Archive for April, 2018

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Ripped from the headlines!

Thursday, April 26th, 2018

Regret blasting Yeti cooler? New one could be tax-free on weekend

That was the actual headline on this Statesman article until a few minutes ago, and is still what the Firefox tab shows.

Anyway:

1. I don’t regret blasting my Yeti cooler…since I don’t have one. I do have a nice Yeti tumbler that I have no intention of blasting, since it was a gift from my beloved and indulgent sister.

2. “a new one could be tax-free this weekend”. Well, actually, no. Unless you can find a Yeti for under $75. And if you’re looking at Yeti equivalents, you could get a new RTIC cooler. Or an ORCA (hatttip to Say Uncle). Or a Pelican.

3. As one of Uncle’s commenters points out, if you really want to hurt Yeti, don’t blow up your cooler: sell it, cheap. Every retail sale you take away from them hits them in the pocket.

4. And thanks to the Statesman for pointing out that this is a tax-free (on certain “emergency supplies”) weekend.

Posted in Guns, Texas | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 24, 2018.

Tuesday, April 24th, 2018

Speaking of the use of the US Mail to commit crimes, I meant to note this the other day, but it got past me:

Walter Leroy Moody Jr. descended into Hell Thursday night.

Some of you may recall the crime, but not the name. Mr. Moody was a crank who had a grudge against the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. So he sent a bomb to the home of one of the judges, Robert Vance Sr. The bomb killed Vance and seriously injured his wife. To cover his tracks, Mr. Moody sent out more bombs: one of them killed Robert E. Robinson, a lawyer. Others directed at the NAACP and the offices of the 11th Circuit were intercepted.

Law enforcement eventually tracked the bombs back to Mr. Moody, who was convicted of a whole host of federal charges. He was sentenced federally to seven life terms, plus 400 years. However, the state of Alabama prosecuted Mr. Moody for the murder of judge Vance: he was convicted at that level, resulting in his death sentence.

There are two books about the case, neither of which I’ve read: I used to see Priority Mail regularly at Half-Price, but I haven’t seen a copy in a while. Blind Vengeance: The Roy Moody Mail Bomb Murders is the one I wasn’t aware of, but stumbled across while trying to find Priority Mail. Blind Vengence seems to have been published by a university press (which probably explains its obscurity), and both are available used from Amazon relatively cheap. I may have to bend my “one true-crime book per case” policy.

Posted in Books, Explosives, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

I have no joke here…

Monday, April 23rd, 2018

…I just like saying “county-funded fajitas”:

[Gilberto] Escamilla was fired in August and arrested after authorities checked vendor invoices and obtained a search warrant that uncovered county-funded fajitas in his refrigerator.

Mr. Escamilla worked at the juvenile detention center in Cameron County, Texas. This is way down in the south part of the state (Brownsville is the county seat.)

Mr. Escamilla was allegedly ordering fajitas through the detention center, using county money, and then delivering them to his own customers.

His scam was uncovered when he missed work for a medical appointment and an 800-pound (360-kilogram) fajita delivery arrived at the center, which doesn’t serve fajitas.

The state claims this scam amounted to $1.2 million worth of fajitas over nine years. Mr. Escamilla was sentenced to 50 years in prison on Friday.

Edited to add: more from Texas Monthly.

Theft of more than $300,000 is automatically a first-degree felony in Texas. On top of that, Texas treats theft by a public servant differently from other kinds of theft. The theory behind that is that theft committed by a private individual harms the person or people who were stolen from; but theft by a public servant harms the taxpayers who pay their salary, and harms society at large by eroding trust in those who’ve agreed to serve us. In cases where a public employee is accused of stealing less than $300,000, charges involving public servants using their official positions to facilitate the crime are automatically escalated to the next-highest level of felony. In Escamilla’s case, the value of the meat he stole meant that it was already the highest class of felony—which helps explain why his sentence was so high.

Posted in Beef, Food, Law, Politics, Texas | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 23, 2018.

Monday, April 23rd, 2018

For the record: Verne Troyer.

