More filler from "The Concise Home Doctor"

 Well that didn't take long.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                   "Hi!"

 

 I thought for a second that might be The Concise Home Doctor she was lifting, then remembered that's not how time works. Incidentally, something incredibly important and exciting did actually happen in medicine today according to Helen Czerski so great!

STUFFINESS: Guidance and support

 

 Apologies to all sufferers of stuffiness for how little guidance or support is actually in this post, but with these illustrations from The Concise Home Doctor (Volume 1: ABA-HAN) I am finally back on schedule to post a thing a day throughout 2020! I don't know if I'll stop next year, but in the meantime if I find myself falling behind again I shall return to this volume immediately for content irrespective of context because these pictures are just the tip of the sootberg, baby.

 

 

 

 Thank you all for your patience.

SPOILERS FOR 2001

 Following on from those portraits of Saint Jerome working from home, I feel the absence of books acutely in Dr. Dave Bowman's isolation. I read here that Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, wondering how best to depict a superintelligent extraterrestrial onscreen, decided to ask Carl Sagan. They're clearly no fools. Nor of course is Sagan, who advised them not to even attempt such a thing, but instead merely "suggest" the alien. The appropriately unfathomable abstractness that resulted didn't stop Kubrick trying to take out insurance against actual extraterrestrials contacting Earth before the film could be released and showing him up. Lloyds of London refused however, and according to Sagan they "missed a good bet" which begs the question: "Why did they refuse? Why? WHAT DID THEY KNOW?"

 

 

Utah's Bureau of Land Management have released a statement on the removal of the monolith. (I love that it was discovered while counting sheep.)

Sometimes this blog will just be pictures of Saint Jerome and his Tiny Lion.

 Because much of Friday was spent finally knuckling down to updating the blog. 

And because cats really furnish a study.

 

 from the workshop Jan Van Eyk, 1442

 

Stefan Lochner, 1435-ish

 

 

Colantio, 1445-5

 

 

Lucas Cranach the Elder, 1525

Albrecht Dürer, 1514 

 

Vincenzo Catena, 1510-ish

 

 

Henry V. Steinweck, 1630, (according to pinterest)

Atonella de Messina, 1475-ish
 

 (Most of these lions actually are sitting more like dogs; the king of the animals completely tamed. The Victorian sculptor Edwin Landseer had a dog called "Lion", which it's possible he used as a model of the back two-thirds of the lions at the base of Nelson's Column after the one he'd obtained from London Zoo got too smelly - the danger there of working to a dead lion! That's another Time Tour joke.)

 

"Lion" by Edward Landseer.

Oh Also, Was Star Trek More Progressive In The Sixties?

Wait! Hear me out...

 

 Just while I'm on the subject of what is and isn't progress – and indeed of East versus West – I can't shake the feeling that the depiction of aliens in in The Original Series of Star Trek was actually less xenophobic than their depiction in The Next Generation. I'll admit I haven't seen every episode of either – so you should probably stop reading now – but I'm not just talking about how TOS's smaller budget meant that its Klingons had to look more human...

 

 

 Obviously aliens don't have to look human, but those encountered by Picard on TNG also had strange, mock-foreign accents – despite the fact they're being instantly translated – and often sleazier moral systems, which the Federation had to cajole like Henry Higgins into its own incurious chess-and-Mozart mainstream. 

 The aliens encountered by Kirk's Enterprise on the other hand are far less patronisingly depicted. They speak with the same accents as Kirk (when they're not sounding too high-faluting), and regularly occupy a higher place in the cosmic food chain than our heroes. The biggest idiots Kirk encounters often display the powers of actual gods. The problem these aliens pose isn't savagery, unless it's savagery they themselves inspire. 

 

"Stop that nonsense, or you'll not be allowed to make any more planets!"

 

 And I know that TNG has its own god-like pest in Q, but he's more New Age than Old Testament. There's nothing blasphemous about Q, he's just a pest. Anyway working out how to deal with a god isn't nearly as interesting as working out how to deal without one. And that, rather than the "tolerating" of those who are "different", seemed the real mission of Spock, Bones and Kirk.

 

My Guess? The Nixon Mask Was Inside Out.

 Sometimes youtube's suggestions algorithm absolutely nails it. There was no way I wasn't going to click on a video called Bob Newhart & the Masked Doctor Who Cured the Gays. Although a possible inspiration for The Texas Chainsaw Massacre's Leatherface, this masked doctor in question is the far more benign John E. Fryer, M.D., a closeted member of the American Pyschological Association at a time when homosexuality was listed as a mental illness. In 1972 he was persuaded to finally propose its delisting at the annual meeting of the APA in a speech entitled "I Am A Homosexual", which he delivered on the condition that he was allowed to do so in disguise.

 

 "Dr H. Anonymous" to the left of the campaigners who convinced him to make this address: Barbara Gittings and Frank Kameny. (Source).
 

