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Friday 15/8/14 - RIP Robin Williams & Lauren Bacall (dammit!), Remembering Ian Fleming, a Very Brittle Cork & This Week's Wristwatches.

August 15, 2014, 5:36 am
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- Friday 10:36pm AEST -

Last weekend
       Sat down to watch "Trouble With The Curve" (Dir: Robert Lorenz, 2012), a film about an ageing baseball scout, starring Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams. I hadn't heard of this film, but then, I blame that on the fact that US Premiere magazine is no longer published and I don't have my finger on the pulse regarding films in production and new releases the way I used to. 


This was a good film and I thought it was one that Eastwood had directed himself until I checked the DVD's case about halfway through. At any rate, this film had the feel of an Eastwood-directed film, especially in terms of theme, its notions of masculinity, and pace. And I must say that, at the age of 84, Mr Eastwood moves like a guy 25 years younger. Long may he reign.

The rest of the cast was great. Amy Adams did a great job of playing Eastwood's estranged daughter and Justin Timberlake turns in a fine performance as a former pitcher searching for purpose. The remaining cast is made up of many great character actors like Ed Lauter, George Wyner, Bob Gunton and Robert Patrick. These guys may not sound like household names, but if you've watched tv or movies in the past 20 or 30 years, you will recognise their faces. All in all, it was a very good film. Highly recommended.

picture courtesy of http://www.impawards.com
/2012/trouble_with_the_curve_ver3.html

Monday
       I had a visit from one of my lecturers at work today. Everything seems to be going along smoothly. I have another five days left in this industry placement gig. Spent the morning doing some indexing of old local newspapers to find mention of this library for historical purposes. Then I hit the non-fiction shelves and put away some books. My Dewey decimal knowledge was a little rusty at first, but I soon settled back into it. 
Got a text message from my wife; "Found a blue and cream Remington Envoy III at op shop. It says 'Sperry Rand' on it. Seems like it works ok. Needs new ribbon, though. Do you want it?"
"How much?", was my reply.
"25", was her response.
I said 'yes'. I already knew what to expect. A plastic, Made in Holland machine with those bucket keytops and that annoying spool-less ribbon system that Remington were known for. Still, I figured I would clean it up as a catch-&-release exercise. Might have to remove the shell and vacuum the dust out of it, though.
Since the weekend, I've been wearing the Sinn 103. Here's an old photo that I took in Mike's lightbox. Mike is the guy who did that Seamaster case restoration that I wrote about some time ago;


Tuesday
      It was awful to hear of the death of Robin Williams. While I can't say I was a huge fan, I must admit that he was always very funny on-screen and a totally unpredictable talk-show guest. So I suppose I must have been a big enough fan of his without really realising it.
He was able to play serious as well as he could play comedy, and whenever he did take on a dramatic role, he did it to say something about human nature. Stop and think about films such as Dead Poets Society, Awakenings, The Fisher King or Good Will Hunting and you begin to see the broader themes that he liked to tackle and just how gifted an actor he was when playing it straight.
Like many gifted comedians, such as Spike Milligan and Jim Carrey, Williams suffered from deep depression throughout much of his adult life. It seems that this is often the price that they pay for being able to make us laugh.
Director Garry Marshall, who first signed Williams on to play his famous TV character Mork in an episode of Happy Days in 1978 said; "Robin could make everyone happy but himself."
It was a shame that Robin Williams had reached the point of despair that he felt only death could alleviate.
Definitely another actor gone too soon.

Later in the day, I remembered that Ian Fleming died on this day in 1964, following a heart attack. That day, August 12th, also happened to be his son Caspar's twelfth birthday. 
While Fleming was indeed a heavy smoker and drinker, I feel that it was the legal trouble that ensued after he published "Thunderball" in 1961 that exacerbated his ill health. Sometime in the 1950s, he met with a film-maker named Kevin McClory with a view to creating a Bond film entitled Longitude 78 West. Along the way, they brought a screenwriter named Jack Whittingham on board. 
Long story short, a script was completed, but never put into production. Fleming later used the screenplay as the basis for his Bond novel Thunderball. McClory and Whittingham then resurfaced with a view to taking Fleming to court over his use of their ideas in his book. Needless to say, it was all a lot more convoluted than my explanation, but this court battle went on for a few more years and I'm certain that it all took a heavy toll on Fleming's health. It was all still unresolved at the time of his death, but from late 1961 onwards, the recto page of all copies of Thunderball stated that the story was "based on a screen treatment by Kevin McClory, Jack Whittingham and the author". 
However, Kevin McClory would not go away quietly. By 1962, producers Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman had secured the rights to make James Bond movies through their production company, EON, and they wasted no time in getting the first Bond film, Dr No, underway. 
When the time came to film "Thunderball"in 1965, they were forced to give McClory, who still owned the rights to the screenplay and story, a Producer's credit on the film. He would also hold the rights to this story for the next decade.
And then, in the late 1970s, McClory announced that he would make a Bond film entitled Warhead, but it wasn't until 1983 that he finally managed to get the film made. By this stage, he had licensed the rights to his story to a producer named Jack Schwartzman. This was big news to Bond fans for one reason only- it would mark the return of Sean Connery to the role of James Bond. The film was called Never Say Never Again and, while it was a better Bond  film than the official EON Productions release of the same year, Octopussy, starring Roger Moore, it was a poorly-made film overall. Yes, it was great to see Connery back as Bond, but the script was lacking, the direction, by Irwin Kirshner, was lacklustre, and the music soundtrack was woeful. It then dawned on me, way back in the Midcity Cinemas in 1983, that there was more to Bond than just Sean Connery.
Still, even now, I prefer it to Octopussy.
McClory tried to remake the film in the late '80s and again around the year 2000, but had no luck. There's more to this whole story. Type 'Kevin McClory' into Wikipedia for more info. It goes on and on. Suffice to say that it is the studios that do all the suing and counter-suing to ensure that the character of James Bond is protected. 
In fact, it is EON Productions who own the rights to the character these days. 
And I have no problem with that whatsoever. 
They seem to be looking after OO7 nicely.

Anyway, I sometimes wonder what would have become of that man Bond, had Fleming lived longer. I can't help but think that he was getting a little tired of OO7 by 1964, based on where he was taking JamesBond, and may have written a book towards the end of the 1960s where Bond was either killed off or retired quietly to a warm little corner of Jamaica.
We'll never know.

Wednesday
       My daughter has had the 'flu for the past few days and she stayed home today. I was due to go the the State Library for class, but decided to stay home with her instead. I can get to the library on the weekend. 
A little later in the morning, I saw mention of Lauren Bacall on Twitter. Oh no! A quick Googling revealed the news that she had died after suffering a massive stroke. She would have turned 90 next month. Now I know that's a good age to get to, but this was still very sad news to me. She was, after all, the widow of one of my favourite actors. Another link to Old Hollywood broken. 

Smoke 'em if you got 'em, folks. They don't breed them like her anymore. Although Jennifer Lawrence comes very, very close. 






















But then, I thought , I hope there is a Heaven up there, because then she and Bogie are together again. 
I guess that's something, right?


The Rat Pack will be having drinks upstairs tonight. And I might just bust open that Single Malt and watch The Big Sleep.
Remember that scene where Marlowe goes into Geiger's  Antiquarian Bookstore? 


 I wanted to aim for some kind of tribute picture;

INT: WARNER BROS. STUDIOS CANTEEN, MAY 1946 -- DAY



That ought to mess with future film historians; "Gee, did they have iPads back in 1946?"

 Later on Wednesday Night...
...my wife sat down to watch "24 Hours in A&E", a documentary series about a day in the life of the Emergency Room of a London hospital.
Meanwhile, I was at the dining table opening up a bottle of Glenmorangie Single Highland Malt, with a view to having a drink in Miss Bacall's honour. I...uh...'liberated' (yeah, that's the word) this bottle from a place I worked at back in 1989.
I removed the heavy foil from around the neck of the bottle and then gave the cork a gentle twist and...


Panic stations, everyone!!!
Oh no, oh no, oh no! No way! Okay, don't panic, teeritz. First things first, get the camera. Then the Waiter's Friend (corkscrew).
It's been about fifteen years since I had to deal with a broken cork. I wonder if I still had the touch?
I eased the worm gently into the brittle cork and began turning it very...very...slowly. I then removed the remaining foil so that I could see if the screw had broken through the bottom of the cork. What I was trying to avoid were any tiny bits of cork falling into this 10 year old whisky. Sure, I've had this bottle for 25 years (good God!), but whisky doesn't keep maturing once it's been removed from the barrel.
Holding onto the corkscrew, I turned the bottle at an angle. Good. The worm wasn't showing through. I tilted the bottle further and, rather than place the fulcrum edge of the corkscrew against the bottleneck's lip, I went all old-school and carefully began pulling the screw away from the bottle. I watched as some section of cork began to give way, beads of sweat forming on my forehead. Nah, not really. Come on, it's just a bottle of Scotch!
And about ten or twelve seconds later;


  But more importantly;

No shards of cork in the bottle. Now I really needed a drink. And I needed another cork. But first, a drink. Make it a double, would ya, Lou?;


By the time this little saga was over, it had gotten a little too late to put on a Bogie & Bacall movie. Damn, I really felt like watching The Big Sleep, too.
Oh well, here's to you, Miss Bacall. Say 'hello' to your (first) husband for me. And tell Sinatra to keep his hands to himself! He had his chance.
And, the same photo, in glorious black and white;


The Glenmorangie went down pretty smoothly, but left a slight trail of fire behind it. I began to worry that it might have spoiled from being cooped up for a quarter century.
But then, I was too busy feeling smug about never having met a cork that I couldn't shift.
One day, I may have to write a post about it.

The Sinn 103 felt like the wrong watch to be wearing today. Time to switch to something with a vintage feel. The Longines Expeditions Polaires (old photo);


Thursday
       Man, I'm still feeling at a loss over Bacall's death. And then I bought the paper and felt a little more miserable;


By my reckoning, the only star left from Hollywood's Golden Era of the 1930s and '40s is Olivia De Havilland. She's now 98 years old. Her sister, actress Joan Fontaine died last year. I can't think of any other major star who's still around. 
Oh, wait a sec, Maureen O'Hara is still with us. She starred in The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1939. Now THAT was a banner year for Hollywood. So many classic films made in that year. Whenever I see a succession of disappointing movies, I often say; "Hollywood needs another 1939." 
Too much crap gets made these days, but thankfully, some real gems are still being produced.
I then tackled a little more homework before heading to a class in the afternoon.

 Today
       Another day of industry placement. I thought I'd invert Casual Fridays AND pay tribute to Lauren Bacall by wearing this tie that I got sometime in the Eighties. I still had the Longines on today;


That Bogart tie was only ever worn to a few of parties and nights out, circa 1986-'89. No way would I wear it with an actual suit to work. There were too many movers and shakers out in the '80s wearing those colourful Wile E. Coyote and Superman logo ties.
Awful, just awful. If you're a Bugs Bunny fan, buy a Looney Tunes boxed set, but don't wear your fandom around your neck.

And that's another week gone. Dreadful if you're a fan of Hollywood film. However,
Both Williams and Bacall left behind a great body of work for us to savour.
Gotta be thankful for that.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!
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Saturday 23/8/14 - Another Quiet Week, Happy Birthday Pussy Galore, Inflated Page-views & This Week's Wristwatches

August 22, 2014, 7:32 pm
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-Saturday 12.32pm AEST- 


Last weekend
       For Lolly Night, we sat down to watch The Fall (Dir: Tarsem, 2006). I had heard about this film some time ago and kept meaning to see it. The director, Tarsem Singh, was known for making music clips and TV commercials before embarking on this film. Much like Russell Mulcahy, who directed a heap of Duran Duran, Elton John and Bonnie Tyler film-clips before going on to make films such as Razorback (1984), which was like Jaws, except with a wild boar instead of a shark, and Highlander in 1986.


I have found that film directors who cut their teeth on TV commercials and video clips tend to have a very economical way of telling a story and a great visual style. This is because they usually have 30 seconds to four minutes to get a story across. 
The Fall is set in a hospital in Los Angeles sometime in the 1920s and centres on a little girl who is there with her arm in plaster. She strikes up a friendship with a Hollywood stuntman who is bedridden after an on-set injury. To pass the time, he tells her a story about a mythical band of men who are determined to kill the villainous Governor Odious, who has betrayed them all in one way or another. 
Visually, this is a beautiful film, especially when you consider that no CGI effects were used. The most striking fact of all is that this film was shot in 28 countries over a four-year period. I have to say that this film is worth watching just for the opening titles alone. Shot in black and white and played in beautiful slow-motion, it gives the viewer the background story as to how the stuntman got injured.
Here's a link to the title-credits sequence, courtesy of the fantastic website, Art of the Title.com;


Earlier in the day, we all went into the city. The kids are about four weeks away from semester break and my wife and I have informed them that we'll be taking a few outings here and there. Since the Thailand trip two months ago was the big expense, we figure we may as well have a few cheap thrills for a while. 
I wound up finding a new watch store in town and couldn't resist the urge to go in and take a look, especially since this store carried a few brands that you couldn't get in Australia until recently. The store had a display for a brand called Eberhard & Co. I made a beeline for it and noticed a very nice chronograph to the left of the display. It looked much like this;

                                          picture courtesy of www.timeandwatches.com

I took a closer look at this classic mid-Sixties Contograf to find some tiny nicks and scratches here and there on the case. As I was approaching this display, I had already suspected that this watch was a vintage piece, based on its size, and sure enough, it was. 
The saleslady that I spoke to explained to me that the owner of the store had over three hundred watches (and I thought I had it bad) and some of them were displayed throughout the store. A nice idea, to be sure, but it back-fired with me because I found myself liking the vintage watches instead of the new (and displayed to sell) re-editions that were based on some of these vintage models.  
I was wearing the Longines from last week;

 
 
Geez, that's a bad photo. Maybe this one's better?


Monday
       Another day of industry placement. It's going okay. I have two more shifts after this one. Then, I'm gonna keep my ear to the ground regarding actual paid work in a library. I may do some voluntary work at my kid's school library if I can swing it. 


