“We are Forerunners. Guardians of all that exists. The roots of the Galaxy have grown deep under our careful tending. Where there is life, the wisdom of our countless generations has saturated the soil. Our strength is a luminous sun, towards which all intelligence blossoms… And the impervious shelter, beneath which it has prospered.”

Monday morning with Glenn Larson

by | Dec 19, 2022 | Mondays | 2 comments

Ugh, here we go again – another Monday, this one with rain and cold and misery. Not to mention, piles of work to get through because it’s the last week before Christmas, and that means EVERYTHING has to be done PDQ before everyone’s brain switches off sometime around lunchtime on Friday (if not earlier).

Nonetheless, we shall endeavour to make the best of it – because, after all, it IS Christmas season, and that is awesomesauce. So here we go with another Great Mondaydact Browser Mulcher.

This week’s theme comes to us courtesy of our good friend The Male Brain, and concerns TV legend Glenn Larson. Here is his biography:

As the creator of TV series such as Battlestar Galactica, Quincy, Magnum PI and The Fall Guy, the producer and writer Glen Larson, who has died aged 77, was one of the most astute makers of small-screen American dramas in the 1970s and 80s. He made TV gold from the most unlikely material, whether it be a show premised on a talking car (the 1982-86 drama Knight Rider, starring David Hasselhoff as a crime fighter aided by a Pontiac Trans Am with artificial intelligence), a culture-clash cop show featuring a sheriff from New Mexico transferred with his horse to crime-fighting in Manhattan (the 1970-77 series McCloud, starring Dennis Weaver) or the Mormon beliefs that he mobilised in the creation of the science-fiction series Battlestar Galactica (1978).

Larson also used the musical skills he had developed during the 1950s and 60s with the close-harmony vocal quartet the Four Preps to write many of the theme songs for his TV shows. He composed The Unknown Stuntman for the opening credits to his 1981-86 series The Fall Guy, about a stuntman, played by Lee Majors, moonlighting as a bounty hunter. In 1979, he was nominated for a Grammy for his score for Battlestar Galactica.

“I would like to think we brought a lot of entertainment into the living room,” Larson said. That achievement was scarcely matched by awards. He never won an Emmy, despite three nominations, two for producing McCloud and one for Quincy. His greatest honour was to be awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1985.

For Larson was also one of TV’s most controversial figures, branded by the Star Trek writer Harlan Ellison as “Glen Larceny” for taking film concepts for his TV shows. The first series he created, Alias Smith and Jones (1971-73), a western starring Peter Duel and Ben Murphy as outlaw cousins trying to go straight, was a case in point. Critics noted it had a similar premise to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, the 1969 William Goldman-scripted western starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Larson said only that his series was “certainly in the genre of Butch Cassidy, a new wave western”.Other Larson creations had big-screen, and occasionally TV, precursors. McCloud was said to have borrowed from the Don Siegel film Coogan’s Bluff (1968) starring Clint Eastwood; and the comedy series BJ and the Bear (1979-81), about the adventures on the road of a trucker and his pet chimp, bore similarities to Eastwood’s 1978 film Every Which Way But Loose (Eastwood played a trucker with an orangutan). Larson said that the series was akin, too, to the Burt Reynolds film Smokey and the Bandit (1977).

He conceded that Magnum PI (1980‑88), starring Tom Selleck as a luxuriantly moustachioed private detective in Hawaii, was influenced by his fondness for the 1960s CBS cop show Hawaiian Eye. He reckoned that the prototype for Knight Rider was another TV series, The Lone Ranger, saying: “If you think about him [Michael Knight, the show’s hero] riding across the plains and going from one town to another to help law and order, then KITT [his car] becomes Tonto.”

“Television networks are a lot like automobile manufacturers, or anyone else who’s in commerce,” Larson once explained. “If something out there catches on with the public … I guess you can call it ‘market research’.”In the early 1970s, Larson visited the set of The Rockford Files, the comedy detective series starring James Garner. Garner, who in The Garner Files (2011) described Larson as a “thief”, accused him of plagiarising storylines from the show and punched him so hard that he “flew across the kerb, into a motor home, and out the other side”. Garner said: “I only hit him with my left hand. If I’d hit with my right, I would have killed him.”

