Adventures In Eyewear : Part Two- "Because When You're Cool, The Sun Shine On You 24 Hours A Day"

April 1, 2015, 4:46 am

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Yes, yes, I know I said I'd lay low for a while, but here's a post that I started at the beginning of Summer and, now that I'm a few weeks into Autumn, I figured I might as well put it up. 

It'll be Summer somewhere else soon.

                                        Screen-cap taken from "North By Northwest"(Dir: Alfred Hitchcock, 1959)

Right, so I have written about my prescription spectacles in a previous post;

Adventures In Eyewear : Part One- "Nice Glasses, Four Eyes!"

Now, Summer has ended here in Australia. Sure, there are a few warm and sunny days here and there, but I think the days of sun, surf  and sand have given way to Autumn, so I figured it was time to cover the sunglasses that I have gotten over the years.
The title of this post is a line out of My Science Project (Dir: Jonathan R. Butuel, 1985). This film came along hot on the heels of similar movies such as Back To The Future and Weird Science, but it didn't set the box-office on fire. But I'm not here to discuss '80s Brat Pack-laden teen sci-fi.   

There's a character in this film named Vince Latello, played by Fisher Stevens, who gets arrested and as he steps up to get his mug-shot taken, he's wearing a pair of black lensed plastic shades. The cop asks him; "Hey kid, why do you wear sunglasses at night?"

Latello replies with the line above.

It seemed a catchy enough phrase for the purposes of this post. And I've always remembered that line from the movie. It was oft-used back in my twenties when my friends and I rented a house at a seaside town for a couple of weeks one Summer. Add enough booze to a nightly card game and pretty soon, winning a hand of Poker becomes the last thing on your mind as the Jack Daniel and Canadian Club begins to run low and the ashtray fills up with the butts of Marlboro Reds and (my choice that year) unfiltered Lucky Strikes.
Before long, somebody puts on their sunglasses while playing cards and utters that line from that movie.

Anyway, the first decent pair of sunglasses that I bought was a pair of tortoise-shell RayBan Wayfarers back in 1986.

RayBan had been enjoying a resurgence in popularity thanks to their patron saint, Tom Cruise, who wore a pair of black Wayfarer frames in Risky Business (Dir: Paul Brickman, 1983) a few years earlier. A few years prior to that, in 1980, we had Dan Aykroyd and the late John Belushi wearing black acetate sunglass frames. I don't know the make of Aykroyd's sunnies, but Belushi was sporting the unmistakable Wayfarer frames.

RayBan was bought out some time ago by the Italian spectacles juggernaut Luxottica. This was good news in that it continued the production of these classic frames, among other well-known RayBan designs, but it meant that the brand was no longer Made In USA or utilised lenses made by Bausch & Lomb.

Luckily, I have a few pairs of these frames. You might recall that I had one set converted into specs, which made me look like Brains from The Thunderbirds. I recently had these converted into prescription sunglasses for driving and they currently reside in the glove-box of my car.

It wasn't long before I snagged another pair of RayBans endorsed by Mr. Cruise. This time, it was a pair of Outdoorsman frames similar to what he wore in Top Gun (Dir: Tony Scott, 1986). I say similar because I wasn't influenced by the movie. I was influenced by the cover artwork on my paperback copy of Robert Ludlum's The Bourne Identity. While Cruise wore this pair in Top Gun;



I opted for the frames which had a plastic 'sweat bar' above the bridge;

I'm not sure if the sweat bar actually does anything besides looking badass, but they were a nice looking frame. I say 'were' because, when my son was about two years old, I had these frames in my shirt pocket as I put him into his baby seat in the car. I must have leaned down a little too low because, about two minutes later, I drove out of the shopping centre car-park and reached for my sunnies in my pocket. They weren't there. I headed back up to where I had parked the car to find two dark circles on the ground where I had been. As I slowed the car down, I saw that the frames were bent at obscene angles and the 'two dark circles' were the shattered remains of the lenses. Nothing was salvageable. They were gone.
I was miserable for a week. Still, could've been worse. I could have been wearing them when they got run over.

Anyway, years passed and I wore the Wayfarers until I saw Season 2 or 3 of 24 and spotted Keifer Sutherland's Jack Bauer wearing a cool pair of what I'd always called 'VietNam-era CIA operative's sunglasses'.

 I found out a few years later that Bauer's glasses were RayBan Caravans. These frames were based on a classic 1930s design that were originally supplied to Air Force pilots. The Caravans have standard curved temples with tips that sit behind the ear, whereas the original design had straight temples so that they could be put on or taken off while wearing a helmet.
This type of aviator sunglasses became popular in Hollywood films, such as Apocalypse Now (Dir: Francis Ford Coppola, 1979), where we see Robert Duvall as Col. Kilgore all dressed for battle;
                                                                                                        Screencap taken from;

Diary of a Screenwriter










There are numerous brands on the market that make these aviator specs. Two of the more reputable companies, in my opinion, are Randolph Engineering and American Optical. You can get these frames in brushed or polished steel, gold-plate, or black PVD-coated.
When I decided to replace my crushed RayBan Outdoorsman frames, I opted for the Randolph Engineering frames in gold-plate. I felt that this was the most classic look for these frames.

Notice the straight temples. One thing, though. You need to make sure these are a secure fit. Otherwise, they'll slip off your face when you look down. Of course, you can always put a slight bend in the temples of these frames for a tighter fit.

While working in the CBD, I got to know one of the staff at a nearby optometrist. I noticed a nice pair of Persol frames one day, and the guy let me know that they would be going on sale soon. These were a nice black frame. Persol is one of the oldest optical manufacturers and their sunglasses are well-regarded. A friend of mine had a pair back in the late 1980s and I always thought they were a nicely put-together frame.
The good thing about the pair that I was interested in was that they were a different design to my RayBan Wayfarers. No point having a few pairs of sunnies that all look the same. So, I wound up getting these frames on sale;

These also have Polarised lenses to reduce glare. I first noticed this while driving one day in Summer. I glanced at my fingernails and noticed that they looked dull and matte. I removed the sunglasses and then saw my nails look shiny as the sun reflected off them. Polarised lenses are good if you do a lot of driving, or if you spend a lot of time on the slopes of Aspen during ski season.
Me, I was doing a lot of driving. 


These frames have the classic Persol signature 'spearhead' motif at the hinges. There's a nice weight to them, too. I wore them quite a lot when I first got them.
Persol make some great frames. Steve McQueen famously wore a pair of "Havana" frames in
The Thomas Crown Affair (Dir: Norman Jewison, 1968) and subsequent photos of him in private life show him wearing other Persol frames, thus ensuring this brand a coolness factor that's through the roof. Do a Google search for "Steve McQueen Persol" and a bunch of pictures will show up.

So now, I had a few different frames to choose from. When it gets sunny in Australia, it gets very sunny indeed. Given that I wear prescription glasses already, I'm careful to look after my ocular health, so I wear sunglasses whenever I'm out in the sun.
A few years went by and all was well. By now, my wife had been bitten by the sunglasses bug and she scooped up a couple of pairs of sunnies off eBay. 'I blame you!', she's often said to me. I reply with a comment about needing to protect one's eyes when out in the sun. 'You'll thank me one day, baby', I add.

During out trip to Thailand last year, I visited a store in Bangkok and saw a pair of frames by a brand called Moscot. This is a family-owned company that set up in New York in 1915. I had already seen these frames on the internet some time ago, and there was a store in Melbourne that sold them also. However, Australian Dollar prices were obscene, so I steered clear of them. In Bangkok, however, the prices were far more reasonable, so I tried on a pair of 'Lemtosh' frames in tortoise-shell. They looked great.
I had been thinking of getting a pair of frames like the ones Cary Grant wore in North By Northwest, as seen in the first picture of this post. After searching the web for info, I learned that his frames were made by a brand called Tart Optical. His particular frames, the 'Arnel', weren't available in Australia. I found Tart Optical's website and sent an inquiry. The price of these frames were somewhere around $550. Too rich for my blood.
I had decided a long time ago that there were some prices that I just wasn't willing to pay for certain items. My absolute cut-off price for spectacles, be they prescription or sunglasses, was $300.
Anyway, back to the Moscot sunnies. I tried them on in Bangkok. They fit nicely. Then I spent a couple of days thinking about it. They looked good, the lenses were fantastic, the price was right. That's my three main boxes ticked. Sold!

These frames exude a beautiful mid-century aesthetic. Comfortable to wear and very well-made, with a more reasonable price than the Tart frames. I sure the Tart sunglasses are of a high standard, but I just can't justify that kind of price.

The Moscot Lemtosh frames are a rich tortoise-shell, with brown polarised lenses. And I liked the idea of the company still being a family-run business. If I ever get to New York, I'll be sure to pop in to their store.

Of course, whilst in Bangkok, I just had to walk into another optometry store, didn't I? And that's where I saw a pair of black RayBan Clubmasters. It would seem that most of your classic spectacle frames were designed throughout the 1930s, through to the 1950s because there's been a resurgence in popularity in frames from these eras. The Clubmaster frames were introduced sometime in the Fifties and I've seen many of them used in period films over the last twenty-five years or so. These frames can be seen on Denzel Washington in Malcolm X, Kevin Costner in JFK, and Willem Dafoe in Mississippi Burning. They are a classic frame, albeit they feel a little flimsy, since they're made up of a few parts that are screwed together. Still, they're a good back-up frame. As long as one is a little careful with them.
Like the Moscot slogan says- Keep 'em in the case when they're not on your face.

These'll look great when I produce Tony Curtis' next picture in 1960.

However, man does not live by RayBans alone. My wife surprised me one day with a pair of sunglasses that she snagged off eBay for the princely sum of $20.00. These were a tortoise-shell pair of Tom Ford 'Snowdon' frames.

Normally, I tend to shy away from fashion brands or companies that aren't known for producing certain products. Tom Ford (an absolute legend in my view) was a designer for the Gucci fashion house before he branched out on his own. I normally wouldn't look twice at fashion-brand wristwatches or sunglasses, but these frames are beautifully made and very solid. The lenses are polarised, which is an added bonus, and the fit and finish are above par. Sure, their design does owe a debt to RayBan and other brands of the 1950s, but I think this is precisely the point, and, while they do look a little like a pair of Wayfarers, closer inspection begins to reveal numerous differences in aesthetics. Before long, you realise that they are quite different to a pair of Wayfarers.

