12 Oct 2008
by JustMeMikein Art, Movies
Recently I watched the movie, The Hunt for Red October (1990). This is a real man’s movie filled with submarine warfare, geo-politics and its offspring – political brinksmanship, as well as great heaping gobs of pure testosterone. There’s no sex or romance in this tale, in fact there may not even be any speaking roles for women in the movie.
As the movie begins, we learn that the Captain of The Red October, which is the USSR’s newest and most technologically advanced nuclear powered submarine, has disobeyed his orders, and is heading for the United States. The question is – is he defecting or is he a madman who will bring about Armegeddon by firing nuclear war heads at major US coastal cities?
Sean Connery portrays the Russian submarine Captain Marko Ramius whose real mission is to defect to the United States and bring with him the invaluable submarine and most of its officers. We learn this from a discussion at a dinner in the Captain’s Mess aboard the Red October.
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03 Dec 2007
by JustMeMikein Art
Often, traveling will play a trick on you. For example, on the Wednesday before the Thanksgiving holiday, I traveled by interstate bus from New York to Storrs, Connecticut. The distance was 147 miles according to the mileage on the bus ticket. The first twenty minutes of the trip got us from New York’s Port Authority Bus Station on West 41st Street to West 84th Street and Amsterdam Avenue — a distance of about two miles.
After that we gathered ‘speed’ and I exited the bus in Storrs 5 hours and 15 minutes later. More than five hours to travel just 147 miles. Just a few days before, I had flown in from Asia. The second leg of the flight was from Vancouver, B.C., Canada to New York’s JFK Airport, a distance that traversed the entire North American continent, and took just 4 hours 20 minutes. Go figure. More
12 Nov 2007
by JustMeMikein Art
About three weekends ago, I was one of more than 56,000 people in attendance at Belmont Park, in Elmont, NY, for the 2005 edition of the Breeders’ Cup, which is commonly known as the Super Bowl of thoroughbred horse racing. One hundred of the best racehorses in the world were on hand to compete for purses of 14 million dollars in eight separate races. Over 122 million dollars was wagered on these races which were simulcast to horse racing venues across the country, and likely a lot more in Western Europe, where horse racing originated and was called the sport of kings.
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03 Oct 2007
by JustMeMikein Art
The first time I read those words that are the title of this month’s column, they had been written by Paul Moran who writes the Horse Racing column for Newsday, a New York area newspaper. The circumstances were a golden October afternoon, when a horse called Go For Wand shattered her right ankle while battling Bayakoa, an Argentina-bred mare, down to the wire for the 1990 Breeders Cup Distaff Championship. (Photo above – The Painting below)
Pure Heart by Michael Geraghty
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09 Sep 2007
by JustMeMikein Art
Back in the old days before PC’s and VCR’s, before anyone had ever dreamed of DVD’s, before cell phones, and definitely before television, there were movies. And before movies, the main entertainment mediums were books and art and music. It was an age of mystery and things that were usually discussed in bed, or at least behind closed doors, maintained an aura of magic, or fantasy, or at minimum, a sense of romance.
I hear the breezes playing in the trees above
while all the world is saying you were meant for love.
Isn’t it romantic merely to be young on such a night as this?
Isn’t it romantic?
I first heard the words, Isn’t it Romantic as they were crooned on the soundtrack of a movie called The Day of the Locust.
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09 Sep 2007
by JustMeMikein Art
So, did you grow up in a city or was it the suburbs, or maybe you were a kid who grew up in a rural neighborhood where you had to get on a bike and pedal for a while just to see your next-door neighbor’s house.
Me? I grew up on Long Island, about 40 miles east of New York. We had lots of woods near our homes, so we had many opportunities to go exploring with the family dogs. And we played at being Cowboys and we fought the Indians, only make believe of course, but we did have our tree forts. We were outdoors, and we had our dogs with us. We followed tracks in the leaves, and believed we were brave hunters.
Los Tres Amigo by Richard Iams
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