Category: The Evening Pause
A nightly pause from the news to give the reader/viewer a bit of classic entertainment.
Beethoven’s Fur Eliese
2005 Big Sandy Shoot
Longest zip line ride in the world
Facing the facts
An evening pause: The reaction of the ship captain in the opening section of this clip from the movie A Night to Remember (1958) exemplifies better than anything I have ever seen the clarity and courage of an open mind, willing to face new facts instantly and to react correctly, even if by doing so you risk failure and disgrace.
If only our leaders today had as much courage.
Tommy Makem – Will you go Lassie go
George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra
An evening pause: The central scene from the 1976 television production of George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra, starring Alec Guinness and Genevieve Bujold.
[The uproar in the streets again reaches them.]
Caesar: Do you hear? These knockers at your gate are also believers in vengence and in stabbing. You have slain their leader: it is right that they shall slay you. If you doubt it, ask your four counselors here. And then in the name of that right [he emphasizes the word with great scorn] shall I not slay them for murdering their Queen, and be slain in my turn by their countrymen as the invader of their fatherland? Can Rome do less then slay these slayers, too, to show the world how Rome avenges her sons and her honor. And so, to the end of history, murder shall breed murder, always in the name of right and honor and peace, until the gods are tired of blood and create a race than can understand.
ABBA – I have a dream
Waltzing Matilda scene from On the Beach
An evening pause: What do you do when you know that you only have a few more weeks to live? From On the Beach (1959), one of the greatest end-of-the-world films ever made.
Deep Space 9 – The Quickening
An evening pause: Deep Space 9, “The Quickening.” The entire population of a planet has a disease that kills all, horribly, but only after many years. No one believes a cure is possible, except Julian Bashir.
The attack on Pearl Harbor, as seen at the time
An evening pause: This newsreel, made shortly after the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, gives an honest sense of the rage felt by Americans following the attack. Or to quote the words placed in the mouth of Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto from the movie Tora! Tora! Tora!:
“I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve.”
Though it is not clear that Yamamoto ever actually said this line, it encapsulates the consequences of Pearl Harbor quite concisely.
TSA regulations end shipment of any package to US weighing more than a pound
More nations certain to follow! Because of onerous TSA regulations, the Japanese postal service has ended airmail shipments to the US of any package weighing more than a pound.
Hunting as Jeff Foxworthy sees it
Britain, Brazil to seek end to Kyoto climate impasse
Meanwhile, the political negotiations in Cancun continue: Britain and Brazil are going to try to break the deadlock between first and third world nations over extending the Kyoto climate protocol and thus prevent a collapse of the Cancun talks. Key quote:
Japan, Russia and Canada have been adamant that they will not sign an extension and want a new, broader treaty that will also bind emerging economies led by China and India to act.
Note that nothing going on in Cancun has anything to do with climate science. It is politics, pure and simple, rules and regulations created by a bunch of elite intellectuals and UN apparatchiks to be imposed on everyone else — while they play in the sun and fly on their jets to and from climate conferences.
Meteor compilation
Paul Simon – American Tune
An evening pause:
We came on a ship they called the Mayflower
We came on a ship that sailed the moon
We came in the age’s most uncertain hour
And sing an American tune.
Animator vs Animation
Hang gliding in upstate New York
Shooting scene from To Kill a Mockingbird
An evening pause: As it is Wednesday and I am at the gun range, competing in bullseye pistol competitions, let’s look at some Hollywood shooting action.
Karan Casey – Ballad of accounting
Superman – The Mad Scientist
An evening pause: The first Max Fleischer Superman cartoon, The Mad Scientist (1941), from a time when Americans believed that all things were possible, and that our nation stood for the best of those possibilities. When evil men try to destroy skyscrapers and kill innocent people, you don’t stand idly by, you fight them, and stop them.
Speech from Scent of a Woman
Mumford & sons
Black Friday madness
An evening pause: I know some people enjoy this, but this is not how I want to spend my day after Thanksgiving!
Johnny Cash sings a Thanksgiving Prayer
George Winston – Thanksgiving
Judy Garland on television – Somewhere over the rainbow
Office shooting range
An evening pause: It seems to me that building an office shooting range seems exactly the right thing to encourage every red-blooded American to do.
Gettysburg Address recited by Jeff Daniels
An evening pause: I should have run this two days ago, November 19, on the anniversary of its first presentation. No matter, the words are always worthwhile to hear.