Christmas car update.

December 16th, 2025

The car passed the state emissions inspection with no problem. Other than a little bit of confusion because I’d never been to this place before, it was mostly a smooth process.

With an inspection in hand, I can renew my car registration.

The State of Texas used to have a simple and straightforward website for registration renewal.

Not any more. Oh, no. Everything has shifted to something called “Texas By Texas”. So, first of all, you have to set up an account if you’ve never used “Texas by Texas” before. (I had not: I think TxT is new this year.)

Not only do they want your email address, they also want all kinds of other information. Including your physical address, your mailing address, your driver’s license number, the audit code off your driver’s license, etc. etc. et bloody cetra.

Then, once you have your TxT account set up…as far as I can tell, that’s just for your driver’s license. You have to go through a separate step to link your car registration to TxT.

At least, once I finished that, I didn’t have to fill in a lot of information to actually get the renewal done. It didn’t even ask me for proof of insurance or inspection: I think all this stuff is linked by computer statewide these days.

Of course, there were the donations. Literally half a page of donations you could make while renewing your registration:

  • “Support Texas Veterans”
  • Texas state parks (as I recall, they want at least $5 for that)
  • Organ donation
  • Special Olympics
  • “Ending Homelessness Fund”
  • “Evidence Testing Grant Program”
  • “Stop Human Trafficking”

And the registration itself is $78.25 before any donations. Including $10 for bridges, $1.50 for “child safety”, $7.50 for the “inspection replacement fee” (just because the state did away with safety inspections doesn’t mean that they don’t want their money), $2.75 for the “emissions inspection fee” (that’s over and above the $11.50 state fee for the emissions inspection, plus $7 for something, I’m not exactly sure what, plus 75 cents for using a credit card), and $4.75 for “processing and handling”. Tell you what, I’ll give you $2 for processing, and I’ll do the “handling” myself.

Nickels. Dimes. They add up, you know?

Posted in Cars, Christmas | No Comments »

Obit watch: December 16, 2025.

December 16th, 2025

Joe Ely, one of the great Texas musicians. Variety. NYT (wow!).

I’m generally a little cynical about Texas musicians, but even I have to acknowledge that he was one of the greats. And I could just post YouTube videos all day.

This isn’t an Ely original, but I prefer this to Robert Earl Keen. That is a controversial opinion, I know.

Lawrence describes this as the greatest song ever written about a fighting rooster. Can’t argue with that.

Interestingly, he was an early adopter: he had a BBS system, back in the day when BBS systems were a thing.

After the show, Mr. Strummer and Mr. Jones took the Ely band on a tour of London’s late-night demimonde, an eye-opening experience even for someone as well-traveled as Mr. Ely. He returned the favor when the Clash came through Texas on their first U.S. tour, in 1979. He took them around Lubbock, to sites including Buddy Holly’s grave, where they all got stoned on laughing gas and beer.

…

“I had teachers tell me I wouldn’t make it to 21 when I was going to high school, so I beat the odds, you know?” he told Lone Star Music magazine in 2011. “I’ve traveled millions of miles, zigging and zagging in every kind of vehicle known to man, trying to get from one place to another to create some more music.”

He was 78.

Anthony Geary, actor. Other credits include “UHF”, “Project U.F.O.”, “Shaft” (the TV series)…

…and “Mannix”. (“A Way to Dusty Death”, season 7, episode 2. He was “Eddie Decken”.)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Music, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

Christmas is coming.

December 15th, 2025

I am officially on vacation as of today.

You know what that means, right?

Yes, it’s just not Christmas until I see Hans Gruber fall from the Nakatomi Tower.

For what it’s worth, the tree is up (but the lights are not plugged in yet) and the inflatable Christmas Corgi is going in the front yard today.

I still have to get the car inspected. Yes, Texas did away with safety inspections at the first of this year. But I’m in an area that requires emissions testing prior to renewing your registration. And the shop I used to use for inspections no longer has an inspection technician: they redirected me to a quickie inspection place located behind a drive-through liquor and daiquiri stand up the road a piece. And that place is only open during the week…

Posted in Cars, Christmas | No Comments »

Obit watch: December 15, 2025.

