THE SANTOS=DUMONT DEMOISELLE PART 1
BRAZILIAN ALBERTO SANTOS=DUMONT (the “=,” his stylized choice) was a Deutsch-Prize-winning balloonist (1901) who went on to demonstrate his 14 bis aeroplane on October 23, 1906 before a large crowd … Continue reading
R&T SORTA CARPS ABOUT THE MUSCLE CAR ERA PART 2
YESTERDAY IN PART 1, R&T WAXED ELOQUENT about muscle cars countering a U.S. automaker racing ban and swiping car names from good, honest foreigners. Today it continues in its road … Continue reading
R&T SORTA CARPS ABOUT THE MUSCLE CAR ERA PART 1
R&T GOT ALL NUTSY in 1964 about the Pontiac GTO’s name, but they were also recognizing the category of “muscle car.” Wikipedia cites Merriam-Webster defining the category as “a group … Continue reading
SHILLING FOR PROFESSOR EAGLETON
NOT THAT TERRY EAGLETON, English literary theorist and public intellectual, needs the like of me to encourage folks to his lectures. But his “Where Does Culture Come From?,” London Review … Continue reading
GREAT (AND NEAT-O) LAKES
THE INTERESTING FACTS website offered a tidbit that the Great Lakes hold more that 20 percent of the world’s fresh water, six quadrillion gallons of it: “That’s so much water,” … Continue reading
QUITE AN EVENTFUL YEAR—1994
“WHAT WITH FIRESTORMS, EARTHQUAKES, MUD SLIDES and, as I begin this report, torrential rains, flooding, even a tornado, Southern California had hardly been a boring place of late.” So wrote … Continue reading
HOW’S NORWAY DOING WITH EVS? PART 2
YESTERDAY, TWO FASCINATING ARTICLES yielded tidbits about Norway and its dramatic rise of electric vehicle sales from 1 percent in 2014 to 83 percent last year as consumers responded to … Continue reading
HOW’S NORWAY DOING WITH EVS? PART 1
DEMOGRAPHICS AS WELL AS GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIES have a lot to do with Norway’s love affair with electric vehicles. Here, in Parts 1 and 2 today and tomorrow, are tidbits gleaned … Continue reading
HOME RERUN TIME—CELEBRATING A SCRAWNY GUY “WANTING TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY” PART 2
YESTERDAY WE BEGAN GLEANING tidbits about Elisha Cook Jr., who is typically recalled as Kasper Gutman’s psychotic sidekick in The Maltese Falcon and as a doomed informer in The Big … Continue reading
HOME RERUN TIME—CELEBRATING A SCRAWNY GUY “WANTING TO BE TAKEN SERIOUSLY” PART 1
I’VE SAVED SEVERAL CLASSIC FILMS FOR HOME RERUNS, each re-viewed when the spirit moves me. These include Pandora’s Box, the 1929 silent flick (its operatic version Alban Berg’s Lulu); Bogart/Astor/Greenstreet/Lorre’s … Continue reading
Simanaitis Says 