Doug Pederson out as head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.
Five seasons, 42-37-1 overall, 4-2 in the playoffs, one Super Bowl win, and 4-11 this season.
Firings watch.
January 11th, 2021“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 286
January 11th, 2021I have another doctor’s appointment today (actually, two) so I’m serving up a variety platter based on some recent events.
It snowed here yesterday. Seriously, snowed. For several hours. In Texas.
It is supposed to be pretty cold today, too, so how about a refreshing cold weather drink recipe?
This recipe is different from the one given in How To Archer, specifically the addition of Creme de Cacao and Crème de menthe. (Also, eight ounces of peppermint schnapps to 12 ounces of hot chocolate sounds like a really good way to get messed up. So I’d recommend drinking these when you don’t have to go anywhere.) I should have picked up some schnapps, Creme de Cacao, and Crème de menthe when I was out…
We watched “Tombstone” Saturday night. Spoiler: I think we all rather liked it. However, me being who I am and the rest of us being who we are (the kind of people who have the Internet Movie Firearms Database open on their phones while we watch), of course I ended up discoursing on the Buntline Special during breaks.
This is a pretty good short video hitting some of the main points on the Buntline Special and Wyatt Earp.
Bonus: I don’t usually link to hickok45 since you should already be watching him. But I’m making an exception here because: “Cimarron Wyatt Earp Buntline Special” which is (as I understand it) an exact replica of the movie gun. And hickok45 also discourses some more on Buntline history.
Cimarron lists them in their 2020 catalog. Bud’s lists them as out of stock, but says they are a special order item.
It is kind of a good looking gun. And I want something in the Colt Single Action Army style. But:
- I have the same problem hickock45 has with the 10″ barrel length: it just doesn’t seem handy.
- I’m really not sure how well these guns are made (though hickock45 seems to think they’re okay).
- What I really want in the SAA style is…an actual Colt Single Action Army in .45 Colt, not a substitute.
(I do have a New Frontier in .22 LR, but I’m thinking of trading that off. It seems surplus to needs, now that I have a Ruger Single-Six with both .22 LR and .22 Magnum cylinders.)
Side note: “Wyatt Earp and the Buntline Special Myth” from the Kansas Historical Quarterly.
Side note #2: Josephine Earp, which I also find interesting: especially the part about “I Married Wyatt Earp“.
I’ve written before about “The Devil At Your Heels”, the Canadian documentary about Ken Carter and his five-year attempt to do a one-mile jump over the St. Lawrence River.
For those of you who might have been wondering and didn’t check Wikipedia: “Ken Carter – Stuntman To The End”. Or: the rest of the story after the jump attempt.
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January 10th, 2021Science Sunday!
Today I thought we’d go back to maths.
Look Around you 1 – Maths from Joe Hathy on Vimeo.
(One of my cow-orkers sent me this video originally, without any context. I didn’t realize until I went looking for it again that instead of being a semi-contemporary parody of 1970s educational films, it was actually a post-2000 parody of 1970s educational films, and part of a series called “Look Around You“.)
(Give it time. It builds.)
“An Evening with Leonhard Euler”, a lecture by William Dunham. I loved Journey through Genius: The Great Theorems of Mathematics (affiliate link).
Short bonus, since the first video is long: from Numberphile, “e (Euler’s Number)”.
I kind of want to do some stuff with Newton, Gauss, Évariste Galois, and some other mathematicians. But I think next week I may do something with pi, and then something with i the following week.
Obit watch: January 10, 2021.
January 10th, 2021Michael Apted. Yeah, yeah, “7 Up” and the follow-on movies, but he had an interesting career outside of that: “Coal Miner’s Daughter”, “The World Is Not Enough”, “Gorillas In the Mist”, “Gorky Park”…
John Richardson (by way of LP). Credits include “She”, “One Million Years B.C.”, and “Frankenstein ’80”.
