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Dumber than a bag of hair watch.

Monday, September 30th, 2024

“Dumber than a bag of hair” is how I have previously described the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. They have a long history of corruption and incompetence, some of which I have documented here.

Today’s example is a criminal indictment brought to us by the FBI by way of Brian Krebs.

The whole thing is slightly confusing, and I’d recommend reading the Krebs article, but in brief: the FBI has been investigating a crooked cryptocurrency guy who founded a platform called “Zort”.

But the feds say investors in Zort soon lost their shorts, after Iza and his girlfriend began spending those investments on Lamborghinis, expensive jewelry, vacations, a $28 million home in Bel Air, even cosmetic surgery to extend the length of his legs.

But that’s not the part that jumped out at me. What jumped out at me is: crypto bro apparently had LASD deputies “on his payroll”.

The FBI later obtained a copy of a search warrant executed by LASD deputies in January 2022 for GPS location information on a phone belonging to E.Z., which shows an LASD deputy unlawfully added E.Z.’s mobile number to a list of those associated with an unrelated firearms investigation.
“Damn my guy actually filed the warrant,” Iza allegedly texted someone after the location warrant was entered. “That’s some serious shit to do for someone….risking a 24 years career. I pay him 280k a month for complete resources. They’re active-duty.”

And relevant to Lawrence’s interests: “E.Z.” is apparently a man named Enzo Zelocchi. Mr. Zelocchi is one of the two listed directors, and the star of, “Angels Apocalypse”, “once rated the absolute worst sci-fi flick on IMDB”.

1.4, Lawrence.

The FBI said that after the incident at the party, Iza had his bribed sheriff deputies to pull R.C. over and arrest him on phony drug charges. The complaint includes a photo of R.C. being handcuffed by the police, which the feds say Iza sent to R.C. in order to intimidate him even further. The drug charges were later dismissed for lack of evidence.

I’m not seeing any reports that LASD officers have been charged. Yet. Kind of makes me wonder if some of them rolled, perhaps in hopes of doing time in a white-collar resort prison.

Posted in California Über Alles, Cops, Law, Movies | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 30, 2024.

Monday, September 30th, 2024

Kris Kristofferson. THR.

He was a good Texas boy who did some acting in addition to his music career. There’s plenty of press coverage around this, but a few credits that aren’t covered in the articles: “Lone Star”, “Millennium”, “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia”, “Heaven’s Gate”, and let us not forget…

(I know both Lawrence and I have said this before, but “Passion & Poetry: Sam’s Trucker Movie”, which is on the blu-ray edition of “Convoy”, has a lot of Kristofferson in it. And I think it is almost more interesting than the movie itself.)

Dikembe Mutombo, Hall of Fame NBA player. ESPN.

I kind of disliked that commercial because I felt it made him look like a jerk (yes, I know it was playing off his signature move). But:

Mutombo often joked about how much in fines his showmanship had cost him under the league’s no-taunting rule. But four years into retirement he received ample payback, starring in an acclaimed Geico commercial created for the 2013 Super Bowl. In that 30-second spot, in full uniform, he wagged his famous finger at people in various everyday activities.
He told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the commercial had reestablished recognition “for me and for my foundation. I thank God for it.”

…

Mutombo’s mother, Biamba Marie, died at home in 1998 after having a stroke; he had been unable to get hospital care for her due to a government-enforced curfew. That year, he invited business and political insiders to a dinner in Washington to announce a fund-raising campaign for a hospital in Kinshasa to provide treatment for the poor. Over the next several years, he struggled to raise money, even from people within the N.B.A., two notable exceptions being Ewing and Mourning.
“I thought it would be easy, that I would call up all the rich people I knew from being a basketball player and the whole thing would take nine months,” he told The New York Times weeks before the 300-bed hospital, named for his mother, opened in September 2006, on land donated by the government. He said that he had to pay squatters to vacate the property and that he had donated roughly $15 million to the project.
“This is going to be the proudest day of my life,” he said during the ceremonial opening.

John Ashton, actor. Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “Police Squad!” (In color), and “Columbo”.

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

Obit watch: September 10, 2024.

Tuesday, September 10th, 2024

James Earl Jones. NYT (gift link). THR. Variety.

I didn’t realize he was an EGOT (but the Oscar was honorary, not competitive).

