Obit watch: February 3, 2021.

February 3rd, 2021

Eugenio Martinez has passed away at the age of 98.

His death, at his daughter’s home near Orlando, was announced by Brigade 2506, a veterans group of Mr. Martinez’s fellow anti-Communist Cuban exiles. Their abortive invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs in 1961 to overthrow the government headed by Fidel Castro was covertly supported by the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Martinez was the last surviving Watergate burglar.

In January 1973 four of the five burglars — members of the so-called plumbers, an informal White House team assigned to plug information leaks — pleaded guilty so as to avoid revealing details of the bungled operation. They were convicted of conspiracy, theft and wiretapping.
The others, also Cuban-born, were Bernard L. Barker, a former Miami real estate agent and C.I.A. operative, who died in 2009; Virgilio González, a Miami locksmith, who died in 2014; and Frank A. Sturgis, a soldier of fortune, who died in 1993. (In 1971, the four had taken part in the break-in at the Los Angeles office of the psychiatrist of Daniel Ellsberg, the former Defense Department analyst who disclosed the Pentagon papers to the press.)

E. Howard Hunt, who allegedly recruited them, served 31 months in prison.

They were led by James W. McCord Jr., a security coordinator for the Nixon campaign whose confession to the judge just before his sentencing precipitated the revelations of White House crimes and cover-ups that culminated in Nixon’s resignation in 1974. For aiding prosecutors in pursuing senior presidential aides in the scandal, Mr. McCord had his one-to-five-year sentence cut to less than four months.

…

In 1983, after his requests for clemency had been rejected by Presidents Gerald R. Ford and Jimmy Carter, Mr. Martinez — who, it turned out, had still been on retainer to the C.I.A. at the time of the Watergate break-in — was pardoned by President Ronald Reagan.
The pardon, which was granted because Mr. Martinez had been regarded as the least culpable of the defendants, restored his right to vote. Despite the ordeal, he prided himself on one Watergate keepsake — a golden lucky clover inscribed, in Spanish, with the words “Good luck, Richard Nixon.”

Posted in History, Law, Nixon, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 2, 2021.

February 2nd, 2021

Hal Holbrook. He was 95, but still, this stinks. THR. Variety.

Mr. Holbrook never claimed to be a Twain scholar; indeed, he said, he had read only a little of Twain’s work as a young man. He said the idea of doing a staged reading of Twain’s work came from Edward A. Wright, his mentor at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. And Mr. Wright would have been the first to acknowledge that the idea had actually originated with Twain himself — or rather Samuel Clemens, who had adopted Mark Twain as something of a stage name and who did readings of his work for years.
Mr. Holbrook was finishing his senior year as a drama major in 1947 when Mr. Wright talked him into adding Twain to a production that Mr. Holbrook and his wife, Ruby, were planning called “Great Personalities,” in which they would portray, among others, Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, John Alden and Priscilla Mullins, and Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.
Mr. Holbrook had doubts at first. “Ed, I think this Mark Twain thing is pretty corny,” he recalled telling Mr. Wright after the first rehearsals. “I don’t think it’s funny.”

…

Mr. Holbrook began developing his one-man show in 1952, the year Ms. Holbrook gave birth to their first child, Victoria. He soon looked the part, with a wig to match Twain’s unruly mop, a walrus mustache and a rumpled white linen suit, the kind Twain himself wore onstage. From his grandfather, Mr. Holbrook got an old penknife, which he used to cut the ends off the three cigars he smoked during a performance (though he was not sure whether Twain ever smoked onstage). He sought out people who claimed to have seen and heard Twain, who died in 1910, and listened to their recollections.
He had more or less perfected the role by 1954, the year he began a one-man show titled “Mark Twain Tonight!” at Lock Haven State Teachers College in Pennsylvania.
Two years later he took his Twain to television, performing on “The Ed Sullivan Show” and “The Tonight Show.” In the meantime he had landed a steady job in 1954 on the TV soap opera “The Brighter Day,” on which he played a recovering alcoholic.
The stint lasted until 1959, when, tiring of roles he no longer cared about, he opened in “Mark Twain Tonight!” at the Off Broadway 41st Street Theater.By then the metamorphosis was complete. With his shambling gait, Missouri drawl, sly glances and exquisite timing, Hal Holbrook had, for all intents and purposes, become Mark Twain.
“After watching and listening to him for five minutes,” Arthur Gelb wrote in The New York Times, “it is impossible to doubt that he is Mark Twain, or that Twain must have been one of the most enchanting men ever to go on a lecture tour.”

