From my children's book cabinet (and my DVD shelf) - The Eerie, Indiana series

"My name is Marshall Teller. Not too long ago, I was living in New Jersey, just across the river from New York City. It was crowded, polluted, and full of crime. I loved it. But my parents wanted a better life for my sister and me. So we moved to a place so wholesome, so squeaky clean, so ordinary that you could only find it on TV: Eerie, Indiana."

That's from the prologue of the first book in a series which is based on the 90s TV show for kids "Eerie, Indiana". That means I can't talk about the book series leaving out the show.
As there are 19 episodes, though, and 17 books, I picked just the first one of each for this post.

The book is called "Return to Foreverware", a nod to the first episode of the TV show called "Forever Ware". It's by Mike Ford who wrote nine of the books.

Let's begin with the TV show. How to describe "Eerie, Indiana" ...
"Statistically speaking, it's the most normal place in the entire country. Statistics lie."
Actually, the town is exactly what its name promises. "The King" lives on Marshall's paper route, people move strangely synchronized, a straitjacket hangs on a laundry line, and that's just the intro.
Marshall's mother works as a party planner, but being a busy lady she's not so good with her own groceries. How lucky when her neighbor Betty Wilson and her twins Ernie and Bert turn up with a solution. Mrs. Wilson's late husband has designed a series of vacuum sealed containers called Tu.... erm, Forever Ware.

As a little gift she leaves a bologna sandwich in a container, as fresh as it was when it was made. In 1974!
It's even more suspicious when one of the twins slips Marshall a note saying "Yearbook 1964" as the family leaves.
Marshall and his friend Simon check the yearbooks and find a picture of Ernie and Bert looking the same as now, so they decide to snoop around a bit.
They don't expect to see this, though ...

... Mrs. Wilson tucking the twins in, but these are not beds, they are giant Forever Ware containers!
I'm not going to spoil the ending (spoil, see what I did there?).

The book sees Marshall and Simon looking for a weekend job.
They answer to the ad of Mr. and Mrs. Stewart - James and Martha! - who seem to be stuck in the 70s, not only with their clothes, but also their furniture. They get asked to declutter the attic.
What's weird is that Mrs. Stewart seems to have an extra soft spot for Simon. The boys learn that the Stewarts had a son who died years ago - Rod(ney) - and Marshall can't shake the feeling that they'd like to replace him with Simon. But is he the first? Why do they find pictures from a birthday party that always looks the same, but it's a different boy every time. What happened to Rodney? And what's in the basement?
Then Simon suddenly disappears and the Stewarts deny having seen him although his bike is in their garage.
Will Marshall be able to save him and can someone help him doing it (spoiler: Ernie and Bert will)?

Omri Katz as Marshall (whom you probably know
from Hocus Pocus) and Justin Shenkarow as Simon

"Eerie, Indiana" first aired on NBC. Joe Dante of "Gremlins" fame directed several episodes and was a creative consultant.
From the start, the writers Karl Schaefer and José Rivera intended for the show to be more than merely for kids. I wasn't a kid when I first saw it although I can't remember when and where that was, and the mix of humor, spookiness, horror, science fiction, and innuendos drew me in very quickly.
In reviews it was noted that the show reminded of "Twin Peaks", "Edward Scissorhands", "Twilight Zone" - a seemingly "normal" town where there's a lot more going on underneath the surface than you would expect.

It certainly wasn't all fun and play. The second episode in which a boy finds that his retainer gives him the powers to read the minds of dogs who want to overthrow the humans is downright creepy to me, so much so that I often skip it, but I have also been traumatized by "Lady and the Tramp" (as an adult) or "Bambi".

Anyhow, as it's said in a lot of videos and articles, the show was ahead of its time. It was cancelled after 18 episodes were aired between 1991 and 1992 ending on an episode in which Marshall finds out by way of a script that his reality is in fact a TV show. Only in the re-run in 1993, the last episode was aired as well.
In 1997, the show was bought up and broadcast again and got popular enough again to not only inspire a spin-off produced in Canada (just as short-lived, but not as good), but also the book series. In fact, it gained kind of a cult following as you can also see from the many comments of people who had seen it as kids and still bemoan its short life.

