There can be only one.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ. If it isn’t Scottish, it’s crap!
Archive for October, 2018
TMQ Watch: October 30, 2018.
Wednesday, October 31st, 2018Whitey.
Wednesday, October 31st, 2018If you go back to yesterday’s post, it looks like both the Boston outlets and the NYT did updates (and corrections) in place instead of posting new links. Which saves me some effort…
The big piece of news since the story broke seems to be:
The Patriarca family, maybe? Kind of makes sense…
Howie Carr. I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I thought The Brothers Bulger: How They Terrorized and Corrupted Boston for a Quarter Century was a terrific book.
Firings watch.
Tuesday, October 30th, 2018I think this counts.
Izaia Bullock, a linebacker for the Rutgers football team, has been dismissed.
“For violating team rules?” I guess you could say that…
…I do believe most teams have rules against murder plots.
Bullock, 22, “initiated a plot to murder the family members of an acquaintance” earlier in the week, according to a statement from the Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office.
Bullock was charged Tuesday with two counts of attempted murder in the first degree and two counts of conspiracy to commit murder in the first degree.
I wonder if this was one of those situations you see played out so often on the Justice Network: rich child hires patsy to whack his parents while rich kid is off somewhere setting up an alibi…
Obit watch: October 30, 2018.
Tuesday, October 30th, 2018Wow.
My brother and Mike the Musicologist sent this to me literally within seconds of each other, which goes to show you how well they know me:
Details are kind of sketchy right now. Here’s the Boston Herald coverage: apparently he had just been moved to the WV facility from one in Florida.
This is still a developing story, and I’m not finding much coverage outside of the Boston papers: it may be best to wait and post an update tomorrow.
Also among the dead: Victor Marchetti, former CIA agent and author who challenged the agency’s prior approval rule.
Ntozake Shange, noted playwright.
Edited to add: preliminary NYT coverage of Whitey Bulger, which wasn’t up when I posted earlier.
…was found beaten to death on Tuesday in a West Virginia prison. He was 89.
Two Federal Bureau of Prisons employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the information was not yet public, said Mr. Bulger had been beaten unrecognizable by inmates. No other details were immediately available.
Interesting. The anonymous sources are saying he was beaten to death, not stabbed. But…
Ah, Cleveland.
Monday, October 29th, 2018Well. Well well well. Well.
The Cleveland Browns just fired head coach Hue Jackson.
(waits for the deafening cries of “What took them so long?” to subside)
Really, what took them so long? The man was 3-36-1 over two and a half seasons.
Also shown the door: offensive coordinator Todd Haley.
(Hattip: Lawrence.)
Loser update with bonus firing: October 29, 2018.
Monday, October 29th, 2018NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:
Cleveland
On a totally related note, Cleveland fired head coach Tyronn Lue on Sunday. I believe this is the first firing of the NBA regular season.
He was 128-83 over three years, and had one NBA championship and three finals appearances to his credit. But…the team is 0-6 for the first time since 1995.
Obit watch: October 26, 2018.
Friday, October 26th, 2018James Karen, prolific actor.
I’ve never lived in an area served by Pathmark, but the man appeared on almost everything: “Quincy, M.E.”, “Jake and the Fatman”, “Magnum, P.I.”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, “The Rockford Files”, the good “Hawaii Five-O”…
…except he never did a spot on “Mannix”.
Update from the shoe beat.
Thursday, October 25th, 2018We have our first convictions in the great NCAA Basketball shoe scandal of 2017. (Previously.)
There’s a little more editorial commentary mixed in with the reporting than I’d like, but this is noteworthy:
Though the verdicts’ larger impact on college basketball was not immediately clear, after Wednesday the following may be safely said: There is precedent that cheating N.C.A.A. bylaws can have consequences beyond collegiate infractions.
“Now you don’t just have to worry about what the N.C.A.A. does to you — you have to worry about going to jail,” said Dan Beebe, a former Big 12 commissioner who consults with conferences.
Personally, I’d like to see the N.C.A.A forcibly disbanded, but sending people to prison is a good alternative.
Also worth noting, but with a grain of salt: one of the defense attorneys claims that Rick Pitino and Bill Self (Kansas basketball coach, who is still employed) knew what was going on.
…
The three men charged in the case had pleaded not guilty, and none of them took the stand. Their primary defense was that their behavior may have violated N.C.A.A. bylaws, but that it was not a federal crime.
“N.C.A.A. rules were broken,” Michael Schachter, one of Gatto’s attorneys, said in his opening argument. “Jim and Adidas helped out financially a few families whose sons are among the most talented athletes in America. That happened.”
However, he added: “The N.C.A.A.’s rules are not the laws of this country. The N.C.A.A. is not the U.S. Congress.”
As the flaming hyena turns.
