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Obit watch: September 24, 2025.

Wednesday, September 24th, 2025

Claudia Cardinale. NYT (archived). IMDB.

The only Claudia Cardinale movie I’ve seen is “Lost Command” (though both “8 1/2” and “Fitzcarraldo” are on our list: “Son of the Pink Panther” is not). She was on a lot of lists of “the most beautiful women in the world”.

Bernie Parent, goalie.

Parent was beloved in Philadelphia — a French Canadian known for his upbeat personality, broad smile, thick mustache and the white fiberglass mask he wore to protect his face. A bumper sticker seen on fenders around Philadelphia paid tribute to his goaltending skills: “Only the Lord saves more than Bernie Parent.”

…

Parent was unprepared for life after hockey. He fell into a depression. He drank too much and got help through Alcoholics Anonymous to become sober. He coached another Flyers goalie, Pelle Lindbergh, who won the Vezina Trophy in 1985. (Later that year, Lindbergh, 26, died of injuries from a car accident.)
“When death defeats greatness, we all mourn,” Parent said at a memorial service for Lindbergh at the Spectrum, the Flyers’ home arena at the time. “And when death defeats youth, we mourn even more.”
Parent worked for many years as a team ambassador for the Flyers, as a spokesman for an insurance company and as a motivational speaker. He also helped other recovering alcoholics.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports | 2 Comments »

I’m Gundy, damn it!

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025

I guess this counts as a “big” firing, or at least a larger one:

Mike Gundy out at Oklahoma State.

Gundy, 58, is the winningest coach in program history with a record of 170-90 over his 20-plus seasons, accounting for 26.6% of the school’s all-time victories.
No single figure has had as much direct impact over such a significant amount of time as Gundy, who has spent 35 of the past 40 seasons at Oklahoma State in some form.

But this is kind of a “what have you done for me lately” thing. Especially if you define “lately” as “since 2021”.

The 2021 squad came inches short of defeating Baylor and potentially earning a College Football Playoff bid…
But since that moment, OSU has gone 21-21, despite a 10-4 season in 2023 that included another appearance in the Big 12 title game.
The 2024 team went 0-9 in conference play, and the 1-2 start with a 66-point loss to Oregon and a 19-12 loss to Tulsa spelled the end for Gundy, concluding his career with a record of 170-90 (.654 winning percentage), and 12-6 in bowl games.

Noted:

Screenshot

Not quite the war font, but fairly close.

Edited to add: ESPN, for those who want supplemental coverage.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Tuesday, September 23rd, 2025

I figure that there’s going to be some kind of big firing this week. So far, I haven’t seen any, but there’s been a few small firings.

Sandy Brondello out as coach of the New York Liberty, although this is being presented as non-renewal of her contract. The Liberty won the WNBA championship last year, but were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs this year.

Ms. Brondello was 107-53 in four seasons.

Ike Hilliard out as wide receivers coach for the Atlanta Falcons.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | 2 Comments »

Your NFL loser update: week 3, 2025.

Monday, September 22nd, 2025

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

NY Jets
Miami
Tennessee
Houston
New York Football Giants
New Orleans

The worthless Bills are 3-0.
The worthless Chargers are 3-0.
Houston is 0-3.

And as soon as I suggest that Cleveland might go 0-17, they go out and win a game.

But we still have the Jets and the New York Football Giants.

In other news, we’re coming down to the final stretch of the baseball season. The Chicago Cubs have clinched a playoff spot. (No, Lawrence, I’m not betting on the Cubs with you.)

What of our favorite teams?

The White Sox are 58-98, for a .372 winning percentage. That projects out to about 102 losses.

And the Rockies are 43-113, for a .276 winning percentage. That projects out to about 117 losses, which is in the historical range. But at this point, they can’t tie the 2024 White Sox record, or even the previous 1962 Mets record of 120 losses. Wikipedia currently puts them between the 1952 Pirates (.273) and the 1909 Senators (.276).

Their final games are in Seattle (who hasn’t quite clinched a playoff sport, but is very close) and in San Francisco (who hasn’t quite been mathematically eliminated, but is very close). If I had to guess, I’d say they’ll get swept by Seattle and win one in San Francisco, for a final record of 44-118. We’ll see if I’m right.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: September 17, 2025.

Wednesday, September 17th, 2025

For the historical record, Robert Redford: THR. NYT. LAT. Park Record. IMDB.