The IMDB trivia asserts he was a NRA member, which is interesting. It also asserts that he was considered for the lead role in one of the spin-offs of a minor 1960s SF TV series, but they cast Avery “Hawk” Brooks instead.

Other credits include three episodes of “Homicide: Life on the Street”, something called “Excessive Force” that sounds fun, “The Last Remake of Beau Geste”, “Exorcist II: The Heretic”, and, of course, “The Star Wars Holiday Special”.

Once, while traveling cross-country, Jones broke out his Darth Vader voice on the CB radio scanner. “The truck drivers would really freak out — for them, it was Darth Vader. I had to stop doing that,” he told The New York Times magazine.

As a not-quite-an-obit but belongs here anyway note, the NYT obit is credited to Robert D. McFadden. Mr. McFadden retired from the Times on September 1st, and the paper of record ran a very nice tribute to him. I’ll say something nice about the NYT for once: I agree, Mr. McFadden was a pretty swell obit writer. I think he belongs in the same class as the legendary Robert McG. Thomas Jr..

He retired with more than 250 advance obituaries still in the pipeline, each awaiting its day.

Also among the dead: Ed Kranepool, one of the original Mets.

When Stengel assessed Kranepool’s talent, he told The New York Times: “He don’t strike out too much and he don’t let himself get suckered into goin’ for bad pitches. I wouldn’t be afraid to play him. He don’t embarrass you.”

…

After the ’69 Series, Kranepool and several teammates, including Tom Seaver and Cleon Jones, put together a musical act that performed in Las Vegas, singing, among other songs, “The Impossible Dream.” After the group’s debut on the Circus Maximus stage at Caesars Palace, Kranepool conceded that the singing Mets were nervous.
“It’s not like Shea Stadium, where we know what we’re doing,” he told The Times. “But we had enough Scotch.”

Baseball Reference.

Posted in 1970s, Media, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: August 18, 2024.

Sunday, August 18th, 2024

Alain Delon, noted French actor. NYT (gift link).

Other credits include “Someone Is Bleeding” (aka “Icy Breasts”, based on a Richard Matheson novel), “The Assassination of Trotsky” (apparently, he was the assassin to Richard Burton’s (!) Trotsky), and…

…he didn’t have much of a US career, but he did play “Joe Patroni”‘s co-pilot and procurer in “The Concorde…Airport ’79“.

John Aprea, actor. Other credits include a movie that does not exist and is clearly a copyright trap by IMDB, “Renegade”, “Lt. Vince Novelli” on “Matt Houston”, “Mrs. Columbo” (but not “Columbo”), “The F.B.I.”, “The Seven-Ups”…

…and yes, he did do a “Mannix” (“Murder Revisited”, season 3, episode 23. IMDB lists him as “Thug (uncredited)”.)

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

Obit watch: August 15, 2024.

Thursday, August 15th, 2024

Wally Amos, of “Famous Amos” cookie fame.

He also became an advocate for childhood literacy. His mother had never learned to read, and neither had he until late in his childhood. He worked closely with the group Literacy Volunteers of America, and in 1987 he hosted his own public-access cable TV program, “Learn to Read.”
Years later, after he had gotten back into the cookie trade with a small shop near his home in Honolulu, he set aside an adjacent room stocked with children’s books. Every Saturday, he would take a seat in a rocking chair, surrounded by children, and read to them for hours.

Gena Rowlands. NYT (archived). Other credits include “Run For Your Life”, “Lonely Are the Brave”, “77 Sunset Strip”, and “Columbo”.

Seth Bloom, the blue-haired clown and physical comedy virtuoso who helped outreach organizations in Afghanistan and other remote places stage circuses that roused smiles from children while also teaching them important life skills, including how to avoid land mines, died on Aug. 2 in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. He was 49.
Mr. Bloom died by suicide, said his wife, Christina Gelsone, with whom he performed in two-person clown shows around the world, including at the Big Apple Circus in New York City.

…

The Acrobuffos act took the couple around the world. For part of “Air Play,” which was probably their biggest hit, they jumped around in giant balloons, with only their heads visible.
“The most important thing we’ve learned about climbing inside balloons is not to fart,” Mr. Bloom once said.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You can also dial 988 to reach the Lifeline.

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

Obit watch: August 7, 2024.