December 15th, 2025

Dave Ward, legendary Houston newscaster.

My family was a KPRC/Channel 2 family when I was growing up in Houston, but everyone was familiar with Dave Ward. Of course, this was back when there were only three channels…

For those in Houston, Ward was the chronicler of some of America’s most important history, including the space walk, the Vietnam and Middle East wars, and the “Luv Ya Blue” era of the Houston Oilers. He also interviewed five U.S. presidents.

Rob Reiner. I don’t know what to say about this: it seems to be a still breaking story, and the circumstances seem awful.

THR. IMDB. Roger Ebert’s review of “North”.

Posted in 1970s, Media, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

The spirit of Christmas.

December 12th, 2025

A swell Christmas meditation from LawDog.

Posted in Christmas | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: December 12, 2025.

December 12th, 2025

Lawrence emailed me that the great SF writer John Varley had passed away, but he couldn’t find an obit anywhere until Michael Swanwick posted one.

I haven’t read many of his novels, but I’ve read a lot of his short fiction. “The Persistence of Vision“. “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” (which is a fun story that was adapted into a horrible PBS movie, which you can (but shouldn’t) watch in the MST3K version on the ‘Tube). “Air Raid”, which was adapted into Millennium, the novel, which was turned into “Millennium”, the movie (which I hear is awful, but have not seen).

“Press Enter■”. I remember standing in a Bookstop in Austin reading that story when it was published in Asimov’s…and coming very close to vomiting all over the magazine when I got to a key point in the story. (If you’ve read it, you can probably guess where.)

But I will mourn the man who, for a time, seemed to be the resurrection of science fiction, the New Heinlein, the kwisatz haderach of genre. Back then, he set the standard. His were the stories we all wanted to equal and perhaps surpass. He was the reason we read science fiction in the first place.

Posted in Books, Obits | 2 Comments »

Leadership Secrets of Non-Fictional Characters (part 15 in a series)

December 12th, 2025

I’ve said before, I have a high barrier for linking to ESPN feature articles. (I don’t even really like linking to ESPN news articles, except maybe as supplemental material. Sometimes I have to, but I generally prefer local news sources.)

…that’s not how the Picketts walk through the world. What happened that night was what needed to be done, and so it was done. They believe the right thing can sometimes be scary, but that’s because it’s the right thing, there shall be no handwringing, regardless of the outcome.

Posted in Heroism, Leadership, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: December 11, 2025.

December 11th, 2025

Three obits today for people who aren’t as notable as usual, but who I find interesting for one reason or another.

Stephen Downing. He was a police officer with the LAPD. One day he picked up the phone at the precinct.

Jack Webb was on the other end of the line. He was looking for a technical advisor for “Adam-12”.

Mr. Downing — who had studied creative writing in the 1960s at what is now California State University, Los Angeles — got the job and quickly surmised that he could offer more than guidance on police policy and tactics. He wanted to write a script.
“Webb said, ‘It’s harder than it looks,’” Michael Downing said in an interview, recalling what his father told him. “My father went home, wrote the script over the weekend and sold it.”

He continued to write scripts (under pen names) while still working for the LAPD.

As Michael Donovan, he wrote 21 episodes of “Adam-12,” 11 of a “Dragnet” reboot in the late 1960s that starred Mr. Webb and Harry Morgan, and 13 of “Emergency!,” a show Mr. Webb produced in the 1970s about Los Angeles paramedics. Under the name Sean Baine, Mr. Downing’s writing credits included “Police Woman,” “The Streets of San Francisco,” “Kojak” and “Police Story.”

…

After retiring from the L.A.P.D. in 1980, he produced and wrote, under his own name, action series like “T.J. Hooker,” a police procedural set in Los Angeles that ran on ABC and then CBS from 1982 to 1986 and starred William Shatner, and for ABC’s “MacGyver,” with Richard Dean Anderson as an agent whose only weapon is a Swiss Army knife.

IMDB.

Donald McIntyre, opera singer.

