Simple Tricks and Nonsense

Bennion's Most Memorable Movie Quotes

No list-by-committee like the AFI's Top 100 Whatevers is going to completely reflect any one person's individual tastes. Given that this here blog-thingie lets me write about any damn thing I want to, I thought I'd supplement the previous entry with some of my own personal favorite movie quotes that didn't make the "official" list. I present them in no particular order...

From Star Wars (this whole movie is a memorable quote for me, but, for the sake of my three loyal readers, I'll restrain myself to just a few):

• "I find your lack of faith disturbing."
• "Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope..."
• "You don't need to see his identification."
• "Sorry about the mess."
• "No reward is worth this."
• "You came in that thing? You're braver than I thought."
• "Sometimes I amaze even myself."
• "Almost there..."
• "The Force is strong in this one."

From The Empire Strikes Back:

• "Laugh it up, fuzzball."
• "Do. Or do not. There is no try."
• "My hands are dirty, too. What are you afraid of?"

  (Actually, this entire scene between Han and Leia is really great and memorable, but this particular line makes me smile.)
  

• Leia: "I love you!"
  Han: "I know."

  (Hey, if the AFI is going to allow two-character exchanges, then I figure I can, too...)
  

• "I am your father."

  (That one's pretty obvious and overexposed, but this is a list of memorable lines, after all, and I don't think there's more memorable one in the last twenty-five years of film history. Certainly not anywhere in the entire six-part Star Wars saga.)
  

From Return of the Jedi:

• Han: "Luke! How we doing?"
  Luke: "Same as always."
  Han: "That bad, huh?"

From Raiders of the Lost Ark:

• "I don't know, I'm making this up as I go."

From Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (another great "quote movie"):

• "You lost today, kid. That doesn't mean you gotta like it."
• "Ah, Venice."
• "It tells me that goose-stepping morons like you should try reading books instead of burning them!"
• "Dad, I was the next man."

From Batman (1989 version):

• "Where does he get those wonderful toys?"

From Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid:

• "Think you used enough dynamite there, Butch?"
  
• Sundance: "What are you doing?"
  Butch: "Stealing your woman."
  Sundance: "Take her."

From Ocean's 11 (2000 version):

• "You're in or you're out, right now."
• "Ten oughta do it, you think? You think we need one more? You think we need one more. Alright, we'll get one more."

From Star Trek II: The Wrath of Kahn:

• "I have been and always shall be your friend."
• "I shall leave you as you left me... as you left her... in the heart of a dead planet... buried alive. Buried alive."
• "Kaaaaaaahhhhhhhnnnnn!"
• "From hell's heart, I stab at thee. For hate's sake, I spit my last breath at thee..."

  (Yeah, I know it's actually from Moby Dick, but I love Ricardo Montalban's reading of it.)

From Star Trek III: The Search for Spock:

• Sulu: "The word, Admiral?"
  Kirk: "The word is no. I am therefore going anyway."
  
• "Don't call me 'Tiny.'"
  
• Kirk: "The Kobayashi Maru has set sail for the promised land."
  McCoy: "You're taking me to the promised land?"
  Kirk: "What are friends for?"

• Kirk: "My God, Bones... what have I done?"
  McCoy: "What you had to do. What you always do. Turn death into a fighting chance for life."
  

From Casablanca (another highly quotable film, this one is already heavily represented on the AFI's list, but here are my favorite bits):

• "I have often speculated why you don't return to America. Did you abscond with the church fuinds? Did you run off with a senator's wife? I like to think you killed a man. It's the romantic in me."
  
• Renault: "What in heaven's name brought you to Casablanca?"
  Rick: "My health. I came to Casablanca for the waters."
  Reneault: "Waters? What waters? We're in the desert."
  Rick: "I was misinformed."

From The Untouchables:

• "You want to get Capone? Here's how you get Capone: when one of his pulls a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of to the morgue. That's the Chicago way."

From Bull Durham:

• "The rose goes in the front, Big Guy."

From Conan the Barbarian:

• Some guy: "Conan, what is best in life?"
  Conan: "To drive your enemies before you, to crush them, and to hear the lamentations of their women."

From The Sword and the Sorcerer:

• "Well, then, let's be off. We've a battle in the offing... kingdoms to save, and women to love!"

I could go on doing this all afternoon, but I don't want to wear out my welcome, so I'll wrap this up for now with a few lines from perhaps the most quotable movie of all time, Army of Darkness:

• "Hail to the king, baby!"
• "Gimme some sugar, baby!"
• "Lady, you got real ugly..."
• "Groovy."

  And who could forget this amazing little gem of the screenwriter's craft:

• "Alright, listen up, you primitive screwheads: this is my boomstick!"

AFI's Top 100 Movie Quotes

I don't how this slipped past me, but it seems the American Film Institute has released another of those "Top 100 Something-or-other" lists, specifically (as the title of this post indicates) the 100 Greatest Movie Quotes of All Time.

This particular list is a good one, conversationally speaking, because it's a subject that most everyone is qualified to comment on. Everybody seems has a favorite line from something, and it seems to me that trying to stump one another with obscure bits of dialogue has replaced charades as the most popular form of party entertainment in our culture today, at least in the circles in which I run.

I'm going to spare myself the trouble of retyping and/or reformatting the list, so you may want to go have a look at it on your own. Come back here when you're finished, I'll be waiting with a few thoughts...

Are you back? Great, then let's discuss...

I don't know about you, but I was entirely upsurprised by most of the "honorees" on this list. Nearly all of these lines are well-known and frequently appear in everyday usage, even if the movies that spawned them have fallen into obscurity. For example, I'd guess most people are familiar with Mae West's saucy signature line, "Why don't you come up sometime and see me?," but even I was unaware of which Mae West movie it actually came from (She Done Him Wrong, in case you missed it).

Some of the lines on the list, however, didn't quite live up to my personal definition of "memorable." Number 41, for instance, from Bonnie and Clyde: "We rob banks." What's so memorable about that? Bonnie and Clyde is a great movie, but not especially quotable. I also probably wouldn't have included "Plastics," from The Graduate -- it's a single word, meaningless outside of context. If you're talking about The Graduate and you throw out that word, people will get the joke and smile, but if you just slip it into a conversation, no one has any idea that you're referencing a movie and will likely ask you, "What about plastics?" Silly that it made the list.

Believe it or not, there were a couple of items on this list that rang absolutely no bells for me. Take number 46, from Now, Voyager: "Oh, Jerry, don't let's ask for the moon. We have the stars." Um, okay... not familiar with that one in any way. I am unaware of it being referenced or parodied by other works, like just about every other item on this list has been. It means absolutely nothing to me. Same with Number 62, "What a dump," from Beyond the Forest. Don't know the movie, don't know the line.

There were some lines on the list that I absolutely hate, largely because of overexposure, and I wish they hadn't been included. I'd be more than happy to never hear about Forrest Gump's friggin' box of chocolates ever again, and I found Jerry Maguire such an aggravating movie that hearing any of its admittedly memorable catchphrases makes me cringe.

A couple of items on the list seem to me less memorable than other lines from the same movie. Take Top Gun, for instance. Did the people who voted for these items choose the oft-parodied, "You can be my wingman anytime?" No? How about, "Take me to bed or lose me forever?" No, they went with the much less-identifiable, "I feel the need for speed," a line which could come from a dozen different sources. It just doesn't scream "Top Gun" to me.

For the record, I have a problem with the AFI including Kate Hepburn's speech from On Golden Pond or Bill Murray's goofy fantasy segment from Caddyshack, because these are more like monologues than lines, and I think a "movie quote" should be something short and pithy.

I also have a quibble with the bit from Airplane, not because it isn't funny or memorable, but because it's an exchange between two characters, not (again) an individual line or catchphrase. But then I guess I didn't make the rules for this, did I?

Finally, did anyone else notice that a couple of the 100 Greatest Movie Quotes were also on that list of Cheesiest Lines in Movie History that made the rounds a while back? Well, I guess a line can be cheesy and still be memorable.

I'll be back shortly with a list of my own personal favorite movie quotes...

Shelby Foote

After reading the previous entry, a friend of mine e-mailed to let me know of someone else whose passing is worth noting: Shelby Foote, the soft-spoken Southern novelist and historian who became a minor-league celebrity after appearing in the landmark PBS series The Civil War. Foote died Monday at the age of 88.

