I'm an aspiring screenwriter, as well the manager of a novelist/screenwriter. Movies interest me. My own current favorites? Casablanca, Its a Wonderful Life, When Harry Met Sally, Creator, Sleepless in Seattle, Straw Dogs, Blondes Have Bigger Guns, Star Maker, Vertigo, Phenomenon, Powder, Gotham, Usual Suspects, Killer Instinct, Ransom, Till there was You, Patriot Games, the Matrix, American Beauty. Am I the only one to hate Fargo? I like Eye of the Beholder, a great Hitchcock like film, until the last five minutes or so from the point she get into the car leaving the restaurant. Weird how they screwed up the ending -- almost like they ran out of money or got tired of the project. That's a film that should be have a ending rewrite and get re-issued.
After growing up in the South Bay of Los Angeles, I was went to UCSB (University of California at Santa Barbara) as a writer. While a junior and majoring in English (Shakespeare), History (Ancient Greeks) and a minor in Sociology, I picked up a photography magazine to relax a bit while studying for finals. The strangest thing happened. For apparently no reason, I literally become obsessed with Photography. It was almost all I could think about. The next year I dropped out to start taking Photography classes at El Camino Jr. College in Torrance CA. After completing everything they offered, I embarked on a studio photography career, starting my own studio. I specialized in glamour, portfolios, weddings, studio and environmental portraits. Funny thing, I got into Photography because I loved it, but having a studio and putting in 70 plus hours per week burned me out on it. Shooting what other people wanted instead of what I wanted was the other part of it. After that I went into sales and marketing, eventually ending up in the post-secondary school business. We had over 5000 students in over 20 offices through 15 states. It was interesting, but incredibly stressing and intense.
Looking for something that I would enjoy more, I turned to photography again from the standpoint of my hobby: camera collecting. So I became a collectible camera dealer. It's been fun. But now I'm starting to miss being a photographer: this time around I will only shoot for me.
I just finished reading an amazing book called The Hiram Key. All it does is rewrite the last 4,000 years of history as we understand it. So what do the ancient Egyptians, Moses, Judaism, the Gnostics, Solomon's Temple, Jesus Christ, `the Knights Templar, Free-Masonry, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a strangely decorated chapel in Scotland all have in common? You will probably be surprised, I certainly was. Read the book and find out. Whether you will agree with this carefully documented revisionist view of history and religion is another matter -- but I guarantee it will make you think.
Equally interesting books are the Tomb of God, The Bloodline of the Holy Grail, Atlantis Blueprint. History is written by the winners. What we know, or think we know, often is just a politically slanted rewrite.
Not that it has anything to do with anything else here, but is there a worse name for a Women's website than Oxygen.com ?? Show me the woman who WANTS to identify with an invisible, tasteless, odorless gas which MUST be kept in a small confined space to maintain its identify, and just waits to be set off by a spark to explode and burn.
Would you believe the USAF dropped their largest hydrogen bomb on an American city? They did, by accident. In 1956 a B-36 the size of two 747's was landing outside Ft. Worth. The bombardier slipped when he was locking d down the largest H bomb in America's arsenal. It fell, right through the bomb bay doors 3000 feet to the ground. Luckily it did not explode, or the Dallas /Ft Worth metroplex would be radioactive memories.
Did you know the first atomic bomb blast almost occurred in Hanford Washington, the unexpected result of Japanese fire bomb kites during W.W.II? There was only one safety backup for cooling the primitive reactor being used to make A-bombs to drop on Japan. The kite bomb knocked out power to the main cooling pump. Had the backup failed, Washington State would still be radioactive.
Battleships. I've liked Battleships ever since I stepped aboard the USS Texas as a six year old boy. I have also been aboard the Missouri, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. I have a lot of unpublished battleship photos, including the day the world's last active battleship USS Missouri was decommissioned. The Missouri was the site of the Japanese surrender and the end of W.W.II. When the ship was towed north to Washington from Los Angeles a few weeks later, there was only one TV crew covering the Missouri's retirement, from Tokyo.
The Titanic. There had long been rumors that the lower class passengers had been locked below decks in order for the first class passengers to fill the life boats. Of course this was also long denied by the White Star line. Recent explorations of the Titanic by robots has finally shown the truth. The bars were indeed across the lower class exits. As incredible and unbelievable as it seems today, hundreds of people were murdered below decks, locked below with no chance of escape.
Revised: November 25, 2003 . Copyright © 1998-2003 Stephen Gandy. All rights reserved. This means you may NOT copy and re-use the text or the pictures in ANY other internet or printed publication of ANY kind. Information in this document is subject to change without notice. Other products and companies referred to herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective companies or mark holders.