Put Your Lips Together

Take a deep breath. Some thoughts following not yet fully formed...

Looking into the concept of breathing, I found a link to meanings of the word psyche.

psyche

1. Breath, to breathe, to blow, (later) to cool; hence, life (identified with or indicated by the breath); the animating principle in man and other living beings, the source of all vital activities, rational or irrational, the soul or spirit, in distinction from its material vehicle, the body; sometimes considered as capable of persisting in a disembodied state after separation from the body at death.

2. In Mythology, personified by Plato and other philosophers, it was extended to the anima mundi, conceived to animate the general system of the universe, as the soul animates the individual organism. St. Paul (developing a current Jewish distinction between spirit or breath, and nephesh, soul) used the lower or merely natural life of man, shared with other animals, in contrast with the spirit.

3. The soul, or spirit, as distinguished from the body; the mind.

4. The conscious and unconscious mind and emotions; especially, as influencing and affecting the whole person.

5. All that constitutes the mind and what it processes.

6. Term for the subjective aspects of the mind, self, soul; the psychological or spiritual as distinct from the bodily nature of humans.

This takes my thoughts to where they still too-often go these days, even after almost four months of not smoking. Apart from the occasional lava-lamp bubbling beneath my brain, without thought or warning will come a sudden in and out of a sharp breath from my mouth. Someone else noticed this, thinking I was practicing some kind of meditative zen technique. What actually went on: my body tries to smoke, even without a cigarette in hand. Breathe in and puff out. Therefore, by the definitions above, the mere act of breathing constitutes expelling our life force, our animating spirit.

When I get the chance, I put these exhalations to work as I finally found something, like smoking, involving breathing in and out and annoying people at the same time: playing the harmonica.

To play all the notes in the scale you alternate breathing in and out like in the image below.

And once again mixing some of the definitions above together the spirit, the unconscious mind get translated into the vibrations created by the ‘blows’ and ‘draws’ – in this act they become something else.

Meet the New Boss...

I love Metroid games -- more so for the puzzles than battling the bosses (bigger badder characters you need to beat if you plan moving further through a game) because I'm not much good at beating the boss creatures for some reason. I've tried Metroid Prime 2 on the Gamecube, and Metroid Hunters on the DS, but I just can't beat a boss. OK, I beat the first boss on the DS, but couldn't get past the second one. My hope for the Wii was that the controls would give me an easier time with these foes along the way. So far so good, as I finally survived my first Metroid boss battle, but I also survived long enough to succeed against Boss Rundas in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption!

Here's a Gamespot video of how I should have handled it. The video only lasts about 4 minutes -- it took me about 10 times that long to succeed. Oh well, success is success...

Inevitable Alterations

The mind searches furiously for a key to it all. What is it? What went wrong? Why? How? The body meanwhile does what it must to survive! Escape is not sought nor desired nor even possible. The alteration, subtle at first, then mounting in intensity, growing bolder, more visible, more disruptive as time went on -- the alteration was inevitable.

For the chaos, the tumult raging all about this last of his superior breed could only be the product of the pain and the passion and the fire to which he alone remains heir. The energy -- the creative force -- could be disciplined only so strictly, held seething in check only so long, before it burst forth ravaging, mindless uncontrollable. That's the answer! So obvious in retrospect! An organism ceases to live when it ceases to grow. The element of change, which loomed so terrifying -- was in fact the only hope of salvation.

To resist, to dam the flow, to go rigid...was to abandon all hope.

Steve Gerber wrote that (or at least co-wrote that) in the first issue of the comic book Omega the Unknown. Gerber and co-creator Mary Skrenes have always closely held the book and its mysteries to the vest, so we probably will never really know who did what. Just another mystery of life without an answer. What is it?

We feel most comforted by stories with answers, with endings, where there is a chance to frame everything into one picture. All the answers we need in a glance. Steve Gerber will not be ending any more stories. Dead at 60. Why? How?

It is common in the world of comic books for the artist to have a unique style. Uncommon is the comic book writer with an irreproducible personal voice and viewpoint in his work. Steve’s work is uncommon in this vein. …Could only be the product of the pain and the passion and the fire…

One of my favorite Gerber stories, the revival of the Metal Men. The overall theme of the story tells us of the sometimes-hard-to-find good in everyone, but now I am seeing something else in the background. Doc Magnus overcomes his madness in the story because of his work – not only in that he creates, but also that his Metal Men creations save his day by the end, by bringing him clarity and peace at last. I hope Steve too had peace at the end and that he recognized the outstanding quality of his work.

