Category Archives: Germ Warfare

Fifty-three Christmas Eves ago, I first saw an episode of an exciting new show that hadnt yet caught on with viewers, despite great reviews in TV Guide and elsewhere. Mission: Impossible was the final entry in what had been a mid-Sixties spy craze on TV and in the movies, all of them of course due to the huge success of James Bond. Spies had never been big box office before Bond, but for a few years they were as common as Star Wars rip-offs would be fifteen years later. Mission: Impossible was unusual for the new genre; no sex, very little violence, jumpy editing that was too fast for most casual TV viewers a half century ago, with complicated, half-explained plots that you had to follow closely to figure out. Above all, its main characters were quite deliberately left blank: you didnt really know who they were, all you ever knew about them is what they did. Yet Mission: Impossible became by far the most successful and long lasting of all the TV spy shows of the 60s. Variety raved, It looks like CBS finally found its U.N.C.L.E., referring to NBCs hit spy show, then in its third year.

The Man From U.N.C.L.E., debuting in 1964, was the first of the TV spy bunch, boldly announced as Ian Fleming for television!, a claim that NBC and its producers, MGM, were forced to hastily retract after Bonds producers and Flemings estate threatened to sue. That claim was a lie, or more forgivably, an awkward exaggeration, and like Mission, U.N.C.L.E. was slow to find an audience. But once it did, it was a huge, if short-lived pop culture phenomenon. Its stars, Robert Vaughn and David McCallum, were mobbed everywhere they traveled. They got bushels of fan mail every week. MGM even happily publicized hundreds of fan letters addressed simply to The Gun, U.N.C.L.E.s custom-crafted handgun, accessorized with a custom stock, barrel extender, silencer, even an infrared sniper scope. Millions of plastic replicas were among the most popular 60s Christmas toys for American boys. Could you imagine the reaction to that today?

The third member of the top hit parade was NBCs other spy drama, I Spy. (NBC was also the broadcast home of Get Smart, whose competing spy agencies, corporate-looking headquarters, gadgets, and auto-opening doors were far more of a parody of U.N.C.L.E. than of Bond, much to MGMs irritation. But its a comedy, so Im skipping it.)

Like U.N.C.L.E., I Spy was popular for its two leading men, their breezy banter and their friendship. The difference was visible, literally on the face of it: Bill Cosby was the first Black leading man of television, a sensation that he and the network coolly underplayed with the brusque, patriotic note that in modern America, equality and an interracial friendship was no big deal. Theres an urban legend of sorts that race never came up, was never mentioned in I Spy. Thats not quite true; the very first episode, Goodbye, Patrick Henry, is about a boastful, rhyming Muhammad Ali-modeled character who defects to Communist China in a worldwide wave of publicity, only to seek a rescue later. Race did come up as an issue from time to time in the series, but it was rare. Cosby, and America at the time, liked it better that way. His character, Alexander Scott, was a Rhodes scholar, an intellectual giant who became one of Black Americas most admired role models. His espionage cover was being the trainer for tennis star Kelly Robinson, played by Robert Culp, who amiably shrugged off being overshadowed by his co-star.

Kelly and Scotty may have talked jivey, like jazz club or comedy club buddies, but I Spy was the most realistic of TVs spy showsno whizbang gadgets, no high tech, no mythical antagonists. It was us versus the Communists, just like real life. Their few on-screen briefings took place at the Pentagon; they learned their jobs at what sure looks like the defense language institute in Monterey, California. Like the other spy shows (and like James Bond himself), in a literal sense, they were rarely spies. Kelly and Scotty were secret agents, mostly couriers and sometimes fixers. That was also realistic: actual spies were often people with professions (sports, culture, academia) that allowed them to enter foreign countries, even Iron Curtain ones, without attracting suspicion.

By 1965, NBC was billing itself as The full-color network, and I Spy took full advantage of it. No other show of the period, and few since, went on international locations like they did, visually making the most of the real Hong Kong, Mexico or Europe. The shows cinematographer, Egyptian-born Fouad Said, was an outspoken advocate of getting movies and TV off the sound stages and into reality. A company he started, Cinemobile, devised and marketed trucks that were fully equipped camera and lighting departments, setting the pattern for the entire industry to this day.

If you havent seen I Spy, look it up on YouTube. Its a treat, well written and acted. Youll see why white and black America alike fell in love with Bill Cosby, and what a damn shame it is that he ended up the way he has. It was on the air for three years. Not every episode is a classic, but by and large, it was consistently good, beginning to end.

Regrettably for its fans, the same cant be said about The Man From U.N.C.L.E., which started strong but went off course by its third year and was ignominiously canceled midway through its fourth season. Its first year was in black and white, which surprisingly helped the shows suspension of disbelief. Unlike other spy agencies, U.N.C.L.E. was politically neutral, with the winking implication that it was part of the United Nations, right outside their window. (The UN didnt like that, so MGM explained the acronym as United Network Command for Law and Enforcement.) Dashing agent Napoleon Solo (Robert Vaughn) even had a Russian partner, Illya Kuryakin, played by Scots-born actor David McCallum. This was the height of rock and rolls British Invasion, Beatlemania ruled the land, and the Brit, McCallum, became a heartthrob for young girls.

U.N.C.L.E.s Manhattan headquarters looked like a modern corporate office, equipped with computers and closed-circuit TV. The men were in suits and ties. U.N.C.L.E.s main opponent was also corporate looking, with secret branch offices all over the world, and their own custom-designed weaponry, distinct from the heroes. Agents of the two sides often knew each other, like staffers of competing ad agencies. When a comely enemy spy coyly declines to say who she works for, Napoleon Solo helpfully reminds her. Thrush. You know, that organization of renegades, spies, and traitorsthe place you pick up your paycheck each week. In keeping with the Thrush theme, enemies often had the names of birdsDr. Egret, G. Emory Partridge. This gimmick got old quickly.

So did one of the shows regular features, bringing ordinary citizens into the center of the action, usually by chance. They were usually (condescendingly silly) young women from what wed now call Flyover Country, impatient with their allegedly humdrum lives and the dull guy they were engaged to. For an hour of television, they had international adventures, risking death in glamorous surroundings, protected by handsome men. Then theyd invariably realize that their dopey boyfriend and dishwater-plain home town werent so bad after all, and return home happier and wiser for the experience.

In the first two years of the show, plots were imaginative with a touch of science fiction. From the second year on, episodes were in color. Strangely, it seemed to take something away; making it look more like real life made the cardboard aspects more obvious. Then a totally unexpected thing would change the course of U.N.C.L.E., not for the better: ABCs mid-season surprise hit, Batman. For a while, silly, joked-up superheroes were a pop culture phenomenon, called high camp for no discernible reason. If you look the term up, its called things like Artificial, affected, effeminate. The spirit of Batman filled other shows with envy, and by U.N.C.L.E.s third season the show became a lame joke, with Illya riding a stink bomb, Strangelove-style, over Las Vegas and Solo dancing the Watusi with a gorilla. NBC also made the unwise move of airing a one-year spinoff, The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. Stephanie Powers was actually quite good as agent April Dancer, but there was just too much U.N.C.L.E. on TV, devaluing the original shows appeal. The producers knew theyd screwed up. Season four was a more sober, back-to-spy-basics show, but it was too late for The Man From U.N.C.L.E. to pull out of its dive. Its time slot was given to a new, brief-lived sensation, Rowan and Martins Laugh-In.

