With superheroes taking over movies, television and even Halloween cosplay this seemed like a good time for a shoutout to one of my all-time favorite parody comic books. And remember, I take shots at ALL religions, including Islam, so I’m not one of those cringing cowards who only shows irreverence to Christianity.
Filed under humor, Superheroes
Balladeer’s Blog continues its examination of the 1967 science fiction/ existential drama The Prisoner. For Part One, in which I examined the themes and concepts at play in the series click HERE
Episode Title: CHECKMATE … In the ongoing debate about the exact numbering of the 17 episodes of The Prisoner I place this as the 4th in the series.
Peter Wyngarde portrays this episode’s Number Two, the rotating series of executive figures running the futuristic prison city called the Village. Balladeer’s Blog’s readers may remember him from my reviews of his shows Department S and Jason King. X-Men fans will recognize him as the obvious model used by Chris Claremont and John Byrne for Mastermind’s “Jason Wyngarde” persona in The Dark Phoenix Saga.
The episode begins with the Prisoner witnessing yet another sudden unleashing of “Rover” the bioelectrical synthetic creation which the Villagekeepers use to subdue outbreaks of disobedient behavior among the Villagers. As usual everyone freezes in their tracks, knowing Rover will attack anyone perceived as resisting.
For once, one of the residents shows no fear of Rover. An elderly man with a walking stick (George Coulouris from Citizen Kane) continues strolling along, ignoring Rover, who shows unprecedented deference to the man before moving on to subdue whichever Villager has raised the ire of the Villagekeepers.
Our protagonist is intrigued by this and follows the Man With A Walking Stick. The two share a casual conversation in which each man is wary of the other, given that nobody can ever be sure if a fellow Villager is secretly working for the conspirators behind the Village.
Walking Stick Man invites McGoohan’s character to a game of chess he is heading to. The Prisoner goes along and finds that the game is played with human chess pieces in one of the least subtle of the program’s metaphors.
Walking Stick Man is one of the two “players” who sit above the game shouting their moves through bullhorns. The Villagers serving as chess pieces move accordingly. Continue reading
Filed under Forgotten Television, Prisoner (tv series)
With the Frontierado Holiday coming up on Friday, August 3rd here’s another song and video appropriate to the season. It’s Bon Jovi’s Blaze of Glory from Young Guns II.
Filed under FRONTIERADO
It’s rather pathetic that this even needs to be said, but then the fascist lying trash who hate President Trump are pathetic, too. Below is a video from a Holocaust Survivor reminding Trump-haters what REAL Concentration Camps are. And remember, the so-called “family separations” at our southern border were going on under Obama and George W Bush, too, and the pictures being floated around the internet are virtually all from the pre-Trump years.
On top of which President Trump signed an Executive Order to change the situation that Obama and Bush allowed to continue. But even AFTER that, the “hey, let’s go protest something” fools still held that ridiculous weekend of protests over an issue that had already been addressed.
Two comments I will say again: 1. We have long passed the point where, even if I didn’t support President Trump I would be pretending I did just to tick off the pieces of garbage who spew hatred of the man all day long, and 2. The biggest regret of my life is having ever been part of the Democrat Party.
We need Third Parties desperately. If you’re someone who just can’t bear the thought of us having more than two viable political parties and are terrified of coalition governments, take comfort from the thought that a fracturing of the Democrats and Republicans may be a necessary upheaval and may be the only peaceful way out of our current situation.
Besides, after a mere decade or even less we’d probably be left with just two dominant parties still standing, anyway. But at least they would NOT be the worthless Democrat and Republican Parties as currently constituted. Anyway, here’s the video as promised:
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
FRIDAY THE 13th: THE ORPHAN (1977) – H.H. Munro must have turned over in his grave at this adaptation of one of his short stories. This quasi-horror film was re-released in 1979 as just The Orphan and despite the original title it has no connection to the Friday the 13th series of slasher flicks. At least, no REAL connection. I’m surprised some unscrupulous distributor never tried sneaking this into theaters in the 1980s as a “prequel” to the slasher movies by presenting the insane young boy in the movie as the grandfather of Jason Voorhees.
Even so the title makes it hard not to think of our wealthy young protagonist “David” (Mark Owens) as an ancestor of the hockey- masked slice and dice man from Crystal Lake. In the 1920s David’s mother accidentally shoots his African Big Game Hunter father Kevin to death during an argument about his frequent overseas trips. David not only witnesses this but sees his mother put the gun in her mouth and kill herself immediately afterward.
Next David gets VERY disturbed when a presumed family member (an uncredited Christopher Lloyd in a “blink-and-you’ll- miss- him” appearance) forces him to kiss his dead father as he lies in his coffin.
The young man’s Aunt Martha arrives to take care of him (and yes, obscure movie buffs, she sometimes does dreadful things). Turns out Martha was dating David’s father before he callously dumped her to marry her sister. Martha takes her resentment of the father out on David and even chews him out about a cough he inherited from dear dead Dad. I’m sure you can tell where all this is headed. Continue reading
Filed under Bad and weird movies, Halloween Season
Balladeer’s Blog’s reviews of my picks for The Top Five Harry Flashman Novels are still getting more than their share of attention. (Click HERE ) For Flashman of Arabia click HERE.
Before I move on to review the other Flashman novels I decided to instead speculate – in total fanboy mode – on what we readers missed out on with those Harry Flashman adventures referred to but not completed before author George MacDonald Fraser passed away in 2008.
Projected Title: FLASHMAN DOWN UNDER
Time Period: The early period of the Australian Gold Rush (1851-1852)
The Set-Up: The “Forty-Niner” section of Flashman and the Redskins ended in the Spring of 1850 with Harry and Kit Carson riding off into the sunset. Our antihero planned on at last completing his journey toward the California gold fields after all his misadventures along the way.
