Obit watch: April 9, 2018.

April 9th, 2018

Sheila Link passed away at the end of March. She was 94.

This is another of those obits you don’t expect to see in the NYT: Ms. Link was a long-time gunwriter.

Mrs. Link wrote a column, “Gear ‘N’ Gadgets,” for Women & Guns from the magazine’s inception in the early 1990s until 2003.
She was also a frequent contributor to Outdoor Life, Field & Stream and Sports Afield magazines; produced a weekly radio program, “Call of the Outdoors,” which was broadcast for nine years beginning in 1974; and was the author of two books, “The Hardy Boys Handbook: Seven Stories of Survival” (1980) and “Women’s Guide to Outdoor Sports” (1984).

There are things I don’t like about this obit (the author seems to have gone out of his way to incorporate some NRA bashing), but I do love the story at the end, which I will leave for the reader.

Posted in Guns, Obits | Comments Closed

Quaint and curious volumes of forgotten television.

April 9th, 2018

I don’t remember how I stumbled across this, other than we were watching “Ironside” (with Burgess Meredith!) while waiting for “Kolchak” to start.

Anyway: I found out that there was a detective show in the mid-1970s called, believe it or not, “Khan!”.

No, tragically, it did not star Shatner or Ricardo Montalbán. Actually, the title character was played by Khigh Dhiegh. Unless you’re as geeky as I am, you may not recognize that name: he was a fairly prominent character actor, perhaps best known for playing Wo Fat repeatedly on the good “Hawaii 5-0”. (He also played the brainwashing expert in the original Manchurian Candidate.)

(Short shameful confession: while I like the good “5-0”, I do have a lot of reservations. Besides Jack Lord’s ego and politics, my biggest one is: I’ve never liked the Wo Fat episodes. I find them mostly unrealistic and annoying. Yes, I know, I need to go out for blueberry-almond martinis with Gregg Easterbrook. But I digress.)

Also interesting: Ivan Dixon was involved as a director on the series. (Note to self: I still need to pick up a copy of The Spook Who Sat By the Door for movie night.)

So why have I never heard of this? Well, it only lasted four episodes. I suspect this is also why it hasn’t had a DVD release.

As an extra bonus, because I know there are a couple of other Kolchak fans out there (Hi, Pat!): “It Couldn’t Happen Here…” in which the bloggers review all of the episodes of the original series, including the TV movies and the three unproduced scripts.

I’m not sure I agree 100% with their reviews and conclusions, but it fills in the blanks on some of the episodes I’ve missed.

Posted in 1970s, Bookmarks, TV | Comments Closed

CRASE.

April 5th, 2018

So I was hanging out with the cops in Lakeway last night.

I’m about 99 44/100ths percent sure this is the video that they showed as part of their Citizen Response to Active Shooter Events presentation. This seems to me to be a good one: it’s also short (~11 minutes) so it isn’t a huge commitment of your time.

Posted in Cops, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

I met him in a place down in São Paulo…

April 5th, 2018

…where they serve churrasco with arroz de coco,
C-O-C-O, coco.

He walked up to me and he asked me to vote,
I asked him his name and in a crooked voice he said Lula,
L-U-L-A, Lula.
La-la-la-la Lula.

Posted in Food, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Random note.

April 4th, 2018

I’ve been binge-watching episodes of “Seconds From Disaster“.

One thing that kind of surprises me is that there are a lot of disasters – serious disasters, causing major loss of life – that I’ve just simply never heard of until I stumbled across the relevant SFD episode. Mont Blanc Tunnel fire? Totally missed that one. Kaprun funicular disaster? How did I manage to miss that?

Interesting safety note: one of the talking heads on the Kaprun SFD episode made what I thought was a really profound point. Fire will always do the unexpected. Fire doesn’t necessarily behave in an intuitive way. 12 people survived at Kaprun because they ran downhill, towards and past the fire at the rear of the train. Which is counter-intuitive: why would you run towards the fire? Because:

The tunnel acted like a giant blast furnace, sucking oxygen in from the bottom and rapidly sent the poisonous smoke, heat and the fire itself billowing upwards.

Everybody who went uphill away from the fire died.

Also interesting: the trench effect.

Posted in Safety, TV | Comments Closed

Peanuts and popcorn.

April 3rd, 2018

Well, once again, Gonzaga folded. And they didn’t even reach the Final Four this time. I’ve paid off my bet with Lawrence.

And, having learned nothing from history, I’ve bet another $5 with him on baseball. This year, I’m picking the Indians to win it all: the humor value of betting on the Cubs isn’t there any longer, I can’t stand the Dodgers or Yankees, and (as I’ve noted before) some of my family pull for the Tribe.

And 538 is giving the Indians a 13% chance of winning it all (as of today, April 3rd), second only to the Astros. So I’m feeling kind of good about my chances…

Posted in Sports, Wagers | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 2, 2018.

April 2nd, 2018

Man, it’s been a really busy couple of days.

Deborah Carrington, actress. Among her credits: Thumbelina in the original “Total Recall”, Valerie Vomit in “The Garbage Pail Kids Movie”, various Ewoks, and the “Bride of Chucky”.

Stéphane Audran, Babette in “Babette’s Feast”.

Delores Taylor, also an actress. She appeared in a bunch of her husband, Tom Laughlin’s, films, including “Billy Jack” and the two sequels.

Anita Shreve, noted novelist.

Separated at birth?

Former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt


INS reporter Carl Kolchak.

Finally, noted TV producer Steven Bochco. (“Hill Street Blues”, “LA Law”, “NYPD Blue”, “Doogie Howser MD”. And where’s my damn “Hooperman” box set? I’m not kidding: I remember that being a kind of fun show.)

