Obit watch: January 7, 2020.

January 7th, 2020

Elizabeth Wurtzel, author of Prozac Nation. She was 52.

The writer David Samuels, a friend since childhood, said the cause was metastatic breast cancer, a disease that resulted from the BRCA genetic mutation. Ms. Wurtzel had a double mastectomy in 2015. After her diagnosis, she became an advocate for BRCA testing — something she had not had — and wrote about her cancer experience in The New York Times.
“I could have had a mastectomy with reconstruction and skipped the part where I got cancer,” she wrote. “I feel like the biggest idiot for not doing so.”

Posted in Books, Obits | 1 Comment »

And more firings…

January 5th, 2020

Technically, I’m not sure this is an actual firing.

But the word has come down form the mountain top for real: Jason Garrett’s contract with the Cowboys is not being renewed.

And what better time to announce it than on Sunday during the playoffs?

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

January 5th, 2020

Running a little late on this one, but: Joe Moorhead out as coach of Mississippi State.

14-12 in two seasons, 7-9 in the SEC, and the team had internal and NCAA problems. But he did win the Egg Bowl.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 4, 2020.

January 4th, 2020

Sam Wyche, former coach of the Bengals and Buccaneers. He was 61-66 (3-2 in playoffs) in Cincinnati and 23-41 in Tampa.

After winning the A.F.C. Championship for only the second time in their history, the Bengals lost, 20-16, to Walsh’s 49ers in Super Bowl XXIII. The 49ers sealed the victory when Montana tossed a 10-yard touchdown pass to John Taylor with 34 seconds remaining. (The Bengals have never returned to the Super Bowl.)

For the historical record: NYT obits for Jack Sheldon and Syd Mead.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 2, 2020.

January 2nd, 2020

Don Larsen, pitcher for the Yankees and the only man ever to pitch a perfect game in a World Series. ESPN.

Jack “Only A Bill” Sheldon. Mark Evanier has a nice tribute up at his blog, with two funny stories about the late Mr. Sheldon (who, in addition to his “Schoolhouse Rock” work, did several appearances on the late 60’s/early 70s “Dragnet”).

Martin West. He did bit parts on a lot of stuff, including “Ironside”, “The Invaders”, and “Hill Street Blues”.

(Hattip on all three of these to Lawrence.)

For the historical record: David Stern. ESPN. Field of Schemes.

Posted in 1970s, Music, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 31, 2019.

December 31st, 2019

Last one of the year.

Sonny Mehta, book guy.

He published the work of nine Nobel literature laureates, including Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Remains of the Day” (1989), and of winners of Pulitzer and Booker prizes and National Book Awards; memoirs by former Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, and Pope John Paul II; and new translations of Tolstoy, Thomas Mann and Albert Camus.

Mr. Mehta also published popular books by Toni Morrison, John Updike, Anne Rice, John le Carré, P.D. James and Gabriel García Márquez; Geoffrey Ward’s companion to Ken Burns’s PBS series “The Civil War”; Michael Crichton’s “Jurassic Park”; Stieg Larsson’s Dragon Tattoo trilogy; and the work of many important French, German, Italian, Spanish, African and Asian writers.

Gen. Paul X. Kelley, former commandant of the United States Marines.

He completed two tours in Vietnam, as a battalion commander in the 1960s and later as a regimental commander, commanding and bringing home the last Marine combat unit to leave Vietnam, in 1971. His combat decorations included the Silver Star, two Bronze Stars and two Legions of Merit. After returning to civilian life he saw to it that other veterans were honored, serving two stints as chairman of the American Battle Monuments Commission.

Early in his career he had served on the Sixth Fleet’s flagship in the Mediterranean, and in 1960 and 1961 he trained as a commando with the British Royal Marines and deployed with them to Aden, followed by Singapore, Malaya and Borneo.

The Beirut bombing took place four months into his time as commandant.

“When you see 144 caskets on an airplane,” he later said, as quoted by Marine Corps Times, “it will have an impact on you for the rest of your life.”

Posted in Books, History, Obits | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

December 31st, 2019

On the road, but wanted to get this in.

John Dorsey out as the Browns general manager.

Cleveland.com is spinning this as the owners wanted him to take a reduced non-GM role, and he said no.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 30, 2019.

December 30th, 2019

Neil Innes, musical humorist.

In the early 1960s he was one of the first members of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, also known as simply the Bonzo Dog Band. He wrote the group’s biggest hit, “I’m the Urban Spaceman,” which climbed into the Top 10 on the British charts in 1968.
In the 1970s he wrote material for Monty Python, the groundbreaking six-member comedy troupe. Midway through that decade he and Eric Idle, a Python, came up with the Rutles, a deadpan parody of the Beatles; the group not only recorded albums but also made films, most notably the mock documentary “The Rutles: All You Need Is Cash” in 1978.

Sleepy LaBeef, noted rockabilly musician.

He claimed to know 6,000 songs and played, as he put it at the time, “root music: old-time rock ’n’ roll, Southern gospel and hand-clapping music, black blues, Hank Williams-style country.”

Syd Mead.