Wednesday, August 7th, 2024

Charles Cyphers, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “FBI: The Unheard Music The Untold Stories”, “Renegade”, “The F.B.I.”, and “Jake and the Fatman”.

Duane Thomas, one of the great Dallas Cowboys. ESPN.

Thomas spent the 1971 season without speaking with reporters and apparently his teammates.
It didn’t stop Thomas from performing on the field. He became the first player to score a touchdown in Texas Stadium in 1971. When that season ended, Thomas rushed 175 times for 793 yards and a NFL-leading 11 touchdowns.

Patti Yasutake, actress. Other credits include “Crossing Jordan” (the “Quincy, M.E.” of the ’90s except it sucked), “Murder One” (curiously, Charles Cyphers was also in “Murder One”), “Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot”, and “T.J. Hooker”.

Joss Naylor, English sportsman. He specialized in “fell running”: basically, running up and down mountains for days at a time.

His feats running the fells — the term in northern England for hills and mountains — defied common sense and earned him multiple nicknames, including “Iron Man” and “King of the Fells.”
In 1971, Mr. Naylor became the sixth person to conquer the Bob Graham Round — a 24-hour challenge to finish a 66-mile trek over 42 peaks in Cumbria’s Lake District. He overachieved, topping 61 peaks in 23 hours 37 minutes.
The next year, he crossed 63 peaks in the challenge, followed by 72 in 1975 — both times in under 24 hours.
Still running at age 50 in 1986, he completed the Wainwright Round, a series of 214 summits, in just over seven days, setting a record that stood until 2014. (He would have finished faster had he not stopped to save a lamb stuck in mud.)

…

In competitions that sometimes lasted a week, he survived on scone-like cakes and black currant juice with a dash of salt and cod liver oil that he swilled straight from the bottle — “like whiskey,” he once said.

…

In 1971, after the Bob Graham Round, he took on the National Three Peaks Challenge, which involved racing up the highest peaks in England, Scotland and Wales in 24 hours, including driving time between the mountains. He finished in just under 12 hours. Nobody has beaten that time.

Bucca di Bankrupt. (Headline hatip to Mike the Musicologist.)

Posted in Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Brief notes on film: “The Concorde… Airport ’79”

Sunday, July 28th, 2024

The Saturday Movie Group watched this last night.

It is not a good movie.

It is, however, an enjoyably good bad movie.

I think I will put a jump here to avoid any inadvertent spoilers, though frankly this movie arrived already spoiled…

(more…)

Posted in Bagatelle, Movies, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 21, 2024.

Sunday, July 21st, 2024

Sheila Jackson Lee (D – Houston). Fox 26 Houston. McThag.

Whitney Rydbeck, actor. Other credits include “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island”, “Battle Beyond the Stars”, “Switch”, and one of the spin-offs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Politics, Texas, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 19, 2024.

Friday, July 19th, 2024

Bob Newhart. THR. Tributes. Appreciation. Variety.

Something very sick makes me laugh. My wife says to me, “If people ever found out what you find humorous, they’d stop showing up.” I said to her: “That’s our little secret.

…

“I tend to find humor in the macabre. I would say 85 percent of me is what you see on the show. And the other 15 percent is a very sick man with a very deranged mind,” he said during a 1990 interview with Los Angeles magazine.

…

What do you think happens on the other side?

I think if you lived a good life, some people say it is rapture. You spend the rest of your life in a state of rapture. That’d be nice. What I’m actually hoping is there’s the Pearly Gates and God’s there and he says to me, “What did you do in life?” And I say, “I was a stand-up comedian.” And he says: “Get in that real short line over there.”

Ha!

God has an incredible sense of humor, an unimaginable sense of humor. Just look around.

I’ve had this discussion – God is a punster and has a sense of humor – with people at my church, too. I think it it worth noting that he was a faithful Catholic, and was married to the same woman for 60 years. (Ginny Newhart passed away in 2023.)

One of the less-reputable over the air networks used to run “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart” back to back in the afternoons, and I’d have both on while I worked. I think “TBNS” is just about perfect as a show, but, oddly, I didn’t like “Newhart” so much. I do remember watching and enjoying it first run, but not so much as an adult. My dislike for it now is mostly because I felt the show shifted focus away from Dick to Michael and Stephanie, and I really didn’t like those two characters. But when Bob was dominating the screen, it was a pretty good show.

