This is a little longer than I’d like, but it popped up in my recommendations, and pushes several buttons at once:
From 1970, “It Couldn’t Be Done”, a Bell System film about “impossible structures”, featuring Mr. Marvin and the 5th Dimension.
Bonus video: since we’re talking about what we can accomplish when we want to, “They Came To An Island”. From 1946, a documentary about the Navy Civil Engineer Corps (aka the Seebees).
Bad day for music.
Imitated, scorned, spoofed, what came to be known as “The Dollars Trilogy” — “A Fistful of Dollars” (1964), “For a Few Dollars More” (1965) and “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly” (1966), all released in the United States in 1967 — starred Clint Eastwood as “The Man With No Name” and were enormous hits, with a combined budget of $2 million and gross worldwide receipts of $280 million.
The trilogy’s Italian dialogue was dubbed for the English-speaking market, and the action was brooding and slow, with clichéd close-ups of gunfighters’ eyes. But Mr. Morricone, breaking the unwritten rule never to upstage actors with music, infused it all with wry sonic weirdness and melodramatic strains that many fans embraced with cultlike devotion and that critics called viscerally true to Mr. Leone’s vision of the Old West
“In the films that established his reputation in the 1960s, the series of spaghetti westerns he scored for Mr. Leone, Mr. Morricone’s music is anything but a backdrop,” The New York Times critic Jon Pareles wrote in 2007. “It’s sometimes a conspirator, sometimes a lampoon, with tunes that are as vividly in the foreground as any of the actors’ faces.”
Mr. Morricone also scored Mr. Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in the West” (1968) and his Jewish gangster drama, “Once Upon a Time in America” (1984), both widely considered masterpieces. But he became most closely identified with “The Dollars Trilogy,” and in time grew weary of answering for their lowbrow sensibilities.
Asked by The Guardian in 2006 why “A Fistful of Dollars” had made such an impact, he said: “I don’t know. It’s the worst film Leone made and the worst score I did.”
“Lowbrow sensibilities”, my Aunt Fannie.
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Edited to add: Just got this: a nice tribute to another aspect of Mr. Morricone’s work that I was unaware of.
Morricone, a man of staunch yet humble faith, was part of a gathering of 60 artists who paid musical tribute to Pope Benedict XVI’s 60th anniversary of his ordination.
The Vatican’s obituary goes on to tell how Morricone was so inspired by Pope Francis’s elevation that he wrote a Mass to celebrate both the new pope and all Jesuits. Titled Missa Papae Francisci, the work was also dedicated to his wife, Maria Travia, who had been encouraging Morricone to write such a sacred work for years. The Mass was premiered on the 200th anniversary of the re-establishment of the Jesuit order.
Morricone went on to work with Pope Francis to organize a concert “with the poor and for the poor” in 2016. The charity concert was performed by the Roma Sinfonietta Orchestra, the National Academy of St. Cecilia, and Fr. Marco Frisina, raising much needed capital for several charitable projects of the Pontiff. Pope Francis later awarded Ennio the Pontifical Gold Medal, presented by Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture, on April 15, 2019.
This article also quotes the eloquent and touching statement Mr. Morricone requested be read on his passing.
Charlie Daniels. I loved “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” when I was a kid. Still have a soft spot for that song, even though some people might say I have “lowbrow sensibilities”.
There are many candidates for the libertarian national anthem. I’d argue this is one of the better ones:
A drunkard wants another drink of wine, and a politician wants your vote
I don’t want much of nothing at all, but I will take another toke
‘Cause I ain’t asking nobody for nothin’
If I can’t get it on my own
If you don’t like the way I’m livin’
You just leave this long haired country boy alone
And because it is there:
Science Sunday!
Nobody has said this to me directly, but I am sure that some folks out there are saying under their breath, “These videos you keep posting are about as exciting as watching paint dry.”
Well, maybe. I like to think that these are slices of a bygone era, a time when we worked together and got things done. But I also keep telling myself:
Anyway, for the “as exciting as paint drying” group, I bring you: “Paint”. A 1967 film about paints and paint making, from our good friends at the Shell Oil company.
And as a bonus, also from Shell: “The Diesel Story”.
Skyrockets in flight!
Okay, this is another “not quite random” pick. But in honor of the 4th of July, I thought it might be fun to post some things that go “boom”.
