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Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Stephen King's The Stand


This is the way the world ends.

This is the way the world ends.

This is the way the world ends.

Not with a bang but a whimper.

-      T.S. Eliot




It isn’t often that I begin a blog entry with some poetry, but there is a reason behind why I have done this.  This poem is related to the blog topic for today.



Today’s entry is the second entry about a book by author Stephen King (the first one was “Carrie”, which was a Monday Matinee a couple of weeks ago).  And what a book it ended up becoming.  On the surface, it appears to be a story set in a post-apocalyptic world following the release of a deadly virus.  But if one were to read the entire book from cover to cover (and at 823 pages in length, it’s definitely one of the largest novels that I have ever read, they would find a wonderfully written tale of survival, hope, and the ultimate battle between good and evil.



It’s also the book that I consider to be my favourite Stephen King novel.



That book is the 1978 novel “The Stand”.



When Stephen King sat down to write the draft of what would eventually become “The Stand”, his original idea was to write a novel about the Patty Hearst case, but for whatever reason couldn’t figure out a way to put the idea onto paper.  But right around that time, Stephen King was remembering a news story he had read about an accidental chemical and biological warfare spill in Utah.  From this news story, King was inspired to begin the writing process for “The Stand”, which King compared to writing “The Lord Of The Rings” in a modern American setting.



TRIVIA:  When “The Stand” was first published in 1978, the setting of the book was during the year 1980.  But in 1990, when a brand new version of “The Stand” was released as an uncut version, the time period changed from 1980 to 1990, and many pages were written to incorporate modern pop culture references.



All right, now that you know how the book came to be written, I think it’s time to get into the plot and the characters.  To supplement this blog, I’ll be posting clips from the miniseries based on the book that aired on ABC in May 1994.  I will state that some of the characters and plot points were edited out or changed from the book, and I will be pointing out these changes as we proceed on with the discussion of the book.  And, I’ll also state that there’s absolutely no way that I can talk about every character and plot device in the book, because if I even attempted to do that, this entry will be...well...823 pages.  So, I’ll just point out the most important points in the book, and maybe along the way we’ll learn a few life lessons.



The book begins at a hidden U.S. Army base where a group of scientists are busy working on a superflu virus that is referred to in the book as “Captain Trips” (though the official name given for the virus is “Project Blue”).  Unfortunately for everyone in the lab, the virus is accidentally released, and everybody working at the lab dies.  The people inside the lab desperately attempt to seal off the area before they succumb to the flu, but in the confusion and panic, a guard manages to escape the base with his family, not realizing that he is infected with “Captain Trips”.



By the time Charles Campion arrives in East Texas, his whole family has died from the disease, and he is nearly dead.  He ends up crashing his car near a gas station where the reader is first introduced to Stu Redman (who is played by Gary Sinise in the miniseries), who tries desperately to save his life.  But Campion passes away, and with his death begins a worldwide pandemic.  Three weeks later, less than one per cent of the global population is left alive.



Miraculously, Stu Redman survives, not even feeling any symptoms whatsoever.  However, his resistance to “Captain Trips” prompts the U.S. government to lock him inside a CDC where they hope to be able to find a cure for the superflu by studying him.  But after almost everyone at the CDC succumbs to the illness, leaving Stu all alone, he busts out of the facility (following a battle with one of the doctors of the facility who has been slowly driven to insanity due to the outbreak), and seeks out to find out what has happened.

The book does a fantastic job fleshing out character backgrounds while “Captain Trips” wreaks havoc on the world, and it is eventually revealed that Stu Redman isn’t the only American to survive the plague.  As more people die, we learn a lot about the last people left standing, and as I talk about some of the people that Stu happens to meet, I’ll list the person who played them in the miniseries.



There’s Frannie Goldsmith (Molly Ringwald), a young woman in her late teens who happens to be pregnant with her boyfriend’s child.  She lives in the tiny community of Ogunquit, Maine, where she and a neighbour, Harold Lauder (Corin Nemec) are the only two survivors.  You also meet Larry Underwood (Adam Storke), a pop singer from Los Angeles who happens to have the final number one hit ever on the Billboard Charts at the time of the plague with “Baby, Can You Dig Your Man”.



He happens to be in New York City at the time the plague strikes, which transforms the metropolis into a morgue.  It is here that he meets up with Nadine Cross (Laura San Giacomo), and the two of them team up to escape the city.



CHANGE ALERT #1:  Although the character of Nadine Cross exists in “The Stand”, her character is actually a combination of two people.  In the book, a character named Rita Blakemoor had accompanied Larry out of New York, but her character died of an overdose before Larry met Nadine.  So, for the miniseries, Rita Blakemoor’s characteristics were combined with Nadine’s.



Other survivors include Nick Andros (Rob Lowe), a deaf-mute man from the Midwest, who crosses paths with Tom Cullen (Bill Fagerbakke), a kind-hearted, mentally challenged man who insists that everything is spelled M-O-O-N.  That spells moon.  You also have retired professor Glen Bateman (Ray Walston), farmer Ralph Brentner (Peter van Norden), and Dayna Jurgens (Kellie Overbey) making up the group that eventually meets up in the city of Boulder, Colorado after passing through the state of Nebraska.



