I recently caught a bit of a movie. It was from the 60’s or 70s. It was in color. Set in California. The protagonist was buyin drugs from a guy. The guy might have also been a pimp. The protagonist said he was going up to San Francisco. The maybe pimp said he’d never make it, I think. We see the protagonist driving up the highway and a California Patrolman tells him to pull over. He doesn’t the patrolman goes off the road. The protagonist has a flashback to some motorcycle stuff. What movie might I have seen?
I’m almost certain it’s Vanishing Point (1971), starring Barry Newman.
Your recollection matches the opening of the film almost exactly:
The drug dealer: The protagonist, Kowalski (Barry Newman), stops at a biker bar in Denver to buy Benzedrine (speed) pills from a dealer named Jake.
The bet: Kowalski says he’s going to drive to San Francisco. Jake bets him he won’t make it by 3 p.m. the following day.
The highway patrol: Kowalski takes off in a white 1970 Dodge Challenger. Motorcycle patrolmen try to pull him over, and he runs them off the road.
The flashbacks: We begin learning about Kowalski’s past, including his experiences as a motorcycle racer, race-car driver, Vietnam veteran, and former police officer.
All of these details are confirmed by the American Film Institute’s film catalog.
One small correction: Jake is identified as a drug dealer, not a pimp, though the biker-bar setting might explain that impression.
I think you’ve found your movie! And if you haven’t seen the whole thing, it’s well worth watching. It’s one of the great American counterculture road movies of the early 1970s.
Wah-Wah Pedal Pioneer Dies
Del Casher, the guitarist who invented the wah-wah pedal that transformed the sound of classic rock, has died. He was 88.
Casher died Oct. 1 after battling cancer, according to a GoFundMe account posted Oct. 29 by family friends to support his widow.
Del Casher, inventor of the wah-wah pedal, dead at 88
See also:
[QUESTION] What is you favorite song that uses a wah pedal?
I just got my first guitar effect which is a cry baby wah pedal and I can already tell I’m gonna have so much fun with it. I would love to hear what either everyone’s favorite song(s) is using a wah pedal or if there are songs out there that help getting used to playing with one.
When I first think of a wah pedal, the first two songs that immediately pop into my head are Voodoo Child (Slight Return) by Jimi Hendrix and White Room by Cream.
P.s. if there are any Mac Miller fans out there, the solo on Small Worlds is so fun to play with a wah too.
15 Great Songs That Use the Wah-Wah Guitar Pedal & Its Funky, Fluid Feel
Blue Skies – BT featuring Tori Amos
“Blue Skies” is a song by American electronica artist BT with featured vocals by American singer-songwriter and pianist Tori Amos. Released as a single in the United Kingdom in October 1996, it hit number one on the United States Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart in January 1997. “Blue Skies” also appears on the Party of Five soundtrack. Many versions (remixes) of the song exist.
While originally announced for BT’s follow-up album, ESCM, it was later appended to the double-disc reissue of his first album, Ima.
In the album notes for BT’s 10 Years in the Life compilation, BT says that Tori Amos performed 15 minutes of improvisational singing over his track “Divinity”, which later became the vocals for “Blue Skies”. He says that Tori never sang the words “blue” or “skies” in the recording. He joined together syllables and breaths to make new words through editing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Skies_(BT_song)
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah
Those blue skies are ahead
Blue skies are in my headAll the town clocks and marching soldier’s socks
I say, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go to this magic wonder show”
And I’m walking, and crawling
And so tired, I’m insane
I, I, I, I, I, I, I see
Some thoughts/guesses on the exact lyrics:
https://www.yessaid.com/lyrics/blueskies.html
https://www.reddit.com/r/toriamos/comments/82w2vj/lyrics_to_blue_skies/
https://genius.com/Bt-blue-skies-lyrics
Guy – Word Derivation, Guy Fawkes Trivia, Merriam-Webster On
In England, November 5—Guy Fawkes Day—is celebrated by setting off fireworks and lighting bonfires. Human likenesses made of tattered clothes stuffed with hay or rags are burned on the bonfires. The day is named after a 17th-century man, Guy Fawkes, who led a plot to blow up the British Parliament buildings. Fawkes managed to hide 20 barrels of gunpowder in the cellars of the buildings. However, the plot was discovered before he could carry out his plans. He was seized and later put to death. The human likenesses burned on the fires came to be called guys. The verb guy “to ridicule” is derived from this story also. The use of the word was extended to similar figures and then to a person of strange appearance or dress. In the US, the word came to mean simply “man” and in time “a person of either sex.”