In the meantime, Mission: Impossible just kept chugging along, protected by creator Bruce Gellers iron insistence on avoiding high camp, inside jokes, or in fact just about any jokes at all. It started as a product of Lucille Balls Desilu Studios, as did its 1966 stablemate, Star Trek. Martin Landau, in fact, turned down the role of Spock. Years later, he admitted that financially speaking, this wasnt a lucky move. But who knew? Mission: Impossible was a top ten show. Star Trek could barely stay on the air. True.

The very second episode Id seeand the first most Americans would seewas on New Years Eve, Dec. 31, 1966. The show became a hit overnight. Operation Rogosh was so good that for years, the producers screened it as an example for new writers. An unbreakable enemy agent has to be tricked into revealing where germ warfare bombs are placed. Like the movie 36 Hours, they construct an elaborate ruse, convincing their subject that years have elapsed. This kind of fake location plot would later drive The Sting, and in fact they were both based on the same inspiration, a 1940 book called The Big Con. This confidence man trick was called the big store, and Mission: Impossible would return to it again and again. Theyd fool a foreign traitor into thinking his plot to kill his pro-Western boss had succeeded, and while he was in the middle of gloating out loud, the Impossible Missions Forces would roll back the fake wall, and the angry prime minister, whod heard all, would promptly place the hapless villain under arrest. The IMF were con men in a good cause.

Unlike I Spys Alexander Scott, who knew everything about everything, Greg Morriss Barney Collier was strictly a technical whizkid who could rewire or reprogram anything that came his way. He was yet another role model for Black America. In real life, whenever Morriss TV was on the blink, television repairmen were astonished that he needed their help.

Mission: Impossible was an expensive show, a tough challenge for little Desilus tiny backlot. It required various Iron Curtain police and military uniforms, foreign cars and signage, and credible-looking Los Angeles substitutes for overseas locations. Lucille Ball sold the studio to its vastly bigger neighbor, Paramount Pictures, and turmoil erupted that couldnt entirely be kept behind the scenes. First, IMF leader Dan Briggs (Steven Hill) was replaced with Peter Graves when Hill started getting increasingly obstreperous about keeping the Friday sabbath. Industry veterans shook their heads. Can you imagine getting fired from Paramount for being too Jewish?, they laughed.

Two years later, married leads Martin Landau and Barbara Bain refused to report to work until they got massive raises, which the producers would be contractually required to extend to Graves as well. Hard-as-nails Paramount turned them down and they were gone. Landau would be replaced for two now-forgotten years by Leonard Nimoy, but it would take years of female guest stars until Linda Day George became a reasonably good choice. Show creator and co-owner Bruce Geller had one fight too many with Paramount, who banned him from the lot. He still had his ownership rights, he still got his producer feesbut he was gone.

To give the devils their due, Paramount had to do something. By the turn of the 70s, the spy craze was over. The studio wanted more shows in sunlit penthouses and fewer of them in frozen East European dungeons. Crime shows were in, so IMFs complex schemes were now usually aimed at amorphous crime lords called the syndicate. Formerly straight-arrow Greg Morris now had a mild Afro, and often infiltrated criminal rings with a cliched, Yeah, maaan delivery. The show would suffer creatively for all these losses and less-than-sure creative choices, though it continued to be fairly good, professionally done and consistent right through the end, season 7. Mission: Impossible was revived for two years in the late 80s, with Peter Graves still the leader of the IMF team, and was rebooted as a film series by Tom Cruise in 1996. Today, its the only remaining part of the 60s spy craze that people are still familiar with.

When Mission ended in the spring of 1972, we were far removed from the innocent-but-sexy era it was created in. Anyone who thinks wokeness is strictly a modern phenomena surely wasnt around to see feminists burn their bras for eager news cameras outside of the Miss America pageant, or doesnt remember when even the head of the AFL-CIO, as official a Democrat as it got, declared his own party to be the home of acid, amnesty and abortion. Black Americans on the big screen had gone from helping the nuns in Lilies of the Field to the murderous pimps of Superfly. It was a different world. Yet whenever TV reruns brought us back to those exciting musical themes and jazzy opening graphics, we fondly remembered a not-too-distant time of miniskirts, flirtation, Cold War gunplay, and tall, handsome men in immaculate tailoring. Because saving the world never really goes out of style.

Excerpt from:

TV Spies of the '60s - Ricochet.com

Sometimes it really seems like were actively trying to bring about sci-fi level visions of apocalyptic end times. Ever hear of the Tomb, a cement bunker in the Marshall Islands? It looks like a flying saucer crashed into a reef atoll and half-buried itself. But the truth is actually almost as weirdthe Tomb is a basically giant trash can filled with soil thats been nuked dozens of times and also been exposed to biological warfare tests.

One could posit that the US government must hate the Marshall Islands. Uncle Sam detonated nearly 70 nukes on the place during the early stages of the Cold War. As if that wasnt enough, they dropped biological weapons there too. The Tomb is filled with the irradiated and germ-filled debris left behindoh, and also a whole bunch of soil the US shipped over that wed nuked into oblivion on our own turf.

And now its threatening to spill that wretched horridness into the sea. As if the Marshall Islands havent been messed with enough by US government experiments. Climate change is pushing tides ever higher on the Marshalls, and local officials there are bracing for the moment when the Tomb is partially beneath the waves. A problem because the Tomb has developed thousands of cracks over the decades and isnt in any way watertight.

According to the Los Angeles Times, American officials have known since the Tomb was built in the 1970s that it was already leaking radioactive waste into the soil below and considered moving the material back to the US mainland. Nope, they eventually decided, and let the Marshallese handle it.

Im like, how can it [the dome] be ours? said Hilda Heine, the Republic of the Marshall Islands President. We dont want it. We didnt build it. The garbage inside is not ours. Its theirs.

This is, of course, a problem for all of humanity not just our little corner of the world as surfers, but surfers have discovered perfect reef pass surf nearby in recent years. Slater has been surfing there for at least a decade. You may remember, in fact, this trip with JJF from a few years back:

Slater and John John and anybody else who has surfed the surrounding area may want to run themselves by a Geiger counter should they get the chance. Recent research suggests that some zones in the Marshalls are as radioactive as Chernobyl and Fukushima.

The story about the bombs and what was done to and about the people who lived there is alarming and enraging, to say the least, and one certainly worth reading. The above-cited LA Times piece would be a good place to start.

Reports now indicate that the Tomb actually moves a little with the tides as it issomething that wasnt foreseen in the 70s, but which is going to only worsen as seas rise further. The fear is that rising sea levels will eventually push the Tombs dome cover off the vault entirely, releasing nuclear terror into the ecosystem.

There is already a serious amount of coral bleaching, algal blooms and fish die-offs happening in the Marshalls, and the threat of nuclear contamination only adds to stress locals feel about rising sea levels. The US governments role in covering up whats happened there and refusal to repay the Marshallese for resettlement and cleanup efforts is shocking and disappointing.

Its certainly something anyone considering a surf trip there should be aware of. Its also something that a certain world-famous surfer with an unusually loud microphone and penchant for social causes could maybe consider looking into, considering how much fun the islands have provided him as he breezes in and out to play in the ocean.

Read more here:

Cracked Vault Holding Nuclear Waste Could Leak Untold Radiation into the Ocean - Surfer Magazine

A lot of pundit verbiage and Democratic Party internal debate as well is being wasted on the question of whether Trump could be convicted successfully in a Senate currently run by a lickspittle Republican majority afraid of their shadows and devoid of any concern for the fate of Constitutional government.

Lets accept that the 20-plus Republicans among this bunch of gutless partisans that would have to join all or most of the 47 Democrats and independents in the Senate in order to convict Trump do not exist, even if they were to be shown a video of Trump plotting a military coup.

