There’s a high bar that has to be cleared for me to link to something on ESPN.
Bonus: the Canadian Football Act (which isn’t really an act, as it has never been signed into law).
Those Glorious ’70s…
April 15th, 2022Important safety tip (#25 in a series)
April 15th, 2022I admit: I am not a NRA certified firearms instructor. Perhaps I should consult Karl of KR Training (official firearms trainer of WCD) before posting this.
Then again, this just seems like common sense to me.
When you’re teaching classes, a little humor is good. It keeps the students alert.
But you might want to avoid the racial jokes. Doesn’t matter if you are a minority, doesn’t matter if you’re an equal opportunity roaster, somebody’s going to run with this and try to make you (and people of the gun in general) look bad.
Again, nothing wrong with jokes: I’m just saying, steer clear of the racial ones. Probably ought to stay clear of sexist ones, too.
Obit watch: April 15, 2022.
April 15th, 2022Jack Newton, noted golfer.
Newton turned professional in 1971 on the European Tour and won his first event, the Dutch Open, the following year. A week later, he won another tournament at Fulford, England and, in 1974, the tour’s match play championship.
The Australian’s playoff loss in the 1975 British Open at Carnoustie came after Watson had a few rather fortuitous shots. A wire fence kept Watson’s ball in bounds on the eighth hole and the American chipped for eagle at the 14th to claim the Claret Jug by a shot over Newton.
Then, on July 24, 1983, he walked into an aircraft propeller.
His right arm was severed, he lost sight in his right eye and also sustained severe injuries to his abdomen. Doctors gave him only a 50-50 chance of surviving, and he spent nearly two months in intensive care and required lengthy rehabilitation from his injuries.
“Things weren’t looking too good for me. I knew that from the priest walking around my (hospital) bed,” Newton said later. He was 33 at the time of the accident.
…
Mike Bossy, of the New York Islanders.
Franz Mohr, who the paper of record describes as the “piano tuner to the stars”. He was Steinway’s chief concert technician for 24 years.
For years, he went where the pianists went. When Vladimir Horowitz went to Russia in the 1980s, Mr. Mohr traveled with him, as did Horowitz’s favorite Steinway. Mr. Mohr made house calls at the White House when Van Cliburn played for President Gerald R. Ford in 1975, and again in 1987, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev was in Washington for arms-control talks with President Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, wanted Cliburn to play one of the pieces that had made him famous — Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 — but there was no orchestra. Instead, Cliburn played some Chopin and, as an encore, played and sang the Russian melody “Moscow Nights.”
“I was amazed that Van Cliburn, on the spur of the moment, remembered not only the music but all the words,” Mr. Mohr recalled in his memoir, “My Life with the Great Pianists,” written with Edith Schaeffer (1992). “The Russians just melted.”
He was also Glenn Gould’s New York piano tuner.
And (as noted in the obit) he wrote a book, My Life with the Great Pianists (affiliate link).
He also attended to performers’ personal pianos. The pianist Gary Graffman, whose apartment is less than a block from the old location of Steinway’s Manhattan showroom, and Mr. Mohr’s home base, on West 57th Street, recalled that Mr. Mohr would come right over when a problem presented itself.
“If he came because I broke strings, he would replace the strings,” Mr. Graffman said in an interview. But if more extensive work was needed — if Mr. Graffman’s almost constant practicing had worn down the hammers and new hammers had to be installed, for example — “he would take out the insides of the piano and carry it half a block to the Steinway basement. He would work on it and carry it back.” (The unit Mr. Mohr lifted out and took down the street is known as the key and action assembly, a bewildering combination of all 88 keys and the parts that respond to a pianist’s touch, driving the hammers to the strings.)
Mr. Mohr was 94 when he passed.
Obit watch: April 13, 2022.
April 13th, 2022Your Gilbert Gottfried roundup, as promised: NYT (Note the correction. What did I tell you?). Variety. THR 1. THR 2.
In honor of the late #GilbertGottfried, everyone tell the filthiest, most politically incorrect joke you know. https://t.co/q60BSYgTn4 pic.twitter.com/5efeoZRV6P
— BattleSwarm (@BattleSwarmBlog) April 12, 2022
I don’t have a lot I want to say about the late Mr. Gottfried. My close friends know how I felt about his work, and for everyone else: “any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in all mankind” and “De mortuis nil nisi bonum dicendum est.”
