Charles Fuller, playwright. He won a Pulitzer in 1982 for “A Soldier’s Play” (which was later adapted for film as “A Soldier’s Story”).
Günter Lamprecht, German actor.
IMDB. For the record, he was in “Das Boot”.
Obit watch: October 7, 2022.
October 7th, 2022Gun book post tomorrow.
October 6th, 2022Just ran out of time today to get it up. I’m sure some of my readers will be happy I’m skipping a day, but I have a really nice one I want to document…
Obit watch: October 6, 2022.
October 6th, 2022Kitten Natividad, Russ Meyer star. (Alt link.)
Mr. Meyer also fell for Ms. Natividad, who was married at the time, and they began a relationship that lasted for the rest of the 1970s. And he made her the star of his next movie, which would be his final feature film: “Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens” (1979).
The movie is often described as Mr. Meyer’s riff on “Our Town” — for instance, it employed an onscreen narrator named “The Man From Small Town U.S.A.” Ms. Natividad plays a woman whose husband’s preoccupation with anal sex leaves her sexually frustrated.
Critics didn’t have much good to say about the movie, which Mr. Meyer wrote with Mr. Ebert.
Gene Siskel of The Chicago Tribune, Mr. Ebert’s television partner on the film review show then known as “Sneak Previews,” wrote that Mr. Meyer’s “Vixen,” released in 1968, had been “an enjoyable nudie film because it featured the first joyfully aggressive woman we’d seen in a skin flick.” But he added, “Meyer hasn’t grown up in 10 years; if anything, he’s deteriorated.”
…
In 1973 she won the Miss Nude Universe title in San Bernardino, Calif.
She was dancing at the Classic Cat, a club in Hollywood, when a fellow dancer, Shari Eubank, who had starred in the 1975 Meyer film “Supervixens,” suggested she introduce herself to the director. She is said to have done so by poking him in the back with her bare breasts.
…
IMDB, probably not safe for work. (In case you were wondering: “Bouncy Topless Woman on Plane (uncredited)”. Also “Airplane II” as “Woman in ‘Moral Majority’ Shirt (uncredited)”.)
Laurence Silberman, noted judge and legal scholar. Lawrence sent over a nice obit from the Volokh Conspiracy.
Pop culture programming note.
October 6th, 2022I usually don’t do this, but I’m making an exception today. I know that there are some readers of this blog (including one prominent blogger) who are “Perry Mason” fans.
Tomorrow morning’s re-run on MeTV is “The Case of the Prudent Prosecutor“, which is my personal favorite from the run.
Why?
- The episode is set at a hunting and fishing club. “Perry Mason” is pretty good about guns in general (for reasons) and it is nice to see gun usage (not just hunting, but defensive carry) treated as perfectly normal and reasonable.
- The plot of the episode boils down to: a friend of Hamilton Burger is charged with murder, and Burger asks Perry to defend him. Which is a twist…
- …but it’s a good twist. This is one of the episodes that attempts to humanize Hamilton, and more or less succeeds. There’s a nice scene between Hamilton and Perry, where Hamilton explains why the accused is so important to him. It’s a good character moment: I wish the writers had been a little more consistent about Burger through the rest of the series.
If you happen to be in a position to watch this episode, and haven’t, I encourage you to do so.
And yet another dose of hoplobibliophilia.
October 4th, 2022A while back, great and good FotB (and official trainer to WCD) Karl Rehn introduced me to the work of the Snub Gun Study Group. From there, I learned about Stephen A. Camp.
Obit watch: October 4, 2022.
October 4th, 2022…
…
Survivors include a younger sister, the country singer Crystal Gayle; her daughters Patsy Lynn Russell, Peggy Lynn, Clara (Cissie) Marie Lynn; and her son Ernest; as well as 17 grandchildren; four step-grandchildren; and a number of great-grandchildren. Another daughter, Betty Sue Lynn, and another son, Jack, died before her.
