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Random notes: July 30, 2013.

Tuesday, July 30th, 2013

Latest update on the “Rebecca” case (previously):

A former Long Island stockbroker accused of bilking the producers of a planned Broadway musical production of “Rebecca” pleaded guilty to federal fraud charges on Monday, admitting that he had conjured up fictitious overseas investors and a phantom loan as part of a sham effort to rescue the financially troubled show.

Memo from the Department of “Here’s a Shocker”:

Fifty-five percent of respondents to a 2009 agency-wide survey who said they were resigning or thinking about it cited poor management as the main reason, according to a 2010 report on retention by the agency’s internal watchdog that mirrored the findings of a 2005 report. Although the CIA’s overall rate of employee turnover is unusually low, the report cited “challenges” in the retention of officers with unique and crucial skills, such as field operatives.

More:

“Perceptions of poor management, and a lack of accountability for poor management, comprised five of the top 10 reasons why people leave or consider leaving CIA and were the most frequent topic of concern among those who volunteered comments,” the inspector general’s report says.
CIA employees complained of “poor first-line supervision, lack of communication about work-related matters and lack of support for prudent risk taking,” the report says.

Some bars in West Hollywood and other cities are boycotting Stolichnaya vodka over Putin’s “anti-gay” regulations, “banning ‘propaganda of nontraditional sexual relations,’ including gay pride events and providing children with information about homosexuality.” Fair enough; a boycott seems like a reasonable response, though I don’t know how much good it will do. (I’m not convinced boycotts work against the batshit crazy.) But:

West Hollywood City Councilman John Duran, who has been encouraging bars to join the boycott, said protesters in West Hollywood plan to dump the contents of Stolichnaya bottles into a gutter to raise awareness of Russia’s laws. The protest is planned for Thursday in front of Micky’s bar and will use bottles filled with water, not vodka, he said.

Wouldn’t this be a more effective protest if they actually dumped the vodka? If they are worried about the environmental impact of dumping vodka into the gutter, couldn’t they pour it down the sink instead, like they do with unfinished drinks? Is the environmental impact of dumping vodka that great, especially since I suspect much of the alcohol will evaporate in the storm sewers?

And what are they going to do with the vodka that was in the bottles? Or have they been saving empties for this protest?

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Mixology, Theatre | Comments Closed

Random notes: July 4, 2013.

Thursday, July 4th, 2013

There’s an interesting article (tied to the Arizona tragedy) in today’s LAT, about the problems of investigating these incidents.

Some of them are probably obvious: these things generally happen in remote areas, and fire destroys a lot of evidence. But the main thrust of the LAT article is that a deep distrust has developed between firefighters and investigators since 2001. That year, four firefighters died in the Thirty Mile fire. The Forest Service did an investigation, and determined that there were a lot of issues with the way the fire was fought; from my reading, some of those issues were just bad luck and equipment failures, but there were also some procedural issues:

Standard safety procedures were violated. Risks were not appropriately assessed. Rest rules were disregarded.

What happened next is that one of the crew bosses was charged with manslaughter, based on that report. (The boss pled guilty to “making false statements” and served 90 days on work release.)

When federal investigators later showed up in California to look into the 2006 Esperanza fire, near Cabazon, firefighters refused to talk to investigators without union officials present, and some sought advice of lawyers.
Firefighters across the country began seeking legal counsel instead of participating in investigations into fatalities, according to congressional testimony in 2007 from Mark Rey, then an undersecretary of the Department of Agriculture who oversaw the Forest Service.
“Many of our firefighters do not want to speak freely,” he said at the time. They were also opting not to take supervisory jobs for fear of being held liable, he said.
Chockie is not surprised. “When I saw what followed after our report, I can understand why people might be much more hesitant or cautious now,” he said. “What they told us came back to them in unexpected ways.”

Safety procedures exist for reasons. And it is hard to say that people shouldn’t be held accountable. On the other hand, there’s also a very strong “do whatever it takes to fight the fire” attitude among firefighters, even if that means sometimes disregarding rest and safety rules. (And what are you going to do if it is rest time, there’s no relief, and the fire is still burning out of control? “Sorry, can’t fight that fire. On my coffee break.”) The other thing to realize is that wildfires are very volatile and chaotic situations; things can change literally in seconds. Is it fair or right to pass judgements in hindsight on the people who were there on the ground fighting the fire?

Obit watch: noted computer scientist and inventor of the mouse, Douglas Engelbart. LAT. NYT.

