HPD: Clint Spooks 'Em Location

Halloweener #7

(GPS: N37° 55.510 W119° 02.540)

This is a case of a movie location that when you are there you know you are in the right place, but a lot of the area has changed over the years. I wanted to show this one because although a lot of people now know where "Lago" is from the movie they may drive right by this one. It just happens to be one of the best scenes in the movie. The area has changed since the movie was made. Some mining has taken place over the area that is probably the cause of the changes. Much like the dynamite Clint uses in this scene, it does look like it has been hit with explosives. The changes seem more from man than nature. I did the following video on October 31st, 2008:

Both times I was here I went without movie stills and just used my memory of how I remembered the scene. From looking at these pictures I would have to movie down and forward to match them up. The passage that the guy on the horse goes through to get to the outlaws is there, but in my picture does not seem like it due to the overgrowth. You should be able to match up the background features.
The outlaws are inside of the pit as I like to call it, and Clint is supposed to be "hiding" and planting dynamite in the distance over that hump.
As I said above, I know this is the exact same object from the movie, yet it does not really look the same.
Clint mysteriously appears on the other side. I said a bunch of times in the video that I was not sure if it was the very top (near the saddle) or in the middle of the following picture. Keep in mind a lot of what you see in this scene with the editing and camera work does not mean Clint was really up there. What it looks like they did was just add a lot of shots together to make it look like he was up here and the other side we started on.
My picture shows you more of the middle to the right side of the above picture. The movie pictures make this place seem like it was a lot bigger to me compared to when I was there.

As I finish up these last few entries on High Plains Drifter I wanted to include some quotes from Clint Eastwood on the location. The following is taken from Clint Eastwood: Interviews by Clint Eastwood, Robert E. Kapsis, and Kathie Coblentz (Mississippi University Press, 1999):

Quote #1 (Pgs. 100-101):

The interviewer says, "There is something of the infernal in the iconography of High Plains Drifter, a tonality of fire and scorched earth."

Clint Responds:
"That's due in part to the place where we filmed it, Mono Lake in California. The town in the script was situated in the middle of the desert, like in most Westerns, but this convention bothered me because even in the West a city couldn't develop without water. I discovered Mono Lake by chance, while I was out driving around, and I was immediately taken with the strangeness of the site. The saline content is so high that no vessel can risk going out on the waters of the lake. I spent two hours wandering around in the area. Not a boat, nor a living soul, only the natural noises of the desert. From the nearest city I immediately called my art director and had him jump on the first plane. When he arrived, he blurted out, 'you'd think you were on the moon!' I told him, 'It's a wierd place, but that's exactly what I want this story to be!'"

Quote #2 (P. 69):

"High Plains Drifter, basically a morality play, also benefits considerably, if not definitively, by the location, the Mono Lake district of northeastern California. The story was originally situated in Monument Valley, the grandiose site of so many John Ford films, but Eastwood says, 'that wouldn't have provided the same mood I got from the story. I needed a place that would correspond with the mood and Mono Lake is what I finally found. It's a dead lake. It has some very interesting outcropppings and the colors almost change moment by moment, so it gave the film and elusive quality."

I completely agree with the above quotes. To create this type of spooky western he went to the right spot to do it. Some of the traditional locations would not have worked as well. I would not say the location is the most beautiful of the places I go to, but it is a unique one for what is a very unique and special western. In the next blog entry I will do something on Panum Crator which is right behind this location.

Clint Spooks 'Em (Youtube Version)

Trick And/Or Treat

I have one more "Halloweener" I want to do. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, family, work, etc. this last video and pictures will have to be delayed until sometime late next week in November.

So, the trick is that the next October entry will have the video and pictures when the time comes, but will actually be done in November.

The treat is that, for my finale, I have a new location that I do not think many know about. It is easy to find, but I have not seen anyone talk about it online, nor anywhere else I know of. Even better is I may actually get to video and take pictures of it OCTOBER 31st! I have been there before, but the weather conditions were not too good. So, hopefully the same won't happen this time.

Stay tuned...

High Plains Drifter Location at Mono Lake

Halloweener #6

(GPS: N37° 56.710 W119° 02.450)

This is an area I have covered before. Normally, I do not like to rehash the same areas in my blog, but this is one of those areas that I tend to get occasional e-mails about so I thought I would update it. I am keeping the original blog up and linking this new blog entry in it. Those pictures and blog reflect a period of about 10 years ago when I was not as "hardcore" about movie locations and knowledge of how to find them as I am now. There were some simple mistakes I made in that blog that I hope to correct in this one. Keep in mind I have visited and lived many summers near Mono Lake from as far back as I can remember. I always knew the movie was made there, but it would be like, "Oh, High Plains Drifter was made just over there." Then, "That's nice. Let's get out here because it is so hot at the South Tufa!"

In this blog I want to add some other tidbits about the area that you might not pick up in the movie or even if you went to the location. In this first video I mention Mt. Dana. It is seen in the movie and my video a few times when the looking west. Here is a zoom of it. At first glance, especially in the video and movie, the mountains look connected. This picture should help show it a little better from down below from the east. It is in the very back there. There is a another smaller mountain in front of it from this point of view. When the video was made I had climbed Mt. Dana from the eastern road entrance of Yosemite. From the popular route it is a 3,000 foot climb that takes a few hours to get to the 13,000 foot elevated summit. A future blog will cover the video, pictures, and my story of that hike.

In the movie, this the first shot we get of the town of "Lago" in the movie.
I hiked up the hill to get a close enough shot for our purposes. This is not exactly where the camera was in the movie. The way I know this is that you have to line up the mountain peaks in the background with some of the features of the island out there. Long story short, there were some issues with sun and my cheap equipment. To avoid glare I just stayed here rather than move more to the north west (probably a few hundred feet or so to the left of my picture from what I can tell). With something like this I am just trying to get the general "feel" of the location rather than be obsessed with the exact location. So, this should get the job done for our purposes.
The hill I walked up is like walking up an incline of beach sand. Of all the terrain I hate walking on, it would be scree infested mountain peaks. Two steps forward and then one step back, or one step forward and two steps back. It did not take too long, but after climbing Dana I wanted to get this short little incline hike out of the way as soon as possible without sweating too much from the now warming sun. Of course, I always get sand in my shoes from stuff like this. Now check this out:

There are a lot of chunks of obsidian out there. This one was a pretty good size chunk. There are a lot of crators nearby that have had volcanic activity in the past. I visited one that I will do a video and pictures for soon. So, you will be seeing a lot more obsidian in the near future. Clint comes down from the hill and takes the road you see from the above pictures down to the town. Again, close enough for our purposes here. The main thing I wanted to do this time was be sure I got most of the background right. The following is where the town begins. You can see the rocky formation where my backpack is at that you see Clint ride by. It is obviously decayed over the years. When I was here ten years ago something did not feel right about to me. Keep in mind I was doing this off of memory rather than take movie stills. I expected it to look just like you see in the movie. I said some stuff in the video about it being level in the movie, but I am not so sure about it looking at it now. Movies, pictures, and then actually seeing it there can give you three different views about it. All I can say is there is enough there to know it is what you see in the movie, but it has changed. As I have mentioned in the video and blog a bunch of times I always look for the rocks because they tend not too change very much and are usually the key to the locations.
I mention in the video there is, what I assume, a tufa rock formation that you can see extending from the land in the movie and then you see one of those rocks remaining these days. Here is a zoom that makes it look like a viking ship.
The following is one of the pieces of wood you can find there. As I mention in the video, something like this could be remains from the movie set. I have seen pieces of wood from sets that are still around after almost 70 years. So, that really isn't an issue. However, I would caution someone from looking at the piece of wood below and saying they are certain it is from the set of High Plains Drifter. The reason being is I have seen wood and charred wood not only here, but in other areas around Mono Lake, not to mention other nearby areas. There are a lot of reasons you might find wood like this here that may not have anything to do with the movie. Usually, most productions are required to pick up all set pieces at the end of the filming. Keep this in mind, not just for this movie, but any time you see someone declare something is from some movie set. I will list some further links below about Mono Lake if you want more information. One thing I mentioned in the second video is about the Daly gang of Aurora. I refer you to Roger McGrath's Gunfighters, Highwaymen, & Vigilantes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984) chapter 5 which gives you the history of how the outlaw gunfighers took over the town of Aurora. Aurora is on the other side of the lake behind the mountains in the above pictures. It was a major mining area during the early 1860's. There is not much there these days, and the reasons for that is another story for another time. But, this is one of those things that people that have seen the movie or even visited the location may not know the coincidental history of the area.

You should read the chapter, but long story short, the gunfighters took over the town. Like a lot of gunfighters of the old west, no one really cared if they killed each other or other undesirables, but once a well thought of citizen was killed then mobs formed. One of the members of the Daly gang, with the last name of Buckley, was caught not very far from this location. He was taken back with the gang, and there they received death by a slight elevation change in Aurora (they were hanged).

Now, this is not the exact same story as High Plains Drifter, but some of the same ideas about revenge, the take over of the town, and even a few tidbits of the supernatural are involved in the story. So, even though one is fiction and the other real history, whenever I see High Plains Drifter or read that chapter about the Daly gang I feel like they are very much related. Please take a look at that chapter and tell me what you think after you read it. The book is a good read about the ghost towns of Bodie and Aurora, as well as, the Owens Valley War of the 1860's. McGrath deserves a plug for his old book so here it is. :)

The Return to Lago (Youtube Version)

A few links:

Monolake.org

Mono Lake Wikipedia Article

Some old blogs that give different views of Mono Lake:

Mono Crack

Awesome View of Mono Lake

Click here for all the blogs I did on this location.

The Mummy: The Flashback Tomb Location (The Red Rock Canyon Series)

Halloweener #5

The flashback sequence in the movie is really in the same area as the dig excavation of my last entry. For this reason I did not feel the need to do a video of it. If you want to see the area then refer to that video; when I go up that incline I would have to come back down it to show where the funeral procession was heading. There is a trick to the following picture. Take a look and I will try to explain:

Most of the locations in Red Rock Canyon are easy to find. This one confused me a bit, and since there is no need for me to reinvent the wheel, I refered to Richard Schmidt's A Field Guide To Motion Picture Locations at Red Rock Canyon. The book was helpful regarding the issue, but I still did not quite get what was going on until I got home. What you see in the movie picture is an optical illusion. It looks like one solid ledge on a mountain side, but it ends up being two different places separated by a few hundred feet.
The picture above, Hagen Cliffs, is the background in the upper right side of both pictures. This is the picture that really threw a monkey wrench into what I normally do. I could line up a bunch of rocks, but would get lost in the middle. Where is that ledge they were walking at? After examing my pictures over and over and then reading Schmidt's book I realized the error I was making. Keep in mind I am going to have to go back to this area to get the correct picture, but the following picture should help in figuring out the key to this puzzle. The above picture is our incline. This is where they funeral procession was coming down from. If you look closely in the upper right background you should see the top parts of Hagen Cliffs. My picture has the same type of illusion in that everything looks connected when it isn't. So, what I have to do when I go back is, turn around, go up higher, and then shoot the picture in this direction again; there is another area I can climb up for this. I will take a picture of this incline, but also get Hagen Cliffs in the background. It should look like the movie picture. Interesting enough, I had another problem like this with another movie location I was trying to find where two areas looked like they were connected, but were not. I will show that location at another time. Now what about the actual tomb location?
In the excavation they show them discover the tomb as a hole in the ground. The flashback sequence is still roughly in the same area. I pointed it out in the video, but here is the picture that best shows where they did it:

I went ahead and circled the rock you can compare with the movie picture. It is the same as the big bloated rock formation on the right side of the picture. For the movie, they added a wall there that represented the tomb entrance.

The Mummy at Red Rock Canyon (Youtube Version)

The Mummy: The Excavation Site (The Red Rock Canyon Series)

Halloweener #4

(GPS: N35° 21.665 W°117 59.285)

As I mentioned in my last entry, all the scenes they did at Red Rock Canyon took place within a few hundred feet at most from each other. This area is really just around the corner and above from the last entry. This is the scene that Boris Karloff reveals the location for where the tomb was.

Boris Karloff sure sounds like Darth Vader, or better yet, Darth Vader sure sounds like Boris Karloff. The more old movies I watch the more I see where George Lucas got his ideas. I can not tell you how many times I have watched old movies where the mysterious masked person ends up being a long lost relative. Okay, back to this. In the above movie picture Boris is standing over the ledge showing where the dig should take place. If you watched the video I had to make a short climb to get to this point. Compared to everything else I have done it was nothing, but I still did not want to make any mistakes. In my picture they were standing in the middle right side. I went over there and looked down.That area below is where the incline is the men were team digging with the baskets. The dropoff here is not really that dramatic. It is maybe 50 feet. What is interesting to me is a lot of movies filmed at Red Rock Canyon seem to make areas like this bigger than they really are. Then when I was there this area out along with some others seemed a lot smaller than they way the seemed in the movie.

