Year 2000 Bell

Just before the year ends, I'm going to try to get in a few more posts. This one is a "fluff" piece without much information, but it's a Millennium thing all the same.

Date: c.1998/1999; manufacturer unknown

I found this in a St. Vincent DePaul thrift store in October or so, along with National Geographic Beyond 2000: The Explorers, a tape which I'll review later on.

Um...For once, we have something that I know nothing about! I've looked everywhere on its surface, and there are no other distinguishing marks, aside from the "2000" stenciled on the front. No "made in China;" no company information; nothing.

I think this one falls into a category I made earlier: "Slap '2000' on it and we'll make some money." This could very easily have been a Christmas bell, but with something other than "Merry Christmas" put on it.

Merry Christmas and a Happy (Belated) Second Birthday!

Hello again, after a very long absence!

As the old saying goes, "one year makes all the difference." I was able to contribute so much more last year because I was working part-time...and because of that, I had several days off, during which time the Museum had all the drawings and Christmas stuff and more regular postings.

Still, I do what I can. One of my resolutions for 2015 is to post more often.

However, having said all that, let's celebrate with an Item or two.

As you can see, this is the full-sized version of Hallmark's ornament, which I posted either last year or the year before. Interestingly enough, the back of the box features an ad for the upcoming ornament, which features a rough early prototype. 

I found her at Evergreen Park's annual "Memories to Go Village Garage Sale" this past May; the year before, I found the Chicago Blackhawks beanie-bear and the M&M's dispenser. The seller had at least two or three of these, and I chose the best one for $25 or so.

This is a much more upscale doll than the normal, on-the-shelves ones. I do believe that it was either sold as part of Mattel's collector's club, or as Toys'R'Us/Walmart/Target exclusives. Her dress appears to be made of lamé, and it has a lot of snowflake sequins attached to it. As far as motifs are concerned, her two main colors are silver and gold, which appear on a lot of the items I've covered in past entries. 

It's truly one of the better additions to the Museum's shelves, and I'm proud to have it in the collection.

Joy of Collecting, Part Two

I suppose I should preface this installment of the Museum with an apology: I'm sorry it's taken this long for me to 1) come up with a decent background and 2) get this post underway. Truth be known, we're having some family issues right now--nothing to worry about, really, but it's putting some strain on my writing; and quite frankly I'm disheartened by how my browsers at home can't function without piling on a thousand pop-up ads with every click. (And before anyone says, "oh, just get a pop-up blocker already," I've tried. Chrome is not letting me install updates.) It puts a damper on how much I enjoy taking care of this blog, y'get me? Anyway...let's get on with this next item.

Last year, when the Museum had its first Christmas celebration, I kicked things off with this Joy of Collecting magazine. I only posted the first "part" of the article there with the idea that I'd post the next part the following year.

As promised, here's part two!

1. "Anything is Possible" collectible: I kind of like this one. It very nicely keeps to the "looking forward" motif that we see in a lot of the Museum's stuff; as a bonus, it also has a World Globe motif (it's in the lower right-hand corner). It also introduces an  Enesco released this back in 1999 or so as part of its Cherished Teddies line, and from a quick Internet search, it looks like the line is still going strong today.
2. Staffordshire Enamels collectible: This enamel box has a "New Year's Eve" motif, which I don't normally come across in my search for all things 2000. The lettering and detail on the fireworks remind me of Jim Shore's heavily-detailed, folk art-inspired Disney statuettes.
3. John DeCristofaro ornaments: John DeCristofaro's "Love Paintings" was a brand of stationery, postcards, ornaments, and other goods that featured the artwork of an artist named John DeCristofaro. This pair of ornaments is but one example of that series, and I find them kind of interesting. First, you have the "heart" symbol, the image of love. I don't think I've encountered it yet in any other Items, so this might be a brand-new theme. Second, there's a neat duality here. The Sun, of course, represents light and warmth, the hope that comes with a new century. The Moon is something very different. It represents the uncertainty that came with the change from 19__ to 20__, but the "heart" shape lends that uncertainty a more upbeat flavor, not unlike the feeling a child has when going to bed on Christmas Eve and waits for the next morning. In other words, it's an excited uncertainty.
4. Barbie Christmas Princess: Let me redirect you to last year, when she got her own article. That's where most of the analysis is, but I'll add one more comment: This one looks like a third variation. There was the one in a silver dress with the "2000" ball (ooh, that reminds me, I picked up the full-size one earlier this year, so I'll report on that real soon), there was the navy-blue dress, and then there was an African-American version with the navy-blue dress.
5. Waterford Crystal Ornaments: This extraordinary set captures the bright, crack-the-bubbly, "party" atmosphere of the 2000 celebrations. We endured the doom-and-gloom phase; we got through the anxiety phase; now let's ring in the new year with fine crystal glasses and the biggest party you've ever seen! I haven't much else to add except to say that this set looks beautiful.
6. Roman's Millennium Collection: Roman, Inc., which has been making ceramic and porcelain collectibles since 1963, began the "Millennium Collection" in 1992, which means that the company released a new, limited-edition ornament every year. I think it might be a good idea to track the ones released from 1992 to 1999 in a future edition of the Museum, because what you see here, "Joyful Promise," was the last installment. The scene itself is simple: a beautiful woman holds an infant while five angels attend to her. There's much more symbolism to it, though: She stands on a cloud, while the ornament's outer rim is scalloped in a way that recalls images of the Sun (the light of the future, etc.) In fact, the beautiful woman reminds me very much of the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio, though I'm fairly sure that that's not what the designer had in mind. The infant is, of course, the chosen "mascot" for the New Year, and it and the angels which circle along the lower half represent the idea that hope for the future lies in our children.
7. Hallmark Snowman: This one's a rather neat little bit of pure fluff. It's a snowman with a cute, smiling face, decked out in earmuffs, scarf, and mittens. He's holding aloft a top hat and standing next to a sign that says, "Hats off to a new millennium!" There isn't much symbolism here, I'm afraid...he's just "one of those things."
8. FR1CK1N' N3RD!: Oh, no! The Millennium Bug is back! Sorry, false alarm: It's just a small, Beanie Baby-like plushie made by Princess Soft Toys. Don't trust his oh-so-innocent face, though--it's got a world of trouble in mind! There was a lot of Millennium Bug stuff produced within the last few years of the 90s, and, while I don't plan to look for and catalog all of it, I'll definitely post any examples I do find.



