Blue Crab Boulevard

The Bell & Howell 2709 camera that recorded that very famous sequence along with a number of other Charlie Chaplin classic films is to be sold at auction in Britain.

The camera that Charlie Chaplin shot many of his classic silent films with is expected to provoke feverish bidding when it appears at auction in London for the first time.

The Bell & Howell 2709 camera was used by Chaplin on a number of his masterpieces, including The Kid (1921) and The Gold Rush (1925). He bought the camera in 1918 for his newly established Chaplin Studios, in Hollywood, and it was first used on Shoulder Arms. It is covered in marks and nicks that bear witness to its history.

On the night of May 10th, 1775, a small group of armed men quietly approached a sleeping Fort Ticonderoga located on the Western shore of Lake Champlain just North of Lake George. When they reached the fort, they found an unlocked gate, sneaked inside and captured the fort, the entire garrison of 22 British soldiers and the all-important cannon that the fort held. The 83 Green Mountain boys who captured the fort were led by Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold. Allen later claimed to have demanded the surrender of the fort with the phrase that titles this post. That is a matter of some dispute by historians, however. What is not in dispute is that the capture of this strategic fort and its cannon had a major impact on the early stages of the American Revolutionary War. The cannon from Ticonderoga (as well as from the nearby fort at Crown Point) were later moved to Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston Harbor and caused the British fleet there to sail away in 1776.

I've been to Ticonderoga, which is now a historical site. A highly recommended day trip if you ever get the chance to visit. It has been completely restored and there are costumed interpreters who enact Colonial era history that you can experience.

If you, as a person, want to give yourself a black eye, it's fairly easy. Punch yourself in the eye or run - eye first - into a door. If you're a multinational corporation, it's even easier! Hire a lawyer! Then have the lawyer sue a tiny pub in Britain for using two words to advertise its Christmas dinner special. Yep, KFC hired a lawyer to go after a tiny, little pub for using the words "Family Feast" to describe a special they run for Christmas dinner.

The highest pub in England has come out on top in a David-and-Goliath battle with Kentucky Fried Chicken over the right to call one of their meals a "family feast".

Every Christmas, the remote Tan Hill Inn in the Yorkshire Dales serves a traditional meal of turkey with all the trimmings for £40 a head.

However, American fast food giant KFC threatened legal action against the quirky local for trademark infringement of the chain's own "Family Feast" - a mass-produced carton of 10 chicken pieces, chips, coleslaw, potato with gravy, and 1.25 litre soft drink.

When pub landlady Tracy Daly, 42, received a letter from Freshfields law firm on London, on behalf of KFC, she initially thought it was a late April Fool's joke. Even the solicitor's name, Giles Pratt, sounded suspicious, she said.

But she called him, and heard it was serious. "The solicitor told me I shouldn't take it personally, but I don't feel anything - it's just hilarious," she told The Times newspaper.

My goodness, the Colonel would be so very, very pleased with the decision to try to enforce a trademark on two very, very common words in the English language against such an insignificant victim. Absolutely brilliant corporate maneuver, KFC. You've just made yourselves look completely and utterly foolish and probably done more damage to your precious trademark all by yourself than that tiny little pub could have ever done. From now on, people will giggle when they see family feast and remember family farce.

UPDATE: Sorry, I left this out. Here's the menu for the Tan Hill Inn's Family Feast:

…..soup or Guinness and Stilton pate, followed by roast turkey with Yorkshire puddings, cranberry sauce and vegetables. Punters can choose between Christmas pudding and Strawberry Gateaux for dessert, with coffee or cheese and biscuits to finish.

As opposed to:

….a mass-produced carton of 10 chicken pieces, chips, coleslaw, potato with gravy, and 1.25 litre soft drink.

Hmmm. Which sounds more appetizing? We begin to see the problem……

Oh, just great. As if we here at Blue Crab Boulevard don't have enough to do attempting to chronicle the Animal Uprising™. One thankless task that has brought numerous restraining orders and all those visits from the nice man from the health department isn't enough. Oh, no. Now we're going to have to start covering the devious schemes of the machines, too. Life is just not fair. But we feel it is our duty to tell everyone that what started out as a prank has taken an ugly turn.

Yes, we regret to inform you that your satellite navigation system is trying to kill you.

A Motorist leapt clear of her car with moments to spare after a satellite-navigation system led her into the path of a speeding train.

Paula Ceely watched in horror as the locomotive ploughed into her Renault Clio at over 60mph, then shunted the car half a mile down the track.

Recalling her lucky escape yesterday, the 20-year-old vowed never to rely on satnav instructions again.

Miss Ceely, from Redditch, Worcestershire, was on her way to see boyfriend Tom Finucane, who lives 150 miles away in the village of Hebron, Carmarthenshire, when the drama happened.

Having never been to his house before, she borrowed Mr Finucane's satnav device to direct her there.

She was only a few miles from her destination when she was directed into a country lane as night fell.

She said: 'I thought "The satnav knows where it's going" so I just followed the directions it was giving me. I drove up to a large metal gate but the satnav insisted it was the correct way so I opened it and drove through.'

When she left the car to close the gate she heard the sound of a train's horn and looked down to see she was standing on a railway track.

Sure, it started with sending German pensioners off into sand piles. Then it was sending drivers into public toilets - car and all. Pretty funny. But it has now turned lethal. The machines are trying to kill you! Skynet is here now! And we're pretty sure our computer is watching us. Remember our warning - act before it's too late and they cut off all Communicashun comuniiiictrat communication…..Whueuro nn bltzflk didstmnne 334h9mm &&&839a jj……………………..

A West Virginia convenience store was the scene of what will very likely be one of the top ten Criminal Mastermind stories of all time. A would be holdup man entered the store with a pair of women's panties on his head as a disguise. His weapon? A cigarette lighter shaped like a pistol.

The store clerk refused to cooperate with the Dillinger wanna-be. He ended up running away. 

INWOOD — What a cashier first thought of as a practical joke turned into no laughing matter for a Ranson man who was arrested Wednesday after using women’s underwear and a lighter shaped like a small gun in an attempt to rob a convenience store.

Steven Clay Stephenson, 34, of North Mildred Street, was arrested shortly after the attempted robbery when he was caught with another man after stealing a tire. Police found both the lighter, shaped like a small caliber pistol, and three lug nuts from the stolen tire when they searched him. He was charged with attempted armed robbery, driving under the influence, petit larceny and having improper registration.

“He entered the store wearing a pair of women’s pajama shorts over his face,” Sgt. T.C. Kearns of the West Virginia State Police said Wednesday. “I couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.”

At about 4 a.m. Wednesday, Trooper J.D. Schuessler went to the ROCS Shell gas station and convenience store at 4701 Gerrardstown Road in Inwood for an armed robbery complaint.

The cashier told Schuessler that a man

dressed in a black shirt and blue jeans came in with a pair of women’s underwear over his face.

“At first she (the cashier) thought it was a joke,” Kearns said.

Stephenson then pulled out what appeared to be handgun and demanded money.

“She was unsure if it was an actual gun or a cigarette lighter in the figure of a gun, which the store used to sell,” Schuessler wrote in the criminal complaint filed in Berkeley County Magistrate Court.

One wonders if the new Professor Moriarty actually bought the lighter at the same store. It's probably best that the genius only remembered the panty part of his disguise. As bright as he appears to be, had he worn pantyhose for the robbery, they would have been on his legs.

Hey, don't blame us for the headline of the post. Blame the Animal Uprising™ for attempting to slip a fawn disguised as a baby into a theater. The fawn, however, died.

TACOMA, Wash. - The police log entry said it all: "Deceased fawn was dressed up like an infant and abandoned at the Pantages" Theater. Why would anyone dress up a dead newborn deer, lay it in a basket and leave it outside an ornate downtown landmark?

"Your guess is as good as mine," said Tom Sayre, a spokesman of The Humane Society for Tacoma and Pierce County.

The outfit included an infant sleeper and a bib that read, "You think I'm cute? You should see my aunt," Sayre added.

The fawn had apparently been dead for a while. Now we here at Blue Crab Boulevard are blaming this on the evil animal overlords, but it may actually be human enablers:

EDWARDSVILLE, Ill. — For the past several weeks, drivers near Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville have been noticing odd things about some of the roadkill on the sides of the area’s highways.

Some of the dead possums and raccoons have been dressed in pet or human baby clothes and have had their claws painted with nail polish. The carcass of a deer has been adorned with gold paint.

The culprit is SIU-Edwardsville graduate art student Jessica May, 24, of West Lafayette, Ind.

In an interview with the Belleville News-Democrat, May said she is not an animal rights activist; she is just interested in seeing if people would give more thought to the animals if they were somehow given human attributes.

We're just guessing here, but the thoughts people are giving when they see Ms May's "art" probably are not for the animal. The thoughts are probably more for the "artist". And they probably aren't civil.

Well, less than 24 hours after the Palestinian government promised that the jihadi Mouse Club television program would be taken off the air, Hamas has announced that, no, it won't be. I was overly optimistic in even reporting what any of that bunch of congenital liars said.

RAMALLAH, West Bank –  A Hamas-run television channel has defied a Palestinian government request to axe a controversial children's cartoon in which a Mickey Mouse look-alike urges resistance against Israel.

A senior official working for Al Aqsa (Jerusalem) television in the Gaza Strip said that the program - "Tomorrow's Pioneers" - would air as normal this Friday in defiance of information minister Mustafa Barghouti.

"The program will continue and it will be broadcast tomorrow at 4.00 pm [1300 GMT]. Mustafa Barghouti misunderstood the issue," said the official on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the press.

Earlier, the information ministry in the West Bank city of Ramallah said: "A politically-oriented children's television program was withdrawn by the Al Aqsa TV station today following a request by the ministry of information."

Barghouti said that the program adopted a "mistaken approach" to the Palestinian struggle against Israeli occupation and that it was wrong to use children's programs to convey political messages.

In the program, the Mickey Mouse look-alike named Farfur and a little girl urge resistance against Israel and the United States - along with stressing the importance of daily prayers and drinking milk.

If the Palestinian government announced that the sun would rise in the East tomorrow, Hamas would issue a press release denying it within a day.

It's frankly a bit surprising that this op-ed by James Pinkerton was published in Newsday, that not exactly being known as a hotbed of conservative thought. It may be rather significant that it did get published there. Pinkerton points out the glaringly obvious here: the arrest of the six men plotting an attack on Fort Dix shows the real problem with illegal immigrants. You don't know who you have in the country or what their intentions are.

So three of the men arrested for plotting to massacre American soldiers in New Jersey were here illegally. Here's a dumb question: Why are there any people here in this country illegally?

It's possible to argue back and forth about the economic and social impact of illegal immigration into the United States. But surely there can be no argument about the undesirability of terrorism.

And, since we have just been reminded yet again that illegal aliens can be terrorists, we should ask a further question: Do we really have to wait for an A-bomb to go off in a U.S. city before we get curious as to who is in our midst?

Now, of course, some might say we should target only certain groups, such as Arabs and Muslims - the Fort Dix Six are all Muslim - for special surveillance. But that would be profiling, and we can't have that!

Moreover, as CBS News reported Tuesday, four of the six accused terrorists are from the former Yugoslavia, a European country. So here's a better idea: Let's simply recognize that the most dangerous elements in our society, by definition, are those who are illegal and unknown. Those unknown illegal immigrants might be honest and hard-working busboys. But they also could be mass murderers: The point is we don't know.

Pinkerton argues the same thing I have pointed out repeatedly since I started blogging. The first presidential candidate who promises better control of the borders has an opportunity to gather a lot of votes. Carrying through on those promises would be an almost certain lock on reelection. Despite the antics of the left and their pals, the pandering Congressional Democratic leadership, a solid majority of people in this country want the borders controlled. A lot of other things can be worked out later if that border is first secured. First party candidate to grasp that has a real chance at winning.

The Boston Pop(you one in the mouth)s! Two men decided the balcony of the Boston Symphony Hall, where the Boston Pops was playing the first concert of the year, would be a great place to have a fist fight. So, right in the middle of the concert, they did so.

BOSTON — Concert-goers, and even Boston Pops conductor Keith Lockhart, were caught off-guard on Wednesday night when a fight broke out on opening night at usually sedate Symphony Hall.

Television video of the fight showed two men struggling in the balcony — one having his shirt pulled off — as several people stood around them.

Lockhart briefly halted the performance, which featured Ben Folds, while the men were escorted out.

Witnesses said they heard a scream from the balcony, and the sound of chairs falling, then a second scream as the fight escalated.

Apparently someone was upset that the orchestra had no intention of playing In a Godda Da Vida. Or Free Bird. The men were ejected, no charges were filed.

Boston, home of the first full-contact pops concert. Call the folks at Guinness.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair will tender his resignation to the Queen on June 27th. He announced his decision today, ending months of speculation and backroom maneuvering.

Tony Blair today announced he was stepping down after 10 years as prime minister and 13 as Labour leader.

The prime minister told a crowd of supporters at Trimdon Labour club he would stand down as PM on June 27. He will tender his resignation to the Queen on that day.

In an emotional 17-minute speech, he said the judgment on his 10-year administration was "for you, the people, to make". Mr Blair paid special tribute to his wife and children "who never let me forget my failings".

But he concluded: "Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right. I may have been wrong - that's your call. But I did what I thought was right for our country.

"This country is a blessed country. The British are special. The world knows it, we know it, this is the greatest country on earth."

He dealt directly with Iraq, many people's perception as his ultimate legacy, saying: "The blowback since … has been fierce, unrelenting and costly."

But he insisted: "The terrorists will never give up if we give up."

Tony Blair has been a strong ally in the war on terror. He's also been hounded mercilessly by the British left, much as the Bush administration has. After the Labor party's showing in the elections in Scotland, it is not at all clear whether the next PM will be from that party at this point.