Noted.

April 8th, 2022

I have written before about my fondness for the old Texas Monthly, and my disdain for most of what’s in the current version.

This is an exception, for obvious reasons.

“At One of the Last Classical Music Stores, CDs Still Rock“.

(Archive.is version, because TM can sometimes be skirty if you don’t have a subscription.)

Classical Music of Spring, as it’s now called, is a time warp and a survival tale. It’s a physical shop in historic downtown Spring, a block from CorkScrew BBQ, that stocks a selection of mostly new classical CDs, with a few used albums, Broadway and movie soundtracks, and DVDs and Blu-rays of opera and ballet productions. It doesn’t sell instruments, sheet music, or guitar strings. Just recordings.

…

…The store was never really about shopping; it was more of a community center or musical salon, where classical buffs gathered to argue about their favorite artists, discuss new releases, and listen to albums on the store’s speakers.
“It’s a hangout,” Sumbera mused. “People don’t just come in and flip through the stacks, pick up a couple of recordings, buy them, and leave. People stick around and chat.”

…

…the logistics of setting up an online storefront for classical music are darn near terrifying.
Think about searching Amazon for a pop album you want to download. You can probably type in “Adele 30” and be done. But the classical world, with composers, soloists, conductors, ensembles, and hundreds of compositions with identical names like “Piano Sonata,” is a database programmer’s nightmare. And then there’s the sheer volume of classical recordings being released. Presto Music, for example, stocks 614 recordings of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
“I don’t think people realize how many classical titles are out there in print right now,” Sumbera pointed out, before offering a ballpark guess: 150,000. Naxos, America’s biggest classical distributor, lists 297 brand-new albums arriving in the month of March alone. Sumbera can’t load all of those into an online store by himself, or even fit the inventory into his building.

Classical Music of Spring is linked on the sidebar, but to save searching…

Posted in Endorsements, Media, Music | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 8, 2022.

April 8th, 2022

Jimmy Wang Yu, martial arts movie guy.

A contract player at the start of his career, Wang’s early career was indelibly linked with Shaw Brothers, for better and worse, and he would become a mainstream star in the studio’s most famous wuxia films including One-Armed Swordsman (1967) which broke box office records in Hong Kong, Golden Swallow (1968), Return of the One-Armed Swordsman (1969) and ground-breaking kung fu film The Chinese Boxer (1970).

…

Another notable Wang film from this period was Master of the Flying Guillotine (1976), which Quentin Tarantino would rank as one of his favorite films and that would later influence RZA’s The Man with the Iron Fists.
By the 1980s, Wang’s career began to slow down, and he was better known for the scandals in his private life. There were reports of domestic abuse, continued reports of his alleged links to Triads and in Taiwan, he was charged with murder in 1981, but the charges were dropped due to a lack of evidence.

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#85 in a series)

April 8th, 2022

I missed this story until Reason covered it.

The ex-police chief of San Angelo, Texas, was convicted of “receipt of a bribe by an agent of an organization receiving federal funds” and three counts of “honest services mail fraud”.

A police chief – even an ex-chief – being convicted of bribery and “honest services” fraud is noteworthy enough. But this crosses over into a whole new level of weird.

A federal prosecutor had told jurors the evidence they have will show Vasquez used his position as police chief in 2015 to circumvent the bidding process by which city contracts are awarded and convince city officials to stick with its current provider of radio communication systems, San Antonio based Dailey-Wells Communications, the licensed seller of L3Harris radios.

That’s not the weird part. The weird part: Dailey-Wells Communications had contracted with the former chief’s Earth, Wind, and Fire cover band to play at their corporate events.

No, you are not having a stroke. Yes, you read that right: the police chief’s Earth, Wind, and Fire cover band.

Once the new contract was awarded in 2015, Dailey-Wells hired Funky Munky to play 10 shows for about $84,000. The band’s other performances in that era earned them some $2,100 a show.

This appears to be the band’s Facebook page, but it hasn’t been updated since August of 2020. The website seems to be defunct.

Posted in Cops, Law, Music, Politics | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: April 7, 2022.

April 7th, 2022

Eric Boehlert.

A frequent commentator on television and radio, as well as a prolific writer, Mr. Boehlert never shied away from searing critiques of what he saw as bias in the mainstream press and the circular impact of media on politics.
After more than a decade as a senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a left-leaning media monitoring group, Mr. Boehlert had in recent years started his own newsletter, Press Run, as a vehicle for his commentary.

According to reports, he was hit by a train while bicycling.

