Archive for March, 2011

« Older Entries

Follow the money.

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

In the comments to this thread, Lawrence notes that former Fiesta Bowl CEO John Junker was a heavy contributor to John McCain and other Republican politicians.

The Fiesta Bowl Special Committee Report (as I also noted in that thread) contains a list of political figures and organizations receiving contributions from Fiesta Bowl employees; contributions that were reimbursed by the Fiesta Bowl. This is, of course, illegal. (The report uses the phrase “a Class 6 felony violation”. If you check out the link, a Class 6 doesn’t sound all that awful; but remember, it is a felony, with all the burdens that come with a felony conviction.)

I want to quote this from the report:

Although we have not interviewed any of these individuals or entities, no one we spoke to alleged that any of these candidates had any knowledge that the Fiesta Bowl reimbursed contributions to their campaigns or related entities.

Which is an interesting statement. Why would the Fiesta Bowl be giving money to these people, if they didn’t want these people to know they were giving money and were looking for something in exchange? That’s also strange in the light of quoted statements such as this one:

John: I spoke with Senator Carloyn [sic] Allen and said we would round-up some checks for her campaign: [¶] Checks should be made out to CAROLYN ALLEN 2006 [¶] The maximum individual contribution is $296.00 [¶] I told her we would have them by Friday. Thanks. GH168

(John is former Bowl CEO John Junker. “GH” is attorney Gary Husk, “an attorney and public affairs professional on retainer with the Fiesta Bowl.” “Husk, and his company Husk Partners, were public-affairs consultants or lobbyists for the Fiesta Bowl.”)

Here’s the list of political figures and organizations that received contributions later reimbursed by the Fiesta Bowl. I’ve added notes of political affiliation when I could find it, along with links to websites.

Posted in Clippings, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

Seven against Fiesta!

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

So it may be too early to speculate on the future of the Fiesta Bowl.

At least that’s what Bill Hancock, executive director of the BCS, says.

Oh, by the way…

Hancock said Wednesday that for at least five years, while attending Fiesta Frolic, he let the Fiesta Bowl cover his golf tab and accepted free gifts from Nike.

What is “Fiesta Frolic”?

The Frolic is an annual, multiday spring gathering the bowl stages for college-football officials at a Phoenix resort.

Hancock called the Frolic, which costs the Fiesta Bowl several hundred thousand dollars a year, a “remarkable business opportunity” for college-football executives to network. However, the Fiesta Bowl Special Committee’s investigative report noted that it recently changed its name to Fiesta Bowl Spring College Football Seminars at the request of attendees “to make the event sound like less of a ‘boondoggle.’ “

And the BCS has created a seven member task force to review the allegations against the Fiesta Bowl.

Its seven-member task force includes a member who for years let the Fiesta Bowl pay for his golf at a resort, and another who took a free Caribbean trip last year from the Orange Bowl, The Republic has learned.

Speaking of the report, I’m slowly going through it. There’s some stuff I haven’t seen reported yet. For example, someone seems to have been a gold bug: there’s an estimated $22,300 worth of gold coins (including $20 gold pieces “ranging in date from 1877 to 1924”) that are supposedly in the possession of the Fiesta Bowl. (I do not see anything in the report, though, that states possession of those coins was actually verified.) In addition, the bowl apparently paid for subscriptions to:

Note that all of these were personal subscriptions for former CEO John Junker, for which he was reimbursed by the Bowl (according to the report).

I’m also amused by the discussion of payments to someone identified in the report only as “Person X”. Mr. “X” was apparently being paid somewhere around $40,000 a year (the amount varied from year to year, but $40,000 seems to be a good average) plus six tickets to the game. And nobody knows what he did for that money. Literally. That’s a direct quote from the report:  “I don’t know what he does. Kelly doesn’t know what he does.” The Arizona Republic has managed to identify Mr. X.

Posted in Clippings, Sports | 4 Comments »

Obligatory opening day post.

