Sunday, July 29, 2018
Some more pics of Sydney’s past:
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Terrace houses in Macquarie Street, Sydney, date unknown. One of those houses, Wickham House, still exists. Built in 1852 as a fashionable three storey
town house, it is now the home of the Royal Australian Historical Society:
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Haldon St, Lakemba, looking towards the Railway Station, with
Gillies Street on the right. Year
unknown.
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Dodge Ambulance, Sydney, 1930’s.
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Ambulance and officers outside the Balmain, Drummoyne and Five Dock
Branch of the Central District Ambulance in the 1930s.
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Redfern Railway Station, c 1920.
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Corner of Cumberland and Little Essex Streets, The Rocks, Sydney in
1900 (showing rear of Flagstaff Hotel).
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Tram tracks at Crows Nest Junction, early 1920s.
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Pacific Highway, Waitara, 1940s.
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Coonanburra Road, Wahroonga, early 1900s. . .
. . . and in 2008.
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Sydney University viewed from Parramatta Rd and Bay St in 1870
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Coogee Beach, January 1909.
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Rushcutters Bay Rd, on way from Sydney to South Head in 1877.
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Corner of Missenden & Parramatta Roads, 1911.
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Erskineville Road, Erskineville c1929
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Burwood Road, Burwood, c1930
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Ashfield, 1956
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Leichhardt, 1921
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George St, Sydney in 1880 showing the stone road paving that was
once used prior to the quieter and more durable wooden lock paving. It must be lunch time or close to time to head home.
Saturday, July 28, 2018
Best Movie Lines, continued: 49-48
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Continuing the countdown of the American Film Institute’s top 100 movie lines (from 2005, so more recent lines are not included), on their own at first to enable you to see if you can identify the film and the actor speaking the line, then followed by an identification and some trivia.
This week:
“It’s alive! It’s alive.”
“Well, nobody’s perfect.”
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49.
Line:
“It’s alive! It’s alive.”
Film:
Frankenstein
Year:
1931
Spoken by:
Colin Clive
Character:
Henry Frankenstein
Link to the line:
Original poster:
Trivia:
Expanded version of the above line:
Look! It's moving. It's alive. It's alive... It's alive, it's moving, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!
The Frankenstein monster in this film does not physically resemble the character in Mary Shelley's novel. Make-up artist Jack P. Pierce came up with innovations such as the monster's flat head, the bolts through the neck, the droopy eyelids, and the poorly-fitted suit. All future Frankenstein films have copied his model.
What are commonly called bolts on the neck of the monster are in reality electrodes.
The leading character of Mary Shelley's book, Dr. Victor Frankenstein, was renamed Henry because it was decided Victor would sound too "severe" and "unfriendly" to American audiences at the time.
The makeup used by Jack Pierce to create the monster is believed to have been based on Goya’s 1799 drawing The Chincillas, derived from a famous eighteenth century comedy. Goya depicts Spanish noblemen with padlocked brains. The figure on the left has many similarities to Boris Karloff’s monster:
There is a scene in the film where the monster plays with a little girl by a pond. She is throwing flowers in the pond, the monster emulates her and throws the girl into the pond, where she drowns. Audiences were not shown the giorl being thrown into the pond, only the people hunting down the monster fopr what he had done to the girl, resulting in audiences imagining something much worse.
Gallery:
While preparing to film the scene where the monster attacks Elizabeth, Mae Clarke admitted to Boris Karloff that she was worried that when she saw him in full makeup coming towards her, she might really be frightened. Karloff told her that throughout the scene he would wiggle his pinkie finger out of sight of the camera so that she could always see that, despite the horrific makeup, she could always see her friend Boris waving at her and letting her know that she was safe.
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48.
Line:
“Well, nobody’s perfect.”
