Archive for the ‘Books’ Category

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

One Ranger.

Monday, June 17th, 2013

hamer_1

Grave of Frank Hamer, Austin Memorial Park Cemetery, Austin, Texas.

For those of you unfamiliar with the late Mr. Hamer, obviously he was a Texas Ranger, and perhaps one of the most famous of the Rangers. Among other things, Mr. Hamer led the posse that took down Bonnie and Clyde.

American Rifleman profile of Mr. Hamer. Jeff Guinn’s Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde, which I have previously recommended, also has considerable background on Hamer. Hamer’s Wikipedia entry.

Here’s a second picture that I actually like a little better than the first. It was taken with a different camera (the first one was taken with my Nikon D40X and the 18-55 kit lens). Note that I haven’t done anything to these two photos except crop them: I haven’t manipulated exposure, contrast, or anything else.

hamer_2

Posted in Books, Cops, Law, Photography, Texas Rangers | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 14, 2013.

Friday, June 14th, 2013

By way of The Rap Sheet, I have just learned of the passing of Joan Parker, “tireless fundraiser for a host of different charities” and wife of the late great mystery writer Robert B. Parker.

I want to believe the two of them are sitting at heaven’s bar: Mrs. Parker taking small, careful sips of her drink, and Mr. Parker drinking Amstel. (If you can’t get Amstel in heaven, where can you get it? I mean, other than the Netherlands?)

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Random notes: June 13, 2013.

Thursday, June 13th, 2013

Gun control works! How can a bunch of people with rifles and handguns defeat a heavily armed military? Just ask Syria!

Across northern Syria, rebel workshops like these are part of a clandestine network of primitive arms-making plants, a signature element of a militarily lopsided war.
Their products — machine-gun mounts, hand grenades, rockets, mortar shells, roadside bombs and the locally brewed explosives that are packed inside — help form the arsenal of a guerrilla force that has suffered serious setbacks this year in its effort to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad.

More on our pal Louis Scarcella, the former NYPD detective whose cases are being reinvestigated: gee, there’s awfully similar language in many of the confessions he obtained.

In at least four more murder cases, suspects questioned by Mr. Scarcella began their confessions with either “you got it right” or “I was there.”

NYT obit for Iain Banks.

Noted without comment:

“Ann,” Holland Taylor’s solo show about the former Texas governor Ann Richards, will close on June 30 at Lincoln Center’s Vivian Beaumont Theater, two months before its scheduled closing date of Sept. 1, the show’s producers announced on Wednesday. Directed by Benjamin Endsley Klein, “Ann” opened on Broadway in March to mostly positive reviews and was extended once. But weekly grosses never surpassed $400,000, and in recent weeks it has never played to more than 50 percent of its capacity at the Beaumont.

Since Lawrence and I have both touched on this story, I thought I’d link to the followup: the “psychic” who claimed there was a mass grave in Liberty County has been ordered to pay $6.8 million in damages to the property owners. If I understand the HouChron correctly, this was a default judgment, as the psychic didn’t appear in court. (Insert your favorite psychic joke here.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Cops, Guns, Law, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Random notes: June 10, 2013.

Monday, June 10th, 2013

LAT obit for Iain Banks.

As best as I can tell, there has been no mention of Banks’s death in the NYT yet.

At dinner Saturday night, Lawrence, Andrew, and I were talking about how bad the Marlins (and Astros) are. I remembered that someone on FARK posted a link to a site that provides updated win-loss projections for each MLB team, but I was unable to find that site in my history, on FARK, or in Google.

“DeWayne Mann” on FARK was kind enough to respond to my inquiry with three links, which I provide here for bookmarking purposes:

CoolStandings, which currently projects Miami at 106.9 losses and Houston at 103.1.

Baseball Prospectus, which has Miami at 102 losses and Houston at 99.5.

FanGraphs, which has Miami at 104 losses and Houston at 99.

(As Dewayne notes, all three sites use a more sophisticated model than (winning percentage * 162). Based only on that calculation, the Marlins project out to 115 losses, and the Astros to 106. For comparison purposes, the 1962 Mets lost 120 games and had a .250 winning percentage. The 2003 Detroit Tigers lost 119 games, and had a .265 winning percentage.)

Posted in Bookmarks, Books, Clippings, Loser, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 9, 2013.