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

This is to note that once again, I’ve bet Lawrence $5 even money that the Cubs will win the World Series this year.

Also, my bet with Lawrence on Gonzaga has been paid.

Posted in Sports, Stupid, Wagers | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 30, 2011.

Wednesday, March 30th, 2011

Here’s the LAT obit for Farley Granger (fixed – thanks, Lawrence).

I don’t have much to add to this, except I seem to have a much higher opinion of “Rope” than most of my friends do: I thought Granger pretty much carried both that movie and “Strangers on a Train” on his back. He was brilliantly twitchy in a way matched only, perhaps, by Anthony Perkins.

I wonder what Frankenheimer’s “Manchurian Candidate” would have been like with Granger instead of Laurence Harvey. Not that I dislike Harvey, but I think Granger could have pulled it off; he was only three years older, and I believe he would have brought an interesting dimension to the role of Raymond Shaw.

I haven’t been able to find an obit in a US paper for H.R.F. Keating, but by way of Bill Crider, here’s the Telegraph‘s obit.

My mother used to subscribe to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. That was my first exposure to many writers, including Keating: his Inspector Ghote stories were regularly in EQMM. As a critic of the field, his Crime and Mystery: The 100 Best Books is indispensable: I’m slowly making my way through his list, and will perhaps finish sometime before the heat death of the universe.

Rest in peace, Mr. Keating.

Posted in Books, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

¿Dónde está el dinero?

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

The NYT has an interesting investigative story on the Fiesta Bowl. Or, rather, on the Fiesta Bowl’s money.

The Fiesta Bowl management and staff have apparently been spending the money taken in by the Fiesta Bowl’s 501(c)3 on some questionable items. And when I say questionable, I mean “jail time is a possibility” items: campaign contributions, strip clubs (of course. It always has to be strip clubs.), a $30,000 birthday party (how do you spend $30,000 on a birthday party for an adult human? Unless that birthday party is at a strip club. Or, apparently, Pebble Beach.), airfare and hotel for an employee’s honeymoon (plus airfare for Fiesta Bowl employees to attend the wedding). Those are the high points.

The item that really leaps out at me is $75 for flowers. The flowers were for someone at the University of Texas, and were apparently sent in an attempt to influence that person into accepting the CEO’s daughter into “a honors program” (Plan II?). $75 is such a penny-ante amount; surely the CEO could have come up with $75 out of his own pocket. And why send flowers at all? A phone call would have done just as well. “Nice football team you have there. It’d be a shame if you didn’t get a bowl bid this year because my daughter didn’t get accepted into Plan II.”

The best thing about this? It could cost the Fiesta Bowl both tax-exempt status and BCS bowl status. As a matter of fact, it appears some of the impetus for this investigation came from an anti-BCS group. I wonder what other skeletons are going to turn up in the Orange and Sugar Bowl closets. I also wonder if this is the first hammer blow at the Berlin Wall of the BCS.

Edited to add: For those who don’t want to deal with the NYT, here’s a HouChron story on the firing of bowl CEO John Junker, which covers some of what was in the NYT report. Here’s a direct link to the public release version of the special committee report (which has some information redacted due to “contractual confidentiality provisions”).

Posted in Clippings, Law, Sports | 2 Comments »

Mono no aware.

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

Tam has a post up at her site that leaves me with a small sadness. I’m not entirely sure I can, but I’ll see if I can explain it.

When I was in high school, I bought every gun magazine I could find on the newsstands (note to my younger readers: “newsstands” were places where you could buy magazines and newspapers), at the bookstores, and in the grocery stores. Grocery stores, in particular, had large magazine sections, and many of those magazines were gun magazines. (Also, people were shorter, and lived near the water. But I digress.)

I grew up reading Elmer Keith (in Guns and Ammo, towards the end of his career) and Skeeter Skelton. I remember visiting my Uncle Dick in Pennsylvania, and him letting me read his just purchased copy of Hell, I Was There. I liked Cooper a lot, but I don’t recall him writing with great regularity for any of the gun magazines I could find.