In 1978, Fox studios unsuccessfully sued Universal for infringing Star Wars copyrights in the making of Battlestar Galactica. Even though Battlestar Galactica featured special effects supervised by John Dykstra, who had also worked on Star Wars, Larson preferred to regard his series, about a fleet of spaceships wandering the galaxies, and starring Lorne Greene and Richard Hatch, as influenced by another movie. He described it as “Wagon Train heading toward Earth”. Larson had been working on versions of the drama for a decade: an earlier version was called Adam’s Ark, and in this and Battlestar, Larson applied much Mormon theology to his deep-space drama.

“I was vested emotionally in Battlestar, I really loved the thematic things,” he recalled. Each episode of the drama cost a then-exorbitant $1m and ratings were not high – as a result the series was cancelled after 24 episodes. An inveterate recycler, Larson reused some of the sets, costumes and effects from Battleship Galactica for his 1979 sci-fi series Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.

Larson’s shows themselves influenced later ones. Without Quincy (1976‑83), which starred Jack Klugman as a Los Angeles-based medical examiner, such forensic dramas as CSI would be unthinkable. Larson was responsible for successfully adapting Martin Caidin’s 1972 novel Cyborg as The Six Million Dollar Man (1973-78), with Lee Majors as a former astronaut supercharged with bionic implants – a conceit that influenced such cyborg franchises as RoboCop and the Terminator. And in 2004 a rebooted version of Battlestar Galactica, with Larson listed merely as “consulting producer”, was made to great critical acclaim.

Larson was born in Long Beach, California. He started in show business in 1956 when he was signed, with three others singers, to Capitol Records. The Four Preps recorded hits such as Twenty Six Miles (Santa Catalina), Big Man, Dreamy Eyes and Down by the Station, many of them co-written by Larson. He decided to pursue a career in television and sold a story idea for a 1966 episode of The Fugitive. By 1968 he had become associate producer on It Takes a Thief, a drama starring his Hollywood high school contemporary Robert Wagner.

In his heyday, Larson had as many as five TV shows running at the same time on American TV networks. But his influence waned during the 1980s thanks to such relative flops as Automan, Manimal and The Highwayman. In 1997, he adapted the Ultraverse comic Nightman, which lasted two series.

Cinema versions of Knight Rider, Manimal and The Six Million Dollar Man have been floated by Hollywood in recent years; and the Hollywood director Bryan Singer is making a film version of Battlestar Galactica, based not on the 2004 critics’ favourite, but on Larson’s original.

Bottom line: if you are my age or older, you grew up watching at least one of his shows. I assuredly did – I have very happy memories of watching The A-Team and Knight Rider as a kid.

Here is the man himself:

That is an EPIC manstache.

Let us have some memes based on the shows he produced:

True that
Probably
Yes, there aren’t all that many of them. Too bad though
If you are Gen-Xer, you too had run slowly to imitate the show
We love it too
That was also a good show
Also a good show, and you can see an example of why he was called “Glen Larceny”

And a video to wash it all down:


#BasedTucker is Based

Dec 12, 2022

Dec 13, 2022

Dec 14, 2022

Dec 15, 2022

Dec 16, 2022


Dawn of Battle

The Male Brain has lots of good stuff for us this week. We start with an intriguing mashup from Barry Walts that will appeal to the WH40K fanboys among us, looking at the various factions through the eyes of the Crazy Christ:

(I got into a bit of a kerfuffle with members of James Delingpole‘s Telegram channel about the Crazy Christ. It’s a weird place for a discussion, to say the least – and considerably less genial than my own channel, where I am happy to say the members are quite easy-going and good fun to converse with. But, if you’re willing to deal with the loonies, have a look.)

Moving on – Moon takes a close look at Tencent:

Prof. Ryszard Legutko stood up in the European Parliament and dropped some serious truth-bombs on the assembly, leading to severe butthurt among many of them – including Ursula von der Loony:

Radical Living straight-up rips off Steven He and turns German into a difficulty mode:

Poor Krauts. Also – what’s Krautspeak for “Emotional Damage!!!”? I’ll bet it is yet another 15-syllable compound German word…

Next up is a trilogy of greatness from Black Pigeon Speaks, aka Felix Rex:

That last one explains perfectly why sportzball is STOOPID.

