Archive for March, 2022

« Older Entries

Musical interlude.

Thursday, March 31st, 2022

I feel like it is time for one of those.

I have been resisting reading The Cartel (affiliate link) for reasons. I actually started to type those out here, but then reconsidered.

Anyway, I have been sort of flipping through it before I go to bed, and Winslow used a line from this song as an epigraph for one of the chapters. I had not heard of it, or Tom Russell, before, so I looked it up on Apple Music and liked it.

Tom Russell also did a cover of this song with Joe Ely, but I thought I’d throw up a version with just Ely. As Lawrence once put it, this is the greatest song ever written about a rooster.

I feel sure I have mentioned this song before, which I picked up from another blogger (I don’t remember who) but a search does not turn it up under the title or singer. In any case, I feel like it is worth mentioning here, because it seems to have recently become available digitally on Apple Music and Amazon (affiliate link) in “The Legacy Collection Volume 3: Damron Sings Henderson”. Previously, I could only find it on YouTube, and the CDs were unavailable.

“Pull your sights up to 800 and hold a yard left for the wind” makes me smile every time. It also reminds me of Lindy Cooper Wisdom’s poem, “Grandpa’s Lesson“.

…But ain’t many troubles that a man cain’t fix
With seven hundred dollars and a thirty ought six.

Posted in Books, Music | Comments Closed

Brief note on film.

Thursday, March 31st, 2022

I don’t usually make note of individual podcast episodes here. There has to be some compelling reason for me to do so.

In this case: “The comedies of Preston Sturges“, from “Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast”.

I actually have several reasons for this one:

  • I’m very interested in Preston Sturges. I have not seen “Sullivan’s Travels” or “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”, but I very much want to see both. “Miracle” got a really good write-up in Joe Bob Briggs’s Profoundly Erotic, but there doesn’t seem to be a blu-ray, and the DVDs are expensive. Criterion needs to do an edition of that, since they’ve already done “Sullivan’s Travels” (affiliate link). (At some point, Lawrence and I plan a Saturday night double bill of “The Freshman” and “The Sin of Harold Diddlebock”.)
  • Joel McCrea, who we have seen recently elsewhere, and who I would like to see more of. He seems like a truly interesting gentleman.
  • Veronica Lake is always in order.
  • As I’ve said before, Anthony Esolen is a writer I greatly admire. (I found this while searching for an essay he wrote on the films of John Ford. Edited to add: finally found that essay, and added a link.)

Anyway, I commend this to the attention of the movie buffs in my audience.

Posted in Movies | Comments Closed

Quick note from the California legal beat.

Wednesday, March 30th, 2022

Eligible for parole in California: Frederick Woods. Mr. Woods was one of three men involved in the Chowchilla school bus kidnapping.

Richard and James Schoenfeld (brothers) were paroled in 2012 and 2015 respectively.

Mr. Woods, who was 24 at the time of the kidnapping, was given a sentence of seven years to life in prison. He began serving his sentence in 1978 and has been held at the California Men’s Colony, a state prison in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
The panel’s decision is subject to review by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who has 30 days to let it stand or refer the application to the full parole board. Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, cannot override the decision because Mr. Woods was not convicted of murder.

Not eligible for parole: Leslie Van Houten.

Van Houten is serving a life sentence for helping Manson and others kill Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in August 1969. Van Houten was 19 when she and other cult members fatally stabbed the LaBiancas and smeared the couple’s blood on the walls.

Posted in Bagatelle, California Über Alles, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 30, 2022.

Wednesday, March 30th, 2022

Marvin J. Chomsky, TV director. Credits include “Roots” and “Holocaust”. Also three episodes of a minor 1960s SF TV series, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “Mission: Impossible”, “Lancer”, “Bearcats!”, “Evel Knievel”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Little Girl Lost“, season 7, episode 4.)

Paul Herman. Credits other than “The Sopranos” and “Goodfellas” include “We Own The Night”, “Once Upon A Time In America”, and “The Last Temptation of Christ”.

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

Obit watch: March 25, 2022.

Friday, March 25th, 2022

Scoey Mitchell, comedian and actor.

Born on March 12, 1930, in Newburgh, New York, Roscoe Mitchell Jr. started out as a nightclub comedian. For one joke, he talked about mowing the lawn outside his new house when a white man complimented his work and asked how much he was getting paid. He said, “I get to sleep with the lady inside.”

Credits (other than “Barefoot In the Park”) include “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling”, and guest shots on “Lou Grant”, “Police Story”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man”.

Yvan Colonna. This is a couple of days old, and you’ve probably never heard of him, but the case is interesting.