NYT obit for Pat Crowley (archived). (Previously.)

John Penton, one of the pioneers of off-road motorcycle riding.

Traveling home from Mexico in late 1958, he rode nonstop from California to Ohio, prompting one of his brothers to challenge him to try to break the transcontinental motorcycle record, riding from New York to Los Angeles.
At 5:59 a.m. on June 8, 1959, Mr. Penton set out from New York City on a 35-horsepower BMW R69S, outfitted with an oversize gas tank and a fender rack to hold rain gear and candy bars. To officially record his progress, he carried Western Union letterhead that he got stamped at tollbooths along the route.
In St. Louis, a cycling group, including two police officers, was expecting him and provided an escort through the city, offering him two ham sandwiches and two cups of milk, according to the podcast We Went Fast.
Mr. Penton intended to stop only to refuel. But by the time he reached Flagstaff, Ariz., he was exhausted and seeing double. So he set two alarm clocks and slept for an hour, then hit the road again.
On June 10, he arrived at the Western Union office in downtown Los Angeles at 8:10 a.m., having traveled 3,051 miles. His official time — 52 hours, 11 minutes, 1 second — broke the previous record by over 25 hours. Mr. Penton’s record stood for nine years.

…

In the late 1940s, Mr. Penton began to realize that smaller, more agile off-road motorcycles could outperform heavier, unwieldy roadster models like Harleys, Triumphs and Indians. By the 1960s, he was determined to design a bike that would not have to be modified for off-road use.
In 1967, while in Europe competing in a six-day team endurance event that is considered the Olympics of off-road racing, he paid $6,000 to the Austrian company KTM, a manufacturer of bicycles and mopeds, to build a prototype for a design he called the Penton.
The first Pentons were delivered in 1968; the 125cc model weighed 185 pounds, about half the weight of some bikes that Mr. Penton had ridden. The Penton came with innovations like a folding gearshift lever to prevent the bike from being caught on rocks and in muddy ruts, and an air-filter system that enhanced water resistance to keep the engine running smoothly.
“Our claim to fame,” Jack Penton said, “was that it was ready to perform at the highest level just as you bought it” — no modifications needed.
In 1978, Mr. Penton sold his distributorship to KTM, which rebranded the motorcycle with its company name. By then, more than 25,000 Penton motorcycles had been sold in the United States, according to the American Motorcyclist Association.

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

Your NFL loser update: week 2, 2025.

Tuesday, September 16th, 2025

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

Kansas City
NY Jets
Miami
Cleveland
Tennessee
Houston
New York Football Giants
da Bears
New Orleans
Carolina

The worthless Chargers are 2-0.
The worthless Bills are 2-0.
Houston is 0-2.

I think it is time to start panicking.

More seriously, who do I think has a shot at the Owen 17 record? I can see Cleveland finishing 0-17. There’s historical precedent for that.

But something makes me think that one of the New York teams is more likely to finish out the season with no wins. I don’t know what is making me think that, and I could be wrong, but right now that’s the way I would bet.

In other news:

The Chicago White Sox are at 57-94, for a .377 winning percentage. That projects out to about 101 losses. And since my last update, they have been mathematically eliminated (the best kind of eliminated) from post-season play.

And the Colorado Rockies are at 41-109, for a .273 winning percentage. Right now, that projects out to about 118 losses. At this point, they can’t break the record set by the 2024 White Sox, but they can still tie it.

Also mathematically eliminated: the Pirates, the Nationals, the Angels, and the Twins. And the Tigers are at the top of their division, though they haven’t clinched yet. I’m hoping pigpen51 is happy.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Firings watch.

Monday, September 15th, 2025

It was another one of those busy weekends for me.

It was also a busy weekend for sports firings, so getting caught up:

DeShaun Foster out at UCLA. Heh. Heh. Heh. 5-10 in “a little more than one full season”, and 0-3 so far this season. ESPN.

Brent Pry out as head coach of Virginia Tech. 16-24 in “four seasons” and, yes, 0-3 so far this season. ESPN.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 1 Comment »

Your NFL loser update: week 1, 2025.

Tuesday, September 9th, 2025

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

Dallas
Kansas City
NY Jets
New England
Miami
Baltimore
Cleveland
Tennessee
Houston
New York Football Giants
da Bears
Detroit
Atlanta
New Orleans
Carolina
Seattle

The worthless Chargers won.
The worthless Bills won.
Detroit lost.
Houston lost.
Has the curse of Saylor Twift finally settled on Kansas City?

