$4 Pancake Vs. $88 Pancake

 I want, I want and I need, I need.

Treasure Island is a Terrible Kid's Movie

I remember one day in elementary school, they gathered perhaps the entire school together into the gymnasium and showed us "Treasure Island" (1950) using the old projector and screen. I have no idea why, I would love to know. Do school faculties just decide one day that they don't feel like teaching so let's just watch a movie? My best guess is it might have been weather. I'm not sure but I think it was raining all day so they cancelled all recess or something. Is that possible? Don't know.

Regardless of the cause, it's always been quite a distinct memory for me and what I remember is this: it seemed to last forever. It was just a single movie and, I suppose, was just a single day but the movie was able to alter the nature of time and space and fit an eternity into just one afternoon. It went on and on and on, it was relentless; not only would it not end, it seemed to have no beginning or middle such that I could estimate how far along we were. 30 years later, I decided to watch it again to give it a re-evaluation. My first observation: in objective terms, the running time is 1 hour, 36 minutes. 

Having re-watched it, I absolutely understand the problem I had as a kid. It's a terrible kid's movie. And I don't think it's bad for kids because it has alcohol or murder or guns, or even that it shows a child shooting a man in the face. I think all that's great. It's a terrible kid's movie because it's unintelligible.

Perhaps audiences in the fifties were different but the makers of the movie seem to have made no attempt to update the dialogue for modern audiences. I made a note of a few lines. Imagine a child following this:

"You'll get plenty of cut and rip when the times comes, but until I gives the signal, lay to."

Now, I'm an adult an I can use the context to piece together what's meant here but kid-me had no chance. How about this line:

"I imagine I'll have to strike my colors. That comes hard from a master mariner to a ship's yonker like you, Jim."

It's a movie about sailors and pirates so some mariner lingo is going to be inevitable but come on. It's the rule of threes, so how about this:

"Picked up Hawke's old helmsman, we did, and a bosun what pipes man-o'-war fashion."

My word. Compounding the dialogue is that the lines are delivered with some thick English accents and recorded on equipment from the fifties and when I saw it, it was probably played on a loudspeaker in an auditorium. At one point a character is giving instruction to the main character with his dying breaths. He seems to say "And don't beach and I'll go bears". Listening to it again, it might be "And don't go peach and I'll go pears." It's about fruit? Turning on the closed captions, the real text is "And don't peach and I'll go shares." Oh, I see, I never had a chance to begin with. Neat.

Not to belabor the point, but it is the crux of my point that I have a good sound system, I have the closed captions on, I'm an adult - I've read and enjoyed "Pride and Prejudice" - and I can't understand "Treasure Island." And this is for kids?

All that aside, even if I don't understand it, it's technically an old classic and so I wondered what the stars of it went on to do later.

The main character is a child star, Bobby Driscoll, and he looked kind of familiar to me. I bet he went on to be an adult in some movies I've seen. Well, he was a child star in Disney movies but when he developed a bad acne problem, his contract was terminated and he couldn't find work. He later developed a drug problem and hung out with Andy Warhol. "On March 30, 1968, two playing children found his dead body in an abandoned East Village tenement. Believed to be an unclaimed and homeless person, he was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave on Hart Island, where he remains."

Hmm. Well, how about Long John Silver? Robert Newton created a character so iconic that he altered the perception of pirates forever. Every actor and every person you hear doing a "pirate voice" is really just doing an imitation of Robert Newton. He's a legendary actor, what roles did he go on to? Newton was an alcoholic and had trouble finding work when he became increasingly unreliable. "He died at age 50 of alcohol-related causes although the official report was a heart attack."

Alright, I'm done.

Preston and Steve - Ugly Lady

 

Experiments into the Nature of Reality

In Descartes' "Meditations on First Philosophy", he attempts to construct a system of Reality by identifying those things that one can know for sure, and then having established the "foundation", hopefully working outwards. One of his arguments (with himself) is how do you know that reality isn't just a dream. How do you know you're not dreaming right now?

Can we devise a simple test of determining dream from reality?

The Test of Feeling

 My intuition tells me that one can tell dream from reality by some sort of feeling. It can't be defined exactly, but reality feels real and dreams are, well, dreamlike. Therein lies the root of this post, because I have run that test and run it repeatedly and never been correct.

