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T. Buckingham Thomas:  A Personal Website
As of May 1, I've moved!

This website is now located at t2buck.com.

Please bookmark the new URL.  Pages here at the old address, oocities.com/tbtho, will still exist until Yahoo! discontinues its Geocities service later this year.  However, it's only on the new t2buck.com site that I will be making updates.

 

APRIL 27, 2009    1927 COLOR AND MORE

I was only a small boy when my family went to the First Methodist Church one night to watch a silent movie.  The year was about 1954.  A portable screen had been set up next to the pulpit, and a plank had been placed across the backs of two pews to support a 16-millimeter projector.

The feature that night was the 1927 Cecil B. DeMille classic, The King of Kings.  Scenes from the Gospels were reverently dramatized and narrated with title cards, many quoting a Biblical chapter and verse.  For us in our small-town church, the movie was not only silent but in black and white.

However, I’ve recently learned that a small part of it was shot in color.  Mary Magadalene’s first scene used the two-strip Technicolor process, which appears primitive to us today.

I’ve added some color frames from this movie to my earlier page about alternative color techniques.  Click here.

And while I was at it, I’ve updated other articles by adding four TV images from my youth.

One from 1954 went into this article about single-camera interviews.

Two from Damn Yankees have been added to this entry about low-budget studio backgrounds.

And one is in this note about a TV "camera" that I once built.  Part of it apparently traveled to the moon!

 

APRIL 24, 2009    WHO’S “HE”?

Sometimes, when listening to the radio, I’m not paying attention.  Or maybe I’m tuning to a different station.  At any rate, I often find myself listening to the middle of a story.

And so she stabbed him in the chest!  Apparently it wasn’t a deep wound, and he’s expected to recover, but she certainly got his attention.  I wonder how this is going to affect her movie career.  She’s going to be in jail for some time.  Of course, this is not the first time he’s driven a woman to violence.  We all remember how his first wife threatened him with a gun a few years ago.  I think his brother was involved in that somehow, wasn’t he?

After a few minutes of this, my question is, “Who are you talking about?!”

In written material, it may be acceptable to keep using pronouns without restating their antecedents.  If the reader gets confused, he can go back a page or two to find out who “he” and “she” are.  But on radio, the audience has no rewind button, and you have to assume that some listeners are joining the conversation at various points throughout.  They can’t ask, “So what are we discussing here?”  The broadcaster should repeat the names occasionally.  Some classic examples:

Back in the 1960s on ABC Radio, it must have been network policy to write news stories with a certain redundancy.  I remember hearing many stories that went something like this.

In Philadelphia, two women and a young girl died in a fast-moving row house fire that broke out just after midnight.  The cause is under investigation.  Captain John Ayers told reporters that those on the second floor “didn't have a chance” in that fire last night in Philadelphia.

Anyone joining the story in the middle and wondering “What fire?  Was it around here?” would hear the key facts repeated at the end.

And when Hank Stram was the radio analyst on Monday Night Football, I’d often hear him reorient his listeners.

He’s always been a very productive running back.  His statistics dropped off a bit last season when he missed the last five games with the knee injury, but he’s back on track this year, and he sure looked good on that play.  Talking about Barry Sanders.

 

APRIL 18, 2009    GOTHAM

Having grown up in a small town, I’ve never grown to love New York City.  On my visits there, I’ve never worn this logo.

I have no problem with the individuals from NYC I’ve met.  Many of them are great people.  But there are so many of them!

Baseball TV director Lonnie Dale once opined that New Yorkers are sometimes surly to outsiders because New York is already too crowded.

Outsiders only make the problem worse.  Outsiders, go home!

 

And now Lane Snider reports there are T-shirts that support this hypothesis.

He writes, “Amidst all the ‘I Love New York’ shirts being sold and worn throughout Manhattan, I saw one local who clearly wasn't happy about the rejuvenated tourism.”

 

APRIL 13, 2009    GOOD FOR YOU, BAD FOR ME

When the media characterize news as “good” or “bad,” they’re not always looking at the big picture.

For example, take the weather.  A forecast of 89° and sunny is generally proclaimed as good news, but that’s too hot for my comfort.  A forecast of a rainy day is generally bemoaned as bad news, but not by the farmers whose crops need the rain.  Those same farmers rejoice if the price of wheat goes up, but their joy is not shared by those of us who buy bread.

For another example, take the population.  Although the Pittsburgh region lost 2,967 residents over the last year, the local newspaper found a “silver lining” in the fact that the loss was only half as large as usual.

"It is good news that the population decline has slowed down," said county spokesman Kevin Evanto.

Chris Briem, a regional economist at the University of Pittsburgh ... said he would not be surprised if the population figures released a year from now look even better for the region.

Southwestern Pennsylvania Commission ... Executive Director James Hassinger expressed confidence that the regional population will bottom out by 2015 and slowly tick upward afterward.

A larger population may be good news for businesses and construction workers and politicians.  But should the rest of us want to see more traffic jams, more pollution, more overcrowded schools, and all the other consequences of the fact that there are already too many of us?

 

APRIL 7, 2009    KITTEH IZ MAKIN NU FRENDZ

It’s nice to know that humans aren’t the only species to consider cats cute.

Koko, a gorilla that learned sign language, asked for a cat as a pet.

And in a compilation of feline antics (click the photo for the link), I found a brief clip of a dolphin using its chin to pet a cat.

 

APRIL 1, 2009    THE WAYBACK MACHINE

Seven years ago, in an age when this website was updated only monthly, there was one month when the home page resembled the front page of a newspaper.  It looked something like this.

  a personal website
 T. Buckingham Thomas

April 2002 Edition

 
Mr. Thomas Goes to Washington

(The One In Pennsylvania, That Is)


Local Cable Program Director Accepts Position at TV-3


THOMAS AT HIS NEW DESK

FEBRUARY 11, 1974 —

Tom Thomas has left his home in Ohio to become the program director at TV-3, part of Washington Channels.

"I"m happy to find that my new employer is still enthusiastic about locally-originated television," Thomas said.  "We'll be covering community events:  sports, politics, religious and civic ceremonies.

"And I hope before long to be moving into my first apartment in Washington."

Sometimes called "Little Washington" to distinguish it from the nation's capital, the small city of Washington, Pennsylvania, is located about 30 miles south of Pittsburgh.

 

BASEBALL
REALIGNS

APRIL 1, 2002 —

In an unexpected move, Major League Baseball announced a complete realignment yesterday just before the opening game of the 2002 season.

The stated purpose was to restore competitive balance to the national pastime.

The American League and National League have been eliminated.  In their place, the 15 clubs with the highest revenue have been assigned to the new "Jupiter League," and the other 15 to the "Saturn League."

Baseball's planetary realignment is designed to give the Saturn League teams some reasonable hope of earning a position in the post-season playoffs.

 
Tightwad Relents, Makes Site Ad-Free

MARCH 16, 2002 —

Obscure author T. Buckingham Thomas has agreed to upgrade his free site on the World Wide Web by paying actual money to Yahoo GeoCities.

"I needed to increase the megabytes of storage and to enable uploads using File Transfer Protocol," Thomas attempted to explain.  "And one side benefit is that those advertisements are gone.  You know, the ones that used to drop down from the upper right corner every time you opened a new article."

Thomas's monthly expenditure, which used to be zero, has reportedly increased to $4.95.  He expressed hope that his readers, who will continue to view this site at no charge, will appreciate the improvement.

TBT

 

 

 
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