Balladeer’s Blog’s Christmas Carol-A-Thon for 2015 continues! This time around I’m examining a 1965 production from California PBS station KCET. The title may not sound action-packed and appealing but Dr Frank Baxter was to the 1950s and 1960s what Carl Sagan and The Reduced Shakespeare Company were to later decades.
Just as The Reduced Shakespeare Company made the works of the Bard of Avon more accessible and therefore more popular among non-Shakespeare fans Dr Baxter’s Shakespeare on TV series inspired younger generations to take an interest in the works of the great Elizabethan playwright.
And like Carl Sagan’s series Cosmos made him a virtual rockstar of the scientific field Dr Baxter’s entertaining and educational Bell Laboratory Science Series of film shorts made him enormously popular among teachers and students in every school that used those shorts as classroom aids. The Bell Laboratory Science Series educational shorts were so effective and beloved they were still being used in the 70s and 80s.
This black & white hour-long holiday special features Baxter at a Continue reading
MISSISSIPPI BOWL – The number 1 NORTHWEST MISSISSIPPI COLLEGE RANGERS clashed with the 2nd ranked ROCHESTER TECH YELLOW JACKETS for the NJCAA title. The Rangers held the Yellow Jackets scoreless until the 4th Quarter while scoring at will themselves. At the Half Northwest Mississippi led 35-0 on their way to a 66-13 annihilation of Rochester Tech. * The Rangers are NJCAA Champions for 2015.* 
FIRST SEMIFINAL – The SOUTHERN OREGON UNIVERSITY RAIDERS – the defending champions of NAIA football – visited the MORNINGSIDE COLLEGE MUSTANGS yesterday. The Raiders led 6-0 in the 1st Quarter but trailed the Mustangs 7-6 at Halftime. The 3rd Quarter ended with SOU on top 23-21 and in the 4th the Raiders outscored the Mustangs 7-6 for a 30-27 victory and a return trip to the title game on December 19th. 
A new serialized feature begins here at Balladeer’s Blog! Plenty of regular readers expressed interest in one of the works of “ancient” science fiction that I touched on awhile back – Edison’s Conquest of Mars by Garrett P Serviss. 
Well, Geraldo you moron, it turned out Muslims DID commit the killings and only imbeciles pretended otherwise! Barack Obama, whose premature withdrawal from Iraq spawned the Islamic State, still lives in his fantasy world and refuses to use the words “Muslim terrorism” or even “radical Islam.” Little Barry immediately stood on top of the dead bodies to use them as his soapbox to snivel about … gun control. 
Before MST3K there was … The Texas 27 Film Vault!
SERIAL: Before showing and mocking the movie our members of the Film Vault Corps showed and mocked a chapter of Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940). In that serial Ming the Merciless unleashes a disease called the Purple Death on Earth, prompting Flash Gordon, Dale Arden and Dr Zarkov to fly to the planet Mongo to find a cure and defeat Ming for good.
TAKUGINAI (December 1988) – As always I enjoy reviewing some of the most obscure and/ or neglected versions of the Carol that I can find. Takuginai was (and is) broadcast by the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation in the Northwest Territories of Canada. The half-hour program is a clever and energetic children’s show. 
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