gilligan's island

20th post!

The question popped into my head the other night: "Do "Gilligan's Island" characters have last names?". Of all the things going through my brain at any given moment, I choose to write about if The Skipper actually has a name. I know already of Thurston Howell III of course. Side note: as a kid I dropped out of Brownies for a period of time because they met at a time when I wanted to watch the show (which was reruns at this time, circa 1987-88?). I don't know how long I quit or even if it was official, but when the group went to the swimming pool, I know I was on board for Brownies once again!

Finding this information out was actually pretty easy, and I think that maybe at some point in my life I knew the answer to some of these questions. According to Wikipedia's character list for the show, some Metafilter message board:

Gilligan: Gilligan was never really given another name, and whether Gilligan was his first or last name, who knows. It says that in early scripts Sherwood Shwartz may have named him Willy Gilligan. And that in the pilot episode Mrs Howell refers to him as 'steward' which some people say could have been Stewart, but I  mean, who knows. I'm also now well informed that he stole his red shirt from his big brother, and is possibly Irish-American.

The Skipper too: Mr Jonas Grumby! Captain of the SS Minnow, lover of hats.

The Millionare: Thurston Howell III. Living it up in the middle of nowhere. He owned a diamond mine, a coconut plantation, a railroad, an oil well, and 40,000 acres of land in Colorado that included all of downtown Denver - ha!

And his wife: known as Lovey Howell. I read that in one episode on a radio announcment on the show, it called her Lovey at one point, but also referred to her as Eunice at another time! Also her maiden name was Wentworth.

The movie star: Ginger Grant. Her measurments are known for some reason: 36-25-36. Nice!

The professor: Roy Hinkley! He was a high school teacher.

Mary Ann: Mary Ann Sommers, maker of coconut cream pies.

And there you have it! Mystery solved.

-AMB

A&E Intervention

Hi hi!

Last night when I should have been snoozing I got caught up in an episode of A&E's "Intervention"  - Season 11, eps #141 - "Eddie". It was a pretty good episode, I liked when at the end he thanked his brother for saving his life. hopefully he's still doing ok, he seems like a smart cookie. That show is pretty sad overall; I spend all day knee deep in other people's problems, you'd think I'd find something less depressing on TV. It goes to show how complicated we are as people, and how we can be affected by things in our childhood so deeply. It's always something it seems.

Anyway. I wonder now that the show is in season 11 how people keep getting manipulated into thinking they are in a run of the mill documentary about addiction, and how they always think they're going to their last interview but really SUPRISE it's your family and the intervention. I'm not in to anything, but if I were, and someone came up to me and said "Hey want to be in a documentary?" my immedaite response would be "Is this for A&E?". I guess not everyone watches television.

I always like hearing how people speak about themselves and their addiction after time in therapry. People become pretty insightful, and I think that's a good thing. I know there's lots of information about interventions being actually helpful or not. One counselor yesterday said something along the lines of that if you continue to accept failure you will continue to fail. How messed up must the human brain be sometimes to not just change its mind, how complicated are we that we can't just sometimes do things different. That can be for addictions to anything in your life you're unhappy with. My vice is diet and exercise. We know the difference, we know what needs to be done differently, but change nothing. I know it's not always as easy as that, but I wish it were. I'm sure all the people on 'Intervetion"'wish things were as easily said than done too.

-AMB

bird calls, curiosity, & esquire

I've been Googling!

Is that a word, googling?

I'm on holidays from work for a total of 10 days, 10 wonderful sleep-filled days!

The other day someone in my family said that the long alternating pitch bird noise that can be heard in my hometown belongs to the robin. O and I'm aware that whatever noise it is may be heard in other communities other than my own :) It's a slow sound, and the tune goes up and down repeatedly, sort of reminds me of the melody to "I Saw Her Standing There" by the Beatles. Maybe that example was unhelpful. So anyway, I looked up the tune that a robin sings! Here is what I listened to on BirdJam, which by the way is an awesome name for that website of bird songs. Unfortunately, the specific call I was thinking about, I don't hear on this clip. I'm not a bird watcher, but I guess I enjoy them enough. I like feeding them and taking photos, and I always am jacked up to see a bald eagle or an osprey! After getting the link I clicked on a few more birds. The Black-capped Chickadee sound in the first few seconds is almost like it, but it doesn't go up and down.

Holy crab-apples, new show alert!! It's called "Curiosity" and it comes on the Discovery Channel!! The first episode was this last week, and it was about Stephen Hawking's idea (and book) that God was unnecessary to the creation of the universe. I'm not going to get in to anything much about what my beliefs are, but whatever they may be, I am not ashamed or fearful of saying this stuff is interesting! He was explaining the universe, and really, it made me feel like a speck of dust. It spoke about matter and space and energy and how the universe is the positive energy and space is the negative, and there's so much space because the universe is so big. Is a universe a galaxy or are there multiple galaxies in space and that whole thing is the universe? Okay I'm not looking that up, the point is, I enjoyed it, even if I did get a 78% in  high school physics. I blame teaching. I was looking up specifics (like the name of the show, I had forgotten it) and this ABC news website page has a tiny creature sweeping up the bottom of the window. Just throwing that out there!

Also looked up the definition of the word "esquire" this past week. I hear it after people's names, and it somehow came up in discussion. I don't know how, I don't even know where I would have ever heard it. I think maybe at least once in some kind of watch commercial? Merriam-Webster says: Definition of ESQUIRE: a member of the English gentry ranking below a knight; a candidate for knighthood serving as shield bearer and attendant to a knight; used as a title of courtesy usually placed in its abbreviated form after the surname (John R. Smith, Esq.); a landed proprietor. I wonder what Urban Dictionary has to say about this... :) It's all pretty norm, except for this gem: "The friend of a hooker. Derived from the merging of the words escort (high class hooker) and squire (used as a term of endearment towards a friend)"

Take care pals!

-AMB