Archive for the ‘TV’ Category

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Obit watch: January 27, 2024.

Friday, December 27th, 2024

Geoffrey Deuel, actor.

Other credits include “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders”, “The F.B.I.”, “Mission: Impossible”, “The Magician”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Eagles Sometimes Can’t Fly”, season 3, episode 1. “Chance Meeting”, season 8, episode 15.)

(Lawrence, I’m about halfway tempted to add “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders” to the list. It is available on DVD at a reasonable price, and it seems like a lot of big names from the time are in it. My only issue, other than convincing folks to watch it, is that Ed Mireles says it isn’t completely accurate. We might want to accompany that with the “FBI Files” episode, which I think is more historically accurate.)

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

Post Christmas gun book blogging.

Thursday, December 26th, 2024

“Did you get any gun books for Christmas?” asked nobody, ever.

Yes, actually, I did. Lawrence gave me a batch of older softcover books he picked up while shopping over Thanksgiving, including a Gun Digest I didn’t have. Someone at work sent me some “funny money” as a thank you for services rendered, which I plan to use to purchase the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson, 5th Edition in both the physical and Kindle editions. (It is supposed to be out January 7th according to Amazon, but some people on the forum have reported they’ve already received their copies.) And I’ve been told that I have at least one more present coming, but shipping has been delayed, so I don’t know what that is. Could be a gun book, could be not a gun book. Could be not a book at all.

I also got some books I ordered from Callahan and Company in two separate orders, so I am a bit backlogged. It is probably a good time to start cataloging those. All four of these came in the same C&C order, and there was a total of $8 media mail shipping on top of the stated prices.

(more…)

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Mannix, Smith and Wesson | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: December 24, 2024.

Tuesday, December 24th, 2024

Col. Perry Dahl (USAF – ret.). He was 101.

Col. Dahl shot down nine planes during the Pacific campaign in WWII.

Colonel Dahl was only 5 feet 4 inches tall and needed extra seat cushions to reach the pedals of his plane. But his exploits brought him the Congressional Gold Medal, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Legion of Merit.

…

He scored his first aerial victory in November 1943 when he shot down a Zero fighter plane while escorting bombers on a strike against a Japanese airfield.
In April 1944 he downed his fifth plane, achieving the minimum required to become an ace, and was promoted to the rank of captain.
In November, during the Philippines campaign, he notched his seventh “kill” while escorting American B-25 bombers that were attacking Japanese shipping. Moments later, Japanese fire forced him to bail out of his plane, which he ditched in Ormoc Bay. But his co-pilot was unable to bail out and perished. Captain Dahl was initially captured by a Japanese Army patrol before being rescued by Philippine resistance forces, who hid him.
He later shot down another Japanese plane. His ninth and final aerial victory came on March 28, 1945, while he was escorting bombers attacking a Japanese naval convoy off the coast of French Indochina, earning him the Silver Star.
He lost four of his P-38s to Japanese fire and midair collisions.
“One more destroyed P-38 and you’ll be a Japanese ace,” the 475th Squadron commander Charles MacDonald once remarked, according to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
Colonel Dahl had flown 158 combat missions by the time the war ended.

He also served honorably during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts before his retirement in 1978.

Art Evans, actor. Other credits include the original “Fun with Dick and Jane”, the original “Death Wish”, and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again”.

Lawrence sent me an obit a few days ago for writer Barry Malzberg. I couldn’t do anything with it, because it was on Facebook and wouldn’t even come up for me unless I signed in with my (non-existent) Facebook account. None of the usual sources has published an obit yet, but Michael Swanwick put up a tribute at his blog.

Sophie Hediger, Swiss snowboarder and member of their Olympic team. She was 26, and was killed in an avalanche.

Burt, the crocodile from “Crocodile Dundee”.

