Fans were barred from the pandemic-postponed Tokyo Olympics that will open in two weeks, following a state of emergency issued on Thursday.
The ban was announced by the International Olympic Committee and Japanese organizers, reducing the games to a made-for-TV event.
Why are we still doing this?
(Yes, Lawrence, I know what your answer is: “M-O-N-E-Y!”)
Noted for the hysterical record: four of the alleged six assassins of Haitian president Jovenel Moïse have been killed. Two are in custody.
Robert Downey Sr. Variety. THR.
Suzzanne Douglas, actress. She did some theater work:
She also did some film (“How Stella Got Her Groove Back”, “School of Rock”, among others) and a lot of TV work.
Lawrence sent over a memo from the Burning in Hell Department: Ahmad Jibril. He headed the Palestinian terror group PFLP-GC:
He was 83, and it sounds like he died of “natural causes”. (And not the “He was hit by one of those sword missiles fired from a drone, so naturally he died” sort of “natural causes”.)
For those of you in the UK.
The asking price is £1,100,000 (which works out to about $1.5 million). But: five beds, three bathrooms, 2,954 square feet, a “utility room” and a cellar (that’d be great for your wine collection), plus “reception room”, “garden room”, and “dining room”.
And you can’t put a money value on the prestige of being able to say, “Yes, I live in the old Alan Turing place.”
This is bizarre, and I think a little scary. It is also being covered elsewhere, but for the record: Jovenel Moïse, the president of Haiti, was assassinated over night in his home.
FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Brad “Launchpad” Marzari from Plane and Pilot magazine. Mr. Marzari was a blogger and podcaster: he was killed when his plane crashed on approach to Skylark Field in Killeen over the weekend.
I didn’t know him, but he sounds like a pretty cool guy whose passing leaves a void in the world.
I feel like he’s been getting the tributes he deserves, and don’t really have much to add to those. Other than: what a career.
Hash Halper. No, you never heard of him: this is one of those kind of obits the NYT does well.
Sometime around 2014, little hearts drawn in chalk mysteriously began appearing on the streets of downtown Manhattan. Some materialized in clusters on sidewalks, while others cascaded along blocks. The hearts inevitably faded away, but for New Yorkers who encountered them, they offered a respite from the harshness of city life.
At least that was the intention of their creator, a street artist named Hash Halper, who started drawing the hearts as a gesture of affection for a woman he was dating. The relationship didn’t last, but the hearts made him feel better, so he kept drawing them. Mr. Halper soon began spreading the healing properties of his hearts, calling himself New York Romantic.
“A heart makes you feel good when you’re not feeling good,” Mr. Halper told Channel 7’s “Eyewitness News” in 2018. “And a heart makes you feel great when you’re feeling great.”
…
Tall and shaggy-haired, Mr. Halper could be seen wearing stylish hats or a red suit covered in hearts while he planted himself on streets for hours, bringing his hearts into existence with pieces of pink, blue and yellow chalk and a swift swoop of his hand. Over time, he became something of a downtown folk hero, cherished for his ability to conjure up positivity with a humble shard of chalk.
Once, when he learned that a woman was having a rough time with her romantic life, he began chalking hearts outside her workplace; she met someone special a few weeks later.
But:
He grappled with sobriety. When he had jobs, he didn’t hold them for long. He was at times homeless and would sleep on the benches of Washington Square Park or the couches of friends. His family had paid his rent over the past year in an apartment on Broome Street that he shared with roommates.
“He didn’t tell people that he was troubled because it was dissonant with his public persona,” his brother Omkar Lewis said. “He was the heart guy, so he couldn’t reveal his problems to the world, because he was the guy carrying other people’s pain.”
…
According to his family, he jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge on June 11th. He was 41.
The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.
John Erman, TV director. Credits include episodes of “Roots”, “Roots II: The Next Generation”, “The Outer Limits”, “Peyton Place”, “My Favorite Martian”, and one episode of a minor 1960s SF TV series.
A corrupt Chicago alderman? Quel frommage!
…
Remember, it was granite countertops that brought down Ray Nagin.
Sun-Times:
It also leaves the council’s two most senior members facing federal criminal charges. Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) is the council’s longest-serving alderman and faces a 2019 racketeering indictment that accused him of using his position on the city council to steer business to his private law firm. Austin, appointed to the council in 1994, is second in seniority to Burke.
In late April, a federal grand jury also indicted Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th), the nephew and grandson of Chicago’s two longest-serving mayors. Thompson faces charges involving what prosecutors say was a massive fraud scheme at a Bridgeport bank, Washington Federal Bank for Savings.
I had the Burke story, but I missed the Thompson indictment.
This is…interesting.
Told of Austin’s indictment, Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) said, “Oh, no. Her and Chester both? I have great relationships with both of them. Known them for way longer than I’ve been on the council. I wish nothing but the best for them. I hope she’s OK.”
Sawyer called the outspoken Austin a rare breed in politics who says what she thinks and never stabs anyone in the back.
“I love her candidness and her straight talk, if you will. She’s not gonna tell you something just to make you feel better. She’s gonna tell you the truth,” said Sawyer, son of former Mayor Eugene Sawyer.
The epitome of old-school Chicago politics, Austin didn’t hesitate to put her relatives and friends on the city payroll and made no apologies for it.
