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).