I wanted something a little bit lighter than cop stuff and military aircraft for Easter. Then this popped up in my YouTube suggestions. I’ve wanted to see this ever since I read about the event in Tex Johnston’s biography.
Bonus: original Boeing promotional video for the Dash 80.
Stirling Moss died “quietly on Sunday at his home in London”. He was 90. McThag beat me on the tribute watch.
“To race a car through a turn at maximum possible speed when there is a great lawn to all sides is difficult,” he said in an interview with The New York Times Magazine in 1961, “but to race a car at maximum speed through a turn when there is a brick wall on one side and a precipice on the other — ah, that’s an achievement!”
He raced for 14 years, won 212 of his 529 races in events that included Grand Prix, sports cars and long-distance rallying, in 107 different types of car.
He set the world land speed record on the salt flats of Utah in 1957. He won more than 40 percent of the races he entered, including 16 Grand Prix. For four consecutive years, 1955-58, he finished second in the world Grand Prix championship. And in each of the next three years, he placed third.
The man was a class act. And I don’t mean in terms of style (although he apparently was rather stylish):
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In 1962 at the Goodwood Circuit racetrack in England’s West Sussex County, a plume of fire shot from his Lotus 18/21 car. The crowd gasped. As Moss tried to pass Graham Hill, his car veered and slammed into an eight-foot-high earthen bank.
It took more than a half-hour to free Moss from the wreckage. His left eye and cheekbone were shattered, his left arm broken and his left leg broken in two places.
An X-ray revealed a far worse injury. The right side of his brain was detached from his skull. He was in a coma for 38 days, and paralyzed on one side of his body for six months. He remembered nothing of the disaster. He considered hypnosis to recover the memory, but a psychiatrist said that might cause the paralysis to return.
When he left the hospital, he took all 11 nurses who had treated him to dinner, followed by a trip to the theater. A year later, he returned to Goodwood and pushed a Lotus to 145 m.p.h. on a wet track. He realized he was no longer unconsciously making the right moves. He said he felt like he had lost his page in a book.
Though he believed he remained a better driver than all but 10 or 12 in the world, that was not good enough. He retired at 33.
Moss was more than his talent. He was a beautiful name, one that still connotes high style a half-century after his crash, evoking an era of blazers and cravats, of dance bands and cigarette holders. One legend had him driving hundreds of miles in a vain effort to introduce himself to Miss Italy the night before a big race. His 16 books cemented his legend.
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Lawrence emailed an obit for Tim Brooke-Taylor, British comedian:
Brooke-Taylor was reunited with Cleese and Chapman on ITV’s At Last The 1948 Show, another collection of sketches and quick-fire repartee.
The first episode featured The Four Yorkshiremen sketch, co-written by Brooke-Taylor, which would later be revived by the Monty Python team.
I apologize for the quality. But: this is (according to YouTube) actually from “At Last the 1948 Show”.
I discovered this last night: it’s an odd bit of trivia that I didn’t know previously, and I thought it was worth sharing.
The last resident of 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles was Trent Reznor. Not only that, but he set up a recording studio in the house called “Pig”.
…was the site of recording sessions for most of the Nine Inch Nails album The Downward Spiral (1994)
Okay, so what, who cares? Well, 10050 Cielo Drive had a history…
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I’ll be honest: I’ve never liked Nine Inch Nails, or Trent Reznor’s music, very much. However, the part of the Rolling Stone interview quoted in the Wikipedia entry is actually kind of thought provoking, and softens my attitude towards the man a bit:
Reznor moved out in December of 1993, and the house was demolished in 1994. The owner built a new house on the property, and had the address changed to 10066 Cielo Drive.