At the same time, another group of survivors meets up in the city of Las Vegas, Nevada, and unlike the people in Boulder, these people have done some rather terrible, criminal activities before the collapse of civilization.  There’s Lloyd Henreid (Miguel Ferrer), a criminal who happens to be locked in a prison cell at the time of the outbreak, Julie Lawry (Shawnee Smith), an oversexed teenage girl, and a mentally ill scavenger who is given the nickname of “Trashcan Man” (Matt Frewer).



But why were the survivors headed towards Boulder and Las Vegas?  The explanation lies with the idea of two key figures.  Prior to the outbreak, the survivors often had dreams or visions of one of two people, and in the world after “Captain Trips”, the visions intensified.  If the person had images of an elderly black woman in a cornfield, they were lead to a farmhouse in Nebraska, where they would end up meeting the kindly, 108-year-old Mother Abagail Freemantle (Ruby Dee).  She encourages everyone who meets her that they need to develop a democratic society known as the “Free Zone” in Boulder, and she acts as a spiritual guide for the Boulder survivors.



TRIVIA:  In the mimiseries, Ruby Dee’s husband, Ossie Davis, played the role of Judge Richard Farris.



However, if a person kept seeing a demonic, evil man in their dreams, they ended up in Las Vegas, where they would be given an audience with Randall Flagg (Jamey Sheridan), a man with supernatural powers who rules with an iron fist.  He puts the Vegas survivors to work, restoring power and collecting as many weapons as they can to build a tyrannical, evil empire, providing a new meaning to the term “Sin City”.



For a while, everything goes well in Boulder, Colorado.  The people manage to form a real society, and everyone does their part to make life worth living again.  Frannie and Stu grow closer, and eventually fall in love, but Frannie is worried about her unborn child developing the superflu that killed most of the world’s population.  However, Frannie and Stu’s relationship makes Harold Lauder see red.  Harold had a crush on Frannie for many years, and he saw Stu as a threat.  After all, Harold was a nerdy sort who knew that he had no shot with Frannie, but after the end of the world, he thought there was a small chance.



CHANGE ALERT #2:  In the book, Harold Lauder was obese, with him losing weight as he made the journey from Maine to Colorado.  The miniseries just portrayed Harold Lauder as just a nerd. 



But there was a deeper meaning for Harold’s resentment.  He was growing tired of life in Boulder, and he began having visions of Randall Flagg, who told Harold to come to Las Vegas.  And Harold wasn’t the only one having visions of Flagg in the Boulder Free Zone.  Nadine Cross had been having visions of Flagg all along (hers were even more vivid than Harold’s, but I’ll let you read the book to discover why this is the case), and was on her way to Vegas before getting sidetracked with Larry Underwood in New York.  Nadine and Harold compared notes, and the two of them embarked on a scheme to infiltrate the Boulder Free Zone and depart for Las Vegas.



With help from Nadine, Harold decides to build a bomb and place it inside the building where the Free Zone committee held their meetings.  The two of them soon leave Boulder to flee to Las Vegas as the bomb detonates, killing Nick Andros as well as half of the Free Zone committee.



To complicate things even further, Mother Abagail’s health takes a turn for the worse and her time is slowly running out.  As both the Boulder and Las Vegas camps are now aware of each other, it becomes clear that only one side can win, and as Mother Abagail breathes her last breath, she informs the surviving members of the Free Zone committee that the final battle is near, and they must go to Las Vegas to have a final fight with Randall Flagg.  One last stand between good versus evil.  So Stu, Glen, Larry, and Ralph make the journey to Las Vegas alone while Frannie and the other Boulder residents stay behind, hoping for good news. 



As well, prior to the explosion, a few Boulder residents snuck into Las Vegas (including Tom Cullen), to spy on the enemy camp.  Unfortunately for most of them, Randall Flagg figures out their identities, and dispatches them before they have the chance to fight back.  The only person who seems to avoid capture is Tom Cullen, as all Flagg can see when trying to find out who the last spy’s identity was is a picture of the moon.  This proves to be an important plot point, as Tom Cullen ends up becoming an unsung hero of sorts towards the end of the book.



The journey to Las Vegas won’t be an easy one.  Early on, one of the men has an accident and breaks his leg, unable to continue.  The three remaining men trudge along to Las Vegas leaving him behind.  Will he end up being okay?  Nadine and Harold continue on to Vegas, but only one will make it there alive...and when they arrive, they soon discover that it probably would have been better if they had died after all.  And when you have the mentally ill Trashcan Man setting whole towns on fire and collecting dangerous weapons along the way, you know that it won’t end well for someone.  Sure enough, an object that the Trashcan Man brings to Las Vegas ends up making a lot of noise towards the end.



But, that’s all I can reveal.  I really think you should read the book to discover for yourselves how the end of the world really ends.