She also leaves legions of admirers, women as well as men, who draw strength and encouragement from her irrepressible, down-to-earth music and spirit.
“I’m proud I’ve got my own ideas, but I ain’t no better than nobody else,” she was quoted as saying in “Finding Her Voice” (1993), Mary A. Bufwack and Robert K. Oermann’s comprehensive history of women in country music. “I’ve often wondered why I became so popular, and maybe that’s the reason. I think I reach people because I’m with ’em, not apart from ’em.”
Joan Hotchkis. A lot of theater work, and a fair number of TV credits. “The F.B.I.”, “My World and Welcome to It” (somebody needs to release that on home video), “Medical Center”, “Marcus Welby, M.D.”…
…and “Mannix”. (“To Draw the Lightning”, season 5, episode 22. “With Intent to Kill”, season 4, episode 17.)
On, Wisconsin!
October 4th, 2022Missed this yesterday: Paul Chryst out as head coach of the Badgers.
The team is 2-3 this season.
Obit watch: October 3, 2022.
October 3rd, 2022Sacheen Littlefeather. Alt link. THR.
Ms. Littlefeather was most famous as Marlon Brando’s stand-in at the 1973 Academy Awards. She read part of his prepared speech refusing the award. (The speech was eight pages long, but “but telecast producer Howard Koch informed her she had no more than 60 seconds”.
Robert Brown. Other credits include an episode of a minor 1960s SF TV series, “Primus”, “Run for Your Life”, “Perry Mason”…
…and “Mannix” (“The Girl in the Polka Dot Dress”, season 7, episode 1.)
Your loser update: week 4, 2022.
October 3rd, 2022NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
None.
Didn’t watch any of the games, again: I’ve been feeling kind of puny and spent most of yesterday sleeping. But the Raiders won, and that ends the loser update for 2022.
We’ll see you again in 2023, assuming we’re all still here.
Random acts of hoplobibliophilia.
October 2nd, 2022I did manage to make it to the post office yesterday, and picked up some packages that had been waiting for me. All of which contained gun books.
So, continuing our ongoing epic…
Obit watch: October 1, 2022.
October 1st, 2022Joe Bussard. No, you’ve probably never heard of him (unless you read the same books I do): he was an “obsessive collector” of 78 RPM records.
From his home near the Blue Ridge Mountains, Mr. Bussard (pronounced boo-SARD) drove the country roads of the South seeking 78s that had been languishing in people’s homes. He was selective about what he brought back to his basement. He loved jazz but detested any jazz recorded after the early 1930s. He loved country music but decreed that nothing good came after 1955. Nashville? He called it “Trashville.” Rock ’n’ roll? A cancer.
“How can you listen to Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw when you’ve listened to Jelly Roll Morton?” he said in an interview with The Associated Press in 2001. “It’s like coming out of a mansion and living in a chicken coop.”
…
Mr. Bussard was one of the “characters” (so to speak) profiled in Amanda Petrusich’s Do Not Sell At Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records (affiliate link), a book that I both liked and found depressing.
Lawrence emailed an obit for Drew Ford, of It’s Alive Comics.
Edited to add: I forgot I wanted to include this one. Antonio Inoki.
He was also a professional wrestler.
Perhaps most famously, he fought Muhammad Ali in a MMA match in 1976.
The result of the fight, a draw, has long been debated by the press and fans.
Hoplobibliophilia, act 3.
September 30th, 2022When Mike the Musicologist and I were running around over the weekend, we swung by the Half-Price Books in Cedar Park. And I found a couple of interesting things for $7.99 (plus tax) each…
Obit watch: September 30, 2022.
September 30th, 2022Gavin Escobar, former tight end for the Dallas Cowboys. He was 31, and had been working for the Long Beach Fire Department. According to reports, he and Chelsea Walsh died in an apparent rock climbing accident “in San Bernardino National Forest near Tahquitz Rock”.
Obit watch: September 29, 2022.