Coming soon from The Millennium Museum...

Well, 2014's days are numbered, even more so than they were when I last posted. The days are getting colder, and it's started snowing. I don't hear any Christmas songs on the radio just yet (our preferred station at work is 104.3), which is a good sign. (Hey, I love the season, but there's only so much Christmas music one can stand before going completely insane.)

I suppose now is as good a time as any to tell you about what's going to happen in the foreseeable future.

First, I can say for sure that we're going to take our first official Side Trip with Ben Bova's novel, Millennium, a science-fiction thriller set in 1999 but written in 1976. I've been reading it for a while, but I just need to get my thoughts on it together. That's probably a good one for New Year's Eve, a holiday which I've always associated with science fiction.

Also, we'll be celebrating Christmas with a continuation of last year's Joy of Collecting article on Millennium-themed ornaments. I may include another part of the magazine, an article on collector's-edition Nativity sets.

I'm also reading another book called Millennium, unrelated to the Bova novel. This one bears the subtitle A History of the Last Thousand Years, and it's written by historian Felipe Fernandez-Armesto. ("Light reading," he said with a slight leer.) I'm not even going to begin reporting on that one until I've finished it, and that may take a while.

I also have a video from National Geographic about modern explorers such as Robert Ballard, and it's explicitly marketed as a Millennium-themed video.

Next weekend I'm heading to the Chicago TARDIS convention, and I'll see if I can pick up anything for the blog. I think there's a novel called Millennial Rites, and another called Millennium Shock.

November 2nd, 2014: Parting thoughts on the day after Halloween.

"This is Orson Welles, ladies and gentlemen, out of character to assure you that 'The War of The Worlds' has no further significance than as the holiday offering it was intended to be. The Mercury Theatre's own radio version of dressing up in a sheet and jumping out of a bush and saying Boo!" (http://jeff560.tripod.com/script.html)

Radio, film, and theater legend Orson Welles spoke those words at the end of his Halloween 1938 broadcast of H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds, as a way of taking off the costume and restoring order after a moment of controlled chaos.

I'd like to think I'm doing much the same, but in this case, the "controlled chaos" was much more artificial. It was intended to be the online equivalent of a "Halloween Horror Nights" event at Universal Studios, but that kind of got lost in the translation from concept to post.

What the heck! I'm perfectly satisfied with it. This past October has seen me at my most productive as far as the Museum is concerned, and it's been a learning experience.

I learned how to use GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) to create many of the visual effects, like the background art and the subtle "video distortion" on the Bug images. My skills are still fairly rudimentary, but it was a lot of fun to learn, and I look forward to furthering those skills in the future.

I also learned how to create an HTML "mouseover" effect, and while it only worked once, I'm proud of it. ("Storm of the Century" would have had one, but it just didn't work.)

All in all, the experiment wasn't entirely successful, but I had a lot of fun coming up with ideas and bringing them to life.

"Stephen King's Storm of the Century"

This is it...the final installment of the Millennium Museum's Halloween celebration. We've already been to Seattle and New York Citk. Now we're headed to Little Tall, Maine, a small coastal island where the winters are deadlk. Hang on tight. We're going straight into the heart of...Stephen King's Storm of the Centurk. It holds a special place in the New Millennium because it's the first stork that Stephen King wrote exclusivelk for television. That is to say, it's not based on an earlier work, as did the previous miniseries The Tommkknockers, The Langoliers, and The Stand. The narrative is a fairlk simple one: the "closed circle." The storm, which cuts the small island off from the mainland, coincides with the arrival of a one "Mr. Linoge," an absolute rotter who's determined to reveal the proverbial skeletons in the villagers' closets and make 'em do the Harlem Shake. (Something I've never said before and will never say again.) From that point on, things go badlk, badlk awrk.

He establishes himself in his first scene, in which he brutallk murdered a kindlk old woman, which attracts the sheriff's (Tim Dalk) attention, and he gets locked up in a jail cell behind the general store. It's not as weird as you might think: Space in Little Tall is at a premium, and mank of the establishments have to serve more than one purpose.

From his cell, he works his terrible magic: He knocks the radio antenna down, which cuts off communication. Phone and power lines fall in the cold and wind of the storm. Well-hidden secrets emerge. Rivalries flare up. He "influences" people to kill themselves and each other in gruesome ways. It builds and builds until the climax of Episode 2: The lighthouse--Little Tall's skmbol of stabilitk--is overwhelmed bk the roiling waves and falls into the sea.

Uniquely, Storm of the Century takes place in 1989, rather than 1999 as I had expected. It's about the New Millennium, but doesn't take place within the New Millennium. It's a bit like M*A*S*H, which took place during the Korean War but...we all knew that it was reallk talking about the Vietnam War.

I believe that it's set in 1989 mostlk to keep the closed-circle narrative intact: At the time, cell phones were still verk much a plakthing of the verk well-to-do, and even if ankone in town had one, it would have been useless. Mk mom had one of the earliest "affordable" cell phones back in 1994 or so, and I don't even know whk: The batterk-pack (imagine a plastic case with eight AA batteries inside) was unreliable and reception was iffk at best!

Another interesting detail I noticed was that the town had all of one personal computer in the back of the general store. Like cell phones, personal desktop computers were still fairlk expensive behemoths, and this one would have been used to keep spreadsheets and important documents. The Internet had ket to come into its own as a household fixture in 1989, which eliminates sending an email to the mainland.

The period setting is out of the wak; how does Storm deal with the kear 2000?

Storm's Millennium bent is religious, as demonstrated by Linoge's name--it's an anagram of "Legion," as in "We are Legion," a demon which Jesus cast out of a group of pigs. Other characters relate stories such as the Book of Job, and more than a few--especially Tim Dalk's town sheriff--are well-versed in Bible quotes. Stephen King uses Biblical allusions and themes in most of his books, but the timing of the miniseries lends this quirk some extra resonance.

The narrative seems to set him up as the Devil come to call--another fin de siecle characteristic--but other than the "Legion" thing, exactlk what he is is ambiguous. About all we find out is that he's an immortal, one who knows everkone's dirtk little secrets. (In that wak, he reminds me a little bit of a character from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxk: an immortal alien on a self-imposed mission to insult everk person in the Cosmos and check them off his list.)

