Everyone Needs an Editor: Georgetown Univeristy

~ lobablanca

This is just embarrassing. Georgetown University is supposedly one of the top universities in the D.C. area. It’s a highly respected institution.

More importantly, it’s an institution of higher education. As such, they are rightfully held to higher standards when it comes to things like…oh, I don’t know…spelling their own name correctly?

I know, I know: It’s just a case of simple transposition. Still, how are we to take this school seriously when they can’t even get something as straight-forward as a copy editing assignment correct? Especially on something as high profile as the cover of their commencement program!

Thanks to DCist.com for making my morning with this find.

Flashback Friday: Rapture

~ LobaBlanca

Oh, come on, denizens. I know someone out there must have seen this one coming! After all, I did say last time that I love themed Flashbacks…

Happy Day Before Rapture!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHCdS7O248g&w=640&h=510]

Oh, and in case anyone is interested, no, Debbie Harry was not the first rapper. Several instances of rap appeared in music long before Debbie came on the scene to tell us about Fab Five Freddy and that crazy Man from Mars. And The Sugarhill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” was the first rap song to hit Billboard’s Top 40, in August 1979 (almost 2 years before “Rapture” was released in January 1981). Blondie’s “Rapture,” however, is credited as being the first “rap” song to top the Billboard 100. It’s also credited as being the first rap video ever aired on MTV.

DidnWannaDoIt!

~ lobablanca

So maybe you’ve seen this before in…other places. Maybe you haven’t. I guess it all depends on where you beam into on teh Interwebz.

Just in case you missed it though, here is a music video from the always delightful Suzie Plakson, she of many Trek aliases and many more talents:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ntEJQ61sBM&w=640&h=390]

Check out the red sneakers! And once you’re finished, check out your very own copy of her CD, DidnWannaDoIt!

I do loves me some Suzie, that’s for sure. Whether it’s from her many Trek appearances or her roles in other favorites like Wag the Dog or Mad About You (which also featured another of my favorite Titian-Tressed Trek Talents [dear prophets, I love alliteration]), she is always delightful. There’s something so very vintage Hollywood classy about her.

Of course, the ears hanging in my stairwell probably make me a bit biased…but you all still trust my opinion in this matter, right? Right 😉

BookBin2011: Up Till Now

~ lobablanca

One of my personal word nerd-related pet peeves is the use of the word “till” in the place of the word “until” or “to.” It’s silly, I know, but it’s right there with the phrase “a whole nother.” Perhaps this is simply me showing my American-ness, but it just feels wrong. Wrong to say, wrong to write, wrong to read.

Needless to say, when I first saw the title of William Shatner’s autobiography, Up Till Now, I admittedly cringed inside.

Of course, what self-respecting Trek fan wouldn’t want to read Shatner’s autobiography, right? Okay, I have a confession. I’m not that much of TOS fan. What? I was born in the 70s. My Trek Attention Span is pretty much from TNG to Voyager (sorry, Sam, but I know way more about your Leaping than your Enterprising). I am nearly finished with watching all of the original episodes, but my heart remains in the 24th century.

That being said, I also remember growing up in the era of anti-Shatnerism. I remember the SNL “Get a Life” skit and the subsequent nerd fallout. I remember all the rumors about how the rest of the TOS cast hated Captain Kirk, about how he was self-absorbed and a bit of a dick.

Obviously, I came to this autobiography carrying a great deal of Shatner baggage. And I’m not even a fan of the original series!!

I’m so glad I got over my preconceived notions of Shatner, because this is a remarkable read. Shatner is Shatner, of course. Has he changed? Or has our perception of him changed? I don’t know, really. To hear him tell it, he was just misunderstood for a long time. Perhaps that’s true. Or perhaps time smoothed out the wrinkles. Or perhaps it’s because he is quite possibly the most ubiquitous performer alive today. There are very few entertainment corners into which he has not beamed his uniquely Shatnerian light: movies, television, music, theater, advertising…let’s face it, when you’re the Big Giant Head, you can’t help but be everywhere:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMUX_f0hyn0&w=480&h=390]

Whatever it is, I devoured this book. Starting from his childhood in Montr

Everyone Needs an Editor: Capital Hill

~ lobablanca

This is a common enough mistake everywhere, I’m sure, but it’s particularly jarring in this context. For the record, whenever referring to the building where capital-level legislating takes place, it’s always “capitol” with an “O.” This is true whether it’s a national or state-level capitol (although it’s capitalized when referring to the nation’s Capitol).

The city wherein these capitol buildings reside and these capital ideas transpire is the “capital” with an “A.”

Confused? Don’t be. Just remember that the building is the capitol. The city is the capital.

Why is this matchbox even more jarring for its grammatical faux pas? It’s a D.C.-based restaurant advertising one of its locations near Capitol Hill. Seriously, of all the places where you kinda sorta want to make sure you get this right, Capitol Hill is definitely at the top of the list. We’re called wonks for a reason…

Flashback Friday: Friday the 13th: The Series

~ lobablanca

Oh, how I do loves the themed Flashback Friday post!