September 29th, 2022Bill Plante, CBS news guy. I sort of vaguely remember him, but my family and I were never big CBS news people.
Coolio (Artis Leon Ivey Jr.). THR. Tributes.
David Foreman, founder of “Earth First!”.
…
…
The stress of the legal proceedings nevertheless created fissures in the organization, as did the arrival of a new, younger cohort of activists who wanted to inject social justice issues into Earth First!’s environmentalism. Mr. Foreman, who called himself “a redneck for the environment,” had never shown much interest in left-wing politics, and in 1990 he and his wife, Nancy Morton, publicly split with Earth First!
The group, they wrote in a letter to its members, had become dominated by an “overtly counterculture/anti-establishment style.”
“We feel,” they added, “like we should be sitting at the bar of a seedy honky-tonk, drinking Lone Star, thumbing quarters in the country western jukebox, and writing this letter on a bar napkin.”
Hoplobibliophilia 18, Cowboys 13.
September 28th, 2022Continuing my attempt to clean out the backlog…
I don’t think I buy a lot of new expensive gun books. I haven’t bought any of Ian’s, for example: while I am sort of interested in bullpups, French military rifles, and guns of the Chinese warlords, I look at Ian’s prices and say, “I’m not that interested.”
Paying $100+ for a book still gives me the leaping fantods. It has to be something I’m really interested in: either for collector value (like the Samworths) or on a topic I’m interested in (the history of sniping, for example).
So these two represent a departure from my norm. He says that while he considers paying $300 for another book. But in the meantime…
Obit watch: September 28, 2022.
September 28th, 2022Robert Cormier, actor. He was 33: according to reports, he died from “injuries suffered in a fall”.
Venetia Stevenson. Other credits include “77 Sunset Strip”, “The Third Man” (the TV series), and “The Sergeant Was a Lady”.
Ray Edenton, noted Nashville studio musician.
…
…
Onward through the hoplobibliophiliac fog.
September 26th, 2022Previously:
I believe I had mentioned that a friend of mine in the Association had been tipping me off to gun books online.
I believe I had also mentioned that my tax refund had come in. Plus my bonus payment from my employer is coming this week.
The end result is: I’ve accumulated a bunch more gun books. I have a stack. And I’m way behind in documenting them Lawrence style.
Which is…okay. Except they’re stacking up on the kitchen table, and if I don’t move them in the next few days, I’m going to get griped at. So I thought I’d do a couple a day, maybe every other day, until the backlog is cleared.
No, no, don’t thank me: I run a full service blog here. But I will put in a jump…
If it ain’t a rambling wreck, it’ll do until the wreck gets here.
September 26th, 2022Geoff Collins and athletic director Todd Stansbury out at Georgia Tech.
Georgia Tech is 1-3 this season. That one win came against Western Carolina.
(Apologies for linking to ESPN, but the AJC is pretty much unreadable and unlinkable without a subscription.)
Obit watch: September 26, 2022.
September 26th, 2022Dale McRaven. He co-created “Mork & Mindy” (with Garry Marshall) and created “Perfect Strangers”.
Estrin had a successful career in TV, starting with credits on Charmed, Dawson’s Creek and Tru Calling, before rising through the ranks to serve as co-executive producer of Fox’s Prison Break.
Estrin was showrunner and executive producer of two ABC paranormal thrillers, The River and The Whispers, as well as co-creator and executive producer of ABC’s Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.
He was only 51.
In 1960, Gardner, who had recently appeared Off Broadway in the Jerry Herman musical review Nightcap, was cast in what would be her signature role: Luisa, or “The Girl,” in the Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones musical The Fantasticks. Based loosely on Edmond Rostand’s 1894 play The Romancers, the musical told the allegorical story of two fathers who trick their children – The Girl, Luisa, and The Boy, Matt – into falling in love by pretending to oppose the union.