The general style of Civil War director Ken Burns -- a slow pan across or zoom into an ancient photograph, accompanied by appropriate sound effects and actors reading from letters, diaries, and such -- has become so much the de facto standard for historical documentaries that it's hard to remember what an impact The Civil War really had back in 1990. I think it still stands as the highest-rated program ever to air on PBS, and I myself was utterly spellbound by the series. I've always been interested in this conflict anyway, but Burns and his talented cast of voiceover artists and subject-matter experts brought it to life in a way I'd never experienced before. Not the ersatz life of even the best fictional movie, in which you're always aware that you're watching modern people pretending to inhabit another era, but a sense of what things were really like in the early 1860s. I felt so in touch with the lives of the people being discussed that, at times, I almost expected the black-and-white photos that comprised most of the series to begin moving. It was like they were merely some sort of membrane between now and then, and if you just knew how to push, you could break through and see, hear, and smell everything that was.

Foote's presence in The Civil War no doubt contributed greatly to this effect. According to his obituary in the New York Times, he appeared on-screen no less than 89 times during the 11-hour series. He had a knack for storytelling, and for breathing life into individuals who were formerly nothing more than meaningless names in a textbook. His mission was to make men like Lee and Grant human, to strip away the marble that now encases them and turn them back into the sweating, fallible, heroic, miserable people they actually were. That mission dovetailed nicely with Ken Burns' goals, and the end result was one of the greatest pieces of documentary filmmaking I've ever seen. As Burns himself has been quoted as saying, "[Shelby Foote] made the war real for us."

If you want to read more, that Times article on Mr. Foote is the most complete I've found. You'll probably have to register to see it, but I think it would be worth your trouble. As for me, I'm thinking that I may stop by Barnes and Noble tomorrow afternoon and see if I can pick up Foote's own history of the war... all three volumes of it. Hey, it's summertime; I could use a little light reading.

A Sad Day at Pooh Corner...

Well, here we go again... two more fine character actors that none of my readers will recognize by name have passed away. Oddly, both John Fiedler and Paul Winchell, who died within 24 hours of each other, are best known for working on the same projects, specifically Disney's "Winnie the Pooh" films. Winchell, who died Friday at the age of 86, was the voice of Tigger from 1968 until 1999, and it was he who coined Tigger's memorable catch-phrase "ta-ta for now!"

Meanwhile, Fiedler, who was 80 when he left us on Saturday, continued to play Pooh's gentle little buddy Piglet right up to this year's entry in the long-running franchise, Pooh's Heffalump Movie.

Naturally, there was a lot more to both men than these two signature roles. Winchell, in particular, had an extremely varied career. He began as a ventriloquist and was known to an older generation as the voice of the puppet Jerry Mahoney. Folks in my generation might recognize his voice from Disney's The Fox and the Hound and The Aristocats, and he did the evil Gargamel on the mid-80s cartoon series The Smurfs. Curiously, Winchell was also an inventor who patented a number of devices, including an artificial heart that he later donated to my alma mater, the University of Utah, for research purposes. (I'm proud to remind you that researchers at the U. of U. developed the first permanent artifical heart to be implanted in a human, the Jarvik-7, back in 1982.)

Fiedler, too, did much more than voice-over work. He was a respected Broadway actor and had appeared in the classic courtroom movie Twelve Angry Men before Walt Disney himself decided he should be Piglet. His credits include John Wayne's True Grit and the Cary Grant vehicle That Touch of Mink as well as numerous guest appearances on episodic television. (My personal Fiedler favorite is an episode of classic Star Trek called "A Wolf in the Fold," in which he plays a mild-mannered lawyer possessed by the spirit of Jack the Ripper. Imagine how it messed with my youthful mind to hear the voice of Piglet threatening to slaughter the crew of the Enterprise...)

As usual, I learned of Winchell and Fiedler's deaths from Evanier, who seems to know everybody who's ever had anything to do with animation or '60s television. He's written a nice obit for Winchell as well as a couple of supplementary anecdotes.

Congratulations to Keith and Danielle

I've just received word that one of my oldest friends in the world -- by which I mean the friends I've known for the longest time, not those friends who are actually old -- became a father last weekend. Keith Jensen's daughter Aubrey Elise entered the world on Saturday, June 18, and she and Keith's wife Danielle came home the following Tuesday. Presumably mother and daughter are both doing fine, and in the photos he e-mailed me, Keith himself looks like a new daddy should -- somewhere between busting with pride and wondering what the heck he's gotten himself into. (Just kidding! Mostly he looks very happy, and I'm happy for him and Danielle.)

You may recognize Keith's name; he's an occasional commenter here on Simple Tricks. He and I go way back, all the way to the sixth grade, when he and another kid named Brett Miller decided that they wanted to kill me. Whatever I did to provoke such a threat is long forgotten, and this blog is evidence enough that they never carried out their nefarious plot. By the seventh grade, Keith and I had become good friends and the Miller kid had vanished, no doubt off to form some shadowy criminal organization that will someday return to haunt me.

Since then, Keith and I have shared many adventures. We once rode the public bus all the way into downtown Salt Lake to see E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial at the defunct Crossroads Cinemas. As I recall, the trip required at least an hour and a couple of transfers; it was a heady dose of independence for two middle-schoolers from small, mostly rural towns out on the suburban frontier. I recall another occasion from about the same time when we spent the entire afternoon and all of our money playing this cool new video game called Zaxxon. (I don't know about Keith's mom, but mine was extremely unhappy that I'd blown my money on a video game instead of bowling like we were suposed to. I never did understand the logic there, since our plan had been to spend the money on some form of entertainment regardless of what it actually was. Parents...)

Later, in our high school geology class, Keith and I bravely endured the irrational hostility of a mocassin-boot-wearing upperclassman (we called him Public Enemy Number One) and we laughed about the blindingly obvious apathy of our teacher, whom I believe was actually a gym coach who was only a chapter ahead of us students in the textbook. Later still, in our college ITW course (that's Intellectual Traditions of the West, for non-U. of U. alumni), we lusted after the same girl, a fragile little hippie-chick with intriguing grey eyes who'd been moved up a year in high school and ultimately couldn't face the pressure of being in college at the tender age of seventeen.

More recently, we travelled together through the tourist meccas of Florida with Keith's parents and a suitcase filled with snack foods, and just two years ago, he and Danielle were my hosts and tour-guides for my big expedition to Germany.

A lot of interesting, important times...

So what do you say at a moment like this, to a friend who has been there almost since the beginning, who remembers what you were like as a boy, and what the world was like before everything changed? I have to admit, I'm really not sure. I've seen a lot of friends become parents in the last few years, and I've never quite known how to approach it. The best I can do, Keith, if you're reading this -- and I hope that you are -- is to say congratulations, and offer you and your wife -- your family, now -- my very best wishes for the future.

The Political Gene?

Here's an interesting idea: a new study indicates that people's political leanings may be genetic in origin. The researchers behind this study are not suggesting that we're all destined to belong to a particular party or that we're programmed from birth like little politibots, just that we may be drawn by nature towards a particular side of the spectrum. In other words, our genes pre-dispose us towards being conservative or progressive, and then our upbringing and unique life experiences shape our opinions on specific issues. The real fun seems to occur when someone's innate inclination clashes with their family's expectations and affiliations. (The study was intended partly to figure out why people defect from the parties in which they were raised, such as when the children of staunch Republicans become hippies, or vice versa. While some of that behavior can be chalked up to youthful rebellion, there are plenty of cases where children just plain think differently from their parents for no apparent reason, which makes little sense if you believe that our attitudes are entirely shaped by "nurture" without some element of "nature" being involved.)

I hesitate to assign too much responsibility for individual behavior to DNA, because I believe there's much more to behavior and psychology than mere "hardwiring." However, this theory could explain something I've wondered about, namely the way it so often seems that people who are on opposite sides of a political issue simply fail to connect at some basic level. Even assuming that the discussion remains civil and reasonable, our two hypothetical debators almost always reach a point where the conversation cannot continue because they just don't understand where the other person is coming from. I've heard some people say this is because conservatives argue with logic while liberals use emotion -- this is always said by conservatives, by the way, with the unstated implication that their "logic" is superior to their opponents' "emotion" -- but liberals of course don't see things that way. Personally, I believe there is logic in the positions of both sides, for the most part; it's just that we're using different logic, or at least logic predicated on different things. Certainly we have different priorities and concerns that arise from someplace deep inside us, often for reasons we don't entirely understand ourselves. Why should one person be so sensitive to issues of free expression while someone else is utterly repelled by the thoughts of a large government? Maybe there's something in everyone's personal history that generates these sensitivities... and maybe that's just the way we are. Maybe the reason we find it difficult to bridge the red-blue divide is because reds and blues are fundamentally different.

