No! Nothing to do with the series of near-future war novels by James Rouch, which make rattling good reads, even if the Soviet Union is long gone and unmourned (except by Peter The Average). Art!
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| Meet the 'Iron Cow' - next gen APC |
I refer, of course - obviously! - to Tom Scott, that international globe-trotting investigator of all things arcane and unusual. He seems to get paid for doing things that you and I have to pay for ourselves, the lucky sw
ANYWAY what do "Batman" and "Star Trek" have in common? Yes yes yes, doubtless they featured the same character actors, which is code for I Can't Be Bothered To Check.
WRONG! Art?
I really don't need to tell you which is which, do I?
Tom explained that, thanks to union rules, the Hollywood film and television studios could shoot within a radius of 30 miles from their headquarters and only pay the cast and crew from when they arrived. If they shot beyond that limit, they had to pay for travel time and mileage, which makes it much more expensive. So, film and television studios always on the lookout for a cheap fix, this meant that a lot of external locations were filmed within the Thirty Mile Zone. Art!
This is Bronson Canyon, well inside the TMZ, just begging to be dressed and rendered into the Batcave's secret entrance. Check the picture above. There is far less greenery about the place because I can guarantee that there are tours of "Where 'Batman' was filmed". Art!
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| I should have added "Bill And Ted" |
Here an aside. Conrad is firmly convinced that Keanu Reeves will never be out of work in Hollywood because he is so resoundingly nice. Crew and cast alike agree on this, which is what casting directors remember. You wait and see, he'll still be getting cast when he's 75.
ANYWAY these are the Vasquez Rocks, which happen to be all of 29 miles from the centre of Hollywood, so if a studio needed a particular angled granite outdoor shoot, this is where they came. Tom says that they were used as a backdrop so often that they have their own Wikipedia page. Conrad will let you, gentle reader, check on that.
A smart Commenter on his vlog also pointed out that a lot of alien planets look surprisingly similar to the terrain outside Vancouver, in British America, because a fair few Canuckistanian television shows pretend to be South Canadian - like "Travelers". Art!
The sharp-eyed British television viewer will have noticed that a suspiciously large number of alien planets on the BBC's premier dramamentary series "Doctor Who" resemble a disused quarry. Sheer coincidence, one presumes.
Rabbie Burns Rides Again
Conrad loathes poetry and avoids it just as much as he avoids musicals, except when it can be ruthlessly exploited in the name of the blog. So, recall "O wad some power the giftie gie us, to see oorselves as others see us". TRANSLATION "O would some power give us the gift of being able to see ourselves as others do". Art!
The BBC roped in three Ukrainian refugee women, who are not unattractive and with pretty good (plus a charming accent and a few grammatical slips) English. Svitlana, in the middle, started to learn English when reading Peppa Pig to her daughter*. What surprised her about England was fashion; she found it hard to understand why people wore big puffer jackets but went around with 'naked legs'. Me too, love.
Inna, to port with the curly locks, was rather baffled about beer drinking. In This Sceptred Isle we drink beer all year long, but in Ukraine it's reserved for the summer months. Inna, dear, if we drank only during the British summer that would amount to fourteen days spread out over four months. Unsurprisingly, she also found British accents a tad hard to follow. Never visit Glasgow.
Olena, to starboard, found it hard to comprehend that, yes, you can drink water straight out of the tap. Poor lass, she got a bit choked up about settling down here instead of back home.
Slava Ukraina!
More Of Smokey McCheaty
As I explained yesteryon, Smokey Yunick was a NASCAR mechanic who stretched the rules to their elastic limit in seeking to get a mechanical edge in stock-car racing.
One trick he had was in spoofing how much petrol his team's car could carry. Art!
The referees/judges/eagle-eyed auditors measured how much fuel a tank held by filling it and then emptying out the fuel into a measuring vessel
Smokey used an extra-large fuel tank that held at least a gallon more fuel than permitted. He got round the measurement by putting a basketball in the tank and inflating it, thus reducing the amount measured, and when the volume had been assessed, why he deflated the basketball, removed it and topped up the tank.
Thank heavens this chap was a professional mechanic. He would have made a dangerous criminal.
"The Sea Of Sand"
Sorbusa's self-sacrifice has permitted the Doctor to escape un-noticed from the Earth trans-mat platform.
Another
realisation hit the Doctor. The sledge
on Wasteworld (the nickname he now gave to Delta Pavonis) had been stuck beyond
the trans-mat platform. When he got sent
through with the rest of the sledge, that overhanging remnant would fall to the
ground – right on top of the control console.
About a tonne of metal. Was it
too much to hope that the control console on Wasteworld had been damaged? At any rate, there had been no further
materialisations on the platform.
Assault Leader
Icono could hardly believe his eyes as he surveyed the conquered depot at Mersa
Martuba. The sprawling site they now
ruled contained more minerals and metals than he had ever seen in one hundred
and fifty years of life! Incredible
profligacy in their use of metals. Why,
there were whole vehicles constructed of metal, and a strange malleable
substance made in circles that they travelled upon. Prismatic containers constructed of what
surely could not be wood? That amount of
frivolous use would have guaranteed several death sentences back home.
Minerals and
metals in abundance, yet no great pickings of biomorphic energy. A faint trace off to the west, not big enough
to hunt down. Very well then, they would
order up scanning equipment from the Infiltration Complex, and use that to see
who was where.
Gloat while you can, matey; the Doctor is back in town.
Sue Me
Conrad is rather chuffed that South Korea are through to the next stage of the World Cup Of Ballfoot. Well done, chaps! and I wonder if any Norks are aware that their Sork brethren are doing so well.
The BBC had a Have Your Say Commentary on the match and there was uniform praise for the Sorks. Here's just one example.
The three downvotes are probably Uruguayan players. Art!
He plays for Tottinghand Hashspot (sp?) here in This Sceptred Isle.
Finally -
I've not posted any of the clues - that is, supposedly clues - and solutions from Lord Peter Wimsey's crossword as compiled by Dot Sayers. Here we go then -
"Free of her jesses let the falcon fly, with sight undimmed into the azure sky"
And the solution? How can it be anything but UNHOOD.
If you failed to solve it then that's your fault for not being up on your falconry.
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| 22 Species? Who knew! |
* Conrad is glad that goodness can come out of such an evil publication.
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