Featuring the signature 'T' logo which begins at the edge of the frame and runs along the temple, these very dark tortoise-shell frames are very, very similar to what Daniel Craig has been pictured wearing in some scenes of SPECTRE, the new Bond film;



DC's sunglasses are a new frame, to be released later this year, when the film opens. No doubt, as happens with the release of a new Bond movie in The Digital Age, various style websites will be awash with information on these frames, and everything else that Bond wears in the film. There's already a slew of info about Bond's accoutrements in  SPECTRE on the fantastic James Bond Lifestyle. Com. 

That's a great website for Bond fans.

But back to the sunglasses. These frames are extremely similar in design to the Snowdon frames I have. Not that I'll be rushing out to get a pair. In one of those rare instances, I'm ahead of Mr. Bond. It happened in '08 as well, when I already had a 42mm Omega Planet Ocean and then saw Craig sporting the same model in Quantum of Solace.

Anyway, that's my collection of sunglasses. I could maybe go for a pair of Persol 649s or 714s, but there's no hurry. Summer's over here in Melbourne, although it's a nice sunny day here today as I write this.
You may think that sunglasses can be expensive, and I would agree. However, I would always advocate that one should have a pair or two of decent, quality-lensed sunnies. You can get a cheap pair of sunglasses for five bucks, but they will be flimsy frames fitted with crappy coloured glass that offers your eyes no proper UV protection. May as well wrap green cellophane around your head or wear those 3D glasses you get from a cinema.
There are numerous well-made sunnies on the market. The Randolph Engineering and American Optical aviators sell for around a hundred bucks. Same with a pair of RayBan New Wayfarers (Model No. RB2132), if you prefer plastics.
There are also a few websites that have popped up in recent years that offer some very nice frames in both prescription lenses and sunglasses. Here in Australia there are two that I know of;

OscarWylee

BaileyNelson (thanks for the heads-up on this one, Scott K!)

And, in the US, there's WarbyParker

These three offer some very nice frames for reasonable prices. If I wasn't already sufficiently loaded up, I'd be scouring these sites.
Anyway, I've put most of my sunglasses into hibernation for the Autumn/Winter months. I have the Moscots, Tom Fords, and American Opticals within reach if I need them, but I think I won't be needing them much over the next six months or so.
If you yourself have a decent pair of sunglasses, then great. If you don't, perhaps you may want to invest a few bucks in a well-made pair.
You know me, gang. I'm always gonna say that you need a decent pen, wristwatch and pair of sunglasses.

Thanks for reading, all!

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I Had Forgotten What A Simple Pleasure A Bookshelf Can Be.

April 7, 2015, 3:04 am

≫ Next: 17/4/15 - Very Busy, But Here's a Proof-of-Life Photo of a Watch On My Wrist...Plus a Few Others.

≪ Previous: Adventures In Eyewear : Part Two- "Because When You're Cool, The Sun Shine On You 24 Hours A Day"

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Since we are entering Autumn/Winter here, I felt it would be a good idea to bring some books in from the garage. I want to minimise any possible damage or deterioration that may occur if temperatures drop. Most of our books are stored in plastic tubs with lids, which are stacked up in the garage. My concern is that if it gets too cold in there, dew could form inside these tubs and cause mold to form on the books. Once that happens, the book's a goner. 

This would be bad enough if it happens to any of our books, but it would be catastrophic if it happens to the books we have that are out of print or of some value to us. 

So, I headed out to IKEA and bought a KALLAX (formerly known as EXPEDIT) bookshelf and spent an hour or so putting it together in the lounge room. 

Held together with about a million dowels and eight screws, I wasn't sure how sturdy this thing would be, despite being quite heavy once it was put together. Still, as far as I was concerned, it just had to last a year or so. Made from compressed particle-board, it probably won't stand up to being moved around too much or being over-loaded with heavy hardbacks and coffee table books, but for our purposes right now, it would be adequate enough. Who knows, we may use it as a room divider in the next house. IKEA also makes numerous inserts that can turn these empty shelves into cabinets with doors or slide-out boxes, but for now, all we need is a bookshelf.

We have a CD cabinet in the lounge room that had some books in it, but this was getting a little messy.

I spent the rest of the day going through the tubs and selecting some titles. My main priorities? All of my Bond books and some of my hard-to-replace crime titles. The Bonds were purchased throughout the '80s and '90s from various second-hand bookstores and these would be a headache to replace nowadays without spending a small fortune. Books that I paid a buck or two for are now selling on eBay for anywhere between seven to fifteen dollars. And some of mine are in very good condition. 

As for the crime novels, quite a few of them are currently out of print. Works by noir authors such as Jim Thompson and David Goodis(a damn genius, in my view)are impossible to find, as are the works of English espionage author Eric Ambler. Sure, I could probably get these books on eBay, but again, the costs would be prohibitive. Better to look after the ones I have. 

So, I brought in most of these, but I didn't spend as much time arranging them as I would have liked. Hence, I have classic hard-boiled crime titles mixed in with the works of Hemingway and Somerset Maugham. My wife sifted through her books and selected a bunch of children's titles. Again, many of these are either not in print currently, or expensive to replace. 

The Chandler and Hammett paperbacks are in. And I recalled that I had written my initials and the year of reading on the recto page of some of these books. In pencil, of course.

"The terms recto and verso refer to the text written on the "front" and "back" sides of a leaf of paper in a bound item such as a codex, book, broadsheet, or pamphlet."

-definition courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recto_and_verso 

And not forgetting other crime authors of the era, such as James M. Cain, William P. McGivern and Charles Williams.

As for the Bonds, I had forgotten just how many copies I had. I knew I had at least two of every one of Ian Fleming's fourteen OO7 adventures, but man, these books took up two of the sixteen shelves. AND I double-stacked the shelves.

Then some literature. Mixed in with more crime, an Ambler classic, and a reproduction of The Savoy Cocktail Book.;

My wife shelved mainly her children's books and novels. Many of the paperbacks were books that she bought before I met her. 

Anyway, that's our little Easter Weekend diversion. Here's how it all looks at the moment;

While it would be nice to leave the typewriter (1956 Smith-Corona Silent Super), car (1938 Citroen 15cv TA, made by Burago)and camera (late 1950s Voitlander Vitomatic I)out on display, they would accumulate dust and we don't really need yet another thing to clean right now. I merely arranged them as such for the purposes of these photos.

The clock belonged to my parents. It's currently not in working order, but that's something else that I'll attend to when the time comes.

The glass ashtray belongs to my wife. She has a small assortment of European hand-blown glass. Notice also the long glass beaker on the floor next to the shelf.

And the Royal Doulton ceramic Union Jack bulldog is mine. It's gone back into its box for now. I'll nestle it in among the Bond books in the next house. Here it is with my oldest Fleming paperback, a copy of Live And Let Die from 1957.

Thanks for reading, all, and have a good week!

17/4/15 - Very Busy, But Here's a Proof-of-Life Photo of a Watch On My Wrist...Plus a Few Others.

April 17, 2015, 4:31 am

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≪ Previous: I Had Forgotten What A Simple Pleasure A Bookshelf Can Be.

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Much to be done. Prioritising. So, this blog takes a back-seat for a while as I tend to more pressing matters.

Monday

            I wore the Rolex Submariner 5513. Can't remember what I did that day, but I know it involved pen and paper. And since the sun was out, I had a pair of sunglasses within reach. We're well and truly into Autumn here, but we seem to still be getting little bursts of sunshine here and there.

Wednesday 

            I continued with Assignment No. 1 of my second-last subject. Nine more assignments to go, all of them due by November. I had planned to knock these all out  within two or three months, but other stuff got in the way. So, I figure I might as well pace these out a little. I was wearing the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean.

While I was working on this assignment, my son was at school playing handball during lunchtime. For whatever reason, he lunged for the ball and decided to kick it. One of his classmates had the same idea. They both missed the ball, but his friend's foot connected with my son's upper calf, just behind the knee. 

When I went to pick him up after school, he limped to the car. We did the whole RICE thing (Rest, Ice, Compression, Elevation), but his knee area looked pretty swollen by the next evening.

Today

          His knee wasn't looking all that much better, despite the RICE method, coupled with a dose of anti-inflammatory tablets. So, he took the day off school while I made a doctor's appointment for him. The doctor checked him out and then booked him in for x-rays right away.

Afterwards, we got home, I prepared him some lunch (if you call putting a sausage roll onto a plate preparation) while he elevated his leg on a stool and sat down to watch The Avengers on BluRay. The doctor called me back an hour later to tell me that the x-ray report showed no fractures or breakage. Which was a relief. Needless to say, she suggested he take things easy for the next two weeks. My boy didn't argue with that recommendation. So, luckily, it all wasn't as bad as it could have been. I wore the WatchCo Seamaster 300 on a BondNATO strap.

Okay, this post turned out longer than I thought it would, gang. Time for a cup of Earl Grey tea. Black with one sugar. 

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend, all!

24/4/2015 - Job-Hunting Continues, Revisiting Bond, & This Week's Wristwatches.

April 23, 2015, 7:49 pm

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≪ Previous: 17/4/15 - Very Busy, But Here's a Proof-of-Life Photo of a Watch On My Wrist...Plus a Few Others.

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Still busy 'round these here parts. Sometimes, all you need is a cup of tea. Just to slow things down for a few minutes. I had the WatchCo Omega Seamaster 300 on a Bond NATO strap wrapped around my wrist last weekend. 

You know, I've gotten into long discussions on wristwatch forums where somebody will call these nylon NATO straps 'cheap' and they will assert that this type of strap doesn't belong on a watch that costs thousands of dollars. I beg to differ. I always mention that even a four hundred thousand dollar Ferrari will be equipped with seat-belts made from 'cheap nylon', designed to keep the driver firmly in their seat in the event of an accident. Also, because a NATO strap is made to pass underneath the case-back of  a watch (since this strap is essentially one long piece), it is perhaps the most secure strap available, and this is why it remains the choice of those who still wear a watch for scuba diving purposes. 

Anyway...

