Obit watch: April 30, 2019.

April 30th, 2019

These are mostly for the historical record at this point, since I took a few days off. (More on that later.)

John Singleton. THR.

Richard Lugar, former Indiana Senator.

Manuel Luján Jr., former Congressman from New Mexico and Secretary of the Interior under George H.W. Bush.

Jo Sullivan Loesser, actress:

After paying her dues as an understudy and a member of the chorus, she created the role of Polly Peachum in a concert version of Marc Blitzstein’s acclaimed translation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s “The Threepenny Opera” in 1952. She reprised the role when a full-fledged theatrical version opened in 1954 at the Theater de Lys in Greenwich Village.

She also co-starred in “The Most Happy Fella”, which is significant because she ended up marrying Frank Loesser and left acting. After Mr. Loesser’s death in 1969, she became the keeper of his legacy.

She raised their two daughters and, after Loesser died of lung cancer at 59 in 1969, she managed his music publishing company, Frank Music, until it was bought by CBS in 1976. (It was subsequently sold to Paul McCartney, but she retained creative control over her husband’s theater music and productions for Frank Loesser Enterprises.)
In 1977, feeling free of business obligations and with her daughters grown, Mrs. Loesser attended a party where Morton Gottlieb, a theatrical producer, urged her to return to singing — specifically, to perform her husband’s repertoire at the Ballroom, a restaurant and cabaret in SoHo.
She did, billed as Jo Sullivan, and her comeback was triumphant.

Posted in Obits, Politics, Theatre | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#55 in a series)

April 26th, 2019

We have now come to the point where I have done as many of these as I have “Art, damn it, art!” watches. (And more of these than Art Acevedo watches.)

The mayor of Edinburg, Texas, and his wife have been arrested on charges of election fraud and illegal voting.

Edinburg is in the southern part of the state, in the area generally called the “Rio Grande Valley”.

The Rio Grande Valley has been a particular point of focus in Texas conversations about voter fraud. Two-thirds of the 91 Texas election fraud cases prosecuted from state investigations between 2006 and 2016 were in counties south of San Antonio. Only four of them involved in-person voter impersonation.

More:

Nearly 20 people have been arrested since last year in connection with the fraud case. Prosecutors said the scheme — involving Mr. Molina, his wife and paid campaign workers — was largely carried out by having numerous voters who did not live in Edinburg claim they were residents, including many who stated they lived in an apartment complex Mr. Molina owns.
According to court documents, Mr. Molina and his wife were both registered as volunteer voter registrars in the 2017 election and were authorized to help people fill out voter registration applications. Several of those with false addresses were signed by Mr. Molina and included his voter registrar number, according to the criminal complaint.

This does not exactly strike me as being a genius scheme.

“I feel that he didn’t steal the election away from me — he stole the election away from the community,” said Mr. Garcia, a lawyer. “The suspicions arose, when you started seeing, in checking the lists on the last days of the election, you started seeing a lot of names with the same address. There was one little house — it’s a 400- or 500-square-foot little one-room place — and there was maybe 20 people registered to that address.”

The Mr. Garcia mentioned above is Richard Garcia, the former mayor, who Mr. Molina defeated by 1,240 votes in the 2017 election.

NYT. Statesman. HouChron. The Monitor.

Posted in Law, Politics, Texas | Comments Closed

Bang! goes another kanga on the bonnet of the van…

April 26th, 2019

I live fairly near Wimberly, TX. The surrounding area is pretty nice: there’s a fair amount of undeveloped land, and a few ranches.

One of the local ranchers specializes in “exotic animals”. He brought a kangaroo down to his ranch: “This was something of a trial run by him for kangaroos.”

The trial run is not working out so well: the kangaroo has busted out and is on the run.

Helm said he and others have been going out every couple of hours to take a gander at the kangaroo as it bounds across the rural locale, munching on grass and flowers. He said the area is the perfect habitat for the animal, which is native to Australia.
“He’s not hurting anybody,” Helm said. “He’s healthy, and he’s eating good.”