The Mummy at Red Rock Canyon (Youtube Version)

The Mummy: Enter Boris Karloff (The Red Rock Canyon Series)

Halloweener #3

(GPS: N35° 21.675 W117° 59.245)

Time to start a news series. Many old movies have been shot using areas in Rock Rock near Mojave, Ca. If the Alabama Hills is a gold mine for movie locations, then Red Rock is just as good of a gold mine. I thought I would start one to keep the Halloween theme going so this is the first I intend to do with the 1932 Boris Karloff movie: The Mummy. The first thing to note is the big rock formation in the background is known as The Acropolis. Since the movie was supposed to have taken place in Egypt this location was an obvious area to go to for the production to keep things cheap.Boris Karloff's character comes down this little incline. In the movie it seems quite a distance a way.
It really isn't though. The distance is very close, and I was a bit surprised about that.Some of the night scenes in the movie took place on the other side of this. The interesting thing is they filmed a bunch of scenes in the movie, but they are only within a hundred feet or so of each other.
I will try to get a few more of these Mummy locations in another blog or two.

The Mummy at Red Rock Canyon (Youtube Version)

Nature Rules at the Lone Pine Film Festival 2008

This years film festival at Lone Pine was certainly different from the others I have been to. It is possible this maybe the last one I go to. I did get a lot out of this one and I have some information on a few new movies that were shot there. Let me give you a short version and then the long version.

Short version highlights:

10/10
Ansel Adams Tour
North Tour of the Alabama Hills
Reflection on the Movie Business
"Slept" at Hostel

10/11
Seminar on Sidekicks (We picked the top 10)
Watched a bunch of movies at the L.P. High Auditorium
Whitney Portal for a hamburger
Wagon Train Panel
Drove and walked around in the Alabama Hills by myself
Watched the Silent Hallmark Movies
Watched Army Girl
Camped out at the Tall T

10/12
Photography of Wildlife in Owens Valley
Lights! Camera! Action! Panel
Parade
Geology Tour

Long version:

Last year I was recovering from sickness when I went to the festival. I ended up coughing a lot and sleeping out in the cold. This time I decided to do things differently. I made reservations at the new Hostel in Lone Pine which is owned by Doug Thompson of Whitney Portal. I made the reservation the day after I climbed Whitney back at the end of July. For the past month I had been very careful in trying to avoid getting sick. I had a minor throat irritations at the beginning of September, but I was good to go for this festival. I felt good. The night before I did not get much sleep, but I knew I would get my sleep back that Friday night at the Hostel. At least that is what I believed at the time.

I reached Lone Pine in a few hours, got my tickets and button that I had ordered, and looked around the museum. The museum has added props and clothes used in the movie Iron Man. They are on loan so I do not know how long they will have them. I did get video of them and will post it at a later time. I got some videos and pictures of other things that were not there the last few times I had visited. There was something worn by John Wayne that I will swear I have not seen there for two years. I never got pictures of it. Each time I was there since then I thought I blew my big chance of getting pictures and video of it. I almost freaked out when I saw it on Sunday morning. I intend to do a tribute to John Wayne over a bunch of stuff I have, but that is something I will do some months from now.

One thing I purposely focused on this year at the festival was to take tours that had nothing to do with movie locations. I have gotten to the point that I pretty much have the area memorized. Now, it is not like I can tell you where scene of every movie was made out there, but if you have read this blog you have seen a lot of the more popular locations. A lot of the movie location tours really would not help me at this point. Although there are exceptions which I will get to in after the next paragraph.

At 9am I went on the Ansel Adams tour which was guided by photographer Phil Kember. Phil was really good in explaining some of the technical ideas, some of the approach Adams and he have about photography, and taking us to three locations Adams used in Lone Pine. I am not a photographer, although my father has spent a lot of time in the more technical aspects of photography, but I did appreciate the overall approach Adams took in making pictures. I will come back to this in a blog at a later date because it is something I have thought a lot about. Since I am just a snapshot amateur I pretty much just "cock and fire" as many as I can in the hope that I can get a few pictures that get the job done. Adams, and real photographers, might just drive to a location and, if they like the conditions, take one negative picture.

At 12:45pm I took the North Tour of the Alabama Hills. Originally, there was another tour of the "free" tour ticket you get with the purchase of 2008 L.P. badge that I wanted. It ended up clashing with a bunch of other stuff. I was not too happy about taking what I considered a beginner tour, but it was not really that big a deal anyways. About midway in the tour while we going back to our bus I encountered a few new plaques, they leave these out near the locations during the festival, so I was happy to get a few new locations discovered. I will show these some other time.

The funny thing to me is when we were visiting Gene Autry Rock our tour guide told us that a real entrepreneur business opportunity could be taken advantage of. Recently, the museum put out a very nice looking booklet of the major popular sites of the Alabama Hills and how to drive to them. Our tour guide noted that no one has done the GPS coordinates yet and that is where the business opportunity would be. I had to laugh on that because either I am idiot when it comes to business things or I love giving out things for free. Just a note on my GPS coordinates, I have stated this before, my coordinates should get you very close to where the locations are. Keep in mind you have to know what you are looking for and that the coordinates are not exact. They should get you very close. I have a few reasons I do it this way, but you should be no more that 10-50 feet away at the very worst if you use them. There have been a few I have had to correct because they were way off.

At 4pm I went to the panel Reflections on the Movie Business which was moderated by Boyd Magers. There were a bunch of actors there, but the one asked the most questions was Richard Anderson. He actually waved to me during the parade, but I just missed it.

I then went to spend the night at the Hostel. Oh boy, what did I get myself into!? Originally, back at the end of July, I was told I would bunk with three other people in a room. That is what I had believed for the longest time. I called the Hostel the day before to make sure my reservation was still there. I was told that my reservation was originally erased on the computer, but I was back on. I get there and the person at the desk acted like I was not on the list. "Are you sure you had a reservation?" "Yes, I was told I am in room #11." Problems solved, got my keys, went to my room, and took a shower. When I got in there I noticed EIGHT beds! Oh boy, not what I was expecting. I took off for pizza at my favorite Pizza Factory.

By this time the winds were really bad in Lone Pine. It was a like a dust storm. You could not see the eastern Inyo Mountains and barely see the Sierra side. I was glad I was not outdoors tonight, but that would change. I get back, and one of the guys I would bunk with was inside already trying to get some sleep. I talked to him briefly and got in my bed. It was early, but I had only had about 3 hours of sleep and wanted to be sure I had one of the beds below on the bunk beds. Later on couple of guys intending to backpack Whitney showed up. We talked briefly about the weather conditions and they took off to eat. Two other Whitney hikers showed up and left to eat. Then, the problems were about to start, two German bikers showed up. At this point we should have had all the beds taken, but a big misunderstanding took place. They ended up bringing in two other German bikers who I guess thought they were going to sleep on the floor. I started to see there might be some trouble here. They took off to go eat. Later on the two backpackers came back and I told them something was not right with the German bikers. At this point we had TEN people in a room with EIGHT BEDS! This was not what I had in mind when I made the reservation back in July.