It would still be the duty of the House Judiciary, and of the Democratic majority of the House of Representatives, to fully investigate President Donald Trumps impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors, his ongoing violation of the Constitutions emolument clause against profiteering from his high office, and his use of bribery/extortion on the president of the Ukraine in hopes of getting foreign support for his 2020 campaign for re-election, and to vote out of the Judiciary Committee and to approve in the House articles of impeachment for those constitutional crimes.

Why go through such an exercise in futility if theres little or no hope of a Senate conviction?

Because the Congress is the only available government body that has the power to stop a power-crazed president from becoming a dictator.

And because even if Trump were to be prevented by other forces whether the courts, the Congress, an assassins bullet or too many Big Macs and milkshakes from wreaking further havoc on the American body politic, its society and its people, allowing him to carry on as a dictator, issuing power-grabbing executive orders, violating laws passed by the Congress, refusing subpoenas of his taxes or his subordinates, etc., not to mention launching military actions without any legal backing, his impeachment will establish a new baseline of acceptable/unacceptable presidential behavior and power for all future presidents.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made that case eloquently at the opening of the House Judiciary Impeachment Committee hearing, when she said, in authorizing the committee to launch its impeachment investigation, The Presidents actions have seriously violated the Constitution The President abused his power for his own personal benefit Our Democracy is what is at stake. The president leaves no choice but to act.

Fine words from the Democratic representative from San Francisco, to be sure.

But where was Madam Speaker back in 2002-3? Thats when President George W. Bush and his consigliere Vice President Dick Cheney, with the support of Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, lied brazenly and repeatedly on the basis of fraudulent evidence, claiming that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons programthat was about to give him the ability to nuke US forces and the United States itself, as well as a poison gas and germ warfare capability that also imminently threatened America? It was widely known by anyone paying attention at the time that the portrayal of Iraq as an imminent threat to the US was a sham. Even as the US was building up for an invasion, inspectors on the ground, including American ones, were crying out that there were no such programs. Iraq had no navy, no long-range missiles capable of delivering the non-existent nuclear warheads, or even germ or chemical weapons. Even the white powder that Secretary of State Powell ominously held up in a little jar in the UN Security Council, claiming it was deadly militarized anthrax spores, was nothing but a cheap stage prop.

Also a fraud was the claim that Iraq had tried to arrange for the transport of yellow cake uranium ore from Niger to Iraq, purportedly for use in creating U-uranium for a nuclear weapon. Aside from the major problem that Iraq had no equipment to do the complex, costly and time-consuming work of isolating out the critical bomb-making isotope U-235 that is just 0.72% uranium ore from the U-238 that constitutes 99% of it, the evidence that this transaction was even attempted consisted of a letter typed on forged stationary stolen in a CIA black bag-job on Nigers unguarded Embassy in Rome, and signed by a Niger official who was not longer even in office, as I wrote in my and co-author Center for Constitutional Rights Legal Director Barbara Olshanskys bookThe Case for Impeachment(St. Martins Press, 2006).

The entire Iraq War was a war crime launched on a blatant lie!

If ever there was a president (and vice president, secretary of state and national security advisor!) who deserved to be impeached, convicted and packed off to do hard time in a jail cell in Leavenworth, it was GW Bush. But right about the time my book rolled off the presses in May 2006, this same Pelosi declared that as long as she was speaker, Impeachment is off the table.

To the dismay of then House Judiciary Chair John Conyers, Speaker Pelosi was as good (or bad) as her word and his committee was not allowed to conduct impeachment hearings or to call witnesses and investigate this and other high crimes and misdemeanors of the Bush/Cheney administration.

Think about that. The biggest crime of the past half century the launching of a major war by the US in violation both of International law and of even the US Constitution, which grants war-making powers solely to Congress a war that caused thousands of US military deaths and injuries, hundreds of thousands and perhaps over a million Iraqi deaths, mostly of civilians, that cost trillions of dollars and that destabilized the entire Middle East for decades, wasbased entirely on a presidential lie, and Pelosi would not allow an impeachment hearing!

Why? Because she did not believe it would be smart politics. The Republicans had suffered an electoral drubbing after attempting to impeach President Bill Clinton, and she was afraid the same thing would happen to Democrats if they pursued an impeachment of Bush the younger for launching a war on the basis of lies.

And yet her current words regarding a Trump impeachment, true as they are, were even more applicable to Bush. As we well know, the actions of the Bush/Cheney administration in the wake of the still suspicious and unsolved 9-11 attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001 from the invasion of and launching of an 18-year (and counting) war against Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq to the secret spying on all Americans by the National Security Agency, to authorized illegal torture of captives on the Guantanamo Naval Base in Cuba and at various black sites around the globe in the prisons of friendly dictatorships surely put US democracy in grave danger and should have left Congress no choice but to act.

But Pelosi barred any such action against Bush, and so today we have the endless war in Afghanistan, continued chaos involving US troops in Syria, Yemen, Iraq and elsewhere, we had President Barack Obamas military assault on Libya leading to the overthrow and murder of that countrys leader Muammar Gaddafy, and the creation of a failed state and bloody civil conflict, and we of course have a deeply embedded national surveillance state in which every man, woman and child has her or his communications and travel constantly monitored.

Thank you Nancy for your diligent protection of our democracy and our freedom.

So yes, lets impeach this degenerate, egotistical psychopath president by all means. It is indeed important that he be charged with impeachable high crimes and misdemeanors by the House of Representatives. But this Trumpian nightmare might not have even happened or been necessary had then Speaker Nancy Pelosi done the right thing back in 2006 and ordered Judiciary Chair John Conyers to launch an impeachment investigation into the Bush presidency.

Pelosi now warns, If we allow a president to be above the law, we do so surely at the peril of our Republic. Shes right. We can see clearly, however, that her warning would have been equally appropriate in 2006 had she said it back then instead of saying, Impeachment is off the table.

The results of the Speakers cupidity are before our eyes today in the form of a US government that is neither a democracy nor a republic worthy of the name, with a president who rules by executive decree and a congress that is largely a rubber stamp whose members simply view their positions as a means for collect legal bribes from wealthy influence peddlers.

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Here is the original post:

Conviction And Removal Aren't The Issue; It's Impeachment Of Trump That Is Essential OpEd - Eurasia Review

Id kill my own mother for a time machine.

Nobody needs to be sold on the premise, Will Ferrell = funny at this point, but, if youll all indulge me. Ferrell is one of the best (like, if hes not in your top 5 all-time, youre disqualified) Saturday Night Live performers ever, for the simple reason that he has never been any less than 100 percent present. No matter how dire the sketch, Will Ferrell is in. And while that hasnt always carried over into his movie career, well, I suppose its harder to maintain that level of commitment when youre asked to sweatily keep a 90-minute bad joke afloat than a 5-minute one. But in the sketch comedy (or late-night talk show) form, theres never been anyone more willing and able to command focus like Ferrell. As with tonights monologue, watch Ferrell on a talk shownever content to just put in the studio-mandated time, hes always armed with a bit, his bottomlessly febrile and restless comic animal too primed to allow anything like coasting.

Back hosting SNLfor the fifth time, there wasnt a Five-Timers Club bit. And there wasnt a single returning Ferrell character, although no doubt the audience (and the show) would have been more than content with Ferrell wheeling out any one of a dozen or more. And while there were even more returning SNL pals (Maya Rudolph, Fred Armisen, Rachel Dratch, Tracy Morgan, Alec Baldwin, whos essentially a cast member/hostage at this point), and others (Ryan Reynolds, Larry David, Woody Harrelson) than usual when theres an alum in the house, Ferrells contribution took the form of all new material and characters, about which, once more, I ask you to stick with me.