One more from ReasonTV about the failures of SBF and FTX:


Poli-ticking Off

Mark Dice talks at length about the depth and degree of CIA control over the news (((media)))))))))))):


The dynamic duo over at Redacted reckon the Empire of Lies is preparing yet another false flag in Serbia, to force Russia to split its attention over multiple fronts:

This is a direct extension of that RAND Corporation study, Extending Russia, which said the best way to keep Russia off-balance was to sanction the country and keep it off-balance to the greatest extent possible by forcing the Russians to deal with multiple exogeneous threats.

Guess what – the Daemoncrats, under Fake President and his Feikh & Ghey Maladministration, has attempted to do precisely those things, and Russia is now stronger than ever.

Trying to attack Russia via Serbia isn’t likely to destroy the Russian government. It is much more likely to destroy the West instead. Unfortunately, the neoclowns and neolibs, the vampiric Pharisatanists who control the world, are incapable of understanding higher-order consequences of their actions.


Jackson Hinkle examines the aftermath of Friday’s heavy strikes against the 404th UkReich by the Russians – in which they made extensive use of decoys, to force the hohols to expend their limited supplies of anti-air missiles:


Дед Сварливый Говорит!

Grandpa Grumpuss grumps, grumpily, about the Lend-Lease Act and how it helped the Soviet Union win WWII, but was by no means a decisive factor at all:


It’s All Greek To Us

The good gentlemen of The Duran dissect the recent, very revealing, interview between the Banderite-in-Chief of the 404th UkReich’s Ukromacht forces and the neolib-controlled kitty-litter substitute known as The Economist:


China Syndrome

China Uncensored wonders whether the country’s Zero-Coof policy is actually dead:

I wouldn’t wager against the CPC. They actually do understand how to effectively and completely control the Chinese people, and if relaxing the stringent and stupid Zero-Coff policies helps them to do so, they will do it. They aren’t quite as crazy or as dumb as the globalists in the Empire of Lies.


Winston Sterzel aka serpentza has a lot to say about a recent and very odd episode in the country:


Digging to China reports, albeit through a pro-Western lens, on the rapidly warming ties between the Saudis and the Chinese, which seriously threatens dollar dominance:


The Bald Truth

Brian Berletic of The New Atlas breaks down the rather sad realities of Patriot PAC-3 missile systems to the 404th UkReich:


Semper Fi!

Maj. Scott Ritter talks turkey with Judge Andrew Napolitano about the latest sitreps from the Banderastan War frontlines:


Warrior’s Rage

Col. Douglas Macgregor talks to Lcayton Morris from Redacted about the coming Russian offensive in Banderastan:


Righteous Rantery

Lord Razor of the Fist Clan does not buy into the concept of “get woke, go broke” – but he does believe that corporate woketardery is a great sign of a future buyout, and then massive headc(o)unt reductions, and rephrases it as “go broke, get woke, ultimately CROAK!”. And he demonstrates this by unpacking the absolute state of the kitty-litter substitute known as The Washington Compost:


PJW notes the effects of MUH DUHVERSITEEEEEEEZ!!! in France, following Moroccan victories and defeats in the sportzball cup:


The irrepressible, inimitable Katie Hopkins gives the Beeb a serious dose of harsh medicine:


Bad Medicine

Dr. John Campbell pours scorn on a seemingly sensible but actually absoutely ludicrous new paper that claims the not-not-vaxxed are MORE susceptible to road accidents than the jabbed:


Dr. Aseem Malhotra, once a fervent proponent of the not-vaxxes, and now very much against them, spoke candidly with Clayton Morris of Redacted to explain why the data about the clot-shots are so horrifying:


Culture Club

Ania K from Through The Eyes Of was able to go to Moscow last week – I am positively GREEN with envy – and managed to visit one of my absolute favourite art galleries anywhere in the WORLD, to boot – the legendary Tret’yakov gallery:

I cannot tell you just how jealous I am. The Tret’yakovskaya area of Moscow is really beautiful, and the gallery itself has an astonishing collection of Russian artwork dating back hundreds of years. Here is one of the most famous examples – a painting famous the world over, called “The Apotheosis of War” by Vasily Vereshchagin:

I’ve seen it several times. It is far more chilling when you see it in person. I assure you, this is but a simple example of the immense talent and variety on display at that gallery. The only one in the world that compares favourably to it, in my personal opinion, is the Tate Britain in London – my favourite art gallery outside of Russia.

