Elevators

I have a History Meetup group that screens DVDs of historic movies on the third Wednesday of every month. (Next month we're showing Gandhi!) We show them in Debi's apartment building near the Distillery, where she books the recreation room.  That room is on the second floor, but the only way I know to get there from the main floor is by the elevator.  It makes me feel guilty to take an elevator up just one floor!

I remember visiting the Washington Monument when I was little.  In the elevator on the way up, there was a recorded voice that kept repeating the quote, "First in war, first in peace, first in the hearts of his countrymen."

I recall that in Venezuela back in the 1970s, to reduce unemployment, the government passed a law that every elevator had to have an operator even when it didn't need one!

Mad magazine has done some funny movie parodies.  In The Towering Inferno some people are trapped at the top of a burning skyscraper, so firefighter Steve McQueen tries putting the women and children in an emergency elevator, but it runs into trouble.  In the Mad version Charlton Heston comes along in his Airport 1975 costume and says, "I'm looking for a crippled Boeing 707 that's off course!" McQueen: "Really, I'm looking for a crippled elevator that's off course." Heston: "Wow!  And I thought our plot was farfetched!"