Annals of “law”. (#1 in a series)

April 23rd, 2024

Murray Sawchuck went on “trial” a week ago Wednesday.

I put “trial” in quotes because there was no actual court of competent authority involved. The trial was at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, and the judges were members of the Magic Castle board.

Murray Sawchuck is also known as “Murray the Magician”. He had a gig at the Tropicana until it closed earlier this month, and he’s been on various TV shows.

He also has a YouTube channel. And that’s the problem.

The troubles began in late January, when he and his showgirl wife, Dani, cooked up a new video, inspired by the bickering of Lucy and Desi Arnaz, in which he’d perform a series of tricks for the camera — mostly basic illusions one could purchase off of Amazon. She, playing the role of unimpressed wife, reveals how they’re done.
A bouquet of flowers, for example, is shown to be sucked into the base of the trick table on which it stands. A sword-swallowing act is rendered all the less impressive when she flicks the blade — and it coils up like a measuring tape. The whole thing took 10 minutes to make. Then they posted it to YouTube.

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But it did make a lot of people in the magic community upset. This, in turn, led to the “hearing”, for want of a better word.

Summarizing Mr. Sawchuck’s arguments, from the article: “teaching magic” is “exposing magic”, “exposing magic” isn’t as black and white as magicians would have it, exposing magic “forces magicians to be more entertaining and charismatic”, and there’s a long tradition of “exposing magic” (including Houdini and Penn and Teller).

Anybody remember “Breaking the Magician’s Code: Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed” with the “Masked Magician”? I always thought that was a hoot. And I don’t see where the “Masked Magician” was ever “prosecuted” by the Magic Castle (though Wikipedia says he was sued by some people whose illusions he spoiled).

Obligatory:

I have not seen any follow-up on this, and I have no idea how long it takes for the Magic Castle to rule. If I do see an update, I’ll let y’all know.

Posted in Magic | No Comments »

Obit watch: April 23, 2024.

April 23rd, 2024

Playing catch-up from the past few days:

Terry Anderson, journalist who was kidnapped and held for six years by Shia Hezbollah militants of the Islamic Jihad Organization in Lebanon.

While he had not been tortured during his captivity, he said, he was beaten and chained. He spent a year or so, on and off, in solitary confinement, he said.
“There is nothing to hold on to, no way to anchor my mind,” he said after the ordeal. “I try praying, every day, sometimes for hours. But there’s nothing there, just a blankness. I’m talking to myself, not God.”
He found some consolation in the Bible, though, and added: “The only real defense was to remember that no one could take away my self-respect and dignity — only I could do that.”

Roman Gabriel, quarterback for the Rams and Eagles.

He was voted the N.F.L.’s Most Valuable Player when he led the league in touchdown passes, with 24, in a 14-game season with the 1969 Rams.
He was also named the comeback player of the year by pro football writers in 1973, his first season with the Eagles. Coming off knee problems and a sore arm, he led the N.F.L. in touchdown passes (23), completions (270) and passing yardage (3,219) that season.
He played in four Pro Bowl games, three with the Rams in the late 1960s and another with the Eagles in 1973. But he reached the postseason only twice, and his Rams were eliminated in the first round both times.

Terry Carter, actor. This is buried a bit in the article, but he was McCloud’s partner and played “Colonel Tigh” on the original “Battlestar Galactica”.

Other credits include “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “Search”…

…and “Mannix” (“Medal For a Hero”, season 3, episode 14).

And in a wayfaring six-decade career, he was a merchant seaman, a jazz pianist, a law student, a television news anchor, a familiar character on network sitcoms, an Emmy-winning documentarian, a good will ambassador to China, a longtime expatriate in Europe — and a reported dead man; in 2015, rumors that he had been killed were mistaken. It was not him but a much younger Terry Carter who had died in a hit-and-run accident in Los Angeles by a pickup truck driven by the rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.
Slightly misquoting Mark Twain, Mr. Carter posted on social media: “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Frederick Celani, serial con man. He conned people into thinking he was going to build a package delivery hub in Springfield (Illinois), conned inmates into giving him money to have their convictions overturned (he wasn’t a lawyer), and ran various real estate cons.

Fred Neulander. You may recall that name, as his trial was a brief sensation back in the 1990s.

The rabbi and his wife, Carol Neulander, 52, were well-known in the community through both the shul and Classic Cakes, the popular bakery Carol co-founded, CNN reported.
The mother of 3 had just returned from the bakery when she bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe in the couple’s Cherry Hill home on the evening of Nov. 1, 1994, the outlet said.

