Tuesday: Hili dialogue

21 thoughts on “Tuesday: Hili dialogue”

1. On the fancy bus stop:

   When I traveled through New Zealand in 1991, I was amazed and the beautiful facilities in the NZ campgrounds.

   They typically had: Fully equipped kitchens with fridges, cookers, hot-water dispensers (little flow heaters or tank heaters), chairs, tables, etc., all very clean and neat. Everything except your pots and pans (and some even had a little of this!) and eating tools. Some had microwaves. Nearly all had toasters. And the campers were all polite and shared very nicely.

   My reaction was: Wow, this could never happen in the US! These would be stripped and vandalized within a week.

   In my experience in the US (very extensive in National Parks, State Parks, waysides, free camping, etc.), most campers stay up late, drinking and making themselves noisy and obnoxious.

   The other thing that amazed me: In almost all cases (100s of events), campers outside the US were quiet and polite. When they were noisy (we got up early and moved out, we were riding (push-) bikes around the world), when we spoke to them, they would apologize and go quiet. So different from my experience in the US. (I am a USian.)

   1. … at the beautiful facilities …

   2. Huh. My experience is completely the other way around – in American national parks, campers tend to be pretty low key. In European campgrounds, they bring their caravans and satellite dishes…

      1. In my experience the determining factor is what kind of camping ground it is. In natural parks and reserves campers tend to be ‘low key’, in areas, say close to, eg. popular beaches, not so much.

      2. Think you mean Caravan sites .I have a caravan ,i tend to stay on the smaller sites run by the Caravan club ,only five vans are allowed on at any one time .
         They tend to be quiet .

2. On this day in 1919 Countess Markievicz appointed Minister of Labour by Eamon deValera. First women minister in an Irish cabinet, 2nd would not be appointed until 1979 when Maura Geoghan Quinn was appointed Minister for the Gaeltacht.

   1. Marvin Gaye born on this day in 1939.

      1. Max Ernst 1891

3. Bogart’s lifts prompted me to search out, why it seems Hollywood actors are considerably shorter, on average, than the average. Several theories – 1. Short men fail at sports so go compensate by becoming thespians. 2. Shorter men look better on camera.
   I like the second explanation. The head size is relatively constant regardless of height, which means, for a shorty, the body is proportionately smaller and out of the way in a medium close up.
   So, Hollywood must go to great lengths to make leading actors look taller. One way is to create smaller doorways for them to enter a scene.

   1. THE TOP SEVEN GROSSING MALE HOLLYWOOD ACTORS 2018

      76″ Jason Mamoa
      75″ Chris Hemsworth
      75″ Dwayne Johnson
      74″ Chris Pratt
      74″ Ryan Reynolds
      72″ Chadwick Boseman
      70″ Michael B. Jordan
      69″ Tom Hardy [average US male height]
      67″ Tom Cruise

      NOTE: My source is Forbes thus everything above is almost certainly wrong & actors/agents stretch the truth on height, age etc while building a fake actorly persona. e.g. not many people know Jon Hamm is trans, 4’9″ & George Clooney is a closet disco queen who likes to cross stitch homilies in his spare time.

      SHORT MALE MOVIE ACTORS

      The audience for Hollywood box office movies is younger these days – only the young will put up with the their fellow cinema audiences & the con of overpriced films with crappy popcorn. Hyped Marvel universe films with awful dialogue & telegraphed plots – the over produced audio with booming bass, the absurd fake fights. Grumble, grumble, grumble.

      Anyway ‘scuse the diversion…

      I know nothing about theatre, but it feels right to me that leading men were at one time probably above average height & well built with the sort of lungs/chest that could project clear, enunciated vocals loudly & at a ‘manly’ pitch. But there’s no need in the general non-action TV/movie scene today to be that type & the market for actors id heavily professionalised today with loads of actors coming up through the mill of pre-teen stage school. There it pays to look very young for your age [ie short & immature of face] to get the many kiddy roles going where producers/directors much prefer to use older actors playing younger.

      So maybe in certain genres of stage & screen production there is a selection pressure to be short. But I haven’t done the numbers – it would be quite interesting to take long running US TV soaps & look at the heights of male actors now over 21 years of age. Are they under 69″? How about highest earning male US soap stars?

      1. Small correction: The National Center for Health Statistics has the average USian male at 69.3 inches (176.1 centimeters), or roughly 5 feet 9 inches. And, I’m sure you’re right that in their bare feet, right out of the shower, they are all notably less statured. To play next to John Wayne(6′ 4″), Tom Cruise would need a box 5″ high, or about the height of two small-town phone books(remember those?). Alternatively, a trench could be dug for Wayne in a walk-and-talk scene. Cruise would, of course, ride a normalized horse. No offense to anyone reading this who is of short stature.

         1. I wonder did Wayne’s movie horses wear 5″ horseshoe lifts?

            Here he is when not in character with cute shoulder bag, 1959, when Acapulco was the hot holiday venue:

            https://loeildelaphotographie.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/8_Phil_Stern__John_Wayne__In_Shorts_Smoking___Acapulco__1959-10.jpg

            1. Curiously, your link to Wayne in shorts appears in my email, but is now replaced on WEIT by “STOP stealing bandwidth!” Apparently, someone thinks it’s a waste of the internet.

               From Quora: This happens when someone posts an image on a website that is being hosted on a server other than the one the actual website is being hosted on. It’s called hotlinking and some people get very annoyed when this happens because some servers charge for the amount of bandwidth being used and hotlinking essentially “steals” someone else’s bandwidth.

               To view the image, hit the image url directly and the image would load from the original website and you’d be able to view it.

               Notify the webmaster of the website to take permission from the site they are ‘stealing bandwidth’ from to legally use their image content.

            2. It’s viewable on WEIT now for some reason. In future I’ll upload to my Flickr & use that as the host. Thanks.

            3. I wonder what’s in his cute shoulder bag.

            4. Marion MM? His regulation USMC slip-on glitter pumps – storming up the back lot beaches while weaving between plastic palm trees with a fearsome scowl.

            5. It would be better to just link to the page containing the image. That way, you are not breaking anybody’s copyright and you are not “stealing” any ad revenue.

               Also, I think Jerry prefers links to inlining images and videos.

4. The Harvestman looks like something out of John Carpenters The Thing ,or it is proof there is a god and he has got a very ,very, strange sense of humour .

5. Hm, a meta-april fool prank. Interesting.

6. Forget the bunny rabbit–that harvestman is Totoro.

   1. Now you mention it – he is!

Comments are closed.