Mike Ford writes on his homepage: "One day my editor called me and said, "We're doing these books based on this TV show, but none of the writers we know have ever heard of it." When she told me what it was, they probably heard me scream in space. I loved the show. And that's how I got the job."
I remember getting the books from the USA (at a time when postage was still affordable) and being called into the customs office. The lady asked me to show her the invoice and to her surprise, the whole stack of books had been so cheap that I didn't even get to the limit for having to pay tax.

"Eerie, Indiana" inspired other shows like it (the "Stranger Things" connection is mentioned a lot and Alex Hirsch said that his "Gravity Falls" (another one I'm a fan of) was "a blatant rip off of Eerie, Indiana") and still has its fans today, that's not a bad legacy.
You may recognize one or the other actor, by the way, for example "Gomez Addams" John Astin as the owner of the "World O' Stuff" store, a soul collecting René Auberjonois or young Tobey Maguire as a ghost.

How many people actually ever knew about the books or still do is difficult for me to say, I can't even say how I learned about them. Unsurprisingly, they are no longer in print, though.


Further reading:

1. Gwen Ihnat: Eerie, Indiana was a few dimensions ahead of its time. On: AV Club, October 30, 2017
2. Justin Young: Eerie, Indiana Paved the Way for Supernatural's Success. On: CBR, February 28, 2026


By the way, if you write book reviews or blog posts about other book-related matters - even movies based on books - please check out "A Good Book and a Cup of Tea", a monthly bookish blog link party that I host together with Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs and Lisa from Boondock Ramblings. You can find out more about it here.

From my children's book cabinet - Catweazle

Wait ... from my book cabinet?
Yes, my friends. Today I'll talk about the book "Catweazle" by Richard Carpenter which was based on the scripts from the first series of the British cult TV show with the same name. Okay, I can't avoid it being a mix of both.

I actually used a vintage button for this bead
embroidered brooch. I remember an online
friend saying she didn't know she liked the
man very much, but she liked the brooch.
Of course she didn't know Catweazle.

But wait, I have no idea if Catweazle was as popular as in the UK or Germany or even known everywhere, so let me introduce him to you first.

Catweazle is a sorcerer in 11th century England. One of his great goals is being able to fly. One day Norman soldiers chase him out of his cave and in order to escape he's forced to jump into a pond.

Catweazle running from the
Norman soldiers, but not
without his familiar, the
toad Touchwood

When he comes up again, the landscape looks very different. He hides in a barn and quickly learns that he has landed himself in the 20th century when the son of Hexwood Farm's owner - Edward, called Carrot because of his red hair - finds him.

Carrot with Sam, the farmhand

Understandably, everything is new and scary to Catweazle.
He thinks this time is full of sorcerers. On one hand, he'd love to learn their magic - like Carrot's "electrickery" of the "little sun in a bottle" (simply a lamp that's switched on) or the vicar's "telling bone" (a telephone) - but on the other hand he has problems getting used to so many new things and he doesn't always react very gracefully when they don't go his way (here's a video with "all the insults, name calling, derision & mockery" from "nettle face" to "spider spittle").
Luckily Carrot, who doesn't really believe the Norman story, by the way, can handle Catweazle quite well unless he runs off to get himself into a new pickle, but the sorcerer is also able to help Carrot with a few things, such as dealing with the overdrawn bank account for the farm or an annoying housekeeper and her son.

Catweazle sets up camp in an old water tower in the woods which belongs to the Army and calls it Castle Saburac after the spirit he claims led him there.
When he's not out confusing people or hiding from them, he spends his time there desperately searching for a spell to return to his own time. A lot of his spells go wrong, but he's quite good at hypnotizing people into forgetting him, for example.

I won't be getting into the individual episodes of the TV show although it's tempting - how Catweazle removes an old curse, how he gets his magic dagger Adamcos back or why he steals broomsticks (and almost gets Sam in trouble by doing so) and so on.
As the book is based on the scripts of the show, however, and really sticks very closely to them, I'll take a short look at the creation of the show.
In a short documentary, Richard Carpenter tells the story of his brother-in-law who had a turkey farm - that's one difference between book and show, in the show you don't see a turkey - they visited, and on the way back they got lost and came to a gate with "Catweazle" written on it. Further inspiration came from this Hieronymus Bosch painting, to be precise from the figure in the left corner.

