Pop Journal: So long, Jack Flanders

The Jack Flanders adventures have been a fixture of my life since I first happened across "The Fourth Tower of Inverness" at age 9 or 10 on my local college radio station.

I got hooked, and remained so for the next 40 years. Over the past couple years I've rediscovered Jack, listening to many of his most-recent adventures in the car while making occasional trips for work, criss-crossing my state.

The voice of Jack was that of Robert Lorick, a New York theater actor, who gave full life to this "cosmic tourist."

Jack's adventures, penned by Meatball Fulton (aka Tom Lopez), took the character to Morocco, Brazil, Bali and through mysterious realms outside our world and, sometimes, deep inside Jack's own head. They are funny, perplexing, exciting and wise. And Jack, as voiced by Lorick was all that, too.

His Jack could be calm one moment, sharing bits of arcane wisdom he'd gleaned from Eastern religions, Arab proverbs, foreign novels and Tagore poems, and a grump or a goofball the next - complaining that he needed his morning coffee, making terrible puns or exclaiming "feet don't fail me know!" when trying to outrun a dragon set loose in his friend Dr. Mazoola's laboratory.

If you haven't heard "The Fourth Tower," "Moon Over Morocco," "Dreams of Rio," or any of the other 20-some Jack Flanders stories recorded between 1974 and now, you really should.

Listening to the stories as an adult, I realize how much they've helped shape my life. In my best moments, I hope I'm like Jack in his: Open-minded, clear-headed, appreciative of and bewildered by the mysteries of our world, and ready for adventure. But I have plenty of my own grumpy, goofball moments, too.

When I heard the news earlier this week that Robert Lorick had died, it was a bit like losing an old friend, albeit, one I'd never met, or even seen a picture of, in real life.

It wasn't until Tom Lopez shared this image of Lorick that I'd seen what he looked like - different from the Jack of my imagination, but then I figured he probably was.

I'm going to share Lopez' own tribute below, but before signing off, I want to thank him and Lorick for all the great stories, which I'll return to again and again.

If you want to learn more about Jack and the many other characters featured in the ZBS Foundation audio adventures Lopez writes and produces, check them out. They don't appear on the radio as much anymore, but they can be easily downloaded and, soon, streamed. They come with my very highest recommendation.

-jfire

In Memory of Robert Lorick by Tom Lopez

Robert Lorick died last week. As many of you know, Robert was the voice of Jack Flanders. Jack came into being in 1972 with The Fourth Tower of Inverness. It was a fluke that Robert got the part.

Fulton, who wrote the script, and all the other Jack adventures, had a different actor in mind. But when there was a scheduling problem, Valerie who was to play Lady Jowls, said, “I know just the person.” She had Robert call, and he did an audition on the phone. “I was thinking of someone a bit more macho, more an adventurer,” Fulton said. “But when I heard his voice, there was a kindness, a sensitivity, a sense of humor, and I thought, why not?”

And so Jack Flanders came into being, he was a collaboration between Fulton and Lorick. Robert enjoyed playing Jack, especially coming up here to spend days recording in the country.

Broadway Bob

The photo above was taken in our studio in 1972. As you can see, he was a pretty suave looking guy. Probably not what you thought Jack looked like. When it comes to radio, actors rarely resemble what you envision. Robert had written a couple of successful Broadway musicals. One was “The Tap Dance Kid,” played by Gregory Hines. So whenever Robert came up to ZBS (this is back in our radio-commune days), we’d all sit around our long dining table, and pester Robert to tell us stories about Broadway. Robert was a writer, he had a lot of stories to entertain us with. And he was so charming, so sophisticated, we started calling him, “Broadway Bob”

I know that sounds slick, and the photo above may appear to confirm this, but he wasn’t at all. He was a very kind, generous, thoughtful person, with a droll sense of humor.

We have so many stories to tell about Robert, after all we’ve known and worked with him for 44 years now.

The Voice of Chanel

You may be surprised to know that Robert was the voice of Chanel. Yes, that Chanel. You could hear his voice on their commercials. Of course he didn’t sound like Jack, but he certainly sounded suave.

Robert lived in Manhattan. In 1973, a year after recording “The Fourth Tower,” he was standing on a corner in NYC, waiting for the light to change, a couple guys asked him for a cigarette, Robert explained he didn’t have any. When the light changed, and he stepped off the curb, one of them shot him in the back. He fell into the street, lying there unable to move, watching the car tires coming at him and then wheeze past his head. The bullet was lodged next to his spine, the doctors didn’t dare remove it. The bullet remained there for the rest of his life. Robert often walked with a cane.

This happened while Fulton was traveling in Morocco recording sounds for “Moon Over Morocco.” When he spoke to Robert on the phone some weeks later, he could hear his pain, and asked if Robert felt he could record, sitting in a studio for hours at a time. Robert said, no problem.