It is the first week of the season. I don’t think it is time to panic quite yet.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Your loser update: September 4, 2025.

Thursday, September 4th, 2025

The NFL regular season begins tonight.

The NFL loser update will return on Tuesday, September 9th, since we have to wait for the Monday night game.

Meanwhile, it’s been a minute since I posted a baseball loser update. Lawrence sent over a link yesterday:

“Rockies, Freeland go down screaming as they hit loss No. 100”.

So how bad are things? Not as bad as you might think. And good enough to get me depressed, which is why I haven’t been posting.

The Chicago White Sox are at 52-88, for a .371 winning percentage. That projects out to about 102 losses.

And the Colorado Rockies are at 39-101, for a .279 winning percentage. Right now, that projects out to about 117 losses.

Looking at it another way, for the Rockies to beat the 2024 White Sox record, they would have to lose 21 out of the 22 games remaining. That’s theoretically possible, but call me when the pigs start flying.

One bright note, though: the Rockies are the first – and, as far as I can tell, only – team so far to be mathematically eliminated from post-season play.

On a side note that I don’t have any room for elsewhere, Lawrence also sent over this story about the Clippers paying $28 million to Kawhi Leonard through a fake job to get around the NBA salary cap.

I’d seen this story on Awful Announcing as well. It’s interesting, but I can’t get worked up over it: I’m absolutely convinced that, even if everything is true, the NBA and the Player’s Association won’t do anything about it.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: September 2, 2025.

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2025

Graham Greene, actor. I’ve never seen “Dances With Wolves” but Lawrence has it and is threatening to bring it out for the next movie night. NYT (archived).

Other credits include “Wind River”, “Atlantic Rim”, and “Shattered City: The Halifax Explosion” (which I’d really like to see).

Joe Bugner, boxer.

In 1971, he won a controversial victory on points over his countryman Henry Cooper, a widely popular figure, gaining the British, the British Commonwealth and the European heavyweight titles. Cooper went into retirement afterward, and Bugner was left to deal with a less than adoring British public.

He’s perhaps more famous for fighting Ali twice and Frazier once.

On Feb. 14, 1973, in a 12-rounder against Ali in Las Vegas, Bugner sustained a cut over his left eye in the opening round. But he remained on his feet while losing a unanimous decision. There were no knockdowns. Bugner left with respect from the crowd and from Ali.
The New York Times reported that Ali, who had predicted a seventh-round knockout, said afterward of Bugner, a former sparring partner: “He’s a little better than I thought. I didn’t know his legs were so good. He’s three times better than when I sparred with him through the years.”
Less than five months later, on July 2, Bugner fought Frazier in a 12-round bout in London. It was Frazier’s first fight since losing his heavyweight title to George Foreman in January 1973. Charging ahead in the 10th round, Frazier knocked Bugner down for a nine count, but Bugner recovered and staggered Frazier before the bell, closing his left eye.
Frazier won on points, but The Times said that the decision “may have done more for his opponent’s reputation than for his.”

…

Bugner met Ali again on July 1, 1975, this time for a 15-round championship fight in the wilting morning heat of Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Both fighters survived the conditions, but Ali won convincingly “with the ease of assaulting a statue,” Dave Anderson of The Times reported.
Bugner acknowledged that he had lacked energy in the heat and humidity. Afterward, he grew irritated with journalists’ probing questions and, according to The Telegraph, declared: “Get me Jesus Christ! I’ll fight him tomorrow!”
To which Hugh McIlvanney, a veteran British boxing reporter, replied, “Ah Joe, you’re only saying that ’cause you know he’s got bad hands.”

Gene Espy. He was the second person to “thru-hike” (make the whole trip in one continuous hike) the Appalachian Trail.

It took Mr. Espy 123 days to complete his journey, which started at Mount Oglethorpe in Georgia and took him through 14 states along the world’s longest continuous hiking-only footpath. Back then, the Appalachian Trail was mainly rugged wilderness, with few trail markers. He walked through parts of the trail where few others had ventured.
“I’d carry a map in my hat,” he was quoted as saying in 1993 by The News and Observer of Raleigh, N.C. “Every so often, I would stop and take my hat off, pull out my map, look around and try to figure out where I was.”
He averaged about 16 miles a day, but sometimes walked more than 30 on his way to Mount Katahdin in Maine, the northern terminus of the trail, which he reached on Sept. 30, 1951.

