Jul062004

Big Announcement: Warbirds Over Utah!

As I mentioned a while back, I’ve got a passion for World War II bomber planes. I think they’re beautiful in the same way that antique cars, boats, and trains are beautiful. They were designed according to the aesthetic and engineering standards of another era and, for whatever reason, I admire those standards. In many cases, I admire them more than current standards. Machines from the mid-20th Century are not primitive so much as simple, and they are authentic and unique in a way that most modern machinery is not. (Can you tell the difference between the vast majority of modern cars unless you’re close enough to read the markings? I know I can’t, aside from a handful of exceptions.)

Even though the vast majority of warbirds were broken up for scrap or otherwise removed from the earth a long time ago, it is still possible to see one outside of a picture book. There are airplane museums all over the United States that have at least one or two of these craft in their collections. Here in Utah, for example, the museum at Hill Force Base in Ogden contains a number of large warbirds, including a B-17 Flying Fortress (like the Memphis Belle), a B-25 Mitchell, and a B-24 Liberator. However, seeing airplanes in a museum is something like viewing a stuffed bear. You can study the size and shape of the animal, but you won’t see it move. You won’t understand its essence. Museum planes are dead things, mounted and displayed behind velvet ropes, dusted by attendants, lovingly preserved for the ages… but they’re cold and emptied of their spirit.

A far better option is to try and see one of the handful of warbirds that is still flying. When you see a “living” warbird “in the wild” you can hear the roar of piston engines that don’t sound like any engine made today. You can see the sun glinting off wings and plexiglass nose bubbles. You can feel the wind of the plane’s passage and smell the exhaust. Watching a warbird pass overhead, it is possible for one brief moment to imagine what it must have been like on a sunny English morning in 1943, when the skies were filled with machines and the combined sound of their engines made the ground hum beneath a man’s feet.

If you live in the Salt Lake-Provo area, you’re about to have the chance to see not just one but two “living” warbirds. The Collings Foundation “Wings of Freedom” tour, which consists of a B-17 called the Nine O’ Nine and a colorful B-24 known as The Dragon and His Tail, is coming to our area. The planes will be in Heber City on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, then they will fly down from the mountains into Provo on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. At each stop, walkthrough tours will be available (a very reasonable $8 gets you into both planes) as well as flight opportunities.

That’s right, you will have a chance to go for a ride on an authentic warbird. The price for a ride seems pretty steep at first glance — $400 for approximately twenty minutes in the air — but I can tell you from experience that it’s worth every penny. My father and I rode on The Dragon during last year’s Wings of Freedom stop in Heber, and I can honestly say it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. The cost is tax deductible, the money goes toward keeping the planes flying, and you will be able to tell your friends that you’ve done something few other living people have.

Even if you don’t have the scratch to go for a ride, I urge anyone who is remotely interested in seeing authentic living history to try and get out to one of these two tour stops. The Foundation’s mission is to keep these machines in the air where they belong, and they need your help to do it. And for you, this really is a rare opportunity — there are a mere fourteen B-17s still flying in the United States, and only one single B-24, The Dragon and His Tail. How often do you get to see a one-of-a-kind anything these days? Go on, see a piece of history, and know that your support will ensure that others will be able to do the same, hopefully for years to come…

spacer
Jul032004

Holiday Time-wasters

I’ve been thinking that it’s kind of a bummer to begin the holiday weekend with an obituary, so I thought I’d put up something a bit more entertaining. Of course, the odds are against anyone actually reading any of this before Tuesday morning, and if you are reading this over the weekend, I recommend that you immediately shut down your computer and get yourself outside. Follow the smell of charred beef and cordite until you find some Fourth of July festivities, then plant your butt in a lawn chair and enjoy the things that make this country great: artery-clogging meat products, microbrewed beer, and entertaining pyrotechnic devices. Or, as Apu once said, “Celebrate the independence of your country by blowing up a small piece of it.”

If, however, you are one of those unfortunate drones who is chained to the computer during this time of revelry, listening to the slow methodical drumbeat of that fat guy who lets you know when to swing the oar, allow me to provide you with some diversions:

Continue Reading…

spacer
Jul022004

Brando

I was planning to write this morning about one of the more eccentric aspects of living in Utah, namely the way Utahns celebrate Independence Day on July 3rd if the 4th falls on a Sunday (except, of course, for the rebellious “in-Utah-but-not-of-Utah” towns of Park City and Moab, which stubbornly insist on holding their festivities on the actual declared holiday). However, I’ve just read something on the ‘net that is far more important to me personally than all that theologically-inspired scheduling nonsense: the great Marlon Brando has died.

Continue Reading…

spacer
Jun302004

Review-a-Rama: Troy, The Terminal, Shrek 2, The Stepford Wives

I realized as I was writing the previous entry that I haven’t posted any film reviews in a while, even though they are supposed to be one of the mainstays of Simple Tricks and Nonsense. There are several explanations, not least of which is my tendency to procrastinate, in addition to my equally pernicious capacity for distraction. (That’s a fancy way of saying that I always intend to write a review when I see a movie, but I’m too tired the day I actually see it, so I figure I’ll write about it the next day. But then when tomorrow comes some new topic smacks me in the forehead and I go for it like a cat following a laser pointer, and the next thing I know it’s been a month since I saw that one flick I was going to write about and, oh hell, I really need to catch up, and… Well, that’s probably more than you really wanted to know about my thought processes. Let’s just stick with, “I put things off and I’m easily distracted.”)