Let’s go out with a bang, shall we?

Posted in Books, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have…

March 29th, 2018

…water slides.

This is one of those things that I intended to note earlier, but then I got busy and it got past me.

Schlitterbahn and Tyler Miles (the local operations manager for their Kansas City park) were indicted last week on involuntary manslaughter charges. This is related to the death of a ten-year-old boy who was decapitated on the Verrückt waterslide.

Texas Monthly online has a pretty good summary of the indictment and what led up to it. The spin here, based on the criminal indictment, is that these people supposedly had no idea what they were doing.

According to the indictment, lead designer John Schooley “possessed no engineering credential relevant to amusement ride design or safety,” and neither did Schlitterbahn co-owner Jeff Henry, whose emails describe a desire to “micro manage” the project because “speed is 100% required.”

Why was speed “100% required”? Allegedly, Henry was trying to impress reality show producers.

…Henry’s statements as quoted in the indictment are troubling. “[Verrückt] could hurt me, it could kill me, it is a seriously dangerous piece of equipment today because there are things that we don’t know about it. Every day we learn more,” he’s quoted as saying. “I’ve seen what this one has done to the crash dummies and to the boats we sent down it. Ever since the prototype. And we had boats flying in the prototype too. It’s complex, it’s fast, it’s mean. If we mess up, it could be the end. I could die going down this ride.”

…

…Henry seems to cast the industry’s guidelines as arbitrary and unnecessary—at one point, he’s quoted as saying, “we’re gonna redefine many of the definables that have been defined in the industry that we couldn’t find good reasons for. Like a 48-inch height rule. Why 48 inches? I could never figure out why not 47 inches. It made no sense to me. And so we’re gonna change all that now in this park, and hopefully change it worldwide in all parks and get back to rational reasonable scientific decisions as to why and how we run our facilities.” Furthermore, the indictment lists twelve different examples of the ride violating standards set by the American Society for Testing & Materials, which creates guidelines for amusement park rides. Schooley signed a document certifying that the ride was in compliance. The indictment describes the netting and support hoops above the ride as “obviously defective and ultimately lethal.”

Kind of burying the lede, and something I didn’t see reported as widely as the first indictment: Henry has also been arrested, and is charged with “murder, twelve counts of aggravated battery, and five counts of aggravated endangerment of a child”. The indictment against Henry hadn’t been released when the TM article hit the web, so indictment details are scanty.

It is worth remembering that most of what’s in the TM story is the prosecution’s case from the indictment, that Henry, Miles and Schlitterbahn have a different story that their lawyers will be presenting at trial, and that all parties should, of course, be presumed innocent.

Posted in Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 29, 2018.

March 29th, 2018

Philip Kerr, noted author.

I read A Philosophical Investigation based on someone’s recommendation: I wish I could remember who it was. (I feel pretty strongly that it was either Andy Watson or Pat Cadigan, but I’m getting old. It could have been an entirely different person.)

Anyway, I liked it well enough that I intended to read more of Kerr’s work. The Bernie Gunther stuff in particular intrigues me, but too many books, too little time. Also, I’m thinking I got tangled up somewhere with chronology issues in the Gunther books. I’m kind of sad that there won’t be any more – except for the forthcoming Gunther origin story mentioned in the obit – but, at the same time, this settles the chronology issue pretty thoroughly.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

First…

March 28th, 2018

…they came for the gun magazines, and I didn’t say anything: because I wasn’t a gun owner, and it’s not censorship if a private business does it, amirite?

Then they came for Cosmopolitan, and I said, “Hey! Wait a minute!”

(Semi-related.)

(More seriously, my First Amendment absolutism is really coming into conflict with my “sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander” philosophy, as well as my desire to see the gun-grabbers at Cosmo get theirs good and hard.)

Posted in Guns, Media | Comments Closed

Obit watch: special norts spews edition, March 26, 2018.

March 26th, 2018

H. Wayne Huizenga. Special bonus obit content: Field of Schemes.

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

When guns are outlawed…

March 26th, 2018

Me, in an email conversation:

You know what Siberia needs?
Smoke detectors and fire alarms. Also, maybe, strict lighter control.

Karl of KR Training (official firearms trainer of WCD):

Also a big public march where people hate on the lighter fluid and fireplace industry.

(And let’s not forget Big Foam Rubber.)

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

This is a song about Carla.

March 22nd, 2018

And about the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry.

The selection process is open to the public in its early stages, though Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden makes the final decisions after recommendations from the board. This year, songs with the greatest public support included “If I Didn’t Care,” the 1939 standard by vocal group the Ink Spots, Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler” and Kenny Loggins’s “Footloose.”

I’m not as excited about this year’s list as I have been in the past, though there are a couple of highlights other than “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”. I do love me some Groucho Marx. “New Sounds in Electronic Music” is a welcome surprise. And I’m happy to see K-Log get a nod, though I would have put “Danger Zone” in before “Footloose”.

Posted in Music | Comments Closed

When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have…

March 21st, 2018

…live bees.

A woman from Spain died after having an allergic reaction to an acupuncture procedure where bee stings are used instead of needles.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 21, 2018.

March 21st, 2018

Nelda Wells Spears, former Travis County tax assessor-collector. I remember having to write checks to her, back in the pre-Internet days…

Earl Cooley, prominent Austin SF fan, influential early BBS guy, and a personal friend.

The Mad Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight. They haven’t released a name yet, but even if they did, I wouldn’t give him the publicity.

Posted in Austin, Explosives, Geek, Law, Travis County, WillCo | 1 Comment »

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