"Back To The Future 1, 2 and 3 but it's only Stricklands' lines."

Posted by my son John, at Facebook, on the occasion of the death, at 94, of James Tolkan, who played Principal Strickland.

"The department did not specify where the hikers obtained the mushrooms, which contain psilocybin, a hallucinogenic compound that can cause people to see, hear or feel things that do not exist."

From "Hikers on Psychedelic Mushrooms Are Rescued From New York Wilderness/The hikers, who were in the Catskill Mountains, told officials that they had consumed the hallucinogen and one was experiencing a 'debilitating high.' It was the second such episode in recent months" (NYT).

The men were lost on the Giant Ledge Trail, a popular hiking destination in the Catskills, about 80 miles southwest of Albany. The trail ranges from 1,100 to 2,600 feet in elevation with “several sheer cliffs and drops”... Still, the three-mile loop is well-marked and wildly popular, making it difficult to get lost.... The hikers left the trail after deciding they wanted to walk in a straight line toward their car, through an area with boulders and steep terrain....

I'm imagining them embracing the revelation that you could just walk straight to the car, while all these other people deludedly believe they are required to adhere to the official path. Proceed directly to the car and drive away into your enlightened new life. 

"Tesla’s Electric ‘Cybertruck’ Is Unveiled. It’s Pointy."

Ha ha. Great NYT headline. The thing is pointy.

At the unveiling, Elon Musk said: "Trucks have been the same for a very long time. Like a hundred years, trucks have been basically the same. We want to try something different."

The designer, Franz von Holzhausen, banged it with a sledgehammer, and that demonstration of toughness worked. Then he threw a metal ball at the driver’s side window and the window cracked. He threw the metal ball at the back seat window and, again, the window cracked.

Musk said "Maybe that was a little too hard" and continued with the presentation with the truck with 2 cracked windows in the background.

If you want a good look at the pointy-ness, Motor Trend has 47 photos of the thing. After you've seen a few of them, please take my poll, and vote only based on how it looks (not on whether you like electric trucks or worry about crackable windows):

What do you think of the looks of Tesla's Cybertruck?

I like it, and I think there's a market for a truck that looks like that.

I like it, but it's not what you want if you want a truck.

It's ludicrous. Awful. Ugly.

Intriguing. A novelty. Maybe if you loved "Back to the Future."

It's like what a kid would draw first if the idea was make it futuristic.

 

pollcode.com free polls

"I'm going to say this one last time, but the folks who get it, understand and the ones who DON'T, won't. I can be Doc Brown, and I wear the outfit and wig and not change my skin color."

"if you're white, you can be President Obama if you want. Just don't color your skin!"

Al Roker explains the rule, quoted in "Al Roker defends dressing as white character for Halloween."

"Doc Brown" — I had to look it up to check if that really was the character's name (and I've seen all the "Back to the Future" movies many times).

"This is for all you lovers out there."

Another Pogo video. We discussed Pogo (Nick Bertke) in a post yesterday called "Not-Funnyites converge on a hipster homophobe."

I'm putting this one up because I like "Back to the Future," and I like the way this edit extracts a theme from the movie: What men do to men. That's what I'm seeing anyway. At one point — 0:47 — there's a split screen with love (on the left) getting gradually squeezed out by the hate.

I feel bad about Pogo. Yesterday, I sent a video to Meade along with the text: "you’re finding out about a talented guy who’s been around for 10 years on the day of his (social, career) execution." It's a little random to throw this on here, but this was the video I sent Meade:

The sarcastic meaning of "Hello" is traced to "Back to the Future": "Hello, hello? Anybody home? Hey! Think, McFly. Think."

In the Oxford English Dictionary:





Why am I researching the word "hello" at 4 in the morning? I started out writing something — it will be up next soon — about Trump's press conference, which I wanted to call "hairy." But I wasn't sure "hairy" really is used and understood anymore — "hairy," not in the sense of covered with hair (though with Trump that alternative meaning distracts us), but in the sense of difficult, rough, wild, frightening. It was common slang years ago, enough that The New Yorker had a cartoon in 1971 with the caption "And do you, Elizabeth, take this man, John, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, until the going gets hairy?"