You, too, can have a Tony award. If you’re a “major investor” in a Tony-winning production. And you have $2,500.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, Law, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Random notes: June 26, 2013.

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

Richard Matheson obits: NYT. Lawrence. LAT.

Please refrain from tasting the knob.

(Note that the musical in question, “Somewhere in Time” is based on the movie, which in turn was based on a novel, “Bid Time Return”, by Richard Matheson. I’m not linking to Amazon, but you should be able to find the novel easily: the cheaper editions are listed under “Somewhere in Time”, and the editions carrying the original title are pricy.)

You know what NYC needs? Strict pen control. And perhaps strict costume control, too.

Busking being serious business in Midtown, long-simmering tensions between the box man and one of his rivals erupted into violence on Friday night, when the box man was said to have stabbed a competing panhandler, Wayne Semancik, five times in the head and chest with a pen.

More:

…a photograph in The Daily News showed the police interviewing Alien and Predator as witnesses after the episode.

(Hotlinked: click on the photo to read the Daily News article.)

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

Random notes: June 17, 2013.

Monday, June 17th, 2013

NYT obit for the late Harold J. Cromer, also known as “Stumpy”, “half of the vaudevillian duo Stump and Stumpy”.

Recently, a bunch of gas stations in my area rebranded their associated convenience stores/markets as 7-11 franchises. I kind of liked this, as it is nice to be able to stop off and get gas and a Slurpee when it is 101 degrees outside. (Many of the stand-alone 7-11 stores in my area have closed over the past few years.)

But they just can’t stay out of trouble, can they?

Federal authorities seized 14 7-Eleven stores on Long Island and in Virginia early Monday, arresting nine owners and managers and charging them with harboring and hiring illegal immigrants and paying them using sham Social Security numbers, people briefed on the case said.

More:

The store remained closed through the early morning, with law enforcement agents turning away customers who ordinarily stop in for coffee. A worker for the Town of Islip said he had seen similar law enforcement activity at several other nearby 7-Elevens.

I wonder what the cops were drinking, and where they were getting it from. I also wonder if anyone is keeping track of the doughnut inventory at the seized stores.

Deborah Blum, author of The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (another book I enthusiastically recommend) has an interesting piece in Wired about why ethylene glycol is such a swell poison. (Pure ethylene glycol is colorless, odorless, and sweet tasting. I hope that I never tick off someone to the point that they’re willing to poison me, because if they put ethylene glycol in my iced tea, I wouldn’t be able to tell.)

(Blum’s piece is tied to the M.D. Anderson poisoning scandal, which I thought about mentioning last week. But there really wasn’t a lot I could say about it; as Blum notes, ethylene glycol isn’t a particularly exotic poison, and the incident itself seems to be your basic boring lover’s spat.)

(Edited to add: Oh, so that’s where I found the Blum piece! Thanks, Tam! And I wasn’t aware Blum was writing regularly for Wired: I’d read some of her articles in Slate, but none since I gave up on Slate as a site publishing outlandish and ridiculous crap in an attempt to get page views.)

Posted in Clippings, Geek, History, Law, Obits, Theatre | 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: April 19, 2013.

Friday, April 19th, 2013

Holy crap!

Heard on the CBS coverage: “How do you lock down an entire city?” (Nobody had a really good answer to that question.)

Ten officers were being evaluated at St. Elizabeth’s Medical Center in Brighton early this morning, according to a source, who said the officers said they were hurt from grenades being thrown from the window of a car during a car chase.

More:

“It was more than gunshot wounds,’’ Wolfe told reporters about 5:30 a.m. today. “It was a combination of injuries. We believe a combination of of blasts, multiple gunshot wounds.”
Wolfe said it looked like the man had been hurt by an “explosive device’’ and that the man was struck by “shrapnel.’’ The man was pronounced dead at 1:35 a.m. The hospital officials said they did not know his name.

(CBS, or the local CBS affiliate – I’m not sure which – just ran a commercial featuring an exploding air conditioner. Bad timing, guys.)

I may come back to this later. I want to do some research and possibly talk to Lawrence. In other news:

As a result of last week’s settlement in the legal battle over Broadway’s “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark,” Ms. Taymor’s directing credit on the musical has been enhanced – and it is now listed above the credit for Philip Wm. McKinley, who replaced Ms. Taymor after its producers fired her in March 2011.

