In the early days of the World Wide Web, before anyone really knew what to do with it, people would create Web pages for just about anything.
It was easy. Do-it-yourself websites were all the rage. And strange, bizarre, yet sometimes wonderful pages sprouted up all over the Internet, usually on free sites like the late, lamented Geocities, where garishly bad Web design became something of an art form and half of the pages always said they were "under construction," no matter how old they were.
These pages often were devoted to celebrities, obscure television shows, childhood toys and the like.
Some are still around, but they've grown up and gotten professional.
Some of the rest have migrated to social networks. For instance, there's a Facebook page devoted to Burger Chef, a hamburger chain that all-but faded from existence in the mid-1980s. Then there's another Facebook page just for vintage newspaper advertisements for drive-in movies. And that's just to name two that conform to my own strange and bizarre interests.
Still, even outside of Facebook, you will sometimes run across a site that's devoted to something so odd it seems like it fell through a time warp from the Web's early days — except it's better designed, because nothing, and I mean nothing, not even MySpace, will ever be as poorly designed as those Geocities pages were. Bless their hearts.
Recently, I've stumbled upon three websites so specific in their subject matter you really have to wonder about the people who created them.
The first is House's Canes at http://www.earthimmigrant.net/housescanes/home.html.
It is, as you might guess, devoted to all of the various canes TV's most acerbic doctor, Gregory House, has used over the course of seven seasons of "House."
This site is full of stats. It tells you when a particular cane first appeared, how many episodes it appeared in, and, if known, what happened to it.
My favorite is the Walnut Derby cane, which lasted 20 episodes until Wilson sawed it in half — season 2, episode 16 — to get revenge for one of House's pranks. I even own a replica.
Currently, House is using a Rosewood Tourist cane, which he's had since season 6, episode 4, making it the longest-serving cane so far.
Yet this is the least bizarre of the three websites in question.
Next on the list is The Cosby Sweater Project at http://thecosbysweaterproject.tumblr.com.
Again, as the name suggests, this site is obsessed with the many sweaters Bill Cosby and the other cast members wore on Cosby's venerable 1980s sitcom "The Cosby Show."
That's all it is. Seriously.
But at least Cosby's sweaters were kind of a running joke at the time.
Our final website's obsession, however, is so far out there not even the truth is out there.
And that's the segue into Fox Mulder's Wristwatch, found at http://foxmulderswristwatch.com and billed as "The Internet's most comprehensive examination of the watches worn by Fox Mulder on TV's ‘The X-Files'."
Indeed.
This is my new favorite website ever. Fox Mulder's Wristwatch wins the award for the most random topic ever to have a website devoted to it.
(Don't try to top it. You'll just be wrong.) And in case you're wondering, there are at least 12 different models documented so far, including everything from an Omega Quartz De Ville Prestige to a Casio digital, meaning, at some point, Mulder thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea.
This was the reason the Internet was invented. It's not about national security or commerce or education or even naughty pictures. (OK, it's partly about naughty pictures.) It's about the freedom of someone to share with the entire world an obsession with a TV character's timepieces.
Sure he crushes cities, irradiates the countryside and kills thousands, but could it be that Godzilla just wants to be understood?
One denizen of the Internet, who goes by the name Samurai Frog, seems to think so and has created a Web site to prove it.
Godzilla Haiku, online at godzillahaiku.tumblr.com, puts the thoughts of Godzilla and some of Japan's other giant, rubberized monsters into poetic form — haiku, to be exact.
Haiku are 17-syllable poems of three lines, the first line comprised of five syllables, the second of seven and the third of five. They are among the easiest poems to write, and the hardest to write well. Traditional haiku often have a seasonal reference. But Godzilla isn't much for tradition. Skyscrapers or Shinto shrines, they're all the same to the King of the Monsters. They make the same crunch beneath his feet.
But it's not easy being king. Recently, Godzilla lamented:
I am what I am
This body imprisons me
My soul aches for love
After he trampled Tokyo, menaced Mothra and roasted Rodan, who would've thought Godzilla had it in him. Is he a poet, only we didn't know it?
Despite his grumpiness and propensity for violence and property damage, there has always been something sad, even soulful about Godzilla.
In his closing narration in the U.S. version of "Godzilla: 1985," Raymond Burr's character, Steve Martin, sums it up best: "For now, Godzilla — that strangely innocent and tragic monster — has gone to earth. Whether he returns or not, or is never again seen by human eyes, the things he has taught us remain."
Ever since his first movie stomped Japanese theaters on Nov. 3, 1954, Godzilla — or Gojira, as he is known in Japan — has been a symbol.
He is the atomic bomb. He is a force of nature. He is punishment for "tampering in God's domain," which was a common occurrence in 1950s sci-fi movies.