Lawrence also sent over an obit from Mark Steyn’s website for Kathy Shaidle, their movie writer. I don’t read Mark Steyn regularly, and I wasn’t familiar with Ms. Shaidle, but from the obit, she sounds like someone I would have enjoyed knowing.
…
(We watched “All About Eve” recently. It was the first time I’d seen it: it is a seriously great movie.)
Even back then, I resented being ordered around by the government.
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January 9th, 2021Do I do food today, or true crime? I think true crime, because I’ve done a lot of food this week.
“One Last Job: The Unlikely Story Behind the Hatton Garden Heist”.
This is also fairly short: only about 22 minutes.
Bonus: “The Gang Who Tried to Steal the World’s Largest Perfect Diamond”.
There’s a guy named Dan Howland who used to publish a acclaimed ‘zine called “The Journal of Ride Theory”. It was sort of a parody of academic journals, but dealt with amusement park and carnival rides. At least that’s the best way I can describe it. I missed the ‘zine when it was at its peak, but you can still get copies (including an omnibus book) from Lulu. At some point I ordered that: it may have been a package deal because I also got his amusing one-off, “Dome and Domer: The Increasingly Stupid Story of the Millennium Dome”.
For those unfamiliar with the Millennium Dome (and Howland does it much better justice than the Wikipedia entry) it was built to house the “Millennium Experience”, a one-year exhibition that ran from 1/1/2000 to 12/31/2000. It was also a legendary fiasco. (Three words: “robotic pubic lice“.)
Anyway, that was where I first heard about the Millennium Dome Heist, in which an inept group of crooks tried to steal diamonds from De Beers exhibition in the Dome, but were foiled by the Yard’s Flying Squad.
(Isn’t “Flying Squad” one of the best names for a police unit ever? Admit it, you want to be able to say “I’m part of the Flying Squad”.)
Okay, enough digression.
I have no joke here, I just like saying “this here’s a gun powder activated, 27 caliber, full auto, no kickback, nail-throwing mayhem“.
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January 8th, 2021It’s been a while since I’ve done anything music related.
“No Fun”, a BBC documentary on the birth of punk rock.
Bonus: “Punk ’76”, another punk documentary. It seems to me that “No Fun” has more coverage of punk in America, while “Punk ’76” is primarily English, and specifically about the punk scene around Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s store.
Obit watch: January 8, 2021.
January 8th, 2021I started working on this earlier this morning, but this is breaking just now: Tommy Lasorda. ESPN. No LAT, because you basically can’t read anything without a subscription and your ad-blocker disabled.
Rip. Tommy vs. The Phillie Phanatic may be the greatest moment in MLB history pic.twitter.com/u03IWuIRvw
— Jeremy (RONALDO HERNANDEZ STAN) Taylor (Swift lol) (@theteremyjaylor) January 8, 2021
Neil Sheehan, author (A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam) and journalist.
“Now It Can Be Told: How Neil Sheehan Got the Pentagon Papers”.
Eric Jerome Dickey, novelist.
“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 282
January 7th, 2021Travel Thursday!
After last week’s exciting trip to New Jersey (“Gateway to New York City”), how about something a little more exotic? Maybe…Spain?
“Castles and Castanets”, one of those 1960s Pan Am travel films.
Bonus: as long as we are in Spain, let’s get something to eat. “Spanish Street Food in Seville”, part 1:
And part 2:
Truthfully, I could just turn off the sound and watch the food.
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January 6th, 2021This could possibly fall equally well under “travel”, but I decided to go the “food” route today.
This should not have surprised me, but yet it did: there is a Charles Dickens Museum. And yes, they do have a YouTube channel.
It is a little late for this year (although the Christmas season actually ends tonight), but maybe for next year: “The Original Victorian Christmas Pudding Recipe”.
Are you hungry yet? How about some Victorian gingerbread?
We can wash it down with “Charles Dickens’s Favourite Brandy Punch Recipe”.
