“The Prisoner” Returns!

- – Way back in 1967, a surreal series debuted on television called The Prisoner which was part spy series and part sci-fi drama. The British cult hit   featured none less than Patrick McGoohan playing a character called  Six who was held captive in a bizarre place called The Village, a community led by a man called (what else?) Two. The ambiguous show was unlike anything else on television of the day, and while incomprehensible to many, it went on to profoundly  influence television, music, comic books, and movies for decades to come; echoes of The Prisoner reverberated in an episode of The Fantastic Four, in the Twin Peaks series, and even in the comic book and movie of Watchmen, where Rorschach adopted the prisoner’s “Be seeing you” as his personal sign-off.

In the series, a man finds himself inexplicably trapped in The Village with no recollection of how he arrived.  His fellow inhabitants are identified by number rather than name, and are under constant surveillance.  Not knowing who to trust,  Six is driven by a need to understand The Village, his reason for his being there, and how he can escape.

With Jim Caviezel in the lead role as Six and Ian McKellen as Two, The Prisoner debuts this Sunday evening on the AMC channel…Be seeing you!

Crikey!

- – The late conservation star Steve Irwin, known as the Crocodile Hunter, has received a tribute from an Australian scientist by having a rare species of snail named after him, “crikey steveirwini.” The snail has a khaki appearance,  much like Irwin’s trademark shirt and shorts.

Irwin, who died in a freak stingray incident in 2006, has already had a wildlife reserve, a road, a turtle, and an anti-whaling ship named after him...

Chimp Attack Victim Unveils Face…

- – The images of Charla Nash from Oprah are extremely graphic and very disturbing, so much so that only the before and the veiled after-version are shown here; we do have standards here on Foxsylvania (although Lord knows not many)!   Last February the 56-year-old woman was savagely attacked and ravaged by her friend’s chimpanzee named Travis, a vicious attack which left the Connecticut woman without her eyes, nose, lips, and  hands.

In spite of her devastating injuries, the courageous woman remains remarkably positive and upbeat, is not angry, and seeks to move on with her life rather than dwell on the events of that horrific day.  Hopes are for Charla to get a face transplant and eventually a hand transplant as well. A $50 million lawsuit is in motion against the chimp’s owner for pain and suffering.

Charla Nash herself says that she wants to warn people about potential dangers posed by exotic animals.  “I’d like to put across to people’s minds that these  exotic animals are very dangerous and they shouldn’t be around,” Nash said on Winfrey’s show.  “There’s a place for them that is not in residential areas.”

The evidence could not possibly be any clearer…

The Lure of the Horrible

There’s a wonderful scene in the 1982 movie of Stephen King’s Creepshow showing a young boy who spots a monster outside of his window.  The expression on the boy’s face, however, is one of adoration rather than terror.- – I’m sure that many of us can relate to this!

- – Horror movies…why do we like them?–Well, social scientists suggest that we watch for different reasons which include the adrenaline rush, being distracted from mundane life, vicariously thumbing our noses at social norms, and enjoying a voyeuristic view of the horrific from a safe distance.– But above all, being scared is fun!

Neuroscientists like New York University’s Joseph LeDouz point out that fear is not merely a biological reaction, but an emotion derived from deep-seeded evolutionary factors as well as newly-learned cautions.  An interaction between the brain’s primitive amygdala and the higher cortex allows people to interpret an environmental event and respond with an emotion such as fear.  Once an emotion is aroused in the amygdala, it’s hard to turn it off, and if we like that sort of thing, we’re eager to turn that emotion on again.

…and this is why some of us suffer from a post-Halloween let-down, similar to that depression suffered by others after Xmas!–Ahh, for the Nightmare Before Christmas!

–You Hit a WHAT?!

- – It’s not unusual for deer or cows to cross Oklahoma’s rural highways, but imagine driving home…from church, no less…and hitting an elephant!

I swear that I am not making this up! About 80 miles north of Oklahoma City in Enid, a guy in his late 60’s swerved his SUV at the last second and ended up sideswiping a 29-year-old pachyderm that had escaped from a nearby circus late Wednesday and wandered onto U.S. 81.  “Didn’t have time to hit the brakes.  The elephant blended in with the road,” said the driver.  “At the very last second I said ‘elephant!’” Now that’s something you don’t see every day…or hear said every day!

After sideswiping the elephant, the motorist’s wife flagged some people down and used their cell phone to call police, where the dispatcher didn’t quite believe her.  “You hit a WHAT?,” he said.  One can also imagine the reaction these folks  got upon calling the accident in to their friendly auto insurance adjuster.