Justice John Michalski, “an acting justice of the [New York] State Supreme Court”.

But last month, Justice Michalski came under renewed scrutiny, and his cases were once again reassigned, after federal and state investigators raided his home. He had not been charged with any crime, but he had drawn the authorities’ attention because of his ties to Peter Gerace Jr., the owner of a strip club in Cheektowaga, another Buffalo suburb.
Mr. Gerace was charged in federal court in Florida last year with sex trafficking, drug distribution and bribery of a former Drug Enforcement Administration agent. He denies the charges, and the case has since been transferred to the Western District of New York.
The former agent, Joseph Bongiovanni, has been charged with bribery, obstruction and conspiracy. An indictment detailing the charges against the two men says that Mr. Bongiovanni’s associates included people “he believed to be members of, connected to or associated with” organized crime.
Another man identified in the indictment as having links to organized crime is Michael Masecchia, a longtime Buffalo schoolteacher now facing up to life in prison after pleading guilty to gun and drug charges.

According to reports, the judge committed suicide. He had tried to kill himself last year on the same day Mr. Gerace was indicted.

Rae Allen, actress. Other credits include “Lou Grant”, “Soap”, and “The Untouchables”.

Posted in Cycling, Law, Obits, Theatre, Trains, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: April 6, 2022.

April 6th, 2022

Bobby Rydell, one of the big teen idols.

Mr. Rydell and two other affable performers who became stars in those years, Frankie Avalon and Fabian, grew up within about two blocks of one another in South Philadelphia. Long after their days on the pop chart were past them, they enjoyed great success on the oldies circuit. The three had toured extensively together since 1985, billed as the Golden Boys, and were still performing together this year.
Mr. Rydell did not just have staying power; he also made a comeback after years of alcohol abuse, which he chronicled in his autobiography, “Bobby Rydell: Teen Idol on the Rocks” (2016), written with the guitarist and producer Allan Slutsky. Near death, he had a kidney and liver transplant in July 2012. By that October he was back, singing on a cruise ship with Mr. Avalon. But five months later, he underwent cardiac bypass surgery. Some of his later appearances were charity promotions for organ donation.

…

Mr. Rydell’s recording prime encompassed the era roughly between 1959, when Elvis Presley was in the Army and Buddy Holly died in a plane crash, and 1964, when Beatlemania hit America. It didn’t hurt that Dick Clark’s “American Bandstand” was broadcast in those years from Philadelphia, the home of Mr. Rydell’s label, Cameo Records.
Mr. Rydell’s repertoire included plaintive love ballads; slow, danceable tunes; occasional frenetic rockers like “Wild One” and “Swingin’ School”; and ageless songs like Domenico Modugno’s 1958 hit “Volare,” which became Mr. Rydell’s signature song in his later touring years.
Mr. Rydell was a pop phenomenon but hardly a cutting-edge rock star. Still, he sold a lot more records than some of those who were. Over the course of his recording career he placed 19 singles in the Billboard Top 40 and 34 in the Hot 100. His name alone could conjure up an entire era: The 1970s rock musical “Grease,” in both its Broadway and movie versions, was set in 1959 at the fictional Rydell High School.

…

Columbia Pictures signed Mr. Rydell to a contract in 1961. But the only movie in which he made much of an impact was “Bye Bye Birdie,” released in 1963 and based on the hit Broadway musical of the same name, which poked fun at show business in general and rock ’n’ roll frenzy in particular. Mr. Rydell played Hugo Peabody, the meek high school steady of Kim McAfee, played by Ann-Margret, the small-town girl chosen to give the Elvis-like Conrad Birdie a kiss on national television.

Alan J. Hruska, lawyer, novelist, and one of the founders of Soho Press.

Soho Press, based in Manhattan, has specialized in literary fiction and memoirs with a backlist that includes books by Jake Arnott, Edwidge Danticat, John L’Heureux, Delores Phillips, Sue Townsend and Jacqueline Winspear. The company also has a Soho Teen young adult imprint and a Soho Crime imprint that publishes mysteries in exotic locales by, among others, Cara Black, Colin Cotterill, Peter Lovesey and Stuart Neville.

Nehemiah Persoff. THR. He was 102.

206 credits in IMDB. If he wasn’t in everything, he was in lots of it. “Some Like It Hot”. “On the Waterfront”. “Law and Order”. “Barney Miller”. The good “Hawaii 5-0” multiple times. “Battlestar Galactica”. “Supertrain”. “Richie Brockelman, Private Eye”. “Quincy, M.E.” “Sword of Justice” (I was just thinking about that show the other day.) “Columbo”. “McCloud”. “McMillan and Wife”. (Trivia question I don’t have an answer for: how many actors appeared on all three of the initial shows in the “NBC Mystery Movie” wheel?) “Mission: Impossible”.

