Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

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Obit watch: March 8, 2022.

Tuesday, March 8th, 2022

Laurel Goodwin, actress.

She had a somewhat short career, possibly due to bad luck. Her first movie was “Girls! Girls! Girls!” with Elvis. She was in the first (rejected) pilot for a minor 1960s SF TV series, but was cut from the second one. In the meantime, she said she had turned down offers for two successful comedies.

Other credits include “Get Smart”, “The Beverly Hillbillies”, a 1978 TV mini-series based on Dashiell Hammett’s “The Dain Curse”…

…and “Mannix”. (“A Question of Midnight”, season 3, episode 5.)

Posted in 1970s, Elvis, Mannix, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Do you like tossed salad?

Monday, March 7th, 2022

I broke this obit out into a separate entry because…

…well, to be honest, I forgot I had it in the queue.

But it probably deserves a separate entry, as another one of those obits for a “colorful” newspaper man. He actually kind of sounds like he crossed the border from “colorful” to word that rhymes with “glassbowl”, but I guess some people loved him.

Mike Marley, former sports writer for the NY Post, “but mostly a boxing man unequalled for access, sarcasm, creativity and the ability to dine at the finest restaurants without picking up the check”. He later went on to work with Howard Cosell, and after that became a lawyer.

This is full of great stories, if you like hard-bitten hard-drinking newspaperman stories. There’s the Winter Olympics story. There’s the landlord story.

Marley said he’d leave his stains where they were, as they’d be indistinguishable from the other blood on his clothes.

They don’t make ’em like that any more. And I haven’t made up my mind if this is a bad or a good thing.

Posted in Media, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 7, 2022.

Monday, March 7th, 2022

I was running flat out yesterday from 7 AM to 8:30 PM, so I got a little behind in obits. My apologies.

Mitchell Ryan. THR. Other credits (besides those in the headline) include guest shots on a lot of cop shows (“O’Hara, U.S. Treasury”, “Cannon”, “Barnaby Jones”), “High Plains Drifter”, “Magnum Force”, “The Friends of Eddie Coyle”, and apparently he starred in a series called “Chase” that I’ve never heard of.

Tim Considine. THR. Other credits include “Soldier Who Gets Slapped” in “Patton”, “The Shaggy Dog”, and a guest shot on “Ironside”.

…he made a career as a sports and automobile photographer, writer and author. His books included “The Language of Sport” (1982) and “American Grand Prix Racing” (1997).
Mr. Considine even substituted a couple of times for William Safire, writing the “On Language” column for The New York Times Magazine. He explained how “the first Olympic Games, in 776 B.C., in which a line scratched in the dirt served as the starting point” for some events, led to the expression “start from scratch.”

“Great But Forgotten” did a nice tribute to “The Adventures of Spin and Marty” a while back. The idea of a children’s show where the main characters actually grow and change kind of interests me.

(Shallow rabbit hole about “The Shaggy Dog”, because it came up over the weekend. Lawrence was wondering, and according to Wikipedia (the source of all slightly accurate information), “The Shaggy D.A.” was actually a sequel. There was also a two-part TV movie in 1987, “The Return of the Shaggy Dog”, set at some point between the two movies and starring Gary Kroeger.)

Johnny Brown. Other credits include “The Lost Saucer”, “The Wiz”, “Get Christie Love!”, and he played a character called “Huggy Bear” in an episode of “The Rookies”. (I can’t tell if “Streets of San Francisco” [Edited: D’oh! “Starsky and Hutch”! I blame the fact that my parents wouldn’t let me watch any of these shows.] intended for this to be the same character, but they did use Antonio Fargas instead of Johnny Brown.)

NYT obit for Farrah Forke.

Gary North, economist. I’d heard of him, but I never actually read any of his work.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 4, 2022.

Friday, March 4th, 2022

Shane Warne, Australian cricket legend. ESPN.

Warne took 708 Test wickets, the second most of all time, in 145 matches across a stellar 15-year international career.

