Noted.

December 14th, 2024

It turns out that, among the many people Joe Biden has either pardoned or commuted the sentences of, is…

…crazy horse lady Rita Crundwell.

You may remember Ms. Crundwell from previous coverage in this space. She used to be comptroller of Dixon, Illinois, until it was discovered that she’d embezzled $53 million from the town, and used the money to fund her quarter-horse breeding operation.

She had been sentenced to “nearly 20 years” in 2013. If she served the standard 85% of her federal sentence, she would have been imprisoned until October 20, 2029. But she was placed on house arrest in August of 2021 due to COVID concerns, and her sentence was commuted on Thursday.

Posted in Horses, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Frustration…

December 13th, 2024

I was going to post a short video that was relevant to Lawrence’s interests, but I can’t get it to display properly here. The first five or so seconds are cut off, and since it is only a 14 second long video, that just doesn’t work.

I was going to post a short note on a movie we recently watched, but there are no good videos of the bridge bombing from “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” on YouTube. At least, none that I can find, and I wanted to use that to illustrate my point. (I found one of the fuel dump scene, but that really doesn’t do a good job of showing what I wanted to talk about.)

Edited to add: Okay, I found one that gives a good illustration of what I’m talking about.

This is clips of aircraft footage from “The Bridges at Toko-Ri”. I’ve set it to start with the bridge attack at 8:41.

“Bridges” won an Academy Award for special effects in 1955. Interestingly, the other nominees were “The Rains of Ranchipur“…

…and “The Dam Busters“. We’ve seen “Dam Busters”, but not “Rains”. I may try to sell that to the Saturday Movie Group. On the one hand, it seems like one of those typical potboiler romantic melodramas, with a natural disaster thrown in. On the other hand, that cast: Lana Turner, Richard Burton, Fred MacMurray, and Michael Rennie (among others). On the gripping hand, the blu-ray is pricy.

Posted in Admin, Food, Movies | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: December 11, 2024.

December 11th, 2024

The Amazing Kreskin.

Actual direct quote from my mother when I told her this: “I wonder if he saw that coming.”

NYT (share link).

Mr. Kreskin’s feats included divining details of the personal lives of strangers and guessing at playing cards chosen randomly from a deck. And he had a classic trick at live shows: entrusting audience members to hide his paycheck in an auditorium, and then relying on his instincts to find it — or else going without payment for a night.

…

His star rose in the 1970s when he was a regular guest on the talk show circuit, appearing on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Mike Douglas Show and Late Night with David Letterman. With other famous guests, he played psychological tricks that looked like magic: asking people to put their fingers on objects that would seem to move, for example, or guessing what card had been pulled from a deck.

…

Mr. Kreskin often said that he was not psychic and did not possess any supernatural powers but was able to read certain cues, like body language, and use the power of suggestion to guide people’s actions.

Michael Cole, actor. NYT (archived). He was the last surviving member of the “Mod Squad” trio (preceded in death by Peggy Lipton and Clarence Williams III). Other credits include “Run For Your Life”, “Get Christie Love!”, and “It” (the 1990 TV mini-series).

Rocky Colavito, one of the great Cleveland Indians. ESPN. Cleveland.com. Baseball Reference.

Colavito hit 374 home runs in 14 years in the major leagues, eight of those seasons in two separate stints with Cleveland. He finished his career with a return to his birthplace, the Bronx, playing for the Yankees. A six-time All-Star, he was just the third player in the major leagues to hit four home runs in one game in consecutive at-bats, and he had one of the game’s strongest arms.

