Not Another No Good Blog

TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE (40th Anniversary Tribute)

Released theatrically on August 8, 1986

The air shifts the moment the heavy coat slides from her shoulders. Wool and faint perfume give way to the warmer scent of her skin — clean, slightly sweet, edged with something darker and more intimate. Fabric whispers as the blazer leaves her arms. The soft rasp of the tie loosening. Buttons giving way one by one. Cool air kisses the newly exposed line of her collarbone, the curve of her waist, the smooth heat of her thighs as the trousers pool at her feet.

Hair tumbles free, carrying the light fragrance of her shampoo mixed with the warmer smell of her body. Lace settles against bare skin with a delicate scrape of texture. When she turns, the soft curves of her ass under the thin black fabric is unmistakable, inviting the imagined press of a palm, the slow drag of fingertips. She faces you again, hands resting lightly on her hips, the faintest taste of possibility hanging between you — salt, heat, the quiet promise of skin on skin.

Harry S. Truman (1884-1972) unexpectedly ascended to the presidency on April 12, 1945, following the sudden death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Having served as vice president for just 82 days, Truman was thrust into the role of Commander-in-Chief with little preparation, famously remarking to reporters that the stars and all the planets had fallen on him. He immediately inherited the monumental task of concluding the war in Europe and managing an ongoing conflict in the Pacific. Within months of taking office, Truman was faced with the ultimate wartime choice: authorizing the deployment of the newly developed atomic bomb. To force an unconditional surrender and avoid a costly amphibious invasion of the Japanese mainland, he approved the atomic bombings of Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. These devastating strikes, coupled with the Soviet entry into the war, compelled Japan to surrender on August 14, bringing a decisive end to World War II.

With the dawn of the atomic age and the rapid fracturing of the wartime alliance with the Soviet Union, Truman assumed a foundational role in shaping the early Cold War global order. He established the bedrock of American foreign policy with the Truman Doctrine in 1947, pledging military and economic support to democratic nations resisting authoritarian containment. To fortify a devastated Western Europe against communist influence, his administration engineered the Marshall Plan, channeling over $13 billion in economic reconstruction aid. When the Soviets blockaded West Berlin in 1948, Truman demonstrated unwavering resolve by launching the historic Berlin Airlift, successfully supplying the besieged city by air for nearly a year without triggering an armed conflict.

Truman's leadership fundamentally restructured both international defense networks and the domestic American security apparatus to counter Soviet aggression. In 1949, he spearheaded the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), marking the first peacetime military alliance in United States history. Domestically, his enactment of the National Security Act of 1947 radically modernized the U.S. government by uniting the armed forces under the Department of Defense, while simultaneously establishing the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Council (NSC). Through these lasting geopolitical frameworks, Truman successfully consolidated Western democratic defenses and established the institutional blueprint that guided American foreign policy for the next half-century.

You May Kiss the Bride 💔

1956. A small California town.

Helen Vance and Margaret Ellison have loved each other in secret since they were teenagers. What began as childhood closeness slowly became something neither of them could name out loud. Stolen afternoons, late-night drives, and careful silences filled the years between them. Helen learned to love in fragments. Margaret kept believing there might still be a way to keep both her family’s approval and the only person who had ever truly seen her.

There wasn’t.

On the night of Margaret’s wedding to a man her father chose, Helen — serving as maid of honor — pulls her into the shadows behind the stone church wall. Away from the string lights, the guests, and the waiting car, they finally stop pretending.

The kiss is desperate and restrained at once. Tears slip free without either of them fully crying. Hands hold on too tightly. Between broken breaths, the words they have never spoken are finally said — quiet, almost lost under the distant music:

“I love you.”

“I love you, too."

It is the first time, and the last.

When they step back into the light, the moment is already gone. Margaret returns to the life waiting for her. Helen remains in the dark, carrying the only honest thing either of them was ever allowed to give.

Marilyn Monroe’s final professional photoshoot was taken by photographer George Barris between June and July 1962, primarily around Los Angeles, with the key beach sessions on Santa Monica Beach.

The work spanned roughly six weeks beginning around her birthday on June 1, 1962. It included indoor sessions (at a borrowed midcentury home in the Hollywood Hills/North Hollywood area owned by real-estate figure Tim Leimert, since her own Brentwood house was not yet fully furnished) and outdoor work. Trusted stylists such as hairdresser Agnes Flanagan and makeup artist Whitey Snyder were involved for some of the more formal shots.

The Santa Monica Beach sessions—often dated specifically to July 13, 1962, for the final day—are the best-known and produced the very last images. Monroe appears relaxed, playful, and largely unstyled: minimal or no makeup (freckles and a gallbladder-surgery scar from the previous year are visible in some frames), wind-tousled hair, and casual clothing. She wore a bikini, a bulky hand-knitted Cowichan-style cardigan from her own wardrobe, a green towel, and similar relaxed pieces. She ran and almost danced with the waves, posed in the sand and seaweed, sipped champagne, and showed a carefree, luminous energy that contrasts with the tragic circumstances that followed. Natural lighting and a candid, unguarded approach defined the look; Barris later recalled her saying of certain frames that they showed “the real me, freckles and all.”

As the afternoon light faded and it grew cold on the nearly deserted beach, she asked if they were finished. Barris had one frame of color film left and asked for a final shot. She leaned forward, clasped her hands, and blew a kiss toward the camera, saying words to the effect of “This is just for you, George” (or “for you and the rest of the world”).

That became the last photograph he ever took of her.

Cosmopolitan ultimately did not run the photos after her death. Some appeared relatively soon in the British press (including the Daily Mirror and the magazine Town). Barris, deeply affected, delayed broader publication for years and spent time living in Paris. The images later featured in books, including a 1986 collaboration with Gloria Steinem (Marilyn) and Barris’s own Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words (first published 1995), which pairs many of the photos (over 150 total from the sessions, black-and-white and color, some previously unpublished) with her interview material. Prints and related material have been auctioned (notably a 2017 Paddle8 sale) and exhibited; the National Portrait Gallery in London included several in its 2026 Marilyn Monroe centenary show.

These beach portraits stand out for their intimacy and vitality. Unlike more glamorous or highly produced sessions (including Bert Stern’s concurrent “Last Sitting” for Vogue at the Hotel Bel-Air in June 1962, a separate studio assignment), Barris’s work captures a playful, natural Marilyn at the ocean—settings that also echoed earlier moments in her life, from childhood photos with her mother to 1940s beach shoots.

There are always two of her.

The one they put on the screen — the lights, the glamour, the star they think they know.

And the quieter one. The one who stays after the cameras stop. The one who dreams.

She’s the real one. The one she holds on to.