You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#67 in a series)

October 5th, 2020

Missed this over the weekend, but Mike the Musicologist gave me the heads-up: the mayor of Rochester, New York, has been indicted on campaign finance charges.

Sandra Doorley, the Monroe County district attorney, said Ms. Warren participated in “a scheme to defraud” related to her official campaign fund and a political action committee working to help her get re-elected.
The indictment accused Ms. Warren, as well as her campaign treasurer and Rochester’s finance director, of “knowingly and willfully” working to evade contribution limits as well as engaging in “a systemic and ongoing course of conduct with the intent to defraud more than one person.”

…

The investigation into her campaign finances had dogged her since two candidates who unsuccessfully ran against her in 2017 complained to the state Board of Elections. A subsequent investigation by the board led to a March report that Ms. Doorley said found “considerable evidence” of possible crimes.
At issue are transfers made from Ms. Warren’s political action committee to her campaign committee that far exceeded the $8,557 limit that a campaign could receive from an individual donor, the Democrat and Chronicle of Rochester reported. That limit also applied to the political action committee.

More from the local paper. Local TV coverage.

Warren, along with Albert Jones Jr. and Rosiland Brooks Harris, were each charged with first-degree scheme to defraud and violation of Election Law 14-126(6). Both counts are Class E felonies. If convicted, each person could face 1 1/3 to 4 years in state prison, or a range of sentencing options from probation to restitution.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Railroaded.

October 5th, 2020

In a just society, this would be considered “justifiable homicide”.

A 35-year-old Arkansas man was sentenced to more than 100 years for fatally shooting a woman and wounding his brother over a fast-food order last year, KTHV reported.

…

According to FOX13, a neighbor heard Crocket say, “B—-, you know I don’t like mayonnaise on my hamburger,” when he received his meal order. According to the local news outlet, Crockett struck Aldrige once and Thomas three. Crockett turned himself in to police custody days after the shooting, according to the report.
FOX13 reported that a jury found Crockett guilty of first-degree murder and first-degree battery. Circuit Judge Ralph Wilson sentenced Crocket to up to 130 years in prison, due to his multiple counts including 75 years for first-degree murder, 40 years for first-degree battery, and an additional 15 years for possession of a firearm as a felon, the report said.

(Hattip: my mother.)

Posted in Food, Law, Sarcasm | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 188

October 4th, 2020

Science Sunday!

Today, I thought I’d reach back to the AT&T Tech Channel again. Let’s start with “Similiarities of Wave Behavior”, from 1959. I set this to start about 1:18 in, skipping the introduction.

And as a bonus, Dr. Walter Brattain on “Semiconductor Physics”. You may remember Dr. Brattain as one of the inventors of the transistor who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize in Physics. (The other two were John Bardeen and William Shockley.)

Posted in Geek, History | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 187

October 3rd, 2020

I’m going back to military aviation today, even though I sort of covered that yesterday. It is shaping up to be a busy weekend, and I’m queuing Saturday and Sunday up in advance.

Today’s video: “The Second Seat”, a Naval recruiting film.

The Naval Aviation Officer who sits in the “second seat” runs all the complicated systems that the pilot cannot handle alone, including serving as navigator and bombardier.

Edited to add 10/4: fixed the embedding on this one. Sorry about that: I don’t know what happened, and I wasn’t able to fix this yesterday.

Bonus video, a little on the long side, but it is Saturday, and I know at least one person will enjoy this: Brian Shul, author of “Sled Driver: Flying the World’s Fastest Jet”, speaks at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 2016.

Posted in History, Planes | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 3, 2020.

October 3rd, 2020

Terry Goodkind, noted fantasy writer.

…Mr. Goodkind’s series grew to include 17 books, several of them best sellers. Together, the “Sword of Truth” books have sold more than 25 million copies worldwide. In 2008, the books were adapted by the director and producer Sam Raimi into a television series, “Legend of the Seeker,” that aired for two seasons on ABC.