To check for currency, I looked up "hairy" in the Urban Dictionary, and one thing I found was "Hey do you have the hairies on that?," which got me clicking through to "hey," one of the great English language words that you use all the time but don't think too much about. Years ago — back in the 50s and 60s — many adults would correct you if you thought you could get their attention with "Hey." Often they'd deploy the corny riposte "Hay is for horses." I think these were the same adults who would tell you "A kid is a baby goat" if you were crass enough to refer to a human child as a "kid."

Hey, kids...



... I wanted to track down the origin of "hey." "Hey" is such an old word that the OED's oldest use is unreadable: "Hei! hwuch wis read of se icudd keiser!" (a1225). Unreadable, except that we get the meaning of "Hei!" Even 200 years later, it's hard to understand. This is a line in a Christmas carol: "Hey, hey, hey, hey, The borrys hed is armyd gay." I'm just going to guess that there's some excitement about the presentation of a boar's head.

Anyway, "hey" got me thinking about "hi" — a great word that I'll do a separate post about sometime — and then "hello." I thought "hello" had been invented for speaking on the phone, but "hello" — the interjection defined by its use ("Used to attract attention") — goes back to 1826 in the Norwich (Conn.) Courier: "Hello, Jim! I'll tell you what: I've a sharp knife and feel as if I'd like to cut up something or other." And then in 1833, "Sketches & Eccentricities Col. David Crockett":
"I seed a white man walking off with my plate. I says, ‘Hello, mister, bring back my plate.’"

The first telephone-related "hello" comes in 1877 from Thomas Edison: "I do not think we shall need a call bell as Hello! can be heard 10 to 20 feet away. What you think?" I think you are wrong, Mr. Edison. We need a bell!

Did you know that it was Thomas A. Watson, not the man with the name Bell, who invented the bell for the telephone:

It is impossible to say exactly how vital Watson’s role was in the invention of the phone, but he was certainly far more than a mere assistant. During the seven years he worked for Bell, he secured sixty patents in his own name, including one for the distinctive ringing bell that was for decades an invariable part of every phone call made. Remarkably, before this, the only way to know if someone was trying to get through to you was to pick up the phone from time to time and see if anyone was there.

That's from Bill Bryson's "At Home: A Short History of Private Life." I don't know if you had to pick up the phone. It seems as though Edison's idea was that the phone would be left off the hook — if the hook was even part of the phone — and if you were calling you'd say "hello!" and if the person on the other end was within 10 or 20 feet, you'd get their attention, just as if you were there in person trying to get their attention with a "hey!" And why not "hey"? Apparently, "hello!" carries farther.

When shouting from a mountaintop or into a cave — or into a hollow skull — you always choose "hello":

Oh! This portrait of Donald Trump!

It hangs in his Mar-a-Lago estate:



I cut that to show only the portrait, so go here to see it in its ornate frame and the wood-paneled setting. It was photographed at an angle (visible at the top left of my crop), so there's some distortion not attributable to the artist. But how rich do you need to be to hire an artist that can paint hands? Ah, but who's going to look at the hand — other than me — when the head is glowing and ascending to the heavens? Or are you looking at the stretched folds of fabric straining over the crotch?

The photo of the portrait goes with a NYT article titled "A King in His Castle: How Donald Trump Lives, From His Longtime Butler." About the painting, the butler, Anthony Senecal, said: "I’ve been in other homes in Palm Beach — same exact painting. Just a different head."

Also from the article, how Trump likes his steak: "It would rock on the plate, it was so well done." And information that explains a lot: "Mr. Trump insists — despite the hair salon on the premises — on doing his own hair."