Running the London Marathon While Inside Prison
FRANK: Still. Saw me running did you, oh aye? Done forty-nine times round the block this afternoon, I reckon I do that every day. Why forty-nine? Well once round’s a hundred and eighty yards see, so thať’s five mile more or less exact. Till now I do only afternoons, but next week I’ve got permission to do mornings and all. Then it’ll be ten miles a day. I’m going to keep pushing it up a bit further each week, cos it’s the Marathon next month. About the twenty-third is it, somewhere round there? The London Marathon. That’s what we’re in for: nineteen of us, sixteen cons and three members of staff.
We’re doing it for charity, Children’s Leukaemia Fund I believe it’s called, some name like that. We’ve got outside sponsors and everything, reckon we’ll raise a good few bob. Me, l’m aiming to complete the whole course, twenty-six miles and something yards is it? I don’t see why I shouldn’t not with the practising programme I’ve worked out. Aye, it’ll be same day it teks place in London starting same time and following exactly the same route, On a map I mean, one of the screws brought it in for us a few weeks back. I’ve got it all up here in me head though by now, I’ve been studying it. Ninety-eight circuits ten miles; a hundred and forty-seven, ffteen, a hundred and ninety-six. twenty, and another sixty-eight on top that’ll see me home. Makes it more intersting, you think now I’m crossing Tower Bridge, now I’m in the Isle of Dogs, now I’m running down the Mall. Some says I’ll not do it all, but I will. I’d have a bet I’ll be the only one does and all. They say good stuff comes in little packages don’t they eh?
Life After Life
Paul Jepson, Tony Parker
Valerie wants a job, Frank wants to run the marathon – Paul, Philip and Alan just want to hold on. This dramatic piece of reportage draws on interviews with murderers to create stark, uncompromising portraits of people rebuilding their lives.
Life After Life was performed as part of the National Theatre’s ‘Transformations’ season in 2002.
Random Pics – Denver – October 2026
The War Will Resume After the Midterms?
Top Military Admiral Briefs Trump on Iran Options
White House meeting came as U.S. weighs new combat operations
Wall Street Journal
Michael R. Gordon, Lara Seligman and Shelby Holliday
From the comments:
It’s so disheartening to me our lack of moral clarity here. Whether it’s buying Russian fuel while undermining Ukraine or furthering the conflict with Iran, people (both innocent, and just following orders) are going to DIE. And what’s the primary concern? Lowering the price of diesel for Americans before the midterm elections. It just makes me ill. It’s just gross.
Yes it is disgusting
The Smashing Pumpkins – Denver – October 27, 2026
Great show. 10/10.
Highly recommended
From Google AI:
The Smashing Pumpkins performed at Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado on October 27, 2026, as part of The Rats in a Cage Tour.
Set 1: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness (Front-to-Back)
- 1979
- Bullet With Butterfly Wings
- Cupid de Locke
- Porcelina of the Vast Oceans
- Jellybelly
- Bodies
- Galapogos
- Thirty-Three
- Tonight, Tonight
- Here Is No Why
- To Forgive
- Fuck You (An Ode to No One)
- Zero
- Muzzle
- By Starlight
- Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Set 2: Career Hits & Deep Cuts
- Sojourner
- Edin
- Pentagrams
- Disarm
- Ava Adore
- War Dreams of Itself
- Mayonaise
- Black Stars
- As Rome Burns
- Today
- Cherub Rock
- Jesus Is the Sun
- The Everlasting Gaze
- Superchrist
A Thousand Forms of Fear – Recovery Phrase
My only way to deal with what I deemed an attack (and I might deem anything an attack in those days) was to attack more aggressively in return. The level of hostility in my offensive depended on my level of fear. Fear of being caught, fear of having to tell the truth, fear of being exposed as the lying, cheating fraud I was. But it was the fear of showing my true heart, at times either so full it might burst or so empty I could cry, that hounded me most viciously.
