Andrew Sachs, perhaps most famous as Manuel the waiter in “Fawlty Towers”.
Milt Moss passed away on September 26th, though his death was just announced by his family this week. He was perhaps most famous as the “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing” guy from the Alka-Seltzer ads of the early 1970s.
Y’all read that Christmas story I linked to a few days ago, right?
Chief Acevedo’s last day on the job was Tuesday. Yesterday, he was officially confirmed as Houston’s police chief, and takes over today.
Before he left, Chief Acevedo did an “exit interview” with the Statesman. It is fairly short, but there’s one interesting quote that I’ll pull:
Why is this interesting? Well, there’s a story that came out in the past day or so. Seems like the DNA lab had a problem with a freezer that wasn’t working.
This is the kind of thing that could compromise the integrity of the stored evidence. So what did the lab do about it?
… they decided to keep mum. They alerted no one outside the lab — not investigators, prosecutors, defense attorneys or judges.
“If, in the future, the laboratory determines that a sample has been affected by this incident, the customer will be notified,” interim DNA technical leader Diana Morales wrote in a March 16 letter to her bosses.
That’s…not good, in my opinion. I might even go so far as to say:
The conviction of John Dwayne Bunn for the killing of Rolando Neischer, an off-duty corrections officer, has been overturned.
Why was the conviction overturned?
And who is the judge referring to here? Our old friend Louis Scarcella.
This is a rare combination: both a leadership post and a swell Christmas story.
It is also very short, and I’m afraid to even quote from it as I might spoil it for you. I will say that it is a story from fairly recent history that involves two Marine Corps generals, and reflects honorably on both of them.
So, here: please go read.
Where do we get such men?
This is an actual ESPN headline:
Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. May the dead rest peacefully, and may the survivors recover and find peace as well.
Recent firings that I missed over the past few days:
Brian Polian out in Nevada, though this is being spun as “by mutual agreement”. The team was 23-27 over his four years, and 5-7 this year.
Ron Caragher out at San Jose State. 19-30 in four seasons, 4-8 this year.
Fritz Weaver, noted character actor. He won a Tony for “Child’s Play” in 1974, and was in “Fali-Safe” and the “Holocaust” mini-series, among other credits. (Edited to add 11/29: A/V Club.)
Ron Glass. A/V Club.
Loved him in “Barney Miller”, loved him with Sherman Hemsley in the “I of Newton” episode of the revived “Twilight Zone”, don’t have a damn thing to say about “Firefly” thank you very much.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Cleveland
The Browns have a bye in week 13, which is why this is a combined update.
After that, they play at home against the Bengals, on the road in Buffalo, at home against San Diego, and on the road in Pittsburgh. Three out of four of these teams are basically mediocre, and the Bengals are bad, so it’s still possible for the Browns to pull out a couple of wins. I wouldn’t bet that way, but it is possible…
Charlie Strong officially out as University of Texas head football coach.
16-21 in three seasons: 6-7 in 2014, 5-7 in 2015, and 5-7 again this year.
Strong ran his program by his personal moral compass whereby players could lose their scholarship by violating one of his five core values, which included being honest and not using drugs. He kicked 10 players off the team that first year and doubled the amount of drug testing that went on under Brown.
Strong won universal praise from UT administrators and parents. That’s a primary reason how he captured consecutive top-10 recruiting classes the last two years. Dozens of recruits’ parents told the American-Statesman they wanted their sons to play for a man of Strong’s character.
That’s pretty much the saddest thing about this: it seems like he is a great guy, and everybody liked him. But his teams just were not performing on the field, and (this is also sad to say) there’s just too much invested in UT football to have three consecutive losing seasons.
The mildly amusing aspect of this is that UT has supposedly already hired Tom Herman, current University of Houston head coach and former Ohio State offensive coordinator. (Hello, my northern relatives who are currently watching the Ohio State game!) This is mildly amusing because earlier in the week ESPN was reporting that UT boosters were pushing hard for Herman. By the middle of the week, the reports were that LSU was going to hire Herman. By yesterday, the reports were that LSU wasn’t going to wait around on Herman and had made their interim coach (Ed Orgeron) the non-interim coach instead.
So almost everybody got more or less what they wanted: UT boosters got Herman, LSU got somebody who is at least familiar with the program, Herman gets a larger paycheck, more prestige, and less family disruption. And Charlie Strong gets a contract buyout (“Strong has two years remaining on a guaranteed contract worth $10.7 million.”)
Scum sucking dictator Fidel Castro is burning in Hell.
Cuban geopolitics is a little outside of my area of specialization (though I did stick a toe in those waters when I was taking “Modern Revolutions” with Dr. Sanchez back in the St. Edwards days). If I see any smart takes while I’m out and about I’ll try to link them here.
Edited to add: Various takes: Tam. Lawrence. Amy Alkon.
Edited to add 2: by way of a retweet from Popehat on the Twitter, the Miami Herald obit.
While I’m thinking about it, can I put in a plug for Stephen Hunter’s Havana? Not that it’s completely historical or anything, but I did think it was a fun book. (And Castro is a pivotal character in it.)
…
At the weird intersection of book collecting and weapons geekery: a facsimile edition of the I.33 manuscript, a legendary 14th century combat manual.
Only £750. And that’s the cheap edition.
I can think of one person whose wheelhouse this would sort of be in: he’d probably buy two copies and resell one, except this is a little outside of his specialty…
(On a totally unrelated note, the Lame Excuse Books web page has been updated, and a new catalog is in progress. Books from Lame Excuse Books make fine presents for the holidays.)
(Hattip on I.33 to Hognose over at Weaponsman.)
At the weird intersection of gun crankery and entertainment history:
There are two things I enjoy doing when Mike the Musicologist and I go to Tulsa (well, three, but the shopping is really the whole point of the trip, so it doesn’t count):
I didn’t see Mr. Supica this time, but we hung around the table for a bit and I picked up a few postcards, one of which contained the following odd bit of history.
I kind of knew Sammy Davis Jr. was a gun owner and collector (probably from reading his Wikipedia entry). What I didn’t know was that Mr. Davis was a serious fast draw practitioner. Serious.
Photo by way of Gabby Franco’s blog, also linked.
That’s one of Mr. Davis’ Colt Single Action Army revolvers. The rig was custom made for him by the great Arvo Ojala, holster maker and consultant to the stars. Mr. Davis was fast enough that he did his own gun work for many of the TV shows he guested on.
Here’s some vintage film of Mr. Davis at work:
Mr. Davis and Mr. Martin apparently were not the only fast draw artists in the Rat Pack: according to the back of the postcard (which, sadly, I’ve dropped in the mail and don’t have in front of me), Mr. Davis and Frank Sinatra had a fast draw competition with a new car as the stakes. And Mr. Davis won.
(And Dr. Brackett too? The earth was full of giants in those days: or, more likely, a lot of these folks learned fast draw as a way to get roles in the endless parade of TV westerns.)
I’ll leave you with a short NRA “Curator’s Corner” video about the Davis gun.
Partly as a reminder to myself, partly as a warning to any Austin area readers who may not be aware yet:
The weekend of December 3rd through December 5th, MoPac is going to be completely hosed going northbound.