That’s about all that I have to say about “The Stand”.  Sure, the book doesn’t really have a happy vibe to it, as most everyone in the world ends up dead.  However, there are a lot of life lessons in the book.  It shows that no matter how dire the situation is (and believe me, the end of the world is about as dire as you can get), people can find a common ground and work together to survive anything.  Certainly, the people of Boulder did this, and well, to a lesser extent, the people in Las Vegas succeeded as well.



I think more importantly though, it was a great book to bring together groups of people who normally wouldn’t cross paths, and put them in a situation where they made great team players the more they got to know each other.  You normally wouldn’t expect much in common between a gas station attendant, a pop singer, a farmer, and a university professor, but yet those four people ended up forming part of the Boulder Free Zone committee.  And I think that we can take something from that.  We can be completely different from each other, and we can have different beliefs, backgrounds, classes, or races, and yet if we’re in a situation that means the difference between life and death, I would hope that we could work together to make a difference, rather than letting our differences tear us apart.  It worked for the people of Boulder, Colorado in “The Stand”, didn’t it?



One last thing...the poem I posted at the beginning?  It appeared in the opening scene of the miniseries.  But it’s not quite accurate when you consider that the world did end with a whimper...but there was a bang involved towards the end of the book.



And with that, we end our book study for this week with a question.

Whose side would you be on if you were one of the people who survived “Captain Trips”?  Boulder or Las Vegas?  Mother Abagail or Randall Flagg?

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

June 19, 1978


Are we ready to go back in time for another installment of the Tuesday Timeline?  I hope you are, because it all begins right now.

It’s the nineteenth of June, and as always, I plan to open each edition of the Tuesday Timeline with some of the significant events that happened on this date.  So, let’s look back at some June 19 happenings, shall we?

1269 – King Louis the IX of France orders all Jews found in public without an identifying yellow badge to be fined ten livres of silver

1770 – Emanuel Swedenborg reports completion of the Second Coming of Christ in “True Christian Religion”

1816 – Battle of Seven Oaks near Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada between Hudson’s Bay Company and North West Company

1846 – The first officially recorded organized baseball game is played in Hoboken, New Jersey between the New York Base Ball Club and the Knickerbockers

1862 – The U.S. Congress prohibits slavery in United States territories nullifying Dred Scott v. Sandford

1865 – Over two years since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, slaves in Galveston, Texas are finally informed of their freedom

1867 – Maximilian I of the Mexican Empire is executed by a firing squad

1870 – The Confederate States of America ceases to exist following the Southern States formally being readmitted into the union

1903 – Lou Gehrig is born, and aside from his baseball career, also put a face to the disease known as ALS (later called Lou Gehrig’s disease)

1910 – The first Father’s Day is celebrated in Spokane, Washington.  It will become an official nationwide holiday in 1972

1913 – Natives’ Land Act in South Africa implemented

1934 – The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is founded following the passing of the Communications Act of 1934

1953 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed at Sing Sing in New York following their conviction for conspiracy to commit espionage during World War II

1961 – Kuwait declares independence from the United Kingdom

1964 – The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is approved following an 83-day long filibuster in the U.S. Senate

1982 – David S. Dodge, president of the American University of Beirut, is kidnapped in a militant attack by Hezbollah

1987 – A bombing in a supermarket in Barcelona, Spain by Basque separatist group ETA kills 21 people and injures 45

1991 – The Soviet occupation of Hungary ends

1999 – The wedding of Prince Edward of Wessex and Sophie Rhys-Jones

That’s quite a lot of history...especially within the United States.  June 19 is definitely a date that made a difference. 

June 19 also happens to be a date in which a lot of famous people were born.  Here are some of the famous faces celebrating a birthday today.  Gena Rowlands, Ian Smith, Phylicia Rashad, Ann Wilson (Heart), Kathleen Turner, Paula Abdul, Laura Ingraham, Sadie Frost, Mia Sara, Lara Spencer, Brian Welch (Korn), Eric Sheffer Stevens, Robin Tunney, Bumper Robinson, Poppy Montgomery, Hugh Dancy, Zoe Saldana, Lauren Lee Smith, Paul Dano, and Atticus Shaffer.

In some aspects, today’s look back through time also deals with a birthday of some sorts.  The only difference is that the one celebrating it is a fictional character.



And this fictional character was “born” on June 19, 1978.

This is an interesting piece for me to write because I have already done a blog entry on this big, fat, orange cat.  In fact, it happens to be my most viewed blog entry as of today, with well over ONE THOUSAND page views and counting!

The date was September 27, 2011, and I had decided to make the focus of that day’s blog on a couple of characters who had a classic ‘frenemy’ type relationship.  They tried to one-up each other, they kicked each other off of tables, and they drove their owner absolutely insane some days.  But deep down inside, they really did love each other.


The title of that particular entry was “Garfield & Odie:  Best Frenemies Forever.


And, on June 19, 1978, Garfield the cat made his very first appearance in a comic strip.

But, I’m going to do this blog entry a little bit differently.  Rather than talk about Garfield (mainly because I already did a decent job of it in September 2011), I’m going to put the focus on the cartoonist who created Garfield, because his life story is quite interesting as well.


This entry is about cartoonist Jim Davis, who ended up creating a little comic strip known as Garfield on June 19, 1978, which is now the most syndicated comic strip in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records.

