Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

LightNews

JoeA64

@joea64.bsky.social

2K followers 1.4K following 11K posts

House rabbit parent (Daisy & Redmond), #boardwargames, fan of classic movies & TV (especially the spy genre) & their actresses, #alternatehistory, #fashionhistory, #vintagepinup & the #Napoleonic & #Edwardian Eras. #SlavaUkraini

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · Nov 10

Pinning my #wargaming starter pack so everyone can find it right off: go.bsky.app/QoYYGK3

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 15h

...which I'm all too familiar with from having - before I moved to the other side of town & started dealing with Sudley Road instead - commuted up and down that throughfare every workday.

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 15h

I live in Manassas and I remember that well. Traffic was - and continues to be - the hottest-of-hot-button issues in NoVA, particularly in areas like Manassas that have really bad road nets, and the road in question is Virginia Route 28 (north to Dulles and Reston/Herndon, south to Bealeton)...

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 15h

Don't get me wrong - I'm not really a hot-and-spicy person myself. I have a bottle of sriracha in my cabinet that I bought years ago but have never once opened.

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 16h

...I had to move FAST because, within half an hours, the shelves bore a remarkable resemblance to a grain field that's just been attacked by locusts. And yes, at $5 each, I got some nice finds.

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 16h

I don't know if you've ever been to a con with one of those multi-level price sales - like, when the room opens, everything is at such-and-such price, then two hours later, drops to the next level, then an hour or two later, drops once more to the lowest price. When it went to the $5 level at 1:15

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 16h

A lot of people overseas still get Coke with real cane sugar, but not us deprived Americans...

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 16h

That last bit struck a memory chord. I believe the Army (and Marines) used to pack Tabasco in their ration boxes from WWII on - I'm given to understand it was mighty useful in spicing up, so to speak, the more mediocre items.

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 16h

I couldn't advance a reason why, but lemon-lime is a remarkably popular blend for sodas.

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 16h

That raises a good question. When were slushie-type drinks invented? The first one I was familiar with was Icee in my boyhood (Icee can still be had in several places, by the way) though 7-11's version - unbelievably, I forget what they're called! - is what I'm more familiar with these days.

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 16h

...Coke, lime freeze and chocolate ice cream, oh, and a lettuce salad too (hold the tomatoes again - this is one of my little quirks; I like ketchup, pizza sauce, pasta sauce and all that just fine, but not tomatoes qua tomatoes if you get what I mean).

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 16h

I'm late as usual, I see. (I was at a #boardgaming convention this weekend where there was a big estate sale happening, and came home with a boxful of #boardwargames at $5 each). Anyway, I'll have two hamburgers, medium rare, hold the tomatoes and pickles as usual, with french fries...

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 16h

Not blackjack?

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 16h

got fanmail. Yes. It got fanmail, and it was so renowned that one of the Decepticons from "Transformers" was based on it. I once read in one of Steve Jackson's GURPS role-playing game books, by the way, that U.N.C.L.E.'s gadgetry was basically a vision of 90's tech in the 60's.

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 16h

P.S. One has to remember that, in the mid-1960's (basically seasons 1 and 2), this was THE biggest show on TV, so expanding some episodes into movies was pretty much a given. The show was so incredibly popular that even the iconic U.N.C.L.E. Special pistol-that-morphed-into-carbine...

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 17h

To this day, "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." is my favorite vintage TV series of all time, even more so, if you can believe it, than "Star Trek": TOS.

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 17h

Anyway, that was actually the first time I'd ever seen an U.N.C.L.E. episode, though I'd found one of the novelizations and several of the magazines (with novellas) in the stacks of my middle-school library previously, so my first introduction to this classic was via the written word.

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 17h

...tossed on him by his angry girlfriend, who'd caught him with Serena in a fancy restaurant), when Serena comes in, kicks off her high heels, drops her robe to the floor, and slinks into the shower stall with him. Fade out as she begins caressing Napoleon's bare (and wet) legs with her bare foot...

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 17h

...which is the main engine of the plot, and when I saw it on TV as a "CBS Late Night Movie" back in the late 1970's, I was startled to see an (implied!) sex scene which was REALLY racy even for 1970's TV. Napoleon is taking a shower in Senta's bathroom (he'd had a platter of spaghetti...

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 17h

..."The Double Affair", which was shown on TV in B&W but released in color for the movie edition. Napoleon Solo's fancy in that movie was the dazzling Austrian redhead Senta Berger, playing a Thrush agent named Serena assigned to seduce him and lure him into the trap to replace him with a double...

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 17h

(some originally shot for the movie version, some outtakes) to bring them to feature length, and sometimes, ah, "spiced up" beyond what would have been permissible on 1960's TV. In that connection, my favorite of the movies is "The Spy With My Face", based on the first-season episode...

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 17h

...written by the legendary Harlan Ellison, which included a lot of copyrighted characters that caused a lot of legal uproar for years. Anyway, you were asking about the movies. Those were originally theatrical versions of certain episodes, about two per season, which each had a lot of extra footage

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 17h

The set itself, all 4 seasons, had a whole extra disc devoted to extras. The reason it took so long to put out digitally had both to do with some difficulty finding masters and even more because of the infamous IP dispute over the 3rd-season episode, "The Pieces of Fate Affair"...

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 17h

Oddly, the very first release of the box set actually came from Time-Life; that's the version I have, which came in a snazzy metal-looking (actually cardboard) briefcase box which opened to reveal a photo of Del Floria's instead.

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 17h

I'd feel bad about missing those if I didn't already have them all on DVD (both official and home-recorded when TCM showed them way back in 2007; that time, I think there was a definite connection with the long-awaited release of the series DVD box set).

JoeA64 @joea64.bsky.social · 17h

UNCANNY VALLEY! UNCANNY VALLEY!!!

(looks frantically for the Gunslinger to save him)