Obit watch: May 13, 2024.

May 13th, 2024

Mark Damon, actor and producer. Other credits include “Pistol Packin’ Preacher”, “Ivanhoe, the Norman Swordsman”, and an uncredited role in “The Longest Day”, followed a year later by an uncredited role in “The Shortest Day”.

Tributes to Roger Corman.

Celebrity coroner Cyril Wecht.

A nationally known forensic pathologist with a law degrees from the University of Maryland and the University of Pittsburgh and a medical degree from Pitt, Dr. Wecht was one of the more vocal critics of the Warren Commission report that concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald alone was responsible for the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

…

Months before his death, Dr. Wecht donated his massive cache of records and research to Duquesne in the months before his death.
The collection includes his case files on such high-profile killings as David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, JonBenet Ramsey, the Menendez brothers, Casey Anthony, Scott Peterson, and Chandra Levy.

(Hattip to my brother on this. Archived because the Post-Gazette really doesn’t like adblock.)

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 12, 2024.

May 12th, 2024

Roger Corman. Variety. NYT.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. “King of the B’s” and all that crap. But it’s worth noting that he gave a lot of obscure filmmakers – Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, etc. – their starts in movie making. It’s also worth noting that his company took chances on a lot of foreign films that ended up doing well over here.

It’s also worth noting that (from what I hear) he was responsible for the only decent “Fantastic 4” movie.

Corman had certain aesthetic rules and qualitative guidelines, which he delivered with his characteristic insouciance: “In science fiction films, the monster should be always be bigger than the leading lady.” He pioneered such cinematic staples as the girls’ shower scene, usually the second scene in a Corman teen film. He insisted his directors practice proper professionalism: namely, always have the girls lather up their arms and stomachs so as not to obscure the integrity of the breast shots.

…

Ever restless, Corman ventured into weightier territory, producing The Intruder (1962), a hard look at racial prejudice. It was his first “message” film, and he financed it himself when the major distributors balked at the subject. The story centered on a hatemongering racist (William Shatner) who organized violent opposition to court-ordered school desegregation. It used the N-word in a realistic, non-gratuitous manner, but the film was denied the Production Code’s seal and screened in only a few movie houses in the country.
Although it received commendations from such critics as The Hollywood Reporter‘s Arthur Knight and The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther, it was to be Corman’s first money-losing film. He vowed never again to make a movie with “so obviously a personal statement.”

I’m hoping Lawrence is going to do his own tribute to Corman later, and he’ll almost certainly talk about “The Intruder”, so I’ll just say: if you haven’t seen it, go watch it. Shatner is amazing.

Susan Backlinie. Other credits include “Two Minute Warning”, “The Fall Guy” (the TV show), and “Quark”.

Mary Wells Lawrence, noted advertising executive.

She splashed jazzy colors on Braniff airliners. She put the “plop plop, fizz fizz” into Alka-Seltzer. She warned Benson & Hedges smokers that long cigarettes might pop balloons or set fire to beards. And from Niagara Falls to Broadway, she reached millions with her “I ♥ NY” campaign.

Posted in Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 10, 2024.

May 10th, 2024

Dennis Thompson, drummer for the MC5. He was also the last surviving member.

Pete McCloskey (R – California). He may be more famous for having run against Nixon for the presidential nomination in 1972.

I’ve been holding this one for a few days for reasons, but KVUE has a nice tribute to Robert “Bob” Reale. Mr. Reale was the founder and owner of Reale’s Italian Cafe, which is a swell Italian restaurant and a favorite of both myself and Lawrence.

Posted in Food, Music, Nixon, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

May 10th, 2024

Frank Vogel out as head coach of the Phoenix Suns.

49-33 in his one and only season with the team.

The Suns will now have a third different head coach in three seasons. This is after Vogel said he had “full support” from Suns team owner Mat Ishbia going into Game 4 against the T-Wolves they lost at home to end the season.

Previously. ESPN.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 8, 2024.

May 8th, 2024

Wow. Busy.

Susan Buckner, actress. We may have to add “Deadly Blessing” to the movie list. Other credits include “B.J. and the Bear”, “Switch”, and “Police Academy 6: City Under Siege”.