…

When rumors arose that Colavito would be traded in 1958 by Cleveland’s newly arrived general manager, Frank Lane, who had been consumed with making deals in his previous stops, fans chanted, “Don’t knock the Rock!”
Colavito hit 41 home runs in 1958 and 42 in 1959, tying with Harmon Killebrew for the American League lead, while driving in more than 100 runs each of those seasons. Lane told The Saturday Evening Post in July 1959 that Colavito would “easily be the greatest gate attraction in the American League” when Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams wound down their careers.
But Lane thwarted Colavito’s quest for significant salary raises, and, two days before the opening of the 1960 season, he outraged Cleveland’s fans by trading Colavito to the Detroit Tigers for outfielder Harvey Kuenn. Kuenn, the league’s batting champion in 1959, was three years older than Colavito and had hit only nine home runs that season.
Gabe Paul, the Cincinnati Reds’ general manager at the time and a future Cleveland general manager, was quoted as saying, “The Indians traded a slow guy with power for a slow guy with no power.”
Colavito went on to hit at least 35 home runs in three of his four seasons as a Tiger. Kuenn played only one season for Cleveland before he was traded to the San Francisco Giants.
“I loved Cleveland and the Indians,” Colavito told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 2010. “I never wanted to leave.”
And he insisted that he had never put a curse on the team. As he put it, “Frank Lane did.” Either way, Cleveland still hasn’t won a World Series since 1948.

Mark Withers, actor. Other credits include “Hill Street Blues”, “Death of a Centerfold: The Dorothy Stratten Story”, and “The Wizard”.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas…

December 10th, 2024

For another year, Daddy didn’t spend the Christmas money on brakes or other car repairs. Daddy actually got his car inspected with no trouble, and his registration sticker is on the way.

Daddy also got a Christmas tree up this year. Granted, it looks and feels a lot like a toilet bowl brush, but it is the sentiment that counts. Heck, we even have lights on the tree. We also got the mailing labels for our Christmas cards printed without very much trouble, for once.

And Daddy got an early Christmas present this year. Somebody saved us a bit of trouble by putting a bunch of stuff in one place…

“The Guns of ‘Die Hard'” by Will Dabbs, MD.

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

(While we’re on the subject of Christmas movies, I’d like to put in a plug for another good Christmas movie: “Invasion U.S.A.”. Yes, the one with Chuck Norris. Yes, it is a Christmas movie. Yes, it is kind of silly and stupid and cheesy. But I thought it was a lot of fun.)

Posted in Christmas, Guns, Movies | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#134 in a series)

December 6th, 2024

Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson was arrested this morning.

Fernandes Anderson, 45, was indicted on five counts of aiding and abetting wire fraud and one count of aiding and abetting theft concerning a program receiving federal funds, according to court records and a publicly available indictment.

One of the charges against her is that she gave a staff member a $13,000 bonus payment…most of which was then kicked back to Ms. Fernandes Anderson.

“At defendant Fernandes Anderson’s instructions, Fernandes Anderson and Staff Member A arranged to meet at a bathroom at City Hall where Staff Member A would hand approximately $7,000 in cash to Fernandes Anderson,” court documents said.
The two exchanged texts ahead of the meeting and “shortly following these texts, Staff Member A handed Fernandes Anderson Approximately $7,000 in cash at a bathroom in City Hall,” court documents said.

Ms. Fernandes Anderson makes $115,000 a year as a city councilor. That’s decent money, in my opinion, but the cost of living in Boston is probably much higher than it is in Austin. And Ms. Fernandes Anderson has money problems, per the report.

Those money problems include $5,000 she owes “campaign finance regulators”, as she also has a problem with hiring relatives (her son and daughter) for her staff. “Staff Member A” is also a relative (“but was not an immediate family member”), but Ms. Fernandes Anderson denied that when “A” was hired.

Boston Globe (archived). The Globe mentions her party affiliation in paragraph 7, while the Herald doesn’t mention it at all.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 6, 2024.

December 6th, 2024

I’m going to put a jump here, because both of these obits have a macabre element to them. I’d prefer not to disturb anyone’s sensibilities (and I’m leaving some details out), but I do think they are significant enough to note.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in History, Obits | 2 Comments »

Firings watch.

December 5th, 2024

Luke Richardson out as head coach of the Chicago Blackhawks. 57-118-15 over three seasons, according to ESPN. The Blackhawks are 8-16-2 so far this season, which is the worst record in the NHL.

Eric Bieniemy out as offensive coordinator at UCLA, though this is still “sources say” and there’s at least one report claiming it was a “mutual decision”.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#124).

December 5th, 2024

Shot:

Chi-Chi’s is returning after closing 20 years ago.
The Mexican chain once had more than 200 locations before the last restaurant’s doors shut in 2004.
Now, the founder’s son is spearheading the comeback with a plan to reopen Chi-Chi’s locations in 2025.