Carpenter who had actually been an actor was so intrigued that he turned it into a character himself. His friend, the wonderful Geoffrey Bayldon, had turned down the role of "Doctor Who" before which he wasn't sure had been the right decision until he got offered the role of Catweazle which he wouldn't have been able to do as Doctor Who.
Bayldon brought his own ideas to the character, silly noises, mimics, movements, he really became Catweazle and made him magic.
The chemistry with the others was great, especially with Carrot who spent most of the time hiding the magician from his father, Mr. Bennet, and everyone else, with more or less success.

Robin Davies got his hair dyed red
for the role of Carrot

Spoiler alert - Catweazle does make it home eventually, with his familiar Touchwood whose name is of course inspired by the ancient habit of touching wood for good luck.

In a time before the Internet, yes, even before being able to record something from TV, the book must have been a great way to dive back into that magic, whimsical, crazy world of Catweazle conjured up by the stories and illustrations when you didn't get the chance to watch a rerun.
I still say "Elektricktrick" from time to time (our version of "electrickery", there were a few changes to names and words) and I'm not the only one.
There's a whole glossary on the official fan club's page. Carpenter researched the "occult & mythology" to add to the show's charm by using Latin words and ancient names.

There are two series of "Catweazle" and two books, the second one is called "Catweazle and the Magic Zodiac".
Carpenter also did novelizations of other shows he wrote for (one of them is my other favorite of his "Robin of Sherwood" which adds a magic layer to the Robin Hood legend). In the second series Catweazle comes back again, but alas, not to Hexwood Farm, and after the director had died, a third series was never realized.
The German translation to the books got published after the show made it to TV here and there was even a special edition in 2010 with a foreword explaining to children that this was their parents' world - no computers or cell phones and not even a TV set in every household. There's even a German movie from 2021. I didn't watch it and won't spoil my memory of Catweazle doing so, but it shows he's not forgotten.
I got the English books a long time ago and still enjoy reading them ... although watching Catweazle is of course even better!

The fan club used to be very active - for example they commissioned a beautiful Catweazle bust, had meetings with the actors at the farm where the show was filmed, and there was a forum (which like so many has sadly fallen asleep).
I wonder how many people passed the magic dagger on to their children and maybe even their grandchildren, but can kids of today still appreciate a story like that? What do you think?

Salmay, Dalmay, Adonay!


Sources and more info (I visited more pages, but these two links have a lot of info):

1. Official Catweazle Fan Club
2. Catweazle Extra - Brothers in Magic: a documentation. On YouTube

Random Saturday - Dubbing

In our daily thread on my jewelry forum, I talked about dubbed movies some time ago and found that my English speaking friends had never really thought about those much because they often have not even seen one themselves.
I, on the other hand, had never been too aware about not all countries having as huge a dubbing industry as Germany, Italy, Spain or others.
Actually, I had never given much thought to the history of dubbing at all before learning about multiple-language movies thanks to one of my favorite films, the 1931 Dracula, which was also filmed in Spanish (more about that here).

Why is it that in Germany allegedly 90 % of consumers watch dubbed versions? I have to admit that the high number really did surprise me.
Is this just a historically grown habit because almost all movies and shows are being dubbed or are there other reasons as well?

Picture via pxhere

Let's start with the history.
In 1929, sound films were still pretty young. The lead actress Anny Ondra in Hitchcock's movie "Blackmail" had a Czech accent when speaking English, but post-dubbing was technically not possible yet. So Ondra lip-synced the lines spoken off-camera by Joan Barry which is said to be the first example of "dubbing".

To market movies to non-English speaking audiences, there were either the above mentioned multiple-language movies meaning a movie was filmed in different languages with native speakers which was understandably the most popular method with audiences.
Another possibility was to have the actors learn the lines in the other languages. It sounds quite cute to hear for example Laurel and Hardy speak German, but it can be difficult to understand.
Then there are the subtitles. I know a lot of people who feel subtitles distract from what's happening on the screen. I've also heard American friends saying they don't want to watch foreign films because of the subtitles, so I find it a bit confusing if they are surprised that Germans (and others) don't want to do that, either. There are countries that are used to it, though, Sweden for example.

