Archive for May, 2023

Obit watch: May 31, 2023.

Wednesday, May 31st, 2023

John Beasley, actor. Other credits include “The Sum of All Fears”, “The Pretender”, and “To Sir, with Love II”.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Claudia Rosett, journalist and Adjunct Fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Highlights of her journalism career include exposing the Oil-for-Food corruption scandal at the United Nations; covering the Russian invasion of Chechnya; and monitoring Beijing’s abrogation of its one-country, two-systems promise on Hong Kong. Her short book, What to Do About the UN, argues that the international organization founded in 1945 as a vehicle to avert war and promote human freedom and dignity has instead become fraught with bigotry, fraud, abuse, and corruption.
One of her most memorable pieces of reporting took place on June 4, 1989, when she was present in Tiananmen Square as Chinese tanks rolled over unarmed, peaceful student protestors. In an article published in the Wall Street Journal the next day, she wrote, “With this slaughter, China’s communist government has uncloaked itself before the world.” Thirty-four years later, these words still ring true.

NYT obit for Brian Shul (archived).

Obit watch: May 30, 2023.

Tuesday, May 30th, 2023

C. Donald Bateman, big damn hero, passed away on Sunday. He was 91.

Most people outside of a small specialized circle have probably never heard of him, but:

…Bateman is credited by industry experts as having saved more lives than anyone in aviation history.

Back in the day, there was a huge problem with airplanes flying into the ground. The industry refers to this as “controlled flight into terrain” (CFIT). Two high profile examples of this were Southern Airways Flight 932 (the Marshall University crash) and TWA Flight 514 (the Mount Weather crash).

In the 1960s and 70s, there was an average of one CFIT accident per month, and CFIT was the single largest cause of air travel fatalities during that time.

Prior to the development of GPWS, large passenger aircraft were involved in 3.5 fatal CFIT accidents per year, falling to 2 per year in the mid-1970s.

Don Bateman developed the Ground Proximity Warning System (GPWS) which warns pilots when they’re getting too close to the ground.

Those early systems used a radar altimeter to track how high the plane was above the ground. It helped a lot, but it wasn’t perfect: the GPWS had a “blind spot” looking forward, and could also be fooled if the plane was configured for landing.

So Don Bateman went on to develop the Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) which ties into GPS and a terrain database. EGPWS gives even more warning.

There’s a great story about the early development of EGPWS: Mr. Bateman found out that, after the Soviet Union had fallen apart, there was a huge terrain database that the Soviets had built up available for sale on the black market. So he went to his superiors at Honeywell and convinced them to buy the database, and the early EGPWS were built on that.

Today, what the FAA calls “terrain awareness and warning systems” (TAWS) are required on “all U.S. registered turbine-powered airplanes with six or more passenger seats (exclusive of pilot and copilot seating)”.

Bateman assembled a small team to work exclusively on flight safety systems — over the years, typically fewer than 10 people.
Bob Champion, who came to manage the team for Bateman, said “he looked for innovators who could drive his ideas. He liked people who disagreed and argued so we’d have a good debate about how to solve a problem.”
He said Bateman called it a “team of mavericks.”

Bateman’s team devised critical safety additions, including:

The technology eliminated the “No. 1 killer in aviation for decades,” said Bill Voss, chief executive of the Flight Safety Foundation. “It’s accepted within the industry that Don Bateman has probably saved more lives than any single person in the history of aviation.”

Texas, our Texas!

Monday, May 29th, 2023

For this year’s Memorial Day post, I’m going to lead off with a photo. Which is, frankly, not all that great because of the limitations of the situation, but it does serve to illustrate a story.

This is a photo I took when my brother, my nephew, and I went to see the Battleship Texas in dry dock.

If you click to embiggen, you’ll see a green dot. Here’s a cropped version, which might make it easier to see:

The green dot is from a laser pointer belonging to one of the tour guides. It shows where the Texas was patched.

Patched, you say?

(more…)

Obit watch: May 29, 2023.

Monday, May 29th, 2023

George Maharis. THR.