Now, if I were the paranoid conspiracy-theorist type, I'd say that this is dangerous thinking, the sort of thing that leads to fears of "The Other" and, in the worst-case scenario, to pogroms and social "cleansing." But I don't think the fundamental difference is that significant, assuming that it actually exists. I just think this idea of genetics could help unravel the mystery of why so many people these days seem to be talking past each other instead of with each other.

Terribly Amusing Zombie-related Item

Long-time readers may recall my fondness for the movie Shaun of the Dead, which was one of my top-five favorite films last year. Or, at least, it would've been, if I'd ever gotten around to compiling a top-five list. What can I say? Procrastination is my greatest vice.

Anyhow, I'm not generally a big fan of zombie movies, but Shaun was an amazing little feat of filmmaking -- it stayed faithful to all the zombie-movie tropes while also subverting them for the purposes of humor and character development. It was a smart and entertaining love letter from its creators to the genre that it was spoofing. Now the creator of that genre is thanking the creators of Shaun in a very wonderful way. Here's the relevant paragraph from an LA Times interview with George Romero, writer/director of the seminal zombie film Night of the Living Dead and the upcoming Land of the Dead (which opens Friday, if that's your thing):

There were the pilgrimages of fans trekking to Toronto last winter for the freezing, all-nights "Land" shoot to fulfill lifelong dreams of being a Romero zombie. Two of those were Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg, who created last year's respectful zombie spoof "Shaun of the Dead," which Romero loved. "They're the zombies at the photo booth," tips Romero to their cameo in the film. "They shot their own little film [while] on set, and it's going to be on the DVD."

For the record, Simon Pegg played the title character in Shaun of the Dead and co-wrote the film with director Wright.

I just love this kind of intertextual stuff -- in-jokes, homages, tributes, and "guest appearances" almost always make me smile. They're like a wink-and-a-nod to the informed viewer (or reader, in the case of novels) that acknowledges the whole wide body of material out there and reminds us that it all relates on some level or other. I know this sort of thing bothers some people, but I think it's fun. Almost fun enough to consider seeing Land of the Dead just for that half-second glimpse of my old buddy Shaun...

Cosmos 1 Coda

With no sign of the Cosmos 1 solar-sail spacecraft two days after its launch, members of the Planetary Society's operations team are packing it in and returning to their regularly scheduled lives. Before the project's official blogger Emily signs off, however, she leaves us with this typically hopeful message:

At the Society, we're already talking about what to do next. A few hours ago, Bill Nye -- the Science Guy, and also the Vice-President of The Planetary Society -- asked all of the staff to gather together in the living room of the 100-year-old house in which we work. He opened and poured champagne for all of us, and we raised several toasts. We toasted Cosmos 1, first of all; it was an audacious dream, that we arrogantly compared to the flight of the Wright Brothers. We toasted [project director] Lou Friedman in absentia, for whom it must have been a pretty rough week. We toasted the staff and volunteers of the Society, for all the work it's taken to bring Cosmos 1 to the world. We toasted Ann Druyan, the chief sponsor of Cosmos 1, for making it possible, and for being the mission's spiritual leader. We toasted our members, for their devotion to our cause and their support. Finally, we toasted: Cosmos 2? Many of our members are telling us they're ready to try again. We can't say whether or not we'll try again with this mission until we find out what really happened. But we'll certainly stay in the business, and try more audacious things, like the Solar Sail, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, Mars airplanes, or Venus balloons we've advocated in the past.

Sounds about right to me...

Cosmos 1

Disappointing news for space enthusiasts: Cosmos 1, which was to have been the first solar-sail spacecraft, has disappeared and was most likely destroyed following its launch yesterday aboard a Russian-made ICBM. The Planetary Society, the private organization that planned and provided most of the funding for the project, issued a statement this morning:

In the past twenty-four hours, the Russian space agency (RKA) has made a tentative conclusion that the Volna rocket carrying Cosmos 1 failed during the firing of the first stage. This would mean that Cosmos 1 is lost.

While it is likely that this conclusion is correct, there are some inconsistent indications from information received from other sources. The Cosmos 1 team observed what appear to be signals, that looks like they are from the spacecraft when it was over the first three ground stations and some Doppler data over one of these stations. This might indicate that Cosmos 1 made it into orbit, but probably a lower one than intended. The project team now considers this to be a very small probability. But because there is a slim chance that it might be so, efforts to contact and track the spacecraft continue. We are working with US Strategic Command to provide additional information in a day or so.

If the spacecraft made it to orbit, its autonomous program might be working, and after 4 days the sails could automatically deploy. While the chances of this are very, very small, we still encourage optical observers to see if the sail can be seen after that time.

Emily Lakdawalla, the Society's resident blogger, remains upbeat in the face of this unfortunate development. She reminds us that, "Failures happen in space exploration; if you can't accept that you have to stay away from it. ...by its very nature, pushing frontiers generates risk," and then goes on to say, "Maybe our spacecraft failed, but even so, the mission didn't, as far as I'm concerned. I feel like we really did something here. ...I actually still feel pretty good, because of the incredible amount of support that we have received. Even the members of the media who were here, watching and waiting for news, are still rooting for us, still expressing hope that our spacecraft is still out there. The Planetary Society's mission is, in part, to inspire the public, and it seems we may have done that through the dramatic developments of yesterday's launch. I'm proud of that." Noble words, and I hope she really feels the way she says she does.

I, however, am very unhappy about the project's failure. I've been aware of this effort to try something new in space for a couple of years now, and I was really looking forward to seeing it happen. (If you'll recall, I mentioned the impending launch about two weeks ago.) The concept of a solar sail strikes me as almost unspeakably elegant: riding to another planet or even another star system on a gentle wave of light. A vehicle that gets where it wants to go by harmonizing with the universe instead of trying to outmuscle it, as a rocket does. What could be more poetic, or more beautiful? The Cosmos 1 project appealed to the artist in me.

In addition, I liked the idea that this particular venture was largely funded by ordinary people who simply believed in an idea. Not by NASA, not even by some incredibly rich philanthropist looking for something to occupy his jaded attentions (no offense to gentlemen like Richard Branson or Burt Rutan), but by working folks just like myself, people who think that space exploration is worthwhile and exciting, and who wanted to be part of pushing the envelope. Someone will eventually try the sail idea again, and keep on trying it until it's either disproved or superseded by a working hyperdrive, but I hope that when the next attempt does occur, it again includes private citizens. Because I think the public needs to be inspired by something that's bigger than "Must-See TV," and because I think getting the public involved is probably the only way the final frontier is ever really going to be opened.

If there's any justice at all, the next attempt will be with a Cosmos 2.

Hopefully on that occasion the Planetary Society won't rely on dodgy Soviet leftovers to get into orbit, though...

Dalek Follow-up

Just to tie up a loose end, I see that British authorities have recovered that missing Dalek I wrote about last week. According to the BBC, the thieves decided the stolen prop was "too hot to handle" (i.e., they figured they were going to have a problem fencing it, or decided their original scheme wouldn't be so funny if it ended with them in handcuffs), so they dumped it on Glastonbury Tor and dropped a dime to let somebody know where it was. (According to the Wikipedia, a tor is a "large hill, usually topped with rocks," in the southwest of England.)

The owner of the tourist attraction from which the Dalek was taken denies that this whole event was a publicity stunt, and despite the offer of his services, the presence of Colin Baker was apparently not required.

Kind of a let-down, actually... I was hoping the thing would turn up in the middle of Piccadilly, dressed in a pink tu-tu or something.

Changes in the Gallery, and New Warbird Photos

I've finally made good on my threat to reorganize this site's photo gallery. If you go over there now, you'll find that I have folded everything into three basic groupings: Random Snapshots, Travels, and Diversions. The "Random Snapshots" album remains unchanged since the last time you may have looked at it; it's your basic grab-bag of personal subjects that most of you probably won't care about, i.e., miscellaneous photos of myself, my girl, friends, etc. "Travels" is self-explanatory. And the "Diversions" album is where you'll find photos of things I'd like to share, but which don't quite fit into the other two categories, things like my warbird flight experience or some of the weird stuff I've been involved in or which interests me. For example, I plan to put up a sub-album showing you how my father and I once transformed a twenty-foot-long classic automobile into a rolling replica of the RMS Titanic, complete with the movie characters Jack and Rose on the "bow." If that makes no sense to you, be patient; you will understand at some point in the (hopefully) near future...