And finally, “Toasted Cheese with the Dickenses”. Complete with Victorian cheese toaster. This is a real thing that exists, and I kind of want one now.
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January 5th, 2021Regular readers of this blog have probably figured out that I love a good spy story.
Have you ever heard of Lionel Crabb? I had, because the story was in a collection of great spy stories I have floating around somewhere.
Lt. Commander Crabb was a British frogman. On April 19, 1956, LTC Crabb disappeared while on a mission for MI6: he was exploring Ordzhonikidze, a Soviet cruiser that was visiting Britain on a diplomatic mission (with Nikita Khrushchev on board.)
His body turned up 14 months later. Maybe.
Bonus, combining spy stories with another of my loves: “The Secret Listeners”, a 1979 BBC documentary about radio intelligence during WWI and WWII.
Obit watch: January 5, 2021.
January 5th, 2021THR is now reporting the same thing TMZ was reporting yesterday: Tanya Roberts is not dead, in spite of a statement from her rep stating that she was.
Mike Pingel told THR on Monday, “I did get confirmation [of her death], but that was from a very distraught person [Roberts’ boyfriend, Lance O’Brien],” Pingel said.
Pingel added, “And so yes, this morning at 10 a.m. … the hospital did call to say that she was still alive but it’s not looking good. We will hopefully have information [soon]. It’s upsetting.”
If it ain’t a mess, it’ll do until the mess gets here.
Edited to add: The NYT is now officially reporting Ms. Roberts’s death.
Gerry Marsden, of Gerry and the Pacemakers.
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January 4th, 2021Our movie for New Year’s Eve (before we set off fireworks) was “The Starfighters“. (Specifically the MST3K version with “B-1” Bob Dornan, though I’m not sure there is a non-MST3K version available on home video.)
Personally, I feel that it could have used more refueling and flight scenes, and less romance and character development. But that’s just me.
The F-104 is an interesting aircraft, especially in terms of its operational history.
…
Some operators lost a large proportion of their aircraft through accidents, although the accident rate varied widely depending on the user and operating conditions. The German Air Force and Federal German Navy, the largest combined user of the F-104 and operator of over 35% of all airframes built, lost approximately 32% of its Starfighters in accidents over the aircraft’s 31-year career. The Belgian Air Force, on the other hand, lost 41 of its 100 airframes between February 1963 and September 1983,[160] and Italy, the final Starfighter operator, lost 138 of 368 (37%) by 1992. Canada’s accident rate with the F-104 ultimately exceeded 46% (110 of 238) over its 25-year service history, though the Canadian jets tended to be flown for a greater number of hours than those of other air forces (three times that of the German F-104s, for example).However, some operators had substantially lower accident rates: Denmark’s attrition rate for the F-104 was 24%, with Japan losing just 15%[164] and Norway 14% (6 of 43) of their respective Starfighter fleets. The best accident rate was achieved by the Spanish Air Force, which ended its Starfighter era with a perfect safety record. The Ejército del Aire lost none of its 18 F-104Gs and 3 TF-104Gs over a total of seven years and 17,500 flight hours.
The cumulative destroyed rate of the F-104 Starfighter in USAF service as of 31 December 1983 was 25.2 aircraft destroyed per 100,000 flight hours. This is the highest accident rate of any of the USAF Century Series fighters. By comparison, the cumulative destroyed rates for the other Century Series aircraft in USAF service over the same time period were 16.2 for the North American F-100 Super Sabre, 9.7 for the McDonnell F-101 Voodoo, 15.6 for the Republic F-105 Thunderchief, and 7.3 for the Convair F-106 Delta Dart. By comparison, the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) experienced an overall loss rate of 11.96 per 100,000 flying hours with the Dassault Mirage III, losing 40 of 116 aircraft to accidents over its 25-year career from 1965 to 1989. The Royal Air Force lost over 50 of 280 English Electric Lightnings, at one point experiencing twelve losses in the seventeen months between January 1970 and May 1971; the loss rate per 100,000 hours from the introduction of the Lightning in 1961 to May 1971 was 17.3, higher than the lifetime West German Starfighter loss rate of 15.08.
