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Other Diaries

Jeff Duntemann

Michael Covington

February 28, 2006

Ever notice that cars have faces? (Come on, admit it. Sure you have). When I was a kid, walking to elementary school, I noticed how much a 1956 Mercury looked like Claude Akins.

(Claude's the one on the left).

No? Don't see it? Well, how about this more recent discovery of twins, separted at birth? Dame Edna and the recent Chrysler 300 M.

Back when I was working in Germany, my mother came over to visit. I told her that I was going to buy a Porsche 911, and one Saturday we took a walk along the footpath by the delivery lot out behind the factory, full of brand-new 1980 911s in cosmoline, waiting to be shipped to the USA. Her comment was "You're going to buy one of those frogfaced things?"

Well, that's all for today. Ta-ta, possums.

February 26, 2006

Darrin McGavin, Little Ralphie's dad in A Christmas Story, died today. http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=1663271

I remember him from way back, when he had a TV series in the early 70s called Kolchak: The Night Stalker. One episode was supposed to take place in Chicago's planetarium, but of course it was filmed at Griffith Planetarium in LA. I remember while I was operating the Adler Planetarium machine, kids would occasionally ask me if an episode of Kolchak had been filmed there.

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(first aired September 2, 1974 -- I think that was about the time I started working at Adler).

http://members.fortunecity.com/lost_giant/kolchak/kolchak1.htm

also http://www.squidge.org/~peja/kolchak/Kolchakepisodeguide.htm

U.F.O.(aka: They Have Been They Are They Will Be) Guest Cast: James Gregory, Mary Wickes, Dick Van Patten,Maureen Arthur, John Fiedler, Phil Leeds, Fritz Feld, Rudy Challenger, Carol Ann Susi

Writer: Rudolph Borchert Director: Allen Baron

The truth is really "out there" when Carl investigates the death of several animals in the zoo who have had all the bone marrow sucked out of them. Dodging piles of tar-like goo, and invisible menaces in the planetarium, he comes face-to-shiny-exterior with the killer's spaceship.

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Also passed away today, Don Knotts.

February 4, 2006

With nothing better to do with my time, and alternately amused and infuriated by the Mohammed / cartoon flap, I came up with this. Sent it to a friend. He wants to send it to the San Francisco Chronicle. He's welcome to.

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Meanwhile, the "free world" must realize that with freedom of speech comes great responsibility. What is commonplace for one group of people might be deemed grossly offensive by another group whose right to hold their beliefs is no less valid. Therefore, I invite you to join my new religion, Lotusdisestablishmentarianism (orthodox). See, we worship all cars -- well, most cars -- but Lotus is viewed by our faith as being the Antichrysler. Any depiction of a Lotus, or that of Colin Chapman, the Great Satan of Lotus, sends us into a tizzy. (We practice entering and leaving tizzies at our house of worship). So while a photograph of a car in a newspaper or magazine may be completely unremarkable for some people, for us it has deep religious significance. We demand that editors and publishers take our delicate sensibilities and deep-rooted beliefs into consideration whenever they even think about running a photo of a Lotus, and refrain from doing so.

Thank you.

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Here's his version:

Editor -- This is to advise you and your readers of the Holy Order of Lotusarians. We worship the Lotus Mark VII and its creator, the Prophet Colin Chapman. According to our religion, any depiction of the car or its inventor is sacrilege and punishable by…by…by burning up your heathen cars--yes, that's it! And by coming to your offices and beating on your corporate logo with a traffic cone.

Be aware that the Bush administration itself has called for restraint (self-censorship) in the name of Freedom Of Speech. If your own government is willing to sacrifice The Constitution to appease us, you should be willing to do the same.

Anyone who dares tarnish, humiliate, or degrade our Prophet and a car you don't own and probably never will own is guilty of the highest degree--the highest, do you understand?--of immorality, and deserving of holy fatwah.

John T.

High Lotusarian

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I really wish he'd kept the line about the Antichrysler. I'm rather proud of that one and I can't see ever getting a chance to use it again.

January 26, 2006

Miscellaneous blatherings.

Overuse or misuse of words or phrases sometimes ticks me off (I tick easily).

One of these is "on the ground" or, worse, "boots on the ground." Usually these words add absolutely no content to a statement. They're padding, or showing off.

I just ran across it in http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0127/p01s01-usfp.html

"Few analysts expect the Bush administration to make bold moves with so much on the ground in flux. Not only are the Palestinians embarking on the hard task of forming a government from outside the president's political circle, but Israel - still digesting the departure of Ariel Sharon from the leadership scene - is heading for elections on March 18."

In the very next paragraph,

"The US could simply suspend contact with - and financial assistance to - the Palestinian Authority over the rise of Hamas to the government. But "the stakes are too high on the ground to simply walk away," says Haim Malka, a Middle East expert..."

Once was enough. Twice is overkill. No, wait, that's a buzzword from another war. Hey! I have it! "We had to kill the paragraph in order to save it."

In each case, here's a test: take a big fat black marker and cross out "on the ground" and see if it reads any different. Don't any of these outfits have EDITORS???

I like this guy's analysis: http://www.highereducation.org/crosstalk/ct0104/voices0104-policy.shtml

"But some jargon serves no such purpose. It is not only unnecessary to the task of communication, but actually obscures the message. A good example is "boots on the ground," one of the more entertaining bits of military jargon that recently gained popularity (and attendant overuse). Does "200,000 more boots on the ground" represent another 200,000 soldiers, or must we divide by two, on the assumption that each soldier has two boots? Have the soldiers walked so many miles that their worn-out boots need to be replaced, thus requiring more boots on the ground?

"A CNN report from last April began, "With U.S. boots on the ground at Saddam International Airport, sustained explosions rocked Baghdad on Friday morning." Was anyone wearing these U.S. boots? Did the boots have to sustain the explosions without human reinforcements? Donald Rumsfeld did not clarify.

"Of course, the real reason for using this expression, and many others like it, has nothing to do with conveying useful, specific information-in this case, about troop deployments. Rather, its use says, 'I am an expert in this field, an insider. I am someone who knows the lingo, so you should listen to me.' "

Like he says.

Well, this is where the rubber hits the road; I'm off to shift my paradigm, leverage my... uh... crowbar? and... uh... push the envelope, yeah, that's it.

A friend sent me a link to some great photos taken at various airshows around the country.

www.airshowjournal.com

I've seen some of those. The natural-metal B-17 ("Aluminum Overcast") and the B-24J ("The Dragon and his Tail") along with a natural metal B-25 pass through Orange County/ John Wayne Airport at least once a year, and give rides. I think the going rate is $300 for 45 minutes. One may get a leather flying jacket out of the deal, I'm not sure. (Those are typically $200 at full retail). Back when I was even more childlike (this was in college), I bought a Monogram 1/48 scale model of a B-24J, and an aftermarket Microscale decal sheet for that very airplane, "The Dragon and his Tail." The kit is still unfinished. Oddly enough, I bought that in Chicago, but now I live less than five miles from the maker of Microscale.

Another plane that I saw down at Gillespie Field, east of San Diego, with my dad several years ago was this one:

http://www.commemorativeairforce.org/news/2003/nr-03-0710.html

and warbirdalley and Ghost Squadron

(from the Warbirdalley page)

That's a Spanish-built (postwar) Heinkel He-111 done up to look like a WW2 job. (The joke was, they used Rolls-Royce engines -- the same basic engine used in the Heinkel's nemeses, the Spitfire and Hurricane fighters). Unfortunately plane and crew are no more.

That was the last flying He-111 even if it was really a CASA 2111. It had been used in the 1960s movie "The Battle of Britain."