James Robert Davis was born in Marion, Indiana on July 28, 1945.  He would grow up on a farm in Indiana.  He was raised by his father, James, and his mother Anna.  The farm was also home to Jim’s brother, Dave, and at least 25 cats.  Remember this point for future reference as we continue.

As Jim Davis grew up and went through school, he eventually found work at an advertising agency in the late 1960s.  In 1969, he ended up getting his first taste of cartooning when he took on a job assisting Tom Ryan with his comic strip, “Tumbleweeds”.  Shortly afterwards, Jim had decided to try creating his own comic strip.  His first creation was a comic strip called “Gnorm Gnat”.  If you look below, there’s an example posted of “Gnorm Gnat”.


There are definitely some similarities between Gnorm and Garfield, don’t you think?

Anyway, the comic “Gnorm Gnat” was very successful...at least locally.  It ran in the Pendleton Times for five years.  But when it came time to shop “Gnorm Gnat” around to national newspapers in hopes of it getting picked up for syndication, it was rejected.  One editor even went so far as to tell Davis that although his art was great and his gags were great, the truth was that nobody wanted to read a comic strip about bugs. 

So, Davis heeded his advice, and decided to create another comic strip.  Instead of making the main character a bug, he decided to make the star of the comic a cat...a large orange cat who ate lasagna, hated Mondays, and who wished death upon any and all spiders nearby.

When it came down to naming the cat, Jim Davis settled on Garfield, after his grandfather, James A. Garfield Davis. 

TRIVIA:  In case you were wondering, Davis also had outside sources for naming some of his other characters as well.  Jon Arbuckle came from a 1950s coffee commercial, while the name Odie was taken from a car dealership written by Davis which featured a character called Odie the Village Idiot!

Initially, the comic strip originally surrounded Jon, which made sense when you consider that Jon was meant to be a loose characterization of Jim Davis himself.  He grew up on a farm with his parents and a brother named Doc Boy (I told you Davis’ upbringing sounded familiar), and he worked as a cartoonist.  Jon Arbuckle’s birthday was even the same day as Jim Davis’ birthday!  But when it came time to sell the comic to an agency, he once again faced rejection.  But they did offer him one piece of advice...make the focus of the comic strip the cat, as they felt he had the best lines.  Once again, Davis took the advice to heart, and after retooling the strip a bit, he ended up selling the strip to United Feature Syndicate.

On June 19, 1978, Garfield debuted in a modest 41 newspapers.

TRIVIA:  Would you believe that the Chicago Sun-Times, one of the original newspapers that printed the Garfield strip actually DROPPED the comic from its line up shortly after it debuted?  The outcry was so great that the newspaper made the decision to reinstate the comic!  A true “power of the people” moment if ever there was one.


The comic strip has run daily ever since.  Initially, the Sunday comics were third-pagers, but switched to the half-page format in March 1981.  The first five years of the comic were drawn in a realistic sense, but by 1984, the cartoon switched to a more cartoonish look, which is generally the look that has remained ever since.

That’s the story behind Garfield’s creation.  By 1981, the comic strip could be found in over six hundred newspapers, and was already making $15 million through Garfield merchandise which included stuffed animals, board games, television specials, and book collections of past comic strips.  The merchandising sector became so successful that Davis eventually created his own company, PAWS Inc.  In 1994, PAWS purchased all the rights to the strips that were published from 1978-1993 by United Feature.  Currently, the strip is distributed by United Press Syndicate, although PAWS still maintains the rights.  Even Davis isn’t the sole artist behind Garfield.  He writes the strips and does the rough sketches, but other artists take over the inking, lettering, and colouring.


By 2002, Garfield became the world’s most syndicated strip, a record that has been held for the past decade.  Twelve primetime specials with Lorenzo Music as the voice of Garfield were produced, and currently there are 53 books in the official Garfield library, with the 54th set to be released in August 2012.  And although Davis had success with other comic strips since (U.S. Acres was a minor hit for Davis as well), Garfield really was his ticket to success.

And to think it all began thirty-four years ago, on June 19, 1978.

Damn, that’s one old cat!

Monday, June 18, 2012

Staring Into The "Jaws" Of Fear Itself



Okay, so here’s a dumb question for you all.  How many of you have seen a shark up close?

I will admit that I have not.  The closest I have come to seeing a shark is probably on the Discovery Channel during Shark Week.

And certainly, sharks are not creatures that people should dismiss as being harmless.  Sharks have the power to cause serious bodily harm, and even death to those who approach them. 

It’s estimated that between 1580 and 2008, there have been over 2,200 confirmed shark attacks worldwide.  The country with the most fatalities due to shark attacks is Australia, with a reported 214 deaths linked to sharks.  Western Australia, in particular, seems to be the part of the country that has recorded the most shark attack fatalities. 

However, if you compare those numbers to that of the United States, they tell a different story.  According to the International Shark Attack File (and who knew that one of those actually existed?!?), the United States has had a whopping 1,085 shark attacks over the last four hundred years, but only about 4% of those have resulted in a fatality, the lowest rate for shark attack related deaths in the world.

