We’ve finally had some weather around here. We have had a distinct absence of weather. For most of the summer it’s been almost Californian, without the mildness and Pacific temperament. Steady and warm and blue. That’s great! Except for the drought part. This, of course, is due to perfidious Mankind, and we must redouble our efforts to adjust the climate and fine-tune the solar impact, and all that, but to be honest it’s been nice. But dry. After a while you realize how much you miss the rain.
And so it came to pass that a good stern standard-issue thunderstorm finally rolled through, with all the theatrical overtures. The guttural rumbles in the distance, the growling and muttering, the caul of clouds drawn over the sky, the impatient flashes. This doesn’t mean you’re going to get a storm. It just means that the sky is in the mood for one. It may be dissuaded. It may get distracted. It may just move along. Earlier in the day I’d seen one of those Highly Specific Rainstorms -
And thought, why not us? C’mon. Now here it was. The planes screamed through it overhead, sounding a bit urgent and distressed. The sun went down and the sky lit up, one side sending messages to the other.
Heavy drops, unevenly paced. Tempo increases. Then the torrent.
Marvelous! Unless you’re Birch the Dog, and then it’s just scary. He had that horrible Dog Grin that indicates distress, and followed me everywhere. Sat under the desk in my study. Can’t tell him it’s okay. I’ve no words, just the example of my own indifference - which may strike him as foolishness, because I just don’t get it.
It hit again the next day, a suppertime torrent that provided a distraction from the disappointment of the pizza. It’s not that it wasn’t good; it was. But it wasn’t what I thought I’d bought. The Lotsa Mozzas were on sale, so I’d bought four. I thought I’d bought one that was, I think, called “Classic Hamburger.” That was a Midwest staple when I was growing up, I think, and it sounded good. But it turns out I’d lost my nerve at the last moment, and gone for the staple, the Pepperoni and Sausage. Both of which, you presume, add more flavor than . . . hamburger.
But I really wanted hamburger.
Who made that, in Fargo? Pinky’s? That was the place where we got our pizza when I was young, Pinky’s Pizza. Probably a Facebook page dedicated to its memory. (Of course.) A columnist wrote about it, and I feel like I’ve one foot in the freshly-dug rectangular plot just looking at the page. This is what OLLLLLD PEOPLE are thinking about.
But the Fargo Forum was also full of bad news. Mass shooting of cops. MPR: "The shooting is being investigated by the North Dakota Bureau of Criminal Investigation and the FBI. Zibolski said he is confident investigators will find a reason why Barakat opened fire."
Mm-hmm. And I'm just as confident they'll tell us. Which is to say, not entirely.
In other non-pizza news, I painted the shed.
The door will be replaced, if I can find anyone to do it. The size is not standard. You cannot go to Home Depot and buy a door that fits. I had a guy who did a custom job, but he didn't seal the bottom, and the wood wicked up all the moisture and ruined the paint. I removed the paint today, revealing a spongy, dusty, deteriorating, unpaintable surface. So naturally, I painted that. Why? Because I may not find a handyman for months.
"Hey, why not go to Home Depot's page that lets you request an estimate for a custom door?" I did. They never got back to me. I called to ask why.
"We don't do shed doors," said Robert, the guy on the Home Depot answer line, who hoped that would settle the matter.
I guess it did.
I don’t know why it took me so long to see this movie.
Plot:
Helius (Willy Fritsch) is an entrepreneur with an interest in space travel. He seeks out his friend Professor Mannfeldt (Klaus Pohl), a visionary who wrote a treatise claiming that there was probably much gold on the Moon, only to be ridiculed by his peers. Helius recognizes the value of Mannfeldt's work. However, a gang of evil businessmen have also taken an interest in Mannfeldt's theories.
He has to bring the crooks into his plan, or they’ll sabotage his rocket, the Friede. Reluctantly, Helius agrees to their terms.
In other words: it is acceptable to collaborate with evil if it advances science.
Keep that in mind.
Metropolis style titles and credits:
Argue with this; it makes for an interesting conversation.
Yep, it's a German silent:
And a bad print, as you can tell.
So much of the basic "rocket story" stuff is here:
I do believe it set in the public imagination the basics of Space and Rockets.
At least for Germans.
There’s so much to see here; silent Lang is just incredible. But we’ll go with the facility sequence, which is amazing. Remember, it’s 1929.
The flyover of the facility:
The rollout of the spaceship from the VAB, predating the actual thing by many decades.
The whole launch sequence is fantastic, and you can imagine the effect on the imagination of a young man.
Well.
A while ago I read V2, a Robert Harris WW2 novel about, well, the V2. Harris puts his characters at the construction of the Mittelwerk V2 factory, blasted out of a mountain. His description of the slave workers is vivid and appalling, one of the few moments of the book that rises above the relentless documentary tone. Beaten sickly masses of men, toiling in a grey clamorous hell. It brings to mind Metropolis, of course.
Surely Von Braun made the connection.
Why surely, you say? Wikpiedia:
Beginning in 1925, Wernher attended a boarding school at Ettersburg Castle near Weimar, where he did not do well in physics and mathematics. There he acquired a copy of Die Rakete zu den Planetenräumen (1923, By Rocket into Planetary Space) by rocket pioneer Hermann Oberth. In 1928, his parents moved him to the Hermann-Lietz-Internat (also a residential school) on the East Frisian North Sea island of Spiekeroog. Space travel had always fascinated Wernher, and from then on he applied himself to physics and mathematics to pursue his interest in rocket engineering.
In 1928, he was 16. When he was 17, Woman in the Moon was released. We know he saw it. His V2 prototype had a "Woman in the Moon" logo.
This movie was his Star Trek, and he built the Enterprise. Except he was working for the Mirror Universe guys.
That'll do: off on another week of stuff, and I hope you enjoy it. |
