Ramblings and Musings of the Insane, Philosophical Ladybug

So Livejournal has been a pain for the last 24 hours or so. They're not delivering some of the notifications they should be delivering, and many of the pictures on the Friends page will not load. UGH!

And on to more pleasant matters. **cuddles Captain Scofield.** 56 and still perfectly adorable. And I love how the hair curls up below the hat. It's so thick and gorgeous....

I also love how well Chrissy aged. He was always recognizable. And his voice was always beautiful. Oh wow, I was just amazed at the strength and depth of his voice in the very last project he did. He was sick from cancer when he did that, but you'd never know it to hear that voice.

Another reason why I especially find Scofield a memorable Chrissy character: the episode came out the year I was born. Although it may have been filmed before the turn of the year, not sure on that.

I'm really enjoying the Riptide DVD set. I've been watching some of the other episodes and loving them all. There is great camaraderie between the three detectives. I wrote a oneshot fic to wrap up loose ends in Chrissy's episode; it probably won't be long and I'll start a multi-chapter sequel to the episode. More on that in a bit.

So I mentioned recently wanting more of the boy Ponies to represent darlings. Well, of course, right after I posted that, I discovered Captain Scofield. So the Pony named Salty, a ship's captain, must of course represent him/Chrissy. I've been trying to get one for the last several days, but the boy Ponies always have flaws and it's a debate between which flaws are the least troubling. Plus, it's a struggle getting a decent price and pouncing before someone else does. The boy Ponies are popular.

I thought maybe the pirate Pony could represent Grey Holden/Darren, since pirates have ships too (and that Pony has red hair, like Darren), but I'm iffy on a pirate Pony representing any of the darlings. I assume a pirate Pony is probably more of an adventurer that doesn't steal from people, along the lines of One Piece's crew or Jake and the Neverland Pirates, but since that is completely opposite to what a real pirate does and I'd always be thinking about real pirates and wondering what the pirate Pony is considered to be "up to" in canon, I just don't know.

It's difficult figuring out Ponies to represent the darlings, since they must somehow relate to a darling by occupation/interest. 4-Speed, the truck driver, will represent Luke due to Luke playing a trucker at least once. (I want him right after I get Salty. Although I might have to try to get him first, if I can't find a decent Salty soon. I know where there's a 4-Speed or two that's pretty good.) There's a train engineer Pony too, but I'm not sure who he'd represent. I think Jim West is the only character of interest associated with trains, but I could just get the actual Jim West figure to represent him. (Something I still want to do sometime.) Artemus Gordon is honestly not one of my "darlings" on any tier (and Jim is actually only a casual crush, not a dead serious one like Chrissy), although I do like and respect Ross Martin's acting talents and think he has a lovely smile.

Oh, wait a minute! Squeeee, the train Pony will represent Simon, because I remember Simon played a railroad detective on The Virginian! Yay! I'm so happy there will be a Simon Pony. I was wondering who could represent him. I was previously thinking Salty would have to represent Simon as well as Chrissy, as Simon played some wonderful sailors too. But I'd much rather have each Pony represent one single darling.

The two sports-related Ponies, for baseball and football, I'm at a loss about. I don't think any of my darlings have played sports figures. I do know that Wesley played football in real-life, so I thought possibly the football Pony could represent him in a pinch.

Then there's the Mountain Boys, Ponies representing various weather phenomenon. I don't know what darlings they could represent, but a bigger problem is that they're U.K. releases only and very rare and expensive. I'd be lucky just to get the U.S. boy Ponies I want!

I want Chief, the fireman Pony, to represent William Boyett and also be the husband for my Pony Bride. Unfortunately, of the U.S. Ponies, he's one of the most difficult to get in decent condition and at a decent price. But the other U.S. boy Ponies I either planned to keep single or else are otherwise not what I wanted as a match for Pony Bride. Maybe the train/Simon Pony could be the husband, if I can get him easier than Chief.

Then I learned of a girl Pony with a boat theme: Mainsail. She's a beautiful blue and has sailboat symbols all over her. I immediately fell in love with her and she is a big want too. I also decided I wanted her to be connected with Salty, but not by marriage, so either a sister or a daughter. (Or a friend.) That then developed into an idea of considering giving Captain Scofield a daughter in a fic, since Salty is to represent him.