The 1986 movie stars Paul Hogan as the rugged crocodile hunter Mick Dundee. In the movie, American Sue Charlton, played by actress Linda Kozlowski, goes to fill her canteen in a watering hole when she is attacked by a crocodile before being saved by Dundee.
Burt is briefly shown lunging out of the water.
But the creature shown in more detail as Dundee saves the day is apparently something else. The Internet Movie Database says the movie goofed by depicting an American alligator, which has a blunter snout.

Update to my Party City obit: while Part City as a chain is shutting down, there are at least two stores in Austin that are independent franchises, and those stores are planning to stay open.

They will still be party supplies stores, but exact logistics are unknown. The stores opened before the Party City company formed.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Heroism, Movies, Obits, Planes, Reptiles, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#125).

Tuesday, December 17th, 2024

Shot:

Quincy, M.E., season 5, episode 1: “No Way to Treat a Flower”.

A teenage girl dies from a disease that mainly affects the elderly. A few hours later, her boyfriend dies of the same symptoms. Quincy later traces it to a the marijuana they smoked, which was treated with a poisonous fertilizer. Quincy then decides to go after the magazine that advertised it in order to try to keep more kids from dying from the tainted weed. He also must find out where the kids got the weed from.

Chaser:

Two men from New York died from pneumonia they contracted from bat feces — after they used the excrement as fertilizer to grow marijuana, a new study found.
The unidentified men from Rochester, ages 64 and 59, smoked pot that had been tainted with a fungus found in the bat droppings, known as guano, that caused fatal lung infections, according to a study published in Open Forum Infectious Disease earlier this month.

Posted in 1970s, Bagatelle, Mammals, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 16, 2024.

Monday, December 16th, 2024

Robert Fernandez. He was 100.

Mr. Fernandez joined the Navy at 17 and was stationed on the U.S.S. Curtiss. He was a mess cook and ammunition loader.

In a video biography filmed in 2016, Mr. Fernandez, who was known as Uncle Bob to his friends, said he had joined the Navy to see the world.
“I just thought I was going to go dancing all the time, have a good time,” he said, adding: “What did I do? I got caught in a war.”

…

In his recollection of the attack, Mr. Fernandez said in the video that he had awakened that morning feeling excited to go dancing at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel with his friends that night.

That morning was December 7, 1941. The Curtiss had just returned to Pearl Harbor after a Pacific cruise.

The U.S.S. Curtis was bombed multiple times, and a Japanese fighter plane crashed into it near the bridge that housed the command center. Dozens on the ship were injured, and 21 people were killed, records show. The ship was repaired about a month later and rejoined the war effort…
“I never did get to go there,” Mr. Fernandez said. Instead, while serving on the mess deck — where sailors and Marines eat and cook — Mr. Fernandez began hearing explosions and gunfire. He recalled manning his battle station a few decks below with other sailors, passing ammunition to top-deck sailors who were firing whatever weapon they could get their hands on.
On how he survived the bombing, Mr. Fernandez said, “You just do what you’re told to do and do the best you can.”

Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors states that there are 16 remaining survivors.

Jill Jacobson, actress. Credits other than a couple of spinoffs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s include “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Sledge Hammer!”, and “Castle”.

Rodney Jenkins, show jumper.

In a professional career that began in the 1960s, Jenkins won more than 70 Grand Prix events, a record when he retired in 1989. His victories included three at the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden and five American Gold Cup titles. He rode with 10 victorious U.S. teams in the Nations Cup, an international competition. He was a member of the National Show Hunter and Show Jumping Halls of Fame.
“What made Rodney truly exceptional was his humility and his unwavering belief in the horses he rode,” Britt McCormick, president of the United States Hunter Jumper Association, said in a statement. “He often credited his success to their brilliance, saying, ‘The horse makes the rider — I don’t care how good you are.’”
Known as the Red Rider for his wavy red hair, Jenkins excelled at the hunter and jumping rings. In the hunter rings — inspired by the sport of fox hunting — horses are judged on their style, look and manner as they move at a deliberate pace and jump over fences.
In the other rings, jumpers are scored on their ability to clear taller fences as quickly as possible without knocking down rails; if they do, faults are added to the total score.