Dubbing, which was done in Hollywood first and then in France before the first studios opened in Germany, has always been controversial and heavily criticized especially for the first movies that tried to match the lines closely to the lip movements which ended up in awkward German.

After World War II, movies were shown not only for entertainment, but also for re-education of the Germans. Movies were shown in the original languages - American or British English, Russian, French - with few subtitles which was not popular with the audience, so dubbing became the norm and Germany built up one of the biggest dubbing industries in the world.

Germany wasn't ready yet to deal with her past, though. Do you know the Hitchcock movie "Notorious"? The Nazis from the original turned into international drug smugglers in the German dubbing, therefore the movie title was "Weißes Gift" = "White Poison".
"Casablanca" got a German version in which all Nazis in uniform got cut out.
No worries, we don't have these versions anymore, I don't even remember ever having seen them myself.

That's only one part of the big controversy around dubbing, however.
Can a dubbed film bring a message across just like the original? How is dubbing done without losing impact from the original culture? Without accents, dialects, or country-specific vocabulary?
To be honest, if someone doesn't know British accents - just one example - and would watch those movies/shows with subtitles, I doubt they would analyze the accents or even be able to do it while trying to follow the plot through subtitles.
Sometimes accents have been replaced with German accents. In the movie "Airplane!", the black men from the South speak Bavarian in the German dubbing, and I always thought that was terrible because it didn't transport the joke well for me. Mostly, however, dubbing is in so-called "Hochdeutsch", literally "High German" which is free of any regional accent. That is controversial in itself because "sceptics argue that this Hochdeutsch is a strand of dangerous, homogenising nationalism, erasing the diverse variety of German voices from the silver-screen".
I wonder, however, which accents those sceptics would choose for dubbing then?
Should the actresses and actors just speak in their own original dialect? Should production choose a dialect for them to use, for example have a character from Scotland speak Plattdütsch from Nothern Germany and one from London speak Oberbayerisch?
I can assure you people would have big problems with that. I speak Swabian, not thick, but obviously enough that there are people who can't understand everything, and I couldn't understand my grandmother when she talked in Platt. Where would that get us? I have even seen German programs with heavy dialects which got sutitles.

Picture via pxhere

Of course there is good and bad dubbing, just as there are good translations and bad ones - and as there is good acting and bad acting.
We may not always know their names - which really is a shame - but nevertheless we appreciate our voice actors and actresses. They usually don't dub for just one person and sometimes you don't even notice right away unless you start hearing a voice more and more often.
That's the art of dubbing, just like actors slip into different characters, voice actors slip into different actors, and if they are good, it's believable, too.

One of our best known voice actors, Christian Brückner, is Robert de Niro for us, but also Martin Sheen or Harvey Keitel. Cary Grant had several different voices over time. Movies had more than one dubbed version, for example "Arsenic and Old Lace" (or "Notorious" 😉).
Sometimes a new dubbed version gets made for a new DVD or BluRay edition.
We are shocked when the long-term "voice" of a star dies which means we will have to get used to a new one. Will they choose the right one? Or maybe someone gets a new voice because the old one doesn't have time, wants more money or because there has been a fallout. David Duchovny got a new voice and I could never watch the dubbed version again, it just sounded wrong to me.
You also have to keep in mind that before the Internet we might not even have had the chance to see the original.

There can also be censorship, though (see "Notorious" again), but also "censorship". By that I mean that some shows were dubbed in so-called "Schnodderdeutsch" which you could translate as "flippant German", not really censorship, but ... heck if I know what it should be called.
"Such a manifestation of the German language is used for the purpose of humor and satire and is characterized by neologisms, apparent proverbs, atypical metaphors and comparisons, stylistic breaks, violations of norms and breaks in logic".
You could also say they went completely overboard. I was completely flabbergasted when I saw some of the shows of my childhood in the original.
Matching the lines to lip movements can also lead to small (?) changes in the German script, but it also means you don't feel something's off.