Mr. Colonna was a Corsican nationalist.

Corsica is closer to Italy than France in language, culture and geography, and it is home to a nationalist movement that has mostly renounced violence but remains deeply rooted on the island.

In 1998, Claude Érignac, who was basically France’s appointed governor of Corsica, was shot and killed.

Mr. Colonna, who had always claimed his innocence in Mr. Érignac’s murder, was first sought by the French police in 1999, after investigators arrested a group of men suspected of involvement in the killing. Several of them identified Mr. Colonna as the gunman, although they would later retract their statements, accusing the police of having pressured them.

Mr. Colonna evaded capture for four years. He was convicted of murder in 2007. That conviction was later overturned, but he was convicted again in 2011 and sentenced to life imprisonment.

Three weeks ago, Mr. Colonna was attacked by another inmate:

…a known Islamist extremist who had been convicted on terrorism charges and had a history of violent acts in prison. The inmate, identified by French authorities as Franck Elong Abé, 35, beat, strangled and suffocated Mr. Colonna in the prison gym.
Mr. Elong Abé later told investigators that he had heard Mr. Colonna make “blasphemous” comments. Prosecutors have opened an investigation. But it is still unclear how the attack was able to last nearly 10 minutes without any intervention from prison guards.

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

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#84 in a series)

Friday, March 25th, 2022

Missed this yesterday, but: Jeff Fortenberry (R-Nebraska) was convicted. (Previously.)

A federal jury deliberated less than two hours before convicting the nine-term Nebraska congressman on one count of concealing conduit campaign contributions and two counts of lying to federal agents.

…

The congressman faces up to five years in prison on each count, although he could also receive supervised release.
Ironically, he does not have to give up his congressional seat. Federal law requires members of Congress to give up their seats only for crimes that are tied to treason.

I’m sorry, but you know I have to do this.

Going back to the story, though, he does face a primary challenge from Mike Flood (a state senator).

The investigation ramped up when the FBI discovered that a Nigerian billionaire, Gilbert Chagoury, had been funneling cash into the campaigns of four Republican politicians: former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, current California Rep. Darrell Issa, former Nebraska Rep. Lee Terry and Fortenberry.
It is illegal for U.S. elected officials to accept foreign money.
The World-Herald asked prosecutor Mack Jenkins, who led the case with the help of prosecutors Susan Har and Jamari Buxton, if Fortenberry would have been prosecuted had he gotten rid of the money soon after learning it was suspect. The other three politicians weren’t prosecuted; they got rid of any illegal money soon after they were confronted. Fortenberry took 2 ½ years to give his to charity. And was evasive along the way.

Mitt Romney, you say? Hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm.

In other news, I don’t know that I want to do a full flaming hyenas on this one, but I can’t resist the NYPost:

It was the usual: she got drunk…

…allegedly said one girl was an “acne f–ker,” and hurled multiple insults at other young girls as well.
“Hispanic f–ker,” she allegedly said to one girl attending the sleepover and “judgy f–ker,” to another.

She also threw up in a laundry basket and someone’s shoe. The article doesn’t specify if the shoe belonged to “judgy f–ker”, but I’d personally be pretty judgy if someone threw up in my shoe.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 24, 2022.

Thursday, March 24th, 2022

Madeleine Albright. WP.

Victor Fazio (D-California).

Mr. Fazio represented the Sacramento area from 1979 to 1999. As a member of the House Appropriations Committee, he helped bring home funding for numerous projects, including a multimillion-dollar environmental institute at the University of California, Davis. He also lobbied for the funds to protect 3,700 acres of wetlands west of Sacramento as a refuge; dedicated by President Bill Clinton in 1997, it is known as the Vic Fazio Yolo Wildlife Area.

John Roach.

He was instrumental in prodding Tandy to venture into the computer market. At the time, most small computers were sold as kits to be assembled by hobbyists, but Mr. Roach believed that consumers would welcome a model that they just needed to plug in.
His team presented the original TRS-80 prototype — cobbled together from a black-and-white RCA monitor, a keyboard and a videocassette recorder — to Tandy’s chief executive, Charles Tandy, and to Lewis Kornfeld, the president of RadioShack, in January 1977.
The Apple 1 had been introduced the year before, and Commodore and other companies were marketing their own home computers, but the TRS-80 (the initials stood for Tandy RadioShack) quickly became, for a time, the most popular computer on the market.