“10 INCREDIBLE Space Launch Failures!” In 4k, for the discerning viewer.
Here’s a short one: eyewitness video of the 2015 Tianjin explosion. I’m posting this based on the assumption that the people filming made it out okay (seems reasonable).
My initial reaction when I first saw this was: “Why did you wait? Why didn’t you start running IMMEDIATELY!” But on second thought, what’s safer: sheltering in place (and hoping the blast doesn’t knock over your building, or send fragments through the windows), or running into the street and hoping you don’t get hit by falling fragments or inhale toxic byproducts? I honestly don’t know.
Every once in a while, I spend a little time watching BLEVEs on YouTube. Here’s a good compilation: and, if you are unfamiliar with the term “BLEVE”, it also explains what those are. Life pro tip: you don’t want to be anywhere near one.
Here’s another point of view of the Murdock BLEVE, featuring a news crew who found that out the hard way.
I’m easing into the July 4th weekend myself. So there’s no overarching theme here, other than: America!
“Grayhounds of the Sea”, a history of U.S. Navy destroyers, narrated by none other than Mr. Jack Webb.
Ordnance Lab builds a replica of the Syrian Hell Cannon Mortar. This is part 1: as far as I can tell, they haven’t posted part 2 yet. (The Wuhan Flu probably has something to do with that. But it looks like they’ve been doing stuff recently with the Roomba-Boomba.)
“Ten Years To Remember”. This is a promo film from the Martin Company (which later merged and became Martin Marietta, and even later on merged again and became Lockheed Martin) from 1964, covering ten years of rocket development.
1972 NASA promo film for Skylab. I’ve always been kind of partial to Skylab.
I was only going to do three, but this one popped up, and it is short: a tribute to Robin Olds from AirForceTV.
Tomorrow: things blow up real good.
Hugh Downs, long time TV guy and good Akron boy. (“20/20”, “Today”, “The Tonight Show” with Jack Parr.)
In February 1960, Mr. Paar, no stranger to volatility, became furious after NBC removed a joke from the show for reasons of taste. (The joke, tame by today’s standards, involved the use of the term “water closet,” meaning bathroom.) He decided that the best way to teach NBC a lesson was to walk off the next night’s show as it was being taped, leaving Mr. Downs in charge. Mr. Downs assumed the host’s chair immediately, if not confidently: at one point he looked into the camera and plaintively said, “Jack, come back.” The show aired as scheduled, walk-off and all.
Mr. Paar did come back, to the surprise of nobody, but not until 25 days later. In his absence Mr. Downs — who years later would diplomatically remember his former boss as “quite a bundle” — ably assumed his duties as “Tonight Show” host. The Times critic Jack Gould saluted Mr. Downs for having “in most trying circumstances carried off the situation with dignity.”
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Andrew “Jack” Whittaker Jr. The name may not ring a bell right off: he hit the Powerball for $315 million in 2002, took a lump sum payout of $113.4 million post tax…and it didn’t work out quite like wanted.
…he quickly fell victim to scandals, lawsuits and personal setbacks as he endured constant requests for money, leaving him unable to trust others. He was often quoted as saying he wished he had torn up the ticket.
His wife left him. A friend of his drug-addicted granddaughter was found dead at his home in 2004. Three months later, his 17-year-old granddaughter was gone, too.
His daughter, Ginger Whittaker Bragg, died of cancer in 2009 at 42.
And in 2016, he lost a Virginia home to a fire.
Byron Bernstein. I’d never heard of him, but he was a popular Twitch streamer under the name of “Reckful” and noted World of Warcraft player. He was 31.
The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.
Ah, the Lockheed Electra. The L-188 version, to be clear, not the Model 10 Electra, which is what Amelia Earhart was flying when she was lost.
The L-188 story is fascinating. Lockheed started working on a similar aircraft in 1951, but couldn’t get anyone to buy it. They kept refining the design (going from two to four engines and stretching the plane for increased seating) and, in 1955, Eastern and American placed orders. The first Electra went into service with Eastern in January of 1959.
There’s an excellent book, The Electra Story, by Robert J. Serling, that covers the history of the plane. The first accident was determined to be basically “pilot error”, though Serling quotes the Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB – they investigated crashes until the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) took over in 1967) as stating “…the accident was an accumulation of several factors or errors which, together, compromised the safety of the flight“. (Among those factors: limited experience in the Electra, the plane was using a new type of altimeter different from the ones American used in Electra crew training, and inadequate approach lighting.)