The authorities would prefer that you not try to pet, capture, feed, or otherwise approach the roo:

Helm said the animal really doesn’t like humans, and won’t let anybody get closer than about 80 feet before taking off.
“You better wear a cape and an ‘S’ on your chest if you want to catch this thing,” Helm said. He said it will likely take someone with a tranquilizer dart and dogs to be able to capture the animal. Even after being sedated, Helm said the kangaroo could probably cover a couple of miles in a matter of minutes. “I’m afraid if anyone even got close enough to put a rope on it, they’re going to end up in the emergency room real fast.”

I seem to remember having kangaroo meat once, at a restaurant on the Riverwalk in San Antonio. Oddly, I don’t remember the name of the place, and it’s probably gone by now anyway.

After the jump, subject line hattip and musical interlude.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Mammals | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#54 in a series)

April 25th, 2019

I want to note here that the flaming hyenas watch is not literal: I don’t intend for crooked politicians to catch fire. “You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena!” is a reference to a classic “Bloom County” strip that, sadly, isn’t available on line.

Why does this matter? I’ll get to that.

But first: I was trying to keep up with Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh and the whole “Healthy Holly” scandal. Really, I was. But I got busy with Holy Week and taxes and other stuff and…fortunately, Lawrence sent me the latest news.

The FBI raided the mayor’s home this morning.

And City Hall.

And “several other locations” associated with the mayor.

Telling detail:

Thursday was not the first time a Baltimore mayor’s house has been raided by investigators. In 2008, state prosecutors and police searched the home of then-Mayor Sheila Dixon. The Democrat became the first Baltimore mayor to face criminal charges, was convicted and resigned.

In other news: Tyus Byrd was mayor of Parma, Missouri. She lost her re-election bid. Her successor was sworn in a little more than a week ago.

Right after the swearing in, Mayor Byrd’s house caught fire.

Sounds like bad luck, right? You lose the mayor’s race, then your house catches fire?

Then City Hall caught fire, too.

What began as a small-town changing of the guard has quickly become a statewide investigation. The authorities suspect foul play, and the state fire marshal’s office is assisting the local sheriff’s office in an arson inquiry. At the same time, the state auditor’s office announced it had opened an audit into Parma’s finances after finding credible allegations of problems under Ms. Byrd’s watch. Some have tied the two investigations together, suggesting that the fires were meant to destroy evidence, while another theory purported that Ms. Byrd had been targeted because of her race.
Chris Hensley, a chief deputy with the New Madrid County Sheriff’s Department, said that the evidence showed that multiple fires had been set at City Hall and that arson was suspected.

The building is apparently intact, but (quel frommage!) “nearly all records and the computer” (?) were destroyed.

“Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is an enemy action.” But this is a case where I don’t think we need to wait for a third time.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 25, 2019.

April 25th, 2019

Wow. Lots going on.

This is breaking news: Lawrence beat me to it (because I had to wait for my lunch hour to post).

Former Williamson County DA Jana Duty was found dead in a South Texas condo yesterday.

I have a WCDA tag for reasons: if you go back and look, or read Lawrence’s post, you’ll see that former DA Duty was controversial and apparently had some issues during her tenure. But this is still a sad and awful thing.

Mark Medoff, playwright. He was best known for “Children of a Lesser God”, which won multiple Tony awards and was the basis for the Oscar winning Marlee Matlin movie.

This one is for Mike the Musicologist: Heather Harper, soprano.

An unanticipated performance in 1962 brought Ms. Harper international attention when, on 10 days’ notice, she substituted for Galina Vishnevskaya in the premiere of Britten’s “War Requiem.” The work was written to dedicate the new Coventry Cathedral in England, the original 14th-century structure having been bombed into ruin during World War II.
As a gesture of reconciliation, Britten, a pacifist, had intended the soloists to be the tenor Peter Pears (an Englishman), the baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (a German) and Ms. Vishnevskaya (a Russian). But the Soviet government refused to allow Ms. Vishnevskaya to travel to Coventry for the premiere. Ms. Harper, just turned 32, took her place and triumphed.