Ferrells stock-in-trade is thwart. Hes got those small, deep-set eyes that he can seemingly will to go doll/shark-black in an instant once his characters own desperately smiling confidence isinevitably revealed as faade. Its in this gift for conveying the inner storm raging under the placid outer appearance of white male assurance that powers a Will Ferrell sketch character, and turns a premise as simple and potentially unprofitable as, say, ketchup bottles that make fart sounds into something more akin to improbably potent characterization haiku. When Ferrells seemingly serene Thanksgiving dinner dad responds to his familys harmless jokes about him cutting the cheese, Ferrells tightly controlled burst of a line, Its not who I am! transforms the sketch from a simple observational toilet-joke into a tiny gem of characterization, all in the never-blinking blink of those eyes.

The same goes for the Cinema Classics sketchyes, a repeater, but not a Ferrell repeaterwhere the central gag becomes more about the righteous ire of Ferrells diminutive doctor than that Dorothy (Kate McKinnon, killing it) could only dream up insulting dream stereotypes for the surprising number of accomplished little people in her Kansas life. There, too, its Ferrell, and its one line (What were we wearing!) that flicks the sketch alight with the flash of a seemingly ordinary guy whos got a whole lot more going on inside than it first appeared.

Even the monologue was the sort of self-contained piece of performance art that Ferrell invariably brings to his in-person TV appearances, the joke that the flustered Ferrell cant get over the fact that Ryan Reynolds is right in the front row turning into a tightly controlled exercise in manic absurdity. No way, its too late, Im locked in! is this Ferrells on switch this time, his star-struck semi-self fanning out in too-awkward-to-please catchphrases until he lapses into a ranting Tracy Morgan impression, and until hes one-upped by Morgan himself, both of them eventually shouting about the prophecy!, and the whole loopy enterprise working better than any monologue in a while. Reynolds did some fine embarrassed underplayingcredit where its duebut it was Ferrells stubbornly hilarious unwillingness to go through the motions that made the whole monologue (and episode) work.

For the worst, check politics below. Otherwise, you get to see just how much better Will Ferrell can make your sketch comedy show.

While Ferrell himself made the aforementioned ketchup and Wizard Of Oz sketches into something, the pizza restaurant (chain name redacted because Im a bitch about doubling down on Lorne Michaels product placement deals) sketch matched Ferrell and Kate McKinnon for the first of two times tonight, and it was, unsurprisingly, pretty great. Those two made a different kind of funny in a similar sketch in the past, but here its more about character work than just goofing around on old Mainers at a diner. First up was Kate, her chipper mom lapsing into sullen, passive-aggressive murmurs once her kids object to her mom-joke about being all horned up for pizza. Then, once mom flees, snapping that at least the death row guys she teaches typing to appreciate her, its Ferrells dad who, unable to function without his wife to prop him up, has a different sort of breakdown. Asked by the director to just talk to his kids as he normally would, he first asks his teen daughter abruptly about her period before telling his son, haltingly, And son, um, fight me? He then reveals how lost he feels with a series of escalatingly absurd details (hiring a prosititute to teach him how the stove works when McKinnon was away for the weekend was the capper), before she came back to save the day with the reunited couples co-dependent assurance restored.

The weeks music video, about teens Mikey Day and Cecily Strongs house party being unnervingly disrupted by the smiling presence of Ferrells AP English teacher, lived in some funny details, like Ferrell inexplicably watching The Shawshank Redemption in the middle of things. But it was really all about Ferrels teacher and how his circulating air of placidly pleasant incongruity kept interrupting the teens party rap flow, culminating in a final, last-to-leave meltdown all the funnier because of how underplayed it is by Ferrell. Its a fine idea, but, with Ferrell at the heart, it was great stuff.

If there was one (again, toilet humor) sketch that even Ferrell couldnt do much with, it was the Native American Thanksgiving sketch. Look, I get that having Ferrell put a stop to the thing with a to-camera button about there being a lot of problems in this crazy, crazy sketch is a funny conceit/construction. (Although the only white actor playing a Native in the sketch, technically, is Ferrell, hes right that the idea is sort of 2014.) But having the sketch turn on a poop/corn joke wasnt the most sophisticated way to disarm the whole uncomfortable dinner conversations with racist old relatives premise, especially when Ferrells Native grandfather keeps using Trump minions talking points about building walls and dirty, criminal foreigners while describing, you know, the actual settling/invasion of white settlers, all the way up to and including germ warfare and genocide. (Instead of that white supremacist/Fox News/Stephen Miller nonsense white genocide.) I mean, self-mockery about SNLs history of black-/brownface is cute and all, but the parallelism of the underlying joke here is so wrongheaded as to remain queasily unrealized, even after the turn.

And I know what youre asking: Can Ferrell even make something of a sketch about a ventriloquist dummy hand up my ass gag work? See the ten-to-one section, O ye of little faith.

Is it fair to get annoyed that one of the still most-watched satirical fake news outlets on TV is content to take snarky potshots in one of the more dire and eminently mockable political and social crises in American history? Well, Im writing this, so I declare my annoyance is entirely justified. Che and Jost have just 10 minutes or so to cram in a weeks-worth of overflowing political material? Make it a tight, focused 10 minutes. This weeks Update was . . . fine. With Trump and the GOPs calumnious culpability in the undermining of everything America brags about standing for on bare-assed display all week in televised impeachment hearings, Jost and Che felt smugly comfortable lobbing blunt insults. (GOP conspiracy conspirator Devin Nunes looks like Spongebob? Trump is brain-damaged? Mike Pence is still in the closet?) Its . . . fine, especially since Trumps made it abundantly clear how even such so-so critical material gets under hislets call it skin. But smirking your way through some self-satisfied mediocrity isnt going to cut it when the possibilities for actual, insightful political comedy are as abundant and potent as they are.

There were a few jokes around the edges that worked better. Che ending his report on billionaire presidential candidate late-comer Michael Bloomberg performatively apologizing for instituting New Yorks blatantly racist stop-and-frisk policy with, Apology . . . noted stung. The fact that Jost is still willing to do jokes about college pal Pete Buttigiegs abysmal polling among black voters at least smacks of some comedy courage. (Well see how things go in that department when the co-head writers fiancee hosts on December 14th.) And Ches line about that whole Julia Roberts as Harriet Tubman story being titled Runaway Bride 2 was just solid.

And, in the one correspondent piece of the evening, the whole one-joke joke of Alex Moffats obnoxious Guy Who Just Bought A Boat at least brought out Reynolds to shore up the premise that overcompensating douchebags actually have lots of things to overcompensate for. The way that Moffat initially let slip his sexual inadequacies between his insufferably lame double entendre was a great little piece of comedy, but the dudes asides about his tiny wang have become more obligatory over time, and Reynolds (big wang that doesnt work) prep school chum just doubled down on the gag, giving the pair an excuse to say the grossest stuff they could get on TV. Meh.

I was anticipating more of a Kristen Wiig-style cavalcade of threadbare favorites, but Ferrell just wasnt interested, seemingly. Just Guy Who Bought A Boat and Cinema Classics.

Wow, does Alec Baldwin not want to be here. In the shortest and least-consequential Trump cold open in memory (which is saying something), the whole gag during a week were the House is on the verge of returning articles of impeachment against a sitting president is the premise here was that Trump likes to dodge questions by standing near a running Marine One. Ferrell dutifully donned a bald cap as GOP star witness who actually totally buried Trump Gordon Sondland, trying to wring laughs out of enthusiastically throwing his boss under the boss and yelling about people loving his ass, but at least this one was over with merciful quickness. (Baldwins muffed line didnt help things.)

