Good news: Carlos Uresti has been sentenced to five years in federal prison for bribery.
Bad news: this sentence will run concurrently with his existing 12 year sentence from last year, so he won’t actually be doing any additional time.
Flaming hyenas update.
February 13th, 2019Obit watch: February 13, 2019.
February 13th, 2019Rick Schmidt, former owner of Kruez Market in Lockhart.
Kreuz Market first opened in 1900. Rick’s father, Edgar “Smitty” Schmidt, purchased it in 1948, and Rick and his brother Don Schmidt bought the legendary Lockhart barbecue restaurant from their father in 1984. Don retired from the family business in 1997, and in 1999, Austin-native Rick relocated Kreuz Market from its previous location on Main Street to Colorado Street, near Town Branch creek, following a public dispute with his sister, Nina Sells, who inherited the old brick building on Main Street.
Sells converted the original Kreuz Market location into Smitty’s Market, while Schmidt opened his massive, red-brick building about a mile up the road. The family feud made headlines in Austin and landed the family on an episode of the CBS newsmagazine “48 Hours.″
Brief notes on film: February 2019.
February 11th, 2019Over the weekend, Lawrence and I went to see “They Shall Not Grow Old“.
Quick hot take: go see this movie. Take your teenage children.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the movie: Peter Jackson went through about 100 hours of vintage WWI footage at the Imperial War Museum and selected portions which he enhanced (removing scratches and other artifacts of old age, as well as adjusting exposures), adjusted the film speed to contemporary standards, colorized it, and edited it into a narrative of the war.
Almost all of the voices you hear in the film are actual veterans of WWI (taken from 1950s-1960s oral histories recorded by the BBC). There are some places where Jackson actually hired professional lip readers to determine what the people in the film were saying, and then had professional actors dub the lines.
It doesn’t concentrate on one major battle, or the larger scale strategy of the war: it’s more like “this is what the typical experience of a soldier on the Western Front was like”, from the pre-war mobilization through training to trench combat and finally the end of the war.
IMDB lists the movie as 99 minutes long. In the showing we saw, there was also a 30-minute post credit documentary narrated by Jackson explaining some of the technical aspects. (It isn’t clear to me if that’s the case for all showings.)
I could not be more enthusiastic about recommending this movie: if I had the money, I would rent out movie theaters for showings of this, and give out free tickets in schools. (Yes, it is kind of a hard “R”, mostly for realistic depictions of the effects of war. There’s also some brief shots of male butts in a non-sexual context.)
Of course, I do have a couple of minor notes…
- We saw the 2D version. It looks like there’s also a 3D version, but that wasn’t playing in our location.
- Jackson’s grandfather was a WWI vet, and Jackson has been interested in the war for most of his life. Apparently, he has a rather large collection of WWI artifacts…including artillery. As he puts it at one point, “I sort of accumulated some artillery pieces, the way one does.”
- He talks at one point in the documentary about sound design for the artillery: the actual firing and explosions were based on recordings of contemporary 105mm howitzers with the cooperation of the New Zealand military. It’s interesting to me, though, to compare this with “All Quiet on the Western Front”: one of the things that stood out to me in the latter movie was that the bursting shells all sounded different depending on what type of shell they were. It’s not that you could tell a French 75 from a German gun by sight: more, “that shell sounded different than the last one. Oh, there’s another one. Oh, there’s that first one again.” That seems to me to be somehow more realistic. But I don’t know how Jackson could have gotten around that: explosive shells for vintage WWI guns are probably hard to come by, even if you do have all that “Lord of the Rings” money.
- Jackson talks about there being about 100 hours of Imperial War Museum footage that he cut down to about 100 minutes, and how many aspects of the war he had to leave out. I’m wondering: have Jackson and his team made any efforts to process the rest of the footage and make it available to other filmmakers, or to the IWM? I don’t expect him to go back and do a second WWI documentary (unless this is one is massively successful, and I hope it is) but I’d love it if Jackson’s production company worked with another director on a similar film about the air war, or the Navy, or any of the other aspects of the war he had to leave out.
- For that matter, is anyone in the US doing something like this with US WWI footage?
- I haven’t been able to find the soundtrack for this film on Apple Music or Amazon. And I want it. If you search, though, you can find the closing credits on YouTube (at least until there’s a copyright strike.)