The production, at a tiny Off Broadway venue in Greenwich Village called the Sullivan Street Playhouse, became a huge success, spawning a hit song (“Try To Remember”), running 42 years and boosting the careers of Gardner and other cast members (including Kenneth Nelson, who went on to star in The Boys in the Band, and, most notably, Jerry Orbach, the Law & Order star who enjoyed a long career on stage, film and television).
She did a considerable amount of theater work, both on and off Broadway. She also did some TV, including three of the shows in the “Law and Order” franchise.
Jim Florio. former governor of New Jersey, “who then pushed through a record increase shortly after taking office, incurring public wrath that led to his defeat in his bid for a second term“.
Nancy Hiller, woodworker. (Alt link.)
…
There was nothing fancy about her work. She resisted the label “artist,” though people tried to pin it on her. And she deliberately charged less than her peers, not to undercut them, but to make her work affordable to middle-class clients who appreciated good design and hard work.
“She didn’t want to do work that was only accessible to a few people,” Megan Fitzpatrick, a woodworker and editor, said in an interview. “She wanted work that was accessible to everybody.”
Just Jaeckin, director. His most famous film was probably the 1974 soft-core porn film “Emmanuelle”. Other credits include “The Story of O”, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, and “The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak”.
Your loser update: week 3, 2022.
September 26th, 2022NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:
Las Vegas
Still nothing much to say about the weekend’s games, since I was busy having fun all day yesterday. But I will throw in a quick obit watch: The Pro Bowl.
Obit watch: September 24, 2022.
September 24th, 2022This is shaping up to be another one of those busy weekends: Mike the Musicologist is in town and we’re going to a fun show.
However, I have a few minutes, and I didn’t want to let Louise Fletcher get past me. THR.
Other credits include “Perry Mason” (the original, twice), “Maverick”, “The Untouchables”, and several appearances on one of the spinoffs of a minor 1960s SF TV series.
Edited to add: slipping another one in. John Hartman, drummer for the Doobie Brothers. I apologize that I don’t have more time to go into detail: I might try to do a musical interlude on Monday.
Leonard, Part (N).
September 23rd, 2022I’ve lost track at this point, but a quick Fat Leonard update.
In Venezuela.
And according to this story, he was trying to get to Russia.
Obit watch: September 23, 2022 (supplemental).
September 23rd, 2022Senior Austin Police Department Officer Anthony “Tony” Martin passed away this morning.
According to news reports, he was returning home from work when he hit a car that turned left in front of him.
Obit watch: September 23, 2022.
September 23rd, 2022Hilary Mantel, author of historical fiction.
She was someone I’d heard of, but never read. I didn’t know, until I read the obit, that those three books are a trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, and now I kind of want to read them.
Maarten Schmidt, astronomer. He did a lot of work on quasi-stellar radio sources, or “quasars”.
In 1962, two scientists in Australia, Cyril Hazard and John Bolton, finally managed to pinpoint the precise position of one of these, called 3C 273. They shared the data with several researchers, including Dr. Schmidt, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology.
Using the enormous 200-inch telescope at the Palomar Observatory, in rural San Diego County, Dr. Schmidt was able to hone in on what appeared to be a faint blue star. He then plotted its light signature on a graph, showing where its constituent elements appeared in the spectrum from ultraviolet to infrared.
What he found was, at first, puzzling. The signatures, or spectral lines, did not resemble those of any known elements. He stared at the graphs for weeks, pacing his living room floor, until he realized: The expected elements were all there, but they had shifted toward the red end of the spectrum — an indication that the object was moving away from Earth, and fast.
And once he knew the speed — 30,000 miles a second — Dr. Schmidt could calculate the object’s distance. His jaw dropped. At about 2.4 billion light years away, 3C 273 was one of the most distant objects in the universe from Earth. That distance meant that it was also unbelievably luminous: If it were placed at the position of Proxima Centauri, the closest star to Earth, it would outshine the sun.
