Nom de plume: Rivrdog

"Battleship", the failed movie concept

A thought: why did the concept fail? An almost identical concept, "Space Battleship Yamato", has been going strong in both the sci-fi and anime genres for 38 years in Japan.

Could it be...

...that old, rehashed concepts don't fool the fans?

Hydrate yourself well

...because your eyes are going to de-hydrate you some while you watch this Christmas Story.

BTW, the event he spoke of in the poem, taking up a young, suddenly-orphaned girl and taking her home, that has actually happened, and I was a part of it.

I don't remember the Winter day now, it's been 25 years and I shredded all those Patrol notebooks long ago, but I was on patrol on Dog Watch (6pm-4am), and there was a terrible car crash out in the East County. Initially, I wasn't assigned, but as I listened to the dispatch calls, two patrol units went Code Three, then a Sergeant, then two Fire/First Aid companies, then the dreaded call for the Medical Examiner (Coroner) came from the crash scene.

I went about my patrol duties in my own District, but noted some interesting radio by-play about the crash call, involving passing of numbers for calls to the District Attorney, the Juvenile Court, the Children's Services Division. Eventually, I finished my shift, having gotten no closer to the call than some highway-blocking duty, for just a few minutes until a Reserve unit could relieve me.

As I turned in my shift paperwork to the Dog Watch Sergeant, I asked him about Deputy Stellato, who had gotten the original call for the crash, but had not been seen on duty, or heard on the radio since.

"He's on Family Leave" was the Sergeant's curt reply. I got curious. "Did one of his kids get sick?" I asked. "No", said the Sergeant, "he just got a new Foster child." The grizzled old Road Sergeant didn't want to talk about it, but he looked up from his stack of paper long enough for me to see HIS eyes were wet, "The couple who just died in that wreck left a little girl at home, and Stellato volunteered to foster the little girl, and it's all been handled properly."

Well, this hardened 'Nam combat vet, 8-year Road Deputy got a sudden lump in his throat. I still can't think about that night without tearing up.

Andy Stellato died this year, some sort of nervous-system disease, ALS maybe, and I went to his funeral, of course (he was a Police Academy classmate of mine). The Pastor related this vignette of his life, and most of the Deputies who were with Andy that ugly night were there to wish him Godspeed.

May God speed you about your Life on Earth, and welcome you Home when you leave it, but fear not in the meanwhile, there are always some stout men and women wearing Deputy's Stars to handle the rough stuff for you.

H/T to the Patriot Padre, who's spent some time behind a badge himself, including pulling MY bacon out of the fire on a dark night in a rough barfight.

Trucking Poo in Dubai

...by now you've probably seen photographs of the stunning new construction in Dubai, an Islamic Kingdom out near the Sandbox.

Now their little-known secret is exposed.

They built that city...

WITHOUT A FARGING SEWAGE SYSTEM!

Yep, each building/complex is built with a cesspool, which has to be constantly emptied. That is done by a monster fleet of huge semi-tankers, and those tankers go somewhere out in the desert where there supposedly IS a sewage treatment facility (or, more likely, a very large lake o'poo). This video shows miles and miles of tankers on a Ring Road, waiting to get to their destination and dump their poo. The video reports that some of the drivers are in those rigs for three days waiting to dump, and some of them don't wait, but go off-road and dump into ditches out in the desert, ditches that flow directly into the sea, where tourists swim at the posh resorts.

H/T to the Coyote Kid, way out in SD

A very Rivr Christmas

Christmas is a giving time, religiously, as God gave us His Son to guide, then save us, and it is a festive time, to celebrate that most holiest of Christian ideas.

So, on the Rivr, we celebrate in our own ways.

In this first video, our local Scappoose FD fireboat pulls up to the Multnomah Channel Yacht Club's dock to onload all the gifts that Club members have donated to SFD's Toy & Joy program. Something like 5 each, 55-gallon bags full! Observe that fireboat. If you are/were an Army Engineer, you might recognize it. It started life as a Bridging Tug, a 28-footer that originally came in two pieces, each designed to be transported in the back of a Deuce, then assembled at the bridging site and pushed into the water to move sections of an Army Floating Bridge into place, then retrieveable by a winch on the Deuces when the work was done. About 15 years ago, SFD got one of those tugs, complete, at surplus auction, for about $5,000, and the FD men and women put in 25,000 hours of volunteer time making it into a fireboat. It's main pump is off a '70's American LaFrance pumper engine which Portland FD wrecked but somehow kept, then donated to Scappoose, and the gearbox to engage one of the tug's two 6-cyl diesel engines to the pump is adapted from farm machinery. The fireboat features a 3" monitor that can handle the full output of the pump and main engine, and two smaller monitors, hoses, etc. The boat is kept at Johnson Landing, just upstream of our Club, where it can be manned by the duty crew from the main firehall 24/7. The firehall is 4 minutes away by highway. We can have two companies and a fireboat at our moorage inside of 10 minutes, and that's not bad fire protection for a rural moorage. In our case, all the fireboat does is attach a 4" draft-hose to our main standpipe, charge it, and we have firefighting water for the landside company over the entire moorage.