…

Warne helped Australia win the 1999 50-over World Cup and claimed 293 dismissals in 194 one-day internationals between 1993 and 2005.
In 2000, he was named one of the five Wisden cricketers of the century, alongside Sir Donald Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers, Sir Jack Hobbs and Sir Viv Richards.

(“Leg spin” and “leg spinner” explained by Wikipedia. Hattip to Lawrence for the obit.)

Edited to add: NYT obit for Mr. Warne.

Also, NYT obit for Alan Ladd Jr.

Posted in Cricket, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 3, 2022.

Thursday, March 3rd, 2022

Farrah Forke, actress. Credits include a recurring role as “Alex Lambert” on “Wings”, and also a recurring role on “Lois & Clark” as “Mayson Drake”.

She was a good Texan, and died at 54.

Alan Ladd Jr. He was a big deal Hollywood producer. Among his credits:

During his tenure, Fox produced some of its most successful films, including Star Wars (1977), which he optioned after Universal rejected it. He championed George Lucas’ movie against the wishes of his board of directors, and the film became one of the most profitable in history.
“The only meeting I had with Laddie about the script, … he said, ‘Look, it doesn’t make any sense to me whatsoever, but I trust you. Go ahead and make it.’ That was just honest,” Lucas once said. “I mean, it was a crazy movie. Now you can see it, know what it is, but before you could see it, there wasn’t anything like it. You couldn’t explain it. You know, … it was like this furry dog driving a spaceship. I mean, what is that?”

More:

As a studio executive and producer, Ladd — the son of screen idol Alan Ladd (This Gun for Hire, Shane) — had a hand in 14 best picture nominees. His imprint can be found on such touchstone films as Young Frankenstein (1974), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975), The Omen (1976), Breaking Away (1979), Body Heat (1981), Chariots of Fire (1981), Blade Runner (1982) and Moonstruck (1987).
Before it was fashionable, Ladd supported films with strong female-centric themes, including Robert Altman’s 3 Women (1977); Julia (1977), starring Oscar winner Vanessa Redgrave; 11-time Academy Award nominee The Turning Point (1977); Paul Mazursky’s An Unmarried Woman (1978), starring Jill Clayburgh; Norma Rae (1979), which earned Sally Field an Oscar for best actress; and the Bette Midler-starring The Rose (1979).
Ladd upped the ante by making a woman the main protagonist in a big-budget action film with Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979), starring Sigourney Weaver, and he greenlighted Thelma & Louise (1991), the icon of feminist cinema toplined by Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis.

He won an Oscar for “Braveheart”.

Kirk Baily, voice actor. Lawrence sent me this obit, but I don’t have a source I am willing to link to.

Lawrence also sent over an obit for Katie Meyer, Stanford soccer goalie, who died too young at 22.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 2, 2022.

Wednesday, March 2nd, 2022

THR obit for Veronica Carlson.

Ralph Ahn, actor. He seems to be mostly known as “Tran” on “New Girl”, but other credits include “ER”, “Walker: Texas Ranger”, and “Hunter”.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Nick Zedd, “founder of the Cinema of Transgression movement and an uncompromising auteur whose crude, no-budget oeuvre influenced filmmakers from Christoph Schlingensief to Quentin Tarantino”.

He shot his first distributed film, They Eat Scum, in 1979 on Super 8 film with funds loaned by his parents and by the movie’s star, Donna Death. The short followed a roving gang of nonactor punks turned zombies, whose peregrinations were set to the earsplitting yowls of local New York bands and, inexplicably, the Village People’s “Y.M.C.A.” Zedd released They Eat Scum under his own Penetration Films imprint, describing it on the cassette label “a disgusting outlay of cheapness, decadence, nihilism, and everyday cannibalism” and an “achievement of noncommittal, unblinking savagery, a true expression of the punk ethos.”
Future films lived up to this promise, among them 1983’s Geek Maggot Bingo, which starred Richard Hell and was panned in TV Guide as “a nothing little zit of a 16mm movie.” Writing in the East Village Eye, Cookie Mueller, who starred in a number of John Waters movies, declared, “I have never in my lifetime of experience with low-budget films seen one this low . . . It lies somewhere below the subculture, even beneath the New York subway system.” Waters himself would later say of Zedd, “Nick Zedd makes violent, perverted art films from Hell—he’s my kind of director!”