Tuesday
       This arrived.




I'm not entirely certain if I have read the stories in this collection, but I learned earlier this year that a bunch of Hammett's writings were found...I can't recall exactly where, University of Texas, maybe?...a couple of years ago and they were due to be published soon.
I'm currently reading a novel by Dan Fesperman entitled The Double Game. It's very good so far. Sort of a love letter to spy fiction. Very clever. 


I had to go into town. I was meant to go in last Wednesday to see the "Mirror of the World- Books and Beyond" exhibition at the State Library, but I stayed home with my sick daughter instead.
And also, I saw a great trench-coat at a great price on the weekend and I wanted to have a better look at it. My Burberry trench is getting on in years (I bought it in 1987. Read all about it in my 'Man With a Hat' post from early last year) and I've been on a passive hunt for a replacement because there's absolutely no way I'm paying 2014 Burberry trench-coat prices. More importantly, their current range is too damn short. Not a trench-coat. More like a longish jacket. And that won't do.
The weather was a little cool. I grabbed a coat. I planned on travelling light. No bag or satchel.
Just this;

The pencil case was a tad overkill, but I had a pocket in my coat where it wouldn't get in the way. 

It was a nice exhibition, on long-term display. I took a few notes and pictures. 
Here's a copy of Audubon's Birds of America (published 1827-1838). The largest book on display;


And the smallest books were in this set of miniatures, known back then as a midget library. This set, made in circa 1895, contained a Bible, a Qu'ran, French, English and German dictionaries, and a book of poems by Robert Burns. I'm sure they were all abridged versions, heh, heh. I held my pen up against the glass. The books were one the other side, about six inches away.


And this scroll looked amazing. I can't recall what it was. I think it may have been a version of The Qu'ran. To the left of it was a bound copy of The Qu'ran. Just above that was a tattered leather satchel that was used to house this sacred text. Extraordinary.


Excuse the quality of the photos. They were taken with my phone. If I'd known I could have brought a camera, then I would have. Looks like I'll have to go back and take a longer and more detailed look at all of this. 
And I never get sick of this view;




Even on an overcast day, it lights up quite impressively. Or maybe it's all that knowledge and history in print that gives this domed Reading Room its glow.
Either way, it's always an impressive sight.










When I got home, I switched watches.Time to put on something a little more robust. So on went the Omega Seamaster 300 rebuild;


Wednesday
       I've been keeping an eye on my page-views lately. Reason being that I'm getting way too many hits on that Dry Martini post that I wrote last year. This Blog has reached just over 300,000 views, but I find it not an occasion to celebrate because that number was inflated by the martini post views. Here are the all-time stats. Are there really that many people interested in how I mix a Dry Martini? And I can't find the traffic source. This internet's a tricky, tricky thing;


Friday
       And it was this lady's 89th birthday today;

Happy Birthday, Miss Honor Blackman. She's doing well. It has often been said that if you wanted to explain to somebody what a James Bond film was all about, you would just tell them to watch Goldfinger (Dir: Guy Hamilton, 1964). That's the movie that pretty much explains all of the motifs, tropes and 'ideology' behind the Bond films. Well, at least until Casino Royale in 2006.

I got home from my second-last shift of industry placement. It was getting a little chilly. Time for a thicker layer of clothing.
And a drink.


Man, that Dewar's scotch goes down a little rough.

Today (Saturday)
       Some of you may have noticed that I'm a day late with this post. Ah well, it ain't the end of the world.

Anyway, gang, thanks for reading and have a great weekend. And one more pic of the Seamaster 300. Yes, the picture was taken yesterday, but I'm still wearing it today.


Have a good one, all!
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Friday 29/8/14 - Wristwatch Headaches, Final Day of Industry Placement, Happy Birthday Mr. Connery, & This Week's Wristwatches.

August 29, 2014, 12:17 am
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- Friday 5:17pm AEST - 

Last Weekend
       Saturday's Lolly Night Movie was Rocky (Dir: John G. Avildsen, 1976). I found it hard to believe that my wife has never seen this film.

She considers boxing to be the sporting equivalent of ballet, so I was surprised to learn that she had never seen Rocky. I think it had more to do with an aversion to Sylvester Stallone's acting talent rather than anything else. Despite following up Rocky with dramas such as Paradise Alley and F.I.S.T., both in 1978, Stallone will forever be remembered for his roles as Rocky and Rambo. It's a bit of a shame, really. Especially when we remember that Rocky won the Best Picture Oscar in 1977 and the screenplay, written by Stallone himself, was nominated as well, but lost out to Paddy Chayefsky's screenplay for Network that year. Say what you will about Stallone these days, with The Expendables 3 hitting theatres soon, but the man is still capable of great work. Check out Copland (Dir: James Mangold, 1997). And even Stallone's last Rocky Balboa film, entitled, well, Rocky Balboa (Dir: Sylvester Stallone, 2006) garnered very good reviews and was an unexpected hit when it was released.

I didn't sit down to watch this film because I had to go pick my daughter up from a party. When I got home, I asked my wife what she thought of it.
"Everybody yells in this movie! It's pretty bleak", she said.
Hah! I never noticed this aspect of the movie when I saw it in cinemas in 1976. Of course, I grew up in an Italian household where yelling was the norm.
The parts of the film that I did see reminded me what a great underdog story this movie really is. I think I'm going to have to sit down and watch it again properly. I was wearing my TAG Heuer Formula 1 quartz. This watch gets worn very rarely, but I think I'll start wearing it a little more often. Especially when I head to the gym, which I haven't done for some time now. I think the whole family is over this bout of the 'flu that hit us when we got back from our trip six weeks ago and spring has just begun, so I think a healthier and more active lifestyle is on the cards for us all.
That's the plan, anyway.


Monday
       It was Sean Connery's 84th birthday. He hasn't made a film since The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Dir: Stephen Norrington) in 2003. That film was plagued with problems during production and many folks agree that this is the film that convinced Connery to retire from acting.
      
On the set of Dr. No with Ursula Andress in 1962. Wristwatch geek that I am, I would kill to know what happened to the Rolex Submariner 6538 that he's sporting on his wrist.


A famous promotional shot for Goldfinger. Connery and the Aston Martin DB5 in the Swiss Alps in 1964. Despite the fact that Roger Moore was the Bond that I grew up with, Sean Connery's OO7 is the one that turned me into a life-long Bond fan.
And so, I just wanted to say "Happy Birthday, OO7".

A great magazine ad from a great ad campaign by Louis Vuitton from a few years ago. The rolled-up chinos are a nod to when Bond meets Honey Rider on the island of Crab Key in Dr No. 
The only thing that spoils this Annie Leibovitz photo is the watch on his wrist. 
Bond would not wear a Louis Vuitton Tambour Chronograph.

I worked my final day of industry placement today too. All in all, it was an interesting experience in ways that I hadn't expected. For some reason, I thought that people who worked in libraries actually read books. I got the impression that a few of the staff didn't read regularly and didn't keep up with new releases. Not only that, but it seemed that a few of them viewed dealing with the patrons to be an absolute chore and/or interruption. As I said, it was an interesting experience and it gave me a good indication of the type of library I don't want to end up in.
I wore the Omega Speedmaster Professional. Here it is on a page of The Sun from 1969;



Tuesday
       Today was the day where nothing seemed to go right with regard to a couple of wristwatch-related purchases.
First of all, I ordered a couple of perlon watch straps. These are basically a nylon strap with a cross-hatch weave. What this means is that you can adjust the fit to your exact wrist diameter since there are no holes in the strap. The tongue on the buckle basically slots through the weave of the strap.
I purchased two of these straps. I paid for two of these straps. The Seller sent me one strap. I decided to fit it to the Longines Expeditions Polaires while I stewed over this. 


It's a very comfortable strap. I just wish I'd gotten the two that I'd paid for. 

My other wristwatch dilemma concerned a watch that I had bought for my wife. I bought her an Oris TT1 DayDate back in 2002, after the birth of our daughter. 

My wife has worn it everyday and it indeed bears the scars of a well-worn watch. Especially since it endured a few new scratches on the bracelet a couple of months ago when she crawled out the window of her overturned car;


However, I had wanted to buy her a new watch for the last year or two. Her Oris is a little erratic in its timekeeping (definitely needs servicing) and it's a little difficult to read in low light.
And so, I had decided to get her a Sinn 556A. There's no mistaking the time on this baby;

 
Picture courtesy of www.sinn.de

The package arrived and I carefully removed the bubble-wrap from the box. My wife was at work and I was hoping to remove a few links from the watch's bracelet and surprise her with it when she got home. 
I opened the box. The case of the watch was wrapped in a soft, white plastic strip. I gently pulled on the plastic to take a peel at the dial...and my blood boiled slightly. 
It was the wrong watch.
They had sent me a 556. It's a nice watch, without a doubt, but it lacks the numerals on the dial of the 556A, which really sets off this watch and highlights the cockpit instrument heritage of the Sinn brand. This is how the standard 556 model looks;

 
picture courtesy of www.sinn.de

So a few phone calls were made and the seller and I arranged for him to send me the correct watch and I would send this one back to him. I would have classes over the next two days, so this swap would not occur until Friday. Nothing to do but get on with life.

Today
       Sitting here writing this post, waiting for the courier to show up with the replacement wristwatch. And I still have a million other things to do today. Still, I aim to get the bulk of them done. 

1:35pm
       Okay, the courier just arrived and we did the old swaperoo. Here's the correct watch, still in it's protective plastic;

Okay, I'm gonna remove a few links from the bracelet. Then I'm gonna get the rest of my day underway. 

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!
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Boy Meets Girl...Sooner Or Later.

August 31, 2014, 5:24 am
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When he was fifteen years old, the boy was allocated a job at a major bookstore for Work Experience as part of his studies in Year Nine. Schools did this in order to give students a taste of The Rat Race. To give them an idea of what it's like to turn up to a job at nine am and work through till five pm. This was an arrangement usually organised between the school and an employer or organisation. The kids would 'go to work'. And they were paid a total of three dollars a day. Back then, this was enough to cover public transport costs and still leave enough money for a pie or sandwich for lunch. 
The boy would be working full-time in the Despatch Department, on the fifth floor of this bookstore in the city, for two weeks.
The girl, who was also fifteen, was already working at this bookstore. On the sales floor at ground level. 
The boy spent his two weeks opening up boxes of books that arrived from the suppliers. 
He and the girl never saw each other. 

Nine years later, the boy got a job at a snazzy restaurant in the city. He was told by the owner that it was a daytime bartending gig, but the current bartender made sure that all the boy ever did was prepare salads and desserts for the lunchtime customers. 
The girl, meanwhile, was working for a cleaning company. One of her allocated premises was this same snazzy restaurant in the city. She would get there between five-thirty and six am to clean the place. She would work solidly and would usually be finished by seven-thirty or eight am. Then she would leave and go on to her next allocated premises. The boy would arrive at the restaurant at eleven-thirty to prepare for the lunchtime rush. 
Once again, he and the girl never saw each other. 

Two years passed and the boy was now working at a cafe, making coffees before the term barista was invented. Before the 'latte art' phenomenon took hold. He worked at this cafe five nights a week. One night, the girl from the bookstore came into this cafe with her boyfriend. She ordered two caffe latte. The boy made the two coffees and placed them down on the counter in front of her and her boyfriend.
'She's pretty',  the boy thought to himself. 

Another two years went by and the boy was now working at a small bistro around the corner from the cafe. One busy Saturday night, two girls walked in and sat down at Table No. 3. The boy didn't see them come in because, well, it was a busy Saturday night. The girls were served by one of the other waiters on duty who brought them a bottle of water and two glasses before taking their order for two caffe latte. 
The waiter went to the machine and made the two coffees. When he was done, he called over to the boy and said; "These are for table three."
"Done", said the boy as he scooped up the coffees. 
The boy approached Table No. 3 and put the coffees down before glancing at the two girls. One of them had the day's newspaper spread across the table and a pair of glasses perched on her nose. 
The boy recognised her from the time she came into the cafe with her boyfriend.
"Hey, did you come into Giorgietto's* about a year ago?", he asked her.
The girl removed the glasses and handed them to her friend, who put them on her own face. They were her glasses, after all.
"Yes. Didn't you work there?", the girl replied, tilting her head slightly to the side the way some girls do when they ask a question. The girl had a low voice. Like Bacall, thought the boy.
"Yeah", he replied and, feeling bold, he decided to ask a strategic question, designed to find out her current status. This is way before Facebook, you understand. If you wanted to know somebody's relationship status, you had to ask them, or somebody who knew them. A web site was where spiders spun their silken homes.
"Yeah, you came in and ordered two lah-teys for you and your boyfriend", he said.
"Oh, I left him, he was crazy", she responded. 
They made some more brief chit-chat, but it was a busy Saturday night, remember? There were other tables to be served. Besides, the girl and her friend had a movie to catch. 
So that was that. 

About a week or so later, the girl came back to the bistro one afternoon to have a coffee. She sat up at the bar. The boy was working and he said 'hi' to her. She said 'hello' and ordered a caffe latte. The boy was standing next to the machine, so he made it for her. 
A couple of the regular customers soon arrived and took up their usual seats at the bar. It wasn't long before these regulars began hitting on the girl. She made polite conversation with them. It was then that the boy learned that she worked in one of the libraries at the nearby university.

A few days later, the girl came back again to the bistro and ordered a coffee. The boy saw her and said 'hello'. She said 'hello' back. She had her coffee and left.

This went on for another week or so. The girl would come in, have a coffee, make small-talk with the boy, and then leave. By now, the boy was thinking that he should ask her out the next time she came in. She was a very interesting girl.
A week went by and she didn't show. The boy was beginning to think that perhaps he'd blown it. One of his workmates gave him the 'you-gotta-strike-while-the-iron-is-hot' speech, which did nothing to lift his spirits. 

The boy later found out that one of the regular customers had managed to get the girl's phone number and had asked her out, but had no luck. The boy decided to ask him for the number. The regular customer handed him the number and said; "I don't fancy your chances, she's crazy."

