Fans identify the scene where Morty waves goodbye as he leaves the condo development as a parody of Nixon's farewell wave when leaving the White House after resigning.
I just saw the episode in which Jerry's Dad is impeached as president of his development's condominium association in Florida and his parents decide they will have to move out of the development. At the end of the show, Jerry, who was already in Florida because he had surprised his Dad with a new Cadillac, shows up at their home as they are just about to leave for the last time. Then the three of them walk to the Cadillac as many of the other residents are there, waving as if to see them off. Then Morty turns and waves back at them all with both arms, and then they get in the car and drive off.
I'm sure this must have been a take-off of some very popular movie, but I don't know what movie it was.
"Brad" wrote in message news:V4eT6.42200$[email]...
I
yes, this is similar to when Nixon left the White House for the last time. Nixon made same gestures before boarding the helicopter. for the record, he resigned the office.
I haven't seen that episode in a while, but I believe it's a parody of Nixon's (double-armed) wave as he boarded AF1 for the last time after resigning...
--Todd Wheeling
"R. Abraham" wrote in message news:GbeT6.25503$[email]...
Well, not to be a "pendant" either--as you put it (I've never heard that phrase before :)--but it *was* AF1 when he left on it... IIRC, Nixon left on AF1 shortly before noon (when his resignation was to become effective) and Ford was sworn in during Nixon's flight. So, it was AF1 when Nixon took off and was not AF1 when he landed in California (I think it was CA). Technically there was NO AF1 when Nixon landed; AF1 is only existent when the president is on the plane...and I don't think Ford was in the air at that quickly after taking his oath.
On a side note, after reading a couple of other posts to this thread, I believe I was wrong about his waving from AF1...it was the helicopter at the White House (Marine One) that he waved from... I was thinking AF1 at Andrew's AF Base for some reason...
--Todd Wheeling
"john galt" wrote in message news:jEfT6.45796$[email]...
I heard once that whatever plane the president finds himself in, that plane is designated AF1, even if it's a commercial airliner or a Cessna. It's officially referred to as AF1 as long as the president is aboard.
I'd be surprised if that were the case. A United Airlines flight wouldn't be designated Air Force anything... it takes an Air Force plane to be desig.. AF-1.
His helio is Marine One... and if he flew an F-15 to a carrier.. I'm sure it would be Navy One while he was aboard.
Johnson took the oath of office aboard the plane, but on the ground. He was President, and the plane was AF-1 by the time it took off...
Now if your question was "Why has AF-1 taken off more than it landed... lol"
Because when Nixon took off it was AF-1 and the designation was changed over Kansas and landed as something else [because the 'President' wasn't aboard].
That Susan was a bit of a bitch, but anyhow does anyone think it would have been fun if Susan had pretended to be dead so she wouldn't have to marry George, and the showed up on the last episode married to an architect.
I don't think any pretending would have been neccessary... :) George had been racking his brain trying to figure out how to get out of marriage or at least postpone it...ever since Jerry broke his end of the "deal"... :)
And perhaps Jon Voight could have been looking for his car, and Elaine may have found the grape she lost in her kitchen, and when Newman testifies he would give his first name, and why he and Jerry hate each other, and one of Jerry's girlfriends would accuse him of sexual harassment by describing his "move", and George's boss could have described the payroll task he had to do, and Carrie could explain why she wore the same dress on all of Jerry's dates, and who won the contest (oh, they did do that one), and Audrey might testify as to why she would not eat the pie in front of Jerry, and . . .
So many unsolved mysteries - we will never know. ;-)
She was mis-cast, too. Susan is supposed to be an Upper East Side old money WASP... and yet the woman who played Susan was about as jappy as a girl could be.
Also - George is supposed to be Italian... but Jason Alexander (real name Jason Greenspan) is Jewish.
No, I wasn't referring to Jason; read my message again. You made the comment about poor casting because Jason is Jewish and George was not, but I responded by saying George might be Jewish. Since it's never established in the series we don't know for sure, but there is the suggestion that at least his mother is Jewish.
And as Mike pointed out, Judaism and Italian descent aren't mutually exclusive.