…

He bought a used backpack from an Army surplus store, hiking shoes from L.L. Bean, a canvas tent and a rain poncho. He carried a Boy Scout knife, cooking utensils, a miner’s carbide lamp and two canteens, one for water and the other for gasoline to fuel his tiny stove. His meals included dehydrated mashed potatoes and boiled cornmeal with sugar, raisins and powdered milk.

…

Mr. Espy’s former home in Macon became a mecca to fans seeking his advice.
“They brought their packs to our house and asked what they would need,” his wife, Eugenia (Bass) Espy, said in an interview. “He always said they were bringing too much and would say, ‘You don’t need this, you don’t need that.’ He tried to explain that you only should carry the essentials and keep the pack as light as you can.”

…

One day in 1965, Mr. Espy and his daughters were hiking on the trail in Georgia.
“We heard this crashing in the woods and this scruffy man came at us,” Ms. Gilsinger recalled. “He looked at us and said, ‘Gene Espy!’ And my father said, ‘Earl Shaffer!’ He was really depleted physically, and we took him into town, got him supplies and perked him up.”

(Earl Shaffer was the first person to thru-hike the trail. He passed away in 2002.)

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 29, 2025.

Friday, August 29th, 2025

I know I’m drawing heavily from the NYT, but that’s where the interesting obits are today.

Jim Murray. He was the general manager of the Philadelphia Eagles from 1974 until 1983, including during their Super Bowl run in 1981. But that’s not what I think is notable.

The first facility opened in Philadelphia in 1974, the year Mr. Murray became, at 36, the National Football League’s youngest general manager. The daughter of Fred Hill, a tight end with the Eagles, had been diagnosed with leukemia. The team raised money for her; Mr. Murray was delegated to prolong the giving by looking for a related charitable cause.
He found a local pediatric oncologist, Dr. Audrey Evans, who told him that the most pressing need was to provide accommodation for families who brought their sick children to a hospital and often had to sleep in the corridor or in their cars.
Mr. Murray understood immediately. “He saw the way they were struggling and said, ‘We have to figure something out,’” his godson, the Philadelphia sports broadcaster Rob Ellis, said in an interview. “Then the idea bloomed and progressed. It started with the motivation to help his player.”

Know your stuff. Be a man. Look after your people.

Mr. Murray reached out to a Philadelphia advertising executive who handled the region’s McDonald’s account. Local McDonald’s restaurants agreed to donate money from a promotional drink — the Shamrock Shake — as long as the house could be named after the company’s emblematic clown.
The first Ronald McDonald House opened on Oct. 15, 1974, at 4032 Spruce Street in Philadelphia. There was room for seven families. Mr. Murray took to calling it the “McMiracle.”

Joan Mellen, biographer. She wrote 25 books about all sorts of subjects (Japanese film, the JFK assassination) but I wanted to highlight her because…one of her biographies was about Bobby Knight.

In early 1987, the irascible and authoritarian college basketball coach Bobby Knight called Temple University looking for Joan Mellen…
Mr. Knight was fuming about “A Season on the Brink,” a recent best-selling biography by the sportswriter John Feinstein that portrayed him as vulgar, sexist and out of control. Professor Mellen had just reviewed the book for The St. Petersburg Times, faulting it for misunderstanding its subject.
“Knight is, above all, a teacher,” she wrote. “Aggressively he gives his all. In this he is no different from the dedicated English or math teacher. The basketball players, like all students, are recalcitrant. They fight against learning. Knight’s advantage over other teachers lies in his access and control.”
On the phone, Mr. Knight was charming.
“You’re a professor of literature?” Professor Mellen later recalled him asking her. “I just wanted to tell you I really liked what you wrote.”
Professor Mellen began compulsively watching his games. She arranged to write a profile of him for The New York Times, which she later expanded into a best seller of her own: “Bob Knight: His Own Man.”

Bob Knight: His Own Man was negatively reviewed by many people, some of whom saw it as a shot across the bow of Mr. Feinstein. One of those people was Rick Telander in the New York Times Book Review.

