It has been a few days. Where are we in the season?
MLB teams that still have a chance to go 0-162:
Philadelphia
Your loser update: April 4, 2023.
April 4th, 2023Obit watch: April 3, 2023.
April 3rd, 2023Ryuichi Sakamoto, Japanese musician. THR.
Cool story, bro:
More:
Equally comfortable in futuristic techno, orchestral works, video game tracks and intimate piano solos, Mr. Sakamoto created music that was catchy, emotive and deeply attuned to the sounds around him. Along with issuing numerous solo albums, he collaborated with a wide range of musicians across genres, and received an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Grammy and two Golden Globes.
His Yellow Magic Orchestra, which swept the charts in the late 1970s and early ’80s, produced catchy hits like “Computer Game” on synthesizers and sequencers, while also satirizing Western ideas of Japanese music.
“The big theme of him is curiosity,” the musician Carsten Nicolai, a longtime collaborator, said in a phone interview in 2021. “Ryuichi understood, very early, that not necessarily one specific genre will be the future of music — that the conversation between different styles, and unusual styles, may be the future.”
He also acted a little:
Mr. Sakamoto was beginning to achieve wide recognition in the early 1980s when the director Nagisa Oshima asked him to co-star, alongside David Bowie, in “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” a 1983 film about a Japanese P.O.W. camp. Mr. Sakamoto, having no background in acting, agreed under the condition that he could also score the film.
The movie’s synth-heavy title track remained one of Mr. Sakamoto’s most famous compositions. He often adapted it, including for “Forbidden Colors,” a vocal version with the singer David Sylvian, as well as piano renditions and sweeping orchestral arrangements.
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He began piano lessons at age 6, and started to compose soon after. Early influences included Bach and Debussy — whom he once called “the door to all 20th century music” — and he discovered modern jazz as he fell in with a crowd of hipster rebels as a teenager. (At the height of the student protest movement, he and his classmates shut down their high school for several weeks.)
Mr. Sakamoto was drawn to modern art and especially the avant-garde work of Cage. He studied composition and ethnomusicology at Tokyo University of the Arts and began playing around with synthesizers and performing in the local pop scene.
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In 1978, Mr. Sakamoto released his debut solo album, “Thousand Knives,” a trippy amalgam that opens with the musician reciting a poem by Mao through a vocoder, followed by a reggae beat and a procession of Herbie Hancock-inspired improvisations. That year, the bassist Haruomi Hosono invited him and the drummer Yukihiro Takahashi to form a trio that became Yellow Magic Orchestra. (Mr. Takahashi died in January.)
The band’s self-titled 1978 album was a huge hit, and influenced numerous electronic music genres, from synth pop to techno. The group broke up in 1984, in part because Mr. Sakamoto wanted to pursue solo work. (They have periodically reunited since the 1990s.) Mr. Sakamoto continued tinkering with outré, high-tech approaches in his 1980 album “B-2 Unit,” which included the otherworldly electro single “Riot in Lagos.”
Lawrence mentioned that we’ve actually seen two films scored by Mr. Sakamoto in the past 12 months (“The Last Emperor” and “The Revenant”).
Your loser update: March 31, 2023.
March 31st, 2023MLB teams that still have a chance to go 0-162:
Boston
Cleveland
Detroit
Kansas City
Houston
LA Angels
Miami
Philadelphia
Washington
Cincinnati
Milwaukee
St. Louis
Arizona
San Diego
San Francisco
In other news, the Astros lost to the White Sox yesterday. As we all know, this means they won’t be able to sell beer at Minute Maid Park this year…
…because they lost the opener.
Obit watch: March 31, 2023.
March 31st, 2023Presidents from Eisenhower to Trump caught the flak. He sang “Bail to the Chief” for Richard M. Nixon, urged George H.W. Bush to retire “to a home for the chronically preppy,” likened Jimmy Carter’s plan to streamline government to “putting racing stripes on an arthritic camel,” and recalled first seeing Ronald Reagan “in the picture-frame department at Woolworth’s, between Gale Storm and Walter Pidgeon.”
Did he have any writers? “Oh, yes — 100 in the Senate and 435 in the House of Representatives.” The true meaning of the Cold War? “In communism, man exploits man. But with capitalism, it’s the other way around.” Gun control? “I will defend my Second Amendment right to use my musket to defend my Third Amendment right to never, ever allow a British soldier to live in my house.”
I was a big Mark Russell fan when I was in high school, but I lost touch with his work after I went to college the first time.
Michael Blackwood, filmmaker. He wasn’t someone I’ve heard of before, but I want to find some of his work.
