I’ve been in a mood.

August 11th, 2022

So here are two swell stories, about things I’m not even particularly a fan of.

1. American Girl dolls.

2. J-pop.

Edited to add: And from the Department of It Never Fails, shortly after I posted this, something else happened that put me in a better mood. I can’t talk about it now (I hope to be able to in the future), but: go buy stuff from Hornady. Yes, this is an endorsement. No, they haven’t given me anything for this endorsement.

Posted in Endorsements, Guns, Music | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 11, 2022.

August 11th, 2022

Gary C. Schroen, CIA officer.

He was most famous for leading the first team of CIA people – probably the first team of Americans, period – into Afghanistan after 9/11.

Mr. Schroen selected seven men and gathered the weapons, outdoor gear and food they would need. The mission was code-named Jawbreaker. At least one representative from the military was supposed to join them, but the Pentagon pulled out of the mission at the last minute, declaring it too dangerous.
“There was no rescue force,” Bruce Riedel, a former C.I.A. case officer who worked frequently with Mr. Schroen, said in a phone interview. “If they got in trouble, there were no American troops to come rescue them.”
Before Mr. Schroen left for the mission, Mr. Black took him aside.
“I want to make it clear what your real job is,” Mr. Schroen recalled Mr. Black telling him. “Once the Taliban are broken, your job is to find bin Laden, kill him and bring his head back on dry ice.”

He also wrote a book, First In: An Insider’s Account of How the CIA Spearheaded the War on Terror in Afghanistan (affiliate link).

Darryl Hunt, bass player for the Pogues. I apologize for not inserting a musical interlude here, but I couldn’t find one that featured Mr. Hunt. If anybody has one, they are more than welcome to put a link in comments.

Posted in Books, History, Music, Obits | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: August 10, 2022.

August 10th, 2022

Taiki Yanagida, Japanese jockey. He was trampled during a race a week ago, and had been hospitalized since.

Ryan Fellows. He was on a show called “Street Outlaws”, which airs on Discovery, and seems to involve drag races on closed public roads.

Citing “a source connected with the show,” TMZ says Fellows crashed during the eighth out of nine races scheduled for the night and that Fellows was driving a “gold Nissan 240Z.” It’s unclear whether this is actually the orange “Scooby Doo” Nissan documented extensively on social media and described as a 280Z by Fellows on YouTube or a different Z altogether. The Street Outlaws star reportedly lost control near the finish line causing the car to roll and catch fire. Onlookers apparently attempted to get him out but could not do so in time.

Gene LeBell, noted stuntman. 252 credits in IMDB.

During taping, it was reported that Lee was beating up on the stuntmen, prompting stunt coordinator Bennie Dobbins to bring in LeBell to help set the actor straight by “putting him in a headlock or something.”
In his 2005 autobiography The Godfather of Grappling, LeBell remembered grabbing Lee, who then “started making all those noises that he became famous for … but he didn’t try to counter me, so I think he was more surprised than anything else.”
He then hoisted Lee over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry and ran around the set as Lee shouted, “Put me down or I’ll kill you.”

If that rings a bell, yeah, Quentin Tarantino says that Mr. LeBell influenced the Cliff Booth character in “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”. Apparently in more ways than just the Bruce Lee bit.

Booth also had an accusation of murder hovering over his head, which might have been a veiled reference to LeBell being charged in the murder of private investigator Robert Duke Hall in 1976. LeBell was acquitted of that charge, and his conviction as an accessory to the crime was later overturned.

Here’s a PDF of a vintage NYT article about the Hall murder, if you want to start down that rabbit hole.

Posted in Cars, Horses, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

The Audio Files.

August 9th, 2022

This is a couple of days old, but I don’t think it has gotten a lot of attention, and it lightly pushes some of my buttons.

There’s a company called Mobile Fidelity, or MoFi. They press records. They also have some recordings available in SACD format, and sell record accessories and electronics. I talked to Mike the Musicologist, and he owns some of their SACD recordings, which I will take as a qualified endorsement.

MoFi’s big deal was that they supposedly used “original master tapes” for their recordings.

In the world of audiophiles — where provenance is everything and the quest is to get as close to the sound of an album’s original recording as possible — digital is considered almost unholy. And using digital while claiming not to is the gravest sin a manufacturer can commit.

