Happy Standard Time Change Night!!

[Dan McEntee]

  Everyone enjoy that extra hour of sleep tonight! I just finished watching "Dr. Strangelove" and "Them!"  back to back on Turner Classic Movies. I still love the part in "Them!" where they are searching for two missing kids, and James Arness pulls a Smarty free flight model out of some debris in the LA River and one of the Air Force personnel chimes in with "That's a pretty good model of a kid's idea of an L-1!"  I forget the exact timing but there was a column in Flying Models several years ago where some guys figured out just what free flight model it was. In todays world, I wonder what they would have found in the river that would have been a sign of two kids and their Dad's activities in the LA River??? Type at you later,
      Dan McEntee

[Jim Svitko]

It must be James Arness week, or month, as The Movies! network also broadcast "Them" several times this month.  I remember watching it as a kid.  Pretty good special effects for 1954.  This afternoon, along with "Them", the original "The Thing", with Arness as the alien invader.

[kenneth cook]

            My wife is a huge fan of the old black and white pictures this time of the year. She knows them all and during the month of October she's fixated on them. I watched "Them" last evening. The B-25 that Dr. Medford arrives in was unusual. The lower portion of the front gunner position was removed and a band of metal was wrapped around it. I was curious if it was originally made like that or adapted.

[Dan McEntee]

            My wife is a huge fan of the old black and white pictures this time of the year. She knows them all and during the month of October she's fixated on them. I watched "Them" last evening. The B-25 that Dr. Medford arrives in was unusual. The lower portion of the front gunner position was removed and a band of metal was wrapped around it. I was curious if it was originally made like that or adapted.

     I think the B-25 was Paul Mantz's photo and movie mount airplane for movie work. I have seen pictures of it before. The nose was a special panel of glass for shooting cameras through. I think they just painted over the airplane with a water wash off paint for that one scene. I forgot to look closely at the pilot to see if it was him flying it. I have the VHS tape and DVD so will have to check that out again.
    I like TCM for old movies and the little bits of history and back story information they give before and after. Like last night they said Them! was a low budget movie and they could afford only two giant ant props, and had to carefully plan out shooting to make them last! Leonard Nimoy had a bit part in it that they called out, but they didn't mention the one police officer near the end who went on to be a big soap opera star, I just can't remember his name.
    Type at you later,
  Dan McEntee

[John Park]

I'm just going to sit down and watch Reach for the Sky, a biopic of Douglas Bader, the legless RAF ace.  It's got a good sequence of aerobatics in a Hawker Hurricane.  (It's on a non-commercial channel, so no annoying breaks for adverts.)

[Dan McEntee]

  What channel or station??? Don't let the rest f us miss out on it!! I haven't seen that movie in a long time!

[Dennis Toth]

Beside watching movies or TV shows (I've been on CBS all access - all Star Trek series), it's building season. Since we won't have much light after work, the shop is open. I've got a few ships I need to step up my effort on to be able to paint in December - January (here in FL that's paint season with low humidity). I'm getting close on a couple ships and I have a few new ones I want to build for next year (Mackey Monster for one).

Best,    DennisT

[John Park]

  What channel or station??? Don't let the rest f us miss out on it!! I haven't seen that movie in a long time!

It's BBC2, over here in England, I'm afraid!

[Gerald Arana]

It must be James Arness week, or month, as The Movies! network also broadcast "Them" several times this month.  I remember watching it as a kid.  Pretty good special effects for 1954.  This afternoon, along with "Them", the original "The Thing", with Arness as the alien invader.

"The Thing" gave me night mares for several years as a teenager. Its interesting to find out 68 years later that James Arness was "the thing"!

Thanks, Jerry

[Dan McEntee]

It's BBC2, over here in England, I'm afraid!

    Well, thanks anyway. That's appropriate I guess!! One of my favorites, "The Spirit of St. Louis" is on Turner Classic Movies here in the States at 12:30 CST. Too windy to even think about flying so may as well watch some i9nspirational movies!!
    Type at you later,
     Dan McEntee

[Jim Svitko]

"The Thing" gave me night mares for several years as a teenager. Its interesting to find out 68 years later that James Arness was "the thing"!

Thanks, Jerry

If you watch closely enough, you can see that it is Arness in the alien costume.  He sure looked menacing enough to scare any child, and possibly someone older.

I heard Arness got the role due to his height.  He was 6'7" and probably wore boots to make him even taller.  I have only seen the movie in original black and white.  I would like to see the colorized version.  It would be interesting to see if Arness' costume was really orange, as he said it was.  It probably was orange since I heard a remark Arness made about the costume.  He said he looked like a seven-foot carrot.

What many do not realize is that Peter Graves (Mr. Phelps from the Mission Impossible TV show) and James Arness were brothers.

[john e. holliday]

Why can't we go back to standard time year round, or stay on DLST.   With in the first hour nothing was going right and I thought seriously of going back to bed and staying there.  Hopefully day two will be better.

[John Park]

Why can't we go back to standard time year round, or stay on DLST.

Standard time (Greenwich Mean Time over here) is the way to go.  Back around 1970, we had a three-year trial of DLST all the year round, and everybody (and I mean EVERYBODY) hated it.  I was working 9 to 5 in an office 6 miles from home, and for at least two months each winter I never saw my house in daylight from one weekend to the next. Driving to work in the dark on frosty, foggy roads wasn't much fun either.  Ghastly!

[Dennis Adamisin]

Back to Dan's original post...

[Steve Helmick]

DLST year around would be my choice. More daylight hours after dinner to get stuff done outside.  Steve

[FLOYD CARTER]

I like daylight savings time.  I set my clocks back an hour.  Now I can enjoy 25 hours every day.  That extra hour each day means I can get more things done.

[Dan McEntee]

   If you remember, during the Nixon administration, we had DST year round as a part of the energy crisis at that time. I was in high school at the time and didn't like the idea of it being dark while waiting for the school bus, and neither did a lot of people at the time. It lasted several years, just can't remember exactly how long. They turned off every other street light on the interstate highways, windmills began to0 make the scene, and all the scientists said we would be running out of oil by the year 2000!
   I myself like the time change. It gives you the opportunity to make the most of day light on a more or less normal time frame, and that varies depending on what latitude you are living on. I have a little trouble adjusting some times as I get older, but soon, I hope to be like my friend Ty and be retired, and then let my bladder dictate my sleeping habits and do away with my alar, clock. Interesting thing, my alarm clock. I bought this thing, a combination clock, radio and telephone, in 1976 when setting up house keeping before I got married! It has survived me hammering it, lightning strikes and power spikes, but it's still working!
   Type at you later,
    Dan McEntee

[Robert Whitley]

And six months later you get one less imaginary hour.

I once read that it is akin to cutting a foot off the end of your blanket and sewing it to the other end and thinking that your blanket is now a foot longer.

Aside from the well documented related ER room incIdents and lost productivity factors the whole concept is absurd and antiquated by one hundred years.

Look into the First World War requirements for it’s implementations.