I think “Route 66” was patient zero for a certain type of show: the mysterious drifter (or drifters: I can think of some shows with a pair, but I can’t think of any with more than two) come to a town, meddle in the affairs of other people solve someone’s problems, and then move on to the next town. (See: “The Fugitive”, “The Incredible Hulk”, “The Master”, etc. I think TV Tropes refers to this as “Walking the Earth“.)

Amazon Prime has four seasons of the show available. I feel like I want to watch it, and I have tried to watch it. But I just can’t get through the first episode.

Other credits include, yes, “The Master”, “SST: Death Flight”, “Movin’ On” (I don’t think that counts as a “Walking the Earth” show, in spite of the TV Tropes entry, but I believe “BJ and the Bear” would), and “McMillan and Wife”.

Obit watch: May 27, 2023.

Saturday, May 27th, 2023

Ed Ames. THR.

People of a certain age may remember him from the “Daniel Boone” TV show, or as a singer with the Ames Brothers, or for theater work (including “Chief Bromden” in the 1963 Broadway “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”).

People of my age remember him from a single clip from the Johnny Carson show, which I haven’t seen anyone actually reproduce anywhere, so here it is:

Gary Kent, knock-around guy. He was a stunt man (and stunt coordinator), acted some, and even directed a bit. Acting credits include “The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant”, “The New Adam-12”, and “Sex Terrorists on Wheels”.

Marlene Clark. Other credits include “The Rookies”, “McCloud”, and “Mod Squad”.

Obit watch: May 25, 2023.

Thursday, May 25th, 2023

Tina Turner. THR. Pitchfork.

I’m not badmouthing the dead, but I do think there’s something worth pointing out here:

“After suffering a stroke in 2009 because of my poorly controlled hypertension I struggled to get back up on my feet,” she penned. “This is when I first learned that my kidneys didn’t work that well anymore. They had already lost thirty-five percent of their function.”
Turner eventually “developed a fatal dislike” of her prescription pills and even “convinced” herself that they made her feel “worse.”
So without consulting with her doctors, she “replaced” her “conventional medication” with “homeopathic” remedies.
“Indeed, I started feeling better after a while,” the 12-time Grammy winner noted. However, she was in for a rude awakening when she went for her “next routine check-up.”
“Rarely in my life had I been so wrong. I had not known that uncontrolled hypertension would worsen my renal disease and that I would kill my kidneys by giving up on controlling my blood pressure,” she confessed.

Homeopathic “remedies”.

Are the “dangers of mass popular delusion” not “so menacing”?

Nicholas Gray, founder of Gray’s Papaya.

For the record: NYT obit for Rolf Harris.

Yes, I know…

Wednesday, May 24th, 2023

Tina Turner tomorrow, after the dust has had a chance to settle.

Obit watch: May 24, 2023.

Wednesday, May 24th, 2023

Brian Shul, SR-71 pilot and author, passed away over the weekend.

I’ve had this obit on hold for a few days because I couldn’t find a good source to link to. FotB RoadRich forwarded the Flying obit, so much credit to him.

Bill Lee, musician.

Over six decades, in thousands of live performances and on more than 250 record albums, Mr. Lee’s mellow and ebullient string bass accompanied a pantheon of music stars, including as well Duke Ellington, Arlo Guthrie, Odetta, Simon and Garfunkel, Harry Belafonte, Ian & Sylvia, Judy Collins, Tom Paxton and Peter, Paul and Mary.

He also wrote film scores for the first four feature films directed by Spike Lee, his son.

Chas Newby.

Newby was a member of John Lennon’s first band The Quarrymen, and news of his death was announced by The Cavern Club Liverpool — a music venue where The Beatles performed before finding global stardom.
“It’s with great sadness to hear about the passing of Chas Newby,” the venue wrote in a Facebook post. “Chas stepped in for The Beatles for a few dates when Stuart Sutcliffe stayed in Hamburg and latterly he played for The Quarrymen.”

Gerald Castillo, actor. Other credits include “FBI: The Unheard Music The Untold Stories”, “Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects”, the 1990 “Dragnet”, and the 1990-1991 “The New Adam-12”.

Kenneth Anger, the Hollywood Babylon guy. He also did some “experimental” films. (Edited to add: NYT obit archived.)

I’ve heard more than once that HB is notoriously inaccurate. I know, I know, but: Wikipedia.

