Movies (Television) in History: Dawson's Creek.

Over this past weekend I was horrible sick with what was probably the "stomach flu".  My wife is now.  I'll write more on that latter.

Anyhow,  I woke up in a bad state (I'll spare the details) and spent most of the weekend on the sofa, falling asleep.  

A lost weekend.

Anyhow, my wife had Dawson's Creek on, which was on as one of the major actors, James Van Der Beek  recently tragically died of colon cancer, something I relatively recently dodged the bullet on myself.  FWIW, quite a few actors who were on the series have passed away, although he's the youngest (although barely so) to do so.  It was a tragic death.

Dawson's Creek, 1998-2003, sucks.

The question would be why I put it up here at all, and I don't have that much of a good reason, but it reminds me of how television shows featuring teenagers of recent years fit a pattern.  The other one is One Tree Hill.  

Their nighttime soap operas, but they're bad, and at worst, perverted.

All the characters, even the supposedly poor ones, are fantastically wealthy living in really good conditions.  They have nearly unlimited access to wealth that most middle class families in the real world struggle for and their lives are more or less unhindered by their parents, who are portrayed as a sort of older siblings, even in their appearance.  Nobody in this world has been worn down by age and responsibilities.  They're all beautiful. There's now an ugly duckling girls or awkward boy amongst them. Their entire lives involve endless love triangles, and at least in Dawson's Creek's case, statutory rape.  They're maudlin in the extreme.

All in all, they're a really weird look at the teenage years of Americans, and its weirder than people want to look back at teenagers that way.  It says something about our society, and not in a good way. That millions of adults would follow a series that deals, at least in part, with sexual encounters of minors, is weird.  Dramas, and comedies, focusing on youth have always been a thing, but not ones that focus on youth as well funded adults lusting or longing for each other.

As a complaint about television scripts, I suppose, it's interesting that television likes to keep a couple that should obviously be a couple nearly being a couple for years, and then conclude with them not being a couple.  This can be a legitimate dramatic element, as in the Western drama Wil Penny, but if its going to be done it ought to serve some purpose.  In television dramas, it simply tends not to.  The Wonder Years, well worth watching, provides another example.

On material details, this is set on the Eastern Seaboard which I don't know much about, but nearly 100% of the people depicted are white, which I don't think realistic.  Maybe my view of the Eastern Seaboard is off, however.  Made when it was, an obligatory sympathetically portrayed homosexual couple is included.

One thing I'll add to all of this is that this entire series' view seems summed up by its horrible theme song, which wasn't written for it, I Don't Want To Wait by Paula Cole.  Sung in such a muttering style that it hard to understand, the song is a lament that the singer's grandparents had to endure World War Two and her grandfather came back physically and mentally scarred by the war, and then seemingly implied that they had not lived their lives for the moment.  The lyrics are, in part:

o open up your morning light
And say a little prayer for I
You know that if we are to stay alive
Then see the peace in every eye

She had two babies, one was six months, one was three
In the war of '44
Every telephone ring, every heartbeat stinging
When she thought it was God calling her
Oh, would her son grow to know his father?

I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
I want to know right now what will it be
I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
Will it be yes or will it be sorry?

He showed up all wet on the rainy front step
Wearing shrapnel in his skin
And the war he saw lives inside him still
It's so hard to be gentle and warm
The years pass by, and now, he has granddaughters

I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
I want to know right now what will it be
I don't want to wait for our lives to be over
Will it be yes or will it be...

The I deserve happiness right now and can obtain it without repercussion sort of view was a common one with younger people at the time, memoirs of Gen X.  Indeed, the show is sort of Gen X Romeo and Juliet and the ballad fits that.  That sort of vapid view has really passed into the the rear view mirror and younger generations don't have it, been afflicted, as they are, by the real world.  The shallowness of the views expressed in Dawson's Creek, One Tree Hill, and Beverly Hills 90210 help explain the big turn towards inward conservatism in the generations that have followed. 

Anyhow, just skip this and watch 5-25-77 instead.  

Friday, March 1, 1946. Things that almost were.

Kim Il Sung, was saved from an assassination attempt when Red Army officer Y.T. Novichenko caught a hand grenade thrown at him.

Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu, was planned to commence on this day.

Bombshell actress Lana Wood, sister of Natalie Wood, was born.