…

“He’s a horseman,” Steven Levy wrote in a profile of Jenkins in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1977. “A rider might get over a fence, but a horseman will make the horse jump, as if it’s a birthright to leap like a cheetah and land on the run. A horseman does it because the animals and he are on the same wavelength.”

Posted in Heroism, History, Horses, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 11, 2024.

Wednesday, December 11th, 2024

The Amazing Kreskin.

Actual direct quote from my mother when I told her this: “I wonder if he saw that coming.”

NYT (share link).

Mr. Kreskin’s feats included divining details of the personal lives of strangers and guessing at playing cards chosen randomly from a deck. And he had a classic trick at live shows: entrusting audience members to hide his paycheck in an auditorium, and then relying on his instincts to find it — or else going without payment for a night.

…

His star rose in the 1970s when he was a regular guest on the talk show circuit, appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Mike Douglas Show and Late Night with David Letterman. With other famous guests, he played psychological tricks that looked like magic: asking people to put their fingers on objects that would seem to move, for example, or guessing what card had been pulled from a deck.

…

Mr. Kreskin often said that he was not psychic and did not possess any supernatural powers but was able to read certain cues, like body language, and use the power of suggestion to guide people’s actions.

Michael Cole, actor. NYT (archived). He was the last surviving member of the “Mod Squad” trio (preceded in death by Peggy Lipton and Clarence Williams III). Other credits include “Run For Your Life”, “Get Christie Love!”, and “It” (the 1990 TV mini-series).

Rocky Colavito, one of the great Cleveland Indians. ESPN. Cleveland.com. Baseball Reference.

Colavito hit 374 home runs in 14 years in the major leagues, eight of those seasons in two separate stints with Cleveland. He finished his career with a return to his birthplace, the Bronx, playing for the Yankees. A six-time All-Star, he was just the third player in the major leagues to hit four home runs in one game in consecutive at-bats, and he had one of the game’s strongest arms.

…

When rumors arose that Colavito would be traded in 1958 by Cleveland’s newly arrived general manager, Frank Lane, who had been consumed with making deals in his previous stops, fans chanted, “Don’t knock the Rock!”
Colavito hit 41 home runs in 1958 and 42 in 1959, tying with Harmon Killebrew for the American League lead, while driving in more than 100 runs each of those seasons. Lane told The Saturday Evening Post in July 1959 that Colavito would “easily be the greatest gate attraction in the American League” when Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams wound down their careers.
But Lane thwarted Colavito’s quest for significant salary raises, and, two days before the opening of the 1960 season, he outraged Cleveland’s fans by trading Colavito to the Detroit Tigers for outfielder Harvey Kuenn. Kuenn, the league’s batting champion in 1959, was three years older than Colavito and had hit only nine home runs that season.
Gabe Paul, the Cincinnati Reds’ general manager at the time and a future Cleveland general manager, was quoted as saying, “The Indians traded a slow guy with power for a slow guy with no power.”
Colavito went on to hit at least 35 home runs in three of his four seasons as a Tiger. Kuenn played only one season for Cleveland before he was traded to the San Francisco Giants.
“I loved Cleveland and the Indians,” Colavito told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 2010. “I never wanted to leave.”
And he insisted that he had never put a curse on the team. As he put it, “Frank Lane did.” Either way, Cleveland still hasn’t won a World Series since 1948.

Mark Withers, actor. Other credits include “Hill Street Blues”, “Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story”, and “The Wizard”.

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

Obit watch: December 2, 2024.

Monday, December 2nd, 2024

Hal Lindsey, of The Late Great Planet Earth fame. He was 95.

