Happy Birthday Honey, RIP Sir Christopher Lee, Handwriting Practice & This Week's Wristwatches.

Still busy in my hunt for work, but I'll take a quick respite from it all to write up this post. I headed out to the newly re-opened Astor Theatre last Sunday to catch a restored version of the 1939 Howard Hawks classic Only Angels Have Wings. 

I wrote about this film earlier this week. If you wanna read about it, just scroll down to the previous post.

Great movie. Certainly, it's a little cliched in this day and age, but it held up as well as I remembered.

It was the Palace Cinemas chain which came to The Astor Theatre's rescue a couple of months ago. I finally joined up to their Movie Club back in February. I've been wanting to do so since the early 1990s. As much for the fact that I'd get this cool member's card with John Garfield and Lana Turner in a publicity still from The Postman Always Rings Twice (Dir: Tay Garnett, 1946).

I was saddened to hear of the death of British actor Christopher Lee earlier this week. He starred in the Bond film The Man With The Golden Gun (Dir; Guy Hamilton, 1974) as Scaramanga, the international assassin who has Bond in his sights. Granted, it's by no means my favourite Bond movie, but his performance brought a certain gravitas to that film. Which sorely needed it.

I've been watching Season 1 of Penny Dreadful. Excellent show. High level of gore, which is to be expected from a show set in 1890s London dealing with vampires, post-mortems and other vintage schlock, but it is very well done and the cast is great. Much of it is made up of Bond film alumni. We have the great Timothy Dalton as the retired explorer Sir Malcolm Murray and the superb Eva Green as Vanessa Ives, a spiritual medium. They are joined by Josh Hartnett as Ethan Chandler, a sideshow gunslinger touring through England. 

If you had to sum it up for a bored studio executive, you'd say it was The X Files set in Victorian London during the time of Jack The Ripper, werewolves, witchcraft, etc. 

It has been great to see Eva Green turning in another complex performance, and Mr. Dalton's work in this show reminds me what a great Bond he was. His voice alone (much like Patrick Stewart's) is reason enough to tune in.

While watching this show, I got a close-up of Green's character as she wrote a letter. When she wrote the recipient's name on the envelope...

I began thinking about my own handwriting and how my upper-case letters never seem to match or fit in with the lower-case ones.My capital letters tend to be written in block style which doesn't fit with the other letters. 

So, I began doing some writing practice in an effort to change my upper-case letters.

I think this is going to take me a while, and it will require me to slow my writing speed right down until I'm comfortable with it. 

As if I don't have enough to do right now. However, I'm thinking ten minutes a day or until my hand cramps up, whichever comes first.

It was my wife's birthday earlier this week so, aside from taking the kids out to get her some gifts ($20 bucks max), I downloaded some artwork by the phenomenal Robert E. McGinnis so that the kids could make some birthday cards.

Throughout most of the week, I wore the Omega Railmaster. I chose this particular artwork because the ladies reminded me of Mrs. Teeritz when we met twenty years ago.

Robert E. McGinnis did a lot of artwork for pulp crime paperback book covers in the 1950s, '60s and '70s, as well as a lot of work for women's magazines throughout the 1960s. 

However, any Bond fan worthy of the title also knows that he did some wonderful and evocative artwork for the Bond films in the '60s and '70s, and is responsible for these two classic posters, among others;

Concept art in black & white ................................................And the final colour version.

 The guy did (and still does) some beautiful work. And if 

you think his style is familiar, it may be because he did the famous poster for Breakfast at Tiffany's (right).

Although he's famous for his work on books and films, he is also known for his landscapes. Check out his website;

http://www.mcginnispaintings.com/

Anyway, time to wrap this up. I switched to The Rolex Submariner this morning;

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Favourite Movie No.6 - "Only Angels Have Wings" (1939)

Since I decided to lay low in the Blogosphere while I look for work, I've still had the urge to put up some posts. However, while I'm not writing the weekly wristwatch posts for the time being, I figure I can still put up some kind of content without having to stick to a weekly deadline.

I had always planned to write a little more about movies. You may recall this post from December last year. 

Miracle (Needed) On Chapel St - We Gotta Save The Astor Theatre!

It was about the imminent closure of one of Melbourne's last independent suburban cinemas, The Astor Theatre on Chapel Street, Windsor. I went along to see a Sunday afternoon screening of Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard.

