Rocking It With Rockford

Jim Rockford, That Is
You know, the affable private eye who lives in a trailer down by the beach?  Big fella, personable, likes to chat his way out of trouble - have you got him now?
     I am nearly at the end of the second series and was slapping my thigh with appreciation over one particular stunt - where a car carrying four people gets driven, full speed, into a swimming pool.  Art?

James Gerner emerging at top

     There was no pretence or funny camera work on this scene - that car went headlong into the water at thirty miles per hour.  Given how dangerous something like this is, I strongly suspect the studio insisted that a proper stunt driver be behind the wheel, doubtless to the considerable disappointment of James Garner.  I think his love of driving is one reason that there's a car chase in every single episode.

Jim and Angel - who isn't one

     Another curious thing I noticed is that nobody ever locks their car doors.  Plus Jim always but always leaves his windows wound down.  Doubtless his car would resemble an oven on Gas Mark 6 if he didn't as this is Los Angeles in the summer, but - really!
     Okay, I have regaled you enough with quality television from a bygone age, time to see if the motley can keep down a pint of mustard!* The Castle Is Built On SandHere an aside.  Yes, already!  I see that Heritage England are currently undertaking an underwater excavation of a Dutch shipwreck on the Goodwin Sands - see?  kind of semi-related so not that much of an aside really - which made your humble scribe kind of curious about these sands.  They sit squarely in the English Channel, are ten miles long, and have been the graveyard of at least 1,000 ships over the passage of centuries.  There have been speculative plans about building an airport on them, which still rumbles on.  Art?

Sic

     People have been known to play cricket on them at low tide.

WRONG!

     None of which has anything to do with gamma ray lasers or hafnium.  I mentioned the GRL yesterday, which is still a theory a present - fortunately for The Bad Guys, since it would cook you like a chicken at the speed of light, and would only be stopped by the curvature of the Earth.  Making one would be spectacularly difficult and expensive, and the only likely candidates are South Canada or the Ruffians.
     Then there's hafnium, which was once touted as a potential gamma ray source, and above we have the New Scientist getting it's underwear rather bunched up.  This edition is from 2003 and concerns an experiment conducted in 1999, which nobody has since managed to replicate, that supposedly got more energy out of a fragment of hafnium than went in.
     Here we are 15 years after the article and - no hafnium-fuelled superweapons.

All the gamma-ey goodness we're missing out on

     Bah!



     This will all make sense by the time you come to read it, honestly.

BOOJUM! Reviews Films
In our own inimitable way, not that anyone would really want to imitate a stream of consciousness drivel obsessed with weasels, sharks and KILLER EELS!  Take it away maestro -
"Mama Mia: Here We Go Again": OH NO WE DO NOT! Conrad - that's me, by the way, if you haven't worked it out yet - still loathes and detests all musicals, and has hated Abba since 1975, so this bifecta of bile shall never offend either my eyes or ears.  And, just imagine, Mark Kermode - yes, that big fan of The Comsat Angels - approves of this film.  Bad Mark!  Naughty Mark!  No biscuit for Mark!

Any excuse to promote the Comsats -

"Mission Impossible: Fallout": I think the franchise has proved that, whatever the mission might be, one thing it certainly is NOT is "Impossible".  However, I grant you that "Mission Fairly Possible If Tom Cruise Does An Extremely Dangerous Stunt", whilst accurate, is a bit
lengthy.  And you need to be careful, Tom: you're not getting any younger and one day your luck might run out ...

Yeah, laugh whilst you still can, Mapother.

"Skyscraper": That's it?  Is this the long awaited sequel to "House"?  Surely it sounds as dull as bucket of sand.  How did they green light this?  It's not even "Skyscraper - BLOWING UP!" or "Skyscraper - BURNING DOWN!" or even "Skyscraper - TAKEN OVER BY KILLER EELS TERRORISTS!"  mind you, that second and third would just be remakes of "The Towering Inferno" and "Die Hard".



There were no mangosteens at Morrisons last week.  But I can be strong.
*  Don't worry, motleys love mustard.