Chaser:

Posted in Bagatelle, Food | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 2, 2024.

December 2nd, 2024

Hal Lindsey, of The Late Great Planet Earth fame. He was 95.

Mr. Lindsey took the book world by storm with “The Late Great Planet Earth,” released in 1970 by Zondervan, a small religious publisher in Grand Rapids, Mich. Written with C.C. Carlson (some Lindsey followers said it was ghostwritten by her), the book is a breezy blend of history and apocalyptic predictions based on biblical interpretations and actual events of the time.
An editor at Bantam Books thought the book, Mr. Lindsey’s first, had sales potential, so she acquired the mass-market paperback rights. “The Late Great Planet Earth” became the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970s. By some estimates, it sold about 35 million copies by 1999, and was translated into about 50 languages.

…

The Middle East, and Israel in particular, were central to Mr. Lindsey’s predictions. “The Late Great Planet Earth” was published just three years after Israel’s triumph in the Six-Day War of June 1967. Mr. Lindsey was on safe ground in predicting that Israel’s victory would not bring peace, but he envisioned events far worse than the violence and tensions that plague the region.
The book forecast a war that would end all wars, with a huge Russian army invading Israel by land and sea. The Russians were in turn expected to battle a horde of soldiers, led by the Chinese. Naturally, a conflict of this magnitude could not be contained.
World leaders would send armies to the Middle East to fight under the command of a Rome-based Antichrist against “the kings of the east.”
“Western Europe, the United States, Canada, South America and Australia will undoubtedly be represented,” Mr. Lindsey predicted, and the conflict would not be confined to the Middle East. Hundreds of millions of people would perish in the ashes of New York, London, Paris, Tokyo and other metropolises. Then, finally, the return of Jesus Christ would bring everlasting joy to the faithful and eternal dismay to those who refused to be saved, Mr. Lindsey wrote.
Melani McAlister, a professor of American studies at George Washington University who followed Mr. Lindsey’s career, said in an interview that she found Mr. Lindsey’s tone “weirdly gleeful” considering its central notion, “that there are going to be rivers of blood everywhere.”

“Dear boss: I was late for work this morning because rivers of blood were blocking my driveway.”

We had the book, but I never saw the movie. In double checking the dates on IMDB, I find that Norman Borlaug appears in it as himself. You know what that means, right?

Actually, the Oracle of Bacon claims “Norman Borlaug cannot be linked to Kevin Bacon using only feature films.” I think this is wrong, assuming you count “Earth” as a feature film. (I do.) “Orson Welles has a Bacon number of 2” and, since Welles was in “Earth” with Norman Borlaug, that would make his Bacon number 3, at the most. Right?

Marshall Brickman, Woody Allen collaborator.

Peter Westbrook, Olympic fencer.

A saber fencer with a graceful and agile style in an event reliant on ballistic thrusting and slashing maneuvers, Westbrook won 13 United States championships and qualified for every U.S. Olympic team from 1976 through 1996.
His Olympic medal, a bronze one, came in the individual saber competition at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. He also served as flag-bearer for the American team at the closing ceremony of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics and was inducted into the national fencing Hall of Fame in 1996.

NYT obit for Earl Holliman (archived).

Posted in 1970s, Books, Knives, Movies, Obits, Religion, Swords, Theatre | 1 Comment »

Firings watch.

December 2nd, 2024

Neal Brown was fired yesterday as head coach at West Virginia. Of course, this was announced after I posted yesterday’s firing watch.

They were 6-6 this season, and lost on Saturday to Texas Tech, 52-15. At least Mr. Brown was able to make some people in my family happy.

37-35 in six seasons. 25-28 in conference.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Purdon’t.

December 1st, 2024

Ryan Walters out as football coach of Purdue.

Two seasons, 5-19.

The Boilermakers went 1-11 in 2024 and finished the season with 11 consecutive losses, including going winless in the Big Ten. Purdue’s season ended with a 66-0 loss at Indiana on Saturday.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Silly food blogging.

