A 2025 RevolverGuy Christmas Story.
It isn’t required, and it isn’t a Christmas story, but it might help put some of the “theology” here in context if you also read “Homecoming Day” from earlier this year as well.
The Spirit of Christmas 4.
December 22nd, 2025Obit watch: December 22, 2025.
December 22nd, 2025James Ransone, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “Oldboy” (the Spike Lee remake), the bad “Hawaii Five-0”, and “Law and Order”.
Theodor Pistek, artist. As the NYT notes, he won an Academy Award for costume design for “Amadeus”. He was also a racing driver, and did paintings inspired by racing. I find “Ecce Homo” (reproduced in the obit) particularly striking.
Obit watch: December 19, 2025.
December 19th, 2025Peter Arnett, noted war correspondent.
From Vietnam’s jungles to Iraq, where he interviewed President Saddam Hussein, Mr. Arnett broke news and rules, infuriated national leaders and inspired generations of journalists. He was twice among the last Western TV broadcasters in Baghdad — as the Persian Gulf War began in 1991 and as an American-led coalition invaded in 2003.
Over 45 years, by his own account, he covered 17 wars in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America, first for The Associated Press and later for CNN and other television and print organizations. He made television documentaries, wrote two books, lectured widely and in 1997 interviewed Osama bin Laden, the leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization, somewhere in Afghanistan.
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Sue Bender, author.
Greg Biffle, former NASCAR driver. He, his wife and two children, and three other passengers were killed yesterday when their small plane crashed on approach to Statesville Regional Airport.
The Spirit of Christmas 3.
December 19th, 2025Another good Christmas story, this one from Dr. Dabbs. And I’m not just saying that because the story features a F-4 Phantom II jet.
Flaming hyena update.
December 18th, 2025Remember Marty Small, Sr., the mayor of Atlantic City? Charged with beating the s–t out of his teenage daughter?
Merry Christmas! Not guilty on all counts!
Mr. Small was accused of using a broom to strike his daughter in the head, causing her to lose consciousness. At other times in the two-month period, he hit her in the legs repeatedly, causing bruising, and threatened to “earth slam” her, prosecutors said.
“We’re not saying there shouldn’t be disagreements in the home,” a prosecutor, Elizabeth Fischer, told jurors Tuesday in a closing statement, “but we’re saying it shouldn’t be met with violence.”
The jury began deliberating late Tuesday. Almost immediately, the panel requested to listen again to a recording, made by Mr. Small’s daughter and her boyfriend, in which the mayor can be heard threatening to slam her to the ground.
Prosecutors had said that the threats were meant to instill terror; Mr. Small’s lawyers argued that they were the warnings of a parent trying to correct the behavior of a child who, in a video also shown to jurors, was prone to extreme agitation when punished.
“A father takes a phone away from his daughter, and that results in the Tasmanian devil coming out,” Mr. Small’s lawyer, Louis M. Barbone, told jurors after replaying footage taken during a separate family conflict.
In New Jersey, corporal punishment that is not considered excessive is legal.
The charges against his wife are still pending.
Firings watch.
December 17th, 2025Brian Smith out at Ohio University.
“For cause”.
Not much more information than that, though he had been previously placed “on leave”.
He was hired almost exactly a year ago: the team was 8-4 this season.
ESPN.
Obit watch: December 17, 2025.
December 17th, 2025Gil Gerard, actor.
Other credits include “Airport ’77”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, and “E.A.R.T.H. Force”.
Robert Samuelson, long time economics columnist for “Newsweek” and the Washington Post.
Norman Podhoretz, conservative political writer.
(Hattip on Mr. Gerard and Mr. Podhoretz to Lawrence.)
Edited to add: archived NYT obits for Mr. Gerard and Mr. Podhoretz.
The spirit of Christmas 2.
December 17th, 2025Remember the other day, I linked to a swell Christmas meditation from LawDog?
Well, he’s expanded it some, with the intent of publishing a children’s book for Christmas next year.
Christmas car update.
December 16th, 2025The car passed the state emissions inspection with no problem. Other than a little bit of confusion because I’d never been to this place before, it was mostly a smooth process.
With an inspection in hand, I can renew my car registration.
The State of Texas used to have a simple and straightforward website for registration renewal.
Not any more. Oh, no. Everything has shifted to something called “Texas By Texas”. So, first of all, you have to set up an account if you’ve never used “Texas by Texas” before. (I had not: I think TxT is new this year.)
