04 July 2012

A free glimpse into your future

No time machine required when you have the one and only Akaky Akakievich.

7 comments:

Dick Stanley said...

Sick, truly. But funny. Akaky must watch the old Dragnet flicks a lot to be able to imitate them so well. But, hey, how did Roberta Vasquez's name get in his labels? Uh, nevermind. I remember.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

He has done a post or two on the subject of Ms Vasquez earlier. Have to search the blog to find.

Akaky said...

I miss Jack Webb.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

Can't say I have had the pleasure. But thanks for the tip, I looked him up.

Dick Stanley said...

You might find him as boring as I do now. Even when I was young I thought he was strange. Now, I realize, he just couldn't act.

SnoopyTheGoon said...

No argument here.

Akaky said...

Of course he couldn't act. He literally came on set, hit his mark, and said his lines. If you watch the shows carefully, you can see that not only did he not learn his lines, he and the other actors are reading them off of cue cards. And the other actors, many of whom were first rate, were reduced to his level by the bad writing. What I like most about Dragnet, though, is that Webb was dealing with social issues like battered wives and battered children, drugs, pornography, racism, and police brutality years before other tv dramas would even go near those subjects. And every so often you'd get a big speech from Sgt. Joe Friday that usually gave you Webb's point of view on the subject matter and that point of view was invariably what any ordinary, decent-minded American would think about the matter if they gave it any thought. Webb produced Dragnet, so there wasn't going to be any bad-mouthing the United States of America or the things that Webb believed it stood for, and there wasn't going to be any toleration of the tune in, turn on, and drop out ethos of the 60's. Webb may not have been the best actor in Hollywood or anywhere else for that matter, but he was a decent, hardworking guy who'd made it in a tough business and appreciated the country that gave him the opportunity to make good. That earns him big marks in my book.