Archive for December, 2012

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Monday morning coming down.

Monday, December 31st, 2012

My plan is to do one post covering all of today’s NFL firings, and to update it whenever possible throughout the day.

So far:

Gene Smith is out as general manager of the (2-14) Jacksonville Jaguars. Khaaaaaaaaaaan!

Andy Reid. Eagles. Everyone knew it was coming.

According to the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network, the Jets have fired general manager Mike Tannenbaum, but plan to retain Rex Ryan as coach. That’s a “WTF?”item.

The Cleveland Browns have canned coach Pat Shurmur and general manager Tom Heckert.

Various sources are reporting that Romeo Crennel is out as head coach in Kansas City, but the team plans to keep Scott Pioli as general manager. There’s nothing official from the team yet. (Edited to add: the KC Star reports that this is now official. And “Chiefs chairman Clark Hunt said in a statement that the entire football operation will remain under review and no final determination has been made about Pioli’s job status.”)

Edited to add and bumped: Lovie Smith gone as head coach of da Bears.

Chan Gailey out as head coach of the Bills.

Edited to add: Reports are that Norv Turmer and AJ Smith are out in San Diego, but I have not seen anything official yet. (Edited to add: official now.)

Edited to add: FARK has an official “Black Monday” thread going. You are, of course, welcome to comment here as well.

Edited to add: Ken Whisenhunt out as coach and Rod Graves out as general manager of the Arizona Cardinals. (ETA2: and a whole bunch of offensive coaches as well.)

Edited to add: I think everyone who’s going to be fired today, has been. So let’s wrap this for now with a fitting musical interlude.

Edited to add: Mike Munchak retains his position as head coach, and Ruston Webster stays general manager, in Tennessee. But Mike Reinfeldt is out as chief operating officer.

And Jim Schwartz stays coach of the Lions, but three of his assistants got kicked to the curb.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Two quick items.

Monday, December 31st, 2012

This is an actual headline on the Dallas Morning News website, as of 9:48 AM today:

Dallas police officer on leave over rap video has car burglarized while visiting husband’s grave

And I said, “Whaaaaaaaaht?” (Short item, but worth clicking through to read. The headline, while odd, is an accurate summary.)

Today’s NYT has a follow-up story about Ryan Freel, whose death was previously noted here. Of interest:

  • His stepfather ups the concussion estimate to 15, “10 as a professional ballplayer”.
  • “His former wife witnessed a winter league game in Venezuela in which he smashed through an outfield wall and had to be hospitalized with a concussion.”
  • “Freel’s former wife said she found no fault with his teams or their medical staffs, concluding that they diagnosed his condition properly and insisted that he abide by the stipulated recovery period.”
  • It looks like he will be tested for signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Law, Neuroscience, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

TMQ watch: December 25, 2012.

Sunday, December 30th, 2012

Yes, we admit it. We’re lazy and evil. Also, we got a little behind with the holidays. This is the first chance we’ve had to post this week’s mini-TMQ watch for this week’s mini-TMQ.

Before we start, though, we do want to note that NFL.com is currently reporting the firing of Andy Reid as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles, but it does not sound like the team has made an official announcement. Yet. Monday is the usual “blood in the streets” day for NFL firings.

After the jump…

(more…)

Posted in Clippings, Firings, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 29, 2012.

Saturday, December 29th, 2012

Jean S. Harris, former headmistress of the Madeira School.

Of course, those of you who were alive and aware of your surroundings in the early 1980s know that’s not why I bring up the late Ms. Harris. For those of you who don’t recall, she became notorious after shooting her lover, Dr. Herman Tarnower (a cardiologist who’d become very rich after publishing The Complete Scarsdale Medical Diet).

Ms. Harris and Dr. Tarnower had been long-time lovers, but Dr. Tarnower started dating his younger assistant. Eventually, Ms. Harris snapped; she claimed she drove to Dr. Tarnower’s to kill herself, Dr. Tarnower tried to get the gun away from her, and she accidentally shot him twice in the struggle.

Unfortunately, Dr. Tarnower had four bullet wounds, not two. Ms. Harris was convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 15 to life. She did 12 years before Governor Mario Cuomo granted her clemency.

While she was in prison, she became known as something of an activist for better treatment of women prisoners:

She counseled fellow female prisoners on how to take care of their children, and she set up a center where infants born to inmates can spend a year near their mothers. Then, after her release in 1993 following a grant of clemency by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, she set up a foundation that raised millions of dollars for scholarships for children of women in prison in New York State.

