Weird Weather, Bullitt, and other odds and ends
Weird Weather, Bullitt, and other odds and ends
The mild weather seems to be over just in time for the Independence Day celebration, and I have been inspired to watch some classic movies
While I enjoy a little schadenfreude about all the people in the northeast, or midwest whinging about the smoke, especially since the people I know from there were brutal to us on the west coast who suffered a lot of wild fires the last few years, I will note that the spring and early summer here have been uncharacteristically mild.
As in, until this weekend, I think we only had a couple of days in the 90’s.
As a contrast, in 2015 when we moved in, in February as we were preparing the house to move into, we had already had several 90+ days.
In fact, the spring has been really comfortable. Just a week ago, we had a couple of mornings in the 40’s. Very weird, and uncharacteristic.
One downside is that our neighbors – who seem to not spend any money on home maintenance – are running their AC most of the night, and clearly the fan motor bearings are going bad. It makes a LOT of noise.
Steve McQueen in Bullitt
As I am avoiding the heat, I was scrolling through the Plex server and on a lark I fired up a classic, Bullitt. It is a classic cop drama, starring the incomparable Steve McQueen, who plays a SFPD lieutenant who is assigned to guard a witness in a mob case. Turns out that the witness is someone paid by the real witness, who gets killed for playing loose with the organization, and in the end the real witness is located on an outbound plane to Rome, and killed in a showdown with the police.
Pretty standard fare. Plenty of movies in this vein were made in the early 1970s as a balance to the unrest from the 1960s. Nothing special.
What makes Bullitt memorable, and re-watchable is the car chase. About 2/3rds of the way through the movie, the hitmen and McQueen get into a car chase. The bad guys are driving a Chrysler Barracuda (or ‘Cuda) when they engage with McQueen in a Mustang. What follows is one of the all-time best chase scenes through San Francisco, and frankly, since I grew up in the Bay Area I remember visiting San Francisco, and while today it looks much different, I do remember the city in the 70’s.
I have always loved this movie, and it is definitely comfort food for my soul when I pull it up.
A pretty good weekend so far!