This is to note that once again, I’ve bet Lawrence $5 even money that the Cubs will win the World Series this year.
Also, my bet with Lawrence on Gonzaga has been paid.
Obligatory opening day post.
March 31st, 2011Obit watch: March 30, 2011.
March 30th, 2011Here’s the LAT obit for Farley Granger (fixed – thanks, Lawrence).
I don’t have much to add to this, except I seem to have a much higher opinion of “Rope” than most of my friends do: I thought Granger pretty much carried both that movie and “Strangers on a Train” on his back. He was brilliantly twitchy in a way matched only, perhaps, by Anthony Perkins.
I wonder what Frankenheimer’s “Manchurian Candidate” would have been like with Granger instead of Laurence Harvey. Not that I dislike Harvey, but I think Granger could have pulled it off; he was only three years older, and I believe he would have brought an interesting dimension to the role of Raymond Shaw.
I haven’t been able to find an obit in a US paper for H.R.F. Keating, but by way of Bill Crider, here’s the Telegraph‘s obit.
My mother used to subscribe to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. That was my first exposure to many writers, including Keating: his Inspector Ghote stories were regularly in EQMM. As a critic of the field, his Crime and Mystery: The 100 Best Books
Rest in peace, Mr. Keating.
¿Dónde está el dinero?
March 29th, 2011The NYT has an interesting investigative story on the Fiesta Bowl. Or, rather, on the Fiesta Bowl’s money.
The Fiesta Bowl management and staff have apparently been spending the money taken in by the Fiesta Bowl’s 501(c)3 on some questionable items. And when I say questionable, I mean “jail time is a possibility” items: campaign contributions, strip clubs (of course. It always has to be strip clubs.), a $30,000 birthday party (how do you spend $30,000 on a birthday party for an adult human? Unless that birthday party is at a strip club. Or, apparently, Pebble Beach.), airfare and hotel for an employee’s honeymoon (plus airfare for Fiesta Bowl employees to attend the wedding). Those are the high points.
The item that really leaps out at me is $75 for flowers. The flowers were for someone at the University of Texas, and were apparently sent in an attempt to influence that person into accepting the CEO’s daughter into “a honors program” (Plan II?). $75 is such a penny-ante amount; surely the CEO could have come up with $75 out of his own pocket. And why send flowers at all? A phone call would have done just as well. “Nice football team you have there. It’d be a shame if you didn’t get a bowl bid this year because my daughter didn’t get accepted into Plan II.”
The best thing about this? It could cost the Fiesta Bowl both tax-exempt status and BCS bowl status. As a matter of fact, it appears some of the impetus for this investigation came from an anti-BCS group. I wonder what other skeletons are going to turn up in the Orange and Sugar Bowl closets. I also wonder if this is the first hammer blow at the Berlin Wall of the BCS.
Edited to add: For those who don’t want to deal with the NYT, here’s a HouChron story on the firing of bowl CEO John Junker, which covers some of what was in the NYT report. Here’s a direct link to the public release version of the special committee report (which has some information redacted due to “contractual confidentiality provisions”).
Mono no aware.
March 29th, 2011Tam has a post up at her site that leaves me with a small sadness. I’m not entirely sure I can, but I’ll see if I can explain it.
When I was in high school, I bought every gun magazine I could find on the newsstands (note to my younger readers: “newsstands” were places where you could buy magazines and newspapers), at the bookstores, and in the grocery stores. Grocery stores, in particular, had large magazine sections, and many of those magazines were gun magazines. (Also, people were shorter, and lived near the water. But I digress.)
I grew up reading Elmer Keith (in Guns and Ammo, towards the end of his career) and Skeeter Skelton. I remember visiting my Uncle Dick in Pennsylvania, and him letting me read his just purchased copy of Hell, I Was There
These days? I read American Handgunner. I get a kick out of John Connor, I like Ayoob’s work and Clint Smith a whole lot, and Venturino and Taffin are usually good for a smile. Also, the editor of AH at one point did me a great personal favor, so I have pretty strong feelings about the magazine.
I also pick up SWAT when I can find it. And that’s pretty much it.
