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NRA annual meeting: more collected thoughts.

Wednesday, April 22nd, 2026

I added both an “NRA” category (for general NRA things) and a subsidiary “NRAAM” tag for annual meeting coverage. This should make things easier next time I want to print off my NRAAM coverage for a press pass (though they never ask to see that). But that won’t be for a while: the next two annual meetings are in Atlanta and Orlando.

FotB Andrew sent over a link to the HouChron‘s coverage of the meeting (archived).

Oddly, I never made it back to the press room after I picked up my credentials. The last time I went with credentials, the snack and drink offerings in the room were mingey, and I intended to see if they were better this year.

The quality of the tchotchkes seemed off this year. Mostly pens, pins, stickers, and morale patches. And paper. So much paper. Oddly, also, a lot of lip balm. Hogue was giving away those really nice gun mats again, in two different sizes, which I would say was the best giveaway of the show. Buy stuff from Hogue. Second best: lens pens from Holosun. Buy stuff from Holosun. Also, I really like the foam earplugs Aguila hands out: they are cheap and disposable, but they’re also compact enough to slip in a go bag, just in case I get a chance to shoot and didn’t bring my full range bag.

I did buy the Hi-Lux scout scope (previously). I got it at a slight discount as a show special. Rings are on order. (Ruger‘s customer service was incredibly nice and helpful when I called them to ask what rings I needed.)

Note: for most vendors, it is this blog’s policy that we will pay full retail for products, or a “special show price” that’s generally available to everyone at the show. I won’t accept free merchandise from most vendors. Though if SIG wants to send me that .22 Creedmor for review, or Glock wants to send me a gun, or CZ wants me to review those Spitfire inspired CZ 75s, I won’t turn them down.

One of the things that I don’t think gets enough appreciation at NRAAM is the collector’s organizations, which are grouped together (towards the back of the show) in what we like to call the “collector’s ghetto”. These groups put together excellent displays that take a lot of time and effort: if you ever go to an annual meeting, you should make a point of visiting this section. We had a great time hanging out with my friends in the Association, who were also gracious about offering us water and seats when we needed them. I also belong to the Winchester Arms Collectors Association, and they had a nice (but smaller) display. Both of the Ruger collectors associations were there as well, but I didn’t see the Remington collectors.

Wilson Combat wasn’t there, which disappointed me. I’d been holding out until the meeting to buy a copy of Mr. Wilson’s new book. Now I guess I have to mail order it.

One thing that I thought was incredibly neat was the leather gun racks from South Texas Slings. Here’s how it works: you have two leather straps. At the top of each one is a clip that goes on to the support post for your car’s headrest. At the bottom is a metal clip, kind of like a belt clip but a little larger, that clips on to your seat back pocket. (The clip position is adjustable.) You put one strap on each seat (front or rear).

The straps have two adjustable leather loops. Once you’ve got them attached to the seats, you can just slide your long gun in and adjust the loops to fit. Viola! It’s like a pickup truck gun rack, except made out of leather and for your family sedan, and doesn’t obstruct your rear window!

I find this a very clever idea: I missed out on the show special, but I just ordered a set of these for the Honda. (I don’t plan to keep guns in the car, but I do want a better solution for taking long guns to the range.)

One of our party also greatly admired the work of Modern Rugged Leather, and I concur: they make some nice looking gear.

We were walking around and went past the 4D Reamer Rentals booth. Now, I do not need a chamber reamer at all: I would leave this to a professional gunsmith. But a flyer on the table headlined “Ackely Headspace” caught my eye. Turns out, one of the principals of 4D Reamer Rental is the guy who wrote the book on P.O. Ackley (which I’ve read and recommend). So we had a good conversation.

I do think we saw the Bear’s Leg at the Henry booth, but I wasn’t paying much attention. As someone who is into the .45-70, this really does not fill a need for me. But I can absolutely see a backpacker in bear country carrying this, and I would gladly try one if someone offered.

We had very good meals at Killen’s Barbecue in Pearland, and Goode Company Seafood. We had a spectacularly good meal at the Rainbow Lodge. (I’d been to both Goode Seafood and Rainbow Lodge before.) Our other meal was really just snacks and appetizers at the GOA mixer (previously mentioned in this space), because none of us was really hungry. Breakfast was at the hotel (the Wyndham Downtown) and was good but a little pricey.

