Pen-Elayne on the Web

Forward Into The Past

Back from PA only to discover that Blogger had apparently posted an additional banner ad, but it seems to have been a cache problem; thank goodness, I'm not that good at recoding this template. :) The weekend weather was perfect and PA was relaxing and fun, particularly discovering that the comic shop in the Plymouth Meeting Mall carried old LPs for a buck; made me feel like I was back in college, bless their hearts! Picked up a couple Peter Paul & Mary albums, Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits, and a replacement for my Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night (the album cover, autographed by the man himself at an old Beatles convention umpteen years ago, is still in great shape but the record inside didn't match!). Warmed my heart to see a copy of Bozos right in front of a stack, and me not even putting it there myself! I'm thinking that might be a nice place for Jim to start spreading the word of his campaign (see yesterday's blog entry).

Speaking of Forward Into yadda yadda, just finished watching Return to the Batcave: The Misadventures of Adam and Burt, starring Adam West and Burt Ward as sort-of themselves, Frank Gorshin and Julie Newmar as sort-of themselves, Lee Meriwether as a waitress, and a lot of cute in-jokes. I actually liked the biopic portion of it about as much as the Martin & Lewis one starring Jeremy Northam and Sean Hayes, although I think they could have gotten better "ringers" for some of the guest actors, considering they didn't need to be on camera all that long anyway. I mean, when I was a kid everyone and his mom would imitate Vincent Price; couldn't Gorshin at least have coached the guy? In any case, it was one of those in-jokes that probably wouldn't mean a thing to anyone who didn't watch the original Batman TV show, and by that measure it doesn't work that well (see here for more), but I think the people who made it are counting on that era's pop culture by now being entrenched enough in the public consciousness that they could get away with it. The running gag about the off-camera narrator was my favorite, and the punch line to that was terrific (and I was so livid I didn't recognize the voice sooner!), there was some cute if exaggerated pokes at Hollywood foibles, and the shoehorned anachronisms (bottle return deposits before the '70s? well, maybe in southern CA... Wertham reported on in a newspaper a decade after the Senate hearings? fairly unlikely) weren't emphasized enough to take away my enjoyment of the winking narrative, such as it was. I'm still trying to figure out the medicine they gave Ward to produce the shrinkage.

[Typed whilst listening to Billy Bragg's The Price of Oil - but Billy, how do you really feel?]