Another Democratic debate sketch really brought in the ringers, as Dratch (Klobuchar), Harrelson (Biden), David (Sanders), Rudolph (Harris), and Armisen (Bloomberg), joined Ferrells unblinking Tom Steyer, and actual cast members Bowen Yang (Yang), Chris Redd (Booker), Colin Jost (Buttigieg), Strong (Gabbard), McKinnon (Warren), and Melissa Villaseors moderator Rachel Maddow. There were a few okay touchesI liked how Armisens coy Bloomberg kept interrupting things carrying big fountain sodas, and his joke about Trump fans finding nothing to conspiracy theorize about with a Jewish billionaire with his own media company at least went there. McKinnons Warren remains the best presidential hopeful impression of the season, here, enthusiastically telling would-be voters to just leave her alone to get on with fixing things like a mom who just needs everyone out of her Thanksgiving kitchen. But the rest was just all quick-hit nothing jabs at the easiest targets, leaving the whole overstuffed exercise inoffensively forgettable. Bernies old, GOP operative Gabbard is evil, Bidens also old, Yang and Klobuchar exist. The joke that other billionaire attempting to buy his way into office Steyer walked unsettlingly straight toward the camera was at least some funny Ferrell business. And Mayas Kamala Harris benefits from Maya being Maya, but the joke that Harris (a formidable debater with a few good showings under her belt) is relying on meme-able moments to carry her debate performance is just . . . an idea that SNL would have.

Alt-pop wunderkind King Princess is 25 years younger that Saturday Night Live, which isnt a knock, just an observation to make myself feel old. Her two songs were energetic enough. I like that her teasingly raunchy Hit The Back went straight-up disco partway through, because, again, old.

After finally getting a decent showcase last week, where the hell was Ego Nwodim? Same goes for Pete Davidson, whose peek-a-boo season continued with a very successful disappearing act. Chloe Fineman had very little to do once more, although hers was the best and most committed of the munchkin voices, so thats something.

Its dispiritingly apparent that Lorne isnt interested in letting his actual cast members prove themselves in political sketches, as he deployed just a limo-load of ringers throughout. Seriously, hes got both Fineman and Villaseorfine impressionists bothand theyre barely used in that capacity, even when the DNCs inability to whittle down its debate roster provides nothing but opportunities. It was a sparse night generally for the cast. Cecily had a few plum parts, but its Kate again, thanks to her Elizabeth Warren, pizza mom, and Dorothy.

If you see a sketch performer bring out a ventriloquist dummy, the joke about having a guys hand up my ass is, more than likely, going to make an appearance. That Farrell (plus horrified audience members Kenan and Cecily) managed to score with this brief bit (it started at 12:56, by my clock) was a neat combo of all-around commitment, gross-out comedy (so much lube), and good old ten-to-one (four-to-one, in this case) weirdo spirit. (My name is Lewis Maldonado! Someone please call my wife!)

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On SNL, five-timer Will Ferrell gets plenty of help, doesn't need any of it - The A.V. Club

This post will eventually contain a key plot spoiler, some distance down the page from here, so if you want to see this 1969 film with virgin eyes, stop reading. But do come back after youve seen it. The second spoiler is no spoiler at all, no surprise to anyone: Sean Connery is not James Bond in it, and the Bond of On Her Majestys Secret Service, George Lazenby, is most famous for never having played the role again. That set of facts and how they came about is the main subject of this post, although we will also cover the merits and flaws of the film itself, which some Bond snobs consider one of the best, if not the best, of the entire series. But I cant tell you why yet, not here at the top of the post, because it will involve the spoiler. You have been warned.

By the time Thunderball (1965) wrapped, Sean Connery was tired of being Bond. Actually, thats English-style polite understatement that the blunt, Scottish-born Connery would have impatiently penciled out in favor of thoroughly sick of it. He felt his character was becoming overshadowed by ingenious gadgets, Ken Adams enormous sets, one-liner quips and a growing fantasy element. Connery started the series in 1962 as a relatively unknown actor, quickly became a leading international star, and made an astonishing amount of money. Being a practical Scot, adding to that pile was the only reason he reluctantly stayed aboard for You Only Live Twice (1967). Then he was gone, he swore, for good. So EON Productions, producers Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli, conducted an ostentatiously well publicized search for the next Bond. Each new actor in the role of James Bond is a multi, multi-million-dollar box office gamble, and from that standpoint this very first replacement would be by far the most ill-fated.

Established movie stars such as Richard Burton were considered, but Saltzman and Broccoli wanted to repeat what theyd done with Sean Connery, create their own star, who would presumably cost less and be easier to control. Australian actor George Lazenby, whod so far mostly done commercials for British television, seemed to fill the bill. Less slender, more muscular than Connery, he radiated confidence. Even his TV commercials worked in his favor, as they were mostly for luxury products that showed how at home he looked with beautiful women, expensive tailoring, exotic cars, and champagne. True, he had a case of loving-cup ears, but that hadnt stopped Clark Gable, among others. In screen tests, he handled himself well in fight scenes. He was hired.

British film writer (and lifelong conservative) Alexander Walker was one of the few whod treat Lazenbys career arc with some sympathy. Walker points out one critical difference between the way men became stars in Britain and classic-era Hollywood. At that time, most UK actors went to acting school, often RADA, the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, and learned their profession on stage. By contrast, most American stars didnt; they were truck drivers (James Stewart), worker in a tire factory (Clark Gable), cowhands (Gary Cooper), bodyguards (George Raft), WWI sailor (Humphrey Bogart) or what have you, and got hired primarily for their looks. Sometimes that minimal preparation for the sound stage was a handicap, but frequently it gave our guys a rough, untutored masculine edge. Sean Connery, though he briefly trod the Shakespearean boards, came up the American style. Hed been a boxer in the Royal Navy, and despite his ability to project refinement, he never lost the brusque suggestion of real, not just on-screen toughness, even in extremes a touch of cruelty. Thats a fair part of what made him so good as Bond, a quality that present-day Daniel Craig has, and as it turned out, George Lazenby lacked. But that wasnt evident when production began on On Her Majestys Secret Service.

To accompany the new Bond, the writer and producers tried out a back-to-basics style; far fewer flashy gadgets and tricks, less over-the-top sets, and returning to sticking (mostly) with the original Ian Fleming story, all things they hadnt done since From Russia With Love (not so coincidentally, another film much beloved by Bond purists). OHMSS would be notable for spectacular winter photography and skiing stunts, all of course real and dangerous in that pre-CGI age. Downhill Racer, another skiing picture, this one with Robert Redford right before Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid made him a superstar, filmed in the same location during that season, and the crew of Downhill Racer would enviously tell stories to pals at Paramount Pictures about how elaborate the special camera platforms, cradles and mounts were on the higher budget Bond picture. This time, the flashy gadgets were behind the camera.

There were other differences. Telly Savalas was every bit as bald as Donald Pleasance, the original Ernst Stavro Blofeld (the best of the bunch, IMHO), but he comes across less like Pleasances evil global mastermind and more in the manner of a conventional mob boss, except for one thing: while the main weakness of other Bond villains was an unfortunate desire to take over the world, the Blofeld of OHMSS has a most surprising weaknesssocial status insecurity. It leads him to try to establish an aristocratic family tree, giving British Secret Service a chance to plant Bond in Blofelds inner circle as Sir Hilary Bray, expert in heraldry, arbiter of ancestry. James Bond is a secret agent, but not generally an actual spy, as he is here, working within the enemy camp under a concealed identity.

