Have yourself a merry little…

December 24th, 2024

…Vincent Price Christmas.

Victoria Price told Fox News Digital that her father, the star of classic horror movies like “House on Haunted Hill” and “Edward Scissorhands,” had a “weakness for large jewelry that he loved buying his wives,” and after going to Poland in 1974 he gifted her stepmother a chunky bone butterfly necklace.
“My stepmother hated it,” Price said. “That wasn’t her cup of tea. And unlike us, she just said it. ‘I will never wear this. I hate it.’”

…

She continued, “My dad loved Christmas; he was like Father Christmas. Christmas was his favorite holiday. They were married for 18 years. Every year for the next 18 years, [her stepmother] would get in her thing of Christmas packages some beautiful Tiffany box or something, and there it was, every damn year that bone necklace, so that was my dad’s humor.”

…

She got one of her favorite gifts, a portable typewriter, while they were spending Christmas in England one year, but her favorite gift was one she got from her dad every Christmas – a $10 gift certificate to a bookstore in Beverly Hills where she was able to buy a stack of books. “My dad and I would go to Hunter’s Books after I got my certificate, and he would amuse himself for as long as it took. There was no time limit,” she remembered.

This also gives me a chance to vent mildly about one of my disappointments this year. Vincent Price’s cooking show, “Cooking Price-Wise” is being reissued on blu-ray…

…but it is a region B/2 blu-ray that won’t play in the US, and I don’t have a region-free blu-ray player, alas.

Posted in Books, Christmas, Food, Movies | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: December 24, 2024.

December 24th, 2024

Col. Perry Dahl (USAF – ret.). He was 101.

Col. Dahl shot down nine planes during the Pacific campaign in WWII.

Colonel Dahl was only 5 feet 4 inches tall and needed extra seat cushions to reach the pedals of his plane. But his exploits brought him the Congressional Gold Medal, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Legion of Merit.

…

He scored his first aerial victory in November 1943 when he shot down a Zero fighter plane while escorting bombers on a strike against a Japanese airfield.
In April 1944 he downed his fifth plane, achieving the minimum required to become an ace, and was promoted to the rank of captain.
In November, during the Philippines campaign, he notched his seventh “kill” while escorting American B-25 bombers that were attacking Japanese shipping. Moments later, Japanese fire forced him to bail out of his plane, which he ditched in Ormoc Bay. But his co-pilot was unable to bail out and perished. Captain Dahl was initially captured by a Japanese Army patrol before being rescued by Philippine resistance forces, who hid him.
He later shot down another Japanese plane. His ninth and final aerial victory came on March 28, 1945, while he was escorting bombers attacking a Japanese naval convoy off the coast of French Indochina, earning him the Silver Star.
He lost four of his P-38s to Japanese fire and midair collisions.
“One more destroyed P-38 and you’ll be a Japanese ace,” the 475th Squadron commander Charles MacDonald once remarked, according to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
Colonel Dahl had flown 158 combat missions by the time the war ended.

He also served honorably during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts before his retirement in 1978.

Art Evans, actor. Other credits include the original “Fun with Dick and Jane”, the original “Death Wish”, and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again”.

Lawrence sent me an obit a few days ago for writer Barry Malzberg. I couldn’t do anything with it, because it was on Facebook and wouldn’t even come up for me unless I signed in with my (non-existent) Facebook account. None of the usual sources has published an obit yet, but Michael Swanwick put up a tribute at his blog.

Sophie Hediger, Swiss snowboarder and member of their Olympic team. She was 26, and was killed in an avalanche.

Burt, the crocodile from “Crocodile Dundee”.

The 1986 movie stars Paul Hogan as the rugged crocodile hunter Mick Dundee. In the movie, American Sue Charlton, played by actress Linda Kozlowski, goes to fill her canteen in a watering hole when she is attacked by a crocodile before being saved by Dundee.
Burt is briefly shown lunging out of the water.
But the creature shown in more detail as Dundee saves the day is apparently something else. The Internet Movie Database says the movie goofed by depicting an American alligator, which has a blunter snout.

Update to my Party City obit: while Part City as a chain is shutting down, there are at least two stores in Austin that are independent franchises, and those stores are planning to stay open.

They will still be party supplies stores, but exact logistics are unknown. The stores opened before the Party City company formed.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Heroism, Movies, Obits, Planes, Reptiles, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

NYPD Blues.

December 23rd, 2024

I get the feeling the paper of record was caught flatfooted by the Maddrey scandal, and is playing catch-up.