Mike Esposito runs a record store in Phoenix, “The ‘In’ Groove”. He put up a video on July 14th claiming that, contrary to their advertising, MoFi “had actually been using digital files in its production chain” for their re-issues. (And apparently it wasn’t just re-issues of material that was originally recorded digitally.)

(Remember the early days of CD audio and the SPARS code? Wasn’t that a time?)

Anyway, a lot of audiophiles attacked Mr. Esposito for posting the video and implying MoFi’s claims were not legit.

MoFi, for their part, invited Mr. Esposito to visit them in California. So he went out there, and sat down with some of MoFi’s engineers…

That visit resulted in a second video, published July 20, in which MoFi’s engineers confirmed, with a kind of awkward casualness, that Esposito was correct with his claims. The company that made its name on authenticity had been deceptive about its practices. The episode is part of a crisis MoFi now concedes was mishandled.

I think this is that video.

“They were completely deceitful,” says Richard Drutman, 50, a New York City filmmaker who has purchased more than 50 of MoFi’s albums over the years. “I never would have ordered a single Mobile Fidelity product if I had known it was sourced from a digital master.”

…

“Not that you can’t make good records with digital, but it just isn’t as natural as when you use the original tape,” says Bernie Grundman, 78, the mastering engineer who worked on the original recordings of Steely Dan’s “Aja,” Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” and Dr. Dre’s “The Chronic.”

As you know, Bob, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for the kind of audiophile who spends $5,000 on a turntable for their 78 RPM records. On the other hand, I also don’t have a lot of sympathy for companies that get people to buy stuff by lying to them. On the gripping hand, who am I to look down on these people, when I spend a fair amount of my disposable income on obscure Smith and Wessons and first editions?

Mobile Fidelity and its parent company, Music Direct, were slow to respond to the revelation. But last week, the company began updating the sourcing information on its website and also agreed to its first interview, with The Washington Post. The company says it first used DSD, or Direct Stream Digital technology, on a 2011 reissue of Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco.” By the end of 2011, 60 percent of its vinyl releases incorporated DSD. All but one of the reissues as part of its One-Step series, which include $125 box-set editions of Santana, Carole King and the Eagles, have used that technology. Going forward, all MoFi cutting will incorporate DSD.

…

Marketing has been a key element of the MoFi model. Most releases include a banner on the album cover proclaiming it the “Original Master Recording.” And every One-Step, which cut out parts of the production process to supposedly get closer to the original tape, includes a thick explainer sheet in which the company outlines in exacting detail how it creates its records. But there has been one very important item missing: any mention of a digital step.
The company has obscured the truth in other ways. MoFi employees have done interviews for years without mentioning digital. In 2020, Grant McLean, a Canadian customer, got into a debate with a friend about MoFi’s sourcing. McLean believed in the company and wrote to confirm that he was right. In a response he provided to The Post, a customer service representative wrote McLean that “there is no analog to digital conversion in our vinyl cutting process.”

…

The fallout of the MoFi revelation has thrown the audiophile community into something of an existential crisis. The quality of digitized music has long been criticized because of how much data was stripped out of files so MP3s could fit on mobile devices. But these days, with the right equipment, digital recordings can be so good that they can fool even the best of ears. Many of MoFi’s now-exposed records were on Fremer’s and Esposito’s own lists of the best-sounding analog albums.

What else is there to say? Other than, if you can’t tell the difference, is there a difference?

Posted in Geek, Music | 2 Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#96 in a series)

August 9th, 2022

This is a bit of a change-up pitch.

RBB is a German public broadcaster. More specifically:

RBB is one of the nine regional public broadcasters that make up ARD, Germany’s joint pubweb network which, with an annual budget of $7 billion (€6.9 billion) and more than 22 thousand employees, is the world’s largest public broadcaster. RBB is also one of the main sponsors of the Berlin International Film Festival.

Patricia Schlesinger was the director of RBB. She resigned on Sunday, as did Wolf-Dieter Wolf, chairman of the board.

On Monday, Berlin’s public prosecutor confirmed it had opened an investigation into accusations Schlesinger embezzled RBB funds to support her lifestyle, including getting the network to pay for lavish dinners at her home and financing her private use of a luxury company car.

