Shot (click to embiggen):
(It’s the “inspirational sign” clearly labeled “inspirational sign” that gets me.)
Chaser:
Bagatelle (#97)
November 2nd, 2023Norts spews (also, loser update).
November 2nd, 2023I feel an obligation to say something about the Texas Rangers winning the World Serious.
I was thinking about making a “Damn Yankees” reference, but it turns out that’s the wrong Washington Senators. Good thing I checked first.
NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:
Memphis
Kind of looks like a bad year for bears. And it started out with such promise…
Obit watch: November 2, 2023.
November 2nd, 2023Bobby Knight. NYT. ESPN.
Tribute from ESPN by Jay Bilas.
Don Laughlin. You may never have heard of him, but you’ve heard of the town he created: Laughlin, Nevada.
Taking chances seemed to come naturally to Donald. As a teenager, he stockpiled cash from trapping mink and muskrat and used it to buy mail-order slot machines, installing them himself in local pubs.
Demand was high, and before long he was making $500 a week (nearly $7,000 in today’s money).
The principal of the one-room schoolhouse he attended for high school was not amused. “He said to get out of the gambling business or get out of high school,” Mr. Laughlin told The Review-Journal. “I said, ‘I’m making three times what you are, so I’m out the door.’”
David Mitchell. Here’s another person who you may not have heard of. I had, because this is a great story.
In 1975, Mr. Mitchell and his then-wife bought a struggling weekly newspaper, the Point Reyes Light.
In 1973, a grand jury raised questions about fiscal improprieties and child abuse by Synanon, which had once been widely respected but had devolved into an authoritarian cult that declared itself a religion — the Church of Synanon — to become tax exempt. Later that year, reporters in San Francisco found that the Synanon drug rehabilitation center in Marshall, Calif., less than 10 miles from Point Reyes Station, was hoarding what turned out to be $60,000 worth of weapons.
Mr. Mitchell began his own investigation that same year, joined by his wife; their one reporter, John Maddeen; and Richard J. Ofshe, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who had studied Synanon. To them, it was a story in their own back yard that they couldn’t ignore.
…
The Mitchells wrote articles and editorials reporting on violence, terrorism and financial improprieties at Synanon. There were accounts that its founder, Charles Dederich, had demanded that men enrolled in the program undergo vasectomies and that pregnant women have abortions, and that hundreds of married couples switch partners.
In 1980, Mr. Dederich pleaded no contest to charges that he and two members of Synanon’s security force had conspired to commit murder by placing a rattlesnake in the mailbox of a lawyer who had sued the organization. Synanon disbanded in 1991.
The Point Reyes Light won the Pulitzer for public service in 1979 for the Synanon stories.
The lawyer and the rattlesnake.
One other aspect of the story I remember: most of the Pulitzer prizes come with a cash award. The public service prize does not. Which was sort of unfortunate, as the Light was a constantly struggling newspaper. (The Times blames Mr. Mitchell’s divorce from his second wife on the financial pressures involved in keeping the paper alive.)
Dwight Twilley, musician. As I’ve said before, I’m not much of a music guy and rely on other people for music commentary, but the name rings a faint bell with me…
Obit watch: November 1, 2023.
November 1st, 2023Tyler Christopher, actor. Other credits include “20.0 Megaquake”, “Super Volcano” (both of those were Asylum movies), “Boomtown”, “Crossing Jordan” (the “Quincy” of the 2000s except it sucked), and “CSI: Original Recipe“.
Frank Howard, player for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Washington Senators.
As a Dodger in 1960, he hit a ball over the left-field wall at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh that was found alongside a parked car some 560 feet from home plate.
Batting against Whitey Ford in Game 1 of the 1963 World Series, at the original Yankee Stadium, he hit a drive that landed, in fair territory, just to the left of the monuments to Yankee greats in center field, about 460 feet from home plate. He lumbered only as far as second base in what has been called the longest double in Yankee Stadium history.
In Game 4, he hit a 450-foot homer off Ford into the left-field mezzanine at Dodger Stadium, in a 2-1 victory that completed a Dodger sweep of the Series.
Howard drove in 1,119 runs in his long career. But he also struck out 1,460 times.
…
…
Firings watch.
November 1st, 2023What a great time of year. We’re in the middle of a cold snap right now…
…and the Raiders fired head coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler.
McDaniels and Ziegler, both hired in January 2022, inherited a 10-7 team that made an unexpected run to the playoffs during the 2021 season — the organization’s second postseason bid since 2002 — under interim coach Rich Bisaccia and then-GM Mike Mayock, who took over following the in-season resignation of coach Jon Gruden.