What are the gun-crazy kids of America doing for reading material these days? Do they know how good we had it back then? Did we? At least Keith has been collected (though those books are pricey). Has anyone collected Skeeter’s writings? (Answer: yes, and if you thought Elmer Keith books were pricy…wow
I don’t know where I’m going with this, and I’m not sure I have answers. It just seems like a shame to me.
Obit watch: March 29, 2011.
March 29th, 2011David E. Davis, Jr., former editor and publisher of Car and Driver and Automobile. (LAT obit.)
When I was in high school, I read the Davis Car and Driver religiously. It was full of great stuff: road tests of radar detectors, explanations of why the 55 MPH speed limit was wrong, my first exposure to P.J. O’Rourke (“Ferrari Refutes the Decline of the West”, which is still one of my favorite pieces of writing in, like, ever), Patrick Bedard…the list goes on.
Eighty’s a pretty good run for a guy who destroyed his face in an M.G. crash. Rest in peace, Mr. Davis. I hope you’re driving something fast on heaven’s equivalent of the Nürburgring.
This has been noted elsewhere, but here’s the NYT obit for Diana Wynne Jones. (Edited to add: here’s a short but nice tribute from Michael Dirda in the WP.)
Edited to add 2: Bill Crider had these first, but the deaths of Farley Granger and the mystery writer H.R.F. Keating are being reported. I’ll have more to say after better obits are published.
Bugs Bunny, call your office, please.
March 28th, 2011The Tasmanian Devil is in trouble. Specifically, the population is being wiped out by a form of cancer that causes “…tumors [to] sprout around the devil’s mouth, quickly morphing into bulbous red pustules that eventually take over the animal’s entire face, leaving it unable to eat or drink.”
What’s particularly unusual about this cancer (“Devil facial tumor disease”, or DTFD) is that it’s one of only three known forms of cancer that’s infectious; in other words, the Tasmanian Devils are spreading the cancer to each other.
From a marketing standpoint, the Tasmanian devil is no koala.
Well, yes: as a family member of mine would probably point out, the Tasmanian Devil is capable of reproducing without help.
Legal roundup: March 25, 2011.
March 25th, 2011I saw the stories about a Texas state legislator allegedly pulling a knife on her husband, but I didn’t think this was blog fodder. Domestic disputes among our legislators are nothing new; heck, we even had a former Speaker of the House capped by his wife (who walked away scott-free).
Then I discovered by way of Say Uncle that the legislator in question, Barbara Caraway, voted against the concealed carry on campus bill. And it appears from the linked Pajamas Media article that there’s been more than a little covering up going on in Dallas. Seems that Ms. Caraway’s husband is the Dallas mayor, and is a little embarrassed by the whole affair. I can understand that: but I’m not married, and my non-existent wife who didn’t pull a knife on me isn’t a member of the “Homeland Security & Public Safety Committee” of the Ledge.
Another story that I was kind of watching was the saga of Miss San Antonio, Domonique Ramirez (who I will concede is reasonably attractive, though too young for me). Miss Ramirez won the Miss San Antonio contest last year. It appears that since she won the title, there’s been a change of management, and the new contest management was not, shall we say, completely happy with Miss Ramirez. There were claims that she didn’t write thank-you notes, was late (or didn’t show up) to events, and apparently there were some unfortunate comments made about Miss Ramirez needing to “get off the tacos”.
By the way, one of the members of the new management team for the contest did time in a Federal prison for tax evasion and Medicaid fraud.
Anyway, things got ugly, the contest stripped Miss Ramirez of the Miss San Antonio crown and awarded it to the first runner-up, and Miss Ramirez promptly sued.
Yesterday, Miss Ramirez won her case, and has been reinstated as Miss San Antonio. Of course, there are questions about how much support Miss Ramirez will get from a group of people who appear to be actively hostile to her. I think there’s also legitimate questions to be asked about the value of organized beauty contests in contemporary society; frankly, the whole Miss San Antonio dispute looks like a bunch of people fighting over small stakes.
Edited to add: Ah. Found the AP version of the story on the Statesman site, which contains this quote:
Ms. Woods, it should be noted, is not the person who did time. (Can you call a Federal prison for women a “pound me in the A– prison“?) Here’s some more background on the executive director who did.
Historical note.
