…at least, if you want to teach kids that crime does not pay.
85 years ago today, Bonnie and Clyde got turned into chunky salsa by Frank Hamer and his posse.
FBI page: “At the time they were killed in 1934, they were believed to have committed 13 murders and several robberies and burglaries.” Those 13 murders include several police officers: these were not nice people.
I haven’t been able to get a copy of Boessenecker’s book yet, or watch “The Highwaymen”, but both are on my list.
Technically, this is a couple of days old, and I’m not going to reproduce it here, out of respect for the NYT‘s intellectual property rights.
But if you ever wanted to see a large photo of Thomas Harris (yes, the Hannibal guy) holding a live possum named Bruce…here you go.
Stanton T. Friedman, UFOlogist.
Mr. Silverstein was serving three consecutive life terms for the killing of two fellow prisoners and a guard while behind bars. He had been incarcerated continuously since 1975, originally on an armed robbery conviction. He was said to have joined the Aryan Brotherhood, the white nationalist prison gang, while serving time at Leavenworth Penitentiary in Kansas.
He was in solitary confinement for 36 years, more than half his life. The American Civil Liberties Union has cited his case in its campaign against long-term solitary confinement.
More:
In 1981, Mr. Silverstein and another inmate, Clayton Fountain, were convicted of murdering Robert Chappelle, a member of the D.C. Blacks prison gang. During the trial, the gang’s national leader, Raymond (Cadillac) Smith, was transferred to Marion, apparently intent on killing Mr. Silverstein in revenge. (Prison officials, Mr. Silverstein said later, were aware of the threats but “didn’t take any action to make me safe.”)
Mr. Silverstein and Mr. Fountain got to Mr. Smith first, stabbing him 67 times with makeshift weapons, then dragging his body along prison catwalks as an object lesson. Mr. Silverstein received two more life sentences, for the murders of Mr. Chappelle and Mr. Smith. He insisted that he was innocent of the Chappelle murder and that he had killed Mr. Smith in self-defense.
By 1983 Mr. Silverstein had taken up art, teaching himself and becoming accomplished at it. One day, on his way back from showering, another prisoner handed him another makeshift knife and a homemade key. Using it, he managed to unlock his handcuffs and then fatally stabbed Merle E. Clutts, an unarmed correction officer, about 40 times.
His running buddy Mr. Fountain killed another guard that same day. These incidents are (at least in part) what prompted the construction of the SuperMax prison in Colorado.
Mildly interesting fact that I ran across last night: Clayton Fountain, who was also confined in solitary, took theology courses, converted to Catholicism, and was accepted as a lay brother by a Trappist order after his death.
Niki Lauda, one of the greatest racing drivers ever.
In his 17-year career (1969-1985) in the open cockpit of Porsches, Ferraris, McLarens and other high-tech torpedoes on wheels, mostly in Formula One competition, Lauda won 25 Grand Prix races. Points are awarded to the top six finishers in a race, and by amassing the highest point total in 16 authorized races, Lauda won the Formula One world driving championships in 1975, 1977 and 1984.
Since the crowns were first awarded in 1950, only five drivers have surpassed Lauda’s three titles. The record, seven, was set by Michael Schumacher, of Germany, between 1994 and 2004.
I wasn’t an avid follower of Formula 1, but I kind of liked Mr. Lauda. Especially after reading about him in Reader’s Digest. (I want to say it was a “Drama In Real Life”.)
But in his next race, the German Grand Prix at Nürburgring, a 14-mile, 76-curve course, things went drastically wrong for Lauda and his 1,300-pound blood-red Ferrari.
It had rained and he hit a slippery patch at 140 miles per hour. He spun out, broke through a restraining fence that snagged and tore away his helmet, then hit an embankment and bounced back onto the track, where he was hit by several following cars. His ruptured fuel tank burst into flames that engulfed him in the cockpit.
By the time three other drivers pulled him from the wreckage, he had severe burns of the face, head and hands, a concussion, a broken collarbone and other fractures. His right ear was badly burned. Noxious smoke and gases from the car’s burning interior seared his lungs. He was rushed to a hospital in a coma, then to a burn center, seemingly near death.
On Lauda’s third day in intensive care, a Roman Catholic priest gave him the last rites of the church. Lauda was conscious, and the rites only made him angry. “I kept telling myself, if he wants to do that, O.K., but I’m not quitting,” Lauda told Newsday after he began a remarkable recovery.
He had a series of operations and skin grafts that left permanent scarring on his head. He lost part of his right ear, the hair on the right side of his head, his eyebrows and both eyelids. He chose to limit reconstructive surgery to the eyelids, and thereafter wore a red baseball cap to cover the worst disfigurements. But he began talking, walking and making plans for his return to racing.
See how powerful the last rites are? Either the person dies in a state of grace, or they get real angry and tell Death, “Not today, mofo.”
But I digress. Six weeks after the accident, Mr. Lauda finished fourth in the Italian Grand Prix. He finished the 1976 season in second place behind James Hunt, and won the championship in 1977.
For many years, Lauda championed safer racecar and track designs, and urged tighter controls over driving conditions and rules governing race organizers.
“Racing on substandard tracks or in unsafe weather doesn’t test courage,” Lauda told The Boston Globe in 1977. “At present, some of the Grand Prix circuits we drivers are asked to race on do not fulfill the most primitive safety requirements. Also, the decision to call off or stop a race can’t be left entirely to the organizers, who too often put prestige before the safety of the drivers. We need independent experts whose authority should be supreme.”
More:
Lauda Air 004 crash from Wikipedia. This is one of those crashes that’s always fascinated and scared me: it seems unclear (the flight data recorder was badly damaged), but the apparent cause of the crash was that the thrust reverser on one engine deployed in flight causing the pilots to lose control, and the aircraft to break up.
“Personally involved” seems like a bit of an understatement. According to Wikipedia, Mr. Lauda was basically in Boeing’s face:
I would have liked to have met Mr. Lauda. He seems like another one of those kind of men they just don’t make these days.
It is…well, not exactly “rare”, but at least uncommon for a player to be thrown out of a league completely. The most recent example I can think of before last week was Johnny Manziel’s CFL expulsion.
But we had two last week.
Lawrence pointed out that Tyreke Evans had been “dismissed and disqualified” from the NBA. Mr. Evans was a guard with the Indiana Pacers last season: his dismissal was for unspecified violations of the NBA’s anti-drug policy.
He can apply for reinstatement in two years, but that will require approval from both the NBA and the player’s association. More from ESPN.
Meanwhile, in Australia (we love you, amen) rugby player Israel Folau had his contract voided for a “high level breach of the players’ Code of Conduct”.
Apparently the breach involved Folau posting a Bible verse that condemned “homosexuals” as well as “drunks, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators” on social media. (I’m not clear if this was a tweet or an Instagram post. I’m also not clear if the post is still up.)
Rod Dreher put up a couple of posts last week about this, and there’s lively discussion on both sides in the comments. He also suggests that Folau’s punishment may have been a factor in the election results. More on those from everyone’s favorite political blogger.
I’m not sure what side I come down on in the Folau situation, though I do think the parallels to Kapernick made by some of the commenters are instructive. Then again, as I’ve also said, if Kapernick could produce at the level of a Tom Brady or Drew Brees for an NFL team, nobody would give a flying flip at a rolling doughnut what he said or thought. I don’t know enough about rugby to know if Folau is that kind of star player.
Machiko Kyo, noted Japanese actress.
Her US career was limited to “Teahouse of the August Moon”, but she was in a lot of significant Japanese film: Kenji Mizoguchi’s “Ugetsu“, Teinosuke Kinugasa’s “Gate of Hell“, and she was the female lead in Kurosawa’s “Rashomon“.
During rehearsals, Kurosawa recalled, he had been “left speechless” by Ms. Kyo’s dedication to learning her craft.
“She came in to where I was sleeping in the morning and sat down with the script in hand,” he wrote in “Something Like an Autobiography” (1982), his memoir. “‘Please teach me what to do,’ she requested, and I lay there amazed.”
Herman Wouk, noted author. (The Caine Mutiny, adapted into the Humphrey Bogart movie and a Broadway play, “The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial”. The Winds of War, basis for the ABC mini-series. War and Remembrance, basis for another ABC mini-series.)
And the list goes on. He was quite prolific, and died just short of 104.
With the Preakness Stakes running this weekend, I got to wondering:
The iconic cocktail of the Kentucky Derby is a mint julep, right? What’s the iconic cocktail of the Preakness? And the Belmont?
Since the Preakness is run in Baltimore (for now) I would have expected the iconic cocktail to be heroin. Or a 40 in a brown paper bag.
According to Wikipedia, the source of all vaguely accurate information, I may not have been too far off. Until 2009, the race was “bring your own booze”, “formerly including kegs of beer but in the 2000s restricted to all the beer cans a person could carry in a cooler.” After 2009, something called “InfieldFest” was established, where you could buy a beer mug with unlimited refills.
But there is an official cocktail: the Black-Eyed Susan, “made with vodka, St-Germain liqueur and pineapple, lime and orange juices.” Here’s a 2018 article from Newsweek that calls for “one part bourbon, one part vodka, one part peach schnapps, two parts orange juice and two parts sour mix”, shaken with ice and served over crushed ice “with an orange wedge and cherries for garnish”. Newsweek also links to recipes from “US Racing” and the Washington Post if you want to descend down that rabbit hole.
And the Belmont Stakes? Recent history is troubled. It appears that up until 1997, the official drink was something called the “White Carnation“. In 1997, the official drink changed to the “Belmont Breeze“. That, in turn, got replaced by the “Belmont Jewel” in 2011, which at least has the virtue of simplicity.
Tragically, I have plans for Saturday, so I can’t drink my way through the Preakness. But my readers are welcome to, if they wish. Just don’t drink and race: your horse might hit a bump and spill your drink.
I.M. Pei. He was 102, and it sounds like he led a full rich life right up to the very end.
Dax Cowart passed away on April 28th.
The name may be familiar to some of you, for reasons I’ll get into shortly. For the rest: Mr. Cowart was horribly burned in an explosion in 1973.
During his treatment, he repeatedly requested that the doctors stop treating him and allow him to die. The doctors refused to honor his wishes.
“I didn’t feel his reaction — ‘I want to die’ — indicated what he really wanted,” Dr. Charles Baxter, an innovator in burn treatment who oversaw much of Mr. Cowart’s care (in 1963 he had tried to save President John F. Kennedy’s life at Parkland Memorial), was quoted as saying in The Sun. “He sort of was like the child who doesn’t want the shot but then holds out his arm to get it.”
Mr. Cowart’s mother, Ada, and the Cowart family lawyer, who were in charge of his care, wanted him to continue treatments, even after Robert B. White, a prominent psychiatrist, declared that he was mentally competent.
After his recovery, Mr. Cowart went on to earn a law degree from Texas Tech. He also became a leading advocate for patient’s rights.
In the face of what he saw as medical paternalism, he argued that patients should have more autonomy over what treatments they receive and a choice in whether they even receive any treatment at all.
In this he joined an ethical debate that led him to lecture at graduate schools, bioethics conferences and hospitals. His story inspired a book of medical and philosophical essays by others under the title “Dax’s Case.” Articles about him were published. The ABC News program “20/20” did a segment about him. And he was the subject of documentaries, “Please Let Me Die” (1974) and “Dax’s Case” (1984).
…
“I’m enjoying life now, and it feels good to be alive,” he said at the end of “Dax’s Case.” “I still feel that it was wrong to force me to undergo what I had to to be alive.
“To make this clear,” he added, “if the same thing were to occur tomorrow, and knowing that I could reach this point, I would still not want to be forced to undergo the pain and agony that I had to undergo to be alive now. I would want that choice to lie entirely with myself and no others.”
…at least, until the team fires you for being bad at your job.
Mike Maccagnan out as general manager. Also, Brian Heimerdinger out as VP of Player Personnel.
Isaac Kappy apparently committed suicide on Monday. He was 42 years old, and had parts in “Beerfest”, “Terminator: Salvation”, and “Thor”.
I don’t want to talk much more about this because I’m not sure I can without sounding like a jerk, or seeming to make light of a tragedy, so I’m going to link to the article Lawrence sent me instead. It sounds to me like he had problems, but treatable ones.
The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a surprisingly good page of additional resources.
In other news, this is an actual headline from NBC News:
Georgia professor found dead near hot tub of man who kills himself, another man is arrested
If you’re having trouble parsing that, here’s the first paragraph:
Fortunately, the article is short, and reading the entire thing lends some clarity to the situation and the allegations. This leaps out at me, though:
After placing Lillard in a patrol car, officers told Heindel that he would be separated from Lillard and interviewed, Massee said. Then they left him alone.
Heindel then went into his house and shot himself in his master bathroom, Massee said.
I’m not 100% sure I agree with your police work there, Lou. Good on the cops for sensing “the scene looked a little inappropriate”, but leaving a suspect unsupervised and in a position to grab a gun and kill himself?
The NYT updated their Tim Conway obit in place (and included the dentist sketch, which they didn’t previously).
I was going to link to the LAT obit…but I couldn’t find one. Mr. Conway’s death (in LA) got no play on the LAT homepage. I finally found, by searching the site, that they’d run the generic AP obit and apparently a few photos, but all of this was buried.
“Here’s this fellow from this town outside of Cleveland, Chagrin Falls,” Harvey Korman said of his friend and “Carol Burnett Show” co-star before they brought their “Together Again’’ show to Cleveland’s Palace Theatre in 2003. “His mother is a Rumanian seamstress. His father is an Irish groom. And their issue, one child, is this comedy genius. How does that happen? He is indeed one of the most inventive and innovative comedy minds in our business.
“I truly believe he was born too late. I think if he were born in the era of the Chaplins, the Keatons and the Lloyds, he would have been right up there with the great silent clowns.”
…but I wanted to post this now, in memory of Tim Conway. Fuller obits will come, probably tomorrow.
Robert Maxwell, the kind of badass that’s rare these days.
September 7, 1944:
Technician Fifth Grade Maxwell and a few other G.I.s were on observation duty outside their battalion headquarters near the city of Besançon in eastern France when German soldiers got within yards of their outpost and opened fire.
The Germans blasted away with automatic weapons and even antiaircraft guns, seeking to destroy the stone house where the battalion commanders were stationed. The G.I.s on sentry duty were armed only with .45-caliber automatic pistols, but they fired back.
And then a grenade was hurled over the fence in front of the house’s courtyard and landed beside Technician Maxwell. Using an Army blanket for protection, he fell on the grenade.
…
The grenade exploded, knocking him unconscious, tearing away part of one foot and peppering his head and left arm with shrapnel. World War II was over for Technician Maxwell, but he received the Medal of Honor. It cited him for inspiring his fellow G.I.s to join with him in a firefight that delayed the German onslaught and then, having “unhesitatingly hurled himself squarely upon’’ the grenade, “using his blanket and his unprotected body to absorb the full force of the explosion.”
The citation called it an “act of instantaneous heroism” that “permanently maimed” him but “saved the lives of his comrades.”
Mr. Maxwell was 98 when he passed away Saturday. According to the NYT obit, there are three Medal of Honor recipients from WWII that are still alive.
Fleming Begaye Sr., one of the Navajo code talkers.
Mr. Begaye survived the Battle of Tarawa, a costly offensive on a Japanese-held Pacific atoll that took place in 1943. Out of 18,000 Marines who landed on Betio, more than 1,000 died.
“His landing craft was blown up and he literally had to swim to the beach to survive,” Mr. [Peter] MacDonald [also a code talker – DB] said of Mr. Begaye at the White House ceremony.
Mr. Begaye landed on Tinian, one of the Mariana Islands, in 1944 and was “shot up real badly,” Mr. MacDonald said. He spent a year in a naval hospital.
…
César González Barrón, aka “Silver King“, died last Saturday. Silver King was a lucha libre wrestler, who also played “Ramses” in “Nacho Libre”. He died during a match in London against “Youth Warrior” (Juventud Guerrera).
Mr. González Barrón was a star in Mexican wrestling, known as lucha libre, in which combatants wear elaborate masks and take on outlandish personas.
At the event in London, called the Greatest Show of Lucha Libre, Mr. González Barrón had reprised his role as the evil Ramses.
He was the son of a famous wrestler known as Dr. Wagner, and he had been wrestling professionally since 1985, according to his profile on the film website IMDB. During his career, he was a CMLL World Heavyweight champion, an AAA World Tag Team champion and had won many other championships.
Goro Shimura, mathematician, passed away about a week ago.
Elliptic curves are pretty important to modern cryptography, and Mr. Shimura’s work is foundational in that area. But there’s more to the story:
So basically, this reduced the problem of proving Fermat’s Last Theorem to proving the Taniyama-Shimura conjecture.
The story I’ve heard (I wasn’t there) is that Wiles spent the better part of two days going through his proof of the conjecture, finally finished it…and then added, “Oh, by the way, by Ribert’s result, this means that Fermat’s Last Theorem is also true. Q.E.D.”
I’ve avoided discussing the recent NRA issues because, frankly, I don’t trust anybody to cover them fairly and objectively. If you want to read a take on what’s going on, though, Lawrence put up a post last week on his blog: if you’re not a regular reader there, you might want to check it out.
Also brought up by Lawrence, though this was just a quick hit in the Linkswarm: the New Orleans Times-Picayune was bought out by The Advocate, and the entire Times Picayune staff was laid off. The NYT has a considerably more detailed story on what happened and why, if you care about New Orleans newspaper wars. Personally, I pretty much relied on nola.com for anything involving the city, so I’ll be interested in seeing what changes.
(Also, good to know that there are still places where you can get Baked Alaska.)
I can’t find a good clip, but I rather liked Ms. Day in the 1956 version of “The Man Who Knew Too Much”. (I liked Jimmy Stewart in that movie, too, but I think the 1934 version moves faster and has a more satisfying climax. Don’t get me wrong: both are good Hitchcock films.)
Peggy Lipton, of “Mod Squad” and “Twin Peaks” fame. I wish I had more to say about her, but I was just a little too young for “The Mod Squad” and pretty much missed “Twin Peaks” the first time around.
Jim Fowler, Marlin Perkins’s sidekick on “Wild Kingdom” and later frequent late-night talk show guest.
Here’s something we hope you really like:
Rachel Held Evans, Christian author.
An Episcopalian, Ms. Evans left the evangelical church in 2014 because, she said, she was done trying to end the church’s culture wars and wanted to focus instead on building a new community among the church’s “refugees”: women who wanted to become ministers, gay Christians and “those who refuse to choose between their intellectual integrity and their faith.”
Ms. Evans’s spiritual journey and unique writing voice fostered a community of believers who yearned to seek God and challenge conservative Christian groups that they felt were often exclusionary.
Her congregation was online, and her Twitter feed became her church, a gathering place for thousands to question, find safety in their doubts and learn to believe in new ways.
…
Ms. Evans was known to challenge traditional — and largely male and conservative — authority structures. She would spar with evangelical men on Twitter, debating them on everything from human sexuality to politics to biblical inerrancy.
One of those men, Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said that he was her theological opposite in almost every way, but that she had always treated him with kindness and humor.
“I was on the other side of her Twitter indignation many times, but I respected her because she was never a phony,” Mr. Moore said. “Even in her dissent, she made all of us think, and helped those of us who are theological conservatives to be better because of the way she would challenge us.”
She wasn’t someone I’d ever heard of (until I read the NYT obit) and I suspect there are a lot of things we’d disagree on. But there’s something about her story that touches me, and 37 years old is just too young to die.
It strikes me today that the liturgy of Ash Wednesday teaches something that nearly everyone can agree on. Whether you are part of a church or not, whether you believe today or your doubt, whether you are a Christian or an atheist or an agnostic or a so-called “none” (whose faith experiences far transcend the limits of that label) you know this truth deep in your bones: “Remember that you are dust and to dust you will return.”
Death is a part of life.
Peter Mayhew, noted actor. (“Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger.” He was in some other stuff, too, including “The Star Wars Holiday Special”.)
Variety. THR. Home on the Range at Borepatch, who notes that he was active in Rhodesian Ridgeback rescue. I find that kind of touching: I really liked Ridgebacks when I was younger, and kind of wanted one. (Now that I’m older, I feel like they need more room to run than I can provide.)
In great haste, because this is breaking and I have seven minutes left on my coffee break:
Baltimore mayor Catherine E. Pugh resigned today.
The mayor has been on leave since April 1st, dealing with health issues.
ESPN: The Magazine. (As TMQ always used to add, “Published on Earth: The Planet”.)
Gino Marchetti, defensive end for the Baltimore Colts.
He was also an 11-time Pro Bowl selection and a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
In the waning moments of the 1958 championship game against the Giants, he pulled down Frank Gifford inches from a first down, forcing the Giants to give the ball back to the Colts for one last-ditch drive. Quarterback Johnny Unitas and the Baltimore offense took advantage of the opportunity, driving 70 yards for a tying field goal.
Marchetti, who broke his leg making the game-saving tackle, watched Unitas’s heroics from a stretcher on the sidelines, then looked on as the running back Alan Ameche scored eight minutes into overtime to give the Colts the victory in what many still refer to as the greatest game ever played.
They keep predicting apocalyptic rain for the Austin area. And they keep pushing back the start time of said rain. Now it’s a 40% chance of rain starting at 6 PM Austin time.
So, here. Enjoy two clips that happened to pop up while I was looking at YouTube. Both of these are from “Stormy Weather”, the movie. The resolution on this first one isn’t great, but you should really go buy the DVD or blu-ray from Amazon. (I recommend the blu-ray, but that’s just my opinion.) There’s just something I find haunting and wonderful in Horne’s rendition here.
This is at a much better resolution, and just pure darn fun.
You can see what Gregory Hines was talking about, can’t you?
My birthday was a week ago last Saturday (April 20th).
You know what this means, right?
Right. I’ve been buying books.
I ordered some things off of my Amazon wish list, since there were several items available used in the right combination of price and condition. Right now, I’m reading Tuchman’s Practicing History: Selected Essays: since that’s a collection of shorter work, I’m also planning to start Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War and alternate the two for variety.
(And, yes, I kind of want to see the Netflix series based on Five Came Back. Between that and “The Highwaymen”, I’m really tempted to get a Netflix trial, even though I refuse to pay for television.)
(Other things that were in the Amazon batch: The Scientific Sherlock Holmes: Cracking the Case with Science and Forensics, which won an Edgar a few years back. The Pigeon Tunnel: Stories from My Life. The Life You Save May Be Your Own: An American Pilgrimage, for your obligatory Catholic content (CathCon?). More seriously, I like a lot of O’Connor, I know Rod Dreher is a big Walker Percy fan and I’d like to understand why, and I’m kind of interested in Merton. (Though, going back to Mr. Dreher again, I’m not sure now that I want to read Merton.) And The Infernal Library: On Dictators, the Books They Wrote, and Other Catastrophes of Literacy.)
Mike the Musicologist came up Friday night and we spent the weekend running around. We had a very good joint birthday dinner (Lawrence‘s is a few days before mine) at Lonesome Dove.
After dinner, we went back to Lawrence‘s and watched the 1943 “Stormy Weather“. “Stormy Weather” sort of presents itself as a loose “biography” of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (renamed “Bill Williamson” for the film). In truth, the biographical elements are an extremely thin skeleton…upon which is hung a whole bunch of fantastic musical performances by Robinson, Lena Horne, Cab Calloway, Fats Waller, the Nicholas Brothers, and others.
(I love this entry from Wikipedia about the Nicholas Brothers: “Gregory Hines declared that if their biography were ever filmed, their dance numbers would have to be computer generated because no one now could emulate them.“)
Unfortunately, our plans for Sunday fell through (they caught the kangaroo) but we were able to spend the afternoon talking about kitchen remodeling with some friends of ours. Yes, this is the exciting life of a 54-year-old.
I took Monday off (another perk of being a full-time Cisco employee: you get a free day off on or around your birthday) and went running errands with Mom. This involved stopping at both the Round Rock and central Half-Price Books locations. And HPB sent me a 15% off your total purchase coupon for my birthday. And it just so happened that they had a whole bunch of interesting gun books…