Frame 237 to Room 237, from The Shining to Westworld

Frame 237. November 22, 1963.

Besides the 35th President of the USA John F. Kennedy, two other notables died on November 22, 1963: Aldous Huxley, English novelist and philosopher (b. 1894) and C. S. Lewis, Irish-English author, poet, and critic (b. 1898).

On Nov. 21, 1963, film critics were planning to catch a special preview of Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove the next day. But when the news came from Dallas on Nov. 22, those plans changed.

"NEVER HELD ... THE DAY KENNEDY WAS SHOT," one guest scribbled on an invitation that resurfaced Friday on Reddit and other social media (see below), with many identifying the handwriting as Kubrick's own. Los Angeles Times, November 22, 2013. 

A photograph from a JFK meeting at NASA, allegedly in 1961, is attended by individuals who seem reflected in characters appearing in Stanley Kubrick's 1964 Dr. Strangelove.

One of the subtle but significant characters in The Shining (1980) is Stuart Ullman. Ullmann is a German surname also associated with Jewish Europeans. It means "man from Ulm." 

Ulm is a city in the federal German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the River Danube. The Battle of Ulm on October 16-19,1805 was a series of skirmishes, at the end of the Ulm Campaign, which allowed Napoleon I to trap an entire Austrian army under the command of Karl Freiherr Mack von Leiberich with minimal losses and to force its surrender near Ulm in the Electorate of Bavaria.

Most people who identified as Jewish were wiped out in Ulm during World War II.

In The Shining, Barry Nelson wore a toupee which made him look like JFK at a desk with the U.S. flag. Nelson was the first actor to play James Bond, in Casino Royale in 1954 on television, eight years before Sean Connery got the nod for the Bond movie role in Dr. No. His last major film character was as Stuart Ullman in 1980, in The Shining. His last movie appearance (uncredited) was as an "actor on television" in the 1982's Poltergeist. Barry Nelson died on April 7, 2007, while traveling in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, nine days before his 90th birthday. The cause of his death was unknown.

Bucks County, Pennsylvania, is a historically strange location - known for "ringing rocks" and Thunderbird sightings. The following films are linked to Bucks County: M. Night Shyamalan's 2002 film Signs was entirely set and shot there; Stephen King's The Stand has one scene set there; all of The Last Broadcast (except the NJ footage) was shot in Bucks County; and one of Steven Spielberg's earliest films, Something Evil, is set in Bucks County.

Scatman Crothers played Dick Hallorann in Stanley Kubrick's The Shining (1980). Here he is killed by Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson). In the real world, Crothers died on November 22, 1986, on the 23rd anniversary of President John "Jack" Kennedy's assassination.

Stephen King's home state telephone area code is 207. Area code 217 is central Illinois.

JFK's Apollo takeoff for the moon makes an appearance in The Shining.

Stephen King's book versus Stanley Kubrick's film.

The Maze from HBO's 2016 Westworld first appears, most clearly, via a skullcap.

Noted by Alex Fulton: from Westworld, "Anomaly Detected" at 23:07.

Oli Dunlop writes, "It emphasis the characters internal conflict, a choice - 93 (confirm) 42 (cancel) - two different paths."

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Campaign 2016 memes with The Shining themes make the rounds.

Folkore, fake news, or fakelore? The Cruz family is alleged to be involved with Lee Harvey Oswald without any firm evidence, apparently by Trump campaign operatives.

In The Shining, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) becomes winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado, hoping to cure his writer's block. He settles in along with his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and his son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), who is plagued by psychic premonitions.

In real life, it has been nearly 15 years since the 67-year-old actress Shelley Duvall has starred in a film. She struggles with mental illness. November 2016 articles note that Stanley Kubrick’s daughter, Vivian Kubrick, has started a GoFundMe campaign to help out The Shining actress Shelley Duvall.

