Archive for September 15th, 2020

Your loser update: week 1, 2020.

Tuesday, September 15th, 2020

Apparently, the NFL started their regular season this weekend.

I just barely noticed.

It isn’t so much the politics, although McThag has a good post up on that. I’m just finding it really difficult to care.

Still, one of the motivations for starting this blog was the NFL loser update, and as a wise man once said…

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

San Francisco
Carolina
Tampa Bay
Atlanta
Dallas
Philadelphia
New York Football Giants
Minnesota
Detroit
Cincinnati
Cleveland
Denver
Indianapolis
Houston
New York Jets
Miami

In other semi-related football news, I have been reading as much of Gregg Easterbrook’s Twitter as I can stomach, and there has been no mention of “Tuesday Morning Quarterback” at all. Not just a lack of pointers to the current column, but also a lack of “if you liked it, write our sponsor” messages. I have to assume that he’s not doing it this year, though his silence on the subject is a little strange.

Posted in Loser, Music, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | 4 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 169

Tuesday, September 15th, 2020

I feel like opening the liquor cabinet.

Anthony Bourdain makes a Negroni.

The Negroni has been a favorite cocktail of mine during my Wednesday night drinking bouts. One of the online sources I’ve been using suggests shaking rather than stirring.

Next up: of course, the Sidecar. With a diversion into why you should use quality ingredients.

I kind of like this guy. He doesn’t seem to be putting on a YouTube persona, unlike a lot of the other cocktail video makers. As a wrap-up, here’s another one of his: this time, on the Moscow Mule, another one of my go-to Wednesday night cocktails.

There seem to be people who think you should make your own ginger syrup. I’m just a simple home drinker who works 40 hours a week and doesn’t have time to mess with that, so I use a good quality bottled ginger beer. I’ve had good luck with Fever-Tree, but I’m out of that at the moment, and am thinking Fentimans might be worth trying if I can get my hands on some. (I’ve been using Tito’s vodka, not because it is local, but because it seems like a decent vodka that doesn’t break the bank or give you hangovers.)

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Obit watch: September 15, 2020.

Tuesday, September 15th, 2020

Jack Murphy, aka “Murph the Surf”, the man who stole the Star of India. He was also a convicted murderer.

At the J.P. Morgan Hall of Gems and Minerals at the American Museum of Natural History, on Central Park West, they noted lax security and gawked at what they found there: the Star of India, a 563-carat, oval-shaped blue sapphire, 2.5-inches long (a golf ball is 1.68 inches in diameter); the DeLong Star Ruby, at 100.32 carats; and the 116-carat Midnight Star, one of the world’s largest black sapphires.
On the night of Oct. 29 [1964], a Thursday, with Mr. Clark on the street as lookout, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Kuhn, carrying a coil of rope, scaled a tall iron fence behind the museum, climbed a fire escape to the fifth floor and inched along a narrow ledge. Tying the rope to a pillar above an open fourth-floor window, Mr. Murphy swung down and used his foot to move the sash.
They were in.
The glass protecting the important gems was a third of an inch thick, too strong to break with a rubber mallet. Instead of risking noise with heavy blows, they used cutters to score circles of glass; duct tape to cover the circles, to prevent shattering and muffle the sound; and a rubber suction cup to pull the pieces out.
They opened three cases and bagged 22 prizes: emeralds, diamonds, rubies, sapphires and gem-laden bracelets, brooches and rings. Finally, they went out the window, climbed down and walked away, encountering several police officers on their beat.
“Good evening, officers,” Mr. Murphy said. They gave him a nod and kept walking.

They were caught within days and served time.

In 1967, he and a Miami thug, Jack Griffith, met Terry Rae Frank and Annelie Mohn, secretaries who had stolen $500,000 in securities from a California brokerage where they worked. Prosecutors later said Mr. Murphy had conspired with the women in the theft, and gave them a hide-out in Miami.
Mr. Murphy and Mr. Griffith took the women on their last ride: a midnight speedboat excursion to Hollywood, north of Miami, ostensibly to discuss disposing of the securities (worth $4 million in today’s dollars). But in a waterway called Whiskey Creek, the women were bludgeoned and hacked to death, and their bodies, anchored with concrete blocks, were dumped overboard.
Traced through the stolen securities, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Griffith were charged with the killings. In a 1969 trial in Fort Lauderdale, they blamed each other for the murders and were both convicted. Mr. Griffith was sentenced to 45 years and Mr. Murphy to life in prison.
After 17 years in Florida prisons, Mr. Murphy was released in 1986, vowing to spend his remaining years on “God’s business.” For three decades, supported by groups like the International Network of Prison Ministries, he traveled from his home in Crystal River to preach to inmates in a dozen countries.
He appeared on Christian broadcasts and at criminal rehabilitation conferences, sometimes with an entourage of major league athletes and popular singers. In 2000, the Florida Parole Board ended his lifetime parole.

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