So I was hanging out with the cops in Lakeway last night.
I’m about 99 44/100ths percent sure this is the video that they showed as part of their Citizen Response to Active Shooter Events presentation. This seems to me to be a good one: it’s also short (~11 minutes) so it isn’t a huge commitment of your time.
…where they serve churrasco with arroz de coco,
C-O-C-O, coco.
He walked up to me and he asked me to vote,
I asked him his name and in a crooked voice he said Lula,
L-U-L-A, Lula.
La-la-la-la Lula.
I’ve been binge-watching episodes of “Seconds From Disaster“.
One thing that kind of surprises me is that there are a lot of disasters – serious disasters, causing major loss of life – that I’ve just simply never heard of until I stumbled across the relevant SFD episode. Mont Blanc Tunnel fire? Totally missed that one. Kaprun funicular disaster? How did I manage to miss that?
Interesting safety note: one of the talking heads on the Kaprun SFD episode made what I thought was a really profound point. Fire will always do the unexpected. Fire doesn’t necessarily behave in an intuitive way. 12 people survived at Kaprun because they ran downhill, towards and past the fire at the rear of the train. Which is counter-intuitive: why would you run towards the fire? Because:
Everybody who went uphill away from the fire died.
Also interesting: the trench effect.
Well, once again, Gonzaga folded. And they didn’t even reach the Final Four this time. I’ve paid off my bet with Lawrence.
And, having learned nothing from history, I’ve bet another $5 with him on baseball. This year, I’m picking the Indians to win it all: the humor value of betting on the Cubs isn’t there any longer, I can’t stand the Dodgers or Yankees, and (as I’ve noted before) some of my family pull for the Tribe.
And 538 is giving the Indians a 13% chance of winning it all (as of today, April 3rd), second only to the Astros. So I’m feeling kind of good about my chances…
Man, it’s been a really busy couple of days.
Deborah Carrington, actress. Among her credits: Thumbelina in the original “Total Recall”, Valerie Vomit in “The Garbage Pail Kids Movie”, various Ewoks, and the “Bride of Chucky”.
Stéphane Audran, Babette in “Babette’s Feast”.
Delores Taylor, also an actress. She appeared in a bunch of her husband, Tom Laughlin’s, films, including “Billy Jack” and the two sequels.
Anita Shreve, noted novelist.
Separated at birth?
Former Guatemalan dictator Efraín Ríos Montt
INS reporter Carl Kolchak.
Finally, noted TV producer Steven Bochco. (“Hill Street Blues”, “LA Law”, “NYPD Blue”, “Doogie Howser MD”. And where’s my damn “Hooperman” box set? I’m not kidding: I remember that being a kind of fun show.)
Let’s go out with a bang, shall we?
…water slides.
This is one of those things that I intended to note earlier, but then I got busy and it got past me.
Schlitterbahn and Tyler Miles (the local operations manager for their Kansas City park) were indicted last week on involuntary manslaughter charges. This is related to the death of a ten-year-old boy who was decapitated on the Verrückt waterslide.
Texas Monthly online has a pretty good summary of the indictment and what led up to it. The spin here, based on the criminal indictment, is that these people supposedly had no idea what they were doing.
Why was speed “100% required”? Allegedly, Henry was trying to impress reality show producers.
…
Kind of burying the lede, and something I didn’t see reported as widely as the first indictment: Henry has also been arrested, and is charged with “murder, twelve counts of aggravated battery, and five counts of aggravated endangerment of a child”. The indictment against Henry hadn’t been released when the TM article hit the web, so indictment details are scanty.
It is worth remembering that most of what’s in the TM story is the prosecution’s case from the indictment, that Henry, Miles and Schlitterbahn have a different story that their lawyers will be presenting at trial, and that all parties should, of course, be presumed innocent.
Philip Kerr, noted author.
I read A Philosophical Investigation based on someone’s recommendation: I wish I could remember who it was. (I feel pretty strongly that it was either Andy Watson or Pat Cadigan, but I’m getting old. It could have been an entirely different person.)
Anyway, I liked it well enough that I intended to read more of Kerr’s work. The Bernie Gunther stuff in particular intrigues me, but too many books, too little time. Also, I’m thinking I got tangled up somewhere with chronology issues in the Gunther books. I’m kind of sad that there won’t be any more – except for the forthcoming Gunther origin story mentioned in the obit – but, at the same time, this settles the chronology issue pretty thoroughly.
…they came for the gun magazines, and I didn’t say anything: because I wasn’t a gun owner, and it’s not censorship if a private business does it, amirite?
Then they came for Cosmopolitan, and I said, “Hey! Wait a minute!”
(Semi-related.)
(More seriously, my First Amendment absolutism is really coming into conflict with my “sauce for the goose, sauce for the gander” philosophy, as well as my desire to see the gun-grabbers at Cosmo get theirs good and hard.)
H. Wayne Huizenga. Special bonus obit content: Field of Schemes.
Me, in an email conversation:
You know what Siberia needs?
Smoke detectors and fire alarms. Also, maybe, strict lighter control.
Karl of KR Training (official firearms trainer of WCD):
Also a big public march where people hate on the lighter fluid and fireplace industry.
(And let’s not forget Big Foam Rubber.)
And about the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry.
I’m not as excited about this year’s list as I have been in the past, though there are a couple of highlights other than “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”. I do love me some Groucho Marx. “New Sounds in Electronic Music” is a welcome surprise. And I’m happy to see K-Log get a nod, though I would have put “Danger Zone” in before “Footloose”.
Nelda Wells Spears, former Travis County tax assessor-collector. I remember having to write checks to her, back in the pre-Internet days…
Earl Cooley, prominent Austin SF fan, influential early BBS guy, and a personal friend.
The Mad Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight. They haven’t released a name yet, but even if they did, I wouldn’t give him the publicity.
Nokie Edwards, guitar player for The Ventures.
This is here mostly as a transparent excuse for a musical interlude. I’ll put in a jump.
…I should document, for the hysterical record, that Lawrence and I renewed our $5 bet on Gonzaga. (I take Gonzaga, he takes the field.)
After all, it is the Year of the Dog.