Archive for April, 2018

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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

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