And, yes, “Mannix”. (“A Puzzle for One“, season 6, episode 11.)

Posted in 1970s, Books, Mannix, Movies, Music, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Historical note, NOT suitable for use in schools.

April 4th, 2022

This post is strictly in the interest of history. I am not posting this for any prurient reasons: it just seems like an appropriate bit of history, especially since I recently mentioned Leslie Van Houten.

Never-before-seen photos of murdered blond bombshell Sharon Tate have been found in a California garage.

To be clear, these are not post mortem photos: they were taken when Ms. Tate was 21. She was 26 when the Manson family murdered her.

Cabrejas, 46, had been searching for camera equipment to photograph a solar eclipse when she came across the pics.
“They had been sitting in our garage for years until I came across them cleaning his stuff,” the West Los Angeles native told SWNS.
She added that the photos were “totally a casual thing, from before she was even famous.” Tate was just starting to build her career at the time and was going to a plethora of auditions.

I am, of course, in the interest of respecting copyright and intellectual property, not reproducing the photos here. You can click through to the linked NY Post article if you wish to view a selection of them.

Posted in California Über Alles, Law, Movies, Photography | 2 Comments »

Dear Ross Ward…

April 4th, 2022

…I live in Austin, Texas.

Spamming the comments in my blog (especially the “Contact information for the Austin City Council” page) with posts about your campaign for South Carolina House District 112 is a bad idea for the following reasons:

  • I’m not going to vote for you, since I don’t live in South Carolina.
  • The vast majority of my readers aren’t going to vote for you, since they don’t live in South Carolina.
  • Any of my readers who do live in South Carolina won’t vote for you anyway because you are a spamming scumbag. Let me repeat that: Ross Ward is a spamming scumbag.
  • If you keep spamming my blog comments, I will be going to your ISP and I will be asking them to shut your site down.

Is there any word in what I just said that you have trouble understanding?

Hugs, kisses, and die in a fire Ross Ward you spamming scumbag. Sincerely, your friends at sportsfirings.com.

P.S. Strongly worded message follows.

Posted in Admin, Politics | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: April 4, 2022.

April 4th, 2022

Ted Mooney, author. (Easy Travel to Other Planets)

June Brown. Credits other than “Eastenders” include “Doctor Who”, “The Sweeney”, and “Murder By Decree”.

Posted in Books, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 3, 2022.

April 3rd, 2022

In no particular order of importance:

Bill Fries, also known as “C.W. McCall”. He’s been reported dead before, but this time it seems to be confirmed.

Mr. Fries was working as an ad executive at Bozell & Jacobs in Omaha in the 1970s, when he helped to create a series of television commercials for Metz Baking Company about a trucker named C.W. McCall hauling Old Home bread in an eighteen-wheeler and a gum-snapping waitress named Mavis at the Old Home Filler-Up an’ Keep On A-Truckin’ Cafe.
The ads — including one that ended with the tagline “Old Home is good buns” — became wildly popular and helped pump up Old Home bread sales as they told the story of a diesel-scented romance between Mavis and C.W., who spoke in a formidable twang voiced by Mr. Fries.

…

With a record deal from MGM, Mr. Fries spawned a cultural phenomenon with “Convoy,” an ode to renegade truckers driving across the country, written with Chip Davis, who had also written the music for the Old Home bread ads and who went on to found the group Mannheim Steamroller, known for its Christmas music.
Crackling with CB radio lingo, the song tells the story of the truckers Rubber Duck and Pig Pen who are “puttin’ the hammer down” as they thumb their noses at speed limits, industry rules and law enforcement officers — “bears” and “smokies” in CB parlance. Along the way, they end up leading 1,000 trucks and “11 longhaired friends of Jesus in a chartreuse microbus.”
Originally recorded merely as an album filler, “Convoy” tapped into the surging popularity of trucker culture and CB radio, which truckers used to communicate during long, lonely hours on the open road. It was part of a boom in trucking-themed country songs like “Roll On Big Mama” by Joe Stampley and “Willin’” by Little Feat.
“Convoy” spent six weeks at the top of the country charts and crossed into the top of the pop charts for a week, according to The World-Herald. More than 20 million copies of the single have been sold, according to Bozell. In 1978, Mr. Peckinpah turned the song into a movie, “Convoy,” starring Kris Kristofferson as Rubber Duck.

