23 November 2013

Birthdays
Chris Hardwick b. 1971 (host, The Talking Dead)
Oded Fehr b. 1970 (Resident Evil, The Mummy, V, Charmed)
David Rappaport b. 1951 died 2 May 1990 (Time Bandits, The Wizard, The Bride)
Tom Neyman b. 1935 (Manos: The Hands of Fate)
Michael Gough b. 1916 died 17 March 2011 (Batman, Sleepy Hollow, Doctor Who, They Came From Beyond Space, Phantom of the Opera, Horror of Dracula)
John Dehner b. 1915 died 4 February 1992 (The Twilight Zone)
Boris Karloff b. 1887 died 2 February 1969 (Frankenstein, The Mummy)

An all male and all actor list today, with more folks dead than alive. I did have a brief moment of contrariness thinking I might put Tom Neyman from Manos: The Hands of Fate in the Picture Slot, what with Thanksgiving coming up and the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Turkey Day marathon being aired again, but seriously, for this first year,it has to be Karloff. It's an interesting coincidence that the actor Oded Fehr who plays the mummy in the most recent remakes shares a birthday with Karloff.

Many happy returns to the living and to the dead, thanks for the memories.

 The Day of the Doctor
This is the 50th anniversary of the first airing of Doctor Who and a special episode is now available, featuring the two most recent Doctors, Matt Smith and David Tennant, and also starring John Hurt as The War Doctor.

I've never been a huge fan of the show. I liked Christopher Eccleston and I like that he really doesn't want to be remembered forever as The Ninth Doctor. Still, my personal feelings aside, it is remarkable how successful this series has been and it's definitely a major part of the genre today.

Congratulations to all concerned.

 

Predictor: Miriam Leslie, author and publisher
A few words about today's predictor. Miriam Leslie had a truly remarkable career for a woman of her era. She married four times, the third time to the publisher Frank Leslie, her employer. She divorced her second husband to marry Leslie in 1874 and on their honeymoon, she met the poet Joaquin Miller and had an affair with him, the main character in his book The One Fair Woman modeled after her.

Frank Leslie went bankrupt in 1877 and died in 1880, and Miriam took over the business and brought it back to profitability, her success much admired by the financial community of the day. When she died in 1914, she willed most of her fortune to the cause of women's suffrage.

Predictions (reality in parentheses):

The world, and more especially the New World, is hastening rapidly toward iconoclasm. Monarchs who used to be worshiped or fear are now only to be laughed at. (Interesting call. It would be another twenty years until the Great War started and five bloody years later, European monarchy would be pretty much over.)

Religion is unfortunately ceasing to be a power in the world. It has become, rather, the recreation of a small portion of the people. (Maybe that was true in the circles Miriam traveled in, but I'd have to rate this a swing and a miss overall.)

Dress, formerly a species of trademark placed by the nations upon their population, is rapidly losing its individuality all over the world. (Gotta count this one as a hit.)

Language is struggling toward universality. Almost anyone can make himself understood almost anywhere. (Sure. If someone pretends they don't speak English, all you have to do is SAY IT LOUDER AND SLOWER.)

In politics the people as a controlling power are coming to the front more or less rapidly in even the oldest empires of earth. And it needs no prophet to foretell that in 1993 the world will have become equalized in every respect, even to dire monotony. (Well, I wouldn't call it monotonous, but the world of 1993 was much more level playing field than it was in 1893.)

The era of woman as a power has commenced. (Not unlike her prediction about the waning of monarchy, it was still more than a generation away, but she certainly saw the direction things were going. You might well say "D'uh!", but you might recall the humorist Bill Nye saying women's suffrage would never happen.)

The "servant problem" is an imminent one, for no one is found to dispute that anarchy in domestic matters is the near result of the present attitude of the domestic official. (Ah, yes, the servant problem. Those lazy, thieving laggards who make life hell for the rich. Not that big a deal now, though I guess it's pretty annoying when they go to the gossip rags and your personal life becomes everybody's bidness.

Looking one day ahead... INTO THE FUTURE!

On Ray Bradbury's Mars we are up to April 2003, and kids will be kids, having fun, roughhousing and laughing, destroying ancient ruins the Martians left behind.

Join us then... IN THE FUTURE!