…

“We were finally able to ship some machines in September and shipped 5,000 that year, all we could assemble,” Mr. Roach said. “Our competitors shipped none.”
At just under $600 (about $2,700 in today’s dollars), the computer was relatively cheap (it was $399 if connected to a separately owned viewing screen). It was available in all 8,000 of the company’s stores.

Posted in Geek, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 23, 2022.

Wednesday, March 23rd, 2022

Lawrence tipped me off to the deaths of two actors which (per the policy of this blog) I have to note here.

Lawrence Dane. Yeah, yeah, “Bride of Chucky”. Other credits include “Lancer”, “Mission: Impossible”, “The F.B.I.”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Fly, Little One”, season 3, episode 21. “Overkill”, season 4, episode 24.)

Howard “Pepper” Martin. Sorry for the sourcing, but I haven’t seen this elsewhere.

Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, the 1990 revival of “Dragnet”, “T.J. Hooker”, “240-Robert”, seven appearances on “The Rockford Files”, six appearances on “Police Woman”, “Mission: Impossible”, four appearances on “Police Story”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “Bearcats!”…

…and he was a “Mannix” three timer. (“A Catalogue of Sins”, season 1, episode 11. “Last Rites for Miss Emma”, season 2, episode 22. “The Color of Murder”, season 4, episode 22.)

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

Obit watch: March 21, 2022.

Monday, March 21st, 2022

Av Westin, TV news guy. (“20/20”)

Dr. Julian Heicklen, “a charismatic, cantankerous chemistry professor who dedicated his retirement years to a series of public protests in defense of civil liberties” as the paper of record describes him. He was 90.

What is sort of buried in the NYT obit is the actual nature of his protests. He was an advocate of jury nullification:

Rain or shine, he arrived every Monday — the day when juries are typically chosen — holding a sign reading “Jury Info” and handing out yellow pamphlets that explained the meaning and history of jury nullification.
Though he typically stood alone, he was one of many around the country engaged in similar protests, motivated by concerns about what they saw as unjust laws and prosecutorial overreach and convinced that jurors willing to take the law into their own hands were the last barrier to tyranny.

This being New York City, he was indicted in 2010 on charges of “jury tampering”.

The case drew extensive coverage, giving Dr. Heicklen the sort of platform he had only dreamed of, and he played it for all he could. At his bail hearing, he hung his head and refused to speak, leading the judge to ask if he was sleeping.
“I’m exercising my Fifth Amendment right to remain silent,” he finally piped up. At his arraignment hearing, he laid into the judge and prosecutors for what he called their “tissue of lies.”
The case was short-lived: Judge Kimba M. Wood threw it out in April 2012, ruling that as long as Dr. Heicklen was not targeting individual jurors, he was merely exercising his First Amendment rights.

…

“The case cleared the way for people across the country to be able to engage in jury nullification advocacy without the threat of federal prosecution,” Chris Dunn, the legal director for the New York Civil Liberties Union, said in an interview. “He stood out there every day fighting what he viewed as unjust prosecutions and unjust criminal laws. And that’s admirable, classic political protest.”

Posted in Law, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 19, 2022.

Saturday, March 19th, 2022

John Korty, director.

He won an Emmy for “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman” and an Oscar for the documentary “Who Are the DeBolts? And Where Did They Get Nineteen Kids?” Other credits included “Go Ask Alice” and “Oliver’s Story”.

Robert Vincent O’Neil, writer and director. Among his credits: the original “Angel” (“High School Honor Student by Day. Hollywood Hooker by Night.”) and the sequel “Avenging Angel”. Also, the series “Lady Blue” which I do not remember:

Lady Blue starred Jamie Rose as no-nonsense Chicago cop Katy Mahoney and Danny Aiello as her boss. The MGM Television series was criticized by some for its excessive violence and canceled after 14 episodes. (Rose said she watched Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry films and worked with the actor to prepare for the role.)

Don Young (R-Alaska).

In a state whose small population allows for two senators but only one representative, Mr. Young, who cultivated the image of a rugged frontiersman with outsize clout in Washington, was sometimes called Alaska’s “third senator.” To this day, most Alaskans have had no congressman in their lifetimes but Mr. Young, who was first elected in 1973, during the Nixon administration.
Early in his 24th term in 2019, he became the longest-serving Republican in House history, surpassing the tenure of the former speaker Joseph Gurney Cannon of Illinois, who as a teenager had followed the 1858 Lincoln-Douglas debates and went on to serve 23 House terms in three discontinuous segments between 1873 and 1923. At his death Mr. Young was in his 25th term and 49th year in Congress. (John Dingell, a Democratic House member from Michigan for 59 years, was the longest-serving member of Congress in American history.)

