An interesting curio from the 1960s explaining the derivation of James Bond’s weapon of choice.
In the first Bond novel, Casino Royale, Ian Fleming armed 007 with a .25 calibre Beretta Jetfire, which he kept in a chamois shoulder holster, so as not ruin the line of his jacket. However, in 1956, a Glasgow-based firearms expert, Geoffrey Boothroyd, wrote to Fleming suggesting a Beretta wasn’t necessarily the best gun for a spy:
“I have, by now, got rather fond of Mr. James Bond. I like most of the things about him, with the exception of his rather deplorable taste in firearms. In particular, I dislike a man who comes into contact with all sorts of formidable people using a .25 Beretta. This sort of gun is really a lady’s gun, and not a really nice lady at that. If Mr. Bond has to use a light gun he would be better off with a .22 rim fire; the lead bullet would cause more shocking effect than the jacketed type of the .25.
“May I suggest that Mr. Bond be armed with a revolver?”
Fleming opted for the Walther PPK, and graciously thanked Boothroyd for his advice by creating the fictional character Major Boothroyd, a service armourer, who first appeared in Dr. No and subsequent Bond novels. Later, Major Boothroyd was identified simply as ‘Q’ in the Bond films, and was played first by Peter Burton, then from the second film onwards, by Desmond Llewelyn, until his death in 1999, when John Cleese took over the role.
In the following clip from 1964, Sean Connery introduces Boothroyd, where he explains the differences between a Beretta, a Walter PPK and a .44 Magnum - better known as Dirty Harry’s favored tool of the trade. A longer version can be viewed here.
The Walker Brothers performing Jeff Barry’s tune ‘Walking In The Sun” (from their No Regets album) on Spanish television. 1975.
The group, particularly drummer Gary Walker (Gary Leeds), seem not to be taking the whole affair too seriously…and they haven’t even seen the special effects yet.
TorrentFreak reports that millions of online file-sharers will soon be getting their activities monitored by a third-party “detective” agency/entity who will be provided with raw information by the major ISPs. Alleged copyright violators will be notified that “they” (Hollywood, the music industry) are on to them and given a series of six warnings before more serious measures are taken. Why has the mainstream media been so mum on this story?
In June the MPAA and RIAA announced a ‘ground-breaking’ deal with all the major Internet providers in the United States. In an attempt to deter online piracy, a third-party company will monitor BitTorrent and other public file-sharing networks and collect the IP-addresses of alleged infringers.
The ISPs will then notify these offenders and tell them that their behavior is unacceptable. After six warnings the ISP may then take a variety of repressive measures, which include slowing down the offender’s connection.
This new system is a formalized version of the existing takedown system that’s already in use by copyright holders. It was announced under the name ‘Copyright Alerts‘ and will be managed by the Center for Copyright Information, but little is known about how the data on alleged infringers is collected and stored.
Previously we tried to get more background info, but to no avail. However, via a detour we got in touch with a spokesman for the Center for Copyright Information (CCI) who kindly provided us with some additional information.
We wanted to know what will happen with the IP-addresses that are collected, for how long will they be stored, and will there be a central organization that’s responsible for this process like there is in France. The CCI spokesperson informed us that the data will be exclusively kept by the ISPs.
“ISPs will hold this information, as they do today. Please also note that no personal information about subscribers will be shared with rights holders without the required legal process being completed,” he told us.
There’s no agreement on how long the data will be stored, but a minimum of 12 months is required.
“ISPs will determine this individually based on their own policy. However, please note that the Memorandum of Understanding allows for a 12 month reset period. That means that, if an ISP does not receive any ISP notices from rights holders concerning a subscriber’s account for a 12 month period, all prior ISP notices and copyright alerts from the subscriber’s account may be expunged.”
Political commentator and humorist, Tina Dupuy has written one of the best summaries of the Obama presidency so far. This woman deserves her own TV show on Current or MSNBC, she really does…
There was a 90 percent top marginal tax rate under President Dwight Eisenhower. Ronald Reagan raised taxes nearly every year he was in office and still managed to quadruple the national debt. Teddy Roosevelt was an anti-business trust-buster who snatched Yosemite away from private profits. Gerald Ford ended a long pointless war in Vietnam even though pontificators like Pat Buchanan claim we could have won…eventually. George W. Bush bailed out the banks and the auto industry. I won’t even utter the names Herbert Hoover or Richard Nixon (Republicans sure won’t).
