Monthly Archives: June 2005

Jun122005

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…

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Jun112005

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!

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Jun102005

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…

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Jun092005

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…

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Jun092005

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.

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Jun092005

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.

Continue Reading…

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Jun072005

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.

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Jun052005

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.

Continue Reading…

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Jun042005

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.

Continue Reading…

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Jun032005

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…

Continue Reading…

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