Introducing Gmail Motion

1st April 2011 will go down in history as the start of something revolutionary in ICT!

Miss Not-Appearing-In-This-TV-Series

Running the Number 96 Home Page, a website on a cult Australian TV show, means that I get the odd email from:
* young relatives of former "Number 96" actors saying hello, or asking for relevant episode numbers, or where to get footage of said scenes
* saddened friends and agents of recently-departed "Number 96" cast - sometimes having found email correspondence to/from me on their computer
* fans wanting the actual street address of the building used in the credits (ie. 83 Moncur Street, Woollahra, Sydney.)
* fans wanting to know if Arnold Feather lost his leg in the deli bomb blast (No, it was an earlier Mafia parcel bomb.)
* producers and researchers of TV documentaries, requesting specific episode numbers and airdates
* producers and researchers of TV specials, such as the Logie Awards' annual "In Memorium" reel, requesting specific, high quality stills

and the big one:
* readers of my site wanting proof that some mature woman they recently met/worked with/married/sold a car to really did once work on "Number 96". Semi-nude, of course.

It seems that it's quite trendy these days to claim to have once disrobed for "Number 96". Now, these dubious claimants don't just say they were once some nameless, wordless extra who dropped her bra for a fleeting glimpse of bare breasts in the background of one episode. No, they often claim to have been "the star of the show", or even - as happened this week - playing "Abigail" herself.

They all want to be Abigail these days... except probably Abigail herself.

Now, I hate to burst any deluded former or would-be actress's fantasies - but Abigail was the name of the actress. Bev Houghton was her inimitable character on "Number 96". She with the almost-glimpsed breasts and "a voice which only Alsatians can hear", to quote several cheeky former production people from the show.

Funnily enough, the women seem to think that the people they've chosen to boast/lie to, about supposed past credits, have no way of validating their claims...

Tonight, I wrote back to my most recent query email thusly:

"Over the years, many women who claim to have been Australian actresses in the 1970s say that they were in the Aussie soap opera, 'Number 96'. Often, this claim means that they were models or extras who played an unnamed background character, who took off their blouse in a single episode. Even during the 70s, you'd often see newspaper headlines that said things like 'Mirren Lee, the sex siren of Number 96...', but that woman played a minor character, a bikie's moll, in only TWO episodes. Undoubtedly, she took off her top in 1972, exposed her breasts, appeared topless in the Sunday Mirror's Veritas TV supplement - and then vanished."

Until ten years, and then twenty years, later, when some retrospective article brings her out of hiding for an interview. More headlines, more puzzlement. I hasten to add that the email today wasn't about Ms Mirren Lee. She's merely my example of someone whom various newspapers have continued to pull out of the archives - maybe she just had a diligent agent, and racier 8x10s? Anyway, I continued my email:

"Abigail played a major character, Bev Houghton, from Episode #1 of 'Number 96'. When the character got married, she was Bev Goodman. When Abigail was fired from the series, she was replaced by an actress called Vicki Raymond, who now uses the name Victoria Resch. Vicki continued to play Bev Houghton until the character was killed off. Vicki's sister, Candy Raymond, was also in the show - playing the sister of another character! (Vicki had actually tried out to be Helen Sheridan's little sister, Jill, but didn't get the job because the producers said she looked 'too much like Abigail'!)

"Several years later, Abigail returned to 'Number 96' playing a new character, Eve, who was going to be in a spin-off series called 'Fair Game', but they ended up using the pilot footage across several episodes of '96' instead.

"It's quite likely, I suppose, that your new relative (NAME WITHHELD) was in 'Number 96', but it would have been as a VERY minor character. Probably no lines, apart from saying 'Ooops!' when her bra fell off in the wine bar or something! It's also doubtful the show would have called a character 'Abigail' because that name was so closely regarded as one of the show's stars. My web site has a list of all the major actors (and many minor ones) who were in the show, and the characters they played. Your relative doesn't seem to be there under any of the names you suggested."

But that's showbiz.

Stamp of approval: superheroes have crime licked!!!

A work colleague recently received a real letter, in a real envelope, with real stamps on it, from overseas - email has replaced so much of it these days - and when she saw the US postage stamps her friend had chosen/been sold, she immediately thought of me!