Well, this cinema was due to close its doors forever in April this year, but it (thankfully) got a last-minute reprieve when the Palace Cinema Group stepped in and purchased it. Of course, it's more complicated than that, so here's a news article that explains it in greater detail. It's okay, I'll wait;

The Sydney Morning Herald- Astor Theatre to close, and to reopen, as George Florence agrees to sell to Palace Cinemas

Anyway, the cinema did indeed close down for a couple of months and it re-opened earlier this month. The first public film screening was yesterday (June 7th) at 1:00pm and the first film screened at the new Astor Theatre was the 1939 Howard Hawks classic, Only Angels Have Wings, which is one of my all-time favourite films. I've already written posts about my Top Five...

"Casablanca" and The Other Four Best Movies EVER Made...In My Humble Opinion. Part 1

The Other Three Films In My Top Five Best Movies EVER Made...In My Humble Opinion. Part 2

...but I always suspected that I would have more movies to write about, since I really couldn't just stop at five films, now could I?

So anyway...

                                                    Directed By Howard Hawks
                       Columbia Pictures, 1939
                        Screenplay by Jules Furthman

The story takes place in Barranca, a South American port town in the Andes, and centres on a group of pilots who do the mail run through a treacherous pass in the mountains. This small airline's owner has signed a six-month contract to deliver the mail on time, regardless of the often hazardous weather conditions. If this airline can stick to its schedule for the contracted period, then it will win the major contract, which will mean more money for the airline and better, safer planes for the pilots.

A ship arrives in port for a four-hour stopover. A young American cabaret performer named Bonnie Lee (Jean Arthur) disembarks, with a notion to take in the sights and maybe pick up a souvenir before getting back on-board the ship and heading back to The States. She meets a couple of the devil-may-care pilots, played by character actors Noah Beery Jr (who would later appear in the 1970s TV series The Rockford Files as Uncle Rocky) and Allyn Joslyn. These two guys are on the make, but when she meets them, she's just happy to hear a couple of American accents and takes them up on the offer of a drink. 

I have to say I really like Jean Arthur in this film. She started out in silent films, but her career didn't begin to take off until she appeared opposite Edward G. Robinson in John Ford's The Whole Town's Talking in 1935. However, it was in the following year that she appeared in Frank Capra's classic, Mr. Deeds Goes To Town, starring opposite Gary Cooper, and she was well on the way to becoming a major comedic actress. She again worked for Capra in 1939's classic, Mr. Smith Goes To Washington, and it was this same year that she starred in Only Angels Have Wings.  

I like the way Miss Arthur plays the role of Bonnie. She arrives in this new world of fatalistic flyboys and we slowly see her come to terms with their way of thinking. 

Into this mix, of course, there's Cary Grant as Geoff Carter, the pilot who manages the airline on behalf of its non business-minded owner, Dutchy, played by another great Hollywood character actor, Sig Rumann. 

It's great seeing Cary Grant in this kind of role. He would later go on to play urbane and suave characters in both comedies and dramas, but it's great to see him in this film, dressed like some kind of Indiana Jones prototype. Grant got his big break when he starred opposite Marlene Dietrich in Blonde Venus (1932) and was then spotted by Mae West, who cast him in two of her early films (She Done Him Wrong and I'm No Angel, both in 1933). He went on to star in a slew of films before achieving greater fame for his roles in Topper (Dir: Norman Z. McLeod, 1937) and The Awful Truth (Dir: Leo McCarey, 1937). After these two films, Grant had an extraordinary run in some classic films over the next four years;

1938
Holiday

Bringing Up Baby

1939

Gunga Din

Only Angels Have Wings

1940

His Girl Friday

The Philadelphia Story

My Favorite Wife

1941

Penny Serenade

Suspicion

Grant enjoyed continued success in films throughout the '40s and '50s. He is my favourite of the old Hollywood stars, without a doubt. Whatever I may have learned about how to be a gentleman and how to dress well, I learned from Mr. Cary Grant. He's great in Only Angels Have Wings. Grant's on-screen persona was already established through his earlier work in screwball and romantic comedies, and you can see hints of it in this more melodramatic film. 

Carter runs a tight ship. He knows it's dangerous work, but he also knows that sending these pilots out on the tough assignments will ensure that the airline continues to operate. However, the really tough jobs he keeps for himself. Firm, but fair is our Geoff Carter. 

