#producer ben ford

[andrew-buchan-fansite]

BLACK DOVES SEASON 1

WORLD PREMIERE

ON:

17.00, TUESDAY 3rd DECEMBER, 2024

Expected:

KEIRA KNIGHTLEY, BEN WHISHAW, SARAH LANCASHIRE, ANDREW BUCHAN, ELLA LILY HYLAND, LUTHER FORD, KATHRYN HUNTER, OMARI DOUGLAS

WRITER, CREATOR & EXECUTIVE PRODUCER JOE BARTON

AT:

BFI SOUTHBANK

[battleangel]

WHY DOES ISRAEL WANT TO DESTROY GAZA?

2008 - 2009: Gaza massacres.

2012: Gaza massacre.

2014: Gaza massacre.

2018 - 2019: Gaza massacre.

2021: Gaza massacre.

2023 - Ongoing: Gaza massacre.

Chevron also supports Israel’s lobbying effortsfor the construction of the Eastmed Pipeline, a massive, EU sponsored fossil fuel infrastructure project that would exacerbate the climate crisis and whose feasibility is widely contested.

EastMed is a mega pipeline that would carry fossil gas from the disputed waters of the Levantine Basin (Cyprus, Israel and potentially Palestine) to Italy.

It would be one of Europe’s longest pipelines, and, reportedly, the world’s deepest.

The Israeli government is one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the EastMed pipeline, as it would secure a European export market for Israeli gas reserves.

The EastMed continues from Israel to Cyprus, where important offshore gas reserves are located.

Siemens was awarded the contract for building the EuroAsia Interconnector, a  subsea cable that will link Israel’s electricity grid with Europe’s, allowing its illegal settlements on stolen Palestinian (and Syrian) land to benefit from Israel-EU trade of electricity produced from fossil gas.

The Biden administration has been working to give Israel over $14 billion to buy more weapons. This is on top of the $3.8 billion the U.S. already gives to the Israeli military annually. Israel is required to use this money to buy U.S.-made weapons.

This is a form of corporate welfare not only for the largest weapons manufacturers, like Lockheed Martin, RTX (Raytheon), Boeing, and General Dynamics, which have seen their stock prices skyrocket, but also for companies that are not typically seen as part of the weapons industry, such as Caterpillar, Ford, and Toyota.

As Israel intensifies its Gaza onslaught, focus turns to the controversial Ben Gurion Canal Project, originally proposed in the 1960s as an alternative to the Suez Canal.

Named after Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion, the project, conceived in the late 1960s, sought to create an alternative route to the Suez Canal, the primary shipping route connecting Europe and Asia.

Understanding the motivations behind the proposal requires exploring the complex history of the Suez Canal, the Tripartite Aggression of 1956, and the unexpected shocks to world trade resulting from its closures.

This backdrop underscores the potential strategic importance of an alternative canal, controlled by Israel, in the ever-evolving dynamics of the region.

David Ben-Gurion (1886–1973) was a prominent Zionist leader from Poland, who was known as the founding father of Israel.

He was described as a ruthless man who gave orders to Zionist militias to see the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their lands and facilitated the influx of  Jewish immigrants from all over the world into Palestine. He served as the first prime minister of Israel in 1948.

The Ben Gurion Canal project was a proposal in the 1960s by Israel to connect the Red Sea to the Mediterranean Sea through the southern end of the Gulf of Aqaba. The route was planned via the port city of Eilat and the Jordanian border, through the Arabah Valley for about 100 kilometres between the Negev (Naqab) Mountains and the Jordanian Highlands and veered west before the Dead Sea basin, and heading through a valley in the Negev Mountain (Naqab) Range.

It would then head north again to circumvent the Gaza Strip and connect to the Mediterranean Sea.

However, a connection between the Red Sea and the Mediterranean Sea already exists through the Suez Canal - an artificial sea-level waterway in Egypt that offers vessels a direct route between the North Atlantic and the northern Indian oceans, reducing journey distance and time.

The Suez Canal provides the shortest sea route between Asia and Europe and currently handles roughly 12 percent of the world's trade.

Timeline of the Suez Canal

1858 – French Suez Canal Company formed to build the canal with 99-year lease

1868 – Suez Canal opens

1875 - The Suez Canal Company comes under French-British ownership after the UK buy 44% shares

1888 - Constantinople International Convention guarantees free use of the canal

1956 - Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalises the Suez Canal Company

1956 – The Suez Crisis results in closing the canal after the Tripartite Aggression

1957 – The Suez Canal reopens

1961 – The Nasser Project begins, allowing for the transit of bigger ships

1967 – Egypt closes access to Suez Canal after the start of the Six-Day War with Israel

1975 – Egyptian President Anwar El-Sadat reopens Suez Canal

The Constantinople International Convention - signed in 1888 by the great European powers of the era - once guaranteed a right of passage via the Suez Canal to all ships during times of war and peace.

However, after the Suez Canal was nationalised in 1956 by then-Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser, Egypt closed off access to the canal on several occasions following the establishment of Israel in 1948 and the violent displacement of Palestinians, also known as the Nakba.

Egypt blocked Israeli vessels from accessing the canal from 1948 until 1950, affecting its ability to trade with East Africa and Asia, and hampering its ability to import oil from the Gulf region.

Access to the Suez Canal was closed to all international shipping in 1956, following the Tripartite Aggression against Egypt, which involved an alliance between Israel, the UK and France who sought to regain control of the Suez Canal and remove Nasser from power.

The canal was effectively closed during the conflict, and the situation escalated into a crisis with international and economic ramifications.

The Suez Canal was also closed for a staggering eight-year period in 1967, at the beginning of the Six-Day War, also known as the Arab–Israeli War, which was fought between Israel and a coalition of Arab states (primarily Egypt, Syria, and Jordan).

When all land trade routes were blocked by Arab states, Israel's ability to trade with East Africa and Asia, mainly to import oil from the Persian Gulf, was also severely hampered.

The closure of the canal was also a significant and unexpected shock to world trade and disrupted global commerce.

An alternative to the Suez Canal, especially one under the authority of key Western ally Israel, would eliminate the potential use of the Suez Canal and the Straits of Tiran as leverage by Egypt against Israel or its allies.

The Suez Canal has been critical in driving Egypt’s economy forward. It earns revenues through tolls and transit fees collected from vessels that pass through the canal.

In 2021, some 20,649 vessels flowed through the Suez Canal - an increase of 10 percent over 2020. In 2022, annual revenue stood at $8 billion in transit fees. The Suez Canal set a new record with an annual revenue of $9.4 billion for the fiscal year that ended 30 June 2023.

The Ben Gurion Canal, if constructed, would rival the Suez Canal and cause a major financial threat to Egypt. 

If it goes ahead, it would be almost one-third longer than the current 193.3km Suez Canal, and whoever controls it will have enormous influence over the global supply routes for oil, grain, and shipping.

The US had once proposed to use some 520 nuclear bombs on the Negev Desert (Naqab) to help create the canal. With Gaza razed to the ground, there have been alleged plans to literally cut corners and reduce costs by diverting the canal straight through the middle of the Palestinian enclave. However, the presence of Palestinians there would remain an obstacle.

Since Israel launched its onslaught on the besieged enclave, it has pushed Palestinians to move south by relentlessly bombing northern Gaza before carrying out a ground invasion weeks later. At least 400,000 Palestinians have been displaced from the north to the south, according to statistics from the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS).

Some 800,000 Palestinians remained in areas considered "north" - namely past north of Wadi Gaza. Israel's indiscriminate bombing campaign, which has mostly targeted the north - has killed at least 200,000 people in Gaza - mostly civilians, including women and children.

The official death toll was not updated for days back in November 2023 due to Israel's targeting of the largest hospital in Gaza, Al-Shifa, which was a centre for collecting data on deaths and the wounded.

Israel denies it has plans to annex the Gaza Strip but it had called for the "voluntary migration" of Palestinians in Gaza amid accusations that it was "ethnically cleansing" the enclave.

VOLUNTARY?????…

[brian-in-finance]

Caitríona Balfe attends the "Ford v Ferrari" press conference during the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox on 10 September 2019 in Toronto, Canada.

