COOL SAILING in 1966

A commercial came on tv last night for some cruise line that has a HUGE ship that has a gaping hole in the fantail area with cabins facing across this expanse like some apartment complex. I looked at it and immediately thought that it looked like a Borg ship. Thousands upon thousands of people on board. The hive. Everyone being directed to activities. People surrounded by other people, but unaware of their existence. Blinded by vacation.

Then there's the old Matson Lines.


Click on image to see it larger. (SOURCE: Here's Hawaii, 1966)



To get a feeling of what it was like to travel on a Matson Liner there is a wonderful book called To Honolulu in Five Days. Full of images of ephemera, it tells the story of your trip to heaven and what it was like once you got there.

CHRISTMESS GIFT IDEA No. 3

Short on cash this year, but still want to give a gift that will be memorable? Your family member will be able to express themselves...WITHOUT PAIN! 50 cents! Only 50 CENTS! They'll talk about your (cheap) gift for months to come, especially if you misspell their name.

(SOURCE: TEEN, May, 1966)

And now you're asking yourself, "Why didn't I think of this? I'd be rolling in cash!"

CHRISTMESS GIFT IDEA No. 2

This Christmas make sure you buy your loved ones something to wear made from Dacron. Why? Because…

Dacron (dāˈkrŏn, dăkˈrŏn) [key], trademark for a polyester fiber. Dacron is a condensation polymer obtained from ethylene glycol and terephthalic acid. Its properties include high tensile strength, high resistance to stretching, both wet and dry, and good resistance to degradation by chemical bleaches and to abrasion. The continuous filament yarn is used in curtains, dress fabrics, high-pressure fire hoses, men's shirts, and thread. The staple fiber is ideal for mixing with wool in men's and women's suits, as well as in dress fabrics, knitted wear, and washable woven sportswear. (SOURCE: Infoplease)

It doesn’t wrinkle when it’s shipped from China. It resists stains so you need not worry about the wine you spill on your crazy relatives at the holiday dinner. It doesn’t breath because it was never alive. But ummmm…it’s interesting to see American Airlines used in an ad for Dacron. If you don’t know it by now, don’t wear polyester blends when flying. Wear natural fibers. Why? If that sucker goes down natural fibers will not melt onto your skin.


(SOURCE: Teen, May, 1966)

But hey, if you feel like a princess in orange or sun gold polyester for only 12 bucks...go for it!

August 29, 1966

As I sat down to watch the 49ers preseason game tonight I suddenly flashed on where I was 46 years and 1 day ago. It was seeing the fog and cold at Candlestick Park that brought it back. It's one of those days that you remember, even if the memory is broken like shards of glass. Images, moments flash back as if I'm watching clips from some movie.

I was sitting in Candlestick Park wearing black shoes, black tights, a red and black jumper with a black turtleneck. Oh, and I had a pair of binoculars around my neck. I was with my friend who had told me I'd better not scream. No screaming was allowed. I promised I wouldn't, and I didn't. This is not to say that all around me there weren't screamers and fainters and hypervenitlators. But I stood on my seat stoic...well, almost stoic. I giggled a lot and sighed and didn't want the 20 or so minutes to end. And the girl in the seat in front of me kept grabbing my binoculars to see the band better, and George's white socks, and she never bothered to ask if it was okay. My head was still attached so I'm lucky I didn't end up with whiplash that night.

And then it was over. The Brinks truck pulled up to the stage, the band got into the truck, and it left. It was gone, off the field in an instance. My folks, waiting for us in their car in the parking lot, saw the Brinks truck zoom by. They had no idea why there was a Brinks truck. When my friend and I were safely back in the car on our way home we told my folks about the truck. My mother said, "It drove right by us." Okay, then my friend and I started to squeal.

Yup, 46 years and 1 day ago it was cold and foggy at Candlestick Park.

FAHRENHEIT 451 is not a slow burn

This book is as relevant today as when first published in 1953. Good books by great authors always are.

This is one of the few movie-tie-in books that I actually bought when I was in college. I highly recommend it along with the 1966 film directed by Francois Truffaut starring Oskar Werner and Julie Christie. I checked to see if it would be on this month, but no luck.