On Sun, 24 Jun 2001 22:35:11 GMT, "John Twernbold" wrote:
Estelle really looks Jewish because of the things she says and does, and most times children take on the religion of their mother, so we can suppose that George could have been raised Jewish. (Not that it changes anything, on top of not that there's anything wrong with that.)
Furthermore, I don't think it's an obligation to cast a Jewish actor to play a Jewish character, an Italian to play an Italian, etc. Just look at Anthony Quinn (may he rest in peace) playing Zorba the Greek!
JERRY: I think Superman probably has a very good sense of humor.
GEORGE: I never heard him say anything really funny.
JERRY: But it's common sense. He's got super strength, super speed.. I'm sure he's got super humor.
GEORGE: You would think that, but either you're born with a sense of humor, or you're not. It's not going to change even if you go from the red sun of Krypton all the way to the yellow sun of the Earth.
JERRY: Why? Why would that one area of his mind not be affected by the yellow sun of Earth?
Ah, but as I mentioned, it was AF1 when it took off with Nixon shortly before noon. When it landed Ford had been sworn in and Nixon was no longer the President. So, I think technically that would "cancel out" the LBJ extra landing...no? :)
--Todd Wheeling
"TheNewsGuy(Mike)" wrote in message news:[email]...
I think you are correct. As long as it is an Air Force Plane - AF1
That is not the name of the airplane, it is its flight number like TWA 565, etc
Presidential air transport began in 1944 when a C-54 Skymaster -- the
"Sacred Cow" -- was put into
service for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Then came the
"Independence," a DC-6 Liftmaster,
which transported President Harry S. Truman during the period 1947 to
1953. President Dwight D.
Eisenhower traveled aboard the "Columbine II" and "Columbine III" from
1953 to 1961.
A 1953 incident where Eisenhower's aircraft was "Air Force 8610" and
an Eastern Airlines plane was
"8610" created the need to devise a unique call sign.
The call sign "Air Force One" was classified during the '50s to
identify not only the president's plane, but when
he was aboard. In September 1961, it became popularly known when it
identified President John F. Kennedy
flying aboard his C-118.
In 1962, a C-137C specifically purchased for use as Air Force One,
entered into service with the tail
number 26000. It is perhaps the most widely known and most
historically significant presidential
aircraft. Tail number 26000 is the aircraft that carried President
Kennedy to Dallas, Nov. 22, 1963,
and returned the body to Washington, D.C., following his
assassination. Lyndon B. Johnson was
sworn into office as the 36th president on board the aircraft at Love
Field in Dallas. This fateful
aircraft also was used to return President Johnson's body to Texas
following his state funeral Jan. 24,
1973.
Every invention has an official birth date.
For the
Cube this date is 1974 when the first
working
prototype came into being and a patent
application
was drafted. The place was Budapest, the
capital of
Hungary. The inventor's name is now a
household
word. At the time, Erno Rubik was a
lecturer in the
Department of Interior Design at the
Academy of
Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest.
Although 1974 marks the inauguration of the
Cube,
the processes that led to the invention
began a few
years earlier, nor was the identity of the
inventor a
fortuitous accident. Erno Rubik had a
passionate
interest in geometry, in the study of 3D
forms, in
construction and in exploring the hidden
possibilities
of combinations of forms and material in
theory and in
practice.
In the course of his teaching, Erno Rubik
preferred to
communicate his ideas by the use of actual
models, made from paper, cardboard, wood or
plastic, challenging his students to
experiment by
manipulating clearly constructed and easily
interpreted forms. It was the realization
that even the
simplest elements, cleverly duplicated and
manipulated, yield an abundance of multiple
forms
that was the first step on the long road
that led finally
to the Cube.
Although possibly the most original of all
invented
puzzles, the Cube was not created in a
vacuum. Its
classical antecedents are great puzzles in
their own
right. The Tangram, originating from
ancient China,
merely consists of 5 triangles, a square
and a
parallelogram, simple elements that yield a
multitude
of interesting figures. The Pentomino,
invented by
Solomon W Golomb, has 12 different
elements, each
one made up of five squares joined
together,
displaying all the possible configurations
of the five
combined squares. Pentomino poses the
fascinating
geometric problem of constructing various
rectangles.
