On the road again. Blogging will be catch as catch can for the next few days.
Travel day.
November 10th, 2021Obit watch: November 9, 2021.
November 9th, 2021Dean Stockwell. He was 85.
204 credits in IMDB, dating back to 1945. The man worked, and had been working since he was a child.
Yes, “Quantum Leap” and “Blue Velvet” and the Lynch “Dune”. Also the “Battlestar Galactica” revival, the original “Twilight Zone”, one episode of a spinoff of a minor 1960s SF TV show, “Beverly Hills Cop II”, “To Live and Die in L.A.”, “Paris, Texas”, “Wagon Train”, and the list goes on. He was no slouch when it came to movies, and if it was a TV series, he was almost certainly in it at some point.
And that includes “Mannix”. (“A Step in Time”, season 5, episode 3. He was “Chris Townsend”.)
Lawrence sent over a nice obit from National Review for Gerald Russello, NR contributor and editor of the University Bookman.
Edited to add: NYT obit for Dean Stockwell.
Max Cleland, former Senator from Georgia.
Stipulated: he was a liberal (according to the NYT, too liberal for Georgia), and we probably would have disagreed on many issues.
But: he also served honorably in Vietnam.
On April 8, 1968, just days before his tour was to end, Capt. Cleland was on a rescue mission in the village of Khe Sanh when he noticed a hand grenade on the ground. He picked it up and it detonated, instantly severing his right leg and right arm; his left leg was amputated within the hour. He was later awarded the Bronze Star and a Silver Star for meritorious service.
For three decades, Mr. Cleland blamed himself for his injuries, thinking the grenade had fallen off his own belt. But he later learned from a Marine who had witnessed the explosion that it had been dropped by an unnamed private who had manipulated the pins in a misguided attempt to make the grenade easier to use in combat.
Edited to add 2: THR obit for Dean Stockwell.
Obit watch: November 8, 2021.
November 8th, 2021Camille Saviola, actress.
Onstage, she was best known for originating the role of Mama Maddelena, a spa manager, in the original production of “Nine,” the Arthur Kopit-Maury Yeston musical about a film director having a midlife crisis, which opened on Broadway in May 1982 and ran for almost two years. She was featured in a comic number, “The Germans at the Spa.”
But she wasn’t limited to comedy. In 2005, for instance, she starred in a production of “Mother Courage and Her Children,” Bertolt Brecht’s famed antiwar play, in Pasadena, Calif.
She also did some TV and movie work, including multiple appearances on a spinoff of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s.
JoAnna Cameron. Lots of TV work as well, including “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “Columbo”, and most famously, “Isis” on the Saturday morning series.
Aaron Feuerstein. Some of you may remember him from 1995, when he was in the news.
Mr. Feuerstein owned Malden Mills, which made Polartec fabric.
Then, on the night of Dec. 11, 1995, a boiler in one of the factory’s five hulking plants exploded. The shock wave knocked out the state-of-the-art sprinkler system Mr. Feuerstein had just installed, and 45-mile-an-hour winds blew the ensuing fire to three other buildings. The blaze burned for 16 hours, injuring more than 30 workers.
Three days later, most of the plant’s 1,400 workers lined up to receive their paychecks, figuring it might be their last from Malden Mills. Mr. Feuerstein joined them. He handed out holiday bonuses and then announced an even greater gift: He would immediately reopen as much of the plant as he could, replace the buildings he had lost and continue to pay the idled workers for a month — a promise he later extended twice.
Working nonstop, he and his workers got the surviving building, the finishing plant, back in operation just one week later. Mr. Feuerstein bought an empty factory nearby to hold new equipment. By the first weeks of January, hundreds of his employees were back at work. And just 20 months later he opened a gleaming new $130 million complex.
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Semi-random thought.
November 5th, 2021Perhaps “The Love God?” wasn’t quite as far-fetched as Lawrence and I thought at the time.
Please to remember…
November 5th, 2021It is only about 5 PM in London, so I don’t think I’m too late.
Happy Guy Fawkes Day, everyone! Especially all my peeps in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland!
I wasn’t able to dig up anything really good this year, but any video that contains the words “most dangerous” gets my attention.
Obit watch: November 4, 2021.