He followed the jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk on tour in Europe. He tagged along as the minimalist composer Philip Glass prepared for the 1984 premieres of his opera, “Akhnaten,” in Houston and Stuttgart, Germany.
He observed the creative process of the Bulgarian-born conceptual artist Christo during his creation of epic environmental projects like “Running Fence” and “Wrapped Walkways.” And he let Isamu Noguchi explain his approach to his art as they walked among his sculptures.
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His fascination with architecture led him to make films about some of its stars, including Louis Kahn, Richard Meier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Peter Eisenman and Frank Gehry.
In his review of “Frank Gehry: The Formative Years” (1988) in The New York Times, the architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote that Mr. Blackwood “has built up an admirable oeuvre of films about architects and architecture,” and that Mr. Blackwood has Mr. Gehry “ramble though his work in a way that is both inviting and informative.”
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You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#103 and #104 in a series)
March 31st, 2023Yeah, yeah, yeah. Donald Trump. This is well covered everywhere, but I don’t want anyone saying that I’m not an equal opportunity promoter of hyenas in flames. I try very hard to be impartial in my coverage.
Mike the Musicologist sent over an interesting story: Joanne Marian Segovia is the executive director of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, which I guess is their union.
Ms. Segovia has been indicted for smuggling fentanyl.
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Law enforcement first learned of the connection to Segovia, who has been with the SJPOA since 2003, when investigating a network in India that ships drugs into the United States. A network operative’s phone was searched, and Homeland Security agents found messages that mentioned “J Segovia” at an address in San Jose, including the words “180 pills SOMA 500mg,” the complaint shows.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection records showed that five shipments to Segovia’s address were intercepted between July 2019 and January 2023. The packages contained more than a kilogram of controlled substances such as Zolpidem (a sedative used to treat insomnia) and Tramadol (a narcotic used to treat pain), per the court document.
The packages mailed to Segovia’s home had innocuous labels, such as “Shirts Tops,” “Chocolate and Sweets” and “Gift Makeup,” according to the DOJ. Homeland Security said shipments from several foreign countries with such labels often contain illicit drugs.
I’m not sure if this falls under “dumber than a bag of hair” or “narcotics are a hell of a drug”:
Vargas said he believes Segovia continued to order and pay for controlled substances after being interviewed by Homeland Security agents. He also believes Segovia knowingly gave false information to investigators.
Segovia is charged with an attempt to unlawfully import valeryl fentanyl. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison.
To be clear (and I feel like this is kind of buried in the story) she was a civilian employee, not a sworn member of the SJPD. Also, trying to give her some grace, she may have been dealing with an addiction, or self-medicating for chronic pain. However, the article seems to indicate that she wasn’t just ordering drugs, but she was also sending them to others: in one case, she gave the return address as the SJPOA’s office.
And, of course, for both of these: “All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.“
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#102 in a series)
March 30th, 2023Remember Mark Ridley-Thomas? Don’t feel bad if you don’t: it has been a minute.
In brief, LA council member Ridley-Thomas was indicted for taking bribes from a dean at USC, in return for sending government funds to the “School of Social Work”.
The verdict came down today.
More accessible coverage from Deadline: he was convicted of one count of bribery, one of conspiracy, one count of honest services mail fraud, and four counts of honest services wire fraud. The jury acquitted him on 12 other counts.
Ms. Flynn, who was also indicted, pled out to one bribery count in September. (I missed that story. Sorry.)
Obit watch: March 30, 2023.
March 30th, 2023As most of my readers know, I am something of a greedy gut. So here’s a semi-obscure food related obit that’s relevant to my interests: Yang Bing-yi.
He founded Din Tai Fung: they didn’t invent the soup dumpling, but they popularized it.
Mr. Yang and his wife, Lai Pen-mei, opened their first modest storefront in 1958, laying the foundation for what would become a franchise that their children and grandchildren have expanded to more than 170 locations across Taiwan, mainland China and 13 other countries, including the United States, Japan, Australia and the United Arab Emirates, with a menu that includes such specialties as wontons in red chili oil, shredded tofu and seaweed salad, and steamed truffle-and-pork dumplings.
A Hong Kong branch has been awarded a Michelin star five times.
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Mr. Hom, the chef and writer, said in an interview that Mr. Yang’s drive for precision — down to the diameter of the wrappers and the weight of each soup dumpling — set a standard that has stood the test of time and transcended borders.
“It’s consistently good, no matter where I’ve eaten, in Singapore, Bangkok, L.A., London,” he said. He added that he had made a practice of eating the dumplings slowly, leaving some in the bamboo basket where they are served to observe whether the soupy filling would hold up within the thin skin. They always did.