Why was the German accident rate so high? Lots of reasons.
“Why Germany had so many accidents with the F-104 Starfighter”.
Bonus #1: “F-104 Starfighter Walkaround”.
Bonus #2: I hope you like Starfighters, as this is basically “The Starfighters” without bots, Mike, skits, or all that annoying character development stuff.
Obit watch: January 4, 2021.
January 4th, 2021It is the stated policy of this blog that, if you were a Bond girl, you get an obit.
Tanya Roberts has died at the age of 65. She was, of course, “Sheena: Queen of the Jungle”, Donna’s mother on “That ’70s Show”, and one of Charlie’s Angels (for the final season). She was also the Bond girl, Stacey Sutton, in “A View to a Kill”, the movie that caused me to punch out of the Bond franchise.
Edited to add: Lawrence sent me a link from TMZ that claims Ms. Roberts is still alive. However, I don’t trust TMZ any further than I can sling a piano, and THR has not retracted their story yet. I will try to keep an eye on this one.
Lawrence sent over obits for Floyd Little, noted running back, and Paul Westphal, noted basketball player and coach.
Blood in the streets!
January 4th, 2021This is your Monday morning after the end of the season NFL firings thread.
I was tied up last night, so I didn’t have a chance to note this then, but: Adam Gase was fired Sunday night as head coach of the 2-14 Jets. He was 9-23 over two seasons.
This morning’s batch of firings so far:
Doug Marrone out in Jacksonville after 4 seasons and going 1-15 this season. But hey, they got that first round draft choice!
He was 24-43 overall in his time with the team.
Anthony Lynn out as coach of the worthless LA Chargers. (Apologies for the ESPN link, but the LAT is obnoxious.)
He’d also been with the team for four seasons, and was 33-31 overall, with a 1-1 record in the postseason, and went 7-9 this year.
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January 3rd, 2021Science Sunday!
I’ve mentioned Theodore von Kármán in passing previously, but only in the context of his influence on other folks. He was a hugely important scientist in his own right, though: he did massively important work on fluid flow (including air flow) and turbulence, especially in the supersonic realm.
This is a lecture from 2012 about von Kármán’s life and work.
Bonus: A discussion with Roger Penrose on “What is time?”
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January 2nd, 2021The other day, I was at Half-Price Books, and found a first edition first printing of One Ranger (affiliate link) signed by both authors for $10, which is a heck of a find. I’ve written before about this book, and I won’t repeat myself here.
But it did get me thinking about the Texas Rangers.
I still have not seen “The Highwaymen”. It isn’t out yet on DVD or blu-ray, I refuse to subscribe to NetFlix, and I haven’t gotten up enough motivation to hoist the black flag.
But I do love this scene, both for the obvious reason and because there’s a limited amount of Woody Harrelson.
No, that wasn’t today’s video.
“Doing Justice to Pancho Hamer” part 1:
Part 2:
“Captain Frank Hamer and his go to firearms.”
This guy says that Frank Hamer did not use the Remington Model 8 to dispatch Bonnie and Clyde (they were used in the ambush, just not by Ranger Hamer):
I know I’ve mentioned him before, but Jeff Guinn in Go Down Together: The True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde (affiliate link) agrees with that guy, and says Ranger Hamer used a Colt Monitor machine rifle. On the other hand, John Boessenecker in Texas Ranger: The Epic Life of Frank Hamer, the Man Who Killed Bonnie and Clyde (ditto) asserts that Hamer used the Model 8. My problem with this is that Boessenecker’s sources amount to:
- A photo of the posse’s weapons taken shortly after the shooting that shows one BAR. (I do not believe Boessenecker reproduced that photo in his book.)