The nice thing about the hotel was that it was literally across the street from a church. Since the exhibit hall closed at 5 on Sunday (and we left a little before that, having seen everything) I was able to hit the 5:30 PM Mass (or, as a friend of mine calls it, “the desperado’s mass”, because that’s your last chance for the day).

It really is a beautiful church.

I think this pretty much covers everything I wanted to hit from NRAAM. If I think of anything else, I’ll post an update. And I owe everyone a gun book post (actually, more than one), coming soon.

Posted in Admin, Beef, Books, Food, Guns, History, Hoplobibilophilia, NRA, NRAAM, Photography, Religion, Ruger, Smith and Wesson, Winchester | No Comments »

NRA annual meeting: a collection of random photos of varying quality.

Monday, April 20th, 2026

You can’t buy firearms at the NRA annual meeting, so I had to leave the gun.

But: I did take the cannoli.

(Yes, I do realize that was a long way to go for a joke. But the setup was right in front of me, and I had to take advantage of it.)

It is Jerry‘s world. I just live in it.

I thought this was quite interesting. It is a CZ-75, but it is part of a special edition CZ is doing to honor the Czech fighter squadrons that fought alongside the RAF in WWII. The styling is “influenced” by the Spitfire. Below is a photo of the explanation from CZ’s display, which covers it in more detail: click to embiggen, and I hope you can read it.

I have no idea how much they will sell for, but I admit to being mildly tempted.

Edited to add 4/21: CZ’s page on the CZ 75 RAF, with many much better photos.

Staplerfahrer Klaus, call your office, please.

I guess if you need this, you need it.

This commemorative Barrett is actually much more tasteful than I expected. I’m sorry I don’t have a photo of the other America 250 commemorative, but there was a huge clot of people in front of it, and I wasn’t about shoving people out of the way.

This didn’t come out as well as I would have liked, but I wanted to immortalize it for “Ohio At War!”.

Total distance walked yesterday: 3.3 miles.

I plan to post more, but I’m going to be busy tonight and tomorrow night. It may be Wednesday before I’m able to do a more comprehensive post. Which will include some gun book blogging. Yes, I got a deal in Houston, though not at the show.

Posted in Guns, History, NRA, NRAAM, Photography, Planes | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 9, 2025.

Monday, June 9th, 2025

Lieutenant Commander Conrad Shinn (US Navy – ret.) died on May 15th. He was 102.

LTC Shinn was the first man to land a plane at the South Pole.

Late in Commander Shinn’s life, his daughters said, when asked about being the first pilot to land a plane at the South Pole, he began replying, “And the first to take off.”

…

On Oct. 31, 1956, Commander Shinn, Admiral Dufek and five other Navy men made the seven-hour flight from McMurdo Station on Antarctica to the pole aboard an R4D-5L Skytrain, a twin-engine military version of the commercial DC-3. Internal politics affected the assigned duties for the extraordinary mission.
A captain onboard, Douglas Cordiner, was so upset at not being named the co-pilot that he later stood on the deck of a ship in New Zealand and “threw his library of Antarctica into the water,” Commander Shinn said in his oral history interview.
The R4D, nicknamed Que Sera Sera — Whatever Will Be Will Be — after a popular song, had its landing gear outfitted with skis and was accompanied by a circling Air Force C-124 Globemaster cargo aircraft. Maurice Cutler, then an 18-year-old United Press correspondent from Australia who joined other reporters on the cargo plane, which had wheels but no skis, said in an interview that pallets of survival gear were to be airdropped if Commander Shinn’s plane could not lift off from the pole.
The landing, photographed from above by Mr. Cutler, was not exceptionally rough. Commander Shinn set his plane down at 8:34 p.m. during continuous sunlight across windblown ridges on a desolate ice sheet nearly 10,000 feet above sea level. The temperature was minus 58 degrees Fahrenheit.
Admiral Dufek planted an American flag, and Commander Shinn kept the engines running as the plane remained on the ground for 49 minutes. By then, the skis had become stuck to the ice.
In the thin air on the ice cap, the propeller-driven plane, weighing 28,000 pounds, did not budge with its engines at full power. “We just sat on the ice like an old mud hen,” Commander Shinn told the National Naval Aviation Museum.
To gain thrust, Commander Shinn made a jet-assisted takeoff, firing a series of small rockets housed in canisters attached to the fuselage. After all 15 rockets had been fired, the plane lifted off. “Barely,” he said in a radio interview a day or so after the flight.
Tom Henderson, who directed the 2019 documentary “Ice Eagles,” about aviation in Antarctica, said in a recent interview that Commander Shinn had told him he had lifted off at 58 miles an hour, two below the plane’s minimum designated takeoff speed.
Later, an engine oil pressure light came on, Mr. Henderson said, and Commander Shinn promptly unscrewed the bulb, telling his co-pilot that he’d rather not have Admiral Dufek “see that and get excited.”