In the meantime, check out the latest addition to the gallery, a selection of shots taken yesterday as Anne and I toured the B-17 Fuddy Duddy with her parents. (In my earlier posts, I was under the impression that the plane coming to Ogden this past weekend was the Aluminum Overcast, but I found out yesterday that the Overcast was damaged in a bad landing a year ago and is currently undergoing a complete overhaul and restoration. The Fuddy is owned by the same organization, the Experimental Aircraft Association, and has been filling the other plane's tour obligations.)

The Fuddy Duddy is a beautiful example of this model -- it includes most of the vintage equipment that a B-17 would've carried back in the day, including one of the legendary Norden bomb sights and a stack of radio equipment the size of your average filing cabinet. I also liked the Fuddy's color scheme, which consists largely of the plane's own aluminum skin, unpainted and polished to a shiny finish. (The nose-art was disappointingly tame, however.) This plane is fitted out a bit differently than the Nine o' Nine, the last B-17 I toured, so it's easier for tourists to negotiate a walk-through, and I would imagine that it's also fairly comfortable for those who choose to take a flight: unlike the B-24 I flew on, this B-17 actually has jumpseats for passengers to sit in during take-offs and landings. (I had to sit on the floor when I flew on the Dragon...)

Incidentally, touring that particular aircraft on Father's Day had a special significance for Anne's dad, whose own father built B-17s for Boeing during the war. I can only guess what he must've been feeling as he imagined his late father's hands working the metal, installing avionics, or pounding in rivets. (Unfortunately, no one in the family is quite sure of what Anne's grandpa actually did on the Boeing line, aside from "building B-17s.")

Crimes Against Grammar

I earn my daily bread as a professional copy editor, among other things. That means I nitpick for cash, and just in case you're wondering, no, there isn't much cash to be made from picking nits. My slogan could be that immortal exchange from the Robert Redford film Sneakers:

"It's a living."

"Not a very good one."

Anyway, doing this particular job has made me extremely sensitive to the general lack of correct grammatical usage that pervades our culture. I'm not talking about the way people speak, which is informal and colloquial by nature and thus not something I personally think is worth fretting over. I'm referring instead to the downright painful mistakes I constantly see on signs, menus, advertising, and the business documents I review -- media that is professional in nature and should therefore adhere to the rules.

For some examples of the sort of thing that drives me crazy, check out this humorous collection of egregious errors that were observed along the boardwalk on Coney Island... which, as someone once pointed out, is not actually an island...

(Incidentally, the frequent misuse of the possessive apostrophe-s to make nouns plural is my greatest editorial pet peeve. It makes me say, "Arg.")

Lileks on Sex Symbols Then and Now

James Lileks is probably one of the best known bloggers on the InterWeb. He was doing his free-form essay/daily journal thing before anyone even coined the word "blog." His was the first blog I personally encountered, and I still read him faithfully now, years later.

To be honest, though, he often confounds me. His Daily Bleat frequently consists of nothing more than a laundry list of what he and his daughter Gnat have been doing all day -- which is sometimes interesting and/or amusing, but is just as often as dull as my own life, and what's the point of reading that? Even worse are the times when he gets political, especially if he's pissed about some matter of foreign policy or national security. Let's just say that his politics don't map to my own, and words that have occured to me while reading his screeds include "reactionary," "paranoid," "jingoistic," "hectoring," and "condescending." (Fortunately, he's recently banished most of this content to a dedicated Screedblog, so I no longer have to avoid the Bleat for fear of wanting to put a fist through my monitor.)

I keep reading him because I admire his writing, his ability to work in the medium of words. He has a knack for precisely capturing things that are difficult to convey, concepts and aesthetics and, for lack of a better term, the vibe of a particular time or place. It's a skill I'm trying to develop and, although I think I'm getting better at that whole "essence of an era" thing, I envy the talent of a guy like Lileks. Take, for example, this little tidbit from today's Bleat:

Last night on "What’s My Line," the guest was... Mamie Van Doren, a breathy va-va-va-voomer who performed the odd facial alphabet of the 50s sex siren – the moue, the wink, the coquettish smile, the wide eyes, the teasing glance. And she ran through the sequence again and again, a performance completely disconnected from the questions. It was like watching a prototype Sexbot stuck in an programming loop. She really was from another era - a time when the sex stars had hips like oven doors, hair the color of astronaut suits, brains the size of ant thoraxes, and a life of giddy leisure that revolved around small, portable dogs, beefy Pepsodent morons, pink convertibles, and the purchase of ceramic cat statuary with long necks. A bratwurst to Paris Hilton’s Slim Jim.

That's brilliant work. Simply brilliant. If you've ever seen old footage of a 1950s sexpot, you know his description is dead on, and if you haven't, well, it's easy enough to imagine what he's getting at, isn't it? I especially love the final line about Paris Hilton, that bony little stick-figure who has elevated vacuous sluttishness to an art form. In one short, smart-assy sentence -- a sentence fragment, no less -- Lileks wonderfully contrasts the ideals of the post-WW II culture with our own, makes it funny, and even gives us some nifty subtext in the references to meat. (Read into that whatever you will about phony airbrushed sexuality, base desires, models, and advertising. I find it an especially interesting metaphor given the current grumbling about Paris' TV spot for the Carl's Jr hamburger chain. Discuss amongst yourselves.)

I stand in professional awe. You only get that sort of quality subtext from a fine wordsmith. Lileks is a writer, by God! If only he weren't so frequently confounding...

Lane Smith

Well, now, this sucks -- I just learned that one of my favorite character actors, Lane Smith, has died.

He's one of those guys whose name you probably don't recognize, but you'd know his face instantly; he did a lot of movies in the '70s and '80s that qualify as minor classics, including Rooster Cogburn, Network, Prince of the City, Frances, Places in the Heart, and one of the most incredibly jingoistic and far-fetched (yet entertaining) movies to emerge from the Reagan Era, Red Dawn. More recently, he's appeared in lighter fare such as My Cousin Vinny, The Mighty Ducks, and Son-in-Law, which has the dubious distinction of being the only Pauly Shore movie that is remotely watchable.

Fans of genre TV will remember Smith as Nathan Bates, the power-hungry industrialist who collaborated with the alien Visitors in V: The Series, as well as the Elvis-obsessed editor Perry White in Lois and Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. Also, all the obituaries I've scanned note that Smith played Nixon in a TV miniseries called The Final Days, which I'm sorry to say I've never seen. (Personally, I tend to picture him in the opening credits of V, parked behind a big desk with an oily smile, an ugly suit, and a cigar the size of a car muffler.)

The best obituary I've found indicates that he died from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as Lou Gehrig's Disease. I mention this little factoid only because I've had some personal experience with ALS, and my ears tend to prick up when I hear of someone being afflicted with it. Trust me, it's not a pretty way to go, and it breaks my heart that this talented man had to face such a miserable end.

For the record, he was 69 years old, only a few years older than my parents and way too damn young for this...

Pink Floyd's Set List

For any Floyd fans who may be lurking among my three loyal readers, my friend Robert sends word that speculation about the band's Live 8 set list has begun! (Of course it has; this is the Internet, after all...)

If you'd like to join in the fun or just see what other people are hoping to hear, check out the discussion thread at the Pink Floyd forum.

For whatever it's worth, Robert would like to see the band "do some real esoteric shit like [his] personal favorite, 'Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict.'"

Hmm. I can't say I'm familiar with that one...

Speaking of Airplanes...

I caught a few seconds of video on the news last night of a B-17 being welcomed to Ogden. "Odd," I thought, "the Aluminum Overcast isn't supposed to be here until the weekend." I figured I must've misinterpreted what I was seeing and paid it no further mind.

This morning, however, I got an e-mail from my fellow warbird enthusiast Dave. Apparently, the bird on the news last night is a different B-17 called the Sentimental Journey. A little googling reveals that this B-17, which is supposed to be the most fully restored example around, is owned and operated by the Arizona Wing of the Confederate Air Force, a nation-wide volunteer group dedicated to preserving old planes in their flyable condition. It's on display right now at the Ogden-Hinckley Airport and will be open to the public, 9:00 AM to 8 PM, through Thursday. The plane will depart on Friday morning, the same day the EAA's B-17, Aluminum Overcast, arrives. As Dave said in his message to me, "This could be a terrific opportunity to see not one, but two B-17s within the same week!"

(If the timing works out right, they might both be on the ground at the same time, a spectacle rarely seen since the '40s.)