…

Schlesinger, who was on a $308,000 (€307,000) annual salary at RBB, is accused of using the German public broadcaster to bankroll a lavish lifestyle for herself and her ex-husband, the Spiegel journalist Gerhard Spörl. Among the allegations, many of which have been revealed in explicit detail in the German media, are that Schlesinger regularly hosted exclusive dinners at her home for prominent guests, getting RBB to pick up the bill, and that she pushed through a $662,000 (€650,000) luxury renovation of her office – all while cutting jobs and programming costs at her network.

Wolf-Dieter Wolf has been “linked with some of the accusations leveled at Schlesinger”, whatever that means.

Posted in Law, Politics, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 9, 2022.

August 9th, 2022

I’m thinking about no longer posting obits.

Recently, it seems like as soon as I post one obit watch, two or three or more people die. Clearly, correlation implies causality: my posting obits is making people die, therefore, if I stop posting, people will stop passing away. Right?

Well, it’s a theory, anyway.

David McCullough, historian and author. It is an odd thing: I enjoy history, but I mostly haven’t read any of McCullough’s work, and I don’t know why. (I say “mostly” because we did have some of those Reader’s Digest Condensed Books volumes around the house when I was very young, and one of them had The Johnstown Flood in it. I remember being fascinated, but more for the account of the actual flood itself than the human and engineering factors leading up to it. I should probably grab a copy of the real book somewhere and read it.)

Olivia Newton-John.

In 1970, she was asked to join a crudely manufactured group named Toomorrow, formed by the American producer Don Kirshner in an attempt to repeat his earlier success with the Monkees. Following his grand design, the group starred in a science-fiction film written for them and recorded its soundtrack. Both projects tanked.
“It was terrible, and I was terrible in it,” she later told The New York Times.

The name of the film is also “Toomorrow“, as best as I can tell. There’s a PAL DVD listed on Amazon as “currently unavailable”, but you can get the soundtrack on vinyl.

Lawrence emailed the obit for Lamont Dozier.

In collaboration with the brothers Brian and Eddie Holland, Mr. Dozier wrote songs for dozens of musical acts, but the trio worked most often with Martha and the Vandellas (“Heat Wave,” “Jimmy Mack”), the Four Tops (“Bernadette,” “I Can’t Help Myself”) and especially the Supremes (“You Can’t Hurry Love,” “Baby Love”). Between 1963 and 1972, the Holland-Dozier-Holland team was responsible for more than 80 singles that hit the Top 40 of the pop or R&B charts, including 15 songs that reached No. 1. “It was as if we were playing the lottery and winning every time,” Mr. Dozier wrote in his autobiography, “How Sweet It Is” (2019, written with Scott B. Bomar).

…

Sometimes he would have an idea for a song’s feel: He wrote the Four Tops’ “Reach Out I’ll Be There” thinking about Bob Dylan’s phrasing on “Like a Rolling Stone.” Sometimes he concocted an attention-grabbing gimmick, like the staccato guitars at the beginning of the Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” that evoked a radio news bulletin.
And sometimes Mr. Dozier uttered a real-life sentence that worked in song, as he did one night when he was in a Detroit motel with a girlfriend and a different girlfriend started pounding on the door. He pleaded with the interloper, “Stop, in the name of love” — and then realized the potency of what he had said. The Holland-Dozier-Holland team quickly hammered the sentence into a three-minute single, the Supremes’ “Stop! In the Name of Love.”

Posted in Books, History, Movies, Music, Obits | 3 Comments »

Short observation on film.

August 8th, 2022

The Saturday Night Movie Group watched “The Last Emperor” over the weekend.

“The Last Emperor” is a beautiful looking movie. Wikipedia claims the budget was $23.8 million in 1987 dollars and every penny of that shows on the screen. Of course, the production had a lot of help from the Communist Chinese government, so I’m sure they were able to stretch their budget quite a bit…

(IMDB says £23,000,000. I’m not sure what the conversion factor between 1987 pounds and US dollars is.)

Here’s my quick point: $23.8 million in 1987 dollars translates to $62,079,241.20 in 2022 dollars.

The “unspekable” “Batgirl” movie that is allegedly so bad Warner Brothers won’t release it cost $90 to $100 million (sources vary).

