(Wiki wandering led me to the article on the Big Boys:
Spinal Tap really was a documentary, and we just didn’t know it at the time.)
(Edited to add: Hurrah! The U2/Popmart/giant lemon story is immortalized online! What did I tell you? (Scroll down to “Rock and Roll Creation”.) By the way, I own and enthusiastically recommend This is Spinal Tap: Official Companion
A prominent dinosaur “hobbyist” is claiming “’serious errors and irregularities’ in dinosaur research involving some of the world’s top paleontologists”.
Why is this interesting? Well, scientific disputes of this sort are a topic for coverage on this blog. After all, we do have “Retraction Watch” on our blog roll.
But there’s another good reason: the “hobbyist” in question is Microsoft millionaire, Modernist Cuisine author, and notorious patent troll Dr. Nathan P. Myhrvold.
I’m not a big fan of Dr. Myhrvold, but that kind of answer…well…it stinks.
And now that I have it stuck in your head:
Colorado’s package of gun laws, enacted this year after mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., has been hailed as a victory by advocates of gun control. But if Sheriff Cooke and a majority of the other county sheriffs in Colorado offer any indication, the new laws — which mandate background checks for private gun transfers and outlaw magazines over 15 rounds — may prove nearly irrelevant across much of the state’s rural regions.
Some sheriffs, like Sheriff Cooke, are refusing to enforce the laws, saying that they are too vague and violate Second Amendment rights. Many more say that enforcement will be “a very low priority,” as several sheriffs put it. All but seven of the 62 elected sheriffs in Colorado signed on in May to a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the statutes.
Last week, I asked the musical question:
Does LACSD make it a practice to hire and promote deputies who are dumber than a bag of hair?
Apparently, “dumber than a bag of hair” does not even begin to cover it.
Yes. Not only did they try to intimidate an FBI agent, they recorded themselves doing it. And the prosecution has those recordings now.
(I did give some thought, for just a moment, to the idea that this might have been an ass-covering measure. But on second thought, that doesn’t make much sense; you want to cover your butt on something like this, you record the supervisor giving the illegal order. You don’t record yourself committing the crime.)
Man, yesterday was a rough day for actors and actresses. I decided to hold off until this morning on posting obits, figuring that would give the various papers of record some time to get their thoughts and acts together.
Peter O’Toole: NYT. LAT. Kenneth Turan appreciation. AV Club. Lawrence.
Noted actress Joan Fontaine also passed away yesterday. NYT. LAT. (ETA: AV Club.)
And finally, Tom Laughlin, of “Billy Jack” fame. LAT. (ETA: Also AV Club.)
To be fair, Ms. Kael wrote that line long before Steven Seagal and “On Deadly Ground”.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, I loved the “worst” lists published in various places. Jeff Millar‘s worst movies list in the HouChron. Siskel and Ebert’s “worst movies of the year” episode. High points, things I looked forward to every year.
(On a side note, it fills me with delight down to the bottom of my coal-black little heart that Siskel & Ebert.org has the complete 1992 worst up on their site. This is the year that Roger lost the coin flip and picked Shining Through as his worst movie of the year, complete with the interminable strudel scene. Really. I kid you not. Melanie Griffith just goes on. And on. AND ON. Here, watch for yourself:
Edited to add: Actually, go over to their web site and watch there, because whoever runs the site has decided to make embedded videos auto-play.
The Shining Through section begins at about 15:30, but you should really watch the whole thing.)
But things have changed. Siskel and Ebert and Millar are all dead. For a while, the AV Club was an acceptable substitute.
But this year’s AV Club is a little off. Take their worst movies of the year, for example. I admit I have not seen Planes (I don’t care for Pixar films) or A Good Day to Die Hard. But were they really among the worst movies of the year, in a year that included The Purge and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone? Worse than Last Vegas or the Carrie remake? At least Battle of the Year made their list. (Didn’t see it, but saw the trailer for it.)
Smurfs 2 came out this year. It isn’t on the AV Club list. Enough said.
Likewise, a “worst TV” list that doesn’t include Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, or Raising Hope is pretty much worthless, and tells me that the AV Club writers are either on drugs or taking payoffs from Fox.
But there is one thing I can count on, although it technically isn’t a “worst” list (except maybe of family disasters): the Carolyn Hax Hootenanny of Holiday Horrors. The 2013 edition is here.
