…for Memorial Day, and I don’t know how old this story is. (It just came across Hacker News, for what that’s worth.)
From Hodinkee, a story about a Rolex watch. The serial number dates it to 1947.
But there’s more to the story than it being an old watch. It spent 52 years buried in an unmarked grave…because it belonged to a CIA pilot that was killed in action.
(Previously.)
Those who have been following my entries for Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day may have figured out there’s a theme going on here.
I went back and forth on whether I wanted to include this entry or not. In the end, I felt like: a person who receives the Medal of Honor, no matter what they do with their life later on, deserves praise and credit for heroism.
I can’t find a lot of information about Mr. Liteky’s early life, his ordination, or his joining the military online. But he did join the Army and served as a chaplain (with the rank of captain) with the 199th Infantry Brigade of the 12th Infantry Regiment.
He was out with the troops on December 6, 1967 when they came under fire from what’s described as a “numerically superior enemy force”. From his Medal of Honor citation:
At some point, he changed his name to Charles James Liteky. In 1975, he left the priesthood. In 1983, he married: his wife was a former nun.
He went on to become a peace activist (out of respect for his views, I am not using his military rank), and, on July 29, 1986, he renounced his Medal of Honor. According to his Wikipedia entry, he placed “it in an envelope addressed to then-President Ronald Reagan near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.” He is the only recipient of the Medal of Honor who renounced the award. He went on to participate in protests against US intervention in Central America and the invasion of Iraq.
He died on January 20, 2017, at the age of 85.
There is a website devoted to Charles Liteky which discusses his life (and quotes from his Medal of Honor citation). Mr. Liteky also wrote a book, Renunciation: My Pilgrimage from Catholic Military Chaplain, Vietnam Hawk, and Medal of Honor Recipient to Civilian Warrior for Peace.
I could have out this in an earlier entry, but, well, I forgot.
After dinner at Mala, Mike the Musicologist stopped off at Anvil Bar and Refuge for a drink. Because it was in the neighborhood, I’d heard about it but never been, and it was a weeknight so the crowd was more manageable.
One of the classic cocktails on their list – which I had not heard of before – was the Up to Date. This cocktail is credited to Hugo Ensslin – who I had also not heard of before – around 1917.
Mr. Ensslin was an interesting guy. In 1917 (or 1916 – sources differ) he published a book called Recipes for Mixed Drinks, which many people consider the last gasp of cocktail culture before Prohibition. Mr. Ensslin was a hotel bartender, and Mixed Drinks is mostly based on his hotel recipes, not on ones he got from other people. It is supposed to have been a big influence on people like Harry Craddock (of The Savoy Cocktail Book).
There was a reprint edition a few years back (WP review) that seems to still be in print. But there’s also a scanned version online.
It was a good cocktail. I liked the balance, and may try making one at home at some point.
Also: The Chanticleer Society, though they aren’t updating as much as I would like them to.
Also also: the Sazerac at the Rainbow Lodge is very good.
The lens pen was from Trijicon. Yeah, like they need an endorsement from me, but consider this one anyway.
At the weird intersection of SF geekery and gun geekery:
The other thing I wanted from Speer/Federal/CCI, which I did go back and get:
Not that much new to report, really. As I mentioned yesterday, we used today to go back and re-visit various targets of opportunity.
I had a good conversation with the folks at XS Sights: I have ghost ring sights on my Marlin lever gun, and I want to set up my social shotgun the same way.
We also had a nice conversation with the husband and wife who run Gru-Bee scopes. Gru-Bee sells (among other things) a modern version of the old 4X “baby” Redfield scope. These look great on a Browning SA-22, and the eye relief is enough so I can actually get a good sight picture. I sense an order in the near future, good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise.
The folks at Elite Tactical Systems are very nice, but I am a little frustrated with them. They make 7, 9, and 12 round magazines for the Glock 42. I thought the 9 and 12 rounders might be worth trying out: they had the 9, but did not have the 12 at the show. They did give me a card with a 20% discount code so I could order one online though. Except: the 7 and 12 round mags are out of stock online. The 9 is the only one that’s available. And the code expires June 1st, and there’s no backorder option. Sigh.
I see that I haven’t said much about food, other than the $14 bagels, coffee, and juice in the lobby. Breakfast has been pretty much catch as catch can. Lunch has been “what’s lunch?”.
