Archive for December 31st, 2020

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 275

Thursday, December 31st, 2020

New Year’s Eve, the night when all the amateur drunks are out on the road. These seem fitting. (We’ll do Travel Thursday on Friday again this week.)

Shot: From the Laphroaig Whisky channel, a tour of the Laphroaig distillery.

Chaser: “Space Driving Tactics”. This has nothing to do with Star Wars (though if you want that, I assume you’ve seen Ian’s video) but is instead a 1971 driver’s ed film about the importance of allowing space so you can react to the drivers around you. This seems especially important on a night like tonight.

Posted in Cars, History, Mixology | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 31, 2020.

Thursday, December 31st, 2020

This is a couple of days old, but I missed it until someone mentioned it to me: William Link.

Mr. Link and his partner, Richard Levinson, created a bunch of famous TV series: “Columbo”, “Murder She Wrote”, and, of course, “Mannix”.

Link and Levinson created the character of Lt. Columbo, the cigar-chomping, perpetually underestimated detective, for an episode of the Chevy Mystery Show in 1960. Eight years later, they revisited the character (and the initial story) with a telefilm called Prescription: Murder, which starred Peter Falk as Columbo. It became a regular series in 1971, running for seven years of wealthy and powerful killers thinking themselves a step ahead of Columbo, but always slipping up just enough for the detective to catch them in a lie that cracked the case.

Burning in Hell watch: Samuel Little.

Mr. Little had confessed to having committed 93 murders between 1970 and 2005, at least 50 of which have been verified by law enforcement officers, the F.B.I. said. He had been convicted of at least eight murders, some of which were solved using D.N.A. analysis.
Many of Mr. Little’s victims were marginalized, young Black women who were estranged from their families and struggling with poverty and addiction. In many cases, their deaths did not draw the same level of attention or outrage as other killings.

Posted in Law, Mannix, Obits, TV | Comments Closed