Archive for September, 2020

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Somebody ought to write a book. (Part 1)

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020

Book ideas, free for the taking! My only ask is: if you end up writing this book, please send me one autographed copy.

Somebody should do a really nice coffee table type book with lots of color photos about Steinway pianos. Especially the custom ones.

Now, I have no discernible musical talent (as confirmed by highly sensitive instruments placed in orbit by NASA) and my photography skills are questionable. But I was struck by this when I read it:

Steinway had made many beautiful instruments over the years—not just the classic ebonized concert grands, but also a number of art-case pianos. Among the best known are an elaborate white-and-gilt decorative piano mode for Cornelius Vanderbilt, with paintings of Apollo surrounded by cherubs, and a piano created for the White House, with legs formed of carved eagles. For the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York, Steinway had built a tortoiseshell decoration surmounted by a candelabrum. For the oil magnate E.L. Doheny, the company designed a gilded piano in a Louis XV style with carved legs and elaborate moldings. Even Steinway’s standard-issue polished-ebony concert grands were stately and handsome, if also austere.

—Katie Hafner, A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano (affiliate link)

Those were not the only folks to commission art-case Steinways. “The Steinway firm received orders for “fancy pianos” from America’s illustrious and wealthy citizens: F. W. Woolworth, E. L. Doheny, Sen. Thomas F. Walsh, Henry G. Marquand, George J. Gould, Stanford White, Cornelius Vanderbilt, etc. They also produced decorated instruments for the crowned heads of European countries and influential and wealthy people throughout the world.”

It seems like someone could put together a really nice photo book with these, plus some of the more famous non-art-case Steinway piano (Glen Gould’s, obviously, but also Vladimir Horowitz’s, and I’m sure there are more artists that I’m not aware of yet). Accompany that with documents from the Steinway archives (I wonder if they have photos as well)…I’m certain you can get a book out of this.

That book may already exist, to be honest, but I can’t tell. There’s a book called Steinway that was published in 2002, “with more than 200 photos, designs, sketches, and paintings”, but I don’t have it (and don’t want to spend $70 to get it from Amazon) so I’m not sure if it covers this territory.

(I did do some research. I found an auction listing from 2018 for what may be the Vanderbilt Steinway. The White House Steinway is currently in the White House Museum. I can’t find anything on the Waldorf’s Steinway, though they do still have Cole Porter’s Steinway. I found a reference to a reproduction of the Doheny piano, and a LAT story about an auction of the Doheny collection in 1987.)

(One way to know if a book is really good: it gives you ideas for a different book. One way to know if a book is really bad: it gives you ideas for a better book on the same subject.)

(Final side note: it’s kind of fun to see E.L Doheny pop up again. The Doheny family and their scandals are a large part of Richard Rayner’s A Bright and Guilty Place: Murder, Corruption, and L.A.’s Scandalous Coming of Age (affiliate link) which I read a couple of months ago at the recommendation of friend Dave, and heartily recommend. The family was also a large influence on Chandler’s work.)

Posted in Books, Music | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 177

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020

The other day, ASM826 posted an appreciation of “Zulu”. The Saturday Night Movie Group watched it not too long ago, and I believe we are all in agreement that it is a swell movie. (I recommend the 50th Anniversary bluray, which is available from Amazon at an eminently reasonable price. Yes, that is an affiliate link.)

I thought it might be fun to post some “Zulu” related history.

The British Museum has a YouTube channel.

“Rorke’s Drift to the British Museum: The story of Henry Hook”. Henry Hook was one of the men who received the Victoria Cross for valor in the face of the enemy as a result of his actions at Rorke’s Drift. You may remember Hook:

In the film Zulu, Hook is depicted as an insubordinate malingerer placed under arrest in the hospital, only to come good during the battle. However, Saul David writes in his book, Zulu: The Heroism and Tragedy of the Zulu War of 1879, that he was there as the hospital cook, subsequently as part of a small guard detail assigned to protect the patients. Saul David continues that far from the miscreant portrayed, Hook was actually a teetotaler, Methodist preacher and model soldier.

Bonus: “A tour of Rorke’s Drift”.

Bonus #2: this is a reading of a transcript of an interview with Frank Bourne. The man reading it is his grandson. There’s really no video to this, so you can put it on in the background while you work.