…

While Mr. Goodkind attracted numerous readers with his storytelling, he angered some others with his worldview and his criticisms of fantasy fiction. He was a follower of Ayn Rand, whose Objectivism prized the individual over the collective, and he spoke about her ideas publicly and inserted them into his novels. He also often distanced himself from the genre in which he had achieved fame.
He told an online audience on Reddit that he had “irrevocably changed the face of fantasy” and “injected thought into a tired, empty genre.”
In a phone interview, his literary agent, Russell Galen, said: “His fans were wrapped up in his work and Terry personally. And then there were people who literally despised him. Terry was unique in that field in delighting in controversy, delighting in stirring up verbal combat, delighting in stirring up criticism. He was very feisty.”

Bob Gibson, pitcher.

Gibson won both the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award and Cy Young Award, as its best pitcher, in 1968, when he won 22 games, struck out 268 batters, pitched 13 shutouts and posted an earned run average of 1.12. The following year, Major League Baseball lowered the pitchers’ mounds to give batters a break, but Gibson won 20 games and struck out 269.
He won at least 20 games five times and struck out 3,117 batters, relying on two kinds of fastballs, one breaking upward and other downward, and a slider that he threw at about three-quarters speed. He threw 56 career shutouts and captured a second Cy Young Award in 1970. He was an eight-time All-Star, won a Gold Glove award for fielding nine times and pitched a no-hitter against the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1971.
Pitching for three Cardinals pennant-winners, Gibson won seven World Series games in a row, losing in his first and last Series starts. His physique was not especially imposing — he was 6 feet 1 inch and 190 pounds or so — but he holds the records for most strikeouts in a World Series game, 17, and in a single World Series, 35, both against the Detroit Tigers in 1968.
He was voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1981, his first year of eligibility.

…

“Bob wasn’t just unfriendly when he pitched,” Joe Torre, a Cardinals teammate who later hired Gibson as a coach when he managed the Mets, the Atlanta Braves and the Cardinals, told the sportswriter Roger Kahn in an article for The New York Times shortly before Gibson’s induction into the Hall. “I’d say it was more like hateful.”

…

Profiling Gibson for The New Yorker in September 1980, Roger Angell told how after his 17-strikeout game against Detroit, a reporter asked if Gibson had always been as competitive as he seemed that day.
“He said yes,” Angell wrote, “and he added that he had played several hundred games of tick-tack-toe against one of his young daughters and that she had yet to win a game from him. He said this with a little smile, but it seemed to me that he meant it: he couldn’t let himself lose to anyone. Then someone asked him if he had been surprised by what he had just done on the field, and Gibson said, ‘I’m never surprised by anything I do.’”

Derek Mahon, Irish poet.

Posted in Books, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 186

October 2nd, 2020

Today is a day for randomness and a little self-indulgence on my part.

Jerry Miculek posted another cool video of another Smith and Wesson: this one a blued .45 ACP revolver, custom built for him by Roy Jinks. Y’all know I love me some .45 ACP revolver action.

Bonus video #1: shifting gears a little bit, “”Curiosity Killed a Cat”, a 1944 military training film about how when you’re in the field, you shouldn’t play with the crystals unexploded ordnance or things that might be booby-trapped.

Bonus #2: “Angel In Overalls”, another vintage WWII propaganda film. This one celebrates the P-38 Lightning.

Posted in Guns, History, Planes | Comments Closed

The Greatest Cellar on Earth.

October 1st, 2020

Well, not really. But this is a surprisingly non-annoying NYT article from a few days ago about “dusty hunters”: people who search for unopened bottles of vintage liquor.

