Thighs Wide Shut

(for no particular reason) a brief chronology of 70s bleeps & colors & patterns & fun & games & lames…

1974 – Atari’s Touch Me Touches Down In Video Arcades

Atari releases Touch Me, a screen-less arcade game where you have to remember sound patterns and push buttons to prove you remembered the sound patters.  Gamers say BLEEP THIS, and no one ends up touching it all that much

November 16th, 1977 – Humans Tone Home in Close Encounters of The Third Kind

Steven Spielberg, John Williams & François Truffaut communicate with aliens thru the use of 5 tones.  these ‘wild signals’ obviously do the job cause the aliens remove Richard Dreyfuss from earth 9ever!!

May 15, 1978 – Milton Bradley says Simon

Ralph H Baer encounters Atari’s Touch Me at a trade show in 1976 and thought ‘Nice gameplay. Terrible execution. Visually boring. Miserable, rasping sounds.’  Then he thought up Simon and Milton Bradley got all bleepin’ rich and stuff.  So they basically ripped off Atari AND the sweet sounds of John Williams!!

The launch of Simon was hactually held at Studio 54(!!!), where a four-foot model of the game hung suspended over the dance floor!!!!  Would probably donate our penis to science if someone could find pictures of a bunch of coked-up nekkid people dancing underneath a giant Simon at Studio 54!!!

1978 – Atari Gets Handy & Touchy Again with Touch Me

Atari releases ‘a little product called Touch Me, which was a hand-held version of Milton Bradley’s Simon, which was Milton Bradley’s version of Atari’s coin-op Touch Me.’ - Dennis Koble

Obviously no one really touched this product either, and so Atari’s Electronics Games division scrapped their plans for handheld versions of Space Invaders and Breakout.  Atari waited 11 years before releasing their next handheld system - 1989’s Lynx!!

1978 & beyond – The Copy Cats Meow

Simon‘s popularity brings on a rash of imitators.  One of them was Tiger Electronics’ Copy Cat, although it was probably more like Copy Crap!!

the one we played with as a child, was the Simon-esque Merlin by Parker Bros

remember kids, Parker Bros before hos!

above via Int K Hole

another year, another spot of fun

oh, and the non-arcade game stuff was nice and stuff!

and A Ross Kakoji remains our hero amongst men of a certain age

a freckled redhead with the reflection of Rummikub tiles in her sun-glassies

the multiple levels of beauty in this picture be melting our hearts left & right

Meek’s Cutoff
Probably Sponsored In Part By ARRID Extra Dry®
Official Website | Trailers & Mo
PG | 104 min

Ever see that movie where Michelle Williams loses her dog?  Oh, you mean one of the biggest snoozefests ever put to film?  Yeah, that one.  It was called Wendy and Lucy (please read our review) and the American military have used it to torture people into giving us information.  Yes, it’s really that ungolden slumbers.  It’s so boring that we’d rather sit thru Hebrew School all over again than ever sit thru it again.  Wellllllllllllllllll, apparently that’s director Kelly Reichardt‘s thang.  Fair enuff, if you love the last letter of the alphabet repeated times 838383.  Get the picture?  Don’t think so!  It ALMOST did the impossible and make us not like Michelle Williams, you know, the actress we all adore and admire and wish was our lover, friend and/mother

So what if there was a subject matter so boring to begin with that it would perfectly suit the director’s style and sensibility so dangs well that she couldn’t lose like Parker Lewis or Indiana in 1976.  Guess what, there is, and it happened, and it worked!!!!  We sorta heart Kelly Reichardt now!!!  All is forgiven… sorta!  Her latest subject is people moving westward in search of a better life (actually that was the subject matter of her last 2 movies).  Yeah, but this is 1845, and moving round back than wasn’t easy, cause the west is wild and also mild and filled with nothing!!!!!

3 families are making this journey, and are led by real life Stephen Meek (a grizzly Bruce Greenwood), for who’s path, Meek’s Cutoff, they’re all passing along on!!  There’s the Gatelys (real life super indie droopy faced cutie pie couple Paul Dano and Zoe Kazan), the Whites (moaning Myrtle Shirley Henderson + Neal Huff and tiny Tommy Nelson), and the couple we care and focus on mostest, the Tetherows (Reichardt alums Williams and Will Patton).  They travel slowly by parched day, and unwind even slower by fire at night.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Occasionally stuff happens, like a wagon’s wheel breaks, or like they think they’re going the right way, but maybe they’re not, but maybe they are, but they still have like zero water!  They even capture an Injun (Rod Rondeaux) and things get a bit more interesting, but then they don’t!

Meek’s Cutoff was like watching everyone’s favorite educational game Oregon Trail (see below) come to life.  That may sound intriguing and boring, and it is!!!  Yet it’s pretty impossible to not walk away from it feeling both mesmerized and thirsty.  Plus how often do you get to see a film displayed in a 1.33:1 square aspect ratio, like our boy Kubrick done did wit some of his flicks with pre-HDTV home video in mind

Blazing Saddles: dude, PLAY THE OREGON TRAIL, Apple IIgs stizz, NOW!!

gawd bless you Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium

Verdictgo: Jeepers Mos Def Worth A Peepers

Meek’s is Cut-ON in NY only this Friday and elsewhere elsewhen

and until next thyme the balcony is clothed…