Last edition:

Thursday, February 28, 1946. Ho Chi Minh asks Truman for help.

Labels: 1930s, 1938, 1939, 1940s, 1946, Franklin Roosevelt, French Indochina, French Indochinese War, Harry S. Truman, Ho Chi Minh, Hungary, Vietnam

Thursday, February 11, 1926. Calles attacks the Church.

Plutarco Elías Calles nationalized all property of the Catholic church in Mexico.

The degree to which the leaders of the Mexican Revolution were anti Catholic in a very Catholic nation is hard to overestimate, although at the same time, particularly in some regions, Catholic viewpoints were very represented amongst the revolutionaries.  Emiliano Zapata in particularly was notably Catholic.

Be that as it may, Madero was not a practicing Catholic and had peculiar spiritual views.  He was in fact a spiritualist and a Mason.  Still, his victory in the revolution, temporary though it was, was seen by Catholics as an opportunity to form a Mexican Catholic political party, which they did.  The Church condemned Madero's assassination.

It was that killing that sparked the second stage of the revolution.   Álvaro Obregón and Calles both featured prominently in that, and both were anti Catholic.  Calles was also a Mason.  In that phase of the revolution, moreover, democratic forces, which had brought about Madero's rise, started to wane and with the murder of Zapata and the victory of Carranza Mexico headed off in a much more radically leftist direction. In some ways the Mexican Revolution, in spite of its romantic portrayal in American cinema, was much more of a 20th Century European Revolution, many of which featured radically anti Catholic leaders against Catholic populations in favor of utopian leftism.

Calles fit that mold and was the sort example in the office of president of Mexico.  His anti clerical laws would lead to the Cristero War the following year.

Mexico remains a very Catholic country to this day and the Mexican people are very Catholic. But like other religious communities, the period of anti religious domination hurt the religious nature of the people nonetheless and the culture of the country.  Mexico has never really recovered from the anti religious views of the revolution.  Ironically, one of the beneficiaries of that has been Protestant Millennialism which has been successful in drawing in religious Mexicans who are unchurched, a byproduct of the revolution.

Actor Leslie Nielsen was born in Regina, Saskatchewan.  He served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War Two as an aerial gunner, although he was not deployed overseas.

Last edition:

Wednesday, February 10, 1926. Going to the League.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, German Weimar Republic, Italy, League of Nations, South Tyrol, Tyrol

Tuesday, February 5, 1946. Star of Paris.

Look offered an article on what FDR would have said regarding the ongoing intense look back at the events leading to December 7, 1941, a controversy that most Americans have forgotten occurred.  But it was probably the slice of cheesecake offered up in the form of actress Colleen Townsend that drew attention to the magazine.  Townsend is from California and attended BYU (she was a Mormon growing up).  She entered acting through minor roles in the early 40s, but it was magazine covers that drew the publics attention to her.  She was one of the Yank pinups.  She converted to Presbyterianism in 1948 and married a seminary student in 1950, after which she left acting.  She had a long career as a humanitarian and civil rights worker, and is still living.

TWA's "Star of Paris", a Lockheed Constellation, flew from New York to Paris in the first transAtlantic commercial airline flight.  

The flight took fifteen hours.

More on the flight here:

5–6 February 1946

President Truman established the Tishomingo National Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma.

Last edition:

Monday, February 4, 1946. Weather and War Brides.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, boats and ships, It was because of World War Two, Marriage, The relationship between men and women, Weather

Friday, February 5, 1926. Attacking the couriers.

Terrorists attacked a train traveling from Moscow to Riga in Latvia, killing Soviet couriers L. F. Pecherskiy, Theodor Nette and his partner, with the apparent goal of stealing a diplomatic pouch.

A crowd of 10,000 people gathered in Los Angeles to watch the funeral procession of actress Barbara La Marr.

La Marr was regarded as a great beauty and was famous for that, as well as a torrid life.  Only 29 at the time of her death, she'd been married four times.

Last edition:

Tuesday, February 2, 1926.

Labels: 1920s, 1926, baseball, British League of Nations Mandates, Diplomacy, French League of Nation Mandates, German Weimar Republic, Lebanon, Moral depravity, New York, Palestine, Populism, Syria, The written word, Weimar Germany

Tuesday, January 22, 1946. Central Intelligence Group formed.

