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“.
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?
“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.)
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.
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”.
I’ve been neglecting this holiday for the past few years, but: today is National Buy an AK Day.
Contrary to what some may believe, this holiday has nothing to do with any political events that take place on January 20th: rather, it is inspired by the classic Ice Cube song “It Was a Good Day” (“Today I didn’t even have to use my A.K./I got to say it was a good day“) and the hard work done by Donovan Strain who determined that the “good day” in the song was January 20, 1992.
“Can I buy something that’s not an AK?” You certainly can: I’m not the boss of what you can and can’t purchase. But Ice Cube didn’t say “I didn’t even have to use my AR” or “I didn’t have to use my FN 5.7”, so this isn’t National Buy a Gun Day. (That’s April 15th.)
Going a little long today. Also going back to the music history well, because it has been more than a week since I’ve done that, and I don’t want to get stuck on guns, food, Roman history, or military history. (I may do some more military history tomorrow.)
Short shameful confession: I have not had a chance to watch all of these two videos yet. I’m posting them here partially as bookmarks, because they involve two bands that I’m partial to.
“Rebel Truce – The History Of The Clash”
“Fresh Fruit For Rotting Eyeballs”, a documentary about the Dead Kennedys.
…you shouldn’t send “explicit texts” to a reporter. Actually, you probably shouldn’t send explicit texts to anybody, no matter who you are, and even if they are consensual (as they will come back to haunt you) but especially if you’re in a high ranking organizational position.
So…from 2017 and Mike Duncan’s book tour, “The Storm Before the Storm” at Politics and Prose in DC. If you’re a “Revoutions” listener, you’ve heard the podcast version of this, but for those of you who are not (and for those of you who want to see what Mike Duncan looked like three years ago), here you go.
I get a particular kick out of his stories about his early writerly ambitions: wanting to write “Redwall” knockoffs, except the mice flew airplanes, and then later wanting to be the next Phil Dick.
Bonus: a more recent (July of 2020) interview with Mr. Duncan from “The Current” which is apparently something the Hatchette Book Group puts out.
Edited to add: Mike the Musicologist sent over a report that outside linebackers coach Shelton Felton and inside linebackers coach Brian Niedermeyer have also been fired. An updated report from ESPN also indicates that unnamed others have been let go as well. And all of these firings (including Pruitt’s) are being reported as “for cause”, which means no contract buyout.
Phil Spector. This is another one of those where I don’t have much to say, really: everyone knows the story (and if you don’t, it is recapped in the obit).
Oh, yeah: it also decomposes into phosgene unless you stabilize it first. Which is a bit concerning…
Next: “I somehow convinced myself to order a full kilo instead.”
That’s a full kilo of…sodium cyanide.
“Does cyanide actually smell like almonds?”
This is right on the annoying border for me, so I won’t hold it against you if you skip the video and read the notes instead.
This one might be a little more interesting: the chemistry of arsenic, from the Periodic Videos folks.
As a side note to this, and because Lawrence and I have been talking about it, I went looking for videos on Shadows From the Walls of Death. I did find a few about the book (not death metal) but…they were all in foreign languages without subtitles.
Okay, just one more: “The Science Behind Shaped Charges”.
Igloo White was one of those interesting Vietnam War operations. The idea was: we’d airdrop sensors (frequently camouflaged to look like local vegetation) along the Ho Chi Minh trail to monitor enemy movements. The sensors would relay information to aircraft flying overhead, which would in turn relay that information to an operations center. The operations center was equipped with two “supercomputers” (according to Wikipedia, IBM 360/40 and later 360/65 systems) which would analyze the collected data and try to predict where the enemy was going to be, based on where they had been.
“Operation Igloo White” from Dark Docs.
Bonus: “Electronic Surveillance and Eavesdropping in the Vietnam War”, a 1969 DOD film.
Bonus #2, also by way of Dark Docs: “Operation Popeye”, the military’s weather modification program.
After WWII, a group of veterans returned to their homes in McMinn County, Tennessee. (Athens is the county seat.) The veterans found that McMinn County was run by a corrupt local machine, and assembled their own slate of reform candidates. However, the crooked local government decided that they were going to rig the elections in their favor. The machine, though, had not realized some facts of life:
You can figure that many (if not all) of those men were familiar with firearms, had combat experience, and at least some of them knew something about explosives.
So when the election took place on August 1, 1946, and the machine tried to rig the vote counting (even going as far as to beat and arrest GI poll watchers), the veterans took up arms and rebelled, in what is now known as “The Battle of Athens“.
Here are two short versions of the story:
A somewhat longer video, which is based in part on Mr. DeRose’s book:
This is a long video (about an hour) of a talk by Matt Green (a former judge in Alabama: as best as I can tell, he’s in private practice now specializing in DUI and constitutional law) about the Battle of Athens.
There’s a made for TV movie that you can find on the ‘Tube, but which I’m not embedding here for policy reasons.
Our friend Siegfried (of Siegfried & Roy) has died. Those guys opened Las Vegas to the possibility of a full-evening magic show. They lived large. They paved the way for @pennjillette and me. Here's an appropriately lavish obit in the New York Post. https://t.co/Meq4CrwL8vpic.twitter.com/wZskSwRJaK
Today, a couple of exotic destinations. “Wings Over The West Indies” from our good friends at Pan Am. What makes this interesting is that it is from the 1940s, and features the Sikorsky S-40 flying boat.
And, for a little dose of something slightly more recent and in color…”Wings to Yugoslavia”, also from Pan Am, but this time dating to the 1960s.