Long story short, the German bikers were back and everything was dark at 10:00pm. Then one of the desk girls came in and told them guest hours were over and two of them had to go! She was about to call the cops and the German bikers did not know what to do. It was freakin' cold and windy that night, there was no other place in town with vacancy, and they had no place to go. Fortunately, one of the backpackers told them he had some pads and it was okay with him if they stayed. I guess they paid some more money. I did not not care, but was glad there was a peaceful resolution. About ten minutes after the lights went out the smoke alarm went off. What now? It was brief though and was apparently a false alarm. The other hikers came back at about 1:30am. I ended up getting a few hours of sleep, but made sure I was out of there somewhere before 7am.

As much as I care about the Whitney Portal people, do not mind trying new things, this was NOT what I had in mind. I will not ever use the Hostel again if this is the type of situation I get stuck in. Somewhere between the time I put my reservation in and the time I verified I would be there I got the shaft. The place is still new and I am sure they are still figuring out how they do things, I know I lot of people haved enjoyed their stay there, but this is probably not for me. With that said, please do not let this "bad" review discourage you from spending the night there. I suspect it would have been a different story had I been there on a day or weekend other than during the festival.

I was walking around town on Saturday morning. The wind was blasting my face and it actually HURT! At 8:30, Dave Matuszak led the discussion group on the Top 10 B Western Sidekicks. Dave is really knowledgeable about the history and myth of the western. The top three sidekicks voted by us as the best were Gabby Hayes, Smiley Burnette, and Andy Clyde. I thought Jay Silverheels (Tonto) would be much higher on the list, but his character was a bit atypical in that he was intended to be a funny sidekick. I think he was #7. Others like Slim Pickens, Fuzzy Knight, and Pat Buttram were listed in there somewhere.

I ended up watching some movies in the L.P. High Auditorium. One thing that plagued the festival this year was the cold windy weather. All panels were held inside in the Auditorium because the original area the chairs were all over the place due to the wind. This threw off the movie schedule. In some cases, it canceled a Joel McCrea movie I really wanted to watch.

I decided to visit the Whitney Portal where I would get a hamburger and see what was going on at the Whitney Trailhead. The area was snowing a bit, the road was a bit icey near the store, and the pond was filled with ice.

I went back down to the Wagon Train Panel which was fun. Although all the actors were interesting, Denny Miller was the one who had spent most of the time on that series. I decided to go back to the Alabama Hills by myself and just walk around some of the areas. I always do this, but it is still fun seeing if I can find any movie plaque out that I have never seen before. They keep those up all weekend.

On Saturday night at the Hallmark Films they showed Rider of the Pass (Fred Humes) and The Back Trail (Jack Hoxie). I had never seen these before. It was a real treat. There was a lot of south side Alabama Hills shown in these movies.

Now I must admit, due to lack of sleep and doing as much I had done on this day I was really starting to wear myself down. I forced myself to watch a movie called Army Girl, but during that one I was really asking myself why I do this to myself. LOL! There was not much action, but I really wanted to see it. As soon as it ended I went to THE TALL T location to sleep!

I went to bed fast at around 11pm. I woke up a few hours right before the sun came up. I was a bit cold, but I really enjoyed being out there compared to the Hostel the night before. I ended up walking around just to see the light hit Mt. Whitney before I took off to Ruiz Hill to check out the movie plaques there. This is an area I intend to show on this blog, but at this time I have not. It was also my time to pick up random litter I had found...something I do when I can.
At around 8:40am I watched Page Williams give a presentation on Photographing Owens Valley Wildlife. This was quite nice. She mentioned something about Wild Horses that caught my interest. I will come back to that in a later blog.

I went to the final panel: Lights! Camera! Action! It was fun. Lot of different actors telling stories. They were all good, but I liked hearing Geoffrey Lewis who had worked with Eastwood a lot. Also, Richard Devon, who played a lot of bad guys, was fun telling his stories. After that I went to the town parade where a lot of the stars and others in the town marched through the streets. I had not been to the parade before, but since I had to stick around it was good for me to see it.

I ended up at 2:30pm on the Geology Tour with Dana Jeffries. He was really good and it is probably the most information intensive tour of all the tours. I actually got a lot more out of it than I originally thought. At this point, and I think a lot of the others felt this way too, I was REALLY WORN DOWN. I did my best to remember everything he said. Geology is a difficult subject and cramming everything in 3 hours is very difficult.

When the tour ended it was kind of a downer, but at the same time I really did a lot during this festival and was exhausted. I was glad I got through the weather. The cold winds were an issue that I suspect that upset the vendors who were stuck outside this year compared to other years. I had heard there were some "horror" stories on Friday evening. This is something I suspect that the festival board will have to take into consideration for next year.

I did get a lot of good information and had fun, but this was a lot of work for me this year. At times, due to being worn down, was kind of bored at times. It is possible this maybe the last one I go to. It will depend on how things go this year and what is available next year. My reasons for going to the festival are not for nostalgia since most of these movies were done before my time. I love the area and its use in movies so that is what keeps me going.

Okay, I have written a lot of stuff here, but I wanted to give an honest reflection on how things went. Let me take this time to mention two new movies filmed outside Lone Pine and the Alabama Hills recently:
Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen
G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

So, it looks like I will be doing more location hunts for regarding these new movies.

The Tunnels to Nowhere

Halloweener #2

(GPS: N 34° 14.050 W 117° 46.250)

Two years ago I did a write up of my hike to the Bridge to Nowhere (Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3). This hike is similar in that the fate of the the destination brings you to "nowhere." It was around that time two years ago that the teenager series, Lonelygirl15, had a few incidents in this area. People were looking at maps, saw "Tunnels to Nowhere" marked, and it creeped them out. I never saw it, but some fan made some disturbing "horror" like videos nearby that had a bunch of people talking about these tunnels. Whether they were these tunnels or some of the water "caves" nearby I do not know. I had read about the area, but had never been here so I decided to check it out.

The gps coordinates above get you to the trailhead. Like the Bridge to Nowhere, which is nearby, but at a lower elevation, these tunnels are in the Angeles National Forest. You go up the San Gabriel Canyon above the East Fork River. The trailhead is on Shoemaker Canyon Road.

