Obit watch: January 7, 2022.

January 7th, 2022

Very quick, because I have only a tiny bit of downtime between doctor’s appointments: Sidney Poitier. THR. Variety.

More later, maybe, depending on how long this second appointment takes and how long it takes to get more than breaking news obits.

Posted in Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 6, 2022.

January 6th, 2022

Lawrence N. Brooks. He was 112 years old, and, at the time of his death, was the oldest surviving veteran of WWII.

Assigned to the mostly Black 91st Engineer General Service Regiment stationed in Australia — an Army unit that built bridges, roads and airstrips — Private Brooks served as a caretaker to three white officers, cooking, driving and doing other chores for them.

…

Mr. Brooks said he considered himself fortunate to have been spared combat duty when later in the war troop losses forced the military to send more African American troops to the front lines. In 1941, fewer than 4,000 African Americans were serving in the military; by 1945, that number had increased to more than 1.2 million.
“I got lucky,” he said. “I was saying to myself, ‘If I’m going to be shooting at somebody, somebody’s going to be shooting at me, and he might get lucky and hit.’”

By way of Lawrence: Willie Siros, noted Austin SF fan, book collector, book dealer, and a personal friend. (Apologies if that Facebook link is wonky: for some reason, I can view it on my phone, but I can’t view it on the big computer even in incognito mode. At least, not without logging into my non-existent Facebook account.)

Peter Bogdanovich. Ordinarily I would wait until tomorrow, but it looks like they had this one in the can. (And it has already been corrected once.) THR. Variety.

Before the end of the ’70s, however, Mr. Bogdanovich had been transformed from one of the most celebrated directors in Hollywood into one of the most ostracized. His career would be marred for years to come by critical and box-office failures, personal bankruptcies, the raking of his romantic life through the press and, as it all unspooled, an orgy of film-industry schadenfreude.
“It isn’t true that Hollywood is a bitter place, divided by hatred, greed and jealousy,” the director Billy Wilder once observed. “All it takes to bring the community together is a flop by Peter Bogdanovich.”

I wouldn’t mind seeing “Paper Moon”. I saw “What’s Up, Doc?” many many years ago, and would welcome seeing it again. And we’ve watched “Last Picture Show” recently. I’d also like to read those MoMA monographs.

Though Mr. Bogdanovich repeatedly disavowed the connection, critics liked to point out affinities between Welles’s career and his own: Both men began as directorial wunderkinds. (“Citizen Kane,” released in 1941, was Welles’s first full-length feature.) Both were later expelled from the Eden of A-list directors. (In the 1970s, a down-and-out Welles lived for a time in Mr. Bogdanovich’s mansion in the Bel Air section of Los Angeles.)

…

In the late 1990s, after declaring bankruptcy again, the down-and-out Mr. Bogdanovich lived for a time in the guesthouse of the young director Quentin Tarantino.

Posted in Books, History, Movies, Obits | 1 Comment »

Tweet of the day.

January 5th, 2022

Explained:

Runner-up:

Posted in Art, Geek | Comments Closed

Random thoughts.

January 5th, 2022

I think it is time that we admit “Imagine” is a bad idea.

Not just a bad song, which it is, but we should admit it is just a bad idea in general and toss it on the dustheap of history. No more airplay, no more covers, no acknowledgment that this song even exists.

I have no strong opinion about Lennon’s other songs. But I have left instructions in my will telling my pallbearers to open carry at my funeral, and that they should use any degree of force necessary to stop “Imagine” from being played.

Today’s example of why I feel this way.

I happened to note this the other night, and I’ve seen other people point it out since then. But for the record: 2022 is the year of “Soylent Green”.

(Make Room! Make Room! (affiliate link) was set in August of 1999, for comparison’s sake.)

Posted in Books, Movies, Music | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 3, 2022.

January 3rd, 2022

Richard Leakey, paleoanthropologist.

One of his most celebrated finds came in 1984 when he helped unearth “Turkana Boy,” a 1.6-million-year-old skeleton of a young male Homo erectus. The other was a skull called “1470,” found in 1972, that extended the world’s knowledge of the Homo erectus species several million years deeper into the past.