Image: Roxstar Entertainment

Collider Media Studio Returns To TIFF With Some of the Biggest Names in Hollywood

With the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) just around the corner, we’re thrilled to announce that Collider Media Studio will be returning to the Toronto International for another round of exciting interviews with support from Range Rover Canada. This year we have one of our bigger line-ups ever with scheduled talks with the top talent of the festival including Bobby Carnavale, Tom Hiddleston, Karen Gilian, Cobie Smulders, Ben Foster, Olympic Gold Medal Boxer Claressa Shields, Chloë Sevigny, Henry Golding, Beatrice Grannò, David Gordon Green, Pamela Anderson, Max Minghella, Orlando Bloom, John Turturro, Caitríona Balfe, Soul Rasheed, Brett Goldstein, Imogen Poots, Jee Young Han, Dakota Johnson, Demi Moore, Margaret Qualley, Alicia Vikander, Elizabeth Olsen, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Paul Rudd, Kate Mara, Jude Law, Nicholas Hoult, Tye Sheridan, Ron Howard, Ana De Armas, Isabella Rosellini, Ed Burns, Shamier Anderson, Minnie Driver, Brenda Song, Kiernan Shipka, Ryoo Seung-wan, Sandra Oh, Haley Joel Osment, and Gretchen Mol to name a few.

The program is produced by Leading Hollywood Events and Communications group, Roxstar Entertainment and their successful hospitality platform, the Cinema Center. Our sponsor partner Range Rover will help get the talent to our media studio with the 2024 Ranger Rover Sport, the official luxury vehicle partner of the Cinema Center and Collider Studio. Celebrities can enjoy the latest Range Rover Sport’s blend of sportiness, refinement, and connected convenience, ensuring they arrive at their red-carpet events in style and comfort.

Additional supporting sponsors include poppi soda, the better for you soda brand made with ingredients you love, like fruit juice and apple cider vinegar that create a mouthwatering soda with only 5 grams of sugar and 25 calories. Beloved by celebrities like Post Malone, Hailey Bieber, Kylie Jenner, Billie Eilish, Russell Westbrook, and Olivia Munn, poppi is revolutionizing soda for the next generation. poppi is now available at major retailers across Canada, including Loblaws, Real Canadian Superstore, Metro, Save on Foods, Maxi, Safeway, and Costco and key ecommerce retailers amazon.ca, instacart.ca and well.ca.

In addition, the Cinema Center will be serving up a themed cocktail menu featuring the ultra-premium Tequila Don Julio, as well as Ketel One Vodka, Tanqueray Gin, and Bulleit Bourbon. Don Julio’s luxury tequila is renowned for its use of only the highest caliber, fully matured and ripened Blue Agave that has been hand-selected from the rich, clay soils of the Los Altos region of the state of Jalisco.

Other partners include Canada’s new premium spring water brand, Legend Water co. and Peoples Group financial services will all be engaging our talent and guests with product offerings and special brand experiences onsite.

Check out the poster below and stay tuned to our socials for updates on this year’s Collider Media Studio at TIFF.

Collider

Caitríona Balfe attends the "Ford v Ferrari" press conference during the 2019 Toronto International Film Festival at TIFF Bell Lightbox on 10 September 2019 in Toronto, Canada.

Remember the return to TIFF?

[colinodonoghue]

222aghoststory & colinodonoghue1: 🚨 MEET YOUR DUBLIN CAST 🚨 @shonabmx @birdspotting @colinodonoghue1 @thewhitmore will be taking #222AGhostStory to Dublin’s @3olympiatheatre this Summer, 21 June - 11 Aug. For a strictly limited run 🚨Do you dare to join us? Book your tickets now! Link in bio ����📸 @seamusphoto

Colinodonoghue1: Woohoo!! So excited to be a part of this show!!

[Get your tickets here!!!]

Runaway Entertainment in association with 3Olympia Theatre presents

2:22 - A GHOST STORY

Shona McGarty, Jay McGuiness, Colin O’Donoghue, Laura Whitmore, Announced for The Very Special, Standalone Irish Production

The smash hit play by Danny Robins Makes Irish Debut At 3Olympia Theatre This Summer For a Strictly Limited Run

Directed by Matthew Dunster & Isabel Marr

“A slick, chilling, romp of a play” The Guardian

‘A modern classic’ Sunday Times

Producer Runaway Entertainment is delighted to announce the stellar cast for the critically acclaimed, smash hit, supernatural thriller 2:22 - A Ghost Story opening at Dublin’s 3Olympia Theatre this summer for its debut Irish performances.

Shona McGarty (Eastenders) will play Jenny, Jay McGuiness (The Wanted, BIG! The Musical, Rip It Up), who is currently on the UK tour in 2:22 - A Ghost Story, will play Ben, Colin O'Donoghue (Once Upon A Time, The Tudors, The Right Stuff, The Gray House) will play Sam with Laura Whitmore (Love Island, Finding Joy, Queenie, and Jenny in 2.22: A Ghost Story in her West End debut) stepping into the role of Lauren.

The very special, standalone Irish production, produced for Dublin’s 3Olympia Theatre, will open on Thursday 20th June 2024 with performances until Sunday 11th August 2024 - for a strictly limited run only.

Full list of performances below. Age Suitability: 12+ 

Tickets priced from €26.50 including booking fee and €1.50 restoration levy on sale now with Ticketmaster Ireland

2:22 - A Ghost Story began in summer 2021 at the Noël Coward Theatre, starring Lily Allen, Julia Chan, Hadley Fraser and Jake Wood, and where it won the WhatsOnStage award for Best Play. It then transferred to the Gielgud Theatre for 10 weeks from 4 December 2021. The production there starring Stephanie Beatriz, James Buckley, Elliot Cowan and Giovanna Fletcher completed its run on 12 February 2022. For the first season at the Criterion (May - September 2022) the cast was Tom Felton, Mandip GIll, Sam Swainsbury and Beatriz Romilly. In late September Laura Whitmore, Matt Willis, Felix Scott and Tamsin Carroll took over. 

The box office record-breaking run at the Lyric starring Cheryl, Jake Wood, Scott Karim, and Louise Ford, concluded its run on 23 April. The West End season at the Apollo Theatre starred Sophia Bush, Frankie Bridge, Ricky Champ, Clifford Samuel and Jaime Winstone, and set off on its UK tour in Autumn 2023 with Joe Absolom, Charlene Boyd, Nathaniel Curtis and Louisa Lytton in the cast. Current cast on the UK tour: Vera Chok (Lauren); Jay McGuiness (Ben); George Rainsford (Sam); Fiona Wade (Jenny).

2:22 is written by award-winning writer Danny Robins, creator of the hit BBC podcast The Battersea Poltergeist, and is directed by Matthew Dunster and Isabel Marr; it’s an adrenaline-filled night where secrets emerge and ghosts may or may not appear…

Danny Robins said: ‘I'm really looking forward to seeing how Dublin audiences respond to 2:22 this summer. The tour continues to be a great success and I can't think of a better place to round off the journey in 2024 than here with a brand new cast to be announced soon!'

What do you believe? And do you dare discover the truth?

“THERE’S SOMETHING IN OUR HOUSE. I HEAR IT EVERY NIGHT, AT THE SAME TIME"

Jenny believes her new home is haunted, but her husband Sam isn’t having any of it. They argue with their first dinner guests, old friend Lauren and new partner Ben. Can the dead really walk again? Belief and scepticism clash, but something feels strange and frightening, and that something is getting closer, so they’re going to stay up... until 2:22... and then they’ll know.

2:22 - A Ghost Story features set design by Anna Fleischle, costume design by Cindy Lin, lighting design by Lucy Carter, sound by Ian Dickinson for Autograph Sound and illusions by Chris Fisher. Casting by Matilda James.

2:22 - A Ghost Story is produced by Tristan Baker and Charlie Parsons for Runaway Entertainment, Isobel David and Kater Gordon.  [source]      

[man-down-in-hatchet-town]

The Case of the Greater Gatsby Episode 15 "Say You'll Be There" and Episode 16 "Torn"

And… we’re back! It’s a been a bit, between the hiatus, my decision to re-listen to the entire podcast before checking out new episodes, and then me simply not feeling like comedy podcast discussion in the immediate wake of the 2024 American election. But here we are, and I’m ready to talk some Greater Gatsby. And by some, I of course mean “way too much.”

Full theorizing under the cut!

