![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Whistle-Stop Tour
Jun. 16th, 2004 06:39 pmAnyone who's been wondering where I've been - well, I've been out of town. Back now, from a little weekend getaway to the South Bay area south of (duh) San Francisco, otherwise known as Silicon Valley. Which isn't all that much for sights, but it does have the hubby's parentals to visit and a couple of curiosities that we went to see in San Jose. ( The Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and Winchester Mystery House ) Sharp-eyed readers may have noticed a bit of a theme to the kind of attractions the hubby and I tend to tour.
And on that note, earlier today, on the tube, was a marathon showing of a program I dearly love - Beyond Bizarre, hosted by Jay Robinson, a dramatic actor best known for playing the likes of Caligula in movies like The Robe and Demetrius and the Gladiators; those of my age group may also remember him as Dr. Shrinker from the Sid and Marty Krofft Superstar Hour. Robinson is a scenery chewer of the highest water - think Dr. Smith from Lost in Space and you're part of the way there, add in a rather hard-to-describe accent and some scary eyebrows, a freaky, sharklike grin, and an air of absolute drippy, cackling glee at his being able to use his thespian talent for wittily written descriptions of the world's weird, gruesome, and paranormal fun facts. Start the whole thing off with an absolutely lurid opening credits sequence illustrated by computer models of those plastic novelty eyeballs (the ones that roll realistically inside a clear shell) and you have a clip show about strange sights, occurances and facts (a la Ripley's Believe it or Not) that has way more personality than most. I think I've caught every episode ever made of this series by now, and the oddities mentioned (e.g., the Fragonard collection of muscular sculptures) have become familiar old friends. Ask me how to make shrunken heads - thanks to this show, I know.
On a wholly different topic, my iBook is back to being the iBroke; it's headed back to the Apple store probably tomorrow for Round 2 of the Neverending Saga of the Defective Logic Board. Which means I'm now working on Toys's desktop machine, moved back out to my living room desk for quality timeshare (my back still doesn't apprectiate his office chair). It's gonna make me a bit slow on the update these days - I've yet to plow through everything on my friends list since we've been gone - but on the upside, I've got all this time to plot our vacation... from the huge drudgery that is our life these days, I guess. Uh....
And on that note, earlier today, on the tube, was a marathon showing of a program I dearly love - Beyond Bizarre, hosted by Jay Robinson, a dramatic actor best known for playing the likes of Caligula in movies like The Robe and Demetrius and the Gladiators; those of my age group may also remember him as Dr. Shrinker from the Sid and Marty Krofft Superstar Hour. Robinson is a scenery chewer of the highest water - think Dr. Smith from Lost in Space and you're part of the way there, add in a rather hard-to-describe accent and some scary eyebrows, a freaky, sharklike grin, and an air of absolute drippy, cackling glee at his being able to use his thespian talent for wittily written descriptions of the world's weird, gruesome, and paranormal fun facts. Start the whole thing off with an absolutely lurid opening credits sequence illustrated by computer models of those plastic novelty eyeballs (the ones that roll realistically inside a clear shell) and you have a clip show about strange sights, occurances and facts (a la Ripley's Believe it or Not) that has way more personality than most. I think I've caught every episode ever made of this series by now, and the oddities mentioned (e.g., the Fragonard collection of muscular sculptures) have become familiar old friends. Ask me how to make shrunken heads - thanks to this show, I know.
On a wholly different topic, my iBook is back to being the iBroke; it's headed back to the Apple store probably tomorrow for Round 2 of the Neverending Saga of the Defective Logic Board. Which means I'm now working on Toys's desktop machine, moved back out to my living room desk for quality timeshare (my back still doesn't apprectiate his office chair). It's gonna make me a bit slow on the update these days - I've yet to plow through everything on my friends list since we've been gone - but on the upside, I've got all this time to plot our vacation... from the huge drudgery that is our life these days, I guess. Uh....