I guess talent will out. Helped, of course, by the Commies.

Posted in History, Movies | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 8, 2022.

August 8th, 2022

Clu Gulager, long time character actor. THR.

165 acting credits in IMDB. Man was in everything, from “The Virginian” to “The F.B.I” to “The Last Picture Show” to “Once Upon a Time… In Hollywood”, with lots of stops along the way…

…including “Mannix”. (“The Man Who Wasn’t There”, season 6, episode 16.)

Roger E. Mosley. Credits beyond “Magnum, P.I.” include “The Rockford Files”, “McCloud”, “McQ” (which Clu Gulager was also in), “The Mack”, and “The Sixth Sense” (the 1972 TV series).

As Mosley remembered it, his agent told him: ” ‘It’s starring this guy Tom Selleck. Tom Selleck has made about five pilot shows … and none of them has sold. So here’s what you do, Roger: Sign up for the show, go over to Hawaii, they’ll treat you good for the 20 days it will take to shoot the [pilot], you’ll get a lot of money, and then you come home. A show with Tom Selleck always fails, and you’ll be fine.’
“Well, 8 1/2 years later … “
Mosley in real life was a licensed private helicopter pilot (something the producers discovered after he was hired, he said) but not allowed to fly on the series.

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

Obit watch: August 6, 2022.

August 6th, 2022

Today’s kind of a run-down of people who aren’t as famous as I usually cover, but whose obits I find interesting in one way or another.

Dee Hock. He’s generally credited with having built the consortium that became Visa into what it is today.

As chief executive, he oversaw the development of the first electronic authorization system and the first interbank electronic clearing and settlement system. Banks would issue the cards, not Visa, and they were mandated to add the magnetic stripe to their cards.

Melissa Bank. The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing was a big deal (I never read it). Her follow-up book seems to have been well regarded, but didn’t do as well, and she was working on a third book when she died at 61.

Mary Ellin Barrett. She was one of Irving Berlin’s daughters, and wrote a book about her father (Irving Berlin: A Daughter’s Memoir).

In it, Ms. Barrett offered a new portrait of her father: droll, self-effacing, with an unspoken perfectionism that would doom him to bitterness in old age but that for four decades of maturity pushed him to dazzling artistic achievements, along with attentiveness to his family.
That has become a definitive insider’s view of Irving Berlin. The Times critic Stephen Holden credited Ms. Barrett with the ability to balance affection for her father with awareness of his flaws, and he called her book a “touching, wise, gracefully written memoir.”

Albert Woodfox, who spent 42 years in solitary at Angola.

Mr. Woodfox was placed in solitary confinement in 1972 after being accused of murdering Brent Miller, a 23-year-old corrections officer. A tangled legal ordeal ensued, including two convictions, both overturned, and three indictments stretching over four decades.
The case struck most commentators as problematic. No forensic evidence linked Mr. Woodfox to the crime, so the authorities’ argument depended on witnesses, who over time were discredited or proved unreliable.

Sid Jacobson, comics writer.

Posted in Books, Law, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#94 and #95 in a series)

August 4th, 2022

Wanda Vázquez, the former governor of Puerto Rico, has been charged with taking bribes from a donor to her campaign.

The donor, Julio M. Herrera Velutini — a Venezuelan banker who has been mired in regulatory problems in Puerto Rico — was also charged. Mr. Herrera, 50, owns Bancrédito, an international bank that faced scrutiny from Puerto Rico regulators over suspicious banking transactions.
According to the Department of Justice, Mr. Herrera wanted the island’s top banking regulator to be replaced, and in return offered to pay $300,000 to political consultants working on the governor’s campaign. Ms. Vázquez, who was facing re-election at the time, agreed to the plan, W. Stephen Muldrow, the United States Attorney for Puerto Rico, said, adding that Mr. Herrera then formed a political action committee for Ms. Vázquez.
The grand jury’s 42-page indictment details meetings and text messages purported to show the quid-pro-quo nature of the arrangement. The governor went through with her end of the bargain, forcing the incumbent banking commissioner to step down and installing Mr. Herrera’s choice as the new commissioner, according to the indictment.

It gets a little better: the bribe money was funneled through an ex-FBI agent.