And here’s a direct link to the “You Must Remember This” episodes (which I have not listened to yet, not being a regular listener of YMRT).

Obit watch: May 23, 2023.

Tuesday, May 23rd, 2023

Lawrence emailed an obit for C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel for George Bush and long-time advisor to other presidents. NYT (archived).

Rick Wolff. Interesting guy. He was a radio host on WFAN. Before that, he was the “psychological coach” for the Cleveland Indians: one of the first sports psychologists hired by a major league team.

Even though sports psychology was rare in baseball, Mr. Wolff said on his show last year, Cleveland’s players “took the mental side of the game seriously” and within a few years were a “powerhouse in the American League.”
The idea caught on, he added, and “these days it’s the rare, rare sports team or professional or college organization that doesn’t have at least one sports psychologist on their staff.”

As an author, he wrote, among other books, “Secrets of Sports Psychology Revealed: Proven Techniques to Elevate Your Performance” (2018) and “Harvard Boys: A Father and Son’s Adventure Playing Minor League Baseball” (2007), which he wrote with John Wolff.

The Detroit Tigers picked Mr. Wolff late in the 1972 amateur draft, and he played in their minor league system in 1973 and 1974 while completing his Harvard bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Rick Hoyt, marathon runner with his father Dick Hoyt. I wrote about the Hoyts when Dick Hoyt passed away in 2021, so I’ll point you back to that obit and to the Rick Reilly essay.

The pair competed nearly every year in the Boston Marathon from 1980 through 2014. In 2013, Dick and Rick Hoyt were honored with a bronze statue near the race’s starting line.
They completed more than 1,100 races together, including marathons, triathlons and duathlons, a combination of biking and running.

Ray Stevenson, actor. IMDB.

“Kill the Irishman” is an interesting movie that I have a sentimental fondness for (because Cleveland) and he was good as Danny Greene. But the movie could have been a lot better than it actually was.

Rolf Harris, “Australian-born, UK-resident presenter, actor and convicted sex offender” (stealing Lawrence‘s blurb). IMDB.

Helmut Berger, actor noted for his work with Luchino Visconti. IMDB. (He was also in “Victory at Entebbe” and “The Godfather Part III”.)

Obit watch: May 20, 2023.

Saturday, May 20th, 2023

Jim Brown.

Playing for the Browns from 1957 to 1965 after earning all-American honors at Syracuse University in football and lacrosse, Brown helped take Cleveland to the 1964 National Football League championship.
In any game, he dragged defenders when he wasn’t running over them or flattening them with a stiff arm. He eluded them with his footwork when he wasn’t sweeping around ends and outrunning them. He never missed a game, piercing defensive lines in 118 consecutive regular-season games, though he played one year with a broken toe and another with a sprained wrist.
“All you can do is grab, hold, hang on and wait for help,” Sam Huff, the Hall of Fame middle linebacker for the Giants and the Washington team now known as the Commanders, once told Time magazine.
Brown was voted football’s greatest player of the 20th century by a six-member panel of experts assembled by The Associated Press in 1999. A panel of 85 experts selected by NFL Films in 2010 placed him No. 2 all time behind the wide receiver Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers.
He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, the Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1984 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995.

He retired in 1966…

He had appeared in the 1964 western “Rio Conchos” and was involved in the shooting of the World War II film “The Dirty Dozen” in England, with plans to attend the Browns’ training camp afterward. But wet weather delayed completion of the filming. When he notified Art Modell, the Browns’ owner, that he would be reporting late, Modell said he would fine him for every day he missed camp. Affronted by the threat, Brown called a news conference to announce that he was done with pro football.

Handsome with a magnificent physique — he was a chiseled 6 feet 2 inches and 230 pounds — Brown appeared in many movies and was sometimes cited as a Black Superman for his cinematic adventures.
“Although the range of emotion Brown displayed onscreen was no wider than a mail slot, he never embarrassed himself, never played to a demeaning stereotype of the comic patsy,” James Wolcott wrote in The New York Review of Books in his review of Dave Zirin’s 2018 biography, “Jim Brown: Last Man Standing.” He called Brown “a rugged chassis for a more self-assertive figure, the Black uberman.”
One of Brown’s best-remembered roles was in “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), in which he played one of 12 convicts assembled by the Army for a near-suicide mission to kill high-ranking German officers at a French chateau in advance of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. He next played a Marine captain in the Cold War thriller “Ice Station Zebra” (1968).

