“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 302

January 27th, 2021

Today, planes. Specifically military aircraft. I thought I’d do some slightly shorter stuff as well.

To start with, from the Planes of Fame channel on the ‘Tube, a tour of their B-17.

Bonus #1: “The Ultimate Supersonic Interceptor – F-106 Delta Dart” from the Dark Skies channel.

Back in the day, when I worked for Four Letter Computer Company in Round Rock that has nothing to do with fruit, they tried to force a new case management system on us called “Delta”. Many of the techs felt they would have been better off converting the money spent to $100 bills, piling them in the parking lot and setting them on fire.

I had a photo of the F-106 hanging in my cube with the caption “The only good Delta”.

Bonus #2: Okay, this one is longer, but it is a bonus: “Wings” from the Discovery Channel on the XB-70 Valkyrie. Speaking of #TheFutureWeCouldHaveHad: yes, it was a Mach 3 bomber, but it also served as a testbed for a lot of the tech that was intended to go into the SST.

Is it just me, or does the Tu-144 remind folks a lot of the XB-70? Granted, it lacks the two vertical stabilizers, but other than that…

Speaking of the Tu-144:

The prototypes were also the only passenger jets ever fitted with ejection seats, albeit only for the crew and not the passengers.

Yeah, kind of a bad look there if you punch out and let your passengers get spread evenly over several acres of Siberian landscape. Sort of like the captain deserting a sinking ship ahead of the passengers and the rest of the crew.

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Obit watch: January 27, 2021.

January 27th, 2021

Bruce Kirby, another one of those knock-around actors who was in just about every 1970’s detective show except that one.

Most notably, he was Sgt. Kramer in “Columbo”. He also had several guest shots on “The Rockford Files”, and appeared on “Banacek” and “McCloud” among many other credits. (He was also the police captain on “Holmes and Yoyo”.) And his credits go all the way back to “Car 54, Where Are You?”

NYT obit for Gregory Sierra.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 301

January 26th, 2021

I would call this “True Crime Tuesday” but there’s some other jerkface out there who does that already.

I did think it might be fun to do some stuff at the intersection of crime and art.

“The Mystery Conman – The Murky Business of Counterfeit Antiques”.

Bonus: “Stealing the Mona Lisa”.

Posted in Art, History, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 26, 2021.

January 26th, 2021

Antonio Sabàto. He was most famous as one of the drivers in “Grand Prix”. He did a lot of Italian movies including “Escape from the Bronx” and “Ritornano quelli della calibro 38”.

Walter Bernstein, noted screenwriter.

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“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 300

January 25th, 2021

I was thinking today we’d go for a ride.

“Operation of the Motorcycle” from Honda, apparently in 1966.

Bonus #1: “Welcome to the Murderdrome: A Brief History of Board Track Racing”.

Bonus #2: Okay, not related to motorcycles, but posted for the coolness factor: vintage video from the 1970 12 Hours of Sebring.

Mario Andretti finished first. The second place finisher? Steve McQueen.

Posted in Cars, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 25, 2021.

January 25th, 2021

Jimmie Rodgers, crossover singer probably most famous for “Honeycomb”.

Mr. Rodgers was a regular presence on the pop, country, R&B and easy listening charts for a decade after “Honeycomb,” with records that included “Oh-Oh, I’m Falling in Love Again” (1958) and “Child of Clay” (1967), both of which were nominated for Grammy Awards.

Then something happened.

Mr. Rodgers said he was under consideration for a featured role in the 1968 movie musical “Finian’s Rainbow” when the encounter on the freeway derailed his career. In his telling, he was driving home late at night when the driver behind him flashed his lights. He thought it was his conductor, who was also driving to Mr. Rodgers’s house, and pulled over.
“I rolled the window down to ask what was the matter,” he told The Toronto Star in 1987. “That’s the last thing I remember.”
He ended up with a fractured skull and broken arm. He said the off-duty officer who had pulled him over called two on-duty officers to the scene, but all three scattered when his conductor, who went looking for Mr. Rodgers when he hadn’t arrived home, drove up.
The police told a different story: They said Mr. Rodgers had been drunk and had injured himself when he fell. Mr. Rodgers sued the Los Angeles Police Department, prompting a countersuit; the matter was settled out of court in his favor to the tune of $200,000.