Piet Hein's Soma Cube is, in a sense, a
three
dimensional version of Pentominos. It
resembles
Rubik's Cube both in shape and in the large
number
of ways its seven elements can be assembled
into a
3x3x3 cube. Finally, there is Sam Loyd's
well known
15 puzzle, with it's numbered tiles locked
together yet
moving separately, so that by pushing them
about they
can be set in sequential order and
scrambled at will.
Viewing these puzzles places Rubik's Cube
in a
context and highlights just what a
breakthrough
creation the Cube really is.
What Erno Rubik's set out to do was create
a three
dimensional object, of high aesthetic
value, which
was not only richer in configuration
variations and
more of a mental challenge than any puzzle
in
existence, but would also continue to be
ONE,
SELF-CONTAINED WHOLE, throughout its
manifold transformations.
This objective seemed at first as
impossible to
achieve as the 3-axial rotation of the Cube
appears
on first encounter. After conceiving the
idea of the
3x3x3 Cube, Erno Rubik first tried to hold
together the
elements of a simpler, 2x2x2 cube, by means
of an
elastic rubber construction that threaded
its way
through all 8 elements. Even at this simple
level it
soon became clear that such a device could
not work.
The alternatives then available, such as
magnets and
the obvious tongue and grooves system,
could not
cope with the complexity of the different
junctions and
movements that each element required. Erno
Rubik
realized that only a totally original
concept could
provide a satisfactory solution.
The inspiration came on a lazy, summer day
as he
was watching the Danube flow by. Rubik's
eye was
attracted by some pebbles, whose sharp
edges have
been rubbed and smoothed away in the course
of
time bringing into being rounded shapes of
great but
simple beauty. The interior of the Cube
elements had
to have the same rounded architecture. The
brilliant
interior mechanism, which is basically
cylindrical, took some time to reach its
final form. For
ease of manipulation, the balance between
tightness
and looseness had to be just right,
tolerances had to
be exact. Finally, the 54 outer surfaces of
the
individual elements were given their
colors. Lots of
different decorative patterns, with numbers
and
symbols as well as diverse color
combinations were
tried, but none of them worked nearly as
well as the
six simple but distinct colors, each one
unifying and
differentiating one single face of the
Cube.
When the Cube was complete, Erno Rubik
demonstrated it to his students and let
some of his
friends play with it. The effect was
instantaneous.
Once somebody laid his hands on the Cube it
was difficult to get it back!
The compulsive interest of friends and
students in the
Cube caught its creator completely by
surprise and it
was months before any thought was given to
the
possibility of producing it on an
industrial scale.
Eventually a manufacturer took on the job
of
tooling up for mass production and making
the puzzle
available to the public at large. Given the
inner
complexity of the Cube, and the then
prevailing
economic conditions in communist Hungary,
this was
by no means an easy undertaking. It is to
the credit of
the two men at the helm of the toy
production firm of
Politechnika, President Lehel Takacz and
Chief
Engineer Ferencz Manczur that they at once
perceived enough merit in the Cube to
accept this
task. The process of turning the hand made
object into
thousands of low cost, mass manufactured
units was
slow. It took the best part of three years,
but at last,
towards the end of 1977 the first Cubes
appeared on
the shelves of the Budapest toyshops.
During 1978, without any promotion or
publicity, the
Cube began very slowly to make its way
through the
hands of fascinated youths into homes,
playgrounds
and schools. Word of mouth spread the news
and by
the beginning of 1979 there were
enthusiastic circles
of Cube devotees in various parts of
Hungary.
With the country being both physically and
culturally
behind the iron curtain at the time, the
growing
popularity of the Cube did not cross over
to the West
for quite some time. Not surprisingly, two
men of
Hungarian origin who had established their
lives in the
West built the bridge, which eventually
enabled the
Cube to cross the divide.
Dr Tibor Laczi, born in Budapest, educated
in Vienna
and employed by a major German computer
manufacturer "discovered" the Cube on one
of his
frequent business trips to Hungary. He fell
in love with
it, and sensing its potential consumer
appeal, brought
it to the Nuremberg Toy Fair in February
1979 in
the hope of finding a potential German toy
distributor.
He did not meet with a great deal of
success but he
did stumble across an individual who at
that point of
the Cube's history was destined to make a
crucial
difference.
