Brendan I. Koerner's Blog, page 103
October 16, 2009
A State That's Untouchable, Like Eliot Ness
Instead of hitting you with our weekly Bad Movie Friday entry, we've decided to round out our cough-syrup trilogy with a classic ad: Oddjob shilling for Vicks Formula 44. Good thing there's no narcotic in there to slow him down. And the phenylpropanolamine should make him a much more energetic opponent for Mr. Bond.
We're also ditching the movies this Friday because we're in a rush—not only on deadline, but also prepping for a weeklong trip out to the Bay Area. Next week we'll be...
Tippin' on 44
In response to yesterday's post on Houston's botching of syrup possession cases, one of our loyal correspondents offered a nostalgic comment:
When I was a kid, over the counter codeine was legal. On Sunday visits, I used to slip into my grandmother's medicine chest and for periodic sips out of her Vicks Formula 44 cough medicine bottle. I thought it was the taste I liked, but now I know it must have been more than that.
This got us wondering when Vicks excised the codeine from its celebrated...
October 15, 2009
Leaning on Assumptions
In doing a little research on the lethality of sipping syrup, we came across this concise account of Johnny Jolly's legal woes. It seems the Green Bay Packers defensive end got caught with some liquid codeine in his native Houston. But he's apparently in the clear for the moment, due to some rather strange circumstances:
Donna Hawkins, spokeswoman for the Harris County district attorney's office, said the Houston Police Department recently acquired a new piece of equipment that measures the...
Casting With Disaster
As we went digging into our pocket for some change this morning, we came up with a piece of currency sure to give the vending machine a case of indigestion: a 20 shilling coin from Kenya, a souvenir of our recent East African jaunt. Before tossing back the useless money in frustration, however, we noticed that its heads side featured the visage of Daniel Arap Moi, Kenya's reigning president when the coin was cast 11 years ago. And that got us thinking—how many nations mint coins featuring...
October 14, 2009
Eye Deep in Kenya
Deadline approaches on the piece that sent us out to East Africa. You know the drill—enjoy the Otis Redding as we commit our remaining mental bandwidth to the art of storytelling. More soon.
The Doings of the Grand Empress
Shameless plug for the Microkhan clan: Check out what our own personal Börte Ujin has been up to, via the current issue of Inked Magazine. Photo possibly NSFW, though only if you labor in the most Puritanical of environments.
Why Bookkeepers Don't Rule the World
In reading about the recent discovery of an undated film featuring Babe Ruth, we took notice of one of the clues that could yield the clip's day or origin:
Two college professors separately proposed using the shadows of the flag poles (seen on the field) to determine the position of the sun and, with some serious mathematics, the date of the game. Others noted what appears to be a dirigible in the background over the Bronx and suggested locating dirigible flight schedules.
We stumbled over...
October 13, 2009
The Herminator Bids Auf Wiedersehen
Our first-ever overseas assignment was covering the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. We thus have incredibly vivid memories of Hermann Maier, the celebrated Austrian skiier who just decided to call it a career. We were at the downhill slopes the day of the crash shown above, and remember instantly thinking "He must be dead" upon witnessing the carnage. (The rough stuff starts about the 25-second mark.) But not only did Maier survive the high-speed wreck—he went on to win a pair of...
A Ninja's Flighty Ideas
In response to our recent placeholder extolling the virtues of Stan Bush's work on Bloodsport, one of our faithful Virginia correspondents turned us on to this 1988 exposé, which argues that the film's biographical subject is a huckster. The piece is behind a subscription wall, so those without a ProQuest account will have to make do with our favorite excerpt regarding the alleged mendacity of Frank Dux:
A brochure for Dux's ninjitsu schools lists him as "one of the most decorated veterans...
The Waga Toso Loophole
We're in the midst of watching The Nazis: A Warning from History, which really should be required viewing for anyone who casually throws around Hitler analogies when discussing contemporary politicians. It's chilling stuff through-and-through, loaded with interviews with unrepentant party members and victims of persecution alike. The series essentially argues that the Third Reich was enabled by the pettiness of workaday Germans, who took advantage of the Nazis' obsession with...
