Colleen McCullough, author (“The Thorn Birds”). A/V Club.
Rod McKuen, poet. A/V Club.
Archive for January, 2015
Obit watch: January 30, 2015.
Friday, January 30th, 2015TMQ Watch: January 27, 2015.
Thursday, January 29th, 2015So. It has come to this.
(Actually, we just like saying “So. It has come to this.” We’re also fond of “As foretold in the prophecy” and “so let it be written, so let it be done”.)
This week’s TMQ, after the jump…
There once was a man from Nantucket.
Tuesday, January 27th, 2015My phone tells me it is currently 81 degrees here. I may have to turn on the AC when I get home.
Obit watch: January 26, 2015.
Monday, January 26th, 2015Alice K. Turner, fiction editor of Playboy.
I know the joke: “I just read it for the articles”. But as fiction editor, Ms. Turner was hugely influential:
I was tied up most of the weekend, so for the record:
Joe Franklin.
Edgar Froese, founding member of Tangerine Dream. How about a little musical interlude?
And Ernie Banks. Related.
You know, I have a good feeling about the Cubs this year. I think they’re going to do the memory of Mr. Banks proud. As a matter of fact, I think there’s a good chance they will win the World Series this year.
Yo, dawg.
Friday, January 23rd, 2015The bankruptcy of SkyMall and their parent company, Xhibit, has been well covered in many places.
But I wanted to link, again, to this Priceonomics article from 2013 about SkyMall, Xhibit, and their questionable dealings, just in case folks forgot about it.
God and man don’t believe in modern farmer.
Friday, January 23rd, 2015A while back, I briefly touched on the “Modern Farmer” situation. Briefly, “Modern Farmer” was a promising and National Magazine Award winning magazine:
I never actually read it – I’m not sure I ever saw a copy for sale, and it sounded a little pretentious – but I was interested in what was happening with the magazine, especially after the editor resigned.
Well, the other goat has fainted:
More:
I’d actually never heard of Shinola, the watchmaker. I guess this goes to show how effective advertising in “Modern Farmer” was.
(Hattip: Jimbo.)
But the police are the only ones who can be trusted with guns!
Thursday, January 22nd, 2015Both officers were suspended for “accidentally” discharging their “patrol shotguns”. One was suspended for three days, and the other officer was suspended for one. (The reason for the difference is not clear. Based on the Statesman‘s reporting, it doesn’t seem that there were any injuries.)
Not gun related, but another officer is being suspended for 16 days. Apparently, he violated guidelines in his handling of a sexual assault case involving a child, and became “involved in a civil matter in violation of the department’s policy”. (These were unrelated offenses, just to be clear.)
Obit watch: January 22, 2015.
Thursday, January 22nd, 2015John Bayley, literary critic and husband of Iris Murdoch. Bayley wrote Elegy for Iris
Alan J. Hirschfield, former president of Columbia Pictures.
Hirschfield was the studio president during the David Begelman affair, and is one of the central figures in David McClintick’s excellent book Indecent Exposure
…and the gambling commission’s hanging on by the skin of its teeth.
Thursday, January 22nd, 2015(Subject line hattip, if you needed it.)
(The Chicken Man, in case you ever wondered about that lyric.)
Bad politician! No biscuit!
Thursday, January 22nd, 2015Heh. Heh. Heh. Part I:
Mr. Silver’s party affiliation is given early in the second paragraph. This bit of trivia is in the fifth paragraph:
Mike the Musicologist tipped me off to this story a while back, but I’ve been kind of waiting until something happened with it. Something did. Sort of.
The grand jury has also recommended charges of “false swearing” and “official oppression”. Ms. Kane’s party affiliation shows up in the fourth paragraph. And the newspaper in question is the Daily News (paragraph seven).
The problem here is that the grand jury recommendation is only advisory: the decision on actually filing charges is up to the local district attorney (“Montgomery County District Attorney Risa Vetri Ferman”), and I’m not sure what the odds are on that actually happening.
I’m going to drop this in here, even though it doesn’t fit with the “bad politician” theme, because I don’t have a better place to put it. You may be asking yourself, especially in the light of past coverage on this blog, “What does it take to get yourself fired as a cop in Philadelphia?”
Well, we have an answer to that question:
TMQ Watch: January 20, 2015.
Wednesday, January 21st, 2015We’re grumpy. Apparently, this is a day ending in “Y”. Let’s just jump right into this week’s TMQ…
Look for the label, the union label…
Wednesday, January 21st, 2015Your city council, ladies and gentlemen.
Friday, January 16th, 2015I just finished updating the “Contact information for the Austin City Council” page with the latest information. Please let me know if you find any errors or omissions.
The pages on the city website appear to have eliminated actual email addresses (relying instead on contact forms): if you happen to have a real address for your council member, you might share it. Fax numbers are also not present, but that may be an artifact: it looks like they’ve reorganized the phone system to make things a little more logical.