…

Neulander was indicted for the murder in 1999, but the case did not come together until the following year, when private investigator Len Jenoff told police that the rabbi paid him and another man, Paul Daniels, $30,000 to kill his wife.
At trial in 2001, prosecutors argued that the rabbi wanted to get rid of Carol to continue his two-year affair with Philadelphia radio host Elaine Soncini.
Soncini, who was Catholic, had even supposedly converted to Judaism to be with the rabbi, whom she met when he performed funeral rites for her late husband.

…

When the first trial ended in a hung jury, the 2002 retrial was moved from Camden County to Monmouth County to downplay the local scrutiny.
Following the retrial, Neulander was convicted of Carol’s murder. He narrowly avoided the death penalty and was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.
Soncini testified against Neulander at both trials, as did two of his three children.

Posted in 1970s, Law, Mannix, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: April 20, 2024.

April 20th, 2024

In haste: Death finally caught the Midnight Rider.

Dickey Betts. THR.

Daniel C. Dennett, author.

An outspoken atheist, he at times seemed to denigrate religion. “There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion,” he said in a 2013 interview with The New York Times.
According to Mr. Dennett, the human mind is no more than a brain operating as a series of algorithmic functions, akin to a computer. To believe otherwise is “profoundly naïve and anti-scientific,” he told The Times.
For Mr. Dennett, random chance played a greater role in decision-making than did motives, passions, reasoning, character or values. Free will is a fantasy, but a necessary one to gain people’s acceptance of rules that govern society, he said.
Mr. Dennett irked some scientists by asserting that natural selection alone determined evolution. He was especially disdainful of the eminent paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, whose ideas on other factors of evolution were summarily dismissed by Mr. Dennett as “goulding.”

Posted in Books, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Administrative note.

April 18th, 2024

This coming weekend is my birthday. I plan to be fairly busy for much of it: I’m taking Friday and Monday off work, and expect to be running around a lot (including some gun shopping) over the weekend. I also have some errands I want to run.

All of this is to say I have eaten the plums that were in the icebox posting is going to be catch as catch can probably through Tuesday of next week.

Posted in Admin | No Comments »

Firings watch.

April 17th, 2024

This kind of stretches the definition of “firing” just a little bit, but I claim noteworthiness.

Jontay Porter, forward for the Toronto Raptors, has been banned from the NBA for life.

The NBA said that Porter provided confidential information to bettors, limited his own participation in games for gambling purposes and bet on NBA games.
“There is nothing more important than protecting the integrity of NBA competition for our fans, our teams and everyone associated with our sport, which is why Jontay Porter’s blatant violations of our gaming rules are being met with the most severe punishment,” NBA commissioner Adam Silver said in a statement.
“While legal sports betting creates transparency that helps identify suspicious or abnormal activity, this matter also raises important issues about the sufficiency of the regulatory framework currently in place, including the types of bets offered on our games and players. Working closely with all relevant stakeholders across the industry, we will continue to work diligently to safeguard our league and game,” Silver said.

…

Porter, the league said, gave a bettor information about his own health status before Toronto’s game on March 20. The league said another individual, known to be an NBA bettor, placed an $80,000 bet that Porter would not hit the numbers set for him in parlays through an online sportsbook. That bet would have won $1.1 million.
Porter took himself out of that game after only a few minutes, claiming illness, with none of his stats meeting the totals set in the parlay. The bet was frozen and not paid out, and the NBA started an investigation.
The NBA’s investigation found the Porter placed at least 13 bets on NBA games using an associate’s account, with the bets ranging from $15 to $22,000, totaling $54,094. The NBA said the total payout from those bets was $76,059, a net winnings of $21,965. None of Porter’s bets involved games in which he played. Three of his bets were multigame parlays that included one Raptors contest — and Porter bet that the Raptors would lose. All three bets lost, the NBA said.

“List of people banned or suspended by the NBA” from Wikipedia.

As critical as I’ve been of Gregg Easterbrook’s “pro-topless, anti-gambling” trope, I find myself thinking he’s right: the growth of sports betting has already had a negative impact on major league sports. And I think it is likely to just get worse.

Posted in Firings, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: April 17, 2024.

April 17th, 2024

Man, it has been a rough few days for baseball.

Whitey Herzog.

Signed by the Yankees in 1949, he never made it out of their minor league system, though he picked up a lifetime of baseball knowledge from Manager Casey Stengel at spring training camps. He played the outfield for four American League teams over eight seasons with only modest success.
But Herzog found his niche as a manager with what came to be called Whiteyball, molding teams with speed, defense and pitching to take advantage of ballparks with fast artificial turf and spacious outfields, first at Royals Stadium in Kansas City and then at Busch Stadium in St. Louis.
Herzog managed the Kansas City Royals to three consecutive American League division championships in the 1970s, then took the Cardinals to the 1982 World Series title with a team he had built while general manager as well. And he managed the Cardinals to pennants in 1985 and 1987.
He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 2009.

