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Friday, June 22, 2012

My Two Dads


In the year 2012, there are admittedly all different types of families out there.  One of the most common types of family is the so-called nuclear family, which is a family that consists of a mother, father, and at least one child.

However, this does not mean that this is the only type of family that one can see on the street.

The truth of the matter is that there are a lot of families that some people may label as “unconventional”.  I’m sure you might know what I mean by that.  Single-parent families, step-families, families with same-sex couples raising children, foster families...the possibilities are endless.

But, does this mean that these families are any more or any less important than the standard nuclear family?  I say no.

As far as I’m concerned, it shouldn’t matter what makes up a family.  All that matters is that the people within a family are happy and healthy, and grow up to be loving, caring, productive members of society.

And if you look back through the world of television sitcoms, there are lots of examples where this is the case.  Take a look at “Full House” for example.  The three girls in the family were raised by their father, their uncle, and their father’s best friend after the death of their mother.  It certainly didn’t make D.J., Stephanie, or Michelle turn into drug addicts.  Well, the characters on the show, anyway.  On “Sabrina the Teen-Age Witch”, Sabrina was raised by her two aunts, Hilda and Zelda, and despite having magical powers, she grew up quite grounded.

On “The Facts of Life”, you could say that Blair, Tootie, Natalie, and Jo ended up forming their own family of sorts, with Mrs. Garrett acting as House Mother.  On that note, you could look at “Diff’rent Strokes” for a perfect example of a non-traditional family as the rich, Caucasian Drummond family took in two poor, African-American children as their own.  Even on last week’s blog topic, “Step by Step”, we can see the trials and tribulations of growing up as part of a step-family. 

As it so happens, today’s TGIF subject also deals with the idea of an untraditional family.  And weirdly enough, the show has one star in common with last week’s show, Staci Keanan.


We’re going to look back on the NBC television sitcom “My Two Dads”, which aired for three seasons from September 20, 1987 to April 30, 1990.  Staci Keanan played the role of Nicole Bradford.  Nicole grew up never knowing who her father was.  She grew up with a single mother, Marcy.  For the first twelve years of her life, she grew up happily under her mother’s care.  However, when her mother passes away, Nicole is wondering what will become of her.

TRIVIA:  Although we only see Nicole’s mother in a flashback style episode, she was played by a familiar face – Dynasty’s Emma Samms.


On the show’s pilot episode, we soon discover Nicole’s fate, and it’s probably one of the most bizarre circumstances ever.  You see, when it comes time to read Marcy’s will, there are two men in attendance.  One is financial advisor Michael Taylor (Paul Reiser), and the other one is struggling artist Joey Harris (Greg Evigan).  The reason why both men happen to be there soon becomes clear.


The first thing that you need to know is that Michael and Joey used to be the best of friends.  They were quite close, and they swore to themselves that nothing would ruin their friendship.

Unfortunately, Marcy ended up getting caught in the crossfire.  She had the misfortune of having Michael and Joey falling in love with her, and as a result of this, Michael and Joey’s friendship ended.  Certainly at the will reading, Michael and Joey’s rivalry continued, and they were still quite bitter over what had happened.  After all, both men dated Marcy while she was alive, and both men thought that they would end up being the last man standing.

What neither one of them knew was that Marcy had a secret.  You see, Marcy had gotten involved with both men before Nicole was conceived, and well, Marcy didn’t know exactly which one was the father.  And, since Maury Povich didn’t end up getting a talk show until the 1990s, she had no idea which man fathered her child.


So in Marcy’s will, Marcy clearly stated that since she didn’t know whether Michael or Joey was Nicole’s father, she wished for both men to have joint custody of Nicole.

Naturally, both men are completely shocked by the news, and upon meeting Nicole for the first time, they’re not exactly sure how to deal with the situation.  In fact, I think this is a great time to post the link to the pilot episode, which you can see if you click HERE and HERE.

So, clearly, you can see that the sudden arrival of Nicole in the lives of both Michael and Joey didn’t really do much in terms of melting the frostiness between them...at first.  But after both of them got into a huge fight which hurt Nicole they soon realized that they were being jerks, and they made a pact to try and get along for Nicole’s sake.  Of course, the fact that the judge who made the ruling for Nicole to live with both Michael and Joey, Judge Margaret W. Wilbur (Florence Stanley), also contributed to their decision, as Nicole would have been placed in foster care otherwise.

Of course, this step also helped mend the friendship between Michael and Joey, and by the series end, both men had completely repaired their friendship with each other. 

