Today is the birthday in 1904 of the film and TV actor Iron Eyes Cody.

He he has a lengthy list of feature film appearances on the Internet Movie Database , but was famous to most Americans as the “crying indian” in this landmark anti-pollution Public Service Announcement from 1971.

http://youtu.be/862cXNfxwmE

Iron Eyes Cody was an American, but not a Native American. He was born in Louisiana to Italian parents. His given name was Espera de Corti. He shortened his last name to “Corti” and when he went to Hollywood it became the much more marketable “Cody”.

He appeared on screen with luminaries like John Wayne and Richard Harris. And also with lesser lights like Jim Varney and Mr. T. But perhaps the most fascinating character in any of his films was Cody himself. He maintained throughout his life that he was of Cherokee and Cree ancestry, and stuck to that story even after researchers uncovered his true background.

He married a Native American woman, donated to Native causes, adopted Native children and seems to have lived an exemplary life of devotion to those who were his people in every sense except through a direct blood connection. But how important is that?

Thanks to that ubiquitous PSA, in the minds of millions of people “of a certain age”, Iron Eyes is an iconic Indian, and a constant reminder that we should pick up after ourselves.

Forty years ago, keeping America clean was an important part of the national conversation. That’s not so true today, though I don’t sense that we’ve come anywhere close to winning the war against litter.

I’d like to think that no one would throw a full bag of trash at the feet of an indigenous American standing by the highway in 2012 – not that that would have happened in 1971 either. What’s more likely today is that someone would call the police because some suspicious guy was standing too close to the road, crying.

What do you do to Keep America Clean?

Today is Jim Henson’s birthday, which should be a national holiday where we get out our heavy old socks, decorate them with fringe, buttons and felt, stick our hands inside and start acting out stories.

I love it that he was drawn into puppeteering as a way to get into television, discovered the possibilities in textiles as part of a college class and wound up graduating from the University of Maryland with a degree that was not in communications or theater, but home economics. I wonder if his parents ever asked “what are you going to do with THAT?”

Henson was born in Mississippi in 1936. He would have been 75 today.
Google is observing the date by giving you a chance to animate their famous logo.

Here’s a look at some of Jim Henson’s work, as if you aren’t already familiar with it. The clip does point out something amazing about Henson’s fabric creations and the comic sensibility that brings time to life – namely how lasting these creations are. Is there any question that Kermit the Frog will outlast everyone alive today?

http://youtu.be/jjw7bFM8zPM

Henson argued that the frog was a lot more interesting than the guy with the beard, but we know that’s simply not true. Still, it is quite remarkable how easily we can look past the human with his arm up the back of a character.

There is something fascinating about an assemblage of talking felt.

Your favorite Muppet?

The headline that caught my eye was “China Bans Time Travel“.

My first thought was that here is another unnecessary restriction against an imagined threat – like Oklahoma banning sharia law.

Reading into it a bit, I discovered something with a little more nuance. It wasn’t an outright ban, but rather, an official expression of displeasure. Though in China, what’s the difference? If the declaration on the right means what the New York Times ArtsBeat Blog says it means, the authorities in Beijing formally frown on time travel as a theme in TV shows because such dramas are lacking the required “positive thoughts” area. Also, the plots of such shows “casually make up myths, have monstrous and weird plots, use absurd tactics, and even promote feudalism, superstition, fatalism and reincarnation.”

So?

It is a stretch for free Americans to imagine living in a place where the entertainment is not built atop “monstrous and weird plots,” and the government dictates the scenario, but perhaps it’s not as bad as we think. After the ArtsBeat article appeared, others chimed in with a slightly different reading – that China has not banned time travel stories outright, but simply cautioned writers and producers against misrepresenting exalted figures of the past when they should be treated with total adoration.

Still.

One blogger pointed out that here in the USA, our exalted figures of the past are all fair game for pretty much anything – witness the effort now underway to make a film out of “Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter.”

Another possibility that has apparently occurred only to me – China did in fact launch a brutal crackdown on all use of time travel in fiction and in fact, but mysterious people from the distant future swooped in and switched the documents to soften penalties that would otherwise apply to their favorite authors and filmmakers someday – thus avoiding significant pain and discomfort for the very people whose creative anarchy inspired them to become time travelers in the first place.

Well, why not? It could happen. If I were a technologically sophisticated interloper from the future, I’d do what I could to keep Irwin Allen out of jail simply because he gave us Lost in Space, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and this: The Time Tunnel.

http://youtu.be/NFgMGvFhGQY

Oh, wait. To the people of 1966, I AM a technically sophisticated interloper from the future.
But I still can’t travel through time. Not here, and certainly not anywhere in China. Dang it.

When have you run afoul of an official policy?

The Air Force is about to launch a new technology that will bring enhanced aerial surveillance to certain locations in Afghanistan. Where the current airborne robots use one camera to provide live video of a single narrow area, the new device will provide a constant stream of images from a mulit-lens drone that the military claims will be able observe all the activity in an entire town.

This, of course, approaches the scenario of the 1998 Jim Carrey movie “The Truman Show”, though in this case it’s adapted to serve the purposes of modern warfare.

I’m all for new technology that helps American forces stay alive and accomplish their mission in Afghanistan. But it’s hard to choose the weirdest single thing about this.

Is it:

… that ESPN was used as a model to help the military learn to “tag” certain recorded video sequences for immediate recall, the same way a TV crew covering a professional football game follows a specific player or compiles a collection of certain types of plays?
(What will be the Jalalabad equivalent of an end zone celebration?)

… that the Air Force sent a representative to watch how reality TV shows choose footage from programs where multiple cameras record all the activity in a house?
(This way we’ll be sure to know if two Taliban have a fight in the outdoor hot tub.)

… that the massive amount of video recorded by these all-seeing cameras flying over villages in Afghanistan will be stored in the digital memory of servers housed in used shipping containers … in Iowa?
(This is a far cry from the day when the most exotic images to be found in Keokuk were at the new Blockbuster.)

… that the project’s official name is Gorgon Stare, after the three headed beast from Greek mythology whose steady gaze would cause you to turn to stone?
(Haven’t we already financed another weapons system that can actually do that?)

… that or that the details regarding this surveillance project, which is something you would think by its very nature requires secrecy, are all over the internet, and are now appearing second hand in a whimsical blog posted under the image of a baboon?

The only reason I can think of for this level of sharing is that the military wants everyone in the war zone to feel that they are being observed and their actions are recorded, constantly. Smile! You’re on Overt Camera!

For people who grew up at a time when television was still a new and exciting idea, the thought of being on camera carries the aura of something special. Not so anymore. And maybe the day is drawing near when NOT being on camera will be the more significant event – something to post as your most amazing ever Facebook status: OMG! I’m out of the frame! Do I even exist?

Perhaps that’s even a workable plan for some future reality show – a group of people are put in a house and left to their own devices without being viewed or recorded. When they come out they can tell us how positively weird it was to know they weren’t being watched.

How would it change your behavior if you knew a camera in the sky was recording everything you did outside?