…

Three brain surgeries followed, and he was left with a metal plate in his head. He eventually resumed performing, and even briefly had his own television show, but he faced constant difficulties. For a time he was sidelined because he started having seizures during concerts.
“Once word gets out that you’re having seizures onstage, you can’t work,” he told The News Sentinel of Knoxville, Tenn., in 1998. “People won’t hire you.”
Mr. Rodgers was found to have spasmodic dysphonia, a disorder characterized by spasms in the muscles of the voice box, a condition he attributed to his brain injury. Yet he later settled into a comfortable niche as a performer and producer in Branson, Mo., the country music mecca, where he had his own theater for several years before retiring to California in 2002.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cops, Law, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 299

January 24th, 2021

Science Sunday!

Today’s video goes out to Gregg “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” Easterbrook. From 2014, a talk in the Theodore von Kármán lecture series at JPL, on NASA’s planned Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM).

Spoiler: the project was cancelled in 2017.

I have a great idea for a TV series, if there was a network out there that actually did science stuff: “Cool But Cancelled”, a series devoted to all the awesome proposed space age projects that ended up getting cancelled in favor of various government boondoggles.

#TheFutureWeCouldHaveHad

Unrelated bonus: this is an old documentary from Oak Ridge (produced for the Atomic Energy Commission) about their experimental molten-salt reactor. I’m putting this here mostly because I like the idea of “molten salt”, and y’all know I’m a nuclear geek.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 24, 2021.

January 24th, 2021

Gregory Sierra, knock-around actor.

He did some theater work, but was mostly a TV and movie actor. He was “Julio”, Fred’s sidekick on “Sanford and Son”, Carlos “El Puerco” Valdez (the guy who kidnapped Jessica) on “Soap”, and “Chano”, one of the detectives in the early seasons of “Barney Miller”. He also did a lot of guest appearances, including nearly every major detective show of the 1970s (except that one): “Police Story”, “Banacek”, “Hawaii 5-0” (the good one), “Columbo”, “McCloud”, “Mission: Impossible”, and the list goes on. He was also Lieutenant Rodriguez in the early episodes of “Miami Vice” (that character got killed off and was replaced by Edward James Olmos’s “Martin Castillo”).

His movie credits include “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” and, interestingly, “The Other Side of the Wind“.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | 2 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 298

January 23rd, 2021

Happy birthday John Moses Browning!

“American Gunmaker: The John M. Browning Story”.

Bonus: “Tales of the Gun” from the History Channel, covering Mr. Browning and his work.

Posted in Guns, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 23, 2021.

January 23rd, 2021

Larry King. Or, as the old story goes, “Larry King Radio“.

He bragged that he almost never prepared for an interview. If his guest was an author promoting a book, he did not read it but asked simply, “What’s it about?” or “Why did you write this?”
Nor did he pose as an intellectual. He salted his talk with “ain’t,” and “the” sounded like “da.” To a public skeptical of experts, he seemed refreshingly average: just a curious guy asking questions impulsively.
“There are many broadcasters who’ll recite three minutes of facts before they ask a question,” he said in a memoir, “My Remarkable Journey” (2009, with Cal Fussman). “As if to say: Let me show you how much I know. I think the guest should be the expert.”

Posted in Obits, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 22, 2021.

January 22nd, 2021

Hank Aaron. NYT. ESPN. MLB.

Mira Furlan. She was Delenn in “Babylon 5” and “Danielle Rousseau” on “Lost”.

Posted in History, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 297

January 22nd, 2021

I haven’t put up any RoadRich bait recently, so today is his day.

