Obit watch: January 24, 2021.

January 24th, 2021

Gregory Sierra, knock-around actor.

He did some theater work, but was mostly a TV and movie actor. He was “Julio”, Fred’s sidekick on “Sanford and Son”, Carlos “El Puerco” Valdez (the guy who kidnapped Jessica) on “Soap”, and “Chano”, one of the detectives in the early seasons of “Barney Miller”. He also did a lot of guest appearances, including nearly every major detective show of the 1970s (except that one): “Police Story”, “Banacek”, “Hawaii 5-0” (the good one), “Columbo”, “McCloud”, “Mission: Impossible”, and the list goes on. He was also Lieutenant Rodriguez in the early episodes of “Miami Vice” (that character got killed off and was replaced by Edward James Olmos’s “Martin Castillo”).

His movie credits include “Beneath the Planet of the Apes” and, interestingly, “The Other Side of the Wind“.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | 2 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 298

January 23rd, 2021

Happy birthday John Moses Browning!

“American Gunmaker: The John M. Browning Story”.

Bonus: “Tales of the Gun” from the History Channel, covering Mr. Browning and his work.

Posted in Guns, History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 23, 2021.

January 23rd, 2021

Larry King. Or, as the old story goes, “Larry King Radio“.

He bragged that he almost never prepared for an interview. If his guest was an author promoting a book, he did not read it but asked simply, “What’s it about?” or “Why did you write this?”
Nor did he pose as an intellectual. He salted his talk with “ain’t,” and “the” sounded like “da.” To a public skeptical of experts, he seemed refreshingly average: just a curious guy asking questions impulsively.
“There are many broadcasters who’ll recite three minutes of facts before they ask a question,” he said in a memoir, “My Remarkable Journey” (2009, with Cal Fussman). “As if to say: Let me show you how much I know. I think the guest should be the expert.”

Posted in Obits, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 22, 2021.

January 22nd, 2021

Hank Aaron. NYT. ESPN. MLB.

Mira Furlan. She was Delenn in “Babylon 5” and “Danielle Rousseau” on “Lost”.

Posted in History, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 297

January 22nd, 2021

I haven’t put up any RoadRich bait recently, so today is his day.

“The Story Of Hong Kong’s Kai Tak Airport”.

I’m fairly sure this is a view from the ground of a 747 on final to Kai Tak.

And here’s a cockpit view of the Kai Tak approach.

Question for anyone who has the new Microsoft Flight Simulator: can you set up an approach and fly in to the virtual Kai Tak?

“Captain Joe” explains V1, Vr, and V2. If you watch movies (well, if you watch the kind of movies we watch) you’ll hear the pilots calling out those speeds. But what exactly are they?

“Crawl through a B-29 Superfortress IN FLIGHT!”

What is it like to punch out of an F-15 at 600 knots?

Spoiler: not fun.

Posted in History, Planes | 1 Comment »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 296

January 21st, 2021

Travel Thursday!

I’m 99 44/100ths percent sure I haven’t used this one before, and I feel like I’m reaching the end of the string of Pan Am videos. So…

“Wings To Europe: Grand Tour” from 1959.

… a tour of Europe in the grand style of the 20th century world. A day in each of the Grand Tour cities: Lisbon, Madrid, Rome, Florence, the French Riviera and Paris.

Bonus: ’tis the season. Let’s go skiing!

“Winter Olympic Playground 1960” is a vintage promo film for Squaw Valley, California, and the facilities there. Squaw Valley was the site of the 1960 Winter Olympics, and is about 40 miles from Reno. (The film was done by the Harrah’s Club casino in Reno: it looks like it was still there when I was there (with a slight name change), but it closed permanently in March of 2020.)

Posted in History, Travel | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 295

January 20th, 2021

There’s a part of me that doesn’t want to post this because it feels like unpaid advertising for Blade HQ.

But there’s a larger part of me that likes the idea of going around asking people who know, and deal with knives, what they are carrying. It is sort of like asking a professional photographer “What’s in your camera bag?”. At least for me.