…

Commander Shinn’s pioneering flight showed that remote research stations could be supported by air. Today, planes land routinely at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. In his oral history interview, he said he had probably landed six miles from the actual pole. Mr. Cutler’s initial United Press dispatch said four miles.

Frederick Forsyth. The obits right now are still in the preliminary stage, but I’m going to be on the road tomorrow and don’t know when I’ll have time to write.

I wrote a long time ago about my early experience with The Day of the Jackel. I also wrote a little, not quite so long ago, about The Shepherd.

I remember thinking The Odessa File was pretty good, but I was young at the time. I’m not sure it holds up. I do think The Dogs of War does.

Oddly, I think my second favorite Forsyth (of the ones I’ve read) is the short story collection No Comebacks. A story that turns on an obscure point of libel law? Another story about a man who figures out a way to take his fortune with him when he dies…and tick off his greedy family. A group of blackmailers meet their match in a meek insurance executive.

And then there’s “The Emperor”. This seems like a typical fishing story of the kind Hemingway would have written: man gets into the fight of his life with a big fish. But the man is a henpecked bank employee…and in the struggle with the fish, he finds something inside him. This story contains another of my favorite lines in fiction:

“To hell with the bank,” he said at length. “To hell with Ponder’s End. And madam, to hell with you.”

Bill Atkinson, one of the pioneers of the Macintosh.

It was Mr. Atkinson who programmed QuickDraw, a foundational software layer used for both the Lisa and Macintosh computers; composed of a library of small programs, it made it possible to display shapes, text and images on the screen efficiently.
The QuickDraw programs were embedded in the computers’ hardware, providing a distinctive graphical user interface that presented a simulated “desktop,” displaying icons of folders, files and application programs.
Mr. Atkinson is credited with inventing many of the key aspects of graphical computing, such as “pull down” menus and the “double-click” gesture, which allows users to open files, folders and applications by clicking a mouse button twice in succession.

…

Mr. Atkinson’s programming feats were renowned in Silicon Valley.
“Looking at his code was like looking at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel,” recalled Steve Perlman, who as a young Apple hardware engineer took advantage of Mr. Atkinson’s software to design the first color Macintosh. “His code was remarkable. It is what made the Macintosh possible.”

…

He was also the author of two of the most significant early programs written for the Macintosh. One, MacPaint, was a digital drawing program that came with the original Macintosh; it made it possible for a user to create and manipulate images on the screen, controlling everything down to the level of the individual display pixel.
Ordinary users without specialized skills could now create drawings, illustrations and designs directly on a computer screen. The program introduced the concept of a “tool palette,” a set of clickable icons to select simulated paint brushes pens, and pencils.

…

After the introduction of the Macintosh, while under the influence of a modest dose of LSD, Mr. Atkinson conceived of a program that would weave text, images and video seamlessly in a simple-to-use database. That experience would lead to Apple’s HyperCard software, a forerunner of the World Wide Web.

…

At age 10, after Bill was given a subscription to Arizona Highways magazine, he began cutting out nature photographs and placing them on his bedroom wall. That led to a lifetime passion for nature photography and eventually a second career as a commercial and artistic photographer. A 2004 book, “Within the Stone,” presented his close-up photographs of stones that had been cut and polished.

Posted in Apple, Books, Obits, Photography, Planes | Comments Closed

This one goes out to pigpen51.

Tuesday, April 8th, 2025

We run a full service blog here. And this time, we remembered to stop and get photos on our way out of town.

Even better, the weather on Monday was actually nice, after dealing with cold, rain, and overcast from Wednesday night through Sunday night.

Interestingly (well, to me) the Billy Sims Barbecue we went to on our last trip has moved. The new location replaces a shabu-shabu place that both Mike the Musicologist and I liked. And it looked like whatever went in where the old location was has also closed.