Film:
Some Like It Hot
Year:
1959
Spoken by:
Joe E Brown
Character:
Osgood Fielding 111
Link to the line:
Original poster:
Trivia:
Two musos who witness a mob hit go on the lam disguised as women. Joe (Tony Curtis) falls for Sugar Kane Kowalczyk (Marilyn Monroe), whilst Jerry, disguised as Daphne (Jack Lemmon) is wooed by a millionaire, Osgood Fielding III. At the end of the film, Jerry comes up with a list of reasons why he and Osgood cannot get married, ranging from a smoking habit to infertility. Osgood dismisses them all; he loves Daphne and is determined to go through with the marriage. Exasperated, Jerry removes his wig and shouts, "I'm a man!". Osgood, unfazed, simply responds, "Well, nobody's perfect."
The film was produced in black and white, even though colour films were increasing in popularity. Despite Monroe's contract requiring colour film, she agreed to film in black and white after seeing that Curtis and Lemmon's makeup gave them a "ghoulish" appearance on colour film.
The film is also notable for featuring cross dressing, and for playing with the idea of homosexuality, which led to its being produced without approval from the Motion Picture Production Code. The Code had been gradually weakening in its scope during the early 1950s, due to increasing social tolerance for previously taboo topics in film, but it was still officially enforced. The overwhelming success of Some Like It Hot is considered one of the final nails in the coffin for the Hays Code.
Supposedly when Orry-Kelly was measuring all three stars for dresses, he half-jokingly told Marilyn Monroe, "Tony Curtis has a nicer butt than you," at which point Monroe pulled open her blouse and said, "Yeah, but he doesn't have tits like these!"
Marilyn Monroe required 47 takes to get "It's me, Sugar" correct, instead saying either "Sugar, it's me" or "It's Sugar, me". After take 30, Billy Wilder had the line written on a blackboard. Another scene required Monroe to rummage through some drawers and say "Where's the bourbon?" After 40 takes of her saying "Where's the whiskey?", 'Where's the bottle?", or "Where's the bonbon?", Wilder pasted the correct line in one of the drawers. After Monroe became confused about which drawer contained the line, Wilder had it pasted in every drawer. Fifty-nine takes were required for this scene and when she finally does say it, she has her back to the camera, leading some to wonder if Wilder finally gave up and had it dubbed.
The title of the film refers to the contemporary description of interpreting jazz music "hot" (improvisational) as opposed to "sweet" or "straight" (as written).
The now-famous closing line, "Nobody's perfect," was actually never intended to make the final film - it was apparently to be replaced by the writers once they thought of something they liked better. I.A.L. Diamond and Billy Wilder each credit the other for the genesis of the line. Wilder later fashioned his own epitaph with the similar line: "I'm a writer, but then nobody's perfect."
Gallery:
Some behind-the-scenes pics:
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Friday, July 27, 2018
Funny Friday
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I will say from the outset that today’s Funny Friday comes
with a caution that there is a bit of risqué material included, so proceed
from here at your own risk. But it is
funny, or so thinks moi.
And especially to Noel, who has a wicked sense of humour, enjoy.
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Gross out joke:
A guy sits down in a diner and asks for a bowl of hot
chili. The waitress says, "Sorry,
but the guy next to you got the last bowl".
He looks over and sees that the guy's finished his meal, but
the bowl of chili is still full. He asks, "Are you going to eat that
chili?"
The other guy says, "No. Help yourself".
He slides the bowl of chili over and starts to eat. When he
gets about half way down, his spoon hits something. He looks down sees a dead
mouse and immediately pukes all the chili back into the bowl.
The other guy says, "Yeah, that's about as far as I
got, too".
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I have previously posted the following joke, but what is
funny about it this time is that I came across it again on a website where the
reader comments made me laugh. Here is
the joke and some of the comments:
The joke:
A skinny little white guy gets off work and walks into an
elevator, looks up and sees this HUGE black guy standing next to him.
The big guy sees the little guy staring at him, looks down
and says "7 feet tall, 350 pounds, 15 inch penis, 3 pound left testicle, 3
pound right testicle, Turner Brown."
The little guy faints and falls to the floor.
The big guy kneels down and brings him to, shaking him. The
big guy says, "What's wrong with you?"
