John Erman, TV director. Credits include episodes of “Roots”, “Roots II: The Next Generation”, “The Outer Limits”, “Peyton Place”, “My Favorite Martian”, and one episode of a minor 1960s SF TV series.
Obit watch: July 2, 2021.
July 2nd, 2021You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#69 in a series)
July 2nd, 2021A corrupt Chicago alderman? Quel frommage!
…
Remember, it was granite countertops that brought down Ray Nagin.
Sun-Times:
It also leaves the council’s two most senior members facing federal criminal charges. Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th) is the council’s longest-serving alderman and faces a 2019 racketeering indictment that accused him of using his position on the city council to steer business to his private law firm. Austin, appointed to the council in 1994, is second in seniority to Burke.
In late April, a federal grand jury also indicted Ald. Patrick Daley Thompson (11th), the nephew and grandson of Chicago’s two longest-serving mayors. Thompson faces charges involving what prosecutors say was a massive fraud scheme at a Bridgeport bank, Washington Federal Bank for Savings.
I had the Burke story, but I missed the Thompson indictment.
This is…interesting.
Told of Austin’s indictment, Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th) said, “Oh, no. Her and Chester both? I have great relationships with both of them. Known them for way longer than I’ve been on the council. I wish nothing but the best for them. I hope she’s OK.”
Sawyer called the outspoken Austin a rare breed in politics who says what she thinks and never stabs anyone in the back.
“I love her candidness and her straight talk, if you will. She’s not gonna tell you something just to make you feel better. She’s gonna tell you the truth,” said Sawyer, son of former Mayor Eugene Sawyer.
The epitome of old-school Chicago politics, Austin didn’t hesitate to put her relatives and friends on the city payroll and made no apologies for it.
Sawyer said he respected that quality as well because, as he put it, “They got the job done.”
Perhaps the time has come for adult supervision in Chicago.
Obit watch: July 1, 2021.
July 1st, 2021As promised, Donald Rumsfeld: WP (through archive.is). NYT.
There WASN’T supposed to be an earth-shattering KA-BOOM!
July 1st, 2021From the LAT (through archive.is):
At a news conference, Los Angeles Police Chief Michel Moore said officials responding to a home on the 700 block of East 27th Street had found several thousand pounds of illegal fireworks as well as improvised explosive devices that were “more unstable.”
An LAPD bomb squad transferred the improvised devices into the iron chamber of a semitruck that’s meant to contain such explosive material, he said.
Police detonated the devices at 7:37 p.m., believing that the vehicle would be able to contain the explosion, but there was a “total catastrophic failure of that containment vehicle,” Moore said.
…
At the residence’s patio, officers found several thousand pounds of commercial fireworks stacked 8 to 10 feet high in boxes, and bomb squad personnel spent the day moving them to be stored at another location.
Officers also found improvised explosive devices with simple fuses — about 40 the size of Coke cans and 200 smaller objects of similar construction — and conducted X-rays to determine their contents.
Less than 10 pounds of the devices were transferred into a semitruck, which Moore said was rated, with its outer containment shell, to handle 18 pounds. Officials established a 300-foot perimeter behind the vehicle and evacuated the north and south sides of 27th Street.
According to reports, none of the injuries are “life-threatening”.
FotB RoadRich can correct me if I’m wrong, but I have a memory of APD’s bomb squad telling us (when we were going through the Citizen’s Police Academy) that the most dangerous thing a bomb squad does is…disposal of fireworks. I don’t know if that’s because they do more fireworks disposal than anything else, because people get blasé around them (“It’s just fireworks!”), or if because fireworks are more volatile than anything else they deal with.
Edited to add: Lawrence sent over this tweet from CBS LA: their helicopter was directly overhead when…
WATCH: Sky9 was overhead when police attempted to detonate a stash of illegal fireworks that ended in an explosion in the 700 block of East 27th Street in South L.A. https://t.co/KpWiAEoyqv pic.twitter.com/UbIXLDoZjh
— CBS Los Angeles (@CBSLA) July 1, 2021
Obit watch: June 30, 2021 (supplemental).
