Shoutout for his work in “Magnum Force”. Other credits include “Jerry Springer: The Opera” (the TV movie: he played Jerry Springer), “Murder, She Wrote”, “Jake and the Fatman”, “Unsub” (an interesting failed series from the late 1980s), “Casablanca” (the short-lived TV series: he played “Rick Blane”), “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders” (he played “Michael Lee Platt”, one of the killers), and a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.
Christian Oliver. Other credits include “Alarm für Cobra 11 – Die Autobahnpolizei”, “Ninja Apocalypse”, and “Christmas in Vienna”.
My beloved and indulgent family gave me a copy of Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! for Christmas. I think part of the motivation for this (other than it being on my wish list) is that everyone in my family wants to borrow it when I’m done. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Fun fact I’ve learned from the book, which I did not know previously. Remember “Gunderson”?
Whatever happened to that guy? Would you believe he went on to bigger things?
Mike the Musicologist sent me a text the other day mentioning that there’s a superseding indictment against Democratic Senator Robert “Buffalo Bob” Menendez.
Donald Wildmon has passed away at 85. I believe he was mostly forgotten now, but I remember a time when he was a hugely controversial figure in American politics.
Rev. Wildmon was a Methodist preacher. As the story goes, one night at Christmas he and his family gathered around the warm glowing glow of the TV set…and Rev. Wildmon discovered that the TV was full of what he considered to be vulgarity.
To make a long story somewhat shorter, he ended up founding an organization called the National Federation for Decency, which later became the American Family Association. AFA was one of the leaders in the controversy over the National Endowment for the Arts:
The effectiveness of the AFA is questionable. They don’t seem to have any impact on “Last Temptation”, but they got 7-11 to pull “Playboy” and “Penthouse”, and were partially responsible for Proctor and Gamble pulling advertisements from “50 TV shows”.
I’m a First Amendement absolutist, and I didn’t care much for Mr. Wildmon or his organization at the time. But now that I’m older, and see stuff on TV airing during children’s waking hours, I wonder if the man may have had a point.
Of course, there’s alway the V-chip, which didn’t come into existence until 1996…
Welcome to the exciting future world of 2024! Which looks a lot like 2023. Except a university is missing a president. Hey, you know who would make a good president for Harvard?
After the jump, this week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback (which you won’t be able to read in its entirety unless you subscribe to “All Predictions Wrong”, which is the actual title of Gregg Easterbrook’s Substack)…
As part of the plea, she’s taken a stipulated sentence of three years and eight months, but it isn’t clear to me if she has a chance at parole or some other form of early release.
This has been pretty well covered, but I did want to make an observation. When I was at St. Ed’s, for my “Film and Literature” class, we had to watch “In the Bedroom” and read Andre Dubus’s “Killings”. I thought “Bedroom” was a pretty terrific movie: both Wilkinson and Sissy Spacek give career peak performances. If you have not seen it, I commend it to your attention.
A short one for you. My book buddy in the Association sent me scans from a 1928 Smith and Wesson catalog, along with a scan of a letter from the great Walter Roper. This was a very nice Christmas present, and one I can’t thank him enough for.
You will find each of our arms fully described in the catalog we are enclosing but we want you to ask any questions you may wish about either guns or ammunition, as it will be a real pleasure to help you select a revolver.
The past was another country.
I don’t want to reproduce the whole thing, as I’m not sure about the copyright status and I don’t want to make my book buddy mad. However, I thought people might find this one page interesting, and I think it qualifies as fair use. Keep in mind, this is 1928 data.
No disrespect to Dr. Solow, but: he did not win a Nobel in economic sciences. The prize he won is The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel. It is not one of the five prizes established by Alfred Nobel: it was established in 1968 and first awarded in 1969. It is not a Nobel prize, and again with all due respect to Dr. Solow and his accomplishments, it should not be referred to as a Nobel prize.
He used a 625 to set the 12 shots with a reload in 2.99 seconds record. I don’t think it was a 625-8 JM, as I believe that was introduced after he set the record. (The Standard Catalog says the 625-8 was introduced in 2001, as an engineering change that added the lock. It also says the 625 JM was introduced at SHOT in 2005.) But it was a 625, it was almost certainly modified by the Performance Center to his specifications, and he almost certainly had input into the design of the 625-8 JM.
