Dickie and Dollie Canary (1947)

Good morning!

It's New Year's Eve's Day, and where does that find us? Holed up at the downtown library on a not-open-to-the-public Monday, reminding people who call the reference desk that the other branches are open normal hours today but will be closed all day tomorrow, and looking at the cutest canary couple man has ever seen. Guys, guys-- stop what you're doing! You'll want to meet Dickie and Dollie, from a 1947 Life magazine article profiling the self-same.

While Bernice Tuttle, the innovative mind behind these canary courtship photos, professed literary ambitions and had already used her famous birds in radio appearances and an educational film, I was unable to find hide nor hair of any subsequent celebrity Tuttle and her little dressed up birds may have enjoyed during their life times. Le sigh. At least there are all these crazy pictures to look at.

What really amazes me about the sequence here reproduced is that the birds are not dead. I know that makes me sounds like I'm looking at everything from a Danzig-like perspective, but I swear, after reading Still Life: Adventures in Taxidermy by Melissa Milgrom, I just somehow assumed that any animal postcard or quaintly posed collectible photograph was accomplished through skillful use of taxidermy (see Victorian-era taxidermy virtuoso Walter Potter's whimsy/macabre work...but not if you scare easily!). These birds are quite alive! Which begs the question: did she...dose them? How are they staying so still? From many the running-after-guttersnipe-french-fry-eating-McDonald's-parking-lot-birds incidents of my youth, I know that it's hard to get a bird not to take off at the slightest intimation of movement.

Above, in the caption, the mysterious line "Mrs. Tuttle will not tell how she keeps the birds so still" reminds me of nothing so much as Norman Bates. What are you hiding, Mrs. Tuttle. What are you hiding! Also, who wakes up in the morning with the idea to dress up canaries in a carousel setting, complete with gingham great coat for he and organza apron dress for she? I couldn't with complete confidence tell you. Look how sleepy their little beaked faces are.

This one may be my favorite picture. Also, for some reason, Dickie always looks at least twice as dignified as Dollie. What is it with men's wear that makes it oddly suitable to a canary?

Risqué, n'est-ce pas? Shouldn't each of these love birds, married or not, have a little claw on the floor or something to act like they're not sharing a connubial bed? I guess not! I wish she'd gone forth with her book, wouldn't it have been a perfect companion piece to The Lonely Doll and all those others way out there from left field children's books of the midcentury?

Here, you can (kind of) see that the birds are happy and alive...I think? I would prefer one of them to be holding up a newspaper with the day's date for proof of life, but I'll just assume they're both ok. And that any suffering they may have gone through was simply for art's sake! And a too ruffly pinafore! Note Mrs. Tuttle's hand just holding the lamp shade, and how we don't see a single other picture of her in the entire article. WHAT DOES IT MEAN.

But wait! There's a final revelation in the text of the article:

Dun, dun, DUUUUUUN! I love the complete disregard for gender, because honestly, how gendered do birds seem outside of the nest anyway? Yet still... what other secrets is Mrs. Tuttle hiding! Where is Mr. Tuttle while all this painstaking bird dressing is going on! We'll never know.

And how about you....which Dickie and Dollie snap do you think is the cutest? How do you think they get them to stay so still? Can you think of any creepy/compelling children's books like this from when you were a kid? Spill, spill!

A very happy New Year's Day Eve to you guys, and next time I see you, it'll be 2013! Yippee! :)

Photo Friday: Oh BEEHIVE Edition

Good morning!

The impromptu poem running through my head this morning? "Gotta get my hair ready for a wedding we're going to tonight! Gotta get that beehive up just right!" Set that to a Gerry and the Pacemaker's beat and we've probably got a hit on our hands, folks. But seriously, I do need to get my hair in fighting shape for a friend's wedding tonight, and thought the search words "mom beehive" might be appropriate for our Photo Friday look at Other-People's-Family-Photos. Wanna see the good, the good, and the very good? Here we go!