Professor Mellen’s response was vintage Professor Mellen.
She castigated The Times in a letter to the editor, saying that Mr. Telander should not have reviewed her book because he worked for Sports Illustrated, which had published several negative articles about Mr. Knight. He was among the writers who had criticized the coach.
“Such breaches of journalistic ethics on the part of some sportswriters are a central theme of my book,” Professor Mellen wrote. “My focus, however, was Mr. Knight as a teacher, a topic not touched upon once by Mr. Telander, who is obviously adhering to some other agenda.”
The Times published an Editors’ Note saying that Mr. Telander should not have been chosen to review the book.

A.K. Best, fly tying guy.

Mr. Best was renowned for his mastery of the meticulous art of professional fly tying. He produced nearly weightless artificial lures that mimicked the midges, caddisflies and other bugs that fish eat; his specialty was dry flies, which float on the water’s surface.

…

Mr. Best also wrote books and magazine articles, spoke at seminars and made instructional videos with the professorial tone of a pipe-smoking teacher, which he had been. (Pipe smoke helped keep the mosquitoes away while he fished.) Fly Fisherman magazine said, in a tribute after his death, that he “shaped the soul of modern fly fishing.”
For hours at a time, Mr. Best sat in his basement workshop in Boulder, using a vise, pliers, tweezers, a toothbrush, sprigs of feathers and other tools of the trade. He made the wings and tails of insect replicas by hand, for personal use and at a commercial pace of roughly 40 lures an hour and 36,000 a year for companies like Orvis, Umpqua Feather Merchants and Urban Angler. He was said to have attached a shoulder rest to his phone so he could keep tying while taking a call.
As he worked, he listened to classical music and jazz, accompaniment that dated to his earlier career as a music teacher and high school band director. He considered the precision required for tying flies similar to the exactitude of creating music.
“There’s no such thing as an unimportant detail in music,” Mr. Best told The Gazette of Colorado Springs in 2024. “The composer put that dot on the paper with an ink pen for a specific reason. Just like when you look at a picture of an insect, every dot is important.”

…

His great skill was creating flies of a size and color that appeared natural, rather than store-bought, using the knowledge that no adult aquatic insects have fuzzy bodies; that flies should appear shiny and waxy, not translucent; that hair from a white-tailed deer could be used if elk hair was not available.
“You don’t need a fly so big you’re going to scare the hell out of a fish,” he said in a 2015 interview for the Montana State University Angling Oral History Project. In the same interview, he said, “If it’s the right color and floats, it’ll catch fish.”

There’s a Montana State University Angling Oral History Project? Awesome! President Trump, I want some of my tax money going there, please.

We fished some when I was a child, by which I mean we dangled lines in the water from fishing poles. I’ve never been fly fishing, but I find myself becoming more interested in both the sport itself and the literature surrounding it as I get older. Callahan and Company has fly fishing and angling books as one of their specialties, so I see a lot of fly fishing literature advertised in their catalogs. Much of it sounds fascinating.

I am seeing reports (especially from McThag) that Randall “Duke” Cunningham, Navy ace, former Congressman, and convicted and pardoned felon, has passed away. But I don’t have anything I can link yet.

Burning in Hell watch: Tran Trong Duyet, chief warden of the Hanoi Hilton.

Posted in Books, Fish, History, Media, NFL, Obits, Planes, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 27th, 2025.

Wednesday, August 27th, 2025

Playing catch-up after returning from my trip:

Ens. Donald McPherson (US Navy – ret.) He was 103. National WWII Museum.

I love the NYT opening:

On April 6, 1945, during the Battle of Okinawa in the final months of World War II, a 22-year-old Navy ensign, Donald McPherson, was piloting a Hellcat fighter with “Death N’ Destruction” painted on the side.
As his squadron, the VF-83, joined an aerial assault on the island of Kikaijima, between Okinawa and mainland Japan, Mr. McPherson spotted Japanese dive-bombers rushing toward him from below. He lowered the nose of his Hellcat and fired, notching his first hit before positioning himself behind a second enemy plane.
“By using full throttle, my Hellcat responded well, and I squeezed the trigger, and it exploded,” he said, referring to the enemy plane, in an interview for Fagen Fighters WWII Museum in Granite Falls, Minn. “Then I turned and did a lot of violent maneuvering to try to get out of there without getting shot down.”

Also, I love Hellcats. Ens. McPherson shot down three kamikazes attacking the USS Ingraham in a subsequent engagement, making him an ace.

