Apr202008

In Memoriam: Charlton Heston

Charlton Heston in his most famous role

[Ed. note: I know I’m a couple weeks late for the funeral and pretty much the entire blogosphere has already had its say on the late actor Charlton Heston, but I feel I would be highly remiss if I didn’t recognize his passing here in my little corner of the InterWebs. So just imagine that it’s two weeks ago and this is current news, okay?]

One of the great treasures of my childhood was the time I spent watching old movies on television with my mom. I’m thinking in particular of the days before the home video revolution, when the viewer actually had very little control over the viewing experience. If you didn’t like whatever was on KSL’s Big Money Movie that day, you found something else to do. And if you did like the film, you really had to pay attention and savor it because there was no telling when it might air again.

I think that’s probably the biggest difference between The Way Things Used to Be and the on-demand world we now enjoy, the way we take it for granted that you can watch the same flick over and over, whenever you feel like it. When I was a kid, we just didn’t have that luxury, and I honestly think movies meant more to film lovers back then because of the relative scarcity of any given title.

There were, however, three pictures that you could count on seeing pretty regularly, because they always aired at least once a year, usually around holidays: The Wizard of Oz, Ben-Hur, and The Ten Commandments. As it happened, my mom loved all three of them, and, in the case of the two Heston films, could even recall seeing them on the big screen when they were new. (Somewhere down in the Bennion Archives, I have the Ben-Hur souvenir program that she bought in the lobby of the late, lamented Villa Theatre way back in 1959.) Squashing these epic movies down into the confines of a 24-inch TV screen robbed them of much of their grandeur, of course, but I didn’t fully understand that at the time. I thought they were neat, partly because watching them was an annual tradition, partly because my mom was so enthusiastic about them and my early tastes were heavily influenced by hers, but mostly because I liked Charlton Heston, who died April 5th at the age of 84.

Continue Reading…

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Apr192008

The Prunes of Tomorrow

Here’s a weird little novelty, courtesy of Lileks. No introduction from me would really do it justice, so just watch:

Remember when everyone thought the future was going to be, well, futuristic? We’ve lowered our sights in so many ways. Sigh… at least they haven’t de-wrinkled our prunes yet. (Um, wouldn’t a smooth prune just be a plum? Duh, guys.)

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Apr182008

Friday Afternoon Cheesecake

Since I seem to wallowing in stereotypically masculine interests today anyhow, what with the airplanes and all, I thought I’d throw this up, too:

Mmmm, yummy Raquel in a serape

That’s the eternally yummy Raquel Welch, circa mid-1960s or so. I have no idea if this is a still from a movie or a modeling gig or what. But… it’s Raquel Welch… in a serape and a gun belt… mmmmm…

Oh, come on, it’s Friday afternoon! What better time for a big ol’ slice of cheesecake? Stop looking at me like that…

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Apr182008

Air Force Retiring the Nighthawk

Hm… I just read some news that kind of startled me: the Air Force is retiring its F-117A Nighthawk fighter planes — a.k.a. “the stealth fighter” — this month. Next week, in fact. Monday, to be precise.

And why is this startling, you may ask? Mostly because it doesn’t seem like these weird little black arrowheads have been around all that long, but the article I read reveals that they’ve actually been in service for over twenty years, ever since 1983, although the Air Force denied their existence until 1988. (Makes you wonder how many UFO sightings prior to ’88 were actually Nighthawks being tested out and then flown on secret missions, doesn’t it?)

Continue Reading…

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Apr182008

Plasma Torch + Ex Girlfriend = Huh?

I’m not one to pay much attention to dreams — I don’t try to interpret them, I don’t freight them with any real significance, and most the time I don’t even remember them (I assume, however, that I do have them, because, as far as I can tell, I haven’t gone mad like you’re supposed to if you don’t dream) — but I had one this morning just before the alarm woke me that’s really staying with me for some reason. It wasn’t scary or anything, it was just… weird.

In the dream, I was in The Girlfriend’s bedroom, trying to find the source of this freaky purple light emanating from beneath her bed. I got down on my knees and, after a moment’s hesitation, lifted the bedskirt. There was an automated plasma torch under there, merrily slicing strips from this long bolt of fabric, which I somehow knew were going to be used to make underwear. I don’t know what kind of underwear, or whether it was ladies’ underwear or men’s or sexy or utilitarian. Just that the fabric would end up as… underwear.