November 4th, 2021William Lucking, actor.
161 credits in IMDB. He did a lot of work on “Sons of Anarchy”: other credits include “The X-Files”, “Millennium”, two spinoffs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s, “Renegade”, “Columbo”, “Jake and the Fatman”…
…and “Mannix”. (“Desert Sun”, season 8, episode 10. And I have to update the list, because according to the IMDB reviews, this is another episode in which “Mannix gets a phone call from an old Korean War buddy…asking for help.”)
I wrote yesterday about Pat Martino (and please read the excellent comment left by pigpen51). This isn’t quite an obit, but it came across Hacker News today: a piece from Nautilus about Mr. Martino, his surgery, and his recovery. It was originally published in 2015, from what I can tell, but was updated with a new introduction.
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Firings watch.
November 4th, 2021Tom Arth out as head coach of the Akron Zips.
3-24 overall. They were 0-12 in his first season, 1-5 in 2020, and are 2-7 so far this year.
Henry Ruggs III out as wide receiver for the Las Vegas Raiders. Of course, Mr. Ruggs has other issues, which are being well covered elsewhere, but I wanted to note it here because: 156 miles per hour.
Obit watch: November 3, 2021.
November 3rd, 2021Linda Carlson, actress.
She was the TV station owner on “Newhart” and a judge on “Murder One”, among other roles. I was not aware there was a 1993 “Beverly Hillbillies” movie, nor did I know there was an attempt at an “African Queen” TV series. She also did an episode of “Space: Above and Beyond” and appeared in “Honey, I Blew Up The Kid” for those of you looking for genre credits.
Pat Martino, jazz guitarist. This is a little outside of my usual beat (ha!) but it sits at a point I find fascinating: the relationship between music and the brain.
In 1967, when he was in his early 20s, he released his first album, “El Hombre,” on the Prestige label, and a series of well-regarded records followed. At the start of his career he often drew comparisons to earlier jazz guitarists like Wes Montgomery, but by the 1970s he was forging his own sound. “Pat Martino: Breaking Barriers Between Rock & Jazz,” a 1975 headline in The San Francisco Examiner read.
On a tour supporting his first albums for Warner Bros., “Starbright” (1976) and “Joyous Lake” (1977), Mr. Martino began experiencing frequent headaches and seizures, something he had dealt with occasionally since childhood. One seizure came while he was onstage in France in 1976.
“I stopped playing and stood there for about 30 seconds,” he wrote in his autobiography, “Here and Now!” (2011, with Bill Milkowski). “During these moments of seizure, it feels like you’re falling through a black hole; it’s like everything just escapes at the moment.”
Cutting to the chase, he had brain surgery, but was left with total amnesia.
“When you don’t remember something, you have no idea of its existence,” he wrote. “And upon awakening after the surgery, I remembered nothing.
“But it wasn’t a disorienting feeling,” he continued. “If I had known I was a guitarist, if I had known those two people standing by my bedside in the hospital were in fact my parents, I then would’ve felt the feelings that went along with the events. What they went through and why they were standing there looking at me then would’ve been very painful for me. But it wasn’t painful because to me they were just strangers.”
His parents helped him relearn his past, showing him family photographs and playing him his own albums. Picking up the guitar again was another form of memory recovery.
“I had to start from Square 1,” he told The Edmonton Journal of Alberta, Canada, in 2004. “But once I made the decision to try, it activated inner intuitive familiarities, like a child who hasn’t ridden their bicycle for many years and tries to do so again to reach a destination. There are moments of imbalance, but it’s subliminal, and it emerges after some mistakes, and then it strengthens.”
By the mid-1980s he was performing again. Jon Pareles, reviewing one performance, at Fat Tuesday’s in Manhattan in 1986, found Mr. Martino as virtuosic and unpredictable as ever.
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In his autobiography, he described the process of recovering the ability to play.
“As I continued to work out things on the instrument,” he wrote, “flashes of memory and muscle memory would gradually come flooding back to me — shapes on the fingerboard, different stairways to different rooms in the house. There are secret doorways that only you know about in the house, and you go there because it’s pleasurable to do so.”
