Archive for May 17th, 2021

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 412

Monday, May 17th, 2021

Military History Monday!

But I’m going to start off with an exception. Today is Tax Day in much of the United States. (In parts of the country that were impacted by winter storms, tax day falls on June 15th this year.)

So here’s something thematically appropriate for today: “Helping the Taxpayer” from…

…I’m sorry, I can’t keep a straight face…

…I’m laughing too hard…

…Okay, better now. Those wonderful folks at the IRS (in cooperation with the American Institute of Accountants).

With that out of the way: Ward Carroll has a YouTube channel!

That name may not ring any bells with some of you: Mr. Carroll is a former Navy pilot who has written several books. I liked Punk’s War quite a bit, and need to pick up the other Punk novels (when I see them at reasonable prices: cheese louise, Mr. Carroll, time for Kindle editions of those.)

“Dogfighting 101”. Bending a rule here, but I’m obsessed with dogfighting (in the aviation context, not in the Ron Mexico context). Have been since I was a little kid reading WWI and WWII histories and wondering, “Okay, so Dick Bong shot down a bunch of planes. How?” Textbooks on dogfighting were not readily available in elementary and middle school libraries: I didn’t actually pick one up until I was in my mid-30s.

(Affiliate link.)

Bonus: I feel like I don’t do enough from the British perspective, so let me fix that. “1400 Zulu”, a 1965 propaganda film for the Royal Navy.

Obit watch: May 17, 2021.

Monday, May 17th, 2021

Sometimes I want to put up an obit just because the writer clearly had fun writing it.

In Canada, it’s possible to find a man lounging on a chesterfield in his rented bachelor wearing only his gotchies while fortifying his Molson muscle with a jambuster washed down with slugs from a stubby.

That’s the lead from the obit for Katherine Barber, founding editor of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. She was 61.

Chuck Hicks. He has 197 credits in IMDB as an actor…and 110 as a stunt person. He worked a lot with Clint Eastwood, was in “Cool Hand Luke”, “Dick Tracy”, and played the robot boxer in the “Steel” episode of “The Twilight Zone”…

…and among all of his other movie and TV credits, he appeared seven times on “Mannix”.