The CAF requests a $5.00 donation to tour the Sentimental Journey, and flight opportunities are available. Once again, I can't stress how amazing that experience is; if you have the extra cash, by all means, take a ride aboard one of these historic planes. You won't regret it.

You can learn more about the Sentimental Journey here, and don't forget that the Aluminum Overcast will be at the same airport this weekend.

Low-Flying Planes and 21st Century Angst

I don't usually suffer from the post-9/11 jumpiness that afflicts so many Americans. I don't freak out whenever Homeland Security spins the Big Color Wheel, I don't compulsively imagine horrific scenarios of doom a la James Lileks, and, aside from the hour a week when I'm watching 24, I don't fret about sleeper cells executing their nefarious plans within our borders. Generally, I'm more worried about other people's road-rage than I am about swarthy militants setting off a dirty bomb in the quiet little backwater I call home. It's not that I think another attack is impossible or even unlikely; I just don't see the usefulness of living in a state of constant anxiety, and I also don't think Salt Lake City is much of a target compared to other places around the country. We're a smallish city, we don't command much national attention, and we don't have any globally recognizable landmarks whose loss would demoralize the entire country. (Well, I guess the main LDS Temple is pretty well known, but it's not the same kind of high-profile target as, say, the Empire State Building or the Golden Gate.) Yep, I feel pretty safe living here in dull ol' Deseret.

And that's why my reaction to the incident this morning was so... unexpected. What incident, you ask? Well, kids, let me tell you a story...

First, the background: I'm currently working a temporary gig in downtown Salt Lake, at a job site that's a little over twenty miles from my house. It's been long enough since I had to do any significant commuting that driving so far every day has been a real drag. Fortunately, however, Salt Lake's light-rail system stops conveniently near to the office, so this morning I decided to save the wear-and-tear on my Mustang and use public transport. I had a relaxed, stress-free ride into town, just like the commercials promise; I sat quietly in the sun and read a Newsweek article about Deep Throat and tried to not to think about that silly old Sheena Easton song about taking the morning train.

I was feeling pretty good when I stepped off the train. The station is in the middle of the block, just a short stroll away from my building, so I had to wait for the "Don't Walk" light to change before I could get on with my day. That was fine, though. The air temperature was pleasant, neither chilly nor oppressively warm, and the wait gave me time to try and switch off my mental iPod, or at least get it off the "repeat ad nauseum an ancient pop tune that I didn't really like when it was new" setting. The possibility of an overpriced coffee beverage occurred to me, and I wondered where I might find one in this neighborhood...

And then I was startled out of my reverie by a piercing shriek of jet engines, very close. They seemed to come out of nowhere; one second, I was listening to the background urban hum of car traffic and my own inner Sheena, the next I found myself involuntarily ducking because the plane was so freakin' loud it could only be coming down the street. There wasn't any out-of-control juggernaut skidding down Main Street, though, so I looked up, and there it was, a military refueling tanker, streaking through the crystal-blue sky at what looked like rooftop level. The plane was low enough that I could clearly see the boom hanging from its tail, and the hose attachment that plugs into the gas tanks of thirsty little F-16 fighters. The plane was in the middle of the block between State and Main, heading directly towards the cluster of modest skyscrapers that comprise Salt Lake's downtown core.

Five years ago, seeing something like that might have caused me to think, "Cool! A tanker!" Or I might have thought, "Huh, that's interesting," or maybe even, "Now that's weird, what the hell is that doing there?" (The usual air-traffic lanes are some distance to the west of where I was, so seeing a plane in this part of the city is about as odd as a hippo in a tutu.)

This morning, however, my first thought was, "Oh God... so this is what it was like in New York..."

For a few, stomach-wrenching seconds, I was certain that the next sound I heard would be a roar of impact. The Wells Fargo Center, the tallest building in Salt Lake, was just at the other end of the block, a nice, big target for a kamikaze pilot. The infamous video of that awful day three years ago replaced Sheena Easton in my mind, and I braced myself for the sight of a fireball erupting from the side of the tower I affectionately refer to as "Big Blue..."

But nothing happened. Traffic continued to flow, people went about their business, and the plane stayed in the air, confidently bound for wherever it was going. And even though it was definitely weird to have a military plane flying on that vector and that low an altitude, there apparently wasn't any sort of crisis going on, because I haven't found a peep about it on any of the local newsfeeds. As far as I can tell, I've been feeling shaky and irritable all day because some pilot thought he'd play "Top Gun" and buzz the tower.

Sometimes I really hate living in the 21st Century.

Good, Bad... I'm the One With the Gun

As I wrote a week or so back, I've been fairly puzzled by some people's reaction to the revelation of Deep Throat's identity. Here in my home state of Utah, especially, a lot of folks are saying that Mark Felt is a bum because he betrayed a president he was sworn to protect. I wonder what those same people think about Nixon himself. Do they think he was wrongfully driven from office for the crimes committed in his name, if not on his actual orders? Do they honestly believe Felt's "betrayal" is worse than breaking and entering, illegal wiretapping, and government cover-ups, all for the purpose of one political party unfairly increasing and retaining its grip on power? It seems to me that Felt was being a good soldier by protecting the Republic as opposed to a president he knew to be corrupt. In other words, he was showing loyalty to something higher and more important than Richard Nixon. Just in case you missed it the first time I said it, I'll say it again: it doesn't really matter what motivated him to do it, because it was ultimately the right thing to do, for the country as a whole. In the real world, people often do things that get labelled as "good" or "bad" regardless of the purity of their intentions, and that's how I see Mark Felt blowing the whistle.

Mark Evanier has a similar take on this subject, which I think is as good a defense of Felt as anything further that I could say:

People have been debating whether Mark "Deep Throat" Felt was a good guy or a bad guy, and these debates often seem to be conducted on the assumption that he had to have been one or the other.

I don't think many public figures -- especially in government -- can be fit wholly into one of those two classifications, and I see no reason to expect that Mr. Felt can be so tidily rated. His motives in leaking to Bob Woodward were probably some mixture of wanting to protect the F.B.I. from abuse by the Nixon administration and wanting to advance his personal agenda. In the grand scheme of things, I suspect he was less important to the toppling of a president than he was to the career advancement of Woodward and Bernstein. I don't think what he did was dishonorable or illegal -- that's the spin of those who cast their lot with Richard M. Nixon -- and to the extent he did it to expose corruption, I guess he's a hero. But only for that one series of actions. He wasn't a hero for what he did soon after.

Evanier finishes with a link to an article that details Felt's less-than-noble, post-Throat exploits, if you're interested.

When Fanboys Go Bad

From the Department of Amusingly Daft Things That Total Fanboys Do on Larks (DADTTTFDL) comes a report that someone has stolen a Dalek from a British tourist attraction and is holding it for ransom. Daleks, in case you're not geeky enough to know, are the arch-enemies of the cult TV hero Doctor Who. A race of cyborg mutants encased in rolling shells that vaguely resemble giant fire hydrants, the Daleks are basically stock sci-fi villains in that they're always trying to take over the universe and kill any life-form they deem inferior to themselves (that would be all of them). (The Wikipedia has an insanely detailed entry on Daleks that includes photos, history, and social commentary on the "Dalek phenomenon," if you're interested.)

According to the news story, the missing Dalek is supposed to be an original prop from the BBC series and could be worth thousands of pounds. The "kidnappers" removed one of the prop's "arms" and left it on a doorstep with a ransom note that says they are "awaiting further instructions from the Doctor." Hopefully they're just kidding and don't really expect to be contacted by a time-travelling goofball... although that may happen, too, since the news story linked above notes that:

Former Dr. Who actor Colin Baker has been in touch with staff at the attraction, and may be asked to send a message to the kidnappers.

Could this all be an elaborate ruse cooked up just to meet a celebrity? Hard telling... I'll keep you posted with any follow-up news on this critical situation.

(Incidentally, I used to be a pretty major Who fan back in high school, and I actually met Colin Baker at a "meet-and-greet" autograph session way back in the glorious '80s. Charming fellow, very tall...)

Beelzebub Must Be Reaching for a Sweater...

Well, this is just amazing: Pink Floyd is getting back together for a one-night-only performance at Bob Geldof's upcoming Live 8 concert. For the record, I don't especially like Floyd -- I mostly find their work pretentious and depressing -- but the conflict between the band's bass player Roger Waters and guitarist David Gilmour is legendary among rock-music afficianados, and for fans of the band, this news must seem like nothing short of a miracle. As I recall, Geldof pulled off a similarly unlikely reunion of Led Zeppelin for his '85 LiveAid concerts. If he can perform impossible stunts like getting these notoriously acrimonious musicians back together, why hasn't this man taken over the world by now? Maybe that's the next item on his agenda...