This is not a dramatic uphill hike. You do get in a few hundred feet of elevation on a graded dirt road. When all is said and done, you can get in and out on this hike in just a few hours; 2-3 for most people. The first tunnel is about 2 miles from the trailhead. It is what you see above. Notice the year listed below on the top of the tunnel:
You would think that people would have learned from the failure of the Bridge to Nowhere that creating a road out here would not work either. The idea was a road was to be created that went through to the desert. In the case of atomic attack on Los Angeles this road would be used as an emergency evacuation for the people of the nearby area to take the stress off of the other roads assuming they were still around.
The tunnel was dark on this morning because we were they early. The flash from my camera lit it up, but further on ahead it got dark. You could see the end of the tunnel though. On the way back it was not so bad and I did not need to use my flashlight. We came out on the other side and continued.
The trailhead and slight elevation change is much higher than the Eastfork River. So, the mountains were higher than us and surrounding us, but we had great views below us. The Bridge to Nowhere hike was done below in the canyon of this picture. If you look to the lower right of the picture, then you would see where I was at some point two years ago. The second tunnel is not too far from the first one. It was marked "1964."

It too was a tunnel of a few hundred feet. Sometimes going through something dark like this you just wonder what type of life you may encounter in something like this. Some wild animal? Homeless? Mentally disturbed people? The living dead? We encountered nothing, but thoughts like that are in the mind since we were not too far from civilization.

We came out on the other side to this. The dirt-road is somewhat smaller. One could continue another two miles on it, but I had no desire too since the goal was just to reach and explore these tunnels.

What happened it that these tunnels were built between 1961-1964. However, the overall construction of the road was from about 1954-1969. They used convict labor to do it, but as time went on lack of money and environmentalists eventually stopped its building. Only hikers and bikers, not vehicles come back here. These tunnels are now relics of the Cold War era.

Bodie Ghost Town Gunfight: Nixon vs. McDonald

Halloweener #1

In Oct. 2006 I spent some time going over some unusual, mysterious, and spooky folklore to celebrate the month of Halloween. I skipped last year, but I wanted to do some blogs for this year. I hope, if everything works out, to get a few more done this month.

In this first one there is nothing really spooky or scary about it at all, but it is the story about a gravesite so I thought this would be a good one to start off on. First off, a special treat. No trick on this one though since it was way before my time. Here is a picture taken around 1956 of Bodie Ghost Town's cemetery from the family archives:
Now to our story. The following is taken from Roger McGrath's Gunfighters, Highwaymen, & Vigilantes (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pgs. 218-219:

"The Early morning hours of Thursday, 13 June 1878, found Patrick Gallagher's Shamrock saloon crowded with men. Some stood at the bar drinking Irish whiskey, others were at the chop counter eating fried steaks, while several huddled around the gambling tables playing faro. Alex Nixon, the popular and powerfully built thirty-one-year-old, Irish-born president of the Bodie Miner's Union, treated the men at the bar to a round of drinks. When they had finished, Tom McDonald offered to buy the next round. But he found himself out of pocket change and asked the bartender, T.C. O'Brien, to lend him a dollar. Nixon objected and handed McDonald the dollar himself. The action offended McDonald. Heated words were exchanged, and then, when McDonald said he was the better man, Nixon unleashed a vicious blow that caught McDonald under the right eye and sent him tumbling to the floor.

Terrence Brodigan, a deputy constable and son of one of the discoverers of the Bodie's gold, grabbed Nixon from behind and tried to restrain him. The union president wheeled about and said, 'Do you want any of it? Don't throw your hand behind you, for I am heeled. But I don't want any trouble with you for you are a constable.' By now McDonald had gotten to his feet and was leaning against the bar. He said to Nixon, 'It's pretty hard for a man to be knocked down, get a black eye and cut face for nothing.' 'You're a son of a b---h for letting me do it, even if I do weigh twenty pounds more than you,' replied Nixon.

The dark-complexioned, thirty-five-year-old McDonald was over six feet tall and no small man himself. Nevertheless, he stepped back, drew a revolver, and asked Nixon, 'Will you give me even chances?' 'Yes, by God,' answered Nixon.

O'Brien, now out from behind the bar, seized McDonald by the arm, and officer Brodigan caught hold of Nixon. But Nixon struggled free and drew a revolver from his hip pocket. At the same time McDonald pulled his arm out of O'Brien's grasp. Both men opened fire. Nixon's first shot missed McDonald by inches, but McDonald's hit Nixon in the side. 'My God, boys, I'm shot. Run for a doctor,' exclaimed the big miner as he staggered back and fell to the floor. As he lay there with blood running out of a hole in his side, he fired two more shots at McDonald. They missed. One of the bullets was found the next day embedded in a head of cabbage in the restaurant next door. McDonald returned the fire. The rounds tore holes in the wooden planks of the Shamrock's floor but left Nixon untouched. It hardly mattered. Less than two hours later Nixon died from the effects of McDonald's first shot.

On Friday, hundreds of Bodieites, including John Nixon, the brother of the deceased, viewed Nixon's body as it lay in a coffin in the Miners' Union Hall. Late in the afternoon, a funeral procession, said to be the 'largest turnout ever seen in Bodie,' made its way from the union hall to the cemetery. With F.K. Bechtel, a prominent mine owner and judge, conducting the gravesite service, Alex Nixon was laid to rest, some six thousand miles from his native Country Tyrone. Tom McDonald, meanwhile, was arrested, charged with murder, and lodged in jail. On Thursday afternoon, he appeared before D.V. Goodson, justice of the peace. But the justice decided it was 'impracticable to examine him at this time' and had him transferred to the county jail at Bridgeport for 'safe keeping.' Finally, on 24 June, McDonald appeared in justice court again. This time he was remanded to the custody of the sheriff to await action of the grand jury. His bail was set at $2,500. He remained in jail at Bridgeport another four days before a group of friends raised the money and bailed him out. When the grand jury met two months later, the jurors declined to indict McDonald, and the charge against him was dropped."
You may want to double click the above picture to see the inscription as a bigger picture.
I have something special planned for the ghost town of Bodie in the next few months. There are going to be a bunch of blogs I do on it near the end of the year so stay tuned for that.

A few links:

Bodie.com

Bodie in the California State Park Site

Why I Like Japanese Samurai Movies

Last time I briefly went over a little bit of my involvement in martial arts which was intended to lead into this blog entry. Again, ever since I can remember (seems like I always say that), I have watched martial arts movies. I remember watching these guys when I was younger: GORANGER. I owned the Green Ranger metal figure/doll. Then Bruce Lee and badly dubbed kung fu movies. Then the ninja craze of the 1980's. While I have watched a lot of Hong Kong movies I do not enjoy those as much as the Japanese samurai movies.

