Monday, January 27, 2014

THEY CAN PUT A MAN ON THE MOON BUT THEY CAN’T... PUT A MAN ON THE MOON (A Short Part Two, Because Part One Was Too Short)


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“I seen it [the Apollo Moon landing] on TV! ... Once you see it on television, you know that’s the way it is, you know?”
~ Big Daddy
Cigar store owner in Cocoa Beach, Florida

A week ago I posted the blog bit titled ‘CAVALCADE O’ COMMENTS’ (Or, ‘THEY CAN PUT A MAN ON THE MOON BUT THEY CAN’T... PUT A MAN ON THE MOON’). It seems the one thing everyone agreed on was that it was too long.

Well, guess what. I feel it wasn’t quite long enough, so here’s a (relatively) much shorter addendum.

I get on these kicks – been doing it for decades. For a period of time I will simply immerse myself in one thing or another until I wear it out... for awhile (before returning to it again some years later). It can be almost anything, like, Gene Tierney, W.C. Fields, Laurel & Hardy, William Holden, Hitchcock, or Film Noir movies. Frequently the kicks pertain to movies and actors. But they can also revolve around music, like the Beach Boys, Van Morrison, or Big Band music. Even foods – perhaps avocados, ice cream, soy-based hot dogs, or Chile Relleno burritos.

Currently, my kick is the Kroger brand of smoked string cheese and the fake Apollo Moon landings (the mother of all hoaxes!) The Fake Moon Landing kick is one I’ve gotten on and off of every few years for about a decade and a half. Ironically, when my friend Brother Beer Boy Bryan (Bodyguard Betty) wrote on January 1st  in one of my comment sections “We didn't land on the moon”, as an example of a crazy conspiracy theory, I was already about two weeks into ‘The Return Of My Fake Moon Landing Kick’. Timing is everything!
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I think I’m done with it again... for another few years. But I did watch a couple more movies very recently and wanna yak ‘em up to ya here... briefly. (As I type these words I am listening to Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ – always amongst my favorite Rock albums! One of these days I need to try out that ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ synchronization bit with the movie ‘The Wizard Of Oz’ that I’ve often heard about.) 

I saw CAPRICORN ONE once before, long ago, and probably in a movie theatre the year of its release – 1978. I couldn’t remember much about it other than its basic premise. So, Brother Nappy and I got it from NetFlix. The movie contains several really stupid, bonehead scenes, and Elliott Gould is truly an atrocious actor – I mean, a seriously “bad actor”. The movie also features James Brolin and O.J. Simpson... before he had become a murderer (and then invented the "slow-speed chase", which I saw live on TV, so I know it was real!).

For me, the movie’s highlight is a small but funny part played by Telly Savalas late in the story. Yeah, you heard me right: Telly Savalas was FUNNY! [“Perverts!”] Despite a few truly nonsensical moments, Nappy and I enjoyed the movie overall.

But here’s what blew my mind about it...

1978 - 123 minutes
Seconds before launch, the first NASA astronauts bound for Mars are pulled from the capsule and asked to fake the Mars landing instead. The astronauts agree, but as a reporter starts uncovering the truth, NASA turns its three heroes into martyrs.
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Do you get it? Can you believe it? With a plot like that, can you believe that NASA actually allowed its name and official emblem to be used in the movie ‘Capricorn One’? NASA fakes a Mars landing, and then seeks to kill the astronauts in order to keep the hoax a secret? Wouldn’t you think a storyline like that would ordinarily inspire NASA to send a ‘Cease and Desist’ order? And if not complied with, NASA would have sued the filmmaker for Slander and Defamation Of Character?!

But instead, NASA, at the very least, gave its tacit approval. Ya ‘spose maybe it was a sideways confession that their Apollo Moon landing story was also a hoax? Isn’t that a little too close for comfort?

3 minute movie trailer:



Below are a couple of speeches in the movie that also seem to be somewhat “confessional” to me:

Okay, here it is. I have to start by saying that if there was any other way, if there was even a slight chance of another alternative, I would give anything not to be here with you now. Anything.

Bru, how long have we known each other? Sixteen years? ... Sixteen years. You should have seen yourself then. You looked like you just walked out of a Wheaties box. And me, all sweaty palm and deadly serious. I told everybody about this dream I had of conquering the new frontier, and they all looked at me like I was nuts. You looked at me and said, "Yes."

I remember when you told me Kay was pregnant. We went out and got crocked. I remember when Charles was born. We went out and got crocked again. The two of us. Captain Terrific and the Mad Doctor, talking about reaching the stars, and the bartender telling us maybe we'd had enough. Sixteen years.