TRIVIA:  Florence Stanley’s character also appeared on the NBC sitcom “Night Court”.


So, that’s the story behind “My Two Dads”.  Over the three seasons that the program aired on NBC, Joey and Michael tried to balance parenthood with dating, jobs, and other aspects of daily life.  Initially, Michael lived in an uptown neighbourhood, while Joey lived in an artist studio with Nicole splitting time between the two men’s homes.  But after Joey accidentally gets Michael evicted from his apartment, Michael moves in.  And, Judge Wilbur ends up becoming a familiar face as well, as she ends up buying the apartment building that Joey lives in, making her a regular character as well.


TRIVIA:  Other famous faces to star in the program included Chad Allen and Giovanni Ribisi (as two boys who have crushes on Nicole), and Dick Butkus as the owner of the diner below Joey’s apartment.

Now, here’s where the sitcom becomes even more heartwarming.  Michael and Joey automatically assume the responsibility of taking care of Nicole and her well-being.  No questions asked.  And Nicole’s personality helped win the hearts of both Michael and Joey.  To them, it didn’t matter whose kid Nicole was.  Both of them loved Nicole as if she were their own. 

Mind you, there was one episode that aired in 1989 that almost answered the question of who the father was (It’s an episode entitled Pop, The Question, if you’re curious to watch it).  At the time, Michael and Joey had a falling out, and both of them decided to run a DNA test to determine which one of them was Nicole’s father.  The only problem was that they ran the test without letting Nicole know, and she was very upset that they had done this without consulting her.  Nicole manages to get the results, and tears them up, showing Michael and Joey that she didn’t care about what the results said.  To her, both men were worthy of being her father.  This caused Michael and Joey to patch things up between them, and as a result, the viewing audience never found out which father was really the father...if either one was, that is.

In fact, the only person who ever found the truth out was the judge, and she never told anyone.

But that was what was great about the show.  No, we never did find out if Joey or Michael was Nicole’s dad...but by the end of the series, it didn’t matter at all.  She was still happy, well taken care of, and in fact, she helped the men become more responsible, and happier as a result of her coming to live with them.  Even at the end of the series, when Joey had to move to San Francisco, Nicole never stopped loving him, and lovingly referred to Joey as still being one of “her two dads”.


I think that’s all that matters in the long run.  It doesn’t matter how traditional a family is, and it doesn’t matter how unconventional a family is.  As long as there is love, shouldn’t that be enough?

Thursday, June 21, 2012

A Complimentary Post With A Side Of Self-Doubt


With this edition of the Thursday Confession, I'll readily admit to posting something within this space that has been recycled from another source. In this case, I wrote this piece approximately a year ago in my Notes section on Facebook. But since not everyone can read those, I figure that for the vast majority of you, it'll be new to you. And, this time around, I can actually post video clips and pictures to supplement my confession the second time around.

This confession is all about compliments, and the art of receiving them. There's a lot of people out there in the world who are motivated by the number of compliments that they get from various people. And, believe me, I get that. Everyone likes to hear something good about themselves every now and then, right?

But what happens when you are at the receiving end of a compliment, and you aren't exactly sure how you're supposed to take it. On the surface, it appears as though it is genuine, and that the giver is sincere in his/her words...but if you dig a little deeper, you might discover that it's anything but.

Well, that's what this confession is all about. The art of accepting a compliment...and why on my report card of life, I've never gotten higher than a C- in that art.



THURSDAY CONFESSION #25: In the past, I was absolutely terrible at taking compliments at face value. Even now, I still have difficulty doing this.



Does anyone remember a singer by the name of James Blunt? I'm sure you all do, since he's been all over the pop charts over the past five years or so. I can't really say that I myself am a fan of his, but I kind of have to talk about him briefly to get into the meaty goodness of this whole article.

Anyways, James Blunt has been a singer for a few years now, and I would hazard a guess that his first big breakthrough was a song called “You're Beautiful”. Now, on the surface, judging by the title of the song, you'd think that it was a lovely song about how beautiful someone is, and how much they mean to the person. Yet, dig a little deeper, and you will discover that the song is really about heartbreak and betrayal. Heck, if the music video showing Mr. Blunt leaping off a cliff doesn't convince you of that, I don't know what will. Have a look at the music video below to see what I mean.



In some twisted way, it kind of leads into the general point of this confession. After all, as I said before, this entry's all about compliments, and why it seems so difficult for some to accept them as they are.