In a weak voice the little guy says, "What EXACTLY did
you say to me? "
The big dude says, "I saw your curious look and figured
I'd just give you the answers to the questions everyone always asks me.
I'm 7 feet tall, I weigh 350 pounds, I have a 15 inch penis,
my left testicle weighs 3 pounds, my right testicle weighs 3 pounds, and my
name is Turner Brown."
The small guy says, "oh thank God, I thought you said
turn around."
The comments:
Ben Dover
How does one go about weighing his testicles? Is this a
thing?
You weigh your whole body, then you chop off your testicles
and weigh your whole body again. The difference is the weight of the testicles.
It’s easier if you remove 1 testicle, find it’s volume,
multiply it by the density of a testicle, then multiply by 2
But my testicles aren't the same size
+ or - 5% of weight
I just call them hefty and lefty.
Mine are Leftington, Rightford, and Keith.
Or righty and lighty
My two are identical, the third’s a bit larger.
Chop off one testicle, weigh it, chop of the 2nd testicle,
weigh it, add the two weights together, divide by two, this is your average
testicle weight.
Double that and you'll have the total weight of your
testicles
No dumb ass you just weigh yourself, then cup your balls in
your hands and hold them were they aren’t being affected by gravity and weigh
again.
Just plop them down on some electronic scales. Like what
you'd do with breasts.
You can’t see the NUMBERS
Fill a large cup with water. Weigh an empty bowl. Place the
cup into the bowl. Standing astride the cup and bowl immerse your testicles in
the cup. Remove the cup and weigh the bowl. The difference in weight of the
bowl is the weight of the water that overflowed from the cup. The density of
human organs is similar to that of water. Therefore the weight of the water
that overflowed the cup is similar to weight of your testicles. No cutting required.
Goodness what a bunch of geeks. If you have a gf its easy,
just stand on a scale then ask her to lift 'em up and see how much the dial
changes.
Is nobody going to comment on the hose supposedly in this
man's pants?
Wait, you don't have a 20 inch penis?
Yeah, add a mere 20% to the average man's height, and
quadruple the average penis length? Sounds about right.
20 inches is average
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At the risk of lowering the tone of this Funny Friday even
further, the above joke reminded me of a similar one:
"So, did you jump?" the father asked.
"Well, let me tell you what happened. We got up in the
plane, and the sergeant opened up the door and asked for volunteers. About a
dozen men got up and just walked out of the plane!"
"Is that when you jumped?" asked the father.
"Um, not yet. Then the sergeant started to grab the
other men one at a time and throw them out the door."
"Did you jump then?" asked the father.
"I'm getting to that. Every one else had jumped, and I
was the last man left on the plane. I told the sergeant that I was too scared to
jump. He told be to get off the plane or he'd kick my butt."
"So, did you jump?"
"Not then. He tried to push me out of the plane, but I
grabbed onto the door and refused to go. Finally he called over the Jump
Master. The Jump Master is this great big guy, about six-foot five, and 250
pounds. He said to me, `Boy, are you gonna jump or not?' I said, `No, sir. I'm
too scared.' So the Jump Master pulled down his zipper and took his penis out.
I swear, it was about ten inches long and as big around as a baseball bat! He
said, `Boy, either you jump out that door, or I'm sticking this little baby up
your ass.'"
"So, did you jump?" asked the father.
"Well, a little, at first."\
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A blonde called her boyfriend and said, Please come over
here and help me. I have a killer jigsaw
puzzle, and I can’t figure out how to get it started.”
Her boyfriend asked, “What is it supposed to be when it’s
finished?”
The blonde said, “According to the picture on the box, it’s
a tiger.”
Her boyfriend decided to go over and help with the puzzle.
She let him in and showed him where she had the puzzle spread all over the
table. He studied the pieces for a moment, then looked at the box, then turned
to her and said, “First of all, no matter what we do, we’re not going to be
able to assemble these pieces into anything resembling a tiger.”
He took her hand and said, “Second, I’d want you to relax…
Let’s have a nice cup of tea, and then…”
He sighed, “. . . let’s put all these Frosted Flakes back in
the box.”