…

His discoveries were almost as remarkable as his ability to evade death. He fractured his skull as a boy, almost died after receiving a kidney transplant from his brother Philip in 1979, lost both legs in a 1993 plane crash and was once treated for skin cancer.

Dan Reeves, former Dallas Cowboys running back and later NFL coach.

Reeves played and coached with the Dallas Cowboys during a stellar period when they won two Super Bowls, one when he was a player-coach and one when he was an offensive coordinator, working for Coach Tom Landry. After several seasons as an assistant to Landry, he was hired as the Broncos’ head coach in 1981, replacing Red Miller.
Over 12 seasons in Denver, his teams had a record of 110-73-1 and were among the best in the American Football Conference. Led by quarterback John Elway, they lost the Super Bowl in 1987, 1988 and 1990 by wide margins to the New York Giants, the Washington Redskins and the San Francisco 49ers.

…

Undrafted by any team in the N.F.L. or the American Football League, he signed in 1965 with the Cowboys, who converted him to a running back. He played eight seasons and accumulated 1,990 rushing yards, 757 of them in 1966, his best year.

Jeanine Ann Roose. She was the young “Violet” in “It’s a Wonderful Life”, and…that’s it.

She went on to attend UCLA, becoming a psychologist and later a Jungian analyst, according to TMZ, which quoted her as once having made a comparison between her life and the movie’s story line.
“It’s a Wonderful Life was the only movie that I was in and it been an amazing lifetime experience to have been in such a collectively meaningful picture. … It became clear that my desire was specifically to help others who were struggling with finding meaning in their life — not unlike Clarence in the movie who helps George see the meaning of his life,” she said.

Max Julien. He was “Goldie” in “The Mack” (opposite Richard Pryor). Other credits include “Mod Squad”, “The Bold Ones: The Protectors”, and “The Name of the Game”.

Posted in Movies, NFL, Obits, Science, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 31, 2021 (supplemental)

December 31st, 2021

Want to get this in now, since I don’t know what tomorrow is going to be like: Betty White. THR.

Tiffini Hale. She was a member of the “Mickey Mouse Club” cast from 1989 to 1995, and was only 46.

Posted in Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

What we know that isn’t necessarily so…

December 31st, 2021

Tweet:

Working link.

A lot of this probably isn’t news to people who are as geeky as I am. Some high points:

No good evidence of anything from the Stanford prison ‘experiment’. It was not an experiment; ‘demand characteristics’ and scripting of the abuse; constant experimenter intervention; faked reactions from participants; as Zimbardo concedes, they began with a complete “absence of specific hypotheses”.

No good evidence from the famous Milgram experiments that 65% of people will inflict pain if ordered to. Experiment was riddled with researcher degrees of freedom, going off-script, implausible agreement between very different treatments, and “only half of the people who undertook the experiment fully believed it was real and of those, 66% disobeyed the experimenter.”

Evidence for a small marshmallow effect, that ability to delay gratification as a 4 year old predicts educational outcomes at 15 or beyond (Mischel).
After controlling for the socioeconomic status of the child’s family, the Marshmallow effect is r=0.05 or d=0.1 one-tenth of a standard deviation for an additional minute delay, with nonsignificant p-values. And since it’s usually easier to get SES data…

“Expertise attained after 10,000 hours practice” (Gladwell). Disowned by the supposed proponents.

At most extremely weak evidence that psychiatric hospitals (of the 1970s) could not detect sane patients in the absence of deception.

(Previously.)

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Obit watch: December 31, 2021.

December 31st, 2021

I’ve written before about the NYT‘s ability to do touching obits for people who aren’t famous (outside of, perhaps, a limited cultural circle) but still led interesting lives.

Ben McFall, “the longest-tenured bookseller in the history of the Strand”.