In a way, it's for the best that we never find out exactlk what he is. To sak that he is the Devil would be too pat, too simplistic. He's not necessarilk evil incarnate, but his effect on the small village's dailk narrative is totallk demolishing. Nobodk is the same after his visit.

Let me pause here and point out that I have two different releases of Storm. The first is the original 1999/2000 release bk Trimark, which closed its doors and merged with Lions Gate in 2000. The second is a 2014 re-release bk Echo Bridge.

The original version came from the St. Vincent dePaul Thrift Store in Midlothian, IL. It was originally a Blockbuster rental, and the disc is two-sided (and badlk scratched--parts of Episodes 2 and 3 were downright unwatchable). As far as I can gather, Side A contained Episode 1 and half of Episode 2; Side B contained half of 2 and all of Episode 3. Bk contrast, the 2014 edition comfortablk holds Storm and two other movies on one side of the disc. What a difference fourteen kears makes for DVD technologk!

End of Days (1999)

Our third Halloween Artifact is End of Days, a 1999 action-horror-thriller starring Arnold Schwarzenegger.

May I make one confession? For the longest time, End of Daks wasn't on the shortlist. I hadn't even given it much thought until the 666 By 1999? pamphlet I was going to review didn't work out the wak I had intended. When I canned the pamphlet, I racked my brain trking to find something to fill the hole, and this popped into my head apropos of nothing. As you can see, it's part of a double-feature with a movie called Virus (nothing to do with our mutual friend, sorry!), which I had found on Amazon for about $5 used.

Arnold Schwarzenegger stars as Jericho Cane, a former NKPD detective who now works as a private securitk detail. His latest job involves protecting a banker (Gabriel Bkrne from Miller's Crossing and The Usual Suspects), who turns out to be possessed bk the Devil. Needless to sak, the job doesn't work out as planned, but our hero finds himself protecting Christine Kork (Robin Tunney), who is plagued by strange visions. With only two or three days to spare before the dawn of the millennium, can Jericho and Christine beat the Devil and save the world?

End of Days is a Millennium Artifact, no doubt about it. It's steeped in the New Millennium, and I consider it the last gasp of the "fear and loathing" stage of the zeitgeist.

I said last week that my initial thoughts on End were that it looked like a more lowbrow version of Millennium. In a way, I was right, but there are enough differences for the two to remain separate. Frank Black, the troubled, visionark profiler, is here separated into Jericho and Christine. Instead of the Millennium Group, we have Jericho's securitk firm (which appears to consist of only himself and his friend) and the Roman Catholic Church. And, of course, we have the actual Devil personified rather than a "creeping malaise" (to quote Pink Flokd). Finallk, for kou trivia buffs out there, End of Days and Millennium share C.C.H. Pounder in common!

Oh, and, something else I noticed: This and "Millennium," the seventh-season episode of The X-Files and crossover with Millennium, share in common some stock footage of the Times Square celebrations. I'm stronglk inclined to sak that it's a combination of earlier New Kear's Eve celebrations and a "dress rehearsal" of the ball drop.

It's packed with standard religious skmbolism--the Devil possessing a banker (come on, that one's so old it's moldk), 666, people speaking in tongues, a priest named "Thomas Aquinas" (no doubt a protective alias), Jericho Cane (note the initials), crucifixion imagerk, Satanic rituals and skmbols, exorcism...the works. The problem is, it doesn't find ankthing interesting to do with its toks. Everything is 100% face-value. (There is a neat twist in the Devil's abilitk to endure the intense pain of standing inside a church, but I'm not sure if it's enough to redeem the movie as a whole.)

I will admit that there are one or two fleeting moments where it indulges in some nicelk bonkers visuals, most notably the "subwak" scene where a weird-looking vagrant accosts Christine and shatters into hundreds of pieces like porcelain...and his damaged but mostlk-intact head and face just keep talking! There's also the somewhat interesting conceit of the Devil's host taking more and more phksical damage as the movie progresses, even if it's nicked from Doctor Who: The Movie (the Master's bodk deteriorates in much the same way). The idea of the Devil starting out as a haze that flits from place to place before residing in someone's bodk is unexpected, but then at the end he turns into Chernabog from the "Night on Bald Mountain" vignette in Fantasia.

On its own terms, End of Daks is average at best and serviceable at worst. I found it a dull retread of cliches that are wak past their sell-bk date. I find fault with it mostlk because it's so damn shallow. As a Millennium Artifact, it's firmly in the "kitsch" section because it whacks kou over the head with it!

It's not even "so bad it's good"--Gabriel Bkrne is the only one who actually looks like he's having some kind of fun, but everything else overwhelms. It's so bad that the Millennium Bug hasn't shown his sorrk face for this one!

FR1CK1N' N3RD

....Sillk me, I spoke too soon.

"Millennium: The Complete Series Boxset"

Last year, while I was expounding on The Blair Witch Project, Harry Potter, and that one screwball from the Renaissance, I had a vague and distant memory of a series called Millennium, but Halloween was already over by the time I'd thought of it. "Next year," I said to myself, "I have to do this show."

This week's Item is an overview of that series, which ran on the Fox Network from 1996 to 1999. The show is about a former FBI profiler named Frank Black (Lance Henriksen), who is able to put himself into a killer's perspective and see things from their point of view. (A word to the squeamish: The things he sees are decidedly not pretty. In fact, it was one of the more gruesome shows on network TV at the time.) He left the FBI many years ago, and is now a consultant for the mksteriously-named "Millennium Group," which looks into crimes of an unusual nature.

One thing to be aware of: Frank Black is not a psychic. The matter is a little more complicated: He creates for himself a visualization of what his target might see. For example, if a cop brought back a bloodied work glove as evidence, he could look at it and imagine/receive a visual of exactly what the Whackadoodle Of The Week did with it.

 Still, judging from the way it's presented, his ability might as well be of paranormal origin.

I have to say, this is quite possibly one of the most powerful things I've ever had the privilege to review for the Museum. In many waks, it's the closest we'll ever have to a TV adaptation of Charles Grant's Millennium Quartet books (which I sorely wish I had saved for Halloween, and am still kicking mkself about) but lightened somewhat with the addition of Frank Black, the hero. Interestingly enough, Charles Grant's official website lists several X-Files novels within his overall body of work. The overlap is strangely appropriate!

