Watching You Tube: Playing "Burn: Cycle" on the Philips CD-i

What is the CD-i, you may ask?  You could call it the earliest disc-based game console, but that's only part of what Philips promised with CD-i.  In addition to playing games, you could listen to CD's, watch Video-CD movies, sing along to Karaoke CD's, or use multimedia data.  To put it uncharitably, it was the CD-ROM drive you could use with your TV set.  And like the similar 3DO, it was a big commercial flop.

One of the groundbreaking specialties of the CD-i was its capacity to add full-motion video (FMV) to games. Most such games used FMV pretty uncreatively. There would be live-action interludes between game levels. Or you'd have to shoot live-action people with your light gun.  Burn: Cycle used its FMV to come far closer to the ideal of an immersive experience, an interactive movie.  That's not to say it got to that ideal, of course.  Quite a lot of the gameplay, as you'll see, is puzzle-solving that just gets you from one sequence to the next.  But the creators of the game built an interesting world from cyberpunk elements, with a dash of Hong Kong cinema.

Anyway, it's widely considered one of the best games produced for the CD-i.  And not just because so many of the others reportedly stank on ice.  (It got an A- from the Video Game Critic, one of only three CD-i games so far he's given better than a B.)

Maybe it's just me, but I find that the game's theme of the interaction between humans and computers makes it easier to excuse the somewhat low-fi graphics.  Like the saying about something being a feature instead of a bug, the fairly primitive CGI transcends unreality to become stylized atmosphere.

They did a surprisingly good job of integrating the actors into the environment. Even today, there's a tendency for live-action figures to look "floaty" when put in an entirely digital set (as with the mothership interiors in the recent V series). But these actors are generally well-anchored to the virtual floor. I don't know what was up, though, with that hotel scene, where the actors seem about 30 degrees off from the plane of the set.

Some of the green-screen compositing isn't so hot (there's noticeable fringing in some scenes), and I suppose they could have done a better job with the lighting, so that the live action wasn't so flat and video-like.  But it reminds me a little of the original Doctor Who series.  I can't help thinking that if it had lasted into the 1990's, instead of dying at more or less the "Video Toaster" stage of CG technology, there would have been episodes that looked like this.



(click on the post title to see all nine chapters of this playthrough)

Watching You Tube: Crash Corben: Last of the Rocketmen

(originally posted November 4, 2008)

While we're having fun with Undersea Kingdom, here's a new retro-styled production emulating the serials of the 1940's—Crash Corben: Last of the Rocketmen.








Man alive, I seriously covet that rocketship set.  Part 3, by the way, is, as the YouTube description has it,  an "[a]ctual newsreel from 1944 which acts as an intermission between chapters."  I've excluded it here.

Watching You Tube: Space Adventure, Episodes 13 & 14 and Jim Troesh

And now it's time for two more episodes of one of my all-time favorite web series, Space Adventure!

Episode 13: Double Cliff Hanger!

It looks like "lukku cairi AKA Alice AKA leucocephala" has the same laptop I do.  Of course, since this was four years ago, she probably has a different one now, whereas I don't.

Episode 14: RCK Chain of Command

The "robot clown kid" footage comes from the (ostensibly) educational film The Self Image Film (If Mirrors Could Speak), which Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy, and Bill Corbett covered for RiffTrax.

* * *

I'm going to leave it there this week and share another video with you.  I don't keep up that much with Hollywood news, so it's kind of odd that I should happen to check out The Hollywood Reporter's news site yesterday and catch out of the corner of my eye a Breaking News sidebar item that put a cold shiver through me.  Actor/writer Jim Troesh has died.

That name might not mean much to you; his highest-profile role was a recurring one as a lawyer on Highway to Heaven.  But I knew him from an entertainment industry networking group, the Hampton's Table, that I was a member of when I lived in Los Angeles.