(The boy found out later on that the regular customer had asked the girl out for a coffee. She said yes. When he called her back to tee it up, he said she could maybe come to his place and he'd cook her dinner and maybe they could watch a video or something. She told him she had no intention of going to his place on a first date and that maybe he was expecting more than she was willing to give. She told him she wasn't that kind of girl.)

The boy tried calling her the next day. The girl picked up on the third ring.
The boy's heart was pounding as he heard her say 'hello'.
"Hey, I haven't seen you in a while and was wondering when you were going to pop in next", he said.
"Actually, I was thinking of coming by tomorrow", she replied.

The next day, she came into the bistro and took her seat up at the bar and ordered a coffee. The boy arrived twenty minutes later to start his shift.
They chatted intermittently between the boy doing his job of clearing tables, taking orders, washing cups, etc.
And then she paid for her coffee, got off her stool at the bar and headed for the door. 
The boy stood behind the counter and said; "See you soon" as his heart raced. That the best he could come up with?
The girl replied over her shoulder; "No, you won't" as she pulled the door open, but the boy didn't hear this because the sound of outside traffic drowned out her words.
His workmates stood there watching him watching her leave. A million different thoughts flitted through his head, but the main one was this strong sense that she was walking out for good.
The bistro was getting busy. If he was going to do anything, he'd have to do it now.
He raced for the door and stepped out into the street to see the girl already about fifteen metres away. The boy broke into a quick trot to catch up with her.
She turned at the sound of his approaching steps.
"Hey, would you like to maybe go out and get a coffee or a drink sometime?", he asked her.
"You know, you come across as cool, with your Zippo lighter and your floppy hair, and you come across as though you're interested, but then you get all coy and you back off", replied the girl.
The boy was taken aback somewhat. He didn't think that that was how he was projecting himself. And he made a mental note to look up the word 'coy' in the dictionary when he got home. He thought he knew its meaning, but he wanted to make sure.
The girl continued; "I wasn't going to come back after my last visit because you came off as if you didn't give a damn, but then I thought I'd give you one last chance."
"I didn't mean to give you the impression that I wasn't interested. But I had everyone in the restaurant watching my every move and I felt like I was under a microscope. I hate that", said the boy.
"So, you didn't realise that I was coming in all these times to see you?", the girl asked, raising a perfect eyebrow, her emerald green eyes boring into his.
"I thought you were coming in for the coffee. Seriously, you'd be surprised how many people walk into this place for the first time, have a coffee, and then come back virtually every day as if they're hooked on our blend or something", the boy replied as he raked his fingers through his floppy hair while his heart pounded and his mouth ran dry. Man, he could use a Marlboro Light right now!
He'd been out of the dating game for quite some time.

The boy and the girl arranged to go out for a coffee the next day. This was back in August 1994.
They got married a couple of years later.

The boy was me. The girl was my wife.

********************************

I learned long ago that everybody's life is like a wheel. Some wheels are bigger than others and some wheels turn faster or slower than others and these wheels sometimes intersect in the strangest ways. I've always found it odd, and even incredible, that she and I moved in the same peripheries at times without having met. I suppose sooner or later, our two wheels were bound to overlap. 
And eventually, they did.

Thanks for reading!

*Name changed.

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Fri 5/9/14 - Typewriter Musings, Old Newspapers, RIP Joan Rivers & This Week's Wristwatches.

September 5, 2014, 1:10 am
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Last weekend
        The Lolly Nite Movie this week was The Fisher King (Dir: Terry Gilliam, 1991), starring the late, great Robin Williams and Jeff Bridges. I think the only Robin Williams films my kids have seen are Flubber,  Jumanji and Night at the Museum (one and two). And maybe Hook (which contains one of Dustin Hoffman's finest and funniest performances. Reminiscent of Jack Lemmon in The Great Race in some ways).
While a film like Good Morning, VietNam would have been a better showcase of a manic Robin Williams performance, I have always had a soft spot for The Fisher King. Mercedes Rhuel is wonderful in it, as is Amanda Plummer, but I particularly love the late Michael Jeter's performance in this film as a transvestite who sings show tunes. Jeter also played the prisoner with the special mouse in The Green Mile.
Jeff Bridges was in the midst of a resurgence in his career with this film, not long after his comeback role in The Fabulous Baker Boys a few years earlier. His career appeared to be a series of stop/starts with Against All Odds, a 1984 remake of the 1947 Robert Mitchum noir classic Out of the Past ***************and he does a great job as Jack, a shock-jock radio host who suddenly finds himself unemployed. It has a few macabre Terry Gilliam touches, such as The Red Knight and some scenes in an asylum, but overall, I thought it one of the better films of that year. Actually, come to think of it, 1991 also gave us The Silence of the Lambs, JFK, Thelma & Louise, Barton Fink and Cape Fear, to name a few. And here I was, thinking about The Naked Gun 2 1/2, Doc Hollywood, Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey and Harley Davidson & The Marboro Man.
I wore my Longines Expeditions automatic;


And my wife was wearing her new Sinn 556A. 

Excuse the blurry photo.
I got it for her to commemorate 20 years since she and I got together. And then I wrote about it as a "How I Met Your Mother"-type scenario for our kids to refer to in future. It's the next post down.

Monday
       I've been looking at my typewriters lately. With plans to fix up our house, sell it and move into something larger (hopefully) sometime in the next 12 months, I'm going through my stuff with a view to reducing what will need to be packed up and moved when the time comes. 
This Remington Envoy III will not go into our next house;


And I can think of two or three other typewriters that I just don't use and could probably go to somebody who will use them. eBay to the rescue!
So much to be done around here. However, now that the weather is fining up, all of these tasks seem easier to deal with. 
And there are four or five assignments to tackle in the next month or two as well. But none of them are too daunting, so it shouldn't be a problem. 

Wednesday
       I had the Omega Railmaster on;


I found a couple of old newspapers under the house and gave them a wipe-down. They dated back to August 1969 and I thought it might be interesting to take them into my Preservation class. We are currently studying the history, chemical composition and manufacture of paper and I thought it perhaps relevant to show how fifty year-old newsprint-grade paper has held up. I decided I should switch to a watch from the same era, so on went the 1969 Omega Seamaster;


Up until 1990, there were three major newspapers here in Melbourne. We had The Age, published as a broad-sheet, The Sun News Pictorial, a tabloid which came out every morning, and The Herald, an afternoon broad-sheet which covered any late-breaking news of the day. 
The Sun and The Herald merged almost 25 years ago to become The Herald Sun, a twice-daily tabloid, published in the morning, with a later, updated edition available in the afternoon. The afternoon edition was soon scrapped due to poor sales.
Growing up, The Sun was the newspaper that I often saw on tables in cafes, on tram stop benches, and in people's bags as they walked by, so unearthing this issue had a particular resonance for me. Seeing that masthead took me back. 
I told my lecturer that she could have this newspaper if she wanted, but first, I wanted to get a photo of it. I'll bring it back to class next week, along with a copy of The Age that I found next to it.

Thursday
       I was still wearing the Omega Seamaster;


Today
       I just read that Joan Rivers died. Geez, the funny ones are being taken away from us at an alarming rate. Say what you will about her, but I thought she was a very funny lady. Sure, she could be supremely bitchy, and yes, she overdid the face-lifts, but man, she could be funny.  
She was a guest on The Graham Norton Show in 2009 and Dominic West was there as well. He recounted a comment that Rivers had made after the release of his film 300 a couple of years earlier;

"300 is how gay this movie is out of ten."

The sun's out and I'm about to varnish a small table that will sit on the front porch. Still wearing the Omega;


One day, I'm going to try the lemon-juice-and-distilled-water method for cleaning the spots on the dial. It's a fifty-fifty kind of deal. Might work wonders. Might make a mess of it. One way to find out.
Anyway, much to be done. And I know someone who's got no desire whatsoever to help me out;


And, to end this post a little like I started it;


Thanks for reading!
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Bond Fan Fiction No. 7

September 7, 2014, 9:12 pm
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Aww, Hell! Here I was trying to create a new label just for fan fictions and I wound up updating this one from 2012 instead. There are still many things about Blogger that I haven't gotten the hang of, folks.
Please disregard this post. You may have already read it.
                                                                                                            -teeritz




 Picture courtesy of M4tt


Thanks for reading!
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Fri 12/9/14 - Fewer Typewriters, Lousy Drivers, 50 Years of "Goldfinger"& This Week's Wristwatches.

September 11, 2014, 5:14 pm
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And here I am, messing with the zoom on my camera while taking a picture. Eerie, isn't it?


One more with the SM9


Here are the cards the kids made up;




And here's how it happened;

The Dummy, as I call him, began pulling out onto the road to do a right-hand turn into the opposite lane. The car to my left was turning into the driveway, thus blocking The Dummy's view of the road, and my car.

Both The Dummy's car and the one on my left were those Soccer Mom people movers that their owners don't actually know how to drive. Cannot stand those things. Very often, their drivers have no spatial awareness of how much space they take up on the road. And don't even get me started on how some folks attempt to park these things!

Luckily, The Dummy hit his brakes, but I was still headed for his bonnet (hood) as I hit my brakes. Realising (pretty damn quickly, let me tell you) that I wasn't going to stop in time, I gave the wheel a light wrenching to the right...into the oncoming traffic lane, thinking to myself; "Car's not insured, man, car's not insured!"
I ended up stopping right in front of The Dummy's car, feeling extremely glad that the road was dry and that I'd gotten new tyres late last year. I turned my head 90 degrees to the left and spent a few seconds swearing at him loudly while he raised his hands from the wheel in a 'My bad' gesture. Thankfully, the traffic in the oncoming lane was some distance away from me and I had time to pop the stick into first and get back into my original lane.
Later that morning, I was headed to my class and, as I was stopped at a red light. Looking in my rear-view, I saw a truck heading for my car. Fast. Driver hit his brakes at the last minute and I watched his rig list slightly to one side as smoke came from his tyres before he stopped. 
Man, the traffic's getting crazy in this town. And it wasn't even midday.

At my class, the lecturer handed out Assignment Number 6. I'm gonna be busy for the next month or two. This may be my last weekly watch post for a while unless I scale them back a little and keep them simple. Otherwise, I have about five other posts in various draft stages that I could put up. 
Wait and see, I suppose.

Today
       Not much to report, really. It's early Friday morning and my wife and I are both home today, awaiting the arrival of a carpet guy. Just another stage toward getting this house looking a little more schmick.
And, this month also marks fifty years since the release of Goldfinger back in 1964. And so, I thought I'd wear something that I haven't worn in quite some time. The Omega Seamaster Professional. This watch has absolutely nothing to do with  Goldfinger, but what the hell. Like I say, I haven't worn this watch in a long while.
It was first released in 1993 and I bought my one in November 1999 and, while its design has dated a little, it's become a classic watch in Omega's history. In this particular iteration (model number 2531.80.00), it remained in production until around 2006 when we saw Daniel Craig sporting the new, upgraded version (model number 2208.80.00), with the Co-Axial escapement added to the movement, in his first Bond film, Casino Royale.
It's still in current production, with newer upgrades, but I personally think that the original design of my model is a better looking watch. Anyway, that's what I have clamped to my wrist right now;


That Aston Martin DB5 is gonna look sweet on the bookshelves, nestled among the Bond paperbacks.
One day.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

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Sat 20/9/14 - Visit To The National Gallery, Harrelson & McConaughey Were Robbed(!), Another Lettera 32 & This Week's Wristwatches.

September 19, 2014, 6:41 pm
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I think this'll be a short one, gang. 

Monday
             Not much to report. Planned my day. It was lack-lustre. Had my 1969 Omega Seamaster on.


Switched over to the Omega Speedmaster when I tackled a tonne of ironing.


My wife brought home a roll of plastic book covering. The kind used to cover the dust jackets on hardcovers. I decided I could use the practice.


Wednesday
                 Headed out to the National Gallery of Victoria to do preliminary research for an assignment to do with how institutions house, display and protect their collections. Didn't take my camera. Looks like I'll have to go back. I took quite a few notes, but I think I'll have to see some other exhibits, since I spent all of my time viewing the 17th & 18th Century European Collection. I'll get some pictures next time. I wore my Omega Planet Ocean. I was meeting my brother later on and he expressed an interest in this watch, so I thought he could try it on to see what he thinks of it.


Thursday
               Started watching HBO's outstanding True Detective miniseries, starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey as two Southern detectives investigating a gruesome murder in Louisiana in 1995. 
The story begins in the present day, where former detectives Martin Hart (Harrelson) and Rust Cohle (McConaughey) are being interviewed separately over Cohle's presence at crime scenes which bear a strong resemblance to the ones that they both investigated back in the '90s. The authorities are curious as to what Cohle, who quit the force shortly after the investigation wrapped up in '95, is up to and they think that his former partner may have an idea. These interview scenes are interspersed with flashbacks to the 1995 investigation.
Written and produced by Nic Pizzolatto, this is a dense and multi-layered story which takes many well-known elements of a police procedural and turns them upside-down. For starters, this ain't no Lethal Weapon/ Bad Boys buddy-cop movie. Harrelson's character, Marty Hart, thinks that McConaughey's Cohle is a pain in the ass. Cohle is nicknamed "The Taxman" in the department for his habit of carrying a large A4-sized binder where he writes down copious notes and drawings at the scene of the crime. He talks in a particularly existential manner which, as you can imagine, wears down the patience of his good ol' boy partner, Hart, who calls a spade a spade. 
Director Cary Joji Fukunaga elicits outstanding performances from his cast. There is not one ounce of bad or cliched acting to be found in this show.
It is amazing to watch Harrelson and McConaughey in this. One could be forgiven for thinking that Harrelson is merely a competent actor when one thinks of his debut in TV's Cheers back in the early 1980s and his subsequent roles in comedies in recent years, usually in supporting roles. However, he got rave reviews for his role in The Messenger in 2009, as an army captain tasked with delivering the news to families of soldiers killed in action in the Middle East, and that role was perhaps what helped him land the role of Martin Hart.
Matthew McConaughey, fresh from his Oscar win this year for The Dallas Buyer's Club, is another actor who has been mistakenly labelled a lightweight in the past. He spent the first decade of this century making films such as Fool's Gold, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past and  Failure To Launch, but thankfully, he did a film called Mud a couple of years ago and garnered good reviews for his work.
In True Detective, he turns in a wonderful and complex performance of a man often misunderstood, a man with his own demons and a fondness for Jamieson's Irish Whisky and Lone Star beer. And Camel cigarettes. My God, how much he smokes in this show! I hope they were herbal.
 It's no coincidence that McConaughey's character is named Rust. He is both persistent in his quest and corrosive in his relationships.
These two leads are electric. Both actors give their characters multiple layers and various levels of frustration, self-justification, righteousness, selfishness and determination.
Although, I have to say that the entire cast is flawless. Michelle Monaghan plays Hart's wife and she doesn't put a foot wrong. Another great performance.
True Detective scored 12 Emmy nominations earlier this year, but the statuettes were all pretty much scooped up by the final season of Breaking Bad.
How in hell Harrelson and McConaughey didn't win, I will never understand. HBO restored my faith in television a long time ago and this show, particularly the performances of the two leads, helped make True Detective the best drama I have seen in a very long time, in either a cinema or my lounge room.