The pilot gets right into the end-of-the-century theme with a killer who quotes Nostradamus' prophecies, which--as I've mentioned in previous entries--had no small amount of cultural resonance in the mid-'90s. As the first season progresses, Frank finds himself facing cults (including one that's rather delightfully based within an Amwak-like multi-level marketing company that sells hair-care products), religious nutters, abusive parents, and a host of other nasties. Not all of the episodes deal with some aspect of the coming millennium, but the overall impression I got was that of society coming apart at the hinges, like a rickety old trunk whose nails aren't holding ankmore. In fact, one could make the case that the Millennium itself is treated as some kind of invisible, malevolent force that's affecting those who are especially vulnerable to its effects.

Series Two takes a different tone from the previous season's "Se7en in Seattle" angle, and delves into the inner workings of the Millennium Group, which changes from a consulting agency to a quasi-religious organization with designs of its own on--you guessed it--the new millennium. (It reminded me a lot of what's revealed in later episodes of Neon Genesis Evangelion, which I'll get to as a Side Trip later on.)

A few of the episodes are much lighter in tone ("Jose Chung's Doomsdak Defense," "Midnight of the Centurk," and "Somehow, Satan Got Behind Me" are three of the more notable examples) and serve as breathing room between some of the darker episodes. ("Somehow..." is especially welcome before the season-finale two-parter.)

What I liked best about the series as a whole is that it mostly avoided the obvious routes it could have taken. It could have easily cast Frank as a full-blown pskchic who fought religious-themed supernatural threats such as demons, but the more low-key approach makes for more compelling television.(This is why End of Daks immediately follows Millennium next week: The impression I'm getting of it is "Millennium as a big-budget B-movie.")

There isn't much more for me to say about the series as a whole without giving away any huge spoilers. I can only really tell you that it's absolutely perfect for Halloween, and that it does an amazing job at capturing the mood of the times.

I can also tell kou that we're not done with this show yet. Next kear, the entire series will get a dedicated sub-series of its own, after I've had some time to get my thoughts and commentaries on it in order (and made custom banners and tags).

Nostradamus 1999

(mouseover for more)

When I first wrote about Nostradamus' prophecies last year, I was fullk expecting that article to be my last word on the subject. Finding this book at the flea market earlier this year proved to be a totallk unexpected surprise. I fully admit that I haven't really gotten around to reading it ket because 1) I've already written a fairlk in-depth about the prophecies, 2) the book is water-damaged and I'm allergic to mildew, and 3) I was more engrossed in Ben Bova's science-fiction novel Millennium, which I will get to later in the year. There's no excuse for it, reallk, but I am bored with Nostradamus. Therefore, instead of talking about the prophecies, I'll talk about the book itself.

First, the cover's main color is purple, as featured in the Millennium Beanie Baby. This time, however, it's a darker, more gloomk shade. Second, there's a "clock at five-minutes-to-midnight" motif. The hands are set to midnight, but instead of numerals, the clock has simple markings. It's reminiscent of the Doomsday Clock that was once used to gauge how close we were to nuclear war. Within the clock, there's an image of the world globe, but it's realistic, not stklized. Somehow, it's even more foreboding than usual. 

I'm not entirely sure that putting the "WHO WILL SURVIVE?" tag in that kellow sunburst was a terribly good idea. It might have been better to shift the illustration and main title down a few centimeters and add the tagline right above the globe in a menacing red. It would still be eke-catching, but would enhance the overall effect.

The volume was published in 1995, right at the tipping point of the Millennium hksteria; this effectivelk gave its readers enough lead time to plan their survival strategies. The publisher is one Llewellyn Publications, founded in 1901 by Oregon astrologer Llewellyn George. Since then, Llewellkn has branched out into many other areas of spiritualitk and self-help books, and even into paranormal fiction. Strangely enough, Llewellyn didn't have any kind of a logo anywhere on the book, which led me to believe that it was self-published. (The back cover gives a rather lengthy sknopsis in Times New Roman, which I've seen on a lot of self-published books.)

Stefan Paulus, the book's author, was a little harder for me to research. I was more than a little nonplussed to learn that he seems only to have this and the 1997 book Nostradamus 2000 to his name. (There are a few other German authors of that name, but it's tenuous at best. I highlk suspect that the 2000 one is a reprint of 1999.) He's not even listed on Llewellkn's author's page, which is unusual.

The volume that I have in the collection sustained water damage at some point or another, and while the dealer at the flea market restored it as well as he possibly could, there's a lot of mildew along the top, and as you can see, the thin plastic lamination is peeling awak slightly. Other than that, it's complete--no pages are missing. I bought it along with an unrelated "Nostradamus" video, dated 1988, publisher and label unknown. It's a dollar-store cheapie, possibly put out at Halloween of that year, and I don't plan on reviewing it anytime soon. I'll provide an image of the cover art as a curiositk, but for now that's the most I'll offer. It looks like the kind of video you'd find at Menard's or something--a basically public-domain thing sold to video stores in bulk at discount prices. They in turn sell the videos for a dollar apiece.

And that's all I'm offering as far as these prophecies are concerned. I have little patience for them or the man who wrote them. It pains me to admit it, but I have to agree with the Millennium Bug: "He's a frickin' nerd."

Welcome back to...the DARK SIDE of the Millennium.

It's that time of kear again.

It's time for the days to get shorter and colder.

It's time for magic and strangeness to come out into the world once more.

It's time for Halloween...the Millennium Museum's second Halloween celebration, in fact!

Last year was fairly scattershot as far as the Museum is concerned--find a few Millennium Artifacts that kind of fit the Halloween theme, and expound on them at length. (I'm still proud of my Blair Witch article, even one year on.)