Judy Devlin Hashman, badminton champion.

Before badminton established a world championship or joined the Olympics, the All England Open Badminton Championships was the sport’s pinnacle. Hashman won the women’s singles title in that event for the first time in 1954 at age 18. Then she added her record-setting nine more, the last in 1967.
She also won seven women’s doubles titles, six of them with her sister Susan Devlin, later known as Susan Peard.

Ian Gelder, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Father Brown”, and “Rumpole of the Bailey”.

The paper of record finally ran an obit for Dick Rutan.

Steve Albini. NYT (archived).

Milton Diamond, who the NYT describes as a “sexologist and advocate for intersex babies”.

I probably would have skipped this one for notability, but the obit starts off with an account of the 1973 International Symposium on Gender Identity, at which Dr. Diamond got into a confrontation with Dr. John Money. Dr. Money was an advocate of “genital correction” surgery, while Dr. Diamond advocated leaving them alone.

Dr. Money rushed over to Dr. Diamond, getting in his face, furiously insisting he was right.
Dr. Diamond only replied, “The data is not there.”
At one point, eyewitnesses reported that Dr. Money slugged Dr. Diamond, though Dr. Diamond later said he didn’t remember it.

Turns out Dr. Diamond may have been right, and Dr. Money was (at best) a crank and possibly worse.

Since the 1990s, Money’s work and research has been subject to significant academic and public scrutiny. A 1997 academic study criticized Money’s work in many respects, particularly in regard to the involuntary sex-reassignment of the child David Reimer. Money allegedly coerced David and his brother Brian to perform sexual rehearsal with each other, which Money then photographed. David Reimer lived a troubled life, ending with his suicide at 38; his brother died of an overdose at age 36.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Planes, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#118 and #119 in a series)

May 8th, 2024

Some people might question whether these are actual “flames”, but I think they’re close enough for government work.

1. Here comes the judge?

No. There goes the judge.

Prince George’s County Circuit Court Judge April Ademilyi has been removed from her position by the state’s Supreme Court after being suspended since 2023, 7News learned Tuesday morning.

…

Investigations began into Ademiluyi on Sept. 27, 2022, after allegations arose that she bypassed the judicial nomination process and vetting, ultimately beating a previously seated judge.
Court documents noted concerns from the Commission of Judicial Disabilities with a campaign ad from Ademiluyi that detailed her personal experience as a sexual assault survivor, claiming that the ad could “reasonably be perceived as inconsistent with the independence and impartiality of judicial office.”
While in office, two of Ademiluyi’s employees told the commission that the judge would routinely “demand, demean, and belittle” them, leading to both seeking medical attention for stress and anxiety
In 2023, Ademilyi was suspended without pay and barred from a courthouse.

WP (archived):

The specifics of the alleged misconduct are unclear because the high court did not include an explanatory opinion with its brief ruling. The court broadly cited at least a dozen codes Ademiluyi allegedly violated as a Circuit Court judge, involving her behavior with jurors, her impartiality and fairness, her compliance with the law and her cooperation with disciplinary authorities, but it did not offer specific details of the purported misconduct.

…

She has alleged in complaints and court documents that her outsider status drew hostility from her judicial colleagues, creating a working environment that prompted her to file what she said was a whistleblower complaint against her supervisors in 2022.
In a statement, she asserted that her removal from the bench is retaliation for that complaint. After reporting her supervisors to the Maryland Commission on Judicial Disabilities, they responded with a complaint of their own, alleging misconduct by Ademiluyi in hundreds of pages of documents that the commission and Maryland Supreme Court deemed valid.
Her fellow judges alleged that she behaved inappropriately at the courthouse, including insubordination, unprofessionalism, tardiness and lack of participation in critical judicial training sessions.

…

Soon after Ademiluyi became a judge, tensions with her colleagues began to develop, according to court and commission documents.
But Ademiluyi took the first action before the commission, filing a complaint against Sheila Tillerson Adams, then serving as the county’s longtime chief administrative judge, and Daneeka Varner Cotton, who would soon take over for Tillerson Adams.
Ademiluyi alleged that Tillerson Adams forged her signature on a ruling and that the two had been monitoring her emails in an attempt to sabotage her, according to commission and court documents. In a letter to the commission, Cotton replied that it would be “extremely difficult to respond to the blatant falsehoods” alleged in Ademiluyi’s complaint.