The second video shows some of the Christmas Ships, a fine Portland tradition for over 50 years. Local yachtsmen decorate their boats with lights to a Christmas-y theme, and they cruise the local waters for 10 nights in the pre-Christmas weeks. There are two fleets, one each for the Willamette and Columbia Rivers, but they combine the fleets one weekend at St. Helens, 11 miles downriver of us at the Club, then they cruise up-Channel to Portland, coming by our Club just after sunset. Your blogger used to volunteer with the Christmas Ships when I was in the Sheriff's River Patrol. I worked as Safety Director for my last two years with the Xmas Fleet. I would not have wanted to be Safety Director this year though, as the Fleet lost a crewman overboard at St. Helens the night before this video was shot.

My duties at the Club were a lot simpler, though. I washed dishes after the pre-viewing meal.

Yep, when the Rivr runs in your blood, Christmas is the best time of year!

Let the Good (Old) Times roll

For some of you culture defenders who might just be interested iun the pop culture of your parents (grandparents?), my digital guru-ette, Kim Komando, advises me of a place where free content of the old-time serial radio programs (what the country had for serial entertainment before TeeVee some 80 years ago) can be downloaded.

If you've ever watched the film "Annie", done in retro-style back in 1982, there is a scene where Daddy Warbucks visits an old-time radio studio to make an advertisement (no PSA's in that day). That scene in that film gives you somewhat of an idea of what the old studios for production of these serials were all about.

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Now for some nostalgia, after this message

drop page, insert unpaid advertisement for CTD, where patriots go to buy their necessities of life and survival.

Some of my earliest family squabbles with the now-Rivrsis were over time allocated on the family Radio, my father's Zenith Transoceanic, an old tube-type, portable, all-band receiver, very advanced for it's day (about the size of a "portable" sewing machine of the time). His would have been either a Model 8G005Y or a Model 500. The equipment cost a month's pay for a working stiff in those days, and you could buy a decent used car for what one of them cost. We kids were allowed to go into Dad and Mom's bedroom for this occasion, kneel on the floor by the little table which held the radio, and put on the headphones to listen to the programs such as "The Shadow" or "The Lone Ranger". We had to use the headphones because Dad did not want to hear the programs himself, and probably just because he thought we looked like good little sailors huddled around the radio within the short range of it's headphone cord.

There was only one problem: one set of headphones only, so we could not both listen at once (well, we could have, but that would have involved my Sis and I having our heads within a couple of inches of each other for a half-hour to share the headphones). Some of our desired programs aired on different stations at the same times, though, so the inevitable squabbles arose over who got priority. My Sis exercised her seniority, being the oldest sibling, and I tried to find ways to distract her from hearing the dialogue. If I succeeded, she inevitably took it out on me, though. I seem to recall several times where I got the headphones well after my program had already started, so I missed the important opening scene.

yep, we fought like brother and sister, and still do, as you may discern by reading these pages, where she now comments regularily.

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play theme music

(just damn, don't you think the Rivrdog Blog needs some theme music?) How about the opening few bars of Sousa's Stars and Stripes Forever?

 

Boneheaded analysts = failing economy

...not the other way around.

Netflix is a good example. Some of my family members subscribed, so I know this to be true: for $9/mo, you got great access to content via DVD and snailmail. When streaming content was added, it got even better, and many new customers signed up.

Then netflix committed the boneheaded play of the decade, and tried to split the streaming and the DVD business off into separate outfits, each with it's own subscription. It would have cost more than double to stay with all the content available from the two companies. That cost, near $20/mo, would have been roughly equal to a nice upgrade package from the Satellite outfits or cable TeeVee.

So, Netflix gave up it's price and market niche. It was really only ever about price for content, but somehow, the boneheaded analyst who wrote this doesn't see the forest for the trees.

Is there REALLY any question why our economy is in such bad shape, when the so-called experts can't fathom the main factor in a sea-change in a market?

BMX, ultimate version

Danny MacAskill, of course.

If you think you  are a BMX rider, don't even let the words out of your mouth until you've seen this Red Bull Productions film. Excellent videography, and the musical accompaniment isn't half-bad, either.

Tip o' flight helmet to the Auld Colonel, he flew everything from P-51s (USAAF) to helos and trash-haulers, and even did some work in Rocket Science. When that wasn't enough, he put down a full career as the first "civilian" Police Dispatcher in my county, then wrote a book about it all, publishing it himself. One of three fliers I know to have gone the double-career route in the air and in police work...

Guest Blogger

I have summarily promoted the Coyote Kid to Guest Blogger status, since he provides me with so much blogging material. I have been a guest out in his home in SW South Dakota, and he is a retired military guy like myself, and a retired cop like myself (only he made Lieutenant before he retired, and I put in 25 years as a Patrolman). He is an Armorer (by profession, as he did that for both the cop and military shops). He does well with a computer, too. The only thing he doesn't want to do is a blog, so he is satisfied to let me do the writing or editing. I don't mind that, since his ideas are original and his understanding of them correct.

