This is a good story, with an ending I didn’t expect.
(Hattip: Popehat.)
Noted.
June 18th, 2019Tweet of the day.
June 17th, 2019Because this sits at the extremely rare intersection of gun geekery and SF geekery:
GUN OF THE DAY – Edgar Rice Burrough's Pistol. Our GOTD is a Japanese Type 94 semi-automatic pistol that was manufactured in August of 1944. During WWII, Burroughs volunteered as a war correspondent and provided regular commentary from the war in the Pacific. pic.twitter.com/xz1U98FlTB
— NRA Museums (@NRA_museums) June 17, 2019
Obit watch: June 17, 2019.
June 17th, 2019Death never takes a holiday.
Gloria Vanderbilt. I wouldn’t ordinarily post so soon after someone dies, but it’s clear the paper of record has had this one in the can for a while.
Back on the train…
June 17th, 2019I’ve returned from my travel, for the record. I may talk a little about where I was at some point in the near future, but I probably won’t be doing a full fledged after action report.
One thing I will say: I can’t recommend the Sixth Floor Museum. It is expensive (a minimum of $30 for one person if you want to park your car), a Mongolian fire drill to get in to (you have to wait in line to buy tickets, or you can order them online. But either way, you then have to wait in line until your designated admission time comes around, then you have to wait in another line to actually get in the elevators up to the sixth floor.) and there’s just really not a whole lot to it that you don’t already know or haven’t heard. Most of the stuff there (Oswald’s rifle, Zapruder’s camera) isn’t even the original items (which are stored in the National Archives) but “reproductions” or similar items made around the same time.
It might be a good place to take your kids (but if you drive, you’re going to be out a minimum of $76 for a family of four) but I was generally disappointed.
Obit watch: June 15, 2019.
June 15th, 2019Franco Zeffirelli.
Did everybody born after…1964? see “Romeo and Juliet” in high school? Or was that a limited local phenomenon?
Obit watch: June 14, 2019.
June 14th, 2019Pat Bowlen, Denver Broncos owner. Not much to say about this, other than it will be interesting to watch the ownership situation play out. NYT. ESPN.
Anthony Price, British author of espionage novels. I had not heard of him before last week, but John le Carré praises his work highly in The Pigeon Tunnel.
Obit watch: June 13, 2019.
June 13th, 2019Sylvia Miles, noted actress. She was nominated for Academy Awards for “Midnight Cowboy” and “Farewell, My Lovely”.
Gabriele Grunewald, competitive runner. She was first diagnosed with cancer in 2009, and continued her running career despite multiple recurrences.
She was 32.
NYT obit for Bill Wittliff.
Mary Max, wife of artist Peter Max.
Mr. Max, while still alive, apparently isn’t painting much these days. (I get the impression from the obit that he may have issues.) This led to an ugly legal dispute between Ms. Max (who was substantially younger than her husband) and Mr. Max’s son, who was trying to assert more control over his work.
The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a surprisingly good page of additional resources.
Travel day.
June 12th, 2019This time, the trip is relatively short. (I’m actually driving.) I expect to be at my destination late morning or early afternoon, and may possibly have some time after I get there, unpack, and unwind.
Blogging will be catch as catch can through Sunday.
The vault, the vault, the vault is on fire…
June 11th, 2019I haven’t had a chance to go through all of this yet, but it looks link worthy:
“The Day the Music Burned“, about the 2008 Universal Studios fire.
…
This is the kind of telling detail I look for:
(Hattip: Hacker News on the Twitters.)
Obit watch: June 11, 2019.
June 11th, 2019Bill Wittliff, Texas writer. Among his credits: the screenplay for “Lonesome Dove”.
Bushwick Bill, Houston area rapper with the Geto Boys. NYT. This is an odd one: there were reports on Sunday that his family was denying Bushwick Bill had passed, which may have been correct at the time, but I guess his status changed at some point during the day…
Bushwick Bill had an early brush with death in 1991. High on PCP and grain alcohol, he said, he got into an altercation with his girlfriend and was shot in the right eye, a trauma he described in harrowing detail on “Ever so Clear,” from his 1992 solo debut album “Little Big Man.”
He said in interviews that he had been pronounced dead, toe-tagged and taken to the morgue. “I was actually on the cold slab,” he said in 2014. (He told differing stories about the shooting; in some accounts his mother had shot him.)
The incident was immortalized on the album cover of “We Can’t Be Stopped,” which features a photo of Bushwick Bill taken in the hospital. Flanked by Willie D and Scarface, he is shown on a stretcher, his eye blood-red, the day before he had surgery to remove it. He later said that he had been so medicated, he didn’t know the photo was being taken, and that he didn’t see the album cover until after its release.
You’ve probably seen that cover. If not, it’s in the HouChron Warning! slide show Warning!.
Noted:
Obit watch: June 10, 2019.
June 10th, 2019Nicky Barnes, the other (after Frank Lucas) legendary NYC heroin dealer of the late 1960s and 1970s.
I would use the “bad week for dope dealers” joke, but Mr. Barnes actually died in 2012: his death was not reported until late last week.
Mr. Barnes estimated that he had earned at least $5 million selling heroin in the several years before his 1977 conviction — income he had augmented by investing in travel agencies, gas stations, a chain of automated carwashes and housing projects in Cleveland and Pontiac, Mich. He also marketed something called a flake-burger, made from remnants of butchered beef.
By the time he audaciously agreed to be photographed for the cover of The Times Magazine and an article inside, he had a record of 13 arrests as an adult and no convictions.
Unfortunately, being profiled in the Times Magazine and called “Mister Untouchable” caused a certain amount of tsuris on the part of Jimmy Carter, who ordered the Justice Department to go all out after Mr. Barnes. In 1977, he was convicted and sentenced to life without parole.
While he was imprisoned, though, his wife and former business parters took over his herion empire and began running it into the ground. Mr. Barnes ended up agreeing to testify against all of them, and was released from prison because of his cooperation in 1998.
After his release, Mr. Barnes entered the Witness Protection Program.
Because he was in witness protection, his death was not reported at the time. Apparently, it only came to light now because various people got to wondering what had happened to Mr. Barnes after Mr. Lucas died: Mr. Barnes’s daughters and anonymous sources confirmed his death.
David Bergland, 1984 Libertarian Party presidential candidate.
Firings watch.
June 8th, 2019The Houston Texans have fired general manager Brian Gaine.
Lawrence tipped me off to this and forwarded a link to Battle Red Blog, which uses the word “bonkers” to describe this. It does seem odd to me: the season hasn’t started, after all. But it makes more sense to fire him after the draft – especially if the draft was a bust – than to fire him before and leave a new GM scrambling.
But was the draft that bad for the Texans? Honestly, I don’t know. I didn’t follow it closely.
Obit watch: June 7, 2019.
June 7th, 2019Malcolm John (Mac) Rebennack Jr.
You know him better as Dr. John.
Mr. Rebennack belonged to the pantheon of New Orleans keyboard wizards that includes Professor Longhair, James Booker, Huey (Piano) Smith and Fats Domino. What distinguished him from his peers was the showmanship of his public persona.
Onstage as Dr. John, he adorned himself with snakeskin, beads and colorful feathers, and his shows blended Mardi Gras bonhomie with voodoo mystery.
He recorded more than 30 albums, including jazz projects (“Bluesiana Triangle,” 1990, with the drummer Art Blakey and the saxophonist David Newman), solo piano records (“Dr. John Plays Mac Rebennack,” 1981) and his version of Afropop (“Locked Down,” 2012). His 1989 album of standards, “In a Sentimental Mood,” earned him the first of six Grammy Awards, for his duet with Rickie Lee Jones on “Makin’ Whoopee!”
…
Not a historical note.
June 6th, 2019I really don’t have anything to say about the 75th anniversary of D-Day that I haven’t already said.
Borepatch has a couple of good posts up. Also worth noting: “D-Day + 75: Arms of the Airborne“. (Edited to add: Also, Lawrence.)
(When I win the $520 million in the MegaMillions drawing this coming Friday, I think the second full-auto gun I’m going to buy (after the Thompson) will be a vintage BAR. Or a Colt Monitor.)
Historical note.
June 4th, 2019I’ve written about this before, but I couldn’t let today pass without noting:
It is the 45th anniversary of Ten Cent Beer Night.
Semi-oddly (I guess because it isn’t a big anniversary) there’s nothing about it on Cleveland.com today. Not seeing anything on MLB.com either, and DuckDuckGo doesn’t turn up a whole lot.
I did find this amusing (but old) article from ESPN.
Let us pause to remember. Cheap nasty beer is optional.