…

Tillerson Adams told investigators that dealing with Ademiluyi had been a “nightmare.” The commission ultimately dismissed Ademiluyi’s complaint, ruling that there was not sufficient evidence to support her allegations.
Then came a second commission complaint from Tillerson Adams against Ademiluyi, alleging misconduct. The commission would ultimately find that, among other conclusions, she refused to talk to certain judges, instructed her law clerks to not speak to other judges and sent emails saying, “I don’t look forward to meeting you or communicating with you at anytime.” They also found that her election campaign content could have led to perceptions of her not being impartial in sexual violence cases.

…

The Maryland Supreme Court’s decision Monday went far beyond the punishment the commission had unanimously recommended in February, which included a censure and six-month unpaid suspension, with two months served immediately and four months suspended depending on her compliance with certain conditions.
Those conditions included that the Supreme Court institute a one-year probation with a monitor; an assigned mentor judge who would provide monthly reports; “a complete emotional, behavioral and prosocial assessment” followed by Ademiluyi’s cooperation and compliance with any recommended treatments; and attendance at Maryland judiciary, educational and ethics trainings.

As I understand it, she beat Jared McCarthy in the 2020 general election for the position. Mike the Musicologist, who tipped me off to this story, also sent over a tweet:

2. Troy Finner, the chief of police for the Houston Police Department, retired yesterday.

This sounds more like a “retirefiring” than an actual retirement, even though he’s been on the job for 31 years. The HPD has been under a lot of fire recently over closing 264,000 cases. The cases were “suspended” with a code indicating “lack of personnel”…

…some of which were for violent crimes and sexual assault. It means those reports were not investigated.

Former Chief Finner had said repeatedly he knew nothing about this, but an email surfaced recently in which he was told that a road rage incident had been closed with that code:

In the email response, Finner calls the lack of investigation “unacceptable” and directs officers to follow up on the case.

More from Houston’s ABC13.

And, as a special bonus for reading all the way to the end:

Posted in Cops, Firings, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Headline of the day.

May 7th, 2024

Slain beauty queen Landy Párraga may have tipped off killers by posting photo of octopus ceviche

I really do need to do that OPSEC post, don’t I?

Her food pic showed the distinctive-looking seafood dish and a side of eggs with a restaurant logo on either a placemat or menu on the table.

They didn’t even have to look at the EXIF data.

Also, she was making the sign of the two-backed beast with a convicted drug lord, who was married to someone else.

“If my wife comes across anything about her, I’m screwed,” Norero had said of Párraga to Ángulo.
He reportedly added: “My friend, her name cannot come out anywhere. Otherwise, my world will come crashing down.”

The drug lord got whacked in prison. Authorities suspect that his widow is behind the assassination of Ms. Párraga.

Posted in Food, Law, Media | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 7, 2024.

May 7th, 2024

Both Lawrence and Joe D. sent over additional obits for Dick Rutan: AP. AVWeb (which was not there when I looked yesterday). Air Force Times. My thanks to both gentlemen.

C.J. Sansom, mystery author. I’d never heard of him, but now I want to read his books. He specialized in historical mysteries, and had an ongoing series with “Matthew Shardlake”, a “hunchbacked lawyer-turned-detective” in Tudor England.

His first book, “Dissolution,” is set in a remote monastery in 1537, as Henry VIII is dispossessing Catholic monks of their lands and riches after the king’s rupture with Rome. Shardlake is sent there by his patron, Cromwell, Henry’s chief minister, to investigate a murder. He finds corruption, sexual depravity and more suspicious deaths.
Published in 2003, “Dissolution” was a popular success, and Mr. Sansom was signed to a multibook deal. He went on to publish six more Shardlake mysteries over 15 years. More than three million copies are in print.
His second installment, “Dark Fire” (2005), set during a sweltering London summer, includes child murder and culminates in Cromwell’s real-life execution in 1540. A reviewer, Stella Duffy, writing in The Guardian, praised Mr. Sansom for offering a dizzying window on the times: “Tudor housing to rival Rachman, Dickensian prisons, a sewage-glutted Thames, beggars in gutters, conspiracies at court and a political system predicated on birth not merit, intrigue not intelligence.”

You know, I feel like between Mr. Sansom and Hilary Mantel, at some point, I’m going to have to go to the Cromwell…

Posted in Books, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Noted.

May 6th, 2024

There was an election in Austin this past weekend.

Because of changes in state law, areas of Austin that were previously annexed by the city could vote to de-annex from the city.

Some of those results are interesting.

For example, Proposition B, “Disannex Mooreland Addition” received 0 votes against…and 0 votes for.

Proposition C, “Disannex Blue Goose Road”, got 3 votes for…and none against.

Proposition E, “Disannex Wildhorse/Webb” also ended up in a 0-0 tie.

And Proposition F, “Disannex River Place Outparcels”, won, 1-0. See, one vote can matter.

In case you were wondering, Proposition A, “Disannex Lost Creek”, won, 1,447 – 138. Proposition D, “Disannex Lennar at Malone”, won lost 110 – 2.

Edited to add 5/7: Actually, I mis-read the results. Proposition D, “Disannex Lennar at Malone”, was defeated.

I don’t know that there’s any major trends to be drawn from this. I want to say that the results prove general unhappiness with the city, and a desire to be well separated from it. But I feel like that can only be said for the areas covered by propositions A and D, since those seem to be the only ones with a significant number of voters.

Election results from KXAN.

Edited to add 5/7: Thanks to T. Migratorious for his comments.

Also, KVUE has a post election follow-up article.

Katieva Kizer lives on Blue Goose Road in northeast Austin, which is one of the six neighborhoods that voted on whether to leave Austin’s city limits on Saturday.

…

“My grandfather fought the annexation of this little area the whole time here until he died in 2015,” Kizer said. “He was the kind of guy that would call the county … call the city and tell them, ‘You need to come do things.’”Kizer said they never got any benefits from the city in the seven years they were annexed and that their roads and water infrastructure deteriorated.
“I did call and contact the city for services, and they’re like, ‘No, we’re not up to date in your area to provide those services,'” Kizer said. “Huge potholes everywhere … They didn’t actually come and fix our road until they started doing new construction in the rest of the area. It was only to benefit the newcomers to the area, not anybody that’s already been here and paying taxes.”

…

Disannexing means the residents will no longer receive certain city services, like fire or police protection, street maintenance, public health sanitation and more.
“There weren’t a lot of things to look forward to or that they were giving us,” Kizer said. “So, the major benefit is that I get to go back to being county taxed.”

Posted in Austin, Politics | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: May 6, 2024.

May 6th, 2024

Bernard Hill. NYT. IMDB.

Frank Stella, artist.

Mr. Stella was a dominant figure in postwar American art, a restless, relentless innovator whose explorations of color and form made him an outsize presence, endlessly discussed and constantly on exhibit.
Few American artists of the 20th century arrived with quite his éclat. He was in his early 20s when his large-scale black paintings — precisely delineated black stripes separated by thin lines of blank canvas — took the art world by storm. Austere, self-referential, opaque, they cast a chilling spell.

Jeannie Epper, stuntwoman. 161 stunt credits in IMDB (and another 39 actress credits). Seems like she was working pretty steadily from 1964 all the way to 2021, including “Play Misty For Me”, “Soylent Green”, “Blazing Saddles”, “The Blues Brothers”, and “Road House” (the good one).

Lawrence sent over an obit for Edgar Lansbury. I had seen this elsewhere and didn’t think he was noteworthy enough, but Lawrence pointed out that he produced “Squirm“.

Lawrence also sent over an obit for Dick Rutan, legendary pilot. He’s the guy who, with Jeana Yeager, flew non-stop around the world in nine days, three minutes, and 44 seconds in “Voyager”. Unfortunately, the obit Lawrence sent me came from a blog by way of a blog, and I’d rather have something more substantial to link to: none of the flying news publications I know of have this story yet. I’ll link to a better obit when I find one.

Posted in 1970s, Art, Movies, Obits, Planes, TV | 2 Comments »

All right, give me a Hamm on five, hold the Mayo.

