xxmikexx

What kind of aircraft do you fly?

Habu1967, I saw the Y-12, the SR-71 prototype, on approach to McGuire AFB in NJ. As I recall it had just completed a publicized coast-to-coast record setting run. Re B-52s, I had a second cousin who was a pilot in the first squadron to receive B-52s. Regrettably he was killed in the first of three B-52 runaway elevator trim takeoff accidents.

This post is, effectively, a continuation of an earlier thread dealing with rock shows in the NYC of the 50s. That thread is here ... https://www.flightsim.com/vbfs/blog.php?b=62 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The music business was very different in the 50s. Back then there were no giant recording companies (though there were a couple of sizable publishing companies). There were many independent small record labels, but only a few large ones like Atlantic, who were late arrivals and really didn't hit their stride till the 60s. At that time pop music could be anything. Typical of the transition from the 40s to the 50s was this piece by Les Paul and his wife Mary Ford, "Mockingbird Hill", every line of which rhymes with "hill". http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCoZE_7b-_A&feature=related Incidentally, Les Ford invented multi-track recording -- except he did it with broadcast recording disks, bouncing tracks from one disk to another as the next track was played live and mixed in. Les Paul had been in an automobile accident in 1944 I think it was. Anyway, it shattered his right arm -- his picking/strumming arm. Not a problem. He told the doctors to install the requisite metal plates in such a way that his elbow would be locked at the proper angle for playing his guitar. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Here we have a classic that you've probably never heard before because no radio station would play it today -- it would not fit in with any playlist-driven FM station. Therfore I will have to bring it to you. Ladies and gentlemen, and children of all ages, without further ado, Jack Blanchard and Misty Moore performing their original number one hit, "The Tennesee Birdwalk" ... That was not the original recording -- I can't find the original -- but it's the same song and it's close enough. Here's a live version by the author/performers, featuring a fascinating solo by Misty Moore on what looks to me like a Moog 2 ... It's possible that this song actually dates back to the 60s rather than the 50s. My memory is uncertain on this point, and I'm not able to establish the release date via the internet. But if it is of the early 60s it simply reinforces my point because it is even more out of place than it would have been in the 50s. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx In a time like that it was easy for Little Richard to come on the scene and blow everybody away with a kind of music that had never been heard before, "Long Tall Sally" ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBTakXapwiE As I've said elsewhere, I don't buy much music because I have a tape recorder in my brain that captures most of it and that allows me to play it back on demand. However ... The flip side of this piece, "Slippin' And Slidin'" was (and is) my favorite Little Richard piece. (I think it was the B-side of "Long Tall Sally".) So I bought the 45 and proceeded to wear it out on my friend David Novak's 45 record player. (I didn't own one.) See? Even then the future producer in me was emerging. I probably listened to that record 200+ times, 50 of them in the first week that I owned the record. Within 2-3 months I had worn it out but did not replace it. (No need then, no need now.) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Well, the answer song for "Long Tall Sally" was, of course, "Short Fat Fannie" by Larry Williams. (The music has a delayed start, be patient.) ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tb9-h2M9D1U&feature=related That song became a hit, in part because it mentioned a large number of other hit songs. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Short Fat Fannie" having gone to Number One, Williams decided to come up with a sequel -- an answer to his own answer song, this one entitled "Boney Maronie", which also went to Number One ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfFl3c7g0FM&feature=related My wife and I met when we started prep school at age 13, the year that song was popular. A dear friend of the time, and a dear friend today, was a young lady named Carolann Mulroney. She was in fact thin and, in the cruel way of kids everywhere, inevitably became known as "Boney Mulroney". Under only slightly different circumstances I would have married Carolann instead of Evalyn. We all know it, recognize this for what it is, and laugh about it. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Whereupon Bill Haley weighed in with "Skinny Minnie" ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IO35d9LZtHE&feature=related I went to a rock show where Haley and company performed this piece before it had even been released as a record. I cannot describe the impact of hearing it live, or the thrill I felt when I first heard it on the radio. This is just about the only Haley piece that can't be considered Western Swing though I can't be sure because I never heard any of his minor stuff. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Annette Funicello of "Mickey Mouse Club" fame later joined the party with "Tall Paul" ... Oddly enough, my wife's and my close friend, the aforementioned Boney Mulroney, had a brother who was 6'2". Can you possibly guess what his nickname was? Paul also was a musician -- singer and sax player. Years later, his having won a gig at the Spring Valley NY VFW or some such place, he asked me to come along and back him up because so-and-so had cancelled. It was raining -- pouring -- that night. We set up on the stage, which had a brass strip that ran the full width, about five feet back, that was grounding me -- and therfore grounding my Strat. So I did the whole evening getting occasional big shocks because of my damp shoes coming in contact with that brass strip. (As I've said elsewhere, I'm a trouper. The show must go on.) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx As for answer songs, I don't remember what happened after "Tall Paul".

Darrell, Tell us about the motorcycle in your avatar. It looks like a built-for-comfort distance machine. (I know zero about motorcycles so please forgive if I'm using wrong terminology.)