But before you begin thinking twice about swimming in the ocean at Myrtle Beach or the Hawaiian Islands, consider this.  The odds of getting attacked by a shark in the United States are about one in 11.5 million.  The odds of dying from injuries sustained in a shark attack are about one in 264.1 million.  You’re more likely to die in the ocean from drowning than you are to be eaten by a shark.  Not that either option is considered to be ideal, but just putting this information out there, just in case you have any concerns.

And, consider this.  There are over 360 different species of sharks in the ocean, yet the vast majority of shark attacks in the world are caused by only four species; the oceanic whitetip, the bull shark, the tiger shark, and the great white shark.  And it also seems that the more equipment that a person is wearing, the less likely a shark is to attack.  In a 2010 French film called “Oceans”, a bunch of divers wearing air tanks and scuba suits were able to swim around the sharks without the sharks attacking.  It’s only speculation, but many believed that it was possible that the sharks could sense the unnatural elements of the divers (the scuba gear and tanks), and were more willing to accept them as temporary outsiders.  But, keep in mind that’s just speculation.  I probably would not recommend that you try it.  Though, it does make sense.  I imagine that swimmers, surfers, and water-skiers have more exposed skin, which may as well be the equivalent for a dinner bell for sharks.  And, of course, having a visible cut that has blood residue can also attract sharks to you.

But, again, the statistics state that the odds of getting attacked by a shark are significantly low.  One shouldn’t worry too much.  And, even if you do get attacked by one, the odds of dying are low as well.  Just ask shark attack survivor Bethany Hamilton, the surfer who lost an arm in an attack, but still continues surfing today!


Despite the rarity of shark attacks though, people still have a fear of them, largely brought out by various horror movies and films that depict graphic shark attacks on screen.  In fact, the late author Peter Benchley even attempted to dispel the myths that sharks were nothing more than man-eating beasts.  It was rather ironic for Benchley to make these claims, given that one of his most famous works of literature involved a man-eating shark.  In fact, the book was so successful that it was made into a movie, and it became one of the biggest summer blockbusters of the twentieth century.

I’m sure you can make an educated guess as to what the Monday Matinee is for today, but if you still aren’t sure, perhaps this theme song from the movie will jog your memory...or prompt you to swim to the nearest coastline in absolute terror.


We’re going back to June of 1975, the month that “Jaws” was released in theatres nationwide.  This was the movie that helped bring Steven Spielberg into the mainstream film world as a director, and starred Roy Schieder, Richard Dreyfuss, Robert Shaw, Murray Hamilton, and Lorraine Gary.  When the movie was released on June 20, 1975, it was expected to be a success from the beginning, but I don’t think that the people who worked on the film knew just how much of a success it would eventually be.  The original film was made with a budget of nine million dollars, and ended up making a total of nearly half a BILLION dollars at the box office.  Now that is what I call a nice net profit.


The deal with “Jaws” is that it was widely praised by critics, and it was really considered among the first wave of “summer blockbuster” films that were commonplace during the late 1970s and throughout the next few decades.  “Jaws” was also successful enough to spawn three sequels between 1978 and 1987...though admittedly the sequels couldn’t hold a candle to the original.

That’s not to say that the production of “Jaws” was just as perfect as the movie that was eventually made.  Truth be told, the production of the film was plagued with many problems.  The film went over budget, and shooting ran a lot longer than anyone had initially thought it would.  Spielberg almost abandoned the project to go work on the film “Lucky Lady” because he feared that he would be typecast as the “truck and shark director”.  The only reason Spielberg stayed with the project was because Universal vetoed his departure.  To add to the frustration, the mechanical sharks that were used for filming the shark attack scenes kept malfunctioning, delaying production even further.  Despite these issues though, “Jaws” proved to be a huge hit anyways.

And to think that the movie started off so quietly...


In New England, on Amity Island, a young woman by the name of Chrissie Watkins gets bored at the beach party that she is at, and decides to go off on her own to have her own fun.  Her idea of fun is to go skinny-dipping in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which I’m sure delighted many of the male viewing audience of the movie.  Unfortunately for poor Chrissie, she meets her demise naked and in the middle of the ocean as she is pulled underwater by a powerful force.  When her remains are found on the beach, the medical examiner informs the Chief of Police, Martin Brody (Schieder) that the cause of death was likely caused by a shark attack.  Brody is immediately concerned for the safety of the tourists and townspeople, and immediately wants to close the beaches.

However, Mayor Larry Vaughan (Hamilton) does not want to do that for fear that the reports of a shark in the water would destroy the tourist season, and ruin the town economy.  Amazingly enough, the medical examiner changes his mind and says that Chrissie Watkins died in a boating accident.  Brody is uncomfortable with it, but reluctantly goes along with the explanation.

But then a second person is killed, a young boy.  And this time, the boy’s mother announces that she has placed a bounty on the shark that killed her son.  This prompts a lot of amateur shark hunters to spread out in hopes of killing the shark.  In addition to the amateurs is at least one professional shark hunter, Quint (Shaw).  At the same time, a marine biologist named Matt Hooper (Dreyfuss) does a second examination on Chrissie’s body, and comes to the conclusion that the girl did die from wounds sustained in a shark attack.