And there's the 20,000-square-foot Donald J. Trump Ballroom, where, in 2005, Trump married Melania (whom Senecal "described as exceptionally compassionate"). Hillary Clinton attended the wedding and Senecal "offered a profane description for Mrs. Clinton." The ballroom was later the scene for the Oprah Winfrey party for Maya Angelou's 80th birthday. Senecal says it was a "religious ceremony with the hooting and the hollering" and "Mr. Trump was right on into it. It was so great. He was clapping."

IN THE COMMENTS: Ignorance is Bliss said, "That is certainly a more inspiring picture of him than this one":



MORE IN THE COMMENTS: Brando says:

That portrait supports my theory that he's a poor man's idea of what he would be like if he were rich. A big majestic portrait of himself! Maybe Trump has a secret sense of humor about this — it seems like a gag I'd do if I were rich.

Exactly. It looked that way to me too. The question is whether he's having fun with it and making it fun for other people or whether he's really serious, psychologically needy, and oppressing other people. If it were the latter, the NYT would have told us.

I wonder about the "profane" description of Hillary — what did she do when she arrived? Was she nasty to the help? I've heard she could be very cold and mean to secret service agents.

Well, that's another thing the NYT didn't tell us. Here, we know the NYT had information, and we can see that it was suppressed. What was it?

"I'm torn on how this video affects my view of Jeb Bush. On the one hand, he didn't remember the name of the Back to the Future trilogy..."

"... but on the other hand, at least he's apparently seen it (and has taken Doc's warnings seriously)."

Writes my son John, linking to the video where Jeb Bush picks out an email of his to answer, one where he's asked whether, if he could go back in time, would he kill baby Hitler, and Jeb says, "Hell, yeah, I would" and — "Even if he was cute?" — "Ya gotta step up."

"I just saw the whole Back to the Future trilogy in the theater."

My son John blogs:

Well, that was fun. The Back to the Future movies are probably better enjoyed one at a time than back to back....

The first and the second each end with a to-be-continued cliffhanger which is supposed to be fun because you have to wait.

I never once felt like leaving and finishing the rest some other time by watching the DVDs I have at home. It was the most enthusiastic movie audience I've ever been part of — people applauded and hooted not only during various climactic moments, but also when the time machine and Doc first appeared, the first time one of the characters said the words "back to the future," and of course, when Doc said "October 21, 2015."

There are some live-theater experiences that cannot be had at home.

At one point, Back to the Future Part III stopped in the middle... Audience members called out things like: "You've disrupted the space-time continuum!" "Not enough jigowatts!"

I love stuff like that... much as I hate the malfunctions. I was once in some little theater in Greenwich Village that was showing the Marlon Brando movie "The Fugitive Kind" — "Val Xavier, a drifter of obscure origins arrives at a small town and... is pursued by Carol Cutere..." Marlon and Carol/Joanne Woodward are tooling along in a sportscar and she's saying: "I'm just a lewd vagrant, and I'm gonna show 'em, and show 'em all, just how lewd a lewd vagrant can be, when she puts her whole heart into it, the way I do mine," and then she suddenly points off screen and says: "Hey, turn off here." Immediately, the film malfunctions and shuts down, as if the projectionist had taken "Hey, turn off here" as an order. I've never been simultaneously so amazed and annoyed.

"'Back to the Future' Writer: Biff Tannen Is Based on Donald Trump."

"You watch Part II again and there’s a scene where Marty confronts Biff in his office and there’s a huge portrait of Biff on the wall behind Biff, and there’s one moment where Biff kind of stands up and he takes exactly the same pose as the portrait? Yeah.... That’s what we were thinking about."'

Whoa. I'm not surprised! I'm reading this (at The Daily Beast) just after watching "Back to the Future II." Meade and I watched it together (on the Esquire channel (who knew there was an Esquire channel?)) in celebration of "Back to the Future" Day, and when that scene came up, Meade said: "Donald Trump." And I said: "That's what I thought too!"