Jessica Tisch, the head of the New York Police Department, is cracking down on apparent abuse of overtime pay as the agency faces internal and external investigations into the matter.
Among at least 29 officers who were moved into new jobs over the past two days, 16 earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay in the last fiscal year.

…

Several of the employees who were moved worked under Mr. Maddrey, formerly the chief of department, and other top police officials, according to city payroll records and internal police documents obtained by The New York Times.
Two officers who worked for Mr. Maddrey collectively made $312,769 in overtime alone.
Two other officers, who together made around $289,000 in overtime, were transferred out of the operations bureau led by Kaz Daughtry. Eleven officers were moved out of the department’s public information office. Ms. Tisch last week announced that the head of that office, Tarik Sheppard, is also being replaced.

…

Even before the accusations against Mr. Maddrey, the Police Department has long attracted scrutiny for its high overtime spending. As of March, the agency had spent close to $271 million more on overtime in fiscal year 2024 than originally budgeted, the City Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, said at a public hearing in May, noting that the department routinely exceeded its overtime budget.
Word of personnel changes quickly swept through police headquarters in Manhattan over the weekend, and some officers privately praised Ms. Tisch, calling the changes long overdue. Several said they had been exasperated with officials who showed favoritism toward some subordinates and awarded them with cushy positions and bigger paychecks.
Some were also glad to see Mr. Maddrey and Mr. Iglesias go. In group text chats, the rank-and-file lauded the police commissioner, and shared a photo a with a golden halo around her head. Underneath the picture it said: “Saint Tisch. Patron saint of common sense.”

I want to be clear about this. I don’t think overtime, even a lot of overtime, is necessarily a criminal violation, or even an ethical one. That is, if the officers in question actually collected the overtime honorably: they actually worked the time, did their jobs, and had the proper approval.

If the overtime was being collected based on a quid pro quo – like sex for overtime hours, or kickbacks to supervisors, or something equally sleezy – yes, go after the people involved for the unethical and/or criminal behavior. But just accumulating lots of hours isn’t a crime by itself.

Posted in Cops, Law, NYPD | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 23, 2024.

December 23rd, 2024

I hope all of my readers are having a Festive Festivus.

Rickey Henderson, for the historical record, as I think this was well covered over the weekend. NYT. ESPN. Baseball Reference.

Michael Brewer, of Brewer & Shipley (“One Toke Over the Line”).

Miguel Angel Aguilar, fitness influencer.

Aguilar was hospitalized in a critical condition on Sept. 13 after he got caught up in an attempted robbery in Los Angeles, KTLA reported.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Aguilar and his wife, celebrity hair stylist Priscilla Valles, were confronted by four armed men in the driveway of their Bel-Air home on Sept. 13.
The armed intruders ultimately struck Aguilar multiple times, including once in the face, before fleeing, TMZ reports. LAPD officers were called at around 4:30 p.m. that day.

He had been hospitalized since, and passed away on Saturday.

Posted in Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#137 in a series)

December 21st, 2024

Wow. Just wow.

You know, you go to church last night for the “Lessons and Carols” service (which, at my church, was a very nice service, but lightly attended). Then you go pick up your car from the repair shop (yes, Daddy spoke too soon. Fortunately, I have the reserves to cover it.)

Meanwhile, all heck breaks loose.

New York City’s second-highest-ranking police officer, who served as chief of department, abruptly resigned Friday night following allegations of sexual misconduct, according to the Police Department.
The former top chief, Jeffrey Maddrey, submitted his resignation and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted it Friday night, according to a statement from the department.

The NYPost broke the story. This being the Post, they go into more explicit detail.

Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey stepped down soon after The Post contacted the NYPD about Lt. Quathisha Epps’ claims in an exclusive interview that he routinely preyed upon her, asking for sex in NYPD headquarters.

And here’s a fun fact:

Epps recently made headlines as the NYPD’s top earner, pulling in a whopping $400,000 — including roughly $204,000 in overtime alone last year for her administrative job in Maddrey’s office, payroll records show.

I am leaving a lot out of the Post story. You can go over there and read it if you want, but I warn you: the details are very explicit.

In the interest of fairness:

When she started to try to get away from Maddrey recently, Epps was outed on a list of high overtime earners in retaliation, Sanders said.
Epps was suspended for 30 days and is being investigated over the excessive overtime, police sources said.

Also in the interest of fairness:

Former Police Officer Tabitha Foster filed an unsuccessful 2016 civil suit alleging he took advantage of her by exchanging sex for job perks. A judge threw the case out and cleared Maddrey. Foster also accused Maddrey of hitting her.