The booming voice of Mr. McIntyre, a giant of a man who once seemed destined for a rugby career in his native New Zealand, rang out for more than five decades in the world’s major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, where he had 16 major roles from 1975 to 1996.
But “the highlight of my career,” as he put it in his 2019 autobiography, was his performance at Bayreuth as Wotan, the king of the gods, in “Das Rheingold,” “Die Walküre” and “Siegfried” in a groundbreaking 1976 production of Wagner’s four-opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” directed by Patrice Chéreau.

I don’t get to use my “Wagner” tag enough. But anyway:

By presenting the operas, based on Germanic mythology, as a neo-Marxist allegory of capitalist exploitation in the 19th century, Mr. Chéreau’s production — the so-called centenary “Ring,” marking the 100th anniversary of the tetralogy’s premiere at Bayreuth — shattered norms and set the stage for decades of updatings of canonical operas.
Audiences around the world were used to seeing Wagner gods and heroes holding spears and wearing pseudo-Norse winged helmets. While some postwar Bayreuth productions had emptied out the stage for radically spare visions of the classic works, putting Mr. McIntyre’s Wotan in an Edwardian frock coat and dressing the Rhinemaidens as cancan girls caused a near riot at the tradition-encrusted summer festival.
As Mr. McIntyre recalled in his memoir, an enraged older lady beat another spectator over the head with an umbrella; “howls of fury” greeted his entrance onstage in the frock coat; and the composer’s daughter-in-law, Winifred Wagner, a onetime confidant of Hitler’s, told Mr. McIntyre that if she came across Mr. Chéreau, she would “shoot him” for politicizing the “Ring.”
Over four years, however, with the production revived, revised and refined each summer, many holdouts eventually warmed to it, and at the final performances, in 1980, there was a 45-minute standing ovation. When Winifred Wagner and Mr. Chéreau finally met, she admitted that “many times I wanted to kill you,” but added, “After all, isn’t it better to be furious than bored?”

There’s something to be said for that.

George Altman, baseball player. He was one of only three people who played in the Negro Leagues, MLB, and in Japan. (Don Newcombe and Larry Doby are the other two.)

At Tennessee A&I State University (now Tennessee State University), he played basketball and baseball. After graduating in 1955 with a degree in physical education, he landed a tryout with the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro Leagues team managed by Buck O’Neil.
Altman took batting practice with the Monarchs before one of their games.
“Evidently I must have impressed them a little bit because as I was getting comfortable on the bench, sitting back to just enjoy the game, Buck came up to me and said, ‘Boy, you’re in there,’” Altman wrote. “It almost scared me to death.”

…

After three months with the Monarchs, he signed with the Cubs and was assigned to the Burlington Bees, in Iowa, in the minor leagues. He was drafted into the Army in 1956, and then rejoined the Cubs organization in 1958. He was promoted to the major leagues the next year.
“The thing I like about Altman is the fact that he knows where the strike zone is,” [Ernie] Banks told The Sporting News in 1959. “That’s one thing most young ballplayers don’t know about. They swing at anything they can reach with the bat. Altman waits for his pitch.”
In need of pitching, the Cubs traded Altman to the Cardinals in 1962. St. Louis traded him to the Mets the next year, and the Mets traded him back to the Cubs before the 1965 season. By then, he was struggling with injuries, once joking that he played for Blue Cross.
After Altman hit just .111 in 15 games in 1967, his career in the majors was over. Unwilling to quit playing, he joined the Tokyo Orions in Japan. During seven seasons with the team, he hit 193 home runs, becoming a popular player for his slugging and willingness to learn Japanese phrases.

Baseball Reference.

Posted in 1970s, Cops, Law, Music, Obits, Sports, TV, Wagner | 2 Comments »

Firings watch.

December 10th, 2025

Wow!

Sherrone Moore fired as head coach of the University of Michigan.

The team was 9-3 this season. But it wasn’t a football related firing.

“U-M head football coach Sherrone Moore has been terminated, with cause, effective immediately,” Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel said in a statement. “Following a University investigation, credible evidence was found that Coach Moore engaged in an inappropriate relationship with a staff member. This conduct constitutes a clear violation of University policy, and U-M maintains zero tolerance for such behavior.”