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Thanks to Vince C, who a couple of days ago reminded me of the following joke . .
.
Old Andrzej was a minister in a small Polish town. He had
always been a good man and lived by the Bible. One day God decided to reward
him, with the answer to any three questions Andrzej would like to ask.
Old Andrzej did not need much time to consider, and the
first question was: "Will there ever be married Catholic priests?"
God promptly replied: "Not in your life-time."
Andrzej thought for a while, and then came up with the
second question: "What about female priests then, will we have that one
day?"
Again God had to disappoint Old Andrzej: "Not in your
life-time, I'm afraid."
Andrzej was sorry to hear that, and he decided to drop the
subject. After having though for a while, he asked the last question:
"Will there ever be another Polish pope?"
God answered quickly and with a firm voice: "Not in my
life-time."
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Corn Corner:
I have a friend whose band is playing this weekend. He said
the doors open at 7.00 but I'm pretty sure Jim Morrison is dead.
I used to sneak out of the house to go to parties, now I
sneak out of parties to go home.
My wife spilled her red hair colouring all over the
bathroom...
It looked like somebody dyed in there...
How many Freudian analysts does it take to change a light
bulb?
Two. One to change it, and the other to hold the penis.
LADDER.
I MEANT LADDER.
Wednesday, July 25, 2018
Oz Facts
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Interesting Oz Pics and Facts:
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1.
Back when I was in school, Australian history was considered to have begun in 1770 when Cook discovered Australia and claimed it for England, followed by Captain Arthur Phillip arriving here in 1778 as a dumping ground for England’s excess crims, plus soldiers to guard them and their wives.
These days Oz history is studied from the settlement of Australia 50,000 years ago by indigenous Australians, the doctrine of terra nullius (“nobody’s land”) having been tossed out by the High Court in Mabo, with a flow on effect to history and education.
In 1770 these two cultural subject matters – white “discovery” v indigenous settlement – met when Cook sailed into Botany Bay. The first meeting did not go well, Cook’s party shot an indigenous male for throwing a stone at them.
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2.
The Hyde Park Barracks Museum in Sydney is a brick building and compound designed by convict architect Francis Greenway between 1818 and 1819. It was originally built at the head of Macquarie Street in 1819 to house convict men and boys. As the principal male convict barracks in New South Wales it provided lodgings for convicts working in government employment around Sydney until its closure in mid-1848. Holes were constructed in the walls of the barracks so that guards could watch to ensure convicts weren't having sex with each other. Homosexuality remained a crime in NSW until 1984.
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3.
In 1838 the Governor of Van Diemen’s Land (now Tasmania) visited the Cascades Female Factory in Hobart and addressed the 300 convict women from an elevated dais. The Governor’s party included women and a reverend. Whilst being addressed, the 300 women simultaneously turned their backs, bent over, pulled up their clothes and showed their naked backsides, slapping their bums with their hands for additional auditory protest. Apparently no action was taken and it was not possible to determine who were the ringleaders. It has been reported that the women in the Governor’s party laughed.
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4.
Gough Whitlam, Labor Prime Minister of Australia 1972-1975, pictured above in 1938, rowed whilst a student at the University of Sydney. He once told a gathering that his preferred sport was rowing: "It is, of course, an extraordinarily apt sport for men in public life because you can face one way while going the other."
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5.
In 1854 the diggers on the gold fields at Ballarat in Victoria made a stand against oppression, violence and unfair treatment by the government and its police, who acted as thugs. They stood united at the stockade at Eureka under a flag reportedly made by local women, the flag's five stars representing the Southern Cross and the white cross joining the stars representing unity in defiance. The blue represented the shirts worn by the miners.
One miner, an Italian named Raffaello Carboni, was at the front of the rebellion wrote of the flag under which the miners gathered: “There is no flag in Europe or in the civilised world half so beautiful... the flag is silk, blue ground, with a large silver cross; no device or arms, but all exceedingly chaste and natural.”
