Verbatim

United States House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan has ruled himself out as a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. "Let me be clear: I do not want, nor will I accept the nomination for our party," Ryan said in remarks from the Republican National Committee's headquarters in Washington.

This sounds clear cut to me. The speculation surrounding Ryan should now end. Perhaps it wasn't just coincidence that Ryan's statement used almost the same words that former President Lyndon Johnson used in a televised speech in March 1968 that he would not be seeking another term. This video shows the announcement.

Vulgar man

HBO have just released a trailer for the upcoming telemovie, All the Way, starring Bryan Cranston as former US President, Lyndon Johnson. If this is anything to go by, they've done a better job of casting Johnson than was the case in 2013's The Butler. John Cusack is a good actor, but I think he was miscast as Lyndon Johnson in that film.

Requiem for the masses

Back in the day my brother and I used to read computer and video game magazines. We couldn't afford a computer, and so had to be content with a Nintendo Entertainment System, and eventually its successor, the Super Nintendo Entertainment System.

As well as keeping abreast of what was happening in the industry at the time, looking at the advertisements for new and upcoming games was part of the fun of reading these magazines, even if we never got to play most of them. This is an advertisement for 'Nam 1965-1975, which was published in 1991 by Domark for the Amiga, Atari ST, PC, and Apple Macintosh computers. Coming in the wake of movies such as Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, and the television series Tour of Duty, to name but a couple of notable examples of popular culture depictions of the Vietnam War, it was one of those point and click strategy games. The screenshots show a menu screen, some maps of Vietnam, and a picture of what appears to be former US President Lyndon B. Johnson (1963-1969) being briefed by a couple of his advisors.

Strangely, this game is not even listed on Domark's Wikipedia page, which explains that in 1995 the company was absorbed into Eidos, best known for creating Tomb Raider. By now the reader of this blog is probably asking why this advertisement stands out. I'm glad you asked. At the time, we found it very amusing that the grunt depicted here bears an almost uncanny resemblance to Australian actor Michael Veitch, who at the time was appearing in the sketch comedy series Fast Forward.  Look him up using your preferred search engine and judge for yourself if I'm right.