Joseph Rogers, co-founder of Waffle House.
Obit watch: March 9, 2017.,
March 9th, 2017Obit watch: March 8, 2017.
March 8th, 2017Quoting the NYT obit:
,,,
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Some of her other clients included Weather Underground member David J. Gilbert, “convicted of murder and robbery in the 1981 Brink’s armored car robbery in Rockland County, N.Y., in which two police officers and a Brink’s guard were killed”, Richard C. Williams, “convicted of killing a New Jersey state trooper and setting off bombs at military centers and corporate offices in the early 1980s”, and the infamous drug dealer Larry Davis.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#36 in a series)
March 8th, 2017Jose Torres, the mayor of Patterson, New Jersey, has been indicted on corruption charges.
Three public works supervisors have also been indicted with Mayor Torres. Allegedly, the mayor “asked public employees to work on personal projects while they were being paid by the city”.
Worthy of note 1: various online sources show that Mayor Torres is a member of Criminal Mayors Against Lawful Gun Ownership.
Worthy of note 2: Mayor Torres is the second criminal mayor to face charges this week. SayUncle linked to a report that Mayor Anthony Silva of the (formerly) bankrupt city of Stockton has been arrested again: this time, he’s charged with “money laundering, embezzlement by a public officer, grand theft and embezzlement worth more than $400”.
Obit watch: March 7, 2017.
March 7th, 2017Robert Osborne, the Turner Classic Movies guy. I wish I had more to say about him, but I rarely have cable and thus rarely watch TCM.
Dr. Thomas Starzl, noted surgeon. Among other accomplishments, he did the first liver transplants and pioneered the use of anti-rejection drugs.
Bagatelle.
March 3rd, 2017“Heart failure,” MacAdoo said in an almost sorrowful tone.
“Heart seizure,” Haere said automatically.
“What’s the difference?”
‘Everyone dies of heart failure.”
–Ross Thomas, Missionary Stew
It’s Baltimore, gentlemen.
March 3rd, 2017The gods will not pay your overtime when you’re sitting on the beach.
There are actually seven officers who have been indicted.
According to this report, “some” of the officers were members of “the elite Gun Trace Task Force”.
As first reported by the Baltimore Sun, several of the officers were also highly praised in the October 2016 Baltimore Police newsletter in an article written by Lt. Chris O’Ree, a member of the ATF taskforce.
“I am extremely proud to showcase the work of Sergeant Wayne Jenkins and the Gun Trace Task Force,” O’Ree wrote. “Sergeant Jenkins and his team have 110 arrests for handgun violations and seized 132 illegal handguns.” He added, “I couldn’t be more proud of the strong work of this team.”
How elite were they?
Also, I’m sorry, but if you are a police officer, your nickname should not be “GMoney”.
We need a Class D fire extinguisher.
March 2nd, 2017Flaming hyenas update, for the record:
(Warning: auto-play video.)
I thought the criminal case against AG Paxton had been dismissed and I just forgot to note it. But, according to the linked Statesnan article, that’s still on track to start May 1st.
artfirings.com
March 1st, 2017From the arts beat.
February 27th, 2017Two stories that I think are noteworthy.
I was not aware, until Lawrence forwarded me this Vulture article, that the NYT had fired theater critic Charles Isherwood. And “fired”, apparently, does not mean “laid off because we’re cutting back on arts coverage”. but instead means “here are some boxes, pack your s–t, security will escort you out the door”. I’m having a hard time remembering the last firing I heard about at the paper of record that was supposedly “for cause”. Technically, they didn’t even fire Jayson Blair (he resigned first).
This hasn’t gotten a whole lot of coverage: the only other story Google turned up was from Forbes, and I’m not linking to it because it doesn’t say much. It sounds like the paper is saying he was too close to (and exchanged “improper” emails with) some prominent theater producers, while the pro-Isherwood side seems to be spinning those emails as perfectly reasonable, and sees the problem as Isherwood not getting along with others at the paper (especially Ben Brantley, the other (and senior) critic).
This came across a mailing list I’m on over the weekend, and I found it interesting as well: the search for “Porgy and Bess”, the 1959 film version directed by Otto Preminger. It has a great cast: Dorothy Dandridge, Sidney Poitier, and Sammy Davis Jr., but prints are extremely rare. There was one known to be in the hands of a private collector (who died last year: his widow still has it) and one owned by the “National Audiovisual Institute of Finland” who loaned out their copy for two NYC screenings in 2007.