The most well-known dusty hunter today might be Eric Witz, 42, a senior production editor at the MIT Press, who posts his scores on Instagram at @aphonik, often with detailed analysis of the origins of each bottle. A lover of antiques and enthusiast of cocktail history, he began dusty hunting around 2010 with the purchase of a 1940s bottle of Forbidden Fruit, a strange grapefruit-and-honey liqueur which has not been on the market for decades. Mr. Witz collects not just whiskey, the obsession of most current dusty hunters, but vintage rum, brandy and Chartreuse, all of which are soaring in value at the moment.
“I love the idea of being able to taste something that was made a few generations ago,” he said. Spirits have a higher alcohol proof than wine, so they don’t really age in the bottle or go bad; in that way, they are like drinkable time capsules. In fact, most all dusty hunters believe vintage spirits are superior in taste to what is being made today, even if they can’t quite explain why. Maybe better quality materials and more artisanal production methods were being used back then, maybe international beverage conglomerates weren’t yet mucking up quality, or maybe something magical is happening in the glass over all these years.

Tying the article together is a guy who bought the contents of Cecil B. DeMille’s cellar.

There were 10 bottles of Old Overholt Rye barreled in 1936, five bottles of 1930s Belmont Bottled in Bond, bottles of Kentucky Tavern, J.W. Dant and Old Taylor bourbons, some 1930s Jameson Irish whiskey, Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin champagne from 1929, and a near-flawless case of extremely rare Green River Straight Bourbon Whiskey from 1936.

…

DeMille’s longtime neighbor in Little Tujunga Canyon was Jean-Baptiste “J.B.” Leonis, a banker and liquor importer who founded the city of Vernon. Sensing that Prohibition was on the horizon, in the early 1920s he began to stash booze in a 10-bolt bank vault behind a trick bookcase. In 2017, upon the death of Leonis’ grandson, Leonis C. Malburg, the collection was finally unearthed, featuring numerous pint bottles of Old Crow distilled in 1912, Hermitage Bottled in Bond whiskey distilled in 1914, and rye bottled specifically for the iconic Biltmore Hotel. Staff members at Christie’s Auction House were stunned when it sold at auction for $640,000 in 2018.

Posted in History, Mixology, Movies | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 185

October 1st, 2020

Travel Thursday!

Today I thought we’d all go out to Montreux, on the Lake Geneva shoreline.

“The Swiss Rivera”, sometime in the 1950s.

Bonus #1: Also from the 1950s, “Switzerland – Land of Contrasts”.

Bonus #2: This has little to do with travel, but I’m throwing it in here as a diversion: Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention play “Cosmik Debris”.

Bonus #3: Bringing it back around, a short interview with Frank Zappa about the Montreux casino fire. This is in French, but has English subtitles, and you can hear Zappa speaking under the translation.

Posted in History, Travel | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 184

September 30th, 2020

I really enjoyed “Catch Me If You Can”, both the book and the movie. So here’s something on the long side for you: Frank Abagnale talks at Google.

Shorter bonus: the two red flags to look for.

Posted in Geek | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 30, 2020.

September 30th, 2020

Bad day for music.

Helen Reddy.

Ms. Reddy’s first hit was a 1971 cover of “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” a hit from the award-winning stage show “Jesus Christ Superstar.” The success of “I Am Woman,” with Ms. Reddy’s lyrics and Ray Burton’s music, came a year later.
Ms. Reddy was a frequent guest in the early ’70s on variety, music and talk shows like “The Mike Douglas Show,” “The Carol Burnett Show,” “The David Frost Show,” “The Merv Griffin Show” and “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour.” “The Helen Reddy Show” (1973) was an eight-episode summer replacement series on NBC.
She made her big-screen debut in the disaster movie “Airport 1975” (released in 1974) as a guitar-playing nun who comforts a sick little girl (Linda Blair) on an almost certainly doomed 747. Ms. Reddy always liked to point out that Gloria Swanson and Myrna Loy were also in the cast.