A few days later, a group of fishermen catch a tiger shark, and at first, there’s relief all over the community, as the townspeople believe that the shark attacks will finally stop.  But after an autopsy reveals that there are no human remains inside (an autopsy that the mayor refused to make available to the public), Brody and Hooper come to the grim conclusion that the shark is still out there.  When they come across the wrecked remains of a fisherman’s boat with the fisherman’s body still inside along with a shark tooth nearby, the possibility was definitely there.

However, possibilities weren’t enough concrete evidence for Mayor Vaughan to close the beaches, and when the 4th of July weekend arrived, tourists from all over came to celebrate the beginning of summer vacation.  It doesn’t take long for things to go completely pear-shaped.  A prank that was caused by a few children sets everything in motion.  While the people on the beach are in panic mode, they fail to notice that the shark is swimming around a nearby estuary.  The shark claims its fourth victim, a man, and Brody’s son witnesses the whole thing, going into shock as a result.


At this point, Brody is more determined than ever to get rid of the shark once and for all.  He persuades Vaughan to let Brody and Quint go and kill the shark, with Hooper tagging along as well.

And, hey, that’s all I’m going to give you on the movie plot.  I can’t spoil ALL the fun!

But, seriously, don’t let a movie like “Jaws” scare you from swimming in the ocean.  Shark attacks are very, very rare.  So, take some comfort in that before you watch this movie!

Sunday, June 17, 2012

Father's Day In The Living Years




I’m going to take the opportunity to wish all fathers everywhere a happy Father’s Day today.  It’s your day today, and I hope that all of you are doing something that you all love to do.

I’m turning this blog entry aqua today in celebration of the day.  Normally, I would have chosen blue, but since that happens to be related to one of the clues for the contest that is currently going on, I decided to go with another colour that appeared masculine.

(Of course, this is coming from a man whose favourite colour is purple...)

But seriously, let’s go back to Father’s Day here.

The first official observance of Father’s Day was held in 1910 by Sonora Smart Dodd, the daughter of Civil War veteran William Jackson Smart.  Smart was a single father, who raised six children in Spokane, Washington.  The idea for Father’s Day was inspired by a sermon that she attended where the topic of discussion was Anna Jarvis, who helped create the holiday of Mother’s Day.  Dodd wondered why there wasn’t a similar holiday to celebrate fathers.  Initially, Dodd had wanted Father’s Day to be a fixed holiday...June 5th, which was her father’s birthday.  But when the pastors had difficulty preparing their sermons due to lack of time, the date was then changed to the third Sunday in June for that particular year.  Remember that detail for later.

It took some time for Father’s Day to officially be recognized as a holiday.  President Woodrow Wilson tried to make Father’s Day an official holiday in 1916, but Congress initially rejected the suggestion, believing that the holiday would become too commercialized (wow, did they have a crystal ball back then, or what?).

The idea was resurrected eight years later in 1924, when President Calvin Coolidge recommended that the day be observed nationwide, but stopped short of making it a national proclamation.  Twice more, the bill to make Father’s Day an official holiday was denied by Congress.  But then in 1957, U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith wrote a proposal that more or less blamed Congress for ignoring fathers for over four decades while mothers were honoured, which she felt was an unfair singling out of one of the two parents.  In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson issued the very first presidential proclamation honouring fathers everywhere, and declaring the third Sunday in June as Father’s Day.  A few years later, Richard Nixon signed the bill into law, and Father’s Day was made into a permanent holiday beginning on June 18, 1972.


And since June 18, 1972, I imagine fathers all over the world have gotten millions of ties, belts, and pairs of underwear from their sons and daughters.  J

And that’s the history of Father’s Day.  Very interesting, isn’t it?

My own father is still alive and kicking as of now, and he’ll be turning 66 later next month, making him almost 35 when I was born.  I can’t imagine that he and my mother having their final child (and only son) at the age of 35 must have been easy for him, especially given that he had two daughters years before I was born.  And I certainly did not make things very easy on him, as him and I are nothing alike.  I hate to paraphrase an old Donny and Marie Osmond song here, but he was a little bit country, and I was a little bit rock and roll.  And, I imagine that when I was younger, he and I used to have terrible, terrible fights growing up.  But the one thing that I can honestly say is that despite all of our fights, disagreements, and shouting matches, he has always been there for me, and I imagine that he will continue to be there as long as he is able to.

But what about all of those people who are absolutely indifferent to Father’s Day, or see Father’s Day as a painful reminder of what they have lost?  I imagine that a day like today must be quite difficult for them, especially if their father has passed away.  My deepest condolences go out to anybody who has lost a father.

In this edition of the Sunday Jukebox, I thought that I would post a song that is related to everything that I have said about fathers in this post so far.  In my case, it deals with fights and conflicts that I have had with my father over the years.  But in other instances, it provides a bit of a melancholic feel because the song is about a man who has recently lost his father who never got a chance to tell him how he felt.  As a result, the man has lost the chance to ever get some sort of closure with his father.