The main reason that I wanted to watch this film again was because I'd read the latest installment on;

You Only Blog Twice

A great blog by a guy named Bryant Burnette. He's basically gone through every Bond film and given them a rating, broken down by various criteria such as casting, direction, music, etc. Certainly a lot of work has gone into his reviews. And his screen-caps are divine;

Thinking about this film now, I like it as a collection of scenes, but I don't like how these scenes stack up together as a whole. The editing, while it does give you the idea and implication of what is going on, via a series of less-than-a-second images, soon begins to give you a headache. Well, that's what it began doing to me.
The cinematography is beautiful, though. And even if it didn't live up to the level set by Casino Royale a couple of years earlier, it is still a better Bond film than most of the efforts from the 1970s and early '80s.

Thursday
               Got a mark back for that first assignment that I submitted earlier in the week. Forty-nine out of fifty. Good. Here I was, worrying that I hadn't addressed the criteria properly. Onto the next one, but I think I'll sit down and start it on Monday.
Felt like a drink later that evening. Switched over to the Omega Railmaster. However, I have quite a few leather straps, so I decided to put one on this watch with the view of leaving it on till Summer in an effort to wear it out and see how long it lasts. I tend to wear my watches on bracelets in Summer, since they're prone to more exposure to water, whereas Winter is all about trying to stay dry. We'll see how long this strap lasts.

Later that evening, I felt like a drink, so I raided the liquor cabinet (man, everything is half-full or less!) and poured myself something a little different from the usual;

Today
           My wife had the day off, so we got on our bikes and headed to a nearby park which has an array of workout machines set up. If you go through these machines and do three set of ten repetitions, you don't tend to feel any strain, because you are essentially just using your own body weight. Actually, I  didn't feel any strain because I'm a skinny little dude. So, I went beyond doing ten reps of some of the exercises and that's when I began to feel a slight burn in my muscles (such as they are).

Well, that's another week done and dusted. I'm feeling a little more hopeful regarding work, despite what the newspapers are saying. This country is apparently headed towards 7% unemployment by next year. But I stopped believing everything I read in the papers years ago. Our mining industry has taken a nosedive in recent months thanks to China's ultra-competitive iron ore prices. That's what happens when you put all your eggs in one basket and rely on just one industry to support an entire country. However, politics is not my forte and I have very little interest in the subject, so I'll stop right there.
We're picking the kids up from school in a few hours. They think we're then heading off to view some houses that are up for sale. We're actually taking them to an afternoon screening of The Avengers: Age of Ultron, which was released yesterday.
Don't tell 'em.

Meanwhile, somebody will be at home, taking care of business;

Two meals a day, with a little afternoon snack thrown in, some lower-back and shoulder stretches throughout the day, and a helluva lot of cat-naps. What a friggin' life!

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Tomorrow (25th) is ANZAC Day here in Australia and New Zealand. It's where our nations commemorate the sacrifices and efforts of those who served in the Armed Forces in wartime. This year is of particular significance as it marks the 100th Anniversary of  the landing at Gallipoli in Turkey by ANZAC Forces and their allies (I think).

Further reading can be found on wikipedia via this link; www.wikipedia.com - Gallipoli Campaign

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

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

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

May 1, 2015, 12:29 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

- 1 egg (hard-boiled)     13 gms

- Almonds (handful)       3 gms

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

+ Skim Milk (250ml)      8 gms

+ 1 egg thrown in          13 gms

Total Protein = 51 gms

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!


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

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

May 8, 2015, 12:05 am

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

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Last Weekend

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

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

I wore the Submariner for most of the day;

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

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

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

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

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




 picture courtesy of www.quotesworthrepeating.com


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Have a great weekend, all!

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

May 14, 2015, 4:43 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thanks for reading!

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

May 22, 2015, 3:33 am

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Monday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

picture courtesy of http://watchesinmovies.info

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

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

Today
            Switched over to the Camy Club-Star;

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

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


SEVEN HOURS LATER (APPROX)

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

SEE YA'S!

 

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Happy Birthday, Mr Fleming...

May 28, 2015, 2:39 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Happy Birthday, Mr. Fleming.

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


                                                                          *******


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

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

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

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

June 8, 2015, 7:15 pm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So anyway...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1938
Holiday

Bringing Up Baby

1939

Gunga Din

Only Angels Have Wings

1940

His Girl Friday

The Philadelphia Story

My Favorite Wife

1941

Penny Serenade

Suspicion

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

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

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

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

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

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

This movie also marked Rita Hayworth's breakout role;

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

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

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

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

MISE-EN-SCENE

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

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


                                           Great scene arrangement

                                             Great lighting

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

The Resolution Starts Now: 4K Restorations from Sony Pictures

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

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

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

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

Thanks for reading!

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

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

June 12, 2015, 1:03 am

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

http://www.mcginnispaintings.com/

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

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Man, Doing a New Blog Banner Is Tricky!

June 19, 2015, 4:50 am

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

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Since I began this blog in May 2011, I've changed the banner picture at the top of the page each year. My first attempt was pretty basic. The photo consisted of nothing more than the edge of a typewriter, a couple of my wristwatches, a fountain pen, and a snippet of text from one of my Bond fan fictions. This, to me, seemed to give a good representation of the things that interested me at the time and I felt it would be cool to have a picture at the top of my blog.

I soon ran into some headaches when I uploaded the picture and found that the blog title overlapped into the darker portions of the photo, thus obscuring some letters of the title. So, some strategic placement of items in the frame was required before I made my next attempt. I had to leave a large portion of the photo blank so that the blog title would remain clearly readable. I had a nice, bold upper-case block letter font for the title, and I gave it an italic slant to give it an airport thriller kind of vibe. Here's the photo that I used;

And here's how it looked once it was uploaded onto the Blogger layout template;

It was a pretty amateurish attempt, but it did the job. I used an old manila folder for that creamy background, but neglected to position it correctly to hide the surface of the table underneath.

I left this banner up until early 2013, when I decided to take another crack at it. Took way too many photos before settling on one that I liked. I had my new Olympus EPL-5 Micro 4/3rds digital camera and this thing has some great effects settings in its Art Filter mode. So, I set the camera to 'Key Line' and got a nice, cartoony result. Here's the Italian version, courtesy of Google Translate;

Again, I had to keep a portion of the frame empty so as not to obscure the title, but I suppose that's part of the fun in taking these pictures. trying to cram as much visual information in them without cluttering it up and still leaving room for the title. 

Last year, I decided to change it again, but I thought I'd rearrange the composition of the shot. I spent a hot afternoon indoors with the venetian blinds drawn and spent probably far too much time on placement of items within the frame;

I liked the out-of-focus areas created by the Diorama setting, but I didn't like how the sunglasses looked on top of the typewriter. Then I tried another shot in Sepia;

Not bad, but I thought I might tire of it due to its monochromatic shades. So, I opted for the same photo in colour;

This one stayed up until last week, when I decided to upgrade the banner yet again. I really should have waited until the light was better because the end result was lacking a certain something, in my view;

A little too dark in places, not sharp enough, and I think there were other books that I wanted to include in the frame, to give a better overview of my reading tastes. So, I had a few errands to run earlier today and, when I got home, it was reasonably sunny outside (considering that Winter is well and truly here) so I busted out the camera and other bits and pieces and got to work.

A bit of cropping and resizing to arrive at this one;

Still not 100% crazy about this one. However, it will do. I don't have PhotoShop on my computer, so all I can really do is tweak the photo using Microsoft Picture. I have Picasa and IrfanView loaded, but I have never really sat down to mess with them enough to get the hang of them. If I was gonna get serious about it all, I'd perhaps get some form of photo stacking software for sharpening up every portion of the frame.

However, I think I'm happy with a photo if it's taken with enough natural light and I can fiddle with the contrast and brightness afterwards. 

Again, I'm not sure how much I like this one. I may take another crack at it later in the year when there's better sunlight available. 

Still, it's fun arranging these shots. Also, I think I'll use a different typewriter in the next one. This Quiet De Luxe keeps getting all the glory.

Thanks for reading!

Friday 26/6/15 - This Week's Wristwatches.

June 25, 2015, 7:32 pm

≫ Next: The Bond NATO Strap - As I Understand It.

≪ Previous: Man, Doing a New Blog Banner Is Tricky!

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Busy week. Much done, much more still to do, so I'll keep it short. One more assignment out of the way, six more to go. I have a 1200 word report that needs to be completed and, while it isn't a long assignment, I think that the research will end up taking longer than the actual report. Although, it will be a nice feeling when I finally finish it. It'll just require a little legwork on my part.

Kept messing with my blog banner photo;

I think I'll leave it alone for the time being. 

Wore the Submariner 5513 earlier in the week;

Did a little more handwriting practice in an effort to change my upper-case capitals;

Okay, I think the real trick for me will be to start off writing these letters slowly to begin with. This new upper-case letter 'T' seems to be easier to write as long as I write it slowly.

Right, I've just printed out the question sheet for the assignment I completed this week. Time to fill it in, scan it back into my computer, format the assignment, attach all screen-caps (not necessary, but it will provide proof that I actually searched and found the information required), and then submit it. 

After that, I think I'll slow right down and take my time shaving. I'm looking a little gruff right now.

Switched over to the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean a couple of day's ago. While the Submariner is a great watch, there are times when I need to keep track of the date. 

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!

The Bond NATO Strap - As I Understand It.

July 1, 2015, 5:25 am

≫ Next: Friday 6/7/2015 - An Olivetti Lettera 22 Arrives In Questionable Shape, House Auctions Really Bug Me, & This Week's Wristwatches.

≪ Previous: Friday 26/6/15 - This Week's Wristwatches.

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Right, now pay attention. The new Bond film, SPECTRE, is just around the corner (okay, so the corner's still some distance away, but November will be here before we know it) and I thought I'd take a crack at writing about the watch straps that have appeared on OO7's wrist in the early Bond films, and the subsequent legacy, if you will, that these simple watch straps have created in the years since we first saw them appear in Goldfinger back in 1964. 

Okay, with that brief intro out of the way, those of you who are still interested, feel free to read on. 

As the post title would suggest, this is no definitive text on the subject, but merely represents my own thoughts and opinions on the matter and, as such, it shouldn't be read as gospel since there are sure to be some more thoroughly researched and informative articles on the web about this topic. 