This is not intended as a shot at Mr. Holbrook, but I do wonder how much of our popular conception of Mark Twain is shaped by Holbrook’s performances.

Mr. Holbrook’s many film roles tended to be small ones, although there were exceptions. One was as the anonymous informant Deep Throat in “All the President’s Men,” the 1976 film adaptation of the book by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein about the Watergate cover-up. (Deep Throat was later revealed to have been W. Mark Felt, a top F.B.I. official.) Another big movie role was in “The Firm” (1993), based on John Grisham’s corporate whodunit, in which Mr. Holbrook played the stop-at-nothing head of a Memphis law firm.

Another film role that he doesn’t seem to be getting much credit for: “Lt. Briggs” in “Magnum Force”.

Mr. Holbrook had a long and fruitful run as an actor. He was the shadowy patriot Deep Throat in “All the President’s Men” (1976); an achingly grandfatherly character in “Into the Wild” (2007), for which he received an Oscar nomination; and the influential Republican Preston Blair in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” (2012).
He played the 16th president himself, on television, in Carl Sandburg’s “Lincoln,” a 1974 mini-series. The performance earned him an Emmy Award, one of five he won for his acting in television movies and mini-series; the others included “The Bold Ones: The Senator” (1970), his protagonist resembling John F. Kennedy, and “Pueblo” (1973) in which he played the commander of a Navy intelligence boat seized by North Korea in 1968.

I caught a few episodes of “The Senator” back when RetroTV was airing in Austin, and I thought it held up well. The whole series is on DVD (affiliate link) and it looks like there are full episodes on the ‘Tube.

Harlan Ellison was particularly fond of these episodes (it was a two-parter).

He didn’t do a lot of ’70s detective shows, but, oddly, he did some in the 21st century: “NCIS”, “Bones”, and the bad “Hawaii 5-0”, among other credits.

In other news: Jamie Tarses, prominent TV executive.

Dustin “Screech” Diamond.

Finally, Jack Palladino, who the NYT calls a “hard-charging private investigator”.

Mr. Palladino was placed on life support after sustaining a severe head injury on Jan. 28 in what the San Francisco district attorney, Chesa Boudin, called “a brutal attack” in the city’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood. Two people were arrested in the attack and booked at the San Francisco County Jail on charges that include attempted robbery, assault with a deadly weapon and elder abuse.

What makes this interesting is: he worked for the Clintons. Specifically, Bill:

During the 1992 presidential campaign, he was hired by the Clinton campaign after Gennifer Flowers released tapes of phone calls with Mr. Clinton to back up her claim that they had had an affair.
Mr. Palladino embarked on a mission, as he put it in a memo, to impugn Ms. Flowers’s “character and veracity until she is destroyed beyond all recognition.”
“Every acquaintance, employer and past lover should be located and interviewed,” Mr. Palladino wrote. “She is now a shining icon — telling lies that so far have proved all benefit and no cost — for any other opportunist who may be considering making Clinton a target.”

He also did work for R. Kelly and Harvey Weinstein.

In his work for the Clinton campaign, Mr. Palladino’s staff scoured Arkansas and beyond, collecting disparaging accounts from Ms. Flowers’s ex-boyfriends, employers and others who claimed to know her, accounts that the campaign then disseminated to the news media.
By the time Mr. Clinton finally admitted to “sexual relations” with Ms. Flowers, years later, Clinton aides had used stories collected by Mr. Palladino to brand her as a “bimbo” and a “pathological liar.”

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | 3 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 308

February 2nd, 2021

There’s a channel called “Tech Ingredients” that features a variety of interesting stuff.

This is slightly on the long side, but I watched it last night and found it oddly compelling: “Distilling ALCOHOL With Our New Reflux Still!”

I also generally don’t like videos that focus on a specific product, but in this case, the video is less about the specific reflux still and more about the general workings of one, including things like the design of the bubble plates and the dephlegmator.

Bonus video #1: Previously from “Tech Ingredients”, “Banana Brandy – Making Ugandan Waragi (Moonshine)”.

Bonus video #2: This also appeals to my geek instincts, but doesn’t involve booze: “Jet Engine Thrust Test – Fuel Experiment (Jet-A vs Diesel vs BioDiesel vs HydroDiesel)”. The guy built his own dynamometer, and then tested these fuels to see which one produces the most thrust.

