#i rly love saul rubinek

[parreidolia]

i finally learned how to make gifs so that i could gif this movie. a couple years ago i unearthed the VHS tape of LIGHTS that i watched as a kid. it’s always been one of those Things, a nostalgia/generational/time travel portal, hovering at the edge of my memory like a dense fuzzy shadow object until i found it again online and it snapped into solidity. and then watching each scene is like a record skipping, tenuous memory that feels more like deja vu, read/write access.

i was floored to discover as an adult that LEONARD FUCKIN NIMOY was in it. he voiced one of the greeks forcing the jews to assimilate and trade their ethereal letters made of light and flame for solid, static, metallic greek letters.

PLUS judd hirsch is the narrator. here he is as isadore weisfelt in warehouse 13 s2e13 secret santa:

image descriptions after the cut

image descriptions:

gif 1: Titlecard. The word “LIGHTS” in orange text over a hilly landscape with a tree in the foreground.

gif 2: Mountainous landscape changes color from gradients of blue to purple/orange as the sun rises or sets.

gif 3: A flickering red/orange Hebrew letter aleph (א) on the right. It enters a wide, shimmering beam of light to the left. The aleph dances and echoes as if passing through a prism, and then expands into the sentence “ויהי אור,” or “and there was light” in English (I think).

gif 4: A flickering golden Hebrew letter aleph (א) dances in front of a colorful abstract background. The letter grows and splits off four additional (different) letters, each of which then further split off even more letters.

still image 1: A TOS-era photo of Leonard Nimoy surrounded by relatives at a Bar Mitzvah, wearing a yarmulke with his Spock haircut. Source: https://medium.com/@jeffnimoy/the-other-nimoy-these-are-the-voyages-of-a-second-cousin-once-removed-1cfe62290ad6

still image 2: Still of Judd Hirsch as Isadore Weisfelt in Warehouse 13, grimacing as Artie plays piano. White text reads, “you threw it all away to work for what, those fascists?!“ The word “fascist” is stylized to mimic his vocal inflection.