Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Today is National Submarine Day. During WWII, 263 U.S. Navy submarines deployed on war patrols. This image of 52 submarines in the Pacific Reserve Fleet at Mare Island in 1946 represents the same number of subs that went on eternal patrol after being lost in the war.




April 11, 1945: a kamikaze struck USS Missouri (BB-63) during the Battle of Okinawa, leaving his plane's machine gun impaled in the flash suppressor of a Bofors 40mm. The attack caused minor damage but the Missouri shrugged it off and did not even alter her course. Amazingly, no one but the pilot was killed.



"The members of the forty millimeter gun crews on the stern described to me the way the plane came in. The pilot had apparently been untouched by the hail of gunfire and was riding his plane in like a jockey on a race horse - squatting in his seat. He hit just abaft of turret three, shearing off the port wing of the plane which flew a hundred feet forward and landed behind a five inch gun mount at an intake vent which provided ventilation to the fire rooms. His torso fell on the main deck and the whole rest of his plane and portions of his body went into the water - all without a bomb exploding."
- Commander Faulk's Account

Kamikaze Story

“On the Verge of Breaking Down Completely” (free book download)


April 11, 1972: Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and his 15 yr-old daughter Stephanie visited FBI director J. Edgar Hoover in his office in Washington, DC. Hoover died three weeks later. Efrem (Nov 30, 1918 – May 2, 2014) was an American actor best known for his starring roles in the television series 77 Sunset Strip and the 1965–74 ABC TV series The F.B.I.



The cases were based on real FBI files. Every detail of every episode of the FBI series was carefully vetted by FBI second-in-command Clyde Tolson. All actors playing FBI agents, and other participants, were given background checks to ensure that no "criminals, subversives, or Commies" were associated with the show. Upon Tolson's direction, the violence in the show was severely censored in the final three seasons. Imagine that! For the entire 9 seasons it always aired on Sunday night, opposite "Lassie".

Some notable actors in the early seasons: Robert Duvall, Charles Bronson, Burt Reynolds, Harrison Ford, James Caan, Gene Hackman, Martin Sheen, Jeff Bridges, Telly Savalas, Ron Howard, Carol Lynley, Dawn Wells, Russell Johnson. In December 2023, Warner Bros. Discovery, via Warner Bros, Television Studios (current rights owner of the series) launched a free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) channel dedicated to the series and made all nine seasons of the series available for streaming online on Tubi.



Carol Lynley started as a child model for Sears & Roebuck department store in New York and got her face nationally recognised as "the Coca-Cola Girl". She appeared on the April 22, 1957 cover of Life identified as "Carol Lynley, Busy Career Girl" at age 15.

She was known for Blue Denim (1959), The Last Sunset (1961), Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965), The Poseidon Adventure (1972). Her ethereal look captivated the public in commercials, movies and TV.

She garnered national attention as a teen when she appeared in a number of Clairol and Pepsodent commercials. In 1957, she appeared on the cover of Life magazine, which reportedly inspired Walt Disney to cast her in the family drama The Light in the Forest (1958).

I never missed an episode of the re-runs of Night Stalker.


OJ has ascended...




The award-winning radio documentary, "Ronald Reagan and the Prophecy of Armageddon" (1984) that was broadcasted in the United States, Canada, and Australia by journalist, broadcaster, educator and poet, Joseph Cuomo.




A.I. run amok. Star Wars - 1950's Super Panavision 70:




An F-35A Lightning II assigned to Vermont Air National Guard's 158th Fighter Wing sits on flight line during 2024 total solar eclipse, South Burlington Air National Guard Base, Vermont, April 8. This image was created by compositing together multiple photos in Adobe Photoshop.


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Anyone started to watch this series? Any good?



RadioFreeTom is impressed:

Instead, during the opening credits, the Ink Spots crooned their 1940 hit “Maybe” as a dark screen gave way to the flickering of a black-and-white television. The camera pulled back to reveal the tranquil, empty skyline of a ruined city as narrator Ron Perlman calmly explained how the world as we knew it had blown itself up while fighting over resources. But your family had escaped this destruction by heading into one of many underground vaults built by the cheerful folks at the Vault-Tec Corporation, allowing you and many other humans to live beneath the surface for decades. Now your vault was about to kick you out into the wasteland on an important mission, and your character—at the start of the adventure, a delicate rookie with few skills—would have to figure out what the hell was going on in what was left of the planet.

As someone who (along with millions of other players) has explored every installment in the series, I had my doubts about whether a television show, which Amazon first announced in 2020, could fully capture the game’s quirky weirdness. I’m happy to report that the Fallout show—out today—is dark and thought-provoking, but also often hilarious. The adaptation centers on a young woman named Lucy who was raised in Vault 33, a community modeled on a stereotypical midwestern town. (The Vaults are all identical steel warrens, but each has its own peculiarities.) Lucy, having never lived anywhere but her subterranean hometown of “33,” is nice to a fault. She doesn’t even swear: She peppers her speech with the occasional “okie dokey!” and never uses an expletive stronger than “fudge.”

Lucy embodies the ethos of the Fallout world, a retro-futuristic, atompunk pastiche of 1950s America. In the alternate history of the Fallout games, the stress of constant wars for resources pushed the United States, in the late 20th century, back toward the warm Baby Boomer heaven of stay-at-home moms in aprons and high heels, big cars, and mindless jingoism. All of this nostalgia was wrapped in an insipid consumer culture, and serviced by a small group of paternalistic corporations whose many products still litter the destroyed landscape.

Continue reading at Postapocalyptic TV With a Nostalgic Twist.


Poem by Sara Teasdale, and some words...






While we're waiting for the world to end, join me for dinner at...