In August, Edward Caban, the police commissioner at the time, dismissed internal charges against Mr. Maddrey that he had interfered with the arrest of a retired officer who had chased three boys while armed.

Updated 12/23: And over the weekend, Miguel Iglesias, the Chief of Internal Affairs, was “relieved of his command and has notified the Department of his intent to retire”. The NYPost coverage is being played like it was an open secret within the department that Maddrey was a sex predator, and nobody – including IAD – was willing to do anything about it before now.

Posted in Cops, Law, NYPD, Politics, Religion | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 20, 2024. (Supplemental)

December 20th, 2024

Turn out the lights, Party City is over.

Barry Litwin, the company’s chief executive officer, told corporate employees on Friday that Party City is “winding down” operations immediately and that today will be their last day of employment.

…

The development team was recalled from its yearly trip with vendors and told to go home immediately two weeks ago, according to a former corporate office employee who spoke to CNN.
The team was informed that the company believed the trip posed a safety risk since Party City stopped paying its suppliers.
All Party City corporate employees were sent home on Dec. 10 and security locked the front entrance of company headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, NJ.

…

Party City, which is known for selling balloons and other party supplies, first filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January last year, with $150 million in debtor-in-possession financing to support its operations and reported $1 billion to $10 billion of estimated assets and liabilities.
In September, the retailer reached a plan to exit bankruptcy, which saw a cancellation of about $1 billion in company debt and turned all its equity value over to the retailer’s lenders.

So what the heck happened with that plan? It isn’t clear from the article. Though “The company had considered filing for bankruptcy a second time earlier this month…”

Posted in Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 20, 2024.

December 20th, 2024

Joanne Pierce Misko, historical footnote. And I say that in the kindest possible way.

She spent 10 years as a nun with the Sisters of Mercy, but she decided she wanted to marry and have kids. She was looking for something to do other than teaching.

One day an F.B.I. agent came to her school in Olean to talk about jobs in the bureau. She had already been thinking about leaving her order, and the idea of a career in the F.B.I. intrigued her.

She signed on as a researcher in 1970. Research or clerical work were the only options available to women at that time. But when Hoover died in 1972, L. Patrick Gray III allowed women to sign up as agents.

With her supervisor’s encouragement, Mrs. Misko applied, and within a few months she was being sworn in with 44 others at the F.B.I. headquarters in Washington. She and another woman, Susan Roley Malone, a former Marine, then traveled with the others to the new F.B.I. Academy in Quantico, Va., for 14 weeks of training.

They were the first two female FBI agents.

“I can remember very vividly the first case I had,” she told the Buffalo TV station WGRZ in 2022. “We went out to get the guy, and he found out that we were looking for him and he called back into the office; he was incensed that a woman was being sent out to get him, you know, that he wasn’t worthy of a guy. He had to have a woman go after him.”
Often, she found her gender could be an advantage, as suspects often let their guard down around her.
“Most people back then didn’t even realize the F.B.I. had female agents,” Mrs. Misko said on the Madame Policy podcast in 2022. “Many times a subject would simply open the door when I knocked, not expecting me to say, ‘F.B.I.’”

“Celebrating Women Special Agents: Joanne Pierce Misko” on the FBI website. One thing not mentioned there, but in the NYT obit:

She retired in 1994 and went to work for a bank. That same year, she filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice, saying she had been held back from promotion because of her gender. She settled the suit in 1996 for an undisclosed sum.

By the way, she did marry a fellow FBI agent, but the NYT does not mention children.

Posted in Cops, FBI, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Flaming hyena update.

December 20th, 2024

A while back, I wrote about Burnet County Judge James Oakley, who had just been indicted on both felony and misdemeanor charges.

A jury found him not guilty of one charge, and a judge threw out the other charges. However, a panel of judges from the Third Court of District Appeals recently ruled that judge “erred” in his decision.

Judge Oakley was also reprimanded by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct earlier this month.

One of the things he’s accused of is removing the lock to Justice of the Peace Lisa Whitehead’s courtroom door. Whitehead ended up filing a formal complaint over safety concerns after she said she could not find a “workable solution” with Oakley.
Oakley also faces allegations of sexual harassment from Whitehead that stem from 2023 and for creating a “hostile work environment.”

Judge Oakley resigned on Wednesday. For what it may be worth, the text of his reprimand is included in the linked KXAN article.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#136 in a series)

December 19th, 2024

You know, there’s been so much corruption in the Eric Adams administration, I’ve kind of lost track myself.