“So help me Hanna, had I hit that elephant, not swerved, it would have knocked it off its legs, and it would have landed right on top of us,” summarized the motorist.  “We’d have been history.” Clearly, it would have been a no-win scenario.

Fortunately the couple, who own a wheat farm, weren’t history.  The 8-foot, 4,500-pound elephant suffered a broken tusk and a leg wound, with a local vet saying it appeared to have escaped major injury.

(- -I just love stories with happy endings, don’t you?- -This true story would have made a great episode of Courage, the Cowardly Dog…Eustace and Muriel are riding along in their truck, when Eustace screams, “Elephant!“  Courage also screams, his eyes leaving their sockets…

- -BTW, hear any good elephant jokes lately?)  

“Fantastic Mr. Fox!”

- -Worth a look and arriving November 13th is Fantastic Mr. Fox, an animated adaptation of the popular 1970 Roald Dahl children’s book by director Wes Anderson.

Voiced by George Clooney and Meryl Streep,  Mr. and Mrs. Fox have lived a peaceful life in the wilderness with their son, Ash.  Resorting back to his old ways as a cunning chicken thief,  Mr. Fox uses his formidable slyness to outwit three evil farmers who resort to extreme tactics to protect their chickens, endangering the animal community and forcing them to unite to fight for the land that is rightfully theirs.- – Fantastic Mr. Fox also features the voice talents of Bill Murray as a lawyer badger!

The Arica Monster…

- -Destination Truth recently had an episode with a secondary storyline line on the Arica Monster, a supposedly raptor-like creature inhabiting the Northern Chilean desert.  On the desert road, people have reported seeing a dinosaur-like beast keeping pace with their cars, a neat trick.  Described as large, standing on his hind legs, and having leathery skin, the beast is a fast runner with a distinctive three-toed print who attacks with razor-sharp teeth.

Destination Truth often has comic overtones that MonsterQuest lacks (remember the Mongolian Death Worms episode?), and Josh Gates and his team have such a limited budget that they are reduced to pursuing travel arrangements on Orbitz. They tend to take spills and get sick even while thoroughly enjoying themselves.   As for the raptor remnant, expert opinion is that it was a rhea, an ostrich-like bird with a three-toed print…

Deer Takes The Plunge!

- -Swimming is great exercise, and it was no Halloween prank when a deer in Gastonia, North Carolina got a workout after he jumped from a balcony through a glass roof and into the area surrounding an indoor pool at the Ashley Arms Historic Apartments on October 30th. After pacing the pool’s perimeter a few times, the deer took the plunge and started swimming laps for about 15 minutes, looking for a way out!

Maintenance supervisors were able to use a net to herd the tiring animal to the shallow end of the pool, where he walked up the steps and ran away, successfully avoiding the traffic. – - It was all caught on security camera video!- -And wait until the does catch a look at that buck’s swimmer’s bod!

The “Real” Werewolf on MonsterQuest

- – MonsterQuest recently aired a two-hour episode investigating the killing of over 100 peasants by a werewolf-like creature in southern France during the mid-1700’s.  As the slayings occurred over 240 years ago, extensive speculation and reconstruction was involved as provided by a cryptozoologist and a criminal investigator.

The Beast of Gevaudan slaughtered primarily women and children in an often gruesome fashion, at times decapitating the victims, eviscerating them, or consuming limbs.  The killings began in 1764, and continued for about three years, drawing the attention of Louis XV whose expert hunters dispatched a large wolf but failed to halt the peasant slayings.

That task was accomplished by one Jean Chastel, who used (–what else?) a silver bullet to kill the beast.  Speculation by the MonsterQuest investigators and others has been that the true “werewolf” was in fact a striped hyena, which may have actually been trained to accomplish his mayhem by Chastel himself!

The Beast of Gevaudan will continue to fascinate speculators, and the events form the historical basis for much of the rich present day werewolf sagas, which one hopes will continue for the indefinite future…

Hold That Tiger!

– Tigers could become extinct in the wild in two decades unless conservation efforts are stepped up to halt the decline in their population, wildlife experts said on Wednesday…

…barely 3,500 tigers are estimated to be roaming in the wild in twelve Asian countries and Russia compared to about 100,000 a century ago, according to conservationists and other experts.

Tigers are being illegally killed for their body parts, with skins selling for up to $20,000 on the black market in countries like China.   The destruction of habitats and the depletion of their prey base also figures in the dwindling number of tigers.  Tiger habitat alone has declined by 40% in the past decade due to the destruction of forests…

…and by the way…Happy Halloween from Foxsylvania!