Danny Ongais, one of the great figures in auto racing.

Ongais was born in Kahului and remains the only native Hawaiian who has ever competed in the Indy 500. He made 11 starts from 1977 and 1996, earning four top 10 finishes and a fourth-place result in 1979.

…

During the 1981 Indy 500, Ongais survived one of the most dramatic crashes in the race’s history when his car disintegrated after hitting the wall, leaving his legs and arms exposed as it burst into flames and skidded to a stop. He suffered several season-ending injuries, but returned to drive in the race the following year.

Video of the crash. I can’t embed it, because it is “age restricted” and “only available on YouTube”.

Dottie Frazier has passed away at 99. This is another one of those folks you’ve probably never heard of, but the obit is relevant to my interests.

Ms. Frazier was a diver. She learned to skin dive when she was young:

She seemingly had as many diving stories as she had dives.
There was the time she faced down a shark in the waters off Mexico. The time a large seal wanted the fish she was bringing back to her boat and slammed into her, breaking four ribs. The time she broke her leg snow skiing and made herself a special wet suit with an ankle-to-chest zipper so she could be rolled into it and thus keep diving with the busted limb.

She wasn’t initially impressed with the early scuba gear, but it grew on her.

…in 1955 she tried to enroll in a Los Angeles County underwater instructors certification course, sending in the required fee. She was sent a letter saying the course was for men only, but when she told that news to a friend and respected fellow diver, Jim Christiansen, he asked, “Did they return your check?”
“When I told him no, they had not, he said, ‘Just be ready; I’m picking you up,’” she told the podcast “The League of Extraordinary Divers” in 2016.

She went on to become one of the first, if not the first, women certified as a diving instructor in the United States.

In addition to her work as a scuba instructor, Ms. Frazier, a member of the Women Divers Hall of Fame, operated the Penguin Dive Shop in Long Beach for 15 years beginning in the 1950s and designed and sold wet suits and dry suits. She learned hard-hat diving as well — the kind used in underwater commercial work — but didn’t pursue the career possibilities because, at about five feet tall and not much more than 100 pounds, she found the equipment too cumbersome and restraining.
Ms. Frazier was energetic and adventurous even in her 90s. At 93 she went ziplining. In 2019, she finally sold the last of her motorcycles. In the “Neutral Buoyancy” interview, she noted that longevity seemed to go along with diving.
“A lot of the original divers have made it to a great age,” she said. “Being underwater does things to your spirit.”

Posted in Cars, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 1, 2022.

Tuesday, March 1st, 2022

David Boggs, co-inventor (with Bob Metcalfe) of Ethernet.

“He was the perfect partner for me,” Mr. Metcalfe said in an interview. “I was more of a concept artist, and he was a build-the-hardware-in-the-back-room engineer.”

Ned Eisenberg, actor. THR. He was a regular on “Law and Order: SVU”. Other credits include “Million Dollar Baby”, “Flags of Our Fathers”, and guest shots on “The Equalizer” (original recipe) and “Miami Vice”.

Posted in Geek, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Memento mori.

Monday, February 28th, 2022

The NYPost has provided a vivid reminder not only that we must die, but that tomorrow is not promised to anyone.

On their homepage right now:

“Actress in Thailand dies after falling from speedboat on restaurant trip with friends“. Nida Patcharaweeraphong was 37.

“Minnesota college student killed after house she was dog-sitting at explodes“. Kailey Mach was 20.

“2 killed when BMW plunges off parkway, onto Amtrak tracks in NYC: cops“.

Posted in Media, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 28, 2022.

Monday, February 28th, 2022

John Landy, runner, sportsman, and historical footnote.