The second two accidents were a lot more complicated. Two Electras (one operated by Braniff and one by Northwest Orient) came apart in mid-air and crashed, killing everyone on board. Much of Serling’s book deals with the investigation and the controversy surrounding it. There was a tremendous amount of pressure put on the FAA administrator by Congress and even some airlines to ground the Electra completely until the cause of the accidents was determined.
Lockheed went to extraordinary efforts to find out what had happened:
Each day Bob Gross met with all Lockheed department heads and key engineers. Each day he asked the same question:
“Do you have all the people you need and all the equipment you need? If not, well get it.”
They took him at his word.
It wasn’t just Lockheed, though. Amazingly (to me) both Boeing and Douglas provided engineers and equipment to Lockheed as well, even though the companies were fierce rivals.
Where safety begins, competition ends, for public confidence is the pillar supporting all commercial aviation. Any unsolved accident is a challenge to every airline and every airframe manufacturer, no matter what individual carrier or individual aircraft is involved. Buffalo and Tell City not only were unsolved crashes, but disasters that raised doubts about the industry’s very system of designing and testing new planes. Lockheed’s methods of developing and testing the Electra were almost identical to those used by other companies.
A man named Tom Harris was running Aero Design and Engineering at the time: they made the Aero Commander, a very popular general aviation aircraft. While on the road, he heard people talking about how unsafe and not airworthy the Electra was. When he returned home, he wrote a memo to his staff:
When we have completed an aircraft, and are satisfied that we have produced a safe and airworthy vehicle, we must of course secure this government certification. These two things accomplished, we go to the public and do our best to persuade potential customers that this is the machine they should buy. How well we succeed depends on how effective our persuasive efforts are. We ask for no help from others. We do expect, however, that to the extent our reputation has substance, and to the extent this government certification is valid, that others in the industry will respect our claim for airworthiness. We ask no praise from competitors, but in fairness and in behalf of total industry growth, we believe under this circumstance other members of the industry should not attack, criticize, or infer any unsafe situation with regard to such a product…
It has developed that some of our own people have opinions that the airplane is not safe to ride as presently being operated by the airlines; that it has an inherent defect which has not been determined or remedied, and that to fly in it is foolish and unwise.
At this point, I should like to make it very clear that I do not intend to ask anyone in this organization to fly in any aircraft which he or she does not wish to fly in, either because of the opinions as to safety, comfort, or any other reason. The people of Aero Commander are free to exercise their own judgment and conscience in determining what aircraft, if any, they are individually willing to travel in.
Having made this clear, I feel impelled also to make clear that in my opinion, as responsible members of the aircraft industry, we also have the obligation to avoid making any remarks about another manufacturer’s aircraft that tend to destroy confidence in it, or impute any dangerous condition to such aircraft that would damage its reputation as well as the reputation of this industry, of which we are a part. No one is expected to make statements in praise of an aircraft that they honestly do not feel warrants praise, but an aircraft which has the reputation and experience of a sound manufacturer and the certification of the FAA should be talked about by others in our industry as being safe and airworthy, and if it cannot be praised by an individual, certainly it should not be run down.
If we cannot say something good about airplanes such as this, I suggest that we should at least remain silent.
They don’t make them like that any more.
The cause of the crashes was determined to be a little understood (at the time) phenomena called “whirl mode flutter”. What was happening was that the outboard engines could get into a mode where they’d start vibrating, and the engine mounts were not stiff enough to stop the vibration. Those vibrations could, in turn, be transmitted to the wings and set up a resonance, which would turn into a violent oscillation that only ended when it tore the wing off. Lockheed retrofitted the Electras with stronger engine mounts and engine mount supports, and thickened the struts, which resolved the whirl mode issue. But there were some other high profile crashes (for other reasons) and the public lost confidence in the Electra. Production ended in 1961, with 170 built. Many of them continued in use as cargo, rather than passenger aircraft, though some smaller carriers continued to use Electras on their routes. And Lockheed built a modified version of the Electra which became the highly successful P-3 Orion.