"For those who are going to celebrate Back to the Future day tomorrow (I'm planning to watch the whole trilogy in the theater)..."

"... here's an exhaustive list of parallels between the three movies," says my son John (with whom I watched all 3 "Back to the Future" movies many times).

Crispin Glover talks about how they stole his face for the "Back to the Future" sequel.

On his "Ask Me Anything" stint on Reddit today:

There are certain things that happened since being in Back to the Future that makes it difficult for me to reflect on the film as having funny things happening. Specifically there was a lawsuit because of something the producers did that was illegal in the sequel to the film. What the producers did that was illegal was as follows. The producers used the molds that were taken from my face from the original film and had prosthetics made to resemble my face to be placed on another actor to make them look like me and then inter-spliced a small amount of footage of me from the original film with the actor in prosthetics to resemble me in order to fool audiences in to believing I was in the film.

A profound movie experience.

I'm watching one of the first movies I ever saw... from back in the days when TV played "The Early Show," "The Late Show," "The Late Late Show," and -- if I'm not mistaken -- "The Late Late Late Show." I only watched "The Early Show" back in the 1950s, when I was a child, and only when my mother called my attention to something. I now realize she was being highly selective. Perhaps the second movie I ever saw in my life -- the first was "The Little Fugitive" -- was the Shirley Temple movie "Captain January."

This dance, with Buddy Ebsen, is supremely charming:



"Come Along and follow me, to the bottom of the sea..." Did that influence Robert Zemeckis in "Back to the Future" to make the prom theme "Enchantment Under the Sea"? There's a scene right after the dance where a bunch of crusty old sailors teach Shirley how to spit. That had to be the source material for the spitting scene in "Titanic."

And speaking of influences, I can see how much this influenced me. Shirley is angrily defiant as she stands up to the prissy female truant officer who doesn't like the feisty attitude she's learning from the men. The truant officer wants to put her in an institution, away from Captain January, the kindly lighthouse keeper who found her after a shipwreck.

You should be taken home and spanked! What kind of man is this Captain January to allow you to run around?

This is some heavy dialogue for a young child to hear. (Shirley has just been looking at a picture she thinks is her dead mother and has tried to sing the song "Asleep in the Deep.")

Helen: How can anyone sleep in the deep?
Capt. January: That's the long last sleep, Star.
Helen: Does everyone have to die?
Capt. January: Yes, everyone does.
Helen: Even you and me?
Capt. January: Yes, when the time comes.
Helen: Do you think we'll make it till Christmas?
Capt. January: Yes, I wouldn't be surprised if we did.

Yes, Shirley reminds you of death, then tries to cheer you back up with Christmas and short term hopes.

ADDED: Want to see more Buddy Ebsen? Here -- "Broadway Melody of 1936"-- he dances with a full size woman (his sister Vilma).

Naming the dog.

In Canada, the biggest sitcom in years, according to the NYT, features a family that has a dog named bin Laden. I read this out loud, and John says, "Does that mean they like bin Laden or are they trying to insult bin Laden by giving that name to a dog?" I say I don't know, and this leads to a discussion of how some cultures think it's insulting to be made the namesake of a dog. John remembers that people in India were offended when President Bush named his cat India, and that one man had said "How would he feel if we named our dog Bush?" I say, "Bush would probably think it was nice." John notes that Doc in "Back to the Future" named his dog Einstein, and that clearly was not intended to disrespect Einstein. I say, "Still, Bush ought to have people to advise him about things that happen to offend people in other countries."

For more on the politics of that Canadian sitcom, read the article ("The show's edgy satire and depiction of a poor family taking on the system seems to capture the mood in Quebec in these days of scandals"). I'm thinking the Canadian sitcom makers named the dog bin Laden as part of a pattern of inappropriate behavior by this sitcom family. And I'm thinking actual bin Laden fans don't think it's a compliment to name a dog after him.