But being as this is possibly the most corrupt administration in the history of New York City, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: do I feel like doing two flaming hyenas in one day?

Well, do I, punk?

Ingrid Lewis-Martin, the former top aide to Mayor Adams, was officially indicted today, along with her son and two “businessmen”.

Allegedly, they were getting paid by check, “which her son cashed and used to buy a Porsche and other luxury items”.

Ms. Lewis-Martin, her son, Glenn Martin II, and the businessmen were charged in a four-count indictment with participating in “a long-running bribery, money-laundering and conspiracy scheme.” The indictment accuses Ms. Lewis-Martin of using her official position to “illegally influence Department of Buildings and other city decisions” in exchange for the cash and other benefits for her and her son.

…

Prosecutors also accused Ms. Lewis-Martin and her son of accepting financial support from the two businessmen for a clothing line and a Chick-fil-A franchise in exchange for her using her city position to assist with their projects.
As evidence, prosecutors quoted from telephone conversations involving Ms. Lewis-Martin, her son and others, suggesting they may have wiretapped one or more of the defendants’ phones.

…

The businessmen charged alongside her were pursing construction projects that included work on a rooftop bar, the Glass Ceiling, and a hotel, both in Manhattan, and they had asked her to help move the projects through the city’s tangled bureaucracy.
After Mr. Dwivedi and Mr. Vaid paid Mr. Martin $100,000 in August 2023, he deposited the money into a joint account he shared with Ms. Lewis-Martin, prosecutors said. Each businessman made a $50,000 payment to Mr. Martin; one had the words “personal loan” written in the check memo, according to prosecutors, who called that an attempt to conceal a bribe and said the defendants had not provided any evidence that loan payments were ever made.

…

Prosecutors, in their narrative, included as an exhibit a picture of Mr. Martin in sunglasses, grinning in front of a gleaming black 2023 Porsche Panamera, a big red bow affixed to the hood. He paid $113,000 for the car, “something neither he nor Lewis-Martin could have funded without the bribe money,” the prosecutors wrote.

…

Prosecutors said Ms. Lewis-Martin used her son as an intermediary in an attempt to cover up her actions. Mr. Martin, 38, a professional D.J. who uses the name “Suave Luciano,” has worked at city events overseen by Mr. Adams’s administration, both when Mr. Adams was mayor and Brooklyn borough president.

Noted:

During the same period she was using Signal to field requests from Mr. Vaid and forward them to city buildings officials, Ms. Lewis-Martin set her Signal messages to disappear after an hour, prosecutors said.

COMSEC! Hurrah! Obviously not a perfect effort, but it has been so rare to see someone even trying to secure their communications, attention must be paid.

Oh. Her lawyer vigorously denies the charges:

“To think that a high-ranking city official would take a bribe in the form of a check deposited into a bank account defies common sense,” he said. “We look forward to the citizens of the City of New York, who Ingrid has served so admirably for decades, clearing her name after a trial.”

Ms. Lewis-Martin resigned over the weekend, apparently in anticipation of the indictment.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#135 in a series)

December 19th, 2024

I would like to remind everyone that the “flames” in “you’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena” are metaphorical, not literal. Most of the time.

Why do I feel a need to put that reminder out there?

A deputy mayor of Los Angeles had his home raided by the FBI yesterday.

“A questionable LA politician? Quel fromage!” I know, right? But the reason is interesting, and you will rarely (I hope) see this combination of categories together.

The deputy mayor is suspected of phoning in a bomb threat to City Hall. He was…

…appointed in February 2023 to oversee public safety in Los Angeles. The role, the mayor’s office said at the time, would include oversight of the Police Department, the Los Angeles Fire Department, the Port of Los Angeles Police, the Los Angeles World Airports Police and the Emergency Management Department.

So he has close ties with law enforcement. According to the report, the LAPD initially determined that he was the likely originator of the threat, but turned the case over the FBI because of his law enforcement ties. (I would also think that bomb threats, especially ones against municipal buildings, would fall under Federal purview. But I Am Not A Lawyer.)

Additional coverage from the LAT, but it really doesn’t add much.

I’m not naming him here, even though he is named in the articles, because he hasn’t been charged with a crime yet and is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Honestly, though, making a bomb threat is a pretty stupid crime. These days, phone calls and other electronic communications are easily traceable. Unless you’re very very careful and practice good OPSEC and COMSEC, you’re going to get caught. I think most bomb threats these days are phoned in by teenagers who wouldn’t know OPSEC and COMSEC if it walked up and bit them. Which is generally what happens.

