No, We Are Not Doing 'A Little Musical Critique'
So Art and Paul can come out from behind the sofa, BOOJUM! is not casting it's jaundiced and choleric eye over any of your songs. Not today, anyway.
In case you aren't familiar with this trope here on the blog, what we do is announce the execution (perhaps not the most apt noun) of a 'little musical critique' and apply it to the lyrics of a song. It's tremendous fun. Art!
ANYWAY we are back to the topic of bridges, yes, and ones that are burning, because I remembered a film yesteryon after wheeling on "A Bridge Too Far". Yes, it's another war film, but -
Sorry, what's that? No! Not "The Bridge At Remagen". Yes yes yes, that's a war film and there's a bridge in it, though I don't think you can argue it got burned. Blasted and shelled and shot, yes; burned, no. Or am I being too pedantic? Art!
Maybe a little bit burn-y. It's a terrific opening scene, with the agonising slow chug-chug-chug of the train versus the mad helter-skelter of the South Canadian column. Actually I've gone off on a tangent again, haven't I? That's the Obercassel Bridge, not the Ludendorff Railway Bridge at Remagen. Let me s
ANYWAY that's not what this Intro is to start with. No, the film I am talking about here is "The General", one of Buster Keaton's finest from 1926. Yes, almost a century old. In fact it is closer in time to the South Canadian Civil Unpleasantness than it is to us today, and there may have well been a few survivors of that long and unpleasant engagement able to see it on the silver screen. Art!
This is The General, a locomotive of the Western & Atlantic Rail Road, arriving in Marietta, Georgia, in 1861. I shan't go into the whole plot of the film, but it centres around this engine, which is stolen by wicked Yankees and purloined away. Not because they were idle thieves on a stealing vacation: the South Canadian Civil Unpleasantness had begun and engines were fair game. This burglary mortally offends the driver of The General, whom is determined to get her back. I know, I know, generals were uniformly male. Art!
Kingy, looking for a fight
Here an aside. One of the characters in "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" mentions that they served as an officer aboard the 'King George V' (seen above), which they described as 'stuffed full of guns and radar' but which, nevertheless, they still called 'her'.
ANYWAY AGAIN I refer you back to The General, whose driver is none other than Johnny Gray - Buster being subtle there - and who is determined to get his engine back. Art!
Typical Buster, carrying out a dangerous stunt, because that's a real train travelling on real tracks and if he fell off there'd suddenly be three of him. No, he doesn't have a safety harness, what, are you a coward? he actually stands still on the rails so the cattle-catcher knocks him backwards onto it. Only at about three miles per hour, but, again, there's a couple of dozen tons of mass behind it.
ANYWAY AGAIN AGAIN Buster and his sweetheart manage to liberate The General and head back to Southern lines, having to cross the Rock River Bridge to do so, whilst being hotly pursued by two Union locomotives and a whole passel of Yankees. Art!
Plot twist: there was no bridge there originally, it was built by the film's props and construction people from scratch, and would cost in the region of $600,000 in todays money. Art!
Apprentice pyromaniac Johnny piles a load of lumber on the bridge sleepers and douses them with kerosene. Notice the smoke being emitted from a burning log in the tender. It is highly probable that he's really swilling around kerosene, because the OSHA hadn't been invented yet. Art!
Yep. Real kerosene. Eat your heart out Mike Curb and Roger Waters*.
The Yankees arrive from their hot pursuit, and of course an idiot in uniform makes a bold pronouncement about fire damage, mass and shear values, which he knows nothing about. Art!
What can possibly go wrong?
Art!
That's how we get today's title. Yes, it was a real train that got completely scumbled, as did the bridge. Yes, it was all done in one take.
Here's Someone Else Who Missed The Bridge
Conrad doesn't know if there is a bridge here, just that you don't tend to drive an articulated lorry along waterways if you want to reach your destination. Art!
The driver was not seriously injured and was rescued by firefighters in an inflatable raft, doubtless feeling hideously embarrassed and desperately afraid of what nicknames his colleagues are going to come up with.
Here's One Conrad Can Get Behind
A fascinating subject that we cover every so often on the blog, since there is a significant probability of an asteroid hitting Planet Earth smack in the kisser. It might not happen for five thousand years, or it might occur in 2026, but - it's gonna happen. The Earth's surface is littered with impact craters if you know where to look and what to look for. Art!
"The War Illustrated Edition 207 29th May 1945"
I believe we are up to the last picture from this edition, that being the back page, which, as with the front page, they like to print with a faux 'colour' overlay. Art!
'Flames And Fanatics Subdued On The Elbe', if you're having trouble with their font. The Elbe, for your information, is the river in Germany that marked the meeting place of the Western Allies and the Sinisters. I can tell you that this is a South Canadian armoured car, probably a Greyhound. Let me check out the blurb close up. Ah, so this is the village of Born, where a few bored Teutons with nothing else to do made a bit of a stand. The problem for them would be that, if their stand successfully delayed the South Canadians, the Sinisters would be breathing down their necks from the other direction.
There you go, and you're welcome
So Long, Bernie
Bah! I've been trying to get up pictures for Ol' Bern's 1994 series of FPG trading cards, and could only manage #1. Using different prompts and order, all I can get for #2 "Till Death Us Do Part" is the back of the trading card. Art!
Taking this as an omen, I think we'll put this theme to bed as it only got progressively harder to find illos for the 1993 series as their numbers went higher and higher. It was good while it lasted.
Finally -
Your Humble Scribe has discovered Season 3 of "The Boys" on Amazon Prime, having seen Season 2 ages ago. The original comics that they took as inspiration are violent, as most comics are, and full of sex, which is less common. The television series adds in drugs, as in illegal ones, not the varieties that Vought pumps their superheroes full of. The party scenes from the first 10 minutes of Episode 1 constitute a cocktail of sex, drugs, more sex, more drugs, over-the-top violence and Billy Butcher being brusque. If Mary Whitehouse were still alive to witness this, she'd pass out. Art!
That, let me tell you, is them being very restrained.
I did bake a cake tonight but didn't take a photograph and it's too late to go prowling round the kitchen, so you'll need to wait until tomorrow, whenever that is - I'm typing this blog for Saturday on Thursday so the chronology gets a bit mixed up at times.
* See blog from two days ago.
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