I've been toying with assorted backstories; it would make Scofield another of the few characters I write who had a failed marriage. But since I really don't like the tired cliche of inventing family members for canon characters (other than a mother and a father, which of course they'd have to have), I don't know whether I really want to go through with the idea of a daughter. She could be a liar, someone just pretending to be a daughter, but that would be sad and I wouldn't want the Mainsail Pony to represent a crook just out to get Salty's/Scofield's money (or whatever she'd want from him).

However, the daughter idea was the only idea I had for a Riptide multi-chapter. Maybe, since I want to write more for Scofield, I'll try writing a Sea Hunt story with him in it while I try to figure out the daughter problem for a Riptide fic. I realized Scofield would fit perfectly into a Sea Hunt fic. And I'd love to write Mike Nelson being suspicious of him at first and then realizing, as did the Riptide crew, that he is an honorable man.

But regardless of what I decide story-wise, I want the Mainsail Pony just because she's gorgeous. I'm debating whether to get a really nice one that's available now or if I should keep trying to get Salty first, since he is my first want at the moment. Since it could be a while before I find a Salty that's just right for me, I don't know if I should let the Mainsail sail by in the meantime. I rarely ever see her at the Arena, where I buy most of my Ponies, so I figured I'd just be getting the one I see on eBay. It's possible she's on eBay a lot, though, even if she's not generally on the Arena. Since I just became aware of her, I just started doing eBay searches for her the other day. And now that I want the train Pony to represent Simon, I'd better go back and see the prices for him.

Decisions, decisions....

So Netflix has a disc that I thought had the pilot episode of The Rookies on it, because Darren is listed in their cast for the disc and he's in the pilot episode of The Rookies.

Well, the disc didn't have that; it's just the first episode of the series proper, which does not have Darren. And Darren wasn't in any of the other things on the disc, either. Bah.

It was kind of an interesting disc, though. It had the first episodes of five different detective shows of the 1970s. We watched all of them except The Rookies episode, ironically enough. It sounded rather blah compared to the others. Teen gangs, one of my least favorite topics ever. Ugh, I just can't stand seeing obnoxious, disrespectful kids trying to act like adults and fighting with each other over the dumbest things, like pieces of sidewalk. I totally get Lieutenant Schrank's frustrations with the gangs in West Side Story. No, he didn't handle things very well, but after so many years of trying and failing, he must have really been at his wit's end.

Anyway, the disc. Maybe we'll watch The Rookies one, but I'm not sure. When Darren's not in it, and no one else is in it whom I particularly like, and the plot sounds blah, it doesn't seem very appealing.

We watched the Starsky and Hutch episode. I'm always curious about that show because I hear how close the main characters are, but I ... really didn't see much of that in the first episode. The one guy, Hutch, really acted like a jerk at one point, even dumping Starsky's hot dog because he didn't like the idea of everything Starsky was putting on it. LAME! He tried to use the excuse that Starsky couldn't eat it while he was driving, but gosh, they could have taken it along and he could have eaten it when they stopped. Ugh, and in addition to how just plain jerky that was, I can't stand seeing perfectly good food get wasted. It's an extreme pet peeve of mine. I can't bear to watch that scene in the first Monkees episode where Davy and Theodore Marcuse are fighting on the table and ruining the food. The scene is really hilarious other than that, but ugggh, noooo, the fooood!

I suppose there are much better scenes between Starsky and Hutch in later episodes. The first episodes are rarely the best judge of character relations. But it certainly wasn't very flattering for one of my first ventures into the series. (First venture was the episode where their insane friend is hiring out as an assassin because he likes killing and he kills poor Luke Andreas in a phone booth. Nooo, Lukey! **hugs him!** And then I also saw part of another episode because someone got the numbers mixed up and I started out with the wrong one instead of the one with Luke.)

I haven't really liked the show any of the times I've tried it. I don't mind a little humor in cop shows; Adam-12 and CHiPs are adorably hilarious sometimes. But I don't like when the main characters seem to have so much trouble being serious. That's also why I didn't cotton to Alias Smith and Jones, but adore Maverick. Smith and Jones are so happy-go-lucky in addition to the show being silly, and that tends to irritate me. But on Maverick, the main characters are really the straight men, trying to deal with all the weirdness around them. There's a definite difference.