He was cheerful, irrepressible, and always working on something, which is more than I can say for myself.  And this was despite spending more than forty years of his life from age 14 as a quadriplegic.  There's a line from one of my favorite bands, Optiginally Yours, that always puts me in mind of him.  In "Beebo," they give you this advice on how to shake it to their boogie: "If you can move one limb, that's all you need to begin.  And if you can't, relax and just be groovy."  Jim was a relaxed and groovy kind of guy.

I mention all of this in a "Watching YouTube" post because the best way I can think of to remember him is with the first episode of his web series from a few years ago, called The Hollywood Quad, in which he addressed his own personal elephant in the room with his usual grace and good humor.  I remember seeing it the first time when he unveiled it to laughter and applause at the Table.  It even has a science fiction connection, of sorts, as we see him start on a science fiction script.  (In real life, he wrote a comedy pilot script with the wonderfully bent premise of Earth's first alien visitor having to make his way in the world once his novelty-based fifteen minutes of fame are up.)

Watching YouTube: Original Star Trek Bloopers, Season 3!

Before searching for the Season 1 and 2 bloopers on YouTube, I didn't even know for sure that these existed.  I recall some source saying as a fact that there was no third season blooper reel, because, since they knew the series would almost certainly not be picked up for a fourth season, there was nothing to celebrate.  (Which sort of misses the point of a "wrap party," but never mind.)

I once had a record album of third season Star Trek bloopers, salvaged from the original studio tapes.  I don't remember them being that funny, but I wish now I hadn't given it away... if for no other reason than people are selling them for $20 on eBay.

As I recall, Allan Asherman mentions a couple of third season bloopers in The Star Trek Compendium.  But since I never heard about them anywhere else, I thought maybe these were bloopers that someone remembered, but that never made it into an end-of-season reel, per se.

But here it is... I guess.  I can't say for sure that the cast and crew saw these, in this form, when the series wrapped up production at the end of 1968, but they're more than I ever expected to see.

As to the end... I don't know if this was part of the same reel, but it's footage from the pilot version of "Where No Man Has Gone Before."  It looks like it's here just to set up a pretty lame voiceover gag (which may be a new addition, seeing as it's pretty clearly a video pause, not a film one.)

My theory is that someone noticed it in the editing room (it is, after all, exactly the footage that they cut out in 1966 to make the broadcast series version), and added it for nostalgic reasons.  As the series was coming to an end, cast and crew could look back on where it all began (not counting the rejected first pilot, of course).



0:14 This is what you call "gallows humor."  To be greeted with a hollow laugh.

0:28 Beats me what this text says, at this resolution.  Get used to seeing it several times a minute, though.

1:26 This and the next one (in the transporter room) are the ones I remember Asherman mentioning.

4:55 I've had this cue (and the end theme, which we'll hear in a minute) for 20 years on CD, and cassette tape before that.  I once used both of them (and other pilot music) in a not at all Trek-related student film.  It's nice finally to hear them in context.

Watching YouTube: Original Star Trek Bloopers, Season 2

As I probably should also have said last week, sorry about the low video quality.  I would have thought there were more posts of the Star Trek bloopers out there to choose from.  But this is as good as I've been able to find.

Second Season "Wrap Party" Reel:


0:00 I've never seen this joke station I.D. before.  It wasn't on either of the tapes I once had.  Makes me laugh, though.

1:41 I'd just like to tell all you young whippersnappers that, until I was a teenager, this is what this shot looked like most of the time on television: the 16mm prints were so bad, you couldn't see the planet at all.  Plus, we had to beam uphill to school.  Both ways.

2:07 They're missing a shot here.  As I recall, it was an outtake from "Bread and Circuses."  Leonard Nimoy turns to the handheld camera and breaks out in a huge, un-Spock-like grin, and the camera suddenly tilts.  The operator was probably breaking up.

2:28 Actor Ed Reimers was also the TV pitchman for Allstate insurance, delivering the slogan, "You're in good hands with Allstate."  I think my favorite bit of this, though, is Reimers' moment of tongue-protruding concentration as he reaches to catch the Tribble.