So this is a compromise: I’m posting the video, but I’m not linking to Blade HQ or any other online knife shop. If they want promotion, they can buy some advertising. My rates are surprisingly reasonable.

(What do I carry? The knife in my pocket right now is one of the smaller Victorinox Swiss Army knives. I prefer to carry a Swiss Champ, but I’ve set mine aside for the moment: I need to send it in and get it serviced.)

Here’s another one of those in the “what’s in your (x)?” vein: “Racing Team Tool Box Tour – With Specialty Tools”.

I found this mildly interesting: “Knives you don’t hand to people”.

For some reason, “Matt’s Off Road Recovery” has been popping up a lot in my recommendations. I’ve always had kind of a vague general curiosity about how you get your off-road vehicle back if you have a mechanical breakdown or some other problem, so I guess Matt’s answers that question. Although I’m not sure these people really want it back, but it seems like one of those “can’t leave it here, unless you want a major fine” situations.

Posted in Cars, History, Knives | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 20, 2021.

January 20th, 2021

Don Sutton.

Sutton’s major league career began with the Dodgers in 1966. He went on to win 233 games during 16 seasons with the team, the most in franchise history.
“When you gave him the ball, you knew one thing,” the former Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda, who died this month, once said. “Your pitcher was going to give you everything he had.”
Sutton also pitched for the Houston Astros, Milwaukee Brewers, California Angels and Oakland A’s before retiring in 1988. He was elected to the Hall of Fame on his fifth attempt.

…

Sutton — whose major league career began as part of a Dodger pitching rotation that also included Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale — won 20 games only once (he had a 21-10 record in 1976). But he is tied for 14th place in career wins with Nolan Ryan, and ranked seventh in both strikeouts, with 3,574, and innings, with 5,282.1.
He holds the Dodger team records not only for career wins but also for strikeouts (2,696), starts (533), shutouts (52), home runs surrendered (309) and losses (181).

Barbara Shelley, British actress. She did a lot of horror films: “Village of the Damned”, “Dracula: Prince of Darkness”, “Quatermass and the Pit”, etc. She also did a lot of non-horror TV, including “Eastenders” and two guest shots on “12 O’Clock High”.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Happy National Buy an AK Day!

January 20th, 2021

I’ve been neglecting this holiday for the past few years, but: today is National Buy an AK Day.

Contrary to what some may believe, this holiday has nothing to do with any political events that take place on January 20th: rather, it is inspired by the classic Ice Cube song “It Was a Good Day” (“Today I didn’t even have to use my A.K./I got to say it was a good day“) and the hard work done by Donovan Strain who determined that the “good day” in the song was January 20, 1992.

If you have trouble finding an AK at your local gun shop, you might try Bud’s or Classic Firearms, though stocks at both are limited. If you already have an AK, I encourage you to pick up some 7.62×39 ammo, or whatever caliber your AK is chambered in. (Ammoseek.com is helpful if you can’t find your ammo locally.) You might also buy some normal capacity magazines, if you’re so inclined. (CDNN Sports seems to be well stocked.)

“Can I buy something that’s not an AK?” You certainly can: I’m not the boss of what you can and can’t purchase. But Ice Cube didn’t say “I didn’t even have to use my AR” or “I didn’t have to use my FN 5.7”, so this isn’t National Buy a Gun Day. (That’s April 15th.)

Posted in Guns, History, Music | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 294

January 19th, 2021

Going a little long today. Also going back to the music history well, because it has been more than a week since I’ve done that, and I don’t want to get stuck on guns, food, Roman history, or military history. (I may do some more military history tomorrow.)

Short shameful confession: I have not had a chance to watch all of these two videos yet. I’m posting them here partially as bookmarks, because they involve two bands that I’m partial to.

“Rebel Truce – The History Of The Clash”

“Fresh Fruit For Rotting Eyeballs”, a documentary about the Dead Kennedys.

Posted in History, Music | Comments Closed

When you’re a Met…

January 19th, 2021

…you shouldn’t send “explicit texts” to a reporter. Actually, you probably shouldn’t send explicit texts to anybody, no matter who you are, and even if they are consensual (as they will come back to haunt you) but especially if you’re in a high ranking organizational position.