It turns out that many of the old samurai movies tended to be influenced by the western. The gunfighter would be replaced by a master swordsmen in a poor town. While that is one of the reasons one can see why I might like them it is not the primary reason. Early on in my martial arts training I started losing interest in kung fu movies because they lacked the realism my training was emphasizing. Some fights in a kung fu movie may go ten minutes a real world street fight usually lasts only a few seconds. The choreography is more more "dance like" in these movies.

On the other hand, the Japanese swordfighting movie (chambara) tend to have a more realistic approach where getting the proper distances and angles of attack are usually more important. The thing is to spot some of this you do have to have some training to see some of the fine tuning that is done. There are a few things to keep in mind about this though. One, in these movies, no one is truely trying to kill each other. In a sense everything you see is fantasy. Two, the "swords" used are not real heavy swords. Three, almost all the actors have been told what to do by some professional martial artist who choreographs the fight scenes for them. In fact, sometimes the "bad guy" in the story is a much better martial artist in the real world than the star of the movie, but the "bad guy" must die for the sake of the story.

Sometimes I have seen people say some movie has really great sword fighting scenes. I then watch the movie and can tell the person probably has never trained, and probably never even touched a sword before. Usually what happens is the criteria used by the average fan is much different than I would use for judging a fight scene. There are a lot of variables here, but let me mention one or two. The average fan, without training, might be really impressed with some flashy tricky technique. I was told once that a certain actor was the most exciting swordfighter. The problem there is that what is "exciting" to him is not as impressive to me; if I were to counter with some one who uses more practical efficicent techniques the person would consider them "boring." Again, a lot of this has to do with training and what you are watching for. Another example is one who is impressed with bigger movements as opposed to more tight and compact movements. This may not seem like much, but it is the difference between watching a lop sided basketball game and nailbitting close game. The thing to keep in mind though is not every single fight scene is done at the highest level filled with substance. Still, I have found these movies to be a lot closer, in my mind, to what I had trained.

The Jidegeki (Japanese period film) is filmed with Japnese history and culture. I enjoy this aspect as well. Part of the thing with me is while growing up I lived in a area dominated by Chinese and Japanese kids. I was the "minority" white kid I guess you could say for the first 10 years of my life. I was exposed to a lot of different ideas, but a lot of my friends would always have me involved in what their families were doing. Martial arts and movies were all apart of this. I am not going to spend much time going over the various background issues regarding Japanese history and the samurai at this point, but let me just point to this link for good background reading:

Midnight Eye Samurai Cinema 101

Eventually I did get some exposure to Akira Kurosawa and something known as Shogun Assassin. Little by little I would see some Japanese movies, but during the time I was growing up they were not easy to find. Now with that said, in the Los Angeles area some episodic tv shows were on the air on the local cable channels. It was not until the last 1980's to early 1990's that some vhs movies started to hit the market that I started to see more. Then about the mid-1990's a lot more was released with english subtitles. It is amazing though that so much that was next to impossible to find about 10 years ago is easy to find today. A lot of people new to the genre (the last 8 years or so) do not really appreciate what is out there now as compared to what we had to wait around for during the 80's and 90's.

My favorite companies that put out some of the classics with english subtitles are Animeigo and Criterion. Those are companies that buy the rights and subtitle the movies. As I just mentioned, the situation is a lot better today than it was 10-20 years ago when a lot of these movies were so rare. During those years up to today, Merlin of Samuraidvd.com has doing fan subtitles that are sold on his site. Merlin is very knowledgeable, great to deal with, and is probably the most honest person that I have dealt with in the past in trying to purchase movies that have not had official releases with english subtitles. His prices are usually a lot higher due to the amount of money and time it takes to put up english subtitles from scratch. Almost anything you find on his site is worth watching. I will say this though, I do not care for some of the external sites on his page that he links too. More on this in my next paragraph. If you have a fast connection, can use bittorrent, and can keep a ratio (follow the rules!) then I recommend the Asian Dvd Club. A lot of the old samurai movies are uploaded there that do not have official releases; a lot of these tend to be classics that have played on tv with english subtitles. You can download whole dvd's of movies for the cost of bandwidth. I use it like I would Netflix. Netflix is good to for some of the official english subtitle releases as well. I would say there is probably about a few hundred movies you can get from these sources. The funny thing is if someone says they have a collection of 100, 200, 300, 400, 500 of these movies I would tell them they just got started. There are tons out there, but not all of the are english subtitled.

Now let me end this entry by saying this was blog entry I have wanted to do for a long time, but dreaded writing this for a few reasons that I will go into now. I used to correspond with a bunch online and trade movies via snailmail for a long period of over 10 years. Long story short, the personalities involved got really strange as time went gone on. What used to be a friendly thing turned into a greedy battle over movies. Since some of these movies have been really hard to find, can be quite rare, there is a market for selling them as bootlegs. Over the years I have never seen so much dishonestly, psychological disorders, and criminal behavior just to make a quick buck. It got to the point that I decided to back off on this hobby. Believe me, I could tell you some of the most wild stories regarding this.

So, from time to time, I will write about some of my favorite samurai movies, but I am not as inspired to talk about them online as I once was. I do have some insights and original research I have done over the years that I want to get "out there." However, this blog will not be loaded with Jidegeki blog entries. I will keep them for special moments.

The Midnight Eye article is a good introduction. Let me mention a few others. Galloway's book is a good popular level book on the subject. Silver's book, which did have a recent update, is more of a scholarly approach to it. The emphasis on cinematography and camera angles tends to put most people off. I like that sort of thing, but Galloway should be first. There are a few old articles I like too, but maybe I will list those some other time.

This Wikipedia article is okay for a start:

Samurai Cinema

Galloway, Patrick. Stray Dogs & Lone Wolves: The Samurai Film Handbook. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2005.

Silver, Alain. The Samurai Film. New York: Overlook Press, 1977.

Martial Arts and Me

This is the start of a few blogs I am going to do in order to introduce my interest in Japanese movies. I have been slow about bringing this about, and I will explain the reasons for this as I go along. It is NOT something that I will constantly have blogs about, but once in a while I will bring it up.

Ever since I can remember I have had some exposure to fighting arts. Be it TV and movies, relatives, boxing, etc. As I kid it would be and on and off things since school and sports were priorities. There did come a time though that I spent about a decade training at least 2-6 days a week. It was only a few years ago that I stopped training.

In all honesty, I was not the type of guy that would get into fights when I was growing up. If anything, If I were to get picked on I would just laugh it off and walk or run away. Usually, fighting would just seem to cause more trouble. I still believe that today, but I might stand my ground a bit more if pushed into an ugly situation. These days it is much easier for participants to end up in a court of law with lawsuits or criminal sentences over a simple altercation. Unless your life is truly threatened then it is not worth it.