I’m also a sucker for small jet engines.

Posted in Geek, History, Mixology | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 307

February 1st, 2021

Would you like to swing on a star? Carry moonbeams home in a jar?

How about just some plain old model rockets.

“Estes model rockets: a brief history”.

Bonus #1: “60 Foot Ultimate Matchbox Rocket”.

Haven’t had a chance to try this yet, but I plan to.

Bonus #2: “How To Make Sugar Rockets”. Specifically:

How to make hobby rocket “sugar motors” using sugar and kitty litter, that shoot up over 2,300 feet high, and cost less than $0.50 to make.

It seems like there are a lot of videos on the ‘Tube from folks trying to build their own liquid propellant engines, but I haven’t found one yet that goes from zero to complete working engine: it looks like many of them stalled out for one reason or another. If anybody knows of a good zero to finish liquid fueled rocket video (or series) please leave a comment here.

Bonus #3: One more, for Lawrence: Colin Furze demonstrates (with some help from his friends) “How to START a Pulse Jet”, like the old V-1 engine. The video doesn’t show how to actually build a pulse jet, but the comments link to some helpful resources on that subject.

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 306

January 31st, 2021

Science Sunday!

I apologize for the crappy quality of this first video. But it is from 1967. I’m putting this here because it is something that I hope you will never ever see up close and personal, and this is the only video I know of.

“Burning and Extinguishing Characteristics of Plutonium Metal Fires”.

To steal a line from the late John Clark in Ignition! (affiliate link), “For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”

Bonus #1: “Who Destroyed Three Mile Island?”. As I understand it, this is a presentation from the Lead Developer conference in Austin in 2018. “So like most things in Austin today, the problem with the microphone is South By’s fault.”

More to the point:

When something bad happens, it’s easy to just blame someone and move on. Taking the time to find the systemic causes, though, will not only help keep the problem from repeating, it will enable you to build the psychological safety necessary for your team to truly collaborate. Let’s let the story of Three Mile Island teach us how to make our teams stronger through systems thinking and just culture.

In addition to the science! part of it, I think there’s some good leadership stuff in here too.

(I have another video from Nickolas Means that I want to use in the near future: I didn’t use it today because it was closer to history than science. But sometime next week, probably…)

Bonus #2: Lasers! 8 o’clock! Day one!

“360 video tour of the world’s largest laser” from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Bonus #3: “The Riemann Hypothesis, Explained”.

Posted in Geek, History, Leadership | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 305

January 30th, 2021

I don’t want to keep going back to the AvE well, but this one grabbed me by the socks for reasons:

“Stone Age Radio Voice Based Interwebs for Frozen Third World Sit-Holes.”

Bonus #1: When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have crossbows.

“960lbs crossbow vs 150lbs crossbow – TESTED!”

Bonus #2: “Sergeant Stan W Scott, No. 3 Army Commando, demonstrates the use of the Fairbairn-Sykes fighting knife.”

Bonus #3: This is actually one McThag turned me on to: I enjoyed it, and I don’t think everyone reads McThag’s blog (unfortunately). So:

“I bought The Cheapest Orange County Chopper in America for only 8k.”

Since I am unwilling to pay for television, I have never seen an episode of either one of the bike shows (though I am familiar with the meme). I know there’s a lot of manufactured drama on all of those shows, but I have to say: I was surprised by this guy’s comments on the OCC bike.

(Chopper style bikes aren’t really my style anyway. If I was going to ride, it would either be something in more of a cafe racer style, or else a full-up BMW touring bike.)

Posted in History, Knives, Radio | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 304

January 29th, 2021

I get a lot of “How It’s Made” in my feed. I mostly avoid posting those: this one is an exception, because I’d never heard of this thing until recently, and it’s a fascinating concept.

The “Ghillie Kettle” (also known by other names such as “Kelly Kettle”) is basically a highly efficient water boiler, sort of a descendant of a samovar. You have a bottom part of the kettle in which you start a small fire, and a top part of the kettle which is a water jacket. When you put the top part on top of the fire in the bottom part, the hole in the center of the water jacket functions as a chimney, drawing smoke and hot air up through the jacket part and rapidly heating the water to a boil.

And “How to use a Ghillie Kettle in 3 minutes!”