(First person to mention The Louvre in the comments will have to defend the fact that it’s constantly crawling with Frogs and, increasingly, Chinks and Ayrabs and niggaz. Not my idea of fun, to be honest.)


Warriors of Faith

Tha Dizzle did a great Christmas live stream with his good buddy, Apostate Prophet:


Dr. Jay Smith from PfanderFilms unpacks one of the most concrete sets of evidence that shows us how wrong the Standard Izzlamic Narrative really is:


Al-Fadi from CIRA International talks to Adam Seeker about the horrifying realities of Izzlamist scripture:


Manly Men of Manliness

Terrence Popp dispenses some tough love for men:


Joker from Better Bachelor has plenty to say about everyone’s favourite Australian hot mess, Jana Hocking:


Burn Paedowood to the Ground

Midnight’s Edge explain how Patty Jenkins just destroyed her own career:


Overlord Dicktor Van Doomcock reckons the House of the Devil Mouse has finally started listenng to the fans:

I wouldn’t hold my breath about that one, honestly.


Gary from Nerdrotic reckons Netherflix’s flagship streaming show is now doomed, thanks to its idiot writing staff:


Ryan Kinel is quite impressed by the sheer spectacle of Jennifer Lawrence‘s self-immolation:


The Drinker watches the Willow remake – whatever that is – so you don’t have to:


Reading Too Much Into Things

Your “Science is F***ING WEIRD” moment of the week

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspor.2022.829093/full


Your long read of the week is from Boyd D. Cathey, in the form of a very good article that captures the true nature and spirit of Christmas:

The sin of Adam—Original Sin—affected all mankind and left descendants marked, indelibly stained by that original fault. Adam’s sin was a form of disobedience, but a disobedience so grave and monumental against God’s Creation, that only the Coming of the Messiah, the Second Person of the Trinity of the Godhead, could repair it. And the Son of God would be Incarnate in a woman who would be pure and herself Immaculate, untouched by the inheritance of sinfulness (by the merits of her Son). Only such a pure womb would be fitting for the Incarnate God. And only the Incarnation into one of His creatures would serve the purpose of demonstrating that Our Blessed Saviour would come to us, not only as God, but also in the form of Man—this was fitting because it was to Mankind that He was sent.

For hundreds of years the People of Israel had awaited the coming of a Messiah to lead them, to liberate them and, if you will, to repair Adam’s Fall. But this vision—whether expressed in the revolts of the Maccabees or in later violent episodes like the revolt of Simon bar Kokhba against the Romans (132 A.D.)—implied not just satisfaction for sinful ways, but increasingly the establishment of an earthly and insular kingdom for and of the Hebrews.

And although Our Lord and Saviour indeed came first to the Jews, and offered them His reparative Grace and Salvation, it was by no means to be limited to them. Indeed, His message was universal (as it had been to Abraham). And those Hebrews who accepted the Messiah—and those gentiles who also joined them—became the Church, the “New” Israel, receptor of God’s Grace and holder of His Promises and carrier of His Light unto all the world.

While a majority of old Israel rejected Our Lord, demanding His Crucifixion before Pilate, those who followed Him and believed in Him entered the New Covenant, a New Testament. It is in this sense that the Christian church inherited the promises of Israel and the Old Testament and fulfilled those prophesies. And that fulfillment continues.

St. Paul in his Epistle to Titus [2:11-15] summarizes both the dazzling and miraculous wonder of Our Saviour’s Grace amongst us and its inexhaustible power to transform us, as we await His final Coming in Glory: “The grace of God our Saviour hath appeared to all men, instructing us, that, denying ungodliness and worldly desires, we should live soberly and justly and godly in this world, looking for the blessed hope and coming of the glory of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ: Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and might cleanse to Himself a people acceptable, a pursuer of good works. These things speak and exhort: in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

We—the Christian church, those chosen out of Grace who accept God’s gifts—are in a journey to that final day when Our Lord will return. We have been given for that journey the armament of Our Lord’s graces in the Sacraments and through His love, our Faith, and a Hope that whenever we are tempted to despair, pulls us back and redirects our vision.