Mr. Lindsey took the book world by storm with “The Late Great Planet Earth,” released in 1970 by Zondervan, a small religious publisher in Grand Rapids, Mich. Written with C.C. Carlson (some Lindsey followers said it was ghostwritten by her), the book is a breezy blend of history and apocalyptic predictions based on biblical interpretations and actual events of the time.
An editor at Bantam Books thought the book, Mr. Lindsey’s first, had sales potential, so she acquired the mass-market paperback rights. “The Late Great Planet Earth” became the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970s. By some estimates, it sold about 35 million copies by 1999, and was translated into about 50 languages.

…

The Middle East, and Israel in particular, were central to Mr. Lindsey’s predictions. “The Late Great Planet Earth” was published just three years after Israel’s triumph in the Six-Day War of June 1967. Mr. Lindsey was on safe ground in predicting that Israel’s victory would not bring peace, but he envisioned events far worse than the violence and tensions that plague the region.
The book forecast a war that would end all wars, with a huge Russian army invading Israel by land and sea. The Russians were in turn expected to battle a horde of soldiers, led by the Chinese. Naturally, a conflict of this magnitude could not be contained.
World leaders would send armies to the Middle East to fight under the command of a Rome-based Antichrist against “the kings of the east.”
“Western Europe, the United States, Canada, South America and Australia will undoubtedly be represented,” Mr. Lindsey predicted, and the conflict would not be confined to the Middle East. Hundreds of millions of people would perish in the ashes of New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and other metropolises. Then, finally, the return of Jesus Christ would bring everlasting joy to the faithful and eternal dismay to those who refused to be saved, Mr. Lindsey wrote.
Melani McAlister, a professor of American studies at George Washington University who followed Mr. Lindsey’s career, said in an interview that she found Mr. Lindsey’s tone “weirdly gleeful” considering its central notion, “that there are going to be rivers of blood everywhere.”

“Dear boss: I was late for work this morning because rivers of blood were blocking my driveway.”

We had the book, but I never saw the movie. In double checking the dates on IMDB, I find that Norman Borlaug appears in it as himself. You know what that means, right?

Actually, the Oracle of Bacon claims “Norman Borlaug cannot be linked to Kevin Bacon using only feature films.” I think this is wrong, assuming you count “Earth” as a feature film. (I do.) “Orson Welles has a Bacon number of 2” and, since Welles was in “Earth” with Norman Borlaug, that would make his Bacon number 3, at the most. Right?

Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen collaborator.

Peter Westbrook, Olympic fencer.

A saber fencer with a graceful and agile style in an event reliant on ballistic thrusting and slashing maneuvers, Westbrook won 13 United States championships and qualified for every U.S. Olympic team from 1976 through 1996.
His Olympic medal, a bronze one, came in the individual saber competition at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. He also served as flag-bearer for the American team at the closing ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and was inducted into the national fencing Hall of Fame in 1996.

NYT obit for Earl Holliman (archived).

Posted in 1970s, Books, Knives, Movies, Obits, Religion, Swords, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Silly food blogging.

Sunday, December 1st, 2024

Regular readers of this blog know of my fascination with things that sit at the weird intersection of food and popular culture.

The holidays are here! “Elf on the Shelf” cereal is at the H-E-B! Two flavors, even!

I didn’t buy any. I don’t eat cereal for breakfast, the last box I bought disappeared, and I don’t want to get yelled at for bringing food into the house that nobody’s going to eat.

However, I think it is more likely we will use these:

“Yellowstone” branded spice mixes. In “Cattleman Steak”, “Skillet Butter & Herb”, and “Cowboy BBQ”.

“Life on the Dutton Ranch requires a fistful of grit and the spirit of a cowboy! After a hard day of taking people to the train station, nothing hits the spot like a good steak seasoned with our Cattleman Steak seasoning!”

(No, I don’t watch “Yellowstone”, due to my “won’t pay for TV” policy. But I have picked up a few things about the series…)

Posted in Christmas, Food, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 27, 2024.

