Loser update update.

September 2nd, 2022

The NFL regular season begins Thursday, September 8th.

The loser update will return on Tuesday, September 13th (since we have to wait for the results of the Monday night game).

In honor of great and good friend of the blog, pigpen51, we promise that we will try to avoid Detroit Lions jokes as much as possible this year.

In honor of great and good friend of the blog, Manhattan Infidel (who recently returned to blogging), we promise that we will try to avoid New York Football Giants jokes as much as possible this year.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 31, 2022.

August 31st, 2022

Richard Roat, actor. Other credits include “The F.B.I.”, “O’Hara, U.S. Treasury”, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “Columbo” and “McMillan & Wife” (he missed “McCloud” for the trifecta, but also did “Hec Ramsey” and “Banacek”), and “Westworld” (1973).

William Reynolds. Where is my “The F.B.I.” box set, darn it? Other credits include “Dragnet 1967”, “Pete Kelly’s Blues” (the TV series), “All That Heaven Allows”, “Francis Goes to West Point”, and “Project U.F.O.”

Roland Mesnier, former White House pastry chef.

The French-born Mr. Mesnier served as a member of the chief executive’s kitchen cabinet for nearly 25 years. He catered to the idiosyncratic tastes of five presidents, their wives and their guests, an experience he chronicled in several books.
Mr. Mesnier was hired in 1979 by the first lady, Rosalynn Carter, and served until he retired in 2004, during the administration of George W. Bush. He worked from a modest space in the East Wing, armed with about 300 original pastry molds and an eclectic set of tools, including an ice pick, a coat hanger and a tire-pressure gauge.
Despite the president’s background as a legume farmer, he reported, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter disdained peanuts and sweets in their family’s recipe for a sticky cheese ring — a recipe, Mr. Mesnier said, “that no one tried to steal.” He rated it on a par with Bill and Hillary Clinton’s “atrocious concoction of Coca-Cola-flavored jelly served with black glacé cherries.”
Nancy Reagan often skipped meals but partook of dessert. (She routinely denied her husband chocolate, but Mr. Mesnier smuggled mousse to President Reagan when the first lady was out of town.)

…

In 2001, Mr. Mesnier took three weeks and 80 pounds of gingerbread, 30 pounds of chocolate and 20 pounds of marzipan to construct a replica of the 1800 White House for the Christmas holiday.
He sometimes served flaming desserts — but, he said, he gave that up after a woman’s fox shawl caught fire when she leaned across the table at a holiday reception.

(Obligatory.)

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

Short gun crankery update.

August 30th, 2022

The Han Solo blaster went for $1,057,500.

It isn’t clear to me if that includes the bidder’s premium.

Posted in Guns, Movies | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 30, 2022.

August 30th, 2022

It was already a semi-busy day, but I thought I’d hold obits until tonight just in case something big happened.

Narrator: Something big happened.

Mikhail Gorbachev. NYT. Alt link. Oddly, I can’t find anything about this on the English language Pravda site.

In other news, a lot of young or relatively young people have been passing away.

Ralph Eggleston, noted Pixar animator.

Eggleston was hired by Pixar in 1992 during the development of the first computer-animated feature that was to become Toy Story, beginning what was to become a long and hugely successful career at the animation studio. He worked as an art director on Toy Story, which was released to universal acclaim and great box office success in 1995. Eggleston went on to win his first Annie Award, for best art direction for his work on the film.
Pixar enjoyed a historical run of success in the 1990s and early 2000s and Eggleston, known affectionately as Eggman at the company, was a key player in the films the studio produced for nearly three decades. He worked as an art director on A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1999), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006) and Up (2009). He was a storywriter and visual developer on Monsters, Inc. (2001), a production designer on Finding Nemo (2003) and WALL-E (2008) and a character designer on Ratatouille (2007).

He was 56. Pancreatic cancer got him.

Charlbi Dean, actress. She was in “Black Lightning” and the forthcoming “Triangle of Sadness”. She was 32: according to reports, she died of an “unexpected sudden illness”.

Luke Bell, musician. He was also 32: friends said he had been missing for a week before his body was found.