Posted in Amish, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Three Letter Security.

Thursday, April 19th, 2018

Isn’t that what “TLS” stands for?

So I know about the certificate issue. When I follow Bluehost’s instructions to update the certificate for WordPress, I get this:

It’s been like that all morning. I haven’t opened a ticket with Bluehost yet, as I figure if Bluehost is having an issue, they’re probably already aware of it. If this continues through tomorrow, I’ll contact their support.

Your patience is appreciated. UN-altered REPRODUCTION and DISSEMINATION of this IMPORTANT Information is ENCOURAGED, ESPECIALLY to COMPUTER BULLETIN BOARDS.

Posted in Admin | 1 Comment »

Updates.

Thursday, April 19th, 2018

Melina Roberge has been sentenced to eight years in an Australian prison. I missed this previously, but her co-conspirator, Isabelle Lagace, received a seven and a half year sentence.

You may recall Ms. Lagace and Ms. Roberge as the two women who posted photos of their travels to exotic locations on Instagram…right up to the point where they were busted trying to smuggle 95 kilos of cocaine into Australia.

Roberge – who became known as “Cocaine Babe” in headlines – will serve at least four years and nine months, without eligibility for parole; she will eventually be deported to her home country, the AP reported.

The third member of the conspiracy, Andre Tamin, is supposed to be sentenced in October.

In other news, Alex Malarkey is suing the Christian publisher Tyndale House.

I’ve written about this before, but it was brief, inside a TMQ Watch, and the related TMQ (and all the other ones that were on ESPN) has been deleted. So:

In 2004, when Alex was six, he and his father Kevin were involved in a serious car accident. Alex was in a coma for two months, and is a quadriplegic as a result of the accident.

In 2010, Alex and Kevin wrote, and Tyndale House published, a book called The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven: A Remarkable Account of Miracles, Angels, and Life beyond This World. (Link provided for informational purposes only, and should not be interpreted as endorsement of the book.) In the book, Alex and Kevin claimed that Alex had visited heaven and encountered both Jesus and Satan. The book was a bestseller.

In 2015, Alex Malarkey publicly renounced the book:

“I did not die,” he wrote in a blog post. “I did not go to Heaven. I said I went to heaven because I thought it would get me attention.”

Tyndale House took the book off the market after Alex’s admission.

In the current lawsuit, Alex is asking for a financial accounting from Tyndale House. Additionally:

The suit says identifying Alex as a co-author of the book violates Illinois’ Right of Publicity Act, and he is entitled to profits from the unauthorized use of his name, along with punitive damages. Malarkey also seeks an injunction requiring Tyndale House to disassociate his name from the book, which lists his father as a co-author.
The suit also alleges the publisher violated Alex Malarkey’s right to privacy, cast him in a false light, intruded on his seclusion, defamed him, violated Illinois law barring deceptive trade practices, and financially exploited him in violation of an Illinois law barring the exploitation of people with disabilities.

Posted in Books, Law, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Obit watch II.

Wednesday, April 18th, 2018

Bill Nack, noted sportwriter who specialized in horse racing.

Over nearly a quarter-century at Sports Illustrated, Mr. Nack was one of its storytelling stars, along with Frank Deford, Gary Smith, Sally Jenkins, Leigh Montville and Richard Hoffer. His subjects included horses and jockeys; the boxers Joe Frazier and Rocky Marciano, the racecar driver A. J. Foyt, the baseball players Jackie Robinson and Keith Hernandez, and a football player, Bob Kalsu, the only major professional sports athlete to die in the Vietnam War.

That Bob Kalsu story is a great piece of work.

Mr. Nack also wrote the book on Secretariat.

Starting in March 1973, Mr. Nack spent 40 consecutive days with Secretariat, joining him at 7 a.m., getting to know his team, taking copious notes and once seeing the horse playfully grab his notebook in his teeth and deposit it on a bed of hay.

And:

Mr. Ebert was one of many colleagues who recalled Mr. Nack’s penchant for reciting from “Lolita,” “The Great Gatsby” (in English and Spanish) and some works of H. L. Mencken’s.

