ETA: Zoe Perry also appeared on “Scandal”, opposite her father, as a psycho torturer and serial murderer who nearly takes over the Presidency. The show had several of those over its course.
The 1951 rhythm & blues song “Rocket ‘88’” was credited to “Jackie Brenston and his Delta Cats,” though the song was actually recorded by Ike Turner (future husband and recording partner of Tina Turner) and his group, Kings of Rhythm.
The song was named after the Oldsmobile “Rocket 88” automobile. It’s considered to be an important song in the development of rock & roll, with some writers crediting it as the first rock & roll record.
The most commonly misheard lyric in Elton John’s song “Rocket Man” is “Rocket Man, burning out his fuse up here alone.” This was the premise of a 2011 commercial for the Volkswagen Passat, where listeners came up with many wrong interpretations of “up here alone”: telephone, cheap cologne, motor home, provolone. A couple in a Passat can correctly interpret the words thanks to the car’s premium sound system
The Volkswagen Passat was first sold in 1973 and has gone through seven generational changes. When it was originally sold in the USA it was called the Dasher. The Passat has also gone by the different names Santana, Quantum, Magotan, Corsar and Carat. It came out with a Diesel engine in 1978, and that engine was rated at 49 horsepower. That same engine was also used to power the Vanagon Diesel, a much larger vehicle.
The name “Passat” means trade wind in German. It is the name of a German four-masted steel barque and is one of the last surviving windjammers. She as launched in 1911 and was purchased in 1959 by the Baltic Sea municipality of Lübeck. It is now a youth hostel, visitor venue, museum ship, and landmark moored at Travemünde, a borough of Lübeck in the German federal state of Schleswig-Holstein.
The word scirocco (or sirocco) means a Mediterranean wind that comes from the Sahara. When VW first sold the Passat (German for trade wind, from SSR’s post), it also first sold the Scirocco in 1974. That 1st generation Scirocco was designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro, who also designed the Maserati Ghibli, the Iso Grifo, the De Tomaso Mangusta, and the 1st generation Volkswagen Golf and 1st generation VW Dasher.
The scirocco winds are also known variously as haboob in the Sudan, aajej in southern Morocco, ghibli in Tunis, harmattan in the western Maghreb, africo in Italy, and khamsin in Egypt.
Good trivia! I wondered why Maserati would give a car that name, and now I know. Thanks CG.
The Maserati Ghibli (say “gib-lee”) was a name applied to three different cars manufactured years apart.
From 1967 to 1973, the Maserati Ghibli tipo AM115 was a V8, 2 door 2+2 GT. gImages https://goo.gl/v78AJD.
From 1992 to 1998, the Maserati Ghibli tipo AM336 was a V6, 2 door 4-seater GT. gImages https://goo.gl/FbXF3G.
From 2013 to now, the Maserati Ghibli tipo M157 is a V6, 4-door 5-seater GT. gImages Maserati Ghibli Tipo M157 - Google Search.
The Maserati firm was established on December 1, 1814, in Bologna, Italy. Five Maserati brothers, Alfieri, Bindo, Carlo, Ettore, and Ernesto, were involved in the company at its founding. Another brother, Mario, was an artist who designed the company’s logo, which was based on the Fountain of Neptune located within Bologna.
During World War II, Maserati suspended car manufacturing in order to produce components for the Italian war effort. During this time, Maserati worked to construct a 16-cylinder town car for Benito Mussolini before Ferry Porsche of Volkswagen built one for Adolf Hitler. This failed, and the plans were scrapped.
Mario is a fictional character in the Mario video game franchise, which is owned by Nintendo. Mario has appeared in over 200 video games since his creation. Depicted as a short, pudgy, Italian plumber who resides in the Mushroom Kingdom, his adventures generally center upon rescuing Princess Peach from the Koopa villain Bowser. His younger brother and sidekick is Luigi.
Mario Andretti remains the only driver ever to win the Indianapolis 500 (1969), Daytona 500 (1967) and the Formula One World Championship (1978), and, along with Juan Pablo Montoya, they are the only drivers to have won a race in the NASCAR Cup Series, Formula One, and an Indianapolis 500. No American has won a Formula One race since Andretti’s victory at the 1978 Dutch Grand Prix.