I actually meant to do this particular Flashback the last time we had a Friday the 13th, but I completely forgot. Please don’t take this as a negative reflection on the subject matter at hand, because this show, denizens, is money. Yes, I used a dated Swingers reference to describe an even more dated horror show based on an even more dated series of 80s slasher flicks. When we roll at the lair, we roll deep.

So, Friday the 13th: The Series. There was a trend in the 80s wherein horror-themed television became the hot item. I want to say that the reboot of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone as well as the occasional scares from Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories, all of which debuted in 1985, helped solidify this trend. However, I think perhaps 1984’s Tales from the Darkside, one of my personal favorites, kicked it off. Later on, HBO decided to get in on the fun with 1989’sTales From the Crypt.

Wow, there’s a great list of ideas for future Flashbacks!

Somewhere in between the beginning and the end of this 80s boom came two shows that greatly impacted my adolescent viewing habits: Freddy’s Nightmares and Friday the 13th: The Series. Both were vaguely tangential spinoffs of two of the most popular slasher series from this blood-soaked decade. All they would have needed to do was make a Michael Myers-based show and they could have had the triumvirate of slasher villains slicing and dicing their way through the airwaves each week.

Actually, though, this last statement is only partially true. Yes, Freddy Krueger actually appeared in each episode of Freddy’s Nightmares. He was the host of the show, playing a role somewhat akin to Rod Serling’s role in the original Twilight Zone series…only he chewed the scenery and camped the hell out of his role like a Serling on crack.

Jason Voorhees, however, never appeared in the Friday the 13th series…although something of his was supposed to appear as a way of tying everything together. But we’ll get to that in a minute.

The premise of the series was that once upon a time there was an owner of an antiques store. His name was Lewis Vendredi.

[Loba Tangent: Okay, already, I hope you Francophones are laughing as much as I did when I first realized the grand joke here. Vendredi is the French word for…Friday. BAHA!]

Anyway, Vendredi made a pact with the Devil in which he would sell cursed objects from his store in exchange for immortality. However, the deal fell through after a few years and Vendredi became Satan’s sack kitten. No, I have no idea what a “sack kitten” is. It just popped into my head and next thing I knew, my fingers were typing it.

So Vendredi had a will, which is a curious thing in itself since he was supposed to be immortal…but whatever. He left his shop to his niece, Micki Foster (Robey), and her cousin Ryan Dallion (John D. LeMay). Together with Jack Marshak (Chris Wiggins), Vendredi’s former antiques supplier who also had an oddly coincidental knowledge of occult information and rituals that always perfectly fit whatever curse they encountered during that week’s show, Micki and Ryan (and Micki’s hair, which at times seemed to grow to such heights that it really needed to have a guest star credit for some shows) take on the task of retrieving each of the cursed items that Vendredi sold.

And thus you have the show’s heroes and the show’s theme. But why was it called Friday the 13th? It didn’t take place near Camp Crystal Lake and no mention is ever made of anyone named Voorhees. The rumor that I remember reading regarding this is that the final cursed object our heroic trio would be tasked with retrieving would be…dundunDUN…a cursed hockey mask. Yes, that hockey mask.

[Insert ginormous “OH!” followed by even bigger groan at the sheer cheesiness of it all.]

Is this true? I really have no idea. I don’t even remember where I heard/read it. But it does make sense in the silliest of television show kind of ways. You know, like how talking cars, robotic sisters, and cat-eating aliens made sense. It was the 80s!

Regardless of the reasons for the show’s name, I loved Friday the 13th: The Series. Yeah, it went a little off the rails toward the end, but overall it was good, campalicious horror fun. The acting might not have been pitch-perfect all the time, but the stories were solid and some of the cursed items were just downright creepy, from demonic dolls, sinister scalpels, poisonous pens, mesmerizing mirrors…always shown with equal parts cheese and fright. To me, this is the perfect combination that epitomizes so much of the horror that I grew up loving.

If you’ve never seen this show, the good news is that CBS bought the rights to the series and has released all three seasons on DVD. Before you even ask, yes, I own all three seasons. I haven’t watched all three seasons yet; I made it most of the way through the first season before being distracted by some other show. But what I did make it through was surprisingly still good. So often, I will revisit shows from my youth only to discover that time has not been kind and sometimes happy memories are best left at that: memories. However, Micki, Ryan, and Jack are still fun company…just watch out for Micki’s hair and don’t touch anything in her antiques store. That’s definitely not a place where you want to test the “You Break It, You Bought It” rule…

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9trU9y96m0&w=425&h=349]

Oh, and just because I stumbled upon this while looking for show clips, here’s a video for a song from the musical Chess called “One Night in Bangkok,” sung by none other than Micki Foster herself, Robey. It’s definitely something that needed to be shared. I’m not carrying all this WTFery around by myself, dammit.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlihFItzYEc&w=560&h=349]