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  1. Inkstainedwretch

    Your Most Disturbing Realizations

    I have read that a child being born today stands a good chance of living to be 200 years old. Advances in medicine and geriatrics have been accelerating steadily and in another two or three decades will reach levels unheard-of today. A 200 year life expectancy will make them effectively...
  2. Inkstainedwretch

    Experience of service in the Armed Forces

    I did a night jump at Ft. Bragg where I'm pretty sure we were dropped from under 500 ft. Maybe closer to 300. I hit the dirt no more than five seconds after my T-10 opened. Low cloud cover that night and I think our NG pilots wanted to get back home rather than wait for weather conditions to...
  3. Inkstainedwretch

    Name your favorite films based on true stories.

    Lawrence of Arabia.
  4. Inkstainedwretch

    The Maltese Falcon

    The Code again. According to the Code you couldn't let criminals get away with a crime, so The Maltese Falcon had to have that tacked-on ending when it should be clear to everyone that Gutman and Cairo just went on their merry way. In the same spirit, on the old Älfred Hitchcock show Hitch...
  5. Inkstainedwretch

    School and college sports

    When I was a kid in Dallas in 1954-55 one of my favorite shows was "Space Patrol!" (yes, the exclamation point was in the title). Back then, the stars did the commercials live during the course of the stories. These were sponsored by Ralston Rice Chex, Wheat Chex and Corn Chex. These cereals...
  7. Inkstainedwretch

    The Maltese Falcon

    Most of the Hollywood fast-draws were performed from low-slung, steel-lined holsters that weren't invented yet in the 19th century. They were invented in the late '40s-early '50s by Arvo Ojala, a Finn, who was Redwing's rival as a stunt shooter. I've read that Jerry Lewis was the fastest, with...
  8. Inkstainedwretch

    The Maltese Falcon

    I've read that Redwing had a trick where he would draw a knife and throw it, then draw his pistol and fire and the knife would stick into the bullet hole, the bullet having arrived first. that would be something to see.
  9. Inkstainedwretch

    The Maltese Falcon

    In Sam Peckinpah's "The Wild Bunch" in most scenes they used Spanish-made Star pistols, which were near-ringers for Colt 1911s but which fired 9mm parabellum ammo and worked fine with blanks. One scene where this is obvious is just before the opening gunfight when Pike Bishop (William Holden)...
  10. Inkstainedwretch

    The Maltese Falcon

    I believe blanks were always used in the film industry. The reason for the guns being pointed off to one side was that it was one of the innumerable rules of the Code that if the gun and the victim were in the same frame, the gun could not be pointed directly at the victim. Go figure.
  11. Inkstainedwretch

    The Maltese Falcon

    Sean Connery carried a Webley/Fosberry in the movie ZARDOZ (1974). In an early scene you see him cocking it by grabbing the barrel and pushing back.
  13. Inkstainedwretch

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Hotel rooms almost never have phone books any more. I find this very frustrating.
  14. Inkstainedwretch

    Your Most Disturbing Realizations

    Agatha Christie wrote that when she was a girl, she thought that her family would never be wealthy enough to afford an automobile, but they would never be so poor that they couldn't have servants. How expectations change. Now everyone has a car, but hardly anyone can afford servants.
  15. Inkstainedwretch

    Your Most Disturbing Realizations

    One reason is that half the world was watching live on tv when the Challenger blew up. That made it terribly immediate. The Columbia was destroyed on re-entry when nobody was watching. Many only learned about it the next day. It just wasn't as intense and immediate an experience.
  16. Inkstainedwretch

    Your Most Disturbing Realizations

    Okay, here's a mind-bender: Cleopatra lived closer in time to the building of the first Pizza Hut than she did to the building of the first Pyramid. Egyptian history is that long.
  17. Inkstainedwretch

    The "real" cool cats.

    When I was growing up in the '50s-'60s, I never heard the term "greaser"except as a racial slur meaning Mexican. Young hooligan types were called "hoods,"short for hoodlums. In truth, most were wannabes who affected the sideburns and D.A. hairdos, the pegged jeans and engineer boots and, if they...
  19. Inkstainedwretch

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Dentist offices no longer have spit basins. I miss those things. I have to taste all that stuff they use while the assistant pokes around in my mouth with a plastic suction tube. What's wrong with a good rinse-and-spit?
  20. Inkstainedwretch

    Your Most Disturbing Realizations

    The last episode of "MASH"? I saw the original film in 1970 and I watched it while sitting on the mud at an outdoor GI theater in a place called Long Binh in what was then still the Republic of South Vietnam. It was very controversial at the time because the Army thought it was anti-military...
  21. Inkstainedwretch

    DEATHS ; Notable Passings; The Thread to Pay Last Respects

    I remember him from "The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca" on the Walt Disney show in the late fifties. He was one of the last links to that era.
  22. Inkstainedwretch

    Past lives, do you believe?

    Just a couple of centuries ago there were fewer than a billion people in the world. Now there are seven billion and counting. In fact, most of the people who have ever lived are alive today. So not everyone has been reincarnated, there just aren't enough souls from previous lives. Unless you...
  23. Inkstainedwretch

    Vintage Things That Have Disappeared In Your Lifetime?

    Lucky rabbit's foot charms. They used to sell them everywhere, often dyed bright colors, on a keychain. Made with real rabbit's feet. I don't remember when I last saw one. You'd probably have PETA all over you for selling them now.

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