Jimmy Haslam recently bought the Cleveland Browns. Haslam made a pile of money off of the Pilot Flying J chain of truck stops and “travel centers”. Yesterday, the FBI raided the Pilot Flying J headquarters:

A 120-page affidavit for a search warrant filed in U.S. District Court in Knoxville, Tenn., says Pilot Flying J sales employees withheld fuel price rebates and discounts from certain companies to boost the profitability of the company and increase their sales commissions. The affidavit says FBI and IRS agents are investigating charges of conspiracy, mail fraud and wire fraud.

More:

The document says “the rebate fraud has occurred with the knowledge of Pilot’s current President Mark Hazelwood and Pilot’s Chief Executive Officer James A. “Jimmy” Haslam III, due to the fact that the rebate fraud-related activities have been discussed during sales meetings in Knoxville, Tenn., in which Hazelwood and Haslam have been present.”

The Browns just can’t catch a break, can they? It will be interesting to see how this plays out as we get closer to the NFL season.

(Heard on CBS: “I was going into this thinking there was some connection to somewhere.” No s–t, Sherlock.)

Edited to add: Since folks are distracted by Boston at the moment, let me note here: the confirmed death toll in West stands at 12.

The State Firemen’s and Fire Marshals’ Association said Friday morning that it believes 11 firefighters died in the explosion, including four who were emergency medical service personnel.

According to the association, one of those firefighters was from Dallas: all of the others were volunteer firefighters with the West Fire Department.

Posted in Clippings, Explosives, Law, NFL, Sarcasm, Sports, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Random notes: April 16, 2013.

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

So here’s the latest on Travis County DA Rosemary Lehmberg: she says she plans to plead guilty to the DWI charge and accept whatever punishment the court gives her. No word on whether she’s going to hire a lawyer or act as her own attorney.

But. There’s a catch.

Chapter 87 of the state’s Local Government Code lists among the “general grounds for removal” of a district attorney and other county officials “intoxication on or off duty caused by drinking an alcoholic beverage.”
Under that law, a removal petition could be filed by anyone who has lived in Travis County for six months and is “not currently under indictment” for a crime here. The petition would be filed with a district judge, and a trial would be held on the charge — with a jury to determine the official’s fate, according to the law.

“anyone who has lived in Travis County for six months” and “is not currently under indictment”. You don’t say.

And I said “What about ‘Breakfast At Tiffany’s’?”
And Patrick Healy said “Closing on Sunday.”

Boston Globe. Boston Herald.

Edited to add: Joe Huffman, the man behind Boomershoot and someone who knows his way around explosives, has some informed speculation on what might have been used. Short version: it doesn’t look like a commercial or military grade explosive.

Speaking of crimes, remember the Kaufman County DA killings? Remember how people were suggesting the Aryan Brotherhood was involved? Yeah. About that.

Posted in Clippings, Explosives, Law, TCDA, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Art, damn it, art! roundup: April 11, 2013.

Thursday, April 11th, 2013

Three things in one blog post:

1. Julie Taymor and the producers of “Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark” have settled their lawsuits. As you might expect, “terms of the settlement were not released”. However, according to the NYT:

Ms. Taymor, who filed the lawsuit in 2011 after being fired by the producers, will receive a “significant” monetary settlement that could amount to millions of dollars if “Spider-Man” goes on to wide popularity, according to one person close to her. The producers, meanwhile, no longer need Ms. Taymor’s approval of future tours and versions of “Spider-Man” — especially any that involve altering the show’s script, which she helped write, or her staging. (The show’s music is by Bono and the Edge of U2.)

The paper of record goes on to suggest that the producers will use their new-found artistic freedom to transform the show into “an arena-style special-effects extravaganza that might fit well in Las Vegas, one of the places that the producers are considering for a future ‘Spider-Man’ run”. In addition, there’s some discussion about “reductions and adjustments in royalties and payments that are factored into the weekly expenses”, which the producers hope will reduce those expenses and allow the show to – eventually – make a profit.

The show costs between $1.1 million and $1.2 million a week to run, the highest expenses on Broadway, because of its aerial stunts and technical complexity, and a problematic amount now that ticket sales are fluctuating between $1 million and $1.5 million during most weeks. With those expenses and box-office grosses, the musical is only inching toward recouping its $75 million capitalization.

2. In 2001, the American Museum of Folk Art opened a new building near the Museum of Modern Art.

“Its heart is in the right time as well as the right place,” Herbert Muschamp wrote in his architecture review in The New York Times, calling the museum’s sculptural bronze facade “already a Midtown icon.”

But things did not quite go as planned.

