50 mo

So nobody significant died in the last 24 hours, might be a good time to celebrate Motown's 50th. It was the week of January 12th, 1958 that Berry Gordy Jr. founded Tamla records on less than a thousand dollars. The sound he was to inspire became known as Motown, short for Motor Town, recognizing the influence the automobile making industry had on Detroit.

The hits that came out of Motown crossed a huge cultural divide with black and white youth dancing and romancing to the steady stream of pop, soul, r&b and ballads.

Can anyone not get down with these tunes?

- Stop! In the Name of Love - The Supremes. produced by his house gang, Holland-Dozier-Holland and backed by The Funk Brothers.

- The Tracks of My Tears - Smokey Robinson

- Reach Out I'll Be There - The Four Tops

- War -Edwin Starr version (not the Temptations one)

and finally the ultra smooth What's Going On by Marvin Gaye.

Get down. Pictured above is an early Funk Brothers lineup.

rough day

So here's a big hit for network TV classics fans. Ricardo Montalban died today at 88. Known for the role of Mr. Roarke on the series Fantasy Island, Montalban got his start in his native Mexico on stage and film.

Hollywood called in the late forties and he earned his wages in a variety of "ethnic" roles, often as Asians, Native Americans or as Khan Noonien Singh, first in the original Star Trek series in 1967 and later in Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan.

His portfolio included stints as diverse as Dora the Explorer (makes sense) and Freakaziod (what?)

And, for cult TV fans its sad to say Patrick McGoohan died too. Yesterday actually, he was 80. Irish born McGoohan like many started on the stage. After turning to film he landed the starring role in Danger Man, a UK hit spy series.

he grew tired of the role and pitched the series that was to become The Prisoner. It was his baby. He wrote, produced, directed and starred as the character simply call Number 6.

Stamp collector

So with the news that Bernard Madoff mailed his family jewelery to the tune of a million smackers one gets the feeling that he's preparing for a move in the near future. The architect of a 50 Billion Ponzi scheme, bigger than the GDP of a third of the world's countries, is settling in for a battle.

So where did he get the idea anyway? From Charles Ponzi, an Italian immigrant who arrived on our shores in 1903. Not knowing what to do and having no special desire to get a crappy job he looked around for a way to make some bucks. He didn't have the people skills for customer service and got too many customers pissed off by either shorting them on goods (or cash) or by just plain old lying. He did a bit of time for forged checks and when he got out put his mind to a lazy way to riches.

He discovered there was money to be made with international reply coupons, or chits that could be turned in for postage stamps. These were commonly used in foreign mail when the sender wanted a reply. The idea was the recipient would cash in the chit for return postage and the sender was sure of a nice friendly letter back. The money to be made involved the difference in postage between some countries. Stamps could be bought and exchanged for higher value ones.

This was not going to make Ponzi his fortune but for a while he made amodest living. He decided to recruit more people into the scheme, the idea being that with hundreds, maybe thousands of stamp trading transactions he could really rake it in. But his dishonest streak looked a little beyond this. His new "recruits" bought into the "business" for a flat fee with a promise of doubling their money in six months. So many people thought it was an amazing deal that he was swamped with investors.

Trouble is, no one was selling postage stamps. He was paying out his investors with the money he raised from new subscriptions. So popular was his scheme it is estimated he did 4-5 million dollars a month.

Money like that will draw the feds to have a look. Actually it was Clarence Barron, the Wall Street Journal owner who smelled a rat. He used his newspaper and power to uncover the truth and shut him down. Oddly enough many of Ponzi's biggest supporters when he went to jail were his former investors, who hailed him as a financial wizard.

this ought to sell

John Stringfellow, yet another British inventor, came from the weaving and textile industry. He had a fondness for steam engines, who doesn't? and together with his partners had the distinction of forming the worlds first airline in 1848. Now they had no airplane, and if they did it would run on steam, so when they rolled out the idea to investors it kind of stunk the place out.