She also tutored her fellow prisoners and worked in the prison library.

Edited to add 12/30: Longer and more detailed obit from the LAT.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

More news from the Things That Suck Department.

Friday, December 28th, 2012

I don’t subscribe to that many gun magazines.

I should subscribe to SWAT, and will when finances are better and I get around to it; right now I buy it on the newsstand. I like Claire Wolfe’s and Louis Awerbuck’s columns, and I’m also loyal to people I like. I get American Rifleman with my NRA membership. I subscribe to American Handgunner because I like a lot of the content: Taffin, Ayoob, Conner and Smith specifically. Plus, the editor of AH did me a great personal favor several years ago; he wouldn’t remember, and the story is a long one, but I feel a great deal of loyalty towards the magazine and Roy Huntington.

I also subscribed fairly recently to Precision Shooting magazine, after purchasing it off the stand at my local gun shop for a while. I find it rare when the editor’s column in a magazine is the first thing I want to read, but Dave Brennan always had something funny or profound or wise or silly to say. A lot of the articles may have been a little ahead of where I am now, but I figured they might be useful in the future. And there was always something there for me; a recent survey of scout rifles, for example, or an article on double guns, or a discussion of how to get more accuracy out of a 10/22, or…

Dave Brennan ran a swell magazine, and managed to round up a good stable of writers. If I was allowed only one gun magazine, I would have picked Precision Shooting.

I noticed in the past few weeks that I hadn’t seen an issue since October. I know some magazines do a combined year-end edition, so I wasn’t too worried. But I didn’t see a December issue, and there wasn’t one on the racks when I went to my gun shop. Did my subscription expire? Did the gun shop sell out? I thought I’d check back in early January; perhaps they were just taking the holiday season off.

Various things led me to go out to their website, and, well…apparently, I’m the last person to find out that Precision Shooting stopped publishing in October. It looks like the usual reasons were involved – that is, money.

I’ll miss it. There are a couple of books collecting some of the articles, but it just won’t be the same. Thanks, Mr. Brennan, for keeping things going as long as you did, and good luck.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Ooops.

Friday, December 28th, 2012

Forgot to note this, especially since Lawrence gave me a heads-up:

 Avery Johnson out as coach of the New York Nets.

The team is 14-14, and Johnson was “coach of the month” in November. However, the team is also 3-10 in December, which seems to have motivated the firing.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Speaking of presidents…

Friday, December 28th, 2012

As seen at Blood Bath and Beyond yesterday:

That’s volume III of the “Presidents of the United States” Pez dispenser collection. They also had volume II, but I did not see volume I.

I note volume III specifically because this is the one that includes Millard Fillmore. Yes: a Millard Fillmore Pez dispenser is a real thing that you can buy and not the punchline of a David Letterman joke.

(You can get the Pez Presidents Collector Set Vol III from Amazon, too, along with Volume 1 and Volume II. But as I recall, BB&B’s price for the two sets they had was $12.99, vs. Amazon’s $22. If I was in a better financial situation, I would get all three for my nephews.)

Posted in Geek, History | 1 Comment »

Hey, hey, LBJ.

Friday, December 28th, 2012

Lyndon Johnson’s birth certificate is on display at his presidential library. Insert your own Barack Obama joke here.

Posted in Museums, Photography | Comments Closed

Obit watch and random notes: December 28, 2012.

Friday, December 28th, 2012

For the record, your General Norman Schwarzkopf obits: NYT. LAT. WP.

I saw this a few days ago and intended to make note of it, but the holidays interfered. Donnie Andrews has also died.

Andrews was a legendary Baltimore stick-up man and all-around crook, who reformed later in life. Omar Little (of “The Wire”) was based on Andrews:

Andrews appeared on screen as one of Omar’s crew, and died in a shootout scene in which Omar leaps from a four-story building and escapes. Andrews said that really happened to him — but he had jumped from the sixth story.

The NYT would like for you to be concerned about the poor show ponies, who are frequently drugged to make them easier to handle. What makes this interesting, to me, is that yesterday the NYT ran an article praising Tattler’s Jet and his trainer; Tattler’s Jet was running his 460th and final harness race, in spite of an inflamed hoof. So. Running a horse for 14 years and 460 races, good; sedating show horses, bad.

Posted in Clippings, Heroism, History, Horses, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Igor, the President speaks!

Friday, December 28th, 2012

He’s tanned. He’s rested. He’s ready.