December 1st, 2024

Regular readers of this blog know of my fascination with things that sit at the weird intersection of food and popular culture.

The holidays are here! “Elf on the Shelf” cereal is at the H-E-B! Two flavors, even!

I didn’t buy any. I don’t eat cereal for breakfast, the last box I bought disappeared, and I don’t want to get yelled at for bringing food into the house that nobody’s going to eat.

However, I think it is more likely we will use these:

“Yellowstone” branded spice mixes. In “Cattleman Steak”, “Skillet Butter & Herb”, and “Cowboy BBQ”.

“Life on the Dutton Ranch requires a fistful of grit and the spirit of a cowboy! After a hard day of taking people to the train station, nothing hits the spot like a good steak seasoned with our Cattleman Steak seasoning!”

(No, I don’t watch “Yellowstone”, due to my “won’t pay for TV” policy. But I have picked up a few things about the series…)

Posted in Christmas, Food, TV | Comments Closed

The logjam breaks…

November 29th, 2024

I’ve been in kind of a dry spell for vintage gun books. But that broke this week: I have four on the way from Callahan and Company (and I ordered them before Thanksgiving, so I can get away with this), and will be blogging those when they arrive.

In the meantime, though, I’m not working on Black Friday. I did swing by Half-Price Books and picked up two more Gun Digests I didn’t have: 1969, with an article by James E. Serven about “Captain Samuel H. Walker”, and 2022, with an article by Terry Wieland about “The Colt Walker”. I’ll tie this back at the end.

Let us get started…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in 1911, Books, Cops, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Kindleing, Law, Texas Rangers, Winchester | 1 Comment »

da Bears.

November 29th, 2024

I’m trying to get out of the house to do some shopping, but stuff keeps coming up.

The Chicago Bears fired Matt Eberflus this morning. Tribune. ESPN.

This was not entirely unexpected. The Bears have lost six straight games, and are 4-8 this season. The big reason for pulling the trigger seems to be yesterday’s Lions game. It wasn’t just that they lost to Detroit, it was that the Bears completely botched the end of the game.

Instead of calling his final timeout, Eberflus watched as rookie quarterback Caleb Williams threw a long pass out of the reach of Rome Odunze as time expired.

(I don’t know why ESPN keeps referring to this as “Sunday’s game”. It was Thursday, right? My internal clock isn’t that messed up, is it?)

I didn’t see the game (we were busy eating Thanksgiving dinner out with our people) but from what I hear and read, Eberflus completely botched things. For crying out loud, the game ended with an unused timeout by da Bears!

“Bears fire Matt Eberflus shortly after making him meet with media” from Awful Announcing. Yes, he had a press conference this morning, in which he said “I’m confident I’ll be working to San Francisco and coaching that game.”…and then they fired him about two hours later.

The likeliest explanation, however, is merely that this is an organization where dysfunction has often been the default setting, and much like Eberflus on Thursday, the Bears were caught flat-footed. So while Eberflus’ firing may have been justified, there’s also plenty of evidence to suggest that Chicago’s problems extend well beyond whoever’s not calling timeouts from its sideline.

Eberflus was 14-32 in “three years”.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Relevant to my interests…

November 29th, 2024

…and possibly other people’s as well.

I follow the Jack Carr podcast, but I don’t listen to every episode. I generally only listen to the ones where he has a guest I’m interested in, such as Clint Smith or Steven Pressfield.

In this case, I’m recommending an episode, not because of the guest, but because of the subject matter:

“Inside The Biggest US Navy Security Breach: The Rise of Fat Leonard” with Dr. Matthew Levitt Craig Whitlock.

Kind of thing you could listen to in the car driving back home, if you’re interested in the Fat Leonard saga (which both Lawrence and I have covered).

Edited to add: Well, this is embarrassing, but I don’t think it is my fault. Even though the episode title is “Fat Leonard” etc., the feed appears to be carrying a repeat of the previous episode which was about Hezbollah. I’m guessing this will be fixed in a day or two.

Edited to add 2: Looks like they fixed the feed now.

I wonder how many people were being paid with US taxpayer dollars to review scripts for NCIS, which bear almost no resemblance to the actual NCIS.

Posted in Law | Comments Closed

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