Letters to the Editor
TCinLA
Published Letters: 90 Editor's Choice: 5
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Phantom flight
[Read the article: Ask the Pilot]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Patrick:
You did good for an airborne bus driver.
25 years ago, Air Force magazine gave this aviation writer the best roller-coaster ride ever: back seat of an F-4E (spent all day of 0900 to 1400 learning how to get out of it in an emergency, which leaves one understanding that this is SERIOUS), a flight out of George AFB with 2 F-4G Wild Weasel Phantoms up to the Red Flag range, where two F-5 "Aggressors" waited to prevent our "attack" on a radar site - down and dirty "in the weeds", 500 knots at 500 feet, "air combat maneuvers" (for anyone who's ever done civilian aerobatics, war aerobatics are harsh, hard and hairy) and then a pullout that suddenly had me looking straight up into the cockpit of one of the other F-4s as they passed about 50 feet away in an instant. Got back and had that "shit eating grin" on my face you describe, which changed quickly when my pilot said "you do know we were two seconds from a mid-air, don't you?" (Eight years later, the "head weasel" in the lead plane led the attack in Desert Storm that took out the Baghdad air defenses in 15 minutes, along with my pilot. Those guys definitely knew what they were doing.)
But yes, for those other readers out there who do have $10K burning a hole in your pocket, the ride was definitely "worth it." 25 years later I can still remember every second.
Thanks for the reminder, Patrick. I like your flying writing a lot.
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"Orange Country" - you got that right!
[Read the article: Orange County: Subprime lending stupidity capital of the U.S.]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Indeed, Orangutang County is "another country" so your typo is actually highly accurate. "Orange Country" indeed.
Anyone care to notice what party the sub-primers and S&L scammers belong to? Yes indeed, the Party o' Flaw and Ordure.
Further proof of two things: "Republican" is a synonym for "hypocrite" and my great-grand-uncle, who worked as a political advisor for Harry Truman for 30 years, was right when he told me at an early age that "the only 'good Republicans' are pushing up daisies."
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Even a stopped clock is right twice a day
[Read the article: The disappearing protests]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Matthews has it right on this one. As someone who was there at the beginning and throughout the entire "war against the war," allow me to point out a few things:
I returned from Vietnam in the summer of 1965, entirely against the war - having been a lesser participant in the so-called "Tonkin Gulf Incident", the lie that started the war - and didn't do anything to hide my feelings at the college I went to a week after my return. Nobody was much interested, past a few "beatniks" around the school newspaper. It was pretty much that way throughout the state of Colorado then. Over the next four years of crescendoing opposition to the war, the draft was indeed a driving force, as young guys had to consider what might happen to them if they left school - it was a way of raising their consciousness. And for many it was their only reason for opposing the war. This can be seen in the way war protests slowed and died off as the lottery system was introduced. Once a kid realized the war wasn't going to get him, he was quite happy to go back to worrying about beer and girls (and the potheads were never more than 2030% of the population even back then).
As someone who traveled around the country for many of those years as a professional shit-disturber for the antiwar movement, I saw this phenomenon in places like Ann Arbor, Madison, Berkeley, Austin, and lots of lesser-known places in between.
So, for once, Matthews is right. Whether the antiwar movement and all the rest of we over-the-hill-hippies dislike the fact that many of us were that shallow makes no difference - the facts are the facts.
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Mad Men
[Read the article: I Like to Watch]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm one of "those people" who writes "that stuff," someone who knows how the magician is supposed to pull the rabbit out of the hat right, and "Mad Men" pulls the rabbit out perfectly - it's like sitting close enough to the stage to see the magician do his work if he's not good, and not spotting a thing. I liked "Mad Men" so much that when I finished watching the first broadcast of the show I sat through the rebroadcast just to watch everything in detail be done so beautifully.
Here's something interesting all the rest of you didn't know: "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes," the pilot episode, was the script that got Matt Weiner his job on "The Sopranos."
I think the best comment I've heard about the show comes from a friend of mine who spent a career in advertising, starting as an artist at J.Walter Thompson in May, 1960 (he was the guy who was Draper's partner doing the artwork who asked "do we drink before the meeting or after?"). His comment: "It was real."
Your comment that the show should be required viewing for those who think feminism wasn't about anything important os absolutely right.
I love it when something lives up to my hopes rather than down to my expectations, as this does and JFC doesn't.