If Only Angels Have Wings is about anything, it's about masculinity. Howard Hawks' idea of masculinity. It has been said that Hawks "liked his men to be men, and his women to be their buddies." This notion is evident in this film. The pilots are a hard-drinking, chain-smoking bunch who live from one paycheck to the next, with no real ambition beyond surviving another day. They live by a certain code and they appear to prize friendship above all else. The screenplay, by Jules Furthman, has some great lines in it. As Bonnie Lee finds herself falling for Geoff Carter, he explains to her that he doesn't want to be tied down by a relationship and that he'll never quit flying, no matter how dangerous it is, for any woman. Some of these ideas are as old as time itself

I won't say much more about the story, except to say that it takes numerous turns into what would be considered high melodrama and cliche these days. When the airline is short of pilots, along comes a new flyer who was previously responsible for the death of the younger brother of one of the pilots. What are the chances, eh? Still, this was film-making in 1939. 

I've already mentioned some of the supporting cast, but special mention goes to Thomas Mitchell, who plays Kid Dabb, Geoff's best friend. 

Mitchell also memorably appeared as James Stewart's Uncle Billy in Frank Capra's Its A Wonderful Life in 1946. Hollywood had a great stash of character actors back in its Golden Age.

This movie also marked Rita Hayworth's breakout role;

She would go onto greater fame, most notably in the title role in the 1946 film noir classic, Gilda (Dir: Charles Vidor), and she turns in a good performance here as the wife of the new pilot. Rumour has it that Hawks treated her poorly during filming. Hayworth has gone on record to say that she would have quit the production had it not been for Cary Grant's kindness and respect.

This is an atmospheric film. Cigarette smoke is thick in the air, the floor must be littered with spent matches, based on how often somebody lights up, it's always either thick with fog outside or pouring with rain, and yet you get the impression that it's a humid locale. Hawks went to great lengths with his aerial footage, which has often been cited as groundbreaking for its time. 

This scene above looks great and it perfectly captures the vastness of the locations used. Much of the take-off and landing shots were done with models and it does look clunky when you can see the wires, but so what? It was 1939, remember? Hawks trained as an Army Air Service pilot during the First World War, but the conflict ended before he saw any action. Aviation would be a recurring subject in some of Hawks' films of the 1930s.

Joseph Walker's cinematography makes wonderful use of the lighting. While the scenes were shot on studio sets, they are lit beautifully and the mise en scene is arranged nicely in just about every scene.

MISE-EN-SCENE

Mise en scène encompasses the most recognizable attributes of a film – the setting and the actors; it includes costumes and make-up, props, and all the other natural and artificial details that characterize the spaces filmed.  The term is borrowed from a French theatrical expression, meaning roughly “put into the scene”.  In other words, mise-en-scène describes the stuff in the frame and the way it is shown and arranged.

- taken from http://collegefilmandmediastudies.com/mise-en-scene-2/


                                           Great scene arrangement

                                             Great lighting

I had a copy of this film on video-cassette back in the late 1980s, recorded off tv. I bought it on DVD about five years ago and had planned to do a write-up on it.
However, when I saw that this would be the newly re-opened Astor Theatre's first film screening, well I just had to get my butt over there to see it. They were showing a freshly restored 4K print of the film. The picture quality was great, but the sound was even better. For a quick explanation of 4K restoration, read the first couple of paragraphs of this article, courtesy of the University of California, Berkely Art Museum & Film Archive;

The Resolution Starts Now: 4K Restorations from Sony Pictures

Film itself, or rather, the celluloid used in its production, is quite brittle and it begins to deteriorate quickly as time rolls on. I've read of some classic films that turned to crumbling flakes in their canisters after decades of sitting in storage. There is a vast trove of classic films out there that need to be saved so that future filmgoers can see what all the fuss was about. For every Spielberg, there is a Hitchcock that influenced him. For every Star Wars, there's The Searchers and The Getaway where certain scenes were borrowed. Martin Scorsese has cited Michael Powell & Emeric Pressburger's 1948 classic, The Red Shoes, as an influence on his work. That film was about a ballet dancer. Go figure. Although, when you see this film, you notice some camera work in it that Scorsese has used in his own films over the years. I got a lot of time for Marty Scorsese. The man loves movies.

