Haines His Way

Good-night.

I was gonna say....those photographers are a well dressed bunch are they not?

Thanks for the pics, DRPANNI, and congratulations on the adulation!

I can always think of a question when it is NOT as BK day....hmmmmmmI will go to sleep and think some more.

To answer your question about Thunderbirds voices.

They were always "American". It is explained in the commentary that they found Canadians and Americans living in England at the time to do the voices. They even had Australians from what I understood in the commentary were better doing accents. They were actually going for a "Mid Atlantic" sound than "American"

Perhaps you are mixing up one of their other many series they did with marionettes like Supercar, Fireball, Captain Scarlett, Stingray et al. I have not seen all their shows and other than Thunderbirds movies and series have not since some of them since I was a young lad living in Canada.

Trivia: The Tracy family were named after the astronauts in the American space program

Just read this interesting bit of info about the TV Series

According to ITC, the early 1990s Fox Network rebroadcasts had to have new vocal and music tracks recorded due to Michael Jackson owning the rights to ITCs music libraries, new music and voices were used for some episodes, which upset a lot of long-time fans of the show. Edits were also made to remove scenes of characters smoking and drinking, and to shorten the individual episodes to 30 minutes from 60 due to the short attention span of American kids! In 1994, a completely altered version of the series was syndicated under the title "Turbocharged Thunderbirds." Live-action footage of two teenagers in Thunderbird 5 (renamed Hacker Command) was shot, while events from the 1964 series were said to be taking place on "Thunder-World." It was cancelled in 1995.

Caroline, or Shange -- a little boy must choose between his beloved maid and the author of For Colored Girls Who Considered Suicide.

made me laugh, Dan.  Produced by The New York Shakespeare Festival, of course.

My ask BK query: What makes you think Tracey Ullman isn't 44?  (She plays old people so convincingly!?)

For relaxation, I like an extremely hot bath.  Of course, there was no hot water in my building when I got home last night.  Nor this morning.  A walk in Riverside Park can do the trick, too.

Hey Amazing Racers, anyone enjoy last night's show?

Um, why didn't some of those men offer to eat the caviar???

Muffin: I used to like all sorts of exotic muffins, but recently I've gone back to good old raisin bran. I also like corn muffins. Actually, I'm a big fan of muffins of all types.

Re the photogs: No, they're not exactly the best-dressed people on the planet.

News of Tom's neighbors:



 Discovery News reports, in part:

Kangaroos Not Laid Back After All
By Judy Skatssoon, ABC Science Online

July 27, 2004 — Kangaroos have an aerobic capacity comparable to highly athletic mammals like horses and antelopes, new research shows, which may dent their reputation as laid-back fixtures on the Australian landscape.
Marsupials, including kangaroos, have traditionally been believed to be primitive mammals because their basal metabolism, or resting energy rate, is about a third lower than that of placental mammals.
But Terry Dawson from the University of New South Wales in Sydney says analysis of the muscle physiology of kangaroos shows they stack up against their more energetic placental cousins.
…
Marsupials, and in particular kangaroos, may even be more efficient than placental mammals because of their ability to "rev up" very quickly.
"Instead of being primitive they've got the benefits of not using much energy when they're resting, but they have the capacity to really rev themselves up," he said. "We've probably shown that instead of being primitive they probably have advantages in terms of energy uses." [/size]

der Brucer (invisisoning ROO DNA shots for NBA players)

Good news for Guy Haines fans - his early recordings may be salvagable!

Discovery News reports, in part:

High Tech Lets Old Recordings Speak Again
By Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News

July 23, 2004 — A high-tech system originally developed to track down elusive subatomic particles is now being used to digitize old records and cylinders previously thought to be unplayable, according to the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Early music and spoken word recordings at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., will benefit from the technology. It also may one day allow us to hear Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain speak since, according to written accounts, both notables made recordings during their lifetimes.

The new system, created by Berkeley Lab scientists Vitaliy Fadeyev and Carl Haber, originally was used to determine particle path collisions in research on the Higgs boson, a theoretical particle believed to give objects mass. Now the technology plays and preserves records and tin and wax cylinders without even touching their grooves.

Fadeyev and Haber first tested it out on two LPs: "Goodnight Irene" by The Weavers and "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" by Marian Anderson. The albums, full of pops, skips, and scratches, played like new.
…
Sam Brylawski, head of the recorded sound section of the Library of Congress' Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division, told Discovery News that some cylinders in the collection are not presently playable due to excessive mold or breakage.

"We do not know what is on (these) unplayable ones, but we expect it to be popular music of the late 19th and early 20th centuries," Brylawski said.
Already the Berkeley team has brought one mystery cylinder from 1912 back to life. It contains a recording of a song called "Just Before the Battle, Mother," crooned by what sounds to be a barbershop quartet.

"There are many promising aspects of the research being conducted at the Lawrence Berkeley Labs," Brylawski said. "One is the development of non-contact playback of fragile sound recordings. Not only cylinders, but radio transcription discs and 78-rpm shellac pressings."

He added, "If their work pans out to enable efficient and accurate transfers, we will be able to hear broken recordings; be able to restore deteriorating recordings without the addition of digital audio 'artifacts;' and play back obsolete formats without having to acquire or restore specialized machines and identify highly trained, i.e. costly, specialized engineers."

The new technology might also one day allow the voices of Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain to be heard again.

Fadeyev explained that Lincoln (1809-1865) is believed to have made a recording on a phonoautograph, a device invented before Edison's experiments in sound. The recording, which has not yet been found and may be in private hands, probably could be reproduced using the optical method, according to Fadeyev.

Brylawski further indicated that Mark Twain (1835-1910) recorded a cylinder for the Bettini Company. It too remains lost, but once found, it now has a chance at being played with the same, or perhaps better, quality produced when it was new.

Wow - Lincoln, Twain, and Haines - preserved for posterity!

der Brucer (the site has some nice before and after audio tracks)

Noel: I think Miss Ullman is a bit closer to fifty.  I don't know this for a fact, but she's been doing what she's doing for a long time.

I don't like much of today's pop or rock music.  It all seems so overproduced and everything sounds the same to me, and I'm so tired of singers who do nothing but riff on the melody.  As to rap - can't stomach any of it unless you consider Shaft rap.

Mulling over which DVD will pop up in the player today. So far no decisions. More later.

I do not like muffins, although I occasionally will eat the top of a chocolate chip muffin if it suits my fancy.  

Favorite muffin:  In general, corn, occasionally a raisin-bran, very rarely a blueberry.  I make a mean carrot/nut/coconut oatmeal muffin with a streusel topping.  Yum!

Ask BK (and other DRs) Day Question:

Lately, I have noticed that I will glance up at a (digital) clock, and I will notice that the numbers of the hours and minutes will correlate with the numbers of the month and day of my birth.

For instance, if one's birthday was, let's say...March 19th (which it isn't), one would wake up in the middle of the night (as one might occasionally do) and see that the bedside clock was reading 3:19 AM, or be on the task bar of your computer and notice that the online clock is reading 3:19 PM.  And it just seems to be happenstance....

Does this happen to anyone else out there?

Lately, I have noticed that I will glance up at a (digital) clock, and I will notice that the numbers of the hours and minutes will correlate with the numbers of the month and day of my birth.

For instance, if one's birthday was, let's say...March 19th (which it isn't), one would wake up in the middle of the night (as one might occasionally do) and see that the bedside clock was reading 3:19 AM, or be on the task bar of your computer and notice that the online clock is reading 3:19 PM.  And it just seems to be happenstance....

Does this happen to anyone else out there?

I find that this happens a lot to me except the time is 9:11.  It spooks me out.