March 25th, 2011Today is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, which killed 146 people.
The NYT “City Room” blog has been all over the anniversary, and I commend their coverage to your attention.
A complete list of the victims, including the latest research from Michael Hirsch, can be found here.
The website for the “American Experience” documentary on the Triangle Fire can be found here.
Lawrence linkage.
March 25th, 2011I wanted to show my support for a couple of things linked from Lawrence’s sites.
First off is the effort to make the 1847 Walker Colt the official state gun of Texas. Now, I am an unabashed Smith and Wesson fanboy. I am also a member of the First Church of John Moses Browning, Reformed. (“There is no God but JMB, and Colonel Cooper is his prophet.”) I believe thou shalt honor the 1911, and keep it holy. All of those things said, the Walker Colt is a significant gun in history (and especially in Texas history), predates both the 1911 and S&W, and (if Colonel Cooper’s Guns of the Old West
In short, I fully support this idea. It makes more sense to me than making the armadillo the state mammal.
Secondly, I also want to throw my support behind Lawrence’s efforts to <mess> up the toenail fungus spammer’s business. I have not gotten hit by the toenail fungus spammers yet, but anything that messes up a spammer’s life is okay with me. So remember, folks: soak your toes in vinegar to kill toenail fungus. Don’t buy expensive crap from spamming scumbags.
Speaking of spamming scumbags, in case anyone was curious, the city commission election in Lawrence, Kansas, doesn’t take place until April 5th, so I won’t have an update on how spamming scumbag Sven Alstrom did until April 6th.
My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard…
March 25th, 2011…where I promptly bludgeon them to death. At least, the rich ones.
Your Spider-Man update: March 25, 2011.
March 25th, 2011The “Geek Chorus” is going bye-bye.
If you’ve been following the show, I’m sure you’re aware of the “Geek Chorus”, described by the NYT as “a group of comic-book devotees who make up the plot of the musical as it unfolds”. But did you know this?
Mary Sue, call your office, please.
Seagal update.
March 24th, 2011The Steven Seagal cockfighting bust story raised some obvious questions, such as what was he doing on a raid in Arizona when he’s a deputy chief in Louisana.
Seagal’s explanation was that he was “on loan” from Louisiana. This raises some more interesting questions, such as: does the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office frequently loan out reserve deputies to other departments? Especially other departments a thousand miles away?
By way of Balko, we learn of another explanation: Seagal isn’t with JPSO any longer.
Granted, this is one of the New Times alternative weekly papers, so I’d take much of the article with a grain of salt. (Especially the parts about the more salacious allegations against Seagal: remember, anybody can allege anything they want in a lawsuit, and the complaint quoted in the article was dropped.) But the statements in the article about Seagal’s status with JPSO are direct on-the-record quotes from named sources, so I give those a lot of credibility.
Even more police professionalism.
March 23rd, 2011We’re just jam-packed today, aren’t we?
The LA County Sheriff’s Office is planning to fire six deputies, all of whom worked on the third floor of the men’s jail.
According to the LAT‘s reporting, the six deputies in question “allegedly were part of a clique that had certain gang-like characteristics, including three-finger hand signs, representing the third floor”.
But, hey, is esprit de corps a crime? Or even a termination offense?
No. But beating up your fellow jail employees at the Christmas party is.
Six on two, guys? Really?
There was a rumor about a tumor…
March 23rd, 2011Because, of course, banning guns on campus served as a deterrent to Whitman killing 16 people (counting his wife and mother, who he stabbed to death).
Not to mention this guy.
Obit watch: March 23, 2011.
March 23rd, 2011The LAT is reporting the death of Elizabeth Taylor.
I suspect there will be more on this subject later.
Edited to add: NYT obit. I was going to speculate on how long they’ve had this one in the can, given Ms. Taylor’s long history of health problems. Then I read the editor’s note at the bottom.
Did you know that “The Last Time I Saw Paris” is in the public domain? Not that I recommend watching it, as it is a very loose and very poor adaptation of Fitzgerald’s “Babylon Revisited”.
Edited to add 2: (Warning! Slideshow!) “The husbands of Elizabeth Taylor” from the HouChron. (Warning! Slideshow!)