What book are you currently reading?

[OneHungLow]

Amazon just confirmed the book (yes, book, not digital) will be delivered tomorrow. I am see trouble ahead...

[CharlieOneSix]

Amazon just confirmed the book (yes, book, not digital) will be delivered tomorrow. I am see trouble ahead...

...and reminiscencies from FD2 and C16 are in it.....but who are we?! My copy also arrives tomorrow.

A series of personal accounts by highly trained helicopter pilots, including those with distinguished careers in the military and commercial flying, who with divers, ensured that essential staff could operate in North Sea oil exploration and oil supply. They were the vital link in the process and operated in the most challenging circumstances, often in high levels of danger and sometimes with loss of life, for example, the Piper Alpha Disaster which made national news. And the ferrying of essential personnel and supplies could involve rescues as well as routine flying missions. The narrative is often technical but written to ensure good understanding for lay readers and it will, of course, appeal to the many with flying experience in the forces, in commercial flying and government service. Above all, it is a series of graphic personal stories as recounted by individuals faced with extremes of climate, weather, technical, engineering and aeronautical problems and often with human life at stake.

[OneHungLow]

Amazon just confirmed the book (yes, book, not digital) will be delivered tomorrow. I am see trouble ahead...

Saxton Helicopter book...

Aagh! ... Another Royal Mail fail.

Hello,

We wanted to let you know that due to a delay in delivery, your Amazon order XXXX may arrive one to two business days later than expected.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience that this may cause.

We hope to see you again soon.

Regards,

Customer Service Department

Amazon.co.uk

[CharlieOneSix]

Mine arrived a little earlier. Looks good and I'm pleased to see my contribution had not been edited.

[OneHungLow]

Mine arrived a little earlier. Looks good and I'm pleased to see my contribution had not been edited.

Looking forward to reading about our two favourite ex-North Sea helicopter pilots!

[PHXPhlyer]

Amazon just confirmed the book (yes, book, not digital) will be delivered tomorrow. I am see trouble ahead...

Saxton Helicopter book...

Aagh! ... Another Royal Mail fail.

Hello,

We wanted to let you know that due to a delay in delivery, your Amazon order XXXX may arrive one to two business days later than expected.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience that this may cause.

We hope to see you again soon.

Regards,

Customer Service Department

Amazon.co.uk

There is a bright side...A one or two day reprieve from potential wrath.

PP

[OneHungLow]

Amazon just confirmed the book (yes, book, not digital) will be delivered tomorrow. I am see trouble ahead...

Saxton Helicopter book...

Aagh! ... Another Royal Mail fail.

Hello,

We wanted to let you know that due to a delay in delivery, your Amazon order XXXX may arrive one to two business days later than expected.

We’re sorry for the inconvenience that this may cause.

We hope to see you again soon.

Regards,

Customer Service Department

Amazon.co.uk

There is a bright side...A one or two day reprieve from potential wrath.

I thought I had it all under control, The book was meant to arrive this morning while I alone, now I am likely to be f@c%d by the fickle finger of fate...

The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half. a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. -- Omar Khayyam.

[OneHungLow]

Aagh! ... Another Royal Mail fail.

There is a bright side...A one or two day reprieve from potential wrath.

I thought I had it all under control, The book was meant to arrive this morning while I alone, now I am likely to be f@c%d by the fickle finger of fate...

The moving finger writes; and, having writ, moves on: nor all thy piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half. a line, nor all thy tears wash out a word of it. -- Omar Khayyam.

Well arrived at 08:59, straight in to hands of SWMBO...

Cue the usual speech about losing one book to make space for this new one. Cue my speech that my books are irreplaceable etc. etc.

Today I will be mostly reading save for a client meeting this afternoon

[OneHungLow]

I was prompted to try and find my copy of "I Was Hitler's Pilot: The Memoirs of Hans Baur" bought some years back and lost sadly somewhere along the road. It was probably sent to Oxfam by my better half, so I purchased a digital copy this week. The impulse to reread the book promoted by an excellent article titled "Hitler's Wings" written by Martin Willis in this month's copy of Aeroplane magazine. The article itself is fascinating and well worth a read.