I guess in some ways, I'm kind of guilty of that. In many ways, I find it difficult to accept a compliment at face value. Someone may tell me that I'm beau...um...handsome, and like the James Blunt song, I over-analyze it and try to find some iota of sarcasm or truth fudging within it. Like, suppose I'm walking down the street and all of a sudden people are whistling and cat-calling at me. In past occasions, I dismissed those as being nothing more than a cruel joke because I felt that I wasn't worthy enough to get such attention. Certainly when I was at my heaviest weight, I completely dismissed it as nothing more but a joke. How could they say that I was “hot stuff” when I certainly didn't feel that way about myself?



Or worse is the dreaded backhanded compliment. The kind of compliments that are given by such fictional characters as Reggie Mantle, or Marie Barone from “Everybody Loves Raymond”. Oh, sure, they may tell you something that appears nice, but depending on the context, it might appear as though they are actually being more condescending than kind. Believe me, I've gotten quite a few of those during my lifetime as well.

There is some good news however. I am getting better at taking compliments and praise at face value every day, and I'm more willing to accept them rather than roll my eyes in disgust.

Still, I will probably always have some smidgen of doubt as to how accurate they are. If someone tells me I'm intelligent for instance, I'm perfectly fine with that now and can own it...but if you had asked me that question a decade earlier when I voluntarily left university because I couldn't hack it, I probably might have told you to go to hell, and that you were cruel for making light of something so horrible.



Yeah, at 22, I was pretty much the definition of “emo”. I'll admit it. Consider it a bonus confession for today, if you will.

I think a part of why I sometimes have a bit of difficulty accepting compliments at face value is probably partly due to how I was raised. I was never really brought up in an environment where compliments were freely given out, so maybe that has something to do with it. Not saying that my childhood was filled with abuse or neglect...far from it, really. But, because I didn't really get many spoken word compliments by those closest to me, I guess in some way, I didn't know how to accept a compliment, or more importantly how to distinguish the difference between genuine praise and a sarcastic remark. And, that's not me making an excuse. At the time, it was how I genuinely felt.

I think a larger part of it comes from the pitiful amount of self-worth I had back then. I certainly didn't feel good about myself at my worst, and it didn't matter how people told me that the terrible things I was feeling weren't true. I was too busy feeling sorry for myself to really let those compliments in at the time.

I'm probably not the only case out there in regards to praise. There's some people who are like me, who couldn't figure out the difference between real and fake compliments. As a result, some may mistake genuine praise for sarcasm, or they'd interpret constructive criticism as a personal attack, or if they were truly like me, they'd hide from the world and not let anyone else in for fear of getting hurt.

And, I know that looking back on it, it sounds so incredulous to me that I could even feel this way about something that should be appreciated.

But I did.

I've taken some great efforts to try and improve my outlook on life, and try to be more accepting of compliments, but I know it's not going to be an easy fix, and that it's going to take a lot of patience for me to get there. It is a challenge though. I won't deny that.

I don't take things nearly as personally anymore, and after some soul-searching, I've come to the conclusion that I am just as deserving of love and affection as anybody else.



I just have to try and let my guard down, and trust that when someone does tell me that I am smart, or I'm kind, or when I'm walking down the street and cat-calling me, I'll believe them, and not try to find something snotty in the tone or the choice of words someone uses.

In fact, when I turned 31 a month ago, I was walking down the street, and a group of people were stopped at the corner, whistling at me. And, this time around, I was more accepting of it. It still felt a bit uncomfortable, but I didn't automatically assume the worst either, so I guess I can consider that a small victory in the battle for eternal self-esteem.

I guess I'm just babbling on a bit, and for all I know, this confession may not make any sense whatsoever...but it's something that I have been thinking about for a while, and in my quest to understand myself better, I feel I have to jot everything that's been bothering me down. No matter how crazy sounding it looks to someone on the outside, or how nonsensical it appears to me.

But, that's the kind of guy I am. At one time, I used to be afraid to share things with others, because I was scared I'd be perceived as weird, or flighty, or be made fun of. Now that I'm older, I don't care what people think. These are my thoughts, and my thoughts alone to do with what I want.

Some may look at it as me sharing too much about myself at any given time, but I've only scratched the surface. I still have many, many issues to work through. Many demons left to slay. Many secrets to unearth.

One day, I hope to truly be an open book. Instead, I choose to let you all in one chapter at a time.

In the meantime, I'll do my best to keep telling myself that I'm beau...er...handsome, and take it from there.

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!