Mr. Landy was the second man to run the mile in less than four minutes.

On June 21 — 46 days after Bannister’s historic race — Landy lowered the world record even more, to 3:57.9, in Turku, Finland. (According to the timing rules of the day, which called for mile records to be listed in fifths rather than tenths of a second, the time was listed as 3:58.0; it is now recognized as 3:57.9, the actual time recorded by four timers.)

On August 7, 1954 (48 days after Landy’s record) he and Roger Bannister went head to head in Vancouver, BC.

As expected, Landy led from the start, building a 15-yard lead. But Bannister — by then Dr. Bannister — closed in on the last lap, and Landy could sense him coming. Rounding the final turn, he peeked over his left shoulder to see where Bannister was. But Bannister was on his right, and as Landy’s head was turned, Bannister stormed by him, and won, in 3:58.8. Landy came in second, in 3:59.6.
It was the first time two men had bettered four minutes in the same race. Today, a statue outside the stadium commemorates the moment.

Mr. Landy cut his foot the night before the race, and ran on four stitches.

Above all, Landy was a sportsman, as exemplified in a startling moment in the 1956 Australian track and field championships in Melbourne, just before the Olympics there.
Landy had entered the race hoping to break the world record for the mile. But with the race underway, a 19-year-old competitor, Ron Clarke, was bumped only strides ahead of him and fell to the track. Landy leapt over him and, as he did, accidentally spiked him on his right shoulder. Landy stopped, ran back to Clarke, brushed cinders from Clarke’s knees and said, “Sorry.”
“Keep going,” Clarke said. “I’m all right.”
Clarke got up, and he and Landy started after the others, who by then were 60 yards ahead. Landy caught them and won in 4:04.2.
Gordon Moyes, an Australian minister who was there, later called it “the most incredibly stupid, beautiful, foolish, gentlemanly act I have ever seen.”

Lawrence sent over an obit for Veronica Carlson, noted actress in Hammer horror films.

Among her most famous roles were Maria in Dracula Has Risen from the Grave, Anna Spengler in Frankenstein Must Be Destroyed and Elizabeth Heiss in The Horror of Frankenstein.

IMDB entry.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 25, 2022.

Friday, February 25th, 2022

Joe Wanenmacher, founder and owner of the Tulsa Arms Show, one of (if not the) largest gun shows in the world.

Mike the Musicologist and I have been lucky enough to attend a few of the Tulsa shows. The obit says that Mr. Wanenmacher had mostly handed off operational responsibilities to his other family members, but he still built the show into what it is today. Our hat is off to him.

(Hattip on this to our great and good friend David Carroll.)

Sandy Nelson, drummer and subject of one of the most interesting obits I’ve read in the NYT recently.

He had a big hit in 1959 with “Teen Beat”, which was based on a drum riff he heard in a strip club:

“While they were looking at these pretty girls in G-strings, guess what I was doing?” he told The Las Vegas Weekly in 2015. “I was looking at the drummer in the orchestra pit.”
“He was doing kind of a ‘Caravan’ beat,” he added, referring to a jazz standard. “‘Bum ta da da dum’ — small toms, big toms. That’s what gave me the idea for ‘Teen Beat.’”

He had a second big hit with “Let There Be Drums” in 1961. In 1963, he had a motorcycle accident and lost part of his right leg: he retrained himself to play the bass with his left leg.

He did a bunch of instrumental albums in the 1960s and 1970s, many of which featured covers:

“I think the worst version ever of the Rolling Stones’ ‘Satisfaction’ was done by me,” Mr. Nelson told L.A. Weekly in 1985, “and, oddly enough, it was a big seller in the Philippines. I guess they like squeaky saxophones or something.”

But he also continued to do experimental work:

His friend and fellow musician Jack Evan Johnson said that Mr. Nelson was especially proud of “The Veebles,” a whimsical five-track concept album released on cassette in 2016 that had an extraterrestrial sound and theme.
“It’s about a race of people from another planet,” he told The Las Vegas Sun in 1996, when the long-gestating project was just beginning to take shape. “They’re gonna take over the Earth and make us do nothing but dance, sing and tell dumb jokes.”