Mr. Rossini, 60, is a former F.B.I. supervisory agent who, before the Sept. 11 attacks, was assigned to a C.I.A. task force investigating Al Qaeda, but was criminally charged for illegally running unauthorized searches on a government computer. After pleading guilty to those charges, he paid a fine and served community service and a year of probation.

Ms. Vázquez became governor in 2019, after the previous governor resigned. She lost the primary election in 2020. The NYT describes her as a pro-statehood Republican.

The former governor, the banker and the former federal agent were each charged with conspiracy, federal programs bribery, and honest services wire fraud, and could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted…

Do I need to say it?

In other news, Hillsborough County State Attorney Andrew Warren got booted out of office. No, he didn’t lose an election. No, he hasn’t been indicted.

Ron DeSantis fired his arse for not enforcing state law.

At a news conference flanked by police from around Tampa Bay, DeSantis said Warren has “put himself publicly above the law” by signing letters saying he would not enforce laws prohibiting gender-affirming care for minors or laws limiting abortion.

…

DeSantis’ order does not cite examples of Warren not prosecuting individual cases. The state has no laws on gender-affirming care that Warren could refuse to prosecute. Instead, DeSantis’ order points to Warren’s public comments on abortion, transgender issues and office policies Warren has adopted.

But:

…Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said at Thursday’s news conference that police have had long-running frustrations with Warren for not prosecuting particular cases.
“I continue to work with my law enforcement counterparts who privately are frustrated with the state attorney, who seems intently focused on empathy for criminals and less interested in pursuing justice for crime victims,” Chronister said.

In addition to the abortion and transgender stuff, the complaints include:

▪ Warren enacting a policy not to prosecute “certain criminal violations, including trespassing at a business location, disorderly conduct, disorderly intoxication, and prostitution.”
▪ Warren enacting a policy “against prosecuting crimes where the initial encounter between law enforcement and the defendant results from a non-criminal violation in connection with riding a bicycle or a pedestrian violation.”

Bonus: Scott Israel is apparently working as a chief of police in Opa-locka, Florida. That’s Scott Israel, former Broward County Sheriff, who got booted from office by Ron DeSantis after the Parkland shooting. Did not know this.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 4, 2022.

August 4th, 2022

Private First Class Robert E. Simanek (USMC – ret.). Alt link.

Private Simanek received the Medal of Honor for actions during the Korean War. From his Medal of Honor citation:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while serving with Company F, in action against enemy aggressor forces. While accompanying a patrol en route to occupy a combat outpost forward of friendly lines, Private First Class Simanek exhibited a high degree of courage and a resolute spirit of self-sacrifice in protecting the lives of his fellow marines. With his unit ambushed by an intense concentration of enemy mortar and small-arms fire, and suffering heavy casualties, he was forced to seek cover with the remaining members of the patrol in a nearby trench line. Determined to save his comrades when a hostile grenade was hurled into their midst, he unhesitatingly threw himself on the deadly missile absorbing the shattering violence of the exploding charge in his body and shielding his fellow marines from serious injury or death. Gravely wounded as a result of his heroic action, Private First Class Simanek, by his daring initiative and great personal valor in the face of almost certain death, served to inspire all who observed him and upheld the highest traditions of the U.S. Naval Service.

I kind of liked this quote:

“I had been to the outpost before and thought of it as a somewhat vacation because no action had ever been there all the time I’d been on that particular part of the line,” Mr. Simanek recalled in an interview with the government website Department of Defense News in 2020. “So I took an old Reader’s Digest and a can of precious beer in my big back pocket and thought I was really going to have a relaxing situation. It didn’t turn out that way.”

He was 92. His death (according to the NYT) leaves two surviving MoH recipients from the Korean War: Hiroshi Miyamura, who is 96, and Ralph Puckett Jr., who is 95.

Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Indiana) was killed in a car accident yesterday. Two of her aides, district director Zachery Potts and communications director Emma Thomson, were also killed.

Lawrence sent over an obit for British actor John Steiner, who died in a car accident on Sunday. Credits include “Caligula”, “Deported Women of the SS Special Section”, and “The .44 Specialist”.

Richard Tait, co-inventor of “Cranium”. He was 58, and died of COVID complications.