I enjoyed the Police Woman, S.W.A.T., and Charlie's Angels episodes on the disc quite a bit. I've seen some of all of them before and have always pretty much liked what I saw. Charlie's Angels is so cheesy, but gosh, it's fun. I love good old clean 1970s cheese. And David Doyle is kind of cute in a Simon Oakland-ish way. :) I already liked him from The Patty Duke Show, and I think I may be becoming downright fond of him. Must see more of this wonderful cheesy show.

With my Amazon gift cards in, I used one of them to get the Riverboat 15 episode set. It came on Monday and I've been watching the episodes I hadn't yet seen, starting with the ones on Disc 3. I love The Quick Noose, which is, I think, still season 1 (but after Burt Reynolds left). Devil in Skirts and Chicota Landing, both season 2 episodes, are very much "Eh" for me.

I've noticed that season 2 seems to focus a lot more on Grey's womanizing than season 1 did. I've only seen a handful of season 2 episodes and I'm already sick of the pattern. I want to see adventure, not Grey discovering a woman in every port! Plus, in season 1 it seemed more like Grey just encountered women he liked who then went on to other things. But in season 2 it seems more like he's just fooling around with no intent to get serious. He pretty much admitted it in Chicota Landing. Isn't it enough that Mike Hammer is that way? Why does Grey Holden have to be that way too?

And don't get me wrong, I love Noah Beery. But I'm not crazy about his character on Riverboat. I can understand him being upset about how things are going in Chicota Landing, but his matter-of-fact attitude about taking Grey's boat away from him and "letting" Grey stay on as Captain just really bugged me. He seems to be all business. I don't see any real friendship, like there was between Grey and Ben.

So this is an amusing, ironic situation. I'm not a big Burt Reynolds fan, but I love his Riverboat character. I like Noah Beery quite a bit, but I'm not impressed with his Riverboat character.

And isn't it strange, Darren McGavin and Burt Reynolds didn't get along at all, yet their characters had such an amazing rapport. It's too bad the actors didn't get along. I really wish Ben Frazer had remained. I supposed there was no explanation for his disappearance, either.

After I finish with Disc 3, I'm going to move to Disc 1 and watch The Unwilling (the episode where Grey is mostly absent, which I skipped when I had the Netflix disc out) and I will welcome Ben Frazer with open arms.

I caught Simon Oakland playing good guys in two early episodes of Gunsmoke, How to Cure a Friend and Overland Express. I am particularly thrilled with the latter. He plays a poor guy wanted for murder who only killed in self-defense. Matt and Chester are chasing him, and after a confrontation they all end up on a stagecoach back to Dodge that's marked for hijacking. And when the trouble comes down, Matt is forced to trust Simon's character, Jim Nation. Jim comes through with flying colors.

I also watched episodes 7 and 8 of Baa Baa Black Sheep. 7 was very intense, but I loved 8 the best of the two. General Moore is again especially awesome in it! He reminds me so much of a more calm Tony Vincenzo, compassionate but stern. He listened to a wild idea of Pappy's for a different way to do a dangerous mission that would be less likely to result in losing some of the men. He said that it was so crazy that only someone like him would be willing to listen to it. And he was risking a lot by agreeing to do it, but he did. I wonder if there's any other episodes that feature him taking a fairly large role in the proceedings.

And I've been loving Riverboat and Captain Grey Holden. Darren McGavin is so wonderful in the role. Grey reminds me a lot of Kolchak in some ways, particularly how he's so frank and calls them as he sees them and refuses to bow to wicked men and has a very strong sense of not allowing innocent people to be harmed.

I think I like the earlier episodes best, from what I've seen. I really love Ben Frazer's (Fraser? Frasier?) interaction with Grey. I want to do a friendship h/c fic with them (and Grey as the one hurt). I'm really quite indifferent to Burt Reynolds in general, but I liked his character Ben the moment I saw him. It felt so right for him to be there. I'd wondered if I'd have trouble liking him, but there was no problem at all.