My main interest in martial arts was the self-defense part of it. I was not into the sport fighting aspect of it. I watch a lot of mixed martial arts (MMA) and boxing, but those have rules. A big part of self-defense is learning how to defend against the sucker punch. The may seem like an easy thing to avoid, but when a person is having "words" with you in a confrontation there are certain things that need to be done to have the advantage. This is not something that professional fighting arts really train for. When I see people talking about "street fighting" sometimes I think they have this idea of two people putting up their arms and closing the distance like a boxer would. That is not what I am talking about when I refer to "street fighting" because that can be avoided by walking or running away.

I am not going to go into all the details of what I know about fighting and all the training I did. I have seen too much gloating on the internet about which martial art or artist is better than another and that is not the purpose of this. Nor will I go into any "ugly" fighting situations I have been in. Most soldiers who have been in war will not talk about their accomplishments gleefully. I feel the same way about this. Especially, apart from the grace of God, one could be in the wrong place at the wrong time or situations where some "luck" was involved. I consider myself "retired" from training, but it is always possible I could start up again in the future. I just do not see the need for it right now. I spent a lots and lots of years on techniques regarding punching, kicking, throws, seizing and locking techniques that I am content with what I know and there are other things I want to spend my time on. Honestly, I can defend myself, but I am probably a be a bit rusty on the fine tuning of some of the techniques I used to do.

I think there is a myth in the mind of the average person that someone who has trained in a martial art or has a black belt is invincible against those who have no training or little training. The same punch that knocks out the average Joe can do the same damage against black belt Joe. There are certain scientific ideas that apply to everyone regarding this. The difference between average Joe and Black Belt Joe is the awareness of these ideas.

As I said, I am not going to mention the necessary details of fighting since I believe you really can not get that online or in print. It has to be done in the studio or dojo environment. I will say this, learning proper distances between you and the other person is key. I would say a good percentage of ugly confrontations can be avoided by just learning how to walk away. I have had a bunch of situations where a confrontation had happened and I just started walking away. The funny thing is people seem to get really brave when you are 50-100 feet away. I have been called all sorts of names at that distance and, sometimes, how they want me to come back. Funny, they were not acting that way when I was 5 feet away from them face to face.
This takes proper experience, but if a person has to take a step to reach you with one of his hands (extend your right arm, but also rotate your shoulder forward in a motion like going across your chest) then you have your safety distance. Nothing will happen until you or he take that step to close the distance. Once that step happens then you need to do something. If you are within that step range then your hands really have to already be up to block or attack.

If one has a good grasp of the above concept then a good portion of fights can be avoided. The knowledge of it helps even if the fight does go down. In my own experience, if the best the guy has for you is a bunch of words then you win and he has lost. You just have to learn to walk away.

The point of this blog entry is just to give a little background so I can make the connection to some of the martial arts movies I enjoy. I probably will not say much more about this unless it is related to the movies. In the next blog I will talk about my favorite asian genre: the samurai movie!

The Iron Man Cave Location

(GPS: N36 30.990 W117 49.580)

The Iron Man dvd will be out on September 30. I recently visited the "cave" location. The shots in the scene are very quick, and I really did not have much to work with. Let me tell you the story...

This is one I have wanted to check out for a while now. I drove by at the end of July, but the road to Cerro Gordo was closed since work was being done on it. That was a bit frustrating and is one of the possible problems I have encountered with my location hunts. There are so many things that can go wrong, and the thought, "I have to come back here again," is not one I like.

On the way home a few weeks ago I drove back to Keeler, CA which is near Lone Pine, but on the other side of Owens (Dry) Lake. The road to Cerro Gordo (N36 29.180 W117 52.010) is where I pulled off at. The signs say you need a 4-wheel drive, but to get to the area I went to, which is into the canyon, looks like you can get by on a 2-wheel drive. Again, the sign said the road was closed. I thought about it and just decided to hike up the road and see if I would be forced to turn around.

Now hiking to this location was not too pleasant. Had I not been in good shape from a bunch of hikes I might have decided to turn around. In fact, I did turn around.

Finding this area was not easy. I thought I would just have to enter the canyon area, but they went much deeper than I thought they did to film this sequence. As I mentioned above, after walking more than an hour to this point at a very fast rate and taking sips out of my only drink (a gatorade bottle) I decided to turn around. The sun had just come up from the east side into the canyon. I could not see very well in trying to compare the few pictures I had with the landscape around me. I did not have the time to stick around, and it was starting to get warmer in what would end up being a very hot day. I was disappointed in that I thought for sure I would find this area.

Then, on the way down, I noticed a few rock formations that had been in my mind's eye. I got my pictures and started comparing them. I found it was one of the places that I had passed on the way up. It was definately not the way I visualized it. The area where the cave was located is more on the eastern side rather than on the western side. The bad news is, like I mentioned in the video, is that it was 9 a.m., the sun had just come up over the east side, and the conditions for video and pictures were terrible. So, I realized that I would have to come again someday, but I tried to make the most of the situation with what I could. I held my picture folder in one hand to block out the sun while I took a few pictures and video. Some of the pictures:

The cave entrance you see is not part of the natural environment and is the cave they "inserted" for the movie. I had hoped that the rock between the red and green ones I circled would be there, but that was part of the cave set. So, without the cave, I really had little to go on in trying to reproduce this shot. One thing I always do is try to look for rock formations that are unique. I found only two "major ones." You may have to click both pictures see them in a bigger format to see this.
The cave would have been just on the other side of the road. Those rocks seem to have been bulldozed over in front of where the cave was after the filming of the movie. I assume they cleared out the road a bit. If and when I go back, I will probably move to the right of this picture a bit. This was the only angle I could get at the time, without having spots on my picture, due to the way the sun was shining down on me. Now looking back down to the western side:
These were the rocks I saw that I knew I had the right place. This area below is where the firefight took place:
It is interesting that the road is on a slope so they were not filming everything on a level road. At least that is the way the road is when I was there.

Someday I will head back and take pictures and video later in the day. The pictures are good enough for now. BTW, I have never been to Cerro Gordo. It is privately owned, but you can visit there. Some interesting mining history and a few movies have had scenes there. I do not have a real desire to go there, but you never know. Refer to the following link for more info:

Cerro Gordo Official Site

Silent Places

Readers of this blog will know that I like to use the word silent and silence to describe what I like about the outdoors. I use those words rather vaguely because, although I think we all have an idea in our heads what is meant by those words, there is a mystical element to the way I use them in this blog. Meaning, I like to keep a mystery on somethings and not just clearly spell them out at every point.

Of course, tons of people, in the literary world, have done the exact same thing. I was recently e-mailed the following short article:

The World's Quietest Places by E. Readicker-Henderson.