Longer demo from The Kelly Kettle Company.

I don’t do a lot of camping these days, but I kind of want one of these: it seems like a good thing to add to your emergency prep gear.

And now for something completely different, but which I also think is kind of cool: “David’s Garage” talks about his 1968 Steyr Puch Haflinger.

I have no room and no use for one of these, but I like it. It strikes me as being a neat retro-cool alternative to those massively overbuilt 4-wheelers you see at Bass Pro Shop.

One more for today: “Group B: When Rallying Got TOO FAST”. This was yet another thing I had not heard about until recently, even though it was in the right time frame for me.

Group B was a FIA rally classification. It was sort of an “anything goes” classification.

…Group B had few restrictions on technology, design and the number of cars required for homologation to compete—200, less than other series. Weight was kept as low as possible, high-tech materials were permitted, and there were no restrictions on boost, resulting in the power output of the winning cars increasing from 250 hp in 1981, the year before Group B rules were introduced, to there being at least two cars producing in excess of 500 by 1986, the final year of Group B. In just five years, the power output of rally cars had more than doubled.

Apparently the cars were utterly insane. So what happened? Why did this only last from 1983 to 1986?

Answer: the cars were utterly insane.

Posted in History | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: January 29, 2021.

January 29th, 2021

Cicely Tyson. THR. Variety.

In a remarkable career of seven decades, Ms. Tyson broke ground for serious Black actors by refusing to take parts that demeaned Black people. She urged Black colleagues to do the same, and often went without work. She was critical of films and television programs that cast Black characters as criminal, servile or immoral, and insisted that African-Americans, even if poor or downtrodden, should be portrayed with dignity.
Her chiseled face and willowy frame, striking even in her 90s, became familiar to millions in more than 100 film, television and stage roles, including some that had traditionally been given only to white actors. She won three Emmys and many awards from civil rights and women’s groups, and at 88 became the oldest person to win a Tony, for her 2013 Broadway role in a revival of Horton Foote’s “The Trip to Bountiful.”
At 93, she won an honorary Oscar, and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2018 and into the Television Hall of Fame in 2020. She also won a career achievement Peabody Award in 2020.

So she was a “G” short of an EGOT, but picked up the “P” to make her a PEOT.

For many Americans, Ms. Tyson was an idol of the Black Is Beautiful movement, regal in an African turban and caftan, her face gracing the covers of Ebony, Essence and Jet magazines. She was a vegetarian, a teetotaler, a runner, a meditator and, from 1981 to 1989, the wife of the jazz trumpeter and composer Miles Davis. Since the ’60s she had inspired Black American women to embrace their own standards of beauty — including helping to popularize the Afro.
“She’s our Meryl Streep,” Vanessa Williams told Essence in 2013. “She was the person you wanted to be like in terms of an actress, in terms of the roles she got and how serious she took her craft. She still is.”

…

In January 2021, when she was 96, her memoir, “Just as I Am,” appeared, and in a pre-publication interview with The New York Times Magazine, she was asked if she had any advice for the young.
“It’s simple,” she said. “I try always to be true to myself. I learned from my mom: ‘Don’t lie ever, no matter how bad it is. Don’t lie to me ever, OK? You will be happier that you told the truth.’ That has stayed with me, and it will stay with me for as long as I’m lucky enough to be here.”

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

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 303

January 28th, 2021

Travel Thursday!

You know, when you travel, you have to stay somewhere. I guess you could sleep outdoors, but that’s a good way to get robbed or rousted by the po-lice.

So you need to sleep somewhere. Like a hotel or motel.

(I thought the movie was a little twee, but I do like that scene.)

From 1962, “The Great Tradition”, a promo film for the American Hotel Association.

Bonus: Another one I’m pretty sure I haven’t used (and I think I’d remember: it doesn’t turn up in a search): “Wings to Viking Land”. Really, “Viking Land”.

…a Pan Am travelogue about Scandinavia and specifically Norway, Denmark and Sweden. The flight is made aboard a Pan Am Clipper — a four engine Boeing Stratocruiser equipped with Sleeperette seats. The flight takes less than 24 hours and meals served aboard are from Maxim’s of Paris.

I kind of feel like the original Vikings were not served meals from Maxim’s of Paris, coming or going. But hey, what do I know?

Posted in History, Travel | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 28, 2021.

January 28th, 2021

Cloris Leachman.