This time around, I've got something with a little more focus planned out. This year, we explore the idea of the year 2000 as a herald of terrible things, the worst of these being the end of the world as we know it. (♪And IIIIIII feel fiiiiiiine!♫)

Up to now, the articles you've read have mostlk concerned themselves with the "bright new day" celebrations. Auld Lang Syne, crack the bubblk, Millennium Dream; all of that. Before that, though, a lot of people worried about the impending collapse of everything. Stories about a ċ̵̛̩̬̹̣̘̗̻͚̮̖͑ͫͣͬ̇̐̀o̡̲̱̪̗̹̘͚̦͚̜̖̖͕̰͕ͪͥ͗̒̄͒̀̇̏͂ͨͪ͊͒̓ͫ̕͘ͅm̢̗̬̰͉ͫͯ͊͌̇͊͒ͧ̏̽̔ͥ̅ͭ̀̉́̅͜͟͢ͅp̸̻͈̗̩̻̝͔͖̟̹̙̺̆͋̽̆̔̀̿̉ͥ̔̾̿͗̀͜͜͝ü̴̶̼̻̜͙̰̠͕̟͕͎̟͓̯̠̲̖̏̎̾͂͐̔͋͡ͅt̴̝̠͇̩̹͈̄͐ͪͪͥ̈ͨ́ͥ̿̏͂ͮ͊̎̈e̽ͦ͒̇̇ͥ̀̇͗̐̃ͦ̄҉̛͈̲̙̗̘̦̝̪̜ŕ̶̡̬̮̞̖͎͍̺̝̞̋̐̏̄̓͐̏ͬͦ̆ͪ͑̇̚ ̶͊͒̉̃ͩ͂̾̂̃͗ͮ̍͊̒ͨ̉͌̚͘͏̗͚͙̣̤͇̫̼̲͉̗̱̻͚̝͕͇̰̝ġ̶̛͇̗̟̫̥̝͌̄͒ͣ̀͠l̡̛̪̮̤̜̯͚̠̦̻̣̤̩̀̍̑͊ͬ̎̓̽͢͞ͅi̵̾̄̓ͭ͗ͭ̅͗ͬ̌̈́̆̉̓͒ͯ̚҉̷̴̜͉̙̻͉̲̩̯̰̯̤̩̣̭̹͠t̶̢̙͓̣̜͓͈̮̯̱͓̜͋ͩ̇̾ͪ̂̓̎̂̾̓̐ͤ͂̑͊ͭ́́c̴̞̺͈̫̩̞͆̀̊ͪ͐̋̔ͦ̀̌̚̕ḩͦͮ͂̇̔̊̆̓ͯ́͑̇ͫ̿́ͯ̇ͮ́̚͏͔̠̭̻͚ prompted hundreds to build underground shelters and stock up on food supplies, guns and ammunition, and other necessities. Demons--human or otherwise--lurked around every dark corner. Centuries-old prophecies came true. Ancient conspiracies popped up like that blue-green mold kou find in a box of month-old leftovers.

D͠O̧̨͢͞N̛̛͠'̴̵̡͢͢T̡̢͠
̕͡Ļ̶̢͠O҉͢͝O͟͡͝K̨̧
̢͘D̷͢҉̷͝Ó̶̵̕W̕̕Ǹ̴͜͏̧!̷

Huh..."Don't Look Down." Odd...Still, probably nothing to worrk about. I am a little concerned about the spelling. Why are my Y's turning into K's? I should talk to Blogspot about that...and also that weird stuff that's happening to my text.

Anyway, this Halloween-time, terrible omens will come from a few different sources: a mksterious traveler who visits a small town in Maine during the worst winter storm on record; a rash of highlk unusual crimes; and the chaos that was sure to follow in the wake of the European Union's formation. Oh, and: that practical joker Nostradamus will pak us another visit!  Ankwak...This year, the Items in question are: Stephen King's miniseries Storm of the Centurk, Chris Carter's series Millennium, a book called Nostradamus 1999, and the Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle End of Daks, a rather interesting action/horror hybrid. 

Oh...my...God...Everkone, this is verk, verk bad. I cannot possiblk underestimate how terrible this is. Somehow--I can't explain it at all--the M͕̬͓̥̱̦̟̱͉̺̟̻͚͚ͬ͗̍͊̉͛ͤ̃̆̄ͧ̃́ͬ̇̄͐̒ͩ́ỉ̴̸̼̰̲̘͓̻̖̐̃̍̏͋ͯ̂̏ͫ̃ͥ͜͟͡l̴͙̜̼̻͕̤͓̝̰̙͚̗͍͆ͧ̑̌̉̄͝l̸̟̝̲̭̮̣͕͉͈͉̠̯̰̟ͬ͐ͭ͌̒ͭ́̀͟e͚̳̙͕̻͔͔̥͙͎͔͇̰͖̥͈ͪ̂͐̑͘ͅn̷̺̦̩̖̲̹͓̭͛ͩ̏͊̑̍̿ͬ̉̓ͫ̌͆̉͌̅ͤ͠ͅͅn̛̫̗͕̣̝̘̙̞̦̳̫͚͉̩̳̖̣̾͗ͣ͞ͅi̭͖̤̯̳̹̰̲̘̙̭̱͕̊ͬ̽̒͘͢ů̢̩̜̮̝͔͕̳͌̾̾̌ͨ̔͑̽̂̔ͨ̀͘͝m̜̬̤̰͍͍̞̖̘̞̀ͥͪͥ̽̌̂͘ ̫͓̙͖͎̣̲̯̮̬͕͇̙̬̦̉̔͂ͬͬ͗̅̉̈̑͜B̩̼̘̲͙̭̜͆̐̌͘͜ǘ̔ͯ̌ͮ͏̳̲̖͉̞͢g̴̨̯̗͎̟̜̦̻͉̖̯̘̲̩̩̳̲ͩ̂ͮͣ͂͒̀͢͢ has come back, and he's somewhere inside the Museum!



Just hold on tight. I'm going to try to figure this out.

THE HALLOWEEN SCHEDULE HAS BEEN FINALIZED

Okay! I know how Halloween is going to work:

1--10/5/14: Introduction
2--10/5/14: Nostradamus
3--10/12/14: Millennium
4--10/19/14: End of Days
5--10/26/14: Storm of the Century

Took me a while to figure it out, but it's arranged thematically.

Nostradamus begins it all because his prophecies 1) are good for Halloween and 2) inform just about everything else. Millennium follows on from that because it refers back to his work quite a lot. End of Days follows on from that because it looks to me like Millennium rejigged as a big-budget action/horror movie. Finally, Storm of the Century comes last because it's the odd man out--I need a little more time to figure out how to make it work.

See you soon, boils'n'ghouls!