(In spite of that, I admit I haven't watched The Unwilling yet. I only watched the parts at the beginning and the end where Grey is there. I like Ben, but Grey is the whole reason I'm watching the show. I don't really have close ties to any of the other characters yet, so if Grey isn't around I lose interest quick.)

The Fight Back is my favorite episode so far. Grey is absolutely awesome in it. And it's so intense! I just love the cold open with the burning town. Grey grabbed my attention with his opening speech.

As a general rule, I really haven't cared much for episodes focusing on Grey's love life/him romancing a girl. (I temporarily had to give up on Race to Cincinnati, because both the girl's frustrating brand of flirting and Grey crushing on her was driving me nuts.) But I do really love The Path of the Eagle (with the flashback to Marion and what happened to keep them apart) and The Fight at New Canal (where the married woman keeps making advances on Grey and he keeps to his integrity). There's a lot of hurt/comfort in those episodes, too.

I think I hit my first real dud on my search for various things. I watched Tony Rome and rather quite detested it. If it had been made in the forties I probably would have loved it, or at least, liked it more. Making it in the late sixties caused them to throw in a lot of innuendos and a couple of crude bits. Honestly, by the late sixties there are very few movies I like aside from Disney films.

But at least the whole reason why I watched the darn thing was not wasted. Simon Oakland had a very nice role as Tony Rome's client. And there was even some hurt/comfort later on when a hitman tried and failed to kill him. So I don't regret watching the movie. I would have done it sooner or later, to see him. But ugh, that movie was mediocre. And for the great majority of it I was confused out of my mind. I watched an episode of David Cassidy - Man Undercover afterwards to try to shake the rocks out of my head.

I really hope Bullitt is better than Tony Rome. Since it's culturally significant and the car chase is iconic I do have higher hopes for it.

Yesterday I watched The Big Valley episode The Secret and was thrilled. For the first time I saw Simon Oakland's character interacting with a kid. It was adorable! The whole plot of the episode was very dark and intense, too. And everything worked out in the end, which was awesome.

I'm still waiting on my first Riverboat DVD. Netflix sent a copy last week, but some moron had scratched it up and sent it back to them like that. So I've been waiting on my replacement, which should have come Monday but was scheduled for Tuesday and didn't arrive on either day. If it doesn't come today, I am going to be very annoyed. The next time I have an Amazon gift certificate handy I think I'll just buy the three-disc set. I know I'm going to want it, for Darren McGavin. I got so annoyed last week that I watched an episode elsewhere (and only later realized it's one that's on the DVD and hence, I would have rather waited to see it in higher quality on the DVD). I loved Darren's scenes.

I also rewatched I Want to Live! yesterday. It's the first time I've seen it since Simon Oakland has actually meant something to me. I love the role he has in that, of the tough but compassionate real-life journalist Ed Montgomery. And even when I didn't know who the heck Simon Oakland was, I loved that role. So now it's even more special to me.

A few days ago I switched my second claim at 30_losses from Tutu to Kolchak. I've been wanting a theme comm claim for Kolchak and the plunnies started biting when I looked at the themes again, so it was a no-brainer decision. I already have two fics done (although one is just a little drabble) and one posted.

The death fic, the posted one, came zooming out. I think it took longer to tweak some things with it than it did to write the initial first draft! I have another drabble-length idea and then I think it's on to the idea inspired by Kaze's prompt. I think I'm going to call it Mirror, Mirror.

One thing I really like about this fandom is that, considering the subject matter and the way it's presented, it should be fairly easy and IC to insert religious things here and there. The crossover fic had some, and the death fic has even more. Most fics won't have as much as the death fic, though. Considering the plot, it was a necessity there.

I've been watching some of Darren McGavin's guest-spots on other shows. I've seen all three of his Gunsmoke appearances now, as well as one on The Virginian. It's hard to narrow down favorites, but The Virginian episode The Deadly Past is definitely one of them! His character is a hired gun/mercenary who claims he doesn't ever make friends, but over the course of the events in the episode he becomes friends with the other characters and stays behind to help them in the climax even though he claims he's leaving. He ends up getting himself shot, but thankfully he survives! I just adored it.

