FredCDobbs

I like "dames" and "mugs." I'll take a dame anytime, and I'll deep six all the mugs who get in my way.

?Cultural? Imperialism seems to refer to cultures that dominate others, or cultural trends. I would say that Hollywood, New York and Nashville are the Cultural Imperialistic capitals of the world. Let?s see, where else.... hmm, Mexico City tends to dominate cultural trends for Latin America, and Rio dominates the Portuguese speaking Brazilians, perhaps Portugal too. French and British movies and music are boring. German ?culture? doesn?t exist. Russian ?culture? is a joke. Chinese ?culture? is too Oriental. I can?t remember when I?ve last heard a Japanese tune on the jukebox. But of course we have Crocodile Dundee out of Australia and a few good Lion?s Gate films out of Canada. Has anyone been humming any Arabic tunes lately, or wearing the latest styles from Riyadh?

http://www.smickandsmodoo.com/saloon/happy.mid

Yes I think this was just a quirk. TV networks and satellite providers have an amazing number of circuit boards that the audio/video signal must go through before we receive the picture and sound at home. There are all sorts of technical reasons why they need to man, even though our TV uses only one basic circuit board. On each circuit board are the little ?chips? (which take the place of old tubes and transistors) plus a lot of diodes, resistors, and capacitors, and some other mysterious things. Any one of these hundreds of little things can go bad during a broadcast, and one of the biggest problem is when the engineers try to track down which little thing has gone bad. A capacitor might cost only about .65 cents, but one can go bad on one of dozens of circuit boards, and it will take engineers a lot of time to track it down. I suspect the problem was in a circuit board at Direct TV and not at TCM, since no one reported TCM going out on any system other than Direct TV. I think a company should show a video camera view of their engineers scampering around whenever this happens. They look like a bunch of guys in a submarine movie when the submarine has been hit by some bombs or depth charges. They are running around yelling at each other trying to find the right circuit board to replace. When they finally find it, they can just pull it out and plug in a new one, but the finding of the bad one takes a lot of time.

"Shane" is going to be on again tonight at 8 PM Eastern time.

That's a good list of favorite movies. Just jump right in. We were all new here once. If anyone is rude to you, just try to disregard it. Sometimes we get into arguments about what movie is good and what movie is bad. Lol, so just join right in. I was an old movie buff starting at about age 12, when the old classics first began to be shown on TV in the early '50s on late movie shows late at night, back when the TV networks signed off at 9 and 10 pm. Local stations showed old movies after the networks went off the air. I first saw "Birth of a Nation" when I was about 15. I saw "Svengali" when I was 14 and I fell in love with Marian Marsh. She was an "older woman". She was 19 in that film. Lol.

She was a very versatile actress. Robert Osborne said that one time someone asked her early director, Joseph Von Sternberg, about the real Marlene, and he said, ?I am Marlene Dietrich?. Meaning, he made her famous character for her and he taught her how to act as only that character. She played a different character briefly in ?Dishonored? and I didn?t recognize her. She played a little German maid. She was so different I just didn?t recognize her. The Dietrich we all know is a characterization created by Joseph Von Sternberg specifically for ?The Blue Angel,? and he decided to stay with that characterization for the rest of the films he made with her, then she stayed with it thereafter. It?s like the way Cliff Arquette played the Charlie Weaver character in TV shows and films in the early 1950s. It?s like the way Louis Jones played the Grandpa Jones character in the country music world. He started playing the Grandpa Jones character when he was about 22 years old.

Hey, I found that one hours ago, but it was in color and made in 1951, and it DOES take place in the Caribbean. That's why I asked you about the Caribbean.

In New Mexico, Colorado, and West Texas we've had a lot of snow all winter.

Yeah, I heard there were some snowflakes in Malibu.

> Just went back on the air. Kubrickbuff said his > signal was ok, so it must have been a problem at > Direct TV. They seem to have it fixed now. > > Forgive me, Fred, but when I read your first post > about Direct TV having problems, I admit I smiled and > thought, "Thank goodness, it's not DISH this time." Good for you. All sorts of things go through my mind when something like this happens. A couple of nights ago all the channels started breaking up and it was snowing outside, so I knew I had to go out and clean the snow off my antenna. It is on a post about 5 feet off the ground. I had to go out in my slippers and my pajamas. It sure was cold. I keep a special brush ready just for that. Another time, I just forgot to pay my bill on time. So I had to call up and give them my credit card number so they would turn the system back on for me. Another time Direct TV was upgrading electronics and I had to call them to get them to send a special signal to my tuner. I worked at a TV station one time and during the Today Show we lost our direct telephone cable signal from New York. We had to put on anything we had handy, which was some old Our Gang movies. People were calling and complaining. After about half an hour the chief engineer tracked the problem down to one bad capacitor in one of our dozens of circuit boards. That cost us several thousand dollars in lost advertising.