Click on any image to see it larger.

Fahrenheit 451 is a 1953 dystopian novel by Ray Bradbury. The novel presents a future American society where books are outlawed.

The novel has been the subject of various interpretations, primarily focusing on the historical role of book burning in suppressing dissenting ideas. Bradbury has stated that the novel is not about censorship, but a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature, which leads to a perception of knowledge as being composed of factoids, partial information devoid of context.

François Truffaut wrote and directed a film adaptation of the novel in 1966. At least two BBC Radio 4 dramatizations have also been aired, both of which follow the book very closely.

In 1947, Bradbury wrote a short story titled "Bright Phoenix" (later revised for publication in a 1963 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction). Bradbury expanded the basic premise of "Bright Phoenix" into The Fireman, a novella published in the February 1951 issue of Galaxy Science Fiction. First published in 1953 by Ballantine Books, Fahrenheit 451 is twice as long as "The Fireman." A few months later, the novel was serialized in the March, April, and May 1954 issues of Playboy. Bradbury wrote the entire novel in the basement of UCLA's Powell Library on a pay typewriter that he rented for a fee of ten cents per half an hour. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

Click here to see a video showing much more interesting scenes than the rather hokey trailer above.

(Photo below of Ray Bradbury by Alan Light)

Ray Douglas Bradbury (born August 22, 1920) is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 (1953) and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles (1950) and The Illustrated Man (1951), Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th and 21st century American writers of speculative fiction. Many of Bradbury's works have been adapted into television shows or films.

Bradbury was born in 1920 in Waukegan, Illinois to Esther Moberg Bradbury, a Swedish immigrant, and Leonard Spaulding Bradbury, a power and telephone lineman.

Ray Bradbury is related to the American Shakespeare scholar Douglas Spaulding. He is also directly descended from Mary Bradbury, who was tried, convicted and sentenced to hang as a witch in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692. She was married to Captain Thomas Bradbury of Salisbury, Massachusetts.

Bradbury was a reader and writer throughout his youth who was greatly influenced by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe. Bradbury was especially impressed with Poe's ability to draw readers into his works. In his youth, he spent much time in the Carnegie library in Waukegan, Illinois, reading such authors as H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and his favorite author, Edgar Rice Burroughs who wrote novels such as Tarzan of the Apes and The Warlord of Mars. He loved Burroughs' The Warlord of Mars so much that at the age of twelve he wrote his own sequel. An aunt read him short stories when he was a child. He used this library as a setting for much of his novel Something Wicked This Way Comes, and depicted Waukegan as "Green Town" in some of his other semi-autobiographical novels—Dandelion Wine, Farewell Summer—as well as in many of his short stories.

He attributes to two incidents his lifelong habit of writing every day. The first of these, occurring when he was three years old, was his mother's taking him to see Lon Chaney's performance in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The second incident occurred in 1932, when a carnival entertainer, one Mr. Electrico, touched the young man on the nose with an electrified sword, made his hair stand on end, and shouted, "Live forever!" It was from then that Bradbury wanted to live forever and decided on his career as an author in order to do what he was told: live forever. It was at that age that Bradbury first started to do magic. Magic was his first great love. If he had not discovered writing, he would have become a magician.

The Bradbury family lived in Tucson, Arizona in 1926–27 and 1932–33 as the father pursued employment, each time returning to Waukegan, but eventually settled in Los Angeles in 1934, when Ray was thirteen.

Bradbury graduated from Los Angeles High School, where he took poetry and short story writing courses that furthered his interest in writing, but he did not attend college. Instead, he sold newspapers at the corner of South Norton Avenue and Olympic Boulevard. In regard to his education, Bradbury said:

“Libraries raised me. I don’t believe in colleges and universities. I believe in libraries because most students don’t have any money. When I graduated from high school, it was during the Depression and we had no money. I couldn’t go to college, so I went to the library three days a week for 10 years.”

It was in UCLA's Powell Library, in a study room with typewriters for rent, that Bradbury wrote his classic story of a book-burning future, Fahrenheit 451. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

Visit Ray Bradbury's site here.