She did a lot of work with Britten (including Ellen in the 1969 BBC production of “Peter Grimes”) but she had a larger repertoire, including singing “Lohengrin” at Bayreuth.

Fay McKenzie, actress. Her story is interesting:

Ms. McKenzie made her screen debut in 1918, when she was 10 weeks old, cradled in Gloria Swanson’s arms in “Station Content,” a five-reel silent romance. Her last role was a cameo appearance with her son, Tom Waldman Jr., in “Kill a Better Mousetrap,” a comedy, based on a play by Scott K. Ratner, that was filmed last summer and has yet to be released.

She was also in five Blake Edwards movies and five Gene Autry movies. Ms. McKenzie was 101 when she passed.

Ken Kercheval. He did a lot of TV work (no “Mannix”, though) and was probably most famous as Cliff Barnes on “Dallas”. (He was also in “Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell“, which I’d kind of like to watch. Lawrence, however, does not seem to care much for movies involving demonic dogs.)

Finally, Grand Duke Jean of Luxembourg. Noted:

As the crown prince, he fled Luxembourg with the grand ducal family after Germany invaded the country in May 1940 and found refuge in France, Portugal, the United States and Canada before moving to Britain to join the Irish Guards, a regiment of the British Army, as a private in 1942.
He participated in the Allies’ invasion of Normandy in 1944 and fought in the Battle for Caen there. Three months later he took part in the liberation of Brussels.
Among other honors, he received a Silver Star from the United States, a War Medal from Britain and the French Croix de Guerre. He was promoted to colonel in the Irish Guards in 1984 and was made an honorary general of the British Army in 1995.

Posted in 1970s, Cops, Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre, TV, Wagner, WCDA | 2 Comments »

Headline of the day.

April 24th, 2019

From the HouChron:

A giant bird killed its owner. Now it could be yours.

Bonus: Florida man!

Double bonus:

Bill Grotjahn, who investigated the death for the Medical Examiner’s Office, said Hajos had died from trauma inflicted by the bird. He called it “such an unusual situation.”
“I’ve been doing this for 18 years and I’ve never had a thing like this,” he said. “I’ve had them killed by alligators and snakes but never by a bird like that. I know ostriches and emus have their moments, but cassowaries are an extremely, extremely dangerous bird. You don’t want to fool around with them. They have no sense of humor.”

“…this doesn’t look like any ostrich attack that I’ve ever seen.”

(Yes, yes, I know: cassowaries are not ostriches or emus. But unless I’m badly misreading Wikipedia, they are in the same family.)

Posted in Angry, Birds, Media | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: April 24, 2019.

April 24th, 2019

Henry W. Bloch, co-founder of H&R Block, has passed away at 96.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, he enlisted in the Army Air Forces and served as a B-17 navigator, flying 31 combat missions over Germany, three over Berlin, and winning the Air Medal and three oak leaf clusters.

I don’t get as much of an opportunity to use these tags as I would like, so I have to note the death of Verena Wagner Lafferentz, Richard Wagner’s last surviving grandchild.

Ms. Lafferentz was the daughter of Wagner’s son Siegfried and his wife, the English-born Winifred, who was a fanatical admirer and a rumored paramour of Hitler’s. She met him at the Bayreuth Festival in 1923.

…

In 1940, she, too, was romantically linked to Hitler, although he was said to have been uncomfortable with how the public would perceive their two-decade age gap. She was known to be both flirtatious and unusually frank in her conversations with him about everything from culture to current events.

…

In 1943, when she was 23, she was back in the public eye when she married Bodo Lafferentz, who had joined the Nazi Party a decade earlier, had worked for Volkswagen and had since 1939 been a high-ranking officer in the SS, assigned to the Race and Settlement office.
He oversaw a rocket research center at an outpost of the Flossenbürg concentration camp, where, according to the book “Bayreuth, the Outer Camp of Flossenbürg Concentration Camp” (2003), Wieland Wagner recruited inmates as laborers to build sets for the Bayreuth Festival.

Posted in Music, Nazis, Obits, Wagner | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 23, 2019.

April 23rd, 2019

Jacqui Saburido passed away on Sunday Saturday. She was 40.