Wednesday, November 27th, 2024

Jim Abrahams, of Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker (ZAZ), the people who brought you “Airplane!”, “Police Squad!” (In color), and “Top Secret!”

I know I’ve mentioned this, but: I enthusiastically endorse Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! by ZAZ, and think it would make a great Christmas present for someone in your family.

Earl Holliman. He had an interesting lineup of other credits, including “Forbidden Planet”, “The F.B.I.”, and “The Sons of Katie Elder”.

Helen Gallagher, actress. Other credits include “The Cosby Mysteries”, “Law and Order”, and “Roseland”.

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

Obit watch: November 25, 2024.

Monday, November 25th, 2024

Two members of the Civil Air Patrol were killed in a crash in Colorado over the weekend. Susan Wolber was the pilot and Jay Rhoten was serving as an aerial photographer. They were on a routine training mission when the plane crashed near Storm Mountain in Larimer County, Colorado. A third member of the crew, co-pilot Randall Settergren, survived the crash but was seriously injured.

I’m putting this up to give FotB RoadRich a chance to comment if he wishes. From private discussions with him, I know he was a friend of the pilot, but I’m going to leave it up to him how much more he wants to say.

Barbara Taylor Bradford, author. Her books were huge.

Beginning with the runaway success of her 1979 debut novel, “A Woman of Substance,” Ms. Bradford’s 40 works of fiction sold more than 90 million copies in 40 languages and were all best sellers on both sides of the Atlantic, according to publishers’ reports.
Ten of her books were adapted for television films and mini-series, and the author, a self-described workaholic whose life mirrored the rags-to-riches stories of many of her heroines, achieved global celebrity and amassed a $300 million fortune.

Charles Dumont has passed away at 95. He was a French songwriter, and you might recognize his name: he wrote (with Michel Vaucaire) “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”.

At 44, Piaf was racked by pain after a car accident and expressed little apparent interest in returning to the stage — certainly not with a song by Mr. Dumont, whom she had previously dismissed as “a mechanical songwriter of no great talent,” he recalled in a 2010 interview with The Independent.
That day, Piaf’s secretary had already informed them that the meeting was canceled when the singer piped up in a weary voice from her bedroom and agreed to see them. It took an hour for the frail figure to emerge, Mr. Dumont said, and when she did, she told them. “I’ll hear only one song — just one.” Mr. Dumont raced to the piano and began belting out “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” which he and Mr. Vaucaire had written with Piaf in mind.
“When I finished,” he said in 2010, “she asked, rather rudely, ‘Did you really write that song? You?’ Then she made me play it over and over again, maybe five or six times. She said that it was magnificent, wonderful. That it was made for her. That it was her. That it would be her resurrection.”

Noted:

Piaf dedicated her recording of the song to the Foreign Legion. At the time of the recording, France was engaged in a military conflict, the Algerian War (1954–1962), and the 1st REP (1st Foreign Parachute Regiment)—which backed the failed 1961 putsch against president Charles de Gaulle and the civilian leadership of Algeria—adopted the song when their resistance was broken. The leadership of the Regiment was arrested and tried but the non-commissioned officers, corporals and Legionnaires were assigned to other Foreign Legion formations. They left the barracks singing the song, which has now become part of the Foreign Legion heritage and is sung when they are on parade.

Chuck Woolery. NYT (archived).