So, I was very happy to see Only Angels Have Wings in this restored version. This screening had a good turn-out of people. And I was very happy to see it on a big screen, in a cinema that's been given a chance to continue. Yes, there are the multiplexes in the suburban shopping centres where one can go see the latest Avengers film or the newest Judd Apatow comedy. We need these multiplexes, but we also need these smaller, single-screen movie-houses that show films as diverse as Only Angels Have Wings, Singin' In The Rain, Taxi Driver, The Searchers, Leviathan, Get Carter, Dazed And Confused and Blade Runner. That's The Astor Theatre's first-week line-up of movies. Plus the two Avengers movies, with prizes handed out to audience members who up in the best costumes. It'd be worth going along just to see that!

Oh, and another thing- I missed out on the final screening of Casablanca at The Astor last year because it coincided with my daughter's dance school concert performance. Well, they'll be showing it in August. 
I'll be there. Might even wear my hat and trench.

I may have to get a copy of this poster somehow.

Thanks for reading!

Special thanks to Wikipedia and IMDB for cast and crew info.
All photos screen-capped and cropped from my Columbia Classics DVD copy, 2005.

Happy Birthday, Mr Fleming...

Today, May 28th, is Ian Fleming's birthday. Up above is page one* of his first Bond novel, Casino Royale. I have read that Fleming spent considerable time on that first line, writing a few different drafts and versions of it before settling on one that he was happy with. It's always daunting writing the first line. It can sometimes set the tone for the entire story.

Left; Fleming once wrote of Bond looking very similar to the American singer/composer/pianist Hoagy Carmichael.

Right; It was this description of Bond that wound up as the basis for OO7 in a comic mini-series (Permission To Die) written and illustrated by Mike Grell (for Eclipse Comics) back in the early Nineties.

For those not familiar with the plot of Casino Royale, it concerns British Intelligence operative James Bond, who happens to be a seasoned card player in his spare time, being assigned by M to play Chemin de fer against the mysterious Le Chiffre, a French Trade Union Treasurer with communist sympathies, who is funnelling his gambling winnings to a branch of SMERSH, the Soviet counter-intelligence section of the Russian Secret Service.The idea is for Bond to bankrupt Le Chiffre, thus crippling this supply of funds.

Not long after the first game, Bond's HQ sends along Vesper Lynd, a low-level agent, to assist Bond where necessary.

Things escalate after that. As a spy story, it works well enough, but as a thriller, it works very well, moving along at a good pace with some tense moments and introducing us to a character that would still be a part of popular culture sixty years later. No mean feat.

Today also sees the unveiling of the title and premise of a new Bond novel by British author Anthony Horowitz.
The book is called Trigger Mortis.**
This title doesn't grab me, but I'm wondering if it will be a phrase uttered by a character in the book, in which case, I can accept it.
The story, which incorporates some unused material written by Ian Fleming, takes place a few weeks after the Goldfinger affair and it concerns the US and Soviet Space Race. Big news for fans is that this story will see the return of Pussy Galore, the Bond Girl from Goldfinger.

I have high hopes for this one, folks. Yes, yes, I said the same thing about Sebastian Faulks' effort, Devil May Care (2008), Jeffrey Deaver's Carte Blanche (2011), and Solo (2013), written by William Boyd.
These three books were fine efforts, but for me, they lacked a certain tension that I had come to expect from a James Bond story.
Faulks and Boyd did much to capture the essence of a Bond thriller, but I never got a sense that Bond was placed in impossible situations and had to rely on his wits and determination to get himself out of them. Deaver's book, Carte Blanche was an entire re-boot of the OO7 character and thus, we saw him painted as a man in his early 30s, being recruited by a shadowy corner of British Intelligence and I was none too thrilled with reading this new version of James Bond.

Anthony Horowitz plied his trade as a screenwriter on British TV shows, such as the atmospheric Foyle's War and Agatha Christie's Poirot, before embarking on a literary career with his series of Young Adult fiction about Alex Rider, a teenager who gets caught up in spy tales, as well as numerous other novels. He's certainly been in the writing game long enough and I have a good feeling that he'll be able to marry a cohesive plot with some tense action, while staying true to the character of James Bond.
Believe me, it's harder than it looks.

So anyway, I'll pour myself a bourbon*** later this evening and drink a toast to the man who introduced me to Mr. Bond, as I count down the days to the release of the new OO7 adventure in September.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Fleming.