The all-of-a-suddenness of this photo is what really appeals to me. I was talking to Matthew the other day about how 90% of the photos that existed in the pre-digital camera era would not exist were photo viewing and deleting on the spot capabilities within the power of the historical subject. Example, this woman, given the luxury of digital photography, would obviously have said "Lemme see, lemme see," seconds after this snap was snapped, veto'd it on account of her off kilter expression and her beau's general, sweaty weirdness, and this second in time would have been dispatched into oblivion. But thanks to analog, old school photography techniques, she got this picture back probably weeks later and went "Well, what can you do" before filing it among her keepsakes for her future child to scan and put on the internet for us to look at. Isn't that weird? I love her dress and her hair, in spite of it all.

Now, this girl is adorable. I love how she's seated like a Caramel Cream in a chocolate box, right in the middle of a sea of shiny metallic wrapping papered gifts. Eyeliner out-to-there? Check. Hair so high you actually have to touch it to make sure it's not "doing anything weird"? Check. Acid yellow shift dress? Check.

Don't think I didn't check to make sure this picture didn't have some kind of contextual explanation, but it doesn't. One, this woman's hair, probably with the aid of a fall/wiglet/some kind of faux hair, is PERFECT. Two, she's holding two capucin monkeys in knitted baby clothes, the tinier of the two being in actual pants? Three, her print dress is out of control, and I want it. Four, see the sailors in the background? I wonder where this is!

This lady is pretty, but I can't fully support this particular beehive. I appreciate the smooth symmetry of it, the perfect bubble of a crown-- yet cannot get behind the lack of implied volume. What I like so much about these hairstyles is the look of having princess like flowing, flowing Rapunzel locks that you've managed to pin in a comely fashion to the top of your head, and in this case, there's just not enough hair for me! Her pearlescent nails and peter pan collar are, however, commendable.

YES! It is real, ultimate height that we desire! This came from a funny post on this woman's blog about her mom's complete mastery of this hairstyle, coupled with a tragicomic incident that happened to her mom as a result of this hairstyle. Ugh! I want this level of dexterity with my hurr!

Gotta go get started on my day, but do you have any particular tips or quips regarding teasing one's hair into a sky high coiff? Did your mom or grandma ever succumb to the fashionability of this particular hair mode? Tell! Tell! Whether I'm successful or not, be on the lookout for photos of my results next week!

Hope you guys have a GREAT weekend, I'll see you on Monday!

Collectors Guide to TV Toys and Memorabilia (1960's & 1970's, 2nd Edition)

Wasn't this book's cover just singing out to me from the recently returned shelving of the non-fiction floor yesterday? Collectors Guide to TV Toys and Memorabilia: 1960's and 1970's, 2nd Edition (library) by Greg Davis and Bill Morgan is a collector's historical and price index to your favorite tv tie-in tchochkes from the sixties' and seventies'. Neither one of my parents had the kind of parents who would buy them a lot of INSANELY AWESOME merchandising, so I'm just going to have to keep my eagle eyes peeled for these items in the wild. Wanna take a look?

THE. BIONIC. SNEAKERS. OH. MY. GOD.

As I've said before, I am unnaturally attracted to tv-tie in collectibles. When Great Escape or Goodwill happens to feature a board game or a lunchbox or a coloring book from any and every show I've ever seen in syndication, it's almost a certainty that if the price is under $15, I will be purchasing it for inclusion in my own tiny little home "Golden Age of Television" museum. It's a sickness! An affliction! (#firstworldvintagecollectionproblems) I was telling a coworker at the non-fiction desk earlier that though I have never seen an entire episode of the Six Million Dollar Man-- not once! Not even once!-- I somehow still have the board game, an officially licensed t-shirt contemporaneous to the show's original run (I thought it was homemade, but this book says it's official!), and a lunchbox! These things just fall into my hands somehow.

That, dear friends, is why I avoid ebay auctions altogether-- could you imagine how bad I would be if the whole world was open to me, in terms of shopping territory? Still, the book showed me many wonders to keep in mind in case they do crop up in a home goods or toy section in the near future. 