2:31 I think this may be my favorite outtake, just for the randomness of it.  Some people on YouTube were confused about what Shatner says here, so here it is: "Listen, that bacon is really bad.  No, no kidding, it just stays with you the whole night."  (I may have it wrong at the very end.  It's tough to make out there.)  He has more to say about the bacon a little later.

3:11 This is frequent extra Billy Blackburn removing his "android body" makeup on the set of "Return to Tomorrow."  By the way, if I remember correctly you get paid time and a half for aftertime, and twice time for yet-later "golden time."

3:54 Shatner is addressing associate producer Robert H. Justman.  One of Justman's jobs was to shut filming down promptly every night, so the production wouldn't have to pay out a bunch of that aforementioned aftertime and golden time pay.  However, due to that frugality, it seems Shatner couldn't get all his old-age makeup scenes done in one day.  And he wants Justman to know in the rushes tomorrow.  (See below about "the rushes.")

4:07 This is Gene Roddenberry on the set of "Operation-- Annihilate!" backed with audio from "Patterns of Force."

5:01 I wish I could tell you who these people are.  It would probably make it funnier.

5:50 I don't know who the guy here is, either.  But the real mystery to me is who authorized spending the production's film to document women working out.  And what they were planning to use it for afterwards.  Okay, maybe that last part isn't such a mystery.

6:15 "The rushes" are the quickly-produced print of the negative shot the previous day... and also (as Shatner is using it here) the term for the screening of that print.  In other words, he's talking to the production staff.

6:35 Carrying Shatner away is Ted Cassidy, who played the android Ruk (and the voices of the Puppet Balok and the Gorn) the previous season.  Before that, he was Lurch on The Addams Family.  Here, he's visiting from the set of The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, where he played Injun Joe.

Watching YouTube: Original Star Trek Bloopers, Season 1

I first saw these bloopers when my father bought it on a grey market tape from "Video Yesteryear."  They filled the tape out with Laugh-In bloopers, which just kind of confused me, because I was three years old when it went off the air, so what did I know from Laugh-In?  Er, as opposed to Star Trek, which went off the air before I was born.  But you know what I mean.

The tape self-destructed in my family's Betamax, so that was the end of that.  In the early '90s, I was able to get another grey-market tape (this time on VHS) at a convention.  Eventually, that went missing somehow. Now there's YouTube, and until and unless what Craig Ferguson calls the Mighty CBS Corporation decides to suppress them, I need never be without the Star Trek blooper reels again.

Mid-season blooper reel:


2:31 Why the Mission Impossible clip?  Besides that it was also produced by Desilu, I dunno.

2:55 Why Lucy?  She still owned Desilu at the time (and starred in the company's The Lucy Show).  She sold out to Gulf+Western late in Star Trek's second season, and Desilu was merged with Paramount (the studio next door, also acquired by Gulf+Western).


End-of-the-season "wrap party" reel.  Some from the previous one recur here:


3:33 This one confuses some people.  I've even heard people claim this was Nichelle Nichols' first day on the set.  (It's not; it's from "A Taste of Armageddon," late in the season.)  The thing is, when actors aren't in a shot, sometimes they don't stick around to feed lines to the actor on screen.  Someone in the crew stands in to give the actor someone to react to.  Here, Nichols is unsure who is standing in for Shatner.  (As I recall from actors' memoirs, Shatner's frequent refusal to feed lines got on the other regulars' nerves.  Most of them usually stayed out of courtesy to the onscreen actor.)

Watching YouTube: 4 with Forrest J Ackerman

Update and a new video at the end.

(originally posted November 11, 2008)

Sometimes we're forcefully reminded of what a short and tenuous thing living memory is. There's no one alive who heard Charles Dickens read from his works, or who saw Edwin Booth act. Not one witness to twenty-three presidential administrations.

I met Jack Speer at my first meeting of the Albuquerque Science Fiction Society, in June. He toted an oxygen bottle and had to be lifted into a chair, but he was sharp and happy and in his element. The thought crossed my mind of what we'd lose when these last bastions of First Fandom had left us. I tamped the thought down as morbid. Less than three weeks later, I learned he had died.