Thursday, October 25th, 2018Remember Dawnna Dukes? Remember what an enormous nothing-burger that whole thing turned out to be?
She’s suing the Statesman, Margaret Moore (the current Travis County DA) and Rosemary Lehmberg (the previous DA), “an investigator with the state auditor’s office”, and three former aides.
The fact that she’s proceeding pro se with a defamation suit is not a good sign. But I Am Not A Lawyer: I’d ask Ken White for his take, but he’s pretty busy these days.
On the other hand, she’s probably proceeding without a lawyer because she’s broke:
The 12-term Austin Democrat said investigative stories by the Statesman, followed by corruption charges that were eventually dismissed, left her financially ruined — saddled with a $187,000 legal bill, deprived of consulting contracts and unable to find additional work.
As a result, her lawsuit said, Dukes’ credit cards were canceled, her car was repossessed and her home and East Austin commercial properties were foreclosed upon.
“The trauma due to financial hardships and loss of reputation aggravated (Dukes’) health issues and, to this day, there is still a lingering inconsolable grief caused by her substantial loss,” the lawsuit said.
Dukes also blamed her legal trouble for her defeat in the Democratic primary in March.
I’ll try to keep an eye on this one. Especially the discovery portion of it: that should be a lot of fun.
TMQ Watch: October 23, 2018.
Wednesday, October 24th, 2018Oddly enough, the subject of Hallmark Channel Christmas movies came up at dinner Saturday night. We have a couple of folks who are big fans of those movies – though it seems like they are fans in sort of a post-ironic hipster kind of way, if we may say so.
Anyway, after the jump, this week’s TMQ…
No stars, no bucks.
Wednesday, October 24th, 2018In case you haven’t heard, customers who get water from the City of Austin are under a boil water notice. The water treatment plants are overwhelmed by the volume of silt and organic matter that’s being stirred up by the release of water from the dams, as a result of the continuing rain in the area.
At my office, the water fountains, water dispensers, and coffee makers are completely shut down. (Even though the fountains and dispensers have their own filtering systems.) I’m lucky: the MUD that services our house in Lakeway is not impacted by this, we don’t have to boil our water, and I can put coffee in my Yeti cup (thanks to my beloved and indulgent sister) before I leave in the morning and keep it hot until I finish it off.
But I digress. I tried going over to the Dunkin’ Doughnuts near my office yesterday to see if they could do one of those big coffee boxes for the office. They just laughed at me. (Hey, I figured these places had their own water filtration systems.)
I just called over to the Starbucks nearest our office to see what their status was. (Again: Starbucks brags about their water filtration system.)
Not only was that Starbucks not doing the big coffee boxes, they were not brewing coffee at all. The guy who answered the phone told me none of the Austin Starbucks (79 of them, I think he said) were brewing coffee: if I wanted coffee, I’d have to go to Cedar Park, Georgetown, or Round Rock.
What does a Starbucks do if they can’t make coffee? I guess you could boil water (or heat bottled water) and do tea from teabags. Maybe serve pastries?
One of my cow-orkers said earlier that they expect this to go on for another twelve days. I can’t find any news or official government source that’s reporting an expected duration for this boil water notice, though, so I’m taking that with a grain of salt.
I swear, you people are going to make a prepper out of me yet.
Obit watch: October 24, 2018.
Wednesday, October 24th, 2018Joachim Ronneberg, certified Norwegian badass.
Mr. Ronneberg led the commando raid that blew up the Nazi heavy water plant at Telemark. He was also the last survivor of that raid.
Your loser update: October 23, 2018.
Tuesday, October 23rd, 2018NBA teams that still have a shot at going 0-82:
Chicago
Cleveland
Lakers
Oklahoma City
===============
I wanted to do some analytics on the NFL losers. Specifically, I wanted to get an idea (and perhaps express it in graphical form) of how many losers there were at various points in the season. Week 1 isn’t very interesting: there’s generally 16 losers out of 32 teams1. But week 2 and the weeks following are the ones where things become more interesting.
This is an HTML file containing the loser data from 2009-2018. Year’s on the left, week is across the top. So for example, in week 1 of 2018, there were 15 teams that had a chance to go 0-16.
I tried graphing this in Excel, but wasn’t totally happy with the results I was getting. Perhaps someone with more experience in data visualization can do something better.
1 I say “generally” because there are exceptions. There was a tie in week 1 of 2018, which knocked two teams out of loser contention. In week 1 of 2017, one of the games was postponed due to a hurricane, which left those two teams at 0-0 and with the potential to go 0-16 that week, for a total of 17 possible losers.
Noted without (much) comment.
Monday, October 22nd, 2018TMQ Watch: October 16, 2018.
Thursday, October 18th, 2018Apropos of nothing in particular, a musical interlude:
There. Feel better?
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Obit watch: October 18, 2018.
Thursday, October 18th, 2018Yesterday’s headline of the day:
Felix Smith, pilot for Civil Air Transport.
CAT evolved into the legendary Air America.
Quote of the day.
Wednesday, October 17th, 2018Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What they give the child is his first clear idea of the defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
— G. K. Chesterton (@GKCdaily) October 17, 2018
I have loved that quote ever since I first read it in Martin Gardner’s annotated The Innocence of Father Brown. Gardner carries the quote out a bit more:
When somebody says something like “I’ve never understood why horror films exist at all.” it kind of bothers me. And this quote is why: this is what good horror does. It reminds us “these limitless terrors had a limit”.
Likewise, I remember people arguing that “Boyz in the Hood” deserved an Academy Award more than “Silence of the Lambs” because “‘Boyz in the Hood’ is about something.” You know what? “Silence of the Lambs” is about something, too: it’s about that Chesterton quote. Buffalo Bill is the bogey man, and Clarice Starling is the knight of God. Even the climax reflects this idea: “…there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”
Story time.
Tuesday, October 16th, 2018The last two Sears stores in Austin are closing.
My father did all of his own home and car maintenance, and he swore by (and sometimes at) his Craftsman tools. We didn’t get the Snap-On trucks much in our neck of the woods, and hey! Lifetime warranty!
He also swore by Sears DieHard batteries. True story: once upon a time he was running around the house, frantically searching for the warranty for the DieHard in one of our cars. I asked him several times where the owner’s manual for that car was, since it wasn’t in the glove box. He ignored me the first few times, and finally snapped: “Why do you keep asking me about the owner’s manual?!”
“Because,” I said, with the quiet confidence of a Christian holding four aces, “you’re exactly the kind of person who would stick the warranty paperwork inside the owner’s manual for safekeeping.” Whereupon he went to his briefcase, pulled out the owner’s manual for the car, flipped through it, found the warranty paperwork for the DieHard battery, and proceeded to rush off to the Sears store before it closed.
(He apologized later.)
(Side note: I remember DieHards being warrantied for five or even six years. Now, it seems like you can’t find any car battery that has more than a two year warranty. What’s up with that?)
(Another Dad story: once upon a time, we were on one of our driving vacations. The starter on the car (a Chevy Suburban from the mid-70s: you know, 350 V-8 and plenty of room to work) went out in some small town in Arkansas. Dad, being the type of person who brought tools with him on vacation, dropped the starter out of the car in the middle of a Sears Auto Center parking lot: the manager of the Sears AutoCenter took us over to the local automotive starter rebuild shop, who rebuilt the starter while we waited, then drove us back to the store, where Dad reinstalled the rebuilt starter, and we were on our way. I’m pretty sure he sent a nice letter to corporate about that manager.)
I was loyal to Sears for a long time because of those experiences. The first crack came when I went to one of those local Sears stores to get my personal DieHard replaced under warranty…and they refused, claiming that DieHard was “too small” for my car and thus my warranty was void. Even though I pointed out to them that the DieHard in question had been installed by the other local Sears, and their beef was with that Sears, not me, they still gouged me $60+tax that I could barely afford for a new battery. Yes, this infuriated me.
There were other things. Lawrence has his own story of being screwed over by NTB, back when they were owned by Sears: he’s been boycotting the chain for 20+ years now. As time went on, Sears just seemed to become sadder and sadder, and the only times I went into one were when I was cutting through to get to my parking space. Then I pretty much stopped going to malls, period.
I know Chapter 11 is a reorganization, not a liquidation. But the way things are going, it seems like this is the final turning out of the lights.
Goodbye, Sears. You managed to micturate through all of the goodwill I had for you when I was younger. And for what?
Thematically appropriate Twitter.
Tuesday, October 16th, 2018Thematically appropriate for Halloween, anyway.
I have at least a passing familiarity with modern horror, mostly from hanging around with Lawrence. So this Twitter thread would have had me snorting beverages out my nose if I had been unwise enough to be drinking at the time.
Sample (scroll up and down in the thread to catch them all):
Gaiman: [hours later] however the romans called bread "eattus" which explains the modern origins of the word "eat," but if you look at norse influence an interesting thing happens
Barker: are you going to tell a story
King: the sun's coming up, my mom is gonna be pissed— Agouti "Halloween Radio Voice" Rex (@bitterkarella) August 21, 2018
Brian Lumley: Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this the Tale of the Two Squid Gods!!!
Lumley: See, first there's Nargolog the Black Toad Under the Hearth, the unfeeling monstrosity of eons!!!
Lumley: And then there's his brother Ed, who's an okay guy!!!!— Agouti "Halloween Radio Voice" Rex (@bitterkarella) August 26, 2018
(I know this is a few months old, but hattip to Morlock Publishing who retweeted it yesterday.)
