Shlocktober!

Okay, I Kind Of Stole That One
For those out there who are unaware, The Flop House does a series of their podcast in October where they focus on horror films that are - er - well - not very good, to be honest.  Except they use the term "Shocktober", I think - it's a podcast so they speak it rather than spelling it, so I may be astray a consonant or two.

Proof! Proof I am not raving!

     "Whatever can be the difference, O Snowy-Haired Pundit?" I hear you call.  "For there is but a single "L" between the two."
     Quite right, and I salute your attribution as regards my hair.
     Oh, a slight aside here.  "Pundit" as it refers to one knowledgeable of a particular matter, is derived from the Sanskrit "Pandita", meaning "A learned man"  HOORAY AT LAST A WORD NOT DERIVED FROM LATIN TRA-LA-TRA-LA! <ahem> thank you.
     Anyway, "Schlock": meaning something cheap, trashy and worthless.  Please don't ask me when this seamlessly blends into "Kitsch" - a conversation for another day, I deem.
     I suppose, having started this nonsense, I'd better provide some schlock for October. Art?
                          
     I have both of these and cannot remember much about them, since it's probably a decade since I last perused their four-colour pages; the one to starboard is all about the irresistible rise of the zombie empire via the Sinister Union, or something.
     Which reminds me - whilst on the bus and gazing out of the window, seeking the answer to "The ways of business men (5,6)", I caught a glimpse of a publicity poster for - something. 

"Russian.  Ruthless -"

      - by which point the bus had moved on and I saw no more.  Googling for any illumination isn't really effective as half the internet seems to consist of "Russian" and "Ruthless".  Well, posters can't move, so tomorrow -
     Okay, motley, how about a couple of giant toasted crumpets loaded with butter and strawberry jam, all washed down with a cup of Darjeeling*?

This is what we're talking about!
<Slobbers drool on the keyboard>

The Aeronauts
Conrad has seen the publicity posters for this film (?) and is a tad puzzled.  As far as I remember, "The Aeronauts" flew snazzy Mirage fighter jets, not balloons.  And to prove I'm not raving (this time) I can show you some evidence.  Art?

Our heroes
(Who are - gasp! - French)

     The series focussed on the exploits of two pilots, Tanguy and Laverdure, who get up to high jinks in the air in their Dassault Mirage IIIs and on the ground.  Art, again!

"The Knights of the Sky"

     It was aimed at children, if you can believe that, and you'd never get away with that sort of thing nowadays, as it would be deemed eeeeevil militaristic propaganda and besides, can't we make television series of (puts on bowler hat and waves flag) our own?  And I saw all the episodes, and it didn't affect me**.
     So, I remain unsure where the balloons come from.
     Mind you, that does sustain a train of thought <rubs hands, cackles and tugs on moustache ends>

The Balloonatics
Another steal, this time from a Biggles short story, where he and Wilks of 366 Squadron are in competition to acquire a case of champagne - though in the bowdlerised version I read initially it was amended to "lemonade" - by shooting down Teuton observation balloons.

Our hero versus the dastardly Hun

     Anyway, that has very little to do with the Montgolfier brothers, who were a pair of inventive French chaps way back in the eighteenth century.  They were sitting around, bored, one morning when the got the bright idea to invent lighter-than-air flight, by constructing a balloon.  And none of your little novelty balloons, either: this one was going to carry people, into the sky!
     I'm not sure if they had small novelty ballons in the 1780s; just take it as a given.
     Okay, they started small with what Mythbusters would call "Proof of concept" by building a small balloon, that went like whiz for over a mile, and they were confirmed in their belief that you could send things dangerously high into the ether.  Art?

The ultimate model
(Nobody bothered to record the earlier ones)

     Then they constructed a mid-sized balloon, before moving on to the hard stuff: a balloon so vast it could carry live cargo.  Gasp!  Egad!  Clearly, this is stuff that Man Was Not Meant To Know, or at least be a guinea pig for - they tested their first long distance flight with three brave volunteers: a sheep, a duck and a chicken.
     Once that proved you could survive in the upper atmosphere, there was no stopping the brothers.  You might even say - waitforitwaitforit - that the sky was their limit <ahem>.

Which Brings Us To -
The Siege of Port Arthur.  Despite the name, this was a port that belonged to the Ruffians, waaay over in the Far East, and the Japanese wanted that port.  O how they wanted it.  They wanted it so badly that they laid siege to the port, which contained a large number of Ruffian warships that had been driven there by Japanese success at sea.

The Sons of Nippon with some of their "little friends"

          Those above are some of the 11" howitzers that the Japanese used to shell the port and environs, though they had trouble shelling the ships; whilst a building can be relied upon to stay pretty static (bar an earthquake), ships can dash hither and yon, confounding enemy gunners, which they did.
     Ah, thought the canny Japanese.  Montgolfier!  Art?

The jig is up, and so is the balloon

Barrel.  Fish.  Shooting.

     From a superior vantage point with a telephone line, they were able to direct their howitzer's fire accurately onto the hapless Muscovite ships, which were all sunk in short order.
     It didn't help the Ruffians that their CIC at Port Arthur, and his deputy, were such execrably bad soldiers that the only way they could have been worse was if they were actually secretly working for the Japanese***.

     "Aeronauts": we made that word work hard today, didn't we?

     And with that, we are gone!



*  Brewed from loose-leaf in a pot of course.
**  Probably.
***  If Tsar Putin gives the film version of these events a green light, this will be a vital part of the plot.