People who know me well know this story. For the rest: when I was younger (around the time “Convoy” was a hit) I owned a 45 RPM record (kids, ask your parents about 45 RPM records) of “Convoy” that I literally wore the grooves off of. (Kids, ask your parents about record players, needles, and grooves.)

We also owned an 8-track tape (kids, ask your parents…) with that song on it, that had the track break conveniently located at about the 2:27 point in that video.

Estelle Harris. Other credits include “Once Upon A Time In America”, “Mrs. Potato Head” in the “Toy Story” sequels, a guest appearance on a spinoff of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s, and “Futurama”.

Thomas F. Staley, who built up the Harry Ransom Center.

Dr. Staley, a scholar of James Joyce, arrived at the university in 1988. Over the next 25 years, he brought a literary sensibility and a competitive zeal to acquiring collections — and keeping them from going to universities like Harvard and Yale.
Stephen Enniss, who succeeded him as the Ransom Center’s director, said Dr. Staley had been adept at persuading university administrators, donors and the public at large to preserve literature that he saw as of lasting value.
“Tom’s enthusiasms became everyone’s enthusiasms,” Dr. Enniss said by phone.

…

Not long after being hired to run the Ransom Center, Dr. Staley learned that the archives of Stuart Gilbert, Joyce’s translator and friend, were available. According to The New Yorker, the papers, which cost the Ransom Center $265,000, came with an unexpected find: Joyce’s handwritten edits of the first chapter of “Finnegans Wake.” Dr. Staley estimated that those pages alone were worth $750,000.
In the 25 years that followed, he acquired the papers of dozens of literary luminaries, including Doris Lessing, Jorge Luis Borges, J.M. Coetzee, Penelope Lively and Isaac Bashevis Singer, as well as the archives of Robert De Niro and the Life magazine photojournalist David Douglas Duncan. Dr. Staley also continued to teach English.
When Dr. Staley visited the playwright Tom Stoppard at his home in England, he found his papers scattered in his study and in another building on his property. As Dr. Staley recalled to The Times, Mr. Stoppard told him, “What you want is mostly stuff I would throw away: notes on this and that.” But there were also drafts of his plays, notes on revisions and drawings of stage sets.
On another trip, to Arthur Miller’s house in Connecticut, Dr. Staley learned that in a box Miller thought had been filled with roofing nails, he had discovered valuable notebooks and a short story — the very type of items that help fill an archive. Although parts of Miller’s archive had been at the Ransom Center for decades, a formal deal to acquire the collection, for $2.7 million, was not made until 2017.

General Charles G. Boyd (USAF- ret.).

In 1966, General Boyd, who was a captain at the time, volunteered for a dangerous mission in Vietnam — attacking surface-to-air missile sites around Hanoi. After repeated passes through enemy fire, his F-105D plane was hit and set ablaze. He had to eject, and, shortly after landing in a rice paddy, he was captured.
He spent the next 2,488 days enduring torture, isolation, malnutrition and interrogation in various squalid prisons, including the so-called Hanoi Hilton; for 18 months, he was imprisoned in a cell next to the Navy flyer John S. McCain, who would go on to become a United States senator and presidential candidate.

After his release…

He swiftly ascended in the Air Force chain of command, becoming the only former prisoner of war from the Vietnam conflict to achieve four-star rank. He also served as director of plans on the Air Force staff and as commander of the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. He finished his much-decorated 36-year Air Force career as deputy commander in chief of the United States European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, where he helped oversee the drawdown of forces at the end of the Cold War.
After he retired from the Air Force in 1995, he took on several civilian roles that built on his expertise in homeland security and foreign policy.
Among the most notable was his tenure as executive director of the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century, also known as the Hart-Rudman Commission, headed by former Senators Gary Hart and Warren Rudman. Barely eight months before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the commission warned — in a report that was largely ignored — that the gravest threat to the United States was the likelihood that a terrorist attack would take place on American soil and would kill large numbers of people.

Barrie Youngfellow, TV actress. (“It’s A Living”. Other credits include some cop shows, “Fernwood Tonight”, “Emergency”, and “WKRP In Cincinnati”.)

Posted in Books, Heroism, History, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Okay. This made me laugh.

April 1st, 2022

“A few things to know before stealing my 914“.

Especially this line:

Surprise is your best weapon against this transmission.

(Sometimes I think about a 914 as one of those fun cars to knock around in. Even though I have no mechanical talent, the 914 seems like a simple enough car to learn on. Then I come to my senses. A man will think a lot of stupid things when he can’t sleep at night. Also, there aren’t any on Craigslist locally right now.)