D.M. Thomas, author. I never read it, but I remember back in the day The White Hotel was a huge deal.
FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for local figure Murray Callahan. He used to own Callahan’s General Store, which is kind of a famous local spot. It seems tourist oriented to me these days, but I think back in the day before Austin sprawled out that way, it was more of a feed and seed kind of place: a very early version of Tractor Supply Company, if you will. (I went out there once with my folks some years back, which is what I base my impressions on: while Austin has expanded in that direction, it’s still kind of off the beaten path for me.)
Obit watch: March 29, 2023.
March 29th, 2023Bill Zehme, noted biographer.
Mr. Zehme’s biography of Mr. Sinatra, “The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’” (1997), was a best seller. He also shared the author credit on best-selling memoirs by Regis Philbin (“I’m Only One Man!” in 1995 and “Who Wants to Be Me?” in 2000) and Jay Leno (“Leading With My Chin” in 1996).
His other books included “Intimate Strangers: Comic Profiles and Indiscretions of the Very Famous” (2002), “Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman” (1999) and “Hef’s Little Black Book” (2004), a stream-of-consciousness collaboration with Hugh M. Hefner, the founder and publisher of Playboy magazine.
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Mr. Zehme provided tips from Mr. Sinatra about what men should never do in the presence of a woman (yawn) and about the finer points of his haberdashery: “He wore only snap-brim Cavanaughs — fine felts and porous palmettos — and these were his crowns, cocked askew, as defiant as he was.”
“Mr. Sinatra’s gauge for when a hat looked just right,” Mr. Zehme wrote, was “when no one laughs.”
George Nassar is burning in Hell. The name might ring a bell for some of you: he was Albert “The Boston Strangler” DeSalvo’s cellmate, and DeSalvo supposedly confessed his crimes to Nassar.
In 1995, Mr. Nassar recalled in an interview with The Boston Globe that Mr. DeSalvo had described the killings 30 years earlier as they walked along a concrete hallway at Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts, where both men were incarcerated and undergoing mental health evaluations. Mr. DeSalvo was being held on unrelated charges of armed robbery, assault and sex offenses involving four women.
“He began describing a crime and watching my reaction to see if it was too abhorrent to listen to,” Mr. Nassar said. “Some of it was horrible, particularly the crimes of stabbing a woman under her breasts in Cambridge. But I wasn’t there to condemn.”
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Mr. Nassar told his lawyer, the famed criminal defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, about the confession and recruited him to represent Mr. DeSalvo.“We were setting it up,” he told WBZ, “saying, ‘Al, you’re going to confess, you’re going to trial, you’re going to do your book, we’re going to take care of your family,’ and he was saying, ‘OK, OK, OK.’”
Mr. DeSalvo subsequently confessed to Mr. Bailey and gave his account to psychiatrists, a state investigator and the Boston police, but for reasons that are unclear he was never charged with any of the killings. He later retracted the confession.
In 1967, Mr. DeSalvo was convicted of the robbery, assault and sex offenses he had been charged with and sentenced to life imprisonment. During the trial, another inmate, Stanley Setterlund, testified that Mr. DeSalvo had confessed to the murders “and laughed.”
This is one of those odd obits: Mr. Nassar actually died in December of 2018, but for various reasons, his death only became public knowledge recently.
Obit watch: March 28, 2023.
March 28th, 2023Things have been quiet on the obit front the past few days. Now watch as someone prominent dies later on today. (I don’t want this to happen, but it seems that whenever I’m thinking things have been quiet, something happens.)
In the meantime, Lawrence sent me a couple of obits a few days ago:
Michael Reaves, writer. He worked on “Batman: The Animated Series”, wrote some “Star Wars” novels, and had a lot of other credits.
Eric Brown, SF author and critic for The Guardian.
Great and good FotB Borepatch lost his beloved dog, Wolfgang. Those of you who are familiar with Borepatch and Wolfgang might want to send condolences his way.
Obit watch: March 25, 2023.
March 25th, 2023Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel and the “Moore” in “Moore’s Law”.
In 1965, in what became known as Moore’s Law, he predicted that the number of transistors that could be placed on a silicon chip would double at regular intervals for the foreseeable future, thus increasing the data-processing power of computers exponentially.
He added two corollaries later: The evolving technology would make computers more and more expensive to build, yet consumers would be charged less and less for them because so many would be sold. Moore’s Law held up for decades.
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In interviews, Mr. Moore was characteristically humble about his achievements, particularly the technical advances that Moore’s Law made possible.