I enthusiastically recommend the Serling book. I don’t recommend that you pay what Amazon is asking for the Bantam Air and Space reprint, as it seems to show up intermittently at better used book stores for much less. But you can get the Kindle edition at a reasonable price, or for free if you have Kindle Unlimited.
Those two crashes were in Tell City, Indiana and Buffalo, Texas. Buffalo is about three hours from Austin: when we get out of jail, I may take a road trip up that way.
The Saturday Night Live channel on YouTube has posted “Midday with Jennifer Hicks”. This is the “interviews with Bond villains” sketch that contains the frequently quoted (in my circles) line, “I question the wisdom of having a self-destruct button at all.”
(See also, especially number 9, number 9, number 9…)
This surfaced on Twitter, and I have not seen it before. I wouldn’t say I can’t stop laughing, but it does make me giggle.
Please watch this 35 second Magnum clip. I have not stopped laughing. pic.twitter.com/nneXjJxUPj
— Chris “Wear A Mask” Driver (@Jerkwheatery) June 30, 2020
I wasn’t a regular “Magnum” watcher when it was on the air, but I sometimes think I should go back and watch from the beginning. (In addition to doing the same with “Blue Bloods”.)
Oddly, though, I have a weird allergic reaction to “Quigley Down Under”, and I don’t know why: that movie should push my buttons, and I’d kind of like to have an (accurate) reproduction of the movie gun.
I’ve done gun stuff. But I haven’t done any knife stuff. Until now.
“The KA-BAR Story”. I know, this is a little on the long side. Perhaps bookmark it for later.
I don’t actually own any KA-BARs, though I’ve thought about getting one: all my sheath knives are Buck or Gerber. (And one Benchmade, though that’s really more of a karambit.)
Bonus #1: “KA-BAR Knife Tips and Mods”, from Blackie Thomas.
Bonus #2: “Making Knives, the History of the Bowie Knife, and the Rambo Knives”, from A.G. Russell Knives.
Bonus #3: I wouldn’t ordinarily do four videos in one post, but this one is short and relevant to Lawrence‘s interests: David Morrell talks about the Rambo knife, from the audio commentary on the DVD.
As I understand it (and based in part on this article) the knives for the first two movies were made by Jimmy Lile, a legendary Arkansas knife maker. He passed away in 1991, but his successors are still making knives under his name. You can still buy a version of the Rambo knife from them if you have $2,000 and up to spend.
The knives for the third and fourth movies were made by Gil Hibben. It looks like you can still get a version of the knife from the third movie…if you have $2,000 to spend.
Or you can purchase replicas of varying quality, as anybody who goes to a gun show knows.
I have mixed feelings about the fandom.com wikis, but this is a good entry.
Heh. Heh. Heh.
“You can’t give her that!’ she screamed. ‘It’s not safe!’
IT’S A SWORD, said the Hogfather. THEY’RE NOT MEANT TO BE SAFE.
‘She’s a child!’ shouted Crumley.
IT’S EDUCATIONAL.
‘What if she cuts herself?’
THAT WILL BE AN IMPORTANT LESSON.”
–Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
It has been months since I’ve seen my friend Andrew, who is semi-retired from the road business (or, as we say in Texas, “bidness”).
Here’s a little something for him: “Anatomy of a Road”.
“an unapologetic paean to progress”. I like that.
Bonus video: “We’ll Take the High Road”, a 1950s promo film for the Interstate Highway system, brought to you by “The American Road Builders Association”.
I thought I’d check something, and I’m glad I did: the American Road Builders Association was founded in 1902, and is still around (so they are 118 years old). The organization renamed to the American Road and Transportation Builders Association in 1977.
The great Carl Reiner.
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“I always knew if I threw a question to Mel he could come up with something,” Mr. Reiner said. “I learned a long time ago that if you can corner a genius comedy brain in panic, you’re going to get something extraordinary.”
As Mr. Brooks put it, “I would dig myself into a hole, and Carl would not let me climb out.”
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Also among the dead: Johnny Mandel, film and television composer.
Mandel was considered one of the finest arrangers of the second half of the 20th century, providing elegant orchestral charts for a wide range of vocalists including Frank Sinatra, Peggy Lee, Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Tony Bennett, Natalie Cole and Hoagy Carmichael.
