Rob Reiner Merges With The Infinite

I hate this.  I hate writing this.  

No one deserves to die the way Rob Reiner and his wife Michele passed.  

Most of the time, I'm able to write a simple "they were beloved, and will be missed, here's why this site is memorializing them", but today, on this one, the cruelty of what happened is a bit overwhelming.

We all know Rob Reiner, and kind of wish we had met him.  He seemed absolutely aces, and he made so damn many good movies.  Hell, he'd be a legend just for his few scenes as an actor just in The Wolf of Wall Street, but as a director and producer, he put out some of our favorite movies.  

May the Reiner's family know what the work Rob Reiner did meant a lot to so very many people, and that Rob and Michele will be mourned.

Dick Van Dyke at 100

 

Dick Van Dyke is now 100.  What a delight to do a "at 100" post and have the person still with us and in terrific shape.

He's easily one of the earliest actors whose names I knew who wasn't a Star War.  As a kid, I remember being taken to a re-release of Mary Poppins, and it was part of how I fell in love with movies.  And, of course, reruns of The Dick Van Dyke Show played well through when I was a young adult - when I feel like I finally got the appeal (no, not just Mary Tyler Moore - it's really funny and now I kind of want to watch it again).  Not bad for a show that ended 9 years before I was born.

Later, I'd see him in Bye Bye Birdie and other films.  The man is an entertainer.  

Here's to lasting a century and somehow remaining universally beloved.  You have a lot of choices of how you want people to think of you at 100, if you're remembered at all.  This may be the absolute best case of all.

Netflix Watch: Stranger Things - Season 5 Part 1

I am sure my observations are in no way unique, but here we go.

I don't think Stranger Things is for me.

SPOILERS

Three years between seasons is way too long for serial television.  The problem is not unique to this show, and Stranger Things has already taken it on the chops a bit for trying to suggest that the first season to this season took place within 4-5 years when our kid actors are now old enough to run for Congress.

The bigger problem with the delay between seasons is that, at best, I'm a casual viewer.  I'm not a person who often rewatches serialized TV, and with multiple years between seasons I have a very hard time remembering what previously happened unless prompted very specifically.  And even then, it only kind of comes back.  

But, really, the show became something I was less interested in altogether after Season 2.

Netflix Watch: Death By Lightning

One of my favorite writers is Candice Millard.  With a relatively modest output compared to other popular historical writers, I would gladly put every one of her books in your hand.

A bit like Eddie Muller over at Noir Alley, Millard manages to humanize and make her subjects deeply understandable despite the gulf of time and geography.  A while back, Jennifer R rec'd, Destiny of the Republic to me, which made me a true Millard fanboy and, these days, I'll happily pre-order any new Millard book when I hear it's available. 

Shockingly, her first book, River of Doubt, is not the book which has received an adaptation.  No post-Presidency Theodore Roosevelt mapping the Amazon for us.  Instead, it's Destiny of the Republic, an account of the extraordinary circumstances that led to the election of James Garfield to the US presidency, and his subsequent assassination by Charles Guiteau (spoilers on basic high school US History).  

Most Americans are vaguely aware we had a president named Garfield, and some know he was killed early on in his presidency.  What gets lost is the fascinating inflection point US politics were in that saw the Ohioan elected after years of prime 19th-Century corruption.  And while some may know Guiteau was, as they say, crazy - until I'd read Millard's book, I sure didn't know how Guiteau scrambled along the edges of society, his story reflecting so much of what they don't teach in school about America in the 19th century and what would come to echo through the 20th and 21st centuries.

Now, Netflix has rolled out a star-studded series roughly based on the book and entitled Death By Lighting.  

Wonder Woman First Aired 50 Years Ago Today

Back in the day, network TV would air pilots for TV shows if they felt they might be a costly gamble, and then the show would or wouldn't get picked up based on the success of that pilot, often released as a TV movie.  

On November 7th, 1975, ABC aired The New Original Wonder Woman aired and got solid ratings.  

