By way of Borepatch: Cassius Marcellus Coolidge’s most famous work sold at auction for $658,000.
Sotheby’s auction link. Yes, that did include the buyer’s premium.
Art, damn it, art! watch (#49 in a series)
December 1st, 2015Flames, hyenas, etc.
December 1st, 2015I wanted to wait a little bit for the paper of record to fully update their coverage. Now that they have:
Sheldon Silver, former speaker of the New York State assembly: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
I am worried, though, about the jury issues:
…
I’m hoping this doesn’t give Silver grounds for a successful appeal.
Bloody Sunday.
November 29th, 2015Bad day for college football coaches.
Mark Richt out at the University of Georgia. He’d been there for 15 seasons…
Rutgers fired both head coach Kyle Flood and AD Julie Hermann. Flood was 27-24 overall, and the team went 4-8 this year. But it looks like the main reason for this firing was off-field issues:
Flood was suspended three games earlier this season for emailing a professor and later scheduling an in-person meeting to discuss the academic standing of former Scarlet Knights defensive back Nadir Barnwell.
In addition, seven Rutgers players were arrested this season for offenses varying from home invasion to assault.
Mike London is out as head coach at the University of Virginia. This is being called a “resignation”, but it sounds like “you can’t fire me, I quit”.
…
Time flies.
November 27th, 2015Damn. It has been a year since that asshole tried to shoot up the police department and got center-punched for his trouble? Where does the time go?
One year later article from the Statesman, which has some details I either didn’t know or forgot.
…
Yes. That was a 100 yard, one-handed shot with an M&P .40.
It was also the decisive one.
I can’t find it online, and my memory is a little sketchy, but I’m reminded of an “Ayoob Files” from some years ago. Briefly: bad guy armed with a rifle is holding off cops (and kills one dead). Cops are only armed with handguns, and try to take the guy out, but he has them pinned down 80 to 100 yards away. My recollection of Ayoob’s account is that at least one of the responding officers tried making shots at that range with his duty gun; when the bad guy was finally taken down (as I recall, by someone who arrived on scene with a shotgun and hit him with a rifled slug), they found a fairly tight group of bullet holes…just above where the bad guy’s head would have been.
One of Ayoob’s points, which I thought was well taken was: maybe every once in a while you should try taking long range shots with your duty weapon, just so you have some idea of what it can do and where you might need to hold. Then again…
…if you grew up shooting off the back porch, maybe you don’t need that advice.
(Also, Massad Ayoob, if you happen to be reading this: this incident, and Sgt. Johnson in particular, might make for a good “Ayoob Files” installment. Just saying.)
A small dose of the unusual for Black Friday.
November 27th, 2015Just in case you’re stuck at work, or have decided to stay home and avoid the rush, here’s a couple of things you might find interesting:
1) Lawrence sent me this link the other day: Showmen’s Rest: Chicago’s Clown Graveyard.
The story behind this is that Showman’s Rest is where many of the dead from the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train disaster were buried.
The Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train disaster? Yes: on June 22, 1918, the train carrying the members of the circus was rammed by another train whose engineer had fallen asleep. 86 members of the circus were either killed outright or burned to death in the fire that resulted.
2) A retweet from Popehat led me to look up Count Dante, who I was previously unaware of. Count Dante was “The Deadliest Man Alive!” and the founder of the Black Dragon Fighting Society; he advertised heavily in comic books during the 1960s and 1970s.
Count Dante (really John Keehan; he changed his name in 1967 to “Count Jerjer Raphael Danté, explaining the name change by stating that his parents fled Spain during the Spanish Civil War, changed their names, and obscured their noble heritage in order to effectively hide in America.“) was one of Chicago’s leading martial artists during the 1960s.
He and a buddy were arrested in 1965 for trying to blow up a competing dojo. In 1970, he and some friends went to another competing dojo to “settle a beef with a member”: in the process, one man died.
Count Dante may also have been involved in a 1974 robbery of $4 million. He died in May of 1975 at the age of 36.
Chicago Reader article, “The Life and Death of the Deadliest Man Alive”. The article is tied to a documentary in progress, “The Search for Count Dante”: film website here.
Obit watch: November 27, 2015.
November 27th, 2015Obit watch: November 25, 2015.
November 25th, 2015The NYT is reporting the death of actor Rex Reason.
Mr. Reason was perhaps most famous for playing Cal Meacham in “This Island Earth”, which I almost think I’d like to watch again for real (as opposed to the MST3K movie version).
TMQ Watch: November 24, 2015.
November 24th, 2015Obit watch and random notes: November 24, 2015.
November 24th, 2015I’ve written previously about Ron Reynolds, a state representative and lawyer who was charged with barratry.
Well, it has been a while. The other seven people who were arrested with Rep. Reynolds took pleas, but Rep. Reynolds went to trial. And…?
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena!
I’ve also written about Kelly Thomas, who was beaten to death by the Fullerton PD. The city (meaning local taxpayers) is going to pay out $4.9 million to his family, in settlement of their wrongful death lawsuit.
Obit watch: noted elsewhere, but I did want to mention the passing of Ken Johnson, former player for the Houston Astros (and the Colt .45s, their predecessor), and the only pitcher ever to “complete a nine-inning game without yielding a hit and still manage to lose it.”
(Oddly enough, there’s a good explanation of how this happened in the FARK discussion thread.)
Also among the dead: Adele Mailer, Norman’s ex-wife and the woman he stabbed in a drunken rage.
Norts spews.
November 20th, 2015By way of the NYT, we learn of a controversy sweeping the world of curling: “high-tech” brooms.
More:
“a retailer”? Like a grocery store? Or like a curling specialty shop?
(Steve’s Curling Supplies sells both the Balance Plus and the Hardline.)
Wednesday was the 30th anniversary of Joe Theismann’s leg injury, and the WP ran a story tied to that.
Speaking from recent bitter personal experience, this.
(Also, I love the detail about the black and white TV with the coat hanger. The ER at Brackenridge has cable TV, so at least you’ve got something to distract you. If you happen to be conscious.)
TMQ Watch: November 17, 2015.
November 19th, 2015You know what we miss from the new, tighter, TMQ?
We’ll tell you. After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Failure to launch.
November 18th, 2015And we have our first firing of the NBA season (I think):
Kevin McHale is gone as head coach of the Houston Rockets.
(By the way, Philadelphia is 0-11.)
Musical interlude.
November 13th, 2015No particular reason. Just feel like it.
Well!
November 12th, 2015I wasn’t blogging the trial, nor was I following it very closely, but this is just too good to pass up:
That’s right. Aquitted.
Heh. Heh. Heh.
(You may remember the Lufthansa robbery from such movies as “Goodfellas”.)
Edited to add 11/13:
I’m just going to leave this here…
TMQ Watch: November 10, 2015.
November 12th, 2015We’re running behind again, this time due to Time-Warner issues and other things. In case you were wondering, we are still a bit gimpy, but our hand is steadily improving.
Let’s go ahead and jump into this week’s TMQ…