I don’t know how this took so long to make, but it was worth the wait.
The original Trek, of course, came out in 1965. I always wonder about period camp, but now that things I grew up with are … ahem … of a certain age, my eternal questions of dramatic portrayals and television campiness seem only more unanswered.
Next Generation landed on Fox in 1987. I remember reading about it in a TV Guide before it came on. I was old enough to appreciate the original show in syndication and now, there would be this new show. It launched 22 years after the original. We are now farther away from the beginning of TNG than Patrick Stewart was from William Shatner. Even Voyager made it to air in less than three decades from the original show. And we are, today, sneaking up on the 30th anniversary of The Final Frontier. Meanwhile, people are waiting to pay for a streaming service for a new Trek property.
None of this timing feels hardly likely. But we must ask ourselves, which 30-year span of time between now and then has seen the biggest changes in the storytelling we watch?
I spent the evening in the television studio. What did you do with your evening?
Two shows were put in the can tonight. The news show there and this helpful little program which keeps you up-to-date on current events and pop culture:
Here’s another great segment of television that is worth watching this week:
I like the way the sun comes into our television studio. I only spend one morning a week in there, but when the clouds don’t interfere you can get some real fun light tricks. But you have to shoot in sequence or the light doesn’t make sense. The onward march of time and all of that. If, that, is, you understand how the building is oriented to the passing sun. But who cares, look at that backlight!
That particular shot is in a corner of the studio. We have four chairs around the corner, so in two seats you can get the nice angelic backlighting effect. And in the other two you get a nice wall treatment. You can see it all here. This is the morning show they shot today:
And we are on the road once more. We’re taking an overnight trip down to Louisville. So we’ll have some barbecue, see a few people, do a few things and then be back it even sets in that we’ve gone somewhere. It takes no time, and it takes a lot of time. And after that, time really flies.
And now, a nice little sports show you can watch to catch up on all of the local sporting news:
I saw this print in a restaurant last weekend:
We have a running question about whether it is true that Marilyn Monroe came home from that USO tour to her new husband and said “It was so wonderful, Joe. You never heard such cheering.”
“Yes,” Joe DiMaggio said, “I have.”
It’s a great line, because Joe DiMaggio. But it was apparently first written in a Gay Talese essay, so it almost seems too perfect. The nature of quotes is a fickle thing sometimes, but if we will them into being we can sometimes will disbelief into submission.
I don’t know. I wasn’t there. It’s interesting to think that it happened, because it says so much about Marilyn Monroe. But to think that it is just a manufactured line, that she would know better, would say an awful lot more. Which is why I like to think it didn’t happen, that that wasn’t the exchange between an aging ball player and a young starlet.
I do know this. She’s just glowing in pretty much the entire photo collection, and she’s got that little dress on, in Korean, in the winter. All of the troopers are bundled up. It is February and some 30 degrees, at best. But there she was, soaking in that adoration and lust. A shot of home in a place very much not.
And of course I see this photo on the side wall of a hallway heading to a restroom.
You know, it isn’t as easy to track down the photographer of a 63-year-old photo as you might imagine. Surely the rights to that photo belong to an agency by now, but they’re all buying each other up and none of that helps gets you back to the actual photo zapper.
I think she’s singing Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend in that shot. You can see the same gesture here:
And if you watch the whole thing you might have to re-think everything you know about the 1950s.
I don’t really have a way to end this piece. I’ve looked for loops to repeat and curious, out-of-this-world trivia hooks that you wouldn’t believe. But everyone in the story is from somewhere else, or did other things. But I’ve watched that video a few times and I imagine Joe DiMaggio had a … different sort of adoring crowd.