It hasn’t been that long since the council was sworn in, and I’m sure it will take some time for the council members to get their individual pages set up the way they’d like. I’ll try to keep an eye out for changes, but, again, I’d appreciate help from my readers on that.
I still need to get the Travis County Commissioner’s Court page updated, but with a little bit of luck I’ll be able to do that on my lunch hour.
Edited to add: The Commissioner’s Court page is now updated.
Random notes: January 16, 2015.
Friday, January 16th, 2015I’ve written previously about Al Martinez and the “get the boy his peaches” story.
Recently, some questions were raised about the story over at Romenesko’s site. I didn’t post about this at the time because it didn’t seem link worthy: more “can anybody help me track down the original story” than “it never happened”.
Well, the amazing Larry Harnisch took up the gauntlet and managed to – more or less – track down the original story. Part of the problem seems to be that Al Martinez was working from memory, and apparently combined two stories into one: the dying boy and the peaches did take place, but not at Christmas. But there was another dying boy who craved watermelons at Christmas.
Quel fromage!
I just want to say…
Thursday, January 15th, 2015…this is my favorite John Moltz post ever.
(Well, okay. My favorite John Moltz post as John Moltz at “Very Nice Web Site”. I’m not quite sure it displaces the one at Crazy Apple Rumors where he actually used a question of mine in the “Crazy Apple Help Desk”.)
TMQ Watch: January 13, 2015.
Thursday, January 15th, 2015We lost the better part of the day yesterday to jury duty, so we’re late getting this up. We apologize for the convenience.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Random notes: January 15, 2015.
Thursday, January 15th, 2015Obit watch: Phil Africa, “a high-ranking member of the Philadelphia-based black-liberation group Move”. You may remember MOVE from the 1985 Philadelphia police stand-off and bombing. Phil Africa was not involved in that, as he was already serving time for killing a police officer in the 1978 shootout.
I’m just going to take a wild guess here and suggest he was wearing body armor because HE DIDN’T WANT TO GET SHOT!
(Oh, and for the record: both the gun and body armor were stolen from a sheriff’s deputy.)
Neat story:
Some more detail here and here. (Interestingly, at the time I’m writing this, that story is the most-read one on the WP website.)
Norts spews.
Tuesday, January 13th, 2015Well. Well well well. Well. Yes, I am happy about Ohio State winning; as my regular readers know, I have ties to the Ohio area.
Since I don’t have cable, I mostly followed the game on FARK until I dozed off after halftime (yesterday was a rough day at work). From what I can tell, it might be a good idea for Ohio State to spend some time in the off season working on HOLDING ON TO THE DAMN BALL!
I don’t have a lot to say about the John Fox “firing” right now, except that I think it will be interesting to see how things play out after the Superb Owl. I may have more to say once this week’s TMQ goes up.
Obit watch: Roy Tarpley, former center for the Dallas Mavericks. As my regular readers know, I’m not a basketball fan, but the Tarpley story is sad and worth noting:
He was suspended by the NBA after five games in the 1989-90 season after being arrested for driving while intoxicated and resisting arrest. In 1991, he drew another suspension after a second DWI arrest and, a few months later, had a third violation and was banned from the league for violating the NBA’s drug-use policies.
He returned to the Mavericks briefly in 1994 but then was permanently barred in December 1995 for violating terms of his aftercare program.
Obit watch: January 12, 2015.
Monday, January 12th, 2015
Obit watch: January 9, 2015.
Friday, January 9th, 2015Jethro Pugh, former player for the Dallas Cowboys.
And yes, he did play in the Ice Bowl.
I missed this one, so I’ll direct you over to Lawrence for Lee Israel.
Quote of the day.
Wednesday, January 7th, 2015Technically, tweet of the day, but who’s counting?
#jesuischarlie pic.twitter.com/N99i5QEq0v
— Josh Weinstein (@JElvisWeinstein) January 7, 2015
TMQ Watch: January 6, 2015.
Wednesday, January 7th, 2015Sex! Gambling! After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
The Shipping News.
Wednesday, January 7th, 2015Hmmmm. Hmmmm. Hmmmm. Why, indeed, did “The Last Ship” fail (and cost the show’s producers their entire $15 million investment), even though Sting himself joined the cast?
Could this be…a clue?
Obit watch: January 5, 2015.
Monday, January 5th, 2015Bess Myerson, Miss America 1945, television personality, and political figure, passed away on December 14th, though her death was not widely reported until today.
“a pernicious confirmation of the values of a morally bankrupt middle class.”
Friday, January 2nd, 2015Confession: I have not read all of this yet, but I am linking it here. I think some people will be interested in it.
New Yorker discussion of Michael Moorcock, “The Anti-Tolkien”. The title of this post is a direct quote from Moorcock, as is this: