what was, and what will be

So the news comes at the end of my day, the great news, that my friend, my long time pal, is soon to be a father! I have no advice for the man, I can't speak with any authority on the subject, but I can say congratulations Mike, you the man! And now soon, you'll be the dad! I could make jokes about "they said you didn't have it in you" or "finally there'll be someone in your house with a smaller bladder than you!" but nah, those would be in bad taste!

Glory goes to God

Okay first, I feel a little weird writing about this, but I wanted to say something.
At work today  I learned about the death of one of my customers. Not that long ago, a month at most, we'd heard about another customer of ours had "dropped dead" sad, untimely, yes, but the man was a smoker, older, and well, his lifestyle didn't exactly advertise long life.
But today, I learned about Glory, she was almost always "my customer" she came in with pictures of her kids, needing copies, and I made the copies, and chatted with her. She was alway friendly, always had a smile, even though as I learned later, she had cancer.
This morning I heard Glory had died on November first, ovarian cancer.  She leaves behind a husband, and three little girls.  My heart goes out to them, and her entire family.  I hope there's someone around someday to tell those girls about their mom, tell them she was a bright spirit who was extremely proud of them, because in the brief time I got to know Glory, that's exactly the feeling I got.  I hope they grow up knowing their mom loved them, and she didn't want to leave, but in the end...Glory goes to God.

Star Wars Cinematographer

I had a thought the other day, I couldn't think of the name of the director of photography for Star Wars. Since I've seen the movie many times, I thought this was a little odd, and I've seen the documentaries, and know the names of obscure people related to the production, so I did some research...

Something I didn't know, until today, about Star Wars...
Gilbert Taylor was the Director of Photography.
He was also the "D.P." of these movies...

-Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

-A Hard Day's Night

-Repulsion (Dir. Roman Polanski)

-Frenzy (Dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-The Omen

-(Star Wars)

-Damien:Omen II

-Dracula (1979)

-Flash Gordon (1980)

As far as I know he's never been interviewed, or even mentioned in the many Star Wars documentaries
This...was available on Amazon.com...
"George Lucas's original choice for cinematographer was Geoffrey Unsworth, but Geoffrey Unsworth was committed to Bridge Too Far, A (1977). Gilbert Taylor (I) was hired instead, but hated working on the project. Producer Gary Kurtz became concerned that Gilbert Taylor (I) was slowing production down and attempted to replace Gilbert Taylor (I) with Harry Waxman, but the camera crew made it clear they would not work under Harry Waxman, and George Lucas told Gary Kurtz that replacing Gilbert Taylor (I) would probably delay the film even further."

Other trivia...
-The original teaser was narrated by Orson Welles, who was the original choice to do the voice of Darth Vader.
Sure that really doesn't have anything to do with the above, just threw that in because I like Welles!