May 3rd, 2024

Darvin Ham out as head coach of the Lakers.

The Lakers went 47-35 this season, the eighth-best record in the West. They won their play-in tournament game and advanced to face the Nuggets, who they again lost to in a tightly contested five-game series.

Why can’t LeBron James make change for a dollar?

Because he doesn’t have a 4th quarter.

Ham, who had two years remaining on his contract, went 90-74 (.549) during the regular season and 9-12 (.429) in the postseason — which does not include his two play-in tournament wins — since being hired to replace Frank Vogel in 2022. He also guided the Lakers to the inaugural in-season tournament title in Las Vegas in December.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#117 in a series)

May 3rd, 2024

This was rumored all morning, but it was just rumors until now.

An indictment accusing U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, of accepting bribes from foreign entities was unsealed Friday.

His wife Imelda has also been indicted.

Court documents accuse the two of accepting $600,000 in bribes from two foreign companies; an oil and gas company controlled by the Government of Azerbaijan and a bank in Mexico City. The alleged scheme began in December 2014 and continued through at least November 2021, authorities said.

…

The two each face the following charges:

Each of the money laundering counts carry a maximum prison sentence of 20 years. The case was investigated by the FBI and DOS-OIG.

Of course, Rep. Cuellar and his wife are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You dry-docked my battleship! Part 2!

May 3rd, 2024

Hey! Guess what!

The battleship New Jersey is in dry dock.

Being completely fair, this is a good story, especially if you’re interested in history, ships, the Navy, or some combination of those three.

It was years overdue for the routine maintenance required to keep it safely afloat for the next couple of decades in the Delaware River. And preparations for pulling the 887.7-foot ship about six miles, from Camden to Paulsboro, N.J., and then to Philadelphia, were complete even before the $10 million it will cost to finish the job was secured.

But it isn’t without annoyances.

“They don’t do this, anywhere, very often,” said Libby Jones, the museum’s director of education. “If you’re into this kind of stuff, this is it — this is the Super Bowl.”

Ahem. Ahem.

The Texas also cost a lot more, but it had gone without maintenance for much longer, too.

(Also being scrupulously fair, the Texas is now out of dry dock and in a new permanent location. On the other hand, the Texas was in dry dock for 18 months, not the two months estimated for the New Jersey, and anyone who wanted to had plenty of opportunities to go see it.)

A YouTube channel [Ryan Szimanski] and Ms. Jones created at the start of the pandemic to offer programming while the museum was closed now has nearly 240,000 subscribers. Tickets for the dry-dock tours that Mr. Szimanski leads are selling for $1,000. (Tours led by other guides are $225.)

$1,000? Really? Nothing against Mr. Szimanski: I do watch the New Jersey YouTube channel sometimes. But $775 seems like a steep YouTube premium. (As I recall, the dry dock tour of the Texas was $150.)

It is kind of nice to see the New Jersey is selling merch (though they already had an online store). But can you get Battleship New Jersey 1911 grips? As far as I can tell, no.

(Okay, that’s a trick question: you can’t get Battleship Texas 1911 grips either. Except for the deck pattern ones, which I personally don’t like. The other two patterns seem to come into stock and sell out very fast. One of these days I might be lucky enough to snag a pair.)

What’s the takeway from this, other than dry dock tours of old battleships are fun?

Posted in 1911, Guns, History, Ships | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 3, 2024.

May 3rd, 2024

The NYT ran two obits recently for people who were a little outside the mainstream of celebrity.

Larry Young passed away in March at the age of 56. Dr. Young was a neuroscientist, who got his PhD from UT Austin.

Professor Young, a neuroscientist at Emory University in Atlanta, used prairie voles in a series of experiments that revealed the chemical process for the pirouette of heart-fluttering emotions that poets have tried to put into words for centuries.

…

With their beady eyes, thick tails and sharp claws, prairie voles are not exactly cuddly. But among rodents, they are uniquely domestic: They are monogamous, and the males and females form a family unit to raise their offspring together.
“Prairie voles, if you take away their partner, they show behavior similar to depression,” Professor Young told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2009. “It’s almost as if there’s withdrawal from their partner.”
That made them ideal for laboratory studies examining the chemistry of love.
In a study published in 1999, Professor Young and his colleagues exploited the gene in prairie voles associated with the signaling of vasopressin, a hormone that modulates social behavior. They boosted vasopressin signaling in mice, which are highly promiscuous.

…

Professor Young followed up with other prairie vole studies that focused on oxytocin, a hormone that stimulates contractions during childbirth and is involved in the bonding between mothers and newborns.
“Because we knew that oxytocin was involved in mother-infant bonding, we explored whether oxytocin might be involved in this partner bonding,” he said in an interview with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in 2019.
It was.

…

“Love doesn’t really fly in and out,” Professor Young wrote in “The Chemistry Between Us: Love, Sex, and the Science of Attraction” (2012, with Brian Alexander). “The complex behaviors surrounding these emotions are driven by a few molecules in our brains. It’s these molecules, acting on defined neural circuits, that so powerfully influence some of the biggest, most life-changing decisions we’ll ever make.”

Frank Wakefield, mandolin guy.

In a career that spanned seven decades, Mr. Wakefield played with a host of bluegrass luminaries, including Jimmy Martin and the Stanley Brothers.

…

While still a teenager, Mr. Wakefield mastered the heavily syncopated “chop” chord of the bluegrass pioneer Bill Monroe, whom he met in 1961 and who immediately recognized Mr. Wakefield’s prowess as a mandolinist.
“You can play like me as good — or near as good — as I can,” Mr. Wakefield, in a 2022 interview with the Hudson Valley Bluegrass Association, recalled Mr. Monroe saying at their initial meeting. “Now you’ve got to go out and find your own style.”
Heeding Mr. Monroe’s advice, Mr. Wakefield did exactly that. He devised his own sound by alternating up and down strokes on his instrument with equal force to produce a clear, ringing tone and sustained rhythm, which he likened to a sledgehammer striking a steel rail in a 1998 interview with the bluegrass website Candlewater.com.

…

David Grisman, a student of Mr. Wakefield’s and a mandolin virtuoso in his own right, said in an often quoted passage from Frets magazine that Mr. Wakefield had “split the bluegrass mandolin atom” by taking the instrument beyond where Mr. Monroe had.
“Bluegrass,” the album that Mr. Wakefield made with Mr. Allen for Folkways Records in 1964 (and that a 19-year-old Mr. Grisman produced), proved ample confirmation of that claim: It featured versions of two of Mr. Wakefield’s most enduring originals, “New Camptown Races” and “Catnip,” both of which, with their developments in melody, tunings and chord changes, pushed the limits of what then constituted bluegrass.
Mr. Wakefield’s innovations didn’t stop there, though. By the mid-1960s he had begun composing sonatas for the mandolin and arranging classical pieces for traditional bluegrass ensembles. He performed with Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic at Carnegie Hall in 1967 and made a guest appearance with the Boston Pops orchestra the next year.

Posted in Geek, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 2, 2024.

May 2nd, 2024

Duane Eddy. NYT (archived).

Posted in Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 1, 2024.

May 1st, 2024

Paul Auster, author. (The New York Trilogy)

I wish I could say more about this. I know Auster was an important mainstream writer, but I’ve never read anything by him.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#116 in a series)

May 1st, 2024

Federal agents have launched a criminal probe into the embattled mayor of a Chicago suburb, Tiffany Henyard, issuing a subpoena to the self-proclaimed “super mayor” last week for a trove of business records and financial reports.

I have no joke here, I just like saying “Wonderful thing, a subpoena.”

Mike the Musicologist also tells me that Ms. Henyard’s current lawyers have asked to withdraw from the case…because Ms. Henyard isn’t paying her legal bills.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

NERFed.

April 30th, 2024

First, we had the NERF machine gun.

How do you follow that?

Would you believe…NERF night vision?

It looks like a camera with (probably) a cheap magnifying lens that’s also IR sensitive. It almost certainly isn’t great, but for $35 it might be fun to play with.

And it seems like there’s already a hacker community around it, mostly on Reddit. (No link, because Reddit.)

Hattip to awa over at Gun Free Zone, who points out there’s a meme around this too.

Posted in 1911, Bagatelle, Geek, Guns | Comments Closed

I’m all right, don’t nobody worry about me…

April 30th, 2024

…just really nothing to write about.

