Travel Thursday!
I was thinking about the Orient today. We’ve already done Japan. So how about the next best thing?
“New Horizons: Hong Kong and Singapore”. From Pan Am and 1960, back when Hong Kong was still under British rule.
And your bonus for today: “The Wonderful Jet World of Pan American”, from 1959 and the usual suspects, touting the virtues of Pan Am’s jet fleet.
I’m thinking it is time for some more travel video.
From those wonderful folks at Pan Am, “Wings To Ireland”.
Oddly, my major associations with Ireland are Ken Bruen and “all the bright young things were throwing up their Guinness in the gutters…”
You don’t recognize the latter? Let’s fix that.
That wasn’t a bonus video, this is a bonus video. And it isn’t from Pan Am this time.
“Time Flies”. Yes, yes, like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana. But seriously, this is a 1960s promo film for Lufthansa.
I was going to post the Golden Gate construction video. Really, I was. I had it in my YouTube history and everything.
Then ASM826 beat me to it. Drat. So something else.
This might be a day for more travel on Pan Am. I’ve got a couple of these in the queue. What exotic destination sounds good?
Well, right now, it is 99 degrees in Austin. And 71 degrees below the equator, in the exotic land of…
“Wings to Brazil”, another 1960s travelogue.
Carnival starts at about the 24 minute mark, if you’re interested.
And as a bonus totally unrelated to travel (except you need these to get places): “The Suspension Bridge”, from the United States Steel Corporation.
I believe I promised an exotic destination yesterday. I hope you all have your bags packed, because what could be more exotic than…
…Vietnam?
From 1967, “You In Vietnam”, a Marine Corps training/orientation film for new recruits in country.
Bonus: from 1986, “Combat Leadership: The Ultimate Challenge”.
Lee Marvin shows up at about the three minute mark.
I’ve returned from my travel, for the record. I may talk a little about where I was at some point in the near future, but I probably won’t be doing a full fledged after action report.
One thing I will say: I can’t recommend the Sixth Floor Museum. It is expensive (a minimum of $30 for one person if you want to park your car), a Mongolian fire drill to get in to (you have to wait in line to buy tickets, or you can order them online. But either way, you then have to wait in line until your designated admission time comes around, then you have to wait in another line to actually get in the elevators up to the sixth floor.) and there’s just really not a whole lot to it that you don’t already know or haven’t heard. Most of the stuff there (Oswald’s rifle, Zapruder’s camera) isn’t even the original items (which are stored in the National Archives) but “reproductions” or similar items made around the same time.
It might be a good place to take your kids (but if you drive, you’re going to be out a minimum of $76 for a family of four) but I was generally disappointed.
This time, the trip is relatively short. (I’m actually driving.) I expect to be at my destination late morning or early afternoon, and may possibly have some time after I get there, unpack, and unwind.
Blogging will be catch as catch can through Sunday.
World’s largest Bowie knife, Bowie, Texas.
Going to be on the road for a few days. Blogging will be catch as catch can, though I do intend to get some stuff up.
In the meantime, please enjoy this coded musical interlude. I think I’ve posted these before, but what the heck: they’re still great songs.
NYT headline:
After reading the article, the surprising (to me) answer is: yes, I do want some sausage with my novel, and I want to visit Bad Sooden-Allendorf, shop at the Frühauf’s bookstore, and get a couple of rolls to nibble on.
In other book news, I just discovered that Silvertail Books has reprinted Under an English Heaven.
I’m sure I’ve written before about the amazingly prolific Donald Westlake, mystery author and screenwriter. (Fun fact: “Westlake co-wrote the story for the pilot of the ill-fated 1979 TV series Supertrain with teleplay writer Earl W. Wallace; Westlake and Wallace shared “created by” credit.”) If you know anything at all about the mystery genre, you know Westlake.
But as prolific as he was, he only wrote two non-fiction books: a biography of Elizabeth Taylor under one of his pen names, and Under an English Heaven about the Anguillan “revolution” and “occupation” of the island by British troops. Rumor has it that this is a very Westlake-ian book, even if it is non fiction: more Dortmunder in tone than Parker. This is one I’m actually excited about: review (possibly) forthcoming.
