December 01, 2024

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A Hug to Stop a Bank Robber

" Hmm," MICHAEL ARMUS muttered to himself. He'd just set foot into the Bank of the West in Woodland, California, and felt the tension. "Something's not right." It was a little before 11 on a sunny May morning in 2023, and the 69-year-old retired auto-body painter was there to deposit a check. Normally, whenever Armus visited, he'd be greeted with loud salvos of "Hi, Mr. Armus!" from the tellers, with whom he loved to banter and share his admittedly corny jokesBut today, none of the tellers acknowledged him. Nor did the bank's manager, who sat at his desk with his head down and seemed to be whisper- ing into his telephone. As Armus approached the teller windows, he noticed the three employees had similar worried looks on their faces. He heard one teller whisper to another, "He's got a note." Armus looked to his left and noticed a man at another window with his striped T-shirt pulled up to partially conceal his face. This is a robbery, thought ArmusHe heard the man say, "I don't want to hurt anybody." Minutes earlier, the man had passed a note to the teller demanding cash and saying he had a gun. Armus looked again and the man's shirt had dropped a bit, exposing more of his face.

THE FIRST PHOTOBOMBER ...

PhotobombingwIn case you haven't noticed, people havebeen taking a lot more pictures since theinvention of the smartphone. As a resultcountless individuals go out of their wato make chance encounters as memo -rable as possible—for themselves. Theword 'photobombing, me ' aning poppingup in a photo uninvited, first appeareonline in 2008 and was enshrined in theMerriam-Webster Dictionary in 2015. The oldest known example of this oddbehaviour took place in the early 1850swhen a woman named Sally sat along-side a Mrs. Reed for a photographic p - ortrait by Mary Dillwyn. We know thesdetails because they were written on thepicture, which we still have in theNational Library of Wales. The ladies ardressed fashionably: high collars, dardresses, and shawls and bonnets thalook as if they once belonged to Whis -tler's mother. What we don't know iswhy the smug young girl with the grinning face in the top-left corner peerinaround a screen decided to upstagtheir portrait.Reboots wStop us if this sounds familiar: “Ho -llywood frequently digs up old plotsremaking successful movies of the past ... and inevitably watering them down. This sterile rehashing and stealing of stories ... is significant." If you think that comes from an angry critic reviewing the latest iteration of Planet of the Apes, think again. Social critic Trent Hutter wrote the complaint in the 1950sReboots and remakes are nothing new. If your oldest relatives told you their favourite movie was The Wizard of Oz, you'd probably think they were talking about the 1939 classic starring Judy Garland. But if they corrected you by saying, "No, the silent movie!" then they were probably talking about The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, released in 1910. This forgotten relic is not only the oldest known motion picture based on L. Frank Baum's Oz books, which had just been published a few years earlier, it was the first film in an entire seriesQuite a few other classic movies were based on older films. Alfred Hitchcock even remade one of his own films, the 1934 thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much. His 1956 version kept the name but was filmed in colour and had a whole new script that included songs for its female lead, Doris DayThese originals and their remakes were all considered great successes. But not everyone is a fan of reimagining