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Orion: From Spacecraft to the Son of Poseidon

Orion? Sirius? Poseidon? Helios? Scorpio? Apollo? Why is the simple name of a spacecraft more than meets the eye?

Like in the Philae name game, the twilight language of the Orion spacecraft is linked to a deeper meaning than is obvious from your cable news highlights.

The Delta rocket that launched Orion appeared to be a fiery trident to correspondent RPJ.

The Orion spacecraft was launched on the morning of December 5, 2014, from Cape Canaveral in Florida and finished its first test flight by falling safely into the Pacific Ocean, supported by a trio of parachutes. It was picked up by Navy personnel in a Zodiac (of course).

The details are easy to find in the mainstream media. The Orion blasted off at 7:05 a.m. EST, circled the globe twice, reached 3,600 miles above Earth, then landed in the sea off Baja California. The flight lasted about 4.5 hours, and served as a test of a spacecraft, similar to a large-sized Apollo capsule, which will take humans to asteroids and Mars.

But what is the name game behind the moniker Orion?

Orion (Ancient Greek: Ὠρίων or Ὠαρίων, Latin: Orion) was a giant hunter in Greek mythology whom Zeus placed among the stars as the constellation of Orion.

In the works of Homer and Hesiod we have linkages of some interest in this quest.

Orion is mentioned in the oldest surviving works of Greek literature, which probably date back to the 7th or 8th century BC, but which are the products of an oral tradition with origins several centuries earlier. In Homer's Iliad Orion is described as a constellation, and the star Sirius is mentioned as his dog. In the Odyssey, Odysseus sees him hunting in the underworld with a bronze club, a great slayer of animals; he is also mentioned as a constellation, as the lover of the Goddess Dawn, as slain by Artemis, and as the most handsome of the earthborn. In the Works and Days of Hesiod, Orion is also a constellation, one whose rising and setting with the sun is used to reckon the year.

The legend of Orion was first told in full in a lost work by Hesiod, probably the Astronomia; simple references to Hesiod will refer to this, unless otherwise stated. This version is known through the work of a Hellenistic author on the constellations; he gives a fairly long summary of Hesiod's discourse on Orion. According to this version, Orion was likely the son of the sea-god Poseidon and Euryale, daughter of Minos, King of Crete. Orion could walk on the waves because of his father; he walked to the island of Chios where he got drunk and attacked Merope, daughter of Oenopion, the ruler there. In vengeance, Oenopion blinded Orion and drove him away. Orion stumbled to Lemnos where Hephaestus — the lame smith-god — had his forge. Hephaestus told his servant, Cedalion, to guide Orion to the uttermost East where Helios, the Sun, healed him; Orion carried Cedalion around on his shoulders. Orion returned to Chios to punish Oenopion, but the king hid away underground and escaped Orion's wrath. Orion's next journey took him to Crete where he hunted with the goddess Artemis and her mother Leto, and in the course of the hunt, threatened to kill every beast on Earth. Mother Earth objected and sent a giant scorpion to kill Orion. The creature succeeded, and after his death, the goddesses asked Zeus to place Orion among the constellations. Zeus consented and, as a memorial to the hero's death, added the Scorpion [as Scorpio] to the heavens as well. Source.

Sirius, the star of Isis, takes us full circle to other connections. Isis was the primary goddess of the isles of Philae. NASA is not unaware of the names they are bestowing on their craft.

The youthful Walter O'Brien (played by Daniel Zolghadri) on CBS's hit series Scorpion is wearing a sweater that mirrors, in a fashion, the Apollo 11 USA sweater being worn by Danny in The Shining. (For more, see here.)

Cory Panshin reminds us: "So Orion was 'the lover of the Goddess Dawn' -- which would be Aurora, of course."

In the official feed to the news media, at splashdown, NASA launch commentator Mike Curie is heard to say, in his (seemingly scripted) enthusiasm that this moment was "the dawn of Orion in a new era of American space exploration!"

So many syncs, of late, seem to be foreshadowing events, as well as reflecting them.

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