The records he made after his surgery included “All Sides Now” (1997), on the Blue Note label, an album on which he shared tracks with other famed guitarists, including Mr. Paul. Two of his albums, also on Blue Note, were nominated for Grammy Awards, “Live at Yoshi’s” (2001) and “Think Tank” (2003).
His surgery and the recovery period, Mr. Martino said, changed what he was after in his music.“It used to be to do everything I possibly could to become more successful in my craft and my career,” he told the Edmonton paper. “Today, my intention is to completely enjoy the moment and everything it contains.”
Aristophanes, call your office, please.
November 1st, 2021Your loser update: week 8 and 9, 2021.
November 1st, 2021NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Detroit
Next week is the Lions bye week. (Insert joke about Vegas odds against the bye here.)
Obit watch: October 30, 2021.
October 30th, 2021Jo-Carroll Dennison was born on Dec. 16, 1923, in a men’s state prison in Arizona.
She died on October 18 at the age of 97. She was the oldest living Miss America.
With World War II raging, she visited military bases on the home front, sang and danced for the troops and sold war bonds. According to Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper, photos of her in Life magazine made her the G.I.s’ second most popular “pinup girl,” after Betty Grable.
And Hollywood came calling. Ms. Dennison landed small parts in numerous movies, notably in the war propaganda film “Winged Victory” (1944) and “The Jolson Story” (1946), about the entertainer Al Jolson. She appeared on television with Frank Sinatra and Ed Sullivan and in a few episodes of the series “Dick Tracy” in 1950.
While she never achieved stardom as an actress, she spent decades in the company of Hollywood royalty. Through her brief marriage to the comedian Phil Silvers, she became a regular at Gene Kelly’s Saturday night parties and song fests, where André Previn played the piano and she rubbed shoulders with Judy Garland and Gregory Peck. Writers like Ray Bradbury gave her guidance on what books to read; Leonard Bernstein took her to concerts and advised her on which recordings to buy.
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Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads…
October 29th, 2021I have food on my mind.
McThag put up a post over at his place about bagna cauda. This is something I’d like to try as well. And actually, I think I first heard about it from reading about “Babylon 5”.
(I have never seen a complete episode of “B5”. I feel like SF on TV has been dumbed down and mostly hasn’t been good since the first incarnation of “Twilight Zone” went off the air (though the second incarnation was a bright spot in some ways). I’ve never been a fan of that minor SF TV series from the 1960s or any of the followup products (though I would like to watch the adaptation of a Larry Niven story they did on the animated series). However, the more I read about “B5” and the more clips I watch on the ‘Tube, the stronger my impression gets that it was an actual thoughtful intelligent SF series with many of the right people involved, and it might be something that’s worth my time. Perhaps next time I see a box set at Half-Price.)
But I digress. I’m also kind of craving Swedish meatballs. A supper of bagna cauda and Swedish meatballs doesn’t sound too bad. Perhaps not really healthy, but not too bad…
Anyway, I don’t know where I’m going to get bagna cauda or Swedish meatballs. I could make them myself, but I’m kind of hesitant about stinking up the kitchen with the former. As for the latter, I guess I could schlep out to Ikea and get some frozen ones, but that doesn’t seem like an optimal experience. And I don’t know any place in Austin that serves either one. If you do, please feel free to leave a comment.
(Also, while I can cook, the kitchen is really someone else’s territory, and I’m hesitant about treading in there. Especially if I’m cooking things they might find disgusting, like bagna cauda or anything with onions.)
(Something else I have a craving for, not related to anchovies: Vincent Price’s cocktail franks.)
(There! Vincent Price! There’s your Halloween content! Are you not entertained?!)
Something else I’ve been interested in for quite a while that is (semi-) related to anchovies, and prompted by “The Delicious Legacy” and food anthropology in general: the lost Roman condiment garum.
It's took a long time—4 months of fermentation, in fact—but I made my own garum (or more accurately, liquamen), under the supervision of the world's leading archaeological authority on the subject. (Looking at you, Sally!) Here's how I did it…
(thread) pic.twitter.com/9HcXuaEPht— Ötzi's Last Meal 🐌 (@lostsupper) October 26, 2021
See also: “Culinary Detectives Try to Recover the Formula for a Deliciously Fishy Roman Condiment” by the same guy, Taras Grescoe. (I’ve read his book, The Devil’s Picnic (affiliate link), and based on that, I’d be willing to give Lost Supper a chance when it comes out.)