…
The question remained: If these objects weren’t stars, what were they? Theories proliferated. Some said they were the fading embers of a giant supernova. Dr. Schmidt and others believed instead that in a quasar, astronomers could see the birth of an entire galaxy, with a black hole at the center pulling together astral gases that, in their friction, generated enormous amounts of energy — an argument developed by Donald Lynden-Bell, a physicist at Cambridge University, in 1969.
If that was true, and if quasars really were several billion light years away, it meant that they were portraits of the universe in its relative infancy, just a few billion years old. In some cases their light originated long before Earth’s solar system was even formed, and offered clues to the evolution of the universe.
Sara Shane, actress. Other credits include the 1950s “Dragnet”, “The Outer Limits”, “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”, and the “I Led 3 Lives” TV series.
The Times has published two obits over the past couple of days for people who weren’t all that famous, but were interesting for reasons.
John Train. He was a co-founder of “The Paris Review”. He was an author: among other things, he wrote three books about “remarkable names of real people”.
And he was also kind of a shadowy power broker:
Yet he was also an operator in high finance and world affairs who, by one researcher’s account, had ties to U.S. secret services. Mr. Train founded and ran a leading financial firm devoted to preserving the money of rich families, and he worked to support the mujahedeen in their fight against the Soviet Union in the 1980s.
The multifariousness of his career defies definition, but one quality did underlie his many activities. Mr. Train exemplified the attitudes and values of the exalted class he was born into: the white Anglo-Saxon Protestants of the postwar era. He was globe-bestriding but also self-effacing, erudite but also pragmatic, cosmopolitan but also nationalistic, solemn at one moment and droll the next.
Allan M. Siegal. This is one of those internal NYT obits, but Mr. Siegal was an old-line Times guy, so his obit is of some interest.
…
“Readers will believe more of what we do know if we level with them about what we don’t” was one of Mr. Siegal’s favorite injunctions, articulated long before media outlets in the digital era began emphasizing transparency in news gathering and editing.
Another: “Being fair is better than being first.”
Mr. Siegal’s knowledge of grammar, history, geography, nomenclature, culture and cuisine was expansive. But on no subject was he more authoritative than The Times itself.
…
In 2003, in the aftermath of a scandal in which the fabrications of a reporter, Jayson Blair, led to the fall of the newsroom’s top two managers, Mr. Siegal headed an internal committee that reviewed the paper’s ethical and organizational practices.
Among its recommendations was the creation of a new job: standards editor. Mr. Siegal was the first to be named to the position, adding the title to that of assistant managing editor, a post he held from 1987 until his retirement in 2006. At the time, his name had been listed among the paper’s top editors on the masthead, which appeared on the editorial page, more than twice as long as anyone else’s.
…
Mr. Siegal was capable of withering criticism. His post-mortem critiques to subordinate editors and reporters — written in precise penmanship with a green felt-tip pen (known as “greenies” among the staff, they showed up well against black-and-white newsprint, he found) — could be as terse as “Ugh!” “How, please?” “Name names” and “Absurd!”
Once, having demanded that a headline combine several complex elements in a short word count, he found the result wanting: “As if written by pedants from Mars,” he declared.
But his rockets were also astute and instructive, guiding generations of editors and reporters in the finer points of style and tone. And perhaps because he was so demanding, his not-infrequent notes of praise were cherished all the more. “Nice, who?” was his trademark comment when he thought a headline or caption, by an anonymous editor, was especially artful. (The answer, the name of the editor, would appear — to the editor’s great pride — in the next day’s compilation of post-mortems, run off and stapled together by copy machine and distributed throughout the news department.)< Other critiques showed a biting sense of humor. “If this bumpkin spelling is the best we can do,” he once wrote of a subheadline that included a reference to “fois gras” (rather than foie gras), “we should stick to chopped liver.” When a headline allowed that the football coach Mike Ditka “should recover” from a heart attack, Mr. Siegal wrote: “Unless God returns our call, we shouldn’t predict in such cases.”
Noted.
September 21st, 2022Robert Sarver is selling his majority stake in the Phoenix Suns. Also the Phoenix Mercury.