Posted in California Über Alles, Explosives, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Things you may have wondered about. (#7 in a series)

December 19th, 2024

This is another one of those “okay, maybe not”: I certainly wasn’t wondering. But in case someone else was:

How much would the Griswolds have spent lighting up their house in “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation”?

Spoiler:

Hypothetically, Mr. [Gil} Quiniones [president and chief executive of ComEd] said if the lights worked and the power stayed on for at least eight hours a day, using C9 incandescent bulbs, it would have cost the family $287 a day or $8,885 per month, based on what ComEd charges customers in 2024.

This is assuming that they used standard incandescent lights, and that the lights worked:

Most electricity experts and dedicated fans who have tried to calculate how much power and money all those lights would have required 35 years ago have come to a similar, sobering conclusion.
There’s no way a typical 1989 home could have powered 25,000 incandescent lightbulbs.
One Reddit user laid out a theory, solved through various equations and simulations on a spreadsheet, that determined if Clark bypassed the home’s circuit breaker, the house’s copper wires would vaporize and “every wire in the house will immediately ignite.”

…

A blogger used the spinning power meter depicted in the film to estimate that the lights would have caused a 25 percent load increase on the Chicago power grid.

Also, just for the record, there is no “auxilliary nuclear” switch. Though if I was a president with ComEd, I’d have my people wire one up…that does absolutely nothing. Except maybe light an LED. It’d have to be one of those giant knife switches, though, like something out of “Frankenstein”.

Speaking of LEDs…

If the Griswolds used modern LED lights, popularized in the past two decades and about 90 percent more energy efficient, he said it would still cost the family about $34 a day or $1,054 a month. That final bill would not include the rest of the home’s power usage.

…

About 360 miles east of Chicago, a family in Wadsworth, Ohio, has been lighting up their home in almost the exact Clark Griswold-fashion — without breaking the bank each year, causing brownouts or bothering their neighbors.
For over a decade, Greg and Rachel Osterland, along with their two children, have decorated their home with 25,000 lightbulbs (not one more or less, according to Mr. Osterland) to raise money for cystic fibrosis research. Hundreds of people went to watch the house’s lighting this year, complete with audience drumrolls and a rendition of “Joy to the World,” just like Clark sings in the movie.

…

As a lifelong fan of the movie, Mr. Osterland has done the math quite a few times. He determined that if the Griswolds lived in his area in 2024 and used the C9 incandescent bulbs, they would have paid about $4,656 a month for 175,000 watts of electricity. Although, like others, Mr. Osterland realized that there’s no way a regular house could have taken on that much power without some kind of a boost.
So instead of Clark’s imported Italian twinkle lights that are likely incandescent bulbs, Mr. Osterland uses LED lights that all plug into one outlet. After buying their home in 2008 the couple saved up for years to buy the lights to replicate the Griswold house, which cost them about $12,500.

…

Powering the light display for about six hours a day for 30 days costs the Osterlands about $25 a month. Mr. Osterland estimates that the lights use about 600 watts of electricity in a month, much less than the hundreds of thousands of watts used by the Griswolds.

Posted in Christmas, Movies, Wondering | 1 Comment »

Bagatelle (#125).

December 17th, 2024

Shot:

Quincy, M.E., season 5, episode 1: “No Way to Treat a Flower”.

A teenage girl dies from a disease that mainly affects the elderly. A few hours later, her boyfriend dies of the same symptoms. Quincy later traces it to a the marijuana they smoked, which was treated with a poisonous fertilizer. Quincy then decides to go after the magazine that advertised it in order to try to keep more kids from dying from the tainted weed. He also must find out where the kids got the weed from.

Chaser:

Two men from New York died from pneumonia they contracted from bat feces — after they used the excrement as fertilizer to grow marijuana, a new study found.
The unidentified men from Rochester, ages 64 and 59, smoked pot that had been tainted with a fungus found in the bat droppings, known as guano, that caused fatal lung infections, according to a study published in Open Forum Infectious Disease earlier this month.

Posted in 1970s, Bagatelle, Mammals, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 16, 2024.

December 16th, 2024

Robert Fernandez. He was 100.

Mr. Fernandez joined the Navy at 17 and was stationed on the U.S.S. Curtiss. He was a mess cook and ammunition loader.

In a video biography filmed in 2016, Mr. Fernandez, who was known as Uncle Bob to his friends, said he had joined the Navy to see the world.
“I just thought I was going to go dancing all the time, have a good time,” he said, adding: “What did I do? I got caught in a war.”