…Mead went to produce conceptual artwork and other products on films including 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture, 1982’s Blade Runner, where he first gained the credit “visual futurist” (a name he coined to describe his position), 1982’s Tron, 1986’s Aliens, 1984’s Timecop, 2000’s Mission to Mars, 2006’s Mission: Impossible III, 2013’s Elysium, 2015’s Tomorrowland and 2017’s Blade Runner 2049.

Lee Mendelson, producer of “A Charlie Brown Christmas”.

Posted in Christmas, Movies, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Blood in the streets!

December 30th, 2019

Your Monday morning firings watch. I’ll try to keep this updated through the day.

Bruce Allen out as Redskins president. The team already fired head coach Jay Gruden earlier this year.

Update 1: the New York Football Giants have fired head coach Pat Shurmur. Two seasons, a 9-23 record, and the worst record in the NFL since 2017.

Update 2: Miami fired their offensive coordinator (Chad O’Shea) and two other guys.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

You didn’t even wait to get him in the house watch…

December 29th, 2019

…also known as “the NFL firings that couldn’t even wait until Monday”.

So far: Freddie Kitchens out after one season in Cleveland, during which the team went 6-10 (and lost to the Bengals today).

Rarely has a head coach in the NFL done so little with so much talent, and the Browns had no choice but to cut their losses after an abysmal performance in what was supposed to be a playoff season.

His tenure was characterized by a lack of discipline on the part of his players, a woeful passing game, horrible playcalling and an ugly brawl between Myles Garrett and Pittsburgh’s Mason Rudolph that cost the Browns their best defensive player of the final six games of the season.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 28, 2019.

December 28th, 2019

Don Imus. Not much to say: I was never an Imus listener.

Sue Lyon. She did some TV and movies, but was most famous as the nymphet in Kubrick’s “Lolita”.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

Gratuitous gun porn (#6 in a series)

December 27th, 2019

You know that guy who says “Nostalgia is a moron“? And has bought several guns because of his childhood nostalgia?

Remember that other guy who says that he thought the Remington XP-100 in .221 Fireball was the coolest gun in the world…when he was six years old?

And that guy who has this thing for small-bore handguns?

Remington XP-100 in .221 Remington Fireball. Burris pistol scope.

Purchased from a fellow S&WCA member at the 2019 Symposium (though we went out into the parking garage to make the transaction, rather than doing it in the exhibit hall/dealer’s room: and he was also a Texas resident, so this was a fully legal private sale). There was a discussion on the forum about grail guns, I mentioned this as one of mine, and he reached out to me and said he had one in his safe that wasn’t being used…

He made me what I thought was a very good deal, threw in 50 rounds of handloads and 50 rounds of empty brass, and was very flexible when it came to payment arrangements. Thank you, S&WCA member who shall remain nameless here to protect his privacy!

Posted in Guns, Photography | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 27, 2019.

December 27th, 2019

Jerry Herman, composer and lyricist.

In a half-century of work, he scored a dozen Broadway musicals and five Off Broadway revues, composed many of the nation’s most popular songs and was showered with awards, including Tonys for “Hello, Dolly!” and “La Cage aux Folles.”
He also made stage history as the first composer-lyricist to have three musicals run more than 1,500 consecutive performances on Broadway — “Hello, Dolly!” with 2,844, “Mame” with 1,508 and “La Cage” with 1,761 — and remains one of only two to achieve that feat. (Stephen Schwartz, with “Pippin,” “The Magic Show” and “Wicked,” is the second.) And “La Cage” (1983) was the only Broadway musical to win the Tony for best revival twice, for 2004 and 2010 productions.

Posted in Obits, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: December 26, 2019.

December 26th, 2019

Death doesn’t take a holiday, but I do.

Now that I’m back…

Chuck Peddle. He was a key designer of the 6502 processor for MOS Technology.

“Chuck Peddle is one of the great unsung heroes of the personal computer age,” said Doug Fairbairn, a director at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. “Virtually all of the early, successful, mass-market personal computers were built around the 6502, not chips from Intel or anyone else.”

One key reason for this is that the 6502 sold for $25 in 1975. The Motorola 6800 sold for $300.

Edward Aschoff, college football reporter for ESPN. The ESPN tribute makes it sound like he was a genuinely fun and well thought of guy. He was only 34 years old, and died after a short illness:

Mr. Aschoff had contracted pneumonia about a month ago, according to his social media posts. “I had a virus for two weeks. Fever and cough and the doctors think it turned into this multifocal pneumonia recently,” he tweeted on Dec. 5, noting that he rarely gets sick and had been taking antibiotics.

Posted in Geek, Media, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

A slightly belated Christmas present…

December 25th, 2019

The CBC Radio adaptation of Frederick Forsyth’s The Shepherd.

There’s a lot of good stuff (if you’re a plane buff) linked from that page and elsewhere, including:

If you are a plane buff, I commend both the CBC links and Forsyth’s work to your attention.

(For those who may be unfamiliar with the story: young pilot is flying home for Christmas and suffers a total electrical failure over the north Atlantic. He has virtually no instruments, fog has set in, and if he bails out, he’ll probably freeze to death in the ocean. At the last possible moment, he’s led to a safe landing at an old RAF base by a Mosquito. And then the story goes in some unexpected directions from there.)

Posted in Books, Christmas, Heroism, History, Planes, Radio | Comments Closed

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