Answering the Unanswered

Given the two subjects that have gotten the bulk of my attention lately, I was greatly amused by a line in the new issue of Newsweek:

Now that we've learned how Anakin became Darth Vader and who Deep Throat really was, can we finally close the book on the '70s?

I didn't think that book was still open, myself, but it does seem like a lot of loose ends are getting tied up lately, doesn't it? Star Trek, Star Wars, the final mystery of Watergate... what's next, for someone to dig up Jimmy Hoffa's body? How about finding Jim Morrison alive and well on Fiji? Is a Sasquatch about to wander into downtown Portland, or will a Scottish fisherman finally manage to land Nessie? Keep watching the skies, kids, because you never know...

New Photo Album at Last: Warbirds!

For all you folks who may be into that InterWeb voyeurism thing, I've uploaded a new album to my photo gallery. It's a collection of shots I took two years ago when the Collings Foundation "Wings of Freedom" tour stopped off in Utah for a weekend. As you may have gathered from my warbird-themed entry earlier this week, the Wings of Freedom tour consists of two World War II-vintage bomber aircraft, a B-17 and the only airworthy B-24 left in existence, which travel around the country giving people the rare opportunity to see them up close and in the air.

Even more exciting than seeing them, however, is the chance to actually ride in one of them. My dad and I took that chance, and even though the initial price tag seemed ridiculous in return for a mere twenty minutes of airtime, we've never regretted spending a dime of it. For the record, we chose to fly on the B-24, reasoning that if it's the only one left, we may never get another chance with this particular model.

Feeling the vibration of the plane's engines in your belly, shouting to make yourself heard over their roar, smelling the exhaust and the hot oil and the sun-baked aluminum fuselage... there's no other word for it except "thrilling." It's the closest thing to time-travel you're ever likely to experience. If you have any interest in history, any desire to know, at least in some small way, what the grandfathers of Generation X went through some sixty years ago, you really must try and catch one of these flights. Some day I intend to write a detailed blog entry about the experience, but for now take my word for it and check out the photos.

A quick technical note: I haven't linked directly to the new album because I plan to reorganize the gallery's directory structure in the next little while (as well as add lots more pictures!), and I didn't want to leave dead links all over the place. So, for now, just hop over to the gallery and open the new album manually. It's the first one at the top of the page.

In addition, for anyone who may be interested, I've posted a recent picture of my girlfriend Anne and myself in the Random Shots album.

Enjoy!

A Word of Warning

My friend and Webmaster Jack informed me tonight that he plans to migrate Simple Tricks to a new server sometime this week, so if you try to access the site in the next few days and can't find it, that's why. Rest assured that you won't be deprived of my sparkling prose for long...

You Want Some Fireworks?

The excellent Space News Blog is reporting that NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft is scheduled to hit a comet called Tempel 1 on July 4th. Before you shed any tears, though, be aware that this crash is deliberate; the idea is to gouge a hole in the thing to see what comets are like on the inside. Tempel 1 is reportedly about half the size of Manhattan, and the crater made by the spacecraft's "impactor" -- which is a detachable projectile that will slam into the comet while the rest of the Deep Impact probe remains safely behind to observe -- may range in size from a large house to a football stadium, and be up to 14 stories deep.

Comets are already known to be "dirty snowballs" composed mostly of dust and ice, but no one has any idea what their internal structure is like, and they are also believed to contain material that's been relatively unchanged since the formation of our system. This should be interesting...

Introducing "The Pod"

Well, now, this is just cool: a company in England is making travel trailers small enough to be towed by a Mini, and which resemble classic American trailers of the 1940s and '50s, right down to the pastel color palette. I'm a big fan of most things retro, and these caravans -- that's Brit-speak for "trailers," just in case you're not an Anglophile -- have the added appeal of being tiny and, therefore, cute.

Ladies and gentlemen, courtesy of the always-interesting Boing Boing, I give you The Pod.

Lileks on Sith

Lileks has finally seen Sith, and, in my humble estimation, his review is well worth your reading time. It's frequently on the snarky side, as Lileks is wont to be, but he's a very effective writer and his affection for the Star Wars movies is clear, even as he's blasting some aspect or other of them:

2:45 PM, Southdale AMC theater #4, center row, unobstructed view. Star Wars.

If you’re my age, you probably saw the first one in theater. If you share my infantile interests, you probably saw it five times. (Saw it 12 times myself.) So the blue words, the invocation if you will, bring many strange and fleeting emotion[s]. You can’t help thinking who you were then, where you were, what it was like, how little has changed, how much. It wipes the slate clean, those words. Then the CRASH of the brass - that famous chord you could play for a hundred people and they’d never remember the top note that really makes it work - and you’re back where you have been five times before: listening to the stirring theme, reading bad prose. WAR! The crawl begins, helpfully noting that “Evil is everywhere.” Yes, well, that’ll happen.

He continues in more or less that same snarky vein, focusing not so much on the plot -- which everyone knows by now anyway -- as on specific observations about the movie, the characters, and the conventions of the Star Wars universe. I agree with some of his points, disagree with others, and think nearly all of them are laugh-out-loud funny. My favorite? It has to be either his description of Yoda ("...he reminds me of a cranky old man who finds his favorite stool at Denny’s is occupied by some high schoolers.") or this priceless bit about galactic architecture:

For God’s sake, why aren’t there any railings anywhere? You build a docking pad so people can visit your 127th floor apartment,but you don’t build a railing? It’s windy up there. I’d get out of my car and crawl on my belly to the porch, and I wouldn’t stand up until I saw something I could grab. Like the hostess.

Now, that's funny. But the thing I really love about Lileks is how he can downshift from this kind of high silliness into something a bit more serious (if still rendered in his own inimitable idiom) and smack you in the forehead with, well, with the essential truth of the thing:

...when something actually works, it really works. Like Darth’s screaming hatred towards Obi-Wan as he laid burning on the shore. Like Obi-Wan’s venting in the same scene: dammit, kid, you were supposed to be the Messiah, and you end up as Pontius Judas, and not only is everything truly screwed, with my clubhouse on fire and all my friends dead and a mad bastard whose face looks like Jabba’s back in charge of all the fun stuff. It was the emotional high point of the entire series – or so you thought, because you knew it would end soon. How, you couldn’t guess.

Well, it ends in sadness and doom. Padme’s funeral cortege had an august gloomy beauty so great you didn’t even mind Jar-Jar appearing for 3.9 seconds. Organa takes back Little Carrie Fisher to his wife, and as you look at their planet you know it’s all going to be rubble in a few decades. All of it. Vader strides the bridge of the Exectutor in a scene that brings back the pleasures of “Empire Strikes Back” – you see the officers in their grey uniforms and you know they all speak in British accents. He looks out at the Death Star with Darth “In” Sidious, unaware both wi[ll] perish on v. 2. Finally, Luke is left with his aunt and uncle, both of whom will end up crisped to perfection by xeroxed Bobas many years down the line. But. They stand on the berm – a hillock which manages to be unchanged throughout the decades on a windy sand planet – and cradle the child as they face the setting suns. It’s where Luke stood and dreamed of a life as thrilling as the music that accompanied the scene; it’s where Annakin [sic] stood before he scooter[ed] off to find Mom and carve some Tusk[e]n Chunks. The entire destiny of the galaxy comes down to this place, more or less. With grief explicit and promise implied, the movie ends.

And I coughed and wiped my cheeks and stood up and left. We’re finished with that now. It’s done and it’s over.

At least until the extended DVD comes out.

Yep. That's the Revenge of the Sith experience, right there. Check out the rest of what he's got to say. It's a good read.

B-17 Tour Stopping in Utah

Longtime readers of this blog may recall my affection for World War II-era bombers, or "warbirds," as they are sometimes called. There aren't many of these beautiful antique planes left, and even fewer are still in flyable condition -- most of the surviving examples have been taxidermied for air museums, where usually you can only admire their exteriors from behind velvet ropes -- so the opportunity to see a functional one up close or in the air is a rare treat.

On that note, here is the text of an email I recently received from my friend Dave Wall, who organized last year's visit from the Collings Foundation's B-24 and B-17:

To all who might be interested:

The bad news is, it looks like the Collings Foundation Wings of Freedom Tour is not coming through Utah at all this year. I will write to them and see if we can't maybe get them back next year.

