Archive for June, 2020

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 92

Tuesday, June 30th, 2020

It has been months since I’ve seen my friend Andrew, who is semi-retired from the road business (or, as we say in Texas, “bidness”).

Here’s a little something for him: “Anatomy of a Road”.

Made in the late 1960s or early 1970s (probably 1971) to promote the construction of new highways and the cars that drive them, the ANATOMY OF A ROAD is an unapologetic paean to progress.

“an unapologetic paean to progress”. I like that.

Bonus video: “We’ll Take the High Road”, a 1950s promo film for the Interstate Highway system, brought to you by “The American Road Builders Association”.

I thought I’d check something, and I’m glad I did: the American Road Builders Association was founded in 1902, and is still around (so they are 118 years old). The organization renamed to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association in 1977.

Posted in History, Roads | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 30, 2020.

Tuesday, June 30th, 2020

The great Carl Reiner.

His contributions were recognized by his peers, by comedy aficionados and, in 2000, by the Kennedy Center, which awarded him the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor. He was the third recipient, after Richard Pryor and Jonathan Winters.

…

“I always knew if I threw a question to Mel he could come up with something,” Mr. Reiner said. “I learned a long time ago that if you can corner a genius comedy brain in panic, you’re going to get something extraordinary.”
As Mr. Brooks put it, “I would dig myself into a hole, and Carl would not let me climb out.”

…

Mr. Reiner returned to Broadway twice after moving west, but neither visit was triumphant. In 1972 he directed “Tough to Get Help,” a comedy by Steve Gordon about a black couple working in an ostensibly liberal white household, which was savaged by the critics and closed after one performance. In 1980 he staged “The Roast,” by Jerry Belson and Garry Marshall, two writers he had worked with on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” That play, about a group of comedians who expose their darker instincts when they gather to roast a colleague, ran for less than a week.

THR. Variety.

Also among the dead: Johnny Mandel, film and television composer.

Mandel was considered one of the finest arrangers of the second half of the 20th century, providing elegant orchestral charts for a wide range of vocalists including Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Tony Bennett, Natalie Cole and Hoagy Carmichael.
Mandel scored more than 30 films during his Hollywood career, including the 1960s films “The Americanization of Emily” (from which the hit song “Emily” emerged), “The Sandpiper” (which contained “The Shadow of Your Smile,” earning an Oscar and a Grammy for Song of the Year along with lyricist Paul Francis Webster), “Harper,” “An American Dream” (which included the Oscar-nominated song “A Time for Love”), “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” and “Point Blank.”

He was perhaps most famous for writing “Suicide Is Painless” aka “The Theme from M*A*S*H”.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 91

Monday, June 29th, 2020

You know what I feel like I haven’t done in a while? Naval aviation. And the F-4 Phantom.

Why not a three-fer, since I also really haven’t given the Blue Angels any love here.

“Diamond in the Sky”, from the early 70s. The team used the F-4J Phantom II from 1969 to December of 1974.

Bonus video: from approximately the mid-1970s, “Portrait The Blue Angels”. It feels like there should be a colon in there, but there isn’t officially. They were flying the A-4F Skyhawk from December of 1974 up to November of 1986: the Skyhawk is what they were flying the one time (so far) I’ve seen them perform.

Posted in History, Planes | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: June 29, 2020.

Monday, June 29th, 2020

Charles Webb. He wrote The Graduate.

“He had a very odd relationship with money,” said Caroline Dawnay, who was briefly Mr. Webb’s agent in the early 2000s when his novel “New Cardiff” was made into the 2003 movie “Hope Springs,” starring Colin Firth. “He never wanted any. He had an anarchist view of the relationship between humanity and money.”
He gave away homes, paintings, his inheritance, even his royalties from “The Graduate,” which became a million-seller after the movie’s success, to the benefit of the Anti-Defamation League. He awarded his 10,000-pound payout from “Hope Springs” as a prize to a performance artist named Dan Shelton, who had mailed himself to the Tate Modern in a cardboard box.
At his second wedding to Ms. Rudd — they married in 1962, then divorced in 1981 to protest the institution of marriage, then remarried around 2001 for immigration purposes — he did not give his bride a ring, because he disapproved of jewelry. Ms. Dawnay, the only witness save two strangers pulled in off the street, recalled that the couple walked nine miles to the registry office for the ceremony, wearing the only clothes they owned.

…

Fred, Mr. Webb’s wife, died in 2019, Mr. Malvern said, leaving him quite alone, although he is survived by his sons — David, a performance artist who once cooked a copy of “The Graduate” and ate it with cranberry sauce, and John, a director at the consulting and research firm IHS Markit — and his brother. Mr. Malvern said he did not know whether Mr. Webb had still been writing.