We have had very good dinners, though, at all of the following places:
Tonight, since it is traditional as part of these affairs to have a good dinner on Sunday night: Rainbow Lodge.
Still in on the road mode:
Bo Hopkins, actor. My mother described him as one of those “oh, yeah, that guy” guys.
Ronnie Hawkins, musician. I feel like some of my readers will have more to say about him (and they are welcome to do so in the comments) but I did like this:
…I wanted to bookmark this article: “What Ever Happened to Scandium Bike Frames?” which I ran across the other day.
I think it’s a pretty good explanation of why scandium is significant, and the basic metallurgy of the aluminum/scandium mix.
One thing that isn’t mentioned, except in a passing reference in the end-user chart: Scandium is also being used in firearms. Smith and Wesson in particular has built a number of guns using scandium frames, like the 1911 E-Series.
On second impression, while I still like the bag from SAR USA, the Brownells bag was a little more comfortable to use. It has more of a shoulder strap, and proved to be fully capable of carrying the weight.
Best swag of the day: the grips side of Hogue (not to be confused with the knife side, which was across the aisle) was giving away thick heavy rubber gun mats. You know, the kind of thing that your local gunshop puts on top of the glass display case before they get out that vintage Smith and Wesson. Or the kind of thing you put down on the kitchen table at home before you start tinkering with your own gun.
Still haven’t found anything that grabs me, but the Cimarron people let me handle one of their Wyatt Earp Buntline Specials: it is a nice looking gun. Sadly, they did not have a Billy Dixon Sharps reproduction, for reasons related to being unable to secure them at night. However, they are up in Fredericksburg, and have a storefront there…
Something else that makes me go “Hmmmmmm…”: Walther has a new line of auto pistols, the WMP, chambered in .22 Magnum, which has not been a very common auto pistol caliber. And the price does not break the bank.
Guns are not sold at the show. But other items are (or can be) and I have picked up a few things.
Wilson Combat Zippo and Gun Guy from Wilson Combat. CEO from Columbia River Knife and Tool. Coffee mug from Eley.
I also picked up a t-shirt that should make Robert Francis O’Rourke cry.
There seems to be a little less swag this time around, and what there is, is of somewhat lower quality. But I have picked up lots of free hats and bags, some pins, lots of stickers and key chains, a few screwdrivers, and even some lens cleaning cloths. (One vendor was even giving away lens pens, which I thought was nice. Unfortunately, I can’t lay my hands on that item right now, but when I do dig it out, I’ll update.) Eley also let me have several sets of foam earplugs when I bought my mug from them. And, of course, more morale patches than Carter had liver pills.
(Once I sort through everything and take out the stuff I want, the rest of it is going to my brother’s children. Generally, if it’s something I like, and a fairly small and inexpensive give-away item, I try to get at least three of them: one for myself, and two for the nephews and nieces.)
Mike the Musicologist and I actually bailed on the show early today. By 3 PM, we’d seen the entire exhibit floor, and we’d revisited specific vendors we wanted to come back to. The plan for tomorrow is still to use it as a targets of opportunity day. (Speer had something else I want, but didn’t want to try to lug back to the hotel today.) Also, folks may be more willing to make deals if it means not having to lug stuff back with them…
It does seem like a smaller show than the last one we went to. And there were some vendors we would have expected to see that didn’t come: SIG and Crimson Trace being two that we specifically noticed.
We also noticed a very strong law enforcement presence, including a lot of folks running around the exhibit hall in full battle rattle. But I can’t tell if they were supposed to be between us and the protestors, or if they were attending the show on their own time (in full uniform, complete with tactical gear), or if they were there in case we all spontaneously rose up and started a mass insurrection against Brandon.
I report, you decide.
Edited to add: Walking distance today: 4.9 miles.
Still somewhat time constrained due to my vacation, so short and quick: Alan White, drummer for Yes. (He replaced Bill Bruford in 1972.)
Andy Fletcher, of Depeche Mode.
Not doing the press badge thing this year: I missed the deadline for applying, and it didn’t really buy me anything last time except access to the free drinks and snacks in the press room.
Best swag bag award (so far): SAR USA.
Walking distance today according to my phone: 5.8 miles (including the round trip from the Hyatt Regency in downtown Houston to the convention center).