  Fryer wore a velvet tuxedo, a large curly wig, and what was reported to be a mask of Richard Nixon, and the "Cure" of the video's title is the subsequent delisting of homosexuality as a mental illness in 1973. That "&" is doing quite a but of heavy lifting, but Bob Newhart was the star of a popular sitcom at the time about a psychiatrist, which in 1976 decided it too should probably take a stand. Since the recommendation of this video I've been for a delightfully deep dive into Matt Baume's channel and it's interesting to note how much more progressive television shows seem in the seventies than in the decade that follows, despite the continuity of creative teams behind them. Things don't always slowly get fairer then. Often they get fairer, then get pushed back. But I don't want to bang on about the eighties.

I Want To Be In That Number...

 

 News: Gemma Brockis has made another website! The tiny moments of contemplation afforded by the December tradition of looking for a door, wondering what might be behind it, then opening and finding out, have inspired her to curate her own advent calendar, and I've signed up to be one of the doors. The brief she sent out says "this is not for children. Though I imagine there might be some things they enjoy. That's not to say it's marketed as an ADULT ADVENT CALENDAR but it's particularly for people living alone. So. Hopefully not children." Gemma explains more here.

A Longer Walk than Intended from Alperton to Acton

 Roll up! Roll up!

 

 Come and take a walk through arguably alien landscapes.

 

 If you consider cars aliens, that is. They're not human at least. Human landscapes are places of congregation.

 

 Not all of these are currently open though (unless you're a pigeon).

 But you can still visit huge swathes created specifically for cars: dual carriageways, business estates, cul-de-sacs of semi-detached two-storey-houses. It's fun to take a walk through alien landscapes, provided you realise that's what they are.

 

 Pedestrians aren't unwelcome here. Not remotely. It's just you can't be anything more here. More than a pedestrian, I mean. The slowest form of transport.

 

Arsing Lupin (includes subliminal hazelnuts)

So what's the show called again? 

 

 Conicidentally, I'd just watched The Castle of Cagliostro on Netflix the Thursday before my Crown binge, or not that coincidentally maybe, you be the judge, but Hayao Miyazaki's debut definitely reminded me how much I enjoy a good castle break-in. Checking IMDB to confirm that this was indeed his debut I discovered the film was actually a spin-off from a TV show Miyazaki directed in 1972 called "Lupin the 3rd", so I had a look for some of that, and this compilation of the openings credits is as far as I got. What do you think? I think the second season may feature one of the coolest sequences ever to appear at the beginning of a cartoon: a samurai on the roof a plane in flight briefly unsheathing his sword before showing he's sliced another plane deftly in half. However it also features Lupin kicking a window in to get to a naked woman in bed and literally jumping out of his own clothes before being fended off by boxing glove on a spring, so it also has one of the not-coolest sequences. Subsequent, possibly Miyazaji-less series would clearly encounter problems trying to top it nonetheless: having your samurai slice a whole skyscraper in half,  from the roof,  doesn't ring quite as true, but it's preferable to how cluttered and bloody and brooding and boring the series would later look. The very first series - whose opening lyrics are not great, be warned - employs subliminal imagery of which I've taken screen shots so we can better enjoy the taste of that 1970's' high life being flashed behind the heroine/nameless dancing girl/no idea at our leisure...

 

 and also maybe identify who the hell these guys are.

Climbing the Walls 2: Faganism

Thanks to David Cairns' blog for this "Castle of Cagliostro" still.

 I had forgotten how much I was hoping to one day see the story of "Michael Fagan (intruder)" dramatised, until I found out in the opening minutes of The Crown that a whole episode would be dedicated to it, and my excitement only built as I watched. Fagan was everything I'd forgotten I wanted. As a Time Traveling Professor from the year 2121 on the old Time Tours, I used to claim that this was the most famous story we twenty-second-century folk had about the current monarch, and happily Peter Morgan's adaptation might yet prove me right. It goes like this: Turning south at Hyde Park Corner after a circuit of the Wellington Arch, and looking left from the top deck to see over the garden wall of Buckingham Palace the Queen's Own Compost Heap, punters would hear how, in 1982, a man called Michael Fagan had made it over this wall more than once, how he'd managed to find his way into the Palace and neck a bottle of wine, how the Queen had woken up to find him sitting on her bed, and how he meant her no harm, and how used she was to meeting strangers, how they'd engaged in coversation for a quarter of an hour, how he'd asked her if she had anything to smoke, and how she'd rung for a maid to bring some ciggies, and finally how Fagan was taken away, and tried for the theft of the wine. (Ken Campbell went to his trial, but I can't remember in which show he talks about it). Fagan was sentenced to three months in a psychiatric institute. And in all that time he only ever had one visitor. It was Prince Philip. He wanted to know where the Queen's bedroom was. I think that joke was nicked from a Duck Tours but the point is that although it's the Royal Wedding episode that bears the title "Fairy Tale", albeit ironically, Michael Fagan's meeting with the Queen really was a fairy tale. Anyone who's grown up with Ben Kenobi nipping behind a space pillar while the Stormtroopers pass probably carries with them a similar dream of sneaking into the echoing places of power and pulling a few levers. I walk at night myself of course, sometimes past the Palace, and fantasise about climbing the walls of this city, and even yell "fuck off" at the radio occassionally. I love that this was the episode of Thatcher's Falklands Victory as well, and hadn't realised, again until I saw it, how much I needed to see the first British Prime Minister ever to suggest that a government has no responsibility to look after its people appear in at least one story that wasn't entirely about her.