So excuse me if the thought comes up again as Forrest J Ackerman, the "Super-Fan," "Mr. Science Fiction," coiner of the word "sci-fi," rests at the Acker-Mini-Mansion, having declined treatment for congestive heart failure and pneumonia. Here is a man who has made science fiction his life longer than it's even had the name. It was called "scientifiction" when an early issue of Amazing Stories assured nine-year old Forry from the newsstand ("Back then, magazines spoke," he would always say later), "Take me home, little boy—you will love me."

I interviewed Forry for the first volume of the new Thrilling Wonder Stories, and I've signed contracts with him, in his capacity as one of the foremost agents of early science fiction authors, for works that have appeared or are forthcoming. I've enjoyed talking with him in the front room of his home, surrounded by his collection—a Metalunan mutant head here, Bela Lugosi's Dracula cape there, originals and reproductions of Frank R. Paul artwork everywhere—and he, too, was sharp and happy and in his element.

Please, Forry, flummox and flabbergast the physicians and stay with us. Tell us about Hugo Gernsback and David H. Keller and Aladra Septama. Become the George Burns of science fiction, as you've promised. There's a lot more future yet to see.

* * *

Here's a 1986 tour of the famous Ackermansion. One of my regrets is that although I moved to Los Angeles while he still lived there and gave tours, I never managed to get out there.

A shorter view of the Ackermansion from the same year:

And finally, a trailer for a documentary project, The AckerMonster Chronicles.

UPDATE 2011: Forry died a little over three weeks after I originally posted this.  Originally, this post featured a fourth video which has since gone dark.  But as a replacement, here's a video posted in his memory, three days after his death, with Forry talking about a couple of his prize possessions: the Dracula cape, mentioned above, and the Dracula ring.  It amazes me the ring stood up to use the way it did.  I guess they really knew how to make props way back when.  They knew how to make science fiction fans way back when, too.

Incidentally, as for the comment above about flummoxing and flabbergasting the physicians... I sent him an appropriately punny card for his birthday a few days after originally writing this post, and added this medical-care reminder for him (based on one of his pseudonyms):

I should have drawn Dracula holding up the other hand, with the ring.  It strikes me now that if Dracula had gotten him, Forry would still be around... albeit just in the same way the rest of the undead get to "still be around."  I can't help but think Forry would have found being a vampire a kick.  You can bet he would have used the cape.

Watching You Tube: Space Adventure, Episodes 10-12

I don't know why these have so few views (204, 175, and 240, respectively).  This is one of my favorite web series.  Although, considering the inverted relationship I seem to have with popular things (and, incidentally, that popularity seems to have with the things I do), maybe it's not so puzzling.

At any rate, when last we left Mik, 19 friggin' months ago, he had found a means to bring the ship's computer back to life, as it were.

Episode 10: At It Again!


As a commenter wrote, "oohoo! a new prop and a new angle, all in one episode!!"
Episode 11: As Easy as A/B See What I Mean

Episode 12: Virtual Shape Eating
These episodes were posted about four years ago.  Here's a bit of what creator/star Mik Garrison has been doing more recently:


At the rate I've been going, expect more Space Adventure here around October 2013.  I am hoping to do better than that, though.

Watching You Tube: Surplus WEAT

(originally posted, with an additional video that's no longer online, December 23, 2008)

For Google's, and possibly your, benefit: Thrilling Wonder Stories, Volume 2 focuses on the writers of Star Trek. All fiction, old and new, is from contributors from the original series to Voyager. Plus, there's a major article on the making of the Hugo and Nebula-nominated "World Enough and Time" episode of the fan-run Star Trek New Voyages Internet series.

Dragon*Con program directors visit the set of New Voyages during the making of WEAT. Funny thing is, although my station as Digital Media Wrangler was right out in the open, between sickbay and the bridge, I don't remember this visit at all. But then, I was probably tunnel-visioned on grinding out the DVDs of dailies, as usual.