(I checked: there was a CD version of this, but it is out of print. Amazon and Apple Music do not show a digital version, though some of Mr. Nelson’s other work is available from both.)

Mr. Nelson acknowledged that he had not handled his early success well.
“I spent most of the money on women and whiskey, and the rest I just wasted,” he told The Review-Journal.

…

Mr. Nelson settled in Boulder City, Nev., in about 1987 and became a colorful local fixture, running a pirate radio station out of his house for about seven years before the FCC shut him down, Mr. Johnson said. And then there was the cave.

Yes. He dug a cave in his backyard.

The project took him 12 years.
“I got a ‘cave tour’ once,” Mr. Johnson said by email, “and it was quite something, precarious even — dug down at a very steep angle into the hard desert soil, with no kind of support structure whatsoever and just enough room to scoot down into it for a ways until the room opened up at the bottom.”
“He had an electric keyboard down there,” he added.

Kenny Burrough, wide receiver for the Houston Oilers during the 1970s.

Burrough, who famously wore No. 00 with the Oilers, played 11 seasons in Houston and made the Pro Bowl in 1975 and 1977. His 6,906 receiving yards still ranks third all-time in Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans history behind only Ernest Givins (7,935) and Drew Hill (7,477). His 47 touchdowns ties him for second on the franchise list behind 1960s Oilers receiver Charley Hennigan.

Sally Kellerman. THR.

Other than the original “Hot Lips”, credits include a guest spot on an early episode of a minor 1960s SF TV series, “Back to School”, “T.H.E. Cat”, “Coronet Blue”, the legendary “Delgo“, and a whole bunch of other stuff…

…including “Mannix”. (“The Solid Gold Web“, season 2, episode 23. She plays a former love interest of Mannix.)

Posted in 1970s, Guns, Mannix, Movies, Music, NFL, Obits, Radio, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 24, 2022.

Thursday, February 24th, 2022

Followup NYT obits for Bob Beckel, Gary Brooker, and The Amazing Johnathan.

William Kuenzel has passed away from cancer at the age of 60. I’m noting his obit because this is a bizarre and troubling case, that got Robert M. Morgenthau (NYC’s liberal DA) and Edwin C. Meese III on the same side.

Mr. Kuenzel was arrested in November of 1987 and charged with killing a convenience store clerk. His roommate, Harvey Venn, initially told police Mr. Kuenzel was probably asleep at home, but later changed his story and claimed Mr. Kuenzel pulled the trigger. Mr. Venn got a reduced sentence for testifying against Mr. Kuenzel. Mr. Kuenzel refused to plead out.

Despite apparently exculpatory evidence, including incriminating blood on Mr. Venn’s pants — which he said was from a squirrel but which the prosecutor admitted was the victim’s — Mr. Kuenzel was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to be electrocuted.

It gets worse.

Mr. Kuenzel met with more than 20 years of resistance to his hope for a new trial because of a late filing of an appeal in 1993 — a procedural issue that he could never overcome in state and federal courts even after Alabama’s state assistant attorney general in 2010 turned over evidence that had been withheld at the original trial. It included handwritten notes from Mr. Venn’s police interview in which he said that Mr. Kuenzel had been in bed at the time of the shooting.
The cache of new evidence also included a transcript of the grand jury testimony of a witness who had been equivocal about seeing Mr. Kuenzel and Mr. Venn in the store as she drove by in a car, but who testified with more certainty at the trial. Her testimony provided critical corroboration of Mr. Venn’s assertion that Mr. Kuenzel had been an accomplice.

The Supreme Court refused to review his case in 2013, and again in 2016.

Had he not died, he would have eventually been scheduled for execution.

Posted in Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 23, 2022.

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2022

Mark Lanegan, singer. (Queens of the Stone Age, Screaming Trees)

The Amazing Johnathan (John Edward Szeles).