Bourne, who was now an NCO in B Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot, helped organise the defence at the mission station and field hospital.

He received the Distinguished Conduct Medal (which, according to Wikipedia, was second only to the Victoria Cross at the time).

After Rorke’s Drift, Frank Bourne served in British India and Burma, being promoted to Quartermaster-Sergeant in 1884. He was commissioned in 1890. In 1893 he was appointed adjutant of the School of Musketry at Hythe, Kent, retiring from the army in 1907. During World War I, he rejoined and served as adjutant of the School of Musketry in Dublin. During this time he was responsible for training over 10,000 British and Irish sharpshooters. Some of these highly trained Irish infantry troops and snipers are thought to have utilised their specialised fighting skills to train local republican sympathisers after the war ended. These paramilitary and splinter groups would then form part of what is known today as the Irish Republican Army. At the end of the war, he was given the honorary rank of lieutenant colonel and appointed OBE.

Frank Bourne passed away on May 9, 1945 at the age of 90. He was the last survivor of Rorke’s Drift.

Bonus #3: “The Making of Zulu”.

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 23, 2020.

Wednesday, September 23rd, 2020

Gale Sayers, one of the great NFL players.

A consensus all-American at the University of Kansas — where he was called “the Kansas Comet” — Sayers chose to play for the Bears of the established N.F.L. over the Kansas City Chiefs of the upstart American Football League in 1965. He went on to have one of the greatest rookie seasons ever.
He led the league in all-purpose yards (rushing, receiving and runbacks) with 2,272 yards, scored 22 touchdowns, six of them in one game, and was named to the all-league team for the first of five consecutive years.

He was injured in 1968, went through knee surgery, and came back in 1969.

But 1969 became a somber season. For two years the Bears had matched players by position when they shared hotel rooms on the road. Sayers, who was Black, was paired with his backup, Brian Piccolo, who was white — apparently the first time a Black and white player had shared a hotel room for an N.F.L. team. The two men bonded, partly through racial jokes.
But in November that year Piccolo was found to have embryonic cell carcinoma of the lungs. Sent to the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, he underwent surgery to remove a malignant tumor, but doctors found that the disease had spread to other organs.
The following May, Sayers was given the George S. Halas Award for the Most Courageous Player. In his acceptance speech, he said: “I love Brian Piccolo. I might have received this award tonight, but tomorrow I will take it to Brian Piccolo at Sloan Kettering. When you hit your knees tonight, please pray for Brian Piccolo.”
Piccolo died on June 16, 1970, at 26. Sayers was a pallbearer at his funeral.

…

An injury to his left knee held Sayers to only two games in both 1970 and 1971. After fumbling twice in three carries in an exhibition game in 1972, he retired. He had scored 39 touchdowns in only 68 pro games and compiled a career average of 5.0 yards per carry.
In 1977, Sayers was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame at 34; he remains the youngest person to receive the honor. He was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame the same year.

Tommy DeVito, one of the original members of the Four Seasons. Interesting fact:

The actor Joe Pesci, a friend since childhood (whose character in Martin Scorsese’s “Goodfellas” is named for Mr. DeVito), had lived with Mr. DeVito for a time before he was famous, and once Mr. Pesci broke through, he repaid the favor, helping Mr. DeVito out and getting him bit parts in movies, including “Casino” (1995), also directed by Mr. Scorsese.

Ron Cobb, noted production designer and artist for SF films.

He created some creatures that appeared in the cantina scene of “Star Wars: Episode IV — A New Hope” in 1977. He was also asked to help with spaceship illustrations for a movie pitch that would eventually become the 1979 blockbuster “Alien,” starring Sigourney Weaver.
Mr. Cobb’s work has appeared in several movies that have become classics of science fiction and fantasy. He designed scenes and costumes for the 1982 movie “Conan the Barbarian.” And he was a consultant for “Back to the Future” in 1985, helping to design the famous DeLorean time machine that transported Marty McFly, the character played by Michael J. Fox, back and forth through time.

…

“He was passionate about making the science correct,” Ms. Love said. “He wanted accurate science, and he wanted great design.”
Mr. Bissell said Mr. Cobb devoured knowledge wherever he could find it and shared books on subjects including philosophy, technology and evolution. “Here’s a guy who actually just never cared about money,” Mr. Bissell said. “He always just cared about his work.”

