Monthly Archives: April 2015

Airplane! turns 35

airplane-movie-02An early script had Wally and the Beaver bringing the plane down.  In the end, of course, the only link between Airplane! and Leave It to Beaver is the scene shown to the right.  That’s just one of the bits you’ll pick up from this:

Surely you can’t be serious: An oral history of Airplane!

In 1980, a trio of gentlemen from Wisconsin – Jim Abrahams and brothers David and Jerry Zucker – took a cast of predominantly non-comedic actors, put a parodic spin on the disaster-film genre, and created a film which not only made moviegoers howl with laughter but also earned critical acclaim. Airplane! celebrates its 35th anniversary this year, and if you happen to be in Nashville this weekend, you’ll have a chance to catch the film flying high on the big screen once again: The Wild West Comedy Festival will be holding a screening at The Belcourt on Saturday, April 18, at 7:30 p.m., after which special guests David and Jerry Zucker will participate in a Q&A.

In an effort to increase awareness of the screening as well as apply salve to the wound of those who aren’t able to attend, we spoke with as many people involved in Airplane! as we possibly could—including the Zuckers, Jim Abrahams, and cast members Robert Hays, Frank Ashmore, Al White, Lee Bryant, Ross Harris, Jill Whelan, Maureen McGovern, David Leisure, Gregory Itzin, Marcy Goldman, and Jimmie Walker—and asked them to reflect on their experiences while making the film as well as their astonishment that audiences still love Airplane! Sadly, Otto declined to go on the record with his reminiscences, but those who were willing to open up had quite a story to tell, which you can read straight through or use the section guide on the right to flip around.

Such wonderful people

Adrift at Sea in a Lifeboat, Muslims Throw Christians Overboard to Drown

At least they were “punching up,” as Garry Trudeau believes.

The group was fleeing Libya in a rubber boat — a huge one, apparently, as there were 105 passengers aboard it.

At some point, the Muslims, who outnumbered the Christians, began “punching up,” as Garry Trudeau calls it, and murdering members of the religious minority for praying to Jesus.

 

Muslims who were among migrants trying to get from Libya to Italy in a boat this week threw 12 fellow passengers overboard — killing them — because the 12 were Christians, Italian police said Thursday.Italian authorities have arrested 15 people on suspicion of murdering the Christians at sea, police in Palermo, Sicily, said.

[…]

The original group of 105 people left Libya on Tuesday in a rubber boat. Sometime during the trip north across the Mediterranean Sea, the alleged assailants — Muslims from the Ivory Coast, Mali and Senegal — threw the 12 overboard, police said.

Other people on the voyage told police that they themselves were spared “because they strongly opposed the drowning attempt and formed a human chain,” Palermo police said.

(For the explanation of the Garry Trudeau snark, see Mark Steyn’s recent article.)

500 channels, and nothing’s on

The-Idiot-Box-How-TV-Is-Turning-Us-All-Into-ZombiesNot missing the cable TV I ditched a year and a half ago.  The extra $100 per month in my pocket that I’m not spending on it is a nice bonus.

Big names in the business are starting to get wise to the pending demise of TV as we’ve known it:

Jerry Seinfeld: Network TV Is Dead

He says that if he were just starting his show now, he would go with an internet-centered exhibitor rather than a network.

The 55-year-old comedian also explained why the man behind NBC’s iconic Seinfeld would choose the internet over the small screen. “TV is over,” is his answer.

“When you get to a certain point in the business, what a man is looking for in a network is the same as in his underwear. A little bit of support and a little bit of freedom,” he said according to a transcript via Tubefilter. “That’s exactly what Crackle offered. There’s nothing different about what we’re doing than what anyone else is doing on any media anywhere. TV networks are worried that you’ll figure out TV is over, and there’s nothing special about it.“

Get ready for the warmists to be called out

Bringing light to a subject that has seen more heat than light…the Grünsturmabteilung won’t like this one little bit.  In fact, they’re already busy in the comments:

Climate Change Mythology Questioned By American Physical Society

Junk Science: Climate change “deniers,” as global warm-mongers call those who think empirical evidence is more reliable than computer models, may soon count among their number a 50,000-strong body of physicists.