He was 92, and the second oldest member of the Hall of Fame (behind Willie Mays). Baseball Reference.

As Bruce Sutter, the Cardinal reliever and also a Hall of Famer, once told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, “How many managers can you blow a game for and go out fishing with him the next morning?

Carl Erskine, pitcher.

Erskine was the last survivor of the 13 Dodger players of his time who were profiled by Roger Kahn in his 1972 book, “The Boys of Summer,” telling of their exploits on the field and the lives they led when their baseball years had ended.
Although struggling with a sore pitching shoulder throughout his career, Erskine, an unimposing presence on the mound at 5 feet 10 inches and 165 pounds, employed a superb overhand curveball to help the Dodgers capture five pennants (the first in 1949 and the rest in the 1950s) and the 1955 World Series championship, the only one in their history before they moved to Los Angeles in 1958.
His 14 strikeouts in Game 3 of the 1953 World Series against the Yankees, a complete-game 3-2 victory, has been eclipsed only by the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Sandy Koufax, who had 15 strikeouts against the Yankees in 1963, and the St. Louis Cardinals’ Bob Gibson, who struck out 17 Detroit Tigers in 1968.
In the 1952 World Series, also against the Yankees, Erskine pitched an 11-inning complete game, retiring the last 19 batters in the Dodgers’ 6-5 victory.
He pitched no-hitters against the Chicago Cubs in 1952 and the New York Giants in 1956, both at Ebbets Field. His best season was 1953, when he was 20-6 and led the National League in winning percentage at .769.

Baseball Reference.

Ken Holtzman, the “winningest Jewish pitcher in Major League Baseball”. He played for the Cubs and the Oakland A’s.

Holtzman won 174 games, the most for a Jewish pitcher in Major League Baseball — nine more than the Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, who is considered one of the best pitchers ever and who had a shorter career.
In addition to his win total, Holtzman, who at 6 feet 2 inches and 175 pounds cut a lanky figure, had a career earned run average of 3.49 and was chosen for the 1972 and 1973 All-Star teams.
Holtzman, at 23, threw his first no-hitter on Aug. 19, 1969, a 3-0 victory over the Atlanta Braves — a performance distinguished by the fact that he didn’t strike out any Braves. It was the first time since 1923 that a no-hitter had been pitched without a strikeout.
“I didn’t have my good curve, and I must have thrown 90 percent fastballs,” Holtzman told The Atlanta Constitution afterward. “When I saw my curve wasn’t breaking early in the game, I thought it might be a long day.”
His second no-hitter came on June 3, 1971, against the Cincinnati Reds at their ballpark, Riverfront Stadium, where he struck out six and walked four.

…

Holtzman left the Cubs in 1971 with a 74-69 record. He fared substantially better with the A’s, a 1970s dynasty whose players included Reggie Jackson, Sal Bando, Catfish Hunter and Rollie Fingers. In Oakland’s World Series championship years, from 1972 to 1974, Holtzman had a 59-41 regular season record. In World Series games, he was 4-1.

Baseball Reference.

Bob Graham, former Florida governor and US Senator.

Ron Thompson, actor. He did a lot of theater work, and some movies and TV. Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “The Streets of San Francisco”, “Baretta”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Death Has No Face”, season 8, episode 6.)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Obits, Politics, Sports, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Loser update.

April 15th, 2024

Our long national nightmare is trudging to an end.

The NBA regular season ended yesterday.

Detroit finished 14-68, for a .171 winning percentage. That’s bad, but it just missed historically bad.

Washington finished 15-67, for a .183 winning percentage. Again, bad, but short of historically bad.

In case you were wondering, there are no MLB teams that can go 0-162 this season. But the Chicago White Sox are 2-13, for a .133 winning percentage. Projecting that out, that’s about 140 losses this season, which I think is well within the margins of historically bad. As a matter of fact, if this holds up, it would be within striking distance of the 1899 Cleveland Spiders.

Posted in Loser, Sports | No Comments »

Happy BAG Day!

April 15th, 2024

Today is National Buy a Gun Day. It sort of snuck up on me.

To be honest, I knew it was coming, and thought about making a post last week. The problem is, I’m just not as enthusiastic about BAG Day as I have been in the past, for reasons I’ve outlined in previous BAG Day posts: everyday is BAG Day these days, and it seems like enthusiasm for BAG Day has been waning over the years.