Sunday, June 9th, 2013

Iain Banks has passed on. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Random notes: May 31, 2013.

Friday, May 31st, 2013

Obit watch: Catholic priest and author Andrew M. Greeley.

“Sometimes I suspect that my obituary in The New York Times,” Father Greeley once wrote, “will read, ‘Andrew Greeley, Priest; Wrote Steamy Novels.’ ”

Also:

His niece Laura Durkin confirmed the death, saying he had died overnight in his sleep. She said he had been in poor health and under 24-hour care since suffering severe head injuries in 2008 when his clothing caught on the door of a taxi as it pulled away and he was thrown to the pavement.

I was not aware of this. What a lousy way to end your life.

Also: LAT obit for Jack Vance.

Julian Dawkins, a shuttle driver for “PBS NewsHour,” was found shot just before 1 a.m. on May 22 on Lynhaven Drive in Alexandria.

Police have made an arrest and filed charges in the case. The twist: the accused is a deputy sheriff.

The law of unintended consequences, continued: the city of Austin banned single-use bags effective March 1st.

Store managers and police say the ban, which went into effect March 1, has made it more difficult for them to distinguish between customers and shoplifters. They say people place items in their reusable bags while shopping and walk out of the store without paying.

(It is worth pointing out that reusable bags were common here even before the formal ban, and that there are no actual statistics as of yet showing an increase in shoplifting.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Cops, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 30, 2013.

Thursday, May 30th, 2013

Noted SF author and SFWA Grand Master Jack Vance passed away on Sunday.

Tor.com. Statesman (by way of my mother). Lawrence.

(In case you’re wondering: nothing in the LAT, NYT, or on the A/V Club yet.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 21, 2013.

Tuesday, May 21st, 2013

Ray Manzarek. NYT. LAT. A/V Club.

Mentioned by Lawrence last night: Manzarek wrote a horror novel (the A/V Club calls it “a Civil War ghost story”), Snake Moon. He also wrote some books related to The Doors, and…

…The Poet in Exile, that was little more than a therapy exercise masquerading as fiction, in which a Jim Morrison-type rock star known as “The Snake Man” fakes his own death, reunites with his keyboard player “Roy,” apologizes for how he treated him, then thanks him profusely for keeping his legacy alive. As of 2011, Manzarek was still trying to turn it into a movie, convinced, as always, that this story needed to be told… by Ray Manzarek.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Cahiers du Cinéma: I watched Gatsby so you don’t have to.

Monday, May 13th, 2013

Yes, I finally went to see it. Yes, I even sprang for the 3-D version. I run a full service blog here.

tl,dr: Wait for it on cable.

Notes:

      • This is a highly personal reaction, influenced by a lot of things. In particular, I think I have a weakness for 1920’s era flapper outfits. But Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker and Carey Mulligan as Daisy Buchanan are both just…wow. I don’t know how I can put it without lapsing into the vulgar. Perhaps I should just say I would be delighted to take either one (or both) of them out for a cheeseburger and the amusing house red. Indeed, one of the reasons I wanted to post this is so I could link to photos of both young ladies. Ms. Debicki:

        and Ms. Mulligan:

      • Tobey Maguire did not work for me as Nick Carraway. I felt that he exhibited a limited emotional range: either vaguely petulant or slightly baffled. When he did try to express happiness or friendship, he seemed stiff.
      • Jay Z’s music was…well, let me be polite and say simply “not memorable”.
      • The 3-D does not add much to the movie. There are a few neat tricks (the closing credits in particular are kind of trippy in a geometric sort of way), but I don’t believe you’ll miss anything if you stick with 2-D.
      • There were more than a few CG shots in the movie that were so poorly done and so obviously CG that they took me out of the movie. Luckily, all I had to do was wait for Ms. Debicki or Ms. Mulligan to come back on screen…
      • Other than the bad CG, though, there is a lot of lush and beautiful photography in the movie. It is pretty to look at…
      • …but ultimately empty. I think the biggest failure of the movie isn’t in conveying Gatsby’s obsession with Daisy; that comes across just fine. The point that I think Baz Luhrmann missed (along with Craig Pearce, the other credited screenwriter) is that Daisy is an unworthy vessel for Gatsby’s affection. Tom and Daisy are empty, shallow, vain people. Gatsby’s death isn’t the tragedy; the true tragedy is that he brings about his own end through his pursuit of Daisy, and that Daisy isn’t worth it. Luhrmann fails to develop Daisy in such a way that we’re able to see this. Towards the end of the movie, Maguire in his voiceover quotes the classic line about Tom and Daisy being “careless people“, but reading the words isn’t the same as demonstrating this to us.

