Long before the internet, cable television, videogames (the new reason people wait in line all night), homevideo, there was the movie. And when a movie was released, it was shown, sometimes for months, in a select few theaters, to maximize word of mouth and test whether it should be followed-up with a large or small release to secondary screens, in an age prior to the multiplex. Even stranger, before Jaws, no major studio films were released in the summer months, when waiting on lines might be a little easier on the consumer, 'market research' led the studio chiefs to believe summer was for sunbathing, not moviegoing. Despite its rejection by reviewers, The Exorcist caused an unexpected audience reaction, they were shocked and they wanted to ride again. William Hurt makes his debut in this NYT article.

In April 1998, Ukrainian Trade Minister Roman Shpek announced the winning bid—$20 million USD from a small Hong Kong company called the Chong Lot Travel Agency Ltd. Chong Lot proposed to tow Varyag out of the Black Sea, through the Suez Canal and around southern Asia to Macau, where they would moor the ship and convert it into a floating hotel and gambling parlor.^[3] It would be similar to the attractions Kiev in Tianjin and Minsk at Minsk World in Shenzhen.

However, considerable evidence suggested that the future of Varyag was linked to the People's Republic of China's People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) and its program to develop an aircraft carrier. - Wikipedia as of late 2009.

Here's a visual diary of Varyag's building.

As a profligate metaphor for the gateway between left and right (brains as well as politics) posing as east and west, the Berlin Wall was remarkably small compared to other separations (96 miles compared to The Great Wall's nearly 4000 mi).  1978 - during the hiccup of the Carter-Callaghan years, the former commander of NATO, John Hackett, penned a book by committee (The Third World War, August 1985) that was best understood as science fiction, a story in pensive framgents that detailed a tactical war the Soviets would fight as World War III, part of a unique genre of narrative (the 'what-if' altered from retroactive to active) that hovered between suggestive propaganda and realistic fear-mongering. Having been a strategist that made Berlin a ground zero for any future wars on his watch, Hackett gave his WWIII a three week premise (the other WWs totalled some 10 years in length) that involved a decaying Soviet economy foraging for greater European control and a leadership playing blink with atomic weapons. The initial invasion of West Germany is halted and repulsed by NATO ground war strategy and as an attempt at coup d'grace the Soviets drop a devastating ICBM on Birmingham U.K. NATO responds by liquifying Minsk. The book's too simplified arc is that the bombing of Birmingham unified NATO and the extra Soviet world and the loss of Minsk helped dissolve the already fragmented and collapsing states in the Soviet realm. Strangely the same thing occured minus all the predicted warfare and the tactical armageddon as the Soviets turned inward reflectively in 1989 and allowed their bitter children Afghanistan, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and East Germany to escape dominance. Hacket updated the book in 1982.

What happened to a WWIII, could it really be happening now in slow motion instead of Hackett's three weeks? Replace his 1985 euro-invasion with 1979 Afghanistan and suddenly the time-frame shifts, attacks are indirect (we practiced third-party warfare via insurgents and now it is practiced on us). As the Soviets fled in their attempt at jockeying a mummified communist regime in Kabul, will the coalition leave after propping Karzai's democratic regime? As we no doubt served to assist the mujahadeen of Afghanistan, who now feeds currency and weapons to the Taliban to assist in our possible exit? Does a WW, its nascent rebellions and corresponding technology become cheaper to operate in third-party warfare? Why have three 'superpowers' (Britain, U.S.S.R., U.S.) each fought for control of Afghanistan and two so far walk away bruised and confused?

"there has been a little distress selling on the Stock Exchange."

-Thomas W. Lamont, J.P. Morgan Thursday October 24, 1929 2 PM

Senator Couzens: Did Goldman, Sachs and Company organize the Goldman Sachs Trading Company?

Mr. Sachs: Yes, sir.

Senator: And it sold its stock to the public?

Mr. Sachs: A portion of it. The firm invested originally in 10 percent of the issue.

Senator: And the other 90 percent was sold to the public?

Mr. Sachs: Yes, sir.

Senator: At what price?

Mr. Sachs: At 104...the stock was later split two for one.

Senator: And what is the price of the stock now?

Mr. Sachs: Approximately 1 3/4.

Washington D.C. May 20, 1934

Richard Kelly, whose magnum opus was a the extraordinarily well-made indie portalling sci-fantasy Donnie Darko, made his debut the strangest hybrid between Dickens and Rod Serling. Opening by chance two weeks after 9-11, Darko took 80's retro and made it scary, extending and recycling one of the few non-Serling made Zones, Occurance at Owl Creek Bridge, a 20 minute-long examination of the last moments of a condemed soldier.  Darko is always channeling two types of time travel, notice how all of the characters post Donnie's death make note of his passing, some without having actually met him. Kelly followed Darko with his little seen and heavily reviled Southland Tales, a shoot-the-moon satire of Los Angeles, he goes for Fellini on a shoestring budget and comes up with one of the most stilted experiences Justin Timberlake has ever taken part in (it's more stilted than his Super Bowl halftime chest reveal of Janet Jackson). Every nuance Tales goes for crumbles in disarray, the actors seem to be mimicking the film: searching for meaning in meaningless. Now in The Box, Kelly returns to the east coast, where he heads for a time before Darko, of space travel and the television-age (the film is a Twilight Zone remake) based on Richard Matheson's (I Am Legend) short story.