Friday
          My wife bought me a Holy Bible from an Op Shop. I ain't overly religious, but she thought I'd like this copy because of how old it is and the inscription inside it;

Ahh, such flourish. Meanwhile, I picked up a Lettera 32 earlier that day. The paperwork that came with it was pretty cool.

Sadly, this machine, while in very good working condition, has an issue with the ribbon reverser, which doesn't appear to switch over to the other side when you get to the end of  the ribbon. I've given the mechanism a dab of sewing machine oil, but this doesn't seem to have made much difference. It may require a trip to Tom for some light repair. The descender on the lower-case letter 'q' doesn't print fully on the page, either, but I'm not game enough to start messing with that. Tom has a tool that should sort it out easily.
Aside from that, it works very well. The plate on the back says 'Made by Olivetti', but doesn't mention a country. I'm guessing this machine dates back to the late Sixties/early Seventies, based on the paperwork above, but I haven't looked up its serial number yet.

Today
          The kids finished up school yesterday for this semester and they have a couple of weeks off, as do I from my own studies. I got a bucket-load of assignments to get done and I have to go see a couple of people this week about some part-time work later in the year. Things are getting busy.
I also plan to keep the kids busy over the next couple of weeks. It's not gonna be all Playstations and internet make-up tutorials, let me tell you.
Tomorrow is my Dad's birthday. He would have been 88. I'll light a candle for him. 

Thanks for reading and have a good rest of the weekend, all.
And here I was, thinking this would be a short post!



Special thanks to IMDB for the movie info. While I can usually remember film titles and years of production, sometimes I need a little help.
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Adventures In Eyewear : Part One- "Nice Glasses, Four Eyes!"

September 24, 2014, 12:55 am
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 Screen-cap taken from Bringing Up Baby
(Dir: Howard Hawks, 1938)

I first noticed it during a Maths class in 1982. Mr. Lindsay wrote some algebraic formula or other on the blackboard (yeah, with chalk) and it looked a little blurry to me. I tried squinting. It sharpened up a little, but I couldn't go through my school life squinting at everything I saw.
Never got the hang of algebra, either, for that matter.
A few days later, my Dad booked me an appointment with his optometrist. I went through all of the "Alright, now read the letters on the third line from the top, please" and "Right, now which circle looks sharper? This one? Or this one? This one...or this one?"
The verdict? I would need glasses. Great. Just great. Skinny build. Asthmatic. Now we could add short-sightedness into the mix. I would never be cast as Bond now.

"Now, what kind of frames are you thinking of?", the optometrist asked me in a slightly clipped tone. I actually hadn't really thought that far ahead. I was still coming to grips with having to wear glasses.
"Most young people tend to go for the swept-up look of something like these", he went on, as he reached for a glossy gunmetal set of frames on a display rack near his chair.
They looked a lot like these;












    

 Picture courtesy of almondtreevintage on Etsy

As you can see, they were very representative of the era. Very 'suburban-bank-branch-manager, circa 1980'.
And I wore them without any issues for the next two or three years before deciding to get on the big plastic frames bandwagon. It was the '80s and everything was big. Big shoulder pads in men's and women's tailoring (remember "Dynasty"?), big hair (remember "Dynasty"?), and big spectacle frames. 
Like Judith Light in "Who's The Boss?";

                                                    picture courtesy of http://www.fanpix.net, posted by Samual, 
                                                    screencap from "Who's The Boss?" (Created by Martin Cohan 
                                                    and Blake Hunter, ABC Studios, 1984-1992)

 This style of frames was everywhere. I ended up getting specs very similar to these;

picture courtesy of www.eyeglasseswarehouse.com


However, I had one major change made to the lenses and opted for those new-fangled photochromatic ones that darkened when exposed to UV light. This would instantly turn my specs into prescription sunglasses on sunny days. There was just one big problem with these types of lenses - they tended to darken even on overcast days. So, after wearing them for about a year, I found that I would squint on cloudy days in winter if I didn't have them on. And I looked like I was wearing sunglasses in winter, too. Wanker!
Big mistake getting these lenses. Aside from the reason above, the frames were also too damn big for the shape of my face. My mug is quite thin and these specs occupied almost one third of my face. I didn't notice it so much when my hair was long, but with a shorter hairstyle, these frames looked a little too dominant. But like I said, it was the '80s.
It was time to go for something else that would be better suited to my face shape. It was now around 1986 and I was at the height of my fascination for Old Hollywood movies, classic American noir crime fiction, and Art Deco design. So I found myself particularly drawn to the Beaufort-style spectacle frames. 
These frames positively screamed "1920s book-keeper"...


...or Dr. Jones, circa 1945;



These were an English-made brand called Algha. They had 12k gold-plated temples (arms) and hinges. They were a nice frame. Only problem was the temples ended in those curved coils which curled behind the ears. After prolonged wear, the backs of my ears would ache.
Still, they were a nice frame. I have a sneaking suspicion that I still have them packed away someplace, but there's no way I'm gonna try looking for them now.
EDIT: 24/8- Found 'em!  Which meant that I could take the photo above, rather than search the web.





picture courtesy of http://www.sunglassesid.com , taken from
"Indiana Jones & The
Last Crusade"  (Dir: Steven Spielberg,
Paramount Pictures, 1988)

This style of frame is not currently in vogue, but fashion is cyclical. They'll be popular again one day.


By the late 1980s, it was time to go for something different. I had already purchased a pair of RayBan Wayfarer sunglasses in tortoise-shell and thought of getting another pair and having prescription lenses fitted. So I went to see my optometrist and put a deposit down on a pair of Wayfarers with my script added.
I must admit that I was pretty slack when it came to making regular payments on these glasses. I think the total cost was around $130.oo, but I took a lazy 12 months to pay for them. When I finally went to make the last payment and pick them up, I said to the receptionist; "So, do I get some kind of plaque to commemorate the occasion?"
She didn't laugh.
I happily wore these frames in rotation with the Beauforts for the next few years. Here they are, brought out of retirement for this blog post;


Beautiful shape, classic styling that had remained relatively unchanged since their introduction in the 1950s. Thanks to "The Blues Brothers"(Dir: John Landis, 1980) and "Risky Business"(Dir: Paul Brickman, 1983), the RayBan Wayfarer was enjoying incredibly robust sales during the first half of the Eighties. Everybody was buying these frames. Once again, I opted for tortoise-shell instead of black. Every man and his dog was buying the black.


However, one day, I just stopped wearing them.
The reason was simple, actually. I put them on one morning and, as I headed out of the bedroom, I caught my reflection in the mirror...and realised that these frames, on my face, made me look a little like this guy;


picture courtesy of http://www.thevervoid.com, screencap taken from "The Thunderbirds", (Created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, AP Films, 1964-1966)

Yep, I looked like Brains from The Thunderbirds, the classic Gerry Anderson '60s TV series, that used to screen at 6.00am on Saturday mornings when I was a kid.
All of a sudden, these RayBans-as-spectacles looked large on me. I looked like Buddy Holly, which is fine, but not exactly the look I was going for. These frames dominated my face. And that was it. I switched to wearing the Beauforts all the time. Strangely, the RayBan Wayfarer sunnies look fine, but as soon as you pop the dark lenses out, that changes things. To me, anyway. I'll write more about the sunglasses in another post.
By now, it was the early 1990s and my fascination for all things 1930s and '40s was in full swing. I was watching a lot of films from the era, I was reading up on Art Deco design and architecture (the Art Deco period was brief, running from about 1925 to approximately 1940) and my appreciation of clean, sparse design principles led me to a purer type of spectacle frame;


These frames are by Silhouette. I was aiming for this kind of look;

This is the famed Swiss architect, designer, urban planner and true visionary, Le Corbusier (real name Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris), who has often been called the father of modern architecture.
Of course, I wasn't building cities or designing super-cool armchairs. I was waiting tables.
My best friend looked at me when I first got these frames and remarked; "You know, they make you look like Emperor Hirohito."
Yeah, thanks, John.

They were great frames. Very comfortable.

Simple in design, these frames were perfect circles and I wore them for years. One day in 1996, while I was making coffees at a cafe in the city, I decided to give them a quick clean under the steam arm of the coffee machine. Bad move. 
I held the frames a little too close to the nozzle and ended up scorching them to the point where they had discoloured. I think I may have cooked them slightly. You may just be able to make out the slight haziness (in this blurry photo) on the upper edge of the frames and along the bridge. Damn fool thing to do.


It was a helluva lot more noticeable in real life and I soon grabbed a Texta (Magic Marker, black of course) and coloured-in the blemishes. Needless to say, this didn't work well in the long run when I would sweat, simultaneously removing the repaint and winding up with black marks on my eyebrows and nose.
I couldn't wear them like this. It was time to 'retire' them back to their case and switch back to the Beaufort frames for a while. 
A few months passed before I decided to switch back to metal frames. I opted for these thin ones from ProDesign of Denmark;



Spider-thin and almost perfectly round, these were an unobtrusive frame and I wore them for quite a while. However, I found myself tightening the screws on the arms pretty frequently, which got annoying. Still, they served me well. 


But...they got a little bland after a while. Time for something new. It was now around 2003 and I decided to go back to acetate frames. I opted for a relatively inexpensive pair of black Mossimo frames. Sorry, I got no photos of these frames. I wore them to work one day and they just disappeared. I have a theory that they may have slipped out of my shirt pocket and into the rubbish bin when I leaned over one day to reach for something. My manager really couldn't care less as I headed out to the dumpster in a semi-desperate search for them. I think I even saw him smirk when I got back to the store.
Another reason why I quit that job.

I had a routine vision test sometime in 2009. The optometrist gave me some great news. I would need reading glasses. By the way, that was sarcasm.
"Can I get bi-focals", I asked, not that I was looking forward to wearing them.
"No, because they eyes have a tendency to get lazy when wearing bi-focals. It's better if you opt for straight-forward reading glasses", she replied. So, I went for this metal set of frames by a brand called Austin Reed. They were nifty because they had a separate frame that held the lens;


Made me look like an architect named Sven or Lars or a European car designer named Hans or Gustav. Which was fine by me.


I was, however, a little ticked off at the thought of having to carry two pairs of glasses. Three pairs, actually, if you take into account sunglasses for the summer days.

And so, I soon found myself carrying the steel ProDesign frames with the flimsy screws, and this new set of reading glasses. And then one day, as I was throwing away some old magazines, I came across an issue of GQ magazine that I bought back in 1986. Staring back at me from the front cover was Mr. Cary Grant;

And it was then that I knew I needed some bold dark frames like Mr. Grant's.
This was perhaps the last major interview that Grant did. He was 82 years old, but looked fifteen years younger. 
Diane K. Shah did a great job with the interview and Grant called her up a few days later to say that, since the article was for a fashion magazine, would she like to meet with him again to discuss clothing? This extended interview formed the closing section of the article.
Cary Grant died of a massive stroke in November that year. I was driving my mother's Datsun 200B when I heard the news on the radio. I nearly hit a tree.
I still have this issue of GQ packed away someplace. No way I'm getting rid of it.
By this stage, my optometrist had closed down, so it was time to find a new one. By chance, I was walking through town when a display in an optometrist's shop window caught my eye. I stepped in to take a closer look. This store had quite a few frames to choose from and there was one brand that caught my eye.

Not the typical kind of imagery that one would associate with spectacle frames. Okay, I had the same hairline as the guy in this photo. And that's where the similarities ended. Sure, I could grow a 'stache and goatee like this dude. And maybe, if I hit the gym (and a lot of protein powder) for a couple of years, I could get the same body. However, maybe I should just start by getting similar glasses. Booth & Bruce make beautiful frames, but they were pricier than I was hoping.
I looked at other brands in the store. I knew what I was after. I wanted a dark tortoise-shell, rectangular frame. I landed on a nice set of frames by Hackett Bespoke. Hackett is a men's clothing manufacturer from England. Generally, I tend to steer clear of brands that are known for one type of product who then launch themselves into manufacturing an entirely different product. Mont Blanc, for example, has long been known as a highly respected manufacturer of writing instruments. Around the early to mid 1990s, it branched out into making wristwatches and is now well known for making some complicated timepieces. But I'll never buy one. For me, the brand is so strongly associated with pens that I can't accept it as a watchmaker. Even though it makes some nice wristwatches. 
Anyway, back to my glasses. I bought the Hackett frames.


These frames were perhaps the most expensive ones I've ever purchased. From memory, I think they cost me about $280 before the extra $150 required for prescription lenses. However, these frames still look and feel brand new. The hinges and temples (arms) are sterling silver, encased in tortoise-shell resin or acetate. Perhaps that is what made them so pricey;


However, I look after my stuff, so I don't mind spending every now and then. These things will last me decades, if my other specs are anything to go by. I've had them for about seven years now.
When I bought them, I had to have an eye examination. The new optometrist determined that I didn't actually need reading glasses.
"So how come the last eye test I had showed that I did need them?", I asked.
"You may have been tired when you had that test done. This can sometimes give a different reading", he replied.
I soon had the reading glasses converted to long-distance lenses. These frames are in the glovebox of my car as a set of spares for those rare occasions when I leave the house without my specs. 