It seems smaller than Wanenmacher’s, even though the Houston convention center is larger. It feels like the NRA show is more spread out and there’s a lot more space to move around. Mike the Musicologist and I covered a little more than half the exhibit floor today, and expect to finish off tomorrow. Which leaves us Sunday for return visits to targets of opportunity.
Cool stuff seen: well, not a whole lot that has me drooling, and nothing that made me go “ooooh, that’s a cool and clever idea”. Yet. Though I’m becoming more interested in the new Smith and Wesson CSX, and I get the impression some people have made a commitment to 30 Super Carry. I’m waiting for someone I trust to try out the CSX and report.
Encounters with protestors: very few. I didn’t notice any coming in this morning, and while there were some coming out this afternoon, they were all on the other side of the street. And quite frankly, their chanting was so poorly synchronized I couldn’t understand any of what they were yelling.
Price for two bagels, a medium coffee, and a juice at the Einstein Brothers bagels in the lobby of the Hyatt Regency: $14+.
More tomorrow, I hope.
Still on the road, so this will be short: Ray Liotta. NYT.
67 doesn’t seem that old these days.
Long delayed BAG Day update:
It took a while to get things lined up (my local gun shop had trouble getting in touch with their S&W rep) but I have my birthday gun on order. Unfortunately, there’s a 60 day lead time from S&W on that gun, so I don’t expect to see it before the end of June.
In the meantime, though, my local gun shop took in a foster Smith and Wesson. It looked so sad and lonely sitting in the display case all by itself. Plus, they had a very reasonable price tag on it, and…well…I adopted it. Details and photos to come eventually. It really isn’t much to write home about. There’s a fair amount of wear, but the trigger feels good, it is something I can easily slip into a pocket or carry inside the waistband, and it was $250+tax out the door (thanks to my local gun shop knocking $50 off the tagged price: yes, this is an endorsement).
Tomorrow, I’m heading down to Houston for the NRA Annual Meeting. Blogging will be catch as catch can, but I’m hoping to get in some reports from the road, and maybe even get a chance to handle a few cool things.
Simon Preston, organist.
…
But Mr. Preston, who maintained a vigorous solo schedule throughout that period, came to chafe at the tedious routine of playing and conducting regular services. He decided to leave the abbey and to concentrate on his freelance career, one that came to include more than a decade spent working with the Deutsche Grammophon label on the organ works of Bach, in whose more grandly scaled compositions he excelled.
“It was hard to imagine that anyone could have displayed the mighty Skinner instrument of St. Bartholomew’s Church, said to be the largest pipe organ in New York, more fully and effectively,” critic James R. Oestreich of The New York Times wrote in reviewing one of Mr. Preston’s many recitals in the city in 1992.
Noted:
Robert J. Vlasic, pickle guy. He was 96.
Yesterday was one of those “Day For Yourself” days that my company has been granting since the recent unpleasantness began. In my case, I used a large chunk of it to go down and renew my DBA for Low Fat Heavy Industries, which was a less than fun experience. (The people in the assumed names/corporate filings branch of the county clerk’s office were awesome. The problem was that the county clerk’s office has a horrible shortage of parking: it took me longer to find a parking space than it did to get the DBA renewed. And this is not downtown: the county clerk’s office is located near where Airport hits I-35.)
So I missed covering this yesterday, but I’m only a little behind: Harry Sidhu resigned as mayor of Anaheim. He still hasn’t been charged with anything.
Also resigning:
…
That’s Todd Ament, former head of the Chamber of Commerce, aka “Cooperating Witness #2”. (Previously.)
Roger Angell, baseball writer.
Mr. Angell was sometimes referred to as baseball’s poet laureate, a title he rejected. He called himself a reporter. “The only thing different in my writing,” he said, “is that, almost from the beginning, I’ve been able to write about myself as well.”
He disliked sentimentality about sports. “The stuff about the connection between baseball and American life, the ‘Field of Dreams’ thing, gives me a pain,” he once said. “I hated that movie.”
He was alert, however, to what he called the “substrata of nuance and lesson and accumulated experience” beneath baseball’s surface. And his humor flashed above all this.
This is odd, because I always associated him with that “Field of Dreams” school of baseball thought. (I have another name for it, but in deference to the dead and to the sensibilities of my readers, I won’t put that here.) I would occasionally run across a piece by Mr. Angell about baseball in the New Yorker, and…I don’t think I ever finished one.
This is a mildly amusing piece by Bill James that involves the late Mr. Angell slightly.
The “Dry Martini” essay. For some reason, archive.is won’t let me archive it.
This seems a little harsher than my usual obit, and I’m sorry for that. Props to Mr. Angell for living to 101. At the same time, his style of writing was not one I have a lot of sympathy for, and I wonder how far he would have gone if it wasn’t for his family connections.
Elspeth Barker, novelist.
She wrote one book: “O Caledonia”.
The book recounts the short, unhappy life of a girl named Janet, who, like Ms. Barker, grew up half-feral in a neo-Gothic castle in rural Scotland, avoiding people and befriending jackdaws. Both faced constant harassment from local boys, and both sought refuge in foreign languages and books.
Though the novel opens with Janet newly dead, murdered on a staircase, it is full of life, energized by Ms. Barker’s thistle-sharp eye for natural detail: She writes of mist that “floats in steaming filaments off the glens” and of Janet shaking “wet honeysuckle over her face.”
“O Caledonia,” her only novel, was a hit among readers and critics. It sold widely in Europe and won a number of minor British literary awards, including the Scottish Book Prize, and was shortlisted for a major one, the Whitbread Book Award (now the Costa Book Award).
To be honest, I probably would have let this get past me, if it wasn’t for this line from the obit:
On a totally unrelated note, I don’t have a good place to put this, so I’m sticking it here.
Horridge, who spent 25 years as the Houston Oilers’ mascot they called Roughneck, died at the age of 86, according to KPRC2’s Randy McIlvoy.
Horridge always wore a Columbia blue shirt over his shoulder pads with a shiny chrome hardhat emblazoned with the Oilers’ oil derrick logo and he carried a 48-inch rig wrench, which he used to implore the Astrodome crowd to make some noise.
Before the Oilers’ 1979 AFC Championship Game in Pittsburgh, Horridge told The Washington Post that he used to carry a plastic wrench with him at games, but he switched to a real one that weighed 44 pounds after some Steelers fans tried to rough him up in Pittsburgh after the AFC title game the previous season.
Longtime Houston Oilers mascot Art Horridge has passed away at the age of 86. I think all of us who went to games and covered the Oilers remember Art and his passion for the #Oilers @BudsOilers . Thanks to his family for sending these pics to us @KPRC2 pic.twitter.com/78bgxcNZxm
— Randy McIlvoy (@KPRC2RandyMc) May 19, 2022
(Hattip: Lawrence.)
Vangelis (Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou).
Yeah, yeah, yeah, “Chariots of Fire”, “Blade Runner”…
…in the late ’60s, he found success as a member of the Greek rock band Forminx and then with the progressive group Aphrodite’s Child, which had hits with the single “Rain and Tears” in 1968 and the influential album 666 in 1972.
He enjoyed a partnership with Yes lead singer Jon Anderson, and they released four albums as Jon & Vangelis from 1980 through 1991. (He had been asked to join Anderson’s prog rock band in the wake of keyboardist Rick Wakeman’s departure but declined.)
…
How about a musical interlude?
Ray Scott, pioneer of bass fishing as sport.
The idea for a bass fishing tour came to Mr. Scott, then an insurance salesman, when rain cut short a fishing outing with a friend in Jackson, Miss., in 1967. Stuck in his hotel room watching sports on television, he had an epiphany: Why not start the equivalent of the PGA Tour for bass fishing?
He held his first tournament at Beaver Lake, in Arkansas, where 106 anglers paid $100 each to compete over three days for $5,000 in prizes. A second tournament followed that year; in 1968 he formed a membership organization, the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society, or BASS.
In 1971, Mr. Scott started what has become known as the Super Bowl of bass fishing: the Bassmaster Classic, his organization’s annual championship tournament, which he paired with a merchandising expo for manufacturers of bass fishing boats and gear.
…
Mr. Scott was the showman of BASS, the umbrella company for tournaments, magazines and television shows. Easily recognized in his cowboy hat and fringed jackets, Mr. Scott memorably served as the M.C. for tournament weigh-ins, entertaining thousands of fans with his exuberant patter as anglers pulled flopping fish out of holding tanks.
“Now, ain’t that a truly wonderful fish?” he asked one tournament crowd. “How many of you want to see more fish like that? C’mon, let’s hear it for that fish!”