I’m also intrigued by The Story of Garum, but damn! $158! $37 for the Kindle edition! At those prices, it had better come with a case of garum! Or at least a six-pack.
(I’ve heard that this is the closest you can get today to garum. Amazon has the 40°N, but not the 50°N. I might have to order a bottle directly. And the Vincent Price cookbook.)
(This food anthropology thing rapidly gets expensive. And I haven’t even bought any imported anchovies yet.)
Anyway, McThag’s probably peeved at me by now for wandering all over the place. And I’m hungry. Time to rummage up something to eat. Then maybe order some fish sauce.
Never shop when you’re hungry.
Obit watch: October 29, 2021.
October 29th, 2021Richard Hammer, author. He wrote two books on the My Lai massacre:
Mr. Hammer’s account of the My Lai slaughter in 1968, “One Morning in the War: The Tragedy of Son My” (1970), was frequently reviewed alongside one by Seymour M. Hersh, who had broken the story — “My Lai 4: A Report on the Massacre and Its Aftermath.” (The village of Son My included the hamlet of My Lai.)
“Richard Hammer — knowing perhaps that Hersh had the jump on him — tried to put the incident in perspective and thereby ended up writing the better book,” the book critic Christopher Lehmann-Haupt wrote in The New York Times.“He took the time,” he added, “to explain the gradual depersonalization of the Vietnamese in American soldiers’ eyes — to make us understand how even women and children begin to seem hated and dangerous.”
Mr. Hammer followed up that book with another centered on the massacre, “The Court-Martial of Lt. Calley,” which John Leonard of The Times numbered among “a handful of public-affairs books published in 1971 that people will be reading a generation from now.” William Styron, writing in The Times Book Review, called it “an honest, penetrating account of a crucially significant military trial.”
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Additionally, he was a two-time winner of the Edgar award for “best fact crime” for books unrelated to My-Lai: The CBS Murders: A True Account of Greed and Violence in New York’s Diamond District and The Vatican Connection: The True Story of a Billion-Dollar Conspiracy Between the Catholic Church and the Mafia (affiliate links).
Viktor Bryukhanov, the guy who took the rap for Chernobyl.
It really was a different country, wasn’t it?
Sonny Osborne, of the Osborne Brothers.
Best known for their 1967 hit “Rocky Top,” the Osborne Brothers pioneered a style of three-part harmony singing in which Bobby Osborne sang tenor melodies pitched above the trio’s other two voices, instead of between them, as was the custom in bluegrass. Sonny Osborne sang the baritone harmonies, with various second tenors over the years adding a third layer of harmony to round out the bright, lyrical blend that became the group’s calling card.
The Osbornes broke further with bluegrass convention by augmenting Mr. Osborne’s driving yet richly melodic banjo playing — and his brother’s jazz-inspired mandolin work — with string sections, drums and pedal steel guitar. They were also the first bluegrass group to record with twin banjos and, more alarming to bluegrass purists, to add electric pickups to their instruments, abandoning the longstanding practice of huddling around a single microphone.
This is in the NYT article, and I’ve posted this before, but fark that: I’m in the mood right now for some insurrectionist music.
Eleonore von Trapp Campbell, of the von Trapp family.
Mrs. Campbell’s father, Capt. Georg von Trapp, and his first wife, Agathe Whitehead von Trapp, had the seven children who were the basis for the singing family. Maria Kutschera married the captain after Agathe von Trapp died.
Georg and Maria von Trapp had three children, who were not depicted in the movie; Mrs. Campbell was the second. Early on, she sang soprano as a member of the Trapp Family Singers, who performed in Europe before World War II and, after fleeing Nazi-occupied Austria in 1938, continued to do so in the United States and internationally.
Martha Henry. She was 83.
For the last role of her long career, Martha Henry, one of Canada’s finest stage actors, played the character in Edward Albee’s “Three Tall Women” known simply as A. Mr. Albee’s character description reads in part, “a very old woman; thin, autocratic, proud, as together as the ravages of time will allow.”
