Early live TV “story-within-a-story” twist: “Tales of Tomorrow” episode: “The Window.”

In 1952 people were still trying to figure out how to use the brand new medium. This episode stands out for playing up the potential.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FE5Ft6GS-Fs&pp=ygUcdGFsZXMgb2YgdG9tb3Jyb3cgdGhlIHdpbmRvdw%3D%3D

According to a commentary HERE, there was supposedly a disclaimer attached to it, but no known surviving recordings of the episode show it. And apparently it was interrupted midstream in a few US cities by stations thinking it was real.

THE DAILY FUDD: E278: “Relating Charlie Kirk statement to TDF RKBA approach.”

Charlie Kirk addressed to question from someone at least presenting himself as a rather purist RKBA advocate. Whether that purist was sincere or a mole/troll, I do not know.

MY COMMENT: “Political realities, folks, preclude this fellow’s approach regardless. Holding onto some private firepower requires a moderate approach. Purism will only turn a vast swath of the American people against gun rights. See my channel page for a link my blog’s “Daily Fudd” series. Edition 10–"An Originalist fudd-ish argument regarding full-auto and 2A” offers a prospective  that can give judges a line to be true to the Founders and secure essential firepower, including our AR15s and such, while excluding items like cruise missiles.”

Kirk is not college-educated. His ability in things like historical analysis of the Constitution is limited. He will often take a knee-jerk surface approach to things, though as he has aged and matured he has done better. So I do not know if he would except the ideas in TDF 10 (linked above) or not. I don’t know if he would even understand it. But I give credit that he recognizes something adjacent to the concept.

If anyone who happens to see, this happens to know how to get it in front of him, I hope you will.

TDF INDEX: Cats, Guns, and National Security: THE DAILY FUDD index.  https://catsgunsandnationalsecurity.blogspot.com/2021/03/the-daily-fudd-index.html

“Equity” — 50-second video: Black racial agitation exposed by Black racial agitator.

They want handed what they cannot rightly gain.

Brief Firefly promo.

Intro: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=o-sp68GjYL0&pp=ygUTZmlyZWZseSBpbnRybyB0aGVtZQ%3D%3D

Opening sequence from Shepherd Book. Tells the basic story setting. https://m.youtube.com/shorts/2gIvX4ym-ig

Two clips summarizing opening of the “second pilot” Ep 2–“The Train Job.” Gives a flavor of the show regarding Western vs SciFi.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/amkJVcFNt7E

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/OE1-wHPY8Ac

Off Topic??? — TV show and movie ideas I have hatched in the past.

Someone is likely to steal these, but since I have no means of making them happen, I really can’t complain too much.

1. "My Two Wives": By a weird fluke, a man has two different marriages registered at exactly the same time, and because the laws of his state forbid marrying when one is already married, but not simply having two wives at the same time, he and his wives slip through the crack. After all, says the lead character, "You tell me which one I married first!" It would be a CBS-type sit-com vaguely like "The King of Queens" (cf Episode 6x24: “Awful Bigamy”) focusing on the obvious humor, yet leaving virtually unaddressed any community response to the situation, which is not kept secret. 2. "The Littlest Country": Vaguely a mix of "Grand Duchy of Fenwick" series and "The Almost Royal Family" 1980s ABC Afterschool Special with a young Sarah Jessica Parker. Due to a treaty fluke centuries ago, a few people find themselves in possession of a teeny tiny independent country within the U.S. It would be either a small plot of land barely holding one building, or somehow simply an office in a building. It would seriously address how international relations work, the complexities arising from such a rather small situation, as well as the personal lives of these people who can literally spit from one end of their country to another. 3. "Vanity Plates": alternate title, "Insanity Plates": NBC Monday Night Movie with French Steward-type actor playing guy whose personalized license plates were the very last made by a psycho prisoner, who hunts the fellow down out of vengeance (reminiscent of the gas station scene in "The Jerk"). A series of near-misses ensues as the lead character realizes he is being stalked, and he goes on the run with a 1980s Nancy Allen-type character. Eventually the bad guy is stopped, and the couple live happily ever after, though with new license plates. 4. "A Cat's World": Barely if hardly at all "Cats and Dogs"-derived, it features a world where domesticated felines are intelligent and speaking, and secretly manipulating events in the world. Very little human politics will be discussed. 5. "Cats and Men": Features a world where domestic cats are openly intelligent and speaking. Takes off on numerous works, like "The Country Bears," where two or more sentient species or living types coexist. Societally, cats would continue to live as pets or strays as they do today, but as independent and free beings as recognized by law. They would be legally recognized as such, but politics would rarely be discussed, and it would decidedly NOT be used as a PC vehicle calling for racial harmony or some such thing. The world featured would be geared from the beginning around both humans and domesticated felines being intelligent, each accepting their respective roles. 6. "The Furry Alliance": An alien attack on Earth with a radiation intended to lower human intellect to that of cats and dogs is somehow reversed, leading to most humans being killed, but cats and dogs being elevated in intelligence, as well as made more bipedal (two-legged) in form. These animals, who really seem to have absorbed a lot more information during their pre-attack lives than one might think, form an alliance with the few humans left to defeat the aliens. In one humorous scene, a dog admiral at a staff meeting uses a laser pointer to cause a cat general to compulsively paw at the dot on the table. While the dog quietly goes, "Hee hee hee!" the human in charge of the meeting says, "Stop that!" 7. "Home Movies": Now-obsolete idea about a family or small collection of friends who live in a motor home parked at a drive-in theater. A variant would make it a "Riptide"-type collection of private investigators. Basic comedy-drama, with whatever movie playing having big role in the tone and flow of the show, as well as dealings with the theater management. My worry is that the drive-in element would be lost in later seasons, kinda like how "Two Guys, a Girl, and a Pizza Place" became "Two Guys and a Girl." 8. "The Crash": Internet usage overtakes server capacity, causing a complete shutdown of the Net, and many other facets of our civilization. The action that puts it over the top is a young girl in "a midwestern city" (Kansas City, MO) posting a picture of her kitty on a website. The story would follow four stories: 1. A soldier deployed to "a country in southeastern Europe" (Kosovo) who has to do his work manually; 2. The aforementioned girl and her family dealing with the social chaos. 3. A family in a smaller city near that city; and 4. a National Guardsman in the area who knows the girl because he helped run the website to which she was posting. A major part of the story would feature rioting in the city, revealed when the family in story 3 sees the glow from the city at night, then remembers that the power is still out (scene cuts to burning neighborhoods). The Guardsman pulls some strings (and a 9mm sidearm) to get his friend and her family out of the city (vague similarity to Will Smith taking the helicopter in "Independence Day"), while Guard units surround it to contain the rioting. In a nod to "Titanic," there is a scene where some angry city residents are threatening to charge a road barrier, and two Guardsmen point their rifles to stop them. One says, in a fake British accent, "Back I say! Or I'll cut you down like dogs!" (nod to the "Titanic" scene where the sailor holds back crowds with a revolver). His buddy looks sideways at him, and the speaker says, "Hey, I saw the movie!"