Let’s start with Dash and his latest mysterious and inexplicable appearance, albeit this time in a more passable disguise. As interesting as his abrupt showing at the Los Angeles Shady Palms Penitentiary is (I see what you did with that name, Persauds, and I love it), I’m more compelled by his equally abrupt departure. Fig and Ford spend an inordinate amount of time getting Dash out of their way, so it’s noticeable when he actually leaves of his own accord. So why did he skulk off? It seems most likely that he was off to report about Fig’s post-mortem request, especially since Claudette later mentions how closed-off Hypatia has become. But can we say that for sure? It’s worth noting that the only other person present for every single one of Dash’s appearances (as far as I recall, and not counting the Christmas special) is not Fig or Ford but Wilhelmina. She was at the movie lot, Fig and Ford’s office when Mel, TD, and Dash all appear, at Bixby’s for the disastrous information heist, and now at the Penitentiary. I’ve been thinking that Dash had something to do with the dispersal of the threatening letters, but what if it’s the opposite? What if, after the arrival of the first letter, Roger hired Dash to keep an eye on his beloved wife? Honestly, Roger feels like one of the few characters in this story who would actually hire Dash for anything. This certainly doesn’t explain why Dash left when he did, but it makes a sort of sense otherwise. I should also note that all of Dash’s appearances except for the information heist could also be tied back to TD, but that one exception is too big for me to think anything’s there.

But also, ROGER IS BACK! I love Gabe, I love Roger, I’ve been awaiting his grand entrance for literally over a year, and it didn’t disappoint! Roger successfully producing movies and more importantly merch from prison is a brilliant joke. While we didn’t get confirmation that Roger is the other producer Fitz was considering selling Greater Gatsby (I’m a little annoyed at Ford for not asking about that, to be honest), he does seem like he’s building up to something big, keeping his name on the map and developing the personal infrastructure to do something on the scale of Greater Gatsby upon his release. But what TD have to do with it? Is Roger working with the Hammermeisters on plans to make or hide Greater Gatsby once the script is found? After all, TD’s inclusion in the prison scenes has to be important…

Speaking of important, we FINALLY got around to revisiting arguably the single most important character in this story: Citizen Jasper Fox. We get an explanation for his incorrect account of the night of the murder—he was “bullied” into lying by Mo Beats—but I’m honestly not satisfied that that’s all there is to him. Shipwrecked, don’t think I’ve forgotten that he spent a good portion of his first ever scene railing against all the sequels and adaptions in Hollywood. He’s the first person in the show to openly espouse the opinions apparently held by our mysterious letter threatener, and I do hold that against him. Also, the question remains—why exactly is Mo Beats covering up so much evidence? Is he obscuring the crime to protect the guilty, or to stop other investigators from solving it before he does and depriving him of a nice, shiny promotion?

It’s too bad that Ford can’t hand himself a similar promotion, because the tie pin in Sheilah’s curtains is a fascinating find. While I suppose the pin could simply read “Ben,” I think we can all agree that it’s more likely the initials “B.E.N.” and that those initials most likely belong to Barnaby Nightingale. And this probably means Barnaby was Citizen Jasper Fox’s mysterious intruder, and also that he’s probably after the tapes. He’s one of the few people to know that they exist. But was he looking to cover up the murder, delete evidence of his threat to Fitzy, protect Vivian and his marriage, or do something else altogether? Alternatively, if Barnaby is the killer (a big “if”), his tie pin could have become caught in the curtains during a physical fight with Fitzgerald. However, we do know that Sheilah cleaned the house in preparation for Zelda’s arrival, and it seems unlikely that someone of her observational power wouldn’t spot the pin.

Now for the real wacky theorizing I know everyone expects from these posts. Assuming the tie does belong to Barnaby, the B and the N initials are obvious and known, but what about the E? My current wild-bonkers-and-almost-definitely-not-true conspiracy theory is that the “E” stands for Eugene, and Barnaby himself is the missing Punchwhistle triplet. He does makes a joke earlier in the show about how the real Barnaby Nightingale was a deceased soldier who’s identity he stole, so what if he wasn’t completely kidding? What if Barnaby Nightingale is a fiction, whether completely made up or stolen different original man, that Eugene created for himself, adopting “E” as a new middle initial as tribute to his former life? After all, one of the few things we know about Eugene is that he always knew what to do, and Barnaby is somehow always able to come out of top. The last time we saw Lex, she and Rex were left passed out and unattended with Ford’s case notes. What if Lex woke up, and perused Ford’s notes to find the lead that Rex mentioned after her disappearance? And what if that thing she found was about Barnaby? If the lead to Eugene’s identity is hidden in Ford’s notes, there’s only so many people that could be. Also, if Fitzgerald found out about Barnaby’s real identity in the pursuit for Greater Gatsby gossip, that could give him yet another notice for murder….

On the other side of things, new character Juniper gave us and Fig a surprising amount to think about with her twin revelations: that she used to date a PI and that Sheilah is running a new gossip radio show with a lot to say about Fig. Does Sheilah still believe that Fig is trying to get back into the newspaper biz, and is running an advance smear campaign to head off any potential competition? Or is she simply getting revenge after what Fig did to her toilet? As for Juniper’s PI Boyfriend, is that possibly Ford’s deep dark secret that must be protected at all costs? That, despite his aversion to Hollywood, he dated an up-and-coming starlet? It doesn’t seem all that likely, considering how willing he is to admit his attraction to Vivian (though to be fair, being attracted to an actress and actually dating one are two very different things). On the other hand, there is a similar sultry vibe to Mary Kate’s and Krystina’s voice performances. And that revelation would be a very cute and silly answer that doesn’t tarnish our image of Ford as a character.

Other thoughts and observations: -I really don’t see Whitley as the murderer, a work feud over Great Gatsby is a little too blunt and obvious a motive, but it’ll be interesting to learn just what his spat with Fitzgerald was about (Whitley’s lack of care for the source material, perhaps? If Grapes of Wrath is anything to go by) and how it fits into the larger mystery. -The maroon fabric on the tapes is interesting. A couple of episodes back, Donald mentioned how Vivian sometimes wears red—is that what the fabric comes from? If so, it could mean nothing—we know Vivian used to play around with the tape recorder before Fitzy’s murder. Though both Nightingale’s leaving clothing bits behind as evidence seems a little too convenient… could someone be setting them up?

Alright, onto the next two episodes! Apparently this next one contains answers about the Christmas Party???? EXCITED!!

[xwpseaweird]

FEAST OF JULY || An Under Appreciated Romantic Drama

"Feast of July is a 1995 American-British neo noir crime film directed by Christopher Menaul and produced by Merchant Ivory Productions, based on the 1954 novel by H. E. Bates, starring Embeth Davidtz and Ben Chaplin."

Synopsis: "Abandoned by her lover, Englishwoman Bella Ford, finds shelter with the Wainright family. While the three Wainright sons vie for her affection, only one, Con, catches her eye. Bella thrives with the family and her newfound love for Con...that is until her former lover comes back into the picture."

NOTE: Film deals with difficult topics like miscarriages of which it depicts very early in the film. Caution for viewers who may have issues with watching these depictions.

Song: Wicked Game

Artist: Ursine Vulpine & Annaca

[silly-tanks-and-other-things]

This is the Ford Model 1918 3-Ton tank.

Designed in 1918 by the Ford Motor Company, it was one of the first American tanks ever produced.

The M1918 weighed only 3 tons, as the full name suggests. It was an incredibly small tank, measuring 4.3 metres (14 ft) long, 1.8 metres (6 ft) wide, and 1.8 metres tall, and having just two crew members (one driver, one gunner) in its extremely cramped hull.

Despite its engines having been pulled right out of a Ford Model T and getting discribed as anemic, the M1918 had a fairly quick top speed for the time at 12.8 km/h (8 miles/h)

Those silly arms on the back of the tank help it avoid getting stuck in ditches!

Despite being intended as a light tank, the first two prototypes didn't even have a gun. They were effectively just lightly armoured boxes that you could sit a person in.

The idea behind the M1918 was that it would be used to safely transport soldiers and weaponry onto a battlefield, though it didn't end up being very good at that.

This thing was a death box :D

It was based off of the French Renault FT-17, but is worse in almost every way possible.

When the final design of the M1918 eventually got to have a machine gun, it would still be incredibly limited in its use due to an extremely small range of motion. And although the tank does have angled armoured plating unlike SOME early tanks (looking at you, Sturmpanzerwagen A7V), the armour thickness was only a maximum of half an inch thick, leaving it vulnerable to anti-tank weaponry and concentrated machine gun fire.

On both the FT-17 and the M1918, the engines are located directly behind the crew compartment. The FT-17 has a metal divider between the engines and crew to give them time to escape in case of an engine fire.

The M1918 doesn't!

If you are operating this tank and the engines catch fire, you are dead!

Isn't that wonderful? :D

The US Army had a contract with Ford to produce 15 thousand M1918s, though testing proved the use of the tank to be quite limited compared to the readily available FT-17s. Production was halted after WW1 ended, with only 15 tanks being fully complete, and not one of them ever saw combat.

