Happy Birthday Winston Churchill

On November 30, 1874 - Winston Churchill was born in Woodstock, Oxford England. He was the son of an eccentric aristocratic Tory politicain named Lord Randolph Churchill. As a kid - he went to the finest of schools (Harrow, Royal Military College at Sandhurst) but as a student, he was so weak, his dad thought he was retarded. (parents… a whiff of hope for those with kids struggling in school :~). His career of service was filled with failures (Gallipoli in particular) and many triumphs (his service as Prime Minister, especially The Battle of Britain). He was also awarded one of the first Nobel Peace Prizes. Of course, Yasser Arafat would win a Peace Prize too, but I digress.

A search for Winston Churchill in the LikeTelevision video library offers a ton of media - but let me highlight a few for Sir Winston’s birthday bash. By all means - one should watch The Battle of Britain, but for those pressed for time - here’s a few choice snippets. Clip One - “Never in the field of human conflict, was so much owed by so many, to so few”. Clip Two - “We shall never surrender”. And who could forget this quote…. This was their finest hour…. (just an audio clip, realmedia format). I love the line about perverse science… which for some reason made me wanna watch this video trailer from Frank random, LikeTelevision resident genius.

In case you want more info - here’s a link to the New York Times Obituary. Churchill died on January 24, 1965.

Happy Thanksgiving from LikeTelevision

LikeTelevision would like to wish all our guests and subscribers a warm and heartfelt Thanksgiving. For us, last week was a cornecopia… of troubles. As we mentioned earlier, one of our huge mondo video servers decided to go on permanent vacation and to top it off, some knucklehead decided to try and drive through our back garage door, which caused us slew of angst and a nice fat bill to fix it. We were fortunate in that nothing was stolen - due to the extra security measures taken, which i think was mostly due to the fact that the warehouse area was and remains a total mess, thereby making it a total pain to try and take anything. Either that… or someone just rammed their car into the garage door by accident and bolted before anyone was the wiser. In any event - last week was a bit of a bear and we would like to thank everyone for their patience, though i do not think anyone noticed our server problems because we had standby servers at the ready. A special thanks to Brad, Gummy, Pratek and Surresh, for assisitng us in getting out bytes in order.

But enough whining - in truth, we have so much to be thankful for. Wonderful families and friends, a roof over our heads, food to eat and sustain us, warm smiles from strangers and a constant hope for a bright future. As time has passed, soaking up life’s joys and sorrows, i have learned that being thankful is great medicine for being happy, even when times get tough or people let us down. Many folks think it is the other way around - if i got this or that… ow whatever… THEN i would be thankful. But it is the other around…. if you find yourself feeling thankful, you will also find yourself feeling happy. (remind yourself of that if the relatives are driving you crazy… ah ahahhaaha).

Anyway - here’s some holiday treats to go along with your turkey and dressing - Popeye and Olive say - Happy Thanksgiving, Granny want to kill and cook the turkey, but Elly wants to spare the poor bird, Tex Avery offers a silly look at the first Thanksgiving back in the days of Pilgrims, and finally - check out this Lenny Federal show shot on Thanksgiving day in 2000, where he serves up some chicken pie. Or search for turkey, pilgrim, or dressing. Happy Thanksgiving from all of us at LikeTelevision.

Rififi - Get Ready For Trouble

Here comes trouble - next up, a wonderful 1955 film called Rififi, which means trouble to the French. Rififi is one of the best movies ever made in the film noire genre - and tells the story of a bunch of French jewel thieves trying to pull off their next big heist. Director Jules Dassin won Best Director in the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. Need we say more? Coming later this week… here’s a free preview to tease you.

Gotta scoot - it seems one of the video servers on our network just died… it should be off the network shortly…. and hopefully it is just a bad power supply or something stupid and easy to fix. All prayers on our behalf are graciously accepted. :~)

Firefox - a Browser you will love

In case you missed the major nerd news - Mozilla (the guys who started this whole internet browser craze)… just released a new browser called Firefox on Tuesday November 9, 2004. The beta has been around awhile - but the official Firefox 1.0 was released Tuesday. I have been playing with it for a few days - and am very, very impressed. Besides being much faster (many pages opened twice as quickly) - there’s another real good reason why you might consider using Firefox as your browser of choice. SECURITY! For years hackers have been figuring out all kinds of ways to exploit potential security holes in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. And all this work has created a knowledge base and community of people who work together - to give you a virus, a worm, spyware or a trojan horse. For the most part - these nasty folks work to exploit MSIE because it has such a large installed base of users - so their attempts to make your life miserable are more likely to succeed. One way to thwart this - is to use Firefox. Coupled with the enhanced speed and cool features - makes it worth your while to check it out. The new browser software has already gotten raves from Walter Mossberg, tech writer at WSJ, USAToday, and Forbes, which declared it is better than Microsoft Explorer by leaps and bounds.

Give it a try - porting from Microsoft’s browser was a snap - as it imports your email address book, bookmarks, passwords and all the important stuff in one fell swoop. Brain dead easy.

Veteran’s Day Videos

What better way to honor our Veterans - than to have Kate Smith sing, God Bless Amercia. Even better, the video provided comes from the radio show where she debuted the song to Amercia.