He’s the newly redone animatronic LBJ from the (also recently remodeled) LBJ Presidential Library.

And if you think he looks just a little overly tan, well, you’re not the only one.

Posted in Clippings, Museums, Photography | Comments Closed

You’re not helping. Why is that, Leon?

Thursday, December 27th, 2012

Nathan Weaver is a student at Clemson University. He decided that he wanted to help turtles cross the road.

Weaver put a realistic rubber turtle in the middle of a lane on a busy road near campus. Then he got out of the way and watched over the next hour as seven drivers swerved and deliberately ran over the animal. Several more apparently tried to hit it but missed.

More:

“They seem so helpless and cute,” [Rob Baldwin, Mr. Weaver’s professor] said. “I want to stop and help them. My kids want to stop and help them. My wife will stop and help turtles no matter how much traffic there is on the road. I can’t understand the idea why you would swerve to hit something so helpless as a turtle.”

Sounds a lot like Weer’d Beard and ducks.

(Even though it turns out this was on FARK, I wanted to post it anyway to provoke an emotional response from my younger brother, who should update his blog, damnit. Seriously. He loves that scene from “Blade Runner”.)

Posted in Clippings | 2 Comments »

There was a rumor, about a tumor…

Thursday, December 27th, 2012

The Statesman is reporting the death of Houston McCoy.

Mr. McCoy never got the fame he probably deserved, because that’s the way the media works. He was an officer with the Austin Police Department on August 1, 1966. Mr. McCoy and his fellow officer Ramiro Martinez fired the shots that killed Charles Whitman.

There’s always been some controversy over who actually killed Whitman, and that’s touched on briefly in Mr. McCoy’s obit. I expect to see this rehashed some more in the coming days. Gary Lavergne’s A Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders is considered by pretty much every person I know of to be the definitive account of events before, during, and after; he discusses this issue at some length, and I think comes to a wise and fair conclusion, echoed by Mr. McCoy himself:

From his bed in Menard Manor in 2011, McCoy recounted what he remembered: “I got him but it really doesn’t matter whether I got him or Martinez did. Martinez is a good man, and he was the first police officer on the deck to confront the sniper. There were many heroes that day, police officers and civilians.”

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

Obit watch: December 27, 2012.

Thursday, December 27th, 2012

Brad Corbett. (NYT. Fort Worth Startlegram.)

Mr. Corbett founded, and made his money with, a plastic pipe manufacturing company. But he’s noteworthy here because he owned the Texas Rangers from 1974 to 1980, part of the Seasons in Hell era that I’ve written about before. (Yes, Corbett was the owner during 10 Cent Beer Night; he bought the team on May 29, 1974, and that took place June 4th. Heck of an introduction to MLB.)

Corbett, a Fort Worth businessman, might be best remembered for his time with the Rangers for the 1977 season when they had four managers – Frank Lucchesi, Eddie Stanky, Connie Ryan and Billy Hunter.
Lucchesi managed the first 62 games, but his season got off to a rocky start when second baseman Lenny Randle punched him during spring training. Stanky then managed only one game, followed by Ryan, who managed six, before Hunter managed the final 93.

Also:

Throughout Corbett’s tenure, the Rangers traded away three future Hall of Fame pitchers — Ferguson Jenkins, Gaylord Perry and Bert Blyleven — as well as Mike Hargrove, Jeff Burroughs and Toby Harrah.
[Jim] Sundberg, in fact, was the only player to remain with the Rangers throughout Corbett’s time as owner from start to finish.

One story about Corbett, recounted in the obit, involves him making a trade with another owner while they were both standing at the urinal in a Fort Worth restaurant. Corbett is also one of the men who fired Billy Martin.

Posted in Clippings, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 26, 2012.

Wednesday, December 26th, 2012

The NYT was running a little behind yesterday, and didn’t post their Charles Durning obit until later in the day. (Also, thanks to Lawrence and Guffaw for their comments yesterday.)

Likewise, the A/V Club is operating on holiday time: they did publish a nice obit for Jack Klugman, but have not gotten around to Charles Durning yet. (Edited to add: the A/V Club’s obit for Durning is up now.)

On the night after Christmas 40 years ago, two buses carved a thin line across the vast blackness of the New Mexico plains. They carried 58 young people and seven chaperones from Woodlawn Baptist Church in South Austin, the passengers still reveling in the merry holiday glow, en route to a religious retreat and skiing in the eastern New Mexico mountains.