“What I could see was that semiconductor devices were the way electronics were going to become cheap. That was the message I was trying to get across,” he told the journalist Michael Malone in 2000. “It turned out to be an amazingly precise prediction — a lot more precise than I ever imagined it would be.”
Not only was Mr. Moore predicting that electronics would become much cheaper over time, as the industry shifted from away from discrete transistors and tubes to silicon microchips, but over the years his prediction proved so reliable that technology firms based their product strategy on the assumption that Moore’s Law would hold.
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I believe he was the last surviving member of “the traitorous eight”, the men who defected from William Shockley and founded the hugely influential Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation.
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Mr. Wittine was a Boy Scout. He also had cerebral palsy. He busted his hind end to earn Eagle Scout rank:
By 1978, he had all the required badges. But the Boy Scouts wouldn’t let him advance to Eagle because he was 23 at the time, and the Scouts required that you be under 18.
His scoutmaster, Richard Golden, wrote letters to local newspapers, and in late March of that year journalists began relating Mr. Wittine’s story. The two men were soon on “Good Morning America,” Mr. Wittine pointing at his word board and Mr. Golden spelling out the letters.
The public “bombarded” the Boy Scouts of America with letters and phone calls, The Times reported. In a spontaneous outburst of shared sentiment, former scouts throughout the nation rooted around in their attics, found their Eagle medals and mailed them to Mr. Wittine.
“Allow me to share my medal with you,” a Florida man wrote in a handwritten letter. “It is old and tarnished, awarded fifteen years ago, but the cherished memories are as fresh and exciting as if it were yesterday.”
Adding to the pressure on the Boy Scouts of America, Mr. Golden issued a warning: He and Mr. Wittine would appear at a national Scouting conference soon to be held in Phoenix, even though they had not yet been invited. “We may go anyway, not only to argue Greg’s case but that of Scouting’s approach to all handicapped persons,” Mr. Golden told The Associated Press.
Days after that interview, on May 5, the Boy Scouts issued a news release. The first sentence read, “The Boy Scouts of America has changed its regulations, and the way is now clear for 23-year-old Scout Gregory Wittine of Roosevelt, N.Y., to become an Eagle Scout.”
It was a major change in policy, dropping “all age restrictions” for “severely handicapped” scouts while still requiring that they earn the same badges as other Eagle Scouts. And it brought Mr. Wittine a flood of more attention.
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The Boy Scouts of America does not track how many Eagle Scouts have been able to earn their rank after age 18 because of a disability, but in an interview, Mike Matzinger, a national leader of the organization with knowledge about scouts who have disabilities, estimated the number to be in the tens of thousands.
Ben Burns has been the scoutmaster of a troop of disabled scouts in Dallas since 2010. In an interview, he said that the possibility of becoming an Eagle Scout gave his troop members a sense of mission, and that six of them — all over the age of 18, including his son Tim — had attained the rank.
Tim has Down syndrome and struggles to talk. But at his Eagle Scout ceremony in 2021, he gave a speech.
“That’s been the biggest moment in his life, because he was the center of attention, and it was all about him,” Mr. Burns said. “I’m not sure what he’d be doing with his life if he didn’t have Boy Scouts.”
Mr. Burns said that the approach Mr. Wittine conceived — working extremely hard to obtain badges that might seem out of reach, but getting ample time to do so — struck him as ideal. His scouts, who have a wide range of disabilities, pitch their own tents, use hand saws and learn how to climb back into sailboats after they capsize.
“When our boys earn it, they earn it,” he said.
Obit watch: March 24, 2023.
March 24th, 2023Great and good FotB Borepatch lost his younger brother yesterday. We extend our condolences to him and to the other members of his family. May his brother rest in peace, and may his memory be a comfort to them.
I’m a little late on this one, but I just found out today: John Linebaugh passed away on Sunday.
Mr. Linebaugh was an influential maker of big-bore revolvers.
Fuzzy Haskins, of the Parliaments, which became Parliament, which became Parliament-Funkadelic.
Since this is from 1976, I am assuming (but can’t confirm) Mr. Haskins is in this. (According to the obit, he left the group in 1977.) Even if he isn’t, this is still a neat slice of history.
Obit watch: March 23, 2023.
March 23rd, 2023Norman Steinberg, screenwriter.
It’s a sad day when Norman Steinberg leaves us. From BLAZING SADDLES to MY FAVORITE YEAR, he was one of the best writers I ever worked with. I’m so glad I rescued him from a dull stable legal career, because he always permeated the writers room with his infectious comic spirit.