Hans Baur was Hitler's personal pilot and a man who was highly trusted by the Fuehrer. Hitler was probably one of the first world leaders to embrace the aeroplane as a useful personal tool in a politician's, or in his case, would be world leader's, busy schedule, while also recognizing its value in terms of propaganda in a nation's projection of technical competence and modernity. For all of that Hitler was apparently a nervous passenger and he came to trust Baur implicitly as a pilot, and to some extent as a friend. For his part Baur saw Hitler more often than most of his other Nazi minions and acolytes, and he was with Hitler right up to his time in the bunker.

Baur by all accounts was a very good pilot and the perfect Nazi as well. His memoirs, written after many years in prison in the USSR, and then in France, are very historically and biographically interesting, despite his unrepentant admiration of his old boss which I must admit I find more honest than the, "we were only obeying orders" post hoc rationalisations, or the multitude of slippery evasions of other lesser men who supported the regime, in the post war period.

[G~Man]

I needed some easy listenig for a week, just finished this book. Really good storyline, by the same author who wrote The Martian---a must for those who like science---he researches well.

.

51fisVXQNrL._SL500_.jpg (40.02 KiB) Viewed 1750 times

[OFSO]

Mick Herrons "The Secret Hours". Superb.

Enthusiasts for the "Slow Horses" books (not the crap TV series) are invited to spot the origins of later plots, not to mention characters. Again, Superb.

[Hydromet]

Thanks for that OFSO, loved the "Slow Horses" books. Will get "The Secret Hours."

[G~Man]

Needed some inspiration..... Will pass on report once finished.
.

41tFxwQAvGL._SY445_SX342_.jpg (13.29 KiB) Viewed 1702 times

[OneHungLow]

Needed some inspiration..... Will pass on report once finished.
.41tFxwQAvGL._SY445_SX342_.jpg

Le chemin impénétrable d'un chat Buhist!

So Dude man... The cat is the dude... it doesn't need a trophy wife. The Nazi's were wrong...

Les bouddhistes n'ont pas de chance..

The cats have won.

[PHXPhlyer]

I love my public library!
I was able to reserve this before they have even received any copies.

“Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane"
Zucker, David/ Abrahams, Jim/ Zucker, Jerry

‘Airplane!’ was almost ruined by Barry Manilow and David Letterman

https://nypost.com/2023/10/21/airplane- ... y-manilow/

When the creators of the 1980 comedy classic “Airplane!” were casting the lead role of pilot Ted Striker — eventually played by Robert Hays — they saw a slew of actors who weren’t right for the role.

Finally, with only three weeks until filming, executives at Paramount Pictures told the filmmakers that they had decided on an actor to fill the role: crooner Barry Manilow.

According to a new oral history of the film, “Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!” (St. Martin’s Press) by the film’s creators David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams, with interviews by Will Harris, Paramount executive Tom Parry broke the news to the team, known collectively as ZAZ.

“Their jaws dropped, and then they broke into gales of laughter,” Parry says in the book.

“And they said, ‘You got us! That’s the funniest thing we’ve ever heard!’ The thing is, the guys used to do things like toilet-paper my car, and they thought I was getting back at them. And I said, ‘No no! It’s real!”

With only three weeks until filming, executives at Paramount Pictures told the “Airplane!” filmmakers that they had decided on an actor to fill Stryker the role: crooner Barry Manilow.

Parry managed to dissuade Manilow from taking the role by emphasizing that the film would have three first-time co-directors.

But the insanity of the casting idea in the first place emphasizes how difficult “Airplane!” was to cast, and how widely misunderstood it was even by those in charge of creating it.

“Airplane!” evolved from ZAZ’s popular L.A. comedy theater Kentucky Fried Theater, which would also inspire their 1977 film “The Kentucky Fried Movie.”