But: they did take the statue with them. There’s a large empty plinth in front of the old location, though. I’m not sure what you can do with an empty plinth, other than put a replacement statue on it. But given there’s nothing at that location right now…

Posted in NFL, Photography, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: October 16, 2024.

Wednesday, October 16th, 2024

Megan Marshack passed away earlier this month at the age of 70.

That’s a name that might ring a bell with the old people in my audience. You younger folks never heard of her.

Ms. Marshack was “with” former vice-president Nelson Rockefeller when he died on January 26, 1979.

I use “with” above because the circumstances of Mr. Rockefeller’s death were and are unclear.

The initial account of Mr. Rockefeller’s death was supplied by Hugh Morrow, his longtime spokesman, after midnight on Jan. 27. He told The New York Times that Mr. Rockefeller had died instantly, at 10:15 p.m., while he was in his office, alone with a bodyguard, “having a wonderful time” working on an art book he was writing.
The next day, The Times began deconstructing the official story. The paper reported that someone called 911 to report Mr. Rockefeller’s death an hour after he was reported to have died; that Mr. Rockefeller was not at his office but rather at a brownstone he used as a clubhouse; and that at the time he was with Ms. Marshack, who was identified as a research assistant.
A drip-drip of revelations ensued. First The Times reported that it was Ms. Marshack who called 911; then the paper said that the caller had actually been a friend of hers, who lived in the same apartment building as Ms. Marshack, down the block from Mr. Rockefeller’s brownstone. It also turned out that Mr. Rockefeller had given Ms. Marshack the money for her apartment, a loan amounting to $45,000 (about $200,000 in today’s money), which he forgave in his will, along with other loans to top aides.

…

The circumstances of Mr. Rockefeller’s death remain mysterious. One account said that he was found dead wearing a suit and tie and surrounded by working papers; another said that he was nude, amid containers of Chinese food. Several credible sources indicated that he did not actually die at his brownstone but rather at Ms. Marshack’s apartment. The cause of death is generally understood to have been a heart attack.
Aside from minimal statements confirming that she had indeed been with Mr. Rockefeller when he died — released to The Times by Mr. Morrow immediately after Mr. Rockefeller’s death — Ms. Marshack never publicly commented on any of the accounts.
“My understanding is that, after he passed away, she signed a nondisclosure agreement with the family at their request, and that’s why she never spoke of it,” Ms. Marshack’s brother said in an interview. “I think she had a desire to tell the story all along but held on to her obligation.”

Ms. Marshack left behind an obituary that she wrote herself.

Ms. Marshack’s self-written obituary disclosed some previously unreported details about her association with Mr. Rockefeller but did not mention a romance — although it ended suggestively, quoting from the 1975 musical “A Chorus Line.” Ms. Marshack wrote that she “won’t forget, can’t regret what I did for love.”

And another historical footnote: Richard V. Secord, of Iran-Contra fame.

Paul Lowe, photojournalist.

Mr. Lowe’s work as a photojournalist encompassed several conflicts and major events, including the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Russian invasion of Grozny in Chechnya. His best known photographs emerged out of the siege of Sarajevo, in Bosnia and Herzegovina, one of the longest sieges of a capital in modern history.

He was stabbed by his 19-year-old son, who was apparently suffering a mental health crisis.

Posted in History, Obits, Photography, Politics | Comments Closed

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy…

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2024

…and what could be more patriotic than guns and gun books?

This isn’t quite as patriotic as it could be, since the first two of these are about Africa. And the second two are duplicates of existing books in my collection, so I’m not going to spend as much time on them as I usually do.

El jumperino here…

(more…)

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Photography | Comments Closed

You dry-docked my battleship!

Monday, January 23rd, 2023

You don’t really realize how big these things are until you’re standing right next to them.

You also don’t realize just how large the infrastructure supporting these things is until you see it.

(If you live in Texas, or want to make a trip, the Battleship Texas Foundation is doing these tours through April 30th, only on Sundays. You can find details here if you’re interested.)

(This was a Christmas present from my beloved and indulgent brother and his family. Thanks, folks!)

Posted in Boats, Christmas, History, Photography | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: January 10, 2023.

Tuesday, January 10th, 2023

Quinn Redeker, actor.

He did a fair number of cop and PI shows, among other credits, including “The Rockford Files”, “Harry O”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Falling Star“, season 1, episode 15. He was “Jim Dancy”.)

Mike Hill, film editor. He won an Oscar for “Apollo 13”.