John Clayton, former NFL reporter for ESPN and later for Seattle Sports.

“John was a pioneer as an NFL insider but also one of the kindest men you could ever work with,” said Seth Markman, vice president and executive producer at ESPN. “He literally never said no to a show that asked him to come on — from 6 a.m. to midnight, if you asked for the Professor, he was there for you. I’ll also personally remember how he loved and cared for his beloved wife Pat as she has battled multiple sclerosis. We will all miss John greatly.”
Clayton received the profession’s highest honor, now known as the Bill Nunn Memorial Award, in 2007. The award is presented annually by the Pro Football Writers of America in recognition of “long and distinguished reporting in the field of pro football.”
“It’s the highest honor any writer covering this sport can receive,” Clayton said at the time.

(Hattip to Lawrence for the Don Young and John Clayton tips.)

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 18, 2022.

Friday, March 18th, 2022

Akira Takarada.

He was “Hideto Ogata” in the 1954 “Godzilla”. (He also appeared in the 1956 American version.)

From there, Takarada went on to star in a slew of flicks featuring the King of the Monsters, including “Mothra vs Godzilla” (1964), “Godzilla vs Mothra” (1992). The actor’s last appearance in a Godzilla flick was in “Godzilla: Final Wars” (2004), although he filmed scenes for the 2014 US reboot “Godzilla,” which unfortunately didn’t make the final cut. However, he is still featured in the movie’s credits.

Dr. Eugene N. Parker. I actually saw this reported a couple of days ago, but didn’t have a good source for it.

Dr. Parker predicted the existence of the solar wind.

When Dr. Parker published his prediction in 1958, almost no one believed him, including the reviewers of his paper and the editor of The Astrophysical Journal that published it.
“The prevailing view among some people was that space was absolutely clean, nothing in it, total vacuum,” Dr. Parker told The New York Times in 2018.
In response to the reviewers’ negative comments, he appealed to the journal’s editor, Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, who was also an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago. Dr. Parker argued that the reviewers had not pointed out any errors in his calculations, which described how the particles flowed from the sun like water spreading outward from a circular fountain.
“He went where the equations led him,” said Michael S. Turner, an astrophysicist at the Kavli Foundation in Los Angeles who was a longtime colleague of Dr. Parker’s at Chicago. “And they led him to some very interesting phenomena that people hadn’t discovered.”
Dr. Parker, he said, was happy when people pointed out a mistake in his calculations but not pleased when people accepted prevalent scientific assumptions without question.
“He had little patience for ‘It’s well known that …’” Dr. Turner said.

“He went where the equations led him,” “He had little patience for ‘It’s well known that …’”. That’s science, right there. (Also, mad props to the late Dr. Chandrasekhar.)

Even though Dr. Chandrasekhar, a future Nobel laureate, disagreed with Dr. Parker’s conclusions, he overruled the reviewers, and the paper was published.
Four years later, Dr. Parker was vindicated when Mariner 2, a NASA spacecraft en route to Venus, observed energetic particles streaming through interplanetary space — exactly what he had predicted.

In 2017, NASA renamed “Solar Probe Plus” after Dr. Parker.

NASA had never before named a spacecraft after a living person. But Dr. Zurbuchen, who had met Dr. Parker years earlier, said he did not have much trouble getting Robert Lightfoot, the acting administrator of NASA at the time, to approve the change in 2017. Dr. Zurbuchen then called Dr. Parker to ask if that would be all right with him. “He said, ‘Absolutely. It will be my honor,’” Dr. Zurbuchen recalled.
Dr. Parker later said he was surprised that NASA had asked for his permission.
A few months afterward, Dr. Parker went to visit the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland, where the spacecraft was built and tested. Dr. Fox, then project scientist for the mission, recalled saying, “Parker, meet Parker.”

…

“Parker was always understated,” said Dr. Zurbuchen, who was watching the liftoff near Dr. Parker that morning. “I only saw him cry twice. The first time, when he pulled up to the rocket and his name was on it, and after that launch, when it really got to him — the magnitude of what was happening.”
Months later, Dr. Fox traveled to Chicago to share some of the early data from the Parker probe with Dr. Parker. “His eyes literally lit up,” said Dr. Fox, who showed Dr. Parker photographs not of the sun itself but of dim particles to the side of the sun — the solar wind.
Dr. Fox arranged to send him preprints of papers that mission scientists were writing about the findings. “He read them and he sent notes on them,” she said. “He was just really, really excited about a mission that was really going to do all the science that he always wanted to do.”

Dr. Parker was 94.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Science | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 17, 2022.

