HR Pufnstuf: the untold story

HR Pufnstuf

When we’re young, so many mysterious, adult things enter our lives and we, oblivious in our innocence, never recognize them for what they truly are.

Thank God.

Then, one day Jackie Paper decides he has better things to do and turns his back on the world of childhood, perhaps forever. He turns the key in the lock and opens the door to adulthood.

Welcome to the machine, kid.

From the (disad-)vantage point of the grown up world, things look a little different. As there’s a subtle yet crucial difference in perspective from a grassy knoll to, say, a Book Depository window, so too adulthood’s viewpoint casts a different light and different shadows on old, familiar scenes.

Like the psychadelic magic mushroom land of HR Pufnstuf.

Pufnstuf was based upon the acid-induced dreams of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who claimed to have had the drug injected into him by his arch-nemesis, Antonio Salieri. During his hallucinogen-induced trip, Mozart completed all of his most widely-acclaimed works, including The Magic Flute, an opera about a magic flute.

Cooke took the concept of the magic flute and placed it loosely into the hands of a swinging, happy-go-lucky teenager named “Jack…”

The BBC recently announced plans to produce a new “reality” television series based on H.R. Pufnstuf, entitled H.R. Pufnstuff Idol. In the new show, contestants will be set afloat on a foam-rubber island ruled by the foam-rubber dragon. One team will try and protect a magic flute, while the other team tries to steal it. The team that fails to execute “Jimmy” will lose the immunity challenge, and it must select the weakest link who gets “Witchy Poo’d” upon.

The winner of each episode will win a position on the Dancing on Ice judging panel, a new washer and dryer, and all the Marmite they can eat. The second place winner wins a date with classic British beauty gone horribly bad, Jayne Torvill.

It will be a ratings monster.

No, I’m not sorry I said it.

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I’m a lousy lover

or at least Vancouver poet/accordionist/comedian Rowan Lipkovits is. Here he is at the Roxy, a barn-like nightclub for people under 25 looking to get A) shitfaced and B) laid. Watch and enjoy as he testifies to the fact that he is not exactly in their target demographic. The songs are Al Mader‘s I’m a Lousy Lover and Lipkovits‘ own elderly-tomcat theme, Cougar Man. UPDATE: Rowan reports that Cougar Man is a product of the genius of Peter Guindon, aka Bob Uker (as in ukulele-player), aka The Minoans.

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life lessons from the undead

brainsssss...brainsssss....Stephen Hawking.... 

Because hey, Britney Spears is alive and you think she can give you better advice than a gore-clotted zombie revenant, crazed with bloodlust and hungry for brains?

At least zombies like brains.

The ever-servicey Guardian has a lovely article on life lessons we can learn from zombies. (I must include a small ed. note here, to the effect that we at the ol’ raincoaster blog have, it must be admitted, even when we don’t want to, that we deleted the Zombie Blog off the blogroll, although it should be noted that this was after a long time, and with great reluctance, and we only did it because that blog was not so much undead as actually, factually, and for all intents and purposes really…well, is it indelicate to put it this way? Dead)

Man-made viruses are bad things … 

We, as humans, are fragile things

… When the character of Rhodes is spectacularly dissected by zombie hordes in Day Of The Dead, and screams “CHOKE ON ‘EM!” as they tuck into his guts, he is, in a very real sense, acknowledging his own dehumanised position in consumer culture. Yes he is.

The US military ruin it for everyone

…In Day Of The Dead, they are all racist, sexist and insane, with disastrous results. Quite where the inspiration comes from for this bumbling, disaster-prone, incompetent redneck vision of America‘s military might, is a matter for considerable debate.

Your family messes you up

No genre has reflected the increasingly obsolescence of the nuclear family unit more gleefully than the zombie movie, which posits that family life will not just mess you up, it will also attempt to eat your spleen too…

Always stay close to a helicopter pilot

No matter what goes down in any given zombie movie, you can be sure of one thing – if you haven’t got a helicopter pilot with you, then you are fubar…in the Zack Snyder remake of Dawn Of The Dead, there is no helicopter pilot anywhere to be found, and where do they all end up? Dead, that’s where. So if you are ever introduced to a helicopter pilot, be nice to them

Women are better in a crisis than men are

This may not be news to our female readers (on your side, sisters!) but zombie flicks are either keenly aware of women’s inherent stoicism, or the blokes who make zombie flicks are just trying to suck up…

Animals can be zombies too

Hmmm. Not quite sure how this one can be applied in modern society, but there are zombie monkeys in the 28 series, zombie alligators in Day Of The Dead, zombie dogs in Resident Evil, zombie spiders in Lucio Fulci’s The Beyond, and in Zombie Creeping Flesh there is actually a zombie kitten. Yes, you read that correctly. So I guess what this teaches us is maybe that keeping pets is cruel. Or something.

In summary, then: stay away from pets and family members, retain a keen awareness of your own mortality and the power of science, and hang out with female non-US military-affiliated helicopter pilots. Valuable lessons, there, for all of us.

Couldn’t have put it better myself. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to drop a friendly note to my old buddy Flygrrl

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pix o’ the day: wall of water

tsunami boat 

Surfing randomly for a photo of a mother for some other blogging project, I was floored to come across the Tsunami blog, which is a record of the Boxing Day Tsunami in Thailand. The picture pages (20!) are astonishing. Unfortunately, the page is copy-protected and I can’t post image links, you’ll just have to follow the text link. The images here are authentic, but from other sites.

Yes, some of the images are hard to look at, but some of them more than make up for that, like picture number one on the Tsunami blog, which shows the tsunami approaching like a blue wall crested with clouds, and a Swedish mother running straight towards it, into the surf to save her children.

They all made it.

While you’re there, check out the images of the 2002 Chinese tidal bore. Some of these were circulated in 2006 as “tsunami pictures” but they are actually old photos of a rare occurrence where a river encounters an unusally strong incoming tide and the result is a tsunami-like wall of water that travels rapidly upriver. Apparently, it’s an annual occurance in that Chinese city and people just love it; they hang around the riverbanks and when it comes roaring their way they go all Running of the Bulls, giggling and jogging out of reach.

You know, I really hope they get cable in China soon, and free up the internet, because these people are obviously STARVED for entertainment.

tidal bore wave

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loltrek, the lol of lols

i can has nerdgasm?

we has tribbles and also troubles

First there were lolcats (and note, please, that I am restraining myself from using lolspk here, or even l33t for verily, I am way dignified, yo).

Then there were lolgays. and gebrils. They’re big on gebrils. We even hear there are lolgeeks

Now, to complete the lolfecta for the grand prize, there is:

loltrek.

oh hai u want tribblz?

As if this grand conceit were not already pluperfect, please identify the source of the following vintage meme, for additional geek points and a free virtual propeller beanie:

oh hai, i has meme

and here is your soundtrack, for rocking and geeking out.

Numa, numa, baby!