…between 1972 and 2011 she was nominated for 22 Primetime Emmys and won eight.

(Of course, she won an Oscar as best supporting actress for “The Last Picture Show”. Interestingly, she beat Ellen Burstyn who was also nominated for the same film.)

A number of those Emmys were for dramatic work, including her performance as a woman who finds herself pregnant at 40 in the made-for-TV movie “A Brand New Life” (1973). But comedy was her forte.
She was nominated four times and won twice for her performance on the hit CBS sitcom “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” as Phyllis Lindstrom, the scatterbrained landlady of Mary Richards, the plucky TV news producer played by Ms. Moore. She went on to play the same role from 1975 to 1977 on the spinoff series “Phyllis,” for which she received another Emmy nomination and won a Golden Globe.

Although her focus for the rest of her career was on television, she also had some memorable movie roles, notably under Mel Brooks’s direction. In his beloved horror spoof “Young Frankenstein” (1974) she was the sinister Transylvanian housekeeper Frau Blücher, the very mention of whose name was enough to terrify any horse within earshot. She played similarly intimidating women in Mr. Brooks’s “High Anxiety” (1977) and “History of the World, Part I” (1981). She also co-starred with Harvey Korman in Mr. Brooks’s short-lived sitcom “The Nutt House” (1989).

And, yes! She did do a “Mannix”! (“The Need of a Friend“, season 2, episode 9.)

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

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 302

January 27th, 2021

Today, planes. Specifically military aircraft. I thought I’d do some slightly shorter stuff as well.

To start with, from the Planes of Fame channel on the ‘Tube, a tour of their B-17.

Bonus #1: “The Ultimate Supersonic Interceptor – F-106 Delta Dart” from the Dark Skies channel.

Back in the day, when I worked for Four Letter Computer Company in Round Rock that has nothing to do with fruit, they tried to force a new case management system on us called “Delta”. Many of the techs felt they would have been better off converting the money spent to $100 bills, piling them in the parking lot and setting them on fire.

I had a photo of the F-106 hanging in my cube with the caption “The only good Delta”.

Bonus #2: Okay, this one is longer, but it is a bonus: “Wings” from the Discovery Channel on the XB-70 Valkyrie. Speaking of #TheFutureWeCouldHaveHad: yes, it was a Mach 3 bomber, but it also served as a testbed for a lot of the tech that was intended to go into the SST.

Is it just me, or does the Tu-144 remind folks a lot of the XB-70? Granted, it lacks the two vertical stabilizers, but other than that…

Speaking of the Tu-144:

The prototypes were also the only passenger jets ever fitted with ejection seats, albeit only for the crew and not the passengers.

Yeah, kind of a bad look there if you punch out and let your passengers get spread evenly over several acres of Siberian landscape. Sort of like the captain deserting a sinking ship ahead of the passengers and the rest of the crew.

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 27, 2021.

January 27th, 2021

Bruce Kirby, another one of those knock-around actors who was in just about every 1970’s detective show except that one.

Most notably, he was Sgt. Kramer in “Columbo”. He also had several guest shots on “The Rockford Files”, and appeared on “Banacek” and “McCloud” among many other credits. (He was also the police captain on “Holmes and Yoyo”.) And his credits go all the way back to “Car 54, Where Are You?”

NYT obit for Gregory Sierra.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 301

January 26th, 2021

I would call this “True Crime Tuesday” but there’s some other jerkface out there who does that already.

I did think it might be fun to do some stuff at the intersection of crime and art.

“The Mystery Conman – The Murky Business of Counterfeit Antiques”.

Bonus: “Stealing the Mona Lisa”.

Posted in Art, History, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 26, 2021.

January 26th, 2021

Antonio Sabàto. He was most famous as one of the drivers in “Grand Prix”. He did a lot of Italian movies including “Escape from the Bronx” and “Ritornano quelli della calibro 38”.

Walter Bernstein, noted screenwriter.

Posted in Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 300

January 25th, 2021

I was thinking today we’d go for a ride.

“Operation of the Motorcycle” from Honda, apparently in 1966.

Bonus #1: “Welcome to the Murderdrome: A Brief History of Board Track Racing”.

Bonus #2: Okay, not related to motorcycles, but posted for the coolness factor: vintage video from the 1970 12 Hours of Sebring.

Mario Andretti finished first. The second place finisher? Steve McQueen.

Posted in Cars, History | Comments Closed

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