the aftermath of judy's death

So as I have no doubt mentioned, we watch a lot of The Box round here, and we're presently sometime in1975 (episode 259-60 territory). (It's hard to be sure when episodes were actually broadcast because IMDB doesn't say, and the newspapers of the day didn't either). This is the exciting/depressing ep where Judy has been blown up by Frank Roberts' bomb, but she's not precisely dead yet. Here are Paul and Lee in the street outside, seconds before the bomb goes off. 

This is where The Box starts to contort itself a bit to try and figure how to both deal with the demise of a major character at the same time as two other characters (Jean and Kay) leave (Jean's gone, to London to be with her husband Brad, and Kay is just about to be press-ganged into doing essentially the same thing by Michael Brooks (John Waters). Here are Sir Henry and Max dealing with the shocking situation while Jack O'Brian, um, is on the phone. 

Here's Kay dealing with that ridiculous situation where Michael is saying he has bought her a ticket to London that afternoon and she's, I suppose, required to not only pack in her job but leave her entire flat for ever, while her ex-lover Paul is grieving the likely death of his estranged wife. 

Here's Lee on Paul and Judy's couch, where so much has happened:

Michael and Kay blah blah. Laura said something funny, 'what's she going to do with her record?' (it's on the counter next to the flowers). 

I can't remember why Fanny was here but she is. She (and others like Syd Heylen as Vern, Ken James as Tony Wild, Tracy Mann see below, and I can't remember who else) have to serve the role of being light and shallow in the face of this tragedy, to propel the narrative to the future.

Tracy Mann must have simultaneously been really pleased to get the role of Tina the cleaner and really unhappy about how goofy the character is, at least at the beginning, will be interested to see where it goes. 

This is a golden moment, Paul's dream where he and Judy are having a baby. 

He is woken from this dream by a telephone call from a very unprofessional doctor who apparently thinks it's OK to tell a man his wife is dead over the phone. 

Unusually for The Box, the episode ends with a freeze frame on Paul's face and audio of a (simulated?) heartbeat while the credits go over them.

I just want to say that I am very much in the market for Philip Brown knitwear. 

Briony Behets went on to play someone called Jorja Jones in Class of '75 (I have watched practically every episode of that show, admittedly over a decade ago, and I don't remember her at all!) then she was in Bellbird and by the end of the year she was a weather presenter (in November John Pinkney wrote in the Age that she peformed this duty 'with the intensity of a Pinter heroine, but gets away with it'.) * 

The mainstream news, to the degree it paid any attention to shows like The Box, accused it of being unrealistic lol:

Sydney Sun-Herald 21 Dec 1975 p. 70

*26 November 1975 p. 2

more december 1951 flook

 Perth Daily News 17-20 December 1951

I haven't seen any of this before. I have to assume it's the original strips from 1949, though I can't check against the original. More shortly. 

apple tv yeah whatever

Why did I subscribe to Apple TV? I think it was because the second season of Severance which I somewhat strangely stopped watching after a couple of episodes. But I have to admit now I'm really enjoying Pluribus which is a completely fine show and also Slow Horses is not at all bad.* Even if it does have that grotesque Mick Jagger theme music and if the guy who plays River looks so much like Topher Grace it's madness.

The hateable bit about Apple TV is the constant requirement to sign in. So you have five hot shows, ATV, I bet everyone is really dying to get to your stuff. The constant requirement for scanning a qr code makes ATV seem needy, needy, needy. We don't have to have so much neediness. 

Select Apple TV on your smart (groan) tv and then you have to scan the code while it exposes you to umpteen hits from all five of the abovementioned shows and then you sign in and your phone eventually tells Apple TV that you've signed in, and then you have to select Apple TV again... ffs. Then you have to select your program and then 'play'. Who are these people?! 

* Update - a few hours after I wrote this we went to see Aunty Donna and I was intrigued to find that Slow Horses is a boomer show. Worse ways to find out what you are I guess. 

launceston's penny royal - ii

OK so using Melbourne newspapers from the 70s I managed to get a bit of a better understanding of the Penny Royal. I am embarrassed that I thought it was 'real'. It was a project of entrepreneur Roger Smith's. He was a British migrant who was involved in a lot of tourism (and hotel) businesses in Tasmania until he went bankrupt in, I think, 2004 (he died only a few years ago). Penny Royal was his favourite baby I think, though, and while it is a completely manufactured site (in an old quarry, well-positioned just outside Cataract Gorge and walking distance from central Launceston) he went a long way to making many of the features 'authentic'. Some or all of it was built with bricks from what seems to have been a demolished 19th century building (information is scant). He was adding all kinds of things to it through the 70s and 80s with ambition to build a tramline into the Gorge itself (somehow). None of that happened; there are a few tram tracks at the entrance to PR. 

I'm going to try and make a Wikipedia page about PR soon. The above is just from memory. 
 

other launceston

 

How Demis Roussos got into the Harry Secombe shop I do not know. 

launceston's penny royal

Spent a few days in Launceston for a conference last week. I stayed at the Penny Royal - this has been a longstanding ambition and now I can say I've done it. I don't really understand the background to the Penny Royal at all, and the website for it doesn't help: 

The JAC Group purchased the Penny Royal Hotel and Apartments in 2013 together with a derelict theme park located at the bottom of a twenty-metre cliff behind the complex. The Penny Royal colonial era theme park was originally developed by Roger Smith in 1979 and then sold to various operators before ending up closed for a decade and left in a state of total disrepair. Josef was keen to restore the theme park to its former glory because it was Tasmania’s only theme park and an important part of Launceston’s heritage. After consulting with his team, the JAC Group spent twenty million dollars to redevelop the complex which was officially opened by the Premier of Tasmania the Hon. Will Hodgman MP on a rainy evening the 18th March 2016. The redevelopment involved demolishing and faithfully rebuilding the old buildings to fit them out with new restaurants, cafes and bars, as well as an ice creamery and wood fired pizzeria. 

I mean, the weird bit is that this story is told backwards and I really want to know more about whether this is an old place or not - ? The website is about the theme park anyway not the hotel which is right next door. This is the kind of thing Wikipedia should be doing for us not shit about baseball statistics. Or whatever most of Wikipedia is about, I don't know. 

I found out the truth: I'll tell you tomorrow

flook 10-15 december 1951

So as previously promised, Flook as it appeared in the Perth Daily News in 1951. The above is from 10 December. the below is from 11 December.

As mentioned earlier, nothing like the other two origin stories but the Rufus in this story is so weird I definitely get the sense he's an early iteration rather than a later reimagining. 

Here is the US introduction to the Flook origin story. I assume there was some kind of instruction regarding cutting to the chase. As I mentioned a moment ago, the Rufuses are very different. 

The old Rufus is much uglier. It didn't take long for him to get younger and less gruesome. The stuff published in the Flook and Moses Maggot book starts with the numbering 168, which suggests that it took, um, around 7 months to get to the Rufus we came to know. I suppose this also means that there's at least that long of the insufferable uncle, as well. We'll find out. 

to anzac and back

We went on the train this afternoon, from Arden to State Library thence to Anzac and back. It was rad. Soon we will all be taking it for granted. But if we'd had a Liberal government the last ten years, we wouldn't have any nice things, unless you think an East-West Link through the zoo would be nice. 

Lol heads got to roll for this