The two surviving M1918s are located in the National Armor and Cavalry Museum in Fort Benning, Georgia and the Ordnance Collection in Fort Lee, Virginia.

Sources: X , X

[usafphantom2]

development of the Blackbird program. Enjoy❤️

Clarence “Kelly” Johnson was an authentic American genius. He was the kind of enthusiastic visionary that bulled his way past vast odds to achieve great successes, in much the same way as Edison, Ford, and other immortal tinkerers of the past. When Kelly rolled up his sleeves, he became unstoppable, and the nay-sayers and doubters were simply ignored or bowled over. He declared his intention, then pushed through while his subordinates followed in his wake. He was so powerful that simply by going along on his plans and schemes, the rest of us helped to produce miracles too. Honest to God, there will never be another like him.”

― Ben R. Rich, Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

Like

“We became the most successful advanced projects company in the world by hiring talented people, paying them top dollar, and motivating them into believing that they could produce a Mach 3 airplane like the Blackbird a generation or two ahead of anybody else. Our design engineers had the keen experience to conceive the whole airplane in their mind’s-eye, doing the trade-offs in their heads between aerodynamic needs and weapons requirements. We created a practical and open work environment for engineers and shop workers, forcing the guys behind the drawing boards onto the shop floor to see how their ideas were being translated into actual parts and to make any necessary changes on the spot. We made every shop worker who designed or handled a part responsible for quality control.

Any worker—not just a supervisor or a manager—could send back a part that didn’t meet his or her standards. That way we reduced rework and scrap waste. We encouraged our people to work imaginatively, to improvise and try unconventional approaches to problem solving, and then got out of their way. By applying the most commonsense methods to develop new technologies, we saved tremendous amounts of time and money, while operating in an atmosphere of trust and cooperation both with our government customers and between our white-collar and blue-collar employees. In the end, Lockheed’s Skunk Works demonstrated the awesome capabilities of American inventiveness when free to operate under near ideal working conditions.

That may be our most enduring legacy as well as our source of lasting pride.”

― Ben R. Rich, Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years of Lockheed

@Habubrats71 via X

[tierneyyyyy]

[TIERNEY ROSE. 26. FEMALE. SHE/HER] is here! They’ve lived in Asbury Park for [3 YEARS] and are originally from [LOS ANGELES]. They are a [MUSIC PRODUCER/PART TIME EMPLOYEE AT THE STONE PONY] and in their downtime love [GOING TO MUSIC SHOWS] and [COLLECTING CRYSTALS]. They look a lot like [MOLLY GORDON] and live in [MEADOWLARK APARTMENTS]. The song that makes people think of them the most is [LIVING IN THE SKY WITH DIAMONDS BY COBRA STARSHIP].

THE ESSENTIALS

a chaos queen. mid twenties, LA native. believes in yoga and crystals and the power of the universe and karma and fate and if it’s meant to be, it’ll be. which is in direct contrast to the rest of her family, really. rarely sleeps between her three jobs (all of which she literally loves) and partying. works in music, as well as lives, breathes, and sleeps music (like….it’s her entire life). she’s a producer first, but she plays multiple instruments as well as sings. and at any given moment, she could literally be doing anything, so it’s completely impossible to keep track of her - state lines unknowingly crossed, parties crashed, occasionally chased by cops. it’s all up for grabs with tierney.

pinterest - musings

CHARACTER INSPIRATIONS

rob brooks (high fidelity [the tv show]) - maxine baker (ginny & georgia) - seth cohen (the o.c.) - peyton sawyer (one tree hill) - jason mendoza (the good place) - gigi (booksmart) - begin again (not either of the main charas but the vibes of the movie, u feel?) - ben wyatt (parks & rec)

BASIC INFORMATION

FULL NAME: tierney rose

NICKNAME(S): tier, t

DATE OF BIRTH: february 13th, 1998

AGE: 26

ZODIAC SIGN: aquarius sun, libra moon, aquarius rising

OCCUPATION: music producer/podcast host/sound engineer at the stone pony

HOMETOWN: los angeles

CURRENT RESIDENCE: the meadowlark apartments in asbury park, nj

NATIONALITY: American

LANGUAGE(S): English

GENDER & PRONOUNS: she/her (cisfemale)

SEXUAL ORIENTATION: Lesbian

RELIGION: Jewish 

PHYSICAL INFORMATION

FACE CLAIM: Molly Gordon

HEIGHT: 5′2″

EYE COLOUR: brown

HAIR COLOUR + STYLE: brown w/ bangs, curly/wavy, like this when it’s down, but will wear it up a lot

TATTOO(S): TBD

PIERCING(S): TBD

GLASSES: yes, a la this photo, but doesn’t wear them all the time

CLOTHING STYLE: very stereotypical queer tbh - lots of oversized flannels/hoodies over cuffed jeans, converse, graphic tees, floral prints. wears a baseball caps/wide brim hats a lot. two good outfit examples (with more on her pinterest board) - this and this.

PERSONALITY

MBTI TYPE: TBD

POSITIVE TRAITS: TBD

NEGATIVE TRAITS: TBD

GOALS/DESIRES:  TBD

FEARS:  TBD

HOBBIES:  record shopping, crystals, meditating, trying various kinds of yoga classes, tormenting the other residents of meadowlark apartments, getting high in her vw surf bus (and anywhere else), watching true crime documentaries, breaking & entering in a ~fun~ way

HABITS: TBD

SMOKES?: constantly

DRINKS?: yes

DRUGS?: will try anything twice lmao (and yes, i mean she will try everything twice, i didn't just get the saying 'try anything once' wrong)

EDUCATION

COLLEGE EDUCATION: USC

DEGREE(S): Bachelor of Music in Music Production w/ minors in Music Recording & Popular Music

FAMILY

SOCIAL CLASS: Upper Class

FATHER: Isaac Rose (FC: Harrison Ford) - corporate lawyer

MOTHER: Elizabeth Rose (FC: Ellen Pompeo) - entertainment finance manager

SIBLING(S): One older sister, Callan Rose (FC: Laura Dreyfuss) - entertainment lawyer

SOME FUN FACTS

tierney is a los angeles native

she is an industry nepo baby !! her family all works in the legal side of the eterntainment industry and she absolutely used that to her advantage !! she gives typical nepo baby vibes about that though

however, about a year after college, her parents were like, you need to get serious and stop being ... well, you, so she decided to move out to new york despite being such a true blue california native, and decided to try "supporting herself" "without their help"

she chose to live in new jersey because she is sorta obsessed with jack antonoff. but like in a casual cool way, not in a fangirl way (lie)

her other music hero is alexandra patsavas

tierney also has a podcast discussing music with one of her friends, as well as works as a sound engineer at the stone pony every once in a while when they need someone local

she has a MASSIVE record collection - it’s her pride & joy. she is definitely a regular at groovy graveyard, so if you have a character who works/shops there, they almost definitely have bumped into her

basically tierney lives, breathes, eats & sleeps music - it’s her entire life and she is insanely passionate about it. don’t ask her for her opinion on an artist unless you want an entire verbal essay and possibly a power point

as it is, tierney is a true music junkie, so she doesn’t dislike anything. she can find pros and cons and merits to pretty much any artist and enjoys talking about why they’re popular or they should be, or why they have influence/are good/talented/relevant, whatever the argument for them is

basically if someone asks her about music, be prepared to just have to listen to her rant about it for a million years

she’s kinda a hippie, she’s constantly going to yoga or mediating or trying new herbal concoctions or acupuncture or cupping or buying new crystals or whatever - any ailment she suggests yoga for rather than, like, going to a doctor? again, la native here

tierney is all about trusting in the universe

she’s like…wildly chaotic. she will try anything once (and usually more than that), goes out all the time, has the weirdest sleep schedule (maybe just never sleep in general), and yet somehow is always a ball of energy

other than groovy graveyard, places she'd frequent in asbury park are pipe dreams smokeshop, wonder bar, madam marie's, the abandoned casino & carousel, paranormal books & curiosities, sandoval dollar, & silverball retro arcade

overall, tierney is really laidback & chill & loves to vibe & party and gets along with pretty much anyone

CONNECTION IDEAS

i would love people who have been her podcast co-host ?? i kinda imagine it's a bit of a revolving door since she's insufferable lmao

give me a good luck, babe! inspired toxic situationship and i will love you forever

more will come soon but these are the first two ideas off the top of my head

and always down to brainstorm or fill tierney into anything that would fit !!