The Potential Story: Some members of the Australian outlaw gangs who would achieve large-scale fame during the Aussie Gold Rush got their start as failed prospectors turned criminals during the California Gold Rush. Once word got around about the Victoria finds many of the Australians abandoned California and sailed home hoping to strike it rich there.
After the thrilling Jornada del Muerto Desert finale to Flashman and the Redskins Harry was already in New Mexico so presumably he would have made it to California with at least half of 1850 still to go. Our protagonist’s usual boozing, gambling and whoring could easily have gotten him entangled in some way with a few of the shadier Aussies in the Golden State at the time.
Once word reached California about Australia’s very own Gold Rush, Harry could have boarded a ship for Down Under either along with some of the Cali Aussies OR trying to slip away from them for his usual reasons – having slept with some of their women, conning them out of money, etc.
Arriving in Australia, it’s safe to assume Flashman would still disdain the thought of actually working to strike it rich and would have settled in at first trying to con money from successful prospectors or winning it from them at the card-table. (In Flash for Freedom Harry mentioned playing cards in Australia with bags of gold dust as the stakes.) Continue reading
Filed under Neglected History, Pulp Heroes
As the hysteria, fascism and intolerance of the Democrats continues to drive away more and more of us former party members, their Brain Trust has decided that the most recent reaction to their derangement – the #Walkaway Movement – is really being caused by RUSSIANS! Yes, really! Apparently there’s NOTHING those rascally Russians can’t do!
Anyway, here are some more samples and excerpts from my fellow Russian Agents former Democrats about why they decided to Walk Away. (Just do a search for them if you want to read and watch your own examples.)
One person, a Memphis woman, introduced her young nephew, a St. Jude Hospital cancer survivor. She had tweeted a thank-you to Eric Trump for the Trumps’ $16 million contribution to the charity, and she’s furious at the orgy of Twitter attacks from crazed Trump-haters that she’s endured just for for thanking the Trumps. (Let’s face it: Twitter and Facebook are nothing but “The Confirmation Bias Community”)
Another is a gay man who says that when he “came out” as a Trump supporter he was “called a Nazi, a self-hating fag …the gays and liberals have been ruthless towards me. I was never treated this way coming out of the closet as gay … I am so happy to see so many people bravely standing up now…. now I don’t feel so alone either.”
A woman who describes herself as liberal and is married to a man who became a Trump voter: She says, “I was horrified that our friends now say I married a racist, homophobic, misogynist, horrible man. My Facebook page is just cancer, people hating on each other. I won’t be voting for a party that accuses everybody of being racist.” (Facebook Fascists are the most narrow-minded people alive.)
African-American Brandon Tatum has a great video (CLICK HERE ) called Democrats Hate Black People in which he relates how shocked he was when he learned that the Democrats started the KKK, not the Republicans.
Among his other remarks about how the Democrats thrive on spreading hatred and division:
“They’re picking illegals over black people because they want the next voting bloc, and that’s illegals. They don’t care about you and your families. They want a population of ignorant people they can control. What did Barack Obama do for black people? Nothing…I really wish people would wake up. I got my MAGA hat on and I wear it because I’m a person with a brain and I’ve decided to walk away and be independent as a thinker.” Continue reading
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
Here at Balladeer’s Blog I’ve been reviewing ancient Greek comedies for years and a fair amount of people have recently asked me why I didn’t take the traditional view of Aristophanes’ comedy The Birds. That traditional view claims that The Birds was written at least partially as a commentary on the failed military expedition to Sicily.
FOR MY EXAMINATION OF THE BIRDS CLICK HERE
ANSWER: I omitted any reference to the Sicilian Expedition from my blog post on The Birds for a variety of reasons. For starters, it’s been covered to death by others who INSIST that that is the main subject of the comedy, so there’s no lack of alternate sources who cover that particular angle.
Next, I disagree with the notion that The Birds had much – if anything – to do with the disasters suffered by the Athenian forces in Sicily. It all comes back to my overall view that too many people force interpretations into Aristophanes’ comedies just because he’s the only ancient Greek comedian whose plays have survived in something resembling complete form.
Let’s revisit my usual spiel about the way most study of Aristophanes’ comedies takes place in a virtual vacuum of “All Aristophanes and nothing BUT Aristophanes.” Much of that is understandable since the other comedians’ works came down to us only in fragmentary form.
As I’ve made clear in my examinations of comedies by Eupolis, Cratinus and others it really opens your mind about the entirety of Attic Old Comedy to read the many, many academic works analyzing the fragments of the other comedians’ works. Too few people do this, I guess because most people aren’t as boring as I am. Continue reading
Filed under Ancient Greek Comedy
Recently I reviewed the 1994 movie Maverick since Frontierado is coming up on Friday, August 3rd. Here’s the Clint Black song and official video for Good Run of Bad Luck complete with scenes from the Maverick movie.
Filed under FRONTIERADO
For the umpteenth time, we need Third Parties in America! Anyway, on to the headlines and links.
DEMOCRATS EVEN USE VOTE FRAUD AGAINST EACH OTHER – A Democrat runoff election in Texas was nullified over Vote Fraud. There has since been a guilty plea in this ongoing saga. CLICK HERE
ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS: VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS THAT AMERICANS WON’T VOTE FOR – A Registrar in Houston is fighting to keep illegals on the voter rolls. CLICK HERE
DAVID SOLWAY ONCE AGAIN NAILS THE LEFT’S FASCISM – David’s yet another one of us driven away by the Left’s derangement. For his terrific opinion piece Desperate Times Call For Desperate Measures, Part 2 – CLICK HERE If you missed Part 1 CLICK HERE
Filed under LIBERALS AND CONSERVATIVES, Neglected History, opinion
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