The folk art museum, which had once envisioned the building as a stimulus for its growth, ended up selling the property, at 45 West 53d Street, to pay off the $32 million it had borrowed to finance an expansion. It now operates at a smaller site on Lincoln Square, at West 66th Street.

MoMA bought the building. Now they plan to demolish it and put up a new building that better fits the MoMA aesthetic. (Also, “The former folk museum is also set back farther than MoMA’s other properties, and the floors would not line up.”)

“It’s very rare that a building that recent comes down, especially a building that was such a major design and that got so much publicity when it opened for its design — mostly very positive,” said Andrew S. Dolkart, the director of Columbia University’s historic preservation program. “The building is so solid looking on the street, and then it becomes a disposable artifact. It’s unusual and it’s tragic because it’s a notable work of 21st century architecture by noteworthy architects who haven’t done that much work in the city, and it’s a beautiful work with the look of a handcrafted facade.”

3. Architect Paolo Soleri has passed away.

A onetime apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West compound on the edge of Scottsdale, Ariz., Soleri founded his own desert settlement, called Arcosanti, in 1970 at a site roughly 70 miles north of downtown Phoenix.
…In a series of feverishly detailed drawings, Soleri instead proposed denser, vertical settlements that would leave more land untouched at ground level. He called this approach “arcology,” a term combining architecture and ecology.

Arcosanti never got larger than about 100 permanent residents, according to the LAT, which also asserts Soleri’s work has been influential in the “green architecture” movement. Personally, I think this is the best thing to come out of Soleri’s work, but that’s just me.

Posted in Art, Clippings, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Broadway watch.

Wednesday, April 10th, 2013

“Hands on a Hardbody“, the Broadway musical, is closing this Saturday. The musical opened March 21st, and played 28 regular performances and 28 previews.

The total cost of mounting “Hands on a Hardbody” on Broadway has not been revealed, and the producers also did not say on Monday whether the show would close at a total loss to investors, which appears likely. The musical grossed only $240,040 for eight performances last week, or about 22 percent of the maximum possible amount — almost certainly not enough to cover its weekly running costs.

Background:

“Hands on a Hardbody” the movie.

“Hands on a Hardbody”: why they don’t do that any more.

Posted in Clippings, Schadenfreude, Theatre | Comments Closed

Something for everyone, a new book tonight!

Saturday, March 30th, 2013

Jack Viertel has a book coming out in late 2016.

Mr. Viertel is the artistic director of New York City Center Encores! The book is called (at least for now) “The Secret Life of the Broadway Musical: How Broadway Shows are Built”.

“I found that people in their 20s and 30s didn’t understand how classic musicals are built, because that golden age of musicals is so far away from us now,” Mr. Viertel said in a telephone interview on Friday, referring to an era that, for his purposes, starts with the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical “Oklahoma!” in 1943 and ends with “A Chorus Line” in 1975. Encores! often produces musicals from that period, including its last well-reviewed concert production, “It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman” from 1966.

Mr. Viertel goes on to argue that “Oklahoma” established a “blueprint” for musicals, which was then subverted in the 1970s by “the Hal Prince-Stephen Sondheim shows – ‘Company,’ ‘Follies,’ several others”, and by the “cultural ferment” of that period. But, he suggests, current hit Broadway musicals have a similar architecture to the “golden age” ones.

From the description, it sounds like Mr. Viertel is, at least in part, applying failure analysis to Broadway musicals. This sounds like it will be an excellent companion volume to my own favorite book on the subject, Not Since Carrie: Forty Years of Broadway Musical Flops.

Edited to add: While the Sondheim reference is in the article, I included it as deliberate Mike the Musicologist bait. This resulted in a text message conversation, excerpted below. (I’ve left out some asides which aren’t relevant to the conversation, mostly dealing with “Beat the Devil“.)

MtM: From the description I think that book could also be titled “Get Off My Lawn: Musicals Were Better When I Was A Kid”.

Me: Could be.

MtM: Or perhaps “Musicals In Amber: Why I Think Art Shouldn’t Change”.

Me: But I think the argument that successful musicals share structural commonalities is a legit one to make.

Me: I’m not sure I’d AGREE, but it doesn’t strike me as crazy.

MtM: Which they also share with unsuccessful ones.

Me: Of course, that can be extended.

Me: “Audiences want things that are safe, predictable, and expected.”

Me: “Audiences don’t want to be challenged.”

MtM: The traditional process of putting a show together, as well as the R&H structure, is interesting. I would recommend Everything Was Possible for a study of how a show is created.

MtM: But bemoaning that shows make money through touring over an extended Broadway run? Please.