Anyway, here goes.

About ten years ago, I got myself a couple of 'Bond' NATO straps off the web. They looked like this strap here (right).

Thanks to the wonders of VHS video, we could all now pause and rewind this Bond movie to our heart's content. The resurgence in popularity of James Bond in the late 1990s, thanks to the Brosnan films, and the release of the entire Bond movie back-catalogue on DVD, caused British GQ Magazine to commission the production of a strap and run a competition where it would give it away to some lucky readers. I'm not 100% certain, but this could have been the first of these black and grey NATO straps that were produced.

Whoa! Slow down, teeritz. Just what exactly is a NATO strap? 

Oh, yeah, okay. The British Ministry of Defence put out a tender back in the early 1970s for a watchstrap which could be easily fitted to any standard 20mm lugged, conventional watch case used by British Forces. The strap had to be cheap, it had to be durable, and it had to be strong.

There were other design stipulations mentioned in the MoD tender, to do with material required, length, thickness, etc. If you want to read the final report, here's the link;

H-SPOT.net- Ministry of Defence- Watchstraps-2001- pdf doc

And so, the NATO strap was born. Now, given that we can see that under-hanging piece in the drawing above, I should point out that this is perhaps the most crucial design aspect of these straps. When fitted to your watch, the strap should pass underneath the case, like so;

So, for us mere mortals, these spring-bars tend to work well enough. They are pretty sturdy and they can withstand quite a bit of pressure during day-to-day civilian activities.  Here's a spring-bar, if you need a refresher. This one proved a little stubborn to remove one day, but it was nothing that a steady hand and a Bosch drill couldn't handle;







In the event that one of the spring-bars should come off, the strap will still be secured to the watch by the bar on the other side.

Of course, watches intended for military use tended to dispense with using anything like a spring bar and you will often find that solid bars will have been soldered to the watch case to reduce the risk of the watch coming off the wrist. Here's a military-issued Rolex Submariner 5517 with soldered bars;

Anyway, that's a quick primer on NATO straps.
Now, once DVD came along, it appeared that the original Goldfinger NATO strap was not merely black and grey striped, but in fact black and khaki brown witha thin red stripe running in between.
Thanks to that close-up of Bond's watch in the classic pre-credits sequence of the film...

...we now had a better idea of the colours of the watch strap attached to his Rolex Submariner 6538.

Off-topic- notice how the strap is narrow compared to the 20mm spacing between the lugs? My theory is that somebody on-set had to rush out and get a strap that would fit Connery's wrist. I've often read that this particular Rolex belonged to the film's producer, Albert R. Broccoli. However, he has never struck me as a dive watch kind of guy. I read a long time ago that the watch actually belonged to one of the crew, who was ex-Royal Navy. That makes more sense. Now, rather than attempt to remove links from the watch's bracelet, it would be a simpler process to remove the bracelet entirely (since all you really need is a safety pin) and slip the NATO strap through the spring-bars and then away you go. This strap, however, looks to be around 16mm wide. These straps were available from corner news-stands back in the 1960s and, given that your regular urban gent probably wore a plain dress watch, the chances are pretty good that these news-stands only carried straps that were either 16 or 18mm wide. These sizes would fit most watches  available at the time.
At any rate, that's my theory as to why we see Connery's watch 'under-strapped' in both Goldfinger and Thunderball. Granted, it's all based on speculation, but nobody associated with these early Bond films has ever provided a definitive answer. So, I suppose my guess is as good as anybody's. Maybe.

Before too long, it was on for young and old, as we saw a plethora of internet dealers selling what they all claimed to be the one true Bond NATO strap. I saw this one here (right) on a website and promptly ordered one. Even though the colours weren't entirely correct.

Just one other problem. It was a ZULU strap, not a NATO one. The ZULU strap is of a slightly different construction to the NATO. The hardware is different, consisting of larger, curved rings stitched into a single strap of thicker-than-a-NATO nylon. I don't mind ZULU straps, but I find that they are better suited to watches larger than 42mm in diameter. The larger shape of the rings make these straps look beefier than their NATO cousins and they can overpower the look of a smaller 40mm watch. Just my opinion.

Then, just when we all thought that DVD Hi-Def had given us the true colours of these straps, along came BluRay and suddenly, the colours provided us by DVD seemed a little off. It wasn't khaki brown, it was more of an olive drab hue between the black stripes. Anyhow, some time passed before I ended up getting a couple more NATOs. They were cheap enough, after all. The one on the left in this photo had the same colouring as the ZULU strap above, but it had the slimmer hardware and a sleeker fit on one of my other dive watches. The one on the right of the frame was a more correct colour combination. Black and olive drab stripes, with a thin strip of red thrown in. All was well in the world of Bond fans wanting to emulate the Goldfinger wristwatch look.

So, by now we had a number of internet watch dealers selling these new and more colour-correct straps, all claiming that they were selling the accurate Bond NATO strap as seen in Goldfinger. 

Granted, most sellers were charging anywhere between $12.oo to $16.oo, which was reasonable enough, considering how long these straps can last. However, there were other companies out in the World Wide Web who were selling their versions for forty US dollars. 

I may be a die-hard Bond fan, but I ain't crazy.

Of course, with so much information available on the internet, we soon began to see photos of Bond that we had never seen before. Here's one of Connery on-set, between takes (one imagines) of the famous "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!"scene in Goldfinger's secret lair;

Uh-oh, what have we here? That looks like a normal steel tang buckle. And what's that bit of fabric running across the strap? Is that a keeper?

So, it would seem that Bond did not wear a true NATO strap in the early films. It was just a plain nylon strap, similar in construction to a trouser belt. Of course, Connery couldn't have worn a NATO strap in Goldfinger in 1964 because the NATO strap was not commissioned by the British Ministry of Defence until the early 1970s, remember?
Suddenly, the small corner of the internet that cares about this stuff was, once again, in a flux. The company that was charging forty bucks for their straps brought out this new version. A bunch of other dealers commissioned the NATO strap manufacturer, Phoenix Straps in the UK, to produce this new, Bond-correct version. Me, sucker that I am, I just had to get one.

However, I didn't have BluRay, so I basically never got the memo about the true colours of Bond's strap. I found an eBay Seller and bought six of these straps (right). These are just one piece of nylon that threads underneath the case-back and has a keeper made from the same fabric. They fit great. But they're not exactly the right colours. Although, I don't mind them. They work very well on either the Submariner or my Omega Seamaster 300. And they were cheap enough at the time that I bought them. I think they were about eight bucks each. So, I didn't sweat it too much.
So now, we knew definitively that Bond didn't wear a NATO strap in Goldfinger. And, for me, all thoughts turned back to those news-stands of the '60s. I could just imagine a cheap plastic display case pinned up on the wall, next to packets of Players Navy Cut cigarettes and musk flavoured Life Savers, with a variety of cheap, multi-coloured nylon straps nestled within it. It made perfect sense to me. Back during my decade of selling watches, I had my fare share of customers who would walk in and say; "I'm on my way to a work meeting and my watch strap looks a little tatty. Have you got any replacement straps?" 
I would show them a range of generic leather strapsthat we had for just this type of situation. I could remove the customer's worn or broken strap and fit a new one onto their watch within two or three minutes. Even less if they were in a real hurry.

The last time I watched Thunderball, I again saw this 'under-strapped' Rolex Submariner;

Man, I hate that.  have seen some folks using the same sized strap on their own Submariners, in an effort to maintain authenticity. But I think that's going too far.

Sometime late last year, I got this strap (right). Based on all the screen-caps that I've seen over the last couple of years, this seems to be the closest match to what appeared in the films. Although, I'm reliably informed that the buckle is not exactly like Connery's. But by this stage, I've pretty much given up. I'll wait until I've worn out a few of these straps before I contemplate buying any more.

The beauty of these straps lies in their simplicity. Whether you opt for one of these Bond Nylon straps or a NATO/ZULU, they are easy to attach to your watch and make for a very comfortable fit.

If you wear them for a while and they get dirty, just throw them in the washing machine with the rest of your laundry. They'll come out looking new again.
The subject of NATO/Nylon straps comes up fairly regularly on wristwatch forums. Consensus is clearly divided on these straps. Many folks will argue that they can make a watch look cheap; "How can you put a cheap-assed nylon strap on a watch that costs thousands?", they argue.
My response is always the same; "A cheap-assed nylon strap is what holds you firmly in the driver's seat of a two hundred thousand dollar Ferrari."

The new Bond film, SPECTRE, will be released later this year. Among Bond nerds who are also into wristwatches, forum chatter always turns to second-guessing about what wristwatch OO7 will wear in the next film. First pics of location shooting began to appear on the Web a few months ago. www.007.com teased us with this image;

The fashionistas began to dissect Bond's outfit and sunglasses. The gun fans quickly identified OO7's choice of pistol (Heckler & Koch VP9, in case you're wondering).
We Bond/wristwatch nerds got straight to work on the watch.
Given the angle of his left wrist in this picture, there wasn't much to go on, but it was enough. The strap looked like a NATO, based on the strip of steel running across the band. Hard to tell what watch he was wearing, but the consensus was that it would either be a Seamaster Planet Ocean or the recently released Seamaster 300 Master Co-Axial. Both of these watches are made by Omega who, as you may know, have been supplying cinematic Bond's wristwatches since Goldeneye in 1995.

Other pictures soon began to emerge, and it was the photos from the Rome shoot that laid any strap speculation to rest. We still couldn't make out the model of wristwatch (although five'll get you ten that it'll be the new Seamaster 300), but the strap was clearly a NATO with a black and grey stripe running through it. Yep, that's right. Bond would be wearing a strap with the colours that we all thought were the ones on his watch in Goldfinger.
I can understand why Omega created this strap. These two colours are perhaps perfectly suited to the colouring of the watch itself, whether it be the Planet Ocean or the Seamaster 300.
Nevertheless, Omega have now created a watchband that will become part of film-Bond lore. A watchband in colours based on an error of perception, thanks to the low definition renderings of VHS. Bond's watch in SPECTRE will look something like this;

What a long, strange trip it's been. From the first few NATO straps that were readily available on the internet ten or fifteen years ago, through all the various shades of military browns and greens that were added, to the inclusion of the thin red line, we have now arrived back where we started. Now, I won't be rushing out to get a genuine Omega NATO strap. They're too rich for my blood. Especially when one can get something very similar for a fraction of the cost.
In all fairness to Omega, their straps are of a much nicer quality than the average fifteen dollar version. The nylon is a tighter weave, the feel is closer to the smoothness of a new car seat-belt, and the hardware is finished quite nicely too. So I guess that would explain the difference in pricing, and I'm sure that these straps will sell very well once the film is released.