Posted in Books, Horses, Obits | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: April 18, 2018.

Wednesday, April 18th, 2018

Carl Kasell. NPR.

I don’t listen to NPR much these days, but I did kind of like Kasell. And:

He loved magic tricks, and at one memorable company holiday party, he sawed Nina Totenberg in half.
“We laid her out on the table, got out that saw and grrrr … ran it straight through her midsection,” he recalled. “She said it tickled and she got up and walked away in one piece.”

Right away, I knew that Carl had far more up his sleeve than his inimitable gravitas and the random playing cards he keeps there for his magic tricks (if you ever want to know true joy, ask Carl to do magic for you).

I have this mental image of Carl and Harry standing around in heaven, trying to top each other with card tricks.

Barbara Bush, for the historical record. WP. (Edited to add: Lawrence.)

Posted in Magic, Obits, Radio | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#7)

Tuesday, April 17th, 2018

Southwest Airlines is having a bad day.

…passengers cried, screamed, vomited, and sent goodbye texts to their families during the attempted landing.

Crying, screaming, vomiting, and texting? Sounds like every Southwest flight I’ve ever been on.

This, on the other hand, sounds more serious: an uncontained engine failure that sent shrapnel into the aircraft and possibly into the passenger cabin? I thought post-Sioux City the FAA had gotten a lot harder on manufacturers about that sort of thing. RoadRich, care to comment?

Edited to add: reports are now stating that at least one person is dead.

Facebook admits it does track non-users, for their own good

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
–C.S. Lewis

Typically a retailer may return unsold merchandise to the manufacturer. But in this case, Dick’s Sporting Goods has decided to destroy them.
“We are in the process of destroying all firearms and accessories that are no longer for sale as a result of our February 28th policy change,” a spokeswoman told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “We are destroying the firearms in accordance with federal guidelines and regulations.”

A few points:

1. Why does Dick’s still have modern sporting rifles in stock, five years after they announced they were going to stop selling them?

(That actually has an answer: Dick’s apparently fudged the truth, and has been selling modern sporting rifles at their “specialty Field and Stream stores”.)

2. If I were a Dick’s stockholder, I would be seriously peeved at the management for destroying inventory of a perfectly legal product to make a political point.

3. If I were a Dick’s stockholder, I’d also be seeking a sweeping change of management right about now.

Posted in Bagatelle, Guns, Music, Planes | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 17, 2018.

Tuesday, April 17th, 2018

Mike the Musicologist and I have a running joke: the decline of Western civilization began when men stopped wearing hats on a daily basis. We’re both doing our part to bring back the hat era.

I bring that up now because one of the great hat wearers of our time passed away yesterday.

Harry Anderson. Asheville Citizen-Times (more of a retrospective than an obit)

Of course, he wasn’t just a guy in a hat:

While he earned critical acclaim and amassed a devoted fan base on “Night Court,” Mr. Anderson never fancied himself an actor. “I’m a magician, or a performer, by nature, and that’s always what I’ve been,” Mr. Anderson told WGN-TV in Chicago in 2014.
“I was never really an actor,” he said. “I was a magician who fell into a part on ‘Cheers.’”

He was a good one, too. And for what it’s worth, I loved “Night Court” then, and I love it now. (I wish I could find video of Harry Stone revealing his custom bowling ball. If I could find someone to make me a bowling ball like that, I’d take up bowling.)

In honor of the late great Harry the Hat, why not go out and pick up a nice hat for yourself, or someone you love? Not a ballcap or a gimmie hat: I mean a real, genuine, honest to God hat, like a fedora or a porkpie or something. Let’s bring hats back, for Harry, and for civilization.

Posted in Hats, Magic, Obits, Rhode Island, TV | Comments Closed

When guns are outlawed…

Monday, April 16th, 2018

…only outlaws will have shivs.

Seven inmates were killed during fights that lasted more than seven hours at a South Carolina prison Sunday night and into Monday morning, according to officials.