Davis said at the time that McDaniels and Ziegler were expected to take the team to the “next step” in its evolution. Instead, the Raiders went a combined 9-16 without a playoff appearance under the new regime, as McDaniels finished his tenure with the third-worst record of any Raiders coach with at least 25 games.
Edited to add: ESPN is now reporting that the Raiders also fired Mick Lombardi, offensive coordinator.
da Bears fired David Walker, running backs coach.
Interestingly, while da Bears stink, the firing apparently wasn’t for that reason, but for unspecified “workplace conduct” issues.
Also interestingly:
Obit watch: October 31, 2023.
October 31st, 2023Judy Nugent, actress.
Other credits include “The Greatest Show on Earth”, “77 Sunset Strip”, and the “The Thin Man” TV series.
Obit watch: October 29, 2023.
October 29th, 2023It turned into a busier weekend than I thought it was going to be, and it also turned out that there was more going on this weekend than I expected. I wanted to get these up today, as I have an eye doctor’s appointment tomorrow and am not sure how things are going to go afterwards.
Richard Moll. THR. I’ve mentioned before how much I liked the original “Night Court” and what a great ensemble those folks were.
Moll had a shaved head — he did that to play the warrior Hurok in the sci-fi film Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983) — when he auditioned for the role of Shannon on Night Court, created by Reinhold Weege.
“They said ‘Richard, the shaved head looks good. Will you shave your head for the part?” he recalled in a 2010 interview. “I said, ‘Are you kidding? I’ll shave my legs for the part. I’ll shave my armpits, I don’t care.’”
IMDB.
Joan Evans, actress who was shot by Farley Granger.
This is in the obit, but I did want to note that she was the love interest for Charles Drake’s character in “No Name On the Bullet“, about which I have written before and probably will again.
IMDB.
Matthew Perry. THR. IMDB. Everyone is on this like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst installation, and I don’t have anything to add.
Your loser update: week 8, 2023.
October 29th, 2023Houston sports teams will always break your heart.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
None.
That’s a wrap for this year. Maybe. We’ll see how the NBA looks later on this week.
Obit watch: October 27, 2023.
October 27th, 2023Lawrence sent over an obit for Stephen Kandel, screenwriter.
He has 103 credits as a writer in IMDB. Man wrote for everything. “Harry O”. “The Magician”. “Bearcats!”. “Banacek”. “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”. “The Bold Ones: The Lawyers”. The good “Hawaii Five-0”. Two episodes of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s, and two episodes of the animated spinoff…
…and eleven episodes of “Mannix”, which is more than I want to list here.
Obit watch: October 26, 2023.
October 26th, 2023I’m not a big fan of posting obits for children of celebrities just because of their relationship. Generally, when I post one, the person has to be interesting for some other reason.
I think that qualifies. Also, someone close to me called out the paper of record’s use of the word “peripatetic“. I personally think that’s a perfectly cromulent word, and, much like “gargantuan“, is one that I rarely have an opportunity to use in a sentence.
Murray Newman has a very nice obit up for Skip Cornelius:
…
Obit watch: October 25, 2023.
October 25th, 2023Obit watch: October 24, 2023.
October 24th, 2023Dr. Donlin Long, big damn hero.
Dr. Long was one of the pioneers of the insulin pump.
He was a neurosurgeon.
As an accomplished practitioner of skull base surgery, Dr. Long was also instrumental in the first successful separation of twin infants born conjoined at the head. The operation, performed in 1987, involved 70 surgeons, nurses and assistants and lasted 22 hours.
The twins’ brains were separated, and one of the infants’ skulls was closed by Dr. Benjamin S. Carson, whom Dr. Long, the founding chairman of the department of neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, had recruited to the university…
…Dr. Long, Dr. Carson’s mentor, closed the other boy’s skull during the operation.
Drs. Long and Carson had just one hour to accomplish final separation, to reconstruct the divided brain cavities and veins, and to restart the hearts in the infants, both of them boys.
And he was a mentor to people other than Dr. Carson:
Many of the surgeons trained during Dr. Long’s tenure at Johns Hopkins were hired as full professors, as leaders of neurosurgery departments at hospitals and universities, and as heads of professional associations.
“Neurosurgeons everywhere stand on his shoulders,” Dr. Connolly said.
…
Elizabeth Hoffman, actress. Other credits include “Stargate SG-1”, “Cutter to Houston”, “Blue Thunder”, and a spin-off of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.