At any rate, I'm all NATO'd up for the time being. With the Submariner, I can leave it on its steel bracelet, when I'm in a Live And Let Die kind of mood, or I can slip the what-is-now-known-as the TrueBond nylon strap through it if I have to plant some plastique explosives on some drums of fuel to blow up some illegal heroin in Cuba in 1964.

Although, given my exciting lifestyle, I'll probably be wearing them when I have to vacuum under the couch or put out the recycling bin every second Thursday.

Either way, I think I've got it covered.

I'll leave you all with one last picture, this one featuring international financier, Arpad Busson, who wears a nice vintage Rolex Submariner on a 'cheap-assed' NATO strap;

Yes. That works. That works very well indeed.


Thanks for reading!

Friday 6/7/2015 - An Olivetti Lettera 22 Arrives In Questionable Shape, House Auctions Really Bug Me, & This Week's Wristwatches.

July 2, 2015, 8:58 pm

≫ Next: The Typewriter Collection No. 18 - Olivetti Lettera 22, circa 1962

≪ Previous: The Bond NATO Strap - As I Understand It.

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Last weekend

Went to an auction. We were interested in this house, despite the fact that it would need some work to make it liveable. Speaking to the real estate agent over the last few weeks, he indicated that the property would fetch somewhere in the high sixes. Okay, I think we can cope with that, considering how much we'd have to sink into the place afterwards. Not to mention the $37,000 Stamp Duty that would have to be added to the sale price. 

So, I get to the auction. The agent goes through his schtick about "Position, position, position", etc,  and the auction then gets underway; "Can we have an opening bid on this property?", he asks the crowd. 

And some guy to my right blurts out; "Six hundred and eighty!"

What. The. Hell?!!! A few more bids and I'm out of the running. The place ends up selling for over $800,000. 

One of the agents comes up to me afterwards. "Any questions?", she asks. 

"Yeah, why'd it sell for so much?", I say. That shuts her up. 

The hunt continues. We are in the middle of a "housing bubble" at the moment here in Australia. Home loan interest rates are sitting around 2%, which means that people are borrowing larger amounts from the banks, and bidding higher amounts at auction. That house was not worth the price that it sold for. Six months ago, it would have fetched around six hundred, six-fifty. However, people are getting desperate to get into the housing market and they're willing to spend more. 

We have a couple of options; 

Continue renting and wait for this bubble to burst. Could be six months, could be twelve.

Cast our net out a little wider and look for something a bit further out than we had first planned. As long as it's close to public transport so that the kids can get to school under their own steam. That would be preferable.

Anyway, as I say, the hunt continues. 

I wore the Submariner early in the week (old photo);

I spotted an Olivetti Lettera 22 on eBay earlier in the week. Here's the seller's pic;

Looked good. Seller stated that it was in working order. So I bid on it and was successful. The typewriter arrived earlier today and this is how it looked;

My fellow Typospherians, y'all can see how there's a little more of a gap between the edge of the frame and the shift key, not to mention the way the ribbon cover now sits. 

Personally, I think it was damaged in transit by our wonderful Australia Post. Now, I must mention that they have been fine in the past, despite the fact that I had a run-in with the delivery guy one morning over the way he tends to casually toss parcels onto our front porch with a disgusting regularity. Granted, I'm not buying Faberge Eggs, but there have been times when my wife or I have made eBay purchases of items that were reasonably fragile and I have cringed at times over the way these items were delivered.

I have a plan. It involves a door frame and a car-jack. With the typewriter somewhere in-between;

Now, last time I checked, I remembered that I'm no metallurgist, so I don't know how much stress I can put on this typewriter frame before it either eases back into its approximate original shape or it snaps in half.
What say you? Should I take a crack (bad choice of word) at it?
Mechanically, it works just fine, so if the frame does break, then I'll have a nice parts machine for anybody who wants it.
If the frame holds, however, and ends up looking a little better, then I think I'll be giving this shell a new paint job. I have a can of bright yellow spray-paint which would make this Glasgow-built machine look more like the older Lett 22s from the Fifties.
I'll have to wait and see.

Switched over to the Omega Seamaster Planet Ocean (old photo);

Other than that, not much else going on. The job hunting continues, as does the house hunting. The kids are on school holidays for another week, the cat is her usual glamorous self (old photo, man, I'm just not trying today, am I?);

Have a good weekend, and thanks for reading!

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The Typewriter Collection No. 18 - Olivetti Lettera 22, circa 1962

July 9, 2015, 3:36 am

≫ Next: Friday 24/7/2015 - Houses, Health Checks, Bond Updates & This Week's Wristwatches

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I've had my Lettera 32 for over thirty years and it served me well during my school years. In recent months, I began thinking about maybe snagging an earlier Olivetti, namely a Lettera 22. Design-wise, it bears a great similarity to the 32. If anything, the 32 looks like a slimmed-down version of the 22. 

One model came up on eBay and I began the watching process. It got down to the last 60 seconds of the auction and the highest bid was $19.50. I put in a maximum bid of $43.oo in the final thirty seconds and then waited another 22 seconds before tapping the 'Submit' button. Ten seconds later, I was the winning bidder. It cost me $21.oo + $10.50 postage. I could live with that. 

Here's one of the Seller's pics;

Looked okay. The keytops had some crud on them, but I figured they'd (hopefully) clean up alright. Four days later, it arrived. I cut open the cardboard box to find a bare minimum of padding surrounding the blue-green Olivetti carry case with its dark blue stripe running down the middle. 

I gently pulled the case out of the box to find that the zipper was completely undone. Reason being that it no longer zipped up. So, the typewriter was able to freely slide around inside the case. 

I pulled the machine out of its case and set it down on the dining room table. It looked like this;

Notice how the ribbon cover is misaligned. See also that the frame around the keybank on the left-hand side is further from the Shift key than the other side. This thing had been dropped in transit. 

The cardboard box that it arrived in showed no dents or signs of abuse. I can only assume that the box was handled a little too rough during transit and the typewriter bounced around inside its unzippered case. I sent the seller a couple of pics showing how it looked. He replied next day, saying he hoped I got some resolution with Australia Post. I had planned to put in a complaint with our postal service, but they make it a very convoluted process. 

I replied to the seller, saying that I didn't know if he'd ever shipped a typewriter before, but they do require the use of some scrunched-up newspaper in order to prevent this sort of thing from happening. Especially if the case doesn't zip up. 

Needless to say, I haven't heard back from the seller. I don't think I'll leave him any feedback, good or bad, but if he contacts me to ask why I haven't left it, I will ask him just what kind of feedback he'd like me to leave, considering how he packed the item. 

Anyway, I looked at the typewriter for a few minutes and began thinking of how I could reshape the frame. Granted, I doubted that it would go back to its perfect original shape, but I felt that I could get it looking better than it was. My first idea was a slightly complicated one that would involve placing the frame down in a doorway against one frame and positioning a car-jack against the opposite frame of the door and then seeing if I could slowly re-form the Lettera 22's frame. 

Then, I had a better idea. Why don't I just grab that IKEA tool kit that I got for Mrs. Teeritz last year and just have a bash at the frame with the rubber-tipped hammer?

Yeah, that would be a simpler and faster process. Worst-case scenario? The frame snaps. Still, this thing didn't cost me too much, so I figured it was worth a shot. 

Here's what I typed up yesterday. It's a little repetitive. Sorry;

It certainly looked better by the time I was done. The colour was now beginning to bug me. Because the shape of the 22 is so similar to the later model 32, I wanted to differentiate this machine in some way. But more about that later. There was one other thing wrong with this typewriter. As you may know, you only have to undo four screws in order to remove the shell off these typers. There are four metal brackets where these screws are located. These brackets hold the shell to the internal framework. However, one of the brackets...

...had sheared off. It began to look clearer to me at this point. The machine had received a hard knock on the right-hand side of the frame near the Shift key. This would have caused the bracket over on the left-hand side (near the tension control switch under the ribbon cover) to snap off. 

The one on the right-hand side was still intact;

Now, unbeknownst to me at the time, this snapped-off bracket was making it very difficult to lift off the ribbon cover. I was worried that the cover might bend or snap if pulled too hard. I decided to leave it be and ponder on it for a few days.

Back to the colour of this machine. It is that famous Olivetti shade of teal blue or green, depending on your colour perception. The colour that was used on a zillion Lettera 32s. I wanted to change it and, as luck would have it, I had a can of spray-paint in the garage that would be just about perfect for this machine. 

I covered the badging and sound-proofing felt with masking tape and spent a couple of days painting the frame. First coat left a few streaks as I got the hang of using the can. I sanded the entire frame lightly, removing some of the new colour, and some of the old colour, which exposed the bare metal underneath. The paint I used was self-priming, too. Next day, I gave it another coat. Four hours later, a light touch-up here and there. Later that night, I brought it inside and left it in the lounge room where it would be warmer overnight than the garage where I had left it the day before. 

Next day, I re-attached it to the typewriter and it now looked like this. Ciao, bellezza! ;

Because I thought it would be cool to have this classic Italian typewriter mimic this classic Italian sports car, a 1973 Maserati Merak  / picture courtesy of www.wallpaperup.com ;

I was glad to see that the stains came off the keytops easily, too. All they needed was a light brush-down. I often wonder why people sell stuff on eBay without cleaning it up a little.

Further handling of the frame as I installed and removed it a few times did cause some paint to scrape away here and there, but that doesn't bother me too much. Now that I know how   simple it is to remove the shell, I can always give it a more permanent going over some day, if the mood strikes me, or if the machine ends up looking too  tattered. 

                                                                                    
 It turned out okay. The coats were fairly even, and I was able to keep the colour off the badging;

Now, to tackle the missing bracket problem. I went to my local hardware store and picked up a small metal bracket and some nuts and bolts. If I was going to fix this thing, I knew I would have to make a slight cosmetic change to the shell. 