As Ms. Henry took to the stage at the Stratford Festival in Ontario in August to begin the play’s two-month run, the cancer she had been dealing with for more than a year was well along. She used a walker in the first shows. In September she performed the role from a wheelchair, soldiering on in the demanding part through the final performance, on Oct. 9.
David DePatie, co-creator (with Friz Freleng) of “The Pink Panther”.
George Butler, documentary filmmaker. Among his credits: “Pumping Iron”, aka “the movie that made Arnold Schwarzenegger a star”.
In an interview with The Daily News of New York in 1977, when he was early in his run on “Quincy” (he eventually appeared in the vast majority of the show’s 148 episodes), Mr. Bisoglio gave himself a nickname of sorts that was a reference to his “Quincy” role but could well have applied to much of a career in which he specialized in making a memorable impression in a brief amount of time.
“Whenever the writers find they’re a little short of time after they wrap up the case,” he explained, “they write in a little scene at the restaurant. It’s only one minute or two, at the most. So I’m the one- or two-minute man.”
Firings watch.
October 29th, 2021This is also related to the Chicago Blackhawks sexual abuse scandal: he was the Blackhawks head coach at the time.
The investigation, which was made public Tuesday, revealed that Quenneville was aware of the situation and took part in at least one meeting regarding the allegations during the 2010 postseason. Quenneville had previously said he only learned of the allegations in the summer of 2021 “through the media.”
In an interview with TSN on Wednesday, Beach said there was no way Quenneville was unaware of the allegations.”I’ve witnessed meetings, right after I reported it to [Blackhawks mental skills coach] James Gary, that were held in Joel Quenneville’s office. There’s absolutely no way that he can deny knowing it,” Beach said.
According to recollections from former Blackhawks general manager Stan Bowman in the investigation report, Quenneville, after learning of the Aldrich allegations, “shook his head and said that it was hard for the team to get to where they were [the playoffs] and they could not deal with this issue now.”
Gratuitous Mannix, some filler.
October 29th, 2021By way of The Rap Sheet, through my mother: the cars of Joe Mannix.
Also from the same source: “Curbside TV – The Cars Of Mannix“.
Quote of the day.
October 28th, 2021Perhaps the idea of what a suitable military handgun should be may change, and who knows, perhaps we may have a new .40-caliber cartridge to get the ‘sectional density’ considered necessary for stopping power and a powder charge that will permit the average man to learn quickly to do good shooting at practical pistol range. Such a cartridge with a recoil and muzzle blast not much greater than that of the .38 Special and less than that of the .38 Colt automatic cartridge would make the handgun far more effective, for after all a bullet that misses the intended mark is without value regardless of the energy it may have. The idea that a handgun is essentially a short-range arm is not at all new, even in military circles, but we seem to have attempted to increase the range beyond the practical limit with such cartridges as the .45 Automatic, with the result that the gun is decidedly difficult for the average man to shoot well.
—Pistol and Revolver Shooting, Walter F. Roper (1945).
(Well, we never got a “new .40-caliber cartridge” in a military arm – we went straight from .45 ACP to 9mm – but we did get the .40 S&W as a popular police caliber. I wonder what Roper would have thought of the cartridge: biographical information is hard to find, but I’m pretty sure he had passed on when the .40 S&W was introduced in 1990.)
(As a side note: I’m not as enthusiastic about this gun as other folks seem to be, but that’s because I already have a Hi-Power. If I was in the market, I’d think about it. Or if Springfield comes out with a .40 S&W or even a .357 SIG version of the SA-35, that might quicken my pulse a bit.)
Obit watch: October 27, 2021.
October 27th, 2021Gregarious and contentious — he was once described as “a very likable guy who makes ex-friends easily” — Mr. Sahl had a long, up-and-down career. He faded out of popularity in the mid-1960s, when he devoted his time to ridiculing the Warren Commission report on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy; then, over the following decades, he occasionally faded back in. But before that he was a star and a cult hero of the intelligentsia.
He had regular club dates in New York, Chicago and San Francisco, with audiences full of celebrities. He recorded what the Library of Congress has cited as “the earliest example of modern stand-up comedy on record,” the album “At Sunset.” (Though recorded in 1955, it was not released until 1958, shortly after the release of his official first album, “The Future Lies Ahead.”) By 1960, he had starred in a Broadway revue, written jokes for Kennedy’s presidential campaign, hosted the Academy Awards, appeared on the cover of Time and been cast in two movies (he would later make a handful of others).