Read the article, but I think most of what is said is common sense from our experiences. If you live in the big city it becomes much more obvious that quiet places are much more sacred. The article notes that it is not "absolute silence" we are trying to achieve in our quest for quiet places.

It is interesting to note that even in the most quiet places there probably are sounds that do not register to the human ear; sort of like blowing on a silent dog whistle. Even still, in most outdoor places that are quiet it is good to slow down, take in the air, and just listen to what you can hear. Recently, I was in the middle of a forest and my hiking friend was mentioning that it was pure silence there. Nothing. Sometimes at a quiet place you might hear the wind moving through, but not this time. It was absolutely silent.

A few weeks ago I was on my favorite exercise hike in the Eastern Sierra I usually do every few days during the summer and other times of the year when it is not snowed in. I consider the whole hike a quiet place. Although, it is usually not absolutely silent since up higher I occasionally encounter some wind and some wildlife making some sounds at some point. I rarely see other humans on this trail.

In any case, it is good to have these meditative moments where you can slow down. Being in the big city as much as I am I really look forward to these types of times. The longer I am at the silent places the more culture shock I get when I get back to city traffic. It does take me some time to recover and speed myself up again.

The Naked Gun Terrorist Headquarters Location

(N34 10.925 W118 16.605)

Here is the location of where the diabolical plot discussed takes place in "Beirut, Lebanon."

Here we are twenty years later. Some Palm trees, but lots of other trees have grown in.
This was originally the home of Leslie Brand and it was called Miradero ("A high place overlooking a wide view"). In the late 50's, the mansion was turned into a public library. I did a quick library search and it looks like they have a copy of The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad on reserve. Here is what was funny to me about this. I remember seeing this movie the day it came out in 1988 with a bunch of friends and laughing our brains out. Ten years later I was here at Brand Park with some relatives. The park was being used to take pictures of young models that day. I remembered coming here and walking on the nature trail that day. There was a huge rattlesnake lying across the trail rattling so I turned around.

Now, although I remember that day rather well, I did not make the connection between Brand Park and The Naked Gun movie. In fact, it was not until after videoing and taking pictures on this recent trip to Brand Park where after walking around a bit I realized, "Hey, I have been here before!"

There is more to the park than the library you see above. Please refer to the links on this site for more on Brand Park, the Teahouse, and the Doctor's House. I am sure you can find more if you google "Brand Park in Glendale".

One of these days I need to re-hike that nature trail since I did not get very far because of that snake! :)

The Illusion of the All Knowing Google Search Engine

Some months back in April I wrote a few long blogs on my concerns about the issues of our sources of online knowledge. My main concern is that a lot of information found on the internet can be rather trivial, people are cramming their minds with this information, and, thus, become rather trivial in their knowledge. Someone who surfs the web for knowledge may think they are knowledgeable on subjects may turn out to either know little at all or have a bunch of bad information in their mind. With all the websites, blogs, message boards, chat rooms, etc., not too mention all the cable channels and other non-internet things, information has exploded that it is impossible to keep up with everything. The days are long gone where one could read the daily newspaper, possibly watch a few channels of television, and then go on with your day somewhat informed about the world. My conclusion is that we have to find ways to keep things in balance with what is important to us because there is not enough time to read everything. Still, there is a temptation to look for short cuts.

Recently, I received my monthly newsletter from an old friend J.P. Holding of Tektonics.org. J.P. spends a lot of time in the areas of issues within the scholarly realm of Christianity and the Bible with his emphasis on apologetics. As a sidenote, somewhere on his site is a essay we co-wrote years ago. An essay he recently wrote titled, Does Google Make Uss Stoopid: On Search Engines and Modern Ignorance, comes to some of the same ideas and conclusions that I have felt for quite some time. I have not talked to Holding about these issues, but it does not surprise me since we both encountered some of these issues in the past in dealing with research. He in turn quotes an article recently written by Nicholas Carr in the Atlantic Monthly called, Is Google Making Us Stupid? which is a good read too.

Basically, what both Holding and Carr are saying, and what I have said on here in different ways, is that Google and search engines are a good thing, but do not exhaust all knowledge on any subject. Holding writes, "I have used Google to find quotes many times, or to make it easier to locate something. But the error lies in thinking that ALL research is able to be done this way."

Some people may think the internet is reaching the level of omniscience, but we are far from that and it will not happen. The problem is people thinking it is. I mentioned recently when I was talking about the upcoming release of dvd's and that, at the time, I did not have a "link" for what I had learned outside of the internet. Another example is I was once challenged online when I was told, outside of the internet, that a book would be released a year later. Of course, I was asked for a link and the implication was that if I did not have a link then it must not be so. Of course, challenging blind assertions is one thing, but trying to explain that something exists outside ones area of knowledge is another. One last example is something I noticed last month on a message board. Someone was trying to get a book, but could not find it online other than on a few used books sites that were selling it for an overpriced few hundred dollars. He kept complaining that he could not find any copy of it. Then he was told that he could get it from the publisher, but since the publisher did not have it to order online it was troubling to him. I think he actually did order it from the publisher, but felt he was ordering it "blind" which is rather strange to me. Some people, based on the way technology is now, have a hard time understanding that some things exist outside the internet. That is a rather strange statement for me to make, but in some ways the internet is making people mentally challenged and has become a crutch.

The problem both Holding and Carr point out, again me too on here sometimes, is that people are looking for short cuts in research and knowledge. This is understandable because there is only so much time in a day and it is hard to keep up. Holding writes, "For our purposes, the critical point is that accuracy and truth are regularly being sacrificed on the altars of efficiency and the saving of time." I have said in the past that much of the internet, search engines and online dictionaries, are like the fast food approach to information. These tools are good and helpful for a start, but too much reliance on them is not a good thing. What is worse is if one lets these tools do one's thinking for him or her.

I am reminded of one exchange I was reading online regarding an issue in philosophy. The exchange went a few messages. It became apparent that one of the two people, who I will call David, who was arguing back and forth had the upper hand. The next message that showed up from who I will call Jack, who was not doing so well, took a few quoted paragraphs from an online essay written by another person. All Jack had done was do a quick search and found a response that supported his position. I was not convinced that Jack had any real grasp of what that article said.

So, again, Google and other online tools are really great tools to use, but should only be a part of one's overall quest for knowledge. I have to admit that I do end up doing a lot of skimming of online articles that Holding and Carr refer to as a problem that the internet has created for people. Of course, if the online article is something I really care about I will devour every word. The difference for me is that I can not read books online like I can with a paper book in my hands. I do not look forward to the day where books are replaced by electronic devices. Remember, the ways of the old media and knowledge are still important and are still the basis for the new types of media.