The good news is, EAA's B-17G "Aluminum Overcast" is scheduled to come to Ogden Hinkley Airport on June 17-19. I don't have any more details at the moment. [Ed. note: details are here.] You can find out more about the plane at http://www.b17.org.

It is possible that the Collings Foundation did not schedule to come this year since Aluminum Overcast was previously scheduled to come here.

If you live anywhere near the Wasatch Front (that's the combined Salt Lake-Ogden-Provo area, for you out-of-staters), I urge you to make the drive and see this piece of living history. If you can afford it, please consider taking a flight aboard her, too. The money goes to a good cause -- keeping the plane flyable -- and it's an experience you'll never forget. The plane will be here over Father's Day weekend, so take your dad or your son, and think about all the other dads and sons who once flew aboard these fascinating machines under much different circumstances.

Just in case it's too much trouble to click that link above, here's the scoop: you'll be able to tour the plane's interior from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. each day, $10 for a family, $6 for adults, $5 for students, and free for WWII vets or children under 8. You can learn more by going to the EAA's Website or calling 800-359-6217.

Deep Throat: Hero or Traitor?

Aside from the initial disclosure of his true identity, I've paid little attention to this week's public conversation about Deep Throat, so I was taken aback this morning when I tuned into the talking-head shows and learned that former Nixonians are trying to smear Mark Felt as some kind of bum for blowing the whistle on their wrongdoing. This flabbergasts me for a half-dozen different reasons, not least of which is the incredible notion that TV commentators are still (or once again) arguing about a political battle that was won and lost (depending on your perspective) thirty years ago. I suppose that shouldn't surprise me, given the lingering bitterness over the Clintons, Vietnam, the civil rights movement, and even, in some quarters, the Civil War. People have long memories and grudges do endure. But I guess I keep hoping there'll be an outbreak of common sense any day now, and this eternal optimism causes me to be caught consistently off-guard when it doesn't happen.

I'm reluctant to get into this because I really don't want to pick a political fight here on Simple Tricks after the pleasant silence of these past couple of months. But when I hear that people like G. Gordon Liddy -- one of those who did prison time for the Watergate break-in, just in case you don't know -- are calling Mark Felt a disgrace and a traitor because he went to the press with what he knew, well, that's so ridiculous as to beg some kind of comment.

I'm no expert on the subject of Watergate. I was watching Sesame Street the day Nixon resigned. I've seen two movies on the subject (All the President's Men, naturally, and the goofy but charming comedy Dick), and it seems like I watched a PBS documentary about it a while back, probably an episode of Frontline or The American Experience. My interest in Deep Throat stems from the romance of unsolved mysteries, and the mythic image of a cigarette-smoking man in a trenchcoat speaking truth from the shadows. Up until a week ago, I'd never heard the name Mark Felt, and I know nothing of the man's character or his motives for revealing the dirty deeds of the Nixon administration.

But I do know the basic facts of the Watergate scandal: in 1972, five men broke into the headquaters of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate Hotel for the purpose of bugging the place. Their operation was bankrolled with Nixon campaign funds, and at least one of them was on the payroll of the GOP Committee to Re-elect the President. Nixon may not have personally ordered the burglary, but he likely knew about it, and his White House made efforts to cover it up and obstruct the investigation after the fact.

Now, I don't think you have to be a rabid partisan to feel some sense of outrage at the idea of one political campaign trying to gain an unfair advantage over another through illegal means, and then using the government's own resources to try and hide everything when the operation goes south. Seems to me that's about as ethically bankrupt as politics can get. So bankrupt, in fact, that a lot of people at the time believed the very Constitution of our United States was in danger.

So how can anyone use the word "traitor" with a straight face when discussing the man who helped reveal such insidious corruption? How can someone who is himself a felon convicted of participating in that corruption -- I'm speaking of Liddy, the man who planned the disasterous buglary-and-bugging op -- presume to wag his finger at anyone else's sense of ethics?

The logic behind these attacks on Mark Felt seems to be that Felt violated protocol by going to the press with his concerns instead of his own superior at the FBI, or to another government official. I've also heard the suggestion that Felt was less interested in revealing corruption than in grinding his ax -- he had hoped to become head of the FBI after the death of J. Edgar Hoover, and instead a Nixon political appointee got the job.

I think the answer to the first issue is obvious to anyone who has ever experienced the slightest drop of paranoia: who could Mark Felt go to that wasn't part of the corruption? His superior at the FBI was a Nixon appointee, so he wasn't to be trusted. By the same token, knowing what Felt apparently knew, anyone with close ties to the White House was out of the question. And, as I understand it, Congress wasn't much interested in Watergate until growing public attention -- generated by the press coverage that Felt was contributing to -- forced them to be.

As for Felt's motives, well, I don't have any idea how noble or petty they may have been, or even whether his actions were legal (I'll admit I am completely ignorant of the law as it pertains to this situation.) But his actions were the right ones, in my humble opinion, regardless of why he chose them or whether they violated the letter of the law.

G. Gordon Liddy and other Watergate conspirators are hardly in a position, morally and ethically speaking, to say anything about Mark Felt. At best, they're speaking with a mouthful of sour grapes, because they lost the battle and some of them did time for it; at worst, they're trying to rewrite history, to recast themselves as the victims of this story instead of the villains. And I find that outrageous. If we don't want to elevate Mark Felt/Deep Throat to the status of hero, that's fine and probably justifiable. I've done a little reading about him today, and he's a complex character, to put it mildly. But to try and turn him into a bad guy for exposing other bad guys? That's a load of bull.

Yes, General Burkhalter?

Another actor familiar to fans of classic '60s television has passed away: Leon Askin, the squatty man with the bulldog face who constantly threatened to send Col. Klink to the Russian Front on Hogan's Heroes, died recently in his hometown of Vienna. He was 97 years old.

Hogan's Heroes was one of my favorite sitcoms when I was young, part of the afternoon block of then-ten-year-old syndicated re-runs that included Gilligan's Island, The Brady Bunch, The Beverly Hillbillies, I Dream of Jeannie, and Bewitched. None of these shows was what you'd call "edifying" -- my fourth-grade teacher, Mr. LeBaron, who was an anti-television crusader, believed they had exactly the opposite effect, that watching these particular shows actually reduced one's intelligence -- but they were solid entertainment of a sort you don't find on television these days. They were good-natured instead of shrill and sarcastic, based on gentle mocking instead of go-for-the-throat insults. And they were truly "family friendly" in that people of all ages could enjoy them. Hogan, especially, was dual-layered, containing a lot of innuendo that passed over the heads of the kiddies but tickled the knowledgable grown-ups with a long-lost mid-60s brand of wholesome sexiness. Modern programming, by contrast, falls into two very distinct categories: grown-up fare that I wouldn't let a kid watch through a welder's mask (this includes wildly popular but very sexual sitcoms like Will and Grace and Friends) and "family-friendly" entertainment that is so sanitized and sappy only Ned Flanders could enjoy it, and then only if he closely monitored his glucose levels at every commercial break during the broadcast.

It's hard to believe now, but Hogan's Heroes was actually a controversial show in its time. World War II was only twenty years in the past when the show premiered, a fresher memory for adults of the time than Vietnam is for us now, and many people wondered if a Nazi POW camp was an appropriate setting for a comedy. (The great irony, of course, is that half the show's cast were either European Jews or veterans themselves, including Leon Askin.) These concerns didn't affect the show's rating, though, and it went on to a successful multi-season run; I understand the recently released DVDs have sold quite well, too. Nowadays, any lingering whiff of controversy over HH stems from the sexual activities and unsolved murder of the show's star, Bob Crane, which I suppose tells you where we've come as a society in the last forty years.

As for Mr. Askin, his role as Gen. Burkhalter in HH was small, but memorable. He didn't even appear in all the episodes of the show -- I don't know off the top of my head but I would guess no more than half of them. However, I think for many of us, he is the very personification of a certain comedic type, a blustery military officer who is filled with utter contempt at the incompetence around him (see also, Carter, Sgt., Gomer Pyle USMC).

A check of the filmography on Askin's official website shows that he also appeared in a number of notable movie roles, including the Bob Hope-Bing Crosby flick Road to Bali, the Biblical epic (and first CinemaScope film) The Robe, Young Frankenstein (one of my favorite comedies), and Airplane II: The Sequel (not one of my favorite comedies, despite the presence of the immortal William Shatner). Leon Askin also did a lot of stage work and many German-language films. However, I think it's Burkhalter for whom he'll be remembered, and I also suspect from the amusing anecdote at the top of that filmography page that he'd be just fine with that.