Posted in Movies, Music, NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 176

Tuesday, September 22nd, 2020

I’m still a little behind the curve today (but improving). So what’s in the bucket? Well…we could fly a helicopter. Nothing left to talk about.

(So, it has come to this. I am literally posting Garbage.)

(But I do like that song. Though my preferred version is actually an a cappella cover by Stanford Mixed Company.)

Today’s video: “A New Star in the Sky…The UH-60A”, a promo film for the Blackhawk.

Bonus, because I don’t know where else I can fit it: “Fields of the Future”. This is a promo film for North American Aviation, I guess to encourage kids to go into aerospace related careers.

Posted in History | 2 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 175

Monday, September 21st, 2020

I have an eye doctor’s appointment this afternoon, so I’m being a little lazy. However, this is something that’s been on my mind for a few days.

Today, a public service announcement. Actually, a few of them. I like having the morning airing of “Perry Mason” on ME TV on as background while I work. We’re at the point in the current run where William Talman, who played District Attorney Hamilton Burger, was fired from the series (about midway through season 3).

Sheriff’s deputies, suspicious of marijuana use, raided a party on March 13, 1960, in a private home in Beverly Hills at which Talman was a guest. The deputies reported finding Talman and seven other defendants either nude or seminude. All were arrested for possession of marijuana (the charge was later dropped) and lewd vagrancy, but municipal judge Adolph Alexander dismissed the lewd vagrancy charges against Talman and the others on June 17 for lack of proof. “I don’t approve of their conduct,” the judge ruled, “but it is not for you and me to approve but to enforce the statutes.”

In spite of the charges being dropped, Talman was fired by CBS because of the morals clause in his contract. Gail Patrick Jackson, who produced “Perry Mason” and Raymond Burr both campaigned for Talman’s reinstatement, and he was rehired in December of 1960.

(Another interesting side note, unrelated to the theme of today’s post: William Hopper, who played “Paul Drake”, Mason’s private detective, served as both a member of the OSS and as a UDT guy during the war. Yeah, the guy who played Perry Mason’s private eye was a SEAL before there were SEALs.)

Talman only lived to the age of 53. He died in 1968 of lung cancer, and was one of the first people in Hollywood to do an anti-smoking commercial.

Bonus: Ladies and gentlemen, the late Yul Brynner.

Bonus #2 and #3: The Duke.

Smoking’s bad, m’kay, kids? Don’t do it.

Posted in History, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 21, 2020.

Monday, September 21st, 2020

There were some obits that got kind of buried in the shuffle of events over the weekend. Here’s a round-up:

Winston Groom, noted author. He is perhaps most famous for Forrest Gump, but he did a lot of other work:

“‘Forrest Gump’ is not the only reason to celebrate him as a great writer,” P.J. O’Rourke, the political satirist and journalist who knew Mr. Groom for decades, wrote in an email.
In Mr. O’Rourke’s view, Mr. Groom’s debut novel, “Better Times Than These” (1978), “was the best novel written about the Vietnam War.”
“And this is not even to mention Winston’s extraordinary historical and nonfiction works,” he added.
Those books include the Pulitzer Prize finalist (for general nonfiction), “Conversations With the Enemy” (1983), an account of a Vietnam-era prisoner of war written with Duncan Spencer; “Shrouds of Glory” (1995), about the Civil War; and “Patriotic Fire” (2006), about the Battle of New Orleans.
At his death, Mr. Groom was awaiting the publication of “The Patriots,” a combined biography of Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams; it is to be published in November by National Geographic.

I have not seen, and have no interest in seeing, “Forrest Gump”. However, I recall reading some years back that the book is much more vicious and satirical than the movie, and that Mr. Groom somewhat resented how the movie watered down his work. I might have to seek out some of his non-fiction, especially if P.J. O’Rourke endorses it.

Anne Stevenson, poet. She was also famous, perhaps more so, as the author of a biography of Sylvia Plath.