I do have a gun on layaway at my local gun shop, but I’m not ready to get it out quite yet. They have a couple of other things I think are interesting (a Browning Light 12 made in Belgium, and a Marlin Camp Carbine in 9mm) but nothing I feel like I have to have. And they’re still working on getting my Super Redhawk…

So I’m declaring a push this year. If you want to, go out and buy yourself something nice. Feel free to tell me about it here.

Posted in Guns | No Comments »

Obit watch: April 13, 2024.

April 13th, 2024

Bennett Braun, psychiatrist and crank.

Dr. Braun gained renown in the early 1980s as an expert in two of the most popular and controversial areas of psychiatric treatment: repressed memories and multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder.
He claimed that he could help patients uncover memories of childhood trauma — the existence of which, he and others said, was responsible for the splintering of a person’s self into many distinct personalities.
He created a unit dedicated to dissociative disorders at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago (now Rush University Medical Center); was frequently quoted in the news media; and helped to found what is now the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, a professional organization that today has more than 2,000 members.

If you were alive in the 1980s, I bet you know what’s coming next. Dr. Braun was one of the leading promoters of the satanic ritual abuse theory.

The 1980s saw a vertiginous rise in the number of people, children as well as adults, who claimed to have been abused by devil worshipers. It began in 1980 with the book “Michelle Remembers,” by a Canadian woman who said she had recovered memories of ritual abuse, and it spiked following allegations of abuse at day care centers in California and North Carolina.
Elements of pop culture, such as heavy metal music and the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons, were looped in as supposed entry points for cult activity.

…

Dr. Braun’s inpatient unit at Rush became a magnet for referrals and a warehouse for patients, some of whom he kept medicated and under supervision for years.
Among them was a woman from Iowa named Patricia Burgus. After interviewing her, Dr. Braun and a colleague, Roberta Sachs, claimed not only that she was the victim of satanic ritual abuse, but also that she herself was a “high priestess” of a cult that had raped, tortured and cannibalized thousands of children, including her two young sons.
Dr. Braun and Dr. Sachs sent Mrs. Burgus and her children to a mental health facility in Houston, where they were held apart for nearly three years with minimal contact with the outside world.
By then Mrs. Burgus, heavily medicated, had come to believe the doctors, telling them she recalled torches, live burials and eating the body parts of up to 2,000 people a year. After her parents served her husband meatloaf, she had him get it tested for human tissue. The tests came back negative, but Dr. Braun was not convinced.

…

The satanic panic began to wane in the early 1990s. A 1992 F.B.I. investigation found no evidence of coordinated cult activity in the United States, and a 1994 report by the National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect surveyed over 12,000 accusations of satanic ritual abuse and found that not a single one held up under scrutiny.
“The biggest thing was the lack of corroborating evidence,” Kenneth Lanning, a retired F.B.I. agent who wrote the 1992 report, said in a phone interview. “It’s the kind of crime where evidence would have been left behind.”

…

Mrs. Burgus sued Rush, Dr. Braun and her insurance company over claims that he and Dr. Sachs had implanted false memories in her head. They settled out of court in 1997 for $10.6 million.
“I began to add a few things up and realized there was no way I could come from a little town in Iowa, be eating 2,000 people a year, and nobody said anything about it,” Mrs. Burgus told The Chicago Tribune in 1997.
A year later Dr. Braun’s unit at Rush was shut down, and the Illinois medical licensing board opened an investigation into his practices. In 1999, he received a two-year suspension of his license — though he did not admit wrongdoing.

He moved to Montana, got a new license, and set up his own practice. His Montana license was revoked in 2020.

Posted in Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 12, 2024.

April 12th, 2024

Robert MacNeil, of “The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour” fame. NYT (archived).

On the eve of his retirement from the broadcast in October 1995 to concentrate on writing, he was asked why TheMacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour gave “very little coverage” to the O.J. Simpson story.
“We don’t normally cover big murder stories, for one thing … It is inconceivable to me that a generation ago, NBC News and CBS News would night after night have said to their audience, ‘This is the most important thing that happened in the world today,’ by leading with Simpson and coming back to it later in the program,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “What’s interesting to me is how frightened the mainstream media are of the tabloid shows and the new networks.”

He was also in the motorcade when JFK was shot.

Eleanor Coppola. NYT (archived). IMDB.

“I may hold the world’s record for the person who has made the most documentaries about their family directing films,” she said. Her career, she wrote in “Notes on a Life,” a 2008 book, reflected that “I am an observer at heart, who has the impulse to record what I see around me.”

Fritz Peterson, Yankees pitcher and baseball footnote.