Neena Pacholke, morning news anchor for WAOW in Wisconsin. She was 27 and engaged.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You can also dial 988 to reach the Lifeline. If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.

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

Continuing adventures in hoplobibliophilia.

August 28th, 2022

I think I’ve brought this up before, but, since the recent unpleasantness, pickings have been sort of slim at Half-Price Books. Sometimes I’ll stumble across something, but it doesn’t seem like they’re getting as much good stuff as they used to.

Today was one of those stumble across days. We happened to be in the neighborhood dealing with the Mongolian fire drill that is Dan’s on a Saturday morning for breakfast, so I thought I’d duck in for a few minutes. And I walked out with a haul. Including not one, but two original Samworth books. (Technically, one is a reprint, but it is an original Samworth book.)

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in 1911, Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: August 26, 2022.

August 26th, 2022

Joe E. Tata, actor.

Credits other than “Beverly Hills, 90210” include “Monster Squad”, the 1966 “Batman” series, “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”, “The Outer Limits”, “Mission: Impossible”, and “Lost in Space”.

He also did a fair number of cop/PI/procedural shows, including “O’Hara, U.S. Treasury”, “The F.B.I.”, “Cannon”, “Quincy M.E.”, eight episodes of “The Rockford Files”…

…and “Mannix”. (“A World Without Sundays”, season 7, episode 8. “A Problem of Innocence”, season 6, episode 23. “What Happened to Sunday?”, season 4, episode 15.)

E. Bryant Crutchfield, inventor of the Trapper Keeper.

By way of Mike the Musicologist: a nice tribute to Richard Taruskin from Alex Ross. (Link goes to archive.is because I’m not sure how long that will stay available for non-subscribers.)

By way of The Mysterious Bookshop: Michael Malone, novelist and TV writer. He won a Daytime Emmy for “One Life to Live”, and an Edgar Award in 1997 (Best Short Story for “Red Clay”, in the anthology Murder for Love).

Posted in 1970s, Books, Mannix, Music, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: August 25, 2022.

August 25th, 2022

Jerry Allison, drummer with the Crickets.

Mr. Allison was still a teenager in Lubbock, Texas, when he began playing with Mr. Holly, who was three years older and had already made a tentative start on a music career, releasing a few records in Nashville that did not do well. Back in Lubbock, he, Mr. Allison, Niki Sullivan on guitar (soon replaced by Sonny Curtis, Tommy Allsup and others) and Joe B. Mauldin on bass began honing a sound that drew on Elvis Presley and on country and, especially, Black music.

…

Then, in May 1956, he and Mr. Holly went to see a new John Wayne movie, “The Searchers,” in which one of Mr. Wayne’s most memorable lines was “That’ll be the day.”
Days later, according to an account written for the Library of Congress, Mr. Holly suggested that he and Mr. Allison write a song together, and Mr. Allison, imitating the Wayne line, said, “That’ll be the day.”
“Right away, Buddy starts fiddling around with it,” Mr. Allison told the Lansing newspaper. “In about a half-hour, we had it.”
Mr. Holly cut a country version of the song in Nashville that was unloved (a producer there is said to have called it “the worst song I’ve ever heard”), but in 1957 he and the Crickets, as his Lubbock group was called, recorded a rock ’n’ roll version that became a national hit and remained in Billboard’s Top 30 for three months. Mr. Holly, Mr. Allison and the producer who recorded that version, Norman Petty, got the songwriting credit, and in 2005 the record was selected for the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry.

Gerald Potterton. He directed the 1981 “Heavy Metal”. Other credits include some work on “Yellow Submarine” and “The Railrodder“. (I have previously covered that Buster Keaton film in this space, but the videos are no longer available on the ‘Tube. There is a version that’s not from the Canadian NFB, but I can’t vouch for it.)

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Barbecue Law!

August 24th, 2022

La Barbecue is a popular Austin joint. It is in the Texas Monthly Top 50, though not in the Top 10.

The owner and manager of La Barbecue have been criminally indicted.

[Leanne] Mueller and [Allison] Clem are each charged with two counts of fraudulent securing of document execution.