(An earlier version of the script for “Airplane!” was titled “Kentucky Fried Airplane.”)

Researching TV commercials to parody, ZAZ would record television overnight, hoping to find bizarre infomercials to mock.

Parry managed to dissuade Manilow from taking the role by emphasizing that the film would have three first-time co-directors.

One night, they inadvertently recorded a super-serious 1957 airplane disaster movie called “Zero Hour!” about a World War II veteran with PTSD who is forced to fly a passenger plane after the pilots come down with food poisoning.

“‘Zero Hour!’ was intensely serious and unintentionally hilarious,” Jerry Zucker said in the book.

“One gem in the middle of the movie was the signature line: ‘We need to find someone back there who not only can fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner,’” Abrahams recalled in the book.

“We didn’t have to change it. Imagine being kids who spent 100 percent of their lives looking for things to spoof and then coming across a line like that. I’ve often thought that’s how Jonas Salk must have felt when he discovered his polio vaccine.”

The ZAZ team bought the rights to “Zero Hour!” and constructed “Airplane!” directly on top of it, writing jokey retorts to the original film’s actual lines.

It was crucial then that they cast actors who could perform the creators’ insane comic scenarios with the believability of a disaster movie.

For the role of Elaine Dickinson, the flight attendant/pilot’s love interest eventually played by Julie Hagerty, Shelley Long had a great audition, while Sigourney Weaver took herself out of the running.

“She came in dressed in a 1940s stewardess costume complete with full makeup and a forties hairstyle,” David Zucker says in the book. “Right off the bat she told us that she refused to do the ‘sit on your face and wriggle’ line.”

While Hagerty came along soon after, Striker was proving harder to cast, and the names of many actors — and non-actors — were tossed out in desperation.

Olympic champion Bruce Jenner read for the role three times.

ZAZ even asked David Letterman to audition after seeing him perform at the Comedy Store.

“Airplane!” evolved from the popular L.A. comedy theater Kentucky Fried Theater.

“We did a scene once, and then they gave me some notes, and then we did it maybe two more times,” Letterman says in the book.

“And I kept saying all along, ‘I can’t act! I can’t act!’ and then one of them came to me after the audition and said, ‘You’re right: you can’t act!”

“I remember calling Letterman to tell him he didn’t get the part,” Jerry Zucker said. “He thanked me profusely.”

Beyond the romantic leads, one key to the film’s success would be to hire the kind of actors who had starred in movies and TV shows like “Zero Hero!”

When “Mission: Impossible” veteran Peter Graves, who eventually played the gladiator-loving Captain Oveur, first read the script, he thought it was so awful that he threw it across the room. (Graves died in 2010, but is quoted throughout the book in old interviews.)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with basketball and Julie Haggerty in an "Airplane!" still.

“I did more than turn it down. I was upset. I thought it was trash!” Graves says.

“I said, ‘This is insane!’ And not only that, it’s the worst taste I’ve ever seen — from any piece of material I’ve ever read!’”

Confusion about the script didn’t end after the actors, including Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges, were cast.

“I remember one day, Lloyd and Bob were rehearsing a scene,” Hays says in the book. “I remember Lloyd being a little kind of frustrated and confused, and saying, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ Because it was so stupid! It was so crazy, and he didn’t quite get it.”


“So finally Stack jumps in,” continues David Zucker, “and says, ‘Look, there’s a spear going into the wall behind me and a watermelon falling on the desk in front of you. No one’s listening to us! Just keep talkin’, Lloyd!’”

In the end, “Airplane!” became a regular presence on virtually every “Funniest Movies of All Time” list, and even won over the skeptics in its own cast.

Years after the movie’s release, Graves was standing in a checkout line behind a woman and a twelve-year-old boy. The boy kept peering back like he might recognize him.

“She finishes paying, and the kid’s still looking at me,” says Graves.

“And I just leaned down and said, ‘Son, do you like movies about gladiators?’ She grabbed that kid and headed for the hills. No one has seen her since.”