An upstate New York ABC affiliate talks to a couple of fans who recently (i.e., circa "Blood and Fire") became involved with New Voyages:



And finally, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett (Servo and Crow during the Sci-Fi Channel years of Mystery Science Theater 3000) riff on WEAT for RiffTrax Presents. Although the percentage of jokes that boil down to, "This sucks. That sucks. Look over there, that sucks, too" is a lot higher than in the old MST3K days, I enjoyed it a lot. However, I can see how the actors might not feel the same way. With a couple of them, I think the joking approached the cruel.

My favorite line: "I has a lot of LOLcats on there."

Watching YouTube: Tales of Tomorrow: Test Flight

Here's the television adaptation of Nelson Bond's "Vital Factor" that I mentioned the other day: "Test Flight," the tenth episode of ABC's Tales of Tomorrow, broadcast live on October 26, 1951.

All in all, the characterization of Crowder is softer here than on Dimension X.  Granted, he breaks the law, but still, I almost feel sorry for him when, after all his obsession with space has driven him to, he gets his dream hijacked out from under him.  Although it's a little melodramatic, I like the scene (original to this script) where Davis tries to stop Crowder, and Crowder hands him a gun and invites him to try.

Turn your volume down before starting the video.  It's real loud, the sound is kind of blown out, and it's missing a piece (see notes), but it's the best version I could find on YouTube.



Part One:

1:01 "Break out of the--the--this!" I wonder if that was the scripted line (which I guess would be a joke that Crowder, despite his research, can't pronounce "troposphere"), or if Lee J. Cobb stumbled over a different scripted line (or couldn't pronounce "troposphere").

1:08 Wait, they're planning on getting light years away from Earth?! Makes you wonder what the units are for "velocity per second."

8:20 "Electromagnetism. Utilization of the force of gravity. Or its opposite: counter-gravity." This is directly out of the story, but still makes no sense. Electromagnetism has nothing to do with gravity. Even if it did, "I'll do it with electromagnetism" isn't an answer in itself. What are you going to generate the electromagnetism with?



Part Two:

0:31 For some reason, this file is missing a piece that's on the DVD version I have. It's the act break and a scene where Davis confronts Marty about the cost in time and money of the project so far. Crowder enters, and after a few lines, we're back to this version.

1:14 Beats me what this added fade out/fade in is about. As far as I can see from the DVD, nothing is actually cut out here.

2:26 "a ton of mercurium-37." This one originates with the scriptwriter. There's no such thing.

Watching You Tube: Separate the WEAT from the Chaff

I've posted quite a few YouTube videos here, regarding the Star Trek New Voyages/Star Trek Phase II episode "World Enough and Time."  It's sort of a Thrilling Wonder family thing.  We had a 21-page feature article in Volume 2 about it, written by its script coordinator and documentarian Crystal Ann Taylor.  Co-writer Michael Reaves was also co-writer of "Manifest Destiny" in Volume 2.  Co-writer/director Marc Scott Zicree was Contributing Editor on both volumes, and wrote the article "Where No Writer Had Gone Before" for Volume 2.  Costume designer Iain McCaig created the Chesley-nominated cover for Volume 1/Summer 2007.  Assistant costume designer Mischi McCaig illustrated two stories in Volume 2.  And me, I was co-producer/digital media wrangler.  (I still have several hard drives I bought to hold footage for that project.)