June 30th, 2021A statement from the family of Donald Rumsfeld: pic.twitter.com/AlKYxVvqgF
— Donald Rumsfeld (@RumsfeldOffice) June 30, 2021
The NYT has a preliminary obit up. I’ll probably wait until tomorrow and post links to full obits from them and from the WP.
(Hattip: Lawrence.)
Obit watch: June 30, 2021.
June 30th, 2021NYT obit for John Langley, which (as usual) went up after I posted the other day.
Stuart Damon. He played “Dr. Alan Quartermaine” on “General Hospital” basically forever. He has a few other credits – mostly soaps – beyond that, including “Space: 1999” and “Star 80”.
Robert Sacchi, most famous for “The Man With Bogart’s Face”.
Obit watch: June 28, 2021.
June 28th, 2021NYT obit for Frederic Rzewski, which went up after I posted yesterday.
John Langley. He was perhaps best known as the creator of “COPS”.
He also was involved in off-road racing, and apparently did quite well at that:
He died of an apparent heart attack while his team was competing in the “Coast to Coast Ensenada-San Felipe 250” this past weekend.
I have not seen this elsewhere, but “Reason” is reporting the death of libertarian economist Steve Horwitz.
Happy Gavrilo Princip Day!
June 28th, 2021Let us pause for a moment of silence in memory of FotB and valued commenter guffaw, who originated Gavrilo Princip Day.
“The Guns of August” is a long (almost 1:40) documentary adapted from Barbara Tuchman’s book.
Shameful confession: I greatly admire Barbara Tuchman. I loved The Proud Tower. I think Practicing History is an excellent collection of essays. I read A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century a long time ago, but it was at the right time for me, and I’m fond of that book.
I have never been able to read The Guns of August. I have tried three times and just cannot get through it. I think it may be a matter of just too many people to keep track of…
Bonus: I may be pushing things a little bit, but here you go: “The Russian Civil War in Siberia” from “The Great War” channel.
It isn’t exactly WWI, but I believe (and I think Mike Duncan will agree with me) that the 1917 Revolution and the Russian Civil War were consequences of a lot of things, including WWI, so I’m including this here.
Bonus #2: This is an aspect of history I’m interested in, but I have not had a chance to sit down and watch this video yet. “Blood and Oil: The Middle East in World War I”. Looking at the description and comments, it may be somewhat biased: I would take this with some salt.
Note for myself: The T. E. Lawrence Society.
Obit watch: June 27, 2021.
June 27th, 2021Mike Gravel, former Senator from Alaska and (later) presidential candidate.
Frederic Rzewski, noted pianist. I probably would not have made note of this, but Mike the Musicologist sent me this tweet:
I will write an obit tonight, but for now, the greatest gig poster in history: pic.twitter.com/aeyi0HvCrZ
— Ethan Iverson (@ethan_iverson) June 26, 2021
Ethan Iverson’s tribute. MtM notes: “And while ‘The People United Will Never Be Defeated‘ is grotesque source material, the piece is stunning.”
Obit watch: June 24, 2021.
June 24th, 2021There’s an abundance of John McAfee obits out there on the web. Take your pick from Hacker News: for the hysterical record, I’m linking to the NYT obit.
Promoted from the comments, and by way of great and good FotB Joe D.:
Edited to add NYPost headline:
John McAfee hideout traced to Spanish ‘ghost hotel’ with a bitcoin farm
Biden administration cracking down on ghost hotels in 3, 2, 1…
Bagatelle (#38 (?) in a series).
June 23rd, 2021Flashback:
So I was at my local gun shop over the weekend…and they actually had a C96 in the display case for sale. I kid you not: it was the first one I’ve ever seen in the wild.
It even came with the “holster”. Really. That’s what they said. They were very careful about not calling it a “shoulder stock”. It was a “holster”. (They were also very clear that: once you got it home, what you did with the “holster” was your own damn business.)
The previous owner had even thrown in a box of ammo and some empty brass. The whole kit looked to be in pretty good shape (though I believe the clerk said the hammer had been replaced with a later period hammer, so it wasn’t quite all matching).