Sadly, his designs were good. Proven by the fact that he made several very successful flights with a ten foot wingspan model in 1848! His partners had left for other parts by this time and Stringfellow was left to tinker on his own.

He and his son kept on building steam powered airplanes and just about all of them flew. He never did get to fly in one though. The machines he designed, both the dream machines like the Aerial Steam Carriage (Christ that sounds unsafe) and the actual models that flew were uncannily like modern aircraft.

turbo powered shorty

Sir Charles Algernon Parsons, developer of the steam turbine, tried his hand at many things. Oh, he was successful with the steam turbine, refining it and modifying it until it was a practical power source in increasingly power hungry industrial Britain.

Some of his ideas included a thing called an Auxetophone, a mechanical device for amplifying music. It sucked. he also came up with a method for making artificial diamonds, though not sucking never really worked. He went it this idea for over 30 years before giving up. He was on the right track but could not produce the pressures needed.

But what interests this writer is his model aircraft: a steam powered helicopter and airplane, both of which flew in 1893. He also built a steam powered go kart. Nice.

I'm behind this technology

So far I've been doing the "I told you so" showing how a few planes actually flew before the Wright brothers. This time I`m going to talk about a steam powered airplane that flew over 25 years later than their first flight.

The year is 1933, and rumblings from Europe are starting make North American`s nervous. For the Besler brothers, George and Bill, steam was on their mind. Heirs to railroad fortunes, these Princeton graduates had a thing for steam engines. They embarked on a project build a viable steam powered airplane and succeeded.

Their craft was powered by a high efficiency steam power plant that generated 90 HP and weighed just 500 pounds. With such a good power to weight ratio to start with, they felt confident it would fly. The boiler was heated with fuel oil allowing more maneuverability than coal (good Jesus). The cool thing about this engine is that it could run in both directions at the flick of a switch. This made for very short landings as the pilot could reverse the thrust to slow the plane.

The plane flew just fine for over 15 minutes at 1000 feet and landed in one piece. Maybe they were onto something. With the price of fuel do you think someone could develop a super duper steam engine and power it with cow methane maybe.

ketchup day

Yeah, yeah. Give me hell. I've been off for nearly a month. Holidays took it's toll, got a new job description and the usual craziness took over and left me too far away from my blog to even think about it. let's get back at it then.

First, the sad stuff. Just who died over the last 3 weeks that this blog takes notice of? (yeah I'm a very huggable guy).

Lessee, Ron Asheton, lead guitar player and sometimes bass player for the Stooges, found dead on his couch at 60. That was January 6th, 2009. Like the 36 inch cannon, the Stooges were not pretty and made a lot of noise. Formed in 1967 with brother Scott on drums, bassist Dave Alexander and Iggy Pop on the pipes, the Stooges got moderate airplay with songs like I Wanna Be Your Dog. Mainly they got a lot of press from their shows, as most radio stations could not find a place for their version of rock n roll.

They keep getting nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (6 times and counting) but have yet to make it. C'mon lets get 'em in there.

On the other end of the spectrum (musical that is) Dave Dee passed away on January 9th at age 65. For those of you who are going who the hell is Dave Dee, here's a clue: Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich. Nothing yet? How about their monster 1968 hit Legend of Xanadu?

His real name is David Harman and with his band mates actually had a string of British hits rivalling the Beatles throughout the 60's, starting in 1965 with You make it Move and followed by Hold Tight!, Bend It! and Save Me.

And from the stage we mourn the passing of Van Johnson who died Dec 15, 2008, a true living matinee idol. Van spent more time on a stage that in films, but returned to film and television in later life with brief roles in many shows including I Love Lucy and Batman. His portrayal of Lt. Steve Maryk in the 1954 classic The Caine Mutiny was, in my opinion, his best work.

So now that everyone is all cheered up, I better move on tho some serious shit with more exploding steam airplanes.