- A footnote in which Boessenecker attacks Guinn’s scolarship and sources, but does not offer any sources of his own.
- Boessenecker claims that the Monitor in the Ranger’s museum did belong to Hamer but there is “no evidence” it was used in the ambush. But he also admits that Hamer’s rifle in the museum could not have been used in the ambush. (It is a Remington Model 81, a successor to the Model 8, that wasn’t manufactured until 1940.)
History doesn’t work on the basis of “which writer we like better”. But given Boessenecker’s (in my opinion) weak sourcing, his tendency to take pot shots at other writers, and the moralizing he inserted into his book…unless somebody shows me a better reliable source, I’m taking Guinn’s side in this dispute.
(It looks to me, watching clips on YouTube, that “The Highwaymen” takes the Boessenecker side.)
For those unfamiliar with the Monitor (which is probably a lot of folks) it was basically a cut-down version of the BAR. Here’s a video from Brownells showing both.
Ian’s also done a video on the Monitor, which includes demo firing.
And one last video for the road, from TFB TV: “John Moses Browning’s Amazing Remington Model 8 Semi-Auto Rifle”.
(Remember, JMB’s birthday is coming up January 23rd. I’ll probably do a thematically appropriate post that day: in the meantime, I encourage you to pick up something designed by JMB if you don’t already have one of his guns. A .45 would be nice if you fall into that category, but an Auto-5/Remington Model 11, a Hi-Power, or a Winchester Model 1894 would be fine choices as well.)
Herman’s head…
January 2nd, 2021…has rolled.
Tom Herman out as UT head coach.
Herman was 32-18 in four seasons at Texas and has not won any Big 12 championships. The Longhorns have made only one appearance in the title game. That came in 2018 during UT’s 10-4 season that ended with a win over No. 6 Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.
But that season has become the exception rather than the norm under Herman. He was 9-10 against top-25 opponents and 1-4 against rival Oklahoma. That’s not anywhere close to the success UT officials expected when the school hired Herman away from Houston in November 2016.
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January 1st, 2021Happy New Year! And happy Travel Thursday on Friday!
I thought we’d go someplace exotic today. Namely, “The Land Called New Jersey”, a 1960s promo film from Humble Oil.
Bonus: I may be fudging the definition of “travel” a little bit, but this popped up and I couldn’t resist for two reasons. “Come Fly With Me”, a documentary (about one hour long) about the history of Pan Am. Reason #1 being: Pan Am.
Reason #2: this is narrated by the late Honor “Pussy Galore” Blackman.
(Speaking of Ms. Blackman, we actually did watch “Cockneys Vs. Zombies” (affiliate link). And…it’s not bad. I don’t think it is one of the great zombie films, but for $8 it gives you about 90 minutes of solid fun entertainment. And both Ms. Blackman and Alan “Brick Top” Ford are quite good.)
Obit watch: January 1, 2021.
January 1st, 2021Phyllis McGuire, last of the McGuire Sisters.
Ms. McGuire, with her older sisters Christine and Dorothy, shot to success overnight after winning the televised “Arthur Godfrey Talent Scouts” contest in 1952. Over the next 15 years, they were one of the nation’s most popular vocal groups, singing on the television variety shows of Ed Sullivan, Milton Berle, Andy Williams and Red Skelton, on nightclub circuits across the country and on records that sold millions.
The sisters epitomized a 1950s sensibility that held up a standard of unreal perfection, wearing identical coifs, dresses and smiles, moving with synchronized precision and blending voices in wholesome songs for simpler times. Their music, like that of Perry Como, Patti Page and other stars who appealed to white, middle-class audiences, contrasted starkly with the rock ’n’ roll craze that was taking the world by storm in the mid-to-late ’50s.
Ms. McGuire was also famously linked aromatically with Sam Giancana. Yes, the mobster.
Richard Thornburgh, former governor of Pennsylvania and Attorney General under Reagan and Bush.