Historians agree the best Republican President was also the first: Abraham Lincoln. Who’s second runner up? Which President has represented Republican values best? Easy. President Barack Obama.
First off – his signature legislative accomplishment was to implement a Republican/Heritage Foundation idea from 1989. Assuring Affordable Health Care for All Americans reads, “[N]either the federal government nor any state requires all households to protect themselves from the potentially catastrophic costs of a serious accident or illness. Under the Heritage plan, there would be such a requirement…A mandate on households certainly would force those with adequate means to obtain insurance protection.”
The Heritage Foundation has since recanted and even filed friend-of-the-court briefs against the mandate. This is only after an alleged Democrat was for it. There’s been a pattern of this partisanship before policy since Obama was sworn in.
But if you ignore the misplaced (and often misspelled) vehemence against the first African-American president as a communist/socialist/Marxist/bad “ist” du jour and instead just look at the policy – we have a stellar Republican in the Oval Office.
Obama renewed the Bush Tax Cuts. Republicans love those tax cuts even more than they love being against something once Obama has signed it. In fact the President hasn’t raised taxes at all – just like Republicans say they won’t (see: “Read my lips – no new taxes.”). The only tax he’s raised is on smokers. Obama increased the tax on cigarettes even though he’s an admitted (reformed) smoker. But even that is ideal in a Republican hypocrite kind of way (see: too many anti-gay Republicans in gay sex scandals to list).
And on top of the Bush Tax Cuts – Obama cut even more taxes for 95 percent of Americans.
Plus, he’s cut the size of government! Yes. Regardless of all those email forwards your kooky great-aunt sends you from her decades-old AOL account – the public work force has been reduced under an Obama presidency – therefore “shrinking the size of government.” The reason we had no net jobs in August is because the public sector (i.e., the government) lost jobs due to cuts. The private sector gained the exact amount resulting in a push.
President Obama has managed to quell all anti-war protests and even start a new conflict. That is surely to be the envy of any Republican president who’s ever served.
Guantanamo Bay? Still open. Osama bin Laden? Shot in the head.
Talk about getting 98 percent of what they wanted. If the GOP didn’t have to change their goal post so Obama could never score in their view – Republicans could be dumping Gatorade on Rush Limbaugh by now.
Read the rest of “Obama is the Best Republican President Since Lincoln” (Tina Dupuy.com)
Attention (formerly) middle-class jobless people in Wisconsin, don’t you go gettin’ sassy with Republican corporate stoogeenemy of the people Representative Paul Ryan because… he’ll have your ass arrested... Via Politics USA:
Paul Ryan held his PPV town hall event at Klemmer’s Banquet Hall in Milwaukee. When some protesters who had paid their $15 stood up and asked him questions about jobs and the Bush tax cuts, Ryan not only had them kicked out. He also had three of them arrested.
The protesters got involved when Rep. Ryan tried to claim that our job crisis is directly related to our debt crisis. One person stood up and asked, “Our debt is out of control because of the tax cuts you’re giving…Our unemployment in 2003 was 6.2% before the tax cuts went through. Now our unemployment rate is 9.1%. What are you doing to create jobs, Congressman?”
This lady was shown the door. She was soon followed by another gentleman. Another woman stood up while Ryan was speaking and said, “You won’t talk to us. How can we give our opinions when you refuse to talk to us?” I think you can probably guess what happened to her. When someone stood up in the back and asked, “Where are the jobs, Ryan?” He mentioned corporations, and was escorted out.
How very Republican of him, eh? What a vicious, arrogant fuck Paul Ryan is. Don’t forget these voters also paid $15 for the privilege.
As I have written here in the past about Paul Ryan: “For the record, I’m not a big fan of violence, but it does have its place, historically, in the class war that’s raged since human society began. Admittedly, the image of, say, Rep. Paul Ryan, being forced to fellate a Colt .45 in front of news cameras and having to beg for his life by a once-proud middle-class father reduced to moving his family into a car is something I’d really enjoy seeing. (I think whoever did that would go down in history as a folk hero and at least THEY FEED YOU IN JAIL)”
Ryan might have thought he was being “clever” with this exercise, but there is little doubt that this video will hurt him politically every single time someone watches it. It already has.
