Damn it all to hell and Hong Kong.
Robert M. Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, passed away yesterday.
I’ve written before, but sort of in passing, about Zen. It was a huge influence on me as a young man, and continues to be an influence on me today.
You’ve still got time, if you haven’t been out yet.
Longer post to come at some point in the (hopefully) near future, but here’s my 2017 BAG gun:
Savage Model 11 Scout in FDE. Purchased new in box through GunBroker at…well, a hefty discount off of MSRP, and much less than I’ve seen it elsewhere.
(The book is H.W. McBride’s A Rifleman Went To War. I’m not a big WWI buff, but a lot of people I respect have cited McBride’s book as being a valuable work. And damn, the guy could write: there’s something I want to pull as a quote of the day in almost every chapter.)
Bonus, since I never posted it here: my 2016 BAG gun.
Smith and Wesson Model 19-4 in .357 Magnum with the round butt and 2 1/2″ barrel. Sort of the ultimate snub-nosed revolver. The holster came with it, too. Tam has a good post up about the Model 19, though she’s writing about a diffenent variant than mine.
(Book: Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson, 4th Edition, of course.)
My birthday is coming up soon. As always, I do not expect any of my loyal readers to get me presents.
However, if someone felt inclined: please do not buy this book for me. Thank you.
(Seriously. I have nothing against Jesse Sublett: he seems like a pretty cool guy. But I don’t care much for the food at either Threadgill’s location. And one of the worst aspects of Austin culture is the incessant nostalgia: or, as Lawrence likes to put it, “the burned-out old hippies who constantly talk about how they went to the Armadillo, dropped acid, and saw Shiva’s Headband.” Said it before, I’ll say it again: if the Austin Chronicle and other people had their way, this town would be a 1970s music theme park.)
William Powell apparently passed away July 31st of last year. However,
He was 66, and died of a heart attack.
Mr. Powell was most famous as the author of The Anarchist Cookbook .
Chuck Barris, “Gong Show” host and noted CIA assassin, has passed away.
Or has he? You know, a conspiracy to fake his own death and go on one last mission for The Company is exactly the kind of thing that would appeal to Mr. Barris…
Colin Dexter, mystery writer. I haven’t read any of the Inspector Morse novels yet, though they are on my big list to read someday, so I can’t offer much about Mr. Dexter. However, The Rap Sheet has a good round-up and I would expect more tributes there as time goes by.
I don’t want to seem like I’m making light of this story: it’s awful, and I hope the victims are able to achieve some level of peace.
But when you see a headline like
Vegas jury convicts War Machine of 29 counts
on the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network’s website, it gets your attention.
“War Machine”, in this case, is Jonathan Paul Koppenhaver.
The jury deadlocked on attempted murder charges, but found him guilty of the other crimes. It isn’t clear to me if those include the eight counts of “domestic battery” that his lawyer conceded to.
And I hope he does every damn day of it.
In other words, he beat the shit out of them both. But he apparently reserved special attention for her.
…
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On what I hope is at least a slightly less depressing note, here’s something I stumbled across in my reading over the weekend, but haven’t had time to dig into in depth: Taylorology. This apparently started out as a zine in the old pre-Internet/”Factsheet Five” days, but eventually migrated online.
What’s it all about? Quoting the introduction:
The Taylor murder is one of those great unsolved Hollywood mysteries that everyone seems to have a theory about; some of those theories may even have an element of truth to them. Bruce Long, who runs Taylorology, has collected a great deal of archival material related to the Taylor case. And he’s a man after my own heart: he mentions in the biographical information on his site that he first became interested in the case when he was nine.
When I have some spare time (mumble years from now, the way things are going) I’d like to dig deeper into this site. One thing I can give Mr. Long credit for: he’s steered me away from purchasing one of the more famous books on the case. (Actually, I stumbled across Taylorology by reading another book on the case that references the website. Apologies for being elliptical, but I may do a brief review of the second book in the near future.)
I’ve been thinking most of the day about what I want to say about Jimmy Breslin, or if I want to say anything at all. I might tomorrow, but I wanted to get the obits up tonight: NYT. NY Daily News obit: there’s a lot of related material at their site, too.
For the historical record: Chuck Berry.
Robert James “Bridges of Madison County” Waller.