Dallas Edeburn, deputy with the Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office in Minnesota. He was found dead in his car after his shift. In March of 2021, he was in a serious accident when his patrol car was hit by a stolen car fleeing from the police. Other officers pulled him from his burning car, and he sustained pretty serious injuries. It isn’t clear if his death is related to the previous incident.

Johnny Famechon, former featherweight champion of the world.

The Australian boxer’s most memorable world title victory was his decision win against Cuban Jose Legra for the WBC title at London’s Albert Hall in 1969. Famechon boxed professionally for more than 20 years and had a record of 56 wins (20 by knockout), five losses and six draws.

Posted in Cops, Law, Movies, Obits, Politics | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: August 3, 2022.

August 3rd, 2022

Vin Scully. LAT through archive.is.

For all the Dodgers’ marquee players since World War II, Mr. Scully was the enduring face of the franchise. He was a national sports treasure as well, broadcasting for CBS and NBC. He called baseball’s Game of the Week, All-Star Games, the playoffs and more than two dozen World Series. In 2009, the American Sportscasters Association voted him No. 1 on its list of the “Top 50 Sportscasters of All Time.”

…

In a poll of fans conducted by the Dodgers in 1976, Mr. Scully was voted the most memorable personality from the team’s first two decades in Los Angeles. In 1982, he was elected to the broadcasters’ wing of the Baseball Hall of Fame. In 1995, he received an Emmy Award for lifetime achievement in sports broadcasting.

…

Fans came to trust him when the team struggled and he wasn’t afraid to say so. After television took over, his broadcasts retained a familiar tenor; belonging to a generation before instant replay, he still used his words to paint a picture. Every game included shots of children in the stands. Every at-bat, it seems, prompted a quip.
Talking about an opposing player, Scully once said: “Andre Dawson has a bruised knee and is listed as day-to-day. … Aren’t we all?”

…

Home life was devoted to children and grandchildren and a reading list that included James Michener as well as books about famous court trials.
“I’m certainly not an intellectual,” he said. “I just have a fairly curious mind.”

Mo Ostin, music executive.

The list of artists signed to the constellation of affiliated Warner Bros. labels when they were guided by Mr. Ostin reads like a dream-world music hall of fame. It includes pivotal singers of the 1950s like Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby and Sammy Davis Jr.; innovators of the 1960s and ’70s like Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell and the Grateful Dead; and game-changers of the ’80s and ’90s like Madonna, R.E.M. and Green Day.

“Batgirl”, the movie. I’m seeing estimates that this cost between $90 and $100 million, so it’d have to pull in about $300 million to break even. Does Warner Brothers have no confidence that they can make at least $300 million? Doesn’t any superhero movie these days pull in about $300 million in the first week?

Or is this part of WB’s Machiavellian plan? Announce that they consider the movie to be un-releasable, wait for the Internet clamor to see the movie (insert accusations of sexism and racism), then reverse their decision, release the movie, and hope that public attention gets them to at least break-even? (See “Snyder Cut“.)

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: August 1, 2022.

August 1st, 2022

It never fails. I posted an obit watch yesterday, and as soon as I did, it got hectic.

Samuel Sandoval has passed away at the age of 98. Mr. Sandoval served his country with honor during WWII as one of the Navajo code talkers.

Sandoval was among four remaining code talkers still alive today, from the hundreds who had been recruited during the war. The three others who are living include Peter MacDonald, John Kinsel Sr. and Thomas H. Begay.

Nichelle Nichols. THR. Tributes.

I’m sorry if it seems like I’m giving her death short shrift, but her passing has received an enormous amount of attention, and anything I could add at this point would be superfluous.

Bill Russell.

Russell was the ultimate winner. He led the University of San Francisco to N.C.A.A. tournament championships in 1955 and 1956. He won a gold medal with the United States Olympic basketball team in 1956. He led the Celtics to eight consecutive N.B.A. titles from 1959 to 1966, far eclipsing the Yankees’ five straight World Series victories (1949 to 1953) and the Montreal Canadiens’ five consecutive Stanley Cup championships (1956 to 1960).
He was the N.B.A.’s most valuable player five times and an All-Star 12 times.
A reedy, towering figure at 6 feet 10 inches and 220 pounds, Russell was cagey under the basket, able to anticipate an opponent’s shots and gain position for a rebound. And if the ball caromed off the hoop, his tremendous leaping ability almost guaranteed that he’d grab it. He finished his career as the No. 2 rebounder in N.B.A. history, behind his longtime rival Wilt Chamberlain, who had three inches on him.
Russell pulled down 21,620 rebounds, an astonishing average of 22.5 per game, with a single-game high of 51 against the Syracuse Nationals (the forerunners of the Philadelphia 76ers) in 1960.
He didn’t have much of a shooting touch, but he scored 14,522 points — many on high-percentage, short left-handed hook shots — for an average of 15.1 per game. His blocked shots — the total is unrecorded, because such records were not kept in his era — altered games.