…

Though most of the autopsies have yet to be performed, it appears that many of the prisoners died from stabbing or slashing wounds from “shanks,” Lee County Coroner Larry Logan said. The official cause of death will not be determined until after the autopsies.

Seriously? A mass stabbing incident? And not in a school this time, but in a freaking maximum security prison?

More from the WP:

Lee Correctional Institution is one of South Carolina’s highest-security prisons, which means the inmates are generally tightly monitored and their movements inside the facility are limited.

…

Violence at Lee Correctional is not uncommon. During the past year, at least three inmates were killed in separate incidents, while last month, inmates held an officer hostage for about an hour-and-a-half before releasing him, according to the State newspaper.

Lawrence had much the same thought I did: why did it take seven hours to bring this under control?

I want to make it clear: I don’t take pleasure in this, and I’m opposed to extra-judicial punishments for prisoners. But if you can’t keep people from doing harm on a large scale with improvised weapons in a prison, why do you think laws on inanimate objects are going to keep people from doing harm on a large scale in the free world?

Posted in Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Happy (belated?) BAG Day!

Monday, April 16th, 2018

As I mentioned earlier, we were doing a lot of running around yesterday, and I didn’t get home until late, so this is pretty much the first chance I’ve had to make a BAG Day post.

Of course, I’ve sort of advocated extending BAG Day for at least a few days, due to it falling on a Sunday this year, so I’m not sure that this is more than technically late. (“Technically late” is, of course, the best kind of late.)

How did things pan out? Well, we made it down to Cabela’s yesterday, and the thing I was looking at last week was still there. Photos to come, but probably not until this coming weekend. As for other people, I’ll leave it to them to decide if they want to comment or not.

Speaking of comments, thanks to pigpen51 for his kind and gracious comments on the last post. You’re always welcome here, pigpen: you wear well.

And I’ll be glad to host comments and/or photos on other people’s BAG Day purchases, since I don’t see any of the usual suspects doing so. If you just want to leave a comment, you can leave it here: if there’s enough interest, I’ll do a round-up in a few days.

If you want to send photos and comments, stainles [at] mac.com or stainles [at] sportsfirings.com work. Send stuff there, I’ll post it here. Let me know how you want to be identified: pseudonyms are fine.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 16, 2018.

Monday, April 16th, 2018

It was another busy weekend: birthday dinner, BAG day (post forthcoming), lots of running around…so let us get caught up.

Art Bell, noted radio host.

For more than two decades, Mr. Bell, who was 72 when he died April 13 at his home in Pahrump, Nev., stayed up all night talking to those people on the radio, patiently encouraging them to tell their stories about alien abductions, crop circles, anthrax scares and, as he put it, all things “seen at the edge of vision.”

I used to listen to a lot of late night radio, but my time preceded Art Bell. I know someone whose job requires them to drive in sometimes late at night, and back in the day they were an Art Bell listener.

Tim O’Connor, character actor. He had a long-running role on the “Peyton Place” TV series, and also did guest shots in just about everything. (Including “Mannix”.)

Milos Forman, one of the great directors. (“Amadeus”, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”)

And finally, R. Lee Ermey. Borepatch.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Friday, April 13th, 2018

More blood in the streets:

Steve Clifford out as head coach of the Charlotte Hornets.

196-214 overall, two playoff appearances where they never got out of the first round, and 36-46 this season with no playoffs.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Go big or go home.

Friday, April 13th, 2018

I have a theory.

If you’re going to commit a crime, make it worthwhile. Don’t throw your life away for free movie tickets or a lousy few hundred dollars. Seven figures in front of the decimal point is a good guideline.

Likewise, if you’re going to run guns to Mexico, don’t just run semi-automatic AKs and ARs. Go for all the gusto:

An Austin man, a Georgetown man and an Arizona machine gun manufacturer have been accused in a scheme that involved smuggling machine guns and ammunition to Mexico, according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s office.