It turns out one of my favorite “Newhart” episodes is available on the ‘Tube (until someone files a copyright strike): “Dick the Kid”, season 5, episode 3.

Dick has a case of writer’s block, so he goes off to work as a cowboy on a ranch. The comic element of this episode isn’t Dick’s ineptitude as a cowboy. Just the opposite: he’s so good at being a cowboy, he wins the respect of everyone. Even the toughest most macho of the cowboys breaks down when Dick goes back to the inn.

The world is a lesser place today.

Edited to add: per THR, CBS will be airing a tribute to Bob Newhart on July 22nd, but I don’t have a specific time yet.

Lou Dobbs.

Cheng Pei-pei, Chinese actress. IMDB.

Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnamese Communist leader.

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

Obit watch: July 14, 2024.

Sunday, July 14th, 2024

Wow. It has been a weekend, hasn’t it?

Happy Bastille Day to all my readers, since I don’t expect to do a second post today.

The only thing I have to say about Trump is: in my opinion, 130 yards is not a sniper shot. It really isn’t even a very long shot for the average person. I believe most people zero their rifles so they’re on target at 100 to 150 yards. Calling this guy a “sniper” is an insult to actual snipers.

With all that out of the way:

Shannen Doherty. NYT (archived). IMDB.

Richard Simmons. THR.

And finally, speaking of snipers, Dr. Ruth Westheimer. NYT (archived).

…Westheimer is quoted as saying, “When I was in my routine training for the Israeli army as a teenager, they discovered completely by chance that I was a lethal sniper. I could hit the target smack in the center — further away than anyone could believe. Not just that, even though I was tiny and not even much of an athlete, I was incredibly accurate [at] throwing hand grenades, too. Even today, I can load a Sten automatic rifle in a single minute, blindfolded.”

I’m sorry if it seems like I’m shorting these three people on coverage, but I feel like they all are getting a tremendous amount of coverage already (modulo the ongoing news coverage) and I just don’t have anything to add.

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

Obit watch: July 11, 2024.

Thursday, July 11th, 2024

Shelley Duvall. This is breaking, and the NYT is in “full obit to come” mode. I’ll link to that later.

Edited to add: NYT obit.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment. As noted, they own Redbox. They also own the Crackle streaming service.

Fun fact:

In April 2021, Chicken Soup for the Soul acquired the film and television catalogue of Sonar Entertainment. In return, Sonar will hold a 5 percent stake in a new AVOD network featuring its library. Through the acquisition, Chicken Soup now currently owns the North American rights to a majority of the Laurel & Hardy films and shorts, and most of the Our Gang library, as well as the holdings of the former RHI/Hallmark/Cabin Fever/Sonar outputs, and a majority of the Hal Roach library, all via their Halcyon Studios division.

They had filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition (which would have allowed them to re-organize) but yesterday it was converted into a Chapter 7 petition, which is total liquidation. And it sounds like there was some sleazy stuff going on.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment had failed to pay employees and vendors for at least four weeks prior to its Chapter 11 filing. In court documents, HPS, the company’s top lender, had alleged gross mismanagement by the company. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment chairman and CEO Bill Rouhana Jr., in a declaration supporting the bankruptcy petition, claimed that the company’s financial straits were in part due to “refusals” by its lenders “to live up to their obligations, resulting in asserted defaults and/or contractual terminations across critical content and service providers.”

I have seen reports that they were pocketing employee health insurance premiums, but not actually paying the insurers. Those are just reports, and the executives are entitled to the presumption of innocence. But if it is true that they weren’t paying employees, and weren’t paying employee health insurance…the kind side of me thinks those people should be in jail. The unkind side of me thinks that rope and lampposts are in order.

Edited to add: more from THR, concentrating on the RedBox part of the business, but including the accusations of financial mismanagement.

Benji Gregory. Other credits include “Amazing Stories”, “The Twilight Zone” (the 1985-1986 revival), and “T.J. Hooker”.

Playing catch-up:

Joe Bonsall, of the Oak Ridge Boys.

James M. Inhofe, Republican senator from Oklahoma and former mayor of Tulsa.

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

Obit watch: June 28, 2024.

Friday, June 28th, 2024

“Kinky” Friedman followup: NYT. THR.

How about a little music?

