THE RIGHTEOUS APPLES (1980)

GROOVE TO THEM TUNES!

Flu Flashbacks

Staying home sick always meant educational shows. My parents had decided that if I wasn't at school, I was going to at least be learning something. I have no idea what I was supposed to learn, but seeing these now, I have to admit I'm getting a little dizzy and nauseous.

WHY DO YOU THINK THEY CALL IT PROGRAMMING?

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Just the first ten seconds of this hint at something sinister. The puppets don't help.



Performing "experiments" in the house got me in trouble.



No. This is not what you want to see when you've spent the morning puking.



And there is a theme song I cannot escape.

"Hi, there, nice people." He's so affable. I'm pretty sure he's got bodies in the basement, stacked like cordwood.



His arm came off. That's not the worst part.



"The Secret City" was one of the more out there shows. I suppose it eventually led me to better appreciate the covers of sci-fi paperbacks, but I don't remember learning how to draw from it.



And it all comes back to Kevin Bacon. You're welcome.

Three short films

Dan and I were talking about this one earlier tonight. The Jan Svankmajer "Punch and Judy" reminded us.

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Oh noes! There is violence!



Ohh......the people it has inspired.

Alive From Off Center

Bite & Smile from Marty Focazio on Vimeo.

Before Blogger blew up last week, we had a few comments on the "Star Hustler" post mentioning "Alive From Off Center". I wasn't able to find videos of the opening credits, but I do have a couple mp3s.

The original opening, by Laurie Anderson and David Byrne:


And a later version:


The thing about this show was they showed everything. Most of the funky art films I saw as a kid, I first saw there. I've collected what I can.

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"What Do You Mean We?" was the first time we saw the Laurie Anderson "clone"; and, as a result, the duo hosted the show several times afterwards. I do recall that they introduced the next piece.



"The Street of Crocodiles" by the Brothers Quay. In the "Alive From Off Center" introduction, Anderson reads some of the story to her clone. The clone, upset that a chair might have some secret life, stands and moves the chair to the far corner of the room.

And no, they did not do the video for Tool's Sober. That was Adam Jones.



This was also how I found out about Jan Svankmajer and his short films. The Brothers Quay pay tribute to him in The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer. As it turns out, they didn't discover him until 1983, long after their own style had cemented.



Besides stop-motion, AFOC regularly featured classical animation. (Go here for the full piece, uploaded by the animator herself.)



Sometimes the show just got weird. Meredith Monk's "Book of Days" never went anywhere, yet still felt preachy. She's also the only performer I've ever walked out on. Granted, it was at intermission, but I couldn't take it anymore. I'm sure she's a fine artist, just not one I care for.



This piece is roughly 30 minutes long and I do have the patience for it. I'm happy to have found it.


Praise House - Teaser

JULIE DASH | Myspace Video

AFOC also featured a lot of dance performances. Whatever art was out there, they were going to show it. Any dance. Seriously.



"Codex" was one of the most brilliant things I had ever seen. This work might look a little familiar.



Again, a very weird show. I didn't know anything about Gertrude Stein back in 1987. The language is fascinating, and she plays with how it sounds more than what it means.

Shortly after this, I got into William S. Burroughs and Ezra Pound. While in high-school, I thought more about the sound of words and the feelings they invoked, rather than the simple meanings of things.



I do feel a slight embarrassment looking back on what we considered "a masterpiece of video art" back then.

By the same respect, I'm proud that there was a show like AFOC. Yeah, I know, it was on the middle of the night and you had to wait until "Dr. Who" was over before you got to see, but I taped them so I should share them with my family and friends.

There was something very exciting about dragging this thing out of the darkness.

I don't think there could be a show like AFOC now. Sure, there's "Independent Lens" on PBS, but it's not the same. You can look up anything online now and the cost of producing material like that has dropped so much, it's not as...special.

However, there was some truly wonderful things out there, and each one of those wonderful things should be shared and enjoyed by as many people as possible.

It's like how I used to tape "Dr. Demento" on Sunday nights back in the late 80s. Throughout the rest of the week, on the drive to and from school, we'd listen to those tapes I had made and sing along.

And that's really the thing I love about "Anime Hell" and what we do on this blog. We go out and find those wonderful things, or strange things, or even horrible things that taste like a stale Christmas. But we find them and we share them with you. "I found a shiny! Come see the shiny and enjoy it the way I did!"

That's what AFOC was for me, back in junior-high. It was this wonderful thing or a strange thing or even a horrible thing, but someone showed it to me. And I got to tape it and show it to others. I got to see something that no one else got to see (or, at least, relatively few people) and it wasn't prime-time and there were no commercials. Sometimes, it was art for art's sake; but, sometimes, it was a whole new world I had never imagined was out there.

And, I hope, we can do that for you.

Star Hustler!

"Star Hustler" was frequently the last thing a station would show. I mean it. The last thing they would show before signing off. Yes, back in the day, stations would sign off at the end of the night.

I used to catch it after watching "Dr. Who" (Tom Baker, FTW!) or "Blake's 7". Later, in the 90s, they would show "Alive from Off Center" or an old horror movie, then sign off.

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In 1970s, Jack Horkheimer was appearing on news programs talking about astronomy. He was approached by Florida's PBS affiliate, WPBT, to do a series of half-hour programs about astronomy. He agreed on the condition that WPBT help him create a series of 5-minute shows on stargazing. This was the beginning of "Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler."



In May 1985, the show went national, being broadcast on PBS stations around the United States with the enthusiastic Horkheimer that most people are familiar with. He realized that he was playing a character in order to generate enthusiasm for the show



The show has many catchphrases that viewers associate with Jack Horkheimer. Horkheimer's appearances on the show are always marked with his opening line, "Greetings, greetings, fellow star gazers!" and his signature closing line, "Keep looking up!" These are the most widely recognizable quotes from the show but there were also others in common usage throughout the series.



With the rise of the Internet, however, search engines were giving results for the "Hustler" adult magazine instead of the program's web site showing up at the top of results. As a result, the producers renamed the show "Star Gazer" to avert any confusion, accidental or purposeful.



The theme, by the way, was Debussy's First Arabesque.

Instructional Programming Crap!

For those sick days while withering away in your bedroom!

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Inside/Out

Having lived through that period when stuff like this still find mileage in the 80's, it's fun looking back on these weird pieces of edu-public-TV crap they played during school on PBS stations across the country (before PBS Kids took over). Kinda miss not having a 15 minute piece that ends in a unresolved cliffhanger (since that was reserved for classroom discussion if schools still bother). Thrill to the drama, the action and pathos brought to us by the National Instructional Television (now Agency for Instructional Technology) with additional support from the Exxon Corporation!