Archive for the ‘Obits’ Category

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Obit watch: April 24, 2018.

Tuesday, April 24th, 2018

Speaking of the use of the US Mail to commit crimes, I meant to note this the other day, but it got past me:

Walter Leroy Moody Jr. descended into Hell Thursday night.

Some of you may recall the crime, but not the name. Mr. Moody was a crank who had a grudge against the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. So he sent a bomb to the home of one of the judges, Robert Vance Sr. The bomb killed Vance and seriously injured his wife. To cover his tracks, Mr. Moody sent out more bombs: one of them killed Robert E. Robinson, a lawyer. Others directed at the NAACP and the offices of the 11th Circuit were intercepted.

Law enforcement eventually tracked the bombs back to Mr. Moody, who was convicted of a whole host of federal charges. He was sentenced federally to seven life terms, plus 400 years. However, the state of Alabama prosecuted Mr. Moody for the murder of judge Vance: he was convicted at that level, resulting in his death sentence.

There are two books about the case, neither of which I’ve read: I used to see Priority Mail regularly at Half-Price, but I haven’t seen a copy in a while. Blind Vengeance: The Roy Moody Mail Bomb Murders is the one I wasn’t aware of, but stumbled across while trying to find Priority Mail. Blind Vengence seems to have been published by a university press (which probably explains its obscurity), and both are available used from Amazon relatively cheap. I may have to bend my “one true-crime book per case” policy.

Posted in Books, Explosives, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 23, 2018.

Monday, April 23rd, 2018

For the record: Verne Troyer.

Posted in Amish, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch II.

Wednesday, April 18th, 2018

Bill Nack, noted sportwriter who specialized in horse racing.

Over nearly a quarter-century at Sports Illustrated, Mr. Nack was one of its storytelling stars, along with Frank Deford, Gary Smith, Sally Jenkins, Leigh Montville and Richard Hoffer. His subjects included horses and jockeys; the boxers Joe Frazier and Rocky Marciano, the racecar driver A. J. Foyt, the baseball players Jackie Robinson and Keith Hernandez, and a football player, Bob Kalsu, the only major professional sports athlete to die in the Vietnam War.

That Bob Kalsu story is a great piece of work.

Mr. Nack also wrote the book on Secretariat.

Starting in March 1973, Mr. Nack spent 40 consecutive days with Secretariat, joining him at 7 a.m., getting to know his team, taking copious notes and once seeing the horse playfully grab his notebook in his teeth and deposit it on a bed of hay.

And:

Mr. Ebert was one of many colleagues who recalled Mr. Nack’s penchant for reciting from “Lolita,” “The Great Gatsby” (in English and Spanish) and some works of H. L. Mencken’s.

Posted in Books, Horses, Obits | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: April 18, 2018.

Wednesday, April 18th, 2018

Carl Kasell. NPR.

I don’t listen to NPR much these days, but I did kind of like Kasell. And:

He loved magic tricks, and at one memorable company holiday party, he sawed Nina Totenberg in half.
“We laid her out on the table, got out that saw and grrrr … ran it straight through her midsection,” he recalled. “She said it tickled and she got up and walked away in one piece.”

Right away, I knew that Carl had far more up his sleeve than his inimitable gravitas and the random playing cards he keeps there for his magic tricks (if you ever want to know true joy, ask Carl to do magic for you).

I have this mental image of Carl and Harry standing around in heaven, trying to top each other with card tricks.

Barbara Bush, for the historical record. WP. (Edited to add: Lawrence.)

Posted in Magic, Obits, Radio | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 17, 2018.

Tuesday, April 17th, 2018

Mike the Musicologist and I have a running joke: the decline of Western civilization began when men stopped wearing hats on a daily basis. We’re both doing our part to bring back the hat era.

I bring that up now because one of the great hat wearers of our time passed away yesterday.

Harry Anderson. Asheville Citizen-Times (more of a retrospective than an obit)

Of course, he wasn’t just a guy in a hat:

While he earned critical acclaim and amassed a devoted fan base on “Night Court,” Mr. Anderson never fancied himself an actor. “I’m a magician, or a performer, by nature, and that’s always what I’ve been,” Mr. Anderson told WGN-TV in Chicago in 2014.
“I was never really an actor,” he said. “I was a magician who fell into a part on ‘Cheers.’”

He was a good one, too. And for what it’s worth, I loved “Night Court” then, and I love it now. (I wish I could find video of Harry Stone revealing his custom bowling ball. If I could find someone to make me a bowling ball like that, I’d take up bowling.)

In honor of the late great Harry the Hat, why not go out and pick up a nice hat for yourself, or someone you love? Not a ballcap or a gimmie hat: I mean a real, genuine, honest to God hat, like a fedora or a porkpie or something. Let’s bring hats back, for Harry, and for civilization.

Posted in Hats, Magic, Obits, Rhode Island, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 16, 2018.

Monday, April 16th, 2018

It was another busy weekend: birthday dinner, BAG day (post forthcoming), lots of running around…so let us get caught up.

Art Bell, noted radio host.

For more than two decades, Mr. Bell, who was 72 when he died April 13 at his home in Pahrump, Nev., stayed up all night talking to those people on the radio, patiently encouraging them to tell their stories about alien abductions, crop circles, anthrax scares and, as he put it, all things “seen at the edge of vision.”

I used to listen to a lot of late night radio, but my time preceded Art Bell. I know someone whose job requires them to drive in sometimes late at night, and back in the day they were an Art Bell listener.