…

Carlson worked with others to acquire and unlawfully smuggle 200 firearms including .50 caliber rifles, plus hundreds of rounds of ammunition to Mexico, the release said.
It said he worked with Fox — who is a former law enforcement officer and federal firearms licensee — to illegally acquire multiple M-134G Minigun machine guns.
The M-134G has six barrels and can fire between 2,000 and 6,000 rounds of ammunition per minute, according to the release. As part of the scheme, Fox contacted Garwood — the owner of Garwood Industries in Scottsdale — who agreed to help build the guns and supply Fox with M-134G parts, according to the release.

For those of my readers who are not people of the gun, here’s a short video of a minigun in action:

One of my friends commented last night that the M134 sounded like a great home defense weapon, and I had to agree with him: if you are attacked by a marauding rogue home, 58 rounds per second of 7.62 NATO should stop an attacking home fairly quickly.

(I’m kind of impressed that the Statesman writer got the part about the rotor housings being the serialized part right. At least, I assume he did, not being a minigun expert: but it’s generally impressive when a writer shows some understanding of what “serialization” means in this context.)

(Insert Fast and Furious reference here.)

(Insert rant about the Second Amendment covering machine guns here.)

Posted in Guns, Law | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#49 in a series)

Thursday, April 12th, 2018

I haven’t been covering the corruption trial of former Texas congressman Steve Stockman as well as I could have. Not because of my own political sympathies (though I’m sure there are people who won’t believe that), but simply because of flat-out being busy three nights a week and having a series of full weekends.

Anyway, the verdict is in: guilty on 23 out of 24 counts.

Stockman was charged with “masterminding a wide-ranging fraud scheme that diverted $1.25 million in charitable donations from wealthy conservative philanthropists to cover personal expenses and campaign debts”. Specifically, he was convicted of mail and wire fraud, the ever popular “conspiracy”, “making false statements to the Federal Elections Commission”, and money laundering. The acquittal was on a single count of wire fraud.

Prosecutors presented a meticulously documented case, featuring flow charts and canceled checks, to illustrate how the two-time Republican lawmaker funneled charitable donations through a series of sham nonprofit organizations and shell bank accounts to spend on an array of personal expenses that included his brother’s homemade Advent books, a dolphin watching trip and an amateur spy operation that trailed a perceived GOP rival around the statehouse in Austin.

Two of his aides, Jason Posey and Thomas Dodd, took plea bargains and rolled on Stockman.

Posey testified that he and the former congressman knew they were breaking the law by concealing the source of the funds. But Stockman instructed him to push forward with his plans to spend charitable money on hotel rooms, plane flights and burner phones for secret conversations, and he complied.

I’m sorry, but the fact that they bought burner phones fills me with delight.

Stockman could get “a maximum of 20 years in prison on each of the fraud charges alone” but we all know that’s unlikely to happen, right?

Posted in Law, Phones, Politics, Radio, Texas | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Thursday, April 12th, 2018

I guess yesterday was the end of the NBA regular season.

Everyone knows how much I care about the NBA, but with the end of any regular season in sports comes the wave of firings.

Jeff Hornacek out as head coach of the New York Knickerbockers. He was 60-104 over two seasons. (Also out: assistant coach Kurt Rambis.)

Frank Vogel out as head coach of the Orlando Magic. 54-110 over two seasons. (Various assistants got canned as well.)

And just for the record, the loser trophy this year goes to…the Phoenix Suns? Yep: 21-61 this season. This would call for a coach firing, except the Suns already fired their coach back in October.

More surprising: not only did the notoriously bad Philadelphia 76ers not have the worst record this year…they were 52-30, and are in the playoffs.

Posted in Firings, Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 11, 2018.

Wednesday, April 11th, 2018

Keith Murdoch, rugby player.

This is another one of those strange and sad stories. Mr. Murdoch was selected to tour with the New Zealand All Blacks in 1972. But after the first match of the tour, he got into a fight with a security guard at a hotel. He was thrown off the tour.