Thursday, March 17th, 2022

Peter Bowles, British actor.

Other than “To the Manor Born”, he was “Guthrie Featherstone” on “Rumpole of the Bailey”, and did guest shots on “Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased)”, “Tales of the Unexpected”, “I, Claudius”, “Space: 1999”, “The Prisoner”, and appeared four times on “The Avengers”, among other credits.

When I published yesterday’s obit watch, Tyler James was the only person confirmed dead in the Andrews County car crash. Since then, the names of the others have been published:

Mauricio Sanchez
Travis Garcia
Jackson Zinn
Karisa Raines
Laci Stone
Tiago Sousa
Henrich Siemans (driver of the pickup truck)

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 16, 2022.

Wednesday, March 16th, 2022

Sharon Lee Gallegos. She was 4.

On July 21, 1960, she was abducted from the backyard of her grandmother’s home in Alamogordo, New Mexico. A body was found about 10 days later: but, at the time, law enforcement did not believe the body belonged to Ms. Gallegos.

The body had remained unidentified, and known as “Little Miss Nobody” since that time. Yesterday, the local sheriff’s office announced that they had established through DNA testing that it was actually the body of Ms. Gallegos.

Tyler James, golf coach at the University of the Southwest. Sometimes there’s just nothing you can say.

Posted in Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Beware the Ides of March.

Tuesday, March 15th, 2022

(Hattip: Mike the Musicologist.)

Posted in Bagatelle | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 15, 2022.

Tuesday, March 15th, 2022

Scott Hall, professional wrestler. THR.

Very good at being very evil in the ring, Hall won the WWE Intercontinental title four times and WCW Tag Team championships seven times (as “The Outsiders” with Nash), and in 1994 at WrestleMania X at Madison Square Garden, he competed in an iconic ladder match against Shawn Michaels. However, he never won the world title.
During his 26 years as a wrestler, he also feuded with the likes of Sting, Lex Luger, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, Ric Flair and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
After his retirement in 2010, Hall was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame, first in 2014 as bad guy Razor Ramon (resplendent with gold chains, slicked-back hair and toothpick in mouth in an homage to Al Pacino’s Scarface character) and then in 2020 as a member of the villainous stable the New World Order (nWo).

…

Hall would wrestle in more than 1,500 matches across multiple organizations that also included the American Wrestling Alliance (1985-89), New Japan Wrestling (1990) and Total Nonstop Action (2002-08, 2010).

Posted in Obits | 1 Comment »

Hail Columbia!

Tuesday, March 15th, 2022

Frank Martin out as basketball coach at the University of South Carolina.

Hired in 2012, Martin, 55, compiled a 171-147 (79-99 SEC) career record with the Gamecocks. The win total is the third most in program history, and his tenure was highlighted by the program’s only Final Four in 2017.

The team was 18-13 this season.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 1 Comment »

Happy Pi Day!

Monday, March 14th, 2022

This is the third year I haven’t been able to celebrate as I’d like to. Perhaps next year.

But in the meantime, please enjoy the day responsibly.

Posted in Geek | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: March 14, 2022.

Monday, March 14th, 2022

William Hurt. THR. Variety.

Tova Borgnine, Ernest Borgnine’s fifth wife and cosmetics magnate.

Lawrence sent over a nice obit for Anne Beaumanoir. She spent a long time as

…director of the department of clinical neurophysiology and epileptology at the Geneva University Hospitals. She became noted for many papers on epilepsy and its treatment. In retirement, she lived between homes near her birthplace in Brittany and in the Drôme area of southern France.

Before that, she was part of the Algerian resistance.

Practicing as a neurophysiologist in the southern French city of Marseille in the 1950s, she became a porteur de valise, a suitcase carrier, as well as a chauffeur for the Algerian resistance members inside France as part of what became known as the Jeanson network, which was also supported by intellectuals including the writer/philosophers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
Convicted in Marseille for 10 years in 1959, she was released into house arrest the following year because she was pregnant, escaped and found her way across the Mediterranean — first to Tunisia and later to Algeria. After France conceded independence to Algeria in 1962, she worked for the ministry of health under that country’s first independence president Ahmed Ben Bella and was granted Algerian citizenship. (Dr. Beaumanoir remains revered in Algeria for her supportive role, as a Frenchwoman, in the fight for independence.)

Before that, she was part of the French resistance.

