Hollywoodland

I love the Olympics. I love what they stand for even if they don’t always quite meet the mark. And I will watch the weirdest sports I wouldn’t ordinarily watch during the Olympics. Like boxing. I hate boxing. Except during the Olympics. And weightlifting. Not a priority. Except during the Olympics. Table tennis. Except… well, you get the idea. I discovered last night that one member of our track & field team goes to school (or went, I’m not sure) here in Arkansas. He’s been wearing a racing suit that’s like the one Jesse Owens wore in the 1936 Olympics when Owens beat the pants off Hitler’s so-called superior race. Hah! Anyway, then they had swimming. I was in little doubt that Michael Phelps would make the team. Also making the team is Ryan Lochte who I hadn’t realized was such a hottie. With dimples. I have a weakness for dimples. :love: Ahem. Where was I? Oh, yes. Back to track & field, on the pole vaulting team we have Jeff Hartwig, another Arkansas college attendee, made the team at age 41! And he lives in the Missouri town where I spent most of my childhood. So guess who I’ll be rooting for?

Last night I also watched a couple of episodes of the old (circa 1955) What’s My Line and in one, the mystery guest was Alfred Hitchcock. I never realized what a sense of humor he had. The panelists are always blindfolded for the mystery guests and one panelist, Random House editor (yes, one of the regular panelists was a BOOK EDITOR! You’d never see that nowadays!) Bennett Cerf, trying to determine if the guest was a man or a woman, asked if the guest was a gentleman. Mr. Hitchcock replied in this funny little voice, “Sometimes.”

Tonight, it’s more Olympic trials and The Middleman which moves to its normal time slot of 9pm Central.

I took last night off from doing research for the murder mystery.

Reading: Finished up The Case of the Murdered Muckraker. This is another of my favorites in the series. Maybe because Daisy & Alec (her husband) visit America and meet a real person (as opposed to only fictional people). Bessie Coleman was quite an amazing young woman. She was the first African-American (of either sex) to become an airplane pilot. And she was the first American of either race or sex to get an international pilot’s license. No flying schools in the U.S. would accept her because she was black and a woman. (Sexist bigots!) Not letting that stop her, she went to France where nobody cared about her race or gender. When she returned to the U.S. she became a barnstormer, doing all kinds of dangerous stunts. She died in 1926 at age 34 when a wrench slid into the gearbox of her plane and jammed the gears causing the plane to crash. 5000 people attended her funeral.

Now I’m reading Mistletoe and Murder by Carola Dunn.

On this date in 1933, silent movie comedian Fatty Arbuckle died at age 46. When he was accused of the rape and murder in 1921 of actress Virginia Rappe, his career was ruined. The first two trials ended in mistrials. The prosecution had no evidence aside from the word of a so-called witness that the district attorney wouldn’t allow to testify! So what does that tell you? In the third trial, Arbuckle was acquitted in six minutes and several members of the jury wrote him notes of apology. But despite his acquittal, the tide of public opinion had turned against him. He eventually turned to directing using a pseudonym. He returned to the screen in 1931 in six two-reel short films. On June 29, 1933, he signed a contract with Warner Brothers to make a full-length feature film. He claimed it was the best day of his life. Unfortunately, he died that night of a heart attack.

Incidentally, he made tons of shorts with Mabel Normand whose own career was ruined after the murder of William Desmond Taylor.

Last night I watched Surf’s Up. I thought it was really cute. But I started laughing at myself because I kept thinking, “No way are you going to find penguins on a tropical island.” And because, you know, it’s perfectly normal for penguins to TALK.

Tonight we have more U. S. Olympic trials. Track & field and swimming. Go, Michael Phelps!!! We also have new episodes of Greensburg (which I’m behind on watching), a new Inspector Lewis mystery, and In Plain Sight.

I really like today’s horoscope: [»]