I got home, got out the tin snips and got to work on the metal bracket. I cut it into a smaller strip of metal, seen here in the bottom right of this picture, next to the screwdriver head;

The other side looked like this;

I almost wasn't going to bother trying to fix this, but I had noticed a little bit of 'play' in the frame on the left-hand side when any pressure was placed on it. I had briefly contemplated trying to re-attach the broken piece of steel, but nah. That seemed like it would be a bigger job than I could handle. 

Out came the drill. The new bracket was already pre-drilled in parts, but I needed to make the hole on top of it larger so that I could fit the original rubber washer back into it. It got a little tricky here. Rather than use a pair of pliers to hold the piece of steel while I drilled, I instead just held onto it by hand. As soon as I started drilling, the bracket caught on the drill-bit, effectively becoming a propeller. With the imagined result.

Three Mickey Mouse Band-Aids later, and I was back in business, this time with a pair of pliers in my hand. I then wrestled the  rubber washer into this new, larger hole and screwed it into place. 

Now, the slightly trickier part. This new, thin steel bracket extended down between the shell and the internal frame-work. I used a pencil to mark where the bracket sat and then I unscrewed the frame (again!) and stepped outside with the frame and the drill. I would really have one chance to get this right.  I drilled a small hole into the side of the typewriter shell and through the steel bracket.

Once that was done, I  gently screwed one of the small screws into the holes and fastened it with one of the bolts. The screw was a tad too long and was scraping against the internal framework, but the tin-snips solved that problem quick-smart. Now, it looked like this;

 Here's a slightly more detailed pic, although it keeps coming up sideways;

I'm tempted to paint that screw red, just to give it a little more of that '70s sports car vibe. Once this piece was secure, I screwed in the remaining three points and, lo and behold, the ribbon cover now comes off as easy as it should. 

So, after all this palaver, was it all worth the effort? I have to say I love how this thing types. It certainly feels very similar to my Lettera 32. However, what I really like about this machine is the 12pt sized font. My Lett 32 is a 10pt, as are quite a few of my machines. I've realised that I prefer  the smaller 12pt size. Although, in saying that, I'll never get rid of the Lettera 32. Too much history with that typewriter. Even if it does need a serious clean-out of all the accumulated dust inside it. 

Now, the only thing left to do is maybe change the zipper on the case or perhaps make an entirely new case for the machine. Out of timber. Yeah, maybe I should try putting a new zipper on the existing case. 

Here's one more shot of it, showing the chipped paint.

And that's it. Now, I'll have to move a typewriter or two as part of my 'one-in, one-out' collecting strategy. 

Once the cuts heal.

Thanks for reading!

* Special thanks to Reverend Ted for his brilliant site, The Typewriter Database.com , which helped me pinpoint the year of manufacture.

PayPalled you a Bond Fan's donation earlier today, sir ;-)

Friday 24/7/2015 - Houses, Health Checks, Bond Updates & This Week's Wristwatches

July 24, 2015, 2:01 am

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-Prologue-

Back in 1990 when I was in the market to buy my first car, I went to see a nearby dealer who specialised in spare parts for BMW and Mercedes-Benz. He had a 1970 Mercedes-Benz 280S for sale. The price was six and a half grand. I had a look at it and took it for a test-drive. It was a white 2.8 litre four-speed manual and it drove very smoothly. 

About a week later, I went to take another look at it, this time with my friend Daniel. He took it for a spin, and when he got back, the dealer said to me; 'Okay, so are you interested in this car?'

I told him I had to think about it. Daniel and I left his premises.

'What are you doin', Ritz? Do you wanna buy it?', he asked me as I fished out a pack of Marlboro Lights, offered him one, and then lit it with my brushed steel Zippo lighter.

'Man, it's all happening too fast!', I answered as I took a drag of my own cigarette.

'These things always do' , he responded. 'He's got the car for sale, it's a good car, you've got the money, so what are you waiting for?'

We finished our smokes, went back into the dealer's shop and I filled out the paperwork. Next day, I went back and handed over sixty-five hundred dollars and drove home in my new (to me) car. 

Daniel was right. These things do happen fast.

*******

Last Thursday
                       I got a call from a real estate agent.  There was a house up for sale. Would I like to take a look at it? I asked about the price range and was taken aback by the vendor's asking price, which was the minimum that they would accept.
Things began happening quickly once I hung up the phone. I sent my wife a text message to see if she wanted to go take a look at this house later that day. She was working until 2:oopm. I had scheduled the viewing for 2:30. The kids had to be picked up from school at 3:oo.

We drove out to the place later that day. The agent was standing out front and we made our introductions. He explained to us that the vendors were home, but they would be happy for us to take a tour of their house. So, in we went.
The bedrooms were a tad smaller than what we have in our house. That's no big deal.
There are two lounge/living rooms in this place. Nice.
There's a dining room that can easily be used as a study. Fantastic.
The master bedroom has a small en suite and is situated away from the kid's rooms. Cool.
The house has insulation in the ceiling AND the walls. Pow!
There's plenty of storage space in this house. Wonderful.
We met the vendors. They were a lovely couple, and had very obviously looked after and maintained this home since they had it built back in 1973. Yes, it's a very '70s design, with lots of space, high ceilings and built-in furniture in some rooms. I christened this house 'The Concorde', based on its sloping roof, which reminded me of the airliner's wingspan.
We thanked the vendors and the real estate agent, and headed off to pick up the kids.
Now all we had to do was come up with an offer on this house.

The way this agency works is like this; They tell you the price range that the vendor is seeking. You then put in an offer via silent bid. Once a few of these bids are collected, each one is placed into an envelope for the vendor to look at and decide.
It is a little nerve-wracking because, as a buyer, you can't help but think that you're offering way more for a house than you might pay if it had gone to auction.
Later that night, my wife and I busted out pen, paper, and calculator and did some number crunching.
We weighed up our options.
Here's the kindergarten version;

Buy a lower-priced house that needs work;

   Price range - $3.50 to $4.00
   Leaving ourselves with $1.00 to $2.00 to spend on repair/renovation costs (if it needs extensive work done or we want to add an extra room.)

OR

Buy a house that doesn't need much done to it;

   Price range - $4.50 to $5.50
   Leaving us with .50 cents in the bank, but the house doesn't need anythingdone to it.

Most houses that we have seen in the last three months have either been renovated to the nines, or have been absolute hovels that would need a lot of time, trouble and money just to make them liveable.
We had gotten a little desperate in recent weeks. Pricing has gone through the roof since we sold our own house earlier this year.
After much calculation, we arrived at a figure we were willing (and able) to offer on this house. It was about fifteen grand beyond what we had considered our absolute maximum.

Last Friday
                  We went to see the real estate agent. 'Give me all your money', he said. We hashed out prices. I understood the agent's reasoning. I mean, beyond his wanting to make himself a higher commission. This isn't like a normal auction. We can't hear or see what somebody else is bidding on this place, so we have to bid as high as we possibly can without resorting to dog food for dinner for the next decade.
I looked at my wife, she looked at me. We both knew that our offer would be lower than what other bidders would offer, based on the ridiculously high bids that we have seen at auctions lately and the fact that home loan interest rates are still at a low 2%.
Also, my wife works part-time, and I'm still looking for work. We are indeed hobbled by our current circumstances.
She and I had agreed not to let emotion get into the mix, but I had already day-dreamed about us sitting down in the comfy lounge room, with the heating on, to watch a DVD while the kids sat in the other living area with Playstation controllers in their hands.
We had already gone beyond what we had planned to spend on the place.
However, sometimes, you just gotta bet with your balls.
'I can take on a few extra shifts at work', she said.
We bumped up our offer by another three grand.
The agent explained that he would submit all offers to the vendors next day and he would call us by 3:00pm Saturday to let us know if we were successful with our bid.

Last Saturday
                      We went to view a property that was for sale above a cafe. My wife used to live above a shop back in her twenties and this place reminded her of that time. I hated it. It didn't feel 'homey' to me.
We got home and had lunch. The time slowly rolled around to 3:00pm. My phone didn't ring. The minutes ticked on to 3:30pm. No phone call.
Ah well, maybe the vendors are still reviewing the offers. Maybe they've decided to think about it over the weekend and give their decision on Monday. That's what I was thinking, but by four o'clock, I figured we had probably been outbid.
My phone rang at around 4:30pm. It was the agent; 'Did you place an order for No. 55 XXXXXXX Street in XXXXXX?', he asked.
Two thoughts raced through my mind right then- "We got it!!!"
Or
"This guy has the nastiest sense of humour I've ever come across."
Not wanting to get my hopes up, and in an effort to play along, I responded; 'Yes I did, but I was waiting on information regarding availability of stock.'
I glanced over at my wife, who was sitting on the couch looking at me with a smirk of anticipation.
'Congratulations, they accepted your offer', the agent said.
'Oh, fantastic!', I replied, but I don't recall what else I said. I pictured us packing everything up in this house that we've lived in for the last fifteen years. This house that has served us well in that time, but grew too small as the kids grew larger.
The agent went on; 'They liked you and XXXXXX, and they wanted you to have the house. They said they hope you'll have as many happy years there as they've had.'
Two days earlier, we didn't know this house existed.
These things happen fast.

