The ex-presidents are Pez dispensers!

January 2nd, 2016

Found at Blood Bath and Beyond, and also available from Amazon: Presidents of The United States Volume 8 – Pez Limited Edition Collectible Gift Set.

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A better view with some of the packaging removed:

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Seriously. How did I live this long without a Richard Nixon Pez dispenser?

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All I need now is Lyndon Johnson (who is in Volume 7) and I can do my own remake of Point Break.

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(Well, okay, technically, I guess I would also need a Gary Busey Pez dispenser and maybe a Keanu Reeves one, too.)

(“The part of Keanu Reeves is being played by a tongue depressor.”)

(And I should probably get Volume 3 as well, because who doesn’t need Millard Fillmore to go with their Richard Nixon?)

Posted in Geek, Nixon, Photography | Comments Closed

You know what the problem with fiction is?

January 2nd, 2016

A few nights ago, I had an excellent dinner with a bunch of my friends.

Recent events resulted in the dinner conversation going off on a tangent about Quaaludes and “roofies”, which prompted me to look up Wikipedia’s entry on Quaaludes.

…the massive cache of powder and tabletted methaqualone produced under the aegis of the apartheid-era South African government’s Project Coast in a segment thereof directed by Dr Wouter Basson (whose “Brownies” are capsules of pure MDMA in doses of up to 135 mg), who at one point was held by police in Croatia carrying $40m in Vatican bearer bonds when attempting to purchase 500 kilos of methaqualone.

I wasn’t even aware there was such a thing as “Vatican bearer bonds”.

Dr. Wouter Basson is a cardiologist who somehow managed to become head of the South African government’s chemical and biological warfare projects (the “Project Coast” mentioned above).

The entire drug cache disappeared into the underground in the final days of the National Party’s tenure in office. The total methaqualone cache may have approached a metric ton.

A metric ton of Quaaludes. Jordan Belfort, call your office, please.

Fiction has to be believable. You can’t put something like a government produced cache containing a metric ton of quaaludes, or a guy walking around with $40 million in bearer bonds from the Vatican, into a novel and expect people to believe you.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 1, 2016.

January 1st, 2016

Wayne Rogers.

Unfortunately, his death seems to have fallen into the holiday gap, so everyone’s running the same AP obit. The LAT link above seems to be the most complete version.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 30, 2015.

December 30th, 2015

Okay, so it isn’t exactly Ninja Part 3: The Ninjaing. But I was entertained by Pete Wells’ review of Señor Frog’s in the NYT.

Señor Frog’s is not a good restaurant by most conventional measures, including the fairly basic one of serving food.

(Spoiler: he still liked it better than Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar.)

From the HouChron: off-duty HPD officer lists a couple of personal firearms on Texas Gun Trader, meets up with potential customers, and gets into a shootout.

Mildly interesting, but I call it out here for this quote:

Senties did not know how much Curry was asking for the guns, but on the website, the price tag for pistols can range from about $300 to almost $2,000 depending on the model and the condition.

“…from about $300 to almost $2,000”. Wow. That certainly narrows it down.

Seriously, if you don’t have specific information on what Curry (the HPD officer) was selling and how much he was asking, why put that in? Does the HouChron even have editors these days?

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Food, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

110 years ago today…

December 30th, 2015

…early in the evening on December 30, 1905, Frank Steunenberg, the former governor of Idaho, returned to his home in Caldwell after a busy day downtown. (Among other tasks, Steunenberg renewed his life insurance policy.) He opened the side gate to his home…

…and set off a massive explosion that gravely wounded him. He was carried into his home by family and neighbors, and lingered for a short period of time before succumbing to his injuries around 7:10 PM.

For days thereafter, passerby were picking “little bits” of the governor out of the debris.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Explosives, History, IANAL, Law | Comments Closed

A Chip off the block…

December 29th, 2015

What was TMQ’s belated Christmas present?

Oh, nothing, really. Just Chip Kelly being fired as coach of the Eagles. ESPN. Philly.com.

As you may recall, TMQ has been banging the drum for months now, promoting his expectation that Kelly would go back to coaching college ball after this season. Well, he got the first part of his wish. Now let’s see if he gets the second part; we’re thinking there will be some job openings next Monday, and Kelly might be a good fit for another NFL gig.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: December 29, 2015.

December 29th, 2015

We hope all of our readers had a good Christmas, and that Santa or Krampus brought you everything you wanted. Sadly, Robot Santa Claus failed to bring us everything we wanted, as far too many of our enemies remain alive. Maybe in 2016. Or maybe we should submit our wish list to Morbo.

It looks like TMQ got what he wanted; a Panthers loss. Does this mean what we fear it means? After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

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Posted in Christmas, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 29, 2015.

December 29th, 2015

Ian Fraser Kilmister, also known as Lemmy from Motörhead.

“Please,” the band added, “play Motörhead loud, play Hawkwind” — Mr. Kilmister’s earlier group — “loud, play Lemmy’s music LOUD. Have a drink or few.”