Mandel scored more than 30 films during his Hollywood career, including the 1960s films “The Americanization of Emily” (from which the hit song “Emily” emerged), “The Sandpiper” (which contained “The Shadow of Your Smile,” earning an Oscar and a Grammy for Song of the Year along with lyricist Paul Francis Webster), “Harper,” “An American Dream” (which included the Oscar-nominated song “A Time for Love”), “The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming” and “Point Blank.”
He was perhaps most famous for writing “Suicide Is Painless” aka “The Theme from M*A*S*H”.
You know what I feel like I haven’t done in a while? Naval aviation. And the F-4 Phantom.
Why not a three-fer, since I also really haven’t given the Blue Angels any love here.
“Diamond in the Sky”, from the early 70s. The team used the F-4J Phantom II from 1969 to December of 1974.
Bonus video: from approximately the mid-1970s, “Portrait The Blue Angels”. It feels like there should be a colon in there, but there isn’t officially. They were flying the A-4F Skyhawk from December of 1974 up to November of 1986: the Skyhawk is what they were flying the one time (so far) I’ve seen them perform.
Charles Webb. He wrote The Graduate.
“He had a very odd relationship with money,” said Caroline Dawnay, who was briefly Mr. Webb’s agent in the early 2000s when his novel “New Cardiff” was made into the 2003 movie “Hope Springs,” starring Colin Firth. “He never wanted any. He had an anarchist view of the relationship between humanity and money.”
He gave away homes, paintings, his inheritance, even his royalties from “The Graduate,” which became a million-seller after the movie’s success, to the benefit of the Anti-Defamation League. He awarded his 10,000-pound payout from “Hope Springs” as a prize to a performance artist named Dan Shelton, who had mailed himself to the Tate Modern in a cardboard box.
At his second wedding to Ms. Rudd — they married in 1962, then divorced in 1981 to protest the institution of marriage, then remarried around 2001 for immigration purposes — he did not give his bride a ring, because he disapproved of jewelry. Ms. Dawnay, the only witness save two strangers pulled in off the street, recalled that the couple walked nine miles to the registry office for the ceremony, wearing the only clothes they owned.
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This one is for FotB of the blog Dave: Linda Cristal. She most famously played “Victoria Cannon” on “The High Chaparral”, and did a lot of bit parts on other series during the 1960s through to the 1980s. (Including “T.H.E. Cat“, “Search“, and “General Hospital”.)
Thomas Blanton. He was the last survivor of the three men convicted in the 1963 Birmingham church bombing.
The bombing occurred on Sept. 15, 1963, a Sunday, at the 16th Street Baptist Church, which had been a center of civil rights activity in Birmingham. Three 14-year-olds — Addie Mae Collins, Carole Robertson and Cynthia Wesley — and an 11-year-old, Denise McNair, were killed in the blast, and many others were injured. The attack heightened national outrage over segregationist policies and racial oppression in the South.
“The Birmingham bombing holds a special place in civil rights history because of the randomness of its violence, the sacredness of its target and the innocence of its victims,” Kevin Sack wrote in The New York Times in 2000, when Mr. Blanton and Bobby Frank Cherry were finally indicted in the case.
Mr. Cherry, tried separately, was convicted in 2002 and died in prison at 74 in 2004. A third man, Robert Chambliss, was convicted in 1977 and died in prison eight years later at 81. The last suspect, Herman Cash, died in 1994 at 75 without being tried.
All four were Klan members in the early 1960s.
Now, how sad a thing it is, when we come to make sport of proclaiming men traitors, and banishing them, and putting them out of their offices, and Privy Council, and of sending to and going to the Tower: God have mercy on us!
Science Sunday!
This one is by way of Lawrence: the Antarctic Snow Cruiser.
Bonus video: “The Secret Land: Operation High Jump”. This is technically a military video, but since it deals with Antarctic exploration, I feel like it also qualifies for Science Sunday.
I knew you could purchase military rations online. What I didn’t know, until recently (but should not have surprised me), is that there are people on YouTube who purchase and review them.
Steve1989MREInfo has over 1.5 million subscribers.
Here he reviews a French MRE from 2017.
Bonus video #1: an Italian MRE from 2014, which is interesting: as I understand it, Italian MREs are the only ones that contain alcohol.
Bonus video #2: a British “emergency” field ration from some time between 1899 and 1902.
This isn’t actually a random YouTube recommendation. I ran across this by way of a post from McThag – I thought it was a while back, but apparently it was earlier this year. Time flies when you’re locked down.