Let's take a look at some of the killer dillers:

Bewitched Paper Dolls

We discussed paper dolls just the other day, and while I do have a Doris Day set in my "celebrity" collection, I feel sad that I don't have a Darren, Endorra, and Samantha set from the tv show Bewitched. These Swedish language clips are TOO. CUTE. "De Ungas Sidor" means "The Youth Pages", and I think these would have featured in a Swedish newspaper or magazine sometime when the show originally aired? I was surprised at how tame Agnes Moorhead's costumes and makeup looks in comparison to what I remember from the show-- doesn't she look more a young Zsa Zsa Gabor than herself on her page? Whatever, would still snap these up in a millisecond.

Another show that was in re-runs on the old Sci-Fi channel weekday lineup was The Bionic Woman. Please, please, please look at the box art for the fembot. I found one at an exorbitantly high priced listing on ebay, but this snap from a fansite is even better. YOU CAN RIP OFF HER FACE, YOU GUYS. You can rip her face RIGHT OFF to reveal the plastic decal of her inner workings! I have honestly never seen a more exciting toy. If you don't remember the show or this particular element of the show, do yourself a favor and watch this absolutely amazing clip of an example episode from YouTube. One of the exchanges is "1: Aw, no! No, no, no, man! 2:The doctor's human son died as a baby..." and from there, it really just gets better. FEMBOTS FOR LIFE.

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I also love this wallet, but couldn't find one for sale anywhere. You know Quentin Tarantino has one. You KNOW he does.

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I was surprised when going through the Brady Bunch memorabilia that the official series lunch box is not nearly as exciting as you'd think it would be. Not that I don't want one if you want to give me one, but check it out:

Vintage 1970 Brady Bunch Lunchbox King-Seeley Thermos Division Metal Lunch Box

I wasn't sure if they even had the wedding on the show, but apparently they did, in the pilot episode, where the future Mrs. Carol Brady actually wore yellow instead of pink. Discrepancy! Still, compared to the Partridge Family lunchbox, this is kind of weak sauce...we need more of the kids! More of the A-frame house and staircase! Somethin!

This thing looks insane. Let's get it:

Vtg Mego 1977 Farrah Fawcett Bust Styling Glamour Center Head w/ Instructions

Did you have your own style-its-hair mannequin head a child? Haircare toys are always hit and miss to me because if you do any of the things you're supposed to do to the figure's hair (cut, wash, curl, set, etc), you're kind of going to mess it up. And unlike real hair, your doll's hair does not grow out of the asymmetrical Dorothy Hamill cut you regretted instants after having given it to her.

My dad said in high school it was fashionable for boys of his age to ask door-to-door-literature-distributing Mormons if they could get "me a date with Marie Osmond!", of the most glamorous Mormon singing brother-sister sensation of them all, Donny and Marie. I only remember Donny and Marie from their revamped talk show in the late 90's, and Marie's frequent marital/family/psychological problems of that same time frame. Still, you have to admit they're kitsch cute in their sequins and turquoise on the front of this 45s carrying case. You'd be surprised at the sheer volume of Osmond merchandise there was when the sibling's variety hour was a thing back in the seventies'. 

DONNY AND MARIE OSMOND record and toy CARRY CASE 1977 Vintage RARE!!!

We! Love! Gidget! We! Love! Her!I'm not sure what psychic powers the girl midget might possess, but her smilling little bouffant'd head on the cover is enough to sell me.

HTF 1966 GIDGET FORTUNE TELLER GAME by Milton Bradley, Complete & VG Condition

It's been nine years since I was outbid on a Welcome Back, Kotter record player in my freshman year of college (that might have been the experience that got me off of ebay!), but the passage of time has not dulled the pain a whit! Even as cringe-inducingly-bad as his career has turned of late (did you guys see the video for "I Think You Might Like It"?), even as completely off-put by Scientology as I am, I'm a John Travolta supporter all the way, forever, and his male ingenue turn as Vinne Barbarino in Welcome Back, Kotter is one of my particularly fond memories of the Travolta-that-was. LOOK. AT. THIS. PLAYSET.