About a year ago, I was surfing through eBay and saw a set of frames that looked interesting. They were made by Oliver Peoples, a frame-maker that was very big back in the late 1980s/early 1990s. I used to see them advertise in a variety of magazines. Here's a pic of a younger Mr. Robert Downey jr wearing a pair of OP-505s;

                                                                 picture courtesy of extinct eyewear.tumblr

The Oliver Peoples frames that caught my eye were these ones;


A nice round, tortoise-shell frame. But, if you look a little closer at one of the temples...


...yessir, these frames are called 'Gregory Peck' and are modelled on the frames that he wore in his favourite (his own opinion) and perhaps most famous role as Depression-era Southern lawyer Atticus Finch in "To Kill A Mockingbird" (Dir: Robert Mullligan, 1962). And his name is printed in a worn typewriter font as well.
I had to have them. Also, they were a totally different look to the Hackett frames as well. I will admit that I haven't worn them often. I'm trying to find a more streamlined case for them, since the case that they came with...


...is a little unwieldy and takes up more room in a bag.

While in Thailand a couple of months ago, we walked past a store in Bangkok called V Eyewear that sold spectacle frames. I forget the prices in Thai Baht, but they roughly converted to approximately $95.oo AUD. I took a look at what they had and was sorely tempted. A spare pair of specs will always come in handy. My wife said I may as well, since the price was low enough. So, I chose a frame in a style called 'Passaic'. I went for the black version, just as a contrast to all the tortoise-shell frames that I have. These black frames were called 'Night Out'.


As for the lenses, they were an extra forty-two bucks because I chose glare-proof ones. Fine by me. At a total price of about $137.50AUD, it still worked out considerably cheaper than prices back home.

The spectacles industry has undergone a change in recent years. I first read about Warby Parker in a GQ magazine a few years ago. One of the founders (can't recall his name) lost a pair of expensive spectacles while travelling. He decided then and there that he would never shell out big bucks for glasses again and he soon set up his website with a view to selling well-made, nicely-designed specs at affordable prices.
It wasn't long before somebody in Australia decided on a similar set-up and www.oscarwylee.com.au popped up on the web. And Scott K told me about Bailey Nelson, who offer a range of specs at competitive prices. I don't know if I'd wanna buy specs off the web. I prefer to step into a store and try a few frames on. I may have to pop into Bailey Nelson and check them out. Although, to be honest, I think I'm pretty set for spectacle frames at the moment.

But back to these black frames that I got in Thailand. I almost wasn't going to buy them because I didn't think they'd be made up in time. We were in Bangkok for only five days. A pair of specs and lenses usually takes about seven to ten days here in Melbourne. The young man in the store told me my glasses could be ready by 5:00pm THE NEXT DAY.
How could I say 'no' to that? I left him with my own pair of glasses so that they could match the prescription lenses for this new pair, and arranged to come back the following day.
Sure enough, about thirty hours later, I went back to the store and my new frames were ready and waiting.


I would imagine that the reason they are so cheap would have something to do with the materials used. I'd be fairly certain that there are a range of different plastics and acetates that are used in the manufacture of spectacle frames and some would be more expensive than others. These frames are quite sturdy, but I would say that they may warp or bend over time. However, this is nothing that my optometrist  back home wouldn't be able to reshape if required. To play it safe, I perhaps wouldn't leave them in my car on a hot day. Aside from that, I have no issue with them.


And that's my spectacle odyssey. Thirty-plus years of wearing glasses. It took me a long time to find frames that suited my face shape, and that won't date. I think I've gone for clean and classic designs and I see no point in continuing to search for anything else. It might be an idea to snag one or two similar frames to put away for if/when these current ones get lost (hopefully, that's doubtful) or damaged beyond repair (hopefully, that's doubtful too), but aside from that, I think I've got my eyewear covered.

Thanks for reading!


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Fri 26/9/2014 - Overdressed for Lawn-Mowing, Knocking Off Assignments, & This Week's Wristwatches.

September 26, 2014, 5:14 am
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 - Friday 10:14pm  AEST -


Sunday
             It was a sunny day. I was wearing jeans and a white Henley t-shirt. I was going to mow the lawns. But first, I added a bandana into the ensemble;

 
"Hmm, you look a little too continental for mowing the lawns in the suburbs, T", was my wife's first response. That's a shame. I was actually aiming for a look similar to this --->;

This is French actor Yves Montand in a still from the absolute classic, The Wages of Fear ( Original French Title "Le salairede la peur", Dir: Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1953).
If you've never seen this film, then I envy you. The story starts off fairly slowly and it concerns a group of layabouts who are offered the job of driving trucks carrying nitro-glycerine over some very treacherous terrain in South America. There is an oil field on fire a few hundred miles away and the nitro is needed to put out the flames.
The first hour moves quite slowly as we learn who these men are and what their reasons are (besides money) for taking on this dangerous gig. Once they board the trucks, however, the viewer is in for some nail-biting scenes as the men attempt to manoeuvre these old and decrepit trucks across bumpy roads and rickety bridges. It is a classic lesson in suspense in film. I had it on VHS and have yet to replace it on DVD, but it's available as a Criterion Collection version, so I'll get around to it one day. 
Anyway, needless to say, I didn't quite look the same as Yves Montand as I mowed the front lawn. But I was wearing a proper watch for the job. The Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean.

I'm about 60 pages into The Thirty-Nine Steps and I'm liking it so far. The hero of the story, Richard Hannay, has a great voice, as he's on the run through the Scottish countryside after being framed for a murder back in London. 
Wednesday
                  Finished Assignment 2 yesterday. It was only a response to a list of questions, but it required some hunting around for the answers. Then got started on Assignment 5, which is where I had to write about any collections that I have and the ways that I store and look after them. 
Hell, where do I start?, I thought to myself. 
First thing I did was grab the 1945 Smith-Corona Sterling. I have six assignments to do for this particular subject and at least two others for my other subject. That's going to mean a lot of time spent staring at computer screens. So, to minimise the chances of me going screwy, I thought I would use a typewriter for  this one. However, I made a few too many typos, so I figured I'd start again and concentrate a little more. I also decided to switch over to the 1966 Olympia SM9, since it's a smoother typewriter to work with. And, to get into a more business-like mood, I switched over to the Longines Expeditions Polaires;

I had some 35mm photos developed on Monday and they offered me the option of having them burned to CD for an extra two bucks. This seemed like a good idea for archival purposes. Even though I bought one of those Wolverine film-to-digital scanners off eBay a few months ago. I'll use that someday to transfer the photos that were taken with film up to 2005 when we got a decent (enough) digital camera. 
But back to the assignment. I sat down and started writing. Ninety minutes later, I had a headache and three pages done. Good enough. Perhaps more than what my lecturer had asked for, since she stated that it could be done in point-form. But if I was going to this much trouble, then it was going to be more than just point-form.





         
Thursday
               My son showed me a comic that he bought yesterday. It had a very cool 3D cover art. looking at it front-on, there's Batman standing there, black cape flowing;




















Angle slightly and the cape seems to disappear and a bunch of Batmans (or is it Batmen?) appear in the background;




















Anyway, I thought I'd take a break from study today. One of my other assignments will be a report on silverfish. Man, the research is gonna be riveting for that one. Either way, I'll spend part of the weekend looking up info online and taking notes. When I hand this one in, I'll then have to deliver a ten-minute talk to the rest of the class. Could have been worse, I suppose. It could have been mould.

Today
           Busy.

 

The finished product.


With the book safely tucked inside. I'll hand this in when I go back to class in two weeks. My lecturer had better not lose this book. I haven't read it yet.


And this book arrived in the mail. Can't wait to start it. Charles Cumming has been very well regarded in a very short time. Some folks are saying he should write the next Bond continuation novel.


I'll have to finish The Thirty-Nine Steps and then I'll get started on this one.

Headed into the city with my daughter to the National Gallery of Victoria. I still had a few notes that I wanted to take and I wanted to get some better photos than the ones I took with my phone a couple of weeks ago.
This particular painting had an effect on me. I think I had my very first 'art moment'




I don't know whether it was the story behind the painting, whether the futility of Sophonisba's predicament was particularly tragic, the expressions on the faces of those in the painting, or something else, but I was moved by this painting.











Here's a close-up. I'm always amazed at the detail and the lighting in oil paintings.


I took a heap more photos, but I think it needs its own post.
My wife and son met up with us a couple of hours later and we went off for an early dinner at a bistro that I worked at 20 years ago. Where my wife and I first met. I was still wearing the Omega Planet Ocean. Here's a shot that I tweaked with the iPhoto app.
Man, you can waste a lot of time with these apps.


Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!
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Friday 3/10/14 - Dodgy Cameras, Impossible-To-Find Wristwatch Blogs, New Film Manufacturer on Kickstarter & This Week's Wristwatches

October 2, 2014, 11:43 pm
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Last weekend
                       Half-way through the kid's school holidays. General tidying up around the house and a spot of painting while the sun was out. I was still wearing the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean. Here's an old pic from my archives;


And here are a couple of snaps from my visit to the National Gallery of Victoria last Friday. 'Cos, if I told you what I saw, you wouldn't believe me. 



Monday
             Began writing up Assignment No. 4. I thought I'd write a draft using a typewriter, but then write the final draft on my laptop. I've already written two other assignments on my typewriters and I don't want to give my lecturer the impression that I'm the Unabomber. This assignment is a report on how this gallery houses and displays its art collection. I decided to concentrate on just one part of its collection, the European artworks dating back to the 17th and 18th centuries. I wore my Omega Seamaster AquaTerra. Because I meant business;


I had two pages hammered out on the Royal Quiet De Luxe in about two hours. I think four typed pages should equate to about three pages on the PC, give or take.


While I had the Quiet De Luxe out, I figured I'd tackle another faded keytop. I tried using an eraser on it first, but this had no effect;


So, it was time for numerous screwdrivers and pliers, a safety pin, a Texta and a glue stick. About 30-45 minutes later, a newer looking colon/semi-colon keytop was in place. Another one down, about thirty-nine more to go;


Later that day, a package arrived for me. I was the only bidder on an Olympus OM2n 35mm SLR and when I opened it and inspected the camera, I was greatly disappointed to find that it had a few problems with it that were not mentioned in the very brief listing which described it as being in 'excellent used condition'.


For starters, the old batteries were left inside and had just started corroding. The 35-70mm Auto Zoom lens housing had a section chipped from the edge. No major disasters, but these two things would require some thinking on my part and a little more cash outlay.
Firstly, the OM2 uses two silver oxide 1.55v batteries. I did some searching on the web and found that you can also use 1.5v alkaline cells, but these will give you a slightly different reading through the camera's light meter. Luckily, I decided to chance a quick trip to my local hardware store and found them selling Energizer silver oxides. Cool, one problem solved.
The chip on the lens housing was another matter, although its main issue is that dust will get in and onto the outer lens through a gap between the housing and the HOYA UV filter that's screwed onto the lens. Again, no major disaster, since I think a small strip of plastic, like a cut down piece of a collar stay (as used on business shirts) and some electrical tape should make it dust proof.


I unscrewed the hot-shoe for the flash and it came away in two pieces. This didn't bug me, since I have no plans to use a flash with the camera. Still a little irksome, though. However, I must say that every hot-shoe that I have seen on eBay has had some crack in it or other. Could be a design flaw. Then again, these things ARE over twenty years old, made of plastic, and designed to hold a top-heavy flash unit.
I already have an Olympus Om2n and, whilst I'm no expert, I do think it's one of the finest SLRs ever made. My plan was to get a second one and then sell both in order to get an all-black model in as good a condition as I could find. However, the more I thought about it, the happier I was with my original OM2n that I bought a couple of years ago. That one is in very clean condition and, although it's the two-tone, black and silver model, I thought it better not to try and go back to an all-black model like the one I bought in 1982 and stupidly sold twelve years later. There's a certain nostalgia factor in wanting to have a black one, but I think it's perhaps better not to try and go back to what I had. It just won't feel the same.
I like the lens that this new one came with.


With a range of 35mm to 70mm, I think it'll be a decent lens to have for my amateur photography purposes. I have a 135mm lens that I will attach to this new camera body and maybe put that up for sale. I've run some film through this camera and it all works as it should. However, in an effort to de-clutter and get rid of stuff that I don't use, I've been going through my cameras and I think I'll sell my Voigtlander Vitomatic II rangefinder and Nikon EM, as well as this OM2n.
That will leave my collection down to one OM2n, a late '60s Nikon F Photomic, and two Olympus Trip 35 rangefinders. More than enough 35mm film cameras. Finding correct batteries for the Nikon F could be problematic in future, but it's such a bullet-proof camera that I'd hate to get rid of it.

Tuesday
             My wife and son decided to do the Thousand Steps. Located in a national park about 45 minutes away from our house, it features a pathway which leads up along the mountain ranges in Dandenong. My daughter and I passed on it and headed to the nearby cafe instead. The cafe closed early that day, so we finished our coffee and iced tea while the staff put away tables and chairs and then we headed back to the car to wait for my Bond Girl and our son. It soon began raining;


Oh, and another thing about 35mm film...

Wednesday
                  ...there are two men in Italy who have launched a Kickstarter campaign to purchase some old manufacturing equipment from a disused analog film factory. The factory was once owned by Ferrania, a film manufacturing company which made 135 and 120 film, as well as 35mm motion picture film. Naturally, the advent of digital photography saw the demise of the use of film, but these two guys have decided to resurrect Ferrania for the 21st Century. They need $250,000 in order to buy the equipment and begin manufacture. Their campaign ends on October 30th and they have already raised $160,000. I think they make it, with a considerable amount on top, which is good news for anybody who still likes using film. I've made my pledge, and I can't wait to see their products hit the street sometime next year.
For more info, check out this link to their Kickstarter page;

Kickstarter- Projects- Ferrania ; 100 More Years Of Film 

I spent an hour or two looking for other blogs that deal with affordable vintage wristwatches and I was surprised to find that there aren't many of them around. Or more likely, I couldn't find them. I did find a few, but they just lacked a certain something. The search goes on.