It was January? of 1965. I was employed by Applied Data Research in Princeton, NJ ... I had conceived, designed and written some software to control flatbed plotters in a way that was independent of the details of the devices. (Today we would call that aspect of my code a "class driver".) And then I was able to make a sale of the software to Shell Oil Company. This was pioneering software that knew how to do 3D projection and perspective. So the user could move a virtual pen through 3-space and my software would project the result, scaled, translated, rotated and perspectivized, onto the 2-D plane of the plotter bed. You could condition the virtual pen to leave trails behind it -- dashed lines, dotted lines, blah blah blah. The software even had scaleble fonts that I had programmed myself, the pioneering equivalent of what we would call today a TrueType font. The only thing my software lacked was a hidden lines elimination feature, an algorithm that I struggled for two years to invent but could not. Anyway, a big user of the software was Shell Oil in Houston. (I had closed the sale with some Shell folks in NJ but it was Houston that ended up being the main user.) Something came up during the winter of 64/65, I forget what. I had to fly down to Houston on short notice, planning to stay only a day or two. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Instead the visit stretched out to almost a month. Shell had been prepared to fly me back and forth so I could spend weekends with my wife and infant daughter. But I'm a trouper, Shell was in a world of hurt, and my wife agreed that I should stay in Houston till Shell was up and running again. So I worked 18x7 until the job was done, taking only short meal breaks and the occasional long dinner break, sometimes sleeping at Shell, sometimes sleeping at my hotel a few blocks away. (But the blocks on Fannon were LONG blocks, as I recall.) I'm not sure that my stuff had bugs. I think it may have been an emergency requirement for some new features. At any rate they needed the software modifications to print well geology maps derived from data gathered in the field by their prospecting teams. It was mid-winter in Princeton but in Houston ... Ah, in Houston ... It was sunny, and warm, and I saw a helicopter land right next to the Steak By Weight restaurant on Fannon Boulevard. Out stepped two men wearing large Stetson hats. (Stetsons are made in Brooklyn, by the way, or at least used to be.) Winter in Houston came as a stunning surprise. But we never moved there. We didn't move because it never occurred to me that we could. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Anyway, came a day when Shell and I agreed that everything that needed to be done had been done, tested and found to be in good shape. That was around 10AM of my final day there. I expressed a desire to get on a Newark-bound flight as early as I could. I wandered away to get a soda or whatever while the responsible group manager, a gentleman named Dewey Kibler (a typically Texan name to conjure with), called the Shell travel department office there in the Shell HQ building, which is where I had been working. I returned to Dewey's office. "It's all set up" he said. "If you get right down there they'll have your ticket ready and will run you out to the airport so you can catch the next flight east." "Bye Dewey, I've really enjoyed being here. Thanks for your hospitality." xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Color me gone. I went down to the travel department, who handed me a ticket for an Eastern Airlines flight. I didn't look at it, mostly because they rushed me downstairs ... and into a limousine ... and whisked me off to Hobby ... where Shell had asked that the aircraft be held ... for little old me ... apparently for fifteen minutes. You see, Shell could make this stuff happen because Eastern was their biggest customer, and Houston was Shell headquarters. I boarded the plane, a brand new 727-100, and headed back to coach, suitcase in hand. (That's how it could be done back then if you didn't have time to check luggage through, or if you didn't want to check it through.) While looking for an open seat (that's how it was done back then) a stewardess asked for my ticket (which was sometimes how it was done) ... and then turned me around and led me to ... first class ... to the frontmost seat on the right. (Must have been 1B, I don't recall a seat next to mine.) She went back to coach. Another stewardess then asked whether I would like a cocktail. At 11 AM? Hm-m-m-m ... Why not? ... I didn't drink much, and usually not till evening, but this was a special occasion. I was exhausted and hoped that a drink would knock me out for the flight home. Wrong. Completely wrong. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I had ridden 727s a couple of times before but never up front. It was like riding at the end of a telephone pole that was being pushed from behind. I could feel every movement of the aircraft and for an aviation buff like me it was wonderful. It was also QUIET, something I had never before experienced in an airliner. All I heard was the thump of the nose gear coming up and locking, and of the nosewheel doors closing. That and the sound of the slipstream, the quiet white noise building in intensity as the aircraft accelerated. So there I was, riding a magic carpet with a vodka martini in my right hand as I watched Texas fall away. I've done so much flying that very few flights stick in my mind, but this one certainly did. Once we were at cruising altitude a sumptuous lunch was served to those of us who were flying POSH. (Port out, starboard home.) Heck, even the coach meals were really good back then, and the meal in First was even better. I don't remember what I ate but whatever it was, it was wonderful. I didn't sleep at all. I was too excited by the experience. And ever since then I've equated the 727-100 and then the 727-200 with grace and comfort ... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I've equated the 727 with the Golden Age of air travel, when aircraft almost always departed and arrived on time. When luggage was almost never lost. When traveling men wore suits and ties, and traveling women wore dresses or women's suits, and when traveling children were dressed in their Sunday best. When the stewardesses were young and pretty and still happy in the fun jobs that they would quit as soon as they had met Mister Right, or that would end when the airlines asked them to step down so they could be replaced with even fresher young faces. That era will never return. Suffice it to say that today I drive whenever this is at all practical. If I start at 2AM I can make Denver to Malibu in 20 hours. I've done it three times. I can make NYC in 42 hours and Boston in 46, including a stop in a motel. I've done this probably twenty times. I have zero interest in riding in a cattle car, or in being treated as a piece of cargo, despite the fact that deregulation has resulted in fares that are low as dirt. If I can't fly in comfort -- if I can't afford First -- I simply won't fly again.

kin3, You're likely to find that Flight Simulator becomes an expanding universe for you. You can look forward to many years of discovering new ways to enjoy the sim, and of learning about aviation. If you don't mind my asking, what's your real world occupation? Or are you retired like me?