Repeating myself: go. See. It’s not “fun”, but it’s an extraordinary piece of work.
Obit watch: February 11, 2019.
February 11th, 2019Great and good friend of the blog Borepatch, who has probably forgotten more about popular music than I know, sent over a couple of obits that I missed.
Bonnie Guitar passed away in January at the age of 95.
…
And Sanger D. “Whitey” Shafer also died in January. He was perhaps most famous for writing “All My Ex’s Live in Texas” and “Does Fort Worth Ever Cross Your Mind”.
Tribute from “Austin City Limits”. Obit from Saving Country Music. Obit from WFAA.
Obit watch: February 8, 2019.
February 8th, 2019Frank Robinson, who became the first black manager in MLB when he took over the Cleveland Indians:
Robinson made his debut as the majors’ first black manager with the Cleveland Indians on April 8, 1975, 28 years after Jackie Robinson (no relation) first took the field with the Dodgers. Rachel Robinson, Jackie Robinson’s widow, threw out the ceremonial first ball.
Frank Robinson, who was still an active player, punctuated the historic occasion by hitting a home run in his first at-bat, as the designated hitter, leading the Indians to a 5-3 victory over the Yankees.
Pork chop sandwiches!
February 8th, 2019Remember, folks: when guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have frozen pork chops.
(Hattip for the submission: Mike the Musicologist. We also would have accepted his suggested title: “Roald Dahl, call your office, please.” even though that’s not quite technically accurate. Hattip for the title.)
Also by way of Mike:
Boston cop on leave after service weapon allegedly stolen by strippers
Strippers. Always the strippers.
Note that the arrest report values the Glock at $5,000. Should we be calling the unnamed police officer “The Man With the Golden Gun” from now on?
Headline of the day.
February 6th, 2019Autopsy: Man died of meth overdose before being eaten by bear at national park
Drugs are bad, kids. Mm’kay?
Obit watch: February 5, 2019.
February 5th, 2019This one goes out to Borepatch and Weer’d Beard: Jacqueline Steiner, who co-wrote “M.T.A.”. That song (also known as “Charlie on the M.T.A.”) later became a huge hit for the Kingston Trio:
Thing I did not know: it was originally written for a guy running for mayor in 1949. He only got one percent of the vote, and was later blacklisted as a Communist.
Also among the dead: Albert J. “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap, notorious corporate raider.
Obit watch: February 4, 2019.
February 4th, 2019By way of Lawrence, THR obit for Julie Adams.
Edited to add: NYT obit.
She was most famous for “Creature from the Black Lagoon” (which I still haven’t seen). But her list of credits is extensive, including “McQ” and “The Last Movie”.
And she did a whole bunch of TV work: Jimmy Stewart’s wife on “The Jimmy Stewart Show”, guest shots on “Perry Mason”, “Ironside”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”…
…and “Mannix”. (“Then the Drink Takes the Man”, “Little Girl Lost”). And she was the drunken wife of the dead scientist in the “Mr. R.I.N.G” episode of “Kolchak: The Night Stalker“.
(Oddly enough, she came up in passing Saturday night. The main topic of discussion was the annoying (to me, anyway) tendency of “Kolchak”‘s writers to kill off the more attractive women. The hot girl in the bathing suit in “Firefall”, the lab worker in “The Energy Eater”, the Air Force captain in “Legacy of Terror”, etc.)
As an administrative side note: I’ve been thinking about posting this for a while, but finally decided to make it explicit. If your IMDB credits include an entry for “Mannix”, you will automatically get an obit watch entry here. Please feel free to contact me with any omissions.
Obit watch: February 2, 2019.
February 2nd, 2019This one goes out to Mike the Musicologist: Sanford Sylvan, noted baritone. He did a lot of work with John Adams: among other roles, he was the first Chou En-lai in “Nixon in China” and Leon Klinghoffer in “The Death of Klinghoffer”.
Finally, Captain Rosemary Mariner, United States Navy (ret.). She was one of the first six women to go through naval flight training, the first to fly an attack jet, and the first woman to command a naval aviation squadron. She also had a leading role in removing the restrictions on women flying combat missions.
When she retired from the Navy in 1997, Captain Mariner “had become one of the nation’s leading advocates for equal opportunity in the military,” Deborah G. Douglas wrote in “American Women and Flight since 1940” (2005).