— Mel Brooks (@MelBrooks) March 22, 2023
Gordon T. Dawson, writer and producer. He worked on five Peckinpah movies, wrote nine “Rockford Files” scripts, and did a lot of work on “Walker, Texas Ranger”. Other credits include “Lou Grant”, “Black Sheep Squadron”, and two episodes of a spinoff of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.
Peter Werner, director. Lawrence sent this over because he’d done a lot of “Justified” and “Elementary”. Other credits include “Boomtown”, “Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story”, and “Moonlighting”.
Bagatelle (#80)
March 23rd, 2023Shot:
You know he wants to commit murder, but you have to let him in the building every day. https://t.co/SyPFeNwagy
— Dr. Blast Hardcheese (@punch_sideiron) March 22, 2023
Chaser:
Yet another thing I did not know.
March 23rd, 2023So as long as you believe, the marriage is valid. But when you stop believing, the marriage is invalid. And Pablo Escobear’s authority to officiate weddings is a giant consensual hallucination…and doesn’t the fact that Wikipedia states the bear does not have that authority invalidate the claim that the parties believe the bear has that authority?
Obit watch: March 22, 2023.
March 22nd, 2023John Jenrette Jr., former Democratic congressman from South Carolina.
Mr. Jenrette was, famously, caught up in the ABSCAM scandal.
A former social acquaintance, John Stowe, got in contact with Mr. Jenrette in 1979, saying that he had found a wealthy investor, sometimes referred to as a sheikh — an invention of the F.B.I. — who was willing to finance the revival of an empty munitions factory, bringing 400 jobs to Mr. Jenrette’s district. To sweeten the deal, Mr. Stowe said, he needed legislation that would let the sheikh emigrate to the United States.
Mr. Jenrette was captured on videotape, during one of his visits to a townhouse in the Georgetown section of Washington in December 1979, discussing a payment he would accept with people said to be lieutenants of the phony sheikh.
To an offer of $100,000, with $50,000 up front, Mr. Jenrette said, ”I have larceny in my blood — I’d take it in a goddamn minute.”
Five envelopes, each containing $10,000, were laid out on a desk.
Despite the urgings of Anthony Amoroso, an F.B.I. agent posing as one of the sheikh’s executives, Mr. Jenrette didn’t take the money. Instead, two days later, Mr. Stowe picked it up. Mr. Jenrette, fearful of appearing to have accepted a direct payoff to help the sheikh, agreed to receive $10,000 from Mr. Stowe as a loan, and received a promissory note for it.
The jury delivered a quick verdict, convicting Mr. Jenrette and Mr. Stowe of one count of conspiracy and two counts of violating the federal anti-bribery statute by promising to introduce legislation to let a fictitious Arab businessman into the United States.
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The case put a great strain on his marriage, which had already been roiled by his womanizing. His wife, Rita (Carpenter) Jenrette soon wrote, with a co-author, an article for The Washington Post with the headline “Diary of a Mad Congresswife,” in which she declared, “I hate my life as a congressional wife” and described Mr. Jenrette’s struggles with alcohol.
A few months later, she posed for Playboy and, in an accompanying article, said that she and her husband had once made love on the steps of the United States Capitol. When she was profiled in 2017 on “CBS Sunday Morning,” she amended that to say that they had simply shared a passionate kiss behind a Capitol column.
The Jenrettes divorced in 1981 after five years of marriage.
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Willis Reed, noted player for the New York Knickerbockers.
Reed won the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award for the 1969-70 season and was named the M.V.P. of the championship series. He won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1965, was voted an All-Star seven times and won another N.B.A. title and finals M.V.P. with the Knicks in 1973. For his career, he averaged 18.7 points and 12.9 rebounds per game.
He was chosen by the N.B.A. for its 50th and 75th anniversary teams. In 1996, he was chosen by the N.B.A. as one of its 50 greatest players. His No. 19 uniform jersey — white with blue and orange trim — was the first to be retired by the Knicks, on Oct. 21, 1976. He was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982.
Bobbi Kelly. This is probably going to be a “Who?” moment for most of you.
She was the woman on the cover of “Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More”.
The man, Nick Ercoline, was her boyfriend at the time. They married in 1971 and stayed married until her death.
Obit watch: March 21, 2023.
March 21st, 2023The athletic program at St. Francis College in Brooklyn.
All of it. All 19 sports will be abolished after the spring semester.
Obscure school, who cares, right? They were actually a Division 1 school, which kind of surprised me: the basketball team was 14-16 this season, and 7-9 in the Northeast Conference.
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The school states they intend to honor all current athletic scholarships, but the athletic staff will be let go at the end of the semester.