PP

[PHXPhlyer]

Gambler : secrets from a life at risk / Billy Walters ; with Armen Keteyian.

I had not heard of this guy and the main draw for reading his book was for his interactions with Phil Mickelson.
Not terribly enlightening in that respect but an interesting read.

"Anybody can get lucky. Nobody controls the odds like Billy Walters. Widely regarded as "the Michael Jordan of sports betting," Walters is a living legend in Las Vegas and among sports bettors worldwide. With an unmatched winning streak of thirty-six consecutive years, Walters has become fabulously wealthy by placing hundreds of millions of dollars a year in gross wagers, including one Super Bowl bet of $3.5 million alone. Competitors desperate to crack his betting techniques have tried hacking his phones, cloning his beepers, rifling through his trash, and bribing his employees. Now, after decades of avoiding the spotlight and fiercely protecting the keys to his success, Walters has reached the age where he wants to pass along his wisdom to future generations of sports wagerers..." -

PP

[Hydromet]

^PHXPhlyer, must have a look at it. I once took a job where the person I was replacing had resigned to become a full-time horse race punter. He had developed a program (based on multivariate analysis of variance I think) for predicting the 'true' odds of horses winning, and betting on them when he could get better odds. Never found out how successful he was.
I wonder how my grandfather would have done if he'd had a computer available to him. He used to spend his time writing statistics of horses from races all over Australia in pencil in an exercise book, then walking down to the betting shop to punt on his selections. I've no idea how he went, but perhaps the fact that my Grandmother used to hide money from him is a clue.

[PHXPhlyer]

I love my public library!
I was able to reserve this before they have even received any copies.

“Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane"
Zucker, David/ Abrahams, Jim/ Zucker, Jerry

‘Airplane!’ was almost ruined by Barry Manilow and David Letterman

https://nypost.com/2023/10/21/airplane- ... y-manilow/

When the creators of the 1980 comedy classic “Airplane!” were casting the lead role of pilot Ted Striker — eventually played by Robert Hays — they saw a slew of actors who weren’t right for the role.

Finally, with only three weeks until filming, executives at Paramount Pictures told the filmmakers that they had decided on an actor to fill the role: crooner Barry Manilow.

According to a new oral history of the film, “Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane!” (St. Martin’s Press) by the film’s creators David Zucker, Jerry Zucker, and Jim Abrahams, with interviews by Will Harris, Paramount executive Tom Parry broke the news to the team, known collectively as ZAZ.

“Their jaws dropped, and then they broke into gales of laughter,” Parry says in the book.

“And they said, ‘You got us! That’s the funniest thing we’ve ever heard!’ The thing is, the guys used to do things like toilet-paper my car, and they thought I was getting back at them. And I said, ‘No no! It’s real!”

With only three weeks until filming, executives at Paramount Pictures told the “Airplane!” filmmakers that they had decided on an actor to fill Stryker the role: crooner Barry Manilow.

Parry managed to dissuade Manilow from taking the role by emphasizing that the film would have three first-time co-directors.

But the insanity of the casting idea in the first place emphasizes how difficult “Airplane!” was to cast, and how widely misunderstood it was even by those in charge of creating it.

“Airplane!” evolved from ZAZ’s popular L.A. comedy theater Kentucky Fried Theater, which would also inspire their 1977 film “The Kentucky Fried Movie.”

(An earlier version of the script for “Airplane!” was titled “Kentucky Fried Airplane.”)

Researching TV commercials to parody, ZAZ would record television overnight, hoping to find bizarre infomercials to mock.

Parry managed to dissuade Manilow from taking the role by emphasizing that the film would have three first-time co-directors.

One night, they inadvertently recorded a super-serious 1957 airplane disaster movie called “Zero Hour!” about a World War II veteran with PTSD who is forced to fly a passenger plane after the pilots come down with food poisoning.

“‘Zero Hour!’ was intensely serious and unintentionally hilarious,” Jerry Zucker said in the book.