Continue Reading…

spacer
Jun282004

Ephermal Film

James Lileks had some interesting thoughts this morning about film, specifically about the subjective nature of comedy, and how well (or how poorly) a film plays to an audience a couple of generations removed from the intended one.
He’s discussing one of the later Marx Brothers movies when he says:

Continue Reading…

spacer
spacer
Jun262004

Eeeeee-vil!!

Oh, the stuff you find when you’re exploring the dank, shadowy corners of the Internet. This morning I was perusing the assorted trivialities at MetaFilter when I came across a link to something called The Gematriculator, a Web site that claims to be able to determine the relative level of good and evil contained in any other Web site or piece of text. This Gematriculator gadget is based on an obscure “science” called (what else) Gematria, which searches for patterns in the text. Numerical values are assigned to certain letters, the occurrence of these letters is tallied up and divided by the holy number seven, there is some kind of nonsense involving the Finnish alphabet… if you’re interested, follow the links above to read more about it. Personally, I didn’t get that far. I probably missed out on the really interesting bits involving ritual mollusk sacrifice and the reading of meerkat entrails. My loss, I’m sure.

The point of all this ciphering is to determine how much of the Spirit of God is present in the text being studied. A high level of the Spirit obviously indicates that a text is Good, whereas a lower level naturally denounces one’s writing as Evil. Just for un, I ran Simple Tricks through the Gematriculator, and here is the result:

This site is certified 52% EVIL by the Gematriculator

To be honest, I was surprised the results were so low. I figured my babblings would be at least 75% Evil. Guess I’ll have to try harder in the future.

Incidentally, please notice that I’ve learned a new trick. I now have the power to include photos and graphics in my blog entries. Cue the maniacal laughter! Soon, I shall take over the world! If only someone would shoot that pesky Mr. Bond for me while I waste time revealing my plans…

spacer
Jun252004

More on the Hi Ute

As a follow-up to yesterday’s entry on the Hi Ute Ranch, I’ve been Googling around for some photographs or an official Web site or something. I had no luck on the Web site, but I did find a couple of pictures. For those who want to know what the heck I was talking about yesterday or those who want to relive some happy memories, I present the following:

  • This site features one of those groovy interactive photos that enable you to move around inside them using your mouse. It’s the next best thing to standing in the middle of the actual barnyard.
  • This site, on the other hand, features an ordinary static shot of the ranch plus a brief remembrance in verse by the site’s owner, who lived on the ranch as a boy and isn’t too happy about the development that now surrounds it. I wonder how he feels about the conservation easement, whether he thinks it’s a good thing or too little, too late.

Oh, for those who don’t know and may be wondering as you read the poem on the second Web site, a kildere (or, more properly, a killdeer) is a native Utah bird that nests on the ground in open fields. It has a distinctive call that consists of one high-noted whistle followed by a lower note. This call is what gives the bird its name, although it’s always sounded to me like the bird is saying “hee-haw,” not “kill-deer.” It sounds, actually, like a more benign version of Nelson from The Simpsons. I love the sound of kilderes, especially now when you don’t encounter it much. For the last couple of summers, I’ve been fortunate enough to have a killdeer living in a small pasture behind my parents’ barn, so I hear the call fairly often…

spacer
Jun242004

Score One for Preservation

When I was a kid in the 1970s and early ’80s, much of the landscape I called “home” was rural. Open space was always nearby, even if you lived in downtown Salt Lake City, and out on the edges of the valley where my family was located, there were far more hay fields than housing developments. It was a comfortable, worn-in landscape that soothed the eye and fit the body like a really old pair of jeans.

Everything started to change in the mid ’80s, when a few subdivisions sprang up in the pastures of retiring farmers whose children didn’t want to continue working the land. These were followed by a shopping center or two, and then a couple of new stop lights to handle the increased car traffic. No big deal, it seemed… there were still plenty of fields, and the sweet smell of alfalfa in the air, and the same old dirt roads and open irrigation ditches and sluggish canals there had always been. But change was coming. These small building projects were, in fact, the beginning of a massive and uncontrollable chain reaction, like the first couple of flying neutrons that lead to a full-scale nuclear blast.

Continue Reading…

spacer
Jun212004

Going Boldly…

I’m posting this fairly late, so the people who would be interested in this story probably already know about it. If, however, you haven’t seen the news, this has been a historic day for human spaceflight.

Early this morning, SpaceShipOne, the plucky little rocket plane I recently wrote about, dropped away from its mother ship, ignited its onboard motor, and arrowed upward to an altitude of 62 miles, becoming the first manned, non-governmental vehicle to reach outer space.

Continue Reading…

spacer