IMDB. He was also a prominent civil rights activist.

Brown led the N.F.L. in rushing in eight of his nine seasons. He also set N.F.L. records for career yardage (12,312), total touchdowns (126), touchdowns by running (106), and average yards rushing per game (104) and per carry (5.22). He ran for more than 1,000 yards seven times when teams played only 12 and then 14 games a season (they now play 17), and at a time when the rule book favored the passing game over running plays. He caught 20 touchdown passes, and he returned kickoffs.

Martin Amis, British novelist.

He is best known for his so-called London trilogy of novels — “Money: A Suicide Note” (1985), “London Fields” (1990) and “The Information” (1995) — which remain, along with his memoir, his most representative and admired work.

Mr. Amis’s misanthropic wit made his voice at times reminiscent of that of his father, Kingsley Amis. Kingsley, who died in 1995, was one of the British working- and middle-class novelists of the 1950s known as the Angry Young Men and became famous with the success of his comic masterpiece “Lucky Jim” (1954).
Father and son were close, but they disagreed about much. Kingsley Amis drifted to the right with the rise of Margaret Thatcher; he once publicly referred to his son’s left-leaning political opinions as “howling nonsense.”

Mr. Amis’s talent was undeniable: He was the most dazzling stylist in postwar British fiction. So were his swagger and Byronic good looks. He had well-chronicled involvements with some of the most watched young women of his era. He wore, according to media reports, velvet jackets, Cuban-heel boots, bespoke shirts. He stared balefully into paparazzi lenses.
His raucous lunches with friends and fellow writers like Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie, Clive James, James Fenton and Mr. Hitchens were written up in the press and made other writers feel that they were on the outside looking in. He seemed to be having more fun than other people. His detractors considered him less a bad boy than a spoiled brat.

In 2002, Mr. Amis published “Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million,” a study of the Stalin regime’s atrocities in the Soviet Union. The title alludes to Stalin’s nickname, Koba. The word “laughter” in the subtitle refers to Mr. Amis’s morally perplexed realization that, while Hitler and the Holocaust are off limits, many consider it appropriate to joke about Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Headline of the day.

Friday, May 19th, 2023

Violent taco rampage caught on camera at D.C. Chipotle

In other news, “Violent Taco Rampage” is the name of my new Smiths cover band.

Obit watch: May 19, 2023.

Friday, May 19th, 2023

Andy Rourke, of the Smiths. THR. Pancreatic cancer got him at 59.

The Disney Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel.

Get this: A windowless, theme-park hotel with a mandatory 48-hour stay that costs a family of four $6,000 per visit didn’t work out.

Which, you know, is one way of looking at it. On the other hand:

“If you are into Star Wars, and you enjoy role playing, this is absolutely worth it,” wrote one reviewer. “In addition to the lodging, food (it’s a LOT of food), park admission (including lightning lane access to the rides), what you are really paying for is the experience that is put on by the characters and crew members.”

On the gripping hand:

Also notable, however, is the fact that there were only 43 reviews. Among the guests who didn’t enjoy their stays at the hotel was one who described the experience as “like being in a jail,” and another who dubbed it “the most expensive rip-off of my life,” saying they had to spend most of their time staring at their phone in order to participate in the role-playing game. “The hotel is surprisingly small, with few themed spaces to explore. Even the garden ‘climate simulator’ which is supposed to help with claustrophobia is small. I really don’t know why it’s so tiny, there is plenty of land to work with. It doesn’t feel immersive, it feels cramped.”

Obit watch: May 18, 2023.

Thursday, May 18th, 2023

Superstar” Billy Graham, noted wrestler.

A bodybuilding friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Graham got into pro wrestling in the late 1960s with Stew Hart’s Stampede Wrestling in Calgary and wrestled until 1987 until injuries and health issues pushed him out of the ring.
Graham, who moved into a commentary role, wrestled for AWA, WWWF, NWA and WWF during his career.
He was dubbed “Superstar” during his time in the AWA.
Graham won the WWWF championship from Bruno Samartino in April 1977 and held the belt for nine and a half months — losing the title to Bob Backlund in February 1978.

