Sticking with our theme, I thought I’d do some WWI history for reasons. WWI really isn’t a war that I’ve been all that interested in until fairly recently, having seen “They Shall Not Grow Old” and read A Rifleman Went To War (affiliate link to the Kindle edition. 99 cents? Really? How can you pass that up?).
“The Battle of the Somme” from something called “Epic History TV”.
And as a bonus: “The Battle Of Passchendaele” from the ” Timeline – World History Documentaries” folks.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
New York Jets
Next week is the Jets bye week. Vegas has the bye as a 14 point favorite over the Jets.
I’m thinking there’s a theme I want to work with this week.
From the “Dark Docs” channel, “Alive and Free – Or Dead”, a short documentary about Dieter Dengler.
Lawrence and I have a fair amount of Herzog on our giant movie list, including “Little Dieter Needs To Fly”. I did not know this until today, but there’s a huge Herzog blu-ray box set (affiliate link) from Shout Factory that tempts me greatly.
Bonus: from the “Wings Over Vietnam” series, “The Jolly Greens”, about the guys who rescued pilots who were downed over Vietnam.
A few obits from over the weekend. I’ll start by just quoting the lead from this NYT one:
More:
He was trying to develop new material when a club owner made an offhand comment about one of the club’s cabaret dancers. The owner, who had given the young woman a ride, “came into my dressing room and he said to me, ‘Find out if the girl is staying over or if she communicates,’” Mr. Crosby recalled. “I said, ‘My God, a lot of people talk like that. Maybe that would be fun.’ So I started the play on words.”
He tried it in Massachusetts, he added, “and the places I worked, unfortunately, people didn’t get the difference.”
Because of the particulars of his Latin Quarter booking, Mr. Crosby’s routine was not an immediate breakthrough with Times Square audiences either. He started out performing 12-minute filler sets between stage acts during his weeklong engagement, and his jokes were largely ignored. “I was on for five minutes before anybody knew I was out there,” he said.
At the end of the week, a dejected Mr. Crosby packed his bags and went to pick up his check from the manager, who apologized for the difficult assignment and promised him a better slot in the show. Once audiences had a chance to get the joke, he was a hit. He stayed at the Latin Quarter for 18 weeks, after which the prestigious William Morris Agency began representing him.
…
Speaking of Senator Goldwater, he said, “When President Johnson declared war on puberty, it was Senator Goldwater who said, and I quote, ‘Wherever there is unemployment, you’ll find men out of work.’”
He was a pitchman in the late 1970s and early 1980s for Anheuser-Busch’s Natural Light beer, appearing in commercials with Mickey Mantle, Henny Youngman and Joe Frazier.
In one commercial, he declared, “I always keep Natural on hand while I watch these athletes perspiring to achieve victory, cause these sporting computations make me so dehybernated.”
Robert Sam Anson, noted magazine writer and author.
…
Finally, Eddie Johnson. My feelings about the NBA are well known, but this is a depressing story.
Johnson, who was nicknamed Fast Eddie for his explosive first step, was drafted out of Auburn University in 1977 by the Atlanta Hawks. He soon became one of the team’s top players and started the 1980 and 1981 All-Star Games.
“He was built like a linebacker and was as fast as they come with the ball in his hands, putting it on the floor, attacking someone off the dribble,” Mike Fratello, who coached the Hawks during some of Johnson’s nine seasons with the team, said in a phone interview. “And he could defend because of his strength and his ability to move his feet.”
But he also got into cocaine.
Johnson began to use cocaine in college and continued using it during his N.B.A. career. During his professional playing days, he was charged with cocaine possession, writing bad checks and car theft; he was hospitalized at least twice for treatment of manic-depressive disorder; and he successfully fled two men shooting at him in a motel parking lot after what the police said was a drug deal gone wrong.
In 1981, Johnson discussed his cocaine use in an interview with Sports Illustrated. “I partied a little extensively, but I wasn’t abusing it,” he said. “The whole idea of me abusing drugs is outlandish.”
He was traded to Cleveland, went to Seattle briefly, and was banned by the NBA in 1987.
When there were no games left to play, Johnson’s life unraveled. By his own count, he was arrested at least 100 times. Between 1987 and 2001, he was convicted, among other crimes, of burglary, battery, drug sale and possession, violently resisting arrest and grand theft.
He committed his most serious crime in 2006. Prosecutors said he had entered the unlocked front door of an apartment in Ocala where an 8-year-old girl and her three brothers were alone watching television; a babysitter had stepped outside.
The girl testified at Johnson’s trial in 2008 that he had followed her to her bedroom, locked the door and pushed a dresser in front of it before sexually assaulting her. He was convicted of sexual battery and molestation. He received a mandatory life sentence.
Alex Trebek. Jeopardy. Variety. THR.
The Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research.
Alex is survived by his wife of 30 years, Jean, and children Matthew, Emily, and Nicky. The family has announced no plans for a service, but gifts in Alex’s memory could go to World Vision.
Science Sunday!
This is an interesting intersection of two things I’m interested in: space history and photography.
“How did NASA get those great film shots of Apollo and the Shuttle?”
Bonus: I’ve touched on Harold “Doc” Edgerton previously, but this is a nice tribute and explanation of his work from MIT.
Bonus #2: “Quicker ‘n a Wink”, Doc in 1940.