Edited to add: Reason tribute. Noted here for two reasons:

1. Jesse Walker mentions another of my favorite Kinky songs that I decided not to use, but it was a close decision: “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You”.

2. I had always associated Kinky with the “dropped acid and listened to Shiva’s Headband at the Armadillo World Headquarters” crowd, so this is an interesting quote:

He even sneered at the Armadillo World Headquarters, the town’s legendary music venue: “A lot of people think it’s a very warm place, but to me it’s an airplane hangar.”

This is pushing the definition of an “obit” just a bit, but Will Dabbs, MD, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite modern gun writers, has a nice tribute up to Donald Sutherland.

More specifically, it is a tribute to Donald Sutherland’s role as “Oddball” in “Kelly’s Heroes”.

I’ve seen “Kelly’s Heroes”, but when I was a child, on the late night movies. (Kids, ask your parents about late night movies on TV.) I think the Saturday Movie Conspiracy is going to be re-watching it in the fairly near future. And I had not heard the story about the grenades.

Posted in Guns, History, Movies, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: June 27, 2024.

Thursday, June 27th, 2024

This is breaking, and I may have more later on: “Kinky” Friedman, Texas musician, author, and politician. KVUE. KSAT. HouChron (archived). (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Bill Cobbs, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “A Mighty Wind”, “The Slap Maxwell Story”, and one of the spinoffs of a minor 1960s SF TV series.

Finally, a weird one:

Shahjahan Bhuiya, who hanged some of Bangladesh’s highest-profile death row inmates in exchange for reductions in his own robbery and murder sentences, then briefly became a TikTok star after his release from prison, died on Monday in Dhaka, the nation’s capital.

…

Last year, Mr. Bhuiya told the local news media that he was 74. But according to Mr. Bhuiya’s national identity card, provided by Mr. Kashem, he was 66 at the time of his death.

…

In a memoir that he published after his release, “What the Life of a Hangman Was Like,” Mr. Bhuiya wrote that he had put 60 inmates to death. Prison officials have said that the correct figure was 26.

…

After his release from prison, Mr. Bhuiya published his book and briefly became a TikTok star. His videos often featured his sexually suggestive conversations with young women.

Posted in Austin, Books, Movies, Music, Obits, Politics, Texas, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 21, 2024.

Friday, June 21st, 2024

Your Donald Sutherland obit roundup: NYT. THR. Variety. Variety tribute.

IMDB. I did not realize he was Wilhelm Reich in the video for “Cloudbusting”. And we’ve watched “Don’t Look Now”: I can’t recommend it, even with the sex scene. On the other hand, I would like to see “Kelly’s Heroes” again, not cut up for television. And I’ve never seen “M*A*S*H”.

Master Chief Petty Officer William Goines (US Navy – ret.). He was 87.

In his 32 years in uniform, which included three tours of duty during the Vietnam War, he received a Bronze Star and a Navy Commendation Medal among other decorations.
After the war, he joined the Chuting Stars, the U.S. Navy parachute exhibition team, performing 640 jumps over five years.

Master Chief Goines is credited as being the first black Navy SEAL (though the paper of record does note that there was at least one black frogman in the underwater demolition teams that preceded the SEALs).

Taylor Wily.

Hailing from Laie, Hawaii, Wily — who stood 6’2” and weighed 450 pounds, was recruited in 1987 into the Azumazeki stable of sumo, the century-spanning national sport of Japan. Wily, who wrestled under the name Takamikuni, was undefeated in his first 14 matches and soon became the first foreign-born wrestler to win the championship in the sport’s makushita division. Two years after starting his career in the sport, Takamikuni reached the rank of makushita 2; however, he declined to pursue sumo further after knee issues developed.

From sumo, he went into acting. Other credits include both versions of “Magnum P.I.” (an uncredited appearance in the first, “Kamekona” in the second), the “MacGyver” reboot, and “One West Waikiki”.

Posted in Heroism, Movies, Obits, Sports, Sumo, TV | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: June 18, 2024.

Tuesday, June 18th, 2024

Yesterday was an extended travel day. I got in around 5 PM last night, and had to unpack the car and take care of other business. So blogging opportunities were limited.

Oddly, I have to work today, and have meetings tonight. But tomorrow is a company holiday. I’m planning to post something of a trip report then.

In the meantime, a few obits.