Let’s hear the song first, and then we’ll talk a bit about the band who performed the song, the song itself, and why it had a lot of personal meaning for most of the band.


ARTIST:  Mike + The Mechanics
SONG:  The Living Years
ALBUM:  Living Years
DATE RELEASED:  December 3, 1988
PEAK POSITION ON THE BILLBOARD CHARTS:  #1 for 1 week



Ah, yes.  Mike + The Mechanics, a side project that was launched by Genesis band member Mike Rutherford.  Together with Paul Carrack and Paul Young (no, not the ‘Everytime You Go Away’ Paul Young), Rutherford formed Mike + The Mechanics in the mid-1980s.  Their first album was released in 1985, of which several singles performed very well on radio including “Silent Running” and “All I Need Is A Miracle”.  At first, Rutherford had only intended on making Mike + The Mechanics a one-off project away from Genesis, but after the surprise success of their debut album, the band managed to stay together, even though other projects were calling.  Rutherford had returned to Genesis to help launch their 1986 album “Invisible Touch” while Carrack had released a third solo album in 1987. But the band regrouped in 1988 to put together their sophomore album, “Living Years”.

Of all the songs that made it onto the album’s final cut, it was the title track that ended up being the most successful.  Here’s a few statistics for you.  The song reached the top of the Billboard Charts on March 25, 1989, but it stayed a total of four weeks on the Adult Contemporary Charts in early 1989.  The song also topped the charts in Australia, Canada, and Ireland.  In 1990, the song was nominated for Song of the Year at the Grammy Awards, but lost to Bette Midler’s “Wind Beneath My Wings”.  However, it did win the Ivor Novello Award in London for Best Song Musically & Lyrically. 

Even legendary singer and songwriter Burt Bacharach described the song as having some of the finest lyrics in a decade when he was interviewed in 1996.  How’s that for kudos?

Certainly the song is haunting, and if you watch the video and listen to the lyrics, you know what the song is about.  It’s about a man who has recently lost his father and is realizing that he will never get the chance to repair the frayed relationship between them.  He laments the loss of communication between him and his father, just as he has become a father himself.  It certainly makes the listener stop and think.  It’s probably one of my favourite songs of the 1980s...maybe even all time.

Now, what if I told you that the idea behind the song was based on a couple of true stories?


In order to explain this, we have to go back a year before the “Living Years” album was released.  In September 1987, Mike Rutherford had just finished his touring obligations for Genesis’ “Invisible Touch” album, and he was beginning to work on lyrics for the next Mike + The Mechanics album.  Mike tried his hardest to concentrate on the album, but it was right around this time that he struggled with major writer’s block, and couldn’t figure out how to overcome it.

Although given what was going on inside Mike Rutherford’s personal life at the time, it’s easy to see why.  Mike’s father had passed away while he was on tour with Genesis, and just three months later, his son was born (hmmm...sounds a lot like the lyrics to a certain song, doesn’t it?).  On top of this, Mike’s wife was pregnant with the couple’s third child, and the pregnancy was especially difficult.  It was so difficult that there was a possibility that the child could have died, but thankfully the baby was born healthy.  With his third child safely delivered, a huge weight was lifted off of Rutherford’s shoulders, and soon after this, his creative force took over.  He churned out lyric after lyric, and by the end of January 1988, he felt that he had written enough to begin composing the new Mike + The Mechanics album.  Initially, producer and co-writer Christopher Neil had wanted to move up production of the album to April, but Rutherford insisted that he still had some inspiration left inside of him, and between May and July 1988, Rutherford ended up appearing on the album’s final cut, which was first released that October.

“The Living Years” was the second single released from the album, and it was co-written by Rutherford and long-time Mike + The Mechanics collaborator B.A. Robertson.  The song was a personal project for both Rutherford and Robertson, as both men had ended up losing their own fathers just before the album was released.  However, Robertson had always intended for the song to be about Rutherford’s own strained relationship with his father.

Here’s one final note about the song.  Paul Carrack and Paul Young often shared lead vocal duties in the band, depending on what style the song was written.  The song “The Living Years” was always meant to be a slow song, which Paul Carrack usually performed.  This time around, the song had a very deep meaning for Carrack, as he himself had lost his father at the age of eleven.

The end result was a haunting, yet passionate performance by Mike + The Mechanics, leading to one of their biggest hits of their whole career.


These days, Mike + The Mechanics are still going on, though Mike Rutherford is the only original band member remaining.  Paul Carrack stayed with the band for a number of years before the band temporarily went on hiatus in 2004.  But when Carrack decided to put his time and energy into more solo projects, he was unable to come back to the band.  Sadly, Paul Young passed away on July 15, 2000.

“The Living Years” is a song that is quite bittersweet in nature, and I think the song gives off a fantastic message.  Every day, men and women fall out with their parents, and some don’t end up speaking to them for years.  By the time they work up the nerve to smooth things over, it’s too little too late.  After all, one of the lyrics states “it’s too late when we die.”

Now, I realize that in some cases, it’s an impossibility for people to want anything to do with their fathers...some relationships are just too dysfunctional to even repair.  But, if there is a chance for you to make things right with an estranged father, why not make today that day to attempt to patch things up?  Regardless of how it ends, you might get some comfort in knowing that you tried.