More from ESPN, which claims 21 teams instead of 19:
Just for the sake of comparison, my old school has an undergraduate enrollment of 2,800 to 3,500 (US News gives two different figures)…and the basketball programs are DII. As far as I know, St. Ed’s has never tried to compete in D1.
It seems to me that it might have made more sense to drop down to D2, rather than eliminating athletics totally. But St. Francis just moved to a new facility…that doesn’t have a gym or pool. The original plan was apparently that they were going to share those things with some other school. Perhaps that turned out to be impractical?
Obit watch: March 20, 2023.
March 20th, 2023Simone Segouin. She was 97.
She was a French resistance fighter as a teenager.
She was also the subject of a “Life” profile by Jack Belden:
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New York Public Library digital archive.
Lawrence sent over two interesting obits:
Gloria Dea, the first magician to perform on the Vegas Strip.
On May 14, 1941, at only 19 years old, Dea performed in the Roundup Room at the El Rancho Vegas. That made her the first magician to ever perform on Highway 91, which wouldn’t be renamed Las Vegas Boulevard for 18 more years. (At the time, only the El Rancho Vegas and Last Frontier lined the road. The Flamingo was still under construction.)
Dea performed two shows that night. The crowds went wild for her billiard-ball trick and a floating-card trick, both taught to her by her father.
“It felt good,” Dea told the R-J at her birthday bash in August. “Anytime someone likes something that you do, you feel good don’t you? Oh, yeah. I was received wonderfully. It was a great room. You had the audience seated, then floor-to-ceiling glass in the back, and on the other side of that was the swimming pool.”
“Then you were onstage, facing that. It was fancy. It was a fun place.”
Byrd Odum Holland, makeup artist and actor.
Lawrence pointed out “The Creeping Terror”. We have “Five Minutes to Live“: I bought it on a cheap gas station DVD that I couldn’t pass up because it also had “Land of the Free” (Shatner!) We haven’t watched “Five Minutes” yet, but I am trying to sell the Saturday Movie Group on it because it sounds interesting. Johnny Cash plays a psychotic killer in one of only two “theatrical film roles” he played in his career (as opposed to appearances on TV and in documentaries).
Mr. Holland’s other acting credits include “Swamp Girl” and “The Black Klansman” (1966).
NYT obit for Jim Gordon, which, while late, is better than some of the other obits I’ve seen.
Obit watch: March 18, 2023.
March 18th, 2023Sgt. First Class Michael “Ty” Kettenhofen (US Army).
Sgt. Kettenhofen was a member of the Golden Knights parachute team. He was training at Homestead Air Reserve Base on Monday when he was badly injured in a landing, and died in a hospital after surgery.
Statement from the US Army. This happened on Monday, but I did not see it widely reported until yesterday.
The only thing I really knew him from was “The Wire” (and a blink-and-you’ll miss it role in “Godzilla vs. Kong”), but he was a lot more diverse than that.
60 doesn’t seem that old these days, does it?
Jerry Samuels, also known as “Napoleon XIV” of “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” fame.
In an interview quoted on Wayne Jancik’s website about one-hit wonders, Mr. Samuels said that nine years before recording “They’re Coming to Take Me Away,” he spent eight months in a psychiatric hospital.
“When I did the record, I knew it wouldn’t offend mental patients,” he said. “I would have laughed at it if I had heard it when I was in the hospital.”
From Wikipedia:
Continuing the theme of insanity, the flip or B-side of the single was simply the A-side played in reverse, and given the title “!aaaH-aH ,yawA eM ekaT oT gnimoC er’yehT” (or “Ha-Haaa! Away, Me Take to Coming They’re”) and the performer billed as “XIV NAPOLEON”…
In his Book of Rock Lists, rock music critic Dave Marsh calls the B-side the “most obnoxious song ever to appear in a jukebox”, saying the recording once “cleared out a diner of forty patrons in two minutes flat.”
Given that the song played forward is 2:10 long, and I assume played backward is the same length, I’m not sure that statement implies what Mr. Marsh thinks it implies…
I also want to point out that among the “many covers” of the song is one by LARD (a Jello Biafra side project)…that’s over eight minutes long. You can find it on the ‘Tube, if you’re interested.
Jim Mellen, one of the original Weathermen. Apparently, he left the group before they rebranded as the Weather Underground and started blowing things up (including themselves).
Bagatelle (#79)
March 16th, 2023Shot:
–Oliver Cromwell, Speech on the dissolution of the Rump of the Long Parliament, 20 April 1653
Chaser:
“You shut down our schools, you shut down the churches, you shut down the businesses,” Kelly railed, according to a video posted by Forbes.