If you've never seen the show or it's been a while, this version of Wonder Woman was set during World War II, using the original origins from the comics, which was adapted to World War I for the film.  Steve Trevor crashes his plane onto the mysterious island, populated entirely by ageless, brilliant, warrior women.  Diana, Queen Hippolyta's daughter and the only child of Paradise Island, wins a contest to return Steve to Man's World, which the Amazons abandoned millenia ago.

The pilot includes the entire bullets and bracelets bit, which assumes that somehow Amazons have guns and bullets in the comic.  I don't recall if they use Steve's gun in the pilot.  But the basic idea sets up that Diana can use her fancy metal cuffs to deflect bullets.

Hippolyta is Cloris Leachman here, and the tone is camp.  Folks like Ken Mars appear.  We're less than a decade since Adam West's Batman, and superheroes have become synonymous with comedy in the public's mind, and will remain there until Michael Keaton swoops in.  For many-a-kid, opening a comic book in the 1980's felt like entering a secret land where these stories were actually taken seriously, and superheroes were, of all things, cool.

I have vague memories of Lynda Carter and Wonder Woman from when I was a kid.  Part of that was that the kid I played with when the show was still in first-run episodes always wanted to play superheroes, and always wanted to be Wonder Woman.  And, yeah, he was a little boy in 1970's suburban Michigan.  But can you blame him?  

Boots?  Check.  Flashy suit?  Check.  Wisdom of Athena?  Check.  Invisible plane?  Check.  Tossing bad guys around like a minor inconvenience?  Double check.  Plus: twirling and a magic lasso.

Later, I caught episodes in syndication, but not often.  Then, in college, The SciFi Channel (eventually SyFy) ran the show during the day, and if I was home, I'd watch. 

I got into Wonder Woman comics around 2000, and still read and collect them.  A huge part of that was that Phil Jimenez, who wrote and drew the run that got me on board, understood what was appealing about the character beyond cheesecake and warrior-woman stuff.  And I know that came via the show.  Wonder Woman was not just to be ogled, she was smart, she was determined, she was literally fighting for truth and justice. And those were things that Lynda Carter brought to the screen.

Which I know, because eventually I picked up the three seasons of the show on DVD, and watched episodes, but all out of order.  But it wasn't until maybe 2010 that I finally sat down and just blitzed through the whole series.  And I had a blast doing it.  

Yes, the show starts on ABC and for a season takes place during WWII.  But then the show moved to CBS for its next two seasons and was set in contemporary times - and this is probably the version you remember.  

Full stop, I think that Wonder Woman is a straight up good show.  It made me really miss when you could watch one-off episodes of something, and while there's a bit of mythology/ lore/ what-have-you, you're resetting every week and it's just about that week's adventure.  

Lynda Carter is so solid in this show, it's unreal.  I've not seen her in too many other movies or shows, but she's effortlessly charismatic, beautiful and buyable as the lead.  And she's like in her mid-20's carrying this show.  Clearly born to play the role, so much so that despite Gal Gadot appearing several times as Wonder Woman, I still default to Carter in red boots for my mental image of Diana.

The only other real supporting cast is Lyle Waggoner who plays Steve Trevor, and had the show gone on to a fourth season it seems he was being written off.  Behind the scenes it seems he and Lynda Carter weren't getting along, and by the end of the third season he would appear in whole episodes where he spoke to her on the phone.

In general, I do prefer the 1970's-set episodes when they took the show more seriously, but YMMV.  It's still pretty silly and self-aware, but isn't leaning into wisecracks and forcing the comedy and works better for an hour-long program.  And they had a wider variety of things to take on in the 1970s.

Anyhoo... here's to Wonder Woman, in her satin tight fighting for our rights and the old red, white and blue.

June Lockhart Merges With The Infinite

June Lockhart, born during the silent era of film and when Calvin Coolidge was president of the US, and who had her first credit in 1938 (the same year Superman debuted and Orson Welles freaked people out with a radio show) has passed at 100.

What's crazy is that Lockhart was in a *ton* of big movies in smaller roles right out of the gate.  I'll be watching, say, Meet Me in St. Louis, and there goes Lockhart, who has such a particular look (twinkly eyes and a huge smile never hurt anyone in Hollywood), you know it's her.

So, she was working with Judy Garland, Gary Cooper, Joan Leslie, Red Skelton, Lana Turner...  I mean...  She saw some stuff.  