I’m not a big car guy, and I was never much of a “Motor Trend” fan. As I’ve written before, “Car and Driver” during that late 1970s – early 1980s period was my jam. “Motor Trend” seemed to be “Who Spent the Most Money On Advertising With Us”, and “Road and Track” was the magazine for 50ish guys who drove MGs painted British Racing Green while wearing tweed jackets and dapper little caps and looking down their nose at the rest of the car world.
But I digress. “Motor Trend” apparently had a YouTube channel. One of their features was “RoadKill”, where, as I understand, the two hosts bought crappy cars, fixed them up to the point where they were minimally driveable, and then went on road trips with them. Hilarity frequently ensued.
This particular video amuses me: in this case, they bought the world’s worst Corvette, with the intention of driving it from Florida to Bowling Green, Kentucky…
…and having the staff of the Corvette Museum drop it into the sinkhole.
I think even my non-car people readers should get some amusement out of this, as the Corvette in question is astonishingly bad. The fact that it doesn’t have a windshield is only the start of the troubles.
Bonus video: according to the person who re-uploaded this video, “Motor Trend” moved their content off of YouTube and on to “Motor Trend On Demand”. But other people have uploaded more “Roadkill” videos, if you find the idea of two guys patching up crappy cars and going on road trips oddly appealing. Here’s a playlist.
She was one of my aunts on my father’s side of the family, and was married to my Uncle Dick (the one who rode the Whizzer to Florida).
Who’s up for some travel on Pan Am? And what exotic destination sounds good today?
How about…Finland! It isn’t quite Paris in the the spring, but we can make do.
Bonus: Here’s something a little different. “Airline Pilot”, a 1970 documentary from BOAC, following a young pilot through his training and first flight.
According to the YouTube notes, Stephen Radcliffe (the subject) was BOAC’s youngest pilot ever.
BOAC was merged with British European Airways (BEC) in 1974 to form British Airways. According to various online sources, Mr. Radcliffe died in 1971: he fell off of a cliff while camping.
Sergei Khrushchev, Nikita Khrushchev’s son.
Mr. Khrushchev had been a rocket scientist before he moved to Rhode Island in 1991, shortly after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, to lecture on the Cold War at Brown University in Providence. He remained a senior fellow there.
He and his wife became naturalized United States citizens in 1999 and held dual citizenships. Mr. Khrushchev said in 2001 that his becoming an American citizen would not have displeased his father, who, in 1956, in the depths of the Cold War, famously declared to Western officials, “We will bury you!”
By the time his son became an American citizen, the Cold War was long over.
“I’m not a defector,” Sergei Khrushchev told The Providence Journal in 2001. “I’m not a traitor. I did not commit any treason. I work here and I like this country.
Michael Hawley, noted computer guy.
Mr. Hawley began his career as a video game programmer at Lucasfilm, the company created by the “Star Wars” director George Lucas. He spent his last 15 years curating the Entertainment Gathering, or EG, a conference dedicated to new ideas.
In between, he worked at NeXT, the influential computer company founded by Steve Jobs after he left Apple in the mid-1980s, and spent nine years as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, a seminal effort to push science and technology into art and other disciplines. He was known as a scholar whose ideas, skills and friendships spanned an unusually wide range of fields, from mountain climbing to watchmaking.
Mr. Hawley lived with both Mr. Jobs and the artificial intelligence pioneer Marvin Minsky, published the world’s largest book, won first prize in an international competition of amateur pianists, played alongside the cellist Yo-Yo Ma at the wedding of the celebrity scientist Bill Nye, joined one of the first scientific expeditions to Mount Everest, and wrote commencement speeches for both Mr. Jobs and the Google co-founder Larry Page.
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I thought it might be fun to post some more Convair promotional videos. Especially since these show some nice vintage livery from airlines back in the day.
First up: “Convair Metropolitan”. The “Metropolitan” was another name for the CV-440, which in turn was a descendant of the CV-240 and CV-340.
Bonus: “The Convair Liner”, another promo film. This one covers the 240, 340, 440, and even the military variants.
I really like seeing the old Braniff paint jobs. I never flew Braniff, but I have sort of a sentimental fondness for them after reading Splash of Colors, John Nance’s history of the airline.
