Re: The “Venture Bros.” movie

Alternatively, “Follow That Bikini” (1970), and other feature films by Isotope Pictures.

EDIT: I am tired of waiting to for myself to write this properly. So I’m just going to hit the “Publish” button and call it a day.

I watched the new VB movie last week and I wanted to jot down my thoughts.

Radiant is the Blood of the Baboon Heart was a treat and I was far from disappointed with it. I had access to it a few weeks earlier than I’d expected, but I jumped at the chance to buy it on the Apple Store and I found the film to be pleasantly entertaining.

I have no doubt that the WGA/SAG/AFTRA strikes likely sped up the decision to release the film early.

The truth is that this is the format for which The Venture Bros. was always destined. It took seven seasons (over two decades), but ultimately the animated series evolved to a cinema-level of animation quality.

BEWARE: SPOILERS AHEAD

"You've been waiting all day for this haven't you?"

I loved seeing all the callbacks during Hank’s flashback sequence at the Venture Industries compound. They even referenced dialog from the pilot episode The Terrible Secret of Turtle Bay (which I cannot find in the Apple Store, btw).

And Dermott with a super-soaker? Nice touch.

I kind of wish that Debra (not Debbie) had an iPhone that was rooted and jail broken. But I know how Apple feels about any portrayal of the iPhone in the hands of anyone but unambiguous protagonists.

So, we get a rooted Android. And it’s fine. And that’s some pretty fancy shell work. I mean — I’ve seen worse.

They wrote sudo in the command line. So you know it really is hacking.

Gotta remember to share this with r/ItsAUnixSystem. I’m sure it’s already been done. But there’s a chance it hasn’t!

There is a bit of intersecting overlap across those groups. Think of it as a Venture Bros *NIX reddit bouillabaisse.

Ahhh, doesn’t that just roll off the tongue? Delightful.

I laughed out loud during the scene where all the Helper Pods simultaneously began playing It Takes Two, by Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock.

I could go on. But you should just go watch it.

I give it six bags of popcorn and two sodas.

Seriously, go watch it.

A Great Uncle

I just discovered a copy of something my dad once told me about.

When I was a kid, he’d tell me about my great uncle. Stan was always pretty vague on the subject. Also, the guy had died five years before I was even born. But I still remember bits and pieces of what he used to tell me.

Bill (Senior) was his dad’s brother. And that makes him my grandfather’s brother. This familial relationship is also known as a great uncle. And one thing I remember him telling me about his uncle, and who he was, and that he’d become famous for publishing a little lexicon called “Hotel Slang.”

I guess it was more like a glossary. But it really codified a lot of the street talk you’d hear in a detective story from the film noir genre. Vintage 1930s stuff.

I smiled more than once at the terms as I read down the list. I’d heard my dad mention “Hotel Slang” on more than one occasion. But I was always too young to care about it.

Today I discovered a copy of it in the New York Times archives from 1939.

I read it and was so moved that I had to put it here.

Here is the link to view the original.

In his honor, I’m going to republish, in whole, below.

American Speech: Hotel Slang (1939)

OCTOBER 19, 2010 10:00 AMOctober 19, 2010 10:00 am

by William Stewart Cornyn

This is the first in a series of extracts from the archive
of American Speech – “a quarterly of linguistic usage”
published on behalf of the American Dialect Society.

The following list of expressions has been compiled from the slang current in the hotels of Los Angeles. Many of these terms may be found in other collections, for it is in the nature of the hotel business that its slang should come from many and various sources.

An attempt has been made, however, to exclude expressions which are common in vulgar speech. An exception has been made to this rule wherever an unusual application of a term has been found or where the term should be listed for the sake of completeness.

American Speech, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Oct., 1939), pp. 239-240
© The American Dialect Society
www.dukeupress.edu/americanspeech
Reproduced with permission.

The First Time I Heard About “Taxi Driver”

I can still remember the first time I’d ever heard about Taxi Driver (1976). I was at Buckley, either 9th or 10th grade. Probably 9th. There was this neighbor girl who lived up the street. I only met her after I switched to her school. Her name was *redacted* or something.

She and I were the same age, but she was waaaaay more “sophisticated” than I was. So I remember running in to her this one time. I don’t remember if she was walking her dog, or what. But she was telling me all these things. About how she’d just spent the weekend with her cousin, in Palm Springs.

I was only a kid, but I was old enough to know that it was not a good thing to hang out with kids from Palm Springs.

Anyway, she told me about how she’d just watched Taxi Driver (1976), and about how it was amazing. This must have been around 1990 maybe? So, I’m not sure if it was in a movie theater, tape, or what. But she was sure jazzed about it.

She’d told me about how her cousin had given her some speed that weekend. And how she’d spent the whole night laying awake in bed, just staring up at the ceiling.

She’d said it was amazing.

Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, that memory comes back to me.

Nostalgia can be a funny thing sometimes.

Imagine Trolleys on Third Street Promenade

A streetcar would whisk you up 3rd, all the way from the Starbucks at Santa Monica Place to the … Starbucks … at 7th and Montana.