Thursday
               I wrote more of the draft of Assignment No. 4. I really like how the Olympia SM9 types, I have to say. I was wearing the Omega Seamaster 300 WatchCo rebuild;


I was watching a packet of Tipp-Ex Typewriter Correction Papers on eBay. Seller had a starting bid of $9.00 on it. I almost bid on them before realising that I could maybe get away with just using one of those modern correction tape dispensers that you can buy from just about anywhere. Subconsciously, I think I got the idea from reading Joe Van Cleave's blog posts. Whenever he makes a rare typo, there's a neat square on the offending error with the proper letter typed over it. And so, a quick trip to the dreaded Officeworks store nearby and about $3.50 later, ta-dah!
Might go buy another three or four of them, just in case they stop making them. Well, you never know.
My wife brought home a copy of the recent version of "The Thirty-Nine Steps" on DVD, starring Rupert Penry-Jones as Richard Hannay;


I don't like this shameless attempt at replicating the classic cropduster scene from Hitchcock's North By Northwest, but I'm hoping that this new version is a faithful adaption of the book. My wife keeps asking me ;"Have you finished reading it, so that we can watch the movie? I'll have to return it soon."
I have nineteen pages left, and I think our hero, Hannay, will find himself in some trouble before the final paragraph. I have seen the 1935 Hitchcock version, starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll, but that would have been sometime in the mid-Eighties, so I daresay I'm due for a re-viewing. I have a sneaking suspicion that the ending of both the book and this new version will be different.

Today
          I had a million things to do yesterday and I got 900,000 of them done. Now, I'll sign off so that I can go do the remaining 100,000. I have switched to the circa 1962 Omega Seamaster Automatic (Calibre 562) in an effort to go a little more understated today.


Anyway, thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!

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Fri 10/10/14 - So Many Assignments!, RIP To Another Bond Villain, Back To The Vet & This Week's Wristwatches.

October 10, 2014, 1:44 am
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Last Weekend
                       We watched the remake of The 39 Steps, starring Rupert Penry-Jones as Richard Hannay. Produced in 2008, this was a scant 86 minutes long. Alarm bells went off in my head when I saw the running time on the back of the DVD case. Having just finished John Buchan's book, I felt that you'd need more than 86 minutes to tell the story. Sure enough, this version was considerably different to both the book and the 1935 Alfred Hitchcock version, which was different to the book as well.
So, was it any good? Ahhh, well, it was a great looking film, but then the English do these period dramas to perfection.  The Art Direction, costumes, locations and props are always perfect. As was the casting and the actor's performances. But the story just felt flat and predictable to me.
The introduction of a female character who is a suffragette AND an agent for British Intelligence turned this into a fairly routine affair, in my view.
I was wearing the 1962 Omega Seamaster from last week before switching over to the Seamaster 300;


Monday
             Worked on another assignment. Number 3, I think. They are all beginning to blur. Six pages long. Probably twice as much as was necessary. Oh well.
Then, as a break from study, I thought I'd cover the dust jacket of the book that I'm reading.
I have a roll of this covering that is made up of soft plastic attached to brown paper on two sides. The dust jacket is meant to get slotted in and then cut to size.

This...
 ...gets fed into this...

...and is then trimmed to size, with about ten centimetres of overhang, which is then folded in. You then carefully slide the hardcover of the book between the back of the dust jacket and the brown paper.


This can be a little painstaking and, in this instance, the result was not entirely perfect since there's a little too much plastic protruding beyond the dust jacket, but that's okay. Good enough for me. And better than some books I've seen in libraries.


Once I was done, I thought I'd make a coffee and sit out on the front porch to read a chapter or two.


Later in the day, I received a lens case in the mail. Hopefully, it'll hold two Olympus lenses. The seller used some vintage stamps from the early '80s. At first, I thought they were commemorative. And then I saw the price on them. This seller's (bless him) been holding on to these stamps for over thirty years! Ain't life a wonderful thing? Australian postage stamps are currently 70 cents each. I think I'll keep this section of the envelope as a bookmark.

 

Wednesday
                  What a drag. First, I read of the death of Geoffrey Holder, who played Baron Samedi in the Bond film Live And Let Die in 1973. Along with Gottfried John (General Ourumov in Goldeneye-1995) and Richard Kiel (Jaws in The Spy Who Loved Me-1977 and Moonraker-1979) who both died last month, Holder was a memorable Bond villain. I understand that I'm now at an age where life begins to take things away (as was stated by a character in the last Indiana Jones film a few years ago), but it still sucks. Live And Let Die has a particular resonance for me because it was the first Bond movie I saw when I was but a wee laddybuck in the Seventies.

I had a class later in the day and handed in four assignments. Good to get those off my desk, I can tell you. Got home and received a call from a  lady at a nearby bookstore. I had an interview with her two weeks ago and it went very well. Spent over an hour chatting to her about my work history, experience, etc. She called to tell me that I was unsuccessful in getting the job. She said it was a really good interview (not good enough, it seems) and would I be happy for her to send my details to some other stores within the company? I said that would be fine, but I will obviously keep looking elsewhere.

By this stage, I was beginning to feel a little disillusioned with my studies as well. It might have to do with this barrage of assignments. Anyway, the only way out, is through.
I switched watches later that afternoon;


I wrote a review of this Tissot Visodate Heritage Automatic back on October 10th, 2010. At the time of writing (5:44pm, 10/10/14), this review has had 404,451 page-views and is the most widely-read post on my blog, excepting the Dry Martini post, which I think is a spam-magnet and not being read by people legitimately interested in how I make a Martini.  This Tissot watch has been very well received since its release and I think my review is read by people who are interested in the watch rather than fans of my writing style.

Today
          I switched back to the Omega Seamaster 300. I tend to go through stages where I'll wear a particular watch for days on end. This one has such a nice, vintage dive watch design and its legibility is sharp.


I decided today was a good day to go visit the library where I did my industry placement last month. I have an assignment due on Monday(!!!), to do with Occupational Health & Safety and it requires that I visit a library and look for areas that may be a hazard to the safety of both staff and library patrons. Since I spent a few weeks working in this particular library, I thought it would be suitable for the assignment. I spent about 90 minutes there, walking around, checking the fire extinguishers and Emergency Exits, the condition of the carpet, the height of the Information Desk, etc, etc, until I felt I had enough notes to use. This assignment needs to be only 500 to 700 words long, but I will need to use correct OH&S terminology, such as 'risk assessment' and 'hazard identification'.
Yep, I'm in for a fun weekend, but by this time Monday, I will have completed and submitted this one. Then I can get started on a report on silverfish. Are you as riveted as I am right now?
I traveled light, with a neoprene laptop case doubling as a satchel;


Got home, had lunch, started this post, picked the kids up from school, and took the cat to the vet. Madame Wispola Deusenberg has been gnawing at her fur on-and-off now for almost a year. When I took her to the vet last year, they determined that this stress-related behaviour was a cat equivalent of biting one's nails, since they could see no parasites on her fur.
However, earlier this week, I noticed a few dark hard scabs on her skin at the base of the fur. Some kind of tick or flea?
The vet had a good look and took some samples of the scabs to view under a microscope and said that there are traces of bacteria on the site. A cortisone injection, a packet of antibiotics and a hundred and fifty bucks later, and we headed home with Her Ladyship snugly wrapped in a towel.
Today's vet thinks that this condition could be an allergic reaction to some plant or flower. That makes a lot more sense than 'stress-related behaviour'.


I mean, come on, does she look stressed to you?

And so, that's another week done and dusted. Those two Italian guys with the Kickstarter campaign to fund their film manufacturing company are up to $236,000. Their goal is $250,000 and they have 19 days left.
I've made my pledge and I'll once again include a link, just in case anyone here wants to get on board this great project. 

Kickstarter.com/projects/filmferrania/100 More Years of Analog Film

Okay, I think my pizza's almost ready. Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!
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"Uncharted 2 : Among Thieves" - Absolutely Nail-Biting From The Get-Go!

October 13, 2014, 5:08 pm
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I stumbled across an article on the web that listed some of the best opening scenes and gameplay of the last few years and it featured the opening stage of Uncharted 2: Among Thieves.
I watched this footage, which is interspersed with cut-scenes and actual gameplay and I was riveted. I played the video again for my son to have a look at and when it was over, he looked at me, I looked at him, and then I called out to my wife; "We'll be back in half an hour!" before grabbing my son and my car keys. We headed to EB Games at a nearby shopping centre and found a pre-owned copy of this game. I had already played the first game in this series and, while I enjoyed it, I found it a little too heavy with the shoot-outs.

With this sequel, however, there's a little more figuring out of obstacles and ways into hidden temples, which is good. It counter-balances against all the gun-play. There are 26 stages in this game. I'm up to Stage 18 after going through a wonderful level which takes place on a moving train. I'm now trying to dodge machine gun fire from a tank and I have no idea as to how I'm going to survive this level. There must be an RPG launcher around here somewhere. This happens to me from time to time. I can spend up to three weeks stuck on a particular level of a game before figuring a way out.
Certainly getting my eighteen bucks worth, that's for sure.

This game was released in 2009 and, by this stage, console gaming had definitely come a long way. Game developers had long been devoting time, thought and energy to every aspect of the game, making it an immersive and cinematic experience. Despite the fact that console games are all made up of ones and zeroes on a computer, many film-making techniques are used in the way the story is told in between all the running, jumping, climbing, etc. The camera angles, use of music, and the way that both we, the player, and the in-game characters see things as they unfold all owe their origins to methods employed by Hollywood film-makers over the past twenty or thirty years.

The story concerns a fortune hunter named Nathan Drake, a direct descendant of Sir Francis Drake, and he's sort of a cross between Indiana Jones and the Malcolm Reynolds character from TV's Firefly series by Joss Whedon. Sure, this game series owes a debt to Lara Croft and Tomb Raider, but Drake is a well drawn character in his own right, complete with Indy-style pluck and a wise-cracking mouth.
He's on a quest to find an artifact from one of Marco Polo's ships and needless to say, there are other, less honourable people after it as well.
 
I've been knocking out assignments for the last three weeks, so this is a pleasant diversion. I think I'll re-draft this latest assignment before having another crack at evading that crazy tank.

In the meantime, here's the YouTube video of that opening level. Expertly played, too!
The first 50 seconds is the game loading up, so skip ahead to 0:51.

                                                      Video uploaded to YouTube 9/10/2009 by HassanAlHajry 


 Thanks for reading!


P.S. - To see more footage of this and other games, check out;
 
                                                                                                    HH Gaming Channel on YouTube
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Fri 17/10/2014 - Very, Very Busy...& This Week'sWristwatches

October 17, 2014, 12:11 am
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-Friday 6:11pm AEST-

So much to do. One assignment due next Wednesday, along with a ten-minute presentation...on silverfish. Ten minutes! I could probably cover their entire history and evolution in ten minutes. 
Another assignment due by next Friday, this one requiring quite a bit of hunting around for the answers. The research will take up the bulk of the time. 
Appointment with the tax accountant tomorrow. I normally don't leave it so long to do my return. 
And a bunch of other, niggling little tasks to attend to over the next few weeks.

So...this week's post is a short one. More of a snap-shot really.

Last weekend
                 I have been wearing the rebuilt Seamaster 300. It was on a Kevlar-style strap. I have quite a few watch straps, collected over the years, and I thought it might be time to put one on a watch and leave it on until it wears out;



Here's a tip- when buying a strap for a dive watch, consider one that has contrasting white or cream coloured stitching on it. This can tend to mimic the markers on the dial. It gives the whole look some continuity as well as giving the watch an overall old-school aesthetic. 

Monday
              I still wore the SM300, but decided to put a TrueBond NATO strap on it.


So much for keeping a strap on it until it rots. However, a NATO is hard to beat when it comes to comfort. You can sometimes forget that you have a watch on.


Embedded image permalink

Wednesday
                  Switched to the Omega Railmaster. Busy times coming up. Have a great weekend, all, and thanks for reading!



Man, the layout's all over the place. Started writing it on the iPad and finished it on the laptop. Maybe that had something to do with it.
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Fri 24/10/14 - Still Busy, Armageddon 2014, The Kids Are Sick & This Week's Wristwatch.

October 23, 2014, 4:27 pm
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- Fri 10:27am AEST - 


Last Weekend
                       Started off simply enough. I worked on another assignment on Saturday, surprised by how much information I found on silverfish. For those of you just tuning in, welcome, and I'm currently undertaking Library Studies and am doing the Conservation & Preservation module. There are numerous pests that just love eating books. Silverfish are particularly attracted to the starches and saccharines that are used in the adhesives of book bindings. 

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 And now, a short tutorial for one of my regular readers who wrote in to tell me that silverfish are a pesky little problem in his workshop;

Hey, Bill M, I think this may be tricky around electrical equipment, but a damp, rolled-up newspaper left overnight will attract a heap of silverfish looking for food and lodgings. Next morning, the newspaper should be filled with the little critters. You can then toss the paper in the trash or set it alight. Better safe than sorry.
For a more humane approach, take a clean glass jar, wrap the outside of it with masking tape and then place it in a dark corner with a small piece of dampened bread in it. The silverfish will climb up the masking taped jar, jump in, dine on the bread, but will be unable to climb up the smooth glassy interior of the jar. 
To keep silverfish away, sprinkle talcum powder along the wall-edges of the floor or your radio bench. Cinnamon or clove is very effective. Apparently, these pests don't like strong smelling spices. 
Alternatively, cabinets made from cedar or huon pine are also a deterrent. You can even use wood shavings from these two timbers, but I think they need replacing every few weeks. 
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Sunday
            My wife and I had kept this secret from the kids all week. We told them to get dressed and pack a book because we were driving out to a newly-opened hardware store about an hour away. They didn't seem too thrilled, hah!
As we got closer to our destination, they began to figure things out. Especially when they saw this;


Yep, it was the 2014 Armageddon Expo. A set-up of stalls selling comics graphic novels and steampunk gear, interviews and signings from artists and writers, and other superhero and console gaming related schtick. Sure, it isn't the San Diego ComiCon, but you gotta admire the work that some folks put into their costumes. And who wouldn't wanna see Jar Jar Binks' head separated from his body?