I will say:
1.
…the actor succumbed to a heart abnormality called recurrent ventricular tachycardia, an arrhythmia caused by myotonic dystrophy Type 2.
Myotonic dystrophy (DM) is a genetic disorder marked by progressive muscle wasting and weakness which predominantly affects the limbs and face but can create increasingly dire complications for respiratory, skeletal and cardiac muscles.
People with DM are at a higher risk of irregular heartbeat, including ventricular tachycardia, an arrhythmia in the lower chambers of the heart (ventricles) that causes the heart to beat faster. A sustained sped-up rhythm can cause a fatal drop in blood pressure.
I’ve never heard of this disorder before, but damn, what a sucky way to go.
2. It surprised me, but Mr. Gottfried’s version of the joke in “The Aristocrats” documentary was, to me, the best of them all. Apparently, I’m not the only person who felt this way.
In other news: Michel Bouquet, French actor.
…
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#88 in a series)
April 13th, 2022South Dakota Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg was impeached yesterday.
That doesn’t mean he’s out of office, just that he’s going to an impeachment trial in the state Senate.
The impeachment is tied to a traffic accident in 2020.
…he initially told authorities he thought he had struck a deer or another large animal.
He actually hit a man, Joseph Boever, who died.
Ravnsborg, who took office in 2019, initially told aides and a 911 dispatcher he did not know what he hit on a rural highway as he was returning home from a Republican dinner in September 2020. He went back to the scene the next day and found the body of 55-year-old Boever, who had been walking on the highway’s shoulder.
The Highway Patrol concluded that Ravnsborg’s car crossed completely onto the highway shoulder before hitting Boever, and criminal investigators said later that they didn’t believe some of Ravnsborg’s statements.
Ravnsborg pled to two traffic related misdemeanors in the accident, but apparently there are a lot of people who don’t believe his story. Including Governor Kristi Noem, who is also a Republican: Ravnsborg claims she’s out to get him because he’s been investigating her.
Administrative note, for those sent this way by Borepatch.
April 12th, 2022I’m going to wait until tomorrow to post the Gilbert Gottfried obit roundup.
Generally, I like to wait at least a little bit after the passing is reported before I post an obit watch. The early obits are often just that: early, and incomplete. And sometimes (I’m looking at you, New York Times) they contain errors that are corrected later.
Obit watch: April 12, 2022.
April 12th, 2022Patricia MacLachlan, author. (Sarah, Plain and Tall)
Kathy Lamkin, actress. Other credits include “My Name Is Earl”, “Boston Legal”, and “Bones”.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#87 in a series)
April 12th, 2022Brian A. Benjamin, the lieutenant governor of the state of New York, has been indicted on federal bribery charges.
…
In a grand jury indictment last November, prosecutors said that Mr. Migdol began to steer thousands of dollars worth of fraudulent contributions to Mr. Benjamin in October 2019, just a month after the state senator filed to run for comptroller. They accused him of making straw donations in the name of individuals, including his 2-year-old grandchild, who did not consent to them, and of reimbursing others for the cost of their contributions.
At the time, the prosecutors did not comment on Mr. Migdol’s motive, or explicitly name Mr. Benjamin. But they said his scheme was designed to help the candidate tap into New York City’s generous public campaign matching funds program and secure him tens of thousands of dollars in additional campaign cash.
Edited to add: Well, that was fast. Mr. Benjamin is now the former lieutenant governor.
How about those Lakers?
April 11th, 2022Answer: they missed the playoffs.
And Frank Vogel is out as coach.
I saw reports this morning: apparently, everybody but Vogel knew yesterday he was going to be fired.
…
The Lakers were officially eliminated from postseason contention Tuesday, when they lost in Phoenix and the San Antonio Spurs won in Denver.
The Lakers would lose eight games in a row before winning against Oklahoma City in the home finale at [I’m not going to give them free advertising – DB] Arena.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#86 in a series)
April 11th, 2022In haste, for two reasons. One is that I have other things to blog.
The three people charged are Chief of Staff Alex Triantaphyllis, Wallis Nader, and Aaron Dunn. The charges are related to a “COVID-19 communication contract” which…
My second reason for blogging in haste is: Lawrence is on this story like flies on a severed cow’s head in a Damien Hirst installation. You should really go over to his site for coverage on this, especially since he’s linking to more local sources.