Although he never flew a plane again, Mr. McPherson was reintroduced to the F6F Hellcat when Fagen Fighters museum — which restores, displays and flies World War II-era planes — refurbished a similar one in 2021, soliciting his approval to paint it navy blue, the color of his plane, and adding the “Death N’ Destruction” motto. He reacquainted himself with the aircraft in person that year when it was flown to a ceremony at an airport in Beatrice, Neb.
At a 2022 event at the Fagen Fighters museum, Mr. McPherson said, “You people just can’t believe what all this has meant to me. That beautiful airplane.”
With a smile, he asked Evan Fagen, the museum’s chief pilot, “Can I take it home with me?”

The National WWII Museum and other reports I’ve seen refer to him as the last surviving WWII ace. The NYT obit seems to hedge that a bit by referring to him as “one of the last surviving American combat pilots from World War II recognized by the American Fighter Aces Association as combat aces”.

He received three Distinguished Flying Crosses and four Air Medals, and was awarded a Congressional Gold Medal in 2015.

Humpy Wheeler, NASCAR guy. I probably would have let this go past if it wasn’t for this:

…he transformed race day into a carnival. With his taste for Hollywood-level stunts, he might just as easily have been called the Cecil B. DeMille of motorsports. The clowns, trapeze artists, elephants and tigers he brought in to perform in the speedway’s infield in 1980 were only a start.
He once collaborated with the 82nd Airborne Division, garrisoned in Fort Bragg, N.C., to restage the U.S.-led 1983 invasion of the Caribbean nation of Grenada, complete with wood fortifications, troops and helicopters.
“The mortars were blanks,” the sportswriter Tommy Tomlinson recalled in a recent post on Substack, “but the dynamite that blew up two houses placed on the infield was very real.”

David Ketchum, actor. IMDB.

Theodore Friedman, lawyer. I think this is an interesting story. He was a personal injury specialist, and known as a zealous advocate for his clients.

Maybe a little too zealous, as he was disbarred in 1994.

Mr. Friedman’s disbarment exposed an underside to his turn-it-to-11 style of lawyering. Accused of 23 counts of professional misconduct — including intentional dishonesty, filing a false affidavit and soliciting false testimony from a witness — he lost his law license after a special referee affirmed 14 of the charges. He was disbarred by the Appellate Division of the First Department, a state court that oversees civil and criminal appeals in Manhattan and the Bronx.
His disbarment was seen by some in the legal community as unfair, by others as a comeuppance for sleaze, and by still others as a cautionary tale about the limits of overzealous advocacy.

He reapplied for his license several times, and was ultimately reinstated to the bar in 2010.

Ron Turcotte, jockey. He was most famous as the jockey who Secretariat to the Triple Crown.

Secretariat, a big coppery chestnut nicknamed Big Red who, like Riva Ridge, was owned by Penny Chenery of Meadow Stable and trained by Lucien Laurin, made up for that disappointment in spectacular fashion. He powered to victory in the Derby and the Preakness, setting track records that still stand. He then demolished the competition in the Belmont Stakes to become the first Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948.
Secretariat’s Belmont remains one of the most celebrated performances in racing history. Under Turcotte’s supremely confident handling, he cruised by the competition on the backstretch, “moving like a tremendous machine” in the famous race call by Chic Anderson, then drew off to win by an astounding 31 lengths. He broke the track record set by Gallant Man in 1957 by just under three seconds — the equivalent of 13 lengths — and set a new world record for the mile-and-a-half distance on the dirt, one that still stands and has never been approached.

Posted in Heroism, History, Horses, Obits, Planes, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Noted.

Friday, August 15th, 2025

A while back, I wrote, in the context of the Connor Stalions “sign stealing” scandal:

Realistically, if this is substantiated, I suspect major loss of scholarships, a ban on post-season play, and possibly for Harbaugh to get a “show-cause penalty“.

The NCAA has handed down their penalty. No post-season ban, and no wins erased, but Michigan is getting hit with fines “that could eclipse $30 million”.

The NCAA also imposed an additional game suspension for coach Sherrone Moore, which will be served for the first game of the 2026 season. Moore is expected to serve a two-game suspension in the upcoming season, which ESPN reported in May that the university proposed to self-impose. He also received a two-year show-cause penalty.

…

The NCAA committee also levied an eight-year show-cause penalty for former Michigan staffer Connor Stalions and a 10-year show-cause for ex-coach Jim Harbaugh, who is now in the NFL. Those essentially act as barriers to schools hiring them in the future. Harbaugh’s new 10-year show-cause penalty will not begin until after he serves a current four-year show-cause from a previous NCAA case.

