Paging Andrew! Andrew to the white courtesy phone, please!
There goes Toyko.
December 2nd, 2012Obit watch and a bit of personal indulgence: December 1, 2012.
December 1st, 2012This has not been a good week for various reasons. Add another one to the list.
Jeff Millar, columnist and former movie critic for the Houston Chronicle, and also writer of the “Tank McNamara” comic strip, has passed away.
Millar’s time as a HouChron columnist and film critic overlapped my childhood and teenage years. I’ve written before that he was one of three people (Siskel and Ebert being the other two) who made me love movies. (My teenage years were a time when teen slasher flicks were approximately every third movie in the theaters. It was so bad, Millar came up with the “teen scream checklist” format for his reviews of those movies; I laughed every time I saw he’d done one of those.)
(And I’m glad somebody mentioned “Murray the Wonder Publicist”. I had almost forgotten about him.)
“Tank McNamara” was a hoot in those years, too. It still is, but sports have become so ridiculous that they’re hard to satirize any more. And I was a big fan of “Second Chances”, too: it was often funny, but also deeply moving (and I wonder how much of it was autobiographical). (Somebody should do a complete collection of that comic, damn it.)
I even saved up my pennies and purchased a copy of his novel Private Sector
And the columns. Most of them were side-splittingly funny. But the one that I remember best right now was one he wrote about his first wife (the legendary “Spot” of his columns) after her death. I’d love to find a link to that, but the HouChron doesn’t go back that far.
I had it in my head that, at some point, I was going to write Mr. Millar and thank him for his influence in my life. I met him once, when I was a teenager, at a book signing. But I was too shy and intimidated to talk with him much. We had a brief email correspondence shortly before he retired as a reviewer, and that was the extent of my contact with him. I tried several times to see if he had a presence online, and couldn’t find any contact information, so I gave up on it.
Too late now. I guess this has to be my thank-you note.
Domo arigato, Millar-sensei.
Merry freaking Christmas.
November 30th, 2012Austin, like many other cities, has a program that gets the police department involved in collecting toys and getting them to poor kids. Here, we call this “Blue Santa“.
The “Blue Santa” program started in 1972. Before that, we had an organization called the Christmas Bureau of Austin and Travis County. For as long as I’ve lived in Austin, these two organizations have collaborated closely.
Not this year. The Christmas Bureau, as you may have guessed if you clicked on the link above, seems to have packed up their manager and slunk off into the night, leaving the Blue Santa people holding Santa’s bag.
What happened? That’s still not clear, but the police are investigating. Part of the issue may have to do with new leadership at the Christmas Bureau: the previous leader passed away last year, and the new guy has what we like to describe as a “colorful” history. This includes an arrest for meth possession after an encounter with police in the parking lot of one of our finer local strip clubs this past August (which, of course, does not imply his guilt in this affair, but does make one think).
In the meantime, the Blue Santa folks are trying to fill the gap, if you feel like helping.
Edited to add: It looks like the Christmas Bureau website is working again (it was giving a “500 Internal Server Error”) but hasn’t been updated since last December.
Ump-diddily-ump update.
November 30th, 2012Hey, remember the tennis umpire who was charged with beating her husband to death with a coffee cup?
The LA County DA has dropped the charges.
The charges can be refiled if the investigation turns up new evidence.
Quote of the day.
November 29th, 2012I’ve always liked Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination (also known as Tiger, Tiger in the UK).
The last chapter struck me rather forcefully the first time I read it. Especially the ending: I’m putting this quote behind a jump because it contains possible spoilers for the book.
Random notes: November 29, 2012.
November 29th, 2012More:
The Washington Wizards beat the Portland Trail Blazers last night. Narrowly, but they did win, and there are now no NBA teams with a chance of going 0-82.
Obit watch: November 28, 2012.
November 28th, 2012Zig Ziglar, prominent motivational speaker and author. I suspect there will be updates to this.
Not exactly an obit, but Jack Pardee, former coach of:
- The Florida Blazers (in the World Football League)
- da Bears.
- The Washington Redskins.
- The Houston Gamblers (of the old USFL)
- The Birmingham Barracudas, described by Wikipedia as “a failed experiment to expand the CFL into the United States“.
- The University of Houston, and
- The Houston Oilers
is terminally ill.
You know…
November 27th, 2012…I don’t know of a man, woman, or child alive today who doesn’t enjoy a nice refreshing cup of ham.
(Seriously. The little bistro downstairs in my office has been selling Cup’O’Ham. Also Cup’O’Turkey. They just started doing this about a month ago. Is this a paleo thing? Any ideas, anyone?)
TMQ watch: November 27, 2012.