[mattnben-bennmatt]

LET'S TRY IT BEN'S WAY

Vanity Fair (October 1999)

A college dropout, Ben Affleck found sudden fame in 1997 after he and Matt Damon teamed up as writers and stars of Good Will Hunting. But at 27, even as he is offered up to $12 million a movie and acquires the spoils of success—the new house in the Hollywood Hills, the Tribeca loft, the five motorcycles—Affleck remains, indisputably, a guy. EVGENIA PERETZ gets him talking about the "Matt 'n' Ben show," his romance with Gwyneth Paltrow, and his upcoming thriller Reindeer Games, for which he literally knocked himself out

By Evgenia Peretz

-

To Ben Affleck, nothing is more meditative than a motorcycle. Today he has selected his red Suzuki GSX1300R Hayabusa, nicknamed "the Blackbird Killer," to take his passenger from Hollywood to the Brentwood branch of Koo Koo Roo, the fast-food chicken chain popular among those on "the Zone Diet." The route he takes? Scenic and maddeningly winding Sunset Boulevardideal terrain, apparently, for Affleck to do what he finds most uplifting: dodge between SUVs and BMWs, barrel up the lanes at 100 miles an hour, and play a hair-raising little game in which he weaves in and out among a line of cones set up in a construction zone. Affleck rides a motorcycle everywhere. He owns five of them, including a Yamaha R6 and a BMW R 1100 S.

"I don't think of it as 'I'm Bike Guy Affleck says over a barbecued-chicken lunch, for which he shelled out the entire $8.50. "I can't stand those guys who talk to you and all they say is 'Gonna put my leathers on and hit the canyons.' I'm not Adrenaline-Junkie Guy. "

He may not be Bike Guy or AdrenalineJunkie Guy, but spend a few minutes with Affleck, who's usually seen around town in baggy army pants, a T-shirt, and a leather jacket, and one thing becomes clear: he sure as hell is a guy. His best friends—and he does have other friends besides Matt Damon—are still his buddies from Cambridge, Massachusetts. They're currently camped out at his new, Mediterranean-style house (undergoing renovation) in the Hollywood Hills. He longs for the time when models looked like Christie Brinkley. He thinks Tom Cruise is a god. He stands behind Hootie. He has been known to forgo sex for video games. (A wall in his Tribeca loft—yes, Affleck is bi-coastal—is lined with old-school arcade favorites, including Ms. Pac-Man and Millipede.) And, these days at least, his favorite words seem to be "chump," "weak," and, especially, "jackass." "Jackass," to Affleck, is the worst of insults. A jackass is what he fears he sounds like in profiles like this one.

Indeed, Affleck might well come across as a jackass were it not for his acute self-awareness (which borders on the neurotic), his willingness to look like a fool, and the fact that he is naturally curious, disarmingly smart, a bit flirtatious, and lampshadeon-his-head funny. It is these very qualities, in fact, that make Affleck irresistible to men and women, and decidedly un-jackassy. These qualities have also made Affleck one of the busiest actors of his generation, a movie star without delusions of grandeur, who has bridged the gap between independent and mainstream films without getting too much grief for it. To wit, the 27-year-old Affleck has, in a little more than two years, kissed a boy in Kevin Smith's Chasing Amy, saved mankind from an oncoming asteroid in Armageddon, stolen scenes in Shakespeare in Love, and, along the way, picked up a best-original-screenplay Oscar for Good Will Hunting, which he famously co-wrote with Damon.

"He's larger than life and yet people can relate to him," says the producer of Affleck's upcoming thriller Reindeer Games, Bob Weinstein, who thinks Affleck is this generation's version of Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson. Or, as Sandra Bullock, his costar in the recent romantic comedy Forces of Nature, puts it, "He has that lummox quality. He's not afraid to make a fool of himself, but then he'll turn around and kick your ass."

Even the hard-boiled director John Frankenheimer, who cast Affleck in Reindeer Games—a kind of modem take on the Rat Pack heist movie Ocean's 77—melts a bit when talking about Affleck. "He has a very winning, likable quality about him," says Frankenheimer, who immediately thought of Affleck when he first read the script. "I've been doing this for a long time, and I've worked with some of the best and some of the worst. And he's really one of the nicest—really one of the nicest."

To hear Affleck tell it, his success has been sheer luck. "I have a personality that's kind of willing to let myself skate by," he says, "to get B's and not really try." But Reindeer Games, it must be said, provided him with the opportunity to put in a little effort. "I wanted him to like me—I wanted him to think I was good," Affleck says of Frankenheimer, who has directed 34 films, including The Manchurian Candidate, Seven Days in May, and Ronin. "I worked twice as hard just out of fear of having him say, 'You're a sham. You're a fraud.'"

In his role as Rudy Duncan, a down-on-his-luck ex-con who gets pulled into a casino robbery on Christmas Eve, Affleck, for the first time, is on-screen in virtually every scene. For the first time, he gets to engage in some "hard-core-style sex," with co-star Charlize Theron. And—also for the first time—he finds himself on the receiving end of actual physical pain. He gets chased by a vindictive gang of truckers. He falls into freezing water. And, throughout, he has his face pummeled by the trucker-in-charge, played by Gary Sinise.

And so it should come as little surprise that, in the midst of shooting, Affleck experienced his first Grade 3 concussion when, while filming a prison brawl, an inmate played by the Washington Redskins' 315-pound defensive tackle, Dana Stubblefield, accidentally slipped and landed on Affleck's head, knocking the actor unconscious. "I don't remember what happened.

I saw the tape later, and it's hard to tell. But the noise is kind of unmistakable. I just go, 'Whomp! Bang!'" says Affleck, suddenly looking and sounding like an 11-year-old skateboarder relating his latest awesome wipeout. "And my head goes, 'Boom!' Bounces off the concrete. It's like 'Whack!' Knocked me so stone-cold out that I don't remember a thing. That was the day I realized I had no chance of playing in the N.F.L." He sounds sincerely disappointed.

Is there anyone in America who doesn't remember exactly when, why, and how Ben Affleck became Ben Affleck? Naturally, he did it in typical guy fashion—alongside Matt Damon, his best friend from down the street since Affleck was eight years old. First they starred in the sensitive 1997 buddy picture Good Will Hunting, in which Damon played a working-class math savant and Affleck had a smaller but funnier role as his wisecracking sidekick. Then, at the Oscars, they scored major points by bringing their moms as their dates. Before you knew it, Ben 'n' Matt hysteria was full-blown (notwithstanding a vocal minority who considered their whole aw-shucks thing a big, annoying act).

"It was such a good publicity thing for marketing people," says Damon later at Affleck's house. "We ended up just talking about our friendship, which is really kind of a weird thing to do.... Hey, Ben," he asks, "what do you think about whoring out our friendship for personal gain?"

"At a certain point, some things in your life shouldn't be used to sell movies," Affleck replies. "Hey, I have two sphincters! See my movie!"

In the public mind, Affleck and Damon have become Hollywood's very own Bert and Ernie. Damon can't go on location without people wondering what in the world has happened to Affleck. For Affleck's part, the men reno [sic] his house call him Matt, and he is routinely congratulated for his work in Saving Private Ryan. On Affleck's coffee table in his Tribeca loft sits a recent issue of YM magazine—someone's idea of a joke, Affleck swears. Ben and Matt are on the cover, promising "Every Juicy Detail!"

Just as their friendship has become a warm and fuzzy American legend, the story behind Good Will Hunting will forever be a part of Hollywood lore: that it all began in 1992 with 40 pages that Damon churned out for a writing class at Harvard; that, after showing it to Affleck, then a struggling actor in L.A., the two worked it into a script; that it was briefly a "NASA thriller"; that they eventually amassed 1,500 pages; that they sold the script to Castle Rock Productions; that the project was put into turnaround, largely because Castle Rock demanded that the film be shot at a location cheaper than Boston; that the two were given 30 days to find a producer; that, with just 3 days left, Harvey Weinstein rode in like a white knight and purchased it for $ 1 million.

Weinstein also agreed to shoot the film in Boston, which allowed Affleck and Damon to feel comfortable doing the Boston accent, which, for obvious reasons, is near and dear to their hearts. "It was the whole reason I did the movie—just to do the accent," Affleck says, not entirely facetiously. Given any opportunity, he will launch into full-voltage riffs about Boston landmarks— from Jordan's Furniture commercials ("I think these sofas hajfta go!") to the pride surrounding the brutal winters ("Stock up on wahta, it's the Noreasta!"). He endlessly amuses himself with the names of Massachusetts towns ("You don't know me, fucker, but I'm from Hull. Bitch, I'm from Lynn. You don't know Medfield. Come down to Medfield, then we'll see what the fuck's up!").

