Angela Paton, character actress who played Mrs. Lancaster (the innkeepr) in “Groundhog Day”.
Obit watch: May 27, 2016.
May 28th, 2016Obit watch: May 27, 2016.
May 27th, 2016Angela Paton, character actress who played Mrs. Lancaster (the innkeepr) in “Groundhog Day”.
You know what Germany needs?
May 27th, 2016Strict anti-tank rocket launcher control.
I hate to be all WP all the time, but I did want to make note of this too, if for no other reason than: the Baader-Meinhof Gang is back, baby!
Hey hey hey, it’s Fat…Leonard?
May 27th, 2016Leonard Glenn Francis ran Glenn Defense Marine Asia. His company specialized in providing services to US Navy warships (things like fuel, food, water, and sewage disposal) and was quite successful at it.
How did he do this?
…
…
There are claims that over 200 other people are “subjects” of the ongoing investigation.
In December, Adm. John Richardson, the chief of naval operations, summoned about 200 admirals to a special gathering in Washington.
Without naming names, he revealed that about 30 of them were under criminal investigation by the Justice Department or ethical scrutiny by the Navy for their connections to Francis, according to two senior Navy officials with direct knowledge of the meeting.
…
Strippers. Always with the strippers. The only thing missing from this story is blow:
“Can u set up some clean, disease free wome[n]when I am there?” Simpkins emailed. A few days later, he added: “Whats the plan to meet up and maybe do some honeys?”
“Honeys and bunnys,” Francis replied, confirming the date.
There’s even a rogue NCIS agent.
Random thought.
May 27th, 2016Is there a use case for a shot timer app for an Apple Watch?
I’m aware of existing ones for the iPhone; I’m just wondering if having the same information, or a subset, available on your wrist – probably linked to your phone – is something that people would find useful?
On the dropping of shoes.
May 26th, 2016I have avoided writing about this for the past few days because there were a lot of rumors and “unconfirmed reports” floating around that claimed to be true, but were denied by the university.
Now I feel like I can write about this, because we finally have an official statement from Baylor University:
Art Briles out as football coach.
Ken Starr out as university president:
Both ESPN and the Statesman report that while Starr is staying on, he will have “no operational duties at the university”.
All of this is fallout from a major scandal: basically, several people, including one Baylor athlete, stated they were sexually assaulted by other athletes (mostly football players, though “a former tennis player is the lone suspect in a sexual assault case that has been active for more than eight months”), and that the university responded badly:
Obit watch: May 26, 2016.
May 26th, 2016Mell Lazarus, noted cartoonist. (“Momma”, “Miss Peach”)
Edited to add: really good tribute to Lazarus in the WP‘s “Comic Riffs” blog.
Not strictly an obit, but there’s a good article in the NYT explaining the circumstances surrounding their obit of Donald W. Duncan, previously noted in this space.
Obit watch: May 25, 2016.
May 25th, 2016Beth Howland passed away December 31st of last year, but her death was not announced until yesterday, in keeping with the wishes of her family.
She played Amy in the original Broadway production of Sondheim’s “Company”, and had a slew of other roles. Ms. Howland was perhaps most famous as Vera on “Alice”.
I kind of wonder if she was typecast after “Alice”: the obit says she worked “sporadically”.
Also:
(Wouldn’t “After Alice” be a great idea for a new TV series? Linda Lavin is still alive: she could have taken over the diner from Mel. Polly Holliday is still alive, too: she could be working the counter, and then you cast someone to play Vera’s daughter, who works as a waitress…Hollywood types, you know where to reach me.)
The AV Club is reporting the passing of Burt Kwouk, who sounds like a very cool and interesting guy. He was in three Bond films, but is perhaps best known as Cato in the Peter Sellers “Pink Panther” movies. (Edited to add: NYT obit.)
Not exactly obits, but worth noting in my opnion: both Bubba Smith and Dave Mirra have been diagnosed with chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
Inverted Jenny watch.
May 24th, 2016Missed this over the weekend, but Mom caught it: thanks, Mom!
Inverted Jenny #76 may appear at the World Stamp Show 2016, which starts next Saturday.
Or it may not.
#76 is significant because it was part of a block of four Inverted Jennies that were stolen from a stamp show in 1955. It appears that the block was split up: one of the stamps was found in 1958, a second one in 1982, and #76 showed up recently at an auction house. The American Philatelic Research Library wants to display it at the show (they claim ownership) but since the stamp is stolen property, there’s complicated legal wrangling involved.