Sawyer said he respected that quality as well because, as he put it, “They got the job done.”
Perhaps the time has come for adult supervision in Chicago.
As promised, Donald Rumsfeld: WP (through archive.is). NYT.
From the LAT (through archive.is):
At a news conference, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said officials responding to a home on the 700 block of East 27th Street had found several thousand pounds of illegal fireworks as well as improvised explosive devices that were “more unstable.”
An LAPD bomb squad transferred the improvised devices into the iron chamber of a semitruck that’s meant to contain such explosive material, he said.
Police detonated the devices at 7:37 p.m., believing that the vehicle would be able to contain the explosion, but there was a “total catastrophic failure of that containment vehicle,” Moore said.
…
At the residence’s patio, officers found several thousand pounds of commercial fireworks stacked 8 to 10 feet high in boxes, and bomb squad personnel spent the day moving them to be stored at another location.
Officers also found improvised explosive devices with simple fuses — about 40 the size of Coke cans and 200 smaller objects of similar construction — and conducted X-rays to determine their contents.
Less than 10 pounds of the devices were transferred into a semitruck, which Moore said was rated, with its outer containment shell, to handle 18 pounds. Officials established a 300-foot perimeter behind the vehicle and evacuated the north and south sides of 27th Street.
According to reports, none of the injuries are “life-threatening”.
FotB RoadRich can correct me if I’m wrong, but I have a memory of APD’s bomb squad telling us (when we were going through the Citizen’s Police Academy) that the most dangerous thing a bomb squad does is…disposal of fireworks. I don’t know if that’s because they do more fireworks disposal than anything else, because people get blasé around them (“It’s just fireworks!”), or if because fireworks are more volatile than anything else they deal with.
Edited to add: Lawrence sent over this tweet from CBS LA: their helicopter was directly overhead when…
WATCH: Sky9 was overhead when police attempted to detonate a stash of illegal fireworks that ended in an explosion in the 700 block of East 27th Street in South L.A. https://t.co/KpWiAEoyqv pic.twitter.com/UbIXLDoZjh
— CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) July 1, 2021
A statement from the family of Donald Rumsfeld: pic.twitter.com/AlKYxVvqgF
— Donald Rumsfeld (@RumsfeldOffice) June 30, 2021
The NYT has a preliminary obit up. I’ll probably wait until tomorrow and post links to full obits from them and from the WP.
(Hattip: Lawrence.)
NYT obit for John Langley, which (as usual) went up after I posted the other day.
Stuart Damon. He played “Dr. Alan Quartermaine” on “General Hospital” basically forever. He has a few other credits – mostly soaps – beyond that, including “Space: 1999” and “Star 80”.
Robert Sacchi, most famous for “The Man With Bogart’s Face”.
NYT obit for Frederic Rzewski, which went up after I posted yesterday.
John Langley. He was perhaps best known as the creator of “COPS”.
He also was involved in off-road racing, and apparently did quite well at that:
He died of an apparent heart attack while his team was competing in the “Coast to Coast Ensenada-San Felipe 250” this past weekend.
I have not seen this elsewhere, but “Reason” is reporting the death of libertarian economist Steve Horwitz.
Let us pause for a moment of silence in memory of FotB and valued commenter guffaw, who originated Gavrilo Princip Day.
“The Guns of August” is a long (almost 1:40) documentary adapted from Barbara Tuchman’s book.
Shameful confession: I greatly admire Barbara Tuchman. I loved The Proud Tower. I think Practicing History is an excellent collection of essays. I read A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century a long time ago, but it was at the right time for me, and I’m fond of that book.
I have never been able to read The Guns of August. I have tried three times and just cannot get through it. I think it may be a matter of just too many people to keep track of…
Bonus: I may be pushing things a little bit, but here you go: “The Russian Civil War in Siberia” from “The Great War” channel.
It isn’t exactly WWI, but I believe (and I think Mike Duncan will agree with me) that the 1917 Revolution and the Russian Civil War were consequences of a lot of things, including WWI, so I’m including this here.
Bonus #2: This is an aspect of history I’m interested in, but I have not had a chance to sit down and watch this video yet. “Blood and Oil: The Middle East in World War I”. Looking at the description and comments, it may be somewhat biased: I would take this with some salt.
Note for myself: The T. E. Lawrence Society.
Mike Gravel, former Senator from Alaska and (later) presidential candidate.
Frederic Rzewski, noted pianist. I probably would not have made note of this, but Mike the Musicologist sent me this tweet:
I will write an obit tonight, but for now, the greatest gig poster in history: pic.twitter.com/aeyi0HvCrZ
— Ethan Iverson (@ethan_iverson) June 26, 2021
Ethan Iverson’s tribute. MtM notes: “And while ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated‘ is grotesque source material, the piece is stunning.”
There’s an abundance of John McAfee obits out there on the web. Take your pick from Hacker News: for the hysterical record, I’m linking to the NYT obit.
Promoted from the comments, and by way of great and good FotB Joe D.:
Edited to add NYPost headline:
John McAfee hideout traced to Spanish ‘ghost hotel’ with a bitcoin farm
Biden administration cracking down on ghost hotels in 3, 2, 1…