RARE- 1976 - Welcome Back Kotter Classroom Set + 5 Sweathogs - & accessories WOW

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Truth time: the one item for which I would actually break my ebay embargo (it's not ebay's fault, it's my hair-trigger compulsive collecting habit that's to blame): OH MY SWEET AND DEAR LORD, Southwestern Native American themed Cher dressing room set. YES. A THOUSAND TIMES YES.

Mego CHER - Cher's DRESSING ROOM Playset (1976)

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There's a lot more in the book where that came from. Did you have any particularly beloved tv-tie in merchandise as a child? Do you scour ebay for this kind of junk, or would you gladly pass it up as a yard sale because "what'll I ever do with it?" (I wish I was in the latter camp! I wish!). Which toy would you like to add to your collection?

HOW AWESOME ARE FEMBOTS?

Have a great Thursday, and I'll see you tomorrow for Photo Friday!

Holiday Snips and Snaps (2012)

Good morning!

We lived through the hardest part of the holidays, folks! Still have New Years' on its way down the pipeline, but boy, am I grateful to have most of the seasonal cheer out of the way and done with for the year. Don't think that I don't love Christmas... I do, but with the year it's been, the bum's rush I'm ready to give 2-0-1-2 is almost in effect!

The one unifying effect of these pictures taken over the Christmas holiday is COLOR. Here's your humble blog author in front of our two, tiny, Technicolor trees and a little holiday display that went up just after Thanksgiving. We did have to move the whole kit and caboodle once, to a temporary home in the den, when we had folks over for dinner, but other than that, it's been nice to sit at the table, crunching on breakfast toast and staring eye-to-eye with a Christmas elf.

And that Christmas elf is "Jingle" (really, it's the name printed on his tag)! This elf was my mom's when she was a little kid and mine when I was little... I kidnapped him at some point around five years ago, and when he featured in a similar Christmas display on the same table four years ago, my mom negotiated his safe return to her house (the exchange went: Mom: Is that Jingle? Me: Yes. Mom: My Jingle? Lisa: Um...you gave it to me? Mom: I don't think so.) Only to give him back to me for Christmas last year. Needless to say, Jingle is comforted by the security this new arrangement and looks fine and dandy in this spread. I love his pert expression! His over sized feet! His love of embellishment! Those are three things we have in common!

Also included are an all-seasons light up glitter covered skull, a Charlie Brown Christmas snow globe, candy canes (a particularly vicious holiday vice of mine), the Chrisilizard (Matthew's contribution), and a Christmas be-decked Slimer (remember him from the back to school party?).

Slimer featured again in our holiday picture! I'm happy to have this good a picture of the two of us together, even if it does include a ghoster in a Santa hat.

I made the mistake of listening to the audiobooks of Skinny B-tch and Veganist over the dang break (I do this to myself! Why!), and now my newest diet fad (you know I'm always on one) is trying to include more soy-based replacement meats into my daily dishes (which were about 90% poultry-as-protein based anyway, so it's not the end of the world) and cut down my dairy intake (slightly harder, but I've been in tougher scrapes than this). Here, you can see a picture of me with my chipped nailpolish, one broken burner (aaaah! I NEED. A NEW STOVE.), and a panful of Vegan With a Vengeance's scrambled tofu recipe. I don't know how long I'll last without at least chicken, but a girl can dream!

This year, instead of gift cards (a household holiday gift giving staple of ours, as everyone in each of our families is IMPOSSIBLE to shop for), we made little artistic artifacts to pass on to our loved ones. Matthew did character sprites from vintage video games for Sus and Matt (which I forgot to photograph...Sus! Matt! Take pictures for us!) and I made whatever came into my head as related to the person for whom it was intended. Whether the recipient would rather have a Kroger gift card than a construction paper collage...well, we'll leave that to them, but it was fun making the pictures! My main gift to my dad was to dupe 10 unreleased-on-cd Barbara Mandrell records from his reckless youth to digital copies via my USB turntable, so there's a little bit of country when country wasn't cool in each and every one of these. 

