I love the song “Overjoyed” by Stevie Wonder. A wikipedia article about that song says:
In the liner notes for the song, “crickets, nightingale & additional bird sounds, ocean, pebbles in pond, stone dropped, crushing leaves” are listed under “environmental percussion”.
IIRC there was a debate in SDMB about whether musicians could be geniuses, prodigies or whatever. If there is such a thing, Stevie must be it.
And in the definitive version of The Fantastic Four (Roger Corman’s 1994 masterpiece*), Rebecca Staab played Sue Storm. She met William deVry on the set of… Port Charles, almost a decade later.
.
*sarcasm.
(I own a copy. For a “throw something together to protect our option” flick, it’s not as bad as it could be)
Is that the version with Jay Underwood? I’d love to see that one. Never spent much time trying to track down a copy, though.
Good use of your time.
And I’m betting Jay Underwood forgot to mention FF4 on the back of his head shots…
During WWII, Germany was seeking information about rumors that Churchill and Roosevelt were planning on meeting. They obtained a snippet of information that the meeting place was Casablanca. But a translator who was translating the information into German somehow assumed this was the Spanish words casa blanca rather than a reference to the city in Morocco. So he had the report saying they were meeting at the White House.
Actors need pictures of the backs of their heads, too?
Snopes has that as a myth Casablanca and White House | Snopes.com (and notes that Germany publicly announced the Casablanca conference prior to the meeting occurring (unfortunately without a citation))
I wish to categorically state that I did not work for German military intelligence during World War II.
So I’m not a primary source. I got this trivia tidbit from Commander in Chief: FDR’s Battle with Churchill, 1943 by Nigel Hamilton, which I am currently reading.
Morrison’s report had only whetted the President’s curiosity aboard the C-54 Skymaster as they approached Casablanca - which, despite air raid sirens going off at various times, was not in fact targeted by long-range German bombers from Tunisia. For all their vaunted efficiency, it seemed the Germans had no idea the President was planning to meet Churchill there, let alone intending to stay almost two weeks - Goebbels recording, afterward, his near-disbelief that the Sicherheitsdienst of the great Third Reich had actually intercepted enemy phone calls, yet had taken the name Casablanca to be Casa Blanca, or White House, Washington, D.C. (page 65-66)
Goebbels was thus floored by the seemingly authentic reports that finally reached Berlin on January 28, 1943. “The sensational event of the day, is the news that Churchill and Roosevelt have met in Casablanca,” the Reichminister dictated in his diary. He made no effort to conceal his amazement. “So the discussions have not, as we assumed, been taking place in Washington but on the hot coals of Africa. Once again our intelligence services have completely failed - unable even to identify the place where the talks were taking place,” he fulminated. “They’ve been held now for almost a fortnight, and they’re being heralded by the enemy as the gateway to victory.” (page 130-131)
Hamilton cites Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets by David Stafford for the first passage and Die Tagebucher von Joseph Goebbels (The diaries of Joseph Goebbels) for the second. (Hamilton states it is his own translation from German to English.)
The Snopes article cites The Casablanca Companion: The Movie Classic and Its Place in History by Richard E Osborne.
I actually have read Osbourne’s book but I don’t have a copy handy to check the text. But overall, I feel that Goebbels would be a solid primary source and I would tend to trust Stafford and Hamilton, who were writing histories of the conference, over Osbourne, who was writing a history of the movie.
Thank you. I agree that Goebbels is (in a sentence I never thought I say) a reliable source on this issue.
John Wilkes Booth made himself the most famous actor in history with just one back of the head shot.
(Too soon?)
Re ‘Casa Blanca’ - according to Paul Brickhill, when the Dambusters destroyed the Moehne dam, Arthur Harris (Head of Bomber Command and actually at Squadron HQ monitoring the raid), decided he must tell the Chief of the RAF Charles Portal, who was in Washington at the time, dining with Roosevelt that very night.
So Harris picked up the phone and told the switchboard ‘Get me the White House’. The girl on the switchboard knew nothing of the highly secret raid that went on that evening, but she did know of a nice little roadhouse a few miles out of town called the White House, and she was very efficient.
Confusion, hilarity etc.
Most of us have probably used a “threadlocker” adhesive when assembling threaded fasteners. Companies such as Loctite and Permatex make a variety of them. The color indicates how “strong” it is, with red being permanent.
Well there’s a new class of threadlocker adhesives that you apply after you tighten/torque the fastener. The adhesive wicks into the tiny gaps between the nut & bolt. They are usually green in color. Examples include Loctite 290, Loctite 294, Vibratite 15010, and Permabond HL126.
I just learned that there are currently only 5500 operational container ships in the entire world. Which means that one in seventy is currently waiting to be offloaded in the Port of LA/LB.
Just found out why you shouldn’t apply anti-seize to bolts & spark plugs. Part of the recommended torque accounts for the friction between the threads. Reduce that friction and torque it up to recommended specs and you’ve actually overtorqued it.
Some people (disclaimer: this is not automotive repair advice) say you can account for this by reducing he spec by 20% e.g. 25 ft-lb to 20 ft-lb.
Now that the holiday season has begun (Merry Thanksgivoween, everyone!) I remember a story I read somewhere. I wondered if it were factual or not. It stated that someone visiting Japan had gone shopping around Christmas and spotted a store display that showed Santa Claus nailed to a cross.
Snopes confirms that it’s a legend. Until and unless someone can provide some proof, file it with Bigfoot. But the article contained other interesting tidbits…
The co-optation of familiar Christmas figures, (both secular and religious) in the service of mass merchandising has also produced some rather curious blendings (real and imagined): Colonel Sanders dressed in a Santa suit (as KFC tried strenuously to promote fried chicken as the “traditional” Christmas meal), nuns singing advertising jingles to the tune of Christmas carols, Christmas cards featuring a ghoulish Santa in a graveyard accompanied by the Virgin Mary on broomstick, elves plastered on sake, and a Christmas revue featuring “stripping nuns and three lecherous Wise Men.”
On the island of Shikoku, Japan, there is a village that is filled with scarecrows. A woman there makes and positions them going about their scarecrow-y business in honor of those who have passed away or left.
A lot of bolts just don’t need anti-seize at all. I’ve never had a problem removing spark plugs. OTOH, my car has a huge plastic splash guard under the engine that has to come off for oil changes, and the screws that hold it in place get bathed in salt spray all winter. There’s no torque spec on them, and anti-seize assures that they can be removed the next time.
Re: Casablanca / Casa Blanca / White House: Just reading it here (and no cites), I wonder if they purposely picked Casablanca because of the possible confusion with White House? Someone says Casablanca, a phone call, a telegraph, or a letter later, translating down the lines, sending it on, it could be a mistake, the Germans decide White House.
I can literally see some staffer saying “talk about the movie, that will really confuse the Germans!”
2 days later…
“Who is ‘Oscar’? And why is he taking his Best Picture to Casablanca? I must let High Command know immediately!”
Smersh is an adversary of James Bond in several of Ian Fleming’s novels written between 1953 and 1960.
Smersh was disbanded in 1946 and its duties and operatives transferred to the Ministry of State Security (MGB).