Ralph Lee, founder of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and puppeteer.

His menagerie ranged from hand puppets to fantastic figures that towered over the audience and were controlled by multiple puppeteers. One of his most famous puppets ate Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin and others — it was the “land shark” that turned up at unsuspecting women’s doors in a 1975 “Saturday Night Live” sketch and returned several times over the years.

Amy Silverstein, author. When she was 24, she was diagnosed with congestive hear failure and had a transplant. She published a book, Sick Girl, in 2007.

The first heart eventually failed, and she went through a second transplant in 2014. In 2017, she published My Glory Was I Had Such Friends.

She was 59, and died of cancer, which is believed to have been caused by the medications she was taking to prevent organ rejection.

Quick random gun crankery, no filler.

Wednesday, May 17th, 2023

From YouTube: a factory tour of the Smith and Wesson plant in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I have been on that tour…

Norts spews.

Wednesday, May 17th, 2023

I’m tagging this under “firings”, even though it isn’t a firing in the normal sense of the word.

There were elections yesterday in various parts of the country.

Voters in Tempe, Arizona had three propositions to vote on. All three were related to a plan to build a brand-new arena (and a related large “entertainment complex”) for the Arizona Coyotes NHL team, which is a complete disaster.

In order for the arena to be built, all three propositions had to pass by a simple majority vote.

All three failed by a pretty large margin.

The Arizona Coyotes submitted their proposal to Tempe in late 2021, which involved building nearly 2,000 apartments, an NHL arena and an entertainment district on 46 acres of land west of Tempe Town Lake. It became one of the biggest and most controversial developments in the city’s history.

The estimated cost of this plan was $2.1 billion. It isn’t clear to me how much of this would have been funded with public money, though Field of Schemes cites “$500 million in tax breaks“.

Right now, the team is playing in a 5,000 seat college arena.

“We are very disappointed Tempe voters did not approve Propositions 301, 302, and 303. As Tempe Mayor Corey Woods said, it was the best sports deal in Arizona history,” said Coyotes President Xavier Gutierrez. “What is next for the franchise will be evaluated by our owners and the National Hockey League over the coming weeks.”

There are persistent rumors that the team is going to move out of Arizona completely: one potential location I’ve seen is, believe it or not, Houston.

(I think I went to a Houston Aeros game in the Summit back in the day, possibly as a Boy Scout thing. Never went to see the other Houston Aeros, though, or the Ice Bats.)

More from the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.

Edited to add: coverage from Reason, which wasn’t up when I posted earlier.

Firing watch.

Tuesday, May 16th, 2023

Doc Rivers, who as far as I can tell is neither a doctor or a river (discuss) out as coach of the Philadelphia 76ers.

He went 154-82 in three regular seasons with the organization but, like predecessor Brett Brown, failed to get the team past the playoffs’ second round.

Rivers has been one of the NBA’s most recognizable and successful coaches for more than two decades, being honored as one of the top 15 coaches in league history during its 75th anniversary celebration. He won a championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008, before guiding a once-embarrassing Los Angeles Clippers franchise to six playoff appearances in seven seasons. The former All-Star point guard began his coaching career with the Orlando Magic in 1999-2000, where he was named coach of the year in his first season and took that team to three playoff berths in five seasons.
Yet Rivers has also become known for playoff failures, particularly in close-out games. He is now 17-33 in such situations, and 6-10 in Game 7s, after the Sixers surrendered their 3-2 series lead to Boston.

Obit watch: May 15, 2023.

Monday, May 15th, 2023

Doyle Brunson, legendary poker player and a good Texas boy.

The first person to win $1 million in tournament play, Mr. Brunson — nicknamed Texas Dolly — became a star to a new generation when poker became a fixture on television in the 1990s, his cowboy hat and no-nonsense drawl a gentlemanly foil to brash, talkative younger players.

Mr. Brunson, whose career in poker began in illegal games in the back rooms of Texas bars, won the World Series of Poker main event, the sport’s most coveted prize, in 1976 and 1977. His total tournament winnings exceeded $6 million.