[UPDATE 8/13/11: I really should have checked the credits before posting this, because I knew I'd forget someone.  In fact, I forgot several someones.  Kevin King, who wrote "Dark Side" for Volume 1, was the Producer's Assistant.  Steve Perry, the other co-writer of "Manifest Destiny," was the voice of the pilot of shuttlecraft Sturgeon.  Elisabeth Fies, who videotaped my interview with Forrest J Ackerman (which appeared in print in Volume 1, and as several videos on this blog) and asked additional questions, was a Production Assistant.  Pamela Davis, Editorial Assistant on both volumes, was Script Supervisor.  And receiving Special Thanks were Harlan Ellison ("Life Hutch," Volume 2), George Clayton Johnson ("Rock-a-Bye-Baby--Or Die!" Volume 2), Ray Bradbury ("The Irritated People," Volume 1), Mike Okuda (two illustrations in Volume 2), and finally, thanked beyond the grave, Theodore Sturgeon ("The Golden Helix," Volume 2).  In addition, many fine people on both sides of the camera were interviewed for the feature article, "No Studio, No Network, No Problem," but you'll have to ask the author who all of them were, because I'm sure there are many I never even knew about.]

I don't know why I mention this, especially, except to explain why we should have so many videos about WEAT that this post should be necessary.  You see, some of the videos have gone offline over the years.  So I figured I would gather together the ones that are still on YouTube, so I can delete the old posts with dead links.

Rehearsal of George Takei's big fight scene in the transporter room. I don't know who shot this, but it's interesting. Myself, I was parked downstairs at my Macintosh G5 as usual, so all I saw of the making of this scene as it was happening was a few seconds as a time as I picked up P2 cards full of footage, and dropped off empty ones.  (I made the window this size, because that's all the resolution it has.)


Eugene "Rod" Roddenberry, son of the Great Bird of the Galaxy himself, on WEAT, shortly after the premiere in August 2007.

Speaking of the premiere, here's George Takei talking about it just days before. The live streaming of the event, unfortunately, didn't go so well.  As I understand it, although fans were encouraged to register ahead of time, many did not, and the unexpected traffic crashed the server.
Incidentally, although this may seem all Hollywood gushy of me, George Takei is a cool guy, a real trouper, and a great dinner raconteur.

Watch for a special Easter egg at 3:18. Yes, it's the back of your humble editor/WEAT "Digital Media Wrangler."

Well, that's taken out two old posts with three dead links.  And I'm sure you won't have a long wait for more WEAT.  (You could look them up in the old posts, of course, but that would be cheating.)

Watching You Tube: I Find Your Lack of Direction Disturbing

Ever wanted the voice of Darth Vader to give you directions as you drive?  Sure, we all have.  But now, thanks to Locutio Voice Technologies, in partnership with Lucasfilm, you can actually have it for your compatible Garmin GPS device.



They don't show it here, but if you want to, you can replace the little car graphic with a TIE fighter, to get the whole Imperial experience.  If that's a little dark for you, a Yoda voice is also available.  (With that one, of course, you can replace the car with an X-Wing.  Just try not to drive it into a swamp.  You probably don't have the Force, and having AAA isn't an adequate substitute.)

If you have a TomTom, you're also in luck.  Well, except inasmuch as, if yours is anything like mine, it keeps trying to guide you down streets that don't exist.  But you can have Darth Vader lead you down that wrong path!  Or Yoda, C-3PO, or Han Solo, although that wouldn't be as appropriate.  I suppose if it knew it was giving you bad instructions, C-3PO could apologize, or Han Solo could exclaim, "It's not my fault!"  But considering that a TomTom that smart could just give you good directions in the first place, that would be kind of perverse.

(By the way, this answers any question as to whether TomTom is paying me for this.  Neither is Garmin.  When some ruffians smashed in my car window during an Albuquerque Isotopes game, I was oddly pleased that they stole my Garmin, since I'd been resisting paying to replace the mistake-prone little twerp.  Now I had a need to.  And all it cost me was 200 extra bucks to replace the window.  Now, what the hell was I talking about?  Oh, yeah, Star Wars GPS voices.)

I guess the reason they don't have an Obi-Wan Kenobi voice is that it wouldn't do much good to have your GPS just tell you to trust your feelings and use the Force, and leave it at that.

On the TomTom Darth Vader page, they have sample of Vader telling you to get out of the roundabout by taking the "Sith exit."  I think maybe they were a little too clever there.  If I were hearing it for the first time, I would be wondering whether he meant "sixth," or "fifth" (which, the way most of us pronounce it, rhymes with "Sith").  And meanwhile, I'd be, you know, in a roundabout, anxious to get out in the right place.