Alastair, I agree with you about the SR-71 retirement story. It was so sudden and nonsensical. I am highly skeptical of the idea that we abandoned an important category of intelligence gathering capability simply because the aircraft were getting old. So at a maximum we have Aurora, not announced. At a minimum we have a fleet of newly-built SR-71s that has not been announced. I think we had another example of "methinks the lady doth protest too much" when Edward Teller announced that the spaceborne X-ray laser program had been shut down because the device did not and never would be able to work. Yeah, right. All that quasi-public discussion about underground nuclear tests bathing test articles with early fireball radiation. (The tests with the massive doors that slam shut in milliseconds just before the blast wave reaches them.) All those tests -- and nothing important was learned or developed. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Now there's a problem here. Conspiracy theories can never be disproven, so we have to take everything with a grain of salt as Alex has done. Otherwise we will all become like the people who buy T-shirts in Roswell, NM. Those things said ... Alex, What arguments do you see for retaining an airborne reconaissance facility like SR-71 and therefore like Aurora? I see one and it is the (backup?) ability to put a bird over any spot on the earth at 80,000 feet with six hours notice. Satellites can't come closer than perhaps 250,000 feet, and if they are to be useful for long periods of stare time they will have to be in high polar orbit, meaning that they will be looking at the earth from quite a distance, probably through adaptive optics, which is a clever idea but which probably can't cure cancer. But an Aurora type craft can fly low enough over/alongside the target area to eliminate the need for adaptive optics, and it seems to me that this COULD cure cancer. You could arrange to have a satellite in low polar orbit, and to de-orbit it temporarily so as to bring it down to 250,000 feet, but then you'd have to wait for the earth to rotate beneath that satellite so as to bring the point of interest roughly beneath down-looking optics. Now you could improve things by having a constellation of such satellites, say one over each time zone ... But what if they're knocked out by some enemy capability that nobody's talking about -- like a spaceborne (or seaborne) Chinese X-ray laser. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx So it seems to me that if an aircraft like Aurora CAN be built then most likely it HAS been built -- as a backup to the recon satellites. They might never be needed in practice, but why take a chance? So I think we're now down to the question not of whether but how. Can such an aircraft be built? I think that both Alastair and I will be very interested to hear anything you might have to say on that subject.

Of course I understand what Habu1967 refers to. In fact, I recently bought the payware SR-71 Blackbird for FS2004, though I've only had time to fly it once. (Nice addon.) As for Nebraska, I'll have you know that I once drove to Benkleman (which even you may never have heard of) to take pictures just because I liked the sound of the name when I came across it on a Town-This-Way road sign. If you go out to my website, pcgamecontrols.com, you'll see some of my photography. Look for the "Northern Trip" thread or whatever I called it. I got as far east as McCook, only to run into engine trouble, forcing me to drive north to Grand Island for repairs. Folks, an aside: In the old days in Nebraska they would say, of the shallow and sandy Platte River, "Too thick to drink, too thin to plow." So there, mon ami, we have plenty to talk about, except that I absolutely loathe all forms of sports. And anyway I live in Colorado, where to utter the team name "Cornhuskers" is to invite immediate death by ridicule.

Why don't we take a break? ... Tell everybody about sailing. What do you do that takes a week? But let's do it in your sailing thread ... Oops, I guess threads are automatically locked after some period of inactivity. So how about you start a new thread?

In my opinion line one really must be "ears". This of course makes for a line two problem, let's come back to that. Line four, new direction? ... If he rocks it good he'll get some cheers. (But if "you" is the Saxman then make the appropriate substitution.) Line three is fine. Line two ... ... ... Still thinking ... ... ... If you listen live he'll blah your fears. (No, that's a complete 720-degree change of direction. :))

You hope. Otherwise any arriving or departing pilot will be in big trouble. :D

So ... Jesse and I could go backstage at the Paramount any time we wanted. This meant that we were in a good position to get autographs. Jesse didn't bother to get more than a handful, but I was a voracious autograph collector. I got them on index cards and kept them in my wallet, several names to a card. That way I would always be close to my music heroes. I'm not going to list everybody -- either you know their names and don't need to be told, or you don't know their names, like Dickey Doo of Dickey Doo And The Don'ts, in which case you won't care. But there are two people I do want to tell you about ... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The first is Bo Diddley. He would always ignore the few fans that managed to make it backstage. However, my being a HUGE Bo Diddley fan (still am), I figured out a way to break through his armor. I knew his real name (Ellas McDaniel) and I used it. "Mister McDaniel" I said, "May I have your autograph?" He looked at me, startled, and then accepted my card and signed it. While he was signing I said "You know, I'm a big fan of yours. I too play guitar, and I've copped everything from all of your records. Please tell me about your guitars." Wow! I had well and truly broken through. He actually answered me, and then we had a nice conversation about the guitars that he always had custom-made for him by Gretsch. The other person is Chuck Berry. I never got his autograph. Nobody did. He had little interest in fans in general and zero interest in white fans. I understood -- after his conviction for violating the Mann act he simply wanted to put on his sets, have a good time onstage, and then get on with his private life. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx What were those early rock shows like, you ask. Well, I don't think there's any actual concert footage from back then but there's the next best thing, early kinescope (videotaped) TV performances below. A typical show would last three hours and would feature twenty or so acts. Some would be one-hit wonders. Others might do four song sets. Leaving out the minor acts, a typical show sequence would be as below. I saw each of these acts live, some of them several times. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Jerry Lee Lewis http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yRdDnrB5kM&feature=related How do I pick up information about the music business? I don't know. I hear, read or see stuff and it simply sticks. So, for example, I know two things about Jerry Lee Lewis that you don't. First, he is first cousins with country singer Mickey Gilley. Second, he is first cousins with televangelist Jimmy Swaggart. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Gene Vincent ... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Little Richard http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXSUEjTp_IM I heard "Lucille" for the first and only time at one of the Murray The K shows. I didn't know the title of the song because it wasn't announced, but repetition is a wonderful thing and it wasn't hard to guess. The song ran around in my head for fifty years till I discovered YouTube and played the above video. The tape recorder in my brain had retained the song note for note. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Carl Perkins http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLcLXM8zSPo&feature=related xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Bo Diddley http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBAJXyF1HVc&feature=related xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Bill Haley xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The Royal Teens http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcO-zKCiDlI xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Eddie Cochran http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vm2Mdma2dXw xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx And we'll close the show with Chuck Berry lip syncing "Little Queenie", from the Alan Freed movie "Don't Knock The Rock" ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Be_ioAYtU&feature=related