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December 31st, 2020New Year’s Eve, the night when all the amateur drunks are out on the road. These seem fitting. (We’ll do Travel Thursday on Friday again this week.)
Shot: From the Laphroaig Whisky channel, a tour of the Laphroaig distillery.
Chaser: “Space Driving Tactics”. This has nothing to do with Star Wars (though if you want that, I assume you’ve seen Ian’s video) but is instead a 1971 driver’s ed film about the importance of allowing space so you can react to the drivers around you. This seems especially important on a night like tonight.
Obit watch: December 31, 2020.
December 31st, 2020This is a couple of days old, but I missed it until someone mentioned it to me: William Link.
Mr. Link and his partner, Richard Levinson, created a bunch of famous TV series: “Columbo”, “Murder She Wrote”, and, of course, “Mannix”.
Burning in Hell watch: Samuel Little.
Mr. Little had confessed to having committed 93 murders between 1970 and 2005, at least 50 of which have been verified by law enforcement officers, the F.B.I. said. He had been convicted of at least eight murders, some of which were solved using D.N.A. analysis.
Many of Mr. Little’s victims were marginalized, young Black women who were estranged from their families and struggling with poverty and addiction. In many cases, their deaths did not draw the same level of attention or outrage as other killings.
Obit watch: December 30, 2020.
December 30th, 2020Mary Ann is dead. Ginger is the last one standing.
THR:
I’m sure it is documented somewhere – I can’t remember if it was discussed at all in the supplement for “Boggy Creek II: And the Legend Continues” (which she does not appear in) but I’d really like to know how Ms. Wells got involved with Charles B. Pierce. (Noted: he also got Jessica “Suspiria” Harper to star in one of his films, alongside Vic Morrow. I don’t know: maybe people held Pierce in higher regard back then.)
Joe Clark, the principal with the baseball bat who inspired “Lean On Me”.
Pierre Cardin, fashion designer.
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December 30th, 2020Another thing I’m trying to avoid using too much is the “Timeline – World History Documentaries” channel. But this popped up in the feed, and is relevant to my interests:
“How The Germanic Barbarians Annihilated Rome’s Legions”, a semi-short (49 minutes) documentary about the Battle of the Teutoberg Forest.
Episode 55 of “The History of Rome” podcast (which I can’t pull up right now, but you should be able to get it through the podcast app of your choice) covers the Teutoberg Forest. There’s also a book that I’ve read, and liked: The Battle That Stopped Rome: Emperor Augustus, Arminius, and the Slaughter of the Legions in the Teutoburg Forest by Peter S. Wells (affiliate link).
Bonus: To give folks a little variety, here’s a documentary about “The Black Ghost”, a 1970 Dodge Challenger R/T SE with a 426 Hemi that was a street racing legend in Detroit.
I’m not a huge gearhead, and definitely not a big Mopar guy, but I have to say: that is one nice car, with a great story behind it.
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December 29th, 2020105 years ago today, Robert Ruark was born.
I wrote a long appreciation of him on his 100th birthday, which I won’t repeat here. But I thought it might be neat to feature him in today’s block of videos.
Short: a 15 minute documentary about Ruark from the Robert Ruark Society.
Long: “Safari Hunting”, a 1954 documentary about an African safari, featuring Robert Ruark (and Harry Selby) and narrated by Ruark.
It’s kind of cool, for someone as Ruark obsessed as I am, to see and hear the man himself, instead of just reading him. It’s also kind of cool to see what a safari was like in the 1950s.
And speaking of that, one of my Christmas presents from my beloved and indulgent sister and her family was a swell book: White Hunters: The Golden Age of African Safaris by Brian Herne (affiliate link). I’m about 3/4ths of the way through it, and I feel comfortable in recommending this book.
Firings watch.
December 29th, 2020Dwayne Haskins, previously in this space because strippers, was released yesterday.
He was the first round draft choice of the “Washington Football Team” in 2019, and the 15th overall draft choice that year.