Posted in Bagatelle, Cars | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: April 1, 2022.

April 1st, 2022

Nancy Milford, biographer. (Zelda: A Biography, Savage Beauty: The Life of Edna St. Vincent Millay. Afflilate links.)

Posted in Books, Gatsby, Obits | Comments Closed

Musical interlude.

March 31st, 2022

I feel like it is time for one of those.

I have been resisting reading The Cartel (affiliate link) for reasons. I actually started to type those out here, but then reconsidered.

Anyway, I have been sort of flipping through it before I go to bed, and Winslow used a line from this song as an epigraph for one of the chapters. I had not heard of it, or Tom Russell, before, so I looked it up on Apple Music and liked it.

Tom Russell also did a cover of this song with Joe Ely, but I thought I’d throw up a version with just Ely. As Lawrence once put it, this is the greatest song ever written about a rooster.

I feel sure I have mentioned this song before, which I picked up from another blogger (I don’t remember who) but a search does not turn it up under the title or singer. In any case, I feel like it is worth mentioning here, because it seems to have recently become available digitally on Apple Music and Amazon (affiliate link) in “The Legacy Collection Volume 3: Damron Sings Henderson”. Previously, I could only find it on YouTube, and the CDs were unavailable.

“Pull your sights up to 800 and hold a yard left for the wind” makes me smile every time. It also reminds me of Lindy Cooper Wisdom’s poem, “Grandpa’s Lesson“.

…But ain’t many troubles that a man cain’t fix
With seven hundred dollars and a thirty ought six.

Posted in Books, Music | Comments Closed

Brief note on film.

March 31st, 2022

I don’t usually make note of individual podcast episodes here. There has to be some compelling reason for me to do so.

In this case: “The comedies of Preston Sturges“, from “Criteria: The Catholic Film Podcast”.

I actually have several reasons for this one:

  • I’m very interested in Preston Sturges. I have not seen “Sullivan’s Travels” or “The Miracle of Morgan’s Creek”, but I very much want to see both. “Miracle” got a really good write-up in Joe Bob Briggs’s Profoundly Erotic, but there doesn’t seem to be a blu-ray, and the DVDs are expensive. Criterion needs to do an edition of that, since they’ve already done “Sullivan’s Travels” (affiliate link). (At some point, Lawrence and I plan a Saturday night double bill of “The Freshman” and “The Sin of Harold Diddlebock”.)
  • Joel McCrea, who we have seen recently elsewhere, and who I would like to see more of. He seems like a truly interesting gentleman.
  • Veronica Lake is always in order.
  • As I’ve said before, Anthony Esolen is a writer I greatly admire. (I found this while searching for an essay he wrote on the films of John Ford. Edited to add: finally found that essay, and added a link.)

Anyway, I commend this to the attention of the movie buffs in my audience.

Posted in Movies | Comments Closed

Quick note from the California legal beat.

March 30th, 2022

Eligible for parole in California: Frederick Woods. Mr. Woods was one of three men involved in the Chowchilla school bus kidnapping.

Richard and James Schoenfeld (brothers) were paroled in 2012 and 2015 respectively.

Mr. Woods, who was 24 at the time of the kidnapping, was given a sentence of seven years to life in prison. He began serving his sentence in 1978 and has been held at the California Men’s Colony, a state prison in San Luis Obispo, Calif.
The panel’s decision is subject to review by Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who has 30 days to let it stand or refer the application to the full parole board. Mr. Newsom, a Democrat, cannot override the decision because Mr. Woods was not convicted of murder.

Not eligible for parole: Leslie Van Houten.

Van Houten is serving a life sentence for helping Manson and others kill Los Angeles grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife, Rosemary, in August 1969. Van Houten was 19 when she and other cult members fatally stabbed the LaBiancas and smeared the couple’s blood on the walls.

Posted in Bagatelle, California Über Alles, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 30, 2022.

March 30th, 2022

Marvin J. Chomsky, TV director. Credits include “Roots” and “Holocaust”. Also three episodes of a minor 1960s SF TV series, the good “Hawaii 5-0”, “Mission: Impossible”, “Lancer”, “Bearcats!”, “Evel Knievel”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Little Girl Lost“, season 7, episode 4.)

Paul Herman. Credits other than “The Sopranos” and “Goodfellas” include “We Own The Night”, “Once Upon A Time In America”, and “The Last Temptation of Christ”.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

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