Lockhart is most famous to folks of my generation and the prior generation as Ruth Martin, the matriarch of the second family featured in the popular Lassie program (the first kid was Jeff Miller, the second was Timmy Martin).  Or, they know her as Maureen Robinson, the matriarch of that space-faring family in Lost in Space.  

Lockhart's last appearance was in the 2016 film The Remake, but she had done voicework for the Netflix Lost In Space reboot.  The last thing I saw her in was a recent viewing of Holiday in Handcuffs from 2007, but which I watched in 2022.  

Here's to Ms. Lockhart, and a heck of a career and life.

TL;DR: MTV Ends (channels in the UK)

 

MTV, Music Television, is shutting down music operations.  Specifically in England.  Likely soon to be the rest of Europe.  I assume the US will happen without so much as a whimper.

But it's been dead for a while now, hasn't it?

Complaining about MTV had been old since the mid-00's.  Even Gen-X, who lived off of MTV for a decade and a half, had drifted away from the music network before YouTube arrived and made MTV's music programming redundant.  

Launched in 1981, MTV immediately became the default channel the latchkey kids of Gen X came home and put on instead of clicking on their radios (I am often reminded that Jamie did not have MTV, as she was raised in a town that might as well have had John Lithgow forbidding her to dance).  Whether we're discussing elder Gen X or us on the trailing side of the generation, it was a true culture shift our parents would not enjoy until VH1 ushered Whitney Houston and Phil Collins safely into our homes.  

But for a while, the cable channel became like a singular radio station shared by a huge swath of America, contributing to the 1980's monoculture, and ending the ability of musicians to be non-telegenic and still make it.  

For the telegenic, it could mean a young The League would find himself watching the video for Lucky Star intently in 1984, and in the 1990's maybe watch En Vogue videos with piqued interest when he was more likely to listen to Jane's Addiction on his tape deck driving around North Houston.

Upon its debut, MTV was mostly rock and pop.  My memory of the pre-1985 MTV is of a lot of Human League, John Cougar Mellencamp, Styx, Billy Idol, and whatever else was going on.  Very early MTV included Joan Jett and J. Geils Band videos.  My understanding is that MTV just didn't have many videos at launch unless it was from a European act who needed videos for Top of the Pops.  

Between videos, VJ's (Video Jockeys), would drop fun tidbits and make it feel like a cool hang, I guess.  Ask anyone into girls between 50 and 65 about Martha Quinn sometime and see them light up like a Christmas tree.  I liked the VJ's until I didn't.  Or when the VJ bit became the bit with things like Total Request Live (utterly unwatchable unless you were a 13 year old).  

Seeing the immediate ability to get national exposure, bands rushed out to make videos, grabbing whatever they could in way of equipment and lighting.  And the crazier or wilder your look, the better.  Which became it's own thing as hair got bigger, pants got tighter, and pretty soon we had Van Halen's Hot for Teacher, after which we might as well have hung it up, because that was the zenith of early music videos.  

DC Studios Universe Watch: Peacemaker Season 2

I'm pretty sure we didn't talk much about Peacemaker Season 1 around here.  Which is too bad, I quite liked it.  

Peacemaker Season 2 just finished on HBOmax.  And, man, are the reactions online weird.  

And, look, I want to be a kind person, but sometimes it's really clear that

• once a show moves beyond a certain number of episodes/ duration, and therefore snowballs in complexity, some viewers don't know how to watch a movie or TV show without being spoonfed what is happening
• in 2025, people are still actively worrying about their fan theories and judging a show based on whether or not the show matches the story they told themselves.  Why would you watch a show so predictable you know exactly where it's going?
• a lot of folks think that if something is character driven, nothing has happened, which just blows my gourd
• a lot of people who consider themselves experts on "the comics" don't seem to actually know anything about the comics.  And I say this as someone who knows nothing about Peacemaker other than that he's a Charlton character with a very oddball helmet.