I saw my first rock show, at the Brooklyn Paramount Theatre, in ... 56? ... 57? I can't remember the year precisely and Google isn't helping me, but I'll pledge 56. Remarkably, I can't find a single reference to the day when the show in question first opened its doors and an excited crowd of kids, fighting to get in, caused a stampede that left one kid trampled to death and several others injured. Aware of all the advance hype and excitement, and figuring that 'Tings Might Happen, I wasn't there that day. No, I was there a week later, seven days into the show's ten day run. But kids were still dancing in the aisles to this, that and the other act, and the balcony was still swaying, a danger that the theatre management apparently elected to ignore because the show was breaking box office records. To my knowledge that was the first rock show in NYC. It had been produced by Alan Freed, the Cleveland DJ who came to NYC and made it big. Deeply involved in payola, and in making movies that featured the acts he owned large pieces of, and paying the required monetary tributes the NYC mob, who owned him, Freed became a legend ... and he remained one until his station, WABC, fired him because he refused to say whether he had ever accepted payola. Before that show there had been Vaudeville, dying a lingering death. After that show Vaudeville was mainly to be seen only in a) the Ed Sullivan TV show, and b) the Academy Of Music theatre on East 14th Street, right next to Julian's, a legendary pool hall that also must be the subject of a story for another day. As I recall, Freed was succeeded by "Cousin Brucie" Morrow, a DJ who did then and does today make me cringe. I caught him last winter emceeing a show paying homage to Disco. He was just as smarmy and patronizing and ... well ... think of screeching chalk on a blackboard. Anyway, Morrow drove me to seek part-time shelter at WLIB, at the time a low power "race music" station, nothing remotely resembling its status of today as Number One in the NY/NJ/CT Tri-State area. (At least that's how things stood several years ao. I don't really know what's happening today.) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx At the time WLIB really had only one thing going for it and that was the seminal DJ Jocko Henderson, not yet a legend but soon to become one. Here's a typical Henderson on-air rap. Maybe I've made it up, maybe not, but Jocko would have been right at home saying it, and playing percussion under it using his stiffened fingers on a table top ... Ee-tiddly-ock This IS your man Jock And I'm back on the scene With the record machine. The time right now? Eleven nineteen. In the immortal words of Steve Allen, I kid you not. As I recall Henderson did six hours, from 9PM to 3AM, all filled with his unique ad-libbing, all filled with the records HE wanted to play. He would take requests, but only if they coincided with his own tastes. Like Freed, Henderson began packaging shows of his own, these put on at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem. People think that Bootsy Collins invented the rocketship landing on the stage, but they're wrong. It was Jocko, who sometimes stepped out of the machine dressed like Cab Calloway -- in a blindingly white tux with top hat and cane. So, folks, there's nothing new under the sun. Bootsy is rooted in Jocko is rooted in Calloway is rooted in, most likely, Mister Bojangles. I can't go further back than Bojangles but the lineage must have been known to the people of that time. Bojangles, by the way, is the subject of the song by The Byrds, "Mister Bojangles". Apparently one of them came across Bojangles living in a trailer, impoverished and forgotten. Well, Roger McGuinn may not have heard of Bojangles before that but I had, though I can't tell you when or where. Being a night owl I often caught long stretches of Jocko's show on WLIB, but not always, because he had competition. Yes, folks, the main thing going down on the NYC airways of the time at that hour was the legendary Jean Shepard, who single-handedly invented talk radio, complete with seven-second delay on the playback. But before introducing call-ins as a feature of the show, Shepard had always done six hours of non-stop monologue, interrupted only by ads and station breaks that he did himself as I recall. (I think this was WOR, quite a big station, but not at night.) And he never repeated himself, never. He invented characters who would tell stories, and some of his characters were regulars, so to speak, but the stories never repeated. A truly astonishing performance. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx As it happens I was in ground school with Shepard in ... 67? Also in our class was the man who would later become known as Big Ed Mahler, the famed airshow aerobatic pilot, though at the time he was simply Eddie Mahler, son of a wealthy car dealer. This was all at Princeton Airport, another story for another day. But I digress ... ... ... ... And I digress to another digression :D ... I don't think he ever complained but Cab Calloway was sentenced to spend the rest of his days performing a single song -- "Minnie The Moocher", just as Bobby Pickett had to perform "The Monster Mash" in supermarket parking lots till he dropped dead, and as Jimmy Buffet will have to perform "Margaritaville" in the bar he owns till the day Key West is wiped out by a hurricane. (I don't wish Buffet dead but I do wish that this song be six feet under. Which reminds me :) ... Television pioneer Art Linkletter, today 95, recently observed that "It's better to be over the hill than under it". :D) (Hey Sherm! I know that constructs like "under it". with the period following the quotation mark are a no-no. However, you have no choice but to agree that the English language is whatever educated people say that it is. I say that the trailing period looks better, just as I Like To Capitalize All The Words In A Title Includiing The Minor Ones. So there.) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Ahem ... As I had been about to say, my rock show attendance career began with Alan Freed. It also continued with Alan Freed and the Brooklyn Paramount until the fall of 57, when it came to an abrupt end. It came to an abrupt end because I had made a friend at summer camp -- a friend whose uncle just happened to be the manager of the Brooklyn Fox Theatre. And Freed didn't put shows on there, competing DJ Murray Kaufman did. Yes, folks, Jesse Kligman and I got to go backstage at the Brookly Fox for probably every "Murray The K" show produced betweent the fall of 57 and the fall of 60. All we had to do was to go up to the stage door alongside the theatre, knock, and tell Whoever that we had Uncle's okay, and that they should check with Uncle if they didn't believe us. (Nobody ever checked. I mean, how many fans know the name of the manager of the theatre they want to invade?) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Aside: Like my prep school, the summer camp had the children of a number of famous people, or kids who later became famous. Like Vicki Wilson, who later achieved notoriety as Whatever. Vicki was one of the daughters of Sloan Wilson, the guy who wrote "The Man In The Gray Flannel Suit". The book and the movie had been hits in the USA, but it faded off the radar screen here. But not in Russia. That's right folks, TMITGFS sold like hotcakes in Russia for many, many years. Now the Russians were reasonable people back then. They paid royalties. Trouble was, they didn't allow the royalties to leave Russia. So every year, after summer camp, Vicki and her parents would go off to Russia for a vacation, their goal being to spend away whatever royalties had accrued in their absence. Another friend of mine there was a girl named Georgia Godowsky. Not a very impressive name. In fact you've never heard it before. But Georgia's uncle was (drum roll) the legendary composer Irah Gershwin brother of George Gershwin, after whom Georgia had been named. (Georgia's mom's sister married Irah. No, I never met him though I certainly do wish I had. You will note that they HAD to name her Georgia. I mean, whoever heard of the feminine version of Irah?) Another was Sue Kolker, who appears in Jim Bouton's "Ball Four" as someone who persistently stood in the way of progress regarding Whatever in White Plains or some such place. We also had Dave Wyler, heir to the Wyler Watch fortune. Dave wasn't stuck up or anything, he was simply obnoxious, so I did not hang out with him. But I did hang out with Peter Rutter, later a congressman from Cincinatti. And oh yes ... My counselor for two years in a row was a certain Albert Shanker, a schoolteacher who would later found the National Teacher's Union. I will make no further comment about him because I don't want to get into politics in the FlightSim.com blogosphere. However, he was a really nice guy, very patient with we hormone-laden little male warriors.

