It's saddened to hear that the great comedic genius that is Robin McLaurin Williams has died. He has gone the same way as David Carradine and Isadora Duncan and joined the choir invisible (though the reasons for their strangling were very different to his).
Before I continue this tribute, I know that some of you may not like the idea of jokes in a tribute of a dead person, but Robin is a comedian form the same school as Monty Python, and (using Graham Chapman's memorial service as a example) it is something Robin would have wanted.
They are a lot of anecdotes about Robin's talent, but the best one I can think of now was this one said back in July by Adam Savage (my doppelganger born 20 years earlier) on his "Still Untitled Project" on Tested.com
Favorite Adaptations - Still Untitled: The Adam Savage Project - 7/01/2014
(The anecdote in question begins on 22:00)
Before I continue (again) I like to say that the movie Bicentennial Man (despite been panned by critics at the time and been a flop in the box office due to (according to Robin) lackluster marketing and a cut in the film's budget by Disney (the owners ofTouchstone Pictures) that resulted in a lowering of quality) is a good film. I think it's better than the original novella (which I have read) as the film includes more emotion.
This is a truly sad loss for me as he has been a big part of my childhood and was responsible for a part of my sense of humour. I saw him as Mork in Mork & Mindy, the Genie in Aladdin, the Adult Peter Pan in Hook, Alan Parriah in Jumanji, the advance aging kid in Jack, and (of course) as Mrs Doubtfire. In my later years marveled his acting talent in films like Dead Poets Societyand Man of the Year.
I would have loved to have met him (alive, of course, but the zombie version of him might be an interesting sight (how it would compare to Bill Murray in Zombieland I don't know until I see it (Them becoming zombies, not the film.))). In fact, back in primary school, me and a friend thought about doing a comic strip adventure about us meeting him. I only drew the first frame of us in the airport introducing the story. Maybe because of that (and the fact my heart wasn't fully into that project (and also it was my final year in primary school)) the project didn't go further and I forgot about it until just now as I am writing this. I can assume that any physical evidence of this project is all gone. Probably put in some shredder years ago to clear out the cupboards in St Lucy's Primary. I wanted to do something involving anthropomorphic animals, but the teacher said we'll do that after the Robin Williams story. Sigh.
So anyway, here is my tribute post to Robin Williams.
Hot Cars Kill Dogs campaign video from Dogs Trust (2014)
I recently found out about this internet campaign from the UK animal welfare charity Dogs Trust (formerly known as the National Canine Defense League). It tackles a problem every person involved n or concerned about animal welfare gets angry about every summer - dogs trapped in cars on sunny days.
They are no actual statistics on how many dogs die in such a preventable way (I tried typing "how many dogs die in hot cars each year" into Google and I got nothing. Not a single number.). But the high school biologist in me knows why it happens. A human could withstand the heat inside a hot car (though some children have died in hot cars (38 a year in the US, according to this website.)). This is because humans sweat. Dogs can't sweat. That is why they stick their tongues out when their exhausted... or hot. The lack of sweat glands can limit their ability to withstand heat. But many humans don't know this fact and assume that a few minutes in a car will be fine because it was fine for them. It's only when they return to a car containing a dead dig that they realize how wrong their assumption was.
What got me seeing this video was how devilishly simple the idea is - a time lapse of a ice sculpture of a dog melting in a car. What struck me was how come no one had thought of this until 2014? Its so obvious. The charity has been around since 1891 (just when cars were beginning to scare horses and running over small animals on the road). Why now? But I guess the dog in hot car problem didn't exist until fully enclosed passenger compartments began to be the norm in the 1920s (before most cars were convertibles). Also, it would have been expensive to set up a time lapse camera (something a charity can't afford to do (until now)).
It is a brilliant idea that illustrates a common problem in the world and I applaud it. But the cinematographer in me sees need for improvement, such as engraving a name on the collar (something in the theme of ice, such as "Frozo") and ending the video with a close-up on the collar showing the dog's name. But please ignore it and not take it as an insult, because they have made something great. It deserves an award of some sort for its simplest and execution. Dogs Trust, I salute to you.