In early 1944, Dr. Beaumanoir helped save two French teenagers of Polish origin whose father, Ruben Lisoprawski, ran a bakery in Paris. Like most of his family, he had been taken to the Auschwitz concentration camp in German-occupied Poland and never seen again. But his children Daniel Lisoprawski, 14, and Simone, 16, survived in part because Dr. Beaumanoir learned that the Gestapo was planning a raid on a Paris apartment where the teens were being hidden by a Frenchwoman.
Dr. Beaumanoir went to the apartment to warn them and take the teens to a resistance safe house. That house was also soon raided by German soldiers, but a resistance leader managed to flee with the children over the rooftops of Paris to another safe place.
Eventually, Dr. Beaumanoir spirited them to her parents’ restaurant and home in Dinan, Brittany, where they remained hidden, moving among friendly locations during German house-to-house searches, until the end of the war in 1945. Afterward, the Beaumanoir family brought them up as if their own children.
In 1996, Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, named Dr. Beaumanoir as well as her parents among the Righteous Among the Nations, a designation for non-Jews who rescued Jews, for their role in helping the Lisoprawski family.

Posted in History, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Sunday, March 13th, 2022

Been a busy weekend, both for me and for sports firings.

Will Wade out as men’s baskeball coach at LSU. Five seasons, 108-54 overall. But: the NCAA has informed LSU that they are investigating a total of 11 violations, including eight “level 1” violations.

Additionally, LSU basketball shares fault with the football program in an additional Level I allegation that LSU “failed to exercise institutional control and monitor the conduct and administration of its football and men’s basketball programs” from February 2012 through June 2020.

…

Wade was suspended at the tail end of the 2018-19 season after Yahoo Sports detailed a wiretapped conversation between him and now-convicted middleman Christian Dawkins. The conversation recorded by the FBI included Wade openly speaking about a “strong-ass offer” he made in the recruitment of former LSU guard and Baton Rouge native Javonte Smart in 2017.
This specific allegation is outlined in the NOA as the first of the seven charges against the men’s basketball team, and was determined to be a Level I violation. In the charge, the Complex Case Unit wrote in this instance Wade “violated the principles of ethical conduct and/or offered impermissible recruiting inducements in the form of cash payments and job offers in order to secure” an unnamed recruit, who is believed to be Smart.

Nino Giarratano out as baseball coach at the University of San Francisco. This is tied to a lawsuit by three former players accusing him of “persistent psychological abuse and repeated inappropriate sexual conduct”.

Tom Crean out as basketball coach of the Georgia Bulldogs. This one seems to have actually been a performance thing: he was 47-75 over four seasons, and they finished 6-26 this year.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 12, 2022.

Saturday, March 12th, 2022

Dr. Donald Pinkel, big damn hero, has passed away at 95.

About 23 years ago, I was watching some sort of special on PBS. I don’t remember the title, but as I recall, they were talking about developments during the 20th century. One of the things they spent a lot of time on was the story of childhood leukemia.

Acute lymphocytic leukemia, a type of cancer that overwhelms the body with misshapen white blood cells, was once the No. 1 killer of children in the United States between the ages of 3 and 15, causing about 2,000 deaths a year. It had a 96 percent fatality rate — and doctors say that number might have been low, because the remaining 4 percent of cases were probably misdiagnoses.

There were drugs that could push leukemia into temporary remission. Emphasis on the “temporary”. It always came back.

Dr. Pinkel combined multiple chemotherapy drugs to drive the disease into remission. Then, when the patients were healthy enough, he and his team bombarded their skulls with radiation and injected drugs directly into their spinal columns, attacking places where Dr. Pinkel suspected the cancer was hiding during remission.
This would go one for months, even years. Children would lose their hair, their appetites. Some died. But by 1968 Dr. Pinkel’s regimen, which he called Total Therapy, was achieving remarkable results: Out of 31 patients in one study, 20 were in complete remission after three and a half years.
A decade later, after continued refinements to the protocol, the five-year survival rate was up to 80 percent. Today, still using Dr. Pinkel’s framework, it is 94 percent.

I realize we’re talking 60 years of scientific advancement here. But to me, this is still an amazing story. Turning things around from “everybody dies” to (almost) “everybody lives”. And going from zero to 80% in sixteen years?

Beyond that, Dr. Pinkel also helped build St. Jude.