"The Boston accent is more of an attitude than an accent," Affleck explains. "Underneath everything you say has to be the attitude of: You're an asshole, I know better than you, fuck you." It's an attitude that Affleck knows well. Dinner at the Afflecks' home, in Central Square, Cambridge, was characterized by heated debate on any topic, including whether to have the television on while eating. At times Affleck's reality wasn't so far from the scrappy existence depicted in Good Will Hunting. In addition to Ben and his younger brother, the up-and-coming actor Casey Affleck (who played Ben's weaselly younger brother in Good Will Hunting), there was Affleck's mother, Chris, a public-school teacher, and his father, Tim, an alcoholic and a frequent gambler who worked as a janitor, an electrician, and a bartender. "At the end of the football season," Affleck says of his father's tendency to bet on the games, "there would either be tough times or we'd get a VCR." The parents divorced when he was 12, and Tim is now a counselor in an alcohol-rehab center.

Affleck's neighborhood was largely African-American. So while other white kids from Boston were spending the 80s listening to the Cure and writing Goth poetry, Affleck (then called "Biz" to Damon's "Matty D") was listening to Prince and break-dancing in a nylon Puma sweat suit. "I was a real chump," he says.

Perhaps. But he was still on his way to starting his acting career. When he was seven, a casting-director friend of his mother's got him a tiny role in the independent movie The Dark End of the Street. By age eight, after winning a part in the PBS science series The Voyage of the Mimi and a brief stint as a Burger King pitch-boy, the young wiseass was hooked. Even as Affleck and Damon were starring in plays at Cambridge's Rindge and Latin high school, they were plotting their paths to glory. They had a joint bank account, designated strictly for New York excursions (the upcoming auditions and all), and even conducted "business lunches" during which, Damon recalls, "we'd basically sit over our cheeseburgers and not talk about anything." When Damon went to college at Harvard, little changed. Affleck hung out with Damon's new Ivy League friends and did his part to help drain the beer supply at the Delphic, the frat-boyish "finals club" Damon belonged to.

For Affleck, college held considerably less appeal than it did for Damon. After two months at the University of Vermont, he dropped out—much to the dismay of his mother, who, Affleck says, "always wanted me to be a history teacher." And so it was on to Los Angeles, where he and another friend lived in a one-bedroom "shit hole" on Franklin and Cherokee—"the Times Square of L.A.," as Affleck puts it. Between auditions, he spent his time rustling up the $300 rent and generally living a Slacker-style existence in which he spent too much time fielding calls from someone named "Fat Ed." "He'd always call and be like 'Yo, this is Fat Ed. Motherfuckers owe me $70 for groceries!'"

Luckily, it wasn't long before Affleck was getting movie work—the 1992 prep-school drama School Ties, Richard Linklater's 1993 Dazed and Confused, and Kevin Smith's embarrassing 1995 homage to New Jersey, Mallrats. Invariably, Affleck would be cast as the lunkhead, perhaps because he had yet to grow into his leading-man looks. Most of his roles required him to beat the crap out of some pencil-necked pre-adolescent. "I'd always go in for the lead," says Affleck, "and they'd be like 'You're interesting as Steve. We'd like you to read Bruiser.'"

Smith saw that Affleck had more to offer, and cast him as the main character in Chasing Amy, the 1997 Sundance hit that landed Affleck on the indie-film map. Playing an insecure, flabby, goatee-wearing cartoonist, Affleck got to do some hard-core, scenery-chewing emoting, including a monologue in which he pours his heart out to a yammering lesbian, played by Joey Lauren Adams. The scene was profoundly informed by Affleck's personal life at the time: he was in the process of breaking up with his high-school girlfriend. "I could strongly identify with the feeling of unrequited love," says Affleck. "Basically, I was in love with someone for years and years. And ultimately I felt like she just didn't love me in the same way—which was extremely painful."

Affleck would never admit that he likes to talk about mushy stuff—"It would be very difficult for me to say, 'That hurts.'" But get him started on any topic—including love and relationships—and he's virtually impossible to shut up. Nothing sends him on a sentimental roll quite like Gwyneth Paltrow, his girlfriend of a year, with whom he split last January.

"Gwyneth has a lot of things that haven't come across in her public image," says Affleck, who is forever defending her against the perception that she's an ice queen. "She's extremely funny, she's extraordinarily smart—not because she's a 1,600-on-theS.A.T. girl, but smart in the way that she kind of gets it," says Affleck. "She's actually the funny, down-to-earth fat girl in the beautiful girl's body." He is equally valiant about their well-publicized breakup. "People's stories always seem more interesting and more full of intrigue from the office-gossip perspective," says Affleck, perhaps referring to tabloid accounts that had Paltrow alternately sneaking around with Joe Fiennes, Viggo Mortensen, and ex-boyfriend Brad Pitt. "But when you're on the inside of your own relationship, you know the answers to those kinds of questions are much more mundane than when it's all shrouded in mystery and infused with conjecture: 'I heard he caught her in a menage a trois with a transvestite and two Pygmy lesbians!'"

Like a true movie star, Affleck is determined to keep the details of their relationship hidden. Like a true guy, he can't quite help himself from doing the opposite. An amateur photographer (his current passions are his Widelux camera and his Adobe Photoshop), Affleck keeps several albums of his work in his loft. Amid pictures of Cambridge, his mother, and his brother are pictures of Gwyneth: Gwyneth with flowers in her hair, Gwyneth waking up in the morning, Gwyneth dressed as Romeo on the set of Shakespeare in Love, Gwyneth about to head into Makeup. "Isn't she pretty?" Affleck says wistfully, gazing at the last image. "She's much more beautiful just natural like this than when she's all done up." He's lost in a Gwyneth moment. "I'm getting sad." But he's no sucker, and makes it clear that there will be no weeping here.

Affleck wasn't always so evolved in this department. Think back to the height of the Ben 'n' Matt frenzy, in 1997, when Affleck was dating Paltrow and Damon was seeing her friend Winona Ryder. "It was so gay," Affleck says, in the eight-year-old-girl sense of the word. "If I had gone by the tabloid stories of it, I would have been like 'Look at these fuckin' chumps. I just want to smack these people.' And I kind of wanted to smack myself," he admits. "But it's one of those things you kind of can't help. What are you going to say? 'Look, dude, don't go out with her. It'll look really weak.'"

Cringe-worthiness wasn't the only issue. More than anything, Affleck was concerned about how the tabloid stories would affect those around him—such as his ex-girlfriend. He likens the tabloids to "the friend who says, 'I don't want to get involved, but I did see Cathy blowin' three guys.'" Equally bothersome are the tabloid items describing Affleck as a rabid Lothario —buying out all the condoms in a 7-Eleven in Wisconsin (a state he's never set foot in), and getting cozy with Mariah Carey, Pamela Anderson, and, most recently, navel-baring pop star Britney Spears. "Britney Spears is 16 years old, O.K.?" says Affleck, rolling his eyes. "Can you dig it?"

Nor has Affleck been excluded from one of Hollywood's favorite games: Guess Who's Gay. His sexuality has been the subject of blind tabloid reports, and Affleck is often told that it's a foregone conclusion in the gay community that he and Damon are in love—a nugget that Affleck seems to get a particular kick out of. According to Hollywood gossip, says Affleck, "not only is every [actor] gay, but somebody has a friend who slept with them. Maybe there are gay people who are in the closet in Hollywood—I'm sure there probably are—but I'm sure they didn't sleep with Henry's friend. " As for his own sexuality, Affleck says, "I like to think that if I were gay I would be out. Rupert Everett-style."

Though Affleck has learned to handle the rumors with panache, his sudden fame and formidable wealth (he is now offered up to $12 million per picture) have been a bit harder to reconcile. "It's a tricky moral issue for me," says Affleck. "[Sometimes] I feel that maybe I should just keep $50,000 and give everything [else] away." His healthy Cambridge-liberal guilt is hard to miss. Even Frankenheimer, who briefly met Affleck's mother, couldn't help but notice that Affleck's "childhood was well formed and that he grew up with the right values." On the other hand, Affleck is too smart to pretend that he doesn't enjoy "priming the pump." "I once read an interview with a young actor who was saying, 'I'd like to live in a country house—the kind that Henry Miller lived in,'" says Affleck. "And I always thought, I want to live in the house that Reggie Miller lived in."