And then Armstrong stepped out on the Moon, and we cried. We were so proud. Willis, you and Walker, you came in about then. Both bright and talented wise-asses, looked at me in my wash-and-wear shirt carrying on this hot love affair with my slide-rule, and even you were caught up in what we'd done.

I remember when Glenn made his first orbit in Mercury, they put up television sets in Grand Central Station, and tens of thousands of people missed their trains to watch.

You know, when Apollo 17 landed on the Moon, people were calling up the networks and bitching because reruns of I Love Lucy were cancelled. Reruns, for Christ's sake! I could understand if it was the new Lucy show. After all, what's a walk on the Moon? But reruns! Oh, geez!

And then suddenly everybody started talking about how much everything cost. Was it really worth twenty billion to go to another planet? What about cancer? What about the slums? How much does it cost? How much does any dream cost, for Christ's sake? Since when is there an accountant for ideas?

You know who was at the launch today? Not the President. The Vice-President, that's who. The Vice-President and his plump wife. The President was busy. He's not busy. He's just a little bit scared. He sat there two months ago and put his feet up on Woodrow Wilson's desk, and he said, "Jim, make it good. Congress is on my back. They're looking for a reason to cancel the program. We can't afford another screw-up. Make it good. You have my every good wish." His every good wish! I got his sanctimonious Vice President! That's what I got!

So, there we are. After all those hopes and all that dreaming, he sits there, with those flags behind his chair, and tells me we can't afford a screw-up. And guess what! We had a screw-up! A first-class, bona-fide, made-in-America screw-up!

The good people from Con-Amalgamate delivered a life-support system cheap enough so they could make a profit on the deal. Works out fine for everybody. Con-Amalgamate makes money. We have our life-support system. Everything's peachy. Except they made a little bit too much profit. We found out two months ago it won't work. You guys would all be dead in three weeks. It's as simple as that.

So, all I have to do is report that and scrub the mission. Congress has its excuse, the President still has his desk, and we have no more program. What's sixteen years? Your actual drop in the bucket!

All right. That's the end of the speech. Now, we're getting to what they call the moment of truth. Come with me. I want to show you something.

DUDE GIVING THE EULOGY AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE:
...My fellow Americans, I came here today to talk of unfinished hopes and of unfulfilled dreams. Charles Brubaker, Peter Willis, and John Walker left this Earth for their dreams a little more than eight months ago; they were never able to return to us.

Their dream was able to grow and flourish because of the support of millions of citizens all across America. At a time when cynicism was a national epidemic, they gave us something to take pride in. It is a dream that should NOT be allowed to die.

A nation is built on the spirit of its people; the test of greatness of any nation is how that nation pulls together in a time of crisis. The only limits on what we can achieve are the limits we place on our hopes. These three men reminded us of the limitlessness of our hopes.

There was a moment these past few days when we were all one people; we were all hoping, we were all a little bit taller, a little bit prouder. We were all feeling the same fears and the same exhilaration. These three men brought us together. We knew, together, that there are no goals we cannot reach if we just reach for them together.

There is no adequate way we can express out gratitude to the men themselves because they are no longer among us. However, we can serve their memory... [the voice trails off as...]

I don’t want to say any more and spoil the movie should you decide to watch it. But... uh... is it just me, or did that not sound like NASA would like to confess something to the Americonned Sheeple?
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Another movie Brother Nappy and I just watched together was this:

2005 - 60 minutes
Filmmaker Aron Ranen's tongue-in-cheek documentary explores the controversial conspiracy theory that asserts that, in 1969, U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong spoke the famous words "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" from an earthbound film set, not the moon. In investigating the claims of an Apollo 11 hoax, Ranen uncovers a KKK faction at the Kennedy Space Center, slave-owning Nazis, hippies, soused space cowboys and more.

“The most redneck, in-bred town in America!”
~ A Young, White Dude in Wapakoneta, Ohio

DID WE GO? is almost closer to a “mockumentary” than a documentary. In the one-hour program, Ranen sets out (kinda, sorta) to prove that the Apollo space program really did land Americans on the Moon and then returned them safely to Earth.

It seems that most reviewers at NetFlix hated the movie but Nappy and I found it rather entertaining. It starts out funny, then gets pretty serious and grisly during the Nazi section, and then turns funny again later. If you’re an odd duck (like apparently Nappy and I be) you might enjoy the program too. (I believe it’s fully free to see at YouTube.)

5 minutes and 27 seconds clip:



[Never trust a 21st Century man wearing a bow tie! EVER!!]

“It’s a journey we can’t repeat with today’s technology, but in 1969, a group of astronauts risked everything to walk on the Moon.”
~ ‘When We Left Earth’,
The Discovery Channel, 2010

HUH?! WHA’?! You mean, if only we could somehow recapture, in 2014, the technological advances we had made by 1969, we could again land men on the Moon? Yeah, makes total sense to me! (You telling me some people aren’t trying to “come clean” without actually having to admit to the biggest lie in mankind’s history?)