                                                  Picture courtesy of http://www.comicvine.com/spyboy/4005-46801/


                                                                          *******


* Well, it's a transcript of page one.

** Special thanks to The Book Bond- The New Bond Novel is: "Trigger Mortis"

*** Bond's choice of alcohol when travelling abroad. Dammit, I just checked the liquor cabinet. All I have is Slate! Looks like I'll have some Glenmorangie instead.
It'll go down smoother, and it's more in keeping with Bond's Scottish ancestry, too.

Friday 22/5/2015 - Life Is Busy, Yet Quiet & This Week's Wristwatches.

Monday

             We've been watching Season One of Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D on DVD. It's a very well done show, I have to say. The writing is sharp, with snappy dialogue, and the plots are clever. I was wearing my Omega Speedmaster Professional for most of the week (right);

The show's main protagonist is Agent Phil Coulson, played by Clark Gregg. This character appeared in a couple of the IronMan and Thor films, as well as The Avengers. 

In order to capitalise on the success of the above-mentioned franchises, Marvel Studios decided to put together this TV series about this multi-layered government agency, and it enlisted the help of wunderkind Joss Whedon, who achieved phenomenal television success with Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Firefly in the 1990s and early Noughties.  

Whedon has recently come under fire from feminist groups who have stated that his latest Marvel Studios movie, Avengers: Age of Ultron, was misogynistic in its portrayal of ex-Russian spy/assassin Black Widow, played by Scarlett Johansson.

Without me wading into this debacle, I will state that Whedon was lauded in the past for writing strong female characters and this is again evident in Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. While Joss Whedon doesn't write the screenplays for the show, he is the Executive Producer, so I would imagine that he'd have some degree of control over how it's characters are written and portrayed.

So basically, I don't agree with this feminist take on Mr. Whedon. And I'm married to a feminist.

Anyway, I wrote all of the above to point out that Agent Phil Coulson wears an Omega Speedmaster Professional in the show. 'Cos he's badass!;

picture courtesy of http://watchesinmovies.info

Thursday
               Switched over to the Omega Seamaster AquaTerra Co-Axial;

I tried my hand at making a key-holder out of leather, courtesy of an old baseball glove. Not 100% crazy about how it turned out, but it was a good exercise in seeing how it worked and how practical (or not) it is on a day-to-day basis. It can be a little fiddly to use.

Today
            Switched over to the Camy Club-Star;

Yep, things are still quite busy with school and work-hunting, and yet no major happenings 'round these parts.
So I think a breather is in order, so that I can concentrate on more pressing matters. I may slowly add to some posts that are still in draft stages, but I'll see how I go.

Anyway, thanks for reading, take care, and bye for now, all.


SEVEN HOURS LATER (APPROX)

SWITCHED BACK TO THE OMEGA SPEEDMASTER PROFESSIONAL. THE LURE OF THIS WATCH IS STRONG. SEEN HERE WITH A LARGISH CUP OF EARL GREY TEA. BLACK, ONE SUGAR. 

SEE YA'S!

 

The Typewriter Collection No. 17 - Smith-Corona Skyriter, circa 1954

I like the sleek and low-profile case that it arrived in. The handle looks a little fragile, though. I may replace it with leather. I'm also considering giving this case a paint-job, but I'll have to give some serious thought to how I remove the existing colour.

Having read a few recent posts by Baesun on his blog...
Of Type and Ink - Updates and Painting Skyriters

...I'm reluctant to go messing with lead paint and all of the associated risks. I may try a solution called Ripper Stripper to remove the old colour. 

Not sure how I feel about this carriage-return lever. It's shorter than I'm used to, and I have to say it can feel a little 'aggressive' against the finger. Almost feels a tad sharp, to be honest, though this is nothing that some light filing or sanding down wouldn't fix.

I love how this machine types. Very responsive. I removed the two screws which, remarkably, make it possible to remove the entire inner workings from the outer shell, and began to once again think about changing the colour of this typewriter from its industrial grey shade to something a little more eye-catching. Maybe a pale cream colour to contrast against the dark green keytops and Smith-Corona logo on the ribbon cover.
However, I'm not sure about this. I don't really have the time to devote to such frivolities right now, but it is something to ponder.