For some "hot jazz" fans in the family who haven't received their gifts yet (oooh, I hope you're not reading this, you know who you are!), I made this oversized Boswell Sisters collage:

The Boswell Sisters were a singing group who rose to prominence in late twenties' and early thirties' for their revved-up harmonic renditions of popular tunes of the day. When they are hot, they are HOT. Martha, Connee, and Helvetia ("Vet") stopped singing together in 1936, and although Connee went on to have a fairly successful solo career on Decca records in the 1940's, that superfast thirties' foot tapping tempo is what they're best known for. I LOVE the souped up sound of their recordings, and thought a Howard Finster style tribute was the best way to show 'em off. I made this with black construction paper on white typing paper for the most part, with a little Sharpie edging here and there.

For my mom, I made this little pop art bird, and labelled him "the bird" in French. I think I liked how his feathers turned out the most!

Here's a picture of the Tenacious D collage I made for my sister. I wish to heck Jack Black had turned out better, but I think Kyle Gass pretty much looks exactly like Kyle Gass. The background is repeating lines of "WE ARE THE D", which reminds me of the summer after The Pick of Destiny movie and Sus and I committing its soundtrack to heart. You should see the t-shirts we made for the movie premiere (accordingly, I should take pictures of them sometime! Haha).

I'll have to share pictures of my received Christmas presents in the next fashion or recipe post, respectively (are you intrigued?), but let us simply say that I am a happy little fashionable camper! Who can now make recipes with speed and precision!

How was your holiday? Did you drink way too much egg nog? Did you get or give any particularly mind blowing presents? Tell, tell!

More vintage clips coming your way this week. Merry slightly late Christmas to you all! :)

Photo Friday: Vintage Family Xmas Cards Edition

Good morning!

Well, it's almost here, guys! We've almost made it to Christmas. This week on the tackboard at work, right above the daily desk schedule, three little cards of my coworkers' consistently cute children and grandchildren in either festive or non-festive settings, emblazoned with "Happy Holidays from the..." and little hollyhocks or snowmen, appeared . Family Christmas cards! I thought they were extinct!

When I was little, my mom always took a picture of Susan and me in front of the Christmas tree, but while we sent out generic cards to relatives and my parents' coworkers, there was never not once a whole family picture of my mom, dad, sister, and me, holiday appareled or otherwise, for the Christmas season! What a shame, too. Remembering that I was born in 1985, the perms and bad sweaters alone would have been worth the price of having the cards printed up.

While fiddling around with Google image search, I stumbled across a photo set on Flickr labelled "Goltermann Family Christmas Cards". GUYS. THIS IS THE COOLEST SET OF FAMILY CHRISTMAS CARDS YOU ARE GOING TO SEE THIS YEAR. PERIOD. The golden age of family Christmas cards, in one of its finest examples!

Starting in 1945, and continuing faithfully every holiday season for decades, Mr. and Mrs. Goltermann gathered their growing family for a yearly Christmas card. But not just any Christmas card! I don't know if the Mister was a photographer or just an artistic soul, but the pictures have a consistent wit and cute-factor that makes me want to run out to Olan Mills this year before it's too late. Every! One! Is an actual delight.

As is always the case in a set of photos that stretch such a long space of time, watching the children be born and grow up and have families of their own is fascinating. The first card from 1945 features a pretty dark haired woman and her husband (who looks like a handsomer Gore Vidal) and her young son--by the 1954 card above, the family's expanded to three little guys (and one little gal)! Another thought that struck me going through the pictures was how unusual it would be now for someone to have four kids-- that was about standard back in the time period (my mom was one of four siblings).

I'm not sure what's going on in this one, but look at how pretty the little girl looks in her plaid and hair bow:

Watch out! Little brother and little sister are takin' over! Watch your shoulders, older children! (Does the typography on that hanging sign not look like it was done this morning? Fresh as paint!)