There had been a perpetual war between myself and the costume of persona I’d donned as a youngster and then worn my entire life. Petrified that someone might discover who I really was: merely a child inside the body of an adult. A boy playacting as a man. My lifelong hard-ass exterior and, underneath that, ironclad interior were all an intricately constructed, carefully cultivated, and fiercely guarded sham. I was, in reality, driven by what I’d heard referred to in rehab all those years ago as “a thousand forms of fear.” Sadly, somewhere deep in my soul, I knew that was probably me.
Sing Backwards and Weep: A Memoir
Mark Lanegan
Note – Highly recommended book
The Later Days of Lyndon Johnson
Salem1690s
When you had a near fatal heart attack in 1955, and then begin smoking again, and keep smoking after a massive attack of angina in 1971, yes, I’d say you don’t give a fuck.He drank. He didn’t keep to a physician prescribed diet, and got chunky on heavy, salty food that also sped up his massive heart attack.
He had an actuarial study done that he was likely to die at age 64 given his family history; and seemed to accept this, and to just head towards making that prediction a reality.
There are reports that in this period.”, he would listen to the song Bridge Over Troubled Water by S&G on repeat and cry.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Presidents/comments/1x6p852/lbjs_slow_suicide_called_so_by_his_aides_from/
Relating to a Poem – Personal Experience and Imagination
One way to talk about a poem is to talk about how you relate to it. How you may identify with the speaker of it, like a main character in a story or movie. Or how you share the emotions running through the poem. Or how you are sympathetic to a particular situation, event, or character in the poem because you’ve had similar experiences.
But what if you don’t relate to a particular poem in any of these ways? Or what if the way you relate to the poem is by taking a different or opposing viewpoint? What then? Do you chuck the poem aside, spit in its eye, take it out back, and smack it around a little, before burying it at the back of the bookshelf? That would be one method of readerly response. All reading, in one way or another, is call-and-response. The call is the set of words on the page, and the response is your reaction in reading them.
But here is the thing: you have the ability to relate to anything. Your imagination is as powerful as any reality you have experienced or are presently experiencing. If you have a certain response to a poem—especially an adverse one—have it. Let it run its course. Then, re-read the poem, questioning what you think you know about it in order to enter the poem on its own terms.
The Poetry Reader: An Anthology
Mark Yakich
Cool Bomb Name – Iran War Update
Both the U.S. and Israel militaries are drafting plans for operations against Iran’s nuclear program, according to people briefed on the work. That could include an attack on Pickaxe Mountain, a deeply buried nuclear site that Iranians call Kooh Kolang.
Mr. Trump said last week that he was considering using a 22,000-pound GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast bomb, or MOAB, against Pickaxe. Officials say Mr. Trump is enamored with the weapon in part because of its nickname, Mother of All Bombs.
U.S. and Israel Draw Up Plans for Renewed Strikes on Iran After Elections
Renewed hostilities might not be any more successful than the war’s first phase, and President Trump has repeatedly canceled plans for a return to major combat.
United Airlines CEO on Inequality
But he struck a decidedly more populist note on the topic of wealth inequality — which he brought up when the Times asked him about waning trust in CEOs and his responsibility in dispelling it. Here’s his full answer:
“Wealth inequality has become a danger to our society, and we need to address that,” he said. “We should have a national wealth tax — it won’t work by state because people will just move. And I think we should have inheritance taxes that get close to 100% at some level. I would pay them.”
A Week in the Life of Gaza – Guardian Series
We follow five ordinary people – a 12-year-old boy, a professor, a pregnant woman, a skateboarder and a grandmother – through their days, with all of the difficulty and joy that they encounter. This is what a week in the life of Gaza looks like.
‘We skate on the rooftops of damaged buildings’: a day in the life of a skateboarder in Gaza
‘This is where I live now, the back of a truck’: a day in the life of a grandmother in Gaza
Gaza: a week in the life
This series captures seven days of daily life Gaza, through the eyes of five ordinary citizens, as the war pushes deep into its third year
16th Street – Denver – October 17, 2026