Captain Mariner logged 17 landings on aircraft carriers and more than 3,500 flight hours in 15 different aircraft.
Obit watch: January 31, 2019.
January 31st, 2019Lawrence sent me the “Variety” obit for character actor Dick Miller.
He was hella prolific. Among his credits: the pawn shop guy in “The Terminator”, the sleezy land developer in the original “Piranha”, “Gremlins”, “Chopping Mall”, “Twilight Zone: The Movie”…
…and a lot of TV guest shots, including “Police Squad!” (“In Color!”), “Dragnet 1967”, and, yes, “Mannix” (“Falling Star”, “The Cost of a Vacation”).
He also appeared in “W*A*L*T*E*R”, which is one of those curious side notes in television history.
Speaking of curious side notes, Meshulam Riklis passed away a few days ago at the age of 95. He was a prominent financier, but became somewhat famous in the 1980s for what happened after he married his second wife…
…Pia Zadora.
His devotion to Ms. Zadora included inviting Golden Globe Awards voters to private screenings of “Butterfly” (1982), a film he produced for her, and promoted her candidacy in a media campaign — all for someone considered a lightweight competing with the likes of Kathleen Turner, Howard E. Rollins Jr. and Elizabeth McGovern for best new star of the year in a motion picture.
When Ms. Zadora won the award — a shock in Hollywood and beyond — it was assumed that Mr. Riklis had somehow engineered her victory, although he and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which runs the Golden Globes, denied the accusation.
Obit watch: January 24, 2019.
January 24th, 2019Mary Boyd Higgins, trustee of the Wilhelm Reich estate and legacy.
When she was appointed trustee, in March 1959, Ms. Higgins had her work cut out for her.
She quickly discovered that most of Dr. Reich’s personal papers, which he had wanted sealed for 50 years before anyone could see them, had been stolen; she had to start litigation to retrieve them. He wanted his Maine property turned into a museum; she would need to become an expert in museum design. She also studied copyright law in seeking to have his books republished.
I wasn’t originally going to post this, but then it occurred to me that this obit gives me a flimsy excuse to embed this video:
Obit watch: January 23, 2019.
January 23rd, 2019Russell Baker, Pulitzer Prize-winning humor columnist for the NYT.
Kaye Ballard, noted actress.
I apologize for giving these short shrift, but Ms. Ballard was before my time.
I also want to call out this one, not out of any malice or ill will, but because when you read the details in the obit, it’s kind of disturbing: Brandon Truaxe, “the founder of the disruptive Canadian cosmetics company Deciem”.
If you need help, please don’t be ashamed to ask for it. Anyone who would shame you for needing help…well, their opinions don’t matter.
Firings watch.
January 22nd, 2019Bob Sutton out as defensive coordinator for Kansas City.
To steal a riff from Tuesday Morning Quarterback, “Sure, you got us to the AFC championship game and into overtime against New England. But what have you done for us lately?”
To steal a riff from TMQ Watch: “Gave up two touchdowns at the end of regulation and failed to stop New England in overtime.”
Obit watch: January 22, 2019.
January 22nd, 2019Tony Mendez, legendary CIA officer.
He was most famous for his role in smuggling six US diplomats out of Iran during the hostage crisis.
Before their rescue, the six had managed to escape from a building near the American Embassy. They were sheltered and protected for two months by Canadian diplomats, including the country’s ambassador to Iran, Kenneth D. Taylor, who helped engineer their rescue.
Canadian and American officials were trying to figure out how to get them out when Mr. Mendez devised the elaborate plan that would carry the day. He had them pose as a Canadian film crew scouting for a place in Tehran to shoot a movie. He supplied them with fake Canadian identities and instructed them in the proper mind-set to pass through armed Iranian security; and he led the way, pretending to be the crew’s production manager.
As I’m sure everyone knows, this became the basis for the movie “Argo“. He also wrote several books (the only one I’ve read is “Argo”) and has another one forthcoming.
Some of the six State Department employees whom Mr. Mendez had escorted to safety, euphemistically called “houseguests,” said in emails to his wife that he was the bravest man they had ever known.
“Not a surprise that Tony slipped away quietly,” two of them, Mark Lijek and Cora Amburn-Lijek, wrote. “What else would you expect from the master of disguise?”