Good Ol’ Jack

It didn’t matter what was going on in Robert’s life, he was always eager to do another Jack Flanders story. So to make things easier for Robert with “Morocco,” so Jack didn’t have to carry the whole story by himself, Fulton wrote in a couple more main characters, Kasbah Kelley and Mojo Sam.

Our studio is located in a separate building. After a day of recording episodes for “Morocco,” Robert would get up and slowly, somewhat painfully, lean on his cane and walk to the main house. But he never complained. And he recovered, though he continued to use his cane.

Another Near Death

In 1980, Robert was back in the hospital. He was there for weeks. The doctors had no idea what it was, he getting weaker by the day and thought, maybe this is it? Finally a young doctor from India examined Robert, then took a pencil and made a little dot on the back of Robert’s hand. He said, “This is the size of the bug that bit you.” It turned out to be one of the first cases of Lyme Disease. With antibiotics, he recovered.

One Last Story

Over the last year, Robert was in and out of the hospital. He was on dialysis, he needed a kidney. He was a tall guy, 6’ 2”, he’d lost a lot of weight. We didn’t know if he’d be able to record “The Green Velvet Chair.” But Robert kept assuring us, he can do it. He was able to get a portable dialysis machine, and have a friend drive him up here. He’d lost a lot of weight, he was using a walker. While he was taking a break to do his dialysis, we’d record the other actors. He looked frail, but he still had his sense of humor, and his voice sounded great.

What Now?

Fulton has been writing “The League of the Green Velvet Chair.” But he knew Robert’s health was fading. So to take some of the burden off Robert, he wrote in other characters to join Jack & Mojo in Inverness. The script wasn’t completed, we don’t know what he’ll do with it now.

Even though we knew Robert was in poor health, we were stunned to hear of his death. We still are. I end this with sadness, sniffles, sighs and damp eyes. My wife may have said it best, “He was a wonderful man.”

Pop Journal: Roku; Jessica Jones

New Roku

I was an early adopter to Roku, the pioneering manufacturer of set-top streaming video players.

Like most Americans, I like sitting on my couch in front of the TV, and the Roku allowed me to stream Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime right onto my set - much nicer and more comfortable than sitting in front of a computer screen.

Seeing as how those three services, plus over-the-air free TV, provided me with everything I'd ever want to watch - plus way more - at a much lower cost, I cut our cable service for good.

For the most part, the player worked great. The only issue it seemed to have was occasionally with Hulu, where the picture would freeze up and pausing and rewinding didn't work well at all. I'm not sure whether the problem was due to the player or Hulu's stream, but it was minor in the grand scheme.

Over the past year, however, it became clear that my old Roku wouldn't be able to handle new offerings such as HBO and Showtime's new streaming services. The prospect of being able to watch "Game of Thrones" or, eventually, the new "Twin Peaks" without going through the middle man of the cable company - and paying for tons of channels I'd never watch - is tremendously appealing.

So, I got a new Roku a few weeks back. There are few different models, but I figured the Roku 2 provided everything I needed. And, since hooking it up, I really like it.

For starters, Hulu works great. No crashes. No problems pausing or rewinding. I also like that you can use the player to search across all platforms. Say you want to see whether a movie is on Netflix, where it won't cost anything extra, versus Amazon, where you might have to shell out a few book to rent it, the machine tells you.

There's also a "feed" feature, which you can set up to alert you if there are new episodes available of a show you like, or if a new season of a series has been added to Netflix or one of the other services you use.

I haven't subscribed to HBO or Showtime, yet. At the moment, my household is too caught up watching reruns of "Seinfeld," "Parks and Rec" and "Doctor Who" to even bother. But eventually I'll try them out.

Streaming is such an efficient - maybe too efficient - way of watching TV and movies that it's sometimes cool to watch something when it's actually "on." We did that recently while tuning into the State of the Union Address and to the new season of "Downtown Abbey" (yes, I'm hooked) and it was kind of fun to have that experience again. But I really like being able to watch what I watch, when I want.

 Jessica Jones

While I'm a streamer, I'm not a binge watcher. I rarely take in more than an episode or two of a show in the evenings. But I finally finished watching Marvel's new Netflix series a couple nights back.

"Jessica Jones" is darker and more thoughtful than the rest of Marvel's TV and movie universe. It forces us, via a story involving comic book tropes such as mind control and super strength, to comment on issues of gender, trauma and power.

The show is violent and grim and I sometimes found it hard to watch, let alone enjoy, but it's also smart and, at times, quite funny. I'm very glad I stuck it out.

While I didn't read Alias, the Marvel Comic "Jessica Jones" is based on, I had the impression, back when it came out, that it was just another grim'n'gritty enterprise - a comic making novel use of graphic sex and violence to attract a mostly male audience of aging superhero fans. After all, it's not like Marvel and DC weren't doing a lot of that sort of thing at the time. But if the comic was anything like the TV series, my assumption was unfair.