We need a “Della and the Dealer” movie.

(Edited: 11 April 2025) They should make a movie based on this. Kind of like what they did with “The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia.” Either a direct take or a loose inspiration with modified lyrics. But either way, with the cat telling the story or filmed from the cat’s perspective would be additionally fun.

A POINT ON HOW A PARTICULAR LINE IN A DIRECT TAKE MIGHT WORK:

“The Dealer had a knife and the dog had a gun and the cat had a shot of Rye.”

Unless one takes the “dog” and “cat” as actually being humans colloquially referred to as such, this seems written just to bring a silly image to the song. Two options exist to make this serious:

1. Set the scene in the back of the bar, where Della and the animals are off to the side while Randy and the dealer have their altercation. The cat is given a liquid snack to keep him out of trouble, while the dog is wearing a pack holding a concealed firearm (be it belonging to the dealer or Della), the idea being that the canine was less likely to be searched. Yielding this once to the generally-disliked-by-me Chekov’s Gun rule, this weapon is used by either Della or Randy, to dispatch the dealer (in legitimate defense – the dealer attacks Randy with a knife).

2. More likely: The dog is facetiously credited by the storyteller (and possible witness) with possessing the firearm to cover for whichever human actually pulled the trigger on the Dealer. And since the storyteller is being a little bit silly, let’s give the cat one for the road. 

ADDENDUM 21 FEBRUARY 2025: Offered the following to the Lyric Interpretations page on the song:

Taking the story as serious: Coke dealer, his woman (Della), and their literal dog and cat head out across the American Southwest. They stop in a community and hang around a bar. Della takes up with guitar player named Randy, a friend of the storyteller (probablyd another worker at the bar). All five of them are in the back room of the bar, and the dealer comes at Randy with a knife. To make discovery less likely, the dog is wearing one of those service animal-type packs containing a handgun (slightly anachronistic, I admit, but not impossible in the time), while the cat is given some sort of liquid treat to keep him/her content (because, well, cats get pampered). Randy or more likely Della use the gun to stop the dealer. All four then run to the truck and skip out.

It is also very possible the gun is attributed to the dog’s possession to avoid incriminating whether it was Randy or Della who fired the shot. The  whole line does sound a little bit odd or fanciful.

Animals are most likely literal (not colloquial ways of referring to other humans) because of the line, “Two shadows ran from the bar that night, and A dog and A cat ran too.” This, especially given the ambiguous ”A” rather than “the” article, seems like a genuine attempt to depict the latter two as non-human/qualitatively distinct from the other runners. 

—-

Following up on previous interpretation:

Second idea is definitely it: The dog is credited by the storyteller (and possible witness) with possessing the firearm to cover for whichever human actually pull the trigger on the Dealer. And since the storyteller is being a little bit silly, let’s give the cat one for the road.