Jared Porter out as general manager of the Mets.

Porter, who was hired by Mets team president Sandy Alderson this offseason, sent the texts to a foreign female reporter in 2016 when he was running the Cubs scouting department.
The texts included a photo of a bulge in Porter’s pants while he was laying in bed and an erect penis. At one point Porter sent 62 consecutive texts to the reporter without a response.
“The more explicit ones are not of me. Those are like, kinda like joke-stock images,” Porter told ESPN after acknowledging sending the texts.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 293

January 18th, 2021

I observed the other day that I was reading Mike Duncan’s The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic (affiliate link). Great and good FotB Borepatch commented that he liked Duncan’s book.

So…from 2017 and Mike Duncan’s book tour, “The Storm Before the Storm” at Politics and Prose in DC. If you’re a “Revoutions” listener, you’ve heard the podcast version of this, but for those of you who are not (and for those of you who want to see what Mike Duncan looked like three years ago), here you go.

I get a particular kick out of his stories about his early writerly ambitions: wanting to write “Redwall” knockoffs, except the mice flew airplanes, and then later wanting to be the next Phil Dick.

Bonus: a more recent (July of 2020) interview with Mr. Duncan from “The Current” which is apparently something the Hatchette Book Group puts out.

Posted in Books, History | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

January 18th, 2021

Jeremy Pruitt out as head coach in Tennessee.

Additionally, Phil Fulmer is “retiring” as athletic director. The Tennessean claims his retirement is unrelated to Pruitt’s firing, but I’m skeptical.

Pruitt’s record was 16-19 in three seasons, and 3-7 this year. The team lost seven of their last eight games by double-digit margins.

But the major issue is that Pruitt is entangled in a messy recruiting scandal.

Pruitt’s exit comes on the heels of Tennessee launching an in-house investigation dating back to November into alleged recruiting improprieties that sources told ESPN centered in part on extra benefits provided to football recruits on unofficial visits. Pruitt, with his attorneys present, met with investigators for several hours Thursday. That meeting was monitored by NCAA officials via Zoom. At least one other assistant, inside linebackers coach Brian Niedermeyer, had a lengthy meeting with investigators Wednesday, also with his attorneys present and NCAA officials monitoring virtually.

Edited to add: Mike the Musicologist sent over a report that outside linebackers coach Shelton Felton and inside linebackers coach Brian Niedermeyer have also been fired. An updated report from ESPN also indicates that unnamed others have been let go as well. And all of these firings (including Pruitt’s) are being reported as “for cause”, which means no contract buyout.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 17, 2021.

January 17th, 2021

Phil Spector. This is another one of those where I don’t have much to say, really: everyone knows the story (and if you don’t, it is recapped in the obit).

Sylvain Sylvain, of the New York Dolls.

Peter Mark Richman, actor. He had a long list of credits, including soap operas and a long list of 70’s cop/detective shows…

…including “Mannix”. (“Walk With a Dead Man”, season 3, episode 15.)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 292

January 17th, 2021

Science Sunday!

Whatever happened to chloroform? Well, turns out as an anesthetic it occasionally caused complications like death. And it may be a carcinogen.

It is classified as an extremely hazardous substance in the United States as defined in Section 302 of the U.S. Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act (42 U.S.C. 11002), and is subject to strict reporting requirements by facilities that produce, store, or use it in significant quantities.

But why should we let that stop us?

Oh, yeah: it also decomposes into phosgene unless you stabilize it first. Which is a bit concerning…

Next: “I somehow convinced myself to order a full kilo instead.”

That’s a full kilo of…sodium cyanide.

“Does cyanide actually smell like almonds?”

This is right on the annoying border for me, so I won’t hold it against you if you skip the video and read the notes instead.

This one might be a little more interesting: the chemistry of arsenic, from the Periodic Videos folks.

As a side note to this, and because Lawrence and I have been talking about it, I went looking for videos on Shadows From the Walls of Death. I did find a few about the book (not death metal) but…they were all in foreign languages without subtitles.

Okay, just one more: “The Science Behind Shaped Charges”.

Posted in Explosives, Geek, History | Comments Closed

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