But, man, that carriage-return lever has me slightly bugged. I had one other thought; I'm thinking of keeping an eye out for the Sears version of this machine, the Tower Chieftain III. Looks pretty much exactly like a Skyriter, but it has a longer return lever and a nice, cool 1960s logo. From what I gather, the Chieftain III was made in the early to mid Sixties. I hope they have a similar typing action to this Skyriter. Anybody who has both of these machines, feel free to chime in with an opinion.
I know I could go for a later model Skyriter from the early '60s, but I'm thinking that a rebadged Smith-Corona, i.e; the Tower,  would break up the collection a little. I already have three S-Cs, after all. 

The rubber feet have seen better days, but they're still intact. I will still replace them with some new rubber at some point to provide some better grip.  Other than that, this typewriter is in great working condition. Looks like the kind of thing an engineer from McDonnell-Douglas would have carried around in the mid-Fifties while Chuck Yeager broke through to Mach 2.44.
They bred 'em tough back then.

Thanks for reading!

Friday 8/5/15 - Assignment No. 2 (of 9) Done, Typewriters Come & Go, Happy Birthday Miss Hepburn! & This Week's Wristwatches.

Last Weekend

                        I was going to go and have a look at a house auction on Saturday morning, but since my wife and I had ruled it out as a potential purchase, there was really no point going. The real estate agent (a nice lady) informed us that she was expecting it to fetch around $700,000 to $730,000. I read in the paper the following day that it was Passed In at $830,000 and the Reserve Price (the minimum that the seller would expect) was $850,000. We're going to see more of these over the next few months. Estate agents will always claim that they don't have a crystal ball ("No! Really??) and therefore can't give a more accurate indication of price. I suspect this is true to an extent, since emotion can kick in on the day and people can wind up bidding higher than they'd planned to. However, these agents must have a better idea of what a house will sell for, once they factor in condition, size, location, etc. However, since they're gonna make 2% of the selling price as commission, it is in their interest to see the house sell for as much as possible.

Anyway, the game (and it is a game) continues. 

I wore the Submariner for most of the day;

...and switched over to a watch that I haven't worn very much at all in recent years, the Oris Modern Classic;

Thirty-seven millimetres in diameter, with a rose-gold bezel, this is a nice dress piece. My daughter likes this one, which probably explains why I haven't worn it so much. I'll give it to her in a few years.

I sat down to tackle another assignment. This one involved logging on to a facsimile of a library management system and issuing/returning some books from and to the database. I had put this one off for the past week because I thought it would be quite an undertaking. However, once I got started, it moved along at a pleasant pace and I was done within an hour or so. I see my handwriting's gone to hell.

                                                                         picture below courtesy of klimbims (on www.deviantart.com)

And Monday (4th) was also the late Audrey Hepburn's birthday. She was born in Belgium in 1929 and died (way, way too soon) in Switzerland in 1993. When you stop to think about it, you soon realise that there was nobody else quite like her. Although appearing in about half a dozen films before her breakthrough role in Roman Holiday (Dir: William Wyler, 1953), she came along at a time when Hollywood began paying more attention to Marilyn Monroe, who appeared in Niagara (Dir: Henry Hathaway) that same year. Funny how no two actresses could be more dissimilar. Monroe would have been great to have a couple of drinks with, but Hepburn would have been an extraordinary dinner companion. Waif-like, pixie-haired, and with that great voice, she went on to have a wonderful film career which took second-place in later years to her work as an ambassador for UNICEF.




 picture courtesy of www.quotesworthrepeating.com


Wednesday
                    Okay, it's now 9:37am and today's a busy one;

-Submit Assignment.
-Check e-mails. (Got a knock-back for a library job. Ahh well, their loss. Onto the next.)
-Black skirt for ****** (my daughter's in a school musical this week and she needs to look 'corporate'.)
-Washing on the line. Bring in if dry.
-Breakfast dishes to be done.
-Ironing?
- ***** doing Community Service, 1:30pm-3:30pm.
- Pick ****** up at 3:10pm-3:20pm
-Pick ***** up at 3:30pm
-Early dinner for ******.
 -*****'s tennis lesson at 6:00pm till 6:45pm.
-****** at rehearsal at 6:00pm till 10:30pm(!). This one's tricky. My wife finishes work at five and she may get home in time to drop our son off at his tennis lesson. I'll already be on the road taking our daughter to rehearsal.
-Pick ****** up from rehearsal at 10:30pm-11:00pm. 

