Another good Christmas story, this one from Dr. Dabbs. And I’m not just saying that because the story features a F-4 Phantom II jet.
The Spirit of Christmas 3.
December 19th, 2025Flaming hyena update.
December 18th, 2025Remember Marty Small, Sr., the mayor of Atlantic City? Charged with beating the s–t out of his teenage daughter?
Merry Christmas! Not guilty on all counts!
Mr. Small was accused of using a broom to strike his daughter in the head, causing her to lose consciousness. At other times in the two-month period, he hit her in the legs repeatedly, causing bruising, and threatened to “earth slam” her, prosecutors said.
“We’re not saying there shouldn’t be disagreements in the home,” a prosecutor, Elizabeth Fischer, told jurors Tuesday in a closing statement, “but we’re saying it shouldn’t be met with violence.”
The jury began deliberating late Tuesday. Almost immediately, the panel requested to listen again to a recording, made by Mr. Small’s daughter and her boyfriend, in which the mayor can be heard threatening to slam her to the ground.
Prosecutors had said that the threats were meant to instill terror; Mr. Small’s lawyers argued that they were the warnings of a parent trying to correct the behavior of a child who, in a video also shown to jurors, was prone to extreme agitation when punished.
“A father takes a phone away from his daughter, and that results in the Tasmanian devil coming out,” Mr. Small’s lawyer, Louis M. Barbone, told jurors after replaying footage taken during a separate family conflict.
In New Jersey, corporal punishment that is not considered excessive is legal.
The charges against his wife are still pending.
Firings watch.
December 17th, 2025Brian Smith out at Ohio University.
“For cause”.
Not much more information than that, though he had been previously placed “on leave”.
He was hired almost exactly a year ago: the team was 8-4 this season.
ESPN.
Obit watch: December 17, 2025.
December 17th, 2025Gil Gerard, actor.
Other credits include “Airport ’77”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, and “E.A.R.T.H. Force”.
Robert Samuelson, long time economics columnist for “Newsweek” and the Washington Post.
Norman Podhoretz, conservative political writer.
(Hattip on Mr. Gerard and Mr. Podhoretz to Lawrence.)
Edited to add: archived NYT obits for Mr. Gerard and Mr. Podhoretz.
The spirit of Christmas 2.
December 17th, 2025Remember the other day, I linked to a swell Christmas meditation from LawDog?
Well, he’s expanded it some, with the intent of publishing a children’s book for Christmas next year.
Christmas car update.
December 16th, 2025The car passed the state emissions inspection with no problem. Other than a little bit of confusion because I’d never been to this place before, it was mostly a smooth process.
With an inspection in hand, I can renew my car registration.
The State of Texas used to have a simple and straightforward website for registration renewal.
Not any more. Oh, no. Everything has shifted to something called “Texas By Texas”. So, first of all, you have to set up an account if you’ve never used “Texas by Texas” before. (I had not: I think TxT is new this year.)
Not only do they want your email address, they also want all kinds of other information. Including your physical address, your mailing address, your driver’s license number, the audit code off your driver’s license, etc. etc. et bloody cetra.
Then, once you have your TxT account set up…as far as I can tell, that’s just for your driver’s license. You have to go through a separate step to link your car registration to TxT.
At least, once I finished that, I didn’t have to fill in a lot of information to actually get the renewal done. It didn’t even ask me for proof of insurance or inspection: I think all this stuff is linked by computer statewide these days.
Of course, there were the donations. Literally half a page of donations you could make while renewing your registration:
- “Support Texas Veterans”
- Texas state parks (as I recall, they want at least $5 for that)
- Organ donation
- Special Olympics
- “Ending Homelessness Fund”
- “Evidence Testing Grant Program”
- “Stop Human Trafficking”
And the registration itself is $78.25 before any donations. Including $10 for bridges, $1.50 for “child safety”, $7.50 for the “inspection replacement fee” (just because the state did away with safety inspections doesn’t mean that they don’t want their money), $2.75 for the “emissions inspection fee” (that’s over and above the $11.50 state fee for the emissions inspection, plus $7 for something, I’m not exactly sure what, plus 75 cents for using a credit card), and $4.75 for “processing and handling”. Tell you what, I’ll give you $2 for processing, and I’ll do the “handling” myself.