Monday
             I had a doctor's appointment. This was a biggie. It was a free Health Assessment Check for 45 to 49 year-olds. It was basically the closest you can get these days to asking your doctor for a complete physical, like you see in old movies. They'd sent me the invitation months ago and I kept putting it off.
Anyway, I turned up in track pants, T-shirt and pullover and away we went. They shaved part of my chest so that they could attach the ECG sensors to check my heart rate. I looked like Steve Carell in The 40 Year Old Virgin. They attached inflatable sleeves to both arms and ankles to check my blood pressure. They gave me a Spirometric test to measure lung strength. They checked my height- 5'10". Hmm, I think I've shrunk half an inch in recent years.
Then I spoke to my doctor. The blood sample that I gave them a week earlier shows a reduction in white blood cells (a condition known as Neutropenia) which makes me a little more susceptible to infection. Great.
And I was low on Vitamin D too. He suggested a follow-up appointment in a month. And then he said; 'Right, your prostate.'
I should have known, given the blue rubber gloves he was wearing.
'Oh, really?', I said. 'I thought the blood test was for prostate.'
'Yes, but it's not as exact. We don't have to if you don't want to.'
'Okay, so the glove test is more thorough than the blood test alone?', I asked.
'Exactly. But looking at the test results...' (He gave me some numbers that I can't recall. Basically, I'm not at risk of prostate cancer just yet.)...'But we could do it at a later stage, given your low numbers. I'm not concerned about it', he added.
'I got no real problem with having it done, but I'm just not in the uh...right mindset for it today', I said.
'It's up to you. We don't have to', he stated.
'Okay, how's about we pencil it in for twelve months from now?', I asked.
'Yes, that would be fine. It's not urgent', he said.
'Okay, cool. And I'll bring flowers, too.'
I was wearing the 36.2mm Omega Seamaster AquaTerra Co-Axial;

I got out of there and headed home. I had to get to the real estate agent's office to pay the deposit on the house. I got home, flicked on the coffee machine and got changed. I was going out to hand over a cheque for tens of thousands of dollars. I had to look the part. I had to look like a player. But I wanted to look like an old-school one. So, off came the AquaTerra and on went the circa 1962 Omega Seamaster Automatic;

Wednesday
                   Big Bond day today. I pre-ordered a copy of the new Bond book, Trigger Mortis, by Anthony Horowitz, due out in October. This copy is numbered and signed. Nifty! Nothing to do now except wait.
Later in the afternoon came the news that the new full trailer for SPECTRE had gone online;

http://www.007.com - New SPECTRE Trailer Released

Our internet allowance for the month (50Gb) ran out a week ago and has been running at dial-up speed ever since. It might have something to do with my daughter spending way too much time on Instagram since she got herself an iPod Touch. We've read her the riot act a few times. I'm happy to report that she's been using her iPod for listening to music, rather than anything else, since I told her what a time-trap social media sites can be. They did a survey in her classroom a few weeks ago and she learned that most of her classmates are on three or four different social media sites. These girls are twelve years old.
My wife and I explained to our princess that we didn't care if other parents allowed their children access to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. We reminded her that we run our household a little more 20th Century than most people - 'See all those typewriters, Missy?' - and we try not to rely too heavily on the internet and social media.
Anyway, I had a new Bond movie trailer to watch. On dial-up speed, it took about ten minutes to load up. Hard to know how this film will go, based on a two-and-a-half minute trailer, but I think it's gonna be awesome!

Director Sam Mendes announced earlier this week that he would not direct any more Bond films. He cited the commitment and work involved in helming one of these films takes him away from his theatre projects and he gets 'pilloried' by his friends for directing a Bond film.
Well, Mr Mendes, Ian Fleming himself was often derided by his literary friends for writing the Bond novels. You have Skyfall on your resume now and, for better or worse, you will always be remembered for having made a great Bond film. As well as American Beauty, The Road To Perdition and Revolutionary Road, to name a few.

Directing a Bond film is not slumming it. It's adding to the mythology of an enduringly popular fictional character. And something like a Bond movie does what movies have always done- help people to forget about their own problems for a couple of hours while entertaining them in the process.
Oh, and Happy Birthday (the BIG Five-Oh!) for next week, Mr Mendes!

Being in Bond mode, I switched over to the Rolex Submariner 5513;


Today
           Had an appointment with my solicitor. Paperwork to be signed. Back to the business-like Omega AquaTerra;

While driving home, my phone beeped. I pulled over and checked the message;

Full blood count slightly 
abnormal- please make an 
appointment to discuss.
Dr XXXX XXXXXXXX

I called the doctor's surgery and made an appointment for midday on Monday.


' Don't worry about it, worry at it.'
        
         - Vice Admiral (Ret.) Sir Miles Messervy KCMG, better known as 'M'.

There's no way I plan to spend this weekend worrying about my blood test results. I'll know more about it this time on Monday.
As I've gotten older, I've tried to worry less about stuff until I have all the facts. Sometimes it's an easy process, and sometimes it ain't.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend, all!

Friday 31/7/2015 - Teeth, Pills & This Week's Wristwatches

July 30, 2015, 9:34 pm

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The 36.2mm Omega Seamaster AquaTerra Co-Axial with a 1970 edition of The Spy Who Loved Me (1962). It would appear that I only have one copy of this particular title. May have to rectify that one day.

A 1957 edition of Live And Let Die (1954), seen here with the Submariner 5513. I figured I'd put this title together with this watch, since it's the model Roger Moore wore in the movie.

After the doctor's appointment, I had to head over to the Pathology Department to give them another blood sample. The nurse filled a syringe that was the size of a packet of Life Savers.

'Did you leave me any?', I asked after she withdrew the needle. 

Got home and made a dental appointment for Tuesday. Looks like I'll be losing a little more blood before this week is over. 

Tuesday
             Initial Consultation at the oral surgeon. He looked at the x-ray and said he would have no problem removing this tooth. I had a crown fitted some years ago and the upper portion of it dislodged at some point, leaving only the base. My regular dentist recommended removal of the remaining portion. The only problem was that one of the roots had snapped and he, therefore, didn't want to attempt it, so he made out a referral for me to see this guy.
'We could probably remove it now', he said matter-of-factly.

Life is only going to get a little busier over the next couple of months. I spent most of last night worrying about my blood test results. The internet is a terrible thing. However, to deal with as many issues as life throws out, I figured I may as well have this procedure done here and now.
'Well, if you don't foresee it being difficult, then I suppose we might as well', I replied.
Took him about ten minutes, if that. He wrote out a prescription for some pills to deal with any potential 'dry socket' and away I went.
My face is still numb as I write this. I'm still wearing the Submariner 5513;

Seen here with a 1963 printing of For Your Eyes Only, a short story collection first published in 1960.
That's tea in the glass. I ain't wasting scotch for a photo.






Wednesday
                  Spent an hour at the local library, or rather, seated in the foyer of the local library. I got there at 11:00am. On Wednesdays, this library doesn't open till 1:00pm. Anyway, I could still access the Wi-Fi from the foyer, so that's what I did.



I was wearing the Omega Speedmaster Professional, pictured with a 1963 edition of Fleming's third Bond novel, Moonraker (1955);



Thursday
               The morning was quiet. The rest of the day would be busier. I picked my daughter up from school at midday. She had an orthodontist appointment to have braces fitted. The doctor would be taking plaster impressions of her bite today. After that, we went home and waited for my wife to get home from work. We then went to see the house we had purchased. We had a few questions for the vendors regarding some minor details like modem location, solar panels, heating, etc. Then we had to take our son to the orthodontist so that he could get his braces tightened.It's been a good week for dentists, that's for sure. Speaking of which, I'd better pop a couple of aspirin. My tooth is a'hurtin'.

I switched from the Speedmaster to the Omega Railmaster. Today's book is a 1966 copy of Thunderball (1961). I do like these covers. Many elements from the book are featured in the photograph.





 Today
          Spent a couple of hours at the library, using their internet. Our new 'net plan starts tomorrow. That'll be nice. Tooth still aches a little, but the sun's out. I'm thinking that Spring may start a little early this year. From all reports, though, we could be in for a very hot Summer. Suits me. I've been taking Vitamin D supplements all week. Might be nice to just sit outside and let Mother Nature supply it to me free of charge.

Still had the Omega Railmaster on. Here it is, next to a 1964 (Eighth Impression) hardback copy of On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963). The cover artwork was done by the legendary Richard Chopping. The camera's Art Filter was set to 'Key Line', which produces a nice animation cell effect.

Here's a similar shot in the standard Auto setting. As I said, the sun was out.

This particular copy of the book is an ex-library edition that I snapped up second-hand. Don't remember where. Inside, it still had the 'Due Date' slip and the typewritten library card holder.

Well, kids, that's another week done. Things are only going to get busier for a while. Yes, I keep saying that, and I keep turning up the following week, but I think I just may be too busy to do a weekly update for a while. Four assignments left to do and then this course is over with. Three of the assignments are fairly straight-forward. The fourth one will require some proper research before it's finished. And then, that's it. Let's just see how much of them I can get done over the coming week or two.

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!

Friday 7/8/2015 - This Week's WristWatch, Complete With More Bond Covers.

August 7, 2015, 12:32 am

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I've never been one for multi-tasking. I don't believe in its effectiveness. At least, not for me. I've always tended to give my fullest attention to one task at a time and, while the end result wasn't always 100%, it was most often done to the best of my abilities.
Which is why I've found it quite a juggling act to deal with study, job searching and house hunting seemingly all at the same time.
Thankfully, the search for a house is over. All that's be left to do will be to pack up everything in our current digs, clean the place for the new owners, clean our new place, and then move our stuff into it. Oh, some pretty serious culling of things will occur during this time as well. The new place is about 130 square metres larger than our current house, but we have no intention of filling up every little corner of the place with 'stuff'.
So, that's one major life-changer out of the way. This week has also seen me complete two more assignments for school. So basically, all I'm left with now is two more assignments, one short online quiz, and a 1200 word report, which will probably blow out to around fifteen hundred words by the time I'm done. And then, that'll be it for this course. It will be done and dusted. Bit of luck, I should be finished with all of this in about a week or two. In the meantime, the job hunting continues.
At any rate, I'm not in much of a mood for a long post, so this one will basically be pictures.
Wristwatch-wise, I've stuck with the one watch for the entire week- The 36.2mm Omega Railmaster Co-Axial.
Okay, let's see if I got the order of days right.

Last weekend

                      I wore this watch on its metal bracelet. Then I got to thinking. I have a bunch of leather straps that I have rarely used. Why not put one on this watch for the rest of Winter to really put it through its paces? Give it some true wear and tear. 

I began to think about my watch-wearing habits. I wear certain watches depending on mood. Which is fine, but then I thought about metal bracelets versus leather straps and I decided I could extend the life of a strap by wearing it over the Winter months when it would be less likely to get wet (intentionally) and wouldn't be exposed to perspiration to the same extent as it would in Summer. So, I sifted through the straps and fished out a ZRC (Zuccolo Rochet Company) brown leather one with contrasting stitch. This particular strap is calf or buffalo (not sure which) and it has an alligator or crocodile (not sure which) pattern embossed on it. 