This one is for FotB of the blog Dave: Linda Cristal. She most famously played “Victoria Cannon” on “The High Chaparral”, and did a lot of bit parts on other series during the 1960s through to the 1980s. (Including “T.H.E. Cat“, “Search“, and “General Hospital”.)

Thomas Blanton. He was the last survivor of the three men convicted in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing.

The bombing occurred on Sept. 15, 1963, a Sunday, at the 16th Street Baptist Church, which had been a center of civil rights activity in Birmingham. Three 14-year-olds — Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley — and an 11-year-old, Denise McNair, were killed in the blast, and many others were injured. The attack heightened national outrage over segregationist policies and racial oppression in the South.
“The Birmingham bombing holds a special place in civil rights history because of the randomness of its violence, the sacredness of its target and the innocence of its victims,” Kevin Sack wrote in The New York Times in 2000, when Mr. Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry were finally indicted in the case.
Mr. Cherry, tried separately, was convicted in 2002 and died in prison at 74 in 2004. A third man, Robert Chambliss, was convicted in 1977 and died in prison eight years later at 81. The last suspect, Herman Cash, died in 1994 at 75 without being tried.
All four were Klan members in the early 1960s.

Posted in Art, Books, Law, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Quote of the day.

Monday, June 29th, 2020

Now, how sad a thing it is, when we come to make sport of proclaiming men traitors, and banishing them, and putting them out of their offices, and Privy Council, and of sending to and going to the Tower: God have mercy on us!

—Diary of Samuel Pepys, 28 June 1667

Posted in History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 90

Sunday, June 28th, 2020

Science Sunday!

This one is by way of Lawrence: the Antarctic Snow Cruiser.

Bonus video: “The Secret Land: Operation High Jump”. This is technically a military video, but since it deals with Antarctic exploration, I feel like it also qualifies for Science Sunday.

Posted in Geek, History | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 89

Saturday, June 27th, 2020

I knew you could purchase military rations online. What I didn’t know, until recently (but should not have surprised me), is that there are people on YouTube who purchase and review them.

Steve1989MREInfo has over 1.5 million subscribers.

Here he reviews a French MRE from 2017.

Bonus video #1: an Italian MRE from 2014, which is interesting: as I understand it, Italian MREs are the only ones that contain alcohol.

Bonus video #2: a British “emergency” field ration from some time between 1899 and 1902.

Posted in Food, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 88

Friday, June 26th, 2020

This isn’t actually a random YouTube recommendation. I ran across this by way of a post from McThag – I thought it was a while back, but apparently it was earlier this year. Time flies when you’re locked down.

I’m not a big car guy, and I was never much of a “Motor Trend” fan. As I’ve written before, “Car and Driver” during that late 1970s – early 1980s period was my jam. “Motor Trend” seemed to be “Who Spent the Most Money On Advertising With Us”, and “Road and Track” was the magazine for 50ish guys who drove MGs painted British Racing Green while wearing tweed jackets and dapper little caps and looking down their nose at the rest of the car world.

But I digress. “Motor Trend” apparently had a YouTube channel. One of their features was “RoadKill”, where, as I understand, the two hosts bought crappy cars, fixed them up to the point where they were minimally driveable, and then went on road trips with them. Hilarity frequently ensued.

This particular video amuses me: in this case, they bought the world’s worst Corvette, with the intention of driving it from Florida to Bowling Green, Kentucky…

…and having the staff of the Corvette Museum drop it into the sinkhole.

I think even my non-car people readers should get some amusement out of this, as the Corvette in question is astonishingly bad. The fact that it doesn’t have a windshield is only the start of the troubles.

Bonus video: according to the person who re-uploaded this video, “Motor Trend” moved their content off of YouTube and on to “Motor Trend On Demand”. But other people have uploaded more “Roadkill” videos, if you find the idea of two guys patching up crappy cars and going on road trips oddly appealing. Here’s a playlist.

Posted in Cars | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 26, 2020.

Friday, June 26th, 2020

Doris Brown.

She was one of my aunts on my father’s side of the family, and was married to my Uncle Dick (the one who rode the Whizzer to Florida).

Posted in Obits | 3 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 87

Thursday, June 25th, 2020

Who’s up for some travel on Pan Am? And what exotic destination sounds good today?

How about…Finland! It isn’t quite Paris in the the spring, but we can make do.

Bonus: Here’s something a little different. “Airline Pilot”, a 1970 documentary from BOAC, following a young pilot through his training and first flight.