Diamond Lynnette Hardaway, of “Diamond and Silk”.

Timothy Vanderweert. He ran the “Leicaphilia” blog, which has been on the sidebar for a while now.

Adolfo Kaminsky. I swear I have written something about him before, but I can’t find it now.

He was a forger. Specifically, he forged documents to get people out of the hands of the Nazis.

The forged documents allowed Jewish children, their parents and others to escape deportation to Auschwitz and other concentration camps, and in many cases to flee Nazi-occupied territory for safe havens.
At one point, Mr. Kaminsky was asked to produce 900 birth and baptismal certificates and ration cards for 300 Jewish children in institutional homes who were about to be rounded up. The aim was to deceive the Germans until the children could be smuggled out to rural families or convents, or to Switzerland and Spain. He was given three days to finish the assignment.
He toiled for two straight days, forcing himself to stay awake by telling himself: “In one hour I can make 30 blank documents. If I sleep for an hour 30 people will die.”

…

Using the pseudonym Julien Keller, Mr. Kaminsky was a key operative in a Paris underground laboratory whose members — all working for no pay and risking a quick death if discovered — adopted aliases like Water Lily, Penguin and Otter, and often contrived documents from scratch.
Mr. Kaminsky learned to fashion various typefaces, a skill he had picked up in elementary school while editing a school newspaper, and was able to imitate those used by the authorities. He pressed paper so that it, too, resembled the kind used on official documents, and photoengraved his own rubber stamps, letterheads and watermarks.
Word of the cell spread to other resistance groups, and soon it was producing 500 documents a week, receiving orders from partisans in several European countries. Mr. Kaminsky estimated that the underground network he was part of helped save 10,000 people, most of them children.

Posted in 1970s, History, Mannix, Movies, Music, Nazis, Obits, Photography, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 10, 2022.

Monday, October 10th, 2022

Anton Fier, noted drummer.

His career rose to new heights in the mid-1980s: He toured with the jazz keyboardist Herbie Hancock following Mr. Hancock’s 1984 pop-funk crossover hit “Rockit,” and played on Laurie Anderson’s acclaimed 1984 album, “Mister Heartbreak.”
By that point his musical ambitions could not be contained behind the drum kit, so Mr. Fier formed the Golden Palominos, an ever-evolving indie-rock supergroup that attracted a parade of guest stars, including Michael Stipe, John Lydon and Richard Thompson, through the rest of the 1980s and into the ’90s.

Peter Robinson, crime writer. (“…DCI Alan Banks, hero of a series of Yorkshire-set novels that spanned 35 years and sold more than 10 million copies.”)

Douglas Kirkland, celebrity photographer.

(Hattip on the previous two to Lawrence.)

Nikki Finke, founder of Deadline.com.

At L.A. Weekly, Finke headed its Deadline Hollywood Daily column from 2002-09. In 2006, she launched Deadline Hollywood Daily, an around-the-clock online version, and became a key source of news surrounding the 2007 WGA strike.
That year, The New York Times‘ Brian Stelter wrote that Finke’s blog had “become a critical forum for Hollywood news and gossip, known for analyzing (in sometimes insulting terms) the behind-the-scenes maneuvering of moguls,” with her reporting on the strike ultimately solidifying “her position as a Hollywood power broker.”

She went on to sell the site to Penske Media for $100 million in 2009.

Speaking to her legacy and that of Deadline‘s in a 10-year anniversary post for the publication, she wrote that the concept behind her original blog — using a URL purchased for “14 bucks and change” — was to get breaking news out faster than she could with her column.
“I didn’t set out to be a disruptor,” she wrote. “Or an internet journalist who created something out of nothing that put the Hollywood trades back on their heels, and today, under Penske Media ownership, is a website worth $100+ million. Or a woman with brass balls, attitude and ruthless hustle who told hard truths about the moguls and who accurately reported scoops first.”

Obit from Deadline.com.

Posted in Books, Media, Music, Obits, Photography | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 24, 2022.

Wednesday, August 24th, 2022

Len Dawson, one of the greats. NYT.

Known as “Lenny the Cool” for his composure and guile on the field, Dawson was the Chiefs’ starter for 14 seasons, including their appearances in Super Bowl I and Super Bowl IV.