One day in 1961 Dr. Pinkel got a call asking if he would be interested in a job as the head of St. Jude. During a period of emotional and professional distress, Mr. Thomas, the hospital’s founder, had prayed to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, for help. When he recovered, he decided to build a hospital to help children in similarly dire straits.
Dr. Pinkel was tired of the cold, wet Buffalo winters, but he wasn’t sure about the offer: Memphis was a segregated Southern city, and many in the medical community said Mr. Thomas’s status as a television comedian made it hard to take the idea seriously.
Still, he met with several members of the hospital board and came away impressed. They, like him, believed in focusing their efforts on childhood cancer, and they agreed that the hospital should be need-blind, and that both its staff and its patient population should be completely desegregated.
Dr. Pinkel drove to Memphis in his Volkswagen Beetle, arriving to find a hole in the ground where the hospital would one day be. He made himself an integral part of the planning process, insisting, among other things, that the hospital have integrated bathrooms.
He also insisted on as much common space as possible, including a single cafeteria for all —- doctors, scientists and administrators — to encourage creative cross-pollination. He also opened the cafeteria to patients and their families, to give staff members a visual reminder of their collective mission.
“It was a civil rights culture,” Jackie Dulle, one of his first executive assistants, said in a phone interview. “He wanted everyone to be equal.”

…

Dr. Pinkel and his team found early success with his Total Therapy approach but kept the results unpublished until the late 1960s, to ensure that the data was solid. Still, when he did publicize his findings, he was met with skepticism, even derision; other doctors said he was cruel to give patients and their families hope in the face of what everyone knew was an incurable disease.
But after he invited a few of his most prominent critics to visit the hospital, they changed their tune; one of them, Alvin Mauer of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, took over as the president of St. Jude when Dr. Pinkel left.

…

He won most of the major awards given in the medical field. In 2017 St. Jude named its new research tower after him, a testament to his persistence in the face of what everyone else said was an impossible task.

Posted in Obits, Science | 1 Comment »

Random Sherlock Holmes crankery.

Friday, March 11th, 2022

I do buy books that are not gun books. As a matter of fact, I’m quite fond of Sherlock Holmes. I don’t expect an invitation to join the Baker Street Irregulars, but I have both annotated versions of Holmes, and I enjoy reading about Holmes, Doyle, and related subjects.

I picked up two Holmes related books recently. One purchase was prompted by a Doyle-related book I recently finished, while the other was a word-of-mouth purchase. Since this is kind of long, I will put a jump here. For those who are not interested in bibliophilia or Holmes, another post should be coming along eventually.

(more…)

Posted in Books | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 11, 2022.

Friday, March 11th, 2022

Emilio Delgado. He was most famous as “Luis” on “Sesame Street” (for 44 years), but he also did some other work: three of the “Law and Order” shows, a regular role on “Lou Grant”, “Quincy, M.E.”, and the good “Hawaii 5-0”, among other credits.

Elsa Klensch, of “Style With Elsa Klensch”.

Odalis Perez, former pitcher for the Braves and Dodgers (also the Royals and Nationals). He was 44: according to his family, he apparently fell off a ladder at his home.

Bobbie Nelson, sister of Willie Nelson and pianist and singer in his band.

“My little sister was always on the piano doing great music,” Nelson recalled on the “TODAY” show in November 2020. “I would sit there on the piano stool beside her and try to figure out what the hell she was doing. … Sister Bobbie is 10 times a better musician than I am,” he said.

(Hattip on this to FotB RoadRich.)

Posted in Music, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

I think I love soccer now.

Wednesday, March 9th, 2022

Actually, no, I still can’t stand soccer.

But this is a fun story.

There was a massive fight at a soccer game between Queretaro and Atlas (who I gather are both teams in the Mexican Liga MX league) on Saturday. 26 people were injured.

Yesterday, punishments were handed down: Queretaro has to play at home with no spectators for one year, barras (supporter’s groups) are banned for three years, the owners were fined 1.5 million pesos ($70,450), and…

…the owners have to sell the team by the end of the year.

Queretaro’s ownership group (Gabriel Solares, Adolfo Ríos, Greg Taylor and Manuel Velarde) will also be banned from league-related activities for five years and the club will be returned to previous owners Grupo Caliente, which owns fellow Liga MX club Tijuana…
Grupo Caliente will be tasked with selling Queretaro by the end of this year, and if unable to do so, it will go under the ownership of Liga MX.

I’ve never heard of an owner being forced to sell a team before. I guess it may have happened in the past, but I’m not aware of it. MLB may have come close with Marge Schott, but they never actually pulled the trigger.

Edited to add: Mike the Musicologist cites Donald Sterling as a possible “forced to sell the team” owner. I’m going to give him the win on points for two reasons. First of all, I’m impressed that he remembered Donald Sterling: if there is a person who is even less of an NBA fan (or sports fan in general) than I am, it is MtM.