Obit watch: April 10, 2022.
April 10th, 2022Henry Patterson has passed away at the age of 92.
You probably know him better as the guy who wrote under the pseudonym “Jack Higgins”. (He had others as well, but I think that was his best known.)
Arthur D. Riggs, big damn hero.
…
Dr. Boyer and another researcher, Stanley Cohen, had already developed the basic technology behind recombinant DNA. Dr. Riggs’s insight was to see how that technology could be used to tweak bacteria to produce artificial hormones for human use.
“We chose insulin because it looked doable, and there was a need,” he told The Los Angeles Business Journal in 2021. “At the time, diabetics were being treated with cow insulin because there was no source of human insulin. And cow insulin resulted in a high rate of allergic reactions.”
…
The discovery made Genentech, and Dr. Riggs, rich. But unlike many of his fellow biotech pioneers, he declined the opportunity to make even more money working in the for-profit sector; he was under contract to Genentech, but after that arrangement ended in 1984, he returned to City of Hope full time.
He lived in the same house for 50 years and rarely sat for interviews. He gave most of his money away in the form of anonymous donations to City of Hope. His beneficence, to the tune of $210 million, was finally revealed last year, when he made an additional $100 million donation to the hospital.
…
Sports obit watch.
April 9th, 2022I was going to wait until tomorrow to blog this, but since several people have sent it to me today and it is losing timeliness: Dwayne Haskins, quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers. ESPN.
The reports I am currently seeing say he tried to cross an Interstate highway on foot, and was hit by a dump truck. He was 24.
Tomorrow is not promised to anyone…
Also: Rayfield Wright, former offensive lineman for the Dallas Cowboys. He was 76 and had been suffering from dementia since at least 2012.
Referred to as “Big Cat” by teammates, Wright made five Super Bowl appearances in his 13 seasons with the club. He was selected first- or second-team All-Pro in six consecutive seasons and earned a spot on the NFL’s All-Decade team for the 1970s.
Wright was the first offensive lineman in franchise history to earn a spot in the team’s Ring of Honor and the Hall of Fame. He was followed by Larry Allen.
They remain the only two.
BAG Day is coming!
April 9th, 2022As a reminder to everyone, National Buy a Gun Day is Friday.
BAG Day always falls on April 15th (to coincide with another significant date in the United States). Being on Good Friday this year is merely a coincidence. But if you have qualms…
Do I have plans this year? Reply hazy, ask again later. My local gun shop sent out an email a couple of day ago: they’re putting out a bunch of guns they picked up at the latest Wanenmacher’s. If they have anything attractive and reasonably priced…
(No, MtM and I did not go to Tulsa this round. We try to hit every third show, so our next trip will probably be April of 2023.)
I also haven’t been out to my other semi-local gun shop in a while, and need to check their stock. Also, I haven’t been to Cabela’s in a long time, but I’m dubious about them having anything worthwhile. I may go down there anyway, but I’m not sure when.
If I don’t find anything reasonable, I may declare a push again this year. I have a couple of accessories I want to pick up from MidwayUSA anyway.
I feel like most people have abandoned BAG Day, because (as I’ve noted before) it seems like every day since January 20, 2009 has been Buy A Gun Day. However, if you want to play along at home, you’re welcome to brag about your purchase here. I’ll even promise that you can remain anonymous. Or monogamous, if you prefer.
Obit watch: April 9, 2022.
April 9th, 2022Credits beyond “One Life to Live” and a minor SF TV show from the 1960s include “Night Gallery”, “Bearcats!”, “Law and Order” (and “SVU”), “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”…
…and “Mannix”. (“The End of the Rainbow“, season 2, episode 5.)
Things I was going to do, but decided against.
April 9th, 2022I was going to blog that NYT article about Russian soldiers in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, with some snarky commentary about how “We told them not to do it, that it was dangerous, but they ignored us” sounds like some places I’ve worked.
Then I went searching for an image to insert, and instead found this:
Hello people who are here because of the NYT article with the paragraph about Co-60! Please see below threadhttps://t.co/1wMcudPFFz
— Katie Mummah (@nuclearkatie) April 9, 2022
Which is why I’m not linking the article, and linking Nuclear Katie instead.