The Truman Administration formed the Central Intelligence Group, with its official duties being:

The Central Intelligence Group is a recently created interdepartmental organization in which the State, War, Navy, and sometimes other departments participate. It coordinates all activities of the Government involved in obtaining and analyzing information about foreign countries which this country needs for its national security. It also furnishes interdepartmental analyses of this type of information or use by Government officials.

The immediate predecessor, the OSS, had been disbanded. The Group itself would evolve into the CIA very quickly.

Qazi Muhammed establishing the Republic of Mahabad. He'd be hung by Iran in 1947.

The Socialist Soviet puppet state of the Kurdish Republic of Mahabad, also referred to as the Republic of Kurdistan, (Kurdish: کۆماری کوردستان, romanized: Komarî Kurdistan; Persian: جمهوری مهاباد,) was formed in the Soviet occupied portion of northern Iran.

Last edition:

Monday, January 21, 1946. Steelworkers Strike.

Labels: 1940s, 1946, Labor unrest, Strike Wave of 1945-1946

Today In Wyoming's History: November 22, 2025. Retiring a number.

Today In Wyoming's History: November 22: 2025.  Former University of Wyoming football player and now player for the Buffalo Bills in the NFL, Josh Allen, had his UW uniform number retired prior to a UW football game against Nevada with the Pokes lost, 13 to 7.

Also, he's married to Hailee Steinfeld.

Thursday, November 5, 1925. The Big Parade.

 

Released on this day in 1925, the film is regarded as one of the greatest films about World War One.

The picture also would be associated with a level of tragedy for its stars.  John Gilbert died in 1936 at age 38 due to alcoholism.  He managed to marry four times in his short life, and was not married at the time of his death.  His costar in the film, Renee Adoree made the transition to sound movies, but died in 1933 at age 35 of tuberculosis.  She'd married twice, but was not married at the time of her death.

Born in the Russian Empire, with his true name never definitively learned, Sidney Reilly, a British spy, was executed by the Soviets.

He had a prolific career as a spy, leading to his nickname as The Ace of Spies.  He was reported a model for James Bond.  Early in his life as an emigre he went by the last name of Rosenblum, which would suggest Jewish heritage.  In the late 19th Century he seems to have worked for Scotland Yard as a paid informant on immigrant matters.  He married widow Margaret Thomas at Holborn Registry Office in London in 1898 after her husband had died under conditions that suggested poisoning, something of note as Rosenblum was working as sort of a herbalist at the time.  She was wealthy and that, by extension, made him wealthy.  Soon after that, he began his career as a spy, spying for the British and the Japanese in the lead up to the Russo Japanese War.

While it is difficult to determine the range of his activities, it is claimed that:

• He pretended to be a Russian arms merchant to spy on Dutch weapons shipments to the Boers during the Boer War.
• He obtained intelligence on Russian military defences in Manchuria for the Kempeitai.
• He obtained Persian oil concessions for the British Admiralty in events surrounding the D'Arcy Concession.
• He infiltrated a Krupp armaments plant in prewar Germany and stole weapon plans.
• He seduced the wife of a Russian minister to glean information about German weapons shipments to Russia.
• He attempted to overthrow the Russian Bolshevik government and to rescue the imprisoned Romanov family, actions which lead to his being sentenced to death in absentia.
• He served as a courier to transport the forged Zinoviev letter into the United Kingdom.

He had been lured by into the Soviet Union by the Cheka, posing as anti Soviet agents.

It's difficult to tell the overall truth of his activities.  British intelligence is notoriously able to keep its secrets for one thing.  Reilly was good at keeping them as well, and as he worked for various entities he had a strong reason to.  Like the James Bond character that's supposedly based upon him, he had a strong affinity for women and married up to three or four times, with other alleged affairs in addition.  His last marriage was to actress Pepita Bobadilla.

Last edition:

Wednesday, November 4, 1925. Now or then?

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1925 Election, Democratic Party, History repeating itself or at least rhyming, New Jersey, New York

In Memoriam. James Earl Jones

James Early Jones with Barbara and George Bush.

James Earl Jones

The legendary movie actor with the deep unforgettable voice was an Army officer in the latter stages of the Korean War.  Jones never served in Korea, but his service was notable in part because he attended Ranger school as an Army officer and was accordingly Ranger qualified.

Category:  Actor

Passed today at age 98.

