Your loser update: September 29, 2025.

September 29th, 2025

The NFL portion of the loser update has to wait until tomorrow. The 0-3 Jets play the 0-3 Dolphins tonight. I’m sure this will be an exciting game, if you’re a big fan of fiascos.

The major league baseball regular season ended yesterday, though.

It delights me to be able to report that Cleveland clinched their division (AL Central) and Detroit clinched a playoff berth (also in the AL Central). I will be happy if either team goes to the big show.

But I know that’s not what you are wondering about.

The White Sox finshed 60-102, for a .370 winning percentage. That’s bad, but it doesn’t even make Wikipedia’s list for the modern era.

And the Rockies? Well, I was half right. They did get swept by Seattle (who won their division: the AL West).

But they also got swept by San Francisco. I had figured they’d win one game in SF, but they managed to put together a six game losing streak.

Their final record? 43-119, for a .265 winning percentage. So, so close to a record.

As it is, they are fourth on the Wikipedia list for losses (tied with the 2003 Tigers, and ahead of the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics). If you sort by winning percentage, they come in eighth, tied again with the 2003 Tigers and just ahead of the 1952 Pittsburgh Pirates. (For the record, the 2024 White Sox were .253, for fifth place on the list. The modern era record for worst winning percentage is still the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, at .235 over 153 games.)

Posted in Loser, Sports | 3 Comments »

Quotes.

September 27th, 2025

A few quotes I’ve run across recently that amused me:

…“Michael, anybody that eats chocolate cake alone is an a–hole.”

“You ain’t gotta get real technical to dish out death sometimes.”

By way of Mike the Musicologist. He didn’t provide me with a link, but the context is a woman commenting on how hard it is to carry concealed while wearing a dress:

“I have to show someone my panties before I shoot them.”

Edited to add: Link added.

Posted in Bagatelle, Guns | Comments Closed

Crime watch.

September 26th, 2025

I’m going to make this short, because it broke at the end of the day today and there’s more to come.

The Austin Police Department says that they have identified a suspect as the Yogurt Shop Killer.

Police identified the suspect through DNA and ballistics testing.

…

On Dec. 6, 1991, Austin firefighters responded to a fire at the yogurt shop. The structure call would sadly reveal the quadruple homicide case, when the bodies of four teenage girls were found.

APD says they plan to hold a press conference on Monday to provide more information, so I’ll probably wait until Monday night to do a longer write-up. But I wanted to get at least this out now.

The identified suspect killed himself in 1999.

Posted in Austin, Cops, Law | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: September 25, 2025.

September 25th, 2025

Sara Jane Moore. She was 95, which surprised me: I had been under the impression she was much younger.

You remember Ms. Moore, don’t you?

In San Francisco, about 3,000 people were gathered near Union Square for a glimpse of the president [Gerald Ford – DB] as he left the St. Francis Hotel. Ms. Moore, 45, who had been questioned by Secret Service agents the day before but then released, was standing across the street, 40 to 50 feet away from the commander in chief. She drew a chrome-plated .38-caliber revolver and fired at the president. The shot missed, and she raised the gun for a second shot.
Oliver W. Sipple, a former Marine, deflected the gun just as she fired. The bullet narrowly missed the president, ricocheted off a wall and grazed a bystander. Pandemonium erupted as Mr. Ford, unhurt, was hustled into a limousine by Secret Service agents and sped away. Mr. Sipple and two police officers seized Ms. Moore.

The attempt took place on September 22, 1975. Ms. Moore died on September 24th, 2025, so almost exactly 50 years later.

In February 1979, Ms. Moore and another female inmate escaped from a minimal-security federal prison camp in West Virginia by scaling a 12-foot fence, but they were recaptured hours later. During her imprisonment, she converted from Christianity to Judaism in 1986, explaining to Ms. Spieler that she wanted kosher food for better-quality prison meals. She was paroled from a federal prison in Dublin, Calif., on Dec. 31, 2007, a year after Mr. Ford died at 93.
Ms. Moore moved under an assumed name to an unidentified town on the East Coast and only rarely gave interviews. But she did speak to Matt Lauer on NBC’s “Today” show in 2009.
“It was a time people don’t remember,” Ms. Moore told Mr. Lauer, citing the Vietnam War, a politically divided nation, her own radical beliefs and her attempt to kill the president. “We were saying the country needed to change. The only way it was going to change was a violent revolution. I genuinely thought that this might trigger that new revolution in this country.”

Some things never change.

This is for Mike the Musicologist:

Joining John Wilkes Booth and other notorious figures from history, Ms. Moore was a character in Stephen Sondheim and John Wideman’s dark musical “Assassins,” which debuted Off Broadway in 1990. In the show, she was portrayed as a hapless revolutionary — “a true flibbertigibbet,” as the critic David Richards wrote in The New York Times, “as likely to pull a banana from her capacious handbag as she is a pistol.”

…

Accounts of her life are fragmentary and contradictory, partly because she deliberately obscured her identity and background. She told people falsely that she was the daughter of a rich coal and timber family, had graduate degrees in business administration and was an aspiring actress. Officials said she had been hospitalized repeatedly for aberrant behavior. At some point she took her mother’s maiden name as her surname.

Just in case you were wondering, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme is still alive. She’s only 76.

Henry Jaglom, indie director. I’d heard of him, but have never seen one of his movies.

He acknowledged that his movies tended to be either loved or hated. Many critics found his work rambling and navel-gazing. As the British newspaper The Guardian noted in 1991, his films have been described as “cinema as personal therapy,” “psychobabble” and “diaries as art.”
“It’s fortunate I’m so arrogant,” Mr. Jaglom told The Guardian. “I don’t mind bad reviews. I used to send the worst ones to people as Christmas presents.”

Posted in History, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 24, 2025.

September 24th, 2025

Claudia Cardinale. NYT (archived). IMDB.

The only Claudia Cardinale movie I’ve seen is “Lost Command” (though both “8 1/2” and “Fitzcarraldo” are on our list: “Son of the Pink Panther” is not). She was on a lot of lists of “the most beautiful women in the world”.

Bernie Parent, goalie.

Parent was beloved in Philadelphia — a French Canadian known for his upbeat personality, broad smile, thick mustache and the white fiberglass mask he wore to protect his face. A bumper sticker seen on fenders around Philadelphia paid tribute to his goaltending skills: “Only the Lord saves more than Bernie Parent.”

…

Parent was unprepared for life after hockey. He fell into a depression. He drank too much and got help through Alcoholics Anonymous to become