They were (are?) asking a mere $1,800 for it. Which is more than I’m willing to shell out right now. But if a Broomhandle Mauser is your cup of tea for a carry gun, feel free to drop me a line privately and I’ll hook you up with the shop.
Edited to add 6/24: Fun fact, which I just had the chance to research today. While a pistol with a shoulder stock is technically considered a short barrelled rifle (SBR) and falls under the National Firearms Act of 1934 regulations, there are certain specific items – “such as original semiautomatic Mauser “Broomhandles” and Lugers” – that are considered “collectors’ items” and are not subject to the NFA.
You can find the complete lists here, if you are that curious.
(Possible) obit watch.
June 23rd, 2021I am seeing reports that John McAfee has committed suicide in a jail in Spain. I have not been able to confirm those reports: they currently trace back to one Spanish newspaper.
Edited to add: the NYPost has the story, but they are crediting it back to that same Spanish newspaper.
Missed it by THAT much…
June 23rd, 2021Monday was the 90th anniversary of the strange death of Hubert Chevis, also known as “…the mysterious affair of Lieutenant Chevis and the Manchurian partridge“.
So that this isn’t a total waste of your time: here’s an old episode of a BBC Radio 4 podcast, “Punt PI”, covering the Chevis case, which I am listening to as I write this. (It is about 30 minutes long.)
This is a rather short article, but it includes photos of Mr. and Mrs. Chevis, and of the “J. Hartigan” telegram.
Obit watch: June 22, 2021.
June 22nd, 2021Joanne Linville, actress.
84 credits in IMDB. She did a few 70s cop shows (“The Streets of San Francisco”, “The Blue Knight”, “Barnaby Jones”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, “Columbo” and “Mrs. Columbo”, etc.). She also did a “Twilight Zone” (“The Passerby”), “The Invaders”, and an episode of a minor 1960s SF series.
Sang Ho Baek. He played baseball for George Mason University as a freshman this past season. After the season, he decided to have Tommy John surgery. He had the surgery on June 8th, and passed away on June 12th from complications.
He was 20 years old.
Obit watch: June 21, 2021.
June 21st, 2021George Stranahan, colorful figure.
His family owned the Champion Spark Plug company, so he had family money. He got a PhD in physics, and spent a lot of time doing physics in the late 1950s.
So he did:
The Aspen Center for Physics was born. It proved pivotal in the development of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, for a long time the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, and the formulation of string theory, regarded by many physicists as the most promising candidate for a “theory of everything” that would explain all the universe’s physical phenomena.
Sixty-six Nobel laureates have visited. “I’m convinced all the best physics gets done there,” Tony Leggett, one of those Nobelists, wrote on the center’s website. Another, Brian Schmidt, called the center “the place I have gone to expand my horizons for the entirety of my career.”
He cut back on his involvement in physics in 1972.
He went on to found Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey (which I have heard good things about, but never been able to find) and Flying Dog beer.
He also did some ranching:
In 1990, Mr. Stranahan’s Limousin bull Turbo was declared grand champion at the 1990 National Western Stock Show, a highly regarded trade show. The price for a shot of Turbo’s semen rose to $15,000.
He quit the business not long after. Even with Turbo, Mr. Stranahan estimated that he lost $1 million during 18 years of ranching.
Going back for a minute, if the Woody Creek Tavern rings a bell with you, yes, that was Hunter S. Thompson’s hangout. Mr. Stranahan and Hunter were close friends.
Mr. Thompson either leased or bought the land he lived on from Mr. Stranahan. The details of the arrangement, intended to be easy on Mr. Thompson, appear to have been lost in a haze of friendship and misbehavior. The first time the two men met, Mr. Stranahan told Vanity Fair in 2003, they took mescaline that hit him “like a sledgehammer.”
“We talked a lot, drank a lot and dynamited a lot,” Mr. Stranahan said about their friendship in a 2008 interview with The Denver Post. “If you’re a rancher, you have access to dynamite.”
For the historical record: NYT obit for Frank Bonner.