And then an ex-girlfriend that I haven’t seen in probably 12 years showed up. She didn’t do anything, she just walked into the room, gave me a little wave, and walked out the other door.

And that was it. Weird, huh? The ex-girlfriend’s appearance makes a certain amount of sense — the media coverage for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is beginning to pick up, and I was involved with her back when Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade came out in ’89, so reading those articles yesterday probably just stirred up some old memories — but where the hell did the plasma torch and the underwear come from? I’m going to be pondering this one all day, I fear…

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Apr162008

Announcing the Launch of Reel Classroom

My good friend and occasional writing partner Mike Chenoweth (more familiarly known in these parts as “Chenopup”) has just launched a nifty entrepreneurial venture, a company called Reel Classroom, which will produce and sell educational DVDs targeted at those who want to become film and video professionals, as well as those who are already in the business and want to deepen their skill sets. The first two DVDs — Introduction to Lighting for Film and Video and Green Screen Lighting — are available now.

Both were written, directed, and edited by Mike, and they feature veteran gaffer Carl Gundestrup as your host and narrator. I’ve seen both DVDs myself, and think they’re pretty interesting, even for people who have no intention of ever becoming gaffers or lighting techs. (Full disclosure: I actually appear on-screen in Green Screen Lighting, in all of my difficult-to-light glory!)

The Reel Classroom web site is live as of yesterday, so I’d like to ask my three loyal readers to do me a favor: click on over there and have a look around, see if there’s anything there you might like for yourself, and generally do what you can to spread the word. If you know anyone who might be interested in learning about the film industry, let them know.

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Apr152008

So What Really Sank the Titanic?

Among my various esoteric interests is a curious — some would say morbid — fascination for the infamous tragedies of history: Pompeii, the Hindenberg crash, and of course, the grandmother of disaster stories, the sinking of the RMS Titanic.

Today is the 96th anniversary of what author Walter Lord called “a night to remember,” i.e., the night the supposedly unsinkable ship struck an iceberg while on her maiden — and only — voyage. (Technically, the ship hit the iceberg late on the night of April 14, but it took two and a half hours to go down, so it actually sank on the 15th.)

Public interest in this particular shipwreck never seems to wane, for some reason, and to this day people are still debating over what exactly happened out there in the North Atlantic. Oh, sure, everyone knows the ship hit a ‘berg, but was it ripped open like a giant can of anchovies by a sharp spur of ice, as so many movies have depicted? Or was the damage actually something more… subtle? Caused by something innocuous that nobody thought would be a problem, like the stupidly mundane combination of rubber o-rings and freezing temperatures that brought down the space shuttle Challenger?

Here’s a theory: it was the rivets that held the ship together. More precisely, according to two authors of an upcoming book, it was rivets made of inferior, brittle materials that shattered when the iceberg gently brushed — not ripped into — Titanic‘s side. According to this theory — which is backed up by observations of the wreck itself on the ocean floor — the ship wasn’t torn open, as everyone has believed; rather, the broken rivets allowed the hull plates to simply open up along their seams. The end result was the same, of course.

Continue Reading…

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Apr152008

Something I’ll Bet You Didn’t Know About Coffee

Did you know that what they used to call “marital relations” is entirely dependent on the quality of what’s in your cup? No, really. Check out this “educational film” from the Folgers company:

So, let’s review: hubby is so disgusted by his morning ration of battery acid that he’s apparently decided he never wants to have sex again, at least not with his wife. (There is that veiled threat about the girls at the office and their “hot plates,” the implication obviously being that he’s ready to throw the missus over for somebody who really knows how to brew some good joe.) Fortunately, she’s not the sort to throw crockery at the jerk and move back in with her mother; instead, she wisely identifies the source of her husband’s discontent and takes steps to remediate the problem. And sure enough, by nighttime he’s all hepped up on go-juice and ready to rock her world.

Which of these two is the more foolish, the shallow man who is obviously on a caffeine-fueled emotional rollercoaster, or his doormat of a wife who’ll do anything — even turn to convenient, cheap, processed, better-living-through-modern-chemistry food substitutes — just to avoid revealing that she flunked her Home Ec class three times in a row?

Did these quaintly ridiculous ad campaigns really work back in the day? Do they even still make Folgers Crystals, and is anyone dumb enough to use them? And what would happen to this guy if he someone served him some freshly ground French-press coffee, i.e., real coffee? Based on the evidence presented here, I imagine the sexual release would probably kill everyone within five feet of the sap…

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