Tag Archives: Dear Friend

Tina’s 2001 Odyssey

"Hello Tina" animated GIF by @iamTalkyTina

“Hello Tina” animated GIF by @iamTalkyTina

Well, thanks to my True Friend, Mr. Paul (@phb256, on Twitter, I woke this morning to see a tweet about me took me to the #ds106 web page of La Kisha Mahone where I got made a monkey of.  It looks like this:

"Monkey Mash'n Time" by @LKMahone

“Monkey Mash’n Time” by @LKMahone

It was nice that @LKMahone said I was the very first invite she got on Twitter, and nice that she paid homage to me (that is always a nice thing for a True Friend to do, not saying any names, @JimGroom). And I made a comment saying that.

But it was also a sad thing for me that the picture brought back some Dark Time Memories for me of when back in the late sixties after The Twilight Zone I was still in The Biz but was having a really hard time with typecasting and people saying that I was too short all the time and stuff.

A Dear Friend of mine (different from a True Friend) got word from Mario Bava to Stanley Kubrick that I was feeling down and really needing some work and so Stanley managed to get me onto the set one day when he was shooting a film and got me into a small-bit non-speaking role. It wasn’t my finest moment, and I really found that fur to be scratchy and itchy and I had a rash for weeks after which meant I really couldn’t capitalize on the moment by networking with Kier and Ed (given my background, I really enjoyed it when he starred in UFO a couple years later!) and Gary and Terry and I was really ticked to miss the chance to hobnob with Arthur C. Clarke when he was on set. In the end, aside from getting free food from the craft table during the shoot and my meagre extra’s scale pay for the scene, I really didn’t benefit much from the experience.

The one bright light of the whole sad affair was the time I got to spend with Douglas Rain. He had such a nice way of talking to me and expressed to me his feelings of also feeling withdrawn from others at the time and felt bad that he only had a voice-only role and was playing somewhat of a tragic character in the film. I liked it every morning when he said “Hello, Tina!” in that nice soft voice of his. It was a moment when I truly started to realize how important it is to have Dear Friends and True Friends and Friends and Make Art Not Just Because You Are Hungry for Food But For Art’s Sake, Too.

But for the most part, that wasn’t a very fond time for me.

I dug through my shoebox just now, and found this pic. You can kind of just see me in a little bit of the shot.

"My Scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey"

“My Scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey”

So, @LKMahone, thanks for bringing back the memories. Now, everybody, get out there and Make Some Art, Bub! Be sure to write about what you learned from the experience. And remember to attribute where you get the stuff! 

A couple notes about The Bits.

Hello Tina is based on the following:

  • This image of smiley HAL900
  • the free-for-personal-use font TwoBit, available from www.ffonts.net

I took a screen capture of just the original HELLO DAVE text,

"Hello Dave" text, inverted to put dark text on light background

“Hello Dave”  inverted (dark text on light background)

and uploaded it to whatfontis.com and selected the TwoBit font as the one I liked best from the returned matches.

"TwoBit font, my favourite for HAL9000" results from WhatFontIs.com

“TwoBit font, my favourite for HAL9000” results from WhatFontIs.com

I downloaded the free-for-personal-use font and installed it (double click on the .ttf file and then click the Install Font button in the on a Mac)

"Install Font: TwoBit"

“Install Font: TwoBit”

  • I found the scene photo as an existing GIF in a digital shoebox on Screen.Genius.com.
  • I found the red arrow in my shoebox, too. I rotated it and made it 50% transparent in Photoshop, only making it visible for the frames where I am visible.