Similarly, watching the British Vulcan fly was right up there with the B1. Saw one in person and it was pretty cool. And how awesome is this: http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-lincolnshire-34712344
If you're really into the SR71, you should also see the Mythbuster's episode where Adam gets to go for a ride... it's very, very cool... It's Season 16, Episode 2, called Flights of Fantasy. Dig it up, you won't be sorry.
Fun fact: One of my uncles was involved in the development of the SR71. As far as I know he never flew one, but he flew everything from F-86 Sabre's to B-52's. He ended up a drug mule pilot in the 80's and did several years in prison. He rarely talked about it, but dear God, did that man have some amazing stories.
Ha.. nice. I still chuckle at Alonso Bodden. He was an engineer on the Stealth Fighter before he went full time into comedy. He was on a tour overseas doing a USO gig when he was playing at an Air Force Base of some sort, and started talking to some of the fighter's ground crew... and was asking some very, very specific questions about stuff that not many people were supposed to know about. He told some stories on the Adam Carolla podcast that were pretty funny.
Underrated by who, exactly? He may not be mainstream these days, but every guitar player I know speaks highly of him.
I just don't hear him named very often by guitar players, or see him on lists (though that can be bullshit), or otherwise given his due (in my mind) for his tremendous technique and tone. Maybe I'm wrong, but this guy just doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar anymore.
I To this day, that song and its guitar solo has been passed on like an heirloom. He played here, there were kids in the crowd, LOTS of them, there specifically for that song. Play it for somebody who has never heard it, no mater who it is they will lose their shit (see also: Maggot Brain). Frampton is a living legend.
I vividly recall when I got the Frampton Comes Alive album. We made our twice yearly trip to the big city. I was 11 or 12 and we were at the Spokane Macy's. It was the biggest selling album at the time and it was on sale for $3.98. I begged, begged, begged my grandmother to buy it for me for my Christmas present from her and granddad. She just wasn't sure about Frampton. We took the album up to the check out girl and my grandmother was still unsure... Grandma: "This guy looks like a degenerate, is it ok for my grandson?" Me: * Oh shit. God? Are you real? Can you kill me like right now? * The nice girl manning the cash register assured my grandmother it was nice wholesome music and that I had good taste in music. God bless that girl. My only problem with "Do You Feel Like We Do" is so many people mistook a Vox for making a guitar "Speak". No, I can't do that. That was annoying.
We came to the conclusion that humans are too squishy and short-lived to ever actually make it anywhere worth sending a manned mission to unless we figure out how to go faster than c. In the last decade or so we have landed a probe on a comet (which are fucking tiny), put an incredibly sophisticated rover on Mars, and done a very close flyby of Pluto (which is so small and far away that we don't even consider it a planet anymore). NASA and the ESA are still doing interesting things, they just aren't all that sexy. I appreciate what Elon Musk is doing, but the main reason he wants to put a man on Mars is simply for the sake of doing it. We already know we could probably do it, but it would be expensive and not very much more useful than the robotic missions that are significantly cheaper. We sent humans during the Apollo missions for two reasons: fuck the Russians, and because our technology wasn't actually good enough to land and bring back samples without some of the best pilots in the world flying the ships manually. That's the progress we've made in the last 50 years. Frustratingly, we probably won't ever be able to do more than imagine the vast majority of it. So many objects in the universe we cannot even observe because they are too far away and moving in the wrong direction. No, and that doesn't even really make sense. Water exists pretty much anywhere Hydrogen and Oxygen exist at the same time. There is at least a little water almost everywhere that isn't dense enough to fuse its hydrogen into helium. And we have very smart people trying to figure out the best way to investigate them without contaminating them with our own bullshit. Which would be great if we didn't need to expend more energy to get to it than we could extract. Methane is a lot like water. It's one atom with a bunch hydrogens attached to it. It isn't interesting without context.
Frampton, when he still lived outside Cincinnati, used to live down the street from a girl I dated briefly. The one time I went to her house he was outside mowing the fucking lawn, which was hilarious to me. I guess her Dad was learning guitar as a midlife crisis hobby, mentioned it to Frampton at a neighborhood party not really realizing who Frampton was (he would just tell people he was in the music industry) and Frampton told him to come jam whenever. Can you imagine? Supposedly a really nice guy. Also hilarious that for awhile in the early 2000s, Ohio had both Clapton and Frampton living low key lives in Columbus and Cincinnati.
One of my friends, a ripping bass player, knew his daughter and I believed played with him at his house.
Well, the wedding was nice. Ceremony on the golf course, a nice mix of humor and heart tugging sentiments. Food was good, open bar. It was . . .fun. Unfortunately no shenanigans occurred. I expected more. I floated the idea of beating the prick who gave the bride and groom a big fuck you by showing up in a camouflage cap, an orange tee shirt, work pants and work boots that look like he had been wearing them all day. He stood out like a sore thumb, and we're not talking about a wealthy crowd. And someone re-parked their buddies' car on the median up against a tree. That's about the extent of it.
Have you ever said something in a conversation, paused, asked if that was an old Jeff Foxworthy quote and then found yourself listening to a Foxworthy album from 1998 because you remember listening to it on your discman in your room while you still lived in a certain house that you moved out of when you were in the seventh or eighth grade so it could have only been on this or one other album? No? Damn it I'm weird. I should also mention that my husband's 15 year class reunion was today and I've been day drinking since noon. For the record, Jeff Foxworthy was way funnier when I was in middle school and so far I haven't found the quote so maybe I just made the whole thing up.
I remember them. Cold War jets. Big-ass wide wings. Avro built them, who built the Canadian mystery fighter the Aero.