Detroit native Szeles gained mainstream fame on Vegas headliner Criss Angel’s mid-2000s reality TV show “Mindfreak,” and often injected gonzo, faux-gore bits into his shows. Signature shock value moments included pretending to suck on his own dangling eyeball, slitting his wrists and spiking his own tongue.

…

The “alt-magician” gained further notoriety as the subject of a controversial 2019 Hulu documentary, “The Amazing Johnathan Documentary.” The film followed Szeles, then 60, as he mounted a comeback tour after defying his terminal illness diagnosis — and simultaneously dealing with an ongoing drug addiction.

Gary Brooker, of Procol Harum.

Arthur Feuerstein. He’s probably one of those people you’ve never heard of, but the obit fascinates me (for reasons that will become apparent shortly).

Mr. Feuerstein was a chess player. A really good chess player. How good?

Over his career, Mr. Feuerstein had a record of one win, one loss and three draws with Mr. Fischer.

More:

At the 1956 United States Junior Championship, he took third, behind Mr. Fischer. He then edged Mr. Fischer for the United States Junior Blitz Championship, in which each player had five minutes for the entire game.
The third Rosenwald tournament, played in October 1956 at the Manhattan Chess Club, is usually remembered because of Mr. Fischer’s remarkable win against Donald Byrne, Robert’s younger brother. But Mr. Fischer finished in a tie for eighth, while Mr. Feuerstein was third — just behind Arthur Bisguier, another New York prodigy, who had won the United States Championship two years earlier.
Then, in the 1957-58 championship, Mr. Feuerstein tied for sixth with Arnold Denker, a former champion, and Edmar Mednis, a future grandmaster. Mr. Fischer, who was then only 14, won the championship, beating Mr. Feuerstein in the process for the first and only time…

The NYT obit describes the 1950s as being “a golden age for the game in the United States, particularly in New York City”. It would probably have a limited audience, but I’d read a book about this time in the chess world.

Anyway, Mr. Feuerstein didn’t want to turn pro. He thought professional chess was “too unstable and too poorly paid”, so he went into the corporate world. But he continued to play as an amateur.

Then, one day in 1973, Mr. Feuerstein, his wife, and their dog were driving to their vacation home. They got hit by a semi.

The dog was killed. Mrs. Feuerstein broke her back and spent six weeks in a cast.

Mr. Feuerstein suffered a horrible head injury. The doctors on his case gave his wife an extremely negative prognosis.

Then one day Mr. Feuerstein woke up, pulled the breathing tube out and began trying to talk. A nurse called Alice, who rushed to the hospital. She found him playing chess with the neurosurgeon, who had also been called.
Years later, in a profile that appeared in 2012 in Chess Life, the magazine of the United States Chess Federation, the game’s governing body, Alice Feuerstein said her husband, after waking, did not even know what a toothbrush was. But, Mr. Feuerstein recalled, “I remembered everything about chess, even my openings.” He also recalled that he had won that game with the doctor.

This isn’t a miracle story. According to the obit, Mr. Feuerstein was never able to work full-time again.

But he did return to competition at something approaching his pre-accident ability, sometimes beating grandmasters, and he remained a master-level player into his late 70s.
He played his last tournament in October 2015, when he was nearly 80, and scored 50 percent, with one win, one loss and a draw.

Cancer got him at 86.

Posted in Chess, Music, Neuroscience, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 22, 2022.

Tuesday, February 22nd, 2022

A mega sized roundup today, mostly due to FotB RoadRich.

Frank Pesce. Among his credits (other than the “Beverly Hills Cop” movies and “Top Gun”) are guest spots on “Jake and the Fatman”, “Miami Vice”, “Airwolf”, “Blue Thunder” (the series), and “The Master”.

Lindsey Pearlman. She appeared on “Vicious”, “Chicago Justice”, and “General Hospital”, among other credits. She was 43.

Zoe Sozo Bethel, Miss Alabama 2021.