I hope other generations of writers and artists can continue to wrestle with the lessons of his works and their quality. For those of us who bought his stuff off the stands, his stories will continue in re-readings. The sadness, as always, is in the stories he never got the chance to tell us or to finish.

It is another element of change, and to do right by ourselves we must make the best of it we can. As we could often find something good in the baddest of Steve's villains, we could also heed the card left by his anti-hero, the Foolkiller, which said: Today is the last day of the rest of your life. Use it wisely, or die a fool.

Good night, Steve…we're a much wiser bunch because of you.

The basic nuts and bolts of Steve's life can be found here.

More information from a personal perspective may be found at the site of his friend Mark Evanier. Donations may be made in his name at Hero Initiative.

I've Still Got A Secret

More reasons to smile...

It’s pretty much still a secret, but the program “I’ve Got A Secret” – which ran on the CBS television network from 1952 to 1967 – began again in re-runs on Game Show Network (GSN) at the beginning of the year, at the primo time of 2:30 a.m. CST. If your Tivo is tired of the more modern re-runs and if you are looking for old-school entertainment packed with unexpected and occasionally poignant moments from history, you could do worse than getting some of these into your digital memory for future viewing.

No one thought of future viewers when these first aired. They probably did not think much beyond the show for the following week. “I’ve Got A Secret” after all, was not a game show in the standard sense. Generally played for laughs, the draw was more for those seeking a variety show. The contestants brought a unique secret for the panel to guess, and if the panel was unsuccessful, then the contestant won eighty dollars. In the first few years of the show, they also won a carton of Winston cigarettes courtesy of the program’s then-sponsor.

The variety of the show came from the different types of secrets and guest stars: on one night, a couple revealed they themselves had just found out NASA picked their son for the new astronaut program. An Indian in full authentic regalia, who, it turned out, was the man who posed for the so-called Indian head nickel followed them the same evening. On another night, a lady came from Michigan with the secret her house and all its furnishings were made entirely of paper. Or on another, a group of people in various forms of injury – one with a black eye, another with a cast on their leg, someone else with their fingers wrapped and another with a broken nose showed up with the secret that they had all injured themselves doing The Twist.

If you'd like to check them out before setting your Tivo timer, here's a You Tube clip of a typical 1962 episode (it's only Part One, but it should also offer you the chance at Part Two and Three at the end):

The panel here is my favorite of their various regular groupings: Bill Cullen, Betsy Palmer, Henry Morgan, and Bess Myerson...

Bill Cullen should be familiar to fans of game shows in general given his long-running hosting job for thirty-some years. He was the original host of the Price Is Right, back when it was successful enough to have not only a daytime, but also a regular nighttime version. Its popularity even gave it a spot as a plot on the Flintstones.

Betsy Palmer, delightfully daffy, an aspiring actress who got her best-remembered role years after IGAS was over -- as the mother of psycho serial slaughterer Jason, in the original Friday the 13th movie.

Henry Morgan was one of those wits you used to see a lot of, not really an author, a comedian, star, he just ... was. His curmudgeonly-wit did not endear him long with sponsors, so his solo-efforts on radio and television never lasted long.

Bess Myerson, the first Jewish Miss America, but she was also quite intelligent and stylish and later went on to the anti-war movement and regular work with various New York City government administrations.

Panel moderator Garry Moore, like Henry Morgan, is something you do not really see much of these days -- not really a star of any sort, but whose easygoing charm made him welcome in American homes via the airwaves for years. Moore is famous today for discovering and nurturing the talents of Carol Burnett, though to Bullwinkle fans his fame is for his having a partner/sidekick named Durwood Kirby.

I am not sure why, but until viewing these re-runs I had forgotten how much of a crush I must have had on Betsy Palmer. There is something about her still uniquely appealing to me. You can read more about her, and “I’ve Got A Secret” in this article from T.V. Guide, from 1962. (The picture up top was taken from this same article.) Look out there for the fellow with the carrots in his ears…

Of the couple mentioned above, whose son NASA chose for the astronaut program, they were Mr. and Mrs. Armstrong, and you can read about their experience on IGAS here in an excerpt from "First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong."

Game Show Network will hopefully go back further to earlier re-runs than 1962 of the show, but at times they've been squeemish about playing episodes with such a prominent sponsor as Winston was in those days. Some time you may get to see David Niven (who's secret was that he was sitting on a block of ice while answering questions), the entire United States Air Force of the early 1900s (back when it was only one guy), and a man who witnessed Abraham Lincoln's assassination at Ford's Theatre.

Don't keep this a secret...