EDIT: I guess this ties in with my post on Steampunk Santa Monica.

I don’t want to get bogged down in the history of “Third Street”, (a.k.a. “The Promenade”); it’s too vast and it’s well been documented to great detail. In short, one could argue that this property was Santa Monica’s original “main street” long before the first “Southern California Railroad” would arrive in Ocean Park in (1899). To be fair, there was a light public transit service along 4th and Main Streets between Pico Boulevard and Hill Street. This “south loop” was for some period known as the “Los Angeles & Santa Monica Electric Railway”. At one point, this line had been served by a horse trolley, then converted to traction motors of some kind. Poor horsies. Oh, damn it – I’ve gotten all bogged down anyway.

Below, I’ve included a section of the map of downtown Santa Monica from late (December) 1910.

In this map, you can see that the “3rd Street Line” starts at Montana and 7th. From there it heads west to 3rd Street. It then runs downhill (south-ish) on 3rd all the way to Broadway, crossing a junction with an “east-west” line on Santa Monica Boulevard. For the last two blocks it turns west to merge with the southbound flow of Los Angeles-Pacific traffic from the line down Ocean Avenue. There is an adjacent building called the “L.A.P. Depot”

This map of downtown Santa Monica has inscriptions in the lower-left corner:
“Map of Santa Monica and vicinity, Los Angeles County, Cal.”
“Compiled and copyrighted by W. W. Phelps, C. E.”
“December, 1910”

I’d like to do a series on subjects like this. I guess this line is part of what was sometimes called the “North Loop”.

Here are some subjects to cover:

The Santa Monica “South Loop” in Ocean Park.
The “Nevada Avenue” line to the Old Soldier’s Home (the West L.A. VA property).
The miniature railway in Venice.
The short-lived “Eighth Street Line” that ran down Lincoln to Pearl.

As a footnote, here are the original street names for the major west-east thoroughfares:

Wilshire Boulevard was “Nevada Avenue”

Santa Monica Boulevard was “Oregon Avenue”

Broadway was “Utah Avenue”

TL;DR

I’ve sat on this draft for years now. Time to just publish what I’ve got and finish/fix it later.

I’m Thrilled

And I’ll tell you why.

Let me explain.

On occasion I feel nostalgic for a radio station I discovered in 1988.

The music programming on KROQ (106.7 FM) in the Los Angeles area back then was, shall we say, top notch.

Personally, it was a major influence on my musical tastes. And likely some of my cultural attitudes as well. Sometimes I have to wonder if I’d ever even had any inherent taste in music at all prior to that.

I guess you could say that the radio brainwashed me.

Actual bumper sticker I got from Richard Blade, no later than 1992 (I think).

Sadly, my love affair with KROQ came to a halt a few years later. We moved to a place just outside the county line. And that FM radio signal was just a bit too weak to reach me.

Maybe it was the mighty mountains surrounding the Conejo Valley. Perhaps the peaks of the Santa Monica Mountains were too tall for the repeater atop Mount Baldy. The radio signal would sometimes get a little stronger after dark. But the frequency was always washed out when I’d get home from school. It was a nice treat when the days began to grow shorter that first winter out there.

Parenthetically, none of that mattered to my new schoolmates. Few of them had ever even heard of KROQ, let alone the bands I liked to listen to. And the few that had the slightest familiarity with “that type” of music? They were pretty much all kind of outsiders.

Even someone looking like me was subject to xenophobic attitudes. I can recall that feeling. It’s tough when most of the school has grown up together. But most people just try to blend in.

I didn’t try to stand out. But I’d be damned if I was just going to try to blend in.

All in all? It was weird.

At Buckley, around 1990, KROQ was very much a mainstream radio station. Almost to the point of being boring. My big sister listened to it. Even back when she was still a senior there. Even my mom put up with it most of the time.

Ultimately, the parent company of the radio station, sold the station to Clear Channel Communications. Infinity Broadcasting had been the steward to guide musical tastes into the twenty-first century. But they had to bail. And I don’t blame them for that.

A new style of management took the programming in a different direction at 106.7 KROQ. But, that is another story for another time.

In conclusion, I want to say something about the “Roq of the 80s” station on Audacy, please accept my heartfelt thanks for making this happen.

PS: I’m looking forward to seeing a full “Roq of the (80s and) 90s” playlist as well some day soon.

If it isn’t too much to ask, may we also have a station for Roq Bloq Weekends and Rodney on the Roq? You may as well add one for Swedish Egil as well.

Any hoo, here’s the link:

KROQ “Roq of the 80s” via Audacy (WARNING: May induce Flashback Fridays)

Here’s the link on Audacy:

https://www.audacy.com/stations/roqofthe80s?action=AUTOPLAY_FULL&actionContentId=101-349

On Apple Music:

https://embed.music.apple.com/us/station/kroq-roq-of-the-80s/ra.1461899536

I’m going to see if I can embed the stream here.

You’re welcome.

*END COMMUNICATION*