Alien Sunset

For the record, my favorite scene in all six Star Wars films is also perhaps the most iconic one, the moment in the very first movie when Luke Skywalker watches two suns sink toward the barren horizon of Tatooine. It's a beautiful scene no matter how you examine it: visually, thematically, musically, emotionally. It's a powerful evocation of youthful restlessness, both melancholy and hopeful. And it's magical because it takes something that is mundane, if beautiful -- a simple sunset -- and transforms it into a novelty, the double sunset of another world. We identify with the image because we see something similar all the time, but we thrill at its strangeness. It is simultaneously familiar and unearthly.

How'd you like to see something like that scene, only for real? Something as close to standing in Luke Skywalker's boots as we're likely to get any time soon? My friends, please click "Continue Reading" to experience the unspeakably cool...

This image, which I found via the Space News Blog -- an excellent resource for space enthusiasts, by the way -- was captured recently by the Spirit rover, one of those durable little robot skateboards that are still doing good work up there on Mars, even though they long ago faded from the headlines. I find this photo startling and romantic for exactly the same reasons I like that scene in Star Wars: it is both like and unlike every sunset I've ever seen. It fills me with awe to know that this is how evening looks on the next planet over.

If that photo has the same effect on you, then you might also want to check out this page, which features images of dust-devils twisting in the Martian sand. (Be sure to click on the pictures; they're animated GIFs that aren't quite perfect movies, but will give you an idea of how these things move. Of course, they move just like earthly zephyrs, which is part of their charm.) I don't know about you, but I can picture myself sitting in a rocker on the front porch of my farm house, chewing on a stalk of grass and watchin' them thar twisters in the distance... the desert is all red, naturally, the grass is imported at considerable expense from Earth, and I'm wearing a spacesuit because Mars doesn't have much in the way of breathable air, but hey, I can picture those conditions easily enough.

And if that's still not enough for you, what do you think about the news that a human-built object is at the very edge of our system and about to cross into interstellar space? Or that some intrepid civilians are about to launch a genuine solar-sail, a spacecraft that will be propelled by the gentle pressure of light from the sun? Now there's a science-fiction idea for you...

I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's like we're living in the future!

Another Book Meme

There's a new meme floating around LiveJournal country, about books. I just did a book meme not too long ago, but the questions on this one are a little different, and it's short enough that neither writer nor reader will lose much time over it. If this is your sort of thing, read on and enjoy. If not, I'll catch you later...

1. Total number of books owned:
   Hoo, boy, impossible to say for sure without going to a whole lot of effort, since most of my collection is tucked away inside banker's boxes down in the Bennion Archive (a.k.a. my basement). However, I would feel confident placing the number in the high hundreds, and I wouldn't be surprised if it even reached or surpassed 1,000, especially if we're counting graphic novels. I have a lot of books.

   I'm ashamed to say, however, that I haven't read the majority of them. For a long time I was buying them faster than I could read them, and things kind of got out of hand. I've recently decided to cut way back on how many books I buy per year, use my local public library more, and sell off or donate the ones I know I'll never touch a second time. It's the right decision for a number of reasons, but I gotta tell you, it's been tough to curb my ingrained habits, and it's also felt really weird to become so conscious of how I spend my money...

2. Last book you bought:
   Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith by Matthew Stover. Hey, I'm nothing if not consistent.

3. Last book you read:
   The Perfect Storm by Sebastian Junger. Yeah, I know, everyone else on the planet read this one about eight years ago, but I'm always significantly behind the curve when it comes to the hot read of the moment. Refer to my earlier comment about "rate of buying" vs. "speed of reading." For whatever it's worth at this late date, I thought this book was a terrific work of journalism and I can fully understand why it became a sensation.

4. Five books that mean a lot to you:
   This category was tougher for me to answer than I expected it would be. I've long considered myself a literary kind of guy, but when I really think about it, I find that the fiction that means the most to me is usually of the filmed variety -- movies and television shows, in other words. That's not to say I don't respond to literature -- of course I do -- but the literary experience usually isn't as powerful for me as the cinematic. That may sound strange or even sad to some people, but it is what it is.

   Still, there are books that hold a personal meaning for me. Often the meaning has nothing to do with the books themselves, which for the most part are not what you'd call "quality literature." I guess "meaning" comes as much from external circumstances as from the texts themselves. In any event, here they are:

   • Star Wars by George Lucas. I know, the Star Wars obsession is getting tedious and I'm sorry to keep bringing it up. Nevertheless, I have a pretty good reason for saying this book matters to me, and it really has little to do with my rampant fanboyism. In short, this was the first adult-level book I ever read. The style of the book's true author, Alan Dean Foster (who ghostwrote this one for Lucas), is not especially elegant but it is very dense, vocabulary-wise, and as I read and re-read the book, trying to recapture the sense of wonder I'd gotten from the movie, I ended up building an impressive vocabulary that far surpassed my fellow eight-year-olds. I always did extremely well in vocabulary, spelling, and writing exercises, and I'm convinced this was at least partially because I struggled through a novelization of a movie I loved, even though it was really too advanced for my skills at the time.

   • Han Solo's Revenge by Brian Daley.
     The second volume of the original "Han Solo trilogy" that was published in the early '80s (another trio of books about Han was published in the late '90s), this book matters to me because my father bought it for me just before he took me into the theater to see The Empire Strikes Back. Dad's not a reader, and he rarely bought me books when I was a kid (that was Mom's job). But as we walked along State Street toward the Centre Theatre one summer afternoon, we passed a store window filled with this latest Star Wars tie-in product. He turned to me and asked, "Do you have that one yet?" When I said no, he immediately walked into the store -- I think it was a drugstore, or maybe a magazine shop -- and plunked down $1.95. As I recall, I read about half of it while waiting in line to see the new movie...

   • Star Trek: The Motion Picture by Gene Roddenberry. This is going to sound really weird, but this so-so novelization of a so-so movie matters to me because it comforted me the night my parents and I thought my dad was having a heart attack. I was in the fifth grade when I was wakened by my mom in the middle of one horrible night. She was obviously trying hard not to alarm me, and was just as obviously spooked herself. I grabbed my book more out of habit than anything -- in those days, I almost always had a paperback sticking out of my back pocket -- and I read it while we waited in an eerily deserted emergency room. I was young enough that I was still able to concentrate on a book while my father was being monitored by an EKG, but I wasn't oblivious. I knew what was going on, and I was scared. But I had my friends Kirk and Bones and Spock, and in the end everything was fine. Incidentally, it turned out my father's heart was racing because he drank too much coffee (three pots a day, back then), not because there was anything wrong with him.

   • The Snows of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories by Ernest Hemingway.
     I hated Hemingway when I was forced to read him in high school classes, and he was out of favor with the literati when I was in college, so I don't quite know how I came to even pick up this slim volume of short stories. However, I somehow ran across it, read it, and was stunned by the beauty I found within it. The story "A Clean, Well-Lighted Place," in particular, said so much in so few words. It changed the way I thought I needed to write in order to really make my point. Even though I still tend to ramble, I am now far more conscious that the best way to say what I need to say is simply to say it.

   • Walden by Henry David Thoreau.
     Let's set the scene: I was a freshman in college, awakening to the possibilities around me, filled with hope for the future and yet also prematurely cynical and bitter over events in my personal life. My family was being torn apart at the time by illness and long-simmering conflicts -- a long story I'm not going to recount right now. Suffice it to say I was extremely confused and desperate, eager to be free and grown up and happy. I wanted to feel like all the shit in the world mattered, and I was despairing of ever feeling that way. And then I encountered these words: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation." That made a kind of sense to me that no prayer, no scripture, ever has. It didn't comfort me in the sense of making everything better, but rather by reassuring me that everyone struggles with wanting their lives to be about something, and that you can choose how you're going to live. I have forgotten the lessons of Walden from time to time in the years since, but everytime I re-encounter this great work of a great and gentle mind, I react in the same way. I have a pocket-sized volume of Thoreau's signature work in my desk at all times...
     

5. Tag 5 people to take this survey:
   This last question/category is better suited to the community atmosphere of LiveJournal than my stand-alone blog, and the truth is I don't know five people I could inflict this upon, at least not five people who have blogs or other public forums. Maybe my buddy Cheno needs some material for his new blog? Aside from him, I can't think of anyone...