After putting together and talking about the post on Made for TV movies, I was talking to my grandfather (Papaw) about them. I call him every Sunday and have for nearly the entire time I haven’t been living in the same town. We lived on a dirt road in Texas and my grandparents’ house was at the end, we were about halfway down, hayfields, gardens, horses, cows, bees, emus at one time, all in between. He couldn’t remember watching The Spring, though he did say that was twenty years ago and he was starting to get old. He turned 89 this past May 4th.
All posts by James M. Burnes, PhD.
Made for T.V.
Growing up in deep Southeast Texas we didn’t have cable or satellite. Looking back through things these past few weeks put me to thinking about the things we watched. We weren’t exactly a sit and watch television together as a family type with my father working shift-work. There are a few things I do remember though, mostly any National Geographic Special, and I remember seeing more than a few made for tv movies through the years. Maybe it was just the time I was coming up, but it seemed like there were more options than you’d expect for people limited to the big three network tv.
Continue reading Made for T.V.
That’s the Way The World Goes Round
My Voyages with Doctor Dolittle
Do they give awards for trailer editing? This one was done really well, it revealed nothing, didn’t give all the best parts, and even kept some things unknown. At least the first one did, I didn’t see the official second trailer until I was putting together media for this post.
Ad Assassins
This is another of those dropped posts where I was lucky enough to have the page caught by internet archive and a folder for the images I used.
Once I remembered (stumbled across) were I had saved it I reuploaded on April 23, 2025. It was originally published on November 9, 2019 and I am backdating it to preserve the order.
The internet, and social media specifically, is a virtual ever-changing minefield of people vying for your money. Earlier this week I saw what has got to be the most ridiculous ad I have ever seen and decided to spend the rest of the week gathering shots of the different storefronts that have me on their algorithm.
Continue reading Ad Assassins
Shead and the Bishop
Back when I first started unraveling the travels and works of Ralph Brownell Shead I came across this article in the Indianapolis Start dated January 8, 1935 (Elvis Presley’s Birthday).
Shead and the Chickasaw Rancher
So much has been rolling along since the beginning of the year it all deserves it’s own retelling, and will likely get one after I forget what all the things were. But, this one bears a share as soon as possible so it can be added to the Shead story at large that has somehow ended up my major secondary project in life, and a very rewarding one.
Red (Long) Dead Redemption 2
This was one of the lost posts that still had text crawled on wayback. I tracked down the images and the video to recreate it on April 23, 2025. It was originally published November 23, 2018, and I’m backdating it to keep it in order.
Dinosaurs, or at least paleontology, makes an appearance in the newest and hottest video game out by RockStar games. There are a gazillion things to do and move through in it but I want to uncover a tiny piece of the fun. SPOILER warning for anyone who wants to play blind, there are video walkthroughs and maps ahead.
Hat’s All Folks
This may be the most important post that I ever write. Also the most rigorously academic, and in 10 years probably the most read. We have recently gotten the Boomerang streaming app so that we have all of the stuff I already own conveniently playable from the Apple TV. Currently my son’s favoritest thing to watch is Magilla Gorilla so to stretch it out we’ve been watching a lot more of the Hanna Barbera productions that I remember watching growing up. They aren’t all on the app itself, so I’ve had to dig things out. As we’ve been going through I noticed how many of the characters’ personas are summed up in their clothes. Well, really hats. Many times their uniform is just a hat and a tie. We all know this, but I thought it was a great idea to consolidate them here, try and figure out what kind of hat it is, and, since the library recalled ALL of my checked out books and has yet to reshelve them so I can check them out again, a good way to keep up a word count weekend while not dissertating. And these are just from the Hanna-Barbera Universe
Under the Tenfluence: Books
I finally tracked down my last missing Prehistoric Zoobooks, but have not had the time to put them in a proper post, it is still on the list though. I am working more on my dissertation at the moment and with a new routine at home due to the arrival of my son at the end of June things are a bit up in the air with anything that isn’t deadline/need-based driven. To that end though here is something that I am retrofitting for a full post that was done in a series on Facebook. It was one of those “10_____ that influenced (or some other verb) me” chain tags that go around from time to time. I usually ignore them, but this one came an a time of reflection on my own habits and what I was writing about early American readership so I decided to take something flippant and approach it in a way I could use it for a blog post. In fact, for people starting out blogging or online journaling these types of lists may provide a nice ease into the pool.