19 people were killed when one of the buses crashed. 16 of them were teenagers. This is one of those bits of Austin history that I was previously unaware of; I commend the Statesman story (and the sidebar about how horrible the highway bridge was) to your attention.

Posted in Bridges, Clippings, Movies, Obits, Roads, Safety, TV | Comments Closed

Quote of the day.

Tuesday, December 25th, 2012

Having engaged in the annual Christmas “bringing everybody down” with dead people and concussions, I figure folks could use a chuckle:

(I can honestly say that those words were never said in my house on Christmas. Of course, that’s because my childhood predates cheap R/C helicopters.)

Posted in Christmas | Comments Closed

Norts spews.

Tuesday, December 25th, 2012

Today’s NYT has a nice retrospective article tied to the playoff game between the Miami Dolphins and the Kansas City Chiefs 41 years ago today.

The Dolphins won, 27-24. In double overtime. To this day, that game remains the longest game in NFL history.

“Do you want to talk about my mother’s funeral, too?” [kicker Jan] Stenerud said recently when asked about the defeat. He hung up the phone, ending a brief interview.

Continuing with the “Merry freakin’ Christmas” theme, Ryan Freel has passed away.

Freel, who played second base, third base and all three outfield positions, spent six of his eight big-league seasons with the Cincinnati Reds and finished his career in 2009 with a .268 average and 143 stolen bases.

Freel was apparently a “b—s to the wall” player:

Freel showed no fear as he ran into walls, hurtled into the seats and crashed into other players while trying to make catches. His jarring, diving grabs often made the highlight shows, and he was praised by those he played both with and against for always having a dirt-stained uniform.

And over the course of his career, he suffered an estimated 10 concussions. He missed 30 games in 2007 because of a concussion after he collided with a teammate.

Freel was 36. According to the NYT obit, law enforcement believes he killed himself. I wanted to mention this as a reminder: people have talked a lot about concussions in football, and to a lesser extent in hockey (they’d probably be talking more about hockey if we actually had a hockey season). I think it is worth keeping in mind that those aren’t the only sports worth worrying about.

Posted in Clippings, Neuroscience, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: special Merry freakin’ Christmas edition.

Tuesday, December 25th, 2012

Charles Durning, war hero and noted character actor.

He was among the first wave of U.S. soldiers to land at Normandy during the D-Day invasion and the only member of his Army unit to survive. He killed several Germans and was wounded in the leg. Later he was bayoneted by a young German soldier whom he killed with a rock. He was captured in the Battle of the Bulge and survived a massacre of prisoners.

They don’t make them like that anymore.

Jack Klugman. NYT. LAT.

I’m just a little too young to remember “The Odd Couple” well (except for the theme), but “Quincy, M.E.” was right in my wheelhouse for the first several seasons. At some point, I’d like to do a longer post about the “NBC Sunday Mystery Movie” and all the great stuff that came out of it, but for now, let me say that I was an avid Quincy fan when I was a kid; at least, until the series turned into Jack Klugman’s cause of the week.

I did sort of keep up with Klugman after the series went off the air, and was sad when he came down with throat cancer. That’s the sort of thing I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy, and I can’t imagine what it was like for an actor. Happily, he was able to do some acting after that. (It brings a smile to my face to see that he did a guest stint on “Crossing Jordan”, the “Quincy” of the 2000 era except that it sucked.)

(And I have, but have not watched, the Criterion “12 Angry Men“. Maybe after folks get back from the holiday.)

You know, they don’t write TV themes like those any more, too.

Posted in Clippings, Heroism, Movies, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Paging Doc Daneeka.

Saturday, December 22nd, 2012

I previously noted the strange case of Carolyn Barnes, the local lawyer who was accused of shooting at a census worker, found incompetent to stand trial, sent to the state hospital in Kerrville, and yet retains her license to practice law and is representing at least one client.

Yes. Well. There’s an update to the story:

A Williamson County judge on Friday refused to prevent an attorney locked up in a state psychiatric facility from continuing to practice law.

The judge’s position actually kind of makes sense to me:

“Ms. Barnes is, as of this moment, a licensed member of the bar,” he said. “It wouldn’t be appropriate of me to unilaterally decide if she’s competent to act as an attorney.”
He added that the State Bar of Texas, which is responsible for licensing attorneys, was conducting its own investigation into Barnes’ capability to practice. The organization has the power to bar an attorney from practicing due to a disability — physical or mental — but rarely does so.