Nickels. Dimes. They add up, you know?
Obit watch: December 16, 2025.
December 16th, 2025Joe Ely, one of the great Texas musicians. Variety. NYT (wow!).
I’m generally a little cynical about Texas musicians, but even I have to acknowledge that he was one of the greats. And I could just post YouTube videos all day.
This isn’t an Ely original, but I prefer this to Robert Earl Keen. That is a controversial opinion, I know.
Lawrence describes this as the greatest song ever written about a fighting rooster. Can’t argue with that.
Interestingly, he was an early adopter: he had a BBS system, back in the day when BBS systems were a thing.
…
He was 78.
Anthony Geary, actor. Other credits include “UHF”, “Project U.F.O.”, “Shaft” (the TV series)…
…and “Mannix”. (“A Way to Dusty Death”, season 7, episode 2. He was “Eddie Decken”.)
Christmas is coming.
December 15th, 2025I am officially on vacation as of today.
You know what that means, right?
Yes, it’s just not Christmas until I see Hans Gruber fall from the Nakatomi Tower.
For what it’s worth, the tree is up (but the lights are not plugged in yet) and the inflatable Christmas Corgi is going in the front yard today.
I still have to get the car inspected. Yes, Texas did away with safety inspections at the first of this year. But I’m in an area that requires emissions testing prior to renewing your registration. And the shop I used to use for inspections no longer has an inspection technician: they redirected me to a quickie inspection place located behind a drive-through liquor and daiquiri stand up the road a piece. And that place is only open during the week…
Obit watch: December 15, 2025.
December 15th, 2025Dave Ward, legendary Houston newscaster.
My family was a KPRC/Channel 2 family when I was growing up in Houston, but everyone was familiar with Dave Ward. Of course, this was back when there were only three channels…
Rob Reiner. I don’t know what to say about this: it seems to be a still breaking story, and the circumstances seem awful.
The spirit of Christmas.
December 12th, 2025Obit watch: December 12, 2025.
December 12th, 2025Lawrence emailed me that the great SF writer John Varley had passed away, but he couldn’t find an obit anywhere until Michael Swanwick posted one.
I haven’t read many of his novels, but I’ve read a lot of his short fiction. “The Persistence of Vision“. “Overdrawn at the Memory Bank” (which is a fun story that was adapted into a horrible PBS movie, which you can (but shouldn’t) watch in the MST3K version on the ‘Tube). “Air Raid”, which was adapted into Millennium, the novel, which was turned into “Millennium”, the movie (which I hear is awful, but have not seen).
“Press Enter■”. I remember standing in a Bookstop in Austin reading that story when it was published in Asimov’s…and coming very close to vomiting all over the magazine when I got to a key point in the story. (If you’ve read it, you can probably guess where.)
Leadership Secrets of Non-Fictional Characters (part 15 in a series)
December 12th, 2025I’ve said before, I have a high barrier for linking to ESPN feature articles. (I don’t even really like linking to ESPN news articles, except maybe as supplemental material. Sometimes I have to, but I generally prefer local news sources.)
Obit watch: December 11, 2025.
December 11th, 2025Three obits today for people who aren’t as notable as usual, but who I find interesting for one reason or another.
Stephen Downing. He was a police officer with the LAPD. One day he picked up the phone at the precinct.
Jack Webb was on the other end of the line. He was looking for a technical advisor for “Adam-12”.
Mr. Downing — who had studied creative writing in the 1960s at what is now California State University, Los Angeles — got the job and quickly surmised that he could offer more than guidance on police policy and tactics. He wanted to write a script.
“Webb said, ‘It’s harder than it looks,’” Michael Downing said in an interview, recalling what his father told him. “My father went home, wrote the script over the weekend and sold it.”
He continued to write scripts (under pen names) while still working for the LAPD.
…
IMDB.
Donald McIntyre, opera singer.
The booming voice of Mr. McIntyre, a giant of a man who once seemed destined for a rugby career in his native New Zealand, rang out for more than five decades in the world’s major opera houses, including the Metropolitan Opera, where he had 16 major roles from 1975 to 1996.