Jones was an interesting figure.  He started university as a pre med major but switched to drama prior to entering the Army.  He had considered a career in the service, but a conversion to Catholicism influenced him to leave the Army as he claimed that Shakespeare and the Catholic Church were the only things in his life that were not geared towards killing.  

He played many roles, but is probably best remembered for either being Darth Vader by some, or Terence Mann in Field of Dreams.

He was a fairly private man rarely speaking of his private life, but he did late in life reveal a diabetic condition which plagued him and he was a devout Catholic, albeit with potentially irregular marriages, dating back to his time in the Army.

postscript:

I screwed t his up, as the comments note.

To make it worse, I noted his death at the time it actually happened.

Inexcusable.

Monday, October 1, 1945. The OSS disbanded.

 

The Office of Strategic Services was disbanded.

Due to a clerical error, it had only been given ten days to wrap up.

King Leopold III of Belgium arrived in Switzerland from Austria and issued a proclamation to the Belgian people defending his actions during the war.

June Allyson appeared on the cover of Life.

Last edition:

Thursday, September 27, 1945. Emperors meet.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, 1945 at the movies, Douglas MacArthur, Hirohito, Japan, Movies, Occupation of Japan, Rome, World War Two

Thursday, September 25, 1975. Three Days of the Condor and Oliver Sipple.

President Ford sent a letter of thanks to disabled former Marine and Vietnam War veteran Oliver Sipple, who had stopped Sara Jane Moore's assassination attempt earlier in the week.  Earlier in the week Sipple, who was living and working in San Francisco, had been outed as a homosexual by San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen who had received tips from homosexual activists Reverend Ray Broshears and Harvey Milk.

Milk knew Sipple and claimed to be a friend of his, but neither man had his permission to reveal his homosexuality and Sipple, who had been badly wounded in Vietnam, had never told his family.  As a result, his family disowned him for a time and the stress of the situation was something he never really recovered from.  He descended into alcohol and depression and killed himself in 1989.

Milk has come down as a  hero, and even briefly had a ship named after him, which was renamed this year.  But outing Sipple was a lousy thing to do.

I managed to miss the incident that Sipple is associated with, which was the September 22, 1975 assassination attempt by Sar Jane Moore.  Sipple's quick reactions foiled the attempt, combined with the fact that Moore had purchased the handgun she used only that morning, after one she was familiar with was confiscated by the police the prior day.

Three Days of the Condor was released on this day in 1975.

This is an excellent Cold War thriller based on an underground movement in the US that's operating a shadowy independent mission.  Robert Redford, who passed away yesterday, plays the lead character.  The plot of the film involved Redford's character being a CIA analysts who reads books and steps out during the day, only to find his entire section murdered when he returns.  He flees and is pursued by what turns out to be rogue elements of the CIA.  Every actors portrayal in the movie is excellent, but the most intriguing character is a European assassin played by Max von Sydow.

Following the Vietnam War, the public was learning a lot about the CIA and frankly the FBI for the first time, all of which made the movie's plot seem credible.  Frankly, back where we now are, it seems credible once again.

Oddly enough, the Church Committee revealed that the CIA had a gun designed to shoot toxic pellets to induce a heart attack just prior to this.

The cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show was also released on this day.

Last edition:

Friday, September 19, 1975. No cash.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Cambodia, Currency, Education

In Memoriam. Claudia Cardinale

Tunisian born Claudia Cardinale has died at age 87.  Her entry into film came after being chosen as the most beautiful girl in Tunisia, where her Sicilian parents were immigrants.

One of the Italian (in her case Sicilian) bombshells of the 1960s, Cardinale is famous for a series of well regarded Italian movies, but perhaps best known in the US (outside of film aficionados) for her unlikely role as the Mexican heroin in The Professionals and again as the heroin in Once Upon A Time In The West.  8 1/2 may be her best known Italian film.

She was married once, and had two children, the first of whom when she was a teenager and whom was the result of a rape.  Her parents raised that child as her brother until her true mother was revealed to him when he was eight years old.

In addition to Sicilian and English, she spoke French.

Overshadowed in the US by Sophia Loren, she was known as "Italy's girlfriend".

Tuesday, September 18, 1945. The first desegregation student protest.

