Granny (Irene Ryan) second from left and the Witch (Margaret Hamilton) far right. In the movie, Texas, Brooklyn & Heaven (1948).
Granny Clampett meets The Wicked Witch of the West
Asides
Burt Bacharach Composer Extraordinaire
Watching Austin Powers the other day Burt Bacharach music started playing. This guy was good.
Burt Freeman Bacharach (May 12, 1928 – February 8, 2023) was an American composer, songwriter, record producer, and pianist who is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential figures of 20th-century popular music. Starting in the 1950s, he composed hundreds of pop songs, many in collaboration with lyricist Hal David. Bacharach’s music is characterized by unusual chord progressions and time signature changes, influenced by his background in jazz, and uncommon selections of instruments for small orchestras. He arranged, conducted, and produced much of his recorded output.
Strange Mist Over the City
A Mist with strange vibrations engulfed Winnipeg. Something very different about this fog patch.
Something gloomy and smothering about this smaze.
The Walking Dead and The Walking Drunk
Most of us remember the slow walking zombies on the TV series “The Walking Dead.” The zombies would stagger and stumble as they were attacking the good guys. But there are real life situations that are very similar.
The Old Weather Channel on Cable
This may surprise younger readers, but there was once a time when the reality programming on The Weather Channel was simply, you know, weather. It used to be no more than a ten-minute wait to “Local on the Eights”, with simple text crawls of local conditions and forecasts that looked like they were taken straight from the National Weather Service feed. Those were the days, and sadly they seem to be gone forever.
Playboy Bunny and Tomcats
The first documented usage of rabbit head tail codes on military aircraft dates back to 1953 with Marine Squadron VMCJ-2 “The Playboys”. This squadron, based in MCAS Cherry Point, continues to uphold the tradition of the bunny on combat deployments to overseas location. Additionally, the US Air Force incorporated the image on the SR-71 Blackbird.
The most notable, and famous, use of the bunny image came from the Navy’s Air Test and Evaluation Squadron Four (VX-4) based out of NAS Point Mugu, CA. This squadron is charged with the operational testing of advanced aircraft systems. In this capacity, the rabbit head adorned the tail of some of the Navy’s most legendary fighter jets including the F-4 Phantom II, F-14 Tomcat, F/A-18 Hornet and the newest F-18 E/F Super Hornet. According to Navy lore the first rabbit appeared on the black F-4 Phantom II in 1969 during night testing and was referred to either as “Black Bunny” or “Vandy One”.
That same year, Playboy Enterprises bought a black Douglas DC-9 known as the “Big Bunny”. Shortly after this, a famous picture started to circulate featuring the Navy’s “Black Bunny” at NAS Point Mugu, CA in October 1971. The squadron received a letter from Playboy Enterprises, Inc stating that the bunny head was unofficial and warned of potential legal action. However, Playboy Enterprises stated no legal action would be taken if the squadron used an official Playboy stencil to ensure authenticity and accuracy. Thereafter official stencils were delivered to the Navy to match Playboy’s own design.
F-14 Tomcat
Tomcat with the bunny.
F-14 Tomcat and F-4 Phantom
F-18 Super Hornet
SR-71 Blackbird
World’s Longest Pedestrian Suspension Bridge
I would need at least 4 beers in my system before I would walk on this bridge.
Arouca 516 is a suspension bridge located in the municipality of Arouca, in the North Region and the Aveiro District in Portugal. The bridge has a length of 516 m (1,693 ft). The bridge is suspended 175 m (574 ft) above the Paiva River, which it spans. Its name is a reference to its extension in meters (516) and the municipality where it is located (Arouca).
Its length exceeds by 16 m (52 ft) the Charles Kuonen Suspension Bridge, opened on 29 July 2017, with a length of about 500 m (1,600 ft) and connecting Grächen and Zermatt in Switzerland.
Construction of the bridge started in May 2018. It is a hanging bridge which is supported by two V-shaped concrete towers. The bridge opened on 29 April 2021 to residents of the municipality…
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Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet
Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet are a Juno Award-winning Canadian instrumental rock band, formed in 1984. They remain best known for the track “Having an Average Weekend”, of which an alternate version was used as the theme to the Canadian sketch comedy TV show The Kids in the Hall. Although commonly classified as a surf rock band they rejected the label, going so far as to release a track called “We’re Not a Fucking Surf Band”, although they also later released a compilation box set titled Oh, I Guess We Were a Fucking Surf Band After All.
The MarkoZen Blog 