NYT obits for Rosmarie Trapp and Sgt. Maj. John L. Canley.
John Aylward, actor. Other credits include “Stargate SG-1”, “The X-Files”, and “3rd Rock from the Sun”. He also did some theater:
He appeared in stage roles at the Kennedy Center with Kentucky Cycle, and at Lincoln Center with the play City of Conversation. A classically trained actor, Aylward performed everything from Shakespearean roles to farce with plays by Alan Ayckborne, and dramas by David Mamet, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
His standout roles included playing Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, Richard III, Scrooge in Inspecting Carol and Shelley Levine in Glengarry Glen Ross, a role he played twice.
Marnie Schulenburg, actress. (“One Life to Live”, “As the World Turns”) She was only 37, and died from cancer.
June Preston has passed away at 93.
Interesting career. She was a child actress: among her credits, “Anne of Green Gables”, “Heaven Can Wait”, “It Happened One Night” (uncredited) and “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break” (uncredited).
She also had considerable musical talent.
A year after playing Ann Rutherford‘s daughter in Happy Land (1943), her final feature, Preston was discovered at age 16 by maestro Gustav Stern, a German conductor and vocal coach in Seattle.
She graduated from West Seattle High School in 1947 and began touring two years later. In 1952 at age 24, she debuted with a Metropolitan Opera company on a South American tour in the leading role of Mimi in La Boheme opposite Met standout Jan Peerce.
During the next decade, Preston performed in the world’s most prestigious opera houses and with symphony orchestras in the U.S., Europe and Central and South America. A soprano with a five-octave range, she was nicknamed the “Golden Voice,” and entertainment columnist Walter Winchell was an admirer.
She retired after her marriage in 1963.
Ricky Gardiner, guitarist. He worked with David Bowie (“Visconti co-produced Bowie’s “Low” album and brought Gardiner to play lead guitar on the first half of the iconic album.“) and with Iggy Pop on “Lust for Life“.
Rosmarie Trapp, of the Trapp Family.
…
This is one of the oddest hyena watches I’ve ever done. One reason is that I’ve never seen someone accused of “illegal registration of a helicopter”. (As we will see, there’s slightly more to the story than that.)
The city of Anaheim sold land to the Los Angeles Angels for a new stadium. There’s already been one issue with the land sale violating California affordable housing law.
Now, the state attorney general has asked a court to put the deal on hold. Why?
…
…
…
Okay, so we’ve got obstruction of justice and witness tampering, as well as bribery. I’m guessing the false statements probably involve lying to the Feds. As for the fraud:
Where does the helicopter come in?
The evidence, according to the affidavit, also showed Sidhu pursued an Arizona address to register his helicopter, despite the fact that he lived in Anaheim and based the helicopter out of Chino.
Had he registered the helicopter in California, he would have owed $15,888 in sales tax. Had he registered the helicopter in Arizona, he would have owed a $1,025 vehicle tax.
I’d tend to call that “tax fraud” myself, though I also have trouble throwing stones at someone who tries to lower their tax bill (especially in California).
It should be noted that:
The other odd aspect of this story is that I got tipped off to it by Field of Schemes. Neil deMause is a little more to the left than I’d like, but we find common ground in being opposed to giving tax dollars to sports franchises. This is the first actual political corruption story I’ve ever picked up from him, so take a bow, Mr. deMause.
Edited to add 5/18: Well, we have an actual indictment. But not against Mayor Sidhu: against Todd Ament, the former head of the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce.
According to federal officials, Ament – with the assistance of an unnamed political consultant who federal officials describe as a partner at a national public relations firm – devised a scheme to launder proceeds intended for the Chamber through the PR firm into Ament’s bank account, authorities say.
Federal officials say Ament and the PR consultant defrauded a cannabis company that believed it was paying $225,000 for a task force that would craft favorable legislation regarding cannabis.
The way I’m reading this, the charges against Mr. Ament aren’t directly related to Mayor Sidhu or the land deal: but the Feds had Mr. Ament nailed on those charges, and used them as leverage to flip Mr. Ament, who is strongly believed (based on poor document redaction) to be “Cooperating Witness #2” in the Sidhu affidavit.
Maggie Peterson, also known as Maggie Mancuso.