,,,

Ms. Reddy’s Broadway career consisted of replacing the lead in “Blood Brothers,” a musical set in Liverpool, for a few months in 1995. But she had a busy stage career elsewhere, starring in productions of “Anything Goes,” “Call Me Madam” and “Shirley Valentine” in England and in the United States, from Provincetown to Sacramento.

Mac Davis, good Lubbock boy.

Mr. Davis enjoyed early success as a songwriter in the late 1960s, supplying Presley with Top 10 pop hits like “In the Ghetto” and “Don’t Cry Daddy” after spending much of the decade working in sales and publishing for independent record companies.
He also wrote “Something’s Burning,” a Top 20 pop single in 1970 for Kenny Rogers and the First Edition, and “I Believe in Music,” which was recorded by the Detroit pop group Gallery, reaching the Top 40 in 1972.
“I Believe in Music” was recorded by scores of artists and became Mr. Davis’s signature song; he closed his concerts with it for decades. “Watching Scotty Grow,” another of his best-known compositions, stalled just outside the pop Top 10 for Bobby Goldsboro in 1971.

…

Genial, photogenic and fit, Mr. Davis had his own television variety hour, “The Mac Davis Show,” from 1974 to 1976 on NBC and was a regular guest on “The Tonight Show” and other talk shows in those years. He made his acting debut in the 1979 movie “North Dallas Forty,” a comedy that starred Nick Nolte as an aging football star and Mr. Davis as a calculating quarterback.
More recently, after years of inactivity on the charts, Mr. Davis enjoyed a revival as a songwriter, collaborating with latter-day pop artists like Avicii, the Swedish D.J. with whom he wrote the 2014 global pop hit “Addicted to You.” (Avicii died at 28 in 2018.)
He also wrote “Young Girls” with the pop star Bruno Mars; a version released by Mr. Mars in 2012 was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America. Mr. Davis’s other projects over the last few years included collaborations with the country star Keith Urban and the singer Rivers Cuomo of the band Weezer.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre | 3 Comments »

Clippings.

September 29th, 2020

Missed this one until I was tipped off by, shockingly, Mike the Musicologist:

Doc Rivers was fired as head coach of the Clippers yesterday.

The precipitating incident for this seems to have been the team blowing a 3-1 lead in the playoffs and losing to Denver. He was 356-208 in seven seasons, but the team has struggled in the playoffs.

The Clippers’ job becomes the sixth current vacancy in the NBA, along with Houston, Indiana, Philadelphia, Oklahoma City and New Orleans. New York, Brooklyn and Chicago have already filled vacancies in their offseasons.

Also noteworthy:

Rivers’ departure means the league also is down to four Black coaches currently with jobs: Lloyd Pierce in Atlanta, J.B. Bickerstaff in Cleveland, Monty Williams in Phoenix and Dwane Casey in Detroit. Rivers is the third Black coach to either step down or be fired this offseason, joining Nate McMillan in Indiana and Alvin Gentry in New Orleans.

Edited to add: fixed the poor formatting introduced by trying to use the visual editor in the WordPress app on the iPhone.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 183

September 29th, 2020

I feel like it has been a while since I’ve done anything with military aircraft, so here’s a nice one for you: “F-14 Tomcat The Total Fighter”, produced by Grumman sometime in the 1980s. It’s only about 10 minutes long, too.

Bonus #1, also short, also from Grumman: “F-14 Air Combat Maneuvering”, featuring F-14 pilots in training at Fighter Town USA (not to be confused with Flavor Town).

Bonus: as a tip of the hat to Ygolonac, please to enjoy the following:

Posted in History, Planes | 2 Comments »

I missed the other big news yesterday.

September 29th, 2020

There was another set of indictments that came down which I totally missed. And these are a surprise, though they don’t get the “tax-fattened hyena” tag.

