Shot:
Quincy, M.E., season 5, episode 1: “No Way to Treat a Flower”.
Chaser:
Two men from New York died from pneumonia they contracted from bat feces — after they used the excrement as fertilizer to grow marijuana, a new study found.
The unidentified men from Rochester, ages 64 and 59, smoked pot that had been tainted with a fungus found in the bat droppings, known as guano, that caused fatal lung infections, according to a study published in Open Forum Infectious Disease earlier this month.
Robert Fernandez. He was 100.
Mr. Fernandez joined the Navy at 17 and was stationed on the U.S.S. Curtiss. He was a mess cook and ammunition loader.
In a video biography filmed in 2016, Mr. Fernandez, who was known as Uncle Bob to his friends, said he had joined the Navy to see the world.
“I just thought I was going to go dancing all the time, have a good time,” he said, adding: “What did I do? I got caught in a war.”
…
That morning was December 7, 1941. The Curtiss had just returned to Pearl Harbor after a Pacific cruise.
The U.S.S. Curtis was bombed multiple times, and a Japanese fighter plane crashed into it near the bridge that housed the command center. Dozens on the ship were injured, and 21 people were killed, records show. The ship was repaired about a month later and rejoined the war effort…
“I never did get to go there,” Mr. Fernandez said. Instead, while serving on the mess deck — where sailors and Marines eat and cook — Mr. Fernandez began hearing explosions and gunfire. He recalled manning his battle station a few decks below with other sailors, passing ammunition to top-deck sailors who were firing whatever weapon they could get their hands on.
On how he survived the bombing, Mr. Fernandez said, “You just do what you’re told to do and do the best you can.”
Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors states that there are 16 remaining survivors.
Jill Jacobson, actress. Credits other than a couple of spinoffs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s include “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Sledge Hammer!”, and “Castle”.
Rodney Jenkins, show jumper.
In a professional career that began in the 1960s, Jenkins won more than 70 Grand Prix events, a record when he retired in 1989. His victories included three at the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden and five American Gold Cup titles. He rode with 10 victorious U.S. teams in the Nations Cup, an international competition. He was a member of the National Show Hunter and Show Jumping Halls of Fame.
“What made Rodney truly exceptional was his humility and his unwavering belief in the horses he rode,” Britt McCormick, president of the United States Hunter Jumper Association, said in a statement. “He often credited his success to their brilliance, saying, ‘The horse makes the rider — I don’t care how good you are.’”
Known as the Red Rider for his wavy red hair, Jenkins excelled at the hunter and jumping rings. In the hunter rings — inspired by the sport of fox hunting — horses are judged on their style, look and manner as they move at a deliberate pace and jump over fences.
In the other rings, jumpers are scored on their ability to clear taller fences as quickly as possible without knocking down rails; if they do, faults are added to the total score.
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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.
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.
Actual direct quote from my mother when I told her this: “I wonder if he saw that coming.”
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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.
…
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”.
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.)
Boston City Councilor Tania Fernandes Anderson was arrested this morning.
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.
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.
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”.
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.
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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.
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.
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…)
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…