She doesn’t have that many credits in IMDB, but they are interesting. She appeared several times on “The Andy Griffith Show” (and in “Mayberry R.F.D.” as well as “Return to Mayberry”) and did guest shots on “Green Acres”, “The Odd Couple”, and several appearances on “The Bill Dana Show”.
And she was “Rose Ellen Wilkerson”, the long-suffering and slightly dim girlfriend of Don Knotts’s character in “The Love God?”, which both Lawrence and I have written about.
The print edition of “People”, though this does not seem to be official yet. Noted:
Katsumoto Saotome, Japanese writer. His major project was six volumes of stories from survivors of the Tokyo firebombing.
Mr. Saotome traced his efforts to document the Tokyo firebombing to his attendance at a lecture given by a well-known history professor in 1970. He recalled asking the professor why the attack air was never mentioned in the same textbooks that described the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. The professor told him that there was little documented evidence about the experiences of those who had lived through the firebombing.
Mr. Saotome decided he would seek out fellow survivors and ask them to share their stories of that terrible night. “I was not a popular writer,” he recalled, “so I had a lot of spare time.”
He also established, using private funds, a memorial museum.
He reserved some of his most potent anger for the Japanese government, which he said should have taken more responsibility for starting the war and compensated survivors of the firebombing. A group of them sued the government in 2007, but Japan’s Supreme Court rejected their claim.
Mr. Saotome said he never forgave his government for awarding Curtis LeMay, the United States Air Force general who had been the architect of the Tokyo air raid, its highest decoration for a foreigner, for helping to establish Japan’s modern air force after the war.
Jürgen Blin, boxer. He was best known for fighting Ali in 1971 (after Ali’s loss to Joe Frazier). Mr. Blin was knocked out in the seventh round.
Sergeant Major John Canley (USMC – ret.)
Sergeant Major Canley received the Medal of Honor for actions during the Battle of Hue City. His citation:
…
Sergeant Major Canley originally received the Navy Cross, but that was upgraded in 2018 to the Medal of Honor.
Robert C. McFarlane, former national security advisor for Ronald Reagan.
…
And its fallout left Mr. McFarlane so ridden with guilt that he attempted suicide in his home in February 1987. While his wife, Jonda, a high school English teacher, was upstairs grading papers, he took an overdose of Valium and got into bed alongside her. When he couldn’t be roused in the morning, he was taken to a hospital and revived. He subsequently underwent many weeks of psychiatric therapy at the Bethesda Naval Hospital.
It was a stunning act in official Washington. Many considered it an unconcealed howl of pain by someone from whom they would have least expected it — one of the capital’s most self-contained of public and powerful men.
Killing himself, Mr. McFarlane believed at the time, was “the honorable thing to do,” he said in an interview for this obituary in January 2016 at his home in the Watergate complex in Washington.
“I so let down the country,” he said.
He earlier had tried to explain his actions by citing the ancient Japanese tradition of the honorable suicide. But he came to realize, he said in the interview, that those ways had no resonance in modern American culture and that most people could not understand such behavior.
Henry Scott Stokes, journalist and biographer of Yukio Mishima.
Val Broeksmit. No, you haven’t heard of him, but this is one of the oddest obits I’ve read recently.
Mr. Broeksmit was an “itinerant musician”. His stepfather worked for Deutsche Bank, but committed suicide. After his stepfather’s death, Mr. Broeksmit somehow obtained his passwords and supposedly used them to download a bunch of “whistleblower” documents revealing misconduct by Deutsche Bank.
…
He also somehow got involved in the Sony hack. Mr. Broeksmit was 46.
Fred Ward. Damn.
Credits include the titular character in “Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins”, “Sgt. Hoke Moseley” in “Miami Blues”, “Quincy M.E.”, “Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann”, “Tremors”, “The Right Stuff”, and “Det. Harry Philip Lovecraft” in “Cast A Deadly Spell”.
Bruce MacVittie. Other credits include “Waterfront”, “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “Spenser: For Hire” and “The Equalizer”.
Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan, head of state of the U.A.E. As always, don’t look to me for geo-political takes, as I know nothing.
I have not found a good obit yet, but Randy Weaver apparently passed away. Here’s Reason‘s take.
That sniper was Lon Horiuchi. Lon Horiuchi murdered Vicki Weaver.
