Friday, April 2, 2010

MUSEUM PIECE - 04/01/10

Okay, just so you all know, I'm copping to the fact that all three Inner Toob posts on Thursday were April Fool's jokes. And that includes the As Seen On TV showcase. (If you've seen the two part movie "Sherlock Holmes And The Incident At Victoria Falls", then you know why it was a prank. If not, have no fear - I still played fair with the daily feature about the televersions of historical figures.)

The post about the Three Minute Theater contest was inspired by my crossover compatriot Thom Holbrook, who has entered a play-writing competition. I dragooned several of my theatrically-based friends into the story without their fore-knowledge, and crafted the play out of TV series titles.

As for 'The Frank Morgan Show'.... you don't know how much I wish that it was true. Not my own idea for a concept, per se, just the chance to have seen Frank Morgan on TV......

Actually, I went to the Paley Center on Thursday, rather than on Wednesday as I stated in the post about that fictional "Frank Morgan Show". I don't know how long it's been since I was last there, but they've upgraded the library so that much of the museum's content is now digital and available right there at the computers. I wasn't too keen on this, first of all because the room was nearly packed. If this is the wave of the future, than I hope the new terminals spread to the other two floors as well.

But as for now, those are still to be used by people whose choices are not yet transferred to digital. Private consoles, better & more comfortable seats, and dark surroundings that hopefully inspire quiet (unlike upstairs).

At the digital resource, I watched an episode of 'You Are There' with Robert Culp - "June 2, 1692: The Salem Witch Trials". Culp played Captain John Alden, the son of the legendary John and Priscilla, and he was in prison accused of witchcraft. Others in the cast I recognized were 'You Are There' stalwart Milton Selzer ('The Death of Socrates' & 'Julius Caesar'), Peter Hobbs (George Driscoll on 'Lou Grant'), and one of my favorite actresses, Ruth McDevitt as Deliverance Hobbes.

(Since I got home from seeing this, I've been looking at various sites about the Salem Witch Trials. Those girls who accused those poor people which led to their deaths hopefully got their punishments in the afterlife.)

But for the rest of my stay there Thursday, I was down in the console room to watch the two "From Sea To Shining Sea" specials in which Culp played John Freeborn. The first special took place in 1774-75 and the other took place in 1814. With Culp not aging a bit in either special which in the timeline was a forty year span, you know I'll have more to write about that! Other actors in them were Richard Kiley as a frontiersman, Jeff Conaway as a 1/8th Creek Indian, Burgess Meredith as John Adams, Jeff Corey as Andrew Jackson, and Fritz Weaver as Colonel Washington. (There's a reason why I address him by his title and why I don't mention his first name, but that's for a later post.)

I was also hoping to see an episode of 'Willy' the 1950's sitcom starring June Havoc in tribute of her, but unfortunately they didn't even have the pilot. It may have been a trifle, but I think the sitcom did serve an important function for Toobworld. (Again, more on that in a later post.)



Oh! There was also some downtime while they attended to a technical glitch on the console, so I moved to a different one until they could reload my choices. And from the options to watch while I waited, I chose an episode of 'Crusader Rabbit'.

BCnU!

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