Tom Kremer, a successful toy and game
inventor
himself, whose mother language was also
Hungarian,
ran at the time his own marketing and
licensing
company. Seven Towns Ltd., based in London,
was
widely respected throughout the
international toy
industry as a product developer working not
only with
its own ideas but also representing
professional
inventors from all over the world.
The two men made a pact, there and then, to
translate
the Hungarian success of the Cube onto the
world
stage. Dr Ladzi headed back to Hungary to
pave the
way with the prevailing Hungarian
bureaucracy whilst
Tom Kremer set off on a world tour of toy
manufacturers. He was convinced that to
realize the
Cube's full commercial potential it had to
have the
marketing muscle, the promotional power and
distribution network of a major
international company.
Unfortunately he found none of the leading
players in
the field shared his enthusiasm. Although
impressed
by the Cube, the general view within the
industry
estimated its prospects to be poor. Its
"faults" were
numerous: Too difficult and expensive to
manufacture,
impossible to demonstrate its fascination
on TV, too
abstract, too cerebral, too quiet, a
challenge for the
esoteric academic mind rather than a puzzle
meant
for the young and the general public.
Undeterred by this universal rejection, and
spurred on
by his firm belief in the exceptional
quality of the toy,
Tom Kremer, now armed with a convincing
marketing
plan, continued his search for a viable
partner. After
many disappointments, he succeeded in
persuading
Stewart Sims, Vice President of Marketing
of the
Ideal Toy Corporation, to come to Hungary,
to see
with his own eyes the Cube in play. It was
now
September 1979, by which time the Cube had
gained a sufficient degree of popularity to
be
seen occasionally in the street, on trams,
in cafes,
each time in the hands of someone turning
and
twisting it, completely absorbed. After
five days of
convoluted negotiations between a skeptical
American capitalist and an obstinate
communist
organization largely ignorant of the
operation of a free
market, with Laczi and Kremer desperately
holding
the two sides together, an order for one
million cubes
was signed amidst much handshaking and
great relief
all round.
In the meanwhile, quite independently of
these
developments, David Singmaster, an English
mathematician, became deeply interested in
the
theoretical problems and ramifications
raised by the
Cube in his own field. He wrote a newspaper
article
in June 1979, the first one to appear
outside
Hungary, which brought the Cube to the
attention of
academic circles world wide and led
indirectly to
another milestone in its history: an
article in Scientific
American, with a cover picture, by Douglas
Hotstadter
an acknowledged authority in the field of
Recreational
Mathematics.
Apart from a small seepage across the
Hungarian
borders, the Cube made its international
debut at the
Toy Fairs of London, Paris, Nuremberg and
New
York in January/February, 1980. With Erno
Rubik
demonstrating his own creation, the Cube
made an
immediate impact. The trade buyers were
impressed,
orders rolled in. There was just one
problem: there
were no Cubes! Western quality standards
and
packaging norms meant drastic changes in
the
Hungarian manufacturing process. This, as
with any
change under a communist in regime, was
slow in
coming. Communication between New York and
Budapest, given the linguistic and cultural
differences,
despite the frequent interventions of Tom
Kremer,
were not easy.
The flow of products from Hungary began in
May
1980. As soon as the Cube found its way
into the
hands of consumers it became evident that
the initial
order of one million pieces for the first
year would not
be anywhere near sufficient to meet the
growing
demand. From the very beginning it was a
characteristic of the Cube that no matter
how fast
production increased, demand grew faster.
Contrary
to what the leaders of the Toy Industry had
expected,
for the next two and a half years the
problem was not
one of selling Cubes but of supplying them.
Stop it !!! You're not pendant (rushing through the old "Webster") I"m an old soap opera ng reject so you can expect me to drop in with a certain amount of drama at times.
"TheNewsGuy(Mike)" wrote in message news:[email]...
i'm assuming it was the music that made it a movie reference and not an historical reference. or did Oliver Stone have Nixon leave in a Cadillac? :)
also was the Cable Man / Kramer chase scene a specific or generic chase? the music and choreography seemed quite deliberate, but i wouldn't know the movie.
The music closely resembles the Bernard Hermann scores used in many Alfred Hitchcock films. In particular, the screechy violins are reminiscent of the music played during the Mount Rushmore scene in "North by Northwest".