Talk Whatever

how so?

An article, which is no longer available and which may have been very melodramatic to be honest, said that thousands of mourners for the Queen at her funeral could be classified problematic and a safety hazard. Also, I just saw that Queen Elizabeth II has indeed passed away at 96, RIP.

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Helluva thing… generations of people knew her as a fixture in the world. RIP liz

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Sad indeed. But now she is back to Philip. Seeing the images of his funeral during the COVID period makes me sad. She was a good queen, had her good and bad moments but such a public life is something I would not like.
May she Rest In Peace

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Remember watching old I Love Lucy episodes from before my mom was born where they were talking about meeting Queen Elizabeth II. Crazy to think of how much the world has changed during her reign. Rest in Peace.

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Yes, a sad day for us here.
I’m not a royalist by any means but she earned everyone’s love and respect through an entire lifetime of dedicated service. We are unlikely to see her like again.

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I have a story to share about Queen Elizabeth II that I was not directly involved in. I used to work for a company, and still do some sub-contract work for them under different ownership, in Lexington, Kentucky that began in the early years of the tech boom supplying Thoroughbred information (pedigrees, race records, etc.) through computers. The founder and owner of the company was a mad genius. To give you an idea of his madness, he once became convinced that there were demons in the building and had an exorcism, including the spreading of holy water (which I got a particularly heavy dosing of for some reason :rage:), performed while people were there trying to work and deal with clients on the phone. To give you an idea of his genius, he eventually sold this company, which had grown and diversified by this time, for $80 million.

In the year of 1984, while I was still happily unemployed in college, one of the young men that worked there came to the owner’s personal assistant and told her that he had to see the owner ASAP. The young man, a transplant from England named Harry Herbert, was finally allowed inside. He told the owner that his father was a well-known horseman across the pond and even managed the Queen’s stable. As a matter of fact, his father was dear friends with the Queen and she, on an upcoming visit to the U.S., wanted to see where her dear friend’s son was working.

As you can imagine, the mad genius erupted at such a preposterous story. He yelled and screamed and cursed the young man, but valiant young Harry held his ground and continued to insist that every word was true. And it was. Queen Elizabeth II actually visited this then small business in Kentucky so that she could check in on her friend’s son. According to the people who were there at the time that I spoke to about it once I started working there some years later, as she was being given the tour of the business, she took the time to stop and talk to every single employee in the place.

When I heard this story, I will have to say my regard for her grew immensely and has never diminished since.

May she rest RIP.

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Thar’s a very cool story buddy, a shame you couldn’t get to meet her yourself though. My Sophomore year of High School English Professor and his wife loved visiting England every year, and he even showed our class some of the historic site photos he took for our section on British Literature.

One of the best stories I heard about Queen Elizabeth was from over a decade ago. A couple was having their wedding at a modest church and to the wedding party’s surprise, in walks The Queen and Prince Philip for weekly mass! :smiley: The Queen and Prince Philip had no idea a wedding service was taking place and offered their apologies to the couple for interrupting, and the couple were so in awe that they said it was all right, and asked the Royal couple to stay and join the reception. The couple told reporters the Queen and her husband in attendance made their special day even more special, and the Queen even gave one of the toasts at the reception.

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My Mom told me her admiration for Queen Elizabeth got higher after she announced there would be a period of mourning in the UK for everyone who perished on 9/11. A great lady indeed.

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:+1: :cowboy_hat_face:

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Just found this on Youtube…

I don’t know anything about it, or the composer/performer. (youtube comments were turned off).

Whatever…I think it’s brill!

Whoever has done it has, IMHO, done a cracking job of capturing the very essence of the ‘Spaghetti Western’. Everything is there except the whistling…

Think I might have this going around in my head for a while… :cowboy_hat_face:

At the end of the end of the day, isn’t it beautiful, and gratifying, to see how much the ‘Spaghetti’ has gone from an ‘oddity’, ridiculed by critics many years ago, to now being a respected ‘pioneer’ that has greatly influenced so many other genres and music, from adverts to film, and from fashion to iconic imagery…who didn’t have a poster of Clint in his poncho hanging on their wall?

What does anyone think of Clint opting, if he had decided in later years, to resurrect his character - if he had been given the opportunity?

My own view is that the character was ‘mythological’ (he was that cool when I first saw him in the ‘GBU’ in 1976, when i was aged 12. He rode off into legend, to the echoes of another genius called Morricone. At secondary school, the next day, everyone was either attempting to whistle, scream, or emulate the superb guitar chords.

At the time - not having seen the first two ‘Dollar’ Westerns - it was like…“What did i just see!”
I think that, to bring the character back, would have been wrong…

Which leads us on to Sergio Leone’s ‘idea’ to have Eastwood, Van Cleef, and Wallach, appear at the beginning of ‘OUATITW’…and then be gunned down by ‘Harmonica’ (Charles Bronson).

Any thoughts, amigos?

Long may ‘SWDB’ continue to spread the word of how ground-breaking the ‘Spaghetti’ was, and is.

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Is that right? Damn. Would have been a crazy way to start the movie. He wasn’t serious was he?

Amen.

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Everything points to the fact that Leone wanted to literally kill off his main protagonists from ‘GBU’.

In my mind, it would have killed off the mythology that was established in this milestone of cinema.

As a young lad, when I first watched it, the GBU was the epitome of the actual title…strange as it may now sound. Probably because the film, and characters were so new, interesting, and appeared clearly defined. Years have shown - as I think Leone wanted to - that there is good, bad, and ugly in everyone.

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Would definitely have been a sour way to kick off one of the greats as well. Van Cleef’s character was already dead though, was he gonna kill him again? :joy:

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Thought that myself… :cowboy_hat_face:

On Queen Elizabeth’s funeral the other day; A couple of years ago, I saw a video (falsely?) claiming to examine the plan which was to be executed upon her death (which I thought would be quite a while from now, as I’d expected her to live a few years past 100 like her mother did). It was nothing short of a crazy-prepared story which would basically make Jesus crucifixion look like a largely unnoticed and unmourned event. Come her death the other week, and while there’s certainly been a major, almost shocked reaction in the world in general and (I suppose) the Commonwealth in particular, I haven’t heard of anything that complex being carried out. Am I missing something or was the video simply a bunch of poppycock? (which I always suspected).

were they gonna shave her?

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I don’t recall anything about that. What I do recall is that the UK authorities were basically going to declare a national state of emergency, closing just about everything to ensure everybody would get the news and start mourning as fast as possible. Then maybe some people would be allowed to smile again in a month or so. My memory might have exaggerated it all a bit, N.B.

(Sorry for the late answer, it’s been a busy week)

Just found this on ‘Youtube’…the lady singing has a great voice.

THE MAN WITH NO NAME RIDES./ DIMITRIS.GABESIS. CHARITINI ANASTASIADOU. BILLY ZIOGAS - YouTube

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