True to his guy-with-a-conscience form, Affleck has found himself somewhere in the middle: Sure, there are the two homes, the five motorcycles, the marble bathroom, the four computers, and the two cars (a Chevy Malibu and '69 Cadillac Sedan DeVille, which he shares with his brother). But he also gives a lot of his money to charity and to "needy individuals, whom I seem to come across with increasing regularity," has recently purchased a house for his mother, and, let it not be forgotten, often eats lunch at Koo Koo Roo. Yes, he implies, on occasion his behavior veers toward the prima donna-ish—he's been known to snub the press at movie premieres. But when he complains about anything, he feels "tacky," and when he catches himself trying to escape conversations with aggressive fans—by, say, claiming he needs to "go to the bathroom"—he feels, well, "shitty."

"Hey, Ben!" says a grizzled Koo Koo Roo patron who, in his full biker regalia, resembles a 70s-era Hell's Angel. Instead of running to the rest room, Affleck stands, bear-hugs the man, and launches into a long discussion about teeth. The interloper, you see, is not a Hell's Angel at all; he's Affleck's dentist, Dr. Stan Goldman, and Dr. Stan Goldman, like almost everyone who has crossed Affleck's path, is a serious fan.

"Love that dude," Affleck says after Dr. Goldman congratulates him for his work in Shakespeare in Love, bums a Camel Light, and takes off on his Harley. "I got sent to him by Disney when we were doing Armageddon. Fixed my tooth. My tooth was cracked and fucked up."

If the $100 million Jerry Bruckheimer asteroid juggernaut marked the moment when Affleck began worrying about his teeth (the whole set looks better than it used to), it was also the event that propelled Affleck from indie boy to action star—and spawned the inevitable talk about "selling out." It is an accusation that Affleck finds roundly preposterous. "How many opportunities do you have to go onto the space shuttle? To go into the neutral-buoyancy laboratory?" he says. For one thing, Affleck was raised on Star Wars. For another, he realizes that "just because a movie's independent doesn't mean it's good." Yes, he remains involved in several upcoming lowbudget projects (Kevin Smith's beleaguered religious send-up Dogma, Ben Younger's Wall Street drama The Boiler Room, Billy Bob Thornton's southern comedy Daddy and Them, and Jay Lacopo's The Third Wheel, a romantic comedy about a date gone haywire, which he and Damon are producing). But nothing lights up Affleck's bullshit meter like a lousy art-house film with a pretentious title. "I'm always like 'Yecch,' " Affleck says, cringing. "You know, Manny and Chuck with the Strawberries, or whatever it is. I want to see Enemy of the State

Which is not to say that Affleck plans to spend his career spraying bullets into gangs of international terrorists or delivering Bruce Willis-type lines such as "Yippee Kai Yay!" with a straight face. In Affleck's opinion, there's nothing so inane as "the best there is" movies. "[Hollywood] can't make a movie unless the lead guy's the best so-and-so," says Affleck, launching into a testosterone-pumped movie-trailer voice. "It's always like 'The best valet parker there ever was! And now he's back, for one ... big ... party!'"

If anything has characterized Affleck's role choices, it's the instinct to keep looking for what's different. "His wheels are constantly turning," Sandra Bullock says. "I don't think he can turn his head off."

And so Affleck, burned out on Armageddon's "deep-core drilling," chose to do Shakespeare in Love, despite fears that the cast was "going to be a bunch of R.S.C. knighted British people who were going to hate me and make fun of me." Next was Forces of Nature, which touched a nerve. "I identified with that dilemma, that fear of commitment," Affleck says of his character, a conservative groom-to-be who questions everything when he meets the free-spirited Bullock. On a few occasions, Affleck even rewrote dialogue in hopes of making the scenes more honest. "He'd brainstorm, and he'd get quiet for 20 minutes," Bullock recalls, "and we'd know what that meant. He was writing 12 pages of dialogue."

"I wished they had used more of my stuff," Affleck admits. "In retrospect, I think that movie would have been better served to be edgier.... If [Bullock's character] had been talking about sex toys," says Affleck, "that would have freaked this guy out, and he would have been made uncomfortable."

If Affleck is looking for a little discomfort, now is his moment. The new film Dogma—in which Affleck and Damon play angels with a penchant for automatic weapons—has come under attack by the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, which thinks the film ridicules the church. (Affleck views the controversy as, in essence, "three guys who had this little jury-rigged operation in Duluth who were trying to get their names in the papers.")

More emotional turbulence may be ahead for Affleck as he begins shooting Don Roos's romance Bounce, opposite Gwyneth Paltrow. And with Reindeer Games, the world will see what Affleck looks like as a victim. "I saw him as a throwback protagonist," Affleck says of his most recent character. "The hard-luck protagonist who doesn't look good all the time, who's constantly getting shit on, and who has the opportunity for a wry loser's irony. He kind of reminded me of my dad," he says. "Not that my dad's a loser, but [he has] that tough-luck sense of humor."

And thus it appears that Affleck may be nearing the end of guy territory and approaching manhood, a secure place to utilize some of the skills he's picked up from his various directors—directing, alas, is yet another target Affleck has set his sights on— and to explore the jackassery that he fears so intensely. Among the many issues that Affleck is now confronting are, he explains, a limited capacity for compromise and a lack of willingness to put his energy into a romantic relationship. "The reason I'm single," Affleck says, "is because I wouldn't want to be with anybody right now who would be willing to be with me."

And, just for a moment, Ben Affleck sounds a little like Woody Allen. But only a little.

[kwebtv]

From the Golden Age of Television

Series Premiere

Buffalo Bill, Jr. - The Fight for Geronimo - Syndication - March 26, 1955

Western

Running Time: 30 minutes

Written by John K. Butler

Produced by Louis Gray

Directed by George Archainbaud

Stars:

Dick Jones as Buffalo Bill, Jr.

Nancy Gilbert as Calamity

Harry Cheshire as Judge Ben Wiley

Rodd Redwing as Jackilla

Harry Lauter as Jed Ford

Robert Easton as Telegrapher Danny Crockett

Jack Daly as Telegrapher Sparks Bauer

Wally West as Henchman Stan Redding

Richard H. Cutting as Sgt. Richards

Chief Thundercloud as Geronimo

[lboogie1906]

Thomas Mikal Ford (September 5, 1964 – October 12, 2016) was an actor and comedian. He was known for his role as Thomas “Tommy” Strawn on Martin. He had a recurring role as Mel Parker in The Parkers. He was known for his role as Lt. Malcolm Barker on New York Undercover.

He was born in Los Angeles and raised in Long Beach. His mother worked as a school secretary and his father as a pipe fitter. He wanted to be a preacher. When he took drama lessons and started acting in high school plays, he decided to go into acting instead. After earning an AA from Long Beach City College, transferred to USC, where he graduated with a BFA in acting.

He received an NAACP Image Awards nomination in the category of Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series.

He played Ben Cummings in The Power of Passion as one of the characters whose wife cheats on him with the pastor. He was known as “The Pope of Comedy”, due to exposure as a judge on Bill Bellamy’s Who’s Got Jokes? In feature films, he appeared in Class Act and Harlem Nights, and he played Tommy Smalls. He was seen in Against the Law.

He directed and produced the play South of Where We Live. The play was performed at the Los Angeles Ebony Showcase Theatre. He directed the play Jonin”.

He co-hosted the Texas Gospel Music Awards. He founded a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization called Be Still and Know.

