Out of the Night...

Well, it's not as though I haven't accomplished anything today. I got more than nine hours of sleep (an advantage I'm ruining tonight), took my car in for emissions testing, and just now got the registration renewed online using ServiceArizona. I also got over to the storage space, or more accurately the storage facility's office, and signed a form to let them charge me more money. (The taxes went up.) But I haven't done anything with the mail, which I absolutely promised to do. I'll have to work twice as hard on it tomorrow.

Yes, I was messing around with Wikipedia again.

I noticed yesterday that the entry about the Zorro tv series was awfully short. Then this afternoon, I discovered an entry about Hi Corbett Field, where the Tucson Toros used to play baseball. That was even shorter than the Zorro one, almost as short as the My World and Welcome to It one used to be. So I expanded the Hi Corbett one, and start work on Zorro.

It's very late, so I'm not going to go on and on about all this Wikistuff. Instead I'll just give you a few pictures and brief notes about Zorro.

Handsome fellow, wasn't he? Disney's Zorro was played by Guy Williams (1924-1989). The show aired from 1957 to 19559, when I was just a baby. My brother Steve had a Zorro hat and sword, though, which I remember messing around with when I was four years old. I got to know the show properly when I started watching it on Vault Disney, the Disney Channel block of classic shows. Vault Disney was canceled a couple of years ago, but not before I taped all the Zorro episodes, both the black and white and colorized versions.

One memorable episode, "A Fair Trial," featured classic television stars William Schallert (shown here serving food to Sergeant Garcia) and Sebastian Cabot (Garcia's dinner companion, Judge Vasca).

This version of Zorro spends more time as Don Diego de la Vega than he does wearing the mask. Both as Diego and Zorro, he outsmarts everyone, aided by faithful Bernardo, Diego's manservant. Bernardo is genuinely dumb (as in, unable to speak), but his deafness is an act, the better to overhear things that might help Zorro.

Oddly enough, I was fond of Zorro, The Gay Blade, starring George Hamilton, before I saw Zorro in any other incarnation. The Guy Williams version easily superceded the sillier champion of "the pipples" in my affection, but no other version comes close. I inevitably compare the Antonio Bandaras Zorro with the Don Diego I know and love, and find that the black and white hero is the clear winner.

Karen

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