But Murdoch, in fact, did not go home. Issued with a ticket back to New Zealand, he got off the plane in Singapore and diverted to Australia — to the city of Darwin, on the northern coast, the gateway to the vast, sparsely populated Northern Territory.

And there, for all intents and purposes, he disappeared. He “went bush,” as the Australians say. He became a rugby version of Bigfoot and the subject of a play, his legend growing in inverse proportion to the confirmed sightings of him.

…

After “going bush,” Murdoch dropped from sight until the late 1970s, when Terry McLean, the dean of New Zealand’s rugby writers, tracked him down. McLean came upon him at an oil-drilling site near Perth, capital of the state of Western Australia, only to be advised, firmly and crisply, what he should do to preserve life and limb.
“I got back on the bus,” McLean wrote.

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Master Ninja theme song!

Tuesday, April 10th, 2018

By way of Lee Goldberg’s blog, I have just found out that the complete 1980’s TV series, The Master, is now available on DVD and Blu-ray. (Well, at least, per Amazon. I’ll believe the Blu-ray exists when I see it.)

This is slightly less obscure than other TV shows I’ve discussed (for reasons I’ll get into shortly), but for those who have never encountered The Master: Lee Van Cleef is “John Peter McAllister”, a “white ninja”. (He “stayed behind” in Japan after WWII and supposedly learned the ninja arts.) McAllister returns to the US to search for his daughter and teams up with “Max Keller” (Timothy Van Patten), a drifter with a van. Together they wander the country looking for the daughter and meddling in other people’s affairs helping others with their problems. Meanwhile McAllister is pursued by “Okasa” (Sho Kosugi), a former student who has a grudge against him for leaving the ninja clan or some other stupid horsepucky.

I never saw an actual episode of the show, so my judgement is perhaps unfair. But: it wasn’t good. Think a post-BJ and the Bear series or a variant on The A-Team, but featuring two people with no charisma.

How do I know? Well, the series was recut into “movies” (basically two episodes each) and released on video. (It is unclear to me how they got seven movies out of thirteen episodes, if they did two per movie. But I digress.) Later on, as I’m sure many of you know, Mystery Science Theater 3000 did the first two “movies” (episodes 322 and 324) which is how I saw them.

And now you know…the rest of the story.

The Master on Wikipedia.

Take us out, bots.

Posted in TV | Comments Closed

When guns are outlawed…

Monday, April 9th, 2018

…only members of NYC’s criminal De Blasio administration will have nines with the serial numbers filed off.

Reagan Stevens, 42, the deputy director of youth and strategic initiatives, was sitting in the back of a parked 2002 Infiniti with two men on 107th St. near 106th Ave. in Jamaica when a nearby ShotSpotter detected five shots fired about 10:20 p.m. on Saturday.
Cops searched the Infiniti and discovered a 9-mm. gun in the glove compartment with a serial number scratched off — an additional offense — and a single spent shell casing.
The gun, which carries an eight-round clip, contained three rounds when police discovered it, according to a law enforcement source.

All three were busted, since none of them was willing to claim the gun.

The two men she was with — Ceasar Forbes, the 25-year-old driver of the Infiniti, and Montel Hughes, 24 — were both hit with an additional charge of carrying knives.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

BAG Day is coming!

Monday, April 9th, 2018

National Buy a Gun Day is next Sunday. Can you feel the excitement?

Unfortunately, it seems that the BAG website no longer exists. Also unfortunately, April 15th falls on a Sunday: while that’s good for taxes, it limits your gun-buying options.

As for the first, that doesn’t mean you can’t still observe BAG Day. Indeed, I encourage you: if you’ve been thinking about picking up a modern sporting rifle, or a Marlin 60, or pretty much anything else firearms related, this is the time to pull the trigger.

As for the second, since there’s no central authority, I’ll go ahead and say: anything you purchase this week counts for BAG Day. I’ll even extend this out to Tuesday of next week, since I’m a little behind putting this up.

What about your humble blogger? What am I getting for BAG Day?