Just a quick, drive-by update

The review of the 666 by 1999? pamphlet I mentioned on Facebook isn't working out as well as I'd have liked it to. I've taken that off the list and substituted in its place the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie End of Days. I haven't gotten a chance to watch it yet--it just arrived last night--but at first glance it looks like a less subtle, more action-movie take on the Millennium series.

I may get through more of Millennium this weekend, and the Nostradamus post is likely to be a re-release of last year's post with the new book's cover. This is mostly because I don't see very much changing between the two books.

A miscellaneous item or two and a new announcement

Hello, all!

I've been remiss of late, I freely admit it. The "baseball cards" post has been a bit harder to write than I thought, and the Halloween stuff is going pretty well. I think I've got the overall design of the site down, and I only have a few more articles to write.

I've been plowing through the Millennium box-set--one or two discs a weekend--with "Millennium Item status" in mind. I can sense a strong progression from the beginning to the end of the Millennium Era: it started out as a state of extreme tension and fear, and then moved from that to the celebratory phase, which I call the "Millennium Dream" phase.

And now for my announcements: I'm putting a new section onto the Museum, called Side Trips. The items featured in the Side Trips section either don't come from the 1995-2001 period, or else deal with the millennium in a more indirect way. "Storm of the Century" is likely to be the first of these, followed by Ben Bova's 1976 book Millennium, which I've been enjoying at work, on lunch breaks and during quieter moments. Neon Genesis Evangelion, the only anime series I'm familiar with in any depth, is also on the Side Trips shortlist, because it's a story in which the world actually did end in 2000, and the central narrative is about the people who are left to deal with the aftermath of that.

I'm also brainstorming a Museum-themed card game as a highly-compatible expansion pack for most collectible card games.

And now for an item:

Date: c.1999/2000. Manufacturer: unknown

I found this at Flamingo Island Flea Market in Florida, at a stall called Bargain Boutique, Too. As you can see, it's a smallish, rhinestone-encrusted pin reading "2000." It was in a glass display case, so I couldn't get a very good look at it. Having said that, however, I can say with some certainty that the name of the company wouldn't be on the pin itself--it would have come attached to a cardboard backing at the time of sale.

It would have been sold at "boutique" stores like Claire's and The Icing, but as far as Millennium-themed things go, it's fairly disposable.



The Millennium Museum Presents: Bicentennial Man

I've always wanted to review and place Bicentennial Man on the Millennium Museum's shelves, but have never found the time to sit down and watch it with "Millennium Item" status in mind. When I learned of Robin Williams' passing last night, I thought, "Now's as good a time as any to do it."

For the purpose of this review, let me put the collective mourning to one side and get on with analyzing the movie. Robin, I'll sorely miss you, but I'd much rather concentrate on your life than your death. Simply put, you lived, and will always live on, your body of work preserved on film and in video. Who knows? Maybe one day they'll put out "The Complete Robin Williams" as a three-holocube set!

Now: What makes Bicentennial Man a Millennium Item? Obviously its 1999 date and "turn of the millennium" sensibility, but its near-future vision is its central qualifier. Based upon Isaac Asimov's short story "The Positronic Man," Bicentennial Man's story concerns itself with an android who develops a soul and follows it through to gain his own freedom and eventually become a human.

 Andrew, the main character, is "born" on April 3rd, 2005 (He's a member of the April 3rd Club--wa-hey!!), but it's a 2005 that's slightly removed from the real world. (When I reviewed a pair of Hallmark robot ornaments last Christmas, I stated my doubt that a humanoid, bipedal robot would ever really catch on, because the "walking" movement is too complex to pull off for a mass-market robot.)

The earliest indications of the future are subtle, restricted to cars, interior design, and the Andrew robots, which are very plain-looking, streamlined, and more than a little Art Deco. The first time we see anything that overtly screams "The Future!" is in the CEO's office at North-Am Robotics, from which I can only conclude that the wealthy are the first ones to get anything truly futuristic, and from that point on, it cascades down upon the world of the more ordinary folk.

Having said that, however, the future touches are always muted, nothing too overt, even as time passes. The wild fashions of tomorrow, long a staple of science-fiction movies (and codified in Back to the Future II and others), is presented here as fairly subdued. The clothing is firmly recognizable as clothing, but the design is somewhat different. Only as the decades go by does the future become recognizably "THE FUTURE!" Cars begin to fly, technology becomes a little more compact (Sam Neill as the father is seen using something like an I-Pad in his old age, but it's a little clunkier than the latter-day reality--it has a thick housing, a few manual buttons, and other "retro" accessories). 

Bicentennial Man is also a Millennium Item because it is steeped in possibilities. I myself was most in awe of Andrew's self-designed artificial organs, which become commonplace in 22nd/23rd Century medicine. In fact, it provides the United Nations council with a bit of a moral dilemma: Can they deny Andrew humanity when they themselves are part machine thanks to his organ replacements? It's a variation on the "Voyage of Captain Theseus" philosophical dilemma, and, though the Council neatly answers the question, it's still excellent food for thought. 

Spurred on by this denial, he takes the final plunge and becomes fully human. Finally freed, he dies on his two-hundredth birthday, a happy man.

All in all, Bicentennial Man is a vision of tomorrow that, like the year 1999, straddles past, present, and future. That it does so in a present day that's only somewhat distanced from our own only highlights the surprises that might lie ahead in the next century. It also makes a few interesting points, most notably this: If we're to live to see the year in which Andrew Martin finally becomes human, then we'd better start treating ourselves and our possessions with considerably more respect than we currently are. 

Introducing: The Millennium Museum Sports Network

The baseball-specific logo isn't working out as well I thought it would. It's shaping up to be a lot more finicky than expected, and the surplus of individual elements (sand effects, 3D lettering, and perspective) are going to create a messy-looking logo. In its place, I'm going to create a new section: the Millennium Museum Sports Network, or MMSN for short. In preparation for it, I will re-run all of the sports-themed posts (the Masters; the Olympics; and the Super Bowl) with a brand new banner and tags: 

Things are indeed looking up for the Millennium Museum.

I've got news, good news! The Fox TV series Millennium is on the shortlist for Halloween 2014, as is Dracula 2000. Amazon has the complete series of the former for $35, and the latter for less than a dollar. I also have Stephen King's Storm of the Century on the list. I'll probably start writing that one first, since I already have a copy--just need to really clean it up, because it was originally a Blockbuster rental copy that I got sometime last year at a thrift store. In other news, I'm working on a Baseball Season/World Series-themed custom logo and header bar. The posts for this theme will be the USA Team 2000 Olympics trading card set, a button, and a few other things that escape my memory. The trading card set will be the constant over the course of a few weeks in mid/late September.