Look at Pop Golterman with his empty post-Christmas-shopping pockets, Ma Golterman with her pretty brooch and pert expression, and the kids with their toys from that year. I love that the kid two from the left hasn't bothered to change out of his pajamas for the photo-- he's appropriately still clad in his Christmas morning attire! I, myself, would have been happy upon gift unwrapping to get any one of these presents-- telescope, rifle, camera, or life-size baby doll. Lucky littles!

This next color one might be my very favorite one, Xmas 1966. While the eldest child has grown and flown the nest, the sign from Xmas 1958 (above) has returned in color this time, and the rest of the family is in full effect with their gifts! Look at the daughter's hair dryer contraption! The elder redheaded child's wild expression and gee-tar! You just get the feeling that these people really had fun thinking up the picture and having it taken. Also, look at their Merry Christmas camper in the '69 picture!

1968's picture still has the second eldest child and his guitar! It's good for him to stick with it. How cute is the Mom with her bongos?

As I could tell, the dad was still taking his famous xmas cards all the way through 2010! Click on the link at the top of this post to see the family's whole set, it's really just a heartwarming little hoot for the holidays. Vive los Goltermanns!

Did you take photos for a family Christmas card as a kid? Do you still take them today? What's the most hilarious photo of you-and-an-Xmas-morning-present? I think my favorite has to be me, circa 1990, in a pair of ballet slippers with the box for Tyco's My Pretty Ballerina wrapped in my little ecstastic arms. Do you understand I did not even like ballet, but omg I was excited about the best toy of that holiday season as mine, all mine. I can still remember the weird, robotic noises she made as she stiffly pliéd before my very eyes. ((misty))

Have a great holiday! I'll see you guys next Wednesday (unless I get cabin fever before then!).

Twin Peaks o Philia (1990-1991)

Good morning!

The living room is not what it seems! There's something...different!

Well, actually, there's a lot of things different. Some day, children, I hope I will have a halfway decent camera to photo-document my living conditions with, but for the time being, here we are in my gracious living room. There's my tension lamp, my couch, my weirdly partially open curtains, my new faux bamboo chair from Goodwill ($25! The big find of last weekend!)...what else do we see here?

Hint: It's not the shamelessly messy coffee table

Do you see it yet? Hm?

AAAAAH! IT'S LAURA PALMER!

I've had this over-the-top brass frame, which originally came with a holographic picture of Jesus Christ praying at Gethsemane (don't think I don't still have that, just in a different place), for what feels like forever. I was attracted by one key quality, which is-- did you see that tacky hanging electrical cord to the right of the picture? I know these things bother you like they bother me, but OMG, LOOK AT THE REASON FOR THAT:

Yeah, it's a picture frame with a tiny lightbulb in it. It is. And now it's a picture frame with a tiny lightbulb in it it with LAURA PALMER'S PROM PICTURE in it. I'm sorry, but the subtlety of this nod to my deep and abiding love of the surreal prime time soap is actually making me conceited. I said I was sorry, dang it! I found the image online here and had Matthew print it out on cardstock at work. Voilà!

But what had me on a tv Lynch kick in the first place? Well, at the blogger Christmas party I mentioned a week or two back, Lauren from Old Red Boots brought up the 1990-1991 David Lynch helmed television series Twin Peaks by way of explaining that her cat's name is Agent Dale Cooper (!!) and the show was something she was trying to introduce to her boyfriend and get to re-watch all over again at the same time. The roomful of fashionable bloggin' gals just started buzzing about the bizarre semi-coda, semi-post mortem Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me film, the Log Lady, Audrey Horne's innocent-sex-pot fifties' style, and of course B-O-B (shudders at the very thought). I loved, loved, loved the show on watching it in college circa 2003, and again after college in 2007...it seems like these things come around in cyclical kicks, and I'm a year overdue for re-watching it, if that is indeed the case.