Angelo Bruschini, guitarist for Massive Attack.
Quick random thought.
October 23rd, 2023Prompted by this:
And this, from McThag:
I wrapped up the “What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” series, and it doesn’t look like we’re going back to those days anytime soon. But hand to God, I swear I am considering reviving it for a special limited engagement, collecting videos on the subjects of OPSEC and COMSEC. Seems like too many people don’t understand basic rules, like “don’t buy stuff under your own name”, “pay CASH”, and “don’t brag about your clever scheme to evade the law in email”.
Cheez Louise, I never served in the military or in the intelligence apparatus, but apparently I have more sense than some of these people. And that scares me.
Obit watch: October 23, 2023.
October 23rd, 2023Bobby Charlton, English soccer player. He was 86.
Worthy of note: he was also a survivor of the 1958 Manchester United plane crash.
Elaine Devry, actress. Other credits include “Project U.F.O.”, “The Boy Who Cried Werewolf”, “Cannon”, and three appearances on the 1960s “Dragnet”.
Vincent Asaro, mobster. Readers of this blog with an excellent memory may recall that he was charged in the 1978 Lufthansa robbery…and was acquitted in 2015. However, he was convicted in 2017 of having a guy’s car set on fire. He got eight years for that, but was released in 2020 for “health reasons”.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#111 in a series. Also, random gun crankery.)
October 21st, 2023There is no joy in this one.
Larry Vickers pled guilty to federal firearm charges yesterday.
“But,” you say, “Larry Vickers isn’t a political figure.” Right you are, Bob.
Mr. Vickers was charged with four other men: Sean Sullivan, James Tafoya, Matthew Hall, and James Sawyer. Mr. Hall was the chief of police in Coats, North Carolina, and Mr. Sawter was the chief of police of Ray, North Dakota. This is where the flaming hyenas come in.
He was a Fed?! I know, I know, quel fromage! But really?
Allegedly, all of these guys came up with a really clever scheme.
The indictment alleges that, beginning in at least June 2018 through at least March 2021, the defendants conspired to acquire machineguns and/or other restricted firearms, such as short-barreled rifles, by falsely representing that the firearms would be used for demonstration to law enforcement agencies, including the Coats Police Department and the Ray Police Department. The indictment further alleges that Hall, Sawyer, and other conspirators signed law letters with no expectation that the weapons would ever be demonstrated to their respective law enforcement agencies.
The defendants allegedly intended to impermissibly import into the United States and resell the machineguns and other firearms for profit or to keep for their own use and enjoyment. Sullivan allegedly submitted the false law letters to the ATF seeking to import the machineguns and other restricted weapons. Once the firearms were received, Sullivan allegedly kept some of the machineguns and other restricted weapons and transferred some of the weapons to Vickers, Tafoya, and other conspirators.
Now, everyone else hasn’t gone to trial, and should be considered innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.
So just not illegal import of restricted firearms, but also sanction violations. “Between July 2014 and March 2021” makes me wonder who the sanctions violations were against.
I haven’t seen any coverage of this anywhere, including the usual gun blogs. The only reason I know about it is that Mike the Musicologist sent me a link to the Justice Department press release. I feel kind of bad for Mr. Vickers, who also was dealing with cancer a while back. But this doesn’t sound like BATFE “paperwork” violations. This sounds like a pretty serious conspiracy to illegally import restricted weapons under cover of the law enforcement exemption.
While I object to the idea that what these people did should be against the law, the fact remains that it is, and they apparently (“all suspects” etc) tried to camouflage it as “only ones”. You know, “we’re the only ones competent enough to have full-auto weapons. We’re the only ones competent enough to carry a Glock.”
That, I do resent.
Firing or not?
October 20th, 2023I say “not a firing”. Yet. But the winds are blowing in a direction that makes me think a whole bunch of people are going to get fired.
There’s an ongoing investigation into Michigan by the NCAA. The university is accused of using “an ‘elaborate’ scouting system to steal signals from future opponents since at least 2021“.
I can understand the issue with “stealing signs”, though I really don’t know what that means in college football. But the NCAA has a rule against attending your opponents games in person? Seriously? I guess, maybe, they are afraid larger schools with more resources will have an advantage over smaller schools that can’t afford to travel as much? Or is this just more of “we’re the NCAA. Nothing we do has to make sense”?
Harbaugh served a three-game suspension to start this season related to NCAA charges of failure to cooperate and head-coach responsibility over alleged recruiting violations during the COVID-19 dead period. A violation by a member of his coaching staff could trigger another charge of head-coach responsibility, potentially a Level I violation.