I really like the Han Solo-type character he plays in his first Gunsmoke episode, Twenty Miles From Dodge. He's a poker-playing scoundrel who's a lot better than Kitty thinks he is. Even though he seems to be out for himself during the hostage situation, he's subtly gathering things to help all of the hostages. Plus, he struck up a rapport with a boy among the hostages. I loved watching their interaction! And I knew the boy's mother looked familiar, but I just couldn't place her. Then in the credits I saw she was Aneta Corsaut, the one who played Helen on The Andy Griffith Show!

His second Gunsmoke appearance, The Hostage (not to be confused with a later episode called Hostage!), had him playing an escaped convict, but he was innocent. He helped Marshal Dillon when the other escapees were beating up on him. That appearance also featured Simon Oakland, as the most rash and hot-headed escapee. It was a little strange to see him in that role, but I loved seeing him and Darren working together.

His third episode, which I saw first, is Gunfighter R.I.P. His character honestly enough is a bit of a jerk there, and somewhat turns me off because of that, but the episode itself is beautiful. Darren plays a gunman hired to kill Marshal Dillon, but he ends up injured when he gets involved in an unfair attack on a Chinese girl and her father and tries to protect them. He's nursed back to health by the girl and her sweetness slowly begins to change him. I would have liked to have seen more of the changes, but of course there's only so much you can do with a fifty-minute episode. The part where he becomes so protective of the girl is absolutely squeeable.

It's strange; I absolutely know without a shadow of a doubt that I was here once: http://www.darrenmcgavin.net on the subpage "Scripts" and that I read the ultimately deleted alternate ending for Gunfighter R.I.P. I don't know when I was there or why or how I ended up reading it, but when I stumbled on the site and saw it a few days ago, I knew for a fact it had happened. (My guess is that it was five years ago and I was seeking information on Jimmy's appearance on Kolchak.) I'm glad they didn't use that ending; it would have been absolutely heartbreaking and discouraging.

Someone else is interested in and knows something about Jimmy Murphy. For once, there's a birthdate floating around for him. (1935.) This is new; Wikipedia never had anything on him before. They still don't have an actual article, but it is an improvement. I'm taking it a bit with a grain of salt, since it's not mentioned somewhere like IMDB.com, but it sounds fairly accurate.

And hold that thought, I found someone who has actually had some association with him! Now to hope my email goes through....

I decided I'll need to make more breaks for The Return of Baby Face Morales then I had originally. I just put up the first of the new parts in the Dreamworld group. I'm proofreading the whole thing a second time, so when I finish that I'll probably put up all the parts in rapid succession at the fic journal.

Monday or Tuesday I receive the Knight Rider disc from Netflix that has Jimmy's second episode on it. I'm thrilled; I've wanted to see that for five years. I loved his first guest spot on the series.

... And I'll probably recall the original reason for this entry after I give up and decide to post it.

Oh! I just remembered. Among Jimmy's guest spots was an appearance on the show Kolchak: The Night Stalker. Of course, out of all the creepy things on that show, Jimmy *had* to be in the episode that featured a headless biker killing people in like manner as he was killed ("Chopper"). It took some time before I got the courage to try it, but I don't regret it. In spite of the storyline, the execution was actually quite innocuous. And I just covered my eyes during the death scenes, so I don't know how graphic they were and I don't want to know. (Although I don't think they would have been very graphic.) Jimmy's character survived, as I remembered being told five years ago in a group for the series.

I really like the actor who plays Kolchak, Darren McGavin. I've seen him for years in the Disney film No Deposit, No Return (a classic comedy), and more recently, in that film with Jerry Lewis (The Delicate Delinquent?). I really like the Kolchak character, too. He's hilarious. And I love how he's a reluctant hero. I watched another episode of the show last night (Mr. R.I.N.G.) and plan to see more.

I think it's so neat that the series had a revival with that comic series! And it's updated the time to the present day without aging the characters, the same as Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books do. I may look into the comic series sometime.

I've been vaguely interested in the series for some time (ever since I first learned of it through Columbia House, which would have been fourteen or so years ago), and five years ago my interest only rose because of finding out about Jimmy's guest spot. It looks like he may have led me into another fandom the same as he did with The Bowery Boys.