Strangely, as the years went on, Godzilla also became Japan's and Earth's protector, fighting other monsters, extraterrestrials intent on conquering the planet and time travelers bent on changing history.
In 1991's "Godzilla vs. King Ghidorah," Godzilla saves Japan from time travelers from the year 2204, who have come back in time to stop Japan from becoming an economic power. At least I think that's the plot. I've seen the movie half a dozen times, and it never really makes sense.
Godzilla prevailed, but then Japan went into a deep recession known as the "Lost Decade," which, as far as I know, had nothing to do with incoherent time-travel schemes. You win some, you lose some.
Maybe all of that symbolism is too much to ask of anyone, even a 30-story-tall mutant dinosaur with radioactive breath. All he wants to do is step on model cars and toy trains, yet we expect so much more of him.
Horror and fantasy writer Joe R. Lansdale explores Godzilla's ennui in a brilliant short story titled "Godzilla's Twelve-Step Program," found in Lansdale's latest collection, "The Best of Joe R. Lansdale."
Filled with humor and pathos, the story charts Godzilla's progress, or lack thereof, as he tries to kick his habit of pulverizing cities and squishing people between his toes. Godzilla gets a regular-guy job at a foundry. He watches TV. Some days, things seem like they might be OK. Other days, Godzilla gets that all-too-familiar itch.
If only people would just leave him alone. After all, all Godzilla wants is to appreciate the beauty of the world — and swat a few pesky airplanes from the sky.
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| It's that guy! |
How many times has this happened to you?
You're watching television and see an actor you've seen a million times before. But you can't remember his name and aren't even sure where you saw him. You can't look it up online because you wouldn't know where to begin. Slowly, it starts to drive you insane, and you can't stand it anymore. You phone a friend.
"Hey, turn your TV to channel 38," you say. "No, I don't care that you're watching 'Lost.' You don't understand 'Lost,' anyway. Change the #%&@ channel! Got it? OK, help me out. See that guy, the one with the hat? No, the other one. It's that guy!"
Yes, that's the eternal refrain: "It's that guy!" But who is that guy?
For as long as there have been hard-working character actors taking jobs just to pay the bills, with no hope of ever planting their footprints in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater, people have said, "It's that guy!" He's somebody. You know his face for a reason. But his name escapes you. For all his years of acting, the guy might as well be a face on a milk cartoon.
Now, at long last, there's help. There's "That Guy!"
That Guy! is a Web site devoted to the nameless faces that keep you up at night.
Lucky for you, the friendly folks at Neatorama.com found That Guy! And Neatorama is one of the nearly 200 Web sites I scan every day to bring you vital information like this, allowing you to get some sleep instead of obsessing over actors who may have been dead for 10 or 20 years for all you know.
Online at www.460xvr.com/tg/not.htm, That Guy! lets you scroll through photos of character actors — much like looking through a book of mug shots at the police station — in search of that guy. And like any good collection of mug shots, it contains many of the usual suspects.
Looking for that guy who always plays either the grubby campfire cook in old westerns or the redneck moonshiner? You're probably thinking of Dub Taylor. Or what about the guy who played something like a dozen different characters over the course of "M*A*S*H" and was the go-to guy for Asian roles throughout the 1970s? Yeah, that's James Hong.
If you're like me, and the parts of your brain that could otherwise be curing cancer or picking winning horses at the track are instead filled with a century's worth of useless cultural trivia, you may think you don't need That Guy!
You'd be wrong.
Even trained professionals get stumped sometimes. For example, I used to get Peter Mark Richman confused with Robert Lansing. In the 1960s, Richman guest starred in "The Outer Limits" and "The Twilight Zone," two shows known for "that guy" casting. Lansing, meanwhile, starred in the second-season "Star Trek" episode "Assignment: Earth" and went on to a recurring role in the 1980s CBS crime drama "The Equalizer."
Then I became addicted to buying packs of "Outer Limits" and "Twilight Zone" trading cards, hoping with each pack to obtain one of the rare cards autographed by William Shatner — or at least Jack Klugman. Instead, I got Richman's autograph. Twice. And I ended up paying $50 to get Shatner's card from eBay. Believe me, I never got Richman and Lansing confused again.
That Guy! is a work in progress. For example, while it does include Richman, Lansing is missing. And any listing of character actors that doesn't include Earl Holliman ("Police Woman") is by definition not comprehensive.
But the next time you blank out on Henry Silva or Michael Ansara — they both played Kane on "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," but only one of them was ever a Klingon — maybe That Guy! can help you out.
At the least, it could keep your next drunken argument about who played the lazy-eyed doctor in "The Cannonball Run" from turning violent. (Hint: It's Jack Elam. And I didn't have to look that up.)