In case you are interested, there’s another Inverted Jenny (#58) coming up for auction May 31st.
The estimates for No. 58 range from $525,000 to $1.6 million.
Historical note, of questionable suitability for use in schools.
May 23rd, 2016Today is the anniversary of Bonnie and Clyde’s death.
I would otherwise have missed it, were it not for this (Warning! Slideshow!) article in the HouChron (Warning! Slideshow!).
While the photos are worthwhile, I’m kind of annoyed by the captions: some them, and the article, refer to the ambush taking place today, while other captions refer to it taking place May 24th. Wikipedia (I know, I know) backs up the May 23rd date, as does Jeff Guinn (from what I’m able to tell).
There’s one photo in particular that I like in that slideshow: the one of Alcorn, Hinton, Gault, and Hamer (number 19).
And I was hoping that I could visit the shooting site when I’m in Louisiana in a few weeks, but I sat down and did the math: sadly, it’s over three hours each way from Baton Rouge to Gibsland, and that’s just not going to work this trip.
(I know I’ve mentioned it before, but Go Down Together still gets an unqualified endorsement from me.)
Obit watch: May 23, 2016.
May 23rd, 2016The WP has a nice tribute to Nick Menza, former drummer of Megadeth, who died Saturday.
You know, I bet we could get DNA off of that saw blade…
Also among the dead: Bill Herz, the last surviving crew member of Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” broadcast.
Obit watch and playing catch up: May 21, 2016.
May 21st, 2016Yesterday was kind of a busy day. There were multiple things that I intended to make note of, but I got stuck into something I can’t discuss right now, and…well….anyway:
Morley Safer, for the historical record.
San Francisco police chief “resigns” “at the request of Mayor Ed Lee”. I think we can call this one a “firing”.
The precipitating incident here seems to have been the SFPD shooting of a woman in a possibly stolen vehicle: she fled from the officers and crashed into the back of a truck.
It sounds at first like there was a bit of a rush to judgement on this: the shooting took place Thursday morning, and Suhr was canned Thursday afternoon. But as the linked SFGate article notes, this wasn’t the first problem under Suhr’s administration: there had been two previous controversial shootings, plus a scandal over “racist and homophobic text messages”.
Great and good friend of the blog and occasional guest poster RoadRich sent a series of thoughtful comments yesterday on the Suhr firing: I’m hoping he’ll let me post those as a guest post, but I didn’t get a chance to ask him yesterday because of [redacted] and he’s busy today.
In other California news, remember Maywood? How could you forget the nearly broke municipality of Maywood, “the second-smallest city in Los Angeles County”?
But that didn’t stop municipal leaders from granting themselves, the city treasurer and the city clerk $250 monthly mileage stipends.
If Maywood used the Internal Revenue Service’s suggested reimbursement rate for business travel of 54 cents a mile, city officials would need to drive 463 miles a month to reach the $250 mark.
More:
I wonder if the councilman and other officials are eating at Tacos Los Desvelados.
Turning our attention to Austin:
Mr. Arevalo was an officer with the Austin Police Department. Given that knowledge, would you care to guess what happened next? Yes: he got his job back!
I know sometimes you wanna let go…
May 20th, 2016Me and my people:
87th class of the @AustinCPAAA @Austin_Police @keyetv @NadiaKEYE @ArtAcevedo pic.twitter.com/eFmMwFX6SX
— Mike Canales (@N7sotvomike) May 19, 2016
Somewhat related: APD homicide detective Kerry Scanlon is retiring today.
I think this is a pretty good story (and I’m not just saying that because Nadia Galindo was one of our CPA classmates).
Detective Scanlon came down and spoke to our CPA class. He came across to me as a pretty good guy. (I’m a little biased: he gave me a spiffy APD Homicide coffee mug because I was able to articulate the difference between homicide and murder.) I hope he enjoys a long and happy retirement.
Been through the desert…
May 19th, 2016
Blogger, with occasional horse.
Quickies.
May 17th, 2016Well, baseball season’s finally gotten underway with the ceremonial throwing out of the first manager.
Fredi Gonzalez out as manager of the Braves. The team was 9-28 so far this year; he was 434-413 overall while with the Braves.
The grand jury has decided not to indict former APD officer Geoffrey Freeman, who you may remember better as the officer who shot and killed a naked 17-year-old male. (Previously.)
Obit watch: Guy Clark, noted Texas musician.
Edited to add 5/18: More Guy Clark. NYT. South Texas Pistolero. A/V Club.