Not only do they want your email address, they also want all kinds of other information. Including your physical address, your mailing address, your driver’s license number, the audit code off your driver’s license, etc. etc. et bloody cetra.
Then, once you have your TxT account set up…as far as I can tell, that’s just for your driver’s license. You have to go through a separate step to link your car registration to TxT.
At least, once I finished that, I didn’t have to fill in a lot of information to actually get the renewal done. It didn’t even ask me for proof of insurance or inspection: I think all this stuff is linked by computer statewide these days.
Of course, there were the donations. Literally half a page of donations you could make while renewing your registration:
- “Support Texas Veterans”
- Texas state parks (as I recall, they want at least $5 for that)
- Organ donation
- Special Olympics
- “Ending Homelessness Fund”
- “Evidence Testing Grant Program”
- “Stop Human Trafficking”
And the registration itself is $78.25 before any donations. Including $10 for bridges, $1.50 for “child safety”, $7.50 for the “inspection replacement fee” (just because the state did away with safety inspections doesn’t mean that they don’t want their money), $2.75 for the “emissions inspection fee” (that’s over and above the $11.50 state fee for the emissions inspection, plus $7 for something, I’m not exactly sure what, plus 75 cents for using a credit card), and $4.75 for “processing and handling”. Tell you what, I’ll give you $2 for processing, and I’ll do the “handling” myself.
Nickels. Dimes. They add up, you know?
Obit watch: December 16, 2025.
December 16th, 2025Joe Ely, one of the great Texas musicians. Variety. NYT (wow!).
I’m generally a little cynical about Texas musicians, but even I have to acknowledge that he was one of the greats. And I could just post YouTube videos all day.
This isn’t an Ely original, but I prefer this to Robert Earl Keen. That is a controversial opinion, I know.
Lawrence describes this as the greatest song ever written about a fighting rooster. Can’t argue with that.
Interestingly, he was an early adopter: he had a BBS system, back in the day when BBS systems were a thing.
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He was 78.
Anthony Geary, actor. Other credits include “UHF”, “Project U.F.O.”, “Shaft” (the TV series)…
…and “Mannix”. (“A Way to Dusty Death”, season 7, episode 2. He was “Eddie Decken”.)
Christmas is coming.
December 15th, 2025I am officially on vacation as of today.
You know what that means, right?
Yes, it’s just not Christmas until I see Hans Gruber fall from the Nakatomi Tower.
For what it’s worth, the tree is up (but the lights are not plugged in yet) and the inflatable Christmas Corgi is going in the front yard today.
I still have to get the car inspected. Yes, Texas did away with safety inspections at the first of this year. But I’m in an area that requires emissions testing prior to renewing your registration. And the shop I used to use for inspections no longer has an inspection technician: they redirected me to a quickie inspection place located behind a drive-through liquor and daiquiri stand up the road a piece. And that place is only open during the week…
Obit watch: December 15, 2025.
December 15th, 2025Dave Ward, legendary Houston newscaster.
My family was a KPRC/Channel 2 family when I was growing up in Houston, but everyone was familiar with Dave Ward. Of course, this was back when there were only three channels…
Rob Reiner. I don’t know what to say about this: it seems to be a still breaking story, and the circumstances seem awful.
The spirit of Christmas.
December 12th, 2025Obit watch: December 12, 2025.
December 12th, 2025Lawrence emailed me that the great SF writer John Varley had passed away, but he couldn’t find an obit anywhere until Michael Swanwick posted one.
I haven’t read many of his novels, but I’ve read a lot of his short fiction. “The Persistence of Vision“. “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” (which is a fun story that was adapted into a horrible PBS movie, which you can (but shouldn’t) watch in the MST3K version on the ‘Tube). “Air Raid”, which was adapted into Millennium, the novel, which was turned into “Millennium”, the movie (which I hear is awful, but have not seen).
“Press Enter■”. I remember standing in a Bookstop in Austin reading that story when it was published in Asimov’s…and coming very close to vomiting all over the magazine when I got to a key point in the story. (If you’ve read it, you can probably guess where.)
Leadership Secrets of Non-Fictional Characters (part 15 in a series)
December 12th, 2025I’ve said before, I have a high barrier for linking to ESPN feature articles. (I don’t even really like linking to ESPN news articles, except maybe as supplemental material. Sometimes I have to, but I generally prefer local news sources.)