Frank's TV redux

In 2009*, the Dallas Cowboys put up in AT&T Stadium some videoscreens that measured 160 feet across and 72 feet high.  Converting that to inches and applying Pythagorean methodology, we find that this yields a diagonal size of... 2,105 inches.  Not yet available for home consumers, but still.  Frank would be pleased.

Also note that there are several stadium screens even larger in scope-- The Safeco Field screen is 2,500 inches, and the brand new (more or less) Reliant Stadium screen is a whopping 3,382 inches diagonally (a bit shorter but a lot longer.  Widescreen, donchaknow.).  There's also a race track in Dubai and a speedway in N. Carolina, but I don't have exact confirmed numbers for those, and I don't think it matters enough to track them down.  I'm sure in a couple of years there'll be another bigger one somewhere else anyway.

*"Frank's 2000 Inch TV" was released by Weird Al et. al. in 1993.  16 years ain't too bad to make something this hyperbolic happen.

Partial source: http://stadiumblog.dallasnews.com/tag/guinness-world-records
Other figures from "Bigger in Texas", Caleb Hannan, Wired, October 2013.

Unexpected Cameo

I just saw actor Mike Farrell (most famously having portrayed one Cpt. B.J. Hunnicut)... on an episode of The Monkees.

That's right-- in 1966, nearly 10 years before his appearance on M*A*S*H, he was a strapping young agent for the Central Intelligence Service, tasked with helping the Monkees stop the dangerous Dragon Man's attempts to steal the Doomsday Bug.

Actually, now that I think of it, I'm not sure he had any lines.  But he was very tall and clean-cut, and I guess that's what mattered.

Chris Barrie

It turns out that Amazon Instant Video has basically all of Red Dwarf, including seasons and specials that I didn't even know existed.  So I've been happily devouring it all over again, and I noticed something that I was unaware of the first time around, when it came out in the late 1980s.

At the time, it was very clear that the audience was intended to identify with the character of Dave Lister, the "sole surviving human being," and the other characters were just foils for him to react to.  And that was fine.  I sympathized right along with the slacker slob, and hated his dead holographic bunk mate Arnold "Smeg-head" Rimmer (played by Chris Barrie), just as I was supposed to.  And now, from my changed perspective, that's still true, although it's clearer that the character of Lister is occasionally even more of a rat bastard than Rimmer, if perhaps not quite so superficially dislikable.

However-- I also can't help noting, on a more meta level, that Chris Barrie was/is a vastly superior actor.  For example, in several episodes, for a variety of reasons, Barrie was called upon to imitate or in some way play one of the other characters (mind swapping, memory alteration, damage to his holographic circuits, etc.).  And it was frequently brilliant.  He captured their physical mannerisms, their vocal inflections, often uncannily.  And in the episode where Rimmer and Lister swapped bodies, this was made rather starkly evident-- Craig Charles, the actor who played Lister, was just basically himself with Barrie's voice overdubbed, but Barrie really became Lister, in a manner becoming an actor on a (frankly) much better show.  Honestly, Red Dwarf is fun, but wow, was it also bad.

So here's to you, Chris Barrie, the unsung hero (at least as of season 4, I've still got a ways to go) of Red Dwarf.  He's done other things, including some supporting roles in big-ticket movies, and one long run as the star of a show I've never heard of (probably because it was only on BBC) called The Brittas Empire.

True confessions

In every "reality show" competition-type television program, there will be little interstitial bits where one of the participants will be telling "the camera" something-- going over what they were thinking when something happened, or describing how they feel about the other participants, or whatever.

I've always assumed that they just filmed about 15-20 minutes worth of material and then showed the best 10 seconds worth, but apparently, at least for some of the seedier, more desperate-for-ratings shows, they actually indulge in quite a bit of fakery.  Clips are taken way out of context, or even overdubbed.  Contestants are asked extremely leading questions, or coached, or in some cases outright lied to in order to provoke a particular reaction that fits with the producers' vision of a good dramatic story.

It's not like I didn't take it with a bit of fleur de sel when one Top Cheftestant was snarky about another.  After all, they're isolated, in the heat of a long contest, and of course the producers want to be able to field a cast of heroes and villains for the fans to argue about.  But I have to admit, I was kind of surprised at the lengths some shows will go to.

Hi-Yo Black Beauty, Away!

The Lone Ranger is (canonically!) the grand-uncle of the Green Hornet.  That is to say, John (or possibly Dan; the Lone Ranger's first name was not well specified in the original materials) Reid's nephew's son was Britt Reid, who fought crime as the anti-hero The Green Hornet, using the resources of the family publishing empire which was built on the proceeds of the family silver mine (the source of the Lone Ranger's silver bullets).