I’m glad I went: it was, after all, a nice afternoon out at a nice theater. But I can’t recommend purchasing a ticket until The Great Gatsby comes to cable or the discount theater nearest you.

Posted in Books, Gatsby, Movies | Comments Closed

Week of Gatsby: Day 5.

Friday, May 10th, 2013

I hate being backed into a corner.

One of the reasons I wanted to do “Week of Gatsby” was so I could link to the classic Andy Kaufman routine from “Saturday Night Live”. I didn’t think that would be the problem it turned into.

That clip is not available, in any form, on the Internet, as far as I can tell. NBC Universal, as the copyright holders, seems to aggressively go after anyone who posts SNL clips on YouTube (as is their right, of course).

That clip is also not available, as far as I can determine, in Hulu’s library of SNL clips.

You can watch the entire episode with Kaufman (season 3, episode 13, with Art Garfunkel and Stephen Bishop) on Hulu – if you pay $8 a month for Hulu Plus (or sign up for a free trial). Otherwise, you’re out of luck. I say: to heck with that.

The text of Kaufman’s routine is available from the SNL Transcripts site, but reading the text of a Kaufman routine is like dancing about architecture.

This, however, might make the effort worthwhile: from a Cornell website, the “New Student Reading Project”, some notes on Gatsby. Chapter 7, “Performing Gatsby“, is rather interesting, especially for the comments by some of Kaufman’s contemporaries on his routine.

David Brenner: “And, you know, people would boo the crying. They were New Yorkers.”

(Also: a young Sam Waterson? This I’ve got to see. Was the man ever “young”?)

Posted in 1970s, Books, Gatsby, TV | 4 Comments »

Week of Gatsby: Day 4.

Thursday, May 9th, 2013

Following up on a previous entry: it is legal to download Gatsby in every country except for seven. The United States is one of those seven.

If you happen to live in a country other than those seven – say, for example, Australia – it is perfectly legal for you to download Gatsby from the local version of Project Gutenberg.

Also, I wanted to link to this week’s episode of “The Ihnatko Almanac”: (Edited to add: Fixed. Thanks, Lawrence.) Andy Ihnatko touches on Baz Luhrmann and Gatsby, though his primary topic is one we brought up the other day: Sebastian Faulks continuing the Wodehouse Jeeves novels.

(I also wanted to link this because if you listen to the first couple of minutes, you’ll hear a name you might recognize.)

(Important safety tip: be careful who you page, and who you send feedback to. They just might read your name on the air. Not that there’s anything wrong with that…)

Posted in Books, Gatsby, Geek, Law, Safety | Comments Closed

Robert Anton Wilson, call your office, please.

Thursday, May 9th, 2013

According to the Smoking Gun website, Guccifer has previously claimed that “his hacking interest revolves around exposing members of the illuminati.” Former targets have included Bush, members of the Council on Foreign Relations, prominent economists and a Federal Reserve Board official.

Guccifer’s latest target: noted Illuminati member Candace “Sex and the City” Bushnell.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed

Random notes: May 8, 2013.

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

“I have no idea, I have no idea,” said Philip Levine, the former United States poet laureate, who has lived in Fresno since the late 1950s. But his enthusiasm was tempered by worries over the proliferation of poets laureate. “If you gave the Congressional Medal of Honor to everybody who got drafted, in a way you water down the award,” he said. “Do all these towns need a poet laureate? That’s what I wonder. Does Fresno, for that matter?”

(Fresno is paying their poet laureate $2,000 for a two-year term.)

Paging Andy Ihnatko. Andy Ihnatko to the white courtesy phone, please.

(Seriously, this does not strike me as a good idea.)

“When things got tough or extremely difficult on the House floor, we could count on Jesse to bring levity to an otherwise daunting situation with a bad joke or a one-man skit,” she wrote. “Jesse was the highlight of our karaoke nights and always made everyone feel like an integral part of, and not apart from, various activities.”