Pat Carroll. THR. Other credits include “She’s the Sheriff”, “Too Close For Comfort”, and “ER”.

John Aielli, longtime local public radio host.

Paul Coker Jr. Interesting guy: he was one of the old-time “Mad Magazine” staff (aka the “Usual Gang Of Idiots”). He was also a production designer for Rankin/Bass.

As either a character designer or production designer, Coker lent his talents to such Christmas and Easter specials as Cricket on the Hearth (1967), Frosty the Snowman (1969), Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town (1970), Here Comes Peter Cottontail (1971), The Year Without a Santa Claus (1974), Rudolph’s Shiny New Year and Frosty’s Winter Wonderland (both 1976), Nestor, the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey and The Easter Bunny Is Comin’ to Town (both 1977), Jack Frost (1979), Pinocchio’s Christmas (1980), The Leprechauns’ Christmas Gold (1981) and Santa, Baby! (2001).

Hattip to Lawrence on this one, and for reminding me to order the Rifftrax of “Nestor the Long-Eared Christmas Donkey” for Christmas viewing this year.

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

Obit watch: July 31, 2022.

July 31st, 2022

Burt Metcalfe. In addition to his producing credits on “M*A*S*H”, he did some acting. Credits include “The Twilight Zone” (“The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street”), “Perry Mason”, “The Bridges at Toko-Ri”, “The Outer Limits”, and the “12 O’Clock High” series. Producing credits also include “AfterMASH”.

Stuart Woods, another one of those big-shot thriller authors.

Mr. Woods, who was also a swashbuckling licensed private jet plane pilot and trans-Atlantic sailor with homes in New York, Maine and Florida, tacked into his career as a novelist somewhat haphazardly.

…

He later moved to Ireland, where he began to write his first novel. But he was soon diverted when he became enamored with sailing and began racing. In 1976, in a race from Plymouth, England, to Newport, R.I., that took him 45 days, he finished about in the middle of the field.
He then wrote a nonfiction account of the race, “Blue Water, Green Skipper,” and, after returning to Georgia, sold the American rights to W.W. Norton & Company. It also agreed to publish “Chiefs,” the thriller that Mr. Woods had begun eight years earlier.

He was another one of those guys whose books I saw all the time on the rack at the grocery store, but I’ve never actually read any of them. Chiefs sounds like it might be a good place to start…

Mary Alice, actress. She won a Tony for “Fences”, an Emmy for ““I’ll Fly Away”, and appeared in “The Matrix Revolutions” among other credits.

Posted in Books, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Triskaidekaphobia.

July 29th, 2022

I forgot to post this yesterday, even though I had a reminder on my calendar. I’ve been busy working on a couple of small projects, including some forthcoming random gun crankery and a project for the Smith and Wesson Collectors Association.

But I didn’t want to go too much longer without noting, for the record, that yesterday was the 13th anniversary of the blog.

13 years. Where did they go?

As usual, thanks to my army of supporters, especially Lawrence, Borepatch, Jimmy McNulty, pigpen51, RoadRich, Mike the Musicologist, and Joe D. Thanks also to KR Training (official firearms trainer to WCD), Sportsman’s Finest (official arms dealer to WCD) and to anyone else I have forgotten to thank.

Supposedly, the traditional 13th anniversary gift is lace, and the modern one is “fur and textiles”. I’ll pass on that, please, thank you. I really don’t want gifts: your readership is enough for me. Also, sending guns through the mail is not exactly legal (unless you send them to my FFL), and sending ammo is expensive.

Musical interlude time. I can’t remember if I’ve posted this recently, but Warren Zevon never wears out his welcome.

Here’s to another 13 years.

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