Me: Is he bemoaning that, or just saying that’s the way the economics works today?

MtM: Curious. Amazon search for “everything was possible” returned a 16GB iPod touch as the 4th result.

MtM: I got the impression he is unhappy that Broadway is no longer the ultimate goal for a show.

Me: I didn’t pick that up. But if he does feel that way, I’d like to read why.

Me: From my POV: more touring = more people exposed to musicals = healthy and vibrant musical community.

MtM: I just got a sense from the article that this book is going to be “if shows were still done like this then musicals would still be central to our culture” which grates with me on many points.

MtM: The basic subject – how dramatic/musical structure, book doctoring, etc. is interesting. If that’s his focus then Yay.

Posted in Books, Clippings, Theatre | Comments Closed

A theater critic once bit my sister.

Saturday, February 2nd, 2013

I am absolutely mind croggled. Utterly speechless.

The “Beautiful Soup Theater Collective” did a revival of “Moose Murders” by Arthur Bicknell.

Why does this leave me stunned? Because “Moose Murders” is a legendary fiasco, one that opened and closed on the same night. Here’s the original Frank Rich review from the NYT.

And here’s Charles Isherwood’s review of the revival:

…the odium surrounding “Moose Murders” was not founded on myth. Although Mr. Bicknell has apparently done some rewriting — a reference to Martha Stewart would have been obscure three decades ago — the play is every bit as inane and inept as history has recorded. And, sad to say, there’s no joy to be had in attending its exhumation. It’s like attending a wake for someone who died 30 years ago, then being served Champagne that’s been sitting open during the interim.

(By the way, the producers of “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” say they’ve “re-shuffled” funds and are going ahead. Previously.)

Posted in Clippings, Theatre | Comments Closed

Random notes: January 30, 2013.

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

Gun control works! Just ask Chicago!

And yet Chicago, a city with no civilian gun ranges and bans on both assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, finds itself laboring to stem a flood of gun violence that contributed to more than 500 homicides last year and at least 40 killings already in 2013, including a fatal shooting of a 15-year-old girl on Tuesday.

More:

Chicago officials say Illinois has no requirement, comparable to Chicago’s, that gun owners immediately report their lost or stolen weapons to deter straw buyers.

Uh, that’s not what a “straw buyer” is, Monica Davey. (Nor does Davey mention that “straw purchases” are also a violation of Federal law, though rarely prosecuted according to the WP. One wonders how much of a deterrent Chicago’s law is to people who are already violating federal law.)

(Likewise, purchasing guns in other states, bringing them across state lines, and selling them on the Chicago streets violates multiple existing federal laws. Davey ignores that fact as well.)

Edited to add: Just saw this, and found it appropriate.

 

And I said, “What about ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’?”
He said, “I can’t afford a million dollars,
and as I recall, you’ve got plenty of money.”
And I said, “Well, that’s one thing we have not.”

The Bell trial picked up again yesterday. Rebecca Valdez, the former city clerk who wasn’t actually the city clerk at first, is still on the stand.

Rebecca Valdez said that when she began working for the city, she learned the key to survival: Do whatever City Manager Robert Rizzo asked.
Valdez testified Tuesday that she was directed to sign unfamiliar documents, hand out incorrect salary information in response to a public records request from a resident and obtain signatures for doctored salary contracts.

The defense is attacking her credibility, “seeking to show that record-keeping in Bell was in disarray. Valdez testified that she signed minutes for meetings she didn’t attend, was appointed to the job in name only and sometimes made mistakes marking the times that meetings began and ended.”

And what’s this about her being the city clerk but not being the city clerk?

In 2004, then-City Clerk Theresa Diaz moved out of town, making her ineligible to hold the elected office. Valdez was given her title, but continued her job as an account clerk. Diaz continued to act as the record-keeper for the city, but Valdez testified that she was told to sign documents as the city clerk.

Also interesting:

The city clerk also testified that Victor Bello, one of the defendants, was banned from City Hall toward the end of his tenure, except to attend council meetings.
If Bello showed up, she was to tell the police chief and her supervisor. Twice a week, Valdez took Bello’s mail to his home, accompanied by code enforcement officers, she testified. Bello resigned from the council in 2008 but retained his six-figure salary after Rizzo named him assistant to the food bank coordinator.

Not “food bank coordinator”, but “assistant to the food bank coordinator”, and pulling in at least $100,000 a year. How do I get this job?

Ah, the Texas Highway Patrol Museum. You do remember the Texas Highway Patrol Museum, don’t you? Shut down by the Attorney General last year? Assets, including the building, being sold off?

