Hutch Thinks of Home

HUTCH THINKS OF HOME
Duluth, MN
Hm. The design balannce is not quite right.... But I've worked on it long enough, so it's done!
Did I instead spend a couple/few hours making this exchange of Picasso's flowers?
Yes, yes, I did.
Starsky has Picasso's "Petit Fleurs" (a popular poster in the 70s) up in his bedroom, we see in the episode "The Committee" (thanks, Mortmere, for the screecap!).
Mortmere posted a screenshot of Starky's apartment that shows Starsky's wooden "etc." on the wall.
Does everyone already know that Rhoda Morgenstern (Valerie Harper) has the same "etc." on her wall? She's another East Coast Jewish transplant (but, to Minneapolis) and Mary Richard is her downstairs neighbor on The Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977). [picture via]
I wish we could see Mary & Rhoda interact with Starsky & Hutch.
I'm so happy that my fan-friend Mortmere is posting about Starsky & Hutch here on LJ!
She's here: http://mortmere.livejournal.com
Her icon reveals her orientation:
Mortmere and I first met on youTube via our Star Trek: TOS vids (the original Kirk/Spock) in …
*does the math*
wow, in 2009. [I stand corrected--it was 2008!]
We got talking on LJ--it's like time travel to read those old comments--then email, and we met in person to walk part of the Camino in Spain in 2011 (along with FreshCandy).
We've always stayed in touch on e-mail, but we went in different fandom directions--
and fandom itself got scattered to the winds...
Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, deviantArt, DW, etc. (I'm actually still on Blogger, where I wander the halls by myself. I actually rather like the quiet.)
Then, this year Mortmere introduced me to Inspector Lewis (or, rather, to Hathaway, the thinking-fan's slim jim!),
and I returned the favor by introducing her to Starky & Hutch.
We have achieved fandom cross-pollination!
She's been on Tumblr but I told her the Starsky & Hutch fandom is a little more connected on LJ, so here she is! It's like we're playing in the same sandbox again. I'm much more inspired to make fanworks if I'm playing with others.
My friend Mortmere [links to tumblr] [M's LJ here] and I have been wondering about (and researching) some of the stuff on the sets of Starsky & Hutch.
Like, what's this weird dog?
I rummaged around and discovered it’s a carnival prize, a bulldog made out of “chalkware”. They were usually handpainted (with water-soluble paint), so each one’s a little different.
Like this one:
From Collector’s Weekly:
“Made out of plaster of Paris, chalkware was used to create inexpensive versions of decorative objects such as animal figurines—so many small figurines were given away as prizes at carnivals, the pieces became known as “carnival chalk.”
“The heyday of the material was the early 19th to mid-20th centuries…”
So, OK, but what it is doing in-universe?
1972 Munich, Germany
Designated the “Happy Olympics”, the 1972 Munich games were anything but. Conceived to promote a positive and peaceful image of modern Germany, these were the games when the Utopian Olympic ideal came most badly unstuck.
...these games were overshadowed by the murder of 11 Israeli athletes and coaches by members of the Palestinian Black September group. The games continued with flags at half-mast, with American swimmer Mark Spitz winning seven gold medals.
I was eleven during the 1972 summer Olympics, and I remember the buzz about the men's Speedo tiny (for the time) swim briefs.
But I didn't remember that Mark Spitz is Jewish and during the 1972 Olympics:
"Mark Spitz, the American swimming star who had already completed his competitions, left Munich during the hostage crisis (it was feared that as a prominent Jew, Spitz might now be a kidnapping target)."
Yes, and so, my conclusion is:
I am not going to get much done today, after all, because I spent hours establishing that Starsky is a Jewish guy who likes swimmers and has some feelings about the 1972 Olympics...
Also, he has nice shoulders. But you knew that. Maybe he's a swimmer himself?
*googles again*
Wow, huh:
according to the Talmud, Jewish parents are supposed to teach their kids to swim.
From Sh'ma: A Journal of Jewish Ideas, "Learning to Swim":
"The Talmud (Kiddushin 29a) enumerates three specific requirements for what parents must teach their children: the Torah, how to make a living, and how to swim.
The first two seem obvious, but how to swim?
Swimming, literally, is a life-or-death matter. The authors of the Talmud recognized that parents must teach their children how to survive — how to come out on the “swim” end of “sink or swim.”
Even if we live far from water, even if we think our children will never accidentally enter a pool area, even if we ourselves hate water, we must ensure that our children have the basic skills necessary to survive."
_____
* Weird coincidence:
According to wikipedia, the night before the Palesitinian attack...
"Monday evening, 4 September [1972], the Israeli athletes enjoyed a night out, watching a [live theater] performance of Fiddler on the Roof"
As I assume you know if you've read this far, the coincidence is that Paul Michael Glaser was in the movie version of Fiddler released the year before, in 1971.
"Starsky & Speedo" from OK-7's Tumblr post "Some Thoughts on Starsky's House"
"We had been everywhere. We had really seen nothing. And I catch myself thinking today that our long journey had only defiled with a sinuous trail of slime the lovely, trustful, dreamy, enormous country that by then, in retrospect, was no more to us than a collection of dog-eared maps, ruined tour books, old tires, and her sobs in the night — every night, every night — the moment I feigned sleep."