Wednesday, May 12, 2010

A Short Trip In The Wayback Machine..........

" Hey You, You hurt anybody else, when this is over I'm going to find what you love most and I'm gonna kill it. Your Mother, your Father, your dog. It don't matter what it is, It's dead"

Lt. Mike Torello

Crime Story


Not much has been going on around here worthy of blogging about. This weekend's road trip is about the only thing of note.

I am not one of those folks that will tell you that I don't watch television. I do and enjoy what I watch for the most part. I picked up the habit when I was working shift work. It was a method to unwind and decompress before hitting the bed. Not to mention I had also just made Lieutenant so I was busy learning about responsibility and just how much fun THAT could be. (grin) Today I must say however that I am happy that I have Satellite reception so that I am not limited to the normal network channels since I think that they don't have very much to offer that I want to watch with a few rare exceptions. That wasn't the case back in the mid 80's when N.B.C. was showing programs like Miami Vice, Friday Night Videos, Cheers, Night Court, and my personal favorite Crime Story.

For those of you who never saw it, or don't remember it, Crime Story was a Michael Mann creation, the same fellow who came up with Miami Vice as well as the movie Heat. One of the stars of the program was Dennis Farina who played Lt. Mike Terello commander of the M.C.U. (Major Crime Unit) for the Chicago Police Department. The program was set in the early 1960's and with it's sets, costuming and music it was as close to that time period as it could get. Farina was a perfect fit for the role of Terello, Farina was a retired C.P.D. detective and it showed in the way he carried himself. He carried a cocked and locked 1911-A1 (no doubt some kind of 9mm in reality, since you can't get a 45 to function with blank ammunition) He even had a bunch of rubber bands around the grip safety to hold it in and to help keep the weapon from moving around when it's tucked into your belt in the "Mexican carry" I knew some detectives in the real world that had done the very same thing in the old days. Crime Story had enough of those real touches to allowed me to suspend belief long enough to enjoy the program.

So, if you are bored, with nothing to do and can find it, check it out. It's a quick trip back to a time when Rock and Roll was king and good guys wore black......

1 comment:

Geodkyt said...

Oh, contrair, my friend.

You CAN blank adapt a 1911. You have to bugger up teh locking lugs so it's a straight blowback, add a barrel restrictor, and open the ejection port WAAAAAY up. (Cripmed blanks, like shotgun shells are actually longer after firing than before -- and generally speaking, most semiauto pistol caliber blanks are profiled like a loaded live round for feed reliability. So a fired .45ACP blank is generally longer than a loaded ball round would be, and ittends to get hung up on ejection.)

Basically, the whole top end of the gun becomes "blank only". Which is why Hollywood tends to use 9x19mm versions when representing a .45 ACP -- you really can't tell on screen, and the standard ejection port is big enough for the length of the fired 9x19mm blank.

Last time I got a quote for blank adapting a 1911 (from a blank manufacturer), it was $120, and I had to provide a slide, but he made his own 1911 barrels for blank adapting. (Since they aren't locking up, and aren't launching a projo, he doesn't need to take the care he would need in making a love fire barrel.)