On the night of September 19th, 1999, she and three friends were returning from a party at Lake Travis. Along RM 2222, their car was hit by a drunk driver. Two people died in the crash. Two more were pulled out of the car before it caught fire.

Saburido, trapped in the front passenger seat, burned for nearly a minute before paramedics could put out the fire. Horrific burns covered nearly her entire body, except for the bottom of her legs and feet. She spent months at a Galveston burn unit, undergoing skin grafts and emergency surgeries. One by one her lips, ears and nose fell off. Her eyes were sewn shut so they wouldn’t dry out. The dead bones of her fingers were amputated.

The drunk driver, Reggie Stephey, was convicted on two counts of intoxication manslaughter and sentenced to seven years in prison.

During the trial, Saburido asked to meet with Stephey; she told Stephey she forgave him. He served every year of his sentence before being released in June 2008. Throughout his prison stint, he collaborated with Saburido on the drunken-driving campaign, filming public service announcements and speaking to high schools.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 20, 2019.

April 20th, 2019

NYT obit for Gene Wolfe.

Warren Adler, novelist. He is perhaps most famous as the author of The War of the Roses, which was adapted into the Michael Douglas/Kathleen Turner film.

James W. McCord Jr., leader of the Watergate burglars.

On June 17, 1972, four expatriate Cubans and Mr. McCord, chief of security for the Nixon re-election campaign and a leader of the White House “plumbers” unit assigned to plug information leaks, broke into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington to fix problematic listening devices that they had planted weeks earlier.
But a night watchman alerted the police, and they were caught, odd burglars in business suits carrying cameras and walkie-talkies. E. Howard Hunt, a former C.I.A. agent, and G. Gordon Liddy, the re-election committee’s general counsel, who ran the break-in from a nearby hotel room, fled but were soon arrested. Mr. McCord revealed at an arraignment that he had once worked for the C.I.A., and the unraveling began.

Interesting thing about this obit: Mr. McCord apparently passed away in June of 2017, but his death was not widely reported until recently.

Lorraine Warren, “psychic” fraud.

This was noted elsewhere earlier in the week, but for the historical record: Geraldyn M. “Jerri” Cobb, noted pilot and an early recruit for the astronaut program.

Posted in Books, History, Law, Movies, Nixon, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

Noted.

April 18th, 2019

1. Judith Clark has been granted parole. Officer Waverly Brown and Sgt. Edward O’Grady of the Nyack Police Department were unavailable for comment, as was Brinks employee Peter Paige.

2. Thread:

I haven’t seen “A Few Good Men” yet. (I feel like I should, but: Sorkin.) But I agree with his points on “Magnum Force”. I swear I’ve written about this before, but I think “Dirty Harry” and “Magnum Force” are both much more complicated movies than the people who call them “fascist” give them credit for. “Dirty Harry” is about a good man who is trying to do his job, while coming to terms with a world that’s changing around him. “Magnum Force” is about that same man, who, when given a chance to reject those changes, makes the moral choice not to.

3. Article about Father Fournier from the NYT. Mike the Musicologist sent over a Reddit thread as well.

It seems somehow inappropriate to refer to a priest as a bad a–, but I can’t think of a better word. Before rushing into a burning building, the Father had:

  • served with French forces in Afghanistan, and survived an ambush that killed 10 men
  • went into Bataclan while the shooting was going on to provide absolution for the victims

Clint Eastwood, call your people, please: Father Fournier would be a good subject for your next movie.

Tactical advice from a priest:

From a military base in Afghanistan to a revered cathedral torn by flames, the rule, he said, is the same: “Always be on the move, or else you die.”
Inside Notre-Dame, he said, he kept the safety of his fellow firefighters foremost in his mind. “Artworks can be reproduced, while a human life can’t,” he said.
“The one who tells you that he’s not afraid in that kind of situation is either very dangerous or foolish,” the chaplain said. “Even for a firefighter, to go inside a building in flames isn’t that natural.”