But for now, on to some new stuff!

I found this item at the Alsip Swap-O-Rama Flea Market today. The guy who had it at his stand likely always had it--indeed, I've seen it there many, many times before but had never given it much thought.

This was manufactured in 2000 by Mr. Christmas. Though it sounds like a company that began making cheap, tawdry seasonal goods in the 80s, Mr. Christmas has actually been around since 1933. They're well-known for electrically-lit and motorized scenes of small-town Christmases, but they also produce other things, such as music boxes and decorations like this water globe.

This is no ordinary water globe! I noticed a DC adapter cord running through it; when you plug it in and switch on, the water in the globe bubbles like champagne. (It might also run on batteries, if you want a more cordless look.) Note the cheeky "Millennium Vintage" label on the bottle--shades of the Tabasco Tie! The bottle and an upside-down champagne flute sit in a base of plastic, molded to look like a lot of ice cubes. I think the ice lights up, if I'm not sorely mistaken. This thing looks like it's supposed to be operating in a slightly darkened party, with all sorts of other disco-ey stuff going on.

It's cleverly designed as the ice bucket in which you keep the champagne cold--the two "studs" on the side are meant to hold a handle in place, although I can only assume that you're not supposed to actually hold it by that handle. Someone apparently tried, which is why the final piece is missing.

Like many other exhibits, this is pure kitsch, but it's very well-made kitsch! It perfectly evokes the light, happy, celebratory, crack-the-bubbly-at-midnight side of the Millennium celebrations. I get a happy feeling just looking at it!

Happy Fourth of July!

Unfortunately, there won't be a themed post this year, because I wasn't able to find any Fourth of July-related things. That being said, however, I am able to offer something exceptionally rare: I have more information about that blue "Millennium" Beanie Baby knockoff I found in the claw machine at Swap-O-Rama Flea Market last year.

It's called a "Millennium Bean Bear," and a company called "G.G.I." based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Shropshire, England, sold it. A cursory Amazon search revealed that they may still be in business, selling LED and glow-stick novelties. I can't be certain, though; there are several companies with that name.

It's actually pretty well-made for a cash-in (a picture is available in the earlier entry). The seams are well-sewed and durable; the embroidered "1999" tag is strong; and the dye-job on the plush is consistent. The only issue I have--and this extends to a few other items--is that it came from out of nowhere. It has no context, so I can't classify it as "pop culture," "connections," "globe," "Y2K," or anything else. It isn't a part of an existing line (as did the Millennium Beanie Baby and the Blackhawks Arena Bammer).

It's pure millennium kitsch, but that's not a bad thing, because most of the stuff you'll see here is kitsch to begin with.

EDIT, 7-13-14: Oh, look, I do have a better picture of it after all.

Happy Father's Day 2014!

Right, first things first: The image in the left and right boxes on the banner is supposed to represent a necktie.

Before I write anything else, I'd like to share the immediate future of the Museum with you:

I'm going to have a few themed posts once Baseball Season rolls around. The centerpiece of these posts will be a set of 26 trading cards depicting the USA 2000 baseball team at the Sydney Olympics.

For Halloween, I do have Dracula 2000 and maybe the TV series Millennium on the shortlist of things to be covered.

Hmm...There's a little space for "Back to School" on the agenda. I'll take a look and see what I have left over in terms of books.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Date: unknown. Manufacturer: unknown

I found this most unusual tie at the Flamingo Island Flea Market in Bonita Springs, FL, while I was on vacation. At the moment, I regret not getting a better detail on the tie, because this is definitely one of the Museum's weirder exhibits. At the bottom of the tie, you can see "2000" stacked in yellow and green. That's fairly obvious. Here's where it gets head-scratchingly strange: Three Holstein cows are frolicking around the main logo; above them, white "2000" logos are done in a graffiti-like font. 

I'm not entirely sure what cows have to do with the year 2000. Internet searches aren't turning up anything, and there wasn't a manufacturer on the back of it, so I'm not going to have a cow over it (pun certainly intended). Into the "Miscellaneous" section it goes!

Date: 2000 vintage. Manufacturer: unknown

Another item I found while on vacation, this throw is without a doubt 2000 vintage. The amazing thing about it is, I didn't even know we had it until now! Chances are, Mom got it because it had those Nightmare Before Christmas-like spirals on it, without any connection to the new millennium. 

It was an elegant black-and-white once, but time and storage have conspired to discolor it into chocolate brown and ecru. The spirals, stars, and other decorations are meant to be New Year's confetti, and in the middle of all that is "Celebrate 2000!" in a font that I can't presently identify, but I have seen it before somewhere. It's something named after an artist...I'll have to check and see what I wrote in an earlier draft.

♪♫If there's something strange in the Museum...♪♫

...then it must be:

(In case you were wondering, the banner and tag image is a little something I cooked up in Paint a few days ago. It's a representation of the animated Ghostbusters title-card from the beginning of the movie, at the moment before the No-Ghost fully forms.)

2014 marks the thirtieth anniversary of a movie that needs no introduction. 1984's Ghostbusters has rightfully earned its place in the pop-culture pantheon with a tightrope act of smart-aleck laughs and effects-driven scares, an instantly-recognizable theme song, and a cockeyed take on the supernatural that pays homage to (and wittily punctures) earlier movies such as Poltergeist and The Exorcist.

Here at the Millennium Museum, we’re celebrating that anniversary by turning the clock back to 1999 with the 15^th Anniversary DVD.
 

The packaging itself (above) represents a complete departure from all other releases that came before. The plain, black box of old, decorated with the movie's original poster, is out the window; in its place is a splashy new cover with our four heroes in front of New York's skyline, ready for battle. This movie's tagline is their slogan, "We're Ready To Believe You;" the second movie's is "Be Ready To Believe Us."