Well, about that…

Lawyers for the Texas attorney general’s office said Monday that a “cloud of procedural impropriety” is casting a shadow over the pending sale of the former Texas Highway Patrol Museum, and they recommended that the building be put back on the market.

The “procedural impropriety” seems to be that the high bidder says her bid was ignored. Also, the real estate broker would make a larger commission if the other bidder got the property. There’s some technical aspects that make it unclear which bid is best; that’s why the AG recommended that the building be listed again.

(Hattip on this to Grits for Breakfast. If Ms. Wong winds up getting the building, and we’re all still here, I want to do a road trip to Rosario’s Café y Cantina.)

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Cops, Food, Guns, Law, Museums, Sarcasm, Theatre | 1 Comment »

The best little obit watch in Texas.

Friday, December 21st, 2012

Larry L. King, author of “The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”, has passed away at 83.

I was not aware of this, but King is also alleged to have coined the saying, “The only way you can lose this election, Joe, is to get caught in bed with a live man or a dead woman.”

And:

He was often confused with the radio and television talk-show host Larry King, particularly when making dinner reservations. One Washington restaurant settled the problem by asking them, when reserving a table, to identify themselves, as either “Larry King ‘Radio’ ” or “Larry King ‘Whorehouse.’ ”

Posted in Clippings, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 6, 2012.

Thursday, December 6th, 2012

Dave Brubeck obits: NYT. LAT. A/V Club.

The demise of “The Anarchist” raises questions about the theater business. Did the lead producers’ devotion to Mr. Mamet — and the hope of a lucrative “Glengarry” revival — mean staging a new work that wasn’t right, or ready, for Broadway? Should playwrights direct their own work, as Mr. Mamet did with “The Anarchist” and his last new drama on Broadway, “Race”?

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

Random notes: December 5, 2012.

Wednesday, December 5th, 2012

So has anyone been following the Indian Olympic Committee story? In brief: India wants to elect people to their national Olympic Committee following their rules, the IOC says “No, you’ve got to follow our rules”, and suspends the Indian committee. Suspension means that Indian athletes can’t compete in IOC sanctioned events, there will be no IOC funding for Indian athletes, and Indian sports officials can’t attend international meetings.

The Indian committee has basically said “F you” and elected Lalit Bhanot secretary general of the committee. Bhanot was unopposed.

Bhanot also spent 11 months in jail before he managed to make bail. Why? Corruption charges, specifically related to the 2010 Commonwealth Games.

The humiliating Olympic suspension follows India’s hosting of the Commonwealth Games in 2010 in which a pedestrian bridge collapsed, suppliers went unpaid, human excrement was left in athletes’ quarters and the budget ballooned to $8 billion from $75 million, much of it unaccounted for. Local newspapers, citing internal documents, detailed $80 rolls of toilet paper, $61 soap dispensers that normally cost $1.97 and $250,000 high-altitude simulators that usually sell for $11,830.

“to $8 billion from $75 million”? Wow. That’s corruption on an epic level: gold medal worthy corruption, if you ask me.

And speaking of corruption, the NYT explains how a Ferrari crash led to a change in the leadership of the party:

China’s departing president, Hu Jintao, entered the summer in an apparently strong position after the disgrace of Bo Xilai, previously a rising member of a rival political network who was brought down when his wife was accused of murdering a British businessman. But Mr. Hu suffered a debilitating reversal of his own when party elders — led by his predecessor, Jiang Zemin — confronted him with allegations that Ling Jihua, his closest protégé and political fixer, had engineered the cover-up of his son’s death.

“The Maid of the Mist” folks, who run the tours on the NY side of Niagara Falls, have made a new deal with the state that should keep the boats running. (Previously. Also.)

“Restaurant Impossible: The Musical!” All singing, all dancing, all Robert Irvine!

Okay, we kid. Slightly. But Adam Gopnick of the New Yorker is working with some other folks on a musical based on Gopnick’s book The Table Comes First: Family, France, and the Meaning of Food.

As long as we’re on the theatre beat:

The musical “Scandalous,” Kathie Lee Gifford’s Broadway debut as a lyricist and book writer, will close this Sunday after 31 preview performances and 29 regular performances, the producers announced on Tuesday night.

It is a little late now, but perhaps, if we’re lucky, this will free up Ms. Gifford for more Christmas specials.

Also closing: “The Anarchist”, David Mamet’s latest play.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Law, Sports, Theatre | Comments Closed

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