But “the highlight of my career,” as he put it in his 2019 autobiography, was his performance at Bayreuth as Wotan, the king of the gods, in “Das Rheingold,” “Die Walküre” and “Siegfried” in a groundbreaking 1976 production of Wagner’s four-opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen,” directed by Patrice Chéreau.
I don’t get to use my “Wagner” tag enough. But anyway:
By presenting the operas, based on Germanic mythology, as a neo-Marxist allegory of capitalist exploitation in the 19th century, Mr. Chéreau’s production — the so-called centenary “Ring,” marking the 100th anniversary of the tetralogy’s premiere at Bayreuth — shattered norms and set the stage for decades of updatings of canonical operas.
Audiences around the world were used to seeing Wagner gods and heroes holding spears and wearing pseudo-Norse winged helmets. While some postwar Bayreuth productions had emptied out the stage for radically spare visions of the classic works, putting Mr. McIntyre’s Wotan in an Edwardian frock coat and dressing the Rhinemaidens as cancan girls caused a near riot at the tradition-encrusted summer festival.
As Mr. McIntyre recalled in his memoir, an enraged older lady beat another spectator over the head with an umbrella; “howls of fury” greeted his entrance onstage in the frock coat; and the composer’s daughter-in-law, Winifred Wagner, a onetime confidant of Hitler’s, told Mr. McIntyre that if she came across Mr. Chéreau, she would “shoot him” for politicizing the “Ring.”
Over four years, however, with the production revived, revised and refined each summer, many holdouts eventually warmed to it, and at the final performances, in 1980, there was a 45-minute standing ovation. When Winifred Wagner and Mr. Chéreau finally met, she admitted that “many times I wanted to kill you,” but added, “After all, isn’t it better to be furious than bored?”
There’s something to be said for that.
George Altman, baseball player. He was one of only three people who played in the Negro Leagues, MLB, and in Japan. (Don Newcombe and Larry Doby are the other two.)
At Tennessee A&I State University (now Tennessee State University), he played basketball and baseball. After graduating in 1955 with a degree in physical education, he landed a tryout with the Kansas City Monarchs, a Negro Leagues team managed by Buck O’Neil.
Altman took batting practice with the Monarchs before one of their games.
“Evidently I must have impressed them a little bit because as I was getting comfortable on the bench, sitting back to just enjoy the game, Buck came up to me and said, ‘Boy, you’re in there,’” Altman wrote. “It almost scared me to death.”
…
After three months with the Monarchs, he signed with the Cubs and was assigned to the Burlington Bees, in Iowa, in the minor leagues. He was drafted into the Army in 1956, and then rejoined the Cubs organization in 1958. He was promoted to the major leagues the next year.
“The thing I like about Altman is the fact that he knows where the strike zone is,” [Ernie] Banks told The Sporting News in 1959. “That’s one thing most young ballplayers don’t know about. They swing at anything they can reach with the bat. Altman waits for his pitch.”
In need of pitching, the Cubs traded Altman to the Cardinals in 1962. St. Louis traded him to the Mets the next year, and the Mets traded him back to the Cubs before the 1965 season. By then, he was struggling with injuries, once joking that he played for Blue Cross.
After Altman hit just .111 in 15 games in 1967, his career in the majors was over. Unwilling to quit playing, he joined the Tokyo Orions in Japan. During seven seasons with the team, he hit 193 home runs, becoming a popular player for his slugging and willingness to learn Japanese phrases.
Firings watch.
December 10th, 2025Wow!
Sherrone Moore fired as head coach of the University of Michigan.
The team was 9-3 this season. But it wasn’t a football related firing.
“inappropriate relationship”. “with cause”.
He was 17-8 in two seasons. More from ESPN, but not much more.
Edited to add:
Obit watch: December 10, 2025.
December 10th, 2025Madeleine Wickham, also known as “Sophie Kinsella”, author. (Confessions of a Shopaholic). She was 55: a brain tumor got her.
John Noble Wilford, former science reporter for the NYT and Pulitzer Prize winner. He was most famous for covering Apollo 11, but he did a lot of other science reporting as well.