Mr. Brunson was among the three dozen players invited in 1970 to the inaugural World Series of Poker, a name that belied its modest beginnings. The tournament was the brainchild of the casino owner Benny Binion and Jimmy Snyder, then a public relations agent better known as Jimmy the Greek.
The World Series expanded its roster of poker contests to include several variants of the game, but Texas hold ’em remained the most publicized and lucrative event. Mr. Snyder called Mr. Brunson “Texas Doy-lee,” which reporters mistook for Dolly, and the nickname Texas Dolly stuck, though it seemed incongruous for someone who stood 6 feet 3 inches tall and weighed well over 250 pounds.
After moving to Las Vegas in 1973 for steadier gambling opportunities, Mr. Brunson won the tournament’s main event in 1976 and 1977, widely viewed as the world championship, earning $560,000 in a winner-take-all format. His 10 World Series bracelets are tied for second behind Phil Hellmuth’s 16.

Bill Oesterle, co-founder of Angie’s List (now just “Angi”). He was 57, and died of complications from ALS.

Semi-obit: Vice Media. They’ve officially filed for bankruptcy, but it is a Chapter 11, they have a $20 million operating loan, and the plan for their lenders (“including Fortress Investment Group and Soros Fund Management”) to buy the company is still on.

Archer“.

The long-running animated comedy will conclude with its upcoming 14th season.

Sun’s Up!

Sunday, May 14th, 2023

Monty Williams out as head coach of the Phoenix Suns.

In four seasons, Williams posted a 194-115 record in the regular season, 27-19 mark in the playoffs, but had disappointing playoff exits last year and this year.

They lost to the Nuggets in six games this year. They made the finals in 2021, and lost in seven games to Dallas in the semi-finals last year.

Obit watch: May 13, 2023.

Saturday, May 13th, 2023

Hodding Carter III, journalist and aide to Jimmy Carter.

The son of the journalist Hodding Carter Jr., who won a Pulitzer Prize for editorials calling for racial moderation in the old segregated South, Hodding Carter III succeeded his father as editor and publisher of The Greenville Delta Democrat-Times, and as a voice of conscience in a state torn by violence and social change during the struggles of the civil rights era.
But after 5,000 editorials and years of journalistic trench warfare, Mr. Carter took his fight into politics.

In the 1976 presidential campaign, Mr. Carter helped engineer a narrow victory in Mississippi for Jimmy Carter, who was no relation, and was rewarded with an appointment as assistant secretary of state for public affairs. As chief spokesman for the State Department, he delivered nuanced statements on foreign policy with candor and wit, and developed a good if sometimes acerbic rapport with the diplomatic press corps.
He became the national face of the Carter administration during the Iranian hostage crisis, which broke on Nov. 4, 1979, when militants took over the United States Embassy in Tehran and seized 52 Americans. Their captivity lasted 444 days — virtually the remainder of President Carter’s single term in office, a tenure ended by a frustrated electorate that chose Ronald Reagan for president in 1980.

Colleagues in government and the news media gave Mr. Carter high marks for fielding tough questions on what was known, and not known, of the fate of the Americans. Aside from one episode in which he threw a rubber chicken at a persistent questioner, he coolly conveyed at press briefings the sensitivity of the diplomatic crisis.

I was alive and around during that time, but I do not recall the rubber chicken thing…

Obit watch: May 11, 2023.

Thursday, May 11th, 2023

Sam Gross, “New Yorker” and “National Lampoon” cartoonist.

And while there are lines of taste that many cartoonists will not cross, Mr. Gross leaped over them, doused them with gasoline and lit them on fire, cackling as he did.
A stiff-legged dog lies on its back next to a blind man holding a sign that says, “I am blind, and my dog is dead.” A gigantic beanstalk grows out of a medieval peasant’s posterior, and another peasant says, “I told you they were magic beans and not to eat them.” Diners sit in front of a sign advertising frogs’ legs in a restaurant as a despondent legless amphibian rolls out of the kitchen. Some of his cartoons can’t be fully described in a family newspaper.