Here's a video from TomTom of Darth Vader in the recording booth.  (They also have a video of Yoda, but I didn't like it as much.)



By the way, that's not the voice of James Earl Jones as Darth Vader.  And I have reason to believe it's not David Prowse in the suit, either.  I remember, when Revenge of the Sith came out, a female friend complained to me about how Lucas gave in to Hayden Christensen's request to wear the suit, since it led to a rather narrow Sith Lord.  She missed Prowse.  "He has the shoulders of a god!" she enthused.  I can't say that I'd noticed.  But now I can't see a Darth Vader without sizing up his shoulders.

Of course, if you'd rather not have Star Wars characters telling you where to go, you can always have Brian Blessed do it.  Although I think that would be a trifle... distracting.  But who wants to live forever?



I guess that one's mostly for Britons, since the price is in pounds, and it's not for your GPS, it's for your "sat nav."

Where credit is due: I learned about the Darth Vader Garmin skin via The AV Club.

Watching YouTube: See Xanadu, Home of the Future!

There are many things named "Xanadu."  The original was the now-vanished summer capital of Kublai Khan, the "stately pleasure-dome" written of by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in his poem about (and named after) the Mongol emperor.  It was a disastrous 1980 roller-disco musical starring Olivia Newton-John and Gene Kelly.  It was the Hearst Castle analogue in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, which a newsreel announcer calls publisher Charles Foster Kane's "never-completed, already-decaying pleasure palace."  And it was the name of three "houses of the future," built in the early 1980's as tourist attractions in Kissimmee, FL, Gatlinburg, TN, and the Wisconsin Dells.

The buildings were made of polyurethane foam, sprayed over large balloons which were subsequently removed.  This resulted in dome shapes.  So no doubt the builders were thinking of Coleridge's poem when they named the houses "Xanadu."  Myself, I can't help thinking of Kane's Xanadu, a crumbling dream.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Here's a segment from a documentary, featuring Xanadu and its designer Roy Mason.


With the benefit of hindsight, they seem like slightly late bits of '70s futurism (an idea enforced by the round bed and the hot tub in the video above).  And, like many examples of the type, they were cool and thought-provoking, but didn't leave most people with the urge to move in.
I can't remember if I ever visited Xanadu.  I recall wanting to, and my family went to the Wisconsin Dells frequently.  And yet, I don't know if the few bells these videos ring are from actually having been there, or just from gazing longingly at the brochure.  I do know that I visited fellow Dells attraction Tommy Bartlett's Robot World but I remember that because a) it was outstandingly cheesy and disappointing; and b) I knew as I was going through it that it was built from a design my father rejected for a vacation home, so I was thinking of it as the (not very comfortable) place I could have been spending a couple weeks a year.  It looks like Xanadu would have been (or was) more entertaining to visit.


According to the description on the video's YouTube page, this was a promotional video, but frankly, I find it a little creepy.  The calm, disembodied voices, ostensibly of computers mindlessly going about their tasks, remind me of Ray Bradbury's story "There Will Come Soft Rains," and of the Dimension X and X Minus One adaptations of same.  I expect the voice to read a poem, and get stuck on, "Would scarcely know that we were gone... that we were gone... that we were gone."

It's almost too bad that the house wasn't saying that as the creators of the following videos conducted their "urban exploration" of the abandoned Florida Xanadu in 2005.  The other two were demolished in the 1990's.  This one was closed in 1997.







And then (while we're talking about Citizen Kane), in 2010, as it must to most buildings, death came to Kissimmee's Xanadu.  (This video was shot in the aftermath, so there's not a lot to see here.)



Now, especially with the sign still holding vigil, it brings to mind another poem, Percy Bysshe Shelley's "Ozymandius":

And on the pedestal these words appear--
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Read the Wikipedia page for more about Xanadu.