Victrola ... We had one. My father, an alcoholic, bought it so he could play Tex Ritter's "Rye Whiskey" over and over and over, which was fine with me -- fine singer, fine song. We also had an Edison wax cylinder playback machine but I can't recall what was on the cylinders. (We only had a few.)

Yes, that's absolutely classic Chuck Berry, from when he was just hitting his stride. I should have mentioned earlier that I had a large music biz autograph collection (a story for another day) but that I never was able to get Chuck Berry's -- he simply brushed me (and everybody else) off every time. He was a bitter man. Having served time for his Mann Act violation, he believed that he had been prosecuted (by rednecks) only because he was a) a black man and b) playing demonic music. I don't disagree. You will remember the mood of the mid 50s, when many people still considered rock to be "race music" and were opposed to the music and its performers, and especially to non-white performers, for that reason alone. Anyway, all he ever wanted to do was get in, do his show and get out. If his later career was any guide he would have insisted on being paid cash in hand, in advance, or he would have refused to go onstage. But those things said, the man was an incredible performer, and if you click on any of the live concert links you'll see how much he loved working an audience even if he wanted no contact with people as individuals. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Unlike James Brown and Bo Diddley, who continued to tour right up to their deaths, Chuck Berry has given up touring. Instead he gives unannounced unplugged peformances to people who come by a certain bar? cafe? in the North Saint Louis district know as ... Blueberry Hill. So now we know what those Fats Domino lyrics were referring to. I suppose he was honoring a place that may have given him is professional start. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx One of the sad things that happened re Hurricane Katrina is that Fats lost all his gold records. I don't know whether they were stolen, or lost in the flood, or if something else happened. There was a movement afoot to get him replacements but I haven't heard anything since that very short news story. Yes, I did get his (Fats) autograph. Amazing hands -- short fat fingers which clearly would have constrained his playing style. Heck -- we can hear it in his records -- as deserving of the monicker "slowhand" as Eric Clapton.

What's your second favorite? I'd like to get together on this but even though "My Ding-A-Ling" was his biggest selling record, I can't get with the program.

dobar, In addition to talking about it here, how about your opening a Safari thread in the PC Software Tech forum? Many more people will see it there than here. Discussions about Macs are also fair game, there as well as here. For example ... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Ten years ago my wife and I had a combined graphic arts and printing company. We needed to have both Macs and Windows PCs. This was about the time of OS7 and OS8 so I have no idea what OS X is like. But I can give you my assessment from that time ... I liked the Mac. It was easier for me to use than the standard Windows 98 machines of the day. (And I'm a power user.) However, the sheer breadth of software available for PCs caused us to use PCs whenever possible for a variety of things, not just desktop publishing. Yet we had a need to move data back and forth between the PC and Mac environments. At the time we did it with utility programs and a LAN. Today it could be done by sharing file systems on a dual boot Mac, yes?