Tim O’Connor, character actor. He had a long-running role on the “Peyton Place” TV series, and also did guest shots in just about everything. (Including “Mannix”.)

Milos Forman, one of the great directors. (“Amadeus”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”)

And finally, R. Lee Ermey. Borepatch.

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

Obit watch: April 11, 2018.

Wednesday, April 11th, 2018

Keith Murdoch, rugby player.

This is another one of those strange and sad stories. Mr. Murdoch was selected to tour with the New Zealand All Blacks in 1972. But after the first match of the tour, he got into a fight with a security guard at a hotel. He was thrown off the tour.

But Murdoch, in fact, did not go home. Issued with a ticket back to New Zealand, he got off the plane in Singapore and diverted to Australia — to the city of Darwin, on the northern coast, the gateway to the vast, sparsely populated Northern Territory.

And there, for all intents and purposes, he disappeared. He “went bush,” as the Australians say. He became a rugby version of Bigfoot and the subject of a play, his legend growing in inverse proportion to the confirmed sightings of him.

…

After “going bush,” Murdoch dropped from sight until the late 1970s, when Terry McLean, the dean of New Zealand’s rugby writers, tracked him down. McLean came upon him at an oil-drilling site near Perth, capital of the state of Western Australia, only to be advised, firmly and crisply, what he should do to preserve life and limb.
“I got back on the bus,” McLean wrote.

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 9, 2018.

Monday, April 9th, 2018

Sheila Link passed away at the end of March. She was 94.

This is another of those obits you don’t expect to see in the NYT: Ms. Link was a long-time gunwriter.

Mrs. Link wrote a column, “Gear ‘N’ Gadgets,” for Women & Guns from the magazine’s inception in the early 1990s until 2003.
She was also a frequent contributor to Outdoor Life, Field & Stream and Sports Afield magazines; produced a weekly radio program, “Call of the Outdoors,” which was broadcast for nine years beginning in 1974; and was the author of two books, “The Hardy Boys Handbook: Seven Stories of Survival” (1980) and “Women’s Guide to Outdoor Sports” (1984).

There are things I don’t like about this obit (the author seems to have gone out of his way to incorporate some NRA bashing), but I do love the story at the end, which I will leave for the reader.

Posted in Guns, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 2, 2018.

Monday, April 2nd, 2018

Man, it’s been a really busy couple of days.

Deborah Carrington, actress. Among her credits: Thumbelina in the original “Total Recall”, Valerie Vomit in “The Garbage Pail Kids Movie”, various Ewoks, and the “Bride of Chucky”.

Stéphane Audran, Babette in “Babette’s Feast”.

Delores Taylor, also an actress. She appeared in a bunch of her husband, Tom Laughlin’s, films, including “Billy Jack” and the two sequels.

Anita Shreve, noted novelist.

Separated at birth?

Former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt


INS reporter Carl Kolchak.

Finally, noted TV producer Steven Bochco. (“Hill Street Blues”, “LA Law”, “NYPD Blue”, “Doogie Howser MD”. And where’s my damn “Hooperman” box set? I’m not kidding: I remember that being a kind of fun show.)

Let’s go out with a bang, shall we?

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

Obit watch: March 29, 2018.

Thursday, March 29th, 2018

Philip Kerr, noted author.

I read A Philosophical Investigation based on someone’s recommendation: I wish I could remember who it was. (I feel pretty strongly that it was either Andy Watson or Pat Cadigan, but I’m getting old. It could have been an entirely different person.)

Anyway, I liked it well enough that I intended to read more of Kerr’s work. The Bernie Gunther stuff in particular intrigues me, but too many books, too little time. Also, I’m thinking I got tangled up somewhere with chronology issues in the Gunther books. I’m kind of sad that there won’t be any more – except for the forthcoming Gunther origin story mentioned in the obit – but, at the same time, this settles the chronology issue pretty thoroughly.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: special norts spews edition, March 26, 2018.

Monday, March 26th, 2018

H. Wayne Huizenga. Special bonus obit content: Field of Schemes.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 20, 2018.

Tuesday, March 20th, 2018

Nokie Edwards, guitar player for The Ventures.

This is here mostly as a transparent excuse for a musical interlude. I’ll put in a jump.

(more…)

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

Obit watch: March 19, 2018.

Monday, March 19th, 2018

Noted SF writer Kate Wilhelm passed away on March 8th.

I genuinely wish I had more to say about this, but I don’t right now.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 15, 2018.

Thursday, March 15th, 2018

For the historical record: Augie Garrido, former UT baseball coach.

Garrido ruled the Texas dugout from 1997 until 2016, having previously coached at Cal State Fullerton, Illinois, Cal Poly and San Francisco State. He amassed an 824-427-2 record with the Longhorns, leading Texas to national titles in 2002 and 2005. He won five championships in all, having won with Cal State Fullerton in 1979, 1984 and 1995. With a career record of 1,975-951-9, Garrido is the all-time winningest coach in Division I baseball history.

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 14, 2018.

Wednesday, March 14th, 2018

Stephen Hawking.

I don’t feel like I need to say much more than that, but I like this quote:

On another occasion, [Leonard Susskind] characterized Dr. Hawking to his face as “one of the most obstinate people in the world; no, he is the most infuriating person in the universe.” Dr. Hawking grinned.

Posted in Books, Geek, Obits | Comments Closed

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