Vampires on Facebook

Gotta laugh at this ridiculous come-on. It was directed at me as a comment on Facebook, in reply to a comment I had made on a comic book group.

How are you doing?? Am Rose,I took time reading your profile over and over…. i like all i read about you. i would love to know more about you and have a longer conversation with you,to see what we both have in common. Please do check my profile and see,if we are both compatible…You feel free to email me anytime and i’ll be glad to get that from you,You are so Handsome..I think i should stop here now and i’ll look forward hearing from you soon. Kind Regards Rose

The vampires are always out there, looking for victims. At the same time I saw that message, this fantastic photo popped up in my Facebook newsfeed.

What a lavish display, especially for a horror flick. Even the lettering is impressive. Wartime before TV. The movie was shown with a Fleischer Popeye cartoon, a Disney Pluto cartoon, and a George Pal Puppetoon, misspelled as “Puppetune.”

I can’t read the cartoon titles, but this is the Pluto cartoon that was released closest to Return of the Vampire. Buy your war bonds here!

 
And now, the feature presentation.

Cast Away

Audio electronics manufacturer Onkyo/Pioneer disappeared for a while, and after a period of uncertainty about its survival the company returned. I first realized they hadn’t gone out of business when my Onkyo — or, as some say, Oinkyo — receiver announced it had a firmware update to install.

The receiver has all of the apps I want, except for SiriusXM. I could use Bluetooth from my Google Pixel 4a phone, but it would have to be kept in proximity with the receiver. Chromecast was the way to go, except it wasn’t working through the SiriusXM app. It would attempt to connect, then give up. The cast icon in TuneIn had only slight success, sputtering badly with a buffering indicator.

The phone was showing only the Onkyo and the Google Chromecast “puck” on the porch TV as available devices. I had no trouble connecting and disconnecting the phone with the Chromecast puck. Which made sense, as both gadgets were made by Google. I opened Google Chrome on a PC and clicked the casting icon on a YouTube video. The browser had a different “cast list” that curiously didn’t include the Onkyo.

So there was some inconsistency to be found in Google’s various software implementations. With that in mind, I decided the thing to do was forget about trying to invoke Chromecast from within the apps. I went to the Google Home settings on the phone. As before, it showed only the two devices. Would a casting connection work, by making the phone send all audio to the receiver?

BOOM! YES! It came up and played instantly with no sputtering. It even directly adjusts the receiver’s volume control. How I love workarounds.

Birds of a Feather

“Frank is a singer who comes along once in a lifetime, but why did he have to come in mine?” — Bing Crosby

Rudy Vallee could have just as well said the same thing about Bing. Both of their careers were made possible by the innovation of electrical recording technology, singing into microphones rather than yelling into acoustic horns.

The rivalry between Bing and Frank, which was really more of a mutual admiration society, was parodied a couple of times in Warner Brothers cartoons. First in Frank Tashlin’s memorably zany Swooner Crooner. The complete cartoon isn’t available on YouTube, but here’s a bit of it.

Catch As Cats Can was directed by a lesser known Warner name, Art Davis, who was Bob Clampett’s successor at the studio. I like the ending of this one.

https://youtu.be/nYDt5QmNGsk

A Literal Wall Street-Related Crash

“The safety culture at Boeing fell apart. It was corrupted from the top down by pressures from Wall Street, plain and simple.”

That quote is from Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Ore., in the Netflix documentary, Downfall: The Case Against Boeing. DeFazio led the Congressional investigation into the two Boeing 737 MAX crashes.

The tragedy of the MCAS-induced crashes began with the competition between Boeing and Airbus. Although Airbus receives EU government loans, that’s no excuse for the problems at Boeing. Those began when the corporate culture changed after the takeover of McDonnell Douglas.

As with the Wall Street crash of 2008, the failure of government regulators played a part in the tragedies. The FAA didn’t do its job, and DeFazio wants to know why.

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/lawmakers-demand-fresh-investigation-into-faa-decision-not-to-penalize-boeing-for-max-failures/

For Biden’s part, he was behind an agreement that was made last year, intended to ease competitive tensions between Boeing and Airbus.

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57484209

For fifteen years I spent half of my time traveling on business, flying on planes. How well I remember Flight 66, a redeye non-stop from San Francisco to Boston, aboard a Lockheed L-1011, a big plane that I really liked. When my role changed at work, the times I flew became mercifully few and far between.

After I retired in 2017, many of the flights I took between Boston and Phoenix were aboard the brand-new MAX. The first time I saw one, I was surprised by how large the engines were, so I knew it wasn’t the same 737 I was familiar with from my years of business travel. Only one month after returning from Phoenix for the 20th and final time, the Lion Air 737 MAX crashed shortly after takeoff.

If you don’t have Netflix, Frontline has this documentary.