“She” is Rep. Marcia L. Fudge (D-Ohio), chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus.

Edited to add: Ken over at Popehat has a post up flaming the LAT and other newspapers (and, sort of by implication, your obedient servant) for seizing on the karaoke angle and taking out of the context it was in.

More guns, less crime.

The Statesman has been all over the collapse of RunTex (a local running shoe store, which was also active in various community events) like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst exhibition. I haven’t paid much attention to the story because I’m not a runner and didn’t care about RunTex. I remember my sister (who competes in triathlons) telling me about going there a while back and being totally unable to find any shoes that fit her. (And my sister does not have giant mutant feet.)

In that vein, I found this Statesman column rather interesting. It looks like my sister wasn’t the only person who had that problem…

On recent, long Saturday runs with my Gazelle pace group, when the conversation meanders from work and family stories to movies and smoothie recipes, someone occasionally would mention that they had tried to buy a pair of shoes from the Riverside location’s diminishing selection. Stories of failed attempts to buy new shoes resonated. “I used to shop there all the time” had become a familiar sentence.

Edited to add: A friend of WCD told us a similar story in email; he went in looking for the Nike shoes that would work with their iPhone application and transmitter. They didn’t have any shoes in his size, let alone the Nike ones. When he inquired, they told him “We’re not a shoe store. We support the running lifestyle.”

“We support the running lifestyle.” WHAT THE FRACK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?

“We’re not a shoe store.” Yeah. Now, you’re nothing.

This is just further evidence towards my theory: the problems with the American economy have much to do with the fact that nobody wants to take money for goods and services any longer. I’m not kidding: I can’t count the number of experiences I’ve had, or been told about recently, involving wanting to make a purchase and not being able to get help, get questions answered, or get people to take money.

Posted in Books, California Über Alles, Clippings, Guns | 1 Comment »

Week of Gatsby: Day 3

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

Why isn’t “The Great Gatsby” in the public domain? F. Scott Fizgerald has been dead for nearly 73 years, after all.

This is 19 Zillicoa Street in Asheville, North Carolina:


View Larger Map

This building is Homewood. Homewood was part of Highland Hospital, and was the home of Dr. Robert S. Carroll and his wife, Grace Potter Carroll. Dr. Carroll ran the hospital, and his wife taught music lessons. (Nina Simone was one of her students.)

In 1939, Dr. Carroll turned management of the hospital over to Duke University’s Neuropsychiatric Department. It was while Duke was managing the hospital that the final act of a great American tragedy took place.

On the night of March 10, 1948, a fire broke out at Highland. Various reports say the fire started in the kitchen and moved upwards through the dumbwaiter shaft. The fire escapes were made out of wood and also caught fire. By the time it was extinguished, nine women were dead.

One of the women who died was Zelda Fitzgerald, the widow of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Zelda had a troubled life. I’m not an expert, but the consensus opinion I’ve seen is that she probably suffered from some form of bi-polar disorder, and medicated herself in an attempt to deal with it. She was in and out of Highland between 1936 and her death.

This is the closest thing I could find to an obituary for Zelda Fitzgerald. (Local cache if that doesn’t come up.) I hope wherever she is, she found the peace that evaded her in life.

(Information about Highland Hospital drawn from the NPS page.)

Posted in Books, Clippings, Gatsby, Law | 1 Comment »

Week of Gatsby: Day 2

Tuesday, May 7th, 2013

Real estate people like Gatsby.

There are the Gatsby condominiums on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and the Fitzgerald apartment building on the other side of Central Park. There is a Gatsby Lane carved out of a subdivision in Montgomery, Ala., where Mr. Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, was raised. And there is a 50-year-old company created by the real estate titan Peter Sharp and his longtime partner, Norman Peck, that still exists today.

That company, by the way, is “East Egg”.

In the novel, Mr. Peck explained, wealthy people, including Jay Gatsby, lived in a fictional part of Long Island called West Egg, “but the better people lived in East Egg.”

In other news, have you driven a Gatsby lately?

(Nice looking cars, but not $34.5K worth of nice looking in my opinion. Assuming these people are still building cars, which I admit is a questionable assumption.)

Posted in Books, Cars, Clippings, Gatsby | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »