diego
12-13-2002, 07:01 PM
Felt compelled to post this!!?...not fully off-topic:)
WAR
Goodbye, Viet Nam
The last images of the war: U.S. Marines with rifle butts
pounding the fingers of Vietnamese who tried to claw their way
into the embassy compound to escape from their homeland. An
apocalyptic carnival air--some looters wildly driving abandoned
embassy cars around the city until they ran out of gas; others
ransacking Saigon's Newport PX, that transplanted dream of
American suburbia, with one woman bearing off two cases of
maraschino cherries, another a case of Wrigley's Spearmint gum.
Out in the South China Sea, millions of dollars worth of
helicopters tossed overboard from U.S. rescue ships to make room
for later-arriving choppers. For many Americans, it was like a
death--long been expected but shocking when it finally happened.
There was something surrealist in the swiftness of the last
catastrophe--a drama made doubly bitter by the fact that most
Americans had made their emotional peace with Viet Nam. The
P.O.W.s had come home, the last soldiers had withdrawn. The
nation turned, not happily, to other preoccupations--to
Watergate and to coping with recession and inflation. But since
Viet Nam had deceived Americans so many times before, it was
perhaps fitting that it should be the only war they would have
to lose twice.
May 12, 1975
THE NATION
The Violence in Miami
Some scenes reverberated in the memories of those who had been
attacked. White motorists could only jam down their
accelerators, duck their heads and try to speed away from the
fusillade of bricks, bottles and bullets. "There's one, that's a
white one!" a black screamed as a yellow Toyota passed an
intersection. The driver spun his wheels frantically in an oil
slick before escaping the approaching mob. Recalled white
Motorist Jim Davis: "The police had put up a roadblock. I
couldn't get around it. I went into a U-turn, but my car stalled
and they came running at me. I heard them scream, 'Honky!' I got
the car into gear and knocked them out of the way. I heard
gunfire. I saw a police officer and I screamed, 'What should I
do?' He said, 'I've been shot at all night. Do what you have to
to get out.'"
Witnessed Miami Herald Reporter Earni Young: "A late-model green
car--I think it might have been a Chevrolet Impala--deliberately
drove over one of the bodies. I think I saw it rip the man's arm
off. The crowd cheered and yelled."
June 2, 1980
Three Mile Island
In the dead of the night, the hulks of four 372-ft. cooling
towers and two high-domed nuclear reactor container buildings
were scarcely discernible above the gentle waters of the
Susquehanna River. Inside the brightly lit control room of
Metropolitan Edison's Unit 2, technicians on the lobster shift
one night last week faced a tranquil, even boring watch.
Suddenly, at 4 a.m., alarm lights blinked red on their
instrument panels. A siren whooped a warning. In the understated
jargon of the nuclear power industry, an "event" had occurred.
In plain English, it was the beginning of the worst accident in
the history of U.S. nuclear power production, and of a long,
often confused nightmare that threw the future of the nuclear
industry into question.
At week's end officials insisted that the danger of a meltdown
was receding. Nevertheless, suspense as to the eventual outcome
buttressed the claims of nuclear power's foes that all the
wondrous fail-safe gadgets of modern technology had turned out
to be just as fallible as the men who had designed and built
them. Declared Nuclear Power Critic Ralph Nader: "This is the
beginning of the end of nuclear power in this country."
April 9, 1979
Desert Debacle
Two lines of blue lights etched the outlines of the remote
landing strip. Suddenly flames illuminated the night sky, then
gradually flickered out. On the powdery sands of Dasht-e-Kavir,
Iran's Great Salt Desert, lay the burned-out hulk of a lumbering
U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft. Nearby rested the
scorched skeleton of a U.S. Navy RH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter.
And in the wreckage were the burned bodies of eight American
military air crewmen.
The fire and the fury dramatized the dimensions of a new
American tragedy--the inability of the U.S. to extricate 53
American hostages held by Iranian militants. In a startlingly
bold but tragic gamble, President Jimmy Carter had ordered a
courageous, specially trained team of American military
commandos to try to pluck the hostages out of the heavily
guarded U.S. embassy in Tehran. The supersecret operation failed
dismally.