I have, very occasionally, in the past, had a euphoric dream where something happens to me that is so good that it is almost literally unbelievable. And almost as often as this happens, my pessimism, even in the dream, will kick in and I will think to myself, "This is a little too good to be true, am I dreaming right now?" And so I do whatever one does to make this determination: I think, I consider, I look at the world around me, I try to determine whether I am currently awake. Looking deep down, examining my thoughts/mind to the deepest levels I can, I absolutely HAVE to conclude that I'm really awake. Every single time, it's been the same and I've always been wrong. As much as we might assume dreams feel differently, they don't in any way that I know of.

The Test of Waking

One test might be: you transition into reality by waking up but in dreams there is no waking up, therefore you can tell them apart. The problem with this is that I've had dreams where I've woken up within the dream. In fact, there was one time where I woke up from a dream, was still dreaming, and then woke up from that dream and was still dreaming. I was two levels deep and "woke up" three times before I was really awake.

 The Test of Continuity

Another test might be that when you are in reality, you may remember your dream, but in your dream you won't remember reality. This is pretty similar to the Test of Waking - it amounts to having the transition in one but not the other. You might combine them both and say that since you are aware of your dream in reality and not aware of your awakened life in your dream, the awakened life is more real as much as the highest reality encompasses the lesser realities.

The problem with this test is people, like myself, who usually don't remember their dreams. If the test of reality is being aware of dreams, then you must conclude reality isn't real when you don't. This test is also defeated on the other side by the "dream within a dream" problem.

As a speculation, I've never tried to remember yesterday from within a dream, but I imagine this test would also fail in that if you tried to remember yesterday in a dream, your mind would come up with a false yesterday.

The Test of "Screens"

This is more an idea than any concrete test. Lots of people find that in their dreams, there are never "screens" - smartphones, laptops, computers, television. Or, when there are, they don't work properly. It's apparently very rare to properly look at a screen and see a correct visual image in a dream. I find this generally holds true for me, I've had dreams of screens but they usually are not working as I would like and I get frustrated. 

I have had at least one experience where I've used a smartphone in a dream and everything worked fine, so this is not a perfect test. I suppose it at least is the best idea so far, as long as you judge by percentages.

The Test of Perfect Predictions

This final idea is the most tenuous of all and, for all I know, only applies to me. I find in dreams a strange phenomenon that whenever I come up with an idea or predict something, I am right 100% of the time (as far as I can remember).

Say for instance, I hear a low rumble coming from behind a hill. If I think "I wonder if that's a snowmobile", it will turn out to be a snowmobile. Or if I meet someone and theorize that they're a banker, if I find out what they do, they will turn out to be a banker. It seems to me that the mechanism of guessing and the mechanism of dreaming may be locked together in some fundamental way that doesn't allow differentiation.

So perhaps making a prediction and finding it to be wrong is proof that you're awake. Even if this were correct, it would be better to have a test for whether you're dreaming - I guess if you make a correct guess, you have to keep guessing. It's another probabilistic test.

 The Test of Whatever They Do in Inception

 No idea.

Conclusion

The weird thing about all of this conjecture is that there was one time I correctly realized within a dream that it was a dream. But it was only once and I don't know how it was done. I once had a dream when I was a kid that on the bureau next to my bed was a Bat Phone. I was a big fan of the 1960s Adam West Batman and I loved that red phone that lit up when someone was calling. In the dream, I had one and then I thought (again, the pessimism) "Wait a minute, do I really have a Bat phone? No, I don't. This must all be a dream." That was the only time in my life I can remember realizing a dream was a dream. I don't know how it happened and I think I woke up shortly after.

Game Grumps - Today is Football

 

Late Night - Rick Ocasek Scandal

 I don't know if this is a classic Conan bit, I don't know if it's even above average, but I still think of it often and I was glad to finally see it online.

I wonder if this inspired the "Celebrity Secrets" segment that I believe started later on.

Worf Saves the Day

 

Conan - Renovating Jordan Schlansky's Office

It's sad that Conan has devolved to the point that even a Jordan Schlansky segment feels false and forced. But there are still some highlights that make it worthwhile.

 

It's so contradictory how Jordan wants people to think that he's erudite, composed, an intellectual, that he has it all together and yet he keeps his office messy and piled high with garbage like a hoarder. What an enigma.

Star Trek: The Captain's Summit

 For the Trekkies. Riker, Picard, Spock and Kirk sit down to discuss Star Trek.

Steamed Hams But It's Take On Me

 

Half in the Bag - Bill and Ted Face the Music

 Still trying to decide if I want to buy this movie for streaming. $25 is pretty non-triumphant.