…

The size of the fine is expected to be considerable, although a finite amount will not be immediately available. It includes a $50,000 initial levy, 10% of the football budget, 10% of the cost of football scholarships for the 2025 season, and the loss of all postseason competition revenue sharing for the 2025 and 2026 seasons. That sum could easily eclipse $30 million.
Though there are variables on how much teams get from football postseason revenue, sources expect that number alone based on past Big Ten income and projections to be more than $20 million. Some of that will depend on the performance of both Michigan and the Big Ten. The football budget in 2024 was more than $70 million, which means the amount is likely to be at least $7 million for that part of the fine, depending on updated budgets.

Also, Denard Robinson, who is a former assistant coach, got a three year “show cause” for what are apparently unrelated recruiting violations.

Michigan and its coaches and staffers were charged with six Level 1 violations in the sign-stealing case, which are the most serious. The decision to fine the school heavily but not issue a penalty such as a postseason ban indicates a shift in NCAA enforcement rulings away from postseason prohibitions.

Posted in Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 4, 2025.

Monday, August 4th, 2025

Loni Anderson. NYT.

“WKRP” was a great show, and she was a big part of what made it great. (“And, as we know, Jennifer was the smartest person in the room.” Yes, Jennifer was smart, and I’d even agree deceptively smart. But “smartest person in the room”? Hello, Bailey Quarters. Hello, Venus Flytrap. That’s another one of the things that made “WKRP” great: multiple smart people.)

Edited to add: I probably should have put in an IMDB link. Especially since Lawrence asked:

Who is killing the cast of “3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain”?

Rahaman Ali. Long time readers know I don’t like covering people just because of their relationship with other famous people. But Mr. Ali has an interesting story.

He was Muhammad Ali’s brother.

Rahaman Ali was a promising amateur boxer who won his first professional fight in an undercard bout the same evening that his brother beat Liston to become the world heavyweight champion. Rahaman went on to earn a middling record of 10 wins, three losses and one draw. He retired after a technical knockout in 1972.
Several figures from the brothers’ youth later said in interviews that Rahaman Ali had been a clever, coachable fighter who just lacked Muhammad’s charisma. When a group of Louisville businessmen got together to sponsor Muhammad, then known as Cassius Clay, they left Rahaman, then Rudy Clay, out of the deal. (The two brothers changed their names and joined the Nation of Islam around the same time in the early 1960s.)

He gave up his career to become part of Muhammad’s entourage, serving as “chauffeur, sparring partner, gofer, chef and cornerman”. Also human wristwatch, because Muhammad wouldn’t wear one: he’d just ask Rahaman for the time.

In 1990, speaking to The Courier-Journal of Louisville, Rahaman Ali expressed regret for not having focused on his own boxing career.
After his own bouts, “Muhammad never said, ‘Good fight, good fight, Rahaman,’” Rahaman said. “I feel he could have come back and congratulated me.”

…

Mr. Eig wrote that though Muhammad Ali had once promised always to provide for his brother, Rahaman had begun to live in poverty after a falling-out with Lonnie, Muhammad’s fourth and final wife.
He was sometimes described showing up to Ali Center events attended by his brother yet hardly speaking to him, instead wandering around to introduce himself as “Muhammad Ali’s brother.” Mr. Eig described one such occasion in 2015. Rahaman was not among the list of eminences who got a private audience with Muhammad. Afterward, he walked from table to table, collecting small decorative photographs of Muhammad and putting them into a shopping bag.

Flaco Jiménez, Tex-Mex accordion player. This isn’t my style of music, but even I’d heard of Flaco Jiménez. He was just that big a deal.

David Rendall, operatic tenor. I find this noteworthy because he had a series of…issues? Accidents?

In April 2005, Mr. Rendall was singing Radamès in Verdi’s “Aida” at the Royal Danish Theater in Copenhagen when part of the stage collapsed, destroying the set. He was “knocked down at least 15 feet and tried to crawl to safety to avoid being crushed,” he later told The Telegraph of London. “I thought I was going to die,” a fate that awaits Radamès in the opera but is not normally faced by tenors singing the role.
Mr. Rendall had knee and hip replacements and surgery to his shoulder after the accident. Directors stopped calling, and he had to put his home up for sale. “I can’t do what some directors want onstage,” he told the British newspaper The Telegraph. He received some compensation from the theater but sued anyway.