…

In his recollection of the attack, Mr. Fernandez said in the video that he had awakened that morning feeling excited to go dancing at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel with his friends that night.

That morning was December 7, 1941. The Curtiss had just returned to Pearl Harbor after a Pacific cruise.

The U.S.S. Curtis was bombed multiple times, and a Japanese fighter plane crashed into it near the bridge that housed the command center. Dozens on the ship were injured, and 21 people were killed, records show. The ship was repaired about a month later and rejoined the war effort…
“I never did get to go there,” Mr. Fernandez said. Instead, while serving on the mess deck — where sailors and Marines eat and cook — Mr. Fernandez began hearing explosions and gunfire. He recalled manning his battle station a few decks below with other sailors, passing ammunition to top-deck sailors who were firing whatever weapon they could get their hands on.
On how he survived the bombing, Mr. Fernandez said, “You just do what you’re told to do and do the best you can.”

Sons and Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors states that there are 16 remaining survivors.

Jill Jacobson, actress. Credits other than a couple of spinoffs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s include “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Sledge Hammer!”, and “Castle”.

Rodney Jenkins, show jumper.

In a professional career that began in the 1960s, Jenkins won more than 70 Grand Prix events, a record when he retired in 1989. His victories included three at the National Horse Show at Madison Square Garden and five American Gold Cup titles. He rode with 10 victorious U.S. teams in the Nations Cup, an international competition. He was a member of the National Show Hunter and Show Jumping Halls of Fame.
“What made Rodney truly exceptional was his humility and his unwavering belief in the horses he rode,” Britt McCormick, president of the United States Hunter Jumper Association, said in a statement. “He often credited his success to their brilliance, saying, ‘The horse makes the rider — I don’t care how good you are.’”
Known as the Red Rider for his wavy red hair, Jenkins excelled at the hunter and jumping rings. In the hunter rings — inspired by the sport of fox hunting — horses are judged on their style, look and manner as they move at a deliberate pace and jump over fences.
In the other rings, jumpers are scored on their ability to clear taller fences as quickly as possible without knocking down rails; if they do, faults are added to the total score.

…

“He’s a horseman,” Steven Levy wrote in a profile of Jenkins in The Philadelphia Inquirer in 1977. “A rider might get over a fence, but a horseman will make the horse jump, as if it’s a birthright to leap like a cheetah and land on the run. A horseman does it because the animals and he are on the same wavelength.”

Posted in Heroism, History, Horses, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Noted.

December 14th, 2024

It turns out that, among the many people Joe Biden has either pardoned or commuted the sentences of, is…

…crazy horse lady Rita Crundwell.

You may remember Ms. Crundwell from previous coverage in this space. She used to be comptroller of Dixon, Illinois, until it was discovered that she’d embezzled $53 million from the town, and used the money to fund her quarter-horse breeding operation.

She had been sentenced to “nearly 20 years” in 2013. If she served the standard 85% of her federal sentence, she would have been imprisoned until October 20, 2029. But she was placed on house arrest in August of 2021 due to COVID concerns, and her sentence was commuted on Thursday.

Posted in Horses, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Frustration…

December 13th, 2024

I was going to post a short video that was relevant to Lawrence’s interests, but I can’t get it to display properly here. The first five or so seconds are cut off, and since it is only a 14 second long video, that just doesn’t work.

I was going to post a short note on a movie we recently watched, but there are no good videos of the bridge bombing from “The Bridges at Toko-Ri” on YouTube. At least, none that I can find, and I wanted to use that to illustrate my point. (I found one of the fuel dump scene, but that really doesn’t do a good job of showing what I wanted to talk about.)

Edited to add: Okay, I found one that gives a good illustration of what I’m talking about.

This is clips of aircraft footage from “The Bridges at Toko-Ri”. I’ve set it to start with the bridge attack at 8:41.

“Bridges” won an Academy Award for special effects in 1955. Interestingly, the other nominees were “The Rains of Ranchipur“…

…and “The Dam Busters“. We’ve seen “Dam Busters”, but not “Rains”. I may try to sell that to the Saturday Movie Group. On the one hand, it seems like one of those typical potboiler romantic melodramas, with a natural disaster thrown in. On the other hand, that cast: Lana Turner, Richard Burton, Fred MacMurray, and Michael Rennie (among others). On the gripping hand, the blu-ray is pricy.

Posted in Admin, Food, Movies | 2 Comments »

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