The sword fight between Inigo Montoya and The Man in Black in the film The Princess Bride was months in the making. Mandy Patinkin trained for two months, several hours a day, with Henry Harutunian, the head coach of fencing at Yale. Then he and Cary Elwes worked four months with British stuntmen Peter Diamond and Bob Anderson. Diamond is best known for sword-training Errol Flynn and Burt Lancaster, and as the stunt coordinator for films such as the original Star Wars trilogy, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Highlander. Anderson, who fenced on the British Olymic team, was also the double for David Prowse (Darth Vader) during the lightsaber duels in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.
The sword fight itself took over a week to shoot.
Johnny Cash’s 1971 song, The Man in Black, was his protest statement against the treatment of poor people by wealthy politicians, mass incarceration, and the war in Vietnam.
The lyrics include…
Well, you wonder why I always dress in black,
Why you never see bright colors on my back,
And why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone.
Well, there’s a reason for the things that I have on.
Here is YouTube, for Johnny Cash singing the song for the first time, with an intro: Johnny Cash sings "Man In Black" for the first time (with intro) - YouTube.
Continuing, with commentary only…
I’d never heard of this song before. I just watched the video. It was Cash singing it at Vanderbilt University in Nashville TN. A few more lyrics include
I wear it for the sick and lonely old,
For the reckless ones whose bad trip left them cold,
I wear the black in mournin’ for the lives that could have been,
Each week we lose a hundred fine young men.
That last part was, of course, a reference to Vietnam casualties.
(we have a rule of not posting all lyrics; the result here is less than 25% of the song, and I don’t have the exact wording of the rule; and I’ll stop now)
As I listened to the entire song I couldn’t help but wonder if he initially liked wearing black, and then later developed the “cause”, defined in the song, for wearing black by talking to Vandy students before his performance.
It’s an interesting song. Enjoyable. With laudable points.
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Gloria Vanderbilt was married to conductor Leopold Stokowski for ten years, from 1945 to 1955. More recently, she maintained a romantic relationship with photographer and filmmaker Gordon Parks for many years until his death in 2006. Other notable lovers included Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, Howard Hughes, and Roald Dahl. Even more recently, today she is best known as mother to Anderson Cooper.
Anderson Cooper’s father, Wyatt Cooper, was the fourth and final husband of Gloria Vanderbilt. They had two sons. Anderson Cooper’s older brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, committed suicide at age 23 (in 1988) by jumping from the family’s 14th-floor apartment. Wyatt Cooper had already passed away, in 1978 at the age of 50, during open heart surgery after having had a heart attack only a few weeks earlier. Gloria Vanderbilt, born in 1924, is currently 94 years old.
In an early episode of The Big Bang Theory, Penny says her father’s name is “Bob.” However, when he first visits her, she introduces him to Leonard as “Wyatt.” Leonard calls him “Sir” a couple of times until Wyatt says “Oh, you can call me Wyatt.”
Never is his last name given, or the Bob/Wyatt discrepancy explained.
Wyatt Earp started his career in law enforcement when he joined the Wichita police force in 1875. Besides being a lawman, he was also a professional gambler, teamster, and buffalo hunter, and he owned several saloons, maintained a brothel, mined for silver and gold, and refereed boxing matches.
Although he was part of the famous gunfight at the O.K. Corral in Tombstone, AZ, his brother Virgil was the Tombstone city marshal and deputy U.S. marshal at the time.
A teamster, in modern American English, is a truck driver, or a member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, a labor union in the United States and Canada.
Originally, the term “teamster” referred to a person who drove a team of draft animals, usually a wagon drawn by oxen, horses, or mules.
A mule is the offspring of a mating between a male donkey (a jack) and a female horse (a mare). A similar animal is the hinny (the offspring of a female donkey and a male horse) – this pairing is less likely to produce an offspring, due to the difference in the number of chromosomes between horses and donkeys, making mules substantially more common than hinnies.
Mules are nearly always sterile. There are a small number of recorded cases in which a female mule has produced offspring when paired with a male horse or donkey, though there are apparently no known cases of a male mule producing offspring.