Posted in Clippings, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

100 years ago today…

December 29th, 2015

…on December 29, 1915, Robert Chester Ruark, Jr. was born.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books, Guns, Ruark | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 28, 2015.

December 28th, 2015

Haskell Wexler, noted cinematographer.

Mr. Sayles said Mr. Wexler had once told him the story of being torpedoed. “He said the U-boat surfaced as the sailors were swimming to their lifeboats,” he said, “and they all were afraid it was coming up to machine-gun them. Instead, the captain lifted a small movie camera to document his kill, and Haskell remembered thinking, ‘I wonder if he’s shooting color or black and white?’”

Meadowlark Lemon.

“Meadowlark was the most sensational, awesome, incredible basketball player I’ve ever seen,” basketball great Wilt Chamberlain, Lemon’s onetime teammate, said in a television interview shortly before his death in 1999, as the Times reported. “People would say it would be Dr. J or even Jordan. For me, it would be Meadowlark Lemon.”

Edited to add: NYT obit wasn’t up previously, but is now.

NYT obit for George Clayton Johnson.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 27, 2015.

December 27th, 2015

Robert D. Douglas Jr.

I hadn’t heard of him before the NYT obit, but he led an interesting life: he became an Eagle Scout in 1925. In 1928, he and two other Eagle Scouts were selected to go on a safari with Martin and Osa Johnson; the three Scouts later published a book about their experience. He later went hunting for whales and bears off the Alaskan coast (and wrote another book), flew with Amelia Earhart in an early autogyro, and spent more time in Alaska stomping around with “the Glacier Priest” (and got another book out of that).

This has been floating around for a few days, but I finally found an obit I was willing to link to: George Clayton Johnson. Johnson wrote several of the best “Twilight Zone” episodes (odds are, if the episode you’re trying to remember wasn’t a Matheson episode, it was one of his). He also wrote “The Man Trap” for “Star Trek”, the story that “Ocean’s 11” was based on, and co-wrote “Logan’s Run”.

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

And what was in those ships?

December 25th, 2015

I think if you do it two years in a row, it becomes a tradition, and you have to keep doing it.

Also, I really do like this song.

Merry Christmas, you guys.

Posted in Christmas, Music | Comments Closed

A Christmas Story.

December 24th, 2015

I’ve been threatening to tell this one for a while now. What pushed me over the edge was this (because, hey, Christmas story), and a conversation with my mother about the first “Star Wars”, which filled me with nostalgia. (Or that may have been indigestion from a combination of three cup chicken and the pills I’m taking; sometimes, I can’t tell the difference.)

(We were trying to reconstruct the circumstances around seeing “Star Wars”. My father took my sister and I to the theater at Greenspoint Mall in Houston (which was the closest good one) to see it first run. My younger brother didn’t go with us, because he was roughly 2 1/2. So the questions that came up were: what did we do with him, and when did he first see it? I always thought my dad took us as just a nice gesture, while my mother thinks she had a Tupperware party going on that night and wanted to get us out of the house.)

End of introductory digression.

One year, over the Christmas break from school, I decided I wanted to read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I’m pretty sure I was in middle school at the time, and to this day I can’t explain what motivated this: perhaps I thought it had a cool title, and I may have read about it elsewhere.

Anyway, I checked it out of the school library and brought it home with me.

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Posted in Books, Christmas, Movies | 2 Comments »

1D20.

December 24th, 2015

Speaking of Ross Thomas, I’ve been meaning to link to (and bookmark) Ethan Iverson’s “Ah, Treachery!” essay for a while now. There are a few things in it that I disagree with, but I think Iverson’s essay is generally perceptive about Thomas and his writing; I find myself referring to it periodically.

Young Joseph Wambaugh and the hobo, from the LAT.

Dave Barry’s year in review, in case you haven’t seen it yet.

An OPM statement plays down the seriousness of the data breach, stressing that “if anybody publishes any photos allegedly depicting an alleged Cabinet secretary with an alleged goat, those are fake,” further noting that “it was totally a consenting goat.”

For the record: NYT obit for Joe Jamail.

Posted in Bookmarks, Books, Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 24, 2015.

December 24th, 2015

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Eden Pearl.

Pearl joined the Marine Corps in July 1994 from the town of Monroe, N.Y., before turning 19. After graduating from recruit training at Parris Island, S.C., he became an infantry rifleman, and then completed virtually every difficult form of training the service had, becoming a scout sniper, reconnaissance Marine, combat diver and critical skills operator in MARSOC. His training left him capable of performing anything — from free-fall aerial dives from airplanes to close-quarters combat after breaking down a door.

Sgt. Pearl was critically injured by an IED in 2009, and died on Sunday as a result of his injuries.

Fernande Grudet, aka “Madame Claude”. I note this here for two reasons:

1) Hookersnblow.org.
2) In one of my favorite Ross Thomas books, The Seersucker Whipsaw, there’s a character named “Madame Claude”. I’m wondering if this was a very subtle reference on the part of Thomas…

Posted in Books, Clippings, Heroism, Obits | Comments Closed

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