Today's rain broke out quite heavily at about 3 pm, which I more or less expected, even though it cut out the time I'd planned to get a snack (I had no umbrella). I had a light lunch because the food kiosk I wanted to eat at had an extremely slow line, and I just gave up on that. When I was ready for dinner, there was the sound of a pretty good rain. But I looked out and while it was cloudy, I didn't see anything distinctly raining down. I've been fooled by steady rains before, so I looked at the sidewalks and road and saw ... some people with umbrellas, some not; most cars with windshield wipers going.
I walked on the (covered) pedestrian overpass, and found it was not raining. But there was just as clearly the sound of rain. Some people walked with umbrellas, some without, and all the cars had windshields wiping -- but, from four stories lower, I could see none of them had wet hoods. Clearly, the continuity checker for reality took the afternoon off.
Turner Classic Movies surprised me with four Man from UNCLE ``movies'' -- two-part episodes stitched together for overseas distribution under titles like The Karate Killers and The Spy With My Face. Even in the non-campy seasons they're just minimally more serious than Get Smart is, and I wonder when spy movies and TV shows started taking costumes and sets and special effects seriously and became several billion times less fun. You get stuff like Leslie Nielsen as a general from a generic foreign nation (remember those?) saying, ``This is an historic moment, ironically, for history as we know it is about to end.'' THRUSH local headquarters is tucked away in the ``Freezemeat Corporation'' of Completely Unconvincing Hong Kong and the femme fatale is snuck in on a cart between slabs of beef. It's the sort of production when an electromagnetic crane lifting a car could be an action sequence. Marvelous.
Trivia: The Merrie Melody ``Good Night Elmer'' was released 26 October 1940. Source: That's All, Folks! The Art of Warner Brothers Animation, Steve Schneider.
Currently Reading: Molecules at an Exhibition, John Emsley.