As mentioned, however, this is not just a German thing. I have DVDs with multiple languages on them and even more subtitles.
It's also not just controversial here and that doesn't even have to do with the concept of dubbing itself, but with differences of the languages in different countries. Austrians don't speak "Hochdeutsch", why should they? Obviously, Latin Americans don't like the way Spanish is spoken in Spain. French in Québéc isn't the same as in France. I'm sure there is more.

I watch originals and/or their dubbed versions.
Sometimes
- I watch both to compare and like I said, there are good ones and bad ones. I think you can tell how much money has been spent on dubbing - Hallmark Christmas movies don't seem to get the star treatment - or how quickly something has been dubbed. A pet peeve of mine is if names or cities are pronounced incorrectly.
- I watch English originals with English subtitles, for example if the accents are too much for me, if people speak too fast or mumble a lot or if the sound isn't that good or if I watch something late at night and don't want to turn the volume up. Another pet peeve of mine is if the TV channel offers me an English original, not with English subtitles, but only with German or French subtitles that can't be turned off, ARTE, I'm looking at you here).
- I have to get used to a new accent first.
- I even prefer the dubbed version because I don't like the original voice (can you even call it original in case of an animated character, though? 😋), or because that version triggers positive memories for me, like shows or movies from my childhood, especially if we have quoted from them all our lives.

By the way, what I completely forgot to mention how countries like to do their completely own version of popular movies and TV shows even today. Take the BBC show "Ghosts" (which I love) - there is a US American and German version, and when I last looked, they had announced versions for Australia and France.

For the end of this long post I have a short video for you. How do stars react to hearing their foreign voices? 😉




Sources (in random order):

1. Thomas Bräutigam: Deutschland, eine Synchronnation. On: Goethe-Institut USA, January 2017 (in German)
2. Emily Manthei: Film dubbing as high art in Germany. On: DW (Deutsche Welle), May 24, 2019 (in English)
3. Miranda Stephenson: Unanswered Questions of German Culture I - Why are Foreign Films Still Dubbed for the German Viewer? On: The Cambridge Language Collective - Features (in English)
4. Peter Hoffmann: Die ersten Synchronversuche. On: Die vergessenen Filme - Synchronisierte Filme in Deutschland 1930-1945, November 23, 2015 (in German)
5. Damien Pollard: The political history of dubbing in films. On: The Conversation, July 13, 2021 (in English)
6. Christina Focken: Synchronisierte Filme sind super. In: taz - Die steile These, September 5, 2020 (in German)
7. Kevin Tierney: Quebec movies have a dubbing problem. In: The Gazette (Montreal), August 3, 2017 (in English)
8. Article "Schnodderdeutsch" on German Wikipedia (in German)

The Christmas four-part mini series - The sixteenth door

When I was a child, we were always looking forward to the time before Christmas and the legendary "Weihnachtsvierteiler" (Christmas four-parters) or, how they were called officially, "Abenteuervierteiler" (adventure four-parters).
They were 16 mini series produced between 1964 and 1983. German producer Walter Ulbrich had the idea for the ZDF (one of our TV channels at the time) series and also to get French producers on board, so they could tackle classic adventure stories in a more detailed way than movies.

In Germany, we only had three TV channels at the time which didn't broadcast around the clock, so TV was still special (and of course black and white for a long time). The four-parters were a highlight of the year. Can you imagine us kids waiting impatiently for the next part of Robinson Crusoe (the first one), Treasure Island, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (those two are my favorites), The Leatherstocking Tales and more?
The first ones had a narrator which allowed to explain some things further or quote from the original novels, but over time this was seen as old-fashioned. I actually liked it.

Retro is popular and so are the four-parters, some more than others (because, let's be honest, some are better than others), and they are still available on DVD and sometimes for streaming via the ZDF media library.
I still watch Treasure Island regularly, it's definitely part of that childhood Christmas feeling although a tropical island admittedly doesn't seem to be very Christmassy.



Do you have a personal Christmas TV tradition?