Yet another excuse to post photos and links and some ramblings. I’ll put a jump here since some of the photos might take time to load…
Travel day today. Early morning flight, long layover in Denver, so I may have a chance to blog.
If I get home before daylight, I just might get some sleep tonight.
Talk amongst yourselves.
I don’t remember now what prompted me to pick up Kitchen Confidential, but I’m glad I did: it was a wild, fun, and funny book that I enjoyed immensely. I think at this point I’ve read almost everything Mr. Bourdain wrote that was bound between covers. I wasn’t as up on his TV shows, what with the whole not having cable thing. And I really wanted to meet him sometime when he wasn’t frantically searching for a bathroom in an airport and say thanks.
I had been reading Appetites: A Cookbook right before I left, and I remember him talking about how much he loved his family and friends, and cooking for them. That was pretty much the whole point of the book: cooking well for the people you love. I guess I sort of half-consciously knew that he went through a divorce after that…
There are plenty of people who have lives you think you’d like to live. But you wouldn’t want to live the life they lived inside. https://t.co/eHCUH5eKYy
— NarrowlyDecidedHat (@Popehat) 8 June 2018
Bethany Mandel wrote a good piece for the NYPost the other day about suicide and what it does to the people left behind. I commend it to your attention, especially the last paragraph.
The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States, TVTropes has a surprisingly good page of additional resources.
Blogging will be catch-as-catch-can, especially since the latest update to the WordPress app on IOS appears to have broken either the app or the connection between the app and my blog.
Talk among yourselves. I’ll start: the Holy Roman Empire was neither Holy nor Roman, nor an Empire. Discuss.
Okay, slightly more seriously: I’m about halfway through Bryan Burrough’s Days of Rage: America’s Radical Underground, the FBI, and the Forgotten Age of Revolutionary Violence and expect to finish it on the plane tomorrow. I’m liking it a lot, though not quite as much as Public Enemies or The Big Rich.
The most striking thing to me: just how many bathrooms the Weathermen blew up. There are parts of the book that are just a litany of “blew up a men’s room”, “blew up a ladies room”, “destroyed a bathroom”, “blew up a bathroom in the Pentagon”. It’s like these people didn’t do anything except blow up bathrooms (and, of course, themselves).
The whole book is a veritable catalog of certified bat guano insanity. And I haven’t even gotten to the part about the guy with one eye and one thumb (he lost the other eye and nine fingers when his homemade bomb detonated prematurely) who escaped from jail by cutting the metal grate out of his window (ever tried using wire cutters with no fingers and one thumb?) and dropping 40 feet…
Starting this in the car on our way to Grapevine. The blogger screams for buffalo meat.
We had a pretty good meal Friday night at Campisi’s in downtown, and a so-so one at the Press Box Grill.
Best swag bag: EFK Fire Dragon. Thoughtfully designed, with a long enough strap so you can hang it off your shoulder. Runner-up: Brownells.
I have so many bags, I can go grocery shopping for the rest of the year without reusing any.
Best swag: hard to say. I got a free moon clip from Ranch Products, and had a good conversation with a guy in the Eley booth (who also tossed in some swag).
More tomorrow, I think. Time for to go to bed.
I have been a NRA member for about 41 years now.
(If you’re thinking I’m awful old or else I joined young: Dad got me a junior membership when I was 12, I think. Maybe earlier.)
In all those years, I have never been to a NRA Annual Meeting. Until now.
Does this mean that I plan to abandon you, my faithful readers, while I run around the convention gun geeking? Of course not!
Carl Kolchak cosplay, anyone?
(I didn’t bring a seersucker suit or a straw boater with me. But I do have a hat and a camera and my phone records audio. And Kolchak cosplay seems to be much cheaper than Steve McQueen cosplay.)
(Did you know you can design your own press pass online, and have it professionally printed and sent to you? Thanks to LawDog for the inspiration.)
I’ll post as much as I can as and when I can.