Before that he nearly killed his singing partner.

Mr. Rendall was singing Canio in “I Pagliacci” in Milwaukee in November 1998 — his ringing performance of the great Act I aria “Vesti la giubba” is particularly noteworthy — when he nearly stabbed to death the baritone Kimm Julian.
The last scene includes, in the libretto, just such a stabbing, when Canio kills Silvio, the lover of his unfaithful wife.
“I’d been given my props when we started rehearsing, and these included a knife for the stabbing scene,” Mr. Rendall later told The New York Times. “At the crucial moment, just as I’d done 12 times before, I pushed the button to make the blade retract. But when I looked down, I saw to my amazement that the blade was still out.”
Mr. Julian, blood-soaked, collapsed. The blade had gone three inches into his chest and narrowly missed killing him.

The remaining performances of the show sold out. Mr. Julian made a full recovery. Mr. Rendall was questioned by the police, but ultimately released.

Posted in 1970s, Music, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: July 31, 2025.

Thursday, July 31st, 2025

Robert Wilson, “theater director, playwright and visual artist”, and a good Texas boy.

Time was an important element for Mr. Wilson, too. Where playwrights traditionally compressed time in their works, Mr. Wilson expanded it. His stage work “KA MOUNTAIN AND GUARDenia TERRACE,” which had its premiere in 1972 at the Festival of Arts in Shiraz, Iran, ran 168 hours and was presented over 10 days. Viewers were astonished and outraged to see actors taking hours to complete actions as simple as walking across the stage or slicing an onion.

…

By contrast, Mr. Wilson’s first foray into opera, and his first collaboration with Mr. Glass, “Einstein on the Beach” (1976), is a comparatively trim five-hour work. It has no plot, but its tableaux touches on nuclear power, space travel and even Einstein’s love of playing the violin. And while it has plenty of text — counting sequences, solfège syllables, the lyrics to the pop song “Mr. Bojangles” and sections of poetry and prose by Christopher Knowles, Samuel M. Johnson and Lucinda Childs — none of it is dialogue. The audience, free to leave and return during a performance, is presented with ideas about Einstein by inference and metaphor rather than directly.

…

“Einstein,” which had its premiere at the Festival d’Avignon in France in July 1976 and was staged at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York that November, has proved to be among the most durable works in Mr. Wilson’s and Mr. Glass’s catalogs. It has been recorded three times and revived regularly, with world tours in 1985, 1992 and 2012-15.

…

Mr. Wilson and Mr. Glass teamed up again, in 1984, to produce “The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down,” the fifth act, called “the Rome Section,” of what was to be a 12-hour opera, with other sections composed by Jo Kondo, David Byrne, Gavin Bryars and others. Because of funding problems, the full work was never produced. But Mr. Wilson and Mr. Glass went on to produce two more operas, “White Raven” and “Monsters of Grace” (both 1998). In 2022, Mr. Wilson produced “H-100 Seconds to Midnight,” a work inspired by the physicist Stephen Hawking, with texts by Etel Adnan and music by Mr. Glass and Dickie Landry.

…

Mr. Wilson’s other notable collaborations include Euripides’s “Alcestis” (1986) with Laurie Anderson; “Cosmopolitan Greetings” (1988) with Allen Ginsberg; a Spirituals recital, “Great Day in the Morning” (1982), and stagings of Schoenberg’s “Erwartung” (1995) and Schubert’s “Winterreise” (2001) for the soprano Jessye Norman; “The Old Woman” (2013) with the choreographer Mikhail Baryshnikov and the actor Willem Dafoe; and “Bach 6 Solo,” a staging of Bach’s unaccompanied violin works, played by Jennifer Koh and choreographed by Ms. Childs.
He also worked several times with Lady Gaga, including one work at the Louvre in Paris in 2013 involving what he called “Video Portraits” of her.

Laura Dahlmeier.

Ms. Dahlmeier won the sprint and pursuit events in biathlon at the 2018 Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and added a bronze in the individual event. In Germany, she had helped boost the popularity of the biathlon, a cross-country ski race in which participants also shoot at targets. She won five gold medals at the 2017 world championships in Hochfilzen, Austria, among a total of seven in her career.

She was 31, and died in a climbing accident in Pakistan.

Posted in Music, Sports, Thanks | 2 Comments »

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