Mr. McFall enjoyed duties and perks not given to any other Strand employee. For much of his tenure, he was the only person in charge of an entire section. Not only that, the fief he governed — the fiction shelves — provides the Strand with the core of its business in used books.
He determined the price of each used hardcover novel and book of stories and then affixed a Strand sticker to the dust jacket. On occasion, he’d assess a book newly purchased by the store and find inside his own handwriting with a price from the 1980s.
Pricing was one of many fields in which Mr. McFall’s experience enabled him to make quick, intuitive pronouncements. Without checking a computer, he would say he knew how many years it had been since he had last seen an obscure old novel, the number of days it had remained in stock, and its current value online.

…

Yet he did not trade this adroitness for a position in management. Instead, he remained among shoppers and Strand underlings on the ground floor, where he became the only employee to have a desk designated specifically for his use. It was at the back of the main aisle, the sort of placement a restaurateur might choose for the corner table he would occupy in his own establishment. Behind Mr. McFall lay a sign reading “Classics” and a shelf of leather-bound volumes.

…

Mr. McFall could gossip or banter without looking up from the books he was working through. He sometimes surprised people by halting a conversation, departing wordlessly and returning with a book that he would say his interlocutor had to read. He was known to stash books under his desk if he thought they were perfectly suited to any of his regular customers.

…

Back then, the Strand hardly sold new books. Now, in addition to the latest best-sellers, it gives space to socks, tote bags and mugs. Bibliophilic employees have complained about that evolution while also accusing management of mistreating workers, particularly during the pandemic, which led to mass layoffs and a warning from Ms. Wyden that “our business is unsustainable.”
Mr. McFall gave his blessing to commercialization — “I’m perfectly willing to sell low-end dresses here if it means keeping the Strand in business,” he told The Times — and throughout his tenure he commanded respect both from management and across factions of the rank and file.

…

When Mr. McFall was interviewed for his Times profile, he gestured toward a group of young Strand staffers and said, “I don’t have to have children because these are my children.”

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Obit watch: December 29, 2021.

December 29th, 2021

Comment I made to Lawrence last night: “Sure,” the NYT reporter said, “I’ll cover the obituary desk between Christmas and New Year’s. Nothing ever happens between Christmas and New Year’s.”

I’m being kind of short with these first two because everyone is on them like a fat man on an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet.

John Madden. ESPN. LAT.

Madden retired from coaching the Oakland Raiders in 1979, at age 42 and with a Super Bowl victory to his credit, but he turned the second act of his life into an encore, a Rabelaisian emissary sent from the corner bar to demystify the mysteries of football for the common fan and, in the process, revolutionize sports broadcasting.

“Rabelaisian emissary”. Gotta give that guy credit.

As inclusive as he was beloved, Madden embodied a rare breed of sports personality. He could relate to the plumber in Pennsylvania or the custodian in Kentucky — or the cameramen on his broadcast crew — because he viewed himself, at bottom, as an ordinary guy who just happened to know a lot about football. Grounded by an incapacitating fear of flying, he met many of his fans while crisscrossing the country, first in Amtrak trains and then in his Madden Cruiser, a decked-out motor coach that was a rare luxurious concession for a man whose idea of a big night out, as detailed in his book “One Size Doesn’t Fit All” (1988), was wearing “a sweatsuit and sneakers to a real Mexican restaurant for nachos and a chile Colorado.”

…

Madden ditched the dress code and encouraged individual expression, tolerating his players’ penchant for wild nights and carousing because, he knew, they would always give him their full effort — especially on Sundays. Unlike the disciplinarians of his day, he imposed few rules, asking them only to listen, to be on time and to play hard when he demanded it. Madden told The New York Times in 1969 that “there has to be an honesty that you be yourself”; for him, that meant treating his players as “intelligent human beings.”

I wouldn’t say I was ever a big Madden fan. I had nothing against him, it was more a matter of me not being a big football fan in general. But that seems like a good general leadership principle: be yourself, and treat your people like intelligent human beings.

But when Madden retired, having been pummeled by ulcers and panic attacks and what is now regarded as burnout, he could boast of a résumé that included a Super Bowl XI demolition of the Minnesota Vikings in 1977; a .759 regular-season winning percentage (103-32-7), best among coaches who have worked at least 100 games; and an on-field view of some of the most controversial and memorable moments in football history: the notorious “Heidi” game (1968), the Immaculate Reception (1972) and the infamous Holy Roller play in 1978, his final season.