On April 29, NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced that Sterling had been banned from the league for life and fined $2.5 million, the maximum fine allowed by the NBA constitution. Silver stripped Sterling of virtually all of his authority over the Clippers, and banned him from entering any Clippers facility. He was also banned from attending any NBA games. The punishment was one of the most severe ever imposed on a professional sports team owner. Moreover, Silver stated that he would move to force Sterling to sell the team, based on a willful violation of the rules, which would require the consent of three-quarters, or 22, of the other 29 NBA team owners.

The thing is, it isn’t clear to me that he was actually forced to sell. There were suits and counter-suits, and his wife moved to sell the team – he claimed without his authorization – and it seems like the cases were dismissed before there was any vote or a forced sale by the NBA. All that seems clear is that Sterling’s wife managed to get the team sold off to Steve Ballmer before she was stripped of her ownership interest by league vote.

So even though it isn’t clear to me, my second reason for giving this to MtM on points is that the NBA seems to have come as close as any other sport ever has, and probably ever will (except Liga MX) to forcing an owner to sell a team. Certainly closer than baseball came with Schott.

Also:

The mascot of Brazilian league champions Atletico Mineiro has been banned for one game for “intimidatory” behaviour in last weekend’s city derby against Cruzeiro, the state football federation announced Tuesday.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: March 9, 2022.

Wednesday, March 9th, 2022

Conrad Janis, jazz musician and actor.

“Conrad Janis Is Glad to Live Three Lives,” the headline on a 1962 Newsday article read. At the time he was starring in the romantic comedy “Sunday in New York” on Broadway and, after the Friday and Saturday night performances, playing trombone with his group, the Tailgate 5, at Central Plaza in Manhattan. (On Sundays he’d trek to Brooklyn to play at the club Caton Corner.) When not onstage or on the bandstand, he could often be found at his father’s art gallery.
Sixteen years later he found himself on one of the most popular shows on television when he was cast on “Mork & Mindy,” which premiered in September 1978, as the father of Mindy (Pam Dawber), a Colorado woman who befriends an eccentric alien (Robin Williams). On Sundays during this period, he played in the Beverly Hills Unlisted Jazz Band at the Ginger Man, a club in Beverly Hills, Calif., whose owners included Carroll O’Connor of “All in the Family.”

…

In the movies, he played alongside some famous names: Ronald Reagan and Shirley Temple in the notoriously bad “That Hagen Girl” (1947), Charlton Heston and other prominent stars in “Airport 1975” (1974), Lynn Redgrave in “The Happy Hooker” (1975), George Burns in “Oh God! Book II” (1980).
He was on television from the medium’s earliest days, playing numerous roles in the late 1940s and ’50s, many of them on shows like “Suspense,” “Actor’s Studio” and “The Philco Television Playhouse” that were broadcast live. Some of those roles took advantage of his familiarity with musical instruments.

Among other credits, he did a few cop shows: “Baretta”, “Banacek”, “Cannon”. And he was a regular (“Palindrome”) on “Quark”.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre, TV | 2 Comments »

Brief historical note, suitable for use in schools.

Wednesday, March 9th, 2022

Today is the 106th anniversary of Pancho Villa’s raid on Columbus, New Mexico (also known as the Battle of Columbus).

KXAN has offered us a nice summary of the commemorative events going on in the area.

Short summary: Villa was bouncing around during the revolution, had just lost a battle, and his army was short on everything. He thought it would be a swell idea to do a cross-border raid, especially when he was told there were only about 30 soldiers in Columbus.

There were actually about 350 soldiers in Columbus. Villa sent “about 600” of his people (since he didn’t have enough supplies and ammo for everyone) and his troops had the initial advantage of surprise. However, the American forces rallied and drove off Villa’s forces.

In addition, many of the townspeople were armed with rifles and shotguns.

Armed citizens for the win!

In spite of Villa proclaiming that the raid was a success by evidence of captured arms and equipment from the camp, which included over 300 rifles and shotguns, 80 horses, and 30 mules, the raid was a tactical disaster for him with ill-afforded casualties of 90 to 170 dead from an original force that had numbered 484 men, including at least 63 killed in action and at least seven more who later died from wounds during the raid itself. Of those captured during the raid, seven were tried; of those, one sentence was commuted to life in prison; and six were convicted and executed by hanging. Two were hanged on June 9, 1916; four were hanged on June 30, 1916.

I haven’t read it yet, but I’ve liked Jeff Guinn’s other books, so I’ll mention War on the Border: Villa, Pershing, the Texas Rangers, and an American Invasion (affiliate link), which comes out in trade paperback in May.

Posted in Books, History | Comments Closed

« Older Entries