowstone stuff by Taylor Sheridan. By the time I heard it was watchable there were 23 seasons of it and a few spin-offs, and I couldn't be bothered to enter that particular multiverse.
But when I saw Billy Bob Thornton, John Hamm, Demi Moore and Robyn Lively would be on a show, I was curious. Then I saw it was about the energy industry and set in Texas, and my ears perked up. I have lived the vast majority of my life in Texas, and my father worked for companies that produced instrumentation and valves for oil rigs, derricks, etc.. Anyway - like a lot of folks who grew up around oil, I have a passing interest in the industry.
What's curious is that during my youth, Texas was considered pumped dry. There were oil fields, sure... but the fracking and all that came along later. By the time I was in high school in the early 90's, if you saw an oil jack going, it was always worthy of comment. and, yes, pump jacks could be anywhere and were.
Someone figured out the fields were *not* dry, and fracking eventually happened, especially out in West Texas. And when I travelled out that way for work, all of a sudden the hotels were full of guys off a hard shift, getting rest, uniformly polite but eyeing me with suspicion as I went by in my tie.
Oil wise, things are definitely cooking in Texas.
Landman is, basically, a soap opera that sure feels like a modern spin on the dramas we used to watch, like Dallas. There's a wide array of characters, oil is at the center of it, but only some are involved directly with the business. And because it's TV, it's the lives and loves of those working around oil (read: men) that drive the show, and the women who love them.
No, but really. I can't begin to wrap my head around the fact that this is how James Gunn's DC Studios Universe is starting. Wildly violent, gross, Rated-R just for language, full of nudity, sex and swearing... My suspicion is that he pitched this to WB during his problems with Marvel/ Ike Perlmutter. Maybe he pitched this alongside Peacemaker and they said "well, that sounds like $30 million an episode or 250 million as a movie. But as a TV show cartoon...".
Honestly, I don't care. But, in theory, Creature Commandos does *count* as part of the new shared DCSU. Which is wild, because this thing is Rated a hard R, is grotesque, violent, morbid and hilarious. And, because it's Gunn, and he understands monsters - it's also oddly moving.
It's been a wild ride with two of my favorite fictional people, Superman and Lois Lane, over there on the CW.
Ever since DC television introduced Tyler Hoechlin as Superman on their Supergirl show, and eventually brought in Elizabeth "Bitsie" Tulloch as Lois, CW kinda/ sorta had to figure out how to make a Superman television program. And, indeed they did.
As DC wrapped up the "Arrowverse", it was decreed that the coming Superman and Lois show would have nothing to do with that universe, and we'd see a stand-alone Superman. No Arrow, Supergirl, Black Lightning, Flash, etc...* For the time being, it would be pure Superman. And with comics going back to the 1930's, that was plenty, for me.
Ownership of the CW changed mid-production for the show, and I think it did have some impact on DC's willingness to bother with the CW. I won't go into the politics, but there is no way it didn't have an impact on the show as Nat was portrayed for the first time in media as straight, and the bisexual storyline for another character was never mentioned again.
The clock was ticking on the show once WB put all of DC's motion-media in James Gunn's hands, and *everything* (minus The Batman and the flop that was Joker 2) would be part of a coherent, single universe. TV, cartoons, movies, flipbooks... I can understand WB's desire to give Gunn a clean slate to work with as he brings his vision for Superman to the big screen, and there were always going to be casualties of things I liked.**