“You did the one thing that I thought could never happen,” he said. “As someone who was born and raised on the south side of Chicago, I never thought in my life that I would ever see the city of Chicago brought down so low as you have managed to bring it down.
“Shame on you,” Kelly said. “That is a legacy that you are going to have to carry.”
Obit watch: March 16, 2023.
March 16th, 2023Jim Gordon passed away yesterday. He was 77.
Mr. Gordon was a drummer who worked with both Eric Clapton and George Harrison. He co-wrote “Layla” with Clapton.
He also had mental problems. On June 3, 1983, he used a hammer and knife to kill his mother. He’d been in prison ever since. After the killing, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, but was still convicted criminally and sentenced to 16 to life in prison. He was turned down for parole ten times.
Bobby Caldwell, R&B guy. (“What You Won’t Do for Love”).
Obit watch: March 15, 2023.
March 15th, 2023John Jakes, author.
Mr. Jakes wrote some 60 novels, including westerns, mysteries, science and fantasy fiction, and children’s books. But he was best known for two series of novels with enormous mass-market appeal: “The Kent Family Chronicles,” eight volumes written in the 1970s to capitalize on the 1976 Bicentennial celebrations (55 million copies were sold), and the “North and South” Civil War trilogy, which appeared in the 1980s (10 million copies).
By the 1990s, Mr. Jakes had joined the charmed circle of America’s big-name authors — among them Mary Higgins Clark, Tom Wolfe, James Clavell, Thomas Harris and Ira Levin — whose publishers paid millions in advances for multi-book deals, although they had only vague ideas what the books might say. In 1990, Doubleday and Bantam paid Mr. Jakes $10 million for three novels as yet unwritten.
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In 2012, Acorn Media released DVDs of “The Kent Family Chronicles” mini-series, with Jim Backus as John Hancock, Peter Graves as George Washington and William Shatner as Paul Revere. Patricia Neal, Buddy Ebsen and Robert Vaughn also played roles, in wigs, period garb and foreign accents. Almost 35 years later, Mr. Jakes was still delighted.
“I love melodrama,” he told The Times in an interview. “I never outgrew my fondness for melodrama.”
Lawrence sent over an obit for Rolly Crump, Disney Imagineer.
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His propellers would become the inspiration for an architectural piece he called the Tower of the Four Winds, which he designed for the It’s a Small World attraction at the 1964-65 World’s Fair in New York.
When the attraction moved to Disneyland in 1966, Crump designed the animated clock, which sends puppet children on a parade as each quarter-hour strikes, for the entrance.Crump also created the hand-carved tiki mask sculptures for the Enchanted Tiki Room and with Yale Gracey came up with ideas for The Haunted Mansion; he did concept paintings for the attraction’s amazing “stretch room.”
Happy Pi Day!
March 14th, 2023I’m a little late, but I feel obligated to make a post.
A lazy post: we’re really not observing Pi Day at the house this year, as we have a cake in the fridge. (A bundt cake, so it was at least round.)
And I don’t have any good pi related news or links to share.
So: obligatory Pi Day post. This and $5 can be redeemed at any Starbucks for a cup of coffee.
Gun book time!
March 14th, 2023It is a little like steam engine time, but more boring.
Last week was a fairly busy week. This week is shaping up to be less packed, and with the time change, I have more daylight to work with. Which means I may be able to get some pictures for part two of “Day of the .45”, and for another project I’m working on. In the meantime, after the jump and as foretold in the prophecy, more bibliographies…
Obit watch: March 14, 2023.
March 14th, 2023Dick Fosbury, Olympic high-jumper and inventor of the “Fosbury Flop”.
With a running start at a raised bar, he launched himself back first, seemed to hover for a moment parallel with the ground, and landed approximately on the back of his neck.
The technique has been compared to a corpse being pushed out of a window. Like Fred Astaire dancing on the ceiling, Fosbury’s flopping struck many onlookers as residing somewhere between a physical feat and a joke. At the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City, the crowd oohed, aahed and laughed watching Fosbury compete.
But the last laugh was his:
The high-jump bar kept being raised, and Fosbury kept clearing it. He finally executed a Fosbury Flop at 7 feet 4¼ inches — earning him not just the gold medal, but an Olympic record at the time.
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Within a few years, the Fosbury Flop was the standard method of elite high jumping. (The current Olympic record is held by Charles Austin, who Fosbury Flopped 7 feet 10 inches at the 1996 games in Atlanta.)
More broadly, the Flop set a standard for the kind of innovation that can transform a human endeavor. The Times has written about “the Dick Fosbury of ski jumping,” of racewalking, of golf, of angler fishing and of the game show “Jeopardy!” When Piaget introduced a line of watches advertised as a “daring departure,” the company made Fosbury its spokesman.