November 27th, 2012TMQ is back from his bye week. And we’re back from the holiday. (Yes, we did have a nice Thanksgiving, complete with gun shopping and range time. Thanks for asking.)
Before we jump into this week’s column, we want to take this opportunity to observe that the Washington Wizards are 0-12, and folks are starting to take notice. We’ll come back to that.
The no fun league.
November 26th, 2012Headline in the LAT: “Bounce house injuries rocket; child hurt every 46 minutes“.
Thought: maybe that child needs to be more careful.
Buried in the article:
- “Overall, an estimated 64,657 were treated 1990 to 2010, the researchers found. The numbers suggest 31 children a day in 2010 were treated in emergency rooms for broken bones, sprains and cuts from injuries in bounce-house accidents. That is the equivalent of one injured child every 46 minutes, they said.” Broken bones, sprains, and cuts? So, basically, the same injuries kids have been getting for hundreds of years, with or without bounce-houses?
- “From 1995 to 2010, there was a statistically significant 15-fold increase in the number and rate of these injuries, with an average annual rate of 5.28 injuries per 100,000 U.S. children,” the authors said in the abstract of their findings. “The increase was more rapid during recent years, with the annual injury number and rate more than doubling between 2008 and 2010.” But earlier in the article, they admit that bounce-houses have also become much, much more popular in recent years. Are these increases meaningful without knowing how many bounce-house-hours (if you’ll pardon the coinage) kids are getting on average? I mean, sure, the number of injuries might be going up, but does that mean that bounce-houses are becoming more dangerous? Or just that kids are getting more time in them, and thus the odds of them getting injured increase?
Transparent excuse to link something that’s technically not a bounce-house, but probably as dangerous:
Obit watch: November 26, 2012.
November 26th, 2012Noted Russian SF writer Boris Strugatsky.
Monday firing update.
November 26th, 2012Widely reported yesterday, but noted here for the record (I wanted to let the press shake out a bit before linking): Gene Chizik out at Auburn.
33-19 overall, 15-17 in conference, 3-9 overall and 0-8 in conference this season. And, yes, he won a national championship in 2010, but what had he done lately?
North Carolina State fired Tom O’Brien: 40-35 and 22-26 in conference over six seasons.
Jon Embree is gone at Colorado after two seasons, during which he was 4-21, and 1-11 this season.
Danny Hope out at Purdue: 22-27 over four seasons, 13-19 in conference. And Purdue is going to a bowl game…
And, finally, as far as I know, Frank Spaziani out at Boston College:
(Loser update: the Washington Wizards are now 0-11, and still have a shot at being the first NBA team to go 0-82.)
Obit watch: November 24, 2012.
November 24th, 2012Larry Hagman: A/V Club. LAT. NYT. Dallas Morning News.
I have vague memories of “Mr. Food” being on TV in Houston when I was young. Since a couple of people have sent me this, here’s the obit for Art Ginsburg from the NYT.
Edited to add: Hector “Macho” Camacho has passed away after being removed from life support.
Sacks of wet cement.
November 23rd, 2012One of the joys of Thanksgiving is that I get to subject my nephews (and my nieces, eventually, but not this year) to the classics.
I’m not sure if “Over The River and Through The Woods” is available on any of the major services; I know Hulu only has the first three seasons of “The Bob Newhart Show”, and that’s a season four episode. Fortunately, I was prepared for that. “Woods” does take a little while to build (and I think my nephews were a little bored with the Bob/Emily interplay; perhaps next year we’ll play the “Hi, Bob” drinking game as we watch it), but once Thanksgiving starts, things pay off. (I also want to popularize the use of the phrase “Worst defeat in William and Mary’s history” as an all purpose excuse.
(Someone commented to me once that this episode was just an excuse for Newhart to do his Chinese food delivery bit. To which I respond: So f’ing what?)
I would have sworn that the kids had seen “Turkeys Away”; my sister says she thinks they crowded around the computer to watch it one year, but she’s not sure. Luckily, that is available on Hulu. To be honest, I kind of find the early part of the episode, with the whole “Mr. Carlin wants to get more involved” plot, a little laggy. Once Les gets to the shopping center, though…gold, jerry, comedy gold.
And in that vein, he’s something we hope you’ll really like: an oral history of “Turkeys Away” (and, somewhat, of “WKRP”). Among the people interviewed: the man who inspired Herb Tarlek’s character.
I think I’m also going to have to start working on getting “Look for the smiling face of Archduke Ferdinand on every bottle!” into casual conversation as well.
A modest proposal.
November 21st, 2012From this point forward, I propose that the Wednesday before Thanksgiving be known as “Hawaiian Shirt Day”, and that everyone should wear their shirts to the office (or out and about, if you’re lucky enough not to be working).