I want to do some more gun and gun book blogging, but I’m going to be busy through Wednesday and just won’t have time.

Posted in Admin | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#110)

April 26th, 2024

Shot:

Noem also detailed how she killed a “nasty and mean” male goat because it had not been castrated.
She described the animal as smelling “disgusting, musky, rancid” and claimed it “loved to chase” Noem’s children and knock them down.
The goat was also “dragged to a gravel pit,” but jumped when she pulled the trigger, and subsequently survived the wound. Noem went back to her truck to retrieve another shell, then “hurried back to the gravel pit and put him down,” she wrote.

Chaser:

A hoarder “squatter” with a large aggressive goat refused to leave a house in San Antonio for months — as the belligerent billy goat attacked the homeowner and police, sources said.
The four-legged baaaad boy stormed and butted house flipper Daniel Cabrera, who bought a five-bedroom abode for $175,000 from a woman who refused to move out in June, he told realtor.com.

Spicy bar snack:

Ammo cuffs from Andy’s Leather. So you don’t have to go back to the truck to load another round. Or you could use a rifle with a magazine.

Posted in Bagatelle, Goats, Guns, Mammals | Comments Closed

Everybody was gun book blogging…

April 25th, 2024

…they read as fast as lightning…

Needs some work.

After the jump, some more old gun books, and one new one.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in 1911, Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia | Comments Closed

Well! Isn’t THIS special?

April 25th, 2024

New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 conviction on felony sex crime charges, a stunning reversal in the foundational case of the #MeToo era.
In a 4-3 decision, the New York Court of Appeals found that the trial judge who presided over Mr. Weinstein’s case had made a crucial mistake, allowing prosecutors to call as witnesses a series of women who said Mr. Weinstein had assaulted them — but whose accusations were not part of the charges against him.

Still breaking as I write this. THR is also on the case.

Posted in Law | Comments Closed

Annals of “law”. (#1 in a series)

April 23rd, 2024

Murray Sawchuck went on “trial” a week ago Wednesday.

I put “trial” in quotes because there was no actual court of competent authority involved. The trial was at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, and the judges were members of the Magic Castle board.

Murray Sawchuck is also known as “Murray the Magician”. He had a gig at the Tropicana until it closed earlier this month, and he’s been on various TV shows.

He also has a YouTube channel. And that’s the problem.

The troubles began in late January, when he and his showgirl wife, Dani, cooked up a new video, inspired by the bickering of Lucy and Desi Arnaz, in which he’d perform a series of tricks for the camera — mostly basic illusions one could purchase off of Amazon. She, playing the role of unimpressed wife, reveals how they’re done.
A bouquet of flowers, for example, is shown to be sucked into the base of the trick table on which it stands. A sword-swallowing act is rendered all the less impressive when she flicks the blade — and it coils up like a measuring tape. The whole thing took 10 minutes to make. Then they posted it to YouTube.

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Okay, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. But it did make a lot of people in the magic community upset. This, in turn, led to the “hearing”, for want of a better word.

Summarizing Mr. Sawchuck’s arguments, from the article: “teaching magic” is “exposing magic”, “exposing magic” isn’t as black and white as magicians would have it, exposing magic “forces magicians to be more entertaining and charismatic”, and there’s a long tradition of “exposing magic” (including Houdini and Penn and Teller).

Anybody remember “Breaking the Magician’s Code: Magic’s Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed” with the “Masked Magician”? I always thought that was a hoot. And I don’t see where the “Masked Magician” was ever “prosecuted” by the Magic Castle (though Wikipedia says he was sued by some people whose illusions he spoiled).

Obligatory:

I have not seen any follow-up on this, and I have no idea how long it takes for the Magic Castle to rule. If I do see an update, I’ll let y’all know.

Posted in Magic | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 23, 2024.

April 23rd, 2024

Playing catch-up from the past few days:

Terry Anderson, journalist who was kidnapped and held for six years by Shia Hezbollah militants of the Islamic Jihad Organization in Lebanon.