I was just watching the movie ‘AFTER THE THIN MAN’ with William Powell and Myrna Loy. (Actually, I was watching it with Brother Nappy because, Powell and Loy? They're dead.)

Uh-Oh! 'Dark Side Of The Moon'? Fuhgeddaboudit! I think I feel another Big Band kick coming on again...

DOIN' THE JIVE – The Glenn Miller Orchestra


[Irving Fazola’s clarinet at the 1:41 mark absolutely slays my soul!]


~ Stephen T. McCarthy

YE OLDE COMMENT POLICY: All comments, pro and con, are welcome. However, ad hominem attacks and disrespectful epithets will not be tolerated (read: "posted"). After all, this isn’t Amazon.com, so I don’t have to put up with that kind of bovine excrement.

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7 comments:

  1. Let's try that again. I love the 'big band' sound, especially Glenn Miller and I really like some fine 'licorice stick' playin.

    As for everything else, well, you know I be dining in that choir.

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  2. 'sunging' and praying for fingers that will work again.

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    1. Well, the "Moon is half FULL" side of that is... with fingers that don't work, at least you can't get yourself in trouble with them the way I can.

      ~ D-FensDogg
      'Loyal American Underground'

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  3. I also tend to get on kicks sometimes. Some of them like my infatuation with Fellini films have been drawn out through my entire adult life and I'm still watching them. Others like listening to Depeche Mode records faded with the 80's for the most part and now I only listen every few years just for the memories.

    Moon landing? Well, is there a space station? Have men orbited the Earth? Did Pioneer or whatever that deep space probe was called really go beyond the edge of the solar system?

    I have no real reason to doubt these achievements. I think we did probably land men on the moon. I do wonder why we didn't continue the process. We could be doing moon mining or some enterprise now if we had kept it up. I don't think many people or other countries really care whether we went to the moon or not--at least not any more. So I don't see what it would have gained our government to have faked it.

    But stranger things have happened. Obama got elected. I know that's true and if that happened, men landing on the moon makes total sense to me.

    Lee
    An A to Z Co-Host
    Tossing It Out

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    1. BOIDMAN ~

      Yeah, I believe men have gone 'round the planet but only in low-Earth orbit, not from beyond the Van Allen Radiation belts.

      >>...I have no real reason to doubt these achievements.

      Why not? Because the government would never lie to us about big, important things? And because Uncle Sam is here to help us, to keep us safe, and always has our very best interests at heart?

      >>... So I don't see what it would have gained our government to have faked it.

      Really? In less than 30 seconds I could think of two huge things our government could have gained by faking it. Give me a few minutes I could come up with a few ancillary advantages as well.

      We're all free to believe what we choose to, and I'm happy it's that way. But me, I don't like being lied to, and I especially despise it when the liars are supposed to be representing me and their lies involve my tax dollars!

      ~ D-FensDogg
      'Loyal American Underground'

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  4. "Dark Side of the Moon" is one of my favorites, too. My daughter and some of her friends played it with "The Wizard of Oz" and said it was an amazing match-up in parts.

    I don't think we've seen "Capricorn One", but those speeches are good enough to make me want to see it. Not so sure about the other one, but "Did We Go" could be a hoot if it's a smart satire.

    And then... and THEN... you finished up with Glenn Miller. A terrific ending to an interesting post.

    Happy weekend!

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    Replies
    1. Thanks, SUSAN.

      I wouldn't have pegged you as a 'Dark Side Of The Moon' fan. Glad you appreciate it though. (Someday when you have nuttin' else to do - if there ever is such a day - check out what it says at Wikipedia about that album. I found it very interesting.)

      Yeah, I really gotta try that 'Dark Side...' / 'Oz Wizard' thing one of these days... when I have nuttin' else to do - if there ever is such a day.

      Even if one isn't interested in the whole Fake Moon Landing story, 'CAPRICORN ONE' is still a fairly exciting Action-Adventure movie that can be enjoyed just on that level alone. (Even worth seeing just for Telly Savalas' small role.)

      'DID WE GO?' is not going to convince anyone of anything one way or the other regarding the "Moon Landing". But it's a fun, goofy, irreverent 60-minute amusement. If someone is REALLY serious about studying this topic, the other sources I cited in my Part One blog bit are better places to begin.

      Glenn Miller... now I definitely would have pegged you as a fan of his. And I am too. I'll take Glenn over Floyd, but both get played in my house.

      ~ D-FensDogg
      'Loyal American Underground'

      Delete

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