Sources said the NCAA enforcement staff’s level of interest in Stalions was so significant that it sought access to his computer as part of its investigation.
So they were already looking at Harbaugh for recruiting violations, and he basically pled guilty to that. This would be the second rules violation in less than a year. What would be the implications in terms of NCAA penalties if this is substantiated?
Could we see…dare I say it…the “death penalty“?
I doubt it myself. But it’d be fun to see. Realistically, if this is substantiated, I suspect major loss of scholarships, a ban on post-season play, and possibly for Harbaugh to get a “show-cause penalty“.
Obit watch: October 19, 2023.
October 19th, 2023Other credits include “The Rockford Files”, “Once Upon a Time in America”, “Miami Vice”, and “Pig Pen” in “Convoy”.
Obit watch: October 18, 2023.
October 18th, 2023Dr. James Irving Wimsatt, professor emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, passed away Sunday morning, He was 96.
Dr. Wimsatt was a personal friend of mine, and of many other readers of this blog. I met him through his son, Andrew.
He was a great guy. I always felt intimidated by him: I described him to someone (no disrespect intended, Andrew) as “scary smart and tough as a bus station steak”. He was walking several miles a day on a regular basis well into his 90s. And he remained in full possession of his facilities pretty much right up until his death (though he’d been in and out of hospitals and rehab).
I thought this was kind of a neat entry from encyclopedia.com:
He wasn’t just a Chaucerian, though my understanding is he was a damn good one. He also wrote a lot about other poets. Dr. Wimsatt was kind enough, at one point, to give me a copy of his Hopkins’s Poetics of Speech Sound. I haven’t read it yet, being backlogged, but I wish I had before he passed.
He also served honorably in the US Navy. And he was a pretty regular member of the Saturday Dining Conspiracy.
“He that loveth God will do diligence to please God by his works, and abandon himself, with all his might, well for to do.”
–Geoffrey “Big Geoff” Chaucer
I believe that Dr. Wimsatt did indeed please God by his works, and he’s up there laughing with all those other English professors of that generation.
(Crossposed to the Logbook of the Saturday Dining Conspiracy.)
Random gun crankery.
October 18th, 2023There have been some gun related news stories over the past few weeks that I want to make note of.
1. Vista Outdoor is selling off their ammunition business to Czechoslovak Group a.s. for $1.91 billion. The Vista Outdoor ammo business includes Speer, Remington’s ammo side, CCI, and Federal.
I can’t find as much information as I would like about Czechoslovak Group. It looks like they currently own Fiocchi, and they are not the same company that owns Colt CZ Group. Czechoslovak Group seems to be big in the defense industry, with the sporting ammo component being relatively small. Perhaps they are looking to expand?
…
So it looks like what’s going to be left of Vista Outdoors Revelyst is going to be fishing, camping, golf, cycling helmets, Camelbacks, and golf. Disclosure: the “gun hedge fund” (which is neither a hedge nor a fund) owns some shares in Vista Outdoor, and may make some money off of this. Vista Outdoor has been one of the best performing stocks in the group, though it’s down considerably right now. ($24.81 a share as I write this.)
You shouldn’t take financial advice from me, but I really don’t see “Revelyst” being a growing business, or one I’d be interested in continuing to invest in.
2. I’m having trouble finding what I think of as really reliable sources for this, but: “According to multiple news sources, the Lake City ammo plant has cancelled all of its commercial contracts.”
This is swell news, he said with some sarcasm, as Lake City produces an estimated 30% of the 5.56 ammo on the civilian market. So if you thought things were rough before…suck air, grab clusters, and stock up on 5.56 if you find it at a good price.
My first thought was that this was stealth gun control by the Sleepy Joe administration: if they can’t restrict the guns, why not restrict the ammo? (“Reloading? What’s that?”) A more rational thought (and what seems to be the conventional wisdom) is that the government is stockpiling ammo, both to refresh the Ukraine and against a possible land war in the Middle East.
Disclaimer: the “gun hedge fund” (see above) also owns stock in Olin Corporation. Olin runs the Lake City plant under contract, and our Olin stock has been the best performer overall in the fund. As a matter of fact, our Olin stock is the only stock in the “fund” that’s currently in the black. ($48.12 a share as I write this.)
3. The Recoil website reported this about two weeks ago: BATFE has banned importation of “non-lethal” training ammo unless it is for use by military or law enforcement customers.
Maybe.