Watch straps can be quite expensive, for what they are. A decent alligator strap can cost you around $350-$450 AUD, depending on the brand. Forget that! For twice that amount, I can get a pair of alligator shoes! Which would utilise a whole lot more alligator skin than a watch strap. 

Anyway, on went this faux alligator strap, and it gave the watch a nice vintage tool-watch vibe. A tool watch, by the way, is where the watch performs another function besides simple time-telling. Dive watches (with rotating bezels), GMT watches (able to display a second time-zone), and chronographs (stopwatch function) are all tool watches as I see it. 

Here it is, with a short bit that I wrote for an eBay listing to show the typewriter's font. Not crazy about this writing, but it was a first draft, written over a few minutes. 

I love the contrasting stitching on the strap. It follows on from the dial's hour markers and the Luminova inlays of the hands. Over time, of course, this stitching will darken as it picks up dirt and dust, but this strap is now nicely worn-in, as you can see by the curvature of it. Any new watch strap will normally require a week or two to settle in to the curve of one's wrist. 

Monday

              Seen here with two of the recent Penguin Classics editions of Fleming's works. This 2010 edition of From Russia With Love (1957) was my 'car-copy'. I would read a few pages each day while I waited for the kids to finish school. Took me about six months to read it that way. I thought of doing the same with the 2009 edition of Casino Royale (1953), but I only re-read this book a few years ago and it's still pretty fresh in my memory.

Tuesday
              Don't remember what I did. Never mind. The 1965 editions of For Your Eyes Only (1960) and On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1963) featured brilliant cover designs by Raymond Hawkey. More about him later.
The  2002 edition of Octopussy & The Living Daylights (1962-1966) had some pretty lacklustre cover artwork in my opinion. Although, these editions did have their type re-set.
When I worked at Borders Bookstore back in 1998, I was the Genre Fiction Supervisor and was responsible for the crime section (my favourite). I saw that the Fleming books back then had some average artwork on the covers (far right), but the real tragedy had to do with the typesetting of the text. These editions were published by Coronet and the type looked like somebody had taken an old paperback copy from a second-hand bookstore and photocopied each page. The hollow sections (eye and counter?) of letters such as the lower-case 'a', 'e'and 'p' were black on some pages. Granted, literary James Bond was probably not very widely-read back then, despite the resurgent popularity of the cinematic Bond of the Brosnan films, but Mr. Fleming's work deserved better treatment than this.
Thankfully, Penguin Books came to the rescue a few years later with these new reprints. While the artwork didn't thrill me, I liked the font used. The covers were glossy, but they'd cleverly placed the 'OO7' logo on the back in a matte finish. Not very noticeable when viewed front-on, but as soon as you angle it, Bond's Double-O number appears in a circle.
However, flip the book open and you see a nice, clean off-white page with a beautiful new font used in the typesetting. Turn to the verso page to find this information;

Mr. Fleming was finally getting some respect again.

Wednesday
                  Decided to go to the library, but EVERY SINGLE branch of my council library service was either closed on Wednesdays or didn't open until 1:00pm. So, I headed out to my wife's library service instead. I should have checked the calendar on the wall. I drove out to her library and, once inside, I looked around for her. After about half an hour, I began to suspect that she was perhaps working at another branch. Sure enough, she was, as I found out later on when I sent her a text message. Still had the Railmaster strapped to my wrist. Octopussy (1966, this edition published 1967), From Russia With Love (this edition published 1965) and The Man With The Golden Gun (1965, this edition published 1967) all feature more of Raymond Hawkey's work. By now, Bondmania had well and truly taken hold. Testament to this is the fact that the character's name appears in large, bold lettering on the cover, dwarfing the author's name. The nice thing about Hawkey's designs is that they perfectly capture an important element or motif of the story in one simple image. The cover of From Russia With Love shows The Coronation Egg, which was once part of the Russian Crown Jewels, designed by the legendary Carl Faberge.

Thursday

                Another Hawkey-designed cover, this 1965 copy (22nd printing!) of Casino Royale is in very good condition, considering that it's a fifty year-old paperback. I placed the book and watch on a street map showing my old stomping ground where I grew up. The suburb has changed quite a lot since I lived there. My Mother's house, which sold a couple of years ago, is situated near a row of light industrial buildings which are in the process of becoming a block of apartments. Parking in our street was always tricky, but I think it's going to become some kind of bloodsport once these apartments are up and running. A lot more hipsters in that suburb, too. I think I got out just in time.

Today
          Still wearing the Railmaster. This must be some kind of record for me. An entire week with the one watch. I've been giving my collection some serious thought over the past month or so. I have certain watches that just never get worn. This being the case, there's no real point in holding on to them. So, much like the typewriters, I'll have to give the watches some further consideration to determine which ones should go.
Although, I think I have enough to think about at this point in time.

Finished one of the assignments, checked it, then submitted it online. I wonder if I can get the rest of them done over the next two weeks?

Thanks for reading and have a good weekend!

Friday 14/8/2015 - Another Assignment Done, Interesting Watches & This Week's Wristwatch

August 14, 2015, 12:36 am

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Still had this strapped to my wrist last weekend;

 

Then on Monday, I thought I'd switch over to something else;

I took a few photos of one of my watches in the lead-up to selling it. The Tudor Prince OysterDate. This watch will need a little work from whomever buys it, but it will be a nice watch once it's fixed. I've poured too much time and a little too much money into it in recent years. Perhaps somebody else will have better luck with it. At any rate, I'll list all of its flaws and see how it goes. 

Worked through this major assignment during the week. I'm happy to report that I finished it just prior to writing this post;

So now, all that's left is a short one or two page assignment and a ten or fifteen question online quiz and then I'm done. Bit of luck, I should have it all done by Monday or Tuesday. Cannot wait. 

Tuesday night

                   Sat down to watch Taken (Dir: Pierre Morel, 2008). You know what? It is basically what would happen if James Bond were a modern 'helicopter parent'. 

Here's the pitch;

- Liam Neeson is Bryan Mills, ex-CIA/Special Forces type dude. 

- He dotes on Kim, his seventeen year-old daughter, whom he didn't see much of during her life because his job often took him to far-flung corners of the globe.

- His ex-wife is cold towards him, and has re-married some successful business dude who hasn't always done business on the up-and-up, but that's really neither here nor there, for the purposes of this movie. 

-  His daughter arranges to meet him for lunch one day, to let him know that she's going on a trip to Europe with a nineteen year-old girlfriend of hers. 

-  Bryan doesn't like this idea, because he knows what a dangerous place the world can be.

-  His ex-wife tells him that he has to give their daughter some freedom, in order for her to mature, and that she'll be travelling with friends and everthing will be fine.

-  Bryan relents and permits her to take the trip.

-  He goes out and buys a mobile phone for her to take with her. 

-  He has programmed his own number into this phone, which he gives to his daughter after he has driven her to the airport.

-  He tells her that he expects her to call him every evening, to let him know that she's safe. 

-  On the first night of her trip, she doesn't call him, so he calls her. There's no answer, so he tries again, and she picks up the phone only to be lightly reprimanded by him for not following his simple instruction.

It is during this phone call that his daughter Kim sees some men come into the apartment and grab her friend. Bryan instructs her to hide under the bed and place the phone on the floor. He tells her quite calmly that she is about to be taken by these men and he wants her to yell out as much information about their descriptions when this happens. It's a clever scene. One of the men (unseen, as we witness the effect of this girl's kidnapping on the face of her father five thousand miles away in California) picks up her discarded phone and we get a classic 'I'm coming to get you'speech from the film's hero, beautifully delivered by Neeson;

MILLS

I don't know who you are. I don't know what you want. If you are looking for ransom, I can tell you I don't have money. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you. If you let my daughter go now, that'll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you.

Basically, if James Bond were some overprotective parent, this is how it would play out. I wasn't too impressed with this film when I first saw it, but I must say it plays considerably better the second time around. This is largely due to the great Mr. Neeson's portrayal of a man who will stop at nothing to save his daughter. The second sequel (sometimes known as Tak3n) was released earlier this year. I haven't seen it yet. I'm hoping it is better than the first sequel, though. 

Wednesday

                 Continued working on the assignment. Spent more time fiddling with the bibliography, using Harvard Referencing rules, than doing the actual assignment. So, I then switched to pen and paper to continue with the draft. Still had the Seamaster 300 on my wrist, seen here with a 1962 Pan edition of Goldfinger (1959).

Anyway, got enough of it done before calling it a day. It's meant to be a report of 1200 words, but I've already gotten up to 1,395 words and it's not quite near finished. Ahh, well, and here I was a week ago wondering how I was going to get past six hundred and fifty words. 

Thursday

                I've been trying to get in touch with a Human Resources Manager at a particular company and have had no luck all week. I think she screens her calls, since any attempt to contact her results in getting her message bank.  Tried again today and left yet another message. I think I'll call her again next week. I daresay I don't think she'll have anything to offer me, but I'd really like to hear her tell me this herself. She may as well earn her wage, after all.

Caught up with my watch guy Mike later that evening. He had a couple of interesting pieces to show me. This 1960s Tudor 'Snowflake' Submariner once belonged to an abalone diver who clearly used it on the job. The dial has aged nicely over the years, helped along by some water entry at some point. The hands look they've been replaced at some point, but it would seem that this was some time ago because they have begun to age as well. Exposure to salt water and sunlight have also faded the bezel from its original black shade. This watch has certainly led a life.

Next up was this rare Longines Nonius Chronograph from the mid-to-late Sixties. I've never come across one of these. 

This one was in pretty good condition and measures a respectable 42mm in diameter, which gives it a very modern feel. As good as it looks on the outside, Mike just couldn't resist popping the hood on this thing to show me the movement inside. It's a hand-wound 30CH (L538) chronograph calibre in beautiful condition. Apparently, never been serviced, either. They don't really make them like this anymore.

This is from back in the day when Longines made their own in-house calibres and were a real force to be reckoned with. 

Anyway, that's another week done and dusted. Bit of luck, I'll be done with the schoolwork by next Wednesday. Busy times ahead, that's for sure. 

Think I'll leave you with two more pics of this week's watch;

<---------- Monday morning

Wednesday night ------------> 

Thanks for reading and have a great weekend!