The father and son Metal Gear Solid team from last year were there running a stall, dressed up as Big Boss and Old Snake from this classic (my favourite) game series;


And my son told me that this girl was dressed up as one of the characters out of the classic Mortal Combat games. Here she is, posing for the Tom Baker version of Dr. Who;


My wife asked her (and her friend) if she could get a picture of me with them. When I'm an old, old man, I'll look at that photo and wonder where the hell I was.

Monday
             Our son had been coughing a little over the weekend, so I kept him home from school and took him to the doctor. "I'll treat it as pneumonia", was his diagnosis. 
Good God, was it as bad as that? I thought, if anything, it was a 'flu (again) mixed with hayfever and quite possibly the beginnings of athsma, which is why I thought I'd get him checked out to begin with.

Tuesday
             I was watching The Conjuring (Dir: James Wan, 2013). I'm not a huge horror film fan, but I like to watch one from time to time to see how modern filmmakers find ways to scare the bejeezus out of us in the comfort of our own homes. With horror movies, anticipation is the key, in my opinion, and I often find it creepy when I think of the implications behind certain scenes and the things that we don't see. 
Although, every now and then, along comes a film where we see some pretty creepy stuff. Check out the last few frames of the opening scene of the US version of The Ring (Dir: Gore Verbinski, 2002).
There were a few scenes in The Conjuring where somebody is screaming from another room in the house where the story is set, so I jumped out of my seat when I heard my wife call out my name from one of the kid's bedrooms. 
Turned out that my daughter had just thrown up and she had a temperature. Some frantic running to the laundry, stripping the sheets off her bed, a cold wet flannel and the house settled back into its version of normal. 
Looks like both kids would be staying home from school this week. 

Wednesday
                   Did some homework. And it drove me nuts. I had been wearing the Omega Railmaster since the weekend;


And I decided I'd remove the bracelet and put it on a leather strap. Man, what a job that turned out to be. Took me over two hours!
The space between the lugs on this watch is 19mm. Omega decided to go for an odd number instead of the usual 18 or 20mm spacing. I thought the spring bars on this bracelet were 20mm long, so it would be a snap to remove the bracelet and put a leather strap on the watch. How wrong I was. Removing one side of the spring bars was easy. Trying to remove the other end was another thing altogether.
The bars in this bracelet were of the dumbell design, like this;

                 
Basically, it's a steel tube with a spring inside it and the two barbell-styled ends with a flange. You take the tool and push down on the flanged end and out comes the spring bar. Repeat on other side.
These thin bars are basically what holds the bracelet or strap to your watch. Doesn't look like much, but they are made of quality stainless steel and are quite strong.



 picture courtesy of www.donindiano.net


This here is the Bergeon 6767 spring bar tool. It's the best one on the market, as far as I'm concerned.

                                                     picture courtesy of www.mywatchmaker.net

I wound up destroying the crescent-shaped prong on my Bergeon 6767 tool as I found myself getting increasingly exasperated by this endeavour. Eleven years of doing this on a daily basis and here I was, struggling to remove this bracelet. I was out of practice.
I managed to get one side off without too much hassle. I even wore my Dad's reading glasses for the up-close work. Dammit, I'm getting older.


In the end, I decided on a radical procedure. It was time to use a drill.
I checked to see that I had a drill-bit that was small enough and then I made sure my hands were steady enough to do this right the first time.
Worst-case scenario? I would possibly damage the watch case if the drill slipped. And nobody wanted that. I positioned everything and got started, slowly at first. I had the bit lodged against the flange. The idea was to totally destroy it so that I would be able to remove the spring bar completely with tweezers.
I stopped and started three times, checking my progress as I went along and, in the end, it was Bosch cordless drill-1, spring bar-nil.


Done! Then a quick check of the bracelet's end-link to find that I had gone slightly too close to one side;


I wasn't going to lose any sleep over that. And those scratches can be removed with a light buffing.

Why'd you do it, Teeritz, you may be asking? Well, I have a large selection of watch straps and I figured I would put one onto this Railmaster and wear it over the upcoming warmer months. I don't think I've ever worn a strap to death and I thought it was time to actually use some of them. So, on went a black leather strap with white stitch;


It's a tad long and I don't think it's as snug a fit as I'd like, but that's okay. I'll probably swap it over to something else in the next day or two.

Thursday
               The kids stayed home from school. They appear to be on the mend, but it seems a slow process. A few people I've spoken to have told me of 'flus that took them about six weeks to get over. Some nasty strains out there. Finish your medication, folks.

Took a quick portrait in the mirror. Would have been a better photo if the camera wasn't in my hands. I was aiming for a Mel Gibson in The Year of Living Dangerously kind of vibe, with me wearing light tones and the afternoon sun streaming in through the venetian blinds.

Today
          I think I'll do a little homework this morning. My daughter was feeling well enough to go to school, which was good, but my son is still coughing a little, so he gets to stay home for the fifth day in a row. Ah, well...

And one last pic of the Rialmaster, sitting next to a three dollar pair of sunglasses that I bought at a street stall near the Grand Palace in Bangkok in 2011;


     
Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!
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"Nice belt, **7" - The Secret Agent Belt by Magnificent Bastard

October 28, 2014, 2:08 am
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Magnificent Bastard
I've been following the posts over on Magnificent Bastard.com for a couple of years now;



I mean, how can you not like a logo like that?------------------->
 Anyway, The name of this blog comes from a line out of Patton (Dir: Franklin J. Schaffner, 1970), so it's not just there for shock value, just in case it may offend your delicate sensibilities.

MB is a magazine-style blog about a variety of men's interests and it's very nicely put together. I like the overall smart-assy tone of the editorials and it is a little corner of the internet that exudes an air of dark wood panelling, leather armchairs, Single Malt scotch and a perfectly-knotted tie. To me, anyway. It features short little articles on various topics as diverse as correct shirt buttoning and Mahatma Gandhi's birthday, for example, as well as a regular "Ask the MB" Q&A section, which is quite funny.

I check this blog out every couple of weeks and it was about two months ago that I had a quick look and saw something that I just had to have. 
It was a nylon belt. 
A belt?, I hear you ask?
Yes. A belt. But what a belt!
For the sake of avoiding any copyright-related legal wranglings, it is referred to by MB and therefore myself as the Secret Agent Belt.
I went over to the shopping page and, after a couple of e-mails back and forth, placed an order for one. At approx. $30 USD ($30.07, to be precise. Yet another nod to that English Secret Agent who shan't be named), it hardly broke the bank. 

It arrived about ten days later, securely packaged. And when I opened the box, there was another box inside it;


Once I took the tissue-paper off, I saw the silhouette of the Walther PPK and inside was a nifty little card;


The belt itself is very well made. Nice thick nylon that's not about to wear out anytime soon. And the hardware perfectly mimics the NATO watch strap that it's based on, as does the colouring. It closely matches the strap worn by S*** C****** on his R**** S********* in G********* (Dir: G** H*******, 196*). The stitching is solid, too. This thing should last a long time.


Now, I am in no way affiliated with Magnificent Bastard. I just thought I'd do a post on this belt because it's so well made and I find it amusing in its take on the NATO watch strap. I plan to get a lot of wear out of this belt over the next few months as we enter the warmer Summer weather.
Although, in saying that, if I were still having to wear a suit to work everyday, I'd probably put this belt on every now and then just to take the seriousness out of wearing a suit. Certainly beats those dreaded Superman-logo and Wile E. Coyote ties that a lot of guys were sporting back in the Nineties.


Yessiree, Bob, it works very well indeed. Now all I need is a bad-guy intent on world domination, and a girl in a white bikini with a dive knife strapped around her waist and I'm all set.

You can buy one of these cool belts here;

Shop - Magnificent Bastard.com

Thanks for reading!
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Fri 31/10/14 - No Major Highs, No Major Lows, Just Plodding Along & This Week's Wristwatches

October 30, 2014, 5:09 pm
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- Friday 11:09 am   AEST - 

Last weekend

My wife and I sat down to watch Chef (Dir: Jon Favreau, 2013) on Sunday. I have to say, it didn't quite set my world on fire. There were just a couple of scenes here and there that didn't seem to flow on from the scenes before them, and one or two bits that seemed to run a little longer than they should have. It almost felt as though all Three Acts of the screenplay came from three different drafts. 
Or maybe, the film got cut differently in the editing room to how Favreau wanted it.
I will say, however, I got a lot of time for John Favreau. In this film, his character, Carl Casper, is pretty spot-on. I've worked with chefs like that.
And, as a director, he did sterling work with the first two Ironman films, and I was surprised when he wasn't offered the third one, which I consider the weakest of the three. Shane Black is an action film bad-ass, without a doubt (the Patron Saint of action film screenwriters. I consider The Long Kiss Goodnight a classic), but Ironman 3 just had too much of a Shane Black stamp on it, with it's Christmas carols and shipyards at night. Although, the aeroplane-passengers-with-no-parachutes scene is brilliant and quite moving and his screenplay for the film was very clever. It just seemed, in some ways, like a departure from the first two installments.

Oh yeah, Jon Favreau. He does a great job directing Chef and the supporting cast is great. There are a few scenes with Favreau and his sous chefs, played by the wonderful John Leguizamo and the impressive Bobby Cannavale (whom I recall from an episode of Sex And The City years ago) and my wife turned to me and said; Gee, they swear a lot.
Yes. Yes they do. I've worked in some kitchens that would make a frat boy blush. It was eff this, eff that, eff you!
And there's a scene where Favreau takes his son to a movie in an effort to bond with him a little. We get a quick shot of them sitting in the audience, munching on popcorn and we hear the unmistakeable sound of Ironman's palm laser being fired. I mention this because my son thought I should include it in this post.
'Cos it's important to take your kid's suggestions sometimes.

I was wearing the WatchCo Omega Seamaster 300 on a TrueBond NATO strap all weekend;


Monday
              Watched a couple of episodes of Veep. It stars ex-Seinfeld star Julia Louis-Dreyfus as Selina Meyer, the Vice President of The United States. She has a small team of advisers and yes-men who effectively get her into, and out of, trouble on a regular basis due to her not being as smart as she thinks she is. And there's a great running gag throughout the show;
                                                             
                                                             MEYER
                  Did The President call?

                         ADVISER
                  Uhh, no, Ma'am.

After you hear this three or four times, you begin to get the impression that the Commander-In-Chief hates her guts, since he never returns her calls.

I'll be honest, I wasn't a regular Seinfeld viewer, despite the fact that it was probably the sharpest sitcom on TV throughout the Nineties, although I did like Frasier. 
In Veep, Louis-Dreyfus is brilliant. I've watched the first eight episodes and her performance is very funny, and a virtual 180 degrees from her Elaine Benes character from Seinfeld, which would be a tough act to follow.
The supporting cast is great, notably Anna Chlumsky (who was Macaulay Culkin's co-star in My Girl back in 1991!), Tony Hale as her main lackey, and Matt Walsh, as one of her spin doctors. There's quite a bit of profanity (it's HBO, folks. They keep it real), and the writing is so sharp, with one-liners and put-downs coming at an alarming rate at times.
I hope this show is around for a long time.

I've been reading The Lonely Skier by Hammond Innes. Written in 1946, it's the story of Englishman Neil Blair, a hard-on-his-luck war veteran who wants to write screenplays. He bumps into an old war buddy who offers him the job of going to a ski resort in Italy and 'observing' the movements of the guests and reporting back. He's not sure why he has to do this, but decides to take the job, since he needs the money and might even get enough ideas to churn out a script.
Once there, he meets an odd assortment of characters who each harbour secret motives for being there. The blurb on the back cover mentions Nazi gold, so that's a good enough reason for them to be there. I'll be interested to see how this story pans out. It has the hallmarks of an Agatha Christie tale, but I'm pretty sure it'll be vastly different to a Poirot/Miss Marple story.


Wednesday
                   Switched over to the Omega Speedmaster Professional, seen here on a map of my old stomping ground and surrounding suburbs;


I have to say that I have never used a GPS in the car. I don't have one and have no plans to get one. I still prefer to look at a paper map. When I had my Nokia Lumia 800 smartphone, we used the GoogleMap app to plot the drive out to Daylesford, located about 110 kilometres North-West of Melbourne. While it was nifty seeing a small blue triangle (representing the phone's location on the map) on the screen, it was nerve-wracking watching the phone's battery life bleeding away. Sure enough, the battery died ten minutes from our destination. We got there, but I decided then that I hate using mobile map apps.

Today
          Not much happening. Got an assignment to complete for next Friday and that's going okay. Think I'll give the lawns a quick mowing. Right now, I'm wearing the Omega Railmaster on strap;


Although, I may put on a Seiko if I'm gonna tackle any gardening. Anyway, it's Melbourne Cup Day this coming Tuesday. One of the most prestigious horse races in the world. I reckon half the people in this town will give themselves an extra long weekend and take Monday off.
I'll check the form guide on Tuesday morning and see if there's anything worth putting a little bet on.

Till then, thanks for reading and have a good weekend, all!


EDIT: Hey, I forgot to mention that the Film Ferrania Kickstarter project managed to achieve its budget with a little extra cream on top. They were seeking to raise $250,000 and managed to get a total pledge of  almost $323,000. Well done, ragazzi!
There is a small handful (if four fingers constitutes a handful) of 35mm film production companies left in the world.
One more player in the game can only be a good thing. 

Here's their website;

Film Ferrania
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Friday 7/11/14 - Feeling Uninspired, Get Well Soon, Sir Mick & This Week's Wristwatches.

November 6, 2014, 11:34 pm
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- Friday 6:34pm  AEST - 


Can't say I'm in the mood for this week's entry. I've been thinking lately about these weekly watch posts. Not sure if I want to continue them to such a degree, since they do tend to take up a bit of time to write. Anyway, I'll see how I go. 