All of the sudden she stuck out her hand and bellowed “SPOOOOOON!” at which point someone meekly handed her a spoon and she proceeded to stir the gravy.
(And dryer lint really is great for starting fires. Especially with a flint and steel. At least, that’s what I learned in the Boy Scouts.)
Edited to add more: someone on the AV Club posted a link to “The Dissolve”, aka “Where Many of the AV Club’s Most Interesting Writers Went to Languish In Obscurity”. And they have their own worst list, which I find…kind of credible.
Yeah, okay, the Die Hard movie is on it, and Smurfs 2 isn’t, but they do get points for reminding me of some other candidates for year’s worst movie. For example, The Internship, aka “A Two Hour Long Commercial for Google”, and Movie 43. Might be worth keeping an eye on this site in 2014.
…and the International Olympic Committee:
Vivian and Ronald Joseph finished in fourth place in the pairs skating competition at the 1964 Winter Olympics.
However, after the Olympics, it came out that the second place West German team of Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler had signed a contract with Holiday on Ice before the Olympics. This violated IOC rules, and, in 1966, the West Germans gave their medals back. The Canadian team of Debbi Wilkes and Guy Revell were moved up to second, and the Josephs were moved up to third. There was even a small subdued ceremony in Chicago for the Josephs, and the Wilkes/Revall team were awarded their medals at the 1967 national championships in Canada.
But the IOC never asked the Josephs or the Wilkes/Revell team for their medals back. (Guy Revell died in 1981 and was buried with his medal, so that might have been interesting.) Nor did the IOC tell anyone in the Canadian or US figure skating associations.
As of now, 26 years later, the IOC is officially stating that the Wilkes/Revell Canadian team shares the silver medal with the West Germans, and the Josephs are the bronze medal winners. “Despite the information on its website over the years, the I.O.C. said in an email that since 1987 this was always intended to be the official result.”
Uh-huh. Pull the other one, guys; it has silver bells on it, just in time for the Christmas season.
From the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s website, dated September 15, 2012:
…
I have not yet been able to find a reliable figure for child abuse deaths in 2012: however, the state of Pennsylvania alone reported 33 deaths in 2012, and this site claims 212 in the state of Texas.
FARK headline, linking to an Orlando Sentinel story:
(On a totally unrelated note, why hasn’t the NSA or the National Cryptologic Museum put their gift shop online?)
(I don’t guess I have any readers in the DC area, do I?)
These “unique events under extreme circumstances” include shooting an unarmed man, beating and handcuffing three other men who drove the shooting victim to a police station, driving their car to a levee, and setting the car on fire with the shooting victim inside.
These “unique events under extreme circumstances” also include shooting even more unarmed people and covering those shootings up as well.
This is especially tasty. Robert “Ratso” Rizzo, the former city manager of Bell…
According to the LAT, Ratso claimed $770,000 in “phantom losses” on his tax returns between 2005 and 2010.
He faces a maximum of eight years in prison and a $500,000 fine on the federal charges.
Keep in mind that quotes about federal maximum sentences can be misleading. Also, the judge is going to allow Ratso to serve his time on the tax charges concurrently with the ten to twelve years he’ll already be serving on the other corruption charges he’s pled to, so it isn’t like he’s going to be in prison any longer. Still, this is good news.
And Merry Christmas to you, Angela Spaccia:
I missed the original entry on the Publisher’s Weekly blog; otherwise I would be bellowing “Why was I not informed?” at the top of my lungs.
What am I on about? The Antarctic Express
And I’ve had this in the back of my mind as blog fodder for a bit now: “Experiments to Do With Your Baby“, based on the book Experimenting with Babies: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Perform on Your Kid
The NYT has awarded four stars to Sushi Nakazawa.
Why do I care? Why should you care?
I haven’t watched a single episode of “Breaking Bad” (it is on my list, though), but I have to admit: I like this hat. It may be a little pricy at $149, but you know, man walks down the street in that hat, people know he’s not afraid of anything.
As noted last week, this is TMQ’s bye week.
Meanwhile, we have obtained a copy of The King of Sports: Football’s Impact on America
It probably will not happen today, but we do plan to have a review of King of Sports up between now and the next TMQ.