4. Should Roberto Clemente’s number 21 be retired across all of baseball? My feelings about baseball are well known, so I’m not the person to ask. But I do kind of like Clemente, who died nobly and far too young.

5. The Alliance of American Football has filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Posted in Law, Movies, Politics, Sports | Comments Closed

Notre-Dame.

April 17th, 2019

I don’t feel like I have to comment on everything in the news here, but I feel like I have to say something. I’ve spent the past couple of days going around in my head about this.

I don’t have the personal connection to Notre-Dame de Paris that a lot of folks do: I’ve never been to France, much less seen it up close and personal. I feel like I should have more of a connection, being a frustrated amateur historian and Notre-Dame being one of the spiritual centers of my people.

I don’t know that I have any kind of profound take on it, compared to other, smarter people. There is a part of me that finds some level of symbolism in the fire taking place this week, of all weeks: Notre-Dame rising from the ashes as symbolic analogy to Christ rising from the tomb.

There is another part of me that wants to echo Pirsig from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and the distinction he makes: the church as corporate body that pays bills and employs people and owns buildings, and the Church as the great mass of believers, the continuity of belief and tradition in the lives of people, not in a building. Notre-Dame might burn, but the true Church will never die as long as there are believers.

But that seems dismissive. On the other hand, there are some takes I’ve liked:

(Thread.)

(Also thread. But calling out:

Remind you of anything in particular?)

It looks now like there’s a lot of reason to be optimistic: the rose windows survived, the art and relics were rescued (and if there’s any justice at all in France, Father Fournier will never be able to pay for a drink or meal with his own money for the rest of his life), and the cathedral will be rebuilt. As other, smarter people have pointed out, this isn’t the first time: Notre-Dame was desecrated and damaged during the French Revolution, and restored between 1844 and 1864.

(True side note: my mother emailed me and asked if Quasimodo made it out. I had to explain to her that he wasn’t actually in the cathedral at the time, but was in a small space behind the building: the hutch back of Notre-Dame. Thank you, I’ll be here all week.)

Edited to add: One thing I forgot to note: we know a lot about Notre-Dame.

Posted in History, Religion | Comments Closed

A small silly diversion.

April 17th, 2019

Lawrence stated the other night that you can Google DuckDuckGo “Florida Man” and any combination of words and almost be guaranteed you’ll get some results back.

Here is a perfect example of that theory:

Florida man arrested after aggressively eating handfuls of pasta

No, you are not having a stroke. Yes, that is an actual headline, though the gentleman in question was actually arrested for (quel frommage!) being drunk and disorderly in public and resisting arrest. To the best of my knowledge, the eating of pasta – even in an aggressive fashion – is not an actual crime in Florida. Yet.

In other news of the weird:

Man in monkey mask stole mail from Southwest Austin apartments, police say

Moral of this story: don’t mess with the postal inspectors. They got his fingerprints off light bulbs, and…

The U.S. Postal Inspection Service, the law enforcement arm of the U.S. Postal Service, told police the agency had planted a gift card in the mail designed to force the recipient into giving up their personal information to access the gift card. The day after the burglary, postal inspectors learned that the card was accessed by a Texas woman who — joined by a man later identified by authorities as Ortiz — used the card at a Target retail store on Research Boulevard about two weeks later, the affidavit said.

“The Man in the Monkey Mask” was also one of Dumas’s less successful works.

Posted in Bagatelle, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 17, 2019.

April 17th, 2019

Owen Garriott, astronaut.

In 1973 he was the science pilot of Skylab 3, the record-breaking 59-day mission — more than double the duration of any previous flight — to Skylab, the first United States space station.
He logged nearly 14 hours outside Skylab in three spacewalks, during which physiological and biomedical metrics were monitored to determine the body’s response to long periods spent in reduced gravity.

…

He returned to space in 1983 on the 10-day flight of the shuttle Columbia, which carried the European Space Agency’s Spacelab 1 module, on which a multinational team of scientists conducted research.
On that mission, Dr. Garriott operated the first amateur radio station from space. He used his station’s call sign, W5LFL, to connect with about 250 ham operators, including his mother in Enid, Okla.; Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona; and King Hussein of Jordan.

…

His marriage to Helen Walker in 1952 ended in divorce. In addition to his son Richard, his survivors include three other children from that marriage, Randall, Robert and Linda Garriott; his wife, Evelyn (Long) Garriott; three stepchildren, Cindy Burcham, Bill Eyestone and Sandra Brooks; 12 grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.

Posted in Geek, History, Obits, Radio | Comments Closed

Gene Wolfe.

April 16th, 2019

Michael Swanwick. I love that story about the bags full of old books: I have a similar feeling to Wolfe’s sometimes when I’m watching an old movie, or (yes) handling an old book.

Brian Doherty at Reason’s “Hit and Run”.

Lawrence.

Posted in Books, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 16, 2019.

April 16th, 2019

Thanks to Alan Simpson for providing Gene Wolfe obit links. I’m still holding off a bit on posting here, as I’d like to see some things come together first.

In the meantime: Georgia Engel, Ted Baxter’s girlfriend/wife on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show”. Apparently, she also had a gig on “Everybody Loves Raymond”, but I was one of the people who didn’t love Raymond. And she had a pretty substantial theater career, both before and after MTM.

“I was walking down the street one day after ‘Dolly’ closed to cash my unemployment check for $75,” Ms. Engel told The Toronto Star years later, “when I ran into John and he told me I had to be in his play ‘The House of Blue Leaves.’ I was so thrilled, until I got my first paycheck. I was making $74, one dollar less than unemployment.”

Posted in 1970s, Books, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 15, 2019.

April 15th, 2019

I am seeing unconfirmed reports that Gene Wolfe, one of the greatest SF authors ever to walk the face of the earth, has passed away.

I’ll try to link to reliable obits when I find them.

Edited to add:

Posted in Books, Obits | 2 Comments »

Happy BAG Day!

April 15th, 2019

I did make it down to Cabela’s yesterday, but I didn’t see anything that really called out to me and said “Take me home!”

They did have a bunch of S&W Model 59s in one of the display cases – I want to say at least ten out on the floor, and I don’t know if they had more in back. It looked like they’d been knocked around some, so I’m thinking these were trade-ins or surplus from somewhere. But I didn’t have a chance to ask, or look closely at any of them, as the counter people were busy. The price isn’t too awful – $350 – and it is a Smith I don’t have, but I just don’t know if I need another hi-cap 9mm right now.

They also had a surprising number of Winchester Model 70s out on the rack (as opposed to in the gun library) but nothing pre-64 (of course) and none of them were in calibers that I found desirable: mostly .30-06 and .243, with one each in .300 Win Mag and .308. Also a bunch of Savage rifles, but, again, nothing in a caliber or configuration that really attracted me.

So I’m declaring a push on my own personal Buy a Gun Day. But I’m also declaring this an open thread for anyone who wants to brag about their acquisitions.

P.S. Since I’m making the rules for this thread: yes, layaways do count. Also, if you need some inspiration, you-know-who is still selling M&P Shields for $250.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Good night, Luke.

April 12th, 2019

Luke Walton out as head coach of the LA Lakers.

98-148 over three seasons. LA was 37-45 and missed the playoffs this season.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 12, 2019.

April 12th, 2019

Earl Thomas Conley, musician.

Mr. Conley had 24 Top 10 country singles in the ’80s, several of which he wrote or co-wrote, including 18 that reached No. 1. Only two artists that decade topped the country charts more times than he did: the vocal group Alabama, which had 27 No. 1 singles, and the singer Ronnie Milsap, who had 23. All but one of Mr. Conley’s No. 1 hits were recorded for RCA, starting with “Somewhere Between Right and Wrong” in 1982.

…

“My stuff started with bluegrass music,” Mr. Conley once explained in an interview. “That’s what inspired me, the people that came out of those hills in West Virginia and Kentucky. And, of course, Hank Williams Sr. down in Alabama.
“I was born in ’41, and I was raised up on that early stuff,” he went on. “Coming out of those mountains, there’s a different soul and a different feeling and a whole different deal than what it would be like to come from the city.”

Forrest Gregg, legendary Green Bay Packer.

He was the best offensive lineman of his era. He was so good that he went to nine Pro Bowls, was a first-ballot Hall of Famer and was named to the NFL’s 75th anniversary team.

…

Drafted in the second round out of SMU in 1956, Gregg began a streak of a then-NFL record 188 consecutive games, interrupted only in ’57 when he missed the entire season in order to serve in the army. The NFL did not count those as missed games and Gregg became a mainstay on the Packers’ offensive line, playing mostly right tackle but filling in at guard when injuries dictated.

He also did some coaching: he was with the Browns, took the Bengals to the Super Bowl, had a controversial stint as head coach in Green Bay, and was the first coach at SMU after the scandal.

NYT. Packers.com.

Posted in Music, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

April 11th, 2019

Dave Joerger out as head coach of the Sacramento Kings.

Three seasons, 98-148, and the team went 39-43 this season, which was their best record since 2005. Also out: assistant GM Brandon Williams and PR director Chris Clark.

Memphis fired head coach J.B. Bickerstaff and “reassigned” GM Chris Wallace. Apologies for linking ESPN, but I can’t get the Commercial-Appeal website to load on my phone.

(Edited to add 4/12: coverage from the Commercial-Appeal.

Not exactly a firing, but Larry Drew is not coming back as head coach in Cleveland. Drew took over after head coach Tyronn Lue was fired early this past season.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

BAG Day is coming!

April 11th, 2019

Again. Monday, April 15th. Of course, a lot of the good smaller gun shops are closed on Monday, so (as always) I don’t have a problem if you want to start early, or extend your BAG shopping into next week.

What am I getting this year? There’s nothing that I’m really excited about or that turns my crank. I’m tempted to pick up one of the Palmetto State Armory M&P Shields (which are still on sale) but I don’t really feel like I need one.

Earlier today, I got an email from CDNN, who are selling the “Steyr Scout RFR”. I assume “RFR” means “RimFire Rifle”, as these are available in .22 Magnum, .22 LR, and .17 HMR. I didn’t even know these existed before now.

The idea of a rimfire “scout rifle” (Cooper would call it a “pseduo-Scout”) is kind of appealing, and I’ve been thinking about something in .17 HMR. The price isn’t bad, but I haven’t quite finished getting my Savage Scout set up the way I want it yet. (I’ve got the scope, I’ve got the rings, I just need to find a gunsmith I can trust to mount and boresight it.) So I’m not sure I want to put more money into another scout that will need a scope. Plus, for .17 HMR, I’m actually thinking more along the lines of the Ruger Precision Rifle than a scout.

And I’ve actually checked off all the items I had on last year’s list. Well, mostly: I have the sling and the scope, and the Dragon Leatherworks holster is on order (expected delivery at the end of May.)

If I have time over the weekend, I might run down to Cabela’s to see if there are any targets of opportunity, but I’m not counting on it. Unless I see something that really excites me, I’m probably going to be putting BAG Day money into getting more of my collection set up the way I want it.

But don’t let me stop you, and feel free to share photos of your BAG Day finds here if you want to.

Posted in Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 11, 2019.

April 11th, 2019

Ed Westcott passed away at the end of March. He was 97.

Mr. Westcott was the photographer at Oak Ridge during the Manhattan Project era. Note I said “the photographer”: Mr. Westcott was the only person authorized to take photos at Oak Ridge. (There were also photographers at Los Alamos and Hanford.)

Thousands of his negatives were stored at Oak Ridge, and then at the National Archives in Washington, before they were declassified years later.
He also developed aerial reconnaissance photos of the devastation wrought by the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as armed guards waited outside his darkroom.

Kind of related: I got curious about the Cemestos houses, did some DuckDuckGoing, and found this piece from McSweeney’s. I know, but I actually thought this was pretty good: Anne Wheeler’s a charming writer, and I’d love to hit some nuclear tourism spots with her.

Posted in Obits, Photography | Comments Closed

Own goal.

April 10th, 2019

When I was a small child, I had a book.

Well, actually, I had more than one book. But this one was about planes: I don’t remember the title, or if it was about planes in general, or just military aircraft.

But I do remember a casual mention in that book of a plane shooting itself down by running into its own cannon fire.

What brings this to mind?

The F-16, which suffered considerable damage in January during an exercise above Vlieland, appears to have been hit by its own ammunition. At least one fired cartridge caused damage to the cladding of the device. Parts of the ammunition also ended up in the engine.

(Translation by Google Translate. Original is in Dutch.)

More from Military Times, which is in English, and actually mentions the incident I think I remember.

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Obit watch: April 10, 2019.

April 10th, 2019

Charles Van Doren has passed away at the age of 93.

I wrote a little about this a while back, but to recap: Mr. Van Doren was from a cultured and educated family, had batchelor’s and master’s degrees, taught at Columbia University, and was “handsome, personable” with “an honest look about him”.

He was recruited by Albert Freedman to appear on the quiz show “Twenty-One” (he didn’t even own a TV at the time), and knocked off Herb Stempel, the reigning champion. (From some accounts I’ve seen, the producers basically felt Mr. Van Doren was “more appealing” to the audience than Mr. Stempel.)

Mr. Van Doren won $129,000 in 1956 money (the paper of record claims that’s equivalent to $1 million today).

In succeeding months, as rumors and skepticism over TV quiz shows grew, some contestants admitted that the programs had been fixed. The networks denied it, and Mr. Van Doren insisted that he had not taken part in any deceptions. Besides misleading the press and public, he continued to deceive his family and friends, and even lied to a Manhattan grand jury about his performances.
But on Nov. 2, 1959, he told congressional investigators that the shows had all been hoaxes, that he had been given questions and answers in advance, and that he had been coached to make the performances more dramatic.

Mr. Van Doren served a suspended sentence for second-degree perjury (for lying to the grand jury), went on to work for Encyclopaedia Britannica, and wrote a couple of books after he retired. (He also collaborated on some books with Mortimer Adler.)

The famous New Yorker article from 2008.

As far as I can tell, Herb Stempel is still alive at the age of 92.

Posted in Books, History, Law, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch part 2: April 9, 2019.

April 9th, 2019

Lt. Colonel Richard E. Cole (United States Air Force – Ret.)

He was 103.

Lieutenant (at the time) Cole was Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot on the Tokyo raid. He was the last survivor of Doolittle’s Raiders.

As Mr. Cole remembered it: “The tune ‘Wabash Cannonball’ kept running through my mind. One time I was singing and stomping my foot with such gusto that the boss looked at me in a very questioning manner, like he thought I was going batty.”

…

Doolittle, Lieutenant Cole and the other three crewmen of their plane bailed out in rain and fog soon after their bomber crossed the Chinese coast as darkness arrived. Lieutenant Cole landed in a pine tree atop a mountain and was unhurt except for a black eye. He made a hammock from his parachute and went to sleep. At dawn, he began walking, and late that day he made contact with Chinese guerrillas.
He was soon reunited with Doolittle, who had come down in a rice paddy, and their three fellow crewmen. The five joined up with other stranded airmen who had been rescued. The Chinese took them all on an arduous journey, much of it by riverboat, to an air strip, where they were picked up by a United States military transport plane and flown to Chungking, the headquarters for the Nationalist Chinese.

For the record:

Three of the 80 Doolittle raiders were killed in crash landings or while parachuting. Eight others were captured by the Japanese. Three of them were executed, another died of disease and starvation in captivity, and four survived more than three years of solitary confinement and brutality.

Lt. Cole went on to fly transport planes over the Hump. He also served with the 1st Air Commando Group.

Lt. Cole’s page on doolittleraider.com which contains some great photos. Obit from MySanAntonio.com. I had no idea the gentleman lived in Comfort (about 90 minutes up the road from me). Cool story from the Express News in 2018.

Dick Cole’s War: Doolittle Raider, Hump Pilot, Air Commando sounds like a fascinating book.

Rest in peace, soldier.

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Obits, Planes | 1 Comment »

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