White students in Gary, Indiana, walked out of their schools to protest racial integration.  It was the first such example of this in the United States, and an early effort to desegrated segregated schools.

The Red Chinese won the Battle of Xiangshuikou 

Secretary of War Henry Stimson resigned.  He'd also held the post from 1911-13 under Taft.

Stimson regarded Taft as the most efficient President he served under, and he served under more administrations than any other person in U.S. history.  He said that the best President was "Roosevelt", not making a distinction between the two Roosevelts.

Look was out, with Ingrid Bergman on the covery in her role in The Bells of St. Mary.

Last edition:

Friday, September 14, 1945. Strike!

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Belgium, Corporatism, It was because of World War Two, Labor unrest, Post WWII Occupation of Germany, Strike Wave of 1945-1945, The Post War Economy Myth, Unions

Blog Mirror: Wyoming Remembers Robert Redford For His Love Of The Wild West

Wyoming Remembers Robert Redford For His Love Of The Wild West

Tuesday, September 9, 1975. Welcome Back Kotter.

Albania issued a decree requiring minorities to adopt names reflecting a Muslim origin, which of course they did not have.  It impacted Catholic and Orthodox minorities.

Welcome Back Kotter premiered.  Set in a gritty high school class in Brooklyn, it was one of the best television series of the 1970s.  It ran until 1979, and debuted John Travolta.

Last edition:

Monday, September 8, 1975. Leonard Matlovich on Time and the UFW.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, 1980s, 1988, AIDs, homosexuality, Mental Health, Military, Personalities, U.S. Air Force, Unions, Vietnam War

Josh Allen. He's not from Wyoming you know.

Football season starts today.

But the, neither are a lot of the "Wyoming Freedom Caucus".

But I digress.  

Josh Allen is not from Wyoming.  Wyomingites worship him as if he is.

He's not. 

His connection with the state is thin.  He went to UW. That's it.

This is the sort of thing, however, that Wyomingites and Faux Wyomingites do all the time, make somebody a hero as they're theoretically from Wyoming.

Now, I have nothing against Allen.  Indeed, he married Hailee Seinfeld, and she's a fox, so he must have something going for him.

Blog Mirror: Wyoming Author Craig Johnson Remembers Actor Graham Greene, Who Died Monday

 

Wyoming Author Craig Johnson Remembers Actor Graham Greene, Who Died Monday

Sunday, August 16, 1925. Cuban Communists, Big Beer Haul, Dainty Ankles.

Backed with Soviet money the Cuban Communist Party was founded.  It became the Popular Socialist Party in 1939, and merged with Castro's Organizaciones Revolucionarias Integradas in 1961, the two becoming the Communist Party of Cuba in 1965.

The Herald noted a big beer haul, and that dainty ankles were passe.

Last edition:

Saturday, August 15, 1925.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Art

Sunday, August 5, 1945. Enola Gay and Necessary Evil.

The 20th Air Force dropped 720,000 leaflets over twelve Japanese cities.  Conventional bombing raids continued.

Gen. LeMay officially confirmed the atomic mission for the next day.

Paul Tibbets named the lead plane in the Hiroshima bombing mission the Enola Gay, after his mother.  This was done over the objection of the planes normal designated pilot, Robert Lewis, who wanted to name the plane  "The Pearl Harbor," "The Avenger," or "The USS Indianapolis".  Lewis also wasn't happy about being moved to the co-pilot's seat for the mission.

Lewis would return to civilian life after the war, and died in 1983 at age 65.

The B-29 that would take photos on the mission would be named Necessary Evil.  It featured, as many plans did, a buxom woman, albeit one clothed in a bikini, as nose art.

The Chinese 13th Army captured the town of Tanchuk. The Chinese 58th Division took Hsinning (Changchun).

Paul Ferdonet, the "Radio Traitor" of Stuttgart, was executed in France.

His pro Nazi broadcast had actually dwindled after 1942.

Oddly enough, today would have been Loni Anderson' birthday.  She passed away yesterday.

Last edition:

Saturday, August 4, 1945. Tibbets briefs his crew.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, British Army, Burma, Espionage, Imperial Japanese Army, Music, Operation Silverplate, Railroads, Swing Music, U.S. Air Force, USSR, War Crimes, Weapons, World War Two

Blog Mirror: From Barrister to Movie Actor, 1949

 

From Barrister to Movie Actor, 1949