There’s a story in Nance’s book that I like: Braniff’s mechanics were on strike, and marching the picket line when a thunderstorm hit. Tom Braniff saw that the mechanics were getting wet, so he told one of his people to get some rainsuits, coffee, and doughnuts and take them to the guys on the picket line.
“But Mr. Braniff, those guys out there are on strike! They’re trying to shut us down!”
“I understand that, Buford, but they’re still my boys, and I don’t want them to get sick. Look at them out there! You go get those things and go treat them like human beings out there and be nice to them.”
I have a reputation for being a disturber of the peace. You have to take me as I am. If I’m a disturber of the peace, it’s for good reason. And, ladies and gentlemen, if someone wakes up a sleeping man so as to make him watch out, then the man who shakes him is no disturber of the peace. I wish to cry out, wake up! Watch out for the years to come.
—Konrad Adenauer, first chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany (taken from here)
Apropos of nothing in particular:
Jeremiah said: “I hear the whisperings of many, “Terror on every side! Denounce! Let us denounce him!” All those who were my friends are on the watch for any misstep of mine. “Perhaps he will be trapped; then we can prevail and take our vengeance on him.” But the Lord is with me, like a mighty champion: my persecutors will stumble, they will not triumph. In their failure they will be put to utter shame, to lasting unforgettable confusion. O Lord of hosts, you who test the just, who probe mind and heart, let me witness the vengeance you take on them, for to you I have entrusted my cause. Sing to the Lord, praise the Lord, for he has rescued the life of the poor from the power of the wicked!
–Jeremiah 20:10-13
Shari “Lamb Chop” Lewis and her husband co-wrote an episode of a minor 1960s SF TV series.
Joel Schumacher, director. Variety. THR.
Batman & Robin, however, was a critical disaster, and Schumacher admitted years later that he had made a mistake by listening to studio marketing executives, who wanted to target the film to kids.
“I want to apologize to every fan that was disappointed because I think I owe them that,” he said in a 2017 interview with Vice.
“A lot of it was my choice. No one is responsible for my mistakes but me. I think one curveball we got was at the eleventh hour; Val Kilmer quit due to a role he got in The Island of Dr. Moreau. There had been talks about it, but none of us were involved, not with Warner Bros. and certainly not with me. I talked to Val, and all he kept saying was, ‘But man, it’s Marlon Brando.’ It’s not like he was on a hook and chain here, so Val went. So it was [then Warners co-CEO] Bob Daly’s idea to acquire George Clooney. He was an obvious choice because he was a rising star on ER. I had a talk with him and he was like, ‘All right, if you do it, I’ll do it.’
Wait, wait: Kilmer skipped out on Batman because he wanted to do “The Island of Dr. Moreau“? I haven’t laughed this hard since the hogs ate my kid brother.
Jim Kiick, Miami Dolphins running back in the early 1970s.
Running behind a fearsome offensive line, Kiick, fullback Larry Csonka and halfback Mercury Morris propelled the Dolphins to three Super Bowls and back-to-back titles in the 1972 and 1973 seasons.
Kiick scored six touchdowns during those playoff runs, including one in Super Bowl VII, a 14-7 win over the Washington Redskins, that helped the team complete the N.F.L.’s only perfect season. Kiick scored another touchdown and Csonka added two more in Super Bowl VIII, a 24-7 victory over the Minnesota Vikings.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón. I had not heard of him, either, but he wrote The Shadow of the Wind, which is “…the second-most-successful Spanish novel after Miguel de Cervantes’s masterpiece “Don Quixote,” according to Planeta.”
A visit to a book warehouse in Los Angeles, where he moved in the 1990s, inspired Mr. Ruiz Zafón to write “The Shadow of the Wind,” but he set the action in his birthplace, Barcelona. Written as a story within a story, the novel crisscrosses the tumultuous decades before, during and after the Spanish Civil War of the 1930s.
It starts in 1945, when a boy named Daniel Sempere is taken by his father to a mysterious place known as the Cemetery of Forgotten Books, where Daniel selects a book called “The Shadow of the Wind.” Fascinated by its obscure author, Julián Carax, Daniel enlists the help of friends to investigate the writer’s past, which also brings up the disturbing story of a character who has been burning all the copies of the book he can find.
That sounds like something that’s in my wheelhouse.