jim henson

1. 'Things Happen When You Blog Eleganza!' ⬇ (click on image to ENLARGE)

Holy Milestones, Mackerel!!

It's been a great week for this blog, and speaking personally it makes me quite cheerful indeed.

I cracked the 300 total posts mark, and amazingly, the blog clicked over the 100,000 total hits mark.

It's, uhh - - helped considerably that over 40,000 hits have occurred SINCE YESTERDAY MORNING.

Bezortch, Daddio, that's just crazy with a 'K'...

What came as no surprise to me was that most of the new visits were due to that one ''70's Fashion Ads from Ebony Magazine' post that I blogged way back in June.

(Scroll down to the 'from the archives' section of the sidebar if you somehow missed it.)

I think it was BoingBoing that first picked it up a little while after it first ran, and since then the piece has bounced around to the darnedest places all over the net and has remained a constant source of new traffic around here.

It looks like Thursday's link at Drew Curtis' FARK.com
("It's not news... It's FARK") was the culprit responsible for the Ebony-Eleganza thing going viral.

FARK's post was as a 'rebuttal' of sorts to the
'JC Penney catalog from 1977' fashion flashback that's been popping up everywhere recently, via 15 Minute Lunch.
I've had it come at me from half-a-dozen or more sources in the past few weeks, including 2 or 3 e-mails.

The intra-net is just a nutty, nutty place, no doubt about it.

So: A BIG THANKYOU to all the visitors to this blog, and likewise thanks to all the sites and blogs and forums that have linked here.
At just over 8 months old, the reception 'ILTS' has received has far exceeded any and all of my expectations and hopes.

- - And: A BIG WELCOME to any and all of the new visitors who may have just arrived recently.
Please have a good poke around, and visit again soon.

1.5 - - And and Update and: Speaking of a great week at the blog - - I just got through adding an addendum to the 'Stan Cornyn's Liner Notes' post that I originally put up in May.
This afternoon I received a nice note from Mr. Cornyn himself.
I find it very gratifying, and now you can see it tacked on to the end of the piece.

- Elsewheres this past week...

2. Hey, I went and saw 'The Mist' down at the multiplex the other day, and was very pleasantly surprised. A sturdy examination of mob as monster.
(see also 'The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street' - - a 1960 TV episode of 'The Twilight Zone', and Buñuel's film masterpiece, 'The Exterminating Angel'.)

I guess I'd sort of dismissed the movie as I do many contemporary horror thrillers, but it'd been recommended by a friend with good taste.

Briskly paced and well-cast with a few nice twists and turns along the way. Great little character turns from
Jeffrey DeMunn, Frances Sternhagen and William Sadler - - and I must say I've really begun to sit up and take notice of Toby Jones!

Jones popped up on my radar after his amazing performance in 'Infamous' (a.k.a. 'The Other Truman Capote Movie'), and now my curiosity is officially piqued. Investigation awaits.

2.5 'The Mist' also pleased me from the aging comics nerd's perspective.
As I watched the movie and began to get a bit of a Lovecraftian vibe mixed with flashbacks of comic-book artist Berni Wrightson's work, I was rewarded with the discovery of his name in the credits for some of the creature design.

So nice to know he's still out there doing his thing.
Thanks Berni! You're still The Man!

3. Speaking of cheerful images - - stay with me here - - There's Green Burials.

Long, long, long ago, pondering mortality and such, I thought about what I'd like done with my carcass someday, when it's time for my long dirt nap.

What I decided was that I'd like to return my 'empty vessel' to the earth cleanly and simply, with as little extraneous material and foreign chemicals as possible. Stick me naked into a burlap sack, put me in the ground, and let me rot naturally (please make sure I'm dead first).

The thought of that method being difficult if not illegal has long rankled me. I don't necessarily need to go out as an outlaw.

So. It honestly made me extremely happy to read a small piece in the local freebie weekly just this morning that mentioned options...

- - Via NEWS of the WEIRD, their lead story for the week of 11/25/07:

"As an alternative to burial, cremation is no longer green enough, say environmentalists, because it releases smoke and mercury, and thus the industry is considering 'promession', in which the body is frozen in liquid nitrogen to minus-320 degrees (F) and then shaken until it disintegrates into powder.

"For green burials, the United States has at least six cemeteries that require biodegradable casings and for bodies to be free of embalming chemicals.

"The Forever Fernwood cemetery in Mill Valley, Calif. goes even further, according to an October Los Angeles Times story, banning grave markers, but, said the owner, 'We issue the family a Google map with the GPS coordinates' so they can find their loved one. [Los Angeles Times, 10-28-07; Evening Standard (London), 10-10-07]"

Being shaken into a powder has its merits I'm sure, but a green burial just makes so much sense to me. I'm serious, even 'dead serious', if you will.

Knowing my old home town as well as I do, I didn't bat an eye to read that Mill Valley is mentioned as the location where a new approach is taken one further radical step.

- - If you have any thoughts on the subject of green burial that you'd like to share, I encourage you to comment.

See also: Wikipedia entries for Eco-cemeteries and sky burial.

4. Speaking of radical steps, let's all give a big hurrah to daredevil Evel Knievel, who 'sailed right out there' and passed away today in Clearwater, Florida at age 69.

He made the world a more interesting place in the best way he knew how.

Ride the link to the
Official Evel Knievel Website.