He also recorded the oath of Peter Lalor, the leader of the revolt, who on bended knee with head bowed and one hand holding the edge of the flag, spoke their oath: “We swear by the Southern Cross to stand truly by each other and fight to defend our rights and liberties.”
The authorities could not allow a treasonous rebellion and attacked at dawn on Sunday, 3 December 1854. Whereas the miners had had 1,500 men present on the Saturday, only 150 were present on the Sunday in the belief that an attack would not take place on the Sabbath. 22 miners were killed in the battle, together with 5 soldiers. None of the 125 persons arrested and subsequently charged were convicted, an inquiry resulted in reforms and Lalor was subsequently elected to Parliament. He died in 1889 aged 72.
What remains of the flag has been lent to the Museum of Australian Democracy at Eureka by the Art Gallery of Ballarat.
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6.
The word "Canberra" is popularly claimed to derive from the word Kambera or Canberry, which is claimed to mean "meeting place" in Ngunnawal, one of the Indigenous languages spoken in the district by Aboriginal Australians before European settlers arrived, although there is no clear evidence to support this.
An alternative definition has been claimed by numerous local commentators over the years, including the Ngunnawal elder Don Bell, whereby Canberra or Nganbra means "woman's breasts" and is the indigenous name for the two mountains, Black Mountain and Mount Ainslie (pictured above), which lie almost opposite each other.
In the 1860s, the name was reported by Queanbeyan newspaper owner John Gale to be an interpretation of the name nganbra or nganbira, meaning "hollow between a woman's breasts", and referring to the Sullivans Creek floodplain between Mount Ainslie and Black Mountain.
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7.
Australia’s highest mountain at 2,228 metres (7,310 feet) is named after Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura KoÅ›ciuszko (Andrew Thaddeus Bonaventure Kosciuszko (1746 – 1817), a Polish-Lithuanian military engineer, statesman, and military leader who became a national hero in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and the United States. Kosciciuszko fought in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's struggles against Russia and Prussia, and on the U.S. side in the American Revolutionary War. As Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, he led the 1794 KoÅ›ciuszko Uprising.
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8.
The word Cenotaph means empty tomb, a sepulchral monument in honour of a person whose body is elsewhere. The Sydney Cenotaph located in Martin Place, Sydney, is one of the oldest World War I monuments in central Sydney, being dedicated in 1927. Martin Place, adjacent to the General Post Office (GPO), was the location in which the majority of Sydney's soldiers enlisted into the Australian Army for World War I. The Sydney GPO was also the main conduit of news information during World War I. Today Martin Place is a pedestrian only area, having been closed to traffic in stages from 1971.
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9.
Two glass bottles containing nitro-glycerine (then practically unknown in New South Wales) were responsible for an explosion which created havoc in Bridge Street, Sydney on March 4, 1866. The explosion took place at 6.30pm on a Sunday in the business section of the city, hence no one being killed. Damage was extensive with two buildings being destroyed and buildings nearby being damaged, with many windows shattered. It was estimated that the nitro glycerine had ten time the explosive power of gunpowder.
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10.
Ronald Ryan (1925 – 1967) was the last person to be legally executed in Australia. Found guilty of shooting and killing warder George Hodson during an escape from Pentridge Prison, Victoria, in 1965 (many now being of the opinion that the fatal shot came from another prison officer’s firearm), Ryan's hanging was met with some of the largest public protests in the history of Australia and led to the end of capital punishment. Four of the Ryan jury members requested intervention when Ryan was sentenced to hang on the basis that when they found Ryan guilty, they were under the belief that the death penalty had been abolished in Victoria. The death penalty was abolished in all states by 1985.
The Premier of Victoria at the time that Ryan was sentenced and hanged was Sir Henry Bolte, a chain smoking, whisky swigging right wing politician who promoted an image of a rough, earthy, simple, man at odds with trade unions, teachers, liberals, strikers and protesters. Asked by a journalist what he was doing at the moment that Ronald Ryan was hanged, Bolte replied “One of the three S’s, I suppose.” When asked what he meant, he responded: “A shit, a shave or a shower.”
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