What does that mean? Here’s how the Statesman explains it. La Barbecue didn’t have worker’s comp insurance, and hadn’t had it since November of 2014. Sometime in July of 2016, one of their employees was hurt “while operating a piece of kitchen equipment”. It sounds like the injuries were pretty serious: I’ll get into that in a minute.

Four days later, Clem contacted Paychex Insurance to get workers’ compensation coverage, something the restaurant had been without since November 2014.
Clem did not disclose her employee’s injuries to the agent but asked that the new policy be backdated to July 1, 2016, three weeks before the employee was hurt, the Texas Department of Insurance reported.

This kind of strikes me as equivalent to being in a car accident, then calling your insurance agent to get backdated coverage. I would call this “insurance fraud”. But: I am not a lawyer.

“It is perfectly legal to obtain a backdated policy in Texas,” said the women’s attorney, Brian Roark.

Which may be true. But it is legal to obtain a backdated policy, then make a claim against that policy for an accident that happened while coverage was not in place?

Mueller then submitted a signed application for coverage, claiming the business had no previous losses, and the policy was approved by Travelers Casualty Insurance Co. of America, the department said.

According to the article, Travelers paid out “$350,000 in medical and indemnity benefits”. In addition, “The insurance company is also responsible for lifetime care of the injured employee.”

“The insurance company determined early on that they didn’t believe they should have to pay for the claim, yet continued to pay for it anyway,” Roark said. “Regardless of the insurance company’s determination, La Barbecue, Leanne Mueller and Allison Clem believed they were acting in good faith at all times when they signed the application that had been provided to them by the insurance agent. All the monies paid for the employee were paid to the employee or directly for his medical expenses and not to La Barbecue, Leanne Mueller or Allison Clem. We believe once a jury hears the facts, that La Barbecue, Leanne Mueller and Allison Clem will be exonerated.”

If they are convicted, supposedly the two can be made to pay restitution “up to double the amount Travelers already paid to the injured worker in benefits”.

I’d hate to lose a good barbecue joint (though I’ve never had a chance to eat at La Barbecue). But I think this goes to show at least one thing: it’s just ignorant not to have worker’s comp insurance.

(More from eater.com. Crossposted to The Logbook of the Saturday Dining Conspiracy.)

Posted in Beef, Food, Law | 1 Comment »

The Agony of…something or other.

August 24th, 2022

It isn’t exactly defeat. This makes falling off the end of a ski jump look tame.

By way of a comment on Reddit’s “Hobby Drama” sub, I learned that there is such a thing as the International Tank Biathlon World Championship. The 9th one of those is either wrapped up or just wrapping up. Yes, it did go on: it was not called on account of WAR, though the page linked above seems to be confused about whether this is the 2022 or 2021 edition.

But wait, there’s more! We have a Twitter thread! With video! And commentary!

Two highlights. Number one is a clip from “Fast 12: Tank Drift”:

Number two: everything is better with music.

And this goes out to the Saturday Night Movie Group:

Posted in Bagatelle, Sports | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: August 24, 2022.

August 24th, 2022

Len Dawson, one of the greats. NYT.

Known as “Lenny the Cool” for his composure and guile on the field, Dawson was the Chiefs’ starter for 14 seasons, including their appearances in Super Bowl I and Super Bowl IV.

…

Dawson, a strapping 6-footer with wavy hair and a killer smile, began working as a sports anchor for KMBC-TV (Ch. 9) during his playing days in 1966, not stepping down until 2009. He also served as an NFL color commentator for NBC Sports for six years; was co-host for HBO’s “Inside the NFL” for 24 years; and was the Chiefs’ radio analyst from 1984 to 2017.

…

In 1987, Dawson was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, just 20 miles from his childhood home of Alliance, Ohio. Dawson, inducted into the Chiefs Hall of Fame in 1979, also was selected 1972 NFL Man of the Year, an award that honors a player’s contributions both on the field and in the community.
Dawson’s work as a broadcaster was recognized in 2012, when he received the Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award from the Pro Football Hall of Fame, 25 years after he was enshrined as a player. Dawson, Frank Gifford, Dan Dierdorf and John Madden are the only members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame who also received the Rozelle Award, which recognizes “longtime exceptional contributions to radio and television in professional football.”