And yes… lots more to watch. Search for WWII, George Washington, soldier, blood, America, and yes - why not. Peace.

Want a light war related movie, good for the whole family - try At War with the Army, starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.

Yassar - He’s Dead

After much confusion earlier this week…. with news reports like, Arafat is still clinging to life, the funeral’s on Friday… it looks like Yasser Arafat is going to make his own funeral. But what happens next? And how will the political fight for his seat of power (and money perhaps)… play out. My guess is we will see the struggle go on for… oh… maybe a generation or two. While it is tempting, i will do my best to not speak ill of the dead, after all - Arafat did win the Nobel Peace Prize, which alerted even the casual observer to question what the heck the Nobel Peace Prize means anymore, and a reminder that the peace prize was set up by the guy who invented dynamite.

For those who might be young in years and short on history - you might try a search for terrorist - and see how long this battle has been going on. As far as i can tell… the struggle has been going on my whole lifetime (and I am an old man, my Budweiser born on date - 1959). Also odd, in that it is ironic - that this transpires on Veteran’s Day - the day Americans honor the men who served in the military and helped secure the freedom we enjoy today. It is fascinating to watch the old WWII documentaries - and compare the tone (honor and reverence)… to what we get today. Yes… it was not always accurate - but i think we were a lot wiser to understand that the people who fought on our behalf had mothers, sisters, brothers sons and daughters - and that maybe, it was wise to show some respect. With that in mind - I hope Mr. Arafat is shown mercy, and that he finds himself in a beautiful place - where there’s no need to blow up innocent people to make one’s point.

And for those who love irony - check out this 15 year old news clip, This Day in History (Feb 4)… the day Arafat founded the P.L.O. The clip ends by calling Yasser - a survivor. web page -Watch Video. Clearly - a lot has changed since the video clip was created. And though i disagree with Arafat’s methods (an understatement… vehemently disagree, ok)…. i do hope that he rests in peace. Which reminds me of a great quote from Golda Meir (who like me, grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin)…. “We will not have peace as long as they hate us more than they love their children“. The converse is also true.

Download Rotations - MPEG City

Lots of new download rotations to report - recently added to the download library - White Zombie, Knife in the Water, The Outlaw, The Terror and Alfred Hitchcock’s Sabotage. White Zombie features Bela Lugosi as the head zombie in the original 1931 classic. Roman Polanski’s debute film Knife in the water features some semi psycho folks enjoying a tormented sail on a private yacht. Loads of tension on the little sailboat - as a thirty something couple in the midst of falling apart - bring a young hitchhiker along for a sailing trip, who has eyes for the girl.

Moving right along - The Terror stars Boris Karloff and a Jack Nicholson as a young soldier… a Yute as My cousin Vinny used to say. The film also stars Jonathan Haze, who played Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors. And yes - that’s Dick Miller from a Bucket of Blood.

And there’s more too - Howard Hughes mega dollar saga of Billy the Kidd, The Outlaw starring Jane Russell is ready for your downloading pleasure. Features a very young Jane Russell (discovered in this film no less)… and a special bra made by Hughes Aircraft engineers, that used cantilevered structures to enhance… lift and separate… as only the aircraft industry might be expected to fully understand the nuisance of the bernouilli applied lift. OK - perhaps i am embellishing a wee bit….

More on the way…. oh yeah… don’t forget - we also added one of Hitchcock’s finest films - Sabotage, which offers Sir Alfred tension and some old school terrorists. next up - a classic French Gangsta film from back in the day.

Cool Jodie Foster Movie

Ready for the weekend - another new movie to download - plus a ton of cool images in the library to boot. Mesmerized (Color, 1986) is based on a true story (or so they say… you’ll have to ask John Newland from One Step Beyond for further clarity.) Jodie Foster plays Vicotoria - the girl raised as an orphan - till one day - a wealthy guy named Oliver Thompson (John Lithgow) shows up - and asks her to marry him. At the time the girl is maybe 17 or 18 - perhaps even younger.

And you guessed it - Oliver turns out to be a real brute - like this image of Lithgow as a peeping tom. Better still - check out the full description of Mesmerized or download mpegs of the movie and burn a DVD for your personal use. Pretty cool movie - kinda strange.

November 4, 1979 -US Held Hostage

Twenty-five years ago today - on November 4, 1979 sixty-six Americans began a hostage ordeal that lasted 444 days. Today’s clip in history offers some chilling newsreel footage from the era long ago - 25 years ago, and as such provides some perspective of where we’ve been and where we are going as we seek to end all acts of terrorism.

Off to finish up the Jodie Foster movie with John Lithgow. Worst case - it will be up by tomorrow.

Cool New Mobile Media Files

How would you like to get a ton of LikeTelevision content ready for a cool mobile media player? The future is now, as we like to say. We just added hundreds and hundreds of new media clips for the ZVUE Player - a slick mobile media player - it plays MP3s, and of course - all the hundreds of new avi files from LikeTelevision’s Download Library. If you would like to learn more about the ZVUE, check ZVUE’s site.

In addition - we added a new free download section. Another 25+ videos streams for the Shameless Showcase series, and free MPEG-1 downloads, Image Files, and free zvue avi downloads.