Loyd, You might want to look at the terrain mesh offerings of FS Dreamscapes. They aren't done like Tile Proxy (though that's an obvious possible future direction) but they are very detailed. You should see how the world-famous "Half Mitten Butte" turned out. The developer, Dean Mountford, has become an email friend. This site is here ... http://www.fsdreamscapes.com/web/ On the front page is a video that will show you what he's been up to. He's a regular advertiser on FlightSim.com and I believe his stuff is available through the FS Pilot Shop though I'm not sure of this.

You know all the A sides, I'm not going to repeat them. But here are some terrific Chuck Berry pieces that you may not have heard ... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx First, "Havana Moon". The author of "Louie, Louie" says he was inspired by this piece, which can be heard here ... In this piece you can hear Berry's preferred bottom accompaniment -- a string bass. (Even after electrics came on the scene he continued his love affair with the upright.) Another interesting thing about the orchestration of this piece is that there are no drums, no piano, as would be normal for a Chuck Berry recording. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Here's a piece featuring the normal Chuck Berry lineup of drums, bass, piano, and a second guitar, "Little Queenie" ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_Be_ioAYtU&feature=related However, if you watch it through to the end you will have it confirmed, as I did, that this is a lip-synced scene from an Alan Freed rock movie. (I think it was "Don't Knock The Rock".) You see, Chuck Berry's piano player was a black gentleman named Johnny Johnson, not the white guy you see in the background. Similarly, while I don't know the name of Chuck Berry's regular session drummer (it will have been the Chess Records house drummer), i DO know the name of his session backup guitarist -- Bo Diddley. That's right, folks. On essentially every Chuck Berry record you have ever heard, if there's a second guitar running it will be Bo Diddley. Listen to this, "Memphis" as rendered by the author himself, Chuck Berry. (And you thought it had been written by Johnny Rivers, didn't you.) ... ... D-word ... I can't find the original recording, but if you hear it you'll see (gr?) that Bo Diddley was playing backup rhythm guitar in Berry's unique style. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx In the late 50s I used to go to many of the rock shows in NYC so I got to see Chuck Berry several times. He never played a song the same way twice. The take of "Maybelline" that we're all familiar with was in fact Take 37, and you can be sure that it was recognizably different from (and better than) all the takes that preceded it. Let's see ... Thirty-seven takes. If we assume that some of the takes were abandoned half way through, we're probably talking about 2x37 = 74 minutes of time. Most likely they had a tape machine running and they simply kept it running through the whole session, which probably lasted four hours if you count breaks, maybe going to 60 takes in all. That would have been heaven for me -- listening to all those interpretations by by the author himself. Here's a typical live concert variation ... You will recall, of course, that Take 37 sounds like Take One, as completely fresh as if he had just walked into the studio. Berry loved to play, and he loved his own songs. Take this live performance of "Johnny B. Goode" ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEq62iQo0eU&feature=related and this one ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0YUA3yTUss His enthusiasm was infectious, kids would always be dancing in the aisles, and he was such a dynamite performer that he would always close the show. Nobody repeat nobody ever dared to follow him. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx It was Chuck Berry who converted me to rhythm guitar. Before him I had been copping Scotty Moore riffs (Elvis), but the first time I heard "Roll Over Beethoven" (56?) I was immediately transported to the rhythm section where I remain to this day. (And you thought that John Lennon wrote that song, didn't you.) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx And now for something completely different ... "Maybelline" was Take 37 but Leslie Gore's "It's My Party" was Take One. Yes, for her first recording session ever, this 16-year old girl from central NJ walked into the famous Atlantic Records studio on West 57th street with her mom, listened to Quincy Jones' runthrough of the arrangement with the band, and then laid the whole thing down in one take. As I recall, Jones ended the session right there. What would have been the point of continuing? xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Finally, when I began to write this piece I had intended to present what is perhaps my favorite Chuck Berry original recording, "Around And Around". However, the original is not up on any of the usual sites. But a number of covers are because this, ladies and gentlemen, is a piece that musicians love, like "In The Midnight Hour".