After the Kentucky native performed “Delta Dawn” on The Merv Griffin Show, Griffin offered him a chance to audition as the host of a new game show he had just developed called Shopper’s Bazaar. Woolery beat out former 77 Sunset Strip star Edd “Kookie” Byrnes for the job, and the renamed Wheel of Fortune premiered on NBC on Jan. 6, 1975.
With the show pulling in a 44 share in 1981, Woolery requested a raise from $65,000 a year to about $500,000, what other top game show hosts were making at the time, he recalled in 2007. Griffin offered him $400,000 and NBC said it would pony up the rest, but that somehow infuriated Griffin, who threatened to take Wheel of Fortune to CBS, according to Woolery.
Not wanting to lose the game show, NBC withdrew the offer, and Griffin proceeded to fire Woolery and hire Pat Sajak. Also let go: original letter-turner Susan Stafford, who was replaced by Vanna White.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Music, Obits, Planes, TV | 6 Comments »

Obit watch: November 15, 2024.

Friday, November 15th, 2024

Theodore B. Olson, noted lawyer. I sort of vaguely remember him from the Reagan administration:

He was a founding member of the Federalist Society, the influential conservative legal group, and a leading figure in many conservative legal triumphs of the 2000s, including Bush v. Gore (2000) and Citizens United (2010).

Later on, he became involved in the effort to overturn California’s gay marriage ban, and opposed the first Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

His political views emerged in college, centered on a particularly Western, libertarian brand of conservatism. During a debate trip to Texas, he watched as a restaurant manager in Amarillo refused to seat a Black teammate. Mr. Olson shouted down the manager, telling him they would all leave if he wouldn’t serve everyone.

…

Mr. Olson worked on the White House’s behalf during the initial stages of the Iran-contra affair, Congress’s investigation into the illegal arms sales to Iran to support right-wing rebels in Nicaragua. He was also accused of committing perjury during a congressional investigation into the White House’s withholding of environmental records.
That investigation, which lasted five years and personally cost Mr. Olson $1.5 million, ended without charges. It made him a darling among conservative commentators, but left many Democrats convinced that he was dangerously partisan.

…

His third wife, the conservative commentator Barbara (Bracher) Olson, was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 to Los Angeles from Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked it, crashing it into the Pentagon and killing everyone aboard.
She had planned to leave the day before, but had stayed an extra day to be with Mr. Olson on the morning of his birthday. As the plane veered back toward Northern Virginia, where they lived, she called him from a bathroom, and Mr. Olson was able to record some of the call. His telephone is now in the collection of the National Museum of American History.

Gerry Faust, former coach at Notre Dame.

John Robinson, former coach at the Universty of Southern California and of the Rams.

…Attending Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, he met a fellow fifth-grader, John Madden, the future Hall of Fame coach and broadcaster, and they became lifelong friends.
“Just two doofuses from Daly City,” Robinson told The Los Angeles Times in 2021.

Timothy West, noted British actor. Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Nicholas and Alexandra”, “Crime and Punishment” (the 1979 TV miniseries)…

…and what was, according to the obit, a disastrous production of “Macbeth” with Peter O’Toole.

Mr. O’Toole, who had not appeared on the London stage for 15 years, had insisted on complete artistic control over the production, Mr. West wrote in a memoir — “a sure recipe for dissent if not disaster” — and refused to make any suggested changes.
The first night was a critical failure (“Not so much downright bad as heroically ludicrous,” The Daily Mail wrote), and ignited a public war of words (“West Disowns MacBeth,” one headline blared). But the play drew so many curious theatergoers that it became a box office hit.

He was also married to Prunella “Sybil Fawlty” Scales, who I did not know (until I read the obit) has Alzheimer’s. Damn.

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

Obit watch: November 11, 2024.

Monday, November 11th, 2024

Playing catch-up here:

Tony Todd, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “Crossing Jordan” (the “Quincy” of the 2000s except it sucked), “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “Cop Rock”, “Jake and the Fatman”, and multiple spinoffs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

Bobby Allison. NASCAR. ESPN.

This is a little old, but as I recall, it came up while Mike the Musicologist and I were wandering around: Jonathan Haze, actor. Other credits include OG “Dragnet”, “Highway Patrol”, “The Fast and the Furious” (1954), and “The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent”.

Finally, Baltazar Ushca has passed away at 80. He is believed to have been the last of the Andean ice harvesters.