“The Story Of Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport”.

I’m fairly sure this is a view from the ground of a 747 on final to Kai Tak.

And here’s a cockpit view of the Kai Tak approach.

Question for anyone who has the new Microsoft Flight Simulator: can you set up an approach and fly in to the virtual Kai Tak?

“Captain Joe” explains V1, Vr, and V2. If you watch movies (well, if you watch the kind of movies we watch) you’ll hear the pilots calling out those speeds. But what exactly are they?

“Crawl through a B-29 Superfortress IN FLIGHT!”

What is it like to punch out of an F-15 at 600 knots?

Spoiler: not fun.

Posted in History, Planes | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 296

January 21st, 2021

Travel Thursday!

I’m 99 44/100ths percent sure I haven’t used this one before, and I feel like I’m reaching the end of the string of Pan Am videos. So…

“Wings To Europe: Grand Tour” from 1959.

… a tour of Europe in the grand style of the 20th century world. A day in each of the Grand Tour cities: Lisbon, Madrid, Rome, Florence, the French Riviera and Paris.

Bonus: ’tis the season. Let’s go skiing!

“Winter Olympic Playground 1960” is a vintage promo film for Squaw Valley, California, and the facilities there. Squaw Valley was the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, and is about 40 miles from Reno. (The film was done by the Harrah’s Club casino in Reno: it looks like it was still there when I was there (with a slight name change), but it closed permanently in March of 2020.)

Posted in History, Travel | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 295

January 20th, 2021

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to post this because it feels like unpaid advertising for Blade HQ.

But there’s a larger part of me that likes the idea of going around asking people who know, and deal with knives, what they are carrying. It is sort of like asking a professional photographer “What’s in your camera bag?”. At least for me.

So this is a compromise: I’m posting the video, but I’m not linking to Blade HQ or any other online knife shop. If they want promotion, they can buy some advertising. My rates are surprisingly reasonable.

(What do I carry? The knife in my pocket right now is one of the smaller Victorinox Swiss Army knives. I prefer to carry a Swiss Champ, but I’ve set mine aside for the moment: I need to send it in and get it serviced.)

Here’s another one of those in the “what’s in your (x)?” vein: “Racing Team Tool Box Tour – With Specialty Tools”.

I found this mildly interesting: “Knives you don’t hand to people”.

For some reason, “Matt’s Off Road Recovery” has been popping up a lot in my recommendations. I’ve always had kind of a vague general curiosity about how you get your off-road vehicle back if you have a mechanical breakdown or some other problem, so I guess Matt’s answers that question. Although I’m not sure these people really want it back, but it seems like one of those “can’t leave it here, unless you want a major fine” situations.

Posted in Cars, History, Knives | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 20, 2021.

January 20th, 2021

Don Sutton.

Sutton’s major league career began with the Dodgers in 1966. He went on to win 233 games during 16 seasons with the team, the most in franchise history.
“When you gave him the ball, you knew one thing,” the former Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda, who died this month, once said. “Your pitcher was going to give you everything he had.”
Sutton also pitched for the Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, California Angels and Oakland A’s before retiring in 1988. He was elected to the Hall of Fame on his fifth attempt.

…

Sutton — whose major league career began as part of a Dodger pitching rotation that also included Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale — won 20 games only once (he had a 21-10 record in 1976). But he is tied for 14th place in career wins with Nolan Ryan, and ranked seventh in both strikeouts, with 3,574, and innings, with 5,282.1.
He holds the Dodger team records not only for career wins but also for strikeouts (2,696), starts (533), shutouts (52), home runs surrendered (309) and losses (181).

Barbara Shelley, British actress. She did a lot of horror films: “Village of the Damned”, “Dracula: Prince of Darkness”, “Quatermass and the Pit”, etc. She also did a lot of non-horror TV, including “Eastenders” and two guest shots on “12 O’Clock High”.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

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