Along with being named Miss Alabama 2021, the mother of one was a conservative commentator who was involved with organizations such as Project Veritas, Liberty University and Turning Point USA, the Heavy reported.

Bob Beckel. He used to host “The Five” on the Fox News Channel.

Beckel was campaign manager during Democratic Party nominee Walter Mondale’s ill-fated run for the presidency in 1984.
He also served in the State Department during the Carter administration.

Peter Earnest. He used to work for the CIA…and went on to become the first executive director of the International Spy Museum. I’ve never been there, but my beloved and indulgent sister and her family have. One of these days, I have to make it back to DC.

Mr. [H. Keith] Melton, an early member of the museum’s board, was instrumental in hiring Mr. Earnest, and Mr. Earnest later helped persuade Mr. Melton to donate the bulk of his remaining collection, approximately 7,000 items, including the ice ax used to assassinate the exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Just in case you were wondering. Also:

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 18, 2022.

Friday, February 18th, 2022

Jim Hagedorn, House member from Minnesota.

Gail Halvorsen, the original “Candy Bomber” from the Berlin Airlift. Instead of writing a fuller obit here, I’m going to point you to the much better one Borepatch wrote.

For the historical record: NYT obit for Ian McDonald.

Posted in History, Music, Obits, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: February 16, 2022.

Wednesday, February 16th, 2022

A long time ago, I wrote about reading Car and Driver when I was in high school.

“Ferrari Reinvents Manifest Destiny” was one of those pieces of writing that hit me right between the eyes at exactly the right time.

Julian settled into the driver’s seat and gave the Millennium Falcon–like controls a momentary glance. Then he stamped on the accelerator with an expensive loafer and redlined the 308 up through the gears to a hundred miles an hour through the potato fields and abandoned burger stands without time to even take his hand off the shift lever until he hit fifth, and when he did have time to take his hand off he used that hand to plop a Blondie cassette into the Blaupunkt and a quarter-ton of decibels came on with “Die Young Stay Pretty,” and the scenery exploded in the distance, bush and tree debris flying at us while my eyeballs pressed all the way back into the medulla, and that quadruple-throated three-quart V-8 wound up beyond the vocal range of Maria Callas, Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, leaving, I’m sure, a trail of shattered stemware in the more prosperous of the farmhouses we passed along our way.

…

And, after all, what have we been getting civilized for, all these centuries? Why did we fight all those wars, conquer all those nations, take over all that Western Hemisphere? Why, for this! For this perfection of knowledge and craft. For this conquest of the physical elements. For this sense of mastery of man over nature. To be in control of our destinies—and there is no more profound feeling of control over one’s destiny that I have ever experienced than to drive a Ferrari down a public road at 130 miles an hour. Only God can make a tree, but only man can drive by one that fast. And if the lowly Italians, the lamest, silliest, least stable of our NATO allies, can build a machine like this, just think what it is that we can do. We can smash the atom. We can cure polio. We can fly to the moon if we like. There is nothing we can’t do. Maybe we don’t happen to build Ferraris, but that’s not because there’s anything wrong with America. We just haven’t turned the full light of our intelligence and ability in that direction. We were, you know, busy elsewhere. We may not have Ferraris, but just think what our Polaris-missile submarines are like. And, if it feels like this in a Ferrari at 130, my God, what can it possibly feel like at Mach 2.5 in an F-15? Ferrari 308s and F-15s—these are the conveyances of free men. What do the Bolshevik automatons know of destiny and its control? What have we to fear from the barbarous Red hordes?

…

It made me wish I didn’t belong to the Republican Party and the NRA just so I could go out and join both to defend it all.

P.J. O’Rourke wrote an awful lot of other great stuff, but this is what I’ll remember him for.

NYT. John Podhoretz. National Review. (Edited to add: Reason.)

I’m going to miss him.

Kathryn Kates, actress. She was most famous as the bakery counterwoman on two episodes of “Seinfeld”, and also appeared several times on “Law and Order: SVU”, “Orange Is the New Black”, and other TV shows.

Posted in Books, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

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