According to the Hollywood Reporter, Madden was offered the “Ernie Pantusso” role on “Cheers”, but turned it down.

Harry M. Reid. Las Vegas Review Journal.

Jeff Dickerson, ESPN reporter covering the Chicago Bears. He was only 44.

I wanted to note this, even though he wasn’t as famous as the other guys. The ESPN obit makes Mr. Dickerson sound like a really good guy who was taken too soon:

Even after being placed in hospice last week, he told colleagues he was there merely to humor his doctors. No one around him heard a word of self-pity, and he disarmed those who expressed concern by asking them about their own lives.
“JD always wants to know how you’re doing,” Waddle said. “I’d ask him how he’s doing and his first response is, ‘How are you doing? How are [Waddle’s daughters]?’ The dignity with which he has carried himself through some of the most difficult times any human being would be asked to go through, what his wife went through and the dignity and strength and grace that he showed at her side throughout all of this … I don’t know anybody I’ve met in my 54 years in life who has handled adversity over the last decade with more grace and strength and dignity than Jeff Dickerson. I know a lot of people go through [stuff]. I do. I’m sympathetic to all of it. But what Jeff Dickerson has had to go through the last decade is cruel.

…

Known for his friendly demeanor, clear voice and straight talk, Dickerson reported the facts but was not afraid to tell his listeners and readers what he thought about the Bears. He confronted team management when necessary, but never made a show of it.

…

“He always carried a care for the subject that he was going to write about,” said Gould, who co-hosted an ESPN 1000 radio show with Dickerson during a portion of his Bears career. “As a player you can appreciate that the wisdom he put on paper was as neutral and correct as it ever was going to be. It was always going to be your words. It was always going to be what the story was. It was never going to be someone filling in the blanks …
“Players definitely noticed. He always wrote a true story. He always wrote what was happening at the moment. He didn’t try to back the bus up over somebody. He tried to get it exactly how the story was. … I think you saw a lot of guys give him a lot of credit because they knew he would write it right.”

Posted in Leadership, NFL, Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 28, 2021.

December 28th, 2021

Relentless advocate for children, and author, Andrew Vachss has died. This is by way of Lawrence from Joe Landsdale, and I don’t have any more information than what’s there at the moment. I’ll follow up as more information is posted.

NYT obit for Sarah Weddington.

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When guns are outlawed…

December 27th, 2021

…only nutcases will run around with crossbows pretending to be Sith and threatening the Queen.

Posted in Bagatelle, Guns | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 27, 2021.

December 27th, 2021

Man, you take some time off for Christmas, and Death decides to be even busier than usual.

Edward O. Wilson.

As an expert on insects, Dr. Wilson studied the evolution of behavior, exploring how natural selection and other forces could produce something as extraordinarily complex as an ant colony. He then championed this kind of research as a way of making sense of all behavior — including our own.
As part of his campaign, Dr. Wilson wrote a string of books that influenced his fellow scientists while also gaining a broad public audience. “On Human Nature” won the Pulitzer Prize for general nonfiction in 1979; “The Ants,” which Dr. Wilson wrote with his longtime colleague Bert Hölldobler, won him his second Pulitzer in 1991.
Dr. Wilson also became a pioneer in the study of biological diversity, developing a mathematical approach to questions about why different places have different numbers of species. Later in his career, Dr. Wilson became one of the world’s leading voices for the protection of endangered wildlife.

Jean-Marc Vallée. THR. Credits include “Dallas Buyers Club” and the “Big Little Lies” series. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Desmond Tutu, for the historical record.

Sarah Weddington, attorney in the Roe v Wade case. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

Wanda Young, of the Marvelettes.

Ms. Young (who was also known as Wanda Rogers) and Gladys Horton shared lead singer duties. “Don’t Mess With Bill,” which rose to No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1966, was one of several hits written by Smokey Robinson on which Ms. Young sang lead. (Ms. Horton was the lead singer on “Please Mr. Postman,” “Beechwood 4-5789” and other songs.)