Anouk Aimée, French actress. NYT (archived). IMDB.

Kevin Brophy, actor. Other credits include “Matt Houston”, “Trapper John, M.D.”, and a spinoff of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s.

Ben Vautier, French artist. I haven’t done an “Art, damn it! Art!” watch for a while, and he seems like a good candidate.

Forever looking to provoke, Mr. Vautier found a kindred spirit in 1962 when he met George Maciunas, who spearheaded the avant-garde Fluxus movement of the 1960s, which included Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik and other artists, and which drew from the iconoclastic Dada movement of the early 20th century.
Fluxus, as articulated in Mr. Maciunas’s 1963 manifesto, was intended as a revolution, a call to comrades to “promote living art, anti-art, promote non-art reality,” while purging the world of “dead art, imitation, artificial art.”
Mr. Vautier certainly did his part, as both a visual and performance artist, with works that straddled the line between conceptual art and punchline.
At the Documenta art festival in Kassel, Germany in 1972, he famously strung a banner that read “Kunst Ist Überflüssig” (“Art Is Superfluous”) across the top of the august Fridericianum museum.
He strove to show that art could be found in daily life, and in ordinary objects, as with his series “Tas,” in which he piled dirt and garbage into lots and signed them as if they were masterpieces.
Starting in the 1960s, Mr. Vautier gave staged performances — he called them “gestes” (“gestures”) — that could seem like practical jokes on the audience. In one, “Audience Piece No. 8” (1965), guests were informed that the next piece was to be presented in a special area. Ushers then led them in groups through back exits and abandoned them.
In “Piano Concerto No. 2 for Paik,” an apparent concert from the same year, a pianist fled the stage before playing a note and the orchestra chased him in hot pursuit, trying to drag him back.
Mr. Vautier was often all too willing to shock. In one performance piece, he urinated in a jar, which he then exhibited as if it were high art. In another, he repeatedly slammed his head against a wall.

James Kent, NYC chef.

He opened his own restaurant, Crown Shy, in 2019 with a partner, Jeff Katz, the general manager of Del Posto, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan that closed in 2021. “At Crown Shy, the Only False Step Is the Name” read the headline of a “critic’s pick” review by Pete Wells, the restaurant critic of The New York Times. (The name refers to tall trees’ tendency not to allow their upper stories to grow entangled with the branches of their neighbors.)
Mr. Wells wrote that Mr. Kent’s dishes “regularly over-deliver.” He singled out for praise “an almost absurdly creamy purée of white bean hummus under a fiery red slick of melted ’nduja; a beef tartare with toasted walnuts and rye croutons; and oysters served with “cucumber jelly, diced cucumbers, grains of jalapeño and microleaves of purple shiso.”

…

Crown Shy garnered one star from the Michelin restaurant guide. Saga earned two.
It was fine dining worthy of the European tradition, but with American casualness and an embrace of pop culture.
Mr. Kent played Wu-Tang Clan and the Notorious B.I.G. at Crown Shy. He eschewed a formal dress code. With his chef coat he could often be seen wearing expensive sneakers.
His spray-painted murals earned him a reputation as “a chef that’s also a wildly talented graffiti artist,” as Bloomberg reported in 2016. He was commissioned to do artwork at NoMad Hotel and the restaurant tech company Salido.

…

In April, The Times reported that Mr. Kent and Saga Hospitality Group had leased 3,000 square feet on the ground floor of the former Domino Sugar refinery in Brooklyn for a bakery and a “casual all-day restaurant.”
That same month, the lifestyle magazine The Robb Report described yet more ambitious plans. Mr. Kent was opening a new 140-seat restaurant on Park Avenue inspired by the Grand Central Oyster Bar, where his grandmother Sue Mingus first went on a date with the jazz musician Charles Mingus, who became her husband and whose legacy she took charge of overseeing until her death in 2022.
At the same time, Mr. Kent was planning a fast-casual fried chicken sandwich restaurant on the level of Shake Shack, The Robb Report said. LRMR Ventures, a private investment firm of LeBron James and his friend and business partner Maverick Carter, was backing Saga Hospitality Group’s expansion.
Investors “believe Kent’s a rare, multidimensional talent who’s primed to become the next great American restaurateur,” The Robb Report wrote.

He was 45.

Posted in Art, Food, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

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