Mr. Levine certainly appreciated Pogonomyrmex californicus. “I found out their most amazing feat yet,” he said. “They put three kids through college.”
Carson was also impressed by Mr. Callas, inviting him to appear on the “The Tonight Show” nearly 50 times. Then came the night of Sept. 21, 1982.
With Mr. Callas bombing, Carson made a whistling-buzzing sound — as if tracing a bomb’s trajectory. In comic desperation, Mr. Callas leaned over and shoved Carson. Carson, almost always amiable on the air, was so annoyed that on the spot, in front of his television audience, he told Mr. Callas that he’d never appear on the show again. Carson kept his word.
The Boy's Own Adventure hero of my childhood was aviator Charles Lindbergh. He wrote two memoirs and Jimmy Stewart made a movie of his flight over the Atlantic. Most people in those days still had not traveled by air, and it was only a few decades since he had made his flight. He had largely retired from public life so his Nazi sympathies were not a big issue. He was just a young flier who figured out how to do something nobody else had, and did it all alone.
“Sharktopus,” the blood-soaked tale of a hybrid shark-octopus developed as a secret military weapon, was one of Syfy’s biggest hits last year. (The monster goes haywire and terrorizes bikini-clad women along Mexican Riviera beaches; 2.5 million people tuned in.)Roger Corman, known as the King of the B’s for pumping out movies like “The Wasp Woman” and “Humanoids From the Deep,” said he reluctantly agreed to produce the film, which got its start when a Syfy marketing executive, brainstorming ideas for new creatures, came up with the aquatic crossbreed.
“It’s not easy to take a computer-generated shark that can walk on a beach with octopus legs and make it seem believable,” Mr. Corman said. “My theory is that you can go up to a certain level of insanity and still keep the audience intrigued. Go beyond the insanity barrier, and people turn against you. In my opinion ‘Sharktopus’ breaks that barrier.” The results showed him that “even at my age you can learn something.”
Economic inequality, the linking of food to energy prices, communications in the poor nations, highways in Africa. Just to name a few.
I'm badgered to death emails and cell phone calls from people who believe they can drop into my life whenever they feel like it and demand that I do things. Prices are going through the roof. TV news is unwatchable, it's so vitriolic. Republicans want to undo health care and financial reform and take us back to the good old days of a collapsing economy and the good news days of 50 million uninsured. I could go on....
