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.
Do you like jam?
Do you like Jam Handy?
Do you like soup?
From 1962, “The Ballad of Soup Du Jour”.
Warning: folk music.
And here’s a bonus for those of you who haven’t had enough already, or who are big fans of “The Gallery of Regrettable Food“: “The Magic Shelf”, a 1950s promo film for Campbell’s Soup. In glorious (?) color.
Tomorrow: pack your suitcase for an exotic destination!
Yesterday was a big day, but I wanted to give the news time to shake out.
For “Valley Curtain” he strung orange nylon fabric along steel cables over a narrow pass in Rifle, Colo.; a large semicircular opening allowed cars on the state highway below to pass through.
Fierce winds ripped the curtain to shreds two days later, a setback that Christo shrugged off. “I as an artist have done what I set out to do,” he said. “That the curtain no longer exists only makes it more interesting.”
Then came “Running Fence,” a series of white nylon fabric panels that snaked their way over ranchland in Sonoma and Marin counties in Northern California and crossed Highway 101 on their way to the ocean in Bodega Bay.
For “Valley Curtain,” Christo and his lawyer devised the system that made all of his subsequent works possible. For each project a corporation was created, with Jeanne-Claude as director and Christo as a salaried employee. Financing came from the sale of drawings and small models to collectors and museums; Christo never accepted grants or public money. When the art work was taken down, the corporation dissolved itself, having earned zero profit.
…
Even more difficult, politically, was Christo’s plan to wrap the Reichstag in Berlin. The first drawing was made in 1971. For decades thereafter he encountered nothing but resistance from West German officials. But with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, momentum shifted his way, and in 1995 the work was completed.
In between the Pont Neuf and Reichstag Projects, Christo and Jeanne-Claude simultaneously placed 1,760 yellow umbrellas in the Tejon Pass, just north of Los Angeles, and 1,340 blue umbrellas on a hillside near Ibaraki, Japan.
“The Umbrellas, Japan-U.S.A.” came to grief when one of the 485-pound umbrellas in California came unmoored in high winds and killed a woman and injured several other people. The two artists ordered the umbrellas in both countries to be taken down immediately. As a Japanese crane operator prepared to remove one of the umbrellas, his crane made contact with a power line, electrocuting him.
Herb Stempel, of quiz show scandal fame, has passed at 93. I’ve written about the quiz show scandal previously, so I won’t recap the whole story here.
Mr. Stempel apparently passed on April 7th, but his death was not confirmed until yesterday. It’s mildly interesting that he passed almost exactly a year after Charles Van Doren.
Science Sunday!
You know what else I thought was really cool when I was six years old?
From 1962 and the Bell System, by way of the AT&T Tech Channel, “Telstar”, the story of the satellite’s development.
Bonus science video, also by way of the AT&T Tech Channel, but covering a totally different aspect of science: “The Year They Discovered People”, a 1973 documentary about the Hawthorne Effect.
Marge Redmond. She was perhaps most famous as “Sister Jacqueline” on “The Flying Nun”, but she did a fair amount of other TV: “Barnaby Jones”, “The Rockford Files”, “Quincy, M.E.”, “Matlock”, and more. She was also in “The Fortune Cookie”, “Manhattan Murder Mystery”, and “Family Plot”.
She was married to Jack Weston, and they were both good Cleveland people. Apparently, she died in February, but her death was only recently reported.
Here’s something a little different and shorter. “Coast Guard Lighthouses”, a film about…Coast Guard lighthouses, as of 1960.
Bonus: since the theme today is “something a little different”, here’s a promo film from the American Radio Relay League, also from the 1960s: “The Ham’s Wide World”. Noted: one of America’s most famous hams, Barry Goldwater (K7UGA and K3UIG), shows up at about 15:40.
I do love me some hot Navy action. I also really enjoyed The Hunt For Red October. So:
“Co-ordinated Anti-Submarine Warfare” This is labeled as part 1, but I think the good folks at PeriscopeFilm put parts 1 and 2 together when they uploaded the newly mastered version.
Bonus video: “Tracking the Threat: Anti Submarine Warfare in the Cold War”. This has a 1982 copyright date, which makes it extremely contemporary with Red October.
Richard Herd, working actor. He appeared on a minor SF TV show and was a regular on a minor sitcom, but he had a lot of other credits. (Including, interestingly enough, “Capt. Dennis Sheridan” on “T.J. Hooker”. One of the less reputable broadcast networks was running a marathon of that last weekend. Man, it is hard to watch these days.)
Anthony James, another working actor. He was in “Unforgiven” and “In the Heat of the Night” (the movie), also appeared on a minor SF TV show, and had a lot of other credits (“Quincy, M.E.”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “Gunsmoke”, “Starsky and Hutch”, “Police Story”, and so on).