Christmas quote of the week - The eleventh door

Almost exactly eight years ago, I told you about the history of the Christmas tree.
Nowadays, with the tradition of putting up a Christmas tree having spread far and wide, it's unusual to think about a time when there were no trees. Not everyone was fond of the tree idea, though.

Inspector Brackenreid: Hey, Jackson! What do you think you're doing?
Constable Jackson: I ... I'm measuring the height of the ceiling, Sir. For the tree.
Inspector Brackenreid: The... There will not be a tree in here.
Constable Jackson: Wha... No tree?
Inspector Brackenreid: Bloody Germans and their idiotic traditions. Jackson, get down!
Detective Murdoch: Sir, a tree wouldn't be a terrible idea.
Inspector Brackenreid: This is a place of work, Murdoch, not a bloody herbarium.

Murdoch Mysteries - A Merry Murdoch Christmas, Canada, 2015

Now, you may know that the tradition of the Christmas tree started in Germany (maybe if you read my old post) which the inspector doesn't like much, but as an Englishman and loyal subject of his monarch Edward VII. (this is the year 1903) who was brought up in this tradition by his mother Queen Victoria and her German husband Albert, you would think he'd be a bit more open to it, wouldn't you?
Victoria and Albert even decorated the tree themselves before they let the children in to see it.

Drawing by Joseph Lionel Williams (via Wikicommons)

Actually we find out later that the inspector isn't fond of Christmas itself ... yet.

Christmas quote of the week - The fourth door

I revived the quotes of the week especially for the advent calendar and today's quote is perfect following yesterday's post.
Imagine a small English village and its Women's Guild putting on a Cinderella panto at the village hall.
It starts with the auditions, one actor has to be lured in under some pretext as he really doesn't want to participate, there are talented people and not so talented people who present anything from dance to song.

My favorite audition is that of the young girl singing "Morning has broken" only to be chosen for a lizard footman.
I really wish they had shown the costume, it sounds fascinating! ;-)

It's also quite fascinating that there will be skeletons, mermaids, and Hawaiian dancers in the ballroom scene ....

Jam and Jerusalem, Special "Christmas Panto", UK, 2006

Quote of the week - The twenty-third door

Have you ever seen "Miracle on 34th Street"? You probably have, but I haven't. Neither has Manny. So Jay sits down with him to watch it.

From the screen: No, no, it's not that kind of a trial. It's just because he says it's Santa Claus. - But I've got a feeling he IS Santa Claus, mother. - Some people don't believe that, that's why ...
Manny: Are you crying?
Jay: What are you, a robot? It's a deeply emotional movie.
Gloria: Manny, mi amor, I need you to help me in the kitchen.
Jay: We gotta finish this first, Gloria. The kid's never seen Miracle on 34th Street.
Gloria: That's because he always spends Christmas in Colombia with my family. And all we see there is "Salazar and El Oso save Christmas".
Jay: Sounds like a classic.
Gloria: It is.
Manny: Mom, can we finish the movie?
Gloria: Okay.
From the screen: Mommy, he's not like anyone else. He must be Santa. - I think perhaps you're right, Susie.
A monster appears on the screen.
Jay (screaming): Oh! What the hell is that? What the hell is that?
Manny: Inocente!
Jay: What the hell.
Gloria and Manny are laughing.
Manny: When you told me we were going to watch this movie, I got a joke copy from the internet. You are the inocente.
Jay: Well, maybe I'm a little confused right now. What is this inocente stuff?
Gloria (still laughing): In Colombia, practical jokes are a Christmas tradition. The one that is fooled is the inocente.
Jay: We tell practical jokes on April Fool's Day, so do not do that again!

Modern Family, USA, 2009 -

Of course I had to look up if there is really a tradition like that.
1. There is no show "Salazar and El Oso".
2. There actually is a tradition of pranks and jokes, but not on Christmas itself. December 28th is the Catholic Dia de los Santos Inocentes, Day of the Holy Innocents which reminds of the innocent children Herod ordered to be killed. It is not just celebrated in Colombia, but also other countries like Spain, Mexico, Puerto Rico and more.
If you want to know more about Colombian Christmas traditions, have a look here at Culture Trip.