An inveterate contrarian and a wide-ranging skeptic, Mr. Sahl was a self-appointed warrior against hypocrisy who cast a jaundiced eye on social trends, gender relations and conventional wisdom of all sorts. Conformity infuriated him: In one early routine he declared that Brooks Brothers stores didn’t have mirrors; customers just stood in front of one another to see how they looked. Sanctimony infuriated him: “Liberals are people who do the right things for the wrong reasons so they can feel good for 10 minutes.”
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Mr. Sahl worked on radio and on local television in Los Angeles, but he didn’t help his cause with what some felt was an obsession with the Kennedy assassination. His performances began to include reading scornfully from the Warren Commission report. And he worked as an unpaid investigator for Jim Garrison, the New Orleans district attorney, who claimed to have uncovered secret evidence that Lee Harvey Oswald was not the assassin, and who accused a New Orleans businessman, Clay Shaw, of conspiring to murder the president. No convincing evidence, secret or otherwise, was produced at Mr. Shaw’s trial, and the jury acquitted him in less than an hour.
“I spent years talking with people, Garrison notably, about the Kennedy assassination,” Mr. Sahl wrote in “Heartland,” a score-settling, dyspeptic memoir published in 1976, “and I was said to have hurt my career by being in bad company. I don’t think Gene McCarthy is bad company. I don’t think that Jack Kennedy is bad company. I don’t think that Garrison is bad company.
“I learned something, though. The people that I went to Hollywood parties with are not my comrades. The men I was in the trenches with in New Orleans are my comrades.” He concluded, “I think Jack Kennedy cries from the grave for justice.”
Richard Evans, actor. He was “Paul Hanley” in the first season of “Peyton Place”. Other credits include a lot of 1970s cop/PI shows, “Lancer”, “Bonanza”, one episode of a minor 1960s SF TV series…
…and “Mannix”! (“Bird of Prey”, season 8 episodes 20 and 21. He played “Victor Valdek”.)
Supplemental obit watch.
October 26th, 2021The NY Post is reporting the death of Carl Madsen.
Mr. Madsen was a long-time NFL official: he worked on-field from 1997 to 2008, then worked as a replay official from 2009.
He worked the game between the Titans and the Chiefs on Sunday. According to the report, he was driving home to Mississippi when he had some kind of medical problem. The police responded, pulled him out of the car and did first aid, and transported him to a hospital where he passed away.
He was 71. Our condolences to his family.
Firings watch.
October 26th, 2021Stan Bowman, “president of hockey operations” for the Chicago Blackhawks, has “resigned”, in what sounds like one of those “resign or get fired” deals.
This appears to be a result of a third party investigation commissioned by the Blackhawks. A former player, who is being identified as “John Doe”, sued the team and states that he was sexually assaulted in 2010 by “video coach” Brad Aldrich. This was during the Blackhawk’s Stanley Cup run. Aldrich apparently admitted to a sexual encounter with “John Doe”, but claims it was consensual: “John Doe” denies that it was consensual.
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Obit watch: October 26, 2021.
October 26th, 2021Francis Wayne Alexander. Mr. Alexander is believed to have died sometime between 1976 and 1977, but his death was not announced until Monday.
Mr. Alexander moved to Chicago from New York with his wife in 1975, officials said. The couple divorced months later, and Mr. Alexander remained in Chicago.
He lived on Winona Street on the North Side of Chicago, in a neighborhood where Mr. Gacy was known to have targeted other victims, including William Bundy, a 19-year-old construction worker.
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The Sheriff’s Department was aided by a nonprofit organization, the DNA Doe Project, whose all-volunteer staff tries to match unidentified remains with genetic profiles that had been uploaded to an open-source genealogy database.
Using DNA from one of Victim No. 5’s molars, the DNA Doe Project found connections to Mr. Alexander’s family. Detective Moran followed up with research, interviews and further DNA testing before confirming that he had found the identity of the victim.
The confirmed identification of Mr. Alexander leaves five remaining unidentified victims of John Wayne Gacy. The Cook County Sheriff’s Office is actively working to identify those as well.