…

Dawson, a strapping 6-footer with wavy hair and a killer smile, began working as a sports anchor for KMBC-TV (Ch. 9) during his playing days in 1966, not stepping down until 2009. He also served as an NFL color commentator for NBC Sports for six years; was co-host for HBO’s “Inside the NFL” for 24 years; and was the Chiefs’ radio analyst from 1984 to 2017.

…

In 1987, Dawson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, just 20 miles from his childhood home of Alliance, Ohio. Dawson, inducted into the Chiefs Hall of Fame in 1979, also was selected 1972 NFL Man of the Year, an award that honors a player’s contributions both on the field and in the community.
Dawson’s work as a broadcaster was recognized in 2012, when he received the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame, 25 years after he was enshrined as a player. Dawson, Frank Gifford, Dan Dierdorf and John Madden are the only members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who also received the Rozelle Award, which recognizes “longtime exceptional contributions to radio and television in professional football.”

…

In his 19-year professional career, Dawson completed 2,136 passes in 3,741 attempts for 28,711 yards, 239 touchdowns and 183 interceptions. His 183 games played for the Chiefs ranks third among non-kickers to only Will Shields’ 224 and Tony Gonzalez’ 190. And Dawson completed more passes (2,115) for more yards (28,507) and more touchdowns (237) than any quarterback in Chiefs history.

…

More important to Dawson was the contribution he and the Chiefs played in Kansas City, a town searching for its major-league identity.
“The games themselves don’t mean that much,” he said. “You tend to forget the details. But our success was important to Kansas City. I like to think our football team played a part in changing the minds of people about Kansas City. That is the most significant thing to me.”

Tim Page, Vietnam war photographer. (Alt link.)

A freelancer and a free spirit whose Vietnam pictures appeared in publications around the world during the 1960s, he was seriously wounded four times, most severely when a piece of shrapnel took a chunk out of his brain and sent him into months of recovery and rehabilitation.
Mr. Page was one of the most vivid personalities among a corps of Vietnam photographers whose images helped shape the course of the war — and was a model for the crazed, stoned photographer played by Dennis Hopper in “Apocalypse Now.”
Michael Herr, in his 1977 book “Dispatches,” called him the most extravagant of the “wigged-out crazies” in Vietnam, who “liked to augment his field gear with freak paraphernalia, scarves and beads.”

…

He published a dozen books, including two memoirs, and most notably “Requiem” a collection of pictures by photographers on all sides who had been killed in the various Indochina wars.
Issued in 1997 and co-authored by his fellow photographer Horst Faas, it was a memorial that he considered one of his most important contributions. The collection was put on permanent display in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina (affiliate link to used copies on Amazon). I’ve mentioned it before, but I think this is a great book.

His closest encounter with death came in April 1969 when he stepped out of a helicopter to help offload wounded soldiers and was hit with shrapnel when a soldier near him stepped on a mine.
He was pronounced dead at a military hospital, then was revived, then died and was revived again, finally recovering enough to be transferred to the United States, where he endured months of rehabilitation and therapy before picking up his cameras and heading back to work.
During this time, in an event that consumed much of his later life, two fellow photographers headed on motorcycles down an empty road in Cambodia in search of Khmer Rouge guerrillas and never returned.
Over the following decades, Mr. Page made repeated forays into the Cambodian countryside in a futile search for the remains of the two men, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone.

This goes unmentioned in the obit, and isn’t strictly relevant, but I find it an interesting historical footnote: Sean Flynn was Errol Flynn’s son (by his first wife, Lili Damita). To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Flynn and Mr. Stone have never been found: “In 1984, Flynn’s mother had him declared dead in absentia.”

Personal indulgence: Doris Emily Bedford Gerlat. She was the mother of my beloved and indulgent Uncle Allan (who is married to my beloved and indulgent Aunt Cheryl: the two of them are responsible for the Major Award among other things).

Posted in Books, History, NFL, Photography, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 27, 2022.

Thursday, July 28th, 2022

Tony Dow is really most sincerely dead. NYT again. My thanks to the many people (including Borepatch) who tipped me off to this.

Faye Marlowe. She had a short career: “Hangover Square” seems to be her best known film.

Jered Barclay. He did a fair number of Westerns, “Hawaiian Eye”, “Surfside 6”, “Coronet Blue”, and other credits. He was also in vaudeville and theater, and did a lot of voiceovers.

Bernard Cribbins. Credits other than “Doctor Who” include “Frenzy”, the 1967 “Casino Royale”, “Space: 1999”, and “Coronation Street”. (Edited to add: NYT.)