I sort of lost track of Waller. I remember hearing that Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend was not good, and I didn’t hear much about him after that. But The Long Night of Winchell Dear (which I hadn’t heard of) sounds like it could be interesting.
Sweet Angel Divine, aka “Mother Divine”, passed away a week ago Saturday.
Mrs. Divine was the widow of Father Divine:
One of the best things in the St. Clair McKelway collection Reporting at Wit’s End is his profile (with A. J. Liebling) of Father Divine at, more or less, the height of his empire. “Who Is This King of Glory?” might be available online, too, but when I went to the New Yorker website, it looked like you needed a subscription to read it there. In any case, I commend the McKelway/Liebling profile to your attention.
Scot McCloughan out as general manager of the Redskins.
And the Brockster out as quarterback in Houston. Speculation (both in the sports media and from people I know in Cleveland) is that the Browns aren’t going to keep him, either.
Edited to add: Well. The Browns have cut Bobby ThreeSticks now. And nobody thinks His Brockness is going to be asked to hang around. So who’s quarterbacking come fall? The season is closer than you think…,
The Statesman is reporting the death of Gary Cartwright, one of the best of the Texas Monthly stable of writers and author of several true crime books.
I’d been reading Cartwright’s work for TM since…well, since my family first moved to Texas and started subscribing to Texas Monthly, and that was (mumble mumble) years ago.
I don’t see an actual tribute on their website yet, but I’m sure one is in progress and I’ll link it here. About 2 1/2 years ago, when Cartwright turned 80, they did run a tribute to him which contains links to other TM writers favorite stories. (Some of my favorites from that list: “Leroy’s Revenge”, which you should not read if you love dogs, but has a sort of gonzo feel to it. “Otis Crater was late for the fanciers’ organizational meeting at the Cherokee Lounge for good reason. He had just stabbed a U-Totem attendant following a discussion of the economic impact of a five-cent price increase on a six-pack of beer.” Also, his profiles of noted stripper Candy Barr and private investigator Jay J. Armes.)
I confess: I haven’t read Blood Will Tell yet. I probably should, but the main reason I haven’t is that I was reading Cartwright’s coverage of T. Cullen Davis in the magazine as it was happening. I have read, and endorse, Dirty Dealing, his book on the Judge John Wood killing and the Chagra family.
Even though I think TM has been going downhill recently (my mother dropped her subscription last year after (mumble mumble) years), I always found Cartwright’s work a high point in any issue. He can’t be replaced.
Edited to add: tribute by John Spong.
Edited to add 2/23: also from TM, “23 Writers and Editors Remember Gary Cartwright”.
Raymond Smullyan, author, mathematician, and logician.
Professor Irwin Corey, “the world’s foremost authority”, has passed away. He was 102.
I didn’t become aware of this until I saw it on the NYT obits Twitter feed, but: J.S.G. Boggs, one of my favorite visual artists, has died.
..he painstakingly reproduced British pounds, Swiss francs and American dollars, with quirky deviations.
On American currency, for example, he might use the signature “J. S. G. Boggs, Secret of the Treasury,” or inscribe “Kunstbank of Bohemia” on a $5,000 bill, or append the motto “In Fun We Trust.” At first he created the notes one by one, a time-consuming process. Later he ran off limited-edition prints.
…
A very quick Google search does not turn up any indication of how much the Boggs dollars are currently going for. Which is a shame: I’ve always figured I’d buy a Boggs artwork when I got filthy rich.
(On a side note: Canadian Tire money is available for surprisingly reasonable prices on eBay.)
The obit mentions Lawrence Weschler’s Boggs: A Comedy of Values, which I think is a fine (though dated) book. But I’d also put in a plug for Weschler’s Shapinsky’s Karma, Bogg’s Bills: And Other True-Life Tales, the essay collection that was my first introduction to Boggs.
I’ve ranted to some of my friends about Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me and I should probably post a longer review here. (Short version: now I know why there aren’t more books following an author during their writing process.)
But you know how it is. Mom likes Jack Reacher, and I kind of do as well, so when I found a copy of Night School at Half-Price I grabbed it.