May 5, 1980
THE ARTS
MUSIC
Death of the King
He inspired scores of imitators, sold millions of records. He
got drafted into the Army, served a tour of duty in Germany,
sold millions of records. He went to Hollywood, appeared in 33
movies, sold millions of records, lived a gaudy life so high and
wide that it seemed like a parody of an American success story.
And he kept selling records, well over 500 million in all. The
music got slicker and often sillier, turned from rock toward
rhinestone country and spangled gospel. Only the pace remained
the same. Elvis Aron Presley always lived fast, and last week at
the age of 42, that was the way he died.
He was found lying on the bathroom floor, dead of "cardiac
arrythmia"--a severely irregular heartbeat--brought about by
"undetermined causes." Doctors said there was "no evidence of
any illegal drug use" although a new book co-authored by three
former Presley bodyguards maintains that "E" consumed uppers,
downers and a variety of narcotic cough medicines, all obtained
by prescription. He also was wrestling halfheartedly with a
fearful weight problem and was suffering from a variety of other
ailments like hypertension, eye trouble and a twisted colon.
Aug. 29, 1977
SHOW BUSINESS
Fever
Check it out! Man walks down that street so fine. Strides easy.
Long, looking right. Left then. Then ahead, then
left...snap!...again, follows that little sister in the tight
pants a ways, then back on the beam. Arms arc. Could be some old
trainman, swinging an imaginary lantern in the night. Smiling.
Stepping so smart. Rolls, almost. Swings his butt like he's
shifting gears in a swivel chair. Weight stays, sways, in his
hips. Shoulders, straight, shift with the strut. High and light.
Street's all his, past doubt. And more, if he wants. Could be he
might step off that concrete. Just start flying away. It's all
there, in the walk that John Travolta takes through the opening
credits of Saturday Night Fever.
April 3, 1978
LIVING
Hotpots of the Urban Night
The new discos are strobe light-years removed from the borax
boites of the '60s--most of which died a well-deserved death. In
place of the tacky, bare-wall closets wired for din, push and
crush, the best new places project sensuality, exclusivity and
luxury. And they are booming: there are some 15,000 discos in
the U.S. today, v. 3,000 only two years ago. Many of the night
places are for members only, with fees and dues ranging as high
as $1,000 a year. Many have good restaurants and pool, pinball
and backgammon rooms. In many, the furnishings can best be
described as haut kitsch: kaleidoscopic lighting, silver vinyl
banquettes, tented nooks, twinkly Italian lights, jungles of
synthetic plants, Plexiglas floors. Not a few, however, are
decorated in notably good taste; and some seem to have been
designed by the people who went on to make Star Wars.
June 27, 1977
CINEMA
Crossover Dreams
"The Chinese take Kung Fu seriously," observes Run Run Shaw, one
of two Chinese brothers who produced the current smash-hit film
Five Fingers of Death. "Americans see it as comedy." Not that
Run Run minds, as long as customers pay. "We're here to make
money," he happily admits. Comic as it may seem, Five Fingers,
made in Hong Kong for a mere $300,000, has grossed $3,800,000 in
only eleven weeks in the U.S., not to mention $4,100,000 in
other foreign countries.
Five Fingers is a kind of chop sueywestern exploiting Kung Fu,
one of the Chinese martial arts of man-to-man combat. Instead of
six-shooters, the actors use their hands, feet and heads to show
who is the fastest draw in the East. Besides kicking, jumping
and batting their heads together, they like to yell and grunt a
lot. Dubbed in a kind of pidgin hip, the film makes no attempt
to synchronize speech to lip movements, and a character can go
on talking long after his mouth has closed.
Though the Shaw brothers have been making films since the
mid-'20s, the only Western distribution their Kung Fu movies
used to have was in the Chinatowns of Europe and America. Last
January, however, Run Run decided to peddle his Kung Fu movies
to a wider audience. "American people always love action," he
says to explain his Great Leap Forward. "Hollywood made lots of
money with cowboys until Italians made cowboy pictures with more
action. Next came James Bond." He adds proudly: "Now from Hong
Kong comes Kung Fu." [Within a few years, actors like Jackie
Chan and Bruce Lee became worldwide household names.]