Ms. Plath committed suicide in 1963 at the age of 30, and many of her admirers blamed her husband, Mr. Hughes, who was having an affair with a woman named Assia Wevill (who herself would commit suicide in 1969). But Ms. Stevenson’s book painted a different picture, portraying Ms. Plath as “a wall of unrelenting rage” prone to outrageous behavior, while depicting Mr. Hughes as generous and caring.
The book was written with the cooperation of Ms. Plath’s literary estate, which was controlled by Mr. Hughes and his sister, Olwyn Hughes. Ms. Stevenson wrote in the preface that she “received a great deal of help from Olwyn Hughes,” so much so that “Ms. Hughes’s contributions to the text have made it almost a work of dual authorship.”
That did not give “Bitter Fame” much credibility in some critics’ eyes. The poet Robert Pinsky, reviewing it in The New York Times, called out a bias in the presentation.
“Since Ms. Stevenson’s book is, as it had to be, largely about a marriage, the tilting of viewpoint toward one side is a difficult problem for the biographer,” he wrote. “Marriages are complex and mysterious stories, each with a minimum of two sides. Writing about a marriage demands tact, respect for the unknowable and more acknowledgment of a limited viewpoint than I think Ms. Stevenson provides.”
In the British newspaper The Independent, Ronald Hayman was even harsher, calling “Bitter Fame” a “vindictive book” that sought not only to blame Ms. Plath for the failed marriage but also “to undermine her poetic achievement by representing her verse as negative, sick, death-oriented, and comparing it unfavorably with his.”

Great and good FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Long Cat (aka Nobiko) the subject of Internet memes.

Posted in Books, Mammals, Movies, Obits | 1 Comment »

Your loser update: week 2, 2020.

Monday, September 21st, 2020

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Carolina
Atlanta
Minnesota
Detroit
Philadelphia
New York Football Giants
Cincinnati
Denver
Houston
New York Jets
Miami

(Saints and Raiders are the Monday night game. Both are 1-0 at the moment.)

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 174

Sunday, September 20th, 2020

Science Sunday!

I thought I’d do another assortment today, instead of a single theme.

First up: “Shaping Things to Come”, with Professor Eric Laithwaite of Imperial College London. Professor Laithwaite sounds like an interesting guy: he was one of the pioneers of maglev technology, did a lot of work on electric motors (specifically linear induction motors)…and had some rather eccentric ideas about gyroscopes and moths.

I just love the way this video opens. I don’t know how you could get more British than this.

Bonus: for something a little different, Alan Holden of Bell Labs explains crystals.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 173

Saturday, September 19th, 2020

I’m kind of hungry right now.

What was WWI trench cooking like?

Would you like some tea with that? (Okay, technically, this is WWII, not WWI, but I don’t think the process of making a cuppa was that different.)

Bonus: WWII field kitchen cooking.

Bonus #2: Another WWII field kitchen – a German field kitchen, “known as a Gulaschkanone (Goulash Cannon)”.

Bonus #3, and a bit longer: “The Royal Family’s Favourite Meals From The Empire”.

Posted in Food, History | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: September 19, 2020.

Saturday, September 19th, 2020

For the historical record: Ruth Bader Ginsburg. NYT. The Washington Post has made their website basically unlinkable.

I don’t have much I can say: I am not a lawyer or a Supreme Court watcher, and the politics are best left to others better equipped to cover that.

Posted in Law, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 172

Friday, September 18th, 2020

Someone on Hacker News posted a link to this website listing surviving examples of the Lockheed Constellation and Super Constellation. (I know, Comic Sans, I’m sorry.)

This inspired me, and I thought it might be fun to share some Connie videos. First up: “The Super Constellation”, a 1955 Lockheed promo film about the building of the Super Constellation.

Bonus #1: The EC-121 Air Force variant flies to Yanks Air Museum.

Bonus #2: Want to see one flying over the Black Forest?

Bonus #3: this is longer, and I have not watched all of it yet. An episode of the “Great Planes” documentary series focusing on the Constellation.

Bonus #4, since three out of four of these have been short: Super Constellation engine startup and takeoff.

Posted in History, Planes | 2 Comments »

When a drawbridge comes along, you must whippit…

Thursday, September 17th, 2020

Seemingly taking his Dodge Stratus’s “cloud car” nickname literally, the unnamed 26-year-old went airborne and cleared the gap, but managed to burst all four tires and smash his windshield upon landing and crashing on the other side of the bridge.
“Over he went, blew out all four of his tires, and then he crashed into the other gate,” said Locke, who likened the jump to a similar flight by a Dodge Monaco in 1980’s The Blues Brothers. “That’s a first for me.”
Police immediately received a call reporting a car had “Dukes of Hazzard-ed across” the bridge, and on response, found the driver with a canister of nitrous oxide in his car. Known as “whippits” due to its common use as propellant in canned whipped cream, NO2 is a dissociative sometimes inhaled to experience a “floating” sensation, per Australia’s Alcohol and Drug Foundation.