Jacklyn Zeman, actress. Other credits include “Sledge Hammer!”, “Young Doctors In Love”, and “The New Mike Hammer”.

Lisa Montell, actress. She did a lot of TV westerns, but her credits end in 1962. According to her IMDB biography, she went on to become “a spiritual exponent of the Bahá’í faith”.

Obit watch: May 10, 2023.

Wednesday, May 10th, 2023

Joe Kapp, former quarterback for the Vikings.

Kapp tied a single-game National Football League record — one held by several quarterbacks — when he threw seven touchdown passes against the defending league champion, the Baltimore Colts, in September 1969.
He threw 19 touchdown passes during the 1969 regular season, leading the Vikings to the 1970 Super Bowl against the Kansas City Chiefs, the champions of the American Football League, which was in its last season before it merged with the N.F.L. The Vikings, anchored by the Purple People Eaters, a fearsome defensive line with Carl Eller and Jim Marshall at the ends and Alan Page and Gary Larsen at the tackles, were strong favorites, but the Chiefs defeated them, 23-7.

Kapp joined the Boston (later New England) Patriots in 1970. The Patriots finished with a 2-12 record, then drafted quarterback Jim Plunkett of Stanford, the Heisman Trophy winner.
Having already been involved in a contract dispute with the Patriots, Kapp refused to sign a standard players contract for the 1971 season and quit the team in July, then filed an antitrust suit against the N.F.L. A jury declined to award him damages, but the case represented an early challenge in the players’ ultimately successful struggle to win free agency rights.

Kapp turned to acting after his N.F.L. career ended. He appeared on the TV crime series “Ironside” and had supporting roles in the football-themed movies “The Longest Yard” (1974) and “Semi-Tough” (1977).

IMDB listing.

Denny Crum, former Louisville Cardinals basketball coach.

Nicknamed Cool Hand Luke because of his unflinching sideline demeanor, Crum retired in March 2001 after 30 seasons at Louisville with a record of 675-295 and championships in 1980 and 1986.
A former assistant under the renowned U.C.L.A. coach John Wooden, Crum often wore a red blazer and waved a rolled-up stat sheet like a bandleader’s baton as he directed Louisville to 23 N.C.A.A. tournaments and six Final Fours. He was voted college coach of the year three times.

Lawrence emailed an obit for British actor Terrence Hardiman. Other credits include “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles”, “Midsomer Murders”, and “McLibel!”.

Heather “Dooce” Armstrong, blogger and author.

She was one of the early and influential bloggers, who famously got fired when her employers discovered her blog. (This originated the briefly popular slang term “dooced” for someone who got fired for their online writing.) She evolved into a prominent “mommy blogger”, writing about parenthood, domestic life, and her struggles with mental health, especially post-partum depression.

I used to read her somewhat intermittently, back in the day. I thought she wrote well about mental health issues.

She became sort of a big name in the blogsphere. She had content and sponsorship deals. She even had a short lived deal with HGTV.

By [2009], ads visible to Dooce’s 8.5 million monthly readers made a reported $40,000 for the Armstrongs each month, making it her primary source of income; she began running sponsored content as well…
…Jon joked in 2011 that the traffic from the hate sites had been better for the family business than the birth of their second child two years earlier. By then the revenue from Dooce paid salaries not only to the Armstrongs but an assistant and two full-time babysitters.

She and Jon (her husband) divorced in 2012, and she stopped blogging for a time. When she came back, social media was bigger, and even though she had an Instagram feed, her reach had declined. She also went through an experimental treatment for clinical depression, and a couple of years ago announced she was a recovering alcoholic.

She was 47.

Pete Ashdown, her longtime partner, who found her body in the home, said the cause was suicide.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You can also dial 988 to reach the Lifeline. If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.

Brief loser update.

Wednesday, May 10th, 2023

We are into the baseball season, but not as far in as I would like to be. I sometimes try to post a loser update around the All-Star break.

But I did decide I wanted to throw up a link to this:

Why the worst MLB teams of 2023 are historically bad“.

There are a lot of stats in the article for you baseball people, but summarizing:

Simply put, it is a real thing and it is very, very unusual in a historical context. We can argue about if it will continue, but for now, this is the reality of the big league competitive landscape: There are some teams playing very badly. There are an usual number of teams playing very badly. And there are an unusually large number of teams playing so badly.