In these darkening and terrible times, let us never forget the core message of Our Lord when He came to Earth and dwelt among us:

We are in an existential spiritual war against immortal evil. We will WIN. But we will suffer and take tremendous losses before that final victory. None of that changes the fact that our victory is assured.

The Lord has saved us who believe, through the holy blood of the sinless Christ. The birth of Our Lord in human form is the greatest message of hope ever delivered. We must always remember that hope, hold on to it, even in the darkest of times.


Linkage is good for you:

And some more from Dawn Pine:


MUH RUSHIAN KAHLOOOOOZHUN!!!

The Neo-Tsar dropped a truth-bomb – more like a MOAB, really – on the subject of how the EU has allowed itself to become a vassal of the Empire of Lies:


Those Who Fail To Learn From History…

History lessons of the week:


Your Great Man of the Week is Nebuchadnezzar the Great of Babylon:


HALO Nation

Remy aka Mint Blitz does his thing while talking about the future of the HALO canon following the events of HALO Infinite:


Learning at the Master’s Feet

Nerd of the Rings discusses the history of Yavanna:


Bring on the Grimdark

I have to admit, the Space Marine 2 trailer looks ALL KINDS OF BADASS:

Also, in case anyone has ever wondered whether US Marines would be able to out-BAMF a Blood Angels chapter-brother, wonder no longer:


That’s Not Gone Well…

Wazzocks gonna wazzock:

Now I want to go try some Hawkstone Lager, to see if it really is “F***ing Good”.


Kitchen Nightmares with the Angry Scot:


Comedy hour:

DEFINITELY there myself

Meme Warfare

Indeed not – that’s why God taught us how to make nooses
I just call them “Satan’s Cockholes” – it is rather more graphic, but quite appropriate
To be fair, in Australia, this is an entirely necessary method of spider control
Mildred there is a smart woman
They could at least have spelled Viktor’s name right…

OK, we need proof of-

‘Murica

Never mind.

One for the dads
It’s certainly a society that deserves the fire-and-brimstone treatment…
*warm fuzzies*
The single greatest argument against dumbocracy, is a five-minute conversation with the average voter

Animal Planet

Your aminules are adorkable moment of the week:

And also your animals are absolute DICKS/nightmare fuel moment of the week, to balance things out:

Oh, you’re looking for a red-haired clown? Don’t worry, I ate him already

And finally, your “Meanwhile, in Russia” moment of the week:

That is one SERIOUSLY fat cat

The Lords of Steel

Gym beast props this week go to Shane Hunt:


Ass-Kicking of the Eight Limbs


They See Me Rollin’…


Palate Cleansers

Shuffle Off

Jump-Starts

Gingervitis Injections


Livin’ in the Land of the Metal Gods

Also Einstein: “I fear that someday people will post my pic on the Internet with bogus made-up quotations in Comic Sans font”

Rock Out With Your Glock Out


Hot Totty

We come to it at last – the Instathot of our time. Or at least, of this Monday, anyway. Rather fittingly, given the well-known tastes of yer very ‘eavy, very ‘umble servant, she is Slavic. Normally, she would be a prime candidate for the Friday series, except for three glaring issues:

  • Plastic – probably a decent amount of it;
  • Filters – far too many of them;
  • Tattoos – LOTS of them;

So, sadly for her, she gets relegated to the Monday section, which is where we typically put the statutory warnings and life lessons. This here is Maria Abramovich, which almost certainly is not her real name, from Minsk, Belarus.

OK, that’s it, drag your tired asses off to work for the last week before we can all take some time off over Christmas.

Subscribe to Didactic Mind

* indicates required
Email Format

Recent Thoughts

If you enjoyed this article, please:

  • Visit the Support page and check out the ways to support my work through purchases and affiliate links;
  • Email me and connect directly;
  • Share this article via social media;

2 Comments

  1. furor kek tonicus ( of course the Derp State people telling you that men can get pregnant are claiming that Russia bombed Nordstream )

    Stephan Bonnar passed this week. according to one of his last vids, it sounds like he had a staph infection in his spine and it might have spread to his heart.
    .
    the American Psycho has not had a good time of it the last couple of years.

    Reply

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Didactic Mind Archives

Didactic Mind by Category