These days? I read American Handgunner. I get a kick out of John Connor, I like Ayoob’s work and Clint Smith a whole lot, and Venturino and Taffin are usually good for a smile. Also, the editor of AH at one point did me a great personal favor, so I have pretty strong feelings about the magazine.

I also pick up SWAT when I can find it. And that’s pretty much it.

What are the gun-crazy kids of America doing for reading material these days? Do they know how good we had it back then? Did we? At least Keith has been collected (though those books are pricey). Has anyone collected Skeeter’s writings? (Answer: yes, and if you thought Elmer Keith books were pricy…wow.) When those kids go to read Pale Horse Coming, are they going to get the meta-joke?

I don’t know where I’m going with this, and I’m not sure I have answers. It just seems like a shame to me.

Posted in Clippings, Guns | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 29, 2011.

Tuesday, March 29th, 2011

David E. Davis, Jr., former editor and publisher of Car and Driver and Automobile. (LAT obit.)

When I was in high school, I read the Davis Car and Driver religiously. It was full of great stuff: road tests of radar detectors, explanations of why the 55 MPH speed limit was wrong, my first exposure to P.J. O’Rourke (“Ferrari Refutes the Decline of the West”, which is still one of my favorite pieces of writing in, like, ever), Patrick Bedard…the list goes on.

Eighty’s a pretty good run for a guy who destroyed his face in an M.G. crash. Rest in peace, Mr. Davis. I hope you’re driving something fast on heaven’s equivalent of the Nürburgring.

This has been noted elsewhere, but here’s the NYT obit for Diana Wynne Jones. (Edited to add: here’s a short but nice tribute from Michael Dirda in the WP.)

Edited to add 2: Bill Crider had these first, but the deaths of Farley Granger and the mystery writer H.R.F. Keating are being reported. I’ll have more to say after better obits are published.

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

Bugs Bunny, call your office, please.

Monday, March 28th, 2011

The Tasmanian Devil is in trouble. Specifically, the population is being wiped out by a form of cancer that causes “…tumors [to] sprout around the devil’s mouth, quickly morphing into bulbous red pustules that eventually take over the animal’s entire face, leaving it unable to eat or drink.”

What’s particularly unusual about this cancer (“Devil facial tumor disease”, or DTFD) is that it’s one of only three known forms of cancer that’s infectious; in other words, the Tasmanian Devils are spreading the cancer to each other.

…Persuade the Australian public to care about a seldom-seen animal the size of a cocker spaniel, beady-eyed, standoffish and fond of displaying a mouthful of pointy teeth. Picture a skunk, with the jaws of an alligator and the charm of a weasel.

From a marketing standpoint, the Tasmanian devil is no koala.

Well, yes: as a family member of mine would probably point out, the Tasmanian Devil is capable of reproducing without help.

Yet, in ways that surprise even themselves, Australians are rallying around this nasty, screeching beast that once was the most reviled animal in the country. There are foods and wines branded with the devil’s likeness; bars and coffee shop signs feature caricatures of a snarling devil, as does the official logo of the Tasmania Parks & Wildlife Service. Schoolchildren study the creature and a visit to a devil sanctuary is a standard day trip for cruise ship passengers disembarking in Hobart.

Posted in Clippings, Geek | Comments Closed

Legal roundup: March 25, 2011.

Friday, March 25th, 2011

I saw the stories about a Texas state legislator allegedly pulling a knife on her husband, but I didn’t think this was blog fodder. Domestic disputes among our legislators are nothing new; heck, we even had a former Speaker of the House capped by his wife (who walked away scott-free).

Then I discovered by way of Say Uncle that the legislator in question, Barbara Caraway, voted against the concealed carry on campus bill. And it appears from the linked Pajamas Media article that there’s been more than a little covering up going on in Dallas. Seems that Ms. Caraway’s husband is the Dallas mayor, and is a little embarrassed by the whole affair. I can understand that: but I’m not married, and my non-existent wife who didn’t pull a knife on me isn’t a member of the “Homeland Security & Public Safety Committee” of the Ledge.