While he had not been tortured during his captivity, he said, he was beaten and chained. He spent a year or so, on and off, in solitary confinement, he said.
“There is nothing to hold on to, no way to anchor my mind,” he said after the ordeal. “I try praying, every day, sometimes for hours. But there’s nothing there, just a blankness. I’m talking to myself, not God.”
He found some consolation in the Bible, though, and added: “The only real defense was to remember that no one could take away my self-respect and dignity — only I could do that.”

Roman Gabriel, quarterback for the Rams and Eagles.

He was voted the N.F.L.’s Most Valuable Player when he led the league in touchdown passes, with 24, in a 14-game season with the 1969 Rams.
He was also named the comeback player of the year by pro football writers in 1973, his first season with the Eagles. Coming off knee problems and a sore arm, he led the N.F.L. in touchdown passes (23), completions (270) and passing yardage (3,219) that season.
He played in four Pro Bowl games, three with the Rams in the late 1960s and another with the Eagles in 1973. But he reached the postseason only twice, and his Rams were eliminated in the first round both times.

Terry Carter, actor. This is buried a bit in the article, but he was McCloud’s partner and played “Colonel Tigh” on the original “Battlestar Galactica”.

Other credits include “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “Search”…

…and “Mannix” (“Medal For a Hero”, season 3, episode 14).

And in a wayfaring six-decade career, he was a merchant seaman, a jazz pianist, a law student, a television news anchor, a familiar character on network sitcoms, an Emmy-winning documentarian, a good will ambassador to China, a longtime expatriate in Europe — and a reported dead man; in 2015, rumors that he had been killed were mistaken. It was not him but a much younger Terry Carter who had died in a hit-and-run accident in Los Angeles by a pickup truck driven by the rap mogul Marion “Suge” Knight.
Slightly misquoting Mark Twain, Mr. Carter posted on social media: “Rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Frederick Celani, serial con man. He conned people into thinking he was going to build a package delivery hub in Springfield (Illinois), conned inmates into giving him money to have their convictions overturned (he wasn’t a lawyer), and ran various real estate cons.

Fred Neulander. You may recall that name, as his trial was a brief sensation back in the 1990s.

The rabbi and his wife, Carol Neulander, 52, were well-known in the community through both the shul and Classic Cakes, the popular bakery Carol co-founded, CNN reported.
The mother of 3 had just returned from the bakery when she bludgeoned to death with a lead pipe in the couple’s Cherry Hill home on the evening of Nov. 1, 1994, the outlet said.

…

Neulander was indicted for the murder in 1999, but the case did not come together until the following year, when private investigator Len Jenoff told police that the rabbi paid him and another man, Paul Daniels, $30,000 to kill his wife.
At trial in 2001, prosecutors argued that the rabbi wanted to get rid of Carol to continue his two-year affair with Philadelphia radio host Elaine Soncini.
Soncini, who was Catholic, had even supposedly converted to Judaism to be with the rabbi, whom she met when he performed funeral rites for her late husband.

…

When the first trial ended in a hung jury, the 2002 retrial was moved from Camden County to Monmouth County to downplay the local scrutiny.
Following the retrial, Neulander was convicted of Carol’s murder. He narrowly avoided the death penalty and was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison.
Soncini testified against Neulander at both trials, as did two of his three children.

Posted in 1970s, Law, Mannix, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 20, 2024.

April 20th, 2024

In haste: Death finally caught the Midnight Rider.

Dickey Betts. THR.

Daniel C. Dennett, author.

An outspoken atheist, he at times seemed to denigrate religion. “There’s simply no polite way to tell people they’ve dedicated their lives to an illusion,” he said in a 2013 interview with The New York Times.
According to Mr. Dennett, the human mind is no more than a brain operating as a series of algorithmic functions, akin to a computer. To believe otherwise is “profoundly naïve and anti-scientific,” he told The Times.
For Mr. Dennett, random chance played a greater role in decision-making than did motives, passions, reasoning, character or values. Free will is a fantasy, but a necessary one to gain people’s acceptance of rules that govern society, he said.
Mr. Dennett irked some scientists by asserting that natural selection alone determined evolution. He was especially disdainful of the eminent paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould, whose ideas on other factors of evolution were summarily dismissed by Mr. Dennett as “goulding.”

Posted in Books, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

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