According to the YouTube notes, Stephen Radcliffe (the subject) was BOAC’s youngest pilot ever.

BOAC was merged with British European Airways (BEC) in 1974 to form British Airways. According to various online sources, Mr. Radcliffe died in 1971: he fell off of a cliff while camping.

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 25, 2020.

Thursday, June 25th, 2020

Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev’s son.

Mr. Khrushchev had been a rocket scientist before he moved to Rhode Island in 1991, shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, to lecture on the Cold War at Brown University in Providence. He remained a senior fellow there.
He and his wife became naturalized United States citizens in 1999 and held dual citizenships. Mr. Khrushchev said in 2001 that his becoming an American citizen would not have displeased his father, who, in 1956, in the depths of the Cold War, famously declared to Western officials, “We will bury you!”
By the time his son became an American citizen, the Cold War was long over.
“I’m not a defector,” Sergei Khrushchev told The Providence Journal in 2001. “I’m not a traitor. I did not commit any treason. I work here and I like this country.

Michael Hawley, noted computer guy.

Mr. Hawley began his career as a video game programmer at Lucasfilm, the company created by the “Star Wars” director George Lucas. He spent his last 15 years curating the Entertainment Gathering, or EG, a conference dedicated to new ideas.
In between, he worked at NeXT, the influential computer company founded by Steve Jobs after he left Apple in the mid-1980s, and spent nine years as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, a seminal effort to push science and technology into art and other disciplines. He was known as a scholar whose ideas, skills and friendships spanned an unusually wide range of fields, from mountain climbing to watchmaking.
Mr. Hawley lived with both Mr. Jobs and the artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky, published the world’s largest book, won first prize in an international competition of amateur pianists, played alongside the cellist Yo-Yo Ma at the wedding of the celebrity scientist Bill Nye, joined one of the first scientific expeditions to Mount Everest, and wrote commencement speeches for both Mr. Jobs and the Google co-founder Larry Page.

…

As the director of special projects at M.I.T., Mr. Hawley published “Bhutan: A Visual Odyssey Across the Himalayan Kingdom” in 2003, drawing on his experiences and photographs spanning four visits to Bhutan over a decade and a half. Measuring five by seven feet and weighing more than 130 pounds, it was certified by Guinness World Records at the time as the world’s largest book.

Posted in Books, Geek, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 86

Wednesday, June 24th, 2020

I thought it might be fun to post some more Convair promotional videos. Especially since these show some nice vintage livery from airlines back in the day.

First up: “Convair Metropolitan”. The “Metropolitan” was another name for the CV-440, which in turn was a descendant of the CV-240 and CV-340.

Bonus: “The Convair Liner”, another promo film. This one covers the 240, 340, 440, and even the military variants.

I really like seeing the old Braniff paint jobs. I never flew Braniff, but I have sort of a sentimental fondness for them after reading Splash of Colors, John Nance’s history of the airline.

There’s a story in Nance’s book that I like: Braniff’s mechanics were on strike, and marching the picket line when a thunderstorm hit. Tom Braniff saw that the mechanics were getting wet, so he told one of his people to get some rainsuits, coffee, and doughnuts and take them to the guys on the picket line.

“But Mr. Braniff, those guys out there are on strike! They’re trying to shut us down!”
“I understand that, Buford, but they’re still my boys, and I don’t want them to get sick. Look at them out there! You go get those things and go treat them like human beings out there and be nice to them.”

Posted in History, Leadership, Planes | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

Wednesday, June 24th, 2020

I have a reputation for being a disturber of the peace. You have to take me as I am. If I’m a disturber of the peace, it’s for good reason. And, ladies and gentlemen, if someone wakes up a sleeping man so as to make him watch out, then the man who shakes him is no disturber of the peace. I wish to cry out, wake up! Watch out for the years to come.

—Konrad Adenauer, first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (taken from here)

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2020

Apropos of nothing in particular:

Jeremiah said: “I hear the whisperings of many, “Terror on every side! Denounce! Let us denounce him!” All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine. “Perhaps he will be trapped; then we can prevail and take our vengeance on him.” But the Lord is with me, like a mighty champion: my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph. In their failure they will be put to utter shame, to lasting unforgettable confusion. O Lord of hosts, you who test the just, who probe mind and heart, let me witness the vengeance you take on them, for to you I have entrusted my cause. Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord, for he has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the wicked!

–Jeremiah 20:10-13

Posted in Religion | Comments Closed

More things I didn’t know.

Tuesday, June 23rd, 2020

Shari “Lamb Chop” Lewis and her husband co-wrote an episode of a minor 1960s SF TV series.

Posted in TV | 1 Comment »

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