Another story that I was kind of watching was the saga of Miss San Antonio, Domonique Ramirez (who I will concede is reasonably attractive, though too young for me). Miss Ramirez won the Miss San Antonio contest last year. It appears that since she won the title, there’s been a change of management, and the new contest management was not, shall we say, completely happy with Miss Ramirez. There were claims that she didn’t write thank-you notes, was late (or didn’t show up) to events, and apparently there were some unfortunate comments made about Miss Ramirez needing to “get off the tacos”.

By the way, one of the members of the new management team for the contest did time in a Federal prison for tax evasion and Medicaid fraud.

Anyway, things got ugly, the contest stripped Miss Ramirez of the Miss San Antonio crown and awarded it to the first runner-up, and Miss Ramirez promptly sued.

Yesterday, Miss Ramirez won her case, and has been reinstated as Miss San Antonio. Of course, there are questions about how much support Miss Ramirez will get from a group of people who appear to be actively hostile to her.  I think there’s also legitimate questions to be asked about the value of organized beauty contests in contemporary society; frankly, the whole Miss San Antonio dispute looks like a bunch of people fighting over small stakes.

Edited to add: Ah. Found the AP version of the story on the Statesman site, which contains this quote:

…a top pageant official says she will do nothing to help Ramirez advance to the Miss Texas and Miss America crowns.

“I’m sorry, there’s no way I would represent her as talent. She’s trouble,” pageant director Linda Woods said.

Ms. Woods, it should be noted, is not the person who did time. (Can you call a Federal prison for women a “pound me in the A– prison“?) Here’s some more background on the executive director who did.

Posted in Clippings, Guns | 2 Comments »

Historical note.

Friday, March 25th, 2011

Today is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 people.

The NYT “City Room” blog has been all over the anniversary, and I commend their coverage to your attention.

A complete list of the victims, including the latest research from Michael Hirsch, can be found here.

The website for the “American Experience” documentary on the Triangle Fire can be found here.

Posted in Clippings | Comments Closed

Lawrence linkage.

Friday, March 25th, 2011

I wanted to show my support for a couple of things linked from Lawrence’s sites.

First off is the effort to make the 1847 Walker Colt the official state gun of Texas. Now, I am an unabashed Smith and Wesson fanboy. I am also a member of the First Church of John Moses Browning, Reformed. (“There is no God but JMB, and Colonel Cooper is his prophet.”) I believe thou shalt honor the 1911, and keep it holy. All of those things said, the Walker Colt is a significant gun in history (and especially in Texas history), predates both the 1911 and S&W, and (if Colonel Cooper’s Guns of the Old West and other sources can be believed) packs one heck of a thump; the Walker Colt was that era’s equivalent of the .44 Magnum. Further, the Uberti Walker Colt replicas look really nice.

In short, I fully support this idea. It makes more sense to me than making the armadillo the state mammal.

Secondly, I also want to throw my support behind Lawrence’s efforts to <mess> up the toenail fungus spammer’s business. I have not gotten hit by the toenail fungus spammers yet, but anything that messes up a spammer’s life is okay with me. So remember, folks: soak your toes in vinegar to kill toenail fungus. Don’t buy expensive crap from spamming scumbags.

Speaking of spamming scumbags, in case anyone was curious, the city commission election in Lawrence, Kansas, doesn’t take place until April 5th, so I won’t have an update on how spamming scumbag Sven Alstrom did until April 6th.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Stupid | Comments Closed

My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard…

Friday, March 25th, 2011

…where I promptly bludgeon them to death. At least, the rich ones.

An American who drugged her investment banker-husband with a milkshake and bludgeoned him to death more than seven years ago was convicted of murder Friday at her second trial in a case that grabbed world attention with lurid details on the breakdown of a wealthy expatriate marriage in Hong Kong.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

« Older Entries