When housed in a spectacular mountainside hideaway with a bevy of nave beautiful young women, Bond has to pretend to be a stereotype sniffy, diffident English gentleman, asexual if not outright hinted to be homosexual (a point made in the novel.) Of course, this being James Bond, he strategically beds one and then another of the women and begins to unravel Blofelds plot: using the women to unwittingly spread germ warfare. The Sir Hilary Bray cover story falls apart, and Bond makes his last-minute escape in one of the best action sequences of the first decade of the series.

Thats the outline of the main plot, but the subplot is what makes OHMSS special to fansthe character of The Girl. (Dont faint at the term, Ricochet stalwartsits 1969, remember.) Shes Tracy Draco, played by Diana Rigg, the tempestuous, troubled daughter of a mafia superboss. In the pre-credits scene, Bondwho we first see only in glimpsesrescues her from a seaside attack, with a longer fight scene than usual, but she drives away without a word of thanks. This never happened to the other fellow, he grumbles. By coincidence, shes staying at the same posh hotel, and Bond begins to pursue her. At least as gorgeous as any of her (many) predecessors, she doesnt tumble into bed, and it becomes clear that Riggs Tracy Draco is something new for the series, the closest thing to James Bonds equal weve ever seen. Her scary dad actually encourages Bond to pursue his spirited daughter, and with the mobs army at his disposal Draco becomes a key factor in the fight against Blofeld.

Diana Rigg was an excellent choice, not only because of her talent and looks, but because unlike Lazenby, she was already a known quantity to worldwide TV audiences, well liked as Mrs. Peel in The Avengers. (Honor Blackman, Goldfingers Pussy Galore, was her predecessor in the role, but the early years of that UK series never made it overseas.) We cant credit womens lib for Riggs strong role; its pretty much as Fleming wrote it in 1963. Blofeld captures her, giving Bond the motivation to ignore official Britains reluctance to violate Swiss borders, and do a rescue raid on the mountain stronghold with the assistance of Dracosthe mafiasbest killers.

They escape. Bond realizes that this is the woman hes always wanted, after whats been, after all, a pretty thorough search. They get married. On the drive to the honeymoon, Blofeld and his gunwoman ambush them and kill her, with one shot through the windshield. As the film ends, hes holding her in his arms, silently crying. Its largely this stunning ending, straight out of the book, that has earned the film cult status. Thered be no Bond movie finale with this emotional power until Skyfall, 43 years later.

Lazenby fans, and he acquired a few, claim that Sean Connery could never have pulled this off. I dont know about that. Connerys a fine actor. It should be conceded, though, that Lazenby, the smiling Bond, managed to make the saddest ending in the series believable.

But the bottom line cant be denied. Call it the downbeat ending, call it lack of Connery, On Her Majestys Secret Service earned less than half of what You Only Live Twice did, alarming United Artists with what seemed to be a franchise-killing loss. Panic ensued. But they didnt have to get rid of Lazenby; incredibly, hed already quit, relieving UA of paying off his contract options for sequel films. Unlike Sean Connery, who in his early films was (sensibly) grateful for the chance to become rich and famous, George Lazenby was inexplicably spoiled, arrogant on the set, and difficult to work with. He apparently thought he could do better. He thought wrong. Like Martin Landau and Barbara Bain, who quit Mission: Impossible, like Chevy Chase, whod quit Saturday Night Live just as the party was getting started, Lazenby walked away for greater opportunities that proved imaginary.

Thats the OHMSS story, but for United Artists it couldnt end there. UA studio chief David Picker managed to get Sean Connery back for one more film. He did it the old-fashioned way, by offering a deal that was unprecedented at the time, lucrative beyond even the greediest kings ransom, including $2 million up front (roughly $20 million today), 10% of the actual, un-steal-able gross, and the right to produce two independent films of Connerys choice, a come-on to his artistic vanity that sealed the bargain.

So he made Diamonds Are Forever (1971), the weakest of Connerys Bonds, which gave the box office a shot of adrenaline. When it was over, Connery walked away again, as he said he would, with a public vow of Never again that would provide the rueful title of his final Bond film. Fans who associate Roger Moore with the sillier, more lightweight Seventies Bonds (or blame him for them) should give Diamonds a critical eye; Connery cheerfully phones it in, with all the sets, gadgets, and jokes he previously disdained.

This time EON Productions didnt go for an unknown actor, but for Roger Moore. Like Diana Rigg, he was already known worldwide for a British TV show, in his case The Saint, where he played a vaguely Bondish leading man. No, Moore wasnt Connery, but at least he wasnt Lazenby. Harry Saltzman and Cubby Broccoli had learned their lesson, and didnt clutter Moores entrance with OHMSSs too-elaborate attempts to link the new Bond to the earlier films. He just stepped into the part, Live and Let Die was a big success, and that was that.

Much later, in the pre-credit scenes of For Your Eyes Only (1981), the film would begin with Moore in a cemetery, solemnly placing flowers at a tombstone: Teresa Bond, 1943-1969, Beloved Wife of James Bond. We Have All the Time in the World. It was a rare acknowledgment of a unique moment.

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On Her Majesty's Secret Service: This Never Happened to the Other Fellow - Ricochet.com

Photo: Liane Hentscher/Liane Hentscher/Amazon Studios

After a wonderful intro that sees the return of Stephen Root as Hawthorne Abendsen, aka The Man in the High Castle, now forced into a role as a Rod Serling for the Nazi propaganda machine, Happy Trails becomes another chapter heavy on wheel-spinning but with a solid final 15 minutes. Theres a disturbing pattern this season in which it really feels like one could skip the first half of each episode and still get the good stuff, and pretty much be able to follow whats happening. Lets hope that changes.

Much like Helen Smith returned to New York last episode, Juliana Crain decides shes not going to wait around anymore for the Nazis to come and get her. She travels back to her original timeline, allowing for some nice production design regarding the state of Washington DC, including the decimated rubble of the Lincoln Memorial. Juliana is quickly picked up by inept authorities, whom she even more quickly escapes from, finding her way back to a Resistance. Heres the key question that the show hasnt really answered, though: How did Julianas time in the good reality change her? If she just returns to the Resistance to topple the Reich, will it feel like a narrative waste of time?

Meanwhile, John and Helen Smith are preparing for an important dinner with Fuhrer Heinrich Himmler. Theyre both not-so-subtly threatened by people allied with Himmler, including a new rising star in the party for John and Himmlers horrendous better half for Helen. The former meets with Smith about moving to New York, clearly threatening his position. The latter throws a bunch of passive-aggressive strudel at the feet of Helen Smith about her being away and how to be a good Nazi wife.

Theres some junk about Kido investigating corruption and how the Resistance hurt their cause, but the next major moment comes when John learns from his Nazi Terminator that, well, hes been murdered. Sewells pause is glorious on You killedme? You can tell he understands that John almost enjoys the insanity of it all, and that he knows now that he can just Marty McFly the whole thing and step right into the shoes of the Salesman of the Year. But what about Helen? Could he leave her in this reality with his daughters and just go live with his son and the other Helen in ours?

Again, were distracted by Juliana forced to convince people of her worth again by teaching them about the New Deal and Kido doing some espionage stuff that doesnt matter until we zip back to the real draw of this episode: Himmler Dinner! The Himmlers brought toys, chocolates, and their new Aryan favorite son for the dinner. While showing off her German, young Amy Smith betrays her mothers story about being away to take care of a sick brother, and one could cut the tension with a sausage knife. Helen is worried that theyre building a case against her for leaving New York and possibly even her husband for letting it happen. During dinner, Himmler yells about germ warfare and clearly has one of those coughs thats bad enough in episode four that you know hell be dead of tuberculosis or something by episode eight. Himmler also speaks of smiling faces all around him but absolutely no one he can trust. He doesnt want Johns loyalty; he wants his devotion. The former is easy to fake; the latter could get you killed.