Eight former NFL players and a Houston athletic trainer were indicted in a scheme to attempt to defraud an NFL player trust by submitting false claims for medical benefits, Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg announced Monday.
The players, which include former Texans receiver Corey Bradford and linebacker Shantee Orr, are accused of submitting false reimbursement claims for physical therapy by Houston trainer Louis Ray, who owns Rehab Express in the Galleria area.

Apparently, this was the old “create fake invoices” scheme. The players would turn the invoices over to the “Gene Upshaw NFL Player Plan, a health-reimbursement account set up for former players”, get payments, pocket the money, and kick some back to Rehab Express for creating the invoices in the first place.

Medical records show that 92 claims were submitted claiming reimbursements totaling $723,826 with Ray allegedly receiving payments totaling $112,972, according to Ogg.

If I run the numbers on this after taking out Ray’s share, it works out to an average of about $76,000 per player. Which isn’t exactly small change, but it’s not in the sevenn or eight figure range where I would consider doing a crime and escaping to a country without an extradition treaty. Also, the payouts seem to have varied quite a bit:

Ray, 59, was indicted on a first-degree felony of Securing the Execution of a Document by Deception, for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $300,000.
Bradford, who was an original member of the Houston Texans in 2002 and played four seasons for the team, was indicted on a second-degree felony for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $150,000 and less than $300,000.
Orr, who played linebacker for the Texans from 2003 to 2007, was indicted for a third-degree felony for allegedly taking checks valued at more than $30,000 and less than $150,000. Fabian Washington, James Adkisson, Rex Hadnot, Clint Ingram and Chad Slaughter were indicted for the same.
Derrick Pope, who graduated from Galveston Ball High School and played linebacker for the Dolphins for four seasons, was indicted for a state-jail felony for allegedly taking checks worth more than $2,500 and less than $30,000.

Posted in Law, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#66 in a series)

September 28th, 2020

Whoa.

A Williamson County grand jury has indicted Sheriff Robert Chody on an evidence tampering charge in the destruction of reality TV show footage that showed deputies chasing and using force on a Black man who died last year.

(Previous background on the case in question from WCD.)

Former Williamson County general counsel Jason Nassour, who was also at the scene of the deadly March 2019 incident, also was indicted on a evidence tampering charge. The charge, a third-degree felony, is punishable by two to 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000.

…

Prosecutors have said they could not disclose what they learned about Chody’s role in the video destruction because of the ongoing case.

But here’s something interesting.

The contract between Williamson County and “Live PD” producers in place at the time of Ambler’s death allowed the show to destroy unaired footage within 30 days unless a court order or other state or federal law required it to be retained.
“Live PD” host Dan Abrams said in television interviews and in a post on his web site that sheriff’s officials initially asked producers to preserve the video. Two months after Ambler’s death, Chody told them the investigation was completed. At that point, Abrams said, producers destroyed the video.

If I understand the story correctly, though, both the WillCo and Travis County DAs offices were still investigating this as a death in custody.

Yadda yadda presumption of innocence yadda yadda “growing scrutiny” of the sheriff’s office.

The charge against Chody comes 39 days before the Nov. 3 election. The first-term sheriff is being challenged by Democrat Mike Gleason, who is retired after serving 24 years in the Williamson County sheriff’s office.

Posted in Law, Politics, WillCo | Comments Closed

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 182

September 28th, 2020

Today’s historical video is dedicated to Iowahawk and his fans. Iowahawk may already be aware of this one.

“Wonderful World Of Wheels”. According to the YouTube notes, this is a cut-down version of a longer documentary about car culture in the 1960s. Among other things: Fabian racing go-karts, “Big Daddy” Roth and George Barris, John Derek, and narration by Lloyd Bridges (whose lungs were apparently not bursting for air).

Bonus:

Okay, not really. I just threw that in for giggles.

“Rubber For Industry”, a Firestone propaganda film from the 1940s. After all, you can’t have wheels without rubber, can you? (Well, technically, you can, but they have limitations.)

Posted in Cars, History | 2 Comments »

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