…

In his 19-year professional career, Dawson completed 2,136 passes in 3,741 attempts for 28,711 yards, 239 touchdowns and 183 interceptions. His 183 games played for the Chiefs ranks third among non-kickers to only Will Shields’ 224 and Tony Gonzalez’ 190. And Dawson completed more passes (2,115) for more yards (28,507) and more touchdowns (237) than any quarterback in Chiefs history.

…

More important to Dawson was the contribution he and the Chiefs played in Kansas City, a town searching for its major-league identity.
“The games themselves don’t mean that much,” he said. “You tend to forget the details. But our success was important to Kansas City. I like to think our football team played a part in changing the minds of people about Kansas City. That is the most significant thing to me.”

Tim Page, Vietnam war photographer. (Alt link.)

A freelancer and a free spirit whose Vietnam pictures appeared in publications around the world during the 1960s, he was seriously wounded four times, most severely when a piece of shrapnel took a chunk out of his brain and sent him into months of recovery and rehabilitation.
Mr. Page was one of the most vivid personalities among a corps of Vietnam photographers whose images helped shape the course of the war — and was a model for the crazed, stoned photographer played by Dennis Hopper in “Apocalypse Now.”
Michael Herr, in his 1977 book “Dispatches,” called him the most extravagant of the “wigged-out crazies” in Vietnam, who “liked to augment his field gear with freak paraphernalia, scarves and beads.”

…

He published a dozen books, including two memoirs, and most notably “Requiem” a collection of pictures by photographers on all sides who had been killed in the various Indochina wars.
Issued in 1997 and co-authored by his fellow photographer Horst Faas, it was a memorial that he considered one of his most important contributions. The collection was put on permanent display in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.

Requiem: By the Photographers Who Died in Vietnam and Indochina (affiliate link to used copies on Amazon). I’ve mentioned it before, but I think this is a great book.

His closest encounter with death came in April 1969 when he stepped out of a helicopter to help offload wounded soldiers and was hit with shrapnel when a soldier near him stepped on a mine.
He was pronounced dead at a military hospital, then was revived, then died and was revived again, finally recovering enough to be transferred to the United States, where he endured months of rehabilitation and therapy before picking up his cameras and heading back to work.
During this time, in an event that consumed much of his later life, two fellow photographers headed on motorcycles down an empty road in Cambodia in search of Khmer Rouge guerrillas and never returned.
Over the following decades, Mr. Page made repeated forays into the Cambodian countryside in a futile search for the remains of the two men, Sean Flynn and Dana Stone.

This goes unmentioned in the obit, and isn’t strictly relevant, but I find it an interesting historical footnote: Sean Flynn was Errol Flynn’s son (by his first wife, Lili Damita). To the best of my knowledge, Mr. Flynn and Mr. Stone have never been found: “In 1984, Flynn’s mother had him declared dead in absentia.”

Personal indulgence: Doris Emily Bedford Gerlat. She was the mother of my beloved and indulgent Uncle Allan (who is married to my beloved and indulgent Aunt Cheryl: the two of them are responsible for the Major Award among other things).

Posted in Books, History, NFL, Photography, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 23, 2022.

August 23rd, 2022

Gary Gaines, former football coach at Odessa Permian.

His record from 1986-89 was 47-6-1.
Gaines led Permian to the fifth of the program’s six state championships with a perfect season in 1989, then left to become an assistant coach at Texas Tech.

Yes, this is the coach from “Friday Night Lights”, the book (affiliate link) and movie (ditto).

“I just can’t find the words to pay respects,” Ron King, a former Permian assistant, told the Odessa American. “It’s a big loss for the coaching profession. There are a lot of coaches he took under his wing and mentored.”
Gaines, who was played by Billy Bob Thornton in the 2004 movie, said he never read the book and felt betrayed by Bissinger after the author spent the entire 1988 season with the team.

Vincent Gil, Australian actor. Credits include “Chopper Squad”, “Riptide” (the 1969 series), “Cop Shop”, “A Cry in the Dark”, and “Nightrider” in the first “Mad Max” movie. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Posted in Boats, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Brief belated historical note.

