[U]Annie Glenn[/U], widow of Astronaut John Glenn died today of complications from COVID-19. She was 100 years old.

[QUOTE=storm5510;545867][U]Annie Glenn[/U], widow of Astronaut John Glenn died today of complications from COVID-19. She was 100 years old.[/QUOTE]

Now that's an odd coincidence, that -- on yesterday's [i]Jeopardy![/i] one of the questions was about late US playwright Sam Shepard, who among other things played legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager in the 1983 film about the Mercury 7 astronauts [url=https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086197]The Right Stuff[/url], at the same time the real Chuck Yeager played the bartender at the local test-pilot watering hole in the movie. Last night woke in middle of the night, and somehow the scene where John Glenn (Ed Harris) is on the phone with his wife Annie (Mary Jo Deschanel) who suffers from near-debilitating shyness and is at that moment terrified of meeting president Lyndon Johnson, who is sitting in his limo outside her house, popped into my head.

[QUOTE=ewmayer;545877]Annie (Mary Jo Deschanel) who suffers from near-debilitating shyness and is at that moment terrified of meeting president Lyndon Johnson, who is sitting in his limo outside her house, popped into my head.[/QUOTE]It was her stuttering that was the issue. She wasn't 'shy' per se. It was that her stuttering was such an issue that she couldn't deal well with pressure like that. Nor would it look good if Mr. Astronaut had a defective wife. The book 'The Astronaut Wives Club' and to a lesser extent the miniseries depicts it much better. She later overcame it and was a wonderful public speaker.

Mary Jo Deschanel is Zooey and Emily's mother.

[QUOTE=Uncwilly;545879]It was her stuttering that was the issue. She wasn't 'shy' per se. It was that her stuttering was such an issue that she couldn't deal well with pressure like that. Nor would it look good if Mr. Astronaut had a defective wife. The book 'The Astronaut Wives Club' and to a lesser extent the miniseries depicts it much better. She later overcame it and was a wonderful public speaker.

Mary Jo Deschanel is Zooey and Emily's mother.[/QUOTE]

Reminds me of an episode of M*A*S*H in which Major Winchester went to bat for a Private who was being treated like an idiot by his comrades-in-arms, one officer in particular, because he stuttered. Winchester asked for "a word" with the tormentor-in-chief, and threatened to write him up if the ill-treatment didn't stop immediately. It turned out that Major Winchester had a sister (Honoria) who stuttered.

There was a movie, [i]The King's Speech[/i], about a real-life stutterer who was coached so he could speak in public -- "Bertie," who became King George VI when Edward VIII abdicated.

Saturn
 

Died at age 84. A good innings, as we Brits would say.

[url]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52784240[/url]

[QUOTE=xilman;546301]Died at age 84. A good innings, as we Brits would say.

[URL]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52784240[/URL][/QUOTE]
:tu:

[URL="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment_and_arts"]Christo[/URL]

[QUOTE=xilman;546301]Died at age 84. A good innings, as we Brits would say.

[url]https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52784240[/url][/QUOTE]

Thanks for posting this! :smile:

[QUOTE=xilman;546301]Сатурн... Last fiddled with by xilman on 2020-05-24 at 01:09 Reason: What's "see ya later!" in Russian?. Dunno, ask Batalov][/QUOTE]
[B]"Я крокодил, крокожу и буду крокодить!"[/B]

[QUOTE=Batalov;546964][B]"Я крокодил, крокожу и буду крокодить!"[/B][/QUOTE]

So, transliterated, sounds like

Ja krokodil, krokozu i budu krokoditj!

"I crocodile croco-something something croco-something".

(Sure, I could feed the original Cyrillic to an auto-translator, but where's the fun in that?)

[QUOTE=ewmayer;546971]So, transliterated, sounds like

Ja krokodil, krokozu i budu krokoditj!

"I crocodile croco-something something croco-something".

(Sure, I could feed the original Cyrillic to an auto-translator, but where's the fun in that?)[/QUOTE]
Google would be hopeless of course, because this is a comical nonsense. Yes, I confess, it was not the same as 'see you later, ...'

Literal translation would be "[B]I have crocodiled, I am crocodiling, and I will crocodile![/B]"
(in Russian, this is also semantically rhyming to the much abused (and silently abhorred) "Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin will live!" which was a slogan hanging from every other building for decades.)

Crocodiles are a prominent feature of Russian and Soviet poetry. I think even Pushkin wrote something. As well as animation films (Крокодил Гена).

So, it is not surprising that Russians do generate jokes about crocodiles. This one is simply an abuse of the verb conjugation patterns. Step 1: we pretend that krokodil is a past form of a verb " krokodit' " (non-existent). Step 2. Conjugate and rhyme. Step 3. make a music video. 4. ??????? 5.PROFIT!!

[YOUTUBE]oXFtMG43Lpo[/YOUTUBE]