UPDATE- 11.52pm: All done. Daughter is in the bathroom removing make-up. She really needs to get to bed.

Still on the topic of typewriters, I was a little disheartened to find scans of a couple of my typewriter owner's manuals on the web without any attribution to me being mentioned. Ahh, well, there are more important things I could worry about.

Anyway, here's a close-up of the Skyriter's scratched body;

One other layer of colour underneath the crinkle-paint, then what? Steel? Plastic? Papier-Mache!?

Anyway, that's another week done. The lady who purchased my Olympia is swinging past my house tomorrow on her way to her parent's house. How handy that they live ten minutes away from me. Quick recap: Ribbon vibrator works, lifts up when it's supposed to, but there's no imprint on the page. Strange. Hopefully, it will be an easy fix.

We're off to see my daughter perform in her school musical tonight. So many late nights for everyone this week. I think I'll keep the Speedmaster on my wrist;

Have a great weekend, all!

1/5/15 - Sneaky Real Estate Agents, Protein, Protein, Protein, Goodbye To Two Typewriters & This Week's Wristwatches.

Back when I worked in the watch industry and was getting sick of it, some customers suggested that I go into selling cars. One fellow I knew used to work in the after-care department at one of the major European dealerships and he told me just how precarious a car salesman's life could be; "You work with these guys for months and if they don't make their sales targets, they're gone. I went in on a Monday and asked 'Hey, where's Joe? I saw him on Friday', and they'd tell me 'We finished him up on Friday afternoon. He didn't hit his targets for the last week.' "

And that's why I never went into car sales. A few customers suggested I go into real estate, but...

And that's why I'll never go into real estate. I think I'd have to make too big a compromise of my moral code, and after a while, I'd look in the mirror and begin to despise the person looking back at me. No matter how much money he was making.

Looking at the plans of this house, we decided anyway that it would need some serious configuration of rooms, since the third bedroom was pretty small. Lady Teeritz and I have sat down and written up a checklist of what we'd like in our next house. And what we don't want. No flat roof, no corner block, no shoe-box sized bedrooms. The hunt goes on. 

Been on a bit of a protein kick this week. The average adult male requires 56 grams of protein per day. So, I began taking a closer look at foods that offered a healthy dose of the stuff. I went slightly overboard on the first day;

- 1 egg (hard-boiled)     13 gms

- Almonds (handful)       3 gms

- Sustagen Sport            14.7 gms (it's a chocolate powdered milk additive for use after exercise)

+ Skim Milk (250ml)      8 gms

+ 1 egg thrown in          13 gms

Total Protein = 51 gms

And it wasn't even midday yet! For lunch, I had a tuna salad. That's another 22 grams of protein. Afternoon snack was another handful of almonds, so there's another 3 grams right there. And, for dinner, Chorizo sausages with some vegetables, mainly potatoes. That was 22 more grams for the day. Total intake came to 98 grams! Okay, slow it down a little. Next day's intake? Thirty-seven grams.  Now, if I can just get it all somewhere between these two totals, I should be fine.

Found a copy of Captain America: The Winter Soldier on BluRay for $25 bucks! When I got home, my wife looked at me and raised an eyebrow; "I don't know how you could have forgotten that I bought a copy of this on eBay a few days ago. You were sitting right next to me when I hit 'Buy It Now', and I even asked you if I should get it." 

I need to improve my memory. After I return this movie to Target.

I was going to switch to the Submariner 5513, but decided to keep the Omega on instead. Looking forward to getting the Skyriter. Seller claimed that it had been recently serviced and is working properly. I certainly hope so. It's one typewriter that's been on my mind for a couple of years.

Anyway, gang, it's now Friday afternoon. It's been a sunny day here. Although, the nights do get quite cold. Another thing we'd like in our next house- central heating. We've spent too many a cold Winter's night in a chilly house. 

Hopefully, we'll find something sooner rather than later, but I think we'll have to listen to a little more BS before we get the keys to our next house. Yeah, I'm feeling a little more cynical than usual. 'Cos I don't like getting jerked around by real estate agents who keep changing their story.

However, there's a great deal more good things in my life than bad. And the bad things are just inconveniences, after all.

I switched over to the Submariner, too. Call me weak.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!


- typecasts were done on a 1956 Smith-Corona Silent Super and a 1946 Royal Quiet De Luxe.