Lauren did a neat post on Twin Peaks swag you can get on Etsy these days, and it made me think about how cult-ishly popular the series is even twenty-one years after its last episode. THAT, in a roundabout way, made me wonder what the show's critical and popular reception was like when it originally aired. Did the same people who would watch Dallas of-a-prime-time-night watch a freakin' DAVID LYNCH property? Through the magic of Google books, I found a couple contemporaneous articles from New York magazine, which I've included below. Feel free to click through any of the thumbnails for a full-sized version.

New York magazine Apr 9, 1990:

The gist of this article is very "yeah, neat show, interesting premise". I love the reviewer's description of the tone as "Dark Shadows meets Falcon Crest"...um, sure. Way to be flip about that. Now, David Lynch had already had some commercial success with (no, not Eraserhead, but he had also done Eraserhead) The Elephant Man and Blue Velvet by 1990, but it seems like he might have had a chance at long-term, sustained marketability with something like Twin Peaks-- people are interested enough to keep watching, and surprisingly not "turned off" by all the serio-comic surreal touches that make his presence as creator and sometimes writer/director known. 

A month later, Audrey and Agent Cooper rated a cover story! I know the scan is bad, but we work with what we have:

New York magazine May 7, 1990:

April 19th was the dwarf episode, a week after publication of the previous article, which I guess only really reviewed the pilot of the newborn show? I bet that reviewer about ate his own hat! From the tone of the article, as diverse a population as feminists Barbara Ehrenreich and Jane O'Reilly were running home to catch the next episode. Crazy, right? "Like nothing you've seen on prime time-- or on God's earth," mumbled the Time reviewer quoted on the third page below. "What you might find if you dragged Lake Wobegone," says a wag from Connoisseur magazine. Isn't it funny to think about watching the "The birds sing a pretty song" scene, and then having it immediately followed by a lead-in for the 10 o'clock local news and a Doritos commercial? THAT IS INSANE. Not until the cable networks upped their game with shows like Six Feet Under and, much later, Mad Men did we have true "gold standard" successors to this show-- tv that plays like movies you never want to end. And isn't that an interesting concept in itself! A tv show as not just a one-off or a six-off concept, but like a hundred hour movie you never want to quite resolve itself.

NewYork magazine Aug 27, 1990:

Now, this is a 1990 review of Wild at Heart, which may very well be my favorite Lynch movie after Blue Velvet but before Eraserhead in rank, and it's surprising how MEAN it is. Released while Twin Peaks was still on air, the reviewer castigates Lynch's "weirdness", describing the film as "full of self-mocking trash as well as perfervid excitement, and the trash is not redeemed by the jokes." What in hello did this reviewer expect? The unadulterated, for-real vision of Lynch, not adapted for the small screen, not rewritten by other tv writers, is pretty much the essence of Wild at Heart-- pop culture pastiche as seen through a lense darkly, right? Terrifying, surreal things mixed up with kitschy, things-we-can-understand. People as rocks-to-be-overturned-to-see-what-slimy-things-are-underneath, right? And yet the reviewer weighs in that "Lynch may need to work within certain limits, as he has to do when he makes Twin Peaks episodes for network television." It's like he was a little punished for being commercially successful, right?

New York magazine Sep 3, 1990:

Turns out, I had not even thought about people comparing Northern Exposure to Twin Peaks. In 2012, that sounds INSANE, and with all due respect to Northern Exposure, which I like and all, it's like...what? Huh? Really? But think about it! The Great Northwest, eccentric characters...hm....

Spy Nov 1990:

An article on how everyone in the dingdang world is referencing Twin Peaks to sound fashionable and comparing other things to Twin Peaks. I love it. I left the "art imitates life imitates Elvis" cartoon in there because it's hilarious.

New York Jul 2-9, 1990:

And last but not least, Audreysploitation at its finest for New York's Independence Day double issue. Sherilynn Fenn is so cute, please give me her hair. I know you're not looking at her hair, but you should be.

Are you a Twin Peaks -aholic? When did you first see the show and who or what got you into it? Do you have any strong opinions on David Lynch's movies? What tv show would you like to get back into while you've got your feet up and its Christmas break anyway?

That's all for today...Beware of BOB and I'll see you tomorrow!