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Joe Pepitone, noted Yankee.
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His Yankee teams finished no higher than fifth through 1969, after which he completed his big-league career in the National League, playing for the Houston Astros, the Chicago Cubs and briefly in 1973 for the Atlanta Braves.
He socked 27 homers again for the Yankees in 1969 and hit .307 in more than 40 at-bats for the Cubs in 1971, but after 1966 he never drove in more than 70 runs in a season. Overall, he hit 219 home runs, with a career average of .258.
For most of his career, Pepitone undermined his own gifts with his rambunctious and self-destructive behavior. He had money problems and marital problems. His night life began after night games; he drank with and without his teammates and was no stranger to drugs. He claimed at one point to have turned Mantle and Whitey Ford on to marijuana, and in an interview in Rolling Stone magazine in 2015, he recalled that when he was with the Cubs, fans in the bleachers would throw packets of joints and cocaine at him in the outfield, and he would hide them in the ivy that covered the stadium wall.
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Pepitone played briefly in Japan in 1973 and wrote a whiny article for The New York Times about his treatment there; hardly anyone spoke English, he complained, “and at my apartment, I swear the door was 4 feet 5 inches high.”
He played some professional softball, was in the bar business for a time and in the early 1980s worked briefly for the Yankees as a hitting coach. In 1985, he was riding in a car with two other people when the police stopped them for running a red light and found drugs — cocaine, heroin and quaaludes — and a loaded handgun in the car.
Pepitone was convicted on misdemeanor counts of possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia and served about half of a six-month sentence.
And speaking of Japan, this one goes out to FotB RoadRich: Masatoshi Ito is dead at 98.
“Who?”
He brought 7-11 to Japan.
Perhaps his greatest contribution to modern Japan began in 1973, when a young executive persuaded him to bring 7-Eleven to the country. Starting with a single store in Tokyo, the deal he struck with the chain’s owners, the Dallas-based Southland company, launched a revolution in Japanese retailing that would transform everything from the way companies moved their products to the way people eat.
The company’s introduction of the ready-to-eat rice ball to store shelves in 1978 made that humble snack into a central part of the country’s fast food culture.
In the decades that followed, 7-Eleven and its imitators would open tens of thousands of convenience stores across Japan, providing a wide range of goods and services. The shops — open 24 hours a day, every day of the year — became so integral to daily life that the government declared them part of the national infrastructure.
7-11 in Japan was so successful, the parent company ended up buying out Southland, who had run 7-11 in the US into the ground.
The victory, however, was short-lived. In 1992, Mr. Ito announced he was stepping down as Ito-Yokado’s president after three executives at the company were accused of providing payoffs to corporate shakedown artists who had threatened to disrupt the company’s annual meeting, a common racket at the time.
Replaced by his protégé, Mr. Suzuki, Mr. Ito stayed out of the public view for several years before re-emerging in the late 1990s, when he was appointed Ito-Yokado’s honorary chairman. In 2005, the company became Seven & I, combining the convenience store’s name with the first initial of its predecessor. Mr. Ito remained honorary chairman until his death.
Jesus Alou, baseball player and one of the three Alou brothers (Felipe and Matty were the other two).
He was also famous for another reason:
Patricia Schroeder, former Congress woman (D-Colorado).
Obit watch: March 13, 2023.
March 13th, 2023Kenzaburo Oe, noted Japanese writer and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Pat McCormick, Olympic diver.
At the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, McCormick won the women’s 3-meter springboard and 10-meter platform competitions, the only ones being held for women at the time. In 1956 in Melbourne, Australia, eight months after the birth of her first child — and with her husband, Glenn McCormick, as the team’s coach — she won them both again.
Her feat was unequaled until another American, Greg Louganis, captured the 3-meter and 10-meter titles at the 1988 Seoul Olympics four years after doing it in Los Angeles.
Bud Grant, former coach of the Minnesota Vikings. He was 95.
He had a regular-season record of 158-96-5, for a .621 winning percentage, the second-most victories for a Vikings coach. His Vikings won 11 division titles and made it to four Super Bowls, but they never won; they lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in 1970, the Miami Dolphins in 1974, the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1975 and the Oakland Raiders in 1977.
His teams were led by the celebrated defensive line known as the Purple People Eaters, headed by Alan Page and Carl Eller, and by an offense that included quarterback Fran Tarkenton and running back Chuck Foreman. He was named N.F.L. coach of the year in 1969 and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1994. He won 10 or more games seven times between the 1969 and 1976 seasons.