It turns out that the awesome cameo by Emmy nominee Stephen Root (isnt that fun to say?) in the opening wasnt it for Hawthorne Abendsen this episode. Joining up with him again, we learn that hes not only a reticent part of the propaganda machine but that hes doing so in order to keep his wife alive. Again, the theme of having something to fight for returns, although it can sometimes be double-edged. Hes doing what hes doing just to keep her breathing and so he can see her, but hes harming the cause. She wants him to stop. We also get a wonderful scene between Root and Sewell they should really be in a buddy comedy in the creepy room with the multiverse map. They discuss how what happens in one universe can impact another. What impact will the death of John Smith in one timeline have on this John Smith?

Well, its gonna turn him into a Nazi Stargate jumper, thats what! Hes going in. The Nazi leader gets his wedding ring from the real timeline that the man who killed, well, him retrieved, and dons an ordinary beige suit. No one will even notice. Well, as long as he can keep the Seig Heils to a minimum.

The very existence of a show like Tales from the High Castle is one of the cleverest touches so far. Of course the Nazis would make a politically blatant sci-fi show. After all, thats the cover theyre using to explain the Man in the High Castles films in the first place that theyre just sci-fi. And the entire premise of the show is something straight out of an episode of the clear inspiration here, The Twilight Zone.

Smith discusses the theory with Abendsen that just observing something changes it, which Hawthorne informs him is the Heisenberg Theory. No, not Walter Whites nickname, the actual Uncertainty Principle, which you can read more about here. In this context, its a bit odd. Is Smith wondering if just going to our timeline will alter it? Or are the writers just showing off their big brains?

Anyone else think Alexa Davalos is a bit weak this year? Shes always been best with a strong partner, and shes been left on her own a lot so far this season, failing to really convey the fear and confusion that Juliana Crain would be feeling although thats partially the fault of the writers too, who seem to be unsure of what to do with her without her male counterparts.

It could have been tempting to completely invent brands, celebrities, etc. in this universe, but the writers have stayed incredibly loyal to reality. Even the chocolates that Herr Himmler gives the Smith family are from a real shop in Vienna: Demel Caf.

While Ive been a little hard on this season for a lack of final year tension, much love to the producers who decided to make a few episodes closer to 45 minutes than 60, like these last two. Most TV is too long. Keep up the good fight.

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The Man in the High Castle Recap: Guess Whos Coming to Dinner? - Vulture

My brain and I have often been at war with each other. At times in the past it was a blitzkrieg of bad decisions. At others it was like constantly shifting alliances mediated by therapists, friends and family. At the moment things are good, better than good but theres a tension there; as if the bullets might start flying again. When I play Night in the Woods I relive all those battles and ceasefires. Mental health and, by extension, mental illness is something that has to be fought and negotiated with. Its a constant push and pull that in a lot of cases never has a definitive victory or defeat, only the constant promise or threat of either. Thats what makes Night in the Woods such a cathartic, warm and often heartbreaking journey.

Mae is a recent college dropout, also a cat but thats not hugely important, who has made her way back to her hometown of Possum Springs. A former mining town Possum Springs is starting its descent towards economic ruin. Mae suffers from some kind of disassociative disorder a symptom of which seems to be depression. The signs are all there from the start: poor diet, heavy drinking, nightmares, a lot of sleeping and fragmenting personal relationships. Maes old friends Bea, Gregg and Angus are in the middle of going about their lives when Mae lands back in Possum Springs. All is not right however as disappearances and shadowy figures haunt the edges of both the town and Maes psyche.

I have a lot of respect for Mae. It takes a lot more strength than a lot of people know to up and quit when things get hard. The phrase When the going gets tough, the tough get going gets thrown around a lot and its true that sometimes the best thing to do in a difficult situation is to persevere. On the other hand it takes a great deal of courage to admit that perseverance can hurt more than giving up. Mae, through previous experience realises this but shes afraid that her loving parents and supportive friends wont see things the same way.

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Locking yourself away behind emotional or even physical barriers is pretty common when the fog descends. Being depressed, whether chronically or only occasionally, can feel like wandering through thick fog or looking at the world through a heavy pane of glass. Being close to people whether physically or emotionally doesnt help. Its a chemical imbalance in the brain. Even though youre in control of your body and all its functions the emotional centers of the brain are misfiring, flooded as they are with the wrong kind of emotional chemical. And so we close ourselves off not content to wallow in misery but incapable of doing anything else.

It all paints a dark, grim picture of life for the people in small town America but Night in the Woods isnt all doom and gloom.

These things are easy to do. To lock the bedroom door, to not talk when someones willing to listen, to stop seeking professional help. Whats hard is opening up. Mae doesnt make it easy on herself though. Shes a headstrong, difficult young woman with severe emotional issues but shes also a loyal friend and a loving daughter with a mischievous fun streak. Night in the Woods is a game after all and although games arent necessarily meant to be fun it really helps when they are.

For as many razor sharp reveals and moments of heartbreaking darkness that Night in the Woods has it also has a great deal of levity. Mae and her fellow Gen Z-ers view the world with the sort of ironic detachment and humour common to those raised on message boards and MySpace. But life in small town America tends to fuck you more often than life in the Big City does.

Bea, Maes chain-smoking childhood crocodile friend, has recently lost her mother and is now in charge of the family hardware store. Gregg, the manic anarchist fox Mae has known since adolescence, can also feel the clouds moving in darkening his view of himself, his relationship with his bear boyfriend bearfriend? Angus and life in general. And thats without mentioning Maes parents financial troubles brought about by recession and bad luck. It all paints a dark, grim picture of life for the people in small town America but Night in the Woods isnt all doom and gloom. It wouldnt be much fun to play otherwise.

Gameplay-wise beyond some short mini-games Night in the Woods pretty much boils down to walking, jumping and talking. Your time in Possum Springs will be spent traversing the town from its bustling but slowly shuttering Main Street to its starkly gorgeous church to the oppressive woods of the title. In Possum Springs youll while away the mornings and afternoons talking to the townsfolk like Pastor Kate, the bad-good poet Selmers and the homeless drifter Bruce.

The evenings is when Night in the Woods truly comes alive as Mae embarks on adventures with either Mae, Gregg or her bird friend Jeremy Warton aka Germ Warfare. This can involve a trip to the mall with Bea, a friendly knife fight with Gregg and several ghost-hunting trips with the gang. Its in these moments as well as those that Mae spends at home in the kitchen talking to her mom Candy, watching TV with her dad Stan or reminiscing on her role model: her Granddad.

As much as Night in the Woods is about finding the light through the fog as provided by friends and family its also about the things we leave behind as life goes on. Whether it be the place we grew up, the friends we left there or the people that passed on along the way Night in the Woods has a great reverence for memory. I relate to Mae in a lot of ways both in her struggles and successes. She and I have fought our bad brains to a standstill time and again. Weve both surrounded ourselves with good friends willing to support us ad be supported by us. And perhaps most important of all to me: we both really miss our granddads.

Losing an older relative hurts. Ive lost both grandfathers in the last dozen years. Losing a grandparent or any older family member, especially when youre close to them, feels like a very special kind of loss. A door to a specific view on and interpretation of history has closed forever. The past is no longer as accessible as it once was but that makes memories shine all the brighter.