I?m a ?duck and cover? and Civil Defense kid from the ?50s. Whenever a major network suddenly goes dead, I think maybe New York and the whole East Coast has been blown up by the Russians.

Just went back on the air. Kubrickbuff said his signal was ok, so it must have been a problem at Direct TV. They seem to have it fixed now.

The message on my screen is apparently from Direct TV. All the other channels are ok. Did anybody else see TCM go dead?

No TCM signal on Direct TV. Anybody else? This started right at the beginning of "The Professionals." After 8 minutes a message came on the screen..."No need to call us. We are aware that this TV station is temporarily unavailable."

Thanks for the link. http://www.dimitritiomkin.com/

Ok, would this be during the Napoleonic period? I think that?s about the only time England and France were at war.

Lol, yes I was thinking of you. But I haven?t decided yet if you would be one of the ones who disappears or one the chief ?suspects?. Lol. There are a couple of other candidates lurking around here too. I, of course, would be the chief investigator, and, therefore, above suspicion.

Is this like a pirate movie or an old sailing-days film? Is the port in the Caribbean?

Yeah, the color was great for 1936 and for a print on TV. It wasn't a thrilling movie, but it was pretty good. Good enough to tape and watch every couple of years.

It sure would be fun if we could all get together and charter a streamlined 1930s observation car and pay to have Amtrak pull it from San Francisco to New York. We could all have a big party! I wonder how many of us would disappear on the train and who the ?suspects? would be? Lol.

Here is an Amtrak schedule search. Just type in the depart and arrive city and click on Search. http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/Page/Schedules_Index_Page&c=Page&cid=1080072922206&ssid=3

Amtrak still runs passenger trains. I used to ride them a lot in the 1980s, mainly from New Orleans to El Paso, through the West Texas desert. I would always see deer, antelope, jackrabbits, and coyotes along the route. They got so used to the Amtrak train they weren?t afraid of it. I had one bad experience in the Northeast, going up to DC and back to New Orleans. There were some unruly passengers up in the Northeast. Here is a link to the national Amtrak map. Go to the ?NEW INTERACTIVE? part and click on one of the downloads. The dial-up download takes about one or two minutes to load but it shows the entire Amtrak system. http://www.amtrak.com/servlet/ContentServer?pagename=Amtrak/Page/Routes_Index_Page&c=Page&cid=1080072922209&ssid=4 There are some very interesting trips anyone can take if they are in the right places. For example, anyone living in Los Angeles should sometimes take an overnight trip to Gallup, New Mexico, and stay there a couple of days. This will usually require a car rental in Gallup. The town itself is a whole museum of Indian stuff. Lots of Indian jewelry stores with fabulous Navajo and Zuni jewelry. Lots of old historic sites. About 2 hours north of town is Window Rock, the Navajo Nation headquarters, and about 2 hours south of town is the quaint village of Zuni. This is a very rare treat. This is the same village the Zunis were living in when the Spanish first found them in the late 1500s. They still live in their old adobe and stone buildings. Now they?ve got satellite dishes attached to their adobe buildings. The place to stay for movie buffs is the El Rancho Hotel. The old part. It?s nice and clean. This is where all the old movie stars used to stay when they were in town making western movies. http://www.elranchohotel.com/ Go to the Amtrak website and type in a departure city and an arrival city to get the time schedule.

I think the biggest problem with the plane is the fore-warning about a crash. Like being half-way across the ocean and then an engine catches fire. Doh. 6 hours more to go in the flight, nothing but water below, and after seeing "The High and the Mighty" I imagine the pilot and the co-pilot having a fist fight in the cockpit. Then there's that situation of the airplane out of Hawaii that lost half of its top which ripped off, and it took nearly an hour to get back to land. And there are storms I've been in where the wings were flapping like a duck, and I'm thinking that the wings on a plane aren't supposed to flap. There was a situation down in New Orleans about 15 years ago were a plane from Central America went through a thunder storm and both engines went out. The plane was about 10 miles from the airport and didn't have enough air speed to make it to the airport. The pilot told the co-pilot to look for a place for a crash landing, but the only thing below was water, swamp, or streets. Finally the co-pilot spotted a long mowed grass lawn, more than a mile long. The only one of its kind in the country. It was a special place at a NASA facility. The pilot said, "Ok, we'll land there." And the danged pilot did land that plane on that long lawn and everyone survived. A chance in a billion.

> The voice is the same voice that used to announce > Delta Airlines on-board safety video. > > I swear, it sounds just like her, if it's not > actually her. It could be her. Aren't TCM and Delta both based in Atlanta? There was a famous lady's voice for all the phone companies back in the 1960s and '70s, and I read something about her. She was the lady who said, "I'm sorry, but this number is no longer in service and there is no new number." She had been used by the phone company for years. But the big companies like the phone company, Delta, and TCM often use major commercial film, video, and audio companies to make their recordings, and those companies have a list of men and women who do their different voices for different projects. Like when you buy an answering machine and there is already a voice on it to answer your phone.