Wells. Wells Wells Wells. Wells.
October 25th, 2021Matt Wells out as head coach at Texas Tech.
A source close to WCD suggests that this is related to the ongoing Curse of Mike Leach, and that Tech won’t be successful until they cough up the bucks they (allegedly) owe Leach.
Your loser update: week 7, 2021.
October 24th, 2021NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Detroit
Just as a matter of personal curiosity, does anyone know if there was any kind of tribute to Chuck Hughes at today’s game?
Next week: Philadelphia (2-5) in Detroit.
Obit watch: October 24, 2021.
October 24th, 2021Two different people sent me this one, and neither one mentioned my hot button.
Val Bisoglio, actor.
He has 65 credits in IMDB. High points include: “Saturday Night Fever” (he was the father of Travolta’s character), “Cover Up” (ahem), “M*A*S*H” (he played “Sal Pernelli”, the cook. Not Igor, the guy who served the food, but the cook.), “B.J. and the Bear”, “Rockford Files”, “St. Ives” (the Charles Bronson movie based on a pseudonymous novel by Ross Thomas), “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” (“The Zombie“: if memory serves, he was a lower level mob thug), and “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”.
His most famous role (and the hot button one): he played “Danny Tovo”, the restaurant owner, on 138 episodes of “Quincy, M.E.”
And yes! He did do a “Mannix”! (“Run Till Dark”, season 5, episode 7.)
Paul Salata. He originated the “Mr. Irrelevant” award for the last player drafted in the NFL college draft.
He wanted to celebrate the unheralded honor of being picked last because players at the end of the line rarely get noticed — even though one might have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than of being picked by an N.F.L. team. Mr. Rozelle blessed the idea, and Mr. Irrelevant was born.
“Everyone who is drafted works hard, and some of them don’t get any recognition,” Mr. Salata told The New York Times in 2017. “They do their work and should be noticed.”
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Starting in 1976, Mr. Salata and his friends in Orange County raised money to fly the last player picked in the draft to Southern California, where he would receive a champion’s welcome. In the years since, the players — some of whom who had never been to California — have been paraded through Newport Beach, taken to Disneyland and feted at a banquet, where they received the “Lowsman Trophy,” which depicts a player fumbling a football.
Mr. Salata and his team also fulfilled some of the players’ requests, including surfing lessons, visits to the Playboy Mansion and being a guest announcer on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Many Mr. Irrelevants never made it past their first season or even past their first training camp, but a handful have stuck around in the N.F.L. In February the Tampa Bay Buccaneers kicker Ryan Succop became the first Mr. Irrelevant to score in and win a Super Bowl. He had been drafted last in 2009 by the Kansas City Chiefs.
James Michael Tyler, “Gunther” on “Friends”. I’m sorry if I am giving him the short end of the stick here, but this just came in, and I have never seen an episode of “Friends”.
Short historical note.
October 24th, 202150 years ago today, Chuck Hughes died during a NFL game between Detroit and Chicago.
He is the last NFL player so far to pass away during a game.
Obit watch: October 23, 2021.
October 23rd, 2021Your Peter Scolari roundup: NYT. THR. Variety.
Mr. Scolari’s stage work over the years included two Broadway plays in which he portrayed sports figures. In “Magic/Bird” (2012), about the basketball stars Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, he played several characters, including the basketball coaches Pat Riley and Red Auerbach and the team owner Jerry Buss.
Two years later he played the Yankee star Yogi Berra in “Bronx Bombers,” a role that required him to spout Yogi-isms. The critic Charles Isherwood, in The Times, wrote that he “delivers these in a nicely offhand style that manages to keep the zing without turning each verbal pratfall into a cartoon caption.”
I knew that Peter was sick, but his death comes as a great shock. We were friends for over 40 years. Julia and Peter were an essential part of the success of "Newhart." He was a fantastic person & a joy to work with. He will be sorely missed, his passing at 66 is way too early. pic.twitter.com/qGu5wMQKfr
— Bob Newhart (@BobNewhart) October 22, 2021
No better partner.💔 pic.twitter.com/p5NFP8eLUm
— julia duffy (@mybadauditions) October 22, 2021