One more fun one: “Up and Over”, a promo film made by Sikorsky promoting Los Angeles Airways (LAA). LAA provided helicopter service from various points around LA to the airports and to Disneyland. They also carried mail.
The YouTube notes mention that they went out of business in 1971 after an acquisition with Golden West Airlines failed. What the notes don’t mention is that they had two bad crashes almost back to back (May 22, 1968 and August 14, 1968) that killed a total of 44 people. Which may have been a contributing factor…
I got a whole bunch of stuff from Lawrence and other folks, so let’s start:
Sheldon Adelson, casino and resort hotel owner, and major donor to the Republican Party and conservative politicians in Israel.
John Riley. He was on “General Hospital” and also did a lot of appearances on non-“Mannix” 1970s detective series.
Jessica Campbell. She was “Tammy Metzler” in “Election”, and was only 38.
Lawrence sent over a report of the death of Julie Strain, “scream queen”, B-movie actress, and Penthouse Pet of the Year (1993). The site admits that she was mistakenly reported dead last year, so I would take this with a lick of salt (though they claim confirmation from multiple sources).
She was in a lot of Andy Sidaris films. (If you’re not familiar with those, and you like MST3K, you are missing a treat.)
Among her other movie credits was “Exterminator City”, which Lawrence will tell you (at the drop of a hat) is the worst movie he’s ever seen. Here’s a clip from the movie which does not feature Ms. Strain, just for illumination:
As Lawrence will tell you (again) that’s the best scene in the movie.
Finally, Diana Millay, actress most famous for “Dark Shadows”.
Today I thought I’d indulge myself in a bit more random gun crankery.
(Speaking of random gun crankery: a side note to the Buntline conversation. I think I could actually get the funds together to purchase that, if I were irresponsible and really wanted it. But neither of those is true.)
Two short videos about Thell Reed, Hollywood quick draw trainer. This first one concentrates on “Django Unchained”. (Don’t go to the website listed in Wikipedia: it’s been taken over and is not safe for work.)
“Thell Reed: Hollywood’s Hired Gun”.
And here’s someone we hope you’ll really like: the legendary Arvo Ojala. This is an episode of “To Tell The Truth” featuring Mr. Ojala: it is the full episode, but Mr. Ojala’s segment is roughly the first eight minutes.
Bonus, but still on the short side: vintage video of a demonstration by Bill Jordan, Border Patrol agent, author, and no slouch when it came to quick draw himself. I know the YouTube notes aren’t in English, but the video itself is.
Finally, an extra-long bonus that hits three odd intersections: gun crankery, CanCon, and history. “Black Watch Snipers”.
This AvE channel has been popping up in my feed, and even though I’m not very good with tools, I find something compelling about watching him work. I have to admit, he had me when he referred to “the land of 10mm sockets”.
“Oxy-Acetylene Cutting | Shake Hands With Danger!” Warning: there’s a lot of f–ks in this.
“Stupid Design Mistake | Stanley Tools”.
Bonus: Sizzler still exists! (As best as I can tell, the nearest one to me is in Gallup, NM.)
Pat Loud, the mother in the 1970s reality show, “An American Family”. I touched on this at greater length when Bill Loud, her husband, passed away in 2018.
I’ve been holding this for a few days: Jim Bob Moffett. He was a prominent oil and mining magnate, and a large donor to UT.
He also made a whole lot of people angry back in the early 1990s when one of his companies planned a development in Southwest Austin.
I have another doctor’s appointment today (actually, two) so I’m serving up a variety platter based on some recent events.
It snowed here yesterday. Seriously, snowed. For several hours. In Texas.
It is supposed to be pretty cold today, too, so how about a refreshing cold weather drink recipe?
This recipe is different from the one given in How To Archer, specifically the addition of Creme de Cacao and Crème de menthe. (Also, eight ounces of peppermint schnapps to 12 ounces of hot chocolate sounds like a really good way to get messed up. So I’d recommend drinking these when you don’t have to go anywhere.) I should have picked up some schnapps, Creme de Cacao, and Crème de menthe when I was out…
We watched “Tombstone” Saturday night. Spoiler: I think we all rather liked it. However, me being who I am and the rest of us being who we are (the kind of people who have the Internet Movie Firearms Database open on their phones while we watch), of course I ended up discoursing on the Buntline Special during breaks.
This is a pretty good short video hitting some of the main points on the Buntline Special and Wyatt Earp.
Bonus: I don’t usually link to hickok45 since you should already be watching him. But I’m making an exception here because: “Cimarron Wyatt Earp Buntline Special” which is (as I understand it) an exact replica of the movie gun. And hickok45 also discourses some more on Buntline history.
It is kind of a good looking gun. And I want something in the Colt Single Action Army style. But:
I have the same problem hickock45 has with the 10″ barrel length: it just doesn’t seem handy.
I’m really not sure how well these guns are made (though hickock45 seems to think they’re okay).
What I really want in the SAA style is…an actual Colt Single Action Army in .45 Colt, not a substitute.
(I do have a New Frontier in .22 LR, but I’m thinking of trading that off. It seems surplus to needs, now that I have a Ruger Single-Six with both .22 LR and .22 Magnum cylinders.)
I’ve written before about “The Devil At Your Heels”, the Canadian documentary about Ken Carter and his five-year attempt to do a one-mile jump over the St. Lawrence River.
For those of you who might have been wondering and didn’t check Wikipedia: “Ken Carter – Stuntman To The End”. Or: the rest of the story after the jump attempt.