Why is it so hard to find? Reply hazy and faded (the 70mm prints have all apparently turned pinkish, but there are supposedly some good 35mm prints), but some people suggest that Ira Gershwin and his wife hated the movie and used a contractual clause to have most of the prints destroyed. Other people dispute this theory. But the main problem seems to be: nobody wants to pay for a home video restoration.
Which is a damn shame, in my humble opnion. I’ve never seen a productuon of “Porgy and Bess”, but I’d like to. And I’d purchase a good quality DVD or blu-ray release, especially if it came with decent extras. This sounds like a job for the Criterion Collection.
(At least one person on that same mailing list claims this whole article is “frankly, nonsense” and asserts he saw a good print “just a few years ago in New York”. I wonder if he saw one of the 2007 Finnish print screenings.)
I’ll leave you with this still, which for some reason I find oddly charming:
The guy on the right is Otto Preminger. I’m sure you all know who the guy on the left is.
Obit watch: February 27, 2017.
February 27th, 2017Judge Joseph A. Wapner, of the Los Angeles Coun6y Superior Court. NYT.
Of course, he’s better known to those of us in the older set as the first judge of “The People’s Court”.
For the record: Bill Paxton. A/V Club.
Obit watch: February 24, 2017.
February 24th, 2017For the record, and because a bunch of people sent it to me: Alan Colmes.
Slightly surprising, at least to me: the NYT ran a respectful and timely obit for Gary Cartwright.
Bagatelle.
February 23rd, 2017‘Hog Apocalypse’: Texas has a new weapon in its war on feral pigs. It’s not pretty.
I have no joke here. I just want to embed this:
Obit watch: February 23, 2017.
February 23rd, 2017Noted Japanese film director Seijun Suzuki.
Haven’t watched Tokyo Drifter yet (do have it) but Mike the Musicologist and I watched Branded to Kill a while back. I think that would definitely fall in my top ten strange movies list…
Musings of a cigarette smoking man…
February 23rd, 2017Working from an office suite behind a Burger King in southern Virginia, operatives used a web of shadowy cigarette sales to funnel tens of millions of dollars into a secret bank account. They weren’t known smugglers, but rather agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The operation, not authorized under Justice Department rules, gave agents an off-the-books way to finance undercover investigations and pay informants without the usual cumbersome paperwork and close oversight, according to court records and people close to the operation.
Hmmm. Hmmm. Hmmm. That rings a faint bell. It reminds me of something BATFE did during the previous administration. Give me a moment, it’s on the tip of my tongue…
Memo from the police beat.
February 23rd, 2017A quick roundup of some police related news, mostly for RoadRich, but perhaps of interest to my regular readers.
APD’s latest officer-involved shooting. There don’t seem to be any updates since late last night, but so far this is sounding like just another sad story: police responded to a call in South Austin, a woman in her 20s fled, tried to run over offices, crashed, exited her vehicle and brandished a knife at one of the responding officers, and…
By way of Hognose over at Weaponsman: the chief of the Punta Gorda, Florida police department has been charged with “culpable negligence” and one of his officers has been charged with felony manslaughter. This is related to the citizen’s police academy shooting that I’ve discussed previously in this space.
(Interesting note: my mother and I started the Lakeway Citizen’s Police Academy last night. The officer who was teaching last night (also the second-in-command of the Lakeway PD) mentioned the Punta Gorda incident in the context of “things we won’t be doing in this class”.)
(I might discuss the Lakeway CPA in more detail at some point down the road. My initial impression is that there are a lot of differences between it and the Austin CPA; some of those are probably do to the relative size of the departments, the available resources, and the length of time the programs have been in operation. My class is the 14th for the Lakeway CPA: my Austin CPA class was the 87th, and I’m currently helping out with the 91st class.)
(Hattip: Tim Cushing.)
I wish there was more context in this article. $13.2 million over 26 months sounds like a lot of money, but how does this compare to other cities over the same time frame? How much have cities like Chicago, New York, and Austin paid out over the same period? How does this break down on a per capita or per officer basis?
(Wikipedia estimates the current population of Cleveland at just under 400,000. Let’s take that as a base number. That’s $33 per citizen. “More than 1,600” people are on the police force: just for grins, let’s round up to 1,700. That’s $7,764.70 per employee, which would include both sworn and non-sworn.)
(The population of Austin was about 931,000 in 2016, and there’s about 1,800 people on the APD staff, both sworn and non-sworn. It’s interesting that the Cleveland PD has somewhere between 100 and 200 fewer officers for a city with less than half the population and a third of the area. But I digress. Unfortunately, I don’t have a figure for settlements paid out by the city since November 2014. But I will note, since I haven’t previously: last week, the city agreed to pay $3.25 million to the family of the naked 17-year-old shot by an APD officer.)