Meanwhile, the whole issue may become moot, as the Statesman also reports Ms. Barnes is moving closer to being declared competent to stand trial.

Posted in Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

The best little obit watch in Texas.

Friday, December 21st, 2012

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

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

And:

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

Posted in Clippings, Obits, Theatre | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 21, 2012.

Friday, December 21st, 2012

I have been critical of the HouChron in the past, but I have to give them credit for this headline:

(Click to embiggen.)

If only they’d added “Women, minorities hardest hit” as a subhed, it would have been a classic.

Marijuana has, in many parts of this state, become the equivalent of a beer in a paper bag on the streets of Greenwich Village. It is losing whatever stigma it ever had and still has in many parts of the country, including New York City, where the kind of open marijuana use that is common here would attract the attention of any passing law officer.

Heh. “a beer in a paper bag”. Bunny Colvin, call your office, please.

Black truffles are selling in Paris for around $1,200 a pound.

Black truffles and other types of truffles are becoming scarcer, and some scientists say it is because of the effects of global climate change on the fungus’s Mediterranean habitat. One wholesaler says prices have risen tenfold over the last dozen years.

Posted in Clippings, Food, Law | Comments Closed

Obit roundup: December 20, 2012.

Thursday, December 20th, 2012

Robert Bork: NYT. LAT. WP.

Posted in Clippings, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Some people.

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

Some people are obsessive.
Some people are so obsessive, they start blogs.
Some people are so obsessive, they start blogs devoted to a single subject.
Some people are so obsessive, they start blogs devoted to a single movie.
Some people are so obsessive, they start blogs devoted to a single movie that isn’t f—ing “Star Wars”.
Some people are so obsessive, they start blogs devoted to a single movie that is currently in legal limbo.

Okay. You’re tired of the joke by now, so let me introduce Sorcerer1977, a blog devoted entirely to the 1977 William Friedkin movie “Sorcerer”.

Friedkin did this right after “The Exorcist”; it wasn’t well received at the time, but it seems that over the years, something of a cult has grown around it. Lawrence and I watched it quite a while back (I think it was so long ago we watched it on VHS). I’m a fan of “The Wages of Fear“, which “Sorcerer” is something of a homage to, and I actually think I prefer Friedkin’s version to Clouzot’s.

I’d love to see it again, but the movie is currently tied up in legal limbo which prevents a proper re-release. Both Paramount and Universal say they don’t own the rights to the movie, and have no idea who does, so Friedkin is suing both studios trying to get the ownership issue cleared up.

Anyway, the guy behind this is seriously obsessive and seems to be trying to cover every aspect of the movie – digging out old interviews with Friedkin and other people involved in the production, discussing the Tangerine Dream soundtrack, etc. etc. etc.

My goal for this is to create a makeshift archive — news, interviews, photos, whatever. Kinda like bonus material waiting for a DVD. Or maybe it’s just a digital valentine for a movie I love dearly.

As far as I’m concerned, that’s an awesome goal.

(Hattip: directly, Coudal Partners. Indirectly, Gruber.)

Posted in Geek, Movies | 1 Comment »

Signs! Signs and portents!

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

More evidence that the end of the world is coming: Lawrence and I actually disagree on something.

Specifically, what we disagree on is that I don’t think Thai Noodle House is the worst Thai restaurant in Austin. It has been a while since I’ve eaten at Thai Noodle House, but I don’t remember it being as bad as Chang Thai.

Posted in Food, Guns, Media | 2 Comments »

Speaking of books…

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012

…I’ve been a little distracted, but I’m thinking the time has come to pull my favorite Christmas story off the shelf for re-reading.

Posted in Books | Comments Closed

Interesting questions.

Wednesday, December 19th, 2012
  1. Why did I have to find out about the exhumation of Perry Smith and Richard Hickock from the Onion A/V Club, of all places?
  2. It has been a while since I’ve read In Cold Blood. Is there any evidence that they were ever in Florida to begin with, much less Sarasota? Serious question: I honestly do not remember.
  3. Sarasota county still has evidence that they expect to get useful DNA (in some form) from, 53 years after the crime? (To be clear, it isn’t the evidence that surprises me: I’d expect them to keep evidence for unsolved crimes until the sun goes nova. What I’m having trouble with is whether DNA would be preserved after being stored for that long.)
  4. If they do get closure on this case using Smith and Hickock’s DNA, will this be the oldest solved cold case ever? Or oldest solved using DNA? Anybody know what the current record is?

Posted in Books, Clippings, Law | Comments Closed

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