Lourdes Grobet, photographer. One of her specialties was photographing luchadores, and some of those photos are reproduced in the obit (including one of her dancing with El Santo).

U Phyo Zeya Thaw, Burmese rapper. He was 41.

His execution, and those of three other political prisoners, were announced in the junta-controlled news media on Monday. His mother, Daw Khin Win May, confirmed his death.
The four men were convicted of terrorism charges in trials widely denounced as a sham. The four executions, including that of the veteran democracy activist U Kyaw Min Yu, popularly known as Ko Jimmy, were the first to be carried out in decades in Myanmar.

Posted in Obits, Photography, Theatre, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: May 3, 2022.

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2022

I know this sounds like the setup to a joke, but it isn’t: Ric Parnell has passed away.

Mr. Parnell was perhaps best known as “Mick Shrimpton”, one of Spinal Tap’s many drummers.

Parnell played in multiple bands, including Horse, Atomic Rooster, Nova and Stars. He claimed he declined invitations to play in Journey and Whitesnake, but is credited with playing drums on Toni Basil’s song “Hey Mickey” in 1981.

David Birney.

Mr. Birney’s theater career began in earnest in 1965, when he won the Barter Theater Award, enabling him to spend a season acting in shows at the prestigious Barter Theater in Abingdon, Va. He moved on to the Hartford Stage Company in Connecticut, and in 1967 he played Antipholus of Syracuse in a New York Shakespeare Festival production of “A Comedy of Errors.”
Mr. Birney made his Broadway debut two years later in Molière’s “The Miser.” And in 1971 he starred in a Broadway production of J.M. Synge’s “The Playboy of the Western World” at the Vivian Beaumont Theater at Lincoln Center. Mr. Birney played Christy Mahon, who enters an Irish pub in the early 1900s telling a story about killing his father.

…

Over the rest of his theatrical career, Mr. Birney played a wide variety of roles, including Antonio Salieri, as a replacement, in Peter Shaffer’s “Amadeus” on Broadway; Benedick in “Much Ado About Nothing” at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, N.J.; Hamlet at the PCPA Theaterfest in Santa Maria, Calif.; and James Tyrone Jr. in Eugene O’Neill’s “A Moon for the Misbegotten” at the Miniature Theater of Chester, Mass.

He also did a lot of TV work, including a recurring role on the first season of “St. Elsewhere”. Credits other than “Bridget Loves Bernie” include one of the spin-offs of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s, “FBI: The Untold Stories”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, Serpico on the “Serpico” TV series, “McMillan & Wife”, and “The F.B.I.”

Ron Galella, photographer and historical footnote. He was one of the early “paparazzi” – indeed, it seems to me that he was one before the term came into common use.

He was perhaps most famous for relentlessly photographing Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Mrs. Onassis waged a running court battle with him throughout the 1970s and early ’80s, testifying in one court hearing that he had made her life “intolerable, almost unlivable, with his constant surveillance.” Mr. Galella in turn claimed the right to earn a living by taking pictures of famous people in public places.
In 1972, a judge ordered him to keep 25 feet away from Mrs. Onassis and 30 feet away from her children. A decade later, facing jail time for violating the order — hundreds of times — Mr. Galella agreed never to take another picture of them. And he never did.

…

Reviewing “Smash His Camera,” a 2010 documentary about Mr. Galella, the critic Roger Ebert articulated the ambivalence many felt toward him, whether or not they knew the name of the photographer behind the memorable pictures he took. “I disapproved of him,” Mr. Ebert said, “and enjoyed his work.”

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

Historical note, NOT suitable for use in schools.

Monday, April 4th, 2022

This post is strictly in the interest of history. I am not posting this for any prurient reasons: it just seems like an appropriate bit of history, especially since I recently mentioned Leslie Van Houten.

Never-before-seen photos of murdered blond bombshell Sharon Tate have been found in a California garage.

To be clear, these are not post mortem photos: they were taken when Ms. Tate was 21. She was 26 when the Manson family murdered her.

Cabrejas, 46, had been searching for camera equipment to photograph a solar eclipse when she came across the pics.
“They had been sitting in our garage for years until I came across them cleaning his stuff,” the West Los Angeles native told SWNS.
She added that the photos were “totally a casual thing, from before she was even famous.” Tate was just starting to build her career at the time and was going to a plethora of auditions.