Obit watch: October 16, 2018.
Tuesday, October 16th, 2018For the historical record, and by popular demand: Paul G. Allen.
Obit watch: October 15, 2018.
Monday, October 15th, 2018Catching up:
William Coors is dead at 102.
…
Along with his younger brother, Joseph, a Coors executive who supported Ronald Reagan’s rise to the presidency, William Coors, although not as overtly political, championed bootstrap success and free enterprise, and was widely admired by conservatives.
But he alienated unionists, blacks, Hispanics, women and gays with views and policies that critics called racist, sexist and homophobic, and members of those groups joined informal boycotts of Coors beer in increasing numbers in the 1970s.
Jim Taylor, one of the great Green Bay Packers:
NYT.
Cindy Lobel, food historian. I actually wasn’t familiar with her work, but I generally admire people who write about food and food history: I’m adding her book to my list. Plus: 48 is too damn young to die.
Betty Grissom, Gus Grissom’s widow. Thing I didn’t know: she ticked off a lot of people by suing North American Rockwell (the primary contractor for the Apollo program).
Her action brought Ms. Grissom considerable grief, with strangers accusing her of being unpatriotic and the close-knit space community shunning her.
The experience embittered the family, said Mark Grissom, who was 13 when his father died.
“We got the dark side of NASA,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “People who were my friends were no longer my friends. A lot of people turned their back on us, and Mom got a lot of hate mail. They were like, ‘How dare you sue NASA?’ We were no longer part of the NASA family.”
…
She told an interviewer that her husband’s sacrifice had helped pave the way for future missions in which other astronauts made it to the moon.
Still, she said, “I’m pretty sure he got to the moon before they did.”
“Of course he didn’t make it,” she added, “but in spirit I think he was already there.”
TMQ Watch: October 9, 2018.
Wednesday, October 10th, 2018Geezers on geezers on geezers. Wheel in the sky keep on turning.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Obit watch: October 9, 2018.
Tuesday, October 9th, 2018He played Richard Hickock (opposite Robert Blake’s Perry Smith) in the 1967 adaptation of “In Cold Blood”. He was also in “In the Heat of the Night”.
Mr. Wilson appeared in several dozen more films, including “The Great Gatsby” (1974), “The Right Stuff” (1983), “Dead Man Walking” (1995), “The Last Samurai” (2003) and “Monster” (2003).
He played a cruel dog-owner in three movies based on Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s “Shiloh” novels, and Saint Albert Chmielowski in “Our God’s Brother” (1997), a film adaptation, by the Polish director Krzysztof Zanussiof, of a play written by Pope John Paul II.
Mr. Wilson also had recurring parts on the CBS police procedural “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and Netflix’s science fiction drama “The OA.”
Oddly, it doesn’t seem that he ever did a guest shot on “Mannix”.
Bagatelle (#8)
Tuesday, October 9th, 2018The second most amusing thing I read yesterday:
“less than five seconds”. As a friend of mine put it, that’s “Oops, I clicked on the wrong link. (close)”
(If that’s second, what was the most amusing thing? The MLB RICO story, of course.)
Norts spews.
Tuesday, October 9th, 2018We have our first firing of the NBA season. You know, the NBA season that hasn’t started yet.
Phoenix Suns general manager Ryan McDonough out.
From ESPN:
He drafted the likes of Devin Booker, Josh Jackson, TJ Warren, Alex Len, Dragan Bender and Deandre Ayton. He had some early success, but the Suns are still in the same rebuilding mode that they were in when McDonough was hired. The team went 155-255 during his tenure.
The Suns also had five different coaches under McDonough. Last season, they fired coach Earl Watson three games into the season and named Jay Triano interim coach. In the offseason, they named Igor Kokoskov head coach.
In other news, I missed this story until Popehat tweeted part of it. Ken White’s take on this was more “look at the stupid things clients do”, which surprised me: I’ll touch on the reason why shortly.
Summary: the Los Angeles Dodgers (and other baseball teams) may be in trouble. Legal trouble.
…
…
FanGraphs has an interesting supplemental piece. The part that jumps out at me – and the one that I’m surprised Ken wasn’t all over:
Did the Dodgers do the RICO? I am not a lawyer. But the person who wrote the FanGraphs article is: I think she presents a good argument that, if the Dodgers are found guilty of human trafficking, that’s a “predicate offense” for RICO purposes.
Mail and wire fraud are also predicate crimes. So one count of human trafficking, and one count of wire fraud…to quote FanGraphs:
Admit it: wouldn’t you love to see the Department of Justice seize the Dodgers in asset forfeiture and try to run a baseball team? I know I would: a government run baseball team would make the 1899 Cleveland Spiders look like a model of competence and sanity.