So far, it seems like the only report of this is on Instagram. The post is actually a letter a company called Ultimate Training Munitions sent to Sage Dynamics, but this is backed up by a statement on UTM’s website.
The other big maker of “non-lethal” training ammo is Simunition, which apparently imports from Canada. As far as I know, they have not made any public statement on this yet, even though they have been asked by Recoil, and I assume other outlets.
It is unclear what authority BATFE has to ban import of “non-lethal” training ammo. Perhaps the “sporting purposes” clause. Then again, when has BATFE ever gotten hung up on pesky questions of “legal authority”?
Obit watch: October 17, 2023.
October 17th, 2023Lara Parker, actress.
Other credits include the good “Hawaii Five-O”, “Sword of Justice”, “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, and “The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo”.
Joanna Merlin, actress. Other credits include “All That Jazz”, “The Killing Fields”, and “City of Angels”.
Obit watch: October 16, 2023.
October 16th, 2023Obit watch: October 15, 2023.
October 15th, 2023I’m aware of Suzanne Somers, but all the obits I’ve seen so far have been preliminary. I think I’ll wait until tomorrow on this one.
Other credits include two episodes of the 1985-1986 “Twilight Zone” revival, “The Bunker”, “The Eleventh Hour” and “Breaking Point” (both of which I was just recently reading about, and which I would love to see on home video), and three episodes of “St. Elsewhere”.
Colette Rossant, cookbook author and popularizer of French food. She may have been a bit obscure for most of you: I know of her because she was a great friend of Calvin Trillin, and he wrote about her multiple times in “The Tummy Trilogy”.
In a 1981 article in The Times with the headline “The Inspirations of a Global Cook,” Craig Claiborne, the newspaper’s august food critic, wrote that he “found it impossible to refuse an invitation to a Rossant meal, which turned out to be a feast,” including a blend of fresh and smoked salmon christened with rillettes of fish as an appetizer, a roast of veal “cooked to a savory state in milk” and other delicacies.
Mr. Claiborne noted that Mr. Trillin, the celebrated author, humorist and food writer, had once written that whenever he was invited to dine at Ms. Rossant’s, his wife, Alice, was “forced to grab me by the jacket two or three times to keep me from breaking into a steady, uncharacteristic trot.”
Tommy Gambino, of Gambino family fame.
He was the nephew of “Big Paul” Castellano, who succeeded Carlo as the head of the family but was rubbed out in 1985 on the orders of eventual Gambino godfather John Gotti.
Tommy Gambino arrived at Sparks Steakhouse on East 46th Street just moments after Castellano and his driver, Tommy Bilotti, were gunned down outside the eatery.
Tommy Gambino, once described as the a “quintessential Mafia prince of New York City,” was convicted in 1993 of two counts of racketeering and racketeering conspiracy for controlling gambling and loan sharking operations in Connecticut.
He served in federal prison from 1996 to 2000.
The prosecution’s evidence in his trial included secretly recorded conversations with Mafia turncoat Salvatore “Sammy the Bull” Gravano.
Your loser update: weeks 6 and 7, 2023.
October 15th, 2023NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Carolina
Next week, Carolina and Houston (along with a few other teams) have a bye week.
I call out Carolina and Houston specifically because they play each other in week 8 (on October 29th): it will be a home game for Carolina. As I write this (and with the understanding that this is two weeks out) Houston is favored.
Pho pas.
October 14th, 2023State Fair time has rolled around again. And I have been negligent in covering this year’s offerings.
Various people have sent me links to stories, so it isn’t anyone’s fault but mine. I think I’ve just been too busy naval gazing.
Anyway, by way of the paper of record, I have learned that there’s a scandal at the State Fair.
Ms. Le, a vendor at the fair, is being accused of stealing their deep-fried pho recipe.
Yes, you read that correctly. You are not having a stroke. “Deep-fried pho”.
It’s a little more complicated, though: Cris and John were offered a slot at the fair, but they would have had to close on Saturday (that seems like a non-starter), and Ms. Le apparently offered to work with them before the fair. However, Ms. Le also says she’s been working on deep-fried pho since 2011.
Also: gratuitous photo of “cheesecake swaddled in chocolate and Biscoff cookie crumbs”. On a stick. Of course.
Obit watch: October 14, 2023.
October 14th, 2023Other credits include “Quincy M.E.”, “Adam-12”, “Perry Mason”, and (the original) “The Fugitive”.
Louise Glück, poet and winner of the Nobel Prize (also the Pulitzer and the National Book Award).