I am, of course, in the interest of respecting copyright and intellectual property, not reproducing the photos here. You can click through to the linked NY Post article if you wish to view a selection of them.

Posted in California Über Alles, Law, Movies, Photography | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: January 27, 2022.

Thursday, January 27th, 2022

Don Wilson, of the Ventures.

In addition to their success in the United States (where their other hits included “Walk — Don’t Run, ’64,” a remake of their own hit that also made Billboard’s Top 10), the Ventures became wildly popular in Japan — so much so, Mr. Wilson said, that numerous bands there took to imitating them. That led to an uncomfortable surprise when the band made its second trip there, its first as headliners, in 1965.
“We had an opening group,” he told The San Diego Union-Tribune in 1984, “and they played all of our songs before we went on.”

We’re talking about the Ventures, so you know what that means, right?

Jim Drake, one of the old time Sports Illustrated photographers. I wanted to mention this here because there’s a lot of classic Drake photos reproduced in the obit, including the one of Broadway Joe in Times Square.

Morgan Stevens, actor. He was “Nick Diamond” on “Melrose Place”. He was also “David Reardon” in “Fame” and did other TV guest spots.

Kevin Ward, the mayor of Hyattsville, Maryland, which is a DC suburb. He was found dead in a park: his death is suspected to have been a suicide.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.

Posted in Music, Obits, Photography, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 22, 2021.

Monday, November 22nd, 2021

Bob Bondurant, legendary racer and founder of The Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving.

Mr. Bondurant began attracting attention in the racing world in 1959, when he won 18 of the 20 races he entered behind the wheel of a Corvette.
“I am an original California hot rodder turned white hot when I started winning everything in my Corvettes,” he was quoted as saying by the National Corvette Museum, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2016.
He continued to win races regularly in Corvettes in the 1960s, but he also began to race successfully in other sports cars and open-wheeled Formula 1 machines, including for the elite Ferrari team from 1965 to 1966.
“He was top of the line,” said Peter Brock, who designed the Shelby Daytona Cobra Coupe that Mr. Bondurant raced with Dan Gurney to first place in the GT, or Grand Touring, class at the 24 Hours of Le Mans endurance race in 1964.

…

Even before opening the school, Mr. Bondurant had some well-known students. He had coached James Garner and Yves Montand in driving Formula 1 cars for John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film, “Grand Prix.” Mr. Bondurant, who was a stunt man and technical adviser to the film, wore 16-millimeter cameras on the sides of his helmet to record racing action on the track while moving at 150 miles per hour.
Soon after Mr. Bondurant opened the school, Mr. Newman and Robert Wagner signed up as students. They had been cast as racecar drivers in the film “Winning” (1969), in which Mr. Newman’s character dreams of winning the Indianapolis 500.
“Paul has a knack of knowing how to learn,” Mr. Bondurant told The St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1988. “He’s like most actors — they know how to listen. He would move at his own pace, and wouldn’t go too quick. He took it step by step, and it came naturally to him.”

One of my lifetime ambitions has been to attend the Bob Bondurant School of High Performance Driving, though apparently it went bankrupt in 2018 and is now known as the Radford Racing School.

Robert Bly, the Iron John guy. Anyone else remember when Iron John was a thing? I do, though I never actually read it: I just remember a time when people talked about books, instead of what the Kardasians were doing yesterday.

Carolyn Watjen, aka “Caroline Todd“. You wouldn’t know her under that name: she and her son, David Watjen, write (wrote?) mystery novels under the pseudonym “Charles Todd”. I haven’t read any of them yet, but the Ian Rutledge novels sound interesting.

Jay Last. He was an early semi-conductor pioneer: specifically, he was one of the “traitorous eight” who left William Shockley and founded Fairchild Semiconductor. His death leaves Gordon Moore (yes, that Moore) as the last surviving member of the group.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Mick Rock, photographer of musicians.

Peter Aykroyd, Dan’s brother and “Saturday Night Live” cast member.

Art LaFleur, actor. Other than “The Sandlot”, his credits include episodes of “The John Larroquette Show”, two different remakes of television series that should never have been remade and which failed miserably (not due to Mr. LaFleur, they were just bad ideas), “Matlock”, “Field of Dreams”, and “Wizards and Warriors”.

Posted in Books, Cars, Geek, Obits, Photography | Comments Closed

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