Postscript ... I said earlier that Paul and I had sworn a blood oath never to grow up. I have been true to my oath. Paul has not. No, Paul grew up very quickly when he realized that he had made two or three million dollars in the stock market while he wasn't watching, and that his soon-to-be-ex wife would get some of this money if he didn't do something about the situation. To make a long story short, Paul spent north of $200,000 on attorneys, making sure that his wife, the mother of his children, would not collect a single nickel from him in their divorce case. That's what he told me the next-to-last time I spoke with him. The last time was when he called to tell me that my Aunt Ruth had passed away. I declined to come to the funeral because I did not and do not want to see Paul ever again. He is not the crazy, fun-loving Paul I grew up with. No, he has become instead a mean-sprited money-obsessed person who I don't know and don't want to know. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Now for something that is going to make the blood of all politically correct people boil. When he was ten I took my son out onto our front lawn along with a bow and arrow set we had picked up somewhere, sometime. We stood side by side as I fired arrows directly up into the air. We then stood there unflinching, and unwounded, living proof that the laws of probability would, with better than 99% confidence, ensure that neither of us would get hit by a falling arrow. You see, folks, all men need a rite of passage of some kind -- a ceremonial entree to the world of warriors that only men are genetically capable of understanding. Women like babies, men like weapons. It has ever been so. But couldn't my son have been severely injured, or even killed? Yes, of course. That's the whole point. You expose yourself to danger, and when nothing happens you are a better person, and it's worth the risk. And I shared the risk with him. After all, such a day is a Good Day To Die. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx The Sioux and other tribes of the Great Plains had some very interesting military customs. The young men would go on the warpath meaning that they intended to steal horses from folks they didn't like, and that they would kill anybody who forced them to kill, a much higher honor being to simply strike the enemy with a coup stick, as in "See? My medicine is much stronger than yours. I don't need to kill you, and now you will be so humiliated that you will wish I had." But old retired warriors had the greatest medicine of all provided they became bannermen. A bannerman was a warrior who was too old to fight, worthless in combat. Yet they could and did go on the warpath with the young hotheads. And when the raiding party reached the outskirts of the enemy village, the bannermen would dismount, wind long sashes around their necks, and then stake the other end of the sashes into the ground using a lance that they would hold at an angle in their right hands. Then they would wait, unarmed, for the enemy to come to them, whereupon they would do absolutely nothing but glare at the enemy warriors in Clint Eastwood fasion. (What we would call today "Putting on their war faces", or "Mean mugging.") It was their way of saying "My medicine is so strong that you won't dare to kill me. You won't dare to count coup on me. You are beneath contempt because I am (Yellowtail, Crazy Horse, Sitting Bull, Standing Bear, Eagle Bone, ..., Whoever.) I am a man of legend, and you are a woman-man. You know who I am from the stories that your fathers and grandfathers told around your campfires. I am not afraid of you, or your arrows, or your lances, or your rifles, or your war clubs. And if you DO kill me, well, it is a Good Day To Die." If a bannerman exhibited real courage he was usually spared by even the most hated enemy. The ones who broke and showed fear, their medicine gone after all, would be killed on the spot.

My cousins were very smart. One day they decided to memorize pi and e to 120 decimal places, and they insisted that I learn pi to at least twenty places. To this day I believe I can recite it ... 3.1415926535897932384628 ... Okay, let's go out on the net and see how I did ... 3.1415926535897932384626 ... OMG, I got it wrong, at the end a 6 instead of an 8. But evidently I did 23 places here so I'm correct through 20th place after all. (Aside: Folks, I am not making this up. Who could? Trust me, if I were able I'd be a wealthy author courtesy of a good agent and a good editor.) Anyway, for their next miracle Larry and Paul decided to express the speed of light in as obscure a unit of measurement as they could contrive. They concluded that it should be (drum roll) ... Leagues per fortnight. (snare hits, cymbals crash) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Now, this is a story about my cousins, not about me. I will allow that I was just as wacky, just as creative, but they had their own style and I was enormously impressed with it, so much so that ... I insisted that Paul and I swear a blood oath never to grow up. I mean an honest-to-goodness true Plains-Indian-Slice-Open-Your-Thumbs-And-Mingle-The-Blood oath such as you might witness in a cowboys and Indians movie with lines like this one ... "White man not speak straight. White man speak with forked tongue." Aside: All you politically correct people out there, don't get your britches in an uproar. My daughter-in-law is genetically half Sioux -- 50% original genes -- and she too laughs at that line which I did not make up, though I certainly wish I had. But I digress. This is all by way of leading up to the following story, which cannot be appreciated unless you know my cousin Paul, which you now do ... xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx It came to pass that Paul got a degree in Electrical Engineering and went to work immediately at Johns Hopkins University, where he remained for the next forty years. One of his early professional assignments was as the project engineer for the TV system for the Ranger spacecraft series. Remember Ranger? Of course you do. Ranger One sent, from the vicinity of the moon, a dramatic series of photos, each with a target reticle showing ... well ... I'm not sure what, but it certainly wasn't the point of impact, which was always above and to the right of the reticle's center. This probably was some kind of spacecraft pointing error. Trust me, if that had been Paul's subsystem, the reticle would have been steered onto the point of impact and would have stayed there upon pain of ... never mind, the rest of the story needs telling right now. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Ranger One had been sterilized, because nobody knew what the consequences of bringing live germs to the moon might be. Well, in fashion typical for him Paul decided to find out. That's right, folks. At one point while he was alone with the machine in its pre-launch clean room, Paul deliberately coughed on the spacecraft, ensuring that millions of tiny citizens of earth would be immortalized in the wreckage of Ranger after it crashed into the near side of the moon. Destroyer Of Worlds! you might shout in anger. No, not at all. Paul was simply making a semi-scientific statement about all the nonsense associated with the space program. There is no life on the moon, and Paul's germs are dead too. Based on everything we know today and knew back then, there CAN'T be any life on the moon. (I have a minor in biochemistry, folks. The moon as a harbor for life is simply out of the question, just as silicon as the basis for metabolic life is out of the question.) xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Yes, I know, I know ... Even if there is just the tiniest chance of germs surviving, Ranger MUST be sterilized. However ... Get 999 scientists together who say "No life on the moon." Then find one kooky scientist who says "Sterilize Ranger because the moon might be friendly to life". The press will then report a "split in the scientific community", and by the Laws of Public Relations, Ranger WILL be sterilized. Of course, it's actually impossible to sterilize an object like that. After all, "sterile" is an industrial process with a definition something like "Two hundred degrees Fahrenheit at four atmospheres in 100% humidity for twenty minutes." (And you thought the term meant "free of germs", didn't you.) Even if you dared to put the assembled spacecraft through that procedure (are you nuts?), it's going to become unsterile the moment you take it out of the clean room. If that's not enough to contaminate it, just wait till the technicians get it mated with the launch vehicle. And so on. No way to sterilize it. None. And do you know what we call it when something completely absurd is done in the name of public relations? ... (Drum roll) ... ... That's right, folks. Even in those long ago days of the mid-60s the doctrine of Political Correctness was alive and well, and the politicians and press had somehow been appointed to make science decisions. And that was what Paul was protesting.