"Political Correctness is Intellectual Facism"

Sounds a bit heavy for this particular blogpage, I know, but an incident today certainly clarified several of my random thoughts into one big... well, I dunno. Mmmm, did I say "clarified"? I guess I'm still working through it.

Firstly, it's the now well-worn chestnut of people seemingly choosing to misinterpret the motives of innocent posts on the Internet. I'm quite up-front that there's an awful lot of "ego-boo" (to use a very 70s fannish term) when I share my seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek trivia. I do get a buzz out of it. And if I didn't share it, I'd have no excuse for saving all those issues of "Starlog", "Star Trek Communicator", "Cinefex" and "Cinfantastique".

Secondly, the Australian sense of humour (and, indeed, our unique brand of, umm, sarcasm) does not translate well on the Internet. If it wasn't for those little winking icons, I'd be totally sunk. ;) Sometimes it doesn't matter how carefully I prune a post, I'll wind up being accused of being deliberately: pompous; a know-it-all; egotistical (okay, I know I'm that, I just admitted as much); demeaning; abrasive... And so on.

Thirdly, I do know that the blame for ineffective communication falls upon the sender, not the receiver. But gee, scrutinizing every post for every possible permutation of misinterpretation does take away the spontaneity of posting to a Star Trek mailing list while eating breakfast.

Finally, I go back to two comments from last week's meeting of the Sydney Weblogger Meetup Group: the aforementioned quote by Steve Noble ("If you want to be noted by a particular audience... be noteworthy"), and another PR person's comment, when quoting a speaker at a conference about using new technologies, that if a blog entry wasn't confrontational to someone, then it wasn't really a blog, it was just a home page.

Yesterday, on a e-mailing list to which I belong, a question was asked about amateur Star Trek fan films. It seems that a recent, well-regarded fan film actually kills off a major character, whom fans know already survives into the Star Trek feature film series. So, my e-pal asked innocently enough, why weren't the fan films constrained to follow the official "Star Trek" canon?

As someone who's written many a fanzine story, and as an actor in an episode of Starship Exeter (not the fan film series in question, though), I answered thusly:

"Umm, because it's a work of fiction, based on TOS, but not the movies?

"Umm, because it wasn't produced by the copyright holder, so it's not a canonical episode.

"Umm, because no one dies in science fiction?

"Umm, because it's an alternative universe story?

"Just four of hundreds of possible answers."

That's written exactly as I thought it - no malice intended - but, in hindsight, it seems it was not the wisest way to write it. (Unless, perhaps, if I'm trying 'to be noted by a particular audience', some may suggest?) The person my answer was directed at took no offense to my comments - and, indeed, we'd had numerous very funny back-and-forth emails about several topics, fan films included, following that original first post.

But, this morning, all Hell broke loose (again). I read this comment, from Chris, another poster to the e-list:

"I saw a bumper sticker yesterday that said 'Political Correctness is Intellectual Facism'. I happen to agree with that statement. The world is waaaaaay too over-sensitive about everything these days.

"I didn't read Ian's post as demeaning at all. I actually appreciated the sarcasm and saw it for what it was. It was witty and at the same time it made me think about why it [the fan film] would or would not be canonical.

"It would have been a very different thing if his response had been: 'You're an idiot. Duh!' Now THAT'S demeaning. But it wasn't.

"If we have arrived at the day in which sarcasm is no longer an acceptable vehicle for human expression, then I, for one, am extremely saddened.

"To Ian: you on keep writing, I'll keep reading."

(Permission to quote requested and received; thanks Chris.)

How cool is that? Until Chris mentioned the issue, I had no idea my previous post had been the subject of a dissection - and branded as "demeaning". I told the complainer, who'd leapt to the original posters's defence, "Please reread my post with a laconic Aussie accent and you'll see I was being my usual, bouncy, positive, gregarious (but obviously not humorous at all) self. Think maybe Mel Gibson without the alcohol. And the good looks. And the fortune in Californian real estate. And all those kids."

But hey, maybe I'm not "demeaning", "pompous", "a know-it-all" or "egotistical" at all - just "noteworthy"!?

I know I've complained about a lack of comments to my entries here before, and I don't - as yet - have a monitoring tool on the page to check out who's looking and how they found me, but - as a measure of reassurance - I received two really great emails today, from distant "Star Trek" colleagues who say they read this blog with interest "every day"! Way cool. Or k3wl even.