Merely A Quarter Of A Century Ago

An oddball jumble of video on display this time. Most of which seems to originate from the Spring of 1983 - except for the very last security cam shot which is quite recent. I recall compiling most of these old clips onto a 5 hour VHS tape for buddy Jon in England to watch - in exchange for him providing me with the same sort of entertainment on tape from his side of the world. Which he certainly did.

At one point in here, Randy and I venture back to our old High School to track down where the administration decided to hang up all our old grad photos from the decade before. While there, we also took the time to revisit my 'home away from home' during the early 70s... Mr. Hammer's Art & Applied Design classroom on the third floor. (We saw no sign of U.J. or his famous Albers Color Theory.)

In long forgotten autumn evenings of the early 1980s, we used to get a gang together for indoor volley ball, and a tiny snippet of that nonsense has survived for this upload. (As you might recall, it was roller hockey back in the '70s.) Otherwise, what we're watching here is just random stuff that happened merely a quarter of a century ago. We'll get back to the REALLY old stuff next time.

Christmas 2008

The staff and management of No Relevant Point certainly hope that most, if not all of our viewers, got exactly what they wanted for Christmas 2008 and we trust that you will continue to find this blogateria a source for both idle reflection and painful regret in regards to watching these bygone years reconstituted on video.

Pointing out the fact that youth in general has a short shelf life and that in most cases the best days are already far behind us, is our blunt directive here at NRP and we're just doing our job with the tools at hand.

Old Smokey

Running around a public park, being chased by a man in a grey trenchcoat aiming what appears to be a real gun, was probably a little easier to get away with back in the 70s for home movie making than it would be today. Having said that, perhaps if we'd actually run into anybody while filming at VanDusen Botanical Gardens that day, we might still have been told to knock it off prontolike. But the place was still in its infancy and nearly deserted.

What any unsuspecting onlooker would have seen that afternoon, was a whole lotta believable acting by the two characters in this short miniplay. Bravo to both Doug and Paul for playing their opposing parts so convincingly. Because it looks to me like that's pure and honest FEAR in Doug's eyes during his futile attempt to put distance between Paul and himself. How either of them managed to keep a straight face during the full 'run' of this energetic romp is beyond me.

Unfortunately, the film was originally twice as long as it is now. There were more chase scenes thru the tourist areas of the park that were removed when I decided to submit the movie to a super 8 film contest in the mid 70s. I think it was for CKVU TV. All submissions had to be under 2 minutes in length so I was faced with a hefty snipping job! In the end, I changed my mind and didn't even bother to submit the effort, but the damage had been done. Scenes were cut out and then lost over the years. This shorter version is all that remains of that Sunday stroll thru the park.

This bright and clear copy is taken from the recent DVD transfer rather than from the old VHS transfer - a copy of which still sits dull and faded-looking on the Youtube website.

Amputations On The Body Of Blazerville

And now, only because I stumbled across it yesterday whilst (hi Jon) searching for something else in my overwhelming collection of historical video recordings, we present this short salute to a former living member of the neighborhood, now deceased... the Terry/Carolyn house.

Referred to as such because of the fact that Terry and Carolyn were the only residents we ever knew that called the structure home. (Separate decades of course.) The house, and the one that replaced it on the same property, has probably always been better known as the house wot sat next to the sprawling estate of Bartholomew Woods.

For such a dramatic event as the elimination of a significant chunk of Blazerville, I was joined out on the street by a few long time inhabitants of the area; only one of which agreed to be interviewed. Don's mom pointed out for us that her home, and many of the others in the 'hood', were all basically identical and built by the same people at the same time. And - had she been able to - she would've liked to have saved one of the interior doors of the doomed shelter, for use in her own abode.

Her need for a new door was based on the fact that daughter Brenda (perhaps better known to viewers of this blog as Esther) had removed a special door from the house and taken it with her when she moved into her first marriage. Apparently Brenda is no less nostalgic than this writer and found it hard to part with the sentimental value the bedroom door of her childhood represented.

In The Pre-Housebound Days

It's 'Blazer Doug' front and center in this latest assemblage of old super 8 film bits from the late 1970s; running around like a chicken with his head cut off during the making of a chase movie in Squamish. (Sandy; pictured above; played the chasee.) Also on screen for a large chunk of footage again is non-Blazer Jonny; no doubt these would be the excess trimmings I had to leave behind while compiling the official DVD version of his 1979 visit to Canada. (DVD now available at all fine A&B Sound outlets.)

At least two different trips to Disneyland can be spotted in here; with a short stay in Seattle to catch the monorail thrown in. Meanwhile, in downtown Vancouver, Billy surprises everyone at one point by hopping onstage and doing an impromptu tap dance. Gotta stick around for that. So it's all over the map again; Squamish, Seattle, Disneyland and Victoria. I don't travel around NEARLY as much as I used to now that I'm old and housebound.

Postal Rock Opera Type Thingy

Here's another 'used' video that I fished out of the Youtube lake recently where it had been floating undiscovered for the past year. The closets of my account on that file-sharing website continue to be slowly emptied out as it seems most of my energy for uploading old, stale images of the 70s is now being funneled into this more private arena called No Relevant Point.

I had composed the sluggish tune that plays along in the background of this flick for what I envisioned as part of a long 'postal rock opera type thingy' back in the mid 90s. Songs about getting thru another day on the job with vocal help from Steve and Harry. Stranger still, when I completed the the full album and got a short mention about it (with photo) in the company news magazine, I ended up receiving requests from across Canada for CD copies of this homemade postal 'J.C. Superstar'. We had gone national. That bizarre development still creeps me out a little even today, a full decade later.