How is this asshole a “public servant”? This man is a vicious Republican Ayn Rand-loving shit. He should NOT be in a position of power after displaying such cold-blooded, repulsive, arrogance like this to his constituents. Like they’re “the little people.” You can only imagine what he’d really like to do to them. Yuck. What an ugly human being. Please FB share this and Tweet far and wide.
Maverick Salt Lake City-based indie filmmaker Trent Harris (who made the quirky cult favorite Reuben & Ed with Crispin Glover and Howard Hesseman) was working as a cameraman at a local TV station in 1979 when he met Richard LaVon Griffiths, AKA “Groovin’ Gary” (Griffiths’ CB radio handle). Harris was in the parking lot testing out a new video camera that the station had just bought and “Groovin’ Gary” was taking pictures of the station’s news helicopter. Their meeting, caught on videotape, would prove to be a fateful encounter for both men.
As he is initially revealed in the film, “Groovin’ Gary” seems to be a Jeff Spicoli-esque, late 70s stoner-type. He’s even got blond “feathered” hair. Gary is a bit of a ham-bone and describes himself as Beaver, Utah’s answer to Rich Little. He (somewhat inexplicably) seems to see his impromptu time on camera as an unexpected showbiz “break.” After doing some terrible impressions of John Wayne and other celebrities, he takes Harris over to his car and shows him his AM/FM stereo 8-track tape player—of which he’s very proud—and the engravings of Farrah Fawcett and Olivia Newton-John he’s had put on the windows. It’s banal, yet weirdly compelling.
“Groovin’ Gary” then invites Harris (via letter) to a talent show he’s producing at a high school in Beaver. A pageant that Gary himself will perform in. In drag. As his alter-ego “Olivia Newton-Dong.” He suggests in a letter that Harris might want to get to the local mortuary (?) at 8A.M. to shoot his hair and make-uo session.
During the make-up application (done by the mortician), he discusses his profound love of Olivia Newton-John. Even in full drag, he somehow does not come across as gay, more like someone who thought that they were about to do something just totally hilarious.
We see the talent show itself, with some truly soggy “talents” on display. Then “Olivia” is onstage and it’s weird, ending with a strange-looking masked man picking up Gary and carrying him offstage. To say that it’s a riveting performance is an understatement. Keep in mind as you watch this, that he orchestrated the entire talent show just so he could do this!
Afterwards “Groovin’ Gary’ happily recaps the event with Harris in his car. Harris drives off. Then the film cuts back to Gary, out of drag, doing a shitty Barry Manilow impression from earlier in the talent show. That’s how it ends.
The video below is out of sync, but it didn’t bother me that much.
Two years later, in 1981, Trent Harris directed a “dramatic” remake of the first video with a young Sean Penn playing the goofy kid from Beaver, Utah. There is an ending now, in the scripted version—based on what really happened or not, I have no idea—of “Groovin Gary” coming to the suicidal realization that perhaps his drag performance getting on TV would not be the best thing for his life in a small Mormon town and he tries to talk the Harris character out of showing it. The second film was made, apparently, for $100, and often recreated the scenes from the original video (Harris does not play himself here).
It’s not like this is the greatest thing you’ll ever see, but it is fascinating to see a pre-fame Sean Penn performing in drag (the short was made the same year Penn appeared in Taps). It seems clear that Penn picked up some tricks for his actor’s repertoire here that went right into his infamous character from Fast Times at Ridgemont High the following year. In many ways, this short was just a dry run for “Jeff Spicoli” and the next film in The Beaver Trilogy starring Crispin Glover.
After the jump, the final installment of The Beaver Trilogy starring Crispin Glover…
“Chaque jour une vie nouvelle” or “A New Life Everyday” claimed David Bowie’s advert for Vittel Water back in 2003. The ad was tied-in to the release of Bowie’s Reality album, and had the rock god sharing a house with his stage alter egos - including Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, the Scary Monsters Clown and the Diamond Dog.