 

But-Who-Ever-Heard-of-a-"Radio-Star"-Anyway Round

 

Possibly the most Music Video-y Music Video ever.

(Ugh! Letterboxing! Ugh!)

 

 Welcome to this week's fortnightly quiz! That is correct, I am still pretending not to be a week behind on my posts. As a gang we decided this Friday's (last Friday's) rounds should all be television-based, but at the last minute I decided to abandon my "What connects these nine shows whose stars all died this year?" idea as a bit too much of a buzzkill, so here instead are ten images from classic music videos, but can you match them to the artist? The artists are Aphex Twin, Bjork, Blind Melon, Cardi B, the Chemical Brothers, Peter Gabriel, Michael Jackson, Nirvana, Radiohead, and the Wu-Tang Clan, one of whom I had to look up and are only included because of just how great their video is. Instead of posting the answers in the comments as usual, I'll link to the videos themselves just beneath the image. So enjoy. And rockety roo!

1.

Answer.

 2.

 

Answer.

3.

 Answer.

 

4.

Answer.

 5.

Answer.

 

6. 

Answer.

 

7.

 Answer.

 

8.

Answer.

 9.

Answer.

 

10.

Answer.

 

 And for a bonus point, name this band:

 

Answer... Okay, the word Answer looks really weird to me now.

Sometimes this blog will just be the Horrible Histories Prom. Literally.

 

 I'm very late to this party, having not watched Horrible Histories before I was lucky enough to work with the show's – let's call them what they are – total stars, but in the comfort of this lockdown I finally managed to binge those first five series, and what a party I've missed. Series four and five in particular feel like the absolute apotheosis of a good idea, the work of people who by now could do no wrong (they even let Lawry sing!) and I wonder if this prom – recorded by my reckoning just after series three – contributed anything to that unmatchable mojo. Look at Larry Rickard, for example, tearing through his Bob Hale monologue alongside a live orchestra like it's not the most terrifying thing any actor could do. Has any room as big as this been as full of love? They're monarchs of all they survey, and just so very good at their job. But you know all that. Like I say, I'm very late to this party.

Who's Better Though, Greeks or Persians? There's Only One Way To Find Out... WATCH VIDEOS!

 I spotted this board game in the window of a charity shop in Clapham back in - let me check... September. Wait, September? That is... That's only two months ago! But it feels like... - 2020 has seemed so long, yet the days have seemed so short. Anyway... I had often wondered where the concept of "Western Civilization" came from, given it seemed to refer to influences from Egypt, Greece, Rome, and what I'll call the Bible Lands, all of which as shown in the map above lie to the North, South and East of the Mediterranean. My confusion however was lifted by the following short, computer-game-sponsored video from "Extra Credits" (and its sequel). I've a lot of time for "Extra Credits". Apparently it's the Greek historian Herodotus who first spun the idea of a pan-Greek identity in his account of the battle of Thermopylae against Persia, the battle depicted in the film 300, the battle the Greeks actually lost. In fact, as the video goes on to explain, the Hellenic alliance would be incredibly short-lived, and Sparta would turn on a rebuilt Athens before the century was over...

 

 In this short window between invasions however, the city-state of Athens would produce the Parthenon, the plays of Aeschylus (the Oresteia), Euripides (Medea) and Sophocles (Oedipus!), the philosophy of Socrates, the sculpture of Phidias, and a culture war between the rule of law and contrarian personality cults whose models bring us pretty much bang up to date.

 

Thanks again, Larry Gonick. 

 

 The influence of the team on the left hand side of the map, in other words, has not been overstated. But it's worth remembering that this fight against "Oriental despotism" (as the Persian Empire is described below in a Sunday Times publication from 1960 enigmatically titled Mainly For Children) fought for at Thermopylae and more successfully a few months later at Salamis, masterminded by Greeks who would later seek comfortable retirement themselves in that same Persian Empire, was a fight for freedom only inasmuch as it was a fight for self-determination, the freedom to, among other things, keep slaves, a model that again brings us pretty much bang up to date.

 On other pages: "Why Bother About Space?" by Colin Ronan, "The Chronicle Of The Great Carp" by Clifford Parker, and "Australian Animals I Have Met" by Axel Poignant.