Quote of the week - The sixteenth door

I wonder what kind of holidays they have on other planets and how we would adapt there.
Our favorite alien family on Earth, the Solomons, is celebrating Christmas for the very first time. Knowing the Solomons this can't go smoothly.
Dick for example participates in a Secret Santa. Although twenty dollars are the limit, his gift has cost just a tad more, a hundred and twenty dollars more, and of course Dick is as modest as ever about it. Not.

Mary: My Dad would go out and get the biggest Christmas tree he could find. We'd go carolling, open our house to the neighborhood. All that sharing and generosity.
Dick (overwhelmed by sentiment): So beautiful. Look how generous I am! I AM Christmas!!

Well, a happy alien Christmas to you, Dick! He's not that happy anymore, though, when the police comes for him because he tries to get his Christmas tree out of a neighbor's garden ;-)
He's not the only one losing his illusions about Christmas. Tommy is desperate to find the perfect gift for his girlfriend. Harry finds out that the Santa Claus in the mall is not the real Santa Claus, and Sally who's wrapping gifts at the mall can't believe how unimaginative people are.
Will it become a good Christmas after all? Yes, it will!

3rd Rock from the sun, USA, 1996 - 2001

Quote of the week

I don't know if it's the same where you are, but when I look at my TV guide, sometimes it seems to me that a big part of TV consists of "reality TV", cooking shows, fashion makeovers and/or shopping, and different kind of quizzes. Well, and sitcoms and crime shows, of course.
What is it about quizzes? Why are they so popular? Is it all about seeing someone crack the million dollar question or do we like to exercise our own brains every, now and then?

When DI Lewis and DS Hathaway are called to a murder of a quiz participant in an Oxford college, Lewis has a question for his sergeant.

Lewis: What do you think about quizzes?
Hathaway: Terminally pointless. Right up there with slugs and black pudding.

Lewis, UK, 2006 - 2015


P.S. I sometimes miss the pub quizzes we used to go to. Even if we couldn't win a million bucks there, we always had fun - and were quite tired the next morning!

Quote of the week

True in 1960, true today. When will we learn?

"The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill, and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own for the children, and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone."

 

The Twilight Zone, USA, 1959 - 1964

Quote of the week

Once upon a time there was a station called Nickelodeon. And once upon a time there were Fridays. Okay, there still are, but they are different now. Let me explain. The year Nickelodeon started in Germany was also the year I started dialysis. Three times a week I would go to dialysis right after work, except for Fridays. Fridays I always tried to take off early. That was my little private time window when I would come home and enjoy some Nick shows, enjoy the weirdness, laugh and wind down for a bit before I had to leave again.
Today's quote is from one of those shows.

Ickis, Krumm, and Oblina are young monsters going to school learning how to be good monsters and scare people. Of course they stumble from one adventure into the other, like that time they ended up in the countryside.
All they want to do is scare some humans. The humans, however, think they are aliens, so finally one group is chasing the other. Finally the little monsters make it home again (after successfully scaring everyone) and two of the humans are wondering about the events.

Human #1: You know, I was thinking.
Human #2: Really?
Human #1: Maybe those creatures weren't aliens at all.
Human #2: Really.
Human #1: Maybe they were monsters.
Human #2: Monsters! Noooo. Who'd be stupid enough to believe in monsters when there are so many aliens around?
In the back a cow gets abducted by a spaceship.
Human #1: I guess you're right.
Human #2 (shaking his head): When will people learn ...

Aaahh!!! Real Monsters, USA, 1994 - 1997

P.S. Yes, when will people learn ... once again this post is dedicated to my favorite alien friend ;-)

Quote of the week

Why do people spell words if they don't want anyone else to understand what they are saying? Take a cat that has to go to the v-e-t for example. Believe me, neither spelling nor whispering helps with that one because the furry masters feel the vibrations coming from the human. It's unnecessary around babies, but okay, there might be a chance that it helps if you have toddlers around.
Or maybe sometimes it does work to make things sound less harsh ...

Maryann has just been told that all of her credit cards have been blocked. Being used to spending money without thinking about it she doesn't react well to that.