Once or twice a week, he climbed snow-capped Mount Chimborazo, Ecuador’s highest peak, to hack ice from a glacier with a pickax, wrap the 60-pound blocks in hay and transport them on the backs of his donkeys. He would then sell them to villagers who did not have electricity and needed refrigeration to conserve their food.

…

“The natural ice from Chimborazo is the best ice,” Mr. Ushca said in a short documentary, “El Último Hielero,” or “The Last Ice Merchant” (2012), directed by Sandy Patch. “The tastiest and the sweetest. Full of vitamins for your bones.”

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

Obit watch; November 4, 2024.

Monday, November 4th, 2024

Quincy Jones. NYT.

Alan Rachins, actor. I watched enough “L.A. Law” that I remember him. THR.

Other credits include “Stargate SG-1”, “Showgirls”, and the “Fear on Trial” TV movie, which some of us had to watch in high school.

Posted in Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 30, 2024.

Wednesday, October 30th, 2024

Teri Garr. Tributes. NYT.

While making many of these films, she noticed troubling physical symptoms. She didn’t suspect their cause, but she remembered running in New York City in the late 1990s. “When I was jogging, I would get this horrible pain in my arm like a knife stabbing,” she told CNN in 2008. “And I thought, well, I’m in Central Park — well, maybe it is a knife stabbing.”

…

For years, she was a spokeswoman for MS research and support, continuing to make appearances in her wheelchair. “I really do count my blessings,” she wrote in a memoir, “Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood” (2005), written with Henriette Mantel. “At least I used to. Now I get so tired I have a woman come once a week and count them for me.”

Other credits include “One from the Heart”, “Honky Tonk Freeway”, “McCloud”, “Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood”, and an episode of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

John Gierach, author and fly fisherman. I recognized the name, probably because I’ve seen some of his books around. (Half-Price Books puts the fishing books right above the firearms books.)

Charles Brandt, former prosecutor and author.

But [“The Irishman”] was fiercely criticized by journalists and Mafia experts, who said Mr. Sheeran had exaggerated (at best) or fabricated (at worst) his role in Mr. Hoffa’s death.
“Frank Sheeran never killed a fly,” John Carlyle Berkery, an Irish mob figure in Philadelphia, was quoted as saying in a 2019 Slate article with the headline “The Lies of the Irishman.” “The only things he ever killed were countless jugs of red wine.”
Selwyn Raab, who wrote about the Mafia for The Times for more than two decades, told Slate: “I know Sheeran didn’t kill Hoffa. I’m as confident about that as you can be. There are 14 people who claim to have killed Hoffa. There’s an inexhaustible supply of them.”

I read I Heard You Paint Houses and I think Frank Sheeran’s claim that he killed Hoffa is B.S. Sheeran even admitted to the author at one point that he’d lied about an easily checkable point: if he lied about that, why should we believe the rest of what he said?

Posted in Books, Fish, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: October 28, 2024.

Monday, October 28th, 2024

David Harris, actor. NYT (archived).

Other credits include “18 Wheels of Justice”, “Crime Story”, “Badge of the Assassin”, and “Cop Rock”.

Tom Jarriel, ABC reporter. He’s another one of those old-time guys I remember from watching the news when I was younger.

Phil Lesh, of the Grateful Dead.

Jeri Taylor. TV writer and producer.

Before embarking on her Star Trek voyage, the Indiana native wrote and produced episodes of such popular network crime fare as Quincy, M.E., Magnum, P.I., Jake and the Fatman and In the Heat of the Night. She was adept at writing about “character, of people and relationships and feelings,” she once noted.

…

Along the way, Taylor also wrote ABC Afterschool Specials, episodes of Little House on the Prairie, The Incredible Hulk, Blue Thunder and Father Dowling Mysteries and the 1987 CBS telefilm A Place to Call Home, starring Linda Lavin.

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

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