I wasnt as close to my granddad as Mae was. He read to her in bed. He left her his old collection of horror stories. He visited her as a ghost in a dream. As people pass on their image grows in our mind. My granddad might not have been much of a talker but what he said may as well have been gold. He always knew what to say and when to say it, a talent that seems to have skipped a generation or two in my family. The images that myself and Mae have are idealised but theyre all we have now and that has to be enough, even when its not.

Despite its distinct focus on mental health and the debilitating effects grief and mental illness can have on it Night in the Woods never feels like a game exclusively about either of these issues like, say Depression Quest or Hellblade: Senuas Sacrifice. Instead Night in the Woods with its get-up-and-go attitude to depression and distinct, ironic sense of humour feels like a game about coping as best we can with life and all the things it can throw at us. Even when it descends into an occult nightmare inspired by Algernon Blackwood stories Night in the Woods is quick to return to the themes powering it. Night in the Woods is a game about life in all its fragile beauty and how despite all its hardships and losses it is ultimately worth both living and enjoying.

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Depression Quest: Bad Brains, Good Friends and Night in the Woods - HeadStuff.org

By Bill Primavera

As a realtor who has shown many homes in my 17 years in the business, Ive opened a lot of doors and clutched a lot of doorknobs.

Except for those dastardly swinging doors which I never liked and think are one of the worlds most dangerous inventions, every door needs something to grab on to in order to be opened and closed. Its that round or oval device that you rarely think about, even though you wrap your hand around it 100 times or more a day.

But especially after I read recently that there are about two million germs per square inch attached to the average doorknob and the experience of showing a buyer client too many houses during flu season, I became aware of every doorknob I touched and really started to scrub my hands down many times during the day.

Readers of this column know that Im a movie buff and much of what I learned about home life started from make-believe home life in old movies. One of these was a Judy Garland film called Presenting Lily Mars, which was an adaptation of a Booth Tarkington novel by the same name. It was a silly enough storyline with a subplot that really galled me involving Garlands younger brother who had a strange hobby of collecting doorknobs that he would steal from peoples homes.

Where was the moral compass of that Midwestern family, I thought, in dismissing the criminal behavior of that rascal as something cute, especially since it involved stealing an essential item in providing access and egress around the house?

The doorknob is an ingenious little device actually. The traditional knob itself has a bolt or spindle running through it that sits just above a cylinder, to which the spindle is connected. Turning the knob pulls the cylinder in the direction of the turn. The end of the cylinder is a latch that protrudes into a space that is carved out of the doorframe and prevents the door from being opened if the knob is not turned.

The mechanism is a little more complex than Im describing here, but Ill leave further understanding to the technicians among us.

Interestingly, America didnt produce doorknobs or any hardware at all until after the American Revolution because of Englands stranglehold on manufacturing and restrictive trade practices. The colonies were permitted only to supply the motherland with the raw materials needed to produce the finished manufactured products that would be sold back to us, including doorlatches, doorknobs and all other hardware used in this country.

After the Revolution, Americas ingenuity came into play and its agrarian society was soon to be balanced with rising industrialization. The first major invention influencing the production of doorknobs in America was the invention of the glass pressing machine, patented in 1826. It permitted the first truly decorative and mass-produced pressed glass doorknob made in America.

By Victorian times, the popularity of glass doorknobs was overtaken by the use of metals iron, brass and bronze. But in 1917, during World War I, glass became wildly popular once more since all metals were allocated for the manufacture of planes and other wartime materials. Glass knobs remained popular through World War II, but by the 1950s, preference reverted back to metals.

Today, the choices are all but limitless in the styles and shapes of knobs and levers, as well as finishes to suit every dcor. Theres satin nickel, aged bronze, bright brass, antique brass, bright chrome, brushed chrome, antique pewter, distressed nickel, matte black, oil-rubbed bronze and satin stainless steel.

And hows this for a look into the future? The doorknob may disappear altogether. In Vancouver, businesses and residents must now install only lever-style door handles on new buildings. While all existing homes, offices and businesses will be grandfathered, all new construction will require levers instead of doorknobs to accommodate those with physical disabilities who find doorknobs difficult to manipulate.

I am reminded of a personal story that relates to the fact that my wife Margarets native language is Lithuanian. Within that ancient language are some quaint expressions that dont translate very well into English, but Margaret still unconsciously uses some of them on occasion.

For instance, if one were expecting to visit a friend but found no one home, the Lithuanian expression would be that you were able only to kiss the doorknob.

Considering that there are two million germs per square inch attached to the average doorknob, that might be considered germ warfare.

Bill Primavera is a Realtor associated with William Raveis Real Estate and founder of Primavera Public Relations, Inc., the longest running public relations agency in Westchester (www.PrimaveraPR.com), specializing in lifestyles, real estate and development. To engage the services of The Home Guru and his team to market your home for sale, call 914-522-2076.

Continued here:

The Necessary but Overlooked Importance of Doorknobs - The Examiner News

But what I think is important to note here is not what he actually says. No, whats most revealing is what he doesnt say. Lockerby professes in his August 15 letter that he is no apologist for Lord Jeffrey. Really! He should re-read out loud his last few letters. To me, he seems intent on painting Amherst in a positive light and casting doubt on those who question his moral failings. He doesnt say anything about the fact that Amherst, who as far as I can tell never stepped foot in P.E.I. or its French equivalent, had nothing but contempt and hatred for Indigenous communities in the whole of British North America. Furthermore, he singles out scholars Bernhard Knollenberg and Philip Ranlet (which Ive examined), who Lockerby uses to buttress his skepticism about Amhersts use of smallpox-infected blankets against Indigenous peoples in Pennsylvania. But it is worth pointing out, since Lockerby missed it, that Knollenberg actually changed his position on Amherst after receiving a letter from Donald H. Kent (editor of Colonel Henry Bouquets papers). Kent informed him there is direct evidence that an attempt was actually made on the Indians with smallpox and that it was an official action. Though Ranlet still challenges this evidence, many historians accept the germ warfare charge. Very few scholars think that Amherst was incapable of such an atrocity given his deep enmity toward Indigenous peoples. Historian Elizabeth Fenn from the University of Colorado published a journal piece in 2000, Biological Warfare in Eighteenth Century North America: Beyond Amherst, where she argues that Amhersts giving/ordering of infected blankets at Fort Pitt may not have been an isolated incident - and that there is evidence of an earlier case by British forces. As for Amherst College, Lockerby neglected to mention that the College has moved to rename the Lord Jeffrey Inn (the only campus building named after him) and to no longer use Lord Jeff in its official communications or symbolism - including the ending of its unofficial Lord Jeff mascot. Most significantly, I found it curious that Lockerby would not indicate whether he supports the Mikmaq legal claim to the 400-plus acre Mill River golf resort. Perhaps that omission says more about whats in Lockerbys heart and mind than anything else. Finally, Id like to reassure Mr. Lockerby that I have indeed been doing my homework. Ive corresponded with two Parks Canada experts on Fortress Louisbourg, communicated with Saint Marys University historian John Reid (a leading expert on the Mikmaq of Nova Scotia) and have perused John Knoxs book, An Historical Journal of the Campaigns in North America. None of them paint Amherst and his engagement with Indigenous peoples in a positive light. But Im still digging. Can Lockerby say the same? Right now, though, I should get back to my own book on Stephen Harper for the University of Toronto Press.

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PETER MCKENNA: Revisiting General Jeffrey Amherst - The Guardian

In your article about housework (Germ warfare, 14 January), you said that after washing dishes we should rinse with plenty of water, preferably hot. Why hot? Wouldnt it save money if they were rinsed with the cold water that comes directly from the mains?

Iain Sharp, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

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