WAR
Goodbye, Viet Nam
The last images of the war: U.S. Marines with rifle butts
pounding the fingers of Vietnamese who tried to claw their way
into the embassy compound to escape from their homeland. An
apocalyptic carnival air--some looters wildly driving abandoned
embassy cars around the city until they ran out of gas; others
ransacking Saigon's Newport PX, that transplanted dream of
American suburbia, with one woman bearing off two cases of
maraschino cherries, another a case of Wrigley's Spearmint gum.
Out in the South China Sea, millions of dollars worth of
helicopters tossed overboard from U.S. rescue ships to make room
for later-arriving choppers. For many Americans, it was like a
death--long been expected but shocking when it finally happened.
There was something surrealist in the swiftness of the last
catastrophe--a drama made doubly bitter by the fact that most
Americans had made their emotional peace with Viet Nam. The
P.O.W.s had come home, the last soldiers had withdrawn. The
nation turned, not happily, to other preoccupations--to
Watergate and to coping with recession and inflation. But since
Viet Nam had deceived Americans so many times before, it was
perhaps fitting that it should be the only war they would have
to lose twice.
May 12, 1975
THE NATION
The Violence in Miami
Some scenes reverberated in the memories of those who had been
attacked. White motorists could only jam down their
accelerators, duck their heads and try to speed away from the
fusillade of bricks, bottles and bullets. "There's one, that's a
white one!" a black screamed as a yellow Toyota passed an
intersection. The driver spun his wheels frantically in an oil
slick before escaping the approaching mob. Recalled white
Motorist Jim Davis: "The police had put up a roadblock. I
couldn't get around it. I went into a U-turn, but my car stalled
and they came running at me. I heard them scream, 'Honky!' I got
the car into gear and knocked them out of the way. I heard
gunfire. I saw a police officer and I screamed, 'What should I
do?' He said, 'I've been shot at all night. Do what you have to
to get out.'"
Witnessed Miami Herald Reporter Earni Young: "A late-model green
car--I think it might have been a Chevrolet Impala--deliberately
drove over one of the bodies. I think I saw it rip the man's arm
off. The crowd cheered and yelled."
June 2, 1980
Three Mile Island
In the dead of the night, the hulks of four 372-ft. cooling
towers and two high-domed nuclear reactor container buildings
were scarcely discernible above the gentle waters of the
Susquehanna River. Inside the brightly lit control room of
Metropolitan Edison's Unit 2, technicians on the lobster shift
one night last week faced a tranquil, even boring watch.
Suddenly, at 4 a.m., alarm lights blinked red on their
instrument panels. A siren whooped a warning. In the understated
jargon of the nuclear power industry, an "event" had occurred.
In plain English, it was the beginning of the worst accident in
the history of U.S. nuclear power production, and of a long,
often confused nightmare that threw the future of the nuclear
industry into question.
At week's end officials insisted that the danger of a meltdown
was receding. Nevertheless, suspense as to the eventual outcome
buttressed the claims of nuclear power's foes that all the
wondrous fail-safe gadgets of modern technology had turned out
to be just as fallible as the men who had designed and built
them. Declared Nuclear Power Critic Ralph Nader: "This is the
beginning of the end of nuclear power in this country."
April 9, 1979
Desert Debacle
Two lines of blue lights etched the outlines of the remote
landing strip. Suddenly flames illuminated the night sky, then
gradually flickered out. On the powdery sands of Dasht-e-Kavir,
Iran's Great Salt Desert, lay the burned-out hulk of a lumbering
U.S. Air Force C-130 Hercules aircraft. Nearby rested the
scorched skeleton of a U.S. Navy RH-53 Sea Stallion helicopter.
And in the wreckage were the burned bodies of eight American
military air crewmen.
The fire and the fury dramatized the dimensions of a new
American tragedy--the inability of the U.S. to extricate 53
American hostages held by Iranian militants. In a startlingly
bold but tragic gamble, President Jimmy Carter had ordered a
courageous, specially trained team of American military
commandos to try to pluck the hostages out of the heavily
guarded U.S. embassy in Tehran. The supersecret operation failed
dismally.