Based on the story, I think the police did try to detect it, but they didn’t have to try very hard.

There is no word so far on the status of the cream.

Posted in Cars, Law, Stupid | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 171

Thursday, September 17th, 2020

I thought it might be fun to visit France. But this time, on Air France!

“Discovering France”, from the 1960s.

I apologize for the fact that this is in French, without English subtitles. I feel the virtues of the vintage French scenery outweigh this.

But as a bonus: an old TWA promo film, “World On Parade”. This has three things going for it:

  • It is short.
  • More Paris.
  • O.J. Simpson and Arnold Palmer.

Posted in History, Travel | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 17, 2020.

Thursday, September 17th, 2020

Lawrence sent over a pointer to the NYT obit for Stanley Crouch.

Mr. Crouch defied easy categorization. A former Black nationalist who had been seared by witnessing the 1965 Watts race riots in his native Los Angeles, he transformed himself into a widely read essayist, syndicated newspaper columnist, novelist and MacArthur Foundation “genius award” winner whose celebrity was built, in part, on his skewering — and even physical smackdowns — of his former intellectual comrades.
All the while he championed jazz, enlarging its presence in American culture by helping to found Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, one of the country’s premier showcases for that most American of musical genres, and by promoting the career of the celebrated trumpeter Wynton Marsalis, who co-founded the jazz center in 1991 and remains its artistic director.

…

Espousing that pragmatism, he found ready adversaries among fellow Black Americans, whom he criticized as defining themselves in racial terms and as reducing the broader Black experience to one of victimization. He vilified gangsta rap as “‘Birth of a Nation’ with a backbeat,” the Rev. Al Sharpton as a “buffoon,” the Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as “insane,” the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison “as American as P.T. Barnum” and Alex Haley, the author of “Roots,” as “opportunistic.”
By contrast, he venerated his intellectual mentors James Baldwin, Ralph Ellison and Albert Murray, who, by his lights, saw beyond the conventions of race and ideology while viewing the contributions of Black people as integral to the American experience.

…

After transplanting himself to New York in 1975, Mr. Crouch wrote for The Village Voice, where he was hired as a staff writer in 1980 and fired in 1988 after a fistfight with a fellow writer.
“The two best things that have ever happened to me were being fired by The Voice and being hired by The Voice, in that order,” he told The New Yorker.

…

Mr. Crouch said in an interview with The Times in 1990 that too many discussions of race were “simple-minded and overly influenced by the ideas of determinism — if you’re poor, you’re going to act a certain way” — a self-perpetuating path that, he said, his public-school teachers had stopped him from taking.
“These people were on a mission,” he said of his teachers. “They had a perfect philosophy: You will learn this. If you came in there and said, ‘I’m from a dysfunctional family and a single-parent household,’ they would say, ‘Boy, I’m going to ask you again, What is 8 times 8?’
“When I was coming up,” he continued, “there were no excuses except your house burned down and there was a murder in the family. Eight times eight was going to be 64 whether your family was dysfunctional or not. It’s something you needed to know!”

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 170

Wednesday, September 16th, 2020

Today, I wanted to put up something that pushes a few of RoadRich’s hot buttons (and my own).

The California Highway Patrol has a YouTube channel. I thought it might be interesting to look at some aspects of operations that are common to both the Austin Police Department and the CHP. These are things that APD devotes presentations to in their Citizen’s Police Academy (which is on-hold at the moment), so why not take a look at how a department outside of the United States handles these things?

First up: “Air Operations”. This is a two-parter: Part 1.

(Can I note here that I hate “vlog”? I would say I hate the word, but it isn’t even a word.)

Part 2: this covers CHP’s fixed-wing (that is, not helicopter) operations.

You know what else CHP has? The mounted police.

You know I had to do that.

Anyway, the CHP mounted patrol.

Posted in 1970s, California Über Alles, Cops, Horses, Law, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

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