(no subject)

Happy birthday

to

c_mantix

Wish I could go to Toronto for the giant birthday party for Aquitaine and that ATPoBTVSATS kid! I hope they don't squabble over the toys!

Stream o' thinkin': TV edition

I read in the paper this morning that Don Herbert, Mr. Wizard, has died. Like all attempts at educational shows for kids in the early days of TV, Watch Mr. Wizard was a little awkward. Specifically it didn't appeal to every kid. When it first came on in 1953, I was too young for it, the splashy demo at the end of the show was always fun, but it was a little tough for a pre-schooler to follow. My older brother liked the show quite a bit, and my mother dreaded him trying to copy the experiments. As I got older and understood more I liked it, too. Mr. Wizard went off the air where I lived long before it did altogether, so other people's memories of that early version may be different. The things I remember were that Mr. Wizard always took what he was doing seriously, which I think was a failing of Bill Nye the Science Guy. Mr. Wizard pretty much taught that science was just trying to understand the world around us, that experiments were fun, but they served a purpose (and not in the idiotic "the purpose of this experiment is..." vein either). I saw one show of the Mr. Wizard revival on cable in the 1970's, but it neither seemed entertaining like competing science shows of the 1970's nor instructive enough compared to the old show.

I think one reason I liked Don Herbert as a kid was that he reminded me of the actor Richard Carlson, who was starring in sci-fi flicks about the same time Mr. Wizard debuted. Carlson also played a spy on the TV series I led Three Lives, a bit of cold war TV paranoia. He never got beyond B-movies as a star, but sci-fi movies in those days were B-movies. I sort of think his knowledgeable yet excitable characters were an influence on the kind of acting William Shatner did before WS started making a living being a caricature of himself.