May 5, 1980
THE ARTS
MUSIC
Death of the King
He inspired scores of imitators, sold millions of records. He
got drafted into the Army, served a tour of duty in Germany,
sold millions of records. He went to Hollywood, appeared in 33
movies, sold millions of records, lived a gaudy life so high and
wide that it seemed like a parody of an American success story.
And he kept selling records, well over 500 million in all. The
music got slicker and often sillier, turned from rock toward
rhinestone country and spangled gospel. Only the pace remained
the same. Elvis Aron Presley always lived fast, and last week at
the age of 42, that was the way he died.
He was found lying on the bathroom floor, dead of "cardiac
arrythmia"--a severely irregular heartbeat--brought about by
"undetermined causes." Doctors said there was "no evidence of
any illegal drug use" although a new book co-authored by three
former Presley bodyguards maintains that "E" consumed uppers,
downers and a variety of narcotic cough medicines, all obtained
by prescription. He also was wrestling halfheartedly with a
fearful weight problem and was suffering from a variety of other
ailments like hypertension, eye trouble and a twisted colon.
Aug. 29, 1977
SHOW BUSINESS
Fever
Check it out! Man walks down that street so fine. Strides easy.
Long, looking right. Left then. Then ahead, then
left...snap!...again, follows that little sister in the tight
pants a ways, then back on the beam. Arms arc. Could be some old
trainman, swinging an imaginary lantern in the night. Smiling.
Stepping so smart. Rolls, almost. Swings his butt like he's
shifting gears in a swivel chair. Weight stays, sways, in his
hips. Shoulders, straight, shift with the strut. High and light.
Street's all his, past doubt. And more, if he wants. Could be he
might step off that concrete. Just start flying away. It's all
there, in the walk that John Travolta takes through the opening
credits of Saturday Night Fever.
April 3, 1978
LIVING
Hotpots of the Urban Night
The new discos are strobe light-years removed from the borax
boites of the '60s--most of which died a well-deserved death. In
place of the tacky, bare-wall closets wired for din, push and
crush, the best new places project sensuality, exclusivity and
luxury. And they are booming: there are some 15,000 discos in
the U.S. today, v. 3,000 only two years ago. Many of the night
places are for members only, with fees and dues ranging as high
as $1,000 a year. Many have good restaurants and pool, pinball
and backgammon rooms. In many, the furnishings can best be
described as haut kitsch: kaleidoscopic lighting, silver vinyl
banquettes, tented nooks, twinkly Italian lights, jungles of
synthetic plants, Plexiglas floors. Not a few, however, are
decorated in notably good taste; and some seem to have been
designed by the people who went on to make Star Wars.
June 27, 1977
CINEMA
Crossover Dreams
"The Chinese take Kung Fu seriously," observes Run Run Shaw, one
of two Chinese brothers who produced the current smash-hit film
Five Fingers of Death. "Americans see it as comedy." Not that
Run Run minds, as long as customers pay. "We're here to make
money," he happily admits. Comic as it may seem, Five Fingers,
made in Hong Kong for a mere $300,000, has grossed $3,800,000 in
only eleven weeks in the U.S., not to mention $4,100,000 in
other foreign countries.
Five Fingers is a kind of chop sueywestern exploiting Kung Fu,
one of the Chinese martial arts of man-to-man combat. Instead of
six-shooters, the actors use their hands, feet and heads to show
who is the fastest draw in the East. Besides kicking, jumping
and batting their heads together, they like to yell and grunt a
lot. Dubbed in a kind of pidgin hip, the film makes no attempt
to synchronize speech to lip movements, and a character can go
on talking long after his mouth has closed.
Though the Shaw brothers have been making films since the
mid-'20s, the only Western distribution their Kung Fu movies
used to have was in the Chinatowns of Europe and America. Last
January, however, Run Run decided to peddle his Kung Fu movies
to a wider audience. "American people always love action," he
says to explain his Great Leap Forward. "Hollywood made lots of
money with cowboys until Italians made cowboy pictures with more
action. Next came James Bond." He adds proudly: "Now from Hong
Kong comes Kung Fu." [Within a few years, actors like Jackie
Chan and Bruce Lee became worldwide household names.]