By way of Lawrence, Cindy Lou Butler Stevens.
“Cindy Lou who?”
No, Cindy Lou Butler Stevens. She was one of the female leads in the awful “Boggy Creek II: and the Legend Continues…“, and also appeared in “The Town that Dreaded Sundown” and “Grayeagle”.
All three of those were directed by Charles B. Pierce (who also directed “The Legend of Boggy Creek”, the first film in the trilogy). Per Lawrence, Ms. Stevens was married to Mr. Pierce at the time.
An assortment today. No unifying theme.
Police videos have been kind of skimpy recently because they haven’t been popping up in my YouTube recommendations. If I narrow the topics down to just “law enforcement”, I get…nothing but “Live PD” clips. Now, I have nothing against “Live PD”: I don’t watch it, because we don’t have cable, but I’ll certainly sit through a YouTube clip. In a private window in my browser, not signed in to YouTube, so why are these clips showing up in my recs? And if people want to watch “Live PD” clips, you all know where to find them, right?
Anyway, I finished the book great and good FotB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn recommended back when I posted about the Newhall shootout: Newhall Shooting – A Tactical Analysis: Survival Lessons from One of Law Enforcement’s Deadliest Shootings (affiliate link) and I do recommend it, with some small quibbles.
One thing I learned from that book: in addition to the CHP Newhall training film, the LA County Sheriff’s Department made their own training film. I think you are better served watching the CHP film first, as the quality of the transfer on this one isn’t that great, and I have questions about the accuracy of LACSD’s film. In the interest of the historical record, however, here it is:
Totally unrelated: ever wonder about astronaut weightlessness training in the days before the “Vomit Comet”? Yeah, I do, too. Wikipedia says that the Mercury astronauts trained in a C-131. But this purports to be vintage film of Glenn, Grissom, and Shepherd training in an F-100F (not all three at the same time, obviously):
And speaking of the F-100: “TAC On Target”, from 1962, which features various aircraft in action (including the F-100, F-104, F-105, and F-4C).
I’ll just note: for those of you who work for, or deal with, a certain large company in the computer networking area (hi, Borepatch!) “TAC On Target” may have an entirely different connotation for you.
Something else I like, from Rod Dreher: “Ode to the Roof Koreans“.
I don’t usually link to Reason unless it is backup for a blog entry, or to make a larger point.
But I do rather like this J.D. Tuccille piece, “In Praise of Pointy Things“, and commend it to your attention.
Story: when I was going through the citizen’s police academy in !Austin, the chief of police showed up pretty regularly. There’s an entire class block devoted to his presentation on officer related stress and the physiology of critical encounters.
He likes to tell a story about asking his officers, “Why do you carry a knife?” and then mocking their responses. “In case I need to cut a seat belt.” “When was the last time you had to cut somebody out of a seat belt?” And so on, and so on. I kind of like the guy in general, but this is one aspect of his style I don’t get.
His answer: “In case I need to stab you.”
My answer: “Because I am a tool using animal. I have evolved over millions of years to be able to use tools. A knife is a tool.“
Thanks to all the folks who stopped by and left comments on my Memorial Day post. Thanks also to Borepatch for the linky love.
There are some videos on YouTube about Father Capodanno, but I have not been able to watch any of them yet, and I don’t want to put them up without watching them first. So here’s a couple of things I thought were odd or diverting.
Many of my readers are probably familiar with the idea of ASMR videos. I wasn’t aware that there was such a thing as ASMR gun cleaning videos.
(I have another reason for posting this video. But I’ll go into that at some point in the future.)
Bonus: More hot metal! “Modern Steel Making”, from the United States Steel Corporation in glorious Technicolor!
I feel like I’m in a transition between Memorial Day observance and getting back to (what passes for) normal.
So here’s some military aviation videos that I think are interesting. First off, this is apparently a promo film for Northrop’s YB-49, aka “the Flying Wing”.
This is where I mention that the YB-49 never saw active service: the Air Force went with the B-36 instead.
Bonus video #1: “Instrument Flight”. In the T-38-A Talon.
I’ve always been fond of the T-38. If I had the money and ability to fly jets, I’d love to own and fly my own T-38. (Wikipedia says there are seven privately owned ones in the US.)
Bonus video #2, just because I’m feeling extra geeky: a training film about the F-111’s terrain following radar.
In honor of Memorial Day: “To Save a Soldier”. This is an ABC News documentary from 1966, narrated by Henry Fonda, and following a wounded soldier through the military medical system: from Vietnam to his homecoming.
Bonus video: “The Greatest Raid of All”, a Jeremy Clarkson documentary about the British commando raid on the St. Nazaire dock in March of 1942.
The St. Nazaire raid is a great story: Giles Milton’s Churchill’s Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (affiliate link) contains a good summary.