A Touch Of Nostalgia

Your Humble Scribe Is A Pretty Horrid Person, Really -
 - though we knew that already.  However, the fusion-powered pumping unit that serves him for what humans call a "heart" can occasionally be made to twinge with the merest zephyr of emotion.  Like today.
     For I was watching the end of the original 1965 "Flight of the Phoenix", after we'd turned over from 'Columbo' - more on that later - with a kind of train-wreck attention, because I knew how it ended.
     Here an only slightly tangential aside.  Enter Paul Mantz, a pilot who also had a keen nose for business.  Art?

Paul in his younger days, looking quite dashing

     His life in Hollywood and aviation racing is too littered with fascinating incidents to list here, so I may come back to it.  One point is that he lucked-out on not flying with Amelia Earhart on the excursion she disappeared on, as he had been her co-pilot on her earlier, unsuccessful attempt, and had in fact taught her aerial navigation.
     Back to FOTP.  

That's Paul at the controls

     The pilot of this aircraft was supposed to be Paul's business partner and fellow pilot, Frank Tallman, except that Frank had broken his leg.  Oops.  So, despite being a whisper away from retirement, having become very wealthy in his chosen career, Paul took the plane up.  During filming, it hit an elevation in the ground at speed, which was disastrous for the improvised airframe - it broke up an killed Paul on the spot.  The picture below captures when the aircraft began to suffer collapse.

Pre-CGI, when people risked their lives in stunts

     Possibly the most bitter thing to observe about this tragedy is that Paul Mantz had made a living by, amongst other things, deliberately crashing a B17 bomber for the film "12 O'Clock High" and gotten away unscathed.

Real aircraft.  Real pilot.

     In a nice touch, the film ended today, as I remembered from 1976, with an epitaph:

 "IT SHOULD BE REMEMBERED...

THAT PAUL MANTZ, A FINE MAN AND A BRILLIANT FLYER GAVE HIS LIFE IN THE MAKING OF THIS FILM"

     And with that the Intro is over.*

About Columbo
I think I must have seen episode this back in 1976 as well, hence today's title.  It featured Laurence Harvey as the villain of the piece in "The Most Dangerous Match", where he plays a deaf chess champion who murders his rival.  Art?

Head to head.  Did someone say Czech-mate?  No, pal, Lithuanian.

     I had seen the beginning of this episode, so I knew who the murderer was, and how he did it, but I think my parents changed channels or dinner was ready or I had to go feed the goose, because I never found out how it ended.
     Until today!
     SPOILER ALERT!  SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT! SPOILER ALERT!  

      It's because Detective Columbo's dog likes garbage.  He stated that in a line "He likes garbage.  I don't know why." which had me laughing out loud.** With this leading to learning how and why the garbage-grinder shuts down, our shabby hero deduces that only a deaf man could have carried out the murder.

"Busted!"

     It may have taken 42 years to get there, but I got there.

Here's Laurence, having a dance

B****y Hell, Brain!  What's Going On In There?
There I was in the kitchen, opening the cupboard - a recurring theme today - and all of a sudden I was ambushed by the word "Zuikaku", which popped up in the old noggin for no reason.
     "It sounds Japanese," I bethought myself.  "Like <thinks> "Zaibatsu", that term from sci-fi back in the Nineties, when naive authors thought multinational conglomerates would run the world.  Yeah, like Carillion or Lehmans, eh?

"And unleashing deadly Alien menaces"
(Share price drops hugely)

     Of course it turns out to be nothing of the sort.  No.  "What IS it then?" I hear you quaver.
     A Japanese aircraft carrier of the Second Unpleasantness.
     At this point I give Oscar and Steve (my Memory and Subconscious respectively) a piercing glare, because - what's going on in there?  Conrad is not big on naval history, nor the Second Unpleasantness in the Pacific, nor has he been watching or reading or listening to anything about it, nor are there any anniversaries or documentaries about Zuikaku.     
     I suppose after raising the subject I cannot avoid posting a picture of it.  Art?

Thus

     I wonder what's going to bubble up next from that sea of septic sewage which constitutes my mind?

For The Purposes Of Rhyming On Facebook
Here I have to bite the bullet, gird my loins (not sure exactly what this is, though it seems to be associated with hard work), put my nose to the grindstone (a chore you can only do once, it seems, as afterwards - no nose) and lay on: for I refer to the Barb of Avon, Willy Shakespeare, and his creation Rosencrantz.  Art?

One of these things is not like the other.  Meaning I don't know who's who.  But one is Rosencrantz.

     They turn up in Hamlet as a pair of amateur psychiatrists, who are tasked with finding out why Hamlet has gone round the twist with an attack of the raging whim-whams.  I don't know if they find out, frankly, but Tom Stoppard's play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" sounds a lot more entertaining, being full of sly theatrical in-jokes.

Finally - 
I just needed a bit of rhyme here to finish things off, so here we have a character inspired by "Red Dwarf".  I saw the first episode, you know, back in <Mister Hand intervenes to get rid of long-winded old man's blathering>

Robbie Rocketpants.  Right.  Hopefully your underpants are made out of asbestos, matey.

*  I haven't forgotten about tormenting the motley.  Just lulling it into a false sense of security.  Heh! (I refer you to the Intro's title).
**  Perhaps you had to be there.