At the risk of being accused of embracing what alarmists call the flat-earth view of climate change, the American Physical Society has appointed a balanced, six-person committee to review its stance on so-called climate change that includes three distinguished skeptics: Judith Curry, John Christy and Richard Lindzen. Their credentials are impressive.

Christy is director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama, Huntsville, and was a lead author of the 2001 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Curry is a professor and chairwoman of the School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Lindzen, an Alfred P. Sloan professor of meteorology at MIT from 1983 to 2013, is currently a distinguished senior fellow in the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute.

A question the American Physical Society panel will address is one we ask repeatedly: Why wasn’t the current global temperature stasis, with no discernible change in the past 15 years, not predicted by any of the climate models used by the IPCC, part of the United Nations?

The APS announcement lists among its questions to be answered: “How long must the stasis persist before there would be a firm declaration of a problem with the models?”

In a nod to the likelihood that nature, not man, calls the shots, another APS audit question asks the panel: “What do you see as the likelihood of solar influences beyond TSI (total solar irradiance)? Is it coincidence that the stasis has occurred during the weakest solar cycle (i.e., sunspot activity) in about a century?“

U.S. military ‘hostile’ to Christians under Obama

Just what we need…force out the people who make the military work, leaving only the PC jackwagons who are trying to destroy it:

U.S. military ‘hostile’ to Christians under Obama; morale, retention devastated

Soon there may only be atheists in the foxholes.

Christians are leaving the U.S. military or are discouraged from joining in the first place because of a “hostile work environment” that doesn’t let them express their beliefs openly, religious freedom advocates say.

Michael Berry, senior counsel at the Liberty Institute, a Texas-based legal organization dedicated to defending religious liberty in America, said recent high-profile cases of military chaplains facing punishment for private counseling sessions that reflected the teachings of their religion could cause devout Americans who are qualified for military service to think twice about joining the military.

In December, a chaplain for a Ranger training battalion received an administrative letter of concern after a soldier complained that he advocated Christianity and used the Bible during a mandatory unit suicide-prevention training session. The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers said the chaplain “used his official position to force his personal religious beliefs on a captive military audience” in an article the group posted on its website.

And, last month, a Navy chaplain was removed from his post and may lose his career after some sailors complained about his private counseling, in which he reportedly advocated against homosexuality and sex outside of marriage.

The watermelons’ true colors, unmasked

AA - Climate Change Vs CapitalismGreen on the outside, red on the inside:

The Climate Change War Heats Up

There is so much at stake for the charlatans that have foisted the failed “global warming” hoax, followed by the equally dubious claims and predictions regarding “climate change”, that it should come as no surprise that they have begun to wage a propaganda war on the courageous scientists who led the struggle to educate the public about the truth and the organizations who supported their efforts.

Along the way, many groups and publications claiming scientific credentials abandoned those standards to pump out global warming and climate change propaganda. Scientists discovered they could secure grant money for “research” so long as it supported claims that the North and South Poles, as well as all the world’s glaciers were melting. “Research” that predicted vast hurricane activity or a massive rise in ocean levels became routine headlines. None of it occurred. Both the government and liberal foundations provided millions to maintain the hoax.

Now we have a President claiming that his daughter’s asthma was due to “climate change.” It is obscene nonsense. If this was just a disagreement between scientists, we could look on as the facts determine the outcome, but there are vast agendas as stake so we have to keep in mind that billions have been wasted on “renewable energy” alternatives to replace fossil fuels; the oil, coal, and natural gas that are the heart’s blood of modern nations and our lives.

We have to ask why the United Nations Framework on Climate Change takes such a dim view of the world’s population that it cites its use of energy and other resources as a reason to reduce it instead of celebrating it. Hard-core environmentalists do not like humans because they build houses, start businesses, need roads, and generally consume a lot and then create trash. Climate change is also the platform the U.N. is using to “transform” the world’s economy.

We have to ask why our government is engaged in shutting down the coal-fired plants that provide the bulk of the electricity we use. This isn’t just a war on coal. It is a war on our entire economic system, capitalism. It is a war on Americans by their own government.