Well…actually…I may end up setting a poor example. My initial BAG Day thoughts were to hold off on purchasing an actual gun, and instead put money into a few things I’ve been needing for my existing guns:

At least, that was where my thoughts were going. Then Mike the Musicologist and I happened to be someplace on Sunday, and both of us had our attention drawn to two (separate) items. In my case, what I found seems to be a pretty good deal (and I may trade off some other items I’ve accumulated), but I didn’t want to pull the trigger then. If it’s still there next weekend, it might follow me home, as it pushes a few buttons.

(If that doesn’t pan out, I’ll probably proceed with my original plan, and I might pick up one of those $250 Bodyguards from CDNN. I kind of want something I can easily slip into the pocket of my shorts for summer, or a suitcoat/dress pants pocket for meetings of what Lawrence refers to as my shadowy criminal cabal.)

Posted in Guns | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 9, 2018.

Monday, April 9th, 2018

Sheila Link passed away at the end of March. She was 94.

This is another of those obits you don’t expect to see in the NYT: Ms. Link was a long-time gunwriter.

Mrs. Link wrote a column, “Gear ‘N’ Gadgets,” for Women & Guns from the magazine’s inception in the early 1990s until 2003.
She was also a frequent contributor to Outdoor Life, Field & Stream and Sports Afield magazines; produced a weekly radio program, “Call of the Outdoors,” which was broadcast for nine years beginning in 1974; and was the author of two books, “The Hardy Boys Handbook: Seven Stories of Survival” (1980) and “Women’s Guide to Outdoor Sports” (1984).

There are things I don’t like about this obit (the author seems to have gone out of his way to incorporate some NRA bashing), but I do love the story at the end, which I will leave for the reader.

Posted in Guns, Obits | Comments Closed

Quaint and curious volumes of forgotten television.

Monday, April 9th, 2018

I don’t remember how I stumbled across this, other than we were watching “Ironside” (with Burgess Meredith!) while waiting for “Kolchak” to start.

Anyway: I found out that there was a detective show in the mid-1970s called, believe it or not, “Khan!”.

No, tragically, it did not star Shatner or Ricardo Montalbán. Actually, the title character was played by Khigh Dhiegh. Unless you’re as geeky as I am, you may not recognize that name: he was a fairly prominent character actor, perhaps best known for playing Wo Fat repeatedly on the good “Hawaii 5-0”. (He also played the brainwashing expert in the original Manchurian Candidate.)

(Short shameful confession: while I like the good “5-0”, I do have a lot of reservations. Besides Jack Lord’s ego and politics, my biggest one is: I’ve never liked the Wo Fat episodes. I find them mostly unrealistic and annoying. Yes, I know, I need to go out for blueberry-almond martinis with Gregg Easterbrook. But I digress.)

Also interesting: Ivan Dixon was involved as a director on the series. (Note to self: I still need to pick up a copy of The Spook Who Sat By the Door for movie night.)

So why have I never heard of this? Well, it only lasted four episodes. I suspect this is also why it hasn’t had a DVD release.

As an extra bonus, because I know there are a couple of other Kolchak fans out there (Hi, Pat!): “It Couldn’t Happen Here…” in which the bloggers review all of the episodes of the original series, including the TV movies and the three unproduced scripts.

I’m not sure I agree 100% with their reviews and conclusions, but it fills in the blanks on some of the episodes I’ve missed.

Posted in 1970s, Bookmarks, TV | Comments Closed

CRASE.

Thursday, April 5th, 2018

So I was hanging out with the cops in Lakeway last night.

I’m about 99 44/100ths percent sure this is the video that they showed as part of their Citizen Response to Active Shooter Events presentation. This seems to me to be a good one: it’s also short (~11 minutes) so it isn’t a huge commitment of your time.

Posted in Cops, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

I met him in a place down in São Paulo…

Thursday, April 5th, 2018

…where they serve churrasco with arroz de coco,
C-O-C-O, coco.

He walked up to me and he asked me to vote,
I asked him his name and in a crooked voice he said Lula,
L-U-L-A, Lula.
La-la-la-la Lula.

Posted in Food, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

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