Oakland is currently 8-30, for a winning percentage of .211. That works out to 127 losses this season if trends continue. The 1962 Mets lost 120 games, and the 2003 Tigers lost 119.

Obit watch: May 9, 2023.

Tuesday, May 9th, 2023

Bruce McCall, artist.

Borrowing from the advertising style seen in magazines like Life, Look and Collier’s in the 1930s and ’40s, Mr. McCall depicted a luminous fantasyland filled with airplanes, cars and luxury liners of his own creation. It was a world populated by carefree millionaires who expected caviar to be served in the stations of the fictional Fifth Avenue Subway and carwashes to spray their limousines with champagne.
“My work is so personal and so strange that I have to invent my own lexicon for it,” Mr. McCall said in a TED Talk in 2008. He called it “retrofuturism,” which he defined as “looking back to see how yesterday viewed tomorrow.”

In 1970, Mr. McCall and his friend Brock Yates, the editor of Car and Driver, invented a series of mythical airplanes, among them the Humbley-Pudge Gallipoli Heavyish Bomber, for which they wrote pseudo-scholarly historical notes. Playboy bought the idea, assigned Mr. McCall to do the illustrations and ran the collaboration in January 1971 under the title “Major Howdy Bixby’s Album of Forgotten Warbirds.” It went on to win Playboy’s annual humor award.

In addition to “Playboy”, “National Lampoon”, and the “New Yorker”, he was briefly a writer for “Saturday Night Live” and also did work for “Car and Driver”. Lawrence sent over an obit from that august publication.

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#106 in a series)

Tuesday, May 9th, 2023

This story snuck up on me, which is why I haven’t covered it before today. It has nothing to do with the protagonist being a Republican: as I have said before, I am an equal opportunity observer of hyenas on fire.

Bryan Slaton (R-Royse City) resigned from the Texas House yesterday.

His resignation came one step ahead of his being expelled from the House, in what appears to be a massive bi-partisan consensus that he needed to go.

So what the heck happened? Former Rep. Slaton apparently plied one of his aides, a 19-year old woman, with rum and cokes until she was drunk. Then he had sex with her.

On Sunday, the Texas House Freedom Caucus, a group that includes some of the most socially conservative lawmakers in the chamber who are usually politically aligned with Slaton, also called for his resignation.
“The abhorrent behavior described in the report requires clear and strong action,” the caucus said in a statement. “He should resign. If he does not, we will vote to expel him Tuesday.”
Later that night, 36 members of the 62–member State Republican Executive Committee, party activists who help set the agenda for the party, also called for his resignation, calling his conduct “wrong and unacceptable.” They were joined by the party’s vice chair, Dana Myers, and secretary Vergel Cruz. Three more committee members who could not be reached Sunday night added their names to the call for resignation Monday morning.

More from KVUE, which does not appear to be a re-hashed Texas Tribune story (unlike Fox 7 and KXAN). Statesman coverage.

Obligatory royals post.

Monday, May 8th, 2023

As my mother likes to say, “I stopped caring about the British royal family in 1776.”

However, this Substack piece mildly amused me. My favorite part:

Perhaps the most scandalous coronation took place at the newly completed St Paul’s Cathedral in February 1308. The young queen, Isabella, was the 12-year-old daughter of France’s King Philippe Le Bel, and had inherited her father’s good looks, with thick blonde hair and large blue, unblinking eyes. Her husband, Edward II, was a somewhat boneheaded man of 24 years whose idea of entertainment was watching court fools fall off tables.
It was a fairy tale coronation for the young girl, apart from a plaster wall collapsing, bringing down the high altar and killing a member of the audience, and the fact that her husband was gay and spent the afternoon fondling his lover Piers Gaveston, while ignoring her. Isabella’s two uncles, who had made the trip from France, were furious at the behaviour of their new English in-law, though perhaps not surprised.

Other than that, how was the coronation, Queen Isabella?

(Those with a historical bent may recall that Edward II ended up dying in prison: the unproven legend is that he was murdered by having a red-hot poker shoved up his neither regions.)