Tomorrow morning I’ll guide another walking tour group through the Pima Air & Space Museum. It’ll be a red-letter day: the docent team leader and volunteer supervisor will evaluate my skills; if I do well I’ll become the museum’s newest certified walking tour docent.
As you might imagine, boning up is the order of the day. I’m heading out to the museum later this morning to walk through the exhibits and make sure I have my flow down. Gettin’ my flow down. Gonna be down with the flow.
Strange the tangents you go off on preparing for something like this. One of the aircraft I plan to highlight during my tour of the WWII hangars is the Curtis C-46 Commando, an enormous twin-engine transport.
I learned it was originally designed on spec as a high-altitude pressurized airliner. Curtis didn’t get the number of orders it needed to put it into production, but the military saved the day when it decided the beast was just what it needed to move troops and cargo. I had a vague memory that the military version was unpressurized, but could I say so confidently? After an hour’s research, I decided I could — the military C-46 (and they were all military, originally) was not pressurized. This is the kind of homework I’ve been doing. Multiply by 30-odd aircraft.
It’s about damn time you paid attention to Joss Whedon, creator, writer director, composer, and all around genius of both Buffy and Firefly. And tell Polly congrats for me. Of course, now you’ll have to start Netflixing the series. In the series, Buffy turns up as a sophomore at Sunnydale High (read: Santa Barbara, hence all those rooftop shots of red tiles), and her new watcher is Anthony Stewart Head, plucked fresh from that Tasters’ Choice ad/melodrama. And this time Whedon get to go all out. Seems he’s also (what a surprise) a P. G. Wodehouse fan. One of my favorite lines occurs when the students are discussing a class project and the girls claim the male classmate, Xander, cheated. Giles (the watcher/librarian) concedes “I suppose there was a certain Machevellian ingenuity to your transgression.” At which point Xander says, “I resent that!” (Pause) “Or possibly thank you.”
So please tell Polly that I said she now has to get you hooked on the series. Start Netflixing. The series ran for seven years, although the first season was short because Fox had commitment issues. It one of those rare shows where a subordinate character ends up walking off with the show. James Marsters’ performance as Spike was so brilliant, so funny, and so deliciously twisted that Joss Whedon finally had to transfer him to “Angel” after the end of “Buffy.”
And then you can start watching Firefly, the one Fox cancelled before the last two episodes ever aired. Typical.
Re your checkout: Knock ’em dead. Fascinating information about the C-46. I love stuff like that.
Re Anthony Weiner: I would be ecstatically happy if I didn’t hear that poor, deluded twit’s name for the rest of the year. Shaving pubic hair? What’s the point? Guess I’m just old-fashioned. I have a wonderfully, hilariously funny and indecent story along the same lines, and involving how men lie and what they think women will actually believe. But that’s why we have email.