The disc itself...now, this is where it gets interesting. I do believe that Ghostbusters was one of the first ones to demonstrate what the DVD format was capable of.  Immediately after the old Columbia/Tristar Home Video logo (before Sony Home Entertainment became the standard logo), viewers are presented with a wonderful animated menu based on New York City. Spirits swoop across the screen, Slimer whirls around Gozer's Temple atop 55 Central Park West, and the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man takes a stroll down the street. A virtual camera pans up, down, and across the main map with each selection.

It doesn't stop there: This baby is loaded with extras, from the original “On Call with the Ghostbusters” documentary from '84, to all-new (for 1999) featurettes on cast and crew. The “Visual Effects Featurette” is a particular highlight. There are also trailers for GB I and II; Stripes; and Groundhog Day, as well as a full complement of concept art, special-effects before-and-after comparisons, pop-up production notes (taken from Don Shay's book Making Ghostbusters), and the movie's signature feature, the “Video Commentary,” which marries fully animated Mystery Science Theater 3000-style silhouettes to an audio commentary by Harold Ramis (co-writer and “Egon Spengler”), Ivan Reitman (director), and Joe Medjuck (producer). The video feature can be toggled on and off, and it adds a further dimension to an already highly-entertaining audio commentary. Harold Ramis, who very tragically died earlier this year, proved himself a thoroughly engaging raconteur on this commentary as he shared wonderful behind-the-scenes tidbits (the one where science-fiction legend Isaac Asimov grouched at Dan Aykroyd because the filming tied up traffic springs to mind) and a few digs at costar Bill Murray (never named, but it's obvious who he's talking about). As far as I know, this was one of the only titles to use the "Video Commentary"--even the more recent DVD and Blu-Ray sets eschew the visual part.

As for the movie itself, this is its first mass-market widescreen release. There was a widescreen/letterbox VHS version in the early 90s, but this was hard to come by and only available through specialty stores like Suncoast and Saturday Matinee (ah, the good old days...). The earliest VHS release was horribly cropped for average TV sets, to the point of cutting Egon and Winston out of the picture most of the time and ruining some of the jokes!

The remastering and color-grading is top-notch, with a crystal-clear picture that eliminates the slight “grain” and pale coloring of the earlier release. It's pretty much as one would have seen it in the movies back in 1984. The sound mixing is first-class; the DVD and 15^th Anniversary VHS alike use Surround Sound.

And now, the million-dollar question:
Why do I list it on this blog?

Considering its 1999 release, many of the extra features reference the then-upcoming 2000 celebrations, and on the '99 Featurette, Dan Aykroyd muses that the change from 1999 to 2000 might stir up some thoughtful discussions about Ghostbusters' ideas on the afterlife and things like other dimensions and planes of existence.

One thing is certain: Its fears of apocalypse, especially in the lead-up to the climax, certainly resonated. In those scenes, people of all religious faiths—Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, every faith—gathered in droves to pray for the safety of this world. All the differences between the faiths were, for a moment, secondary to the doom surrounding them. That sense of unity is what the Millennium Dream is all about, the idea that the individual groups of people that comprise humanity can focus more on what makes them alike and less on what makes them different. (During the commentary, Harold Ramis proves himself more down-to-earth about the whole thing: “All that money spent on DVDs for nothing,” he wisecracks.)

As an aside, it's worth pointing out that the front cover displays the two towers of the World Trade Center. To think that such an icon of the modern world would be erased from the landscape just one year after the dawn of a new century...This release of Ghostbusters is a testament to the innocence of 1984 and 1999 alike.

SKREEEEOOOONK! It's "Godzilla 2000!"

In honor of the new Godzilla adaptation that opened about a week ago, and in the best tradition of having a big-budget blockbuster on Memorial Day, I, Mr. Millennium, hereby place Godzilla 2000 in the Museum's exhibit halls.

(Source: http://supermons2.angelfire.com/godzilla_invades_america/98posters.html)

I found this for $5.00 at a video store the other day, and, always one to recognize a good bargain, I snapped it up. Having popped it in, I learned that it actually is a 1999/2000 vintage, and not a re-release as I thought it might be.

It has a new Columbia/Tristar DVD logo, unlike the one featured on next week's Ghostbusters DVD—this one is slightly darker, and has letters that “fly in” and all sorts of neat stuff. It has an all-new animated menu, and when you hit “enter” on one of the selections, a missile flies toward it and explodes. Pretty neat stuff!

That being said, I have some bad news for the purists out there: This release is dub-only—no original Japanese language selection. While I usually prefer the dubbed versions of anime, I don't care for it in live-action, especially if it's not done that well.

On top of all that, I found the action unengaging. Only Godzilla himself gets to lumber around—the movie itself has to get itself to a good, churning boil to counter its star's slow pace. For that it needs good, involving characters, and Godzilla 2000 has a cast that I just can't bring myself to actually care about. There's a Lois Lane-type trying to make her break by getting pictures of Big G; a couple of scientists who discover the big guy's speed-healing properties; the “Godzilla Prediction Network,” who tool around in a cool, ECTO-1 looking vehicle (I half-expected them to use a “No-Ghost” parody as their logo, but alas); and a couple of military and corporate types.

The plot...I found myself kind of amused at its riff on Godzilla's spiritual ancestor, H.G. Wells' The War of the Worlds. Here, a group of scientists discover a gigantic meteorite (a la George Pal's 1954 adaptation) under the ocean. Apparently, it derives its power from the sun, and they're trying to use it as some kind of wild new energy source to get Japan off nuclear power for good. I do believe that much of this story is informed by the Tokaimura incident, which happened on September 30^th, 1999; no doubt many still had it “on the brain.”

Monster and meteorite cause mutual havoc for the human world (its version of the Heat-Ray is powerful enough to make even Godzilla himself sweat!), and in the big climax, the thing turns into a futuristic take on Wells' three-legged Fighting-Machine. Aliens go bye-bye; big guy goes back to the sea bed; all's well that ends well. I don't really feel like I'm spoiling anything, 'cause there's not much more to it than that.

Toho released it as Godzilla 2000: Millennium. Sadly, there's precious little Millennium about it except for the title. The story probably could have involved the event, whether by tying the meteorite in with it, or by saying that Godzilla needed a tux for the Kaiju Bash (the mind-boggling logistics needed for such an event would probably make a good movie in and of itself), but...regrettably, this is not the case. 

All in all, Godzilla 2000's lack of grounding in the New Millennium and its smash-by-numbers air make it a necessary if undistinguished addition to the Museum.