August 23rd, 2022

I had a day off yesterday and did a lot of running around, so I missed this:

50 years ago yesterday, on August 22, 1972, John Wojtowicz, Robert Westenberg, and Salvatore Naturile tried to hold up a branch of the Chase Manhattan Bank in Brooklyn.

Things did not go well. They expected to take between $150,000 and $200,000, but when they got to the bank, an armored truck had taken most of the money away. They got a total of $29,000 and tried to get away: Westenberg escaped, but Wojtowicz and Naturile didn’t manage to get away before the police showed up. The attempted bank robbery turned into a hostage situation…

…and if all this sounds familiar, yes, this was the famous “Dog Day Afternoon” robbery.

50th anniversary retrospective from the NYT.

Posted in History, Law, Movies | Comments Closed

Obit watch: August 22, 2022.

August 22nd, 2022

Virginia Patton, actress. She had a short career: most notably, she was apparently the last surviving adult member of the “It’s A Wonderful Life” cast. (Karolyn Grimes, who played “Zuzu”, is still alive, as is Jimmy Hawkins, who played “Tommy”.)

Josephine Tewson. She did a lot of British TV, some of which made it to PBS here. Most notably to my people, she was “Elizabeth”, the neighbor of “Hyacinth Bucket” in “Keeping Up Appearances”.

By way of Lawrence: Alexi Panshin, SF author.

Tom Weiskopf, noted golfer.

Posted in Books, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Quick legal note.

August 19th, 2022

Fotios Geas, Paul J. DeCologero and Sean McKinnon have been charged with crimes related to the murder of Whitey Bulger.

They’ve all been charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder.

Mr. Geas, 55, who is known as “Freddy,” and Mr. DeCologero, 48, known as “Pauly,” were also charged with aiding and abetting first-degree murder, as well as assault resulting in serious bodily injury. Mr. Geas faces an additional charge for murder by a federal inmate serving a life sentence.
Mr. McKinnon, 36, who was on federal supervised release when he was indicted and arrested in Florida on Thursday, faces a separate charge of making false statements to a federal agent.

Posted in Law | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 19, 2022.

August 19th, 2022

Norah Vincent, author.

Her first book, Self-Made Man: One Woman’s Year Disguised as a Man (affiliate link) was about the 18 months she spent passing as a man.

But the book was no joke. It was a nuanced and thoughtful work. It drew comparisons to “Black Like Me,” the white journalist John Howard Griffin’s 1961 book about his experiences passing as a Black man in the segregated Deep South. David Kamp, writing in The New York Times Book Review, called Ms. Vincent’s book “rich and audacious.”

Her second book, Voluntary Madness: Lost and Found in the Mental Healthcare System (affiliate link) was about the time she spent in various mental hospitals after suffering a breakdown during her time posing as a man.

…While in treatment, she said, she thought to herself: “Jesus, what a freak show. All I have to do is take notes and I’m Balzac.”
What transpired was less tidy than “Self Made Man,” however. As she toured mental institutions — a Bellevue-like urban one, a high-end facility in the Midwest and finally a New Age clinic — Ms. Vincent found herself increasingly mired in depression and juggling a cocktail of medications. The book’s conclusion did not endear her to reviewers, as she exhorted those in extremis like her to move on and “put your boots on.”

She also wrote Adeline: A Novel of Virginia Woolf (affiliate link). During the process of writing the book, she tried to kill herself.

Ms. Vincent was a lesbian. She was not transgender, or gender fluid. She was, however, interested in gender and identity. As a freelance contributor to The Los Angeles Times, The Village Voice and The Advocate, she had written essays on those topics that inflamed some readers.
She was a libertarian. She tilted at postmodernism and multiculturalism. She argued for the rights of fetuses and against identity politics, which she saw as infantilizing and irresponsible. She did not believe that transsexuals were members of the opposite sex after they had surgery and had taken hormones, a position that led one writer to label her a bigot. She was a contrarian, and proud of it.

She sounds like someone who would have been interesting to meet. She was 53: according to the obit, she died at a medically assisted suicide clinic in Switzerland.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

« Older Entries
Newer Entries »