Richard “Demo Dick” Marcinko.

Commander Marcinko climbed the ranks to command Team 6 and wrote a tell-all best seller that cemented the SEALs in pop culture as heroes and bad boys. Though the highly decorated Vietnam veteran led Team 6 for only three years, from 1980 to 1983, he had an outsize influence on the group’s place in military lore.

I’ve read (and thoroughly enjoyed) Rogue Warrior and, believe it or not, Leadership Secrets of the Rogue Warrior and The Real Team: Rogue Warrior (affiliate links). Oddly enough, though, I never met Mr. Marcinko. I say “oddly” because he was actually one of the guests of honor at a convention Lawrence and I went to years back, but I never sought him out. Both of us were busy hanging out with one of the other guests.

Bruce Todd, former Austin mayor.

Todd served two terms as mayor, first elected in June 1991 and retired in June 1997. In his time as mayor, he and the council considered issues such as airport relocation, wilderness preservation and transferring the city-run hospital to Seton. He also helped recruit major employers to the city, like Samsung, AMD and Applied Materials.
He also helped pass the city’s no-smoking law, banning cigars and cigarettes in all restaurants and bars.
Todd also led the effort to get the U.S. Airforce to transfer then-Bergstrom Air Force Base to the city when the base was being decommissioned. He succeeded and also worked to pass a $600 million bond election to transform the base into Austin-Bergstrom International Airport.

(Hattip: Lawrence.)

This is a little old, and has been touched on by other folks, but I did not find a good obit until now: Edward D. Shames.

Mr. Shames’s Easy Company, Second Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division parachuted behind Utah Beach in the D-Day invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. It fought the Germans in France, jumped into the German-occupied Netherlands in Operation Market Garden and held off Hitler’s troops in their prolonged siege of the Belgian town of Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge.

…

Entering combat as a sergeant with Easy Company, he was among its many paratroopers who found themselves scattered and lost upon hitting the ground behind Utah Beach before dawn on D-Day.
“I landed in a bunch of cows in a barn,” he recalled in a July 2021 interview with the American Veterans Center. “I had no idea where I was.”
He rounded up his men and found a farmhouse. The farmer didn’t speak English and he didn’t speak French, but he took out his maps and, through the farmer’s gestures, found that he was in the town of Carentan, some five miles from a bridge where he was supposed to have touched down. When he got there with his men, he received a battlefield commission as a second lieutenant for his resourcefulness.

Mr. Shames was the last surviving officer of Easy Company.

Posted in Austin, Geek, History, Movies, Obits, Politics | 2 Comments »

Merry Christmas, everyone!

December 25th, 2021

I’m not sure that Annie Lennox gets enough credit for her musical talent. I think many people still associate her with the Eurythmics, but she’s gone on to do really interesting solo work. And there’s something about her voice that I find…well, I’m not sure “compelling” is the word for it, but maybe that will do.

I set this to start at the four minute mark because, but this is the whole album for your listening pleasure.

Tradition:

More tradition. This one makes me smile.

Not traditional, but I like it:

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Further adventures in hoplobibilophilia, plus random gun crankery.

December 24th, 2021

One of the problems joys of being a hoplobibliophile (as opposed to being a normal person, or even a normal book collector): you buy a book on a particular gun for some reason. It might be well put together and illustrated, or it might just be cheap. Whatever. Next thing you know…you’re wanting the gun to go with the book.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Winchester | Comments Closed

’twas the night before Christmas…

December 24th, 2021

Chartwell Booksellers sent this over, and I thought I’d share it with everyone:

Winston Churchill’s Christmas Eve message, December 24, 1941.

Slightly longer version (Chartwell dropped the opening paragraph) from the International Churchill Society.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas.

(Ugly Christmas Beanie from Magpul (affiliate link). I don’t know that you’ll be able to get one on or before the 25th: but as all people of goodwill know, the Christmas season runs through January 6th, the Feast of Epiphany, and thus your ugly Christmas beanie (or sweater, if you live someplace that cold) is appropriate wear at least through then.)

Posted in Books, Christmas, Clothing, Hats, History | Comments Closed

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