And I think it’s actually a pretty okay book. It still has some of the things that have started to grate on me (Reacher makes women’s clothes fall off: Reacher takes on seven guys at once), but the annoyances are modulated by a couple of factors:
There’s an interesting MacGuffin (who is “the American” and what is he selling for $100 million?), some clever procedural work, and a satisfying level of ass-kicking (seven against Reacher aside). Night School isn’t a bad way to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon.
I don’t have a Single Action Army (yet) but I grabbed a copy of Shooting Colt Single Actions in All Styles, Calibers, & Generations from Half-Price right after Christmas (it was 20% off, so I picked it up for relatively short money). It seems like HPB got in a fair amount of relatively obscure gun books from someone or somewhere. (I also got a copy of Compliments of Col. Ruger in the same purchase.)
Venturino’s book, while about 20 years out of date, is still informative. I don’t know that much has changed in the world of Colt Single Actions since 1995. (Except for prices, and I suspect some of his listed vendors have closed up shop.) The most interesting thing about my copy of the book, though? When I’m reading it, I can just faintly smell Hoppe’s #9 or some other form of gun cleaner/lubricant coming off the pages. Someone must really have loved this book, and their guns.
(It isn’t an annoying smell, at least to me. I own a few books that used to belong to smokers; as any serious book collector will tell you, that’s annoying.)
One of my Christmas presents from my beloved and indulgent sister was Spy Secrets That Can Save Your Life, a book I was previously unaware of (but which was a NYT bestseller). I’ll confess that I was initially a little bit skeptical about Spy Secrets, mostly because the author set off my “reality show contestant” radar. (He apparently appeared on “Shark Tank” and got a deal.)
My reality show skepticism was offset early on when Jason Hanson came out and said: he’s a gun guy, who has a permit, carries everywhere he legally can, and hangs out in gun shops. But Spy Secrets isn’t a gun book, nor is it a text on mastering covert tradecraft. Hanson’s emphasis is on protecting yourself through:
I’m probably not the best person to evaluate this book – I’d love to see a take from Weaponsman or Karl – but Hanson impresses me as sane and practical. I do have one small quibble with his advice, but beyond that I feel comfortable recommending Spy Secrets. And if you have a high school or college freshman around, I think you could do a pretty good deed if you bought them a copy of this book, a nice tactical pen, and a good quality pocket-sized flashlight.
(My one quibble? I disagree with Hanson about the value of smartphones and text messaging. I agree with him that smartphones detract from situational awareness: I’m conscious of that in my own life and need to work on it. But it is also a well known fact that, in emergency situations where the cell network is overloaded, text messages have a much better chance of going through than phone calls. If you’ve got someone to watch your six, or can dictate a text to Siri, texting “Meet me at the meeting place” may be the smart way to go.)
Tommy Allsup, guitarist, producer, and historical footnote.
As a guitarist, he was touring as a part of Buddy Holly’s band in February of 1959. This is the same tour that Ritchie Valens and J.P. Richardson were on…
Mr. Allsup flipped a coin to see whether he or Valens would get a seat on the plane. He lost and took a bus to the next stop on the tour.
Holly, Valens, the Big Bopper (J. P. Richardson) and the pilot, Roger Peterson, died when the plane crashed in the Iowa countryside. Their deaths were recalled as “the day the music died” in Don McLean’s 1971 hit song, “American Pie.”
For the record: William Peter “The Exorcist” Blatty. NYT. WP.
Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. I’m torn about this. On the one hand, I hate to see nearly 150 years of history flushed down the drain, and I’m sad for the circus population that’s going to lose their jobs (and possibly, for some of them, homes). I’m also sad that this decision appears to have some roots in the organized campaigns by various “animal welfare” organizations. (Remember, when you see those sad animals on TV and Sarah McLachlan in the backgrond: that money’s going to pay Ringling’s legal fees.)
On the other hand…the last time I went to a Ringling Circus was over 30 years ago, before my first attempt at college. And what I remember most about it from that time was that I found it kind of sad and depressing. It isn’t that I’m some sort of crypto-animal-rights activist; it just felt like there was something sad and wrong about the whole thing. I guess I’m sad for the people, and sad for the lost history, but I’m not so sad for the institution itself. (And as the article notes, Feld Entertainment has a bunch of other stuff going on, much of which appears to contain the phrase “…On Ice!” so they’ll probably do okay for a while longer.)