“inappropriate relationship”. “with cause”.

He was 17-8 in two seasons. More from ESPN, but not much more.

Edited to add:

Sherrone Moore was in custody in the Washtenaw (Michigan) County Jail on Wednesday evening, just hours after being fired as Michigan’s football coach for having an “inappropriate relationship with a staff member.”

Posted in Firings, Law, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: December 10, 2025.

December 10th, 2025

Madeleine Wickham, also known as “Sophie Kinsella”, author. (Confessions of a Shopaholic). She was 55: a brain tumor got her.

John Noble Wilford, former science reporter for the NYT and Pulitzer Prize winner. He was most famous for covering Apollo 11, but he did a lot of other science reporting as well.

In 1976, he covered an expedition to Scotland to explore the longstanding mystery of the Loch Ness monster. With sonar probes and underwater television cameras, the expedition, partly funded by The Times, scanned the murky depths of the 23-mile-long lake for a month, but turned up no trace of the creature, said in legend and in many unverified accounts of sightings to be an undulating serpent.

Posted in Books, History, Media, Obits, Science | No Comments »

Obit watch: December 8, 2025.

December 8th, 2025

Mary Kuczkir has passed away at the age of 92. She was also (and better) known as “Fern Michaels”.

In her early years, Ms. Michaels wrote with a partner, Roberta Anderson, but took legal control of the pen name in 1989 and adopted it as her public persona in interviews. Her actual name was Mary Kuczkir.

…

As Ms. Michaels often described it, it took a steely resolve to embark on a writing career in her 40s. “When my youngest went off to kindergarten,” she recounted on her website, “my husband told me to get off my ass and get a job. Those were his exact words. I didn’t know how to do anything except be a wife and mother.”
“Rather than face the outside world with no skills,” she added, “I decided to write a book. As my husband said at the time, stupid is as stupid does. Guess what, I don’t have that husband any more.” The couple never divorced, but parted ways in the early 1970s.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 5, 2025.

December 5th, 2025

Master Sergeant Charles Norman Shay (US Army – ret.) He was 101.

Mr. Shay, a member of the Penobscot Nation of Maine, was one of about 175 Native Americans among the 34,000 Allied troops who came ashore on [Omaha] beach, into the teeth of some of the bloodiest fighting of D-Day in the opening act of the liberation of France during World War II.
Mr. Shay was awarded the Silver Star for saving soldiers who had been cut down by heavy German machine-gun fire after disembarking from their landing craft into the waves. In 2007, he received France’s Legion of Honor for his actions that day.
“I saw there were many wounded men who were floundering in the water, who could not help themselves, and I knew that if nobody went to help them, they were doomed to die,” Mr. Shay recalled in a 2010 interview for the Library of Congress.
He continued: “I proceeded to get as many men as I could out of the water by turning them over on their backs and grabbing them under their shoulders. I don’t know where my strength came from, but they say once the adrenaline starts flowing in your body you can do unbelievable feats.”

…

From 2018 until his death, Mr. Shay lived in northwestern France, in the home of a caretaker, Marie-Pascale Legrand, not far from the beaches where the World War II invasion took place. Ms. Legrand, who met Mr. Shay at a commemoration ceremony in Normandy in 2016, said in an interview that he had been lonely living in Maine and was not getting adequate health care. After visiting him there, she invited him to move to Normandy.
For several years, Mr. Shay performed a sage-burning ceremony overlooking Omaha Beach in honor of the dead. He was one of a very few American veterans able to attend D-Day commemorations in Normandy in 2020 and 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Frank Gehry. THR. The Onion (by way of Lawrence). Previously on WCD.

“You go into architecture to make the world a better place,” Mr. Gehry said in 2012. “A better place to live, to work, whatever. You don’t go into it as an ego trip.”
He added: “That comes later, with the press and all that stuff. In the beginning, it’s pretty innocent.”

Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, actor. Other credits include “Thunder in Paradise”, “Renegade”, “Jake and the Fatman”, and a spin-off of a minor 1960s SF TV series.

Posted in Art, Gehry, Heroism, History, Movies, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

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