Larry And Paul are my cousins, Paul being my age, Larry two years older. Paul's best friend in grade school and high school was ... George Petaki ... who later became governor of the State of New York. (I must have met George many times because I spent as many weekends at my cousins' place as I could, but I'm drawing a complete blank.) My cousins' father was George, a Vienna-trained Ear, Nose and Throat doctor who fled his native Hungary during the late 30s, came to this country, and ended up marrying my mother's sister. Till the day of his death forty years later George spoke rapid fire English with an accent as thick as that of his countryman Edward Teller. Yet by the early fifties George spoke good colloquial English. And by the early sixties he had become the equivalent of a native speaker, making up jokes like the following ... "I've invented two new prescription drugs for Catholic priests" he said to me one day. "Really, Uncle George? What are they?" Noassitol Celiba-C xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Larry and Paul were born into that happy house. Larry became a ham radio equipment builder and operator at the age of nine, as I recall. To this day, having spent many hours in his room listening to him on the air, I know his call letters as well as I know my own name -- K2TIO. (A ham friend recently looked it up and found that his license is still active.) Larry was a good kid but Paul was always getting him in trouble ... Like the time they took my Aunt Ruth's zinc laundry tub out onto the back lawn, filled it with water, strapped an M-80 to a brick, lit the fuse, and dropped the brick into the tub. When the M-80 went off, there was a huge gusher of water, and the tub split its sides not just along the main seam but also somewhere else. I know this story is true because I was there. But here's something I only heard about, because I was at home in NYC when it happened ... Larry had purchased a used US Army mortar shell from a war surplus store. The shell had, of course, been emptied of its explosives, and the primer had been removed, and the back of the cavity had been plugged with lead. No problem, not for my cousins. Egged on by Paul, Larry drilled out the lead plug. Then, working cooperatively, they filled the mortar shell with the heads of wooden matches -- from many boxes of matches -- hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of match heads. Then they build a simple X-frame launcher, stuck an M-80 fuze into the back of the drilled-out hole, leaned the mortar shell against the X-frame, and aimed it toward downtown Peekskill, about half a mile away and three hundred feet lower. And then they lit the fuse ... Well, by some miracle the mortar shell did not explode. Instead it rocketed up off the launcher and was last seen flying a beautiful parabolic arc toward downtown, with the stabilization fins doing a perfect job. The odd thing is, nothing was reported either on the radio or in the newspaper. As far as the good people of Peekskill were concerned, nothing at all had happened. Today I'm horrified by what they did, yet as I write this the incident has me snickering and chortling just as much as when I first heard the story.

Leibowitz. Nancy Leibowitz, the daughter of "Hanging Judge Leibowitz". And here's another famous person though he was not famous at the time -- Heywood Gould ... Four of us who used the West 54th Street subway station got in the habit of singing acapella at the bottom of a staircase, the tile walls making for a rich sonic environment. We often got applause from passing strangers, and sometimes a regular or two would stick around for a song or two. But we didn't go beyond this. Anyway, Woody was a year ahead of me and 2-3 years older so we really didn't have much in common except singing. However ... At one point Woody expressed an interest in acting, and he then got involved in a school play, blah blah blah. I thought nothing of it, and after Woody graduated I never saw him again or heard of him ... ... Until one day about twenty years ago when, reading a movie credit crawl as I often do, I saw "Screenplay -- Heywood Gould". xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx It had to be him. Evidently he had failed as an actor but had enjoyed at least a little bit of success as a screenwriter. So I mentally congratulated Woody and then forgot about him ... Until about six months ago when, just for grins, I googled his name, pursued a couple of links, and discovered that my high school friend Heywood Gould had actually become a director. I've never seen any of his movies, and how I missed them I've no idea, but here's part of his filmography ... Fort Apache, The Bronx Streets Of Gold One Good Cop The Boys From Brazil . . . and on and on. I'd heard of about half the movies but hadn't seen any of them. (Still haven't.) So Woody succeeded beyond his wildest dreams, which is what the USA is all about, isn't it? People are quite literally DYING TO COME HERE. xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Another discovery from a year ago ... James Caan is one of my favorite actors. It turns out that he was four years ahead of me in our prep school and I never knew it. One of my favorite of his movies is "The Gambler". In it is a pudgy little character actor, the same guy who played "Paulie" in all of the the Sylvester Stallone "Rocky" movies. Now you must remember Paulie. He's the guy who held the side of beef in place, in the meat locker, while Rocky used it as a body bag. Remember now? I thought so. Anyway, one evening about ten years ago I caught a standup comic who said, at one point, "Yes, I'm an actor. I played the meat in Rocky." The audience did not react though I did. His line had me quite literally rolling on the floor, absolutely paralyzed with laughter. And then the comedian delivered the best "bomb line" that I have ever heard ... "Ladies and gentlemen. In a few minutes I will be telling actual jokes. I just need to get through this lecture I've been giving." The audience didn't react to that one either.

Sherm, I know HOW to be brief. I just don't want to take the time. I'm fully aware of the Chicago Manual of Style prescription ... "Write simply. Use short words and short sentences." xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx That said, what's it like being a radio news anchor? (I appreciate that you don't have a lot of time for this.) Do you do your own story selection and editing? Do you rip and read? (I know just enough terminology to make me look foolish.)

(The straight man sets up thomaspattison so he can hit one out of the park ...) Does it simulate frightened and angry passengers?