Even though it is a stainless steel revolver, the sort-of dull (I think “bead blasted”) finish isn’t obnoxious to me. So when one of these showed up used at my official arms dealer…
Rockin’ the signed JM hat there.
Unfortunately, it does have the internal lock (or as some call it, “the Hillary hole”).
I didn’t get keys for the lock. (I did get moon clips, and a moon clip tool.) It came unlocked, and I’m not sure I’m ever going to use the lock. But here’s a fun fact for you. Do you know where you can get keys for the internal lock on a S&W revolver? Amazon, that’s where.
I think that “gold bead” (which is probably not an actual “gold bead”, but I can’t think of a better description) sight is very nice. I’d love to take this out and shoot a bowling pin match or something similar with this one. This also wouldn’t be a bad barbecue gun, with a nice holster and maybe some tasteful engraving.
Here is another interesting fact: Smith and Wesson claims to offer Performance Center gunsmithing services. The “Outdoor Package Large Frame – N” looks particularly interesting. I’ve measured the trigger pull on this one, and it comes in right at 11 pounds. That’s probably not out of line, but I wouldn’t mind shaving some off of that. As long as it goes “bang” when I pull the trigger.
Sometime after Christmas, I plan to give them a call and see what the backlog for those services is. I know I’m not the only person wondering, and I also get the feeling that S&W (like everyone else) is being pinched by the gunsmith shortage.
Coming up: two more followup teaser posts, plus another post about a gun I’ve written about previously. I’m hoping to get at least one of those up before Christmas.
Last Friday was my last day at work until January 8th. Some of this is me burning PTO before year-end, some of this is corporate holidays, and some of it is mandatory corporate shutdowns.
I’m planning to do more gun book posts and random gun crankery during my vacation, including a few things you’ve seen teasers for. So strap in, my people. It’s going to be a fun couple of weeks.
Why don’t we start out with a slice of history? After the jump…
What does that even mean? And why does TMQ feel compelled to start off with horse racing metaphors?
After the jump, this week’s TMQ (which you won’t be able to read in its entirety unless you subscribe to “All Predictions Wrong”, which is the actual title of Gregg Easterbrook’s Substack)…
Five seasons as coach. I don’t have a full record, but the team hasn’t made the playoffs at all under Smith “…with their strongest finish coming last season when they went 39-35-8 but finished six points behind the Florida Panthers for the final Eastern Conference wild-card spot.”
The other problem is that the team is completely screwed up. “restricted free agent forward” Shane Pinto is sitting out a 41-game suspension for gambling on sports.
Captain (at the time) Pardo was a principal in of the most unusual flying stories to come out of the Vietnam war. On March 10, 1967, he was flying a bombing mission over Vietnam in an F4-C Phantom. Also flying with Cpn. Pardo and his weapons officer (1st Lt. Steve Wayne) was another Phantom flown by Capt. Earl Aman and 1st Lt. Robert Houghton. They were bombing a heavily defended North Vietnamese steel mill.
Both planes were hit by ground fire during the bombing run. Capt. Aman’s plane was the most seriously hit of the two. It lost a lot of fuel. So much fuel that there was no way Capt. Aman’s plane could make it out of enemy territory.
And I guess pretty much as a direct result of that (though everyone was saying it was coming, I think the timeline was accelerated), Brandon Staley is out as head coach. Tom Telesco is out as general manager, too.
ESPN. Since I prefer to link to local coverage when I can, here’s an archived version of the story from the LAT, but I know some folks may not be able to read that. (It hasn’t made it in the Wayback Machine yet.)
You know what I say: shut the franchise down, throw all the players out of the NFL, reduce all of their facilities to rubble, plow the rubble into the earth, and sow the ground with salt so nothing ever grows there again.
With that out of the way, this week’s TMQ (which you won’t be able to read in its entirety unless you subscribe to “All Predictions Wrong”, which is the actual title of Gregg Easterbrook’s Substack) after the jump…