Cybill: Okay, Maryann, here. Breathe into this bag. It's Chanel.
Maryann is whimpering.
Zoey: What happened?
Cybill: We just came from a meeting with her business manager. She's b-r-o-k-e.
Zoey: Oh my God. She's illiterate?
Cybill: No, she's broke!!! (Maryann starts screaming and trying to strangle herself with the bag strap - maybe spelling it was better after all? ;-))

Cybill, USA, 1995 - 1998

Quote of the week

Vince Noir and Howard Moon, former zookeepers, are working at Nabootique now, the shop of shaman Naboo and his familiar Bollo. Vince has a history of coming in late, though.
If you need an excuse for being late the next time, why don't you try these?

Howard: Come on then, let's have it.
Vince: Hm?
Howard: Every day you're late and every day another crazy excuse. What is it this time?
Vince: What do you mean?
Howard: Lego avalanche trapped you?
Vince: No.
Howard: No? Your pyjamas turned into nitrogen? You got stuck on the ceiling of your bedroom? Giant kingfisher came into your room and pecked you under the duvet? Got your, uh, jodhpurs caught on a magic hedgehog? I write'em down, you know. What is it? A scarecrow took you to Paris, yeah?
Vince: I just had a few things to do, that's all.
Howard: That's not funny. It's not even going in the book. It's awful.

Got inspired? So if you try it, let me know how it went!

The Mighty Boosh, UK, 2003 - 2007

Quote of the week

I vividly remember the discussion about children thinking that cows are purple thanks to a commercial icon. I had the luck to have a godmother whose parents had a farm, and my very personal cow there, Diana (whom I desperately wanted to buy), was light brown and white.
I also remember listening to parents at our local zoo who told their children the most incredible things about our animals. It usually didn't go down well if I took the liberty to educate them on the goat NOT being the sheep's mom and I didn't even go that far to tell them the goat was in fact male.

Maybe that's why today's quote made me both roll my eyes and laugh out loud at the same time.
We are in the beautiful county of Midsomer (where your life expectancy is about as high as that of a worm surrounded by a flock of hungry birds) and people have come from the city to drive their cars off-road through the mud of the countryside.

Brad: Oi! Excuse me? There's a farmer who deliberately put a load of bulls in the field we want to go through.
Brad's pal: Yeah!
Brad: Now a bridle path has a public right of way. Why would he do that?
Garth: And where was this?
Brad: It was in a field at the Melham Cross Road.
Garth: Hm. I think you'll find they were cows.
Brad's group starts laughing.
Brad: Cows (laughing). When was the last time you saw cows with horns?

I can only understand Garth's feelings too well ....

Midsomer Murders, UK, 1997 -

Quote of the week

What do you do when you are on a spaceship and there's a polymorph on board? What a polymorph is? Well, it's this creature that can change shape to evoke a deep emotion in someone, so it can feed on that emotion.
In this case the polymorph has already had a delicious emotion meal made up from guilt, anger, anxiety, and vanity that it sucked off the four spaceship staff members. Now they are discussing plans how to get rid of it.
Rimmer who has lost his anger comes up with this plan.

Rimmer: Um, but here's my proposal. Let's get tough. The time for talking is over. Call it extreme if you like, but I propose we hit it hard and hit it fast with a major, and I mean major leaflet campaign. And while it's reeling from that we follow up with a whist drive, a car boot sale, some street theatre, and possibly even some benefit concerts. Ok? Now if that's not enough, I'm sorry, it's time for the t-shirts. "Mutants Out." "Chameleonic life forms? No thanks." And if that's not enough, well, I don't know what will be.

Red Dwarf, UK, 1988 -

Quote of the week

15th century. Prince Edmund, also known as The Black Adder, is made Archbishop of Canterbury by his father, the king, who wants to make sure no more rich people leave their land to the church hoping they make it to heaven after all.
It wouldn't be The Black Adder, however, if he didn't think of making a little money of his own from the job. His servant Baldrick put together a little collection of what's possible.
How about a nice little curse, for example?

Edmund: Ah. Curse. "Dear Enemy, I curse you and hope that slightly unpleasant happens to you, like an onion falling on your head."
Baldrick: Well, that's the bottom end of the market.

The Black Adder, UK, 1982 - 1983