“One gem in the middle of the movie was the signature line: ‘We need to find someone back there who not only can fly this plane, but who didn’t have fish for dinner,’” Abrahams recalled in the book.

“We didn’t have to change it. Imagine being kids who spent 100 percent of their lives looking for things to spoof and then coming across a line like that. I’ve often thought that’s how Jonas Salk must have felt when he discovered his polio vaccine.”

The ZAZ team bought the rights to “Zero Hour!” and constructed “Airplane!” directly on top of it, writing jokey retorts to the original film’s actual lines.

It was crucial then that they cast actors who could perform the creators’ insane comic scenarios with the believability of a disaster movie.

For the role of Elaine Dickinson, the flight attendant/pilot’s love interest eventually played by Julie Hagerty, Shelley Long had a great audition, while Sigourney Weaver took herself out of the running.

“She came in dressed in a 1940s stewardess costume complete with full makeup and a forties hairstyle,” David Zucker says in the book. “Right off the bat she told us that she refused to do the ‘sit on your face and wriggle’ line.”

While Hagerty came along soon after, Striker was proving harder to cast, and the names of many actors — and non-actors — were tossed out in desperation.

Olympic champion Bruce Jenner read for the role three times.

ZAZ even asked David Letterman to audition after seeing him perform at the Comedy Store.

“Airplane!” evolved from the popular L.A. comedy theater Kentucky Fried Theater.

“We did a scene once, and then they gave me some notes, and then we did it maybe two more times,” Letterman says in the book.

“And I kept saying all along, ‘I can’t act! I can’t act!’ and then one of them came to me after the audition and said, ‘You’re right: you can’t act!”

“I remember calling Letterman to tell him he didn’t get the part,” Jerry Zucker said. “He thanked me profusely.”

Beyond the romantic leads, one key to the film’s success would be to hire the kind of actors who had starred in movies and TV shows like “Zero Hero!”

When “Mission: Impossible” veteran Peter Graves, who eventually played the gladiator-loving Captain Oveur, first read the script, he thought it was so awful that he threw it across the room. (Graves died in 2010, but is quoted throughout the book in old interviews.)
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with basketball and Julie Haggerty in an "Airplane!" still.

“I did more than turn it down. I was upset. I thought it was trash!” Graves says.

“I said, ‘This is insane!’ And not only that, it’s the worst taste I’ve ever seen — from any piece of material I’ve ever read!’”

Confusion about the script didn’t end after the actors, including Leslie Nielsen, Robert Stack, and Lloyd Bridges, were cast.

“I remember one day, Lloyd and Bob were rehearsing a scene,” Hays says in the book. “I remember Lloyd being a little kind of frustrated and confused, and saying, ‘What the hell’s going on here?’ Because it was so stupid! It was so crazy, and he didn’t quite get it.”


“So finally Stack jumps in,” continues David Zucker, “and says, ‘Look, there’s a spear going into the wall behind me and a watermelon falling on the desk in front of you. No one’s listening to us! Just keep talkin’, Lloyd!’”

In the end, “Airplane!” became a regular presence on virtually every “Funniest Movies of All Time” list, and even won over the skeptics in its own cast.

Years after the movie’s release, Graves was standing in a checkout line behind a woman and a twelve-year-old boy. The boy kept peering back like he might recognize him.

“She finishes paying, and the kid’s still looking at me,” says Graves.

“And I just leaned down and said, ‘Son, do you like movies about gladiators?’ She grabbed that kid and headed for the hills. No one has seen her since.”

PP

Just finished.
An easy read.
Lots of behind the scenes insight to the conception and making of the movie with lots of comments from the actors and crew with the main story from the viewpoint of the writers/directors (ZAZ)

PP

[Hydromet]

"Nymbo: A Paddler's Guide to the Nymboida & its Tributaries" by Brian Cork. Only because there are some photos of the Granddaughter shooting some of the rapds.

[probes]

The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/60551

Fascinating and mind-boggling