Television Watch: Alien - Earth (Season 1, 2025)

I'm the first person to say Alien and Aliens are two great films, each for different reasons.  And while I understand people love Alien3, I just wasn't onboard.  And it's safe to say, I've wrestled with the subsequent sequels, including Prometheus and Alien: Covenant.  The desire to combine the Alien storyline with the Predator franchise, with the wink-wink connections to Blade Runner strikes me as a curious obsession in sci-fi fandom - even if I shared the excitement of everyone else when Predator 2 came out.  

And then I saw Aliens vs. Predator, and I thought "never mind".

I'd skipped the last Alien movie.  If Ridley Scott couldn't make me care, I'm not sure who could.  

But part of that was, even as Romulus was in post-production, I heard Noah Hawley got his hands on the franchise and had a TV show coming.  

For those unfamiliar, Hawley is the person responsible for Legion, maybe the most interesting superhero adaptation (loosely based on the Marvel X-character Legion) to hit a screen, big or small, and which ran on FX for three seasons.  But, more important, Hawley has helmed Fargo for five seasons and across ten years.  And, in this blog's opinion, it's one of the best shows to have graced screens, full stop.

Fargo is an oddball spin-off of the Coen Bros. film of the same name.  And I won't get into it here, but if Legion showed Hawley knew how to take a nut of an idea from source material and grow something fascinating with it, Fargo took the well-defined themes and characters of a Coen Bros. movie as inspiration and exploded their stories into multi-faceted noir epics, borrowing elements and ideas from across the Coen Bros. filmography.

So... yeah, I was jazzed when I heard Hawley was getting his hands on Alien.  And eight episodes later, I feel like my trust was warranted.

Hallmark Christmas Movie Schedule 2025 Drops

Ms. Chabert, set to grace Christmas screens this Holiday season, seen here having pulled this man's finger

Well, Hallmark has released their schedule for the Christmas movies coming in 2025.  Despite the fact it's September and in the 90's where I live, over in Hallmark HQ, it might as well be time to rock around the Christmas tree.

Hallmark isn't completely ignoring the rest of the year.  They're currently showing movies with a fall theme on the channels (although it's not officially autumn until September 22nd).  And they're even getting spooky this year as Ms. Chabert and Hallmark stalwart Wes Brown will appear in the Halloween themed third chapter in the "Haul Out the Holly" saga.  

Meanwhile, Hallmark ornaments are coming in waves for 2025, with an official Lacey Chabert ornament coming in October.  (I am well aware of the Superman ornament, thanks).  

Here's the Hallmark checklist of new content:

TL;DR - Pop Culture Fade-Out: What Happens When No One Remembers Lassie?

Liz is also easily distracted by squirrels

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.

Doc Watch: The Yogurt Shop Murders (2025)

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.  

In the 1880's, we were home to a serial killer known as The Servant Girl Annihilator.  I grew up and attended college in the shadow of the University of Texas Tower, from which Charles Whitman killed 15 people and injured 30 more.  

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.  

Maintenance Post: Work, Sports, Comics and TV

Let Emmylou be my co-pilot

Hey all.  

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 Girl title 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.

Television

We've watched all of Derry Girls, and the latest season of The Bear.  We started King of the Hill and Poker Face,  and I'm watching The Yogurt Shop Murders doc series on HBO, and Alien: Earth on Hulu.  I'll do posts on those last two.  

This week, I think Jamie has agreed to some JLC watching and I may go see Freakier Friday.  

Happy Birthday, Lois Lane

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 Merges With The Infinite

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.  

Christmas at Sea: I Watched a Hallmark Christmas Cruise Reality Show

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.

Yes, Hallmark has it's own galaxy of stars.  

Hulk Hogan Merges With the Infinite

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 Merges With The Infinite

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.  

You'll be missed, Ozzy.

Chabert Watch: Gypsy (1993)

Midler took center stage?  Whaaaaat....?

Watched:  06/13/2025

Format:  Prime

Viewing:  First

Director:  Emile Ardolino

Everything's coming up Chabert!

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:

1. Jamie once played a small part in a community theatre version of the play 
2. Broadway queen Audra McDonald is currently receiving rave reviews for her portrayal of Momma Rose.  
3. It's sort of about the ultimate stage mom
4. 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.

Jonathan Joss Merges With The Infinite

Actor Jonathan Joss has passed.  

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.