PicoBlog

This is the 28th edition of the weekly Retrontario newsletter. Subscribe now to start getting it sent directly to your inbox:Uncle Bobby was a legitimate local institution: a real-life Krusty the Klown whose alleged misadventures involving scotch, mothers, and school buses have been the stuff of legend since the 1970s—even though the conversations about him shifted long ago from the playgrounds to the pubs around Toronto. (He’d heartily approve.)  

When people discuss the prestige TV crime dramas of the 1970s, they tend to mention Columbo, The Rockford Files, Kojak, The Streets of San Francisco, Police Story, McCloud, and McMillan and Wife. Sometimes they also throw in Starsky and Hutch, Baretta, and Angie Dickinson’s groundbreaking Police Woman. One show that doesn’t get enough attention from genre aficionados is Barnaby Jones, a Quinn Martin production that starred Buddy Ebsen and Lee Meriwether and ran on CBS TV from 1973 to 1980, for a total of 178 episodes.

The witch’s hat: Black, large-rimmed, with a pointed top. It’s a necessary part of every witching wardrobe. Just ask Elphaba or McGonagall. But where did that hat come from? Theories about the hat’s origin vary. Some scholars cite the mummified remains of two sisters from the 3rd century BCE in Subeshi, China as the earliest evidence of the hats (the sisters were found with pointed hats on their heads). Others cite the Puritan perception of the Quakers in eighteenth century America: The Puritans saw the Quakers as suspicious magic practitioners, and while the Quakers didn’t wear pointy hats, they did wear black ones with wide brims.

Greetings, folks. If you’ve been following this blog for any length of time (perhaps in its old days on Blogger/Blogspot, to its brief incarnation on the Patheos Pagan platform, to its own URL themediawitch.com, to this new Substack blog you’re reading now. And perhaps before I became a blogger, you read some of my film and TV reviews and media rants on The Witches’ Voice website, aka Witchvox. That site, which was created 26 years ago in 1996 (then became a legal non-profit in 1997), and which was a hugely popular, influential and culture-changing resource for the worldwide witchcraft community, was retired from active status in 2019.

If someone calls you a dilettante, should you be offended, amused, or merely confused? It depends where you look up the definition: Once you would have been a lover of the arts, someone who dabbles without expertise, but now you might be accused of passing yourself off as more knowledgeable than you actually are. “Dilettante: a philanderer who seduces the several arts and deserts each in turn for another.” — Oliver Herford

Disclaimer: Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer or any other entities with which I am affiliated. One of the biggest rumors of last week was that Wiz was in talks to acquire Lacework. For me, it was shocking and not shocking at the same time. I felt that Lacework was at the cusp of a breakthrough because people would realize they needed a more sophisticated cloud security product.

Noah here. If you’ve never seen the 1989 film The Wizard, you haven’t missed a great cinematic moment. Starring Fred Savage, the movie follows two brothers across the country as they hitchhike their way to a video game tournament in California. Along the way they hustle people in Double Dragon at arcades, run into a Power Glove-welding punk, and have their savings stolen by some truck drivers. When they finally arrive at the tournament, Savage’s brother, “the wizard,” triumphs over the competition, making it to the final round of games, where a wrench is thrown into the works when the competition’s announcer tells the contestants they’ll be playing a brand new game: Super Mario Bros.

Have you ever heard of Marilyn Monroe? Of course you have. Have you ever heard of Amy Greene? Of course you haven’t. Have you ever stared endlessly and pictures capturing Marilyn’s off-duty style? Of course I have.  Now the Amy Greene I’m referring to is not Rachel Green’s fictional Friends sister, played by Christina Applegate. No. The Amy I’m referring to is the loyal wife of the late Hollywood photographer, Milton H.

Without Patti Mitsui, the Aja we know and love would not exist. Oz Studios, the company she ran with Geoff Westen (former guitarist for California garage-psych outfit the Other Half), was tapped to art direct the cover of Steely Dan’s 1977 jazz-rock tour de force. Next to photographer Hideki Fujii’s enigmatic shot of Japanese supermodel Sayoko Yamaguchi in a kimono, Mitsui added a literal masterstroke: the striking red calligraphic letters of the album’s title.