The southpaw was traded to Cleveland ahead of the 1974 season, ending his pinstripes tenure after nine seasons, going 109-106 with a 3.10 ERA — and an original Yankee Stadium-record 2.52 ERA in home games.
He last pitched for the Rangers in the 1976 season, accumulating a 133-131 record with a 3.30 ERA and seven seasons of 12-plus wins.

He was also involved in the strangest trade in baseball history.

Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson were friends. They hung out together with their wives. One thing led to another, and this was the 1970s…

On March 4, 1973, the ballplayers held separate press conferences to announce they’d swapped wives, kids and even their dogs — a tale the likes of Matt Damon and Ben Affleck once hoped to turn into a movie.
“Actually, it was a husband trade — Mike for me or me for Mike,” Peterson said. “It’s a love story. It wasn’t anything dirty.”

Fritz Peterson and Susanne, Kekich’s wife, married a year later. As far as I can tell, they stayed married. Mike Kekich and Marilyn, Peterson’s wife, broke up a few months after the press conference.

Fritz Peterson’s Baseball Reference page.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: April 11, 2024.

April 11th, 2024

Akebono.

He was a native Hawaiian who moved to Japan and began training in sumo.

When he became Japan’s 64th yokozuna, or grand champion sumo wrestler, in 1993, he was the first foreign-born wrestler to achieve the sport’s highest title in its 300-year modern history. He went on to win a total of 11 grand championships, and his success set the stage for an era during which foreign-born wrestlers dominated the top levels of Japan’s national sport.

…

Akebono’s rivalry with the Japanese brothers Takanohana and Wakanohana, both grand champions, was a major driver of sumo’s renewed popularity in the 1990s. During the opening ceremony for the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, Akebono demonstrated the sumo ring entrance ritual for an international audience, commanding the arena with his hulking physique and captivating stare.

…

He later said in interviews that he rarely considered his nationality in the ring, thinking of himself as a sumo wrestler first and foremost. He became a naturalized Japanese citizen in 1996, and changed his name to Taro Akebono. His chosen sumo name, “Akebono,” means dawn in Japanese.

I’m a little late on this one, but everyone was on it: Peter Higgs, of Higgs boson fame.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Bruce Kessler, TV director. Before that, he raced cars:

In 1958, Kessler suffered serious injuries in a fiery crash in the middle of the night in the rain while driving a Ferrari in the 24 Hours of Le Mans (his co-driver was fellow American Dan Gurney). A year later, he spent days in a coma after a race accident in Pomona, California, then retired from the sport after yet another serious crash in 1962 in Riverside, California.

His credits as a director include “The Hat Squad”, “Renegade”, “Enos”, “The Misadventures Of Sheriff Lobo”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”…

…and the episode “Chopper” of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, which is my own personal favorite episode. One of these days, I’m going to write that Top Five “Kolchak” episodes list. (“Chopper”, “Firefall”, “The Sentry”…)

Finally: O.J. Simpson. THR. LAT (archived). ESPN. (Edited to add: Lawrence.)

I don’t have a lot to say about this. Whatever he did or didn’t do, he’s facing judgement for it now, and I don’t feel like making jokes.

Posted in 1970s, California Über Alles, Law, Movies, NFL, Obits, Physics, Sports, Sumo, TV | No Comments »

This Old Gun.

April 11th, 2024

You know, if my local PBS station ran that as a regular series (like “This Old House”) I’d give them money.

I don’t know who would be a good host for it, though.

Anyway, just a quick update: I got my Colt historical letter on this old 1911.

It shipped March 12, 1918, to “Commanding Officer, Springfield Armory, Springfield, Massachusetts”. There were 2,900 guns in the shipment.

This Springfield Armory should not be confused with the current manufacturer. The neat (to me) thing is, I’ve actually been to the Springfield Armory National Historic Site. We had a tour arranged for us when I went to my first Smith and Wesson Collectors Association meeting in Sturbridge. I’d love to go back and spend some more time there.

My CMP M1 Garand (wait, I haven’t told you guys about that yet, have I?) is also a Springfield Armory gun: from the table of serial numbers on their website, it looks like the receiver was produced in March of 1944. (I put it that way because the CMP M1 was an “expert grade” gun. CMP says the expert grade guns have new commercial stocks and barrels, so it isn’t all original. But I bought it to shoot, not to collect. At some point, I’ll post pictures.)

I just think it’s kind of awesome and fun to have two guns with historic ties to a place I’ve actually visited and walked around in. I wonder how much it’d cost me to make a trip up that way again.

Posted in 1911, Guns, History, M1 Garand | No Comments »

« Older Entries