The character of Jessica, as portrayed in the series by Krysten Ritter, is one of the most important and compelling female genre characters to come along since Buffy. Strong, yet damaged, victimized, yet powerful, she helps us understand how too many men in our society excuse away or attempt to justify intolerable treatment of women.

The rest of the cast, which includes Mike Colter as Luke Cage and Rachael Taylor as Jessica's best friend Trish, is also very good, though I must warn you that if you love David Tennant on "Doctor Who," you may never feel the same way about him after watching him play the villain in the series, the despicable, slimy and utterly creepy Kilgrave.

The only thing about the series that didn't really work for me was a trite subplot involving Jessica's unlikable attorney friend Jeri Hogarth (played by Carrie Ann-Moss). It was tiresome, lacked the freshness of the rest of the series, and didn't go anyplace interesting.

I don't know if it's possible, after this initial season, to tell a story about Jessica that's as moving and meaningful as this one, but I do hope there's more. Ritter, her co-stars and the show's creators have shown they are capable of work that will stick with viewers long after they've finished viewing the final episode.

Pop Journal: Pop '66; Star Wars; Carl Wilson

It's been a while since I've expounded here on what I've been reading, watching, hearing, etc. But now that it's a new year, I hope to do such updates once a week or so.

Update: A new addition to the PCS family of blogs

Lately, much of my blogging time has been spent creating and scheduling posts for a new Pop Culture Safari spinoff site, Pop '66. It's basically this site as it might've appeared 50 years ago - if the Internet existed.

The posts are presented pretty much in real-time. So, for example, I may post on a particular movie or record on the same day, or during the same week, as when it first appeared. I've also been posting videos of primetime TV shows at the exact time when they first aired, 50 years ago (Eastern Standard Time).

Yes, I understand this is nuts. But it's interesting to think that we can, in some ways, replicate the past now that nearly everything is online. Getting the timing right has been tricky, but I'm relying on various books and websites to help. And I'm fudging a little bit, too, here and there. It's not like I'm obsessed or anything.

Anyway, it's been fun and educational. I hope it is for you, too. Along with a focus on movies, music, comics, books and TV, there also will be lots of vintage and other imagery from that seminal year. If you like PCS, I think you'll like Pop '66, too. At the very least, you can look at it and speculate whether I'll be completely bonkers by the end of this year.

My other blog, The Glass Onion Beatles Journal, is still running strong, too.

Review: Star Wars, of course

Like the rest of the world, I saw "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" over the holidays. My snide remark coming out was that it was "a remake of the first Star Wars film, but with better acting." In talking with family and friends, that assessment has pretty much held. But at the same time, I, and many I've visited with, really liked it.

It's my sense, and the sense of other first generation fans I've been talking to, that the script was so committed to replicating the spirit of the original trilogy that it ended up using the first film's plot:  Rebels blow up planet-sized weapon of mass destruction.

There are all sorts of other too-close parallels. In this new movie: Rey is Luke, the novice Jedi from a desert planet. Han Solo is Ben Kenobi, her protector and mentor. Poe is Han. Kylo Ren is Darth Vader. Maz Kanata is Yoda. Snoke is the Emperor. And BB-8 is R2D2. And the acting is considerably better.

But, even so, it was a blast. I left leaving the theater feeling happy and despite. And this is despite bowing to my kids' desire to see it in Imax and in 3-D, two gimmicks bound to make a movie worse.

The new characters, and the actors who played them, were my favorite thing about "The Force Awakens." Daisy Ridley as Rey and John Boyega as Finn were fresh, energetic and charismatic. I want to see a lot more of both characters and suspect that I will. And now that we've all paid homage to original movie, maybe they can do something new next time around.

Review: Overlooked little brother

I'm all for Carl Wilson getting his due. Not only did he sing that glorious lead vocal on "God Only Knows," he also helped guide the Beach Boys through several great LPs during Brother Brian's post-Smile incapacitation.

And, as Kent Crowley's "Long Promised Road: Carl Wilson, Soul of the Beach Boys" details, Carl did a lot of other stuff, besides.

Crowley's aim is to give Carl his full due, and he discusses how it was the youngest Wilson's early interest in electric guitar that helped move Brian from piano and Four Freshman-focused ballads into guitar-driven rock'n'roll. After Brian quit touring, it was also Carl who took over as the Beach Boys' de facto leader and musical director on the road.

There are plenty of quotes from associated and past touring band members who offer nothing but praise of Carl's musical abilities, singing and all-around nice guyness.

My only critique of the book is a lack of focus. Rather than zero in on Carl, Crowley charts the entire history of the Beach Boys. He tends to downplay Brian's influence in an effort to play up Carl's but also gets distracted by other developments in the music of the times and often spends several pages without mentioning any Wilsons at all, not even Dennis.

Crowley might've come closer to his goal had he started by focusing in on those post-Smile albums and the enormous pressure placed on Carl to take the lead when Brian so obviously couldn't - and then flashback to show how all of this came about.

That said, the book serves a valuable purpose by giving this great musician a little more of the attention he deserves.