I’m not going to include them here, but if you search YouTube, you can find some videos that emulate Dr. Edgerton’s photos with modern equipment.
My reason for not including them here is that they do require purchasing some equipment that you probably do not already have: while the price for the additional equipment in one video is reasonable (slightly more than $50) I don’t want to be seen as endorsing the products.
(And I realize that may seem kind of hypocritical for someone who throws around Amazon affiliate links like candy. What can I say: man’s got to have some standards, even if they are low ones.)
I haven’t paid enough attention to firefighters. Let me fix that.
Vintage LA Fire Department propaganda film from 1949. Part 1:
Part 2:
Part 3:
And the senses shattering part 4:
Bonus: LAFD and the 1st Interstate Bank Fire.
Extinguishing this blaze at the 62-story First Interstate Bank Building, 707 West Wilshire Boulevard, required the combined efforts of 64 fire companies, 10 City rescue ambulances, 17 private ambulances, 4 helicopters, 53 Command Officers and support personnel, a complement of 383 Firefighters and Paramedics, and considerable assistance from other City departments.
It is humbling and terrifying to realize how close we came to losing control of this fire!
Part 1:
Part 2:
Travel Thursday On Friday!
How would you like to visit exotic Central America? And Mexico?
“Wings To Central America and Mexico”, from Pan Am about 1959.
Bonus: “Some Impressions of Travel In Central America” by Quintus Curtius.
I’ve heard good things about Lives of the Great Commanders (affiliate link) and it is on my Amazon wish list to purchase eventually.
She was the real estate agent in “The Amityville Horror” and “Clocktower Lady” in “Back to the Future”. She also did a bunch of TV: no “Mannix”, but “Quincy, M.E.”, “The A-Team”, “Wiseguy”, and one of the “Rockford Files” movies, among other credits.
–Judge Learned Hand, Speech to the Board of Regents of the University of the State of New York, October 24, 1952.
Oddly enough, that quote popped up on this morning’s “Perry Mason” episode.
I’m thinking, if you held a gun to my head and asked me to pick a favorite judge, it would be Learned Hand. I feel like I should apologize to Judge Willett for that, but I also have a feeling that if he heard me say that, he’d agree Learned Hand is a good choice.
Travel Thursday has been delayed until tomorrow, because this is also my happy Guy Fawkes Day post for all my homies in the United Kingdom. This is also going up earlier than usual because UKOGBNI time differences. (Two! Two! Two posts in one! Because I’m a lazy blogger.)
So: Happy Guy Fawkes Day, people! I’ve been waiting probably about six months to use this one.
Richard “Hamster” Hammond from 2005: “The Gunpowder Plot: Exploding the Legend”. In which Hammond not only talks about the gunpowder plot, but builds a replica of the House of Lords…and then blows it up.
I know this is kind of long, so for the convenience of my readers who may not have a holiday today: here’s the timestamp for the big event.
Spoiler:
I had a long day and a late night yesterday. I had videos queued up for Tuesday and I have stuff queued up for the Thursday holiday, but I didn’t manage to get anything enqueued for today.
So here’s two longish things, one of which bends the rules a little bit:
“Tubular Bells: The Mike Oldfield Story” from the BBC in 2013.
Bonus video: this is my rule bending one, as it is actually a noir movie, not non-fiction. Lawrence mentioned this last night, and I thought I’d throw it up here since I don’t see that he’s blogged about it. This is also kind of a bookmark for me: I might watch this once I’ve caught up on sleep.
“Inner Sanctum”, from 1948. It’s only 62 minutes long.
In addition to this being a somewhat well-regarded noir film, it also features the great SF/fantasy writer Fritz Leiber as “Dr. Valonius”. If you don’t want to watch the whole thing, but are curious about Leiber, “Dr. Valonius” shows up almost immediately. (Edit: I was misinformed: the Fritz Leiber in “Inner Sanctum” is actually the writer’s father, not the writer.)
Thought I’d post some gun stuff today, for reasons.
Miami Police Department’s patrol rifle class:
Bonus #1, also a bookmark for me: Ryan Cleckner explains milliradians.
Bonus #2: this is kind of gun adjacent, but I’m posting this explicitly as Lawrence bait: “Greatest Tank Battles”, on “The Battle of 73 Easting”.
Bonus #3: “Japanese Guns of World War 2”, from LionHeart FilmWorks.
(See also. Affiliate link, but it delights me down to the bottom of my shriveled little coal black heart that a lot of this stuff is coming back in Kindle editions.)
Here’s a little slice of history for all of you “Emergency” fans out there: “Sirens In the Night”, a 1972 documentary about the Jacksonville Fire Department. Jacksonville was (according to the YouTube captions) the first fire department in the US to provide EMS services.
…
Notable accomplishments of the JFRD are:
1. Establishing one of the first Advanced Life Support (ALS) service in the nation;
2. Establishing the first Hazardous Materials team in 1977;
3. Becoming the first fire department to successfully extinguish a fully involved petroleum tank fire
Bonus video: from 1959, Mike Wallace interviews Rod Serling.
Great and good FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for actor Eddie Hassell. HouChron.
The Dallas Morning News is basically unreadable if you are not a subscriber, so I can’t link to that. According to the reports I’ve seen, Mr. Hassell died as a result of an apparent carjacking.
Nikki McKibbin. She finished third in the first round of “American Idol”.
She was only 42, and passed away due to complications from a brain aneurysm.