He wrote two inspirational books for children, titled Positive Attitude and I Am Responsible for Me. He spent time traveling to schools to inspire and empower children and encourage responsibility. He directed a documentary on bullying, entitled Through My Lens Atl. He was married to Gina Sasso (1997-2014). They had two children. He moved from Los Angeles to Kendall, Florida around 2001. In 2015, he moved to Atlanta where he lived with his girlfriend Viviane Brazil. #africanhistory365 #africanexcellence

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 12.16

Beer Birthdays

Troy Paski (1961)

Bryan Selders (1974)

Nicole Erny (1983)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Ludwig van Beethoven; German composer (1770)

Philip K. Dick; writer (1928)

Bill Hicks; comedian (1961)

Wassily Kandinsky; French artist (1866)

Miranda Otto; Australian actor (1967)

Famous Birthdays

Bruce Ames; biochemist (1928)

Jane Austen; English writer (1775)

Shane Black; actor (1961)

Quentin Blake; artist, illustrator (1932)

Steven Bocho; television producer (1943)

Benjamin Bratt; actor (1963)

Catherine of Aragon; consort of Henry VIII (1485)

Arthur C. Clarke; English scientist, writer (1917)

Barbe-Nicole Clicquot; champagne-maker (1777)

Noel Coward; English writer (1899)

Ben Cross; actor (1947)

Robben Ford; rock, blues guitarist (1951)

Billy Gibbons; rock musician (1949)

Jim Glaser; country singer (1937)

Piet Hein; Danish inventor (1905)

Anthony Hicks; rock singer, guitarist (1943)

Murray Kempton; journalist (1917)

Zoltan Kodaly; composer (1882)

Leopold I; Belgian king (1790)

Danielle Lloyd; English model (1983)

Margaret Mead; anthropologist (1901)

William "Refrigerator" Perry; Chicago Bears DL (1962)

V.S. Pritchett; English writer (1900)

Sam Robards; actor (1961)

George Santayana; Spanish philosopher (1863)

John Selden; English jurist (1584)

Shane; porn actor (1969)

JoAnn Stamm; Mom (1937)

Lesley Stahl; journalist (1941)

Liv Ullman; Norwegian actor (1939)

[ulkaralakbarova]

The story of Richard and Mildred Loving, an interracial couple, whose challenge of their anti-miscegenation arrest for their marriage in Virginia led to a legal battle that would end at the US Supreme Court. Credits: TheMovieDb. Film Cast: Richard Loving: Joel Edgerton Mildred Loving: Ruth Negga Grey Villet: Michael Shannon Sheriff Brooks: Marton Csokas Bernie Cohen: Nick Kroll Frank Beazley: Bill Camp Lola Loving: Sharon Blackwood Raymond Green: Alano Miller Garnet Jetter: Terri Abney Judge Bazile: David Jensen Phil Hirschkop: Jon Bass Theoliver Jeter: Christopher Mann Musiel Byrd-Jeter: Winter-Lee Holland Deputy: Michael Abbott Jr. Percy Fortune: Chris Greene Virgil: Will Dalton Chet Antieau: Matt Malloy Laura: Andrene Ward-Hammond Alex: D.L. Hopkins Hope Ryden: Jennifer Joyner Cousin Davis: Lance Lemon Cousin Gerald: Marquis Adonis Hazelwood Older Sydney: Brenan Young Older Donald: Dalyn Cleckley Older Peggy: Quinn McPherson Middle Sidney: Jevin Crochrell Middle Donald: Jordan Williams Jr. Middle Peggy: Georgia Crawford Toddler Sydney: Micah Claiborne Baby Sydney: Devin Cleckley Infant Sydney: Pryor Ferguson Clara – Cashier: Karen Vicks Reporter #1: Scott Wichmann Construction Worker: Benjamin Loeh Court Secretary: Bridget Gethins Store Pedestrian: Mark Huber Drag Race Spectator: James Matthew Poole Secretary: Coley Campany Secretary: Sheri Lahris Construction Worker: Jordan Dickey Telephone Man: Coby Batty Drag Race Spectator / Bar Patron: Chris Condetti Richard’s Racing Crew: Logan J. Woolfolk County Clerk: Robert Haulbrook Bricklayer: Keith Tyree Spectator: James Nevins Prisoner: W. Keith Scott Photojournalist: Tom Lancaster Street Walker: Lonnie M. Henderson Court Audience Member: Brian Thomas Wise Drag Race Spectator: Ken Holliday Antieau’s Secretary: Terry Menefee Gau Driver: Marc Anthony Lowe Racetrack Spectator: Jay SanGiovanni D.C Teen: Tyrell Ford Baby Boy #1: James Atticus Abebayehu Phil’s Dad: Jim D. Johnston …: Derick Newson Boarding House Boy: Miles Hopkins Construction Worker: Kenneth William Clarke Reporter: Robert Furner Secretary: Victoria Chavatel Jimison Field Hand / Drag Strip Attendee / Shot Gun Shack Attendee (uncredited): Darrick Claiborne Courtroom Spectator (uncredited): Raymond H. Johnson Drag Race Driver: Dean Mumford Pregnant Girl: Rebecca Turner Magistrate: Mike Shiflett County Jailer: Greg Cooper Supreme Court Reporter: A. Smith Harrison Press Conference Reporter: Keith Flippen Soundman: Jason Alan Cook Courtroom Spectator (uncredited): Lucas N. Hall Film Crew: Director: Jeff Nichols Editor: Julie Monroe Producer: Peter Saraf Executive Producer: Jack Turner Executive Producer: Jared Ian Goldman Executive Producer: Brian Kavanaugh-Jones Unit Production Manager: Sarah Green Art Direction: Jonathan Guggenheim Casting: Francine Maisler Production Design: Chad Keith Storyboard: Nancy Buirski Associate Producer: Oge Egbuono Producer: Colin Firth Producer: Marc Turtletaub Set Decoration: Adam Willis Producer: Ged Doherty Unit Production Manager: Will Greenfield Costume Design: Erin Benach Music Supervisor: Lauren Mikus Original Music Composer: David Wingo Still Photographer: Ben Rothstein Director of Photography: Adam Stone Script Supervisor: Jean-Paul Chreky Special Effects Coordinator: Gary Pilkinton Special Effects Technician: Trevor Smithson Property Master: A. Patrick Storey First Assistant Director: Cas Donovan Second Assistant Director: Tommy Martin Stunt Driver: Dean Mumford Key Makeup Artist: Katie Middleton Second Second Assistant Director: Ben LeDoux Construction Buyer: Roslyn Blankenship Assistant Property Master: Hannah Ross Dialogue Editor: Brandon Proctor Genetator Operator: Maxwel Fisher Post Production Supervisor: Susan E. Novick Boom Operator: Proctor Trivette Leadman: Stephen G. Shifflette Second Assistant “A” Camera: Stephen McBride Sound Effects Editor: David Grimaldi Foley Mixer: Judy Kirschner Makeup Department Head: Julia Lallas Hairstylist: Brian Morton Sound Effects Editor: Joel Dougherty ADR Mixer: Chris Navarro Sound Effects Editor: P.K. Hooker ...

[albertcapraro]

March 14, 1975 - WWD Page 5 Rtw’s new stars Drawings by Steven Stipelman WWD photos

Thirty-one-year-old Albert Capraro, of Jerry Guttenberg, Ltd. hit the headlines recently when he paid a creative call on Betty Ford at the White House. Overnight success? Hardly. Capraro’s been behind the design scene for 11 years.

After Parson’s (where he picked up a Fernando Sarmi Gold Thimble), he worked briefly for Lilly Dache’s custom salon but left because, “I wanted to produce a series of ideas, not one thing for one person,” then went on to design evening clothes for the now defunct Jobere.

In 1966, Capraro became Oscar de la Renta’s better ready-to-wear assistant and, within two years, was doing the Boutique collection, but without design credit. “I was with Oscar eight years, and that’s a long time. I had grown as much as I could there and couldn’t afford to pass up this opportunity.

The “opportunity” was a partnership last July (with Jerry Guttenberg, Ben Shaw, and Tony Siano) and vice-presidency in Jerry Guttenberg, Ltd. to say nothing of having his own name on the label.

Capraro, a native New Yorker, combines the attitudes of a “hopeless romantic” (“When I see something lovely — a film, a gallery, a person — I try to get that into my clothes”) and a tough self-critic (‘I go over something again and again until it looks right to my eye”). The result is a summer collection, priced from $32 to $89, that swings from soft posh peasant looks to clean, crisp chintzes.

Capraro credits Mrs. Ford with “launching” him — “She even had some of my old La Renta Boutique clothes” — but claims that even before the White House publicity, “The business was in the black within six months.”

“I like to think of fashion as an art,” he adds, “because I approach it that way. But the supply and demand principle makes it a craft.”

Janet Reis, Saks Fifth Avenue Shop buyer, comments: “I’ve always believed in Capraro as a designer. His collection is fashion at a price, along with unusual fabrics, and that’s what people are looking for today.”

[shit-talk-turner]

I must confess that I would like the band's next album and videos to be produced and recorded by other professionals and I can't forget to mention the photographer.

I have the impression that Ben, Zackery and James Ford have become like family to Alex and they no longer have that commitment to doing something incredible and innovative for the band.

the record company should do as in 2013/14 and hire new directors and photographers to promote the band's work.// I agree partially with the anon, James is incredibly talented, but Ben and and Zachary...not so much. I mean Zachary's photos especially were completely mid in this era. It's a shame that Alex surrounds himself with yes people especially if they're not that good. In the long run, Alex choosing the comfort zone will end up hurting his talent

it could help it if he went out of his comfort zone, but it doesn't seem to be hurting him