Here, without further ado, are the Coyote Kid's smart ideas of the day:

• Train yourself in CPR. Yes, most of us older types WERE trained in chest-compression/rescue-breathing CPR, but it is difficult to do unless you practice, and I'll be the first to admit I haven't worked out on Resusci-Annie in years. Here is the NEW CPR, chest compressions only. Learn it (or re-learn it). BTW, unless I miss my guess, that is AZ Gov Jan Brewer introducing it, and she is MY idea of a Stateswoman.
• Here is a Powerpoint of black-and-white photos of Africa. Most are professionally retouched, but all are excellent. Enjoy. Download Africa in B&W
• Here is a link to previous Hollywood "A-list" stars and their cars. Just search on "stars and cars" and you will find many more such lists, most of them much more current as to time.
• Now, go take this civics test. I have to report that I missed two out of the eleven, which means there are few more involved in the news than I (but not many).
  

Now, go below the fold where the Kid's best comm of the day resides. You might have guessed it's NSFW...

Falling Skies: Experiment, concluded. Report: Fail

My experiment with watching "Falling Skies" on TNT has just ended after the second episode, which aired last night.

First, the non-video-related gripe: the program was so badly butchered by ads as to be unwatchable. The ads aired every six minutes or so, for four minutes. Towards the end, the producer felt so bad about his ad load he put in a countdown clock to the action and showed a few seconds of it (in between ads). How NOT to put on ANY video, period. Total Fail.

Then, the video itself. Just where is this show going? I don't think that they have a farging clue. The sub-plots seem barely connected to the reality of the main plot, and the thinnest connection is offered by Army Leader (we never see his rank, so have to call him "leader") Porter. He alone seems to have the idea of what's involved in the ongoing war, but he fell down when advised of the capture of the injured buggie. Sure, having an enemy POW offers all sorts of sub-plot opportunities, but it makes for more plot confusion, too. Why do we need to hear all the anti-war drivel all over again? Parallel to "All quiet on the Western Front"? Gimme a break.

The buggies had a machine gun with a flash hider and used it to impress the hero's brother? Machine gun? Really. Now add weapons confusion into the mix. The buggies are supposed to have directed-energy weapons, period, plus they're fairly fierce with those claws/legs/mandibles. Giving them machine guns confuses us to the max. Rule one - don't confuse the viewers.

The buggies had their POW's collecting scrap metal. For what? Build more watch-towers? Not readily apparent, this had to be someone's idea of a plot device to be used later on (mission to blow up their foundry, maybe).

There were a few nice touches. The complaints about the 2d MASS chow is a classic, fits right in to any such story. Of course the outlaw biker was prison chef. Of course.

Finally, there's the overall plot failure of the hyper-tech buggies unable to detect enemy forces close by, except by direct vision. Eh? That just doesn't fly, except in a screenwriter's mind.

No, for me, the experiment is over, marked down as a Fail. Too many improbables, and the producers gave themselves way too much plotline leeway, and there's too much soap-opera crap anyway, such as the depressed surgeon drinking, the schmuck brother, etc, etc, etc.

Falling Skies, the opener

Refer to previous post on this subject, here. A comment there, also.

Watched it. Sober, too, so I wouldn't miss anything. I've come to expect a lot from film when Spielberg is involved, so I was immediately onto the arms the survivors carried.

A motley lot of AKs, ARs, some current or just-superceded Army machinery. OK, that's realistic. Mostly civilian, except not in Massachusetts. I figured Spielberg's gun advisor (there has to be one) would know that, but I guess Spielberg hired a dud. There was an on-screen comment about the guns coming from the National Guard...nooooo, not those AKs.

You see a lot of fighters peeking into the breeches of their weapons, but never cleaning them. There WAS a consciousness on the scarcity of ammo, which was good.

OK, the buggies. That monster fortress they erected in the middle of Boston looks out over everywhere, and the evil invaders have generations-ahead sensor equipment, but they can't spot a huge column of people moving slowly along an open road within sight of their redoubt? The buggies don't have Vietnam-era ignition detectors to pinpoint running gasoline engines? They don't have Gulf War 1-era JSTARS downlooking radar?

There were several ideas of human vs. buggie combat stolen directly from "Starship Troopers", in fact, if I were in a grumpy mood, I would say that the entire idea of the series is "Starship Troopers with more human interest".

The outlaw gal who caps her two partner-guards, enabling the good guys to escape the outlaw lair, was an improbable plot-twist that seemed to be inserted just because the script was changed to shorten up the job the Perfesser was doing to bring the outlaw leader around to his way of thinking. The outlaw leader was somewhat intellectual himself, and I was really getting into the clash of wills there that the Perfesser seemed to be winning, but they shortened the whole thing up to a battle scene with the good guys prevailing (and no buggies intervening?).

The whole dichotomy-idea of the Exodus aspect: "fighters" and "eaters", is well-conceived, may be an indication of some serious survivalist thinking involved in the production.

I'll watch more of the series, but this level of production certainly lowers Spielberg in my eyes from the best modern producer out there to just average.