Had a couple of bike rides last weekend with my son. Decided to wear the Seiko 7002;




Man, I don't know why these pics never rotate properly on my computer before I upload 'em. 

Later in the afternoon, I checked this blog and found a new comment posted on a post I wrote almost a year ago;


"What are you, my mother?" was my first thought. Would've been nice if they had left a name. Anyway, I can't worry about what somebody thinks. I have more important crap to occupy my mind. As it happens, I had another idea for a rom-com/screwball comedy screenplay yesterday while driving home from classes. Four main characters, two main objectives. As soon as I can figure out the motivation for two of those characters, there may just be enough in it for a decent story. 
However, you know the old saying- dying is easy, comedy is hard. 

Monday
             Took off the Seiko and switched back to the Omega Railmaster from last week while I continued working on an Occupational Health & Safety Newsletter due in on Friday;


Tuesday
               It was Melbourne Cup Day here. I put a few bucks on a few different horses. Red Cadeaux placed second. For the third year in a row, so I re-couped a little bit. This year's race was marred by a couple of tragedies. One of the favourites, Admire Rakti, collapsed in his stall and died shortly after the race. Another horse, Araldo, was being led back to the mounting yard after the race when somebody in the crowd waved a large, bright flag as he passed. This spooked the horse who lashed out and got tangled in a fence, breaking one of his legs in the process. The injury was assessed and Araldo was later put down. 
There is big, big money in this race. Horses and trainers come to Melbourne from around the world to participate. However, I have to admit that I've always found it a little harsh on the horses themselves, what with the use of the whips and how these animals are pushed to their limits over the 3200m race, not to mention the rigorous training in the lead-up. 
I would like to think that some major changes will come out of these two deaths, the sort of changes which take the welfare of these beautiful creatures into greater account.
And I'm not sure if I want to bet on these races anymore.

Today
         Headed into town briefly. Took the Olympus OM2n with me, just in case I felt like taking some pics. I was wearing the Sinn 103 St Sa chronograph;




On the way to the train station, I heard on the radio that The Rolling Stones concert that was due to take place tomorrow at Hanging Rock has been cancelled. Singer Mick Jagger has come down with a throat infection. I'm sure you'll never read this, Sir Mick, but I hope you get well soonish. And thanks for all your efforts thus far;




I got home a few hours ago and switched the leather strap on the watch back to its steel bracelet;




That guitar plectrum was given to me by a neighbour who was a madder Stones fan than I am. He hung around after one of their concerts back around 12 years ago and got to talking to one of the roadies who gave him this guitar pick. 
"Did somebody use this one?", he asked the roadie. 
Keith", was the roadie's reply.

I'm gonna get a box frame made up for this thing one day. 

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend, all!
                  
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Friday 14/11/14 - New Wristwatch Forums, Back to the Caffettiera, Car Break-Ins & This Week's Wristwatches.

November 13, 2014, 5:11 pm
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- Friday 12:11pm  ADST - 

Last weekend
                     Sat down to watch Dial M for Murder (Dir: Alfred Hitchcock, 1954). Maybe I was a little too tired from the various things that I did earlier in the day, maybe it was the casting of Ray Milland and Robert Cummings in this film (they were both adequate actors, but I felt that a Hitchcock film deserved better leading men), or maybe it was something else. Either way, I  didn't find this film to be as enjoyable as the rest of Hitchcock's output of the 1950s. Sure, there were some tense moments in it, but overall, I found this film a little bland. I'm fairly certain it has more to do with how fatigued I felt rather than anything else, so I think I'll have to watch this film again one day to see if I end up with a higher opinion of it.

And for most of the weekend and early on in the week, I was wearing the Sinn 103 St Sa chronograph;
 

I still get a buzz out of this watch. Maybe it's because it was on my mind for about five or six years before I bought it. I think the current retail price is somewhere around $3,200.ooAUD and it puts vastly more expensive chronographs to shame. For example, here's a quick comparison. I bought my Sinn in 2009. At the time, you could have gone for the more basic model, the 103 St Ty, which looked like this;

This watch has a current retail price of about $3,885.ooAUD on a steel bracelet.
Here are the specifications:




Sinn 358 Sa (Sa = Sapphire)

* Case diameter- 42mm
* Water-resistance- 100m
* Movement- Valjoux 7750 automatic, with day and date display.
* Crystal-Sapphire, with anti-reflective coating on both sides.
* Case-back- Sapphire, with anti-reflective coating on the inside.


 


Now, take a very, similar watch, the IWC Pilot's Chrono , released around 2007, with a current retail price of $7,000.ooAUD on steel bracelet.
Here are the specs on this watch;

IWC Pilot's Watch Chrono Automatic
(model number 3717-01)

* Case diameter- 42mm
* Water-resistance- 60m
* Movement- Valjoux 7750 (Chronometer-rated) 
automatic with day and date display. Soft 
iron core encasing the movement to protect against magnetic field interference. 
* Crystal- Sapphire, with anti-reflective coating on both sides.
* Case-back- Steel


Okay, so this IWC watch has a little extra. The movement is more accurate and has been tested as such, and it's protected against magnetic interference. However, in real life, I find water resistance to be far more important than resistance to magnetic fields. And yes, the IWC is chronometer-rated, but the Sinn is no slouch when it comes to timekeeping accuracy, so I really can't accept the IWC's pricing. Those extras don't really justify a seven grand price-tag. IWC make some beautiful watches, but I feel that you're paying for the name with this particular model, when compared to the equivalent watch by Sinn.
Although, this IWC does have one thing going for it. Brad Pitt wore the previous model in one of my absolute favourite films, Mr & Mrs Smith (Dir: Doug Liman, 2005);


Okay, rant over. 

Monday
              The coffee machine was due for another service, so off it went to the repairers. Time to bust out the caffettiera, the Bialetti Moka Express. It produces a thinner tasting cup of coffee which always takes me a little getting used to after the fuller flavour that you get from an espresso machine. Yes, it's a first-world problem. I do love these caffettieras. There were about six of these, in various sizes, in my house growing up. This one above is the six-cup model. I think I have two others, but they're packed away.
I switched to the Omega Railmaster. Sometimes, simpler coffee requires a simpler wristwatch;


Tuesday
              Found a new wristwatch forum. I was actually told about it by another watch collector and I decided I'd join up.
It's called the International Watch League and it looks like it'll be a nice place to visit. And here's the link;

International Watch League

This morning
                      Somebody knocked on our door this morning at around 5:20am. That's never good news. I opened the door, bleary-eyed, to find a policeman shining a torch at me. He apologised for waking us and then informed us that our cars had been broken into. There was nothing of value in our cars, but this little bastard took my Swiss Army knife. 
The police officer told us somebody in the next street heard his car getting messed with and he got into a scuffle with the perp who ended up getting away...on a bicycle. The general consensus is that it's some kid in the neighbourhood. 
Man, the weasel took my Army Knife. This time, it's personal. 

I got a call around 8:00am from an officer who told me that she would be coming around with a forensics kit to see if they could lift some prints off my car. If the thief has a record, then his fingerprints will be on their database. Tell ya what, the fingerprint powder that they use is a dog to wash off. 
Her colleague went and spoke to a couple of neighbours while she worked on my car. Because it's paintwork is so old, she wasn't sure if she'd be able to get any useable prints.



I like cops. Got a lot of respect for them. It's not an easy job, the paperwork is never-ending, and the hours are murder.

                                Have you seen this man? A couple of decent prints. Probably mine, ha, ha!

Anyway, that's me done for the week. Some homework due by 5:00pm today and another two assignments due next Friday. Can't wait to finish this course. Bit of luck, I should be done by March/April next year. 
.......................................................................Far out, I just stepped outside to hand my wife a pair of sunglasses and the front door slammed shut behind me, effectively locking us both out of the house. Thankfully, the bathroom window was open. But first, I had to grab a ladder.
I have to say today hasn't exactly set my world on fire. 
And it's only midday.

Anyway, have yourselves a great weekend and thanks for reading!

One last pic, jazzed up a little, courtesy of the iPhoto app.



EDIT: I posted the wrong IWC chronograph photo earlier today. Corrected it seven hours later. All fixed.
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Friday 21/11/14 - Looking for 'Archer', Paul Newman's Still So Damn Cool, & This Week's Wristwatches.

November 20, 2014, 11:29 pm
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- Friday 6:29pm  ADST - 

I've been on a bit of a Paul Newman kick lately. 


I've always liked him as an actor. He had a great and likeable presence on-screen, although I'm ashamed to admit that, despite his long and prolific career, I've probably seen only about ten or fifteen of his films;

Cool Hand Luke 
The Secret War of Harry Frigg
Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid
Never Give An Inch (aka Sometimes a Great Notion)
The Life And Times of Judge Roy Bean
The Sting
The Towering Inferno
The Drowning Pool (a couple of nights ago)
The Verdict
The Color of Money
Road to Perdition
The Hudsucker Proxy
Twilight

Okay, make that thirteen. That's cool. Means I've got a lot of his films to still look forward to. As great as he was an actor, he was perhaps greater as a humanitarian. He and his buddy A.E. Hotchner founded the Newman's Own salad dressing venture back in 1982. All proceeds, after taxes, were to go to charity. To date, this company has raised over 380 million dollars. 

I managed to track down a copy of his 1975 film, The Drowning Pool, where he reprised his role as SoCal private detective Lew Harper from the 1966 movie entitled Harper. This character, often regarded as the successor to Chandler's Philip Marlowe, appeared in a large number of books by Ross McDonald, although he's named Lew Archer in the novels.
I recall the TV ads for The Drowning Pool from back in the Seventies. From memory, the film didn't do too well when it was released, but I have to say it was actually a pretty good film. The supporting cast was great, except for Melanie Griffith, in one of her earliest screen roles here, the music was jaunty in places, and the screenplay was good. I haven't seen Harper, but I seem to recall certain scenes from it. Might have something to do with my having read Adventures in the Screen Trade, by William Goldman, the screenwriter who adapted Ross McDonald's first Archer book, The Moving Target, into the screenplay for Harper. At any rate, I'm awaiting a copy of Harper and it'll be interesting to see.

My wife is a big fan of Newman's 1973 classic, The Sting (Dir: George Roy Hill), which reunited him with his co-star from Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid (Dir: Hill again), Robert Redford. Whenever we watch The Sting, and Newman appears on-screen, my wife will remark; 'Gee, he was a beautiful man.'
I'm, of course, in no position to argue. 
Newman aged well throughout the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. Rumour has it that the trick he employs at the beginning of The Sting, whereby he fills a basin with two trays of ice and cold water before dunking his face in it for thirty seconds or so, was something that he did in real life and this is what kept him looking younger than his years. I don't know about that, but he certainly held up well in his time. 

Aside from waiting for the Harper DVD, I've also been on the lookout for Ross McDonald's Archer novels. I have to say these are proving virtually impossible to find in second-hand bookstores. Back in the '90s, I used to see them everywhere, both new and used, nestled on store shelves between the John D. McDonalds (he wrote the Travis McGee crime books) and Ngaio Marsh's mystery novels. 
I can get a lot of the Archer stories off eBay, but I don't relish paying twenty-five bucks for them right now. Might have to check out Amazon.

 I remember going to the cinema in 1982 to see The Verdict (Dir: Sidney Lumet) in which Newman plays a very-close-to-washed-up ambulance-chasing Boston lawyer named Frank Galvin, who has one last shot at redemption when he takes on a medical malpractice case and goes up against James Mason's character, who's a partner in the largest law firm in the city. It's a brilliant performance that Newman gives, and it definitely should have snagged him the Best Actor Oscar that year. Ben Kingsley got it for his title role in Gandhi, a performance that had many older Indians believing that their spiritual leader had come back to life. 
Newman finally received the golden statuette for his return as 'Fast' Eddie Felson (his character from The Hustler- Dir: Robert Rossen, 1961) in Scosese's The Color of Money in 1986, opposite Tom Cruise. It was another great performance, but The Verdict was more of an actor's role.
There were a great many actors of Newman's generation who are all well-regarded. Redford, Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman, James Caan, Gene Hackman, Robert DeNiro and Clint Eastwood were all quite prolific throughout the Seventies and Eighties, but I have to hand it to Newman for all that he did outside of his acting gigs.
Newman was married to actress Joanne Woodward for fifty years, a rare feat in Hollywood marriages, and they had five daughters and one son, who died of a drug overdose in 1978. 
He died in 2008 of lung cancer at the age of 83, leaving behind Woodward and the girls, a great body of  work on film, and a wide range of philanthropic endeavours that made life easier for a great deal of people.

It's been a busy week. I have two or three more assignments to complete and I plan to get them done over the next week. One test to do in-class next Thursday and then that's it for the year. Two more subjects to complete, hopefully in the first quarter of next year, and then this course is finished!

Monday's watch, the Omega Railmaster. Been getting a lot of wear out of this one lately;

When I worked briefly at a local jewellery store a couple of years ago, I began taking notice of silver bracelets, thinking that perhaps I'd like to get myself one. I recall mentioning this to my wife.
Her response? "And who will you be married to? You'll look like a Chock."  (a Guido)
I told her that Chocks wear gold bracelets. Big chunky ones. I wanted something a little more understated. Looking at all these pics of Paul Newman lately and I decided to get on eBay and see what they had. Sure enough, fifty-eight bucks later and here it is. A sterling silver Cuban curb-link bracelet.

This morning. You know, I forgot I had this t-shirt;


This afternoon, changed over to the Seiko 7002 to do some housework;



Right, it's late Friday afternoon, the sun is shining, I got a few major household things out of the way and I could use a drink. 'Scuse me for a second.

Okay, that's better. Gin & tonic with a few slices of cucumber. Makes a difference, I can tell you. Railmaster back on the wrist. Cheers;


Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!


Special thanks once again to wikipedia for the info on Paul Newman. I knew a bit of it, but this great website is fantastic for filling in the blanks and details. It even has an entry about 'Guido'! Nothing on the term 'Chock', which I'm sure was coined by myself and a few friends back in the Eighties to signify the type of young Italian guy that we didn't want to be. - Ciao!





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