Just a thought to ponder this Father’s Day.

Saturday, June 16, 2012

Wait Till Your Father Gets Home


It's Father's Day weekend this weekend, and I thought that I would use this opportunity to post two father themed entries. I have a special Sunday Jukebox planned for tomorrow, but I admit that I had a really tough time finding a topic for Saturday's entry. Mostly because any of the possible ideas that I could come up with, I have already talked about in this blog.

I really had to go way back into the part of my brain where my earliest childhood memories lay in order to come up with a suitable topic for today's discussion. And for some reason, there was this one program that I vaguely remember watching as a kid on Global Television back in the 1980s. There was very little that I remember about the show itself. I couldn't tell you what it was about, nor could I tell you what the names of the main characters were. But there were a few details about the show that I did remember. I remembered that the animation was quite basic, with a lot of empty white backgrounds. I remembered that one of the characters was voiced by the same guy who played the dad on “Happy Days”. And, I remember that the theme song kept repeating the words “wait 'til your father gets home” over and over again.

So, armed with this information, I did a quick Google search, hoping that this was enough to locate the show. I had figured that since the theme song had the words “wait 'til your father gets home” included in the lyrics, it had to be a show that I could talk about this Father's Day weekend. Little did I realize was that the song lyrics were all that I needed to find this mystery show!



The intro you just watched happens to be from the animated sitcom, “Wait Till Your Father Gets Home”, which aired in first-run syndication between 1972 and 1974. 



Although most people who did watch the program usually watched it on their NBC affiliates, where it ran for 48 episodes. It was produced by Hanna-Barbera. The show had its beginnings on the old ABC show “Love, American Style” in a segment called “Love and the Old-Fashioned Father”.

TRIVIA: Did you know that before it became a cartoon series, it was attempted as a live-action show? A pilot was even filmed featuring Van Johnson, but for whatever reason, it was not picked up.



Oh, and the “Happy Days” connection? Tom Bosley, who played the role of Howard Cunningham in “Happy Days” voiced the main character of “Wait Till Your Father Gets Home”. He voiced the character of Harry Boyle, who was almost similar to an animated version of “All In The Family's” Archie Bunker. In fact, the show was created with the popular CBS sitcom in mind.

Before I go on with the descriptions of the characters in this cartoon, I thought that I would post a few clips of episodes for all of you to watch. After all, the best way to introduce the characters of the show is for you to see how they interact with each other, right?

Okay, so I've posted three different episodes for you all to watch below. Click on the links below this paragraph to watch...


Before I go on, I should share with you a little bit of trivia in regards to that last episode I posted. “The New Car” brought forth a little bit of controversy. 



Apparently, a man named Cal Worthington, who sold cars in the Los Angeles area accused the show of using his persona to design the used car salesman featured in the episode, and actually sued Hanna-Barbera, Chevrolet (one of the show's main sponsors), as well as five NBC stations. But, I don't know exactly how the lawsuit ended, as I wasn't born when the show aired for the first time.



Anyway, back to the show discussion. I already talked about Harry Boyle a bit, but here's the rest of the Boyle family. There's Harry's wife, Irma (Joan Gerber), and his three children. Harry's daughter Alice (Kristina Holland), a heavy-set girl who fought for women's liberation rights. As well, Harry had two sons, Chet (David Hayward/Lennie Weinrib), and Jamie (Jackie Earle Haley/Willie Aames). Chet and Jamie could not be further apart from each other in personality. Chet had long-hair, was lazy, and constantly without a job. Jamie, on the other hand, was more conservative in thinking, and was as charming as well as mercenary.

Whenever there were family discussions, it became clear who the favourites of each parent were. Because Irma was more of a free-thinker than her husband, she often understood Alice and Chet more when their liberal thinking clashed with Harry's conservative ideas, although to the credit of Irma, she managed to stay in her zone of neutrality. Jamie, on the other hand, frequently sided with his father, out of a sign of sympathy.



But, lest you believe that Harry Boyle is the epitome of right-wing thinking, think again. Harry's neighbour, Ralph Kane (Jack Burns) was even more to the left of the political spectrum than Harry was, and he was a huge believer in every conspiracy theory under the sun. Together with his neighbour, Sara Whittaker, the two have essentially turned one section of the street into a virtual armed camp. Though Harry gets along with Ralph, even Harry concedes that Ralph's extreme attitude towards life is a little bit too extreme, even for him.

But the one thing that I can definitely say about “Wait Til Your Father Gets Home” is that despite all of the family squabbles and the obvious liberal/conservative divide that seems to be evident between Harry and his children (well, two of the three anyway), by the end of the episode, they can put all of their differences behind them, and still be a united family unit. And, I think that's a life lesson that all of us can learn.

Though, watching the show once more through adult eyes (I think I was five when Global was airing it), I find it hard to believe that Global once aired the show during the 5:30pm time slot on Saturdays...but then again, the show currently airs reruns of “Family Guy” on that station, so maybe they were a bit ahead of their time...