The RRTF report to the DOJ’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) of June 1994 stated unequivocally in conclusion (in its executive summary) that the rules that allowed the second shot to have been made did not satisfy constitutional standards for legal use of deadly force. The 1996 report of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Government Information, Arlen Specter [R-PA], chair, concurred, with Senator Dianne Feinstein [D-CA] dissenting. The RRTF report said that the lack of a request by the marshals to the Weavers to surrender was “inexcusable.” Harris and the two Weavers were not believed to be an imminent threat (since they were reported as running for cover without returning fire).
The later Justice task force criticized Horiuchi for firing through the door, when he did not know if anyone was on the other side of it. While there is a dispute as to who approved the rules of engagement which Horiuchi followed, the task force condemned the rules of engagement that allowed shots to be fired without a request for surrender.
Gloria Parker has passed away at 100.
Ms. Parker played glasses.
At a young age, Gloria began studying violin (she said she played a child-sized instrument at the Brooklyn Academy of Music when she was 4 or 5). At 8, she began learning to play the glasses from her grandfather, who had brought the skill (and eight fragile Bohemian crystal glasses) from his native Czechoslovakia.
“When I was still a little girl,” Miss Parker told United Press International in 1984, “I had a musical vaudeville act playing both the glasses and marimba.”
She mastered how to conjure music from 28 glasses, each filled with water or white wine to produce particular sounds.
“One drop either way makes a difference,” she told The Daily News in 2012. “Height, circumference — it all makes a difference soundwise.”
She would rub her fingers over the rims of the glasses to produce a musical range of two octaves as she played pop, classical, jazz and calypso songs.
…
She was also in “Broadway Danny Rose” as one of Rose’s clients.
Richard Wagner. He was one of the old CBS news guys who covered Vietnam and a lot of other stories.
Alfred Baldwin, unindicted co-conspirator.
Mr. Baldwin was the lookout for the Watergate burglars.
During the first break-in, in late May, the burglars installed two listening devices, Mr. Baldwin said in his interview. He was stationed across the street at the Howard Johnson Motor Lodge, from which he eavesdropped on the phone taps. He had logged about 200 calls by the time Mr. McCord realized that the bugging devices weren’t working properly and decided to stage a second incursion on June 17 to adjust them.
It was not clear at what point Mr. Baldwin saw that the police had arrived on the scene. A 2012 account in Washingtonian magazine said that at the time he was “glued to the TV watching a horror movie, ‘Attack of the Puppet People,’ on Channel 20 — oblivious to the situation developing across the street.”
But that account was wrong, Mr. Baldwin said. He said he had turned on the television to cover up the sound of his walkie-talkie, which he was using to communicate with the burglars.
…
In short order, uniformed police swarmed the scene, and the jig was up. E. Howard Hunt, one of the conspirators who had slipped out of the Watergate, rushed over to Mr. Baldwin’s motel room, told him to pack up the surveillance equipment, take it to Mr. McCord’s house and then disappear.
“Does that mean I’m out of a job?” Mr. Baldwin said he asked Mr. Hunt. But by then Mr. Hunt was out the door.
Mr. Baldwin rolled on the burglars and avoided charges. According to the NYT, he actually passed away in 2020, but his death only became known recently.
Bob Lanier has passed away at 73.
Lanier played 14 seasons with the Detroit Pistons and Milwaukee Bucks and averaged 20.1 points and 10.1 rebounds per game. He is third on the Pistons’ career list in both points and rebounds. Detroit drafted Lanier with the No. 1 overall pick in 1970 after he led St. Bonaventure to the Final Four.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Lanier was among the most talented centers in league history and added that his accomplishments went far beyond what he did on the court.
“For more than 30 years, Bob served as our global ambassador and as a special assistant to David Stern and then me, traveling the world to teach the game’s values and make a positive impact on young people everywhere,” Silver said in a statement. “It was a labor of love for Bob, who was one of the kindest and most genuine people I have ever been around.”
While this is sad and tragic, and I don’t want to minimize it, at least Kareem Abdul-Jabbar no longer has to drag him up and down the court for 48 minutes.
(Too soon?)
“I’ve got a serious situation here,” the Cessna Caravan passenger was reportedly heard telling air traffic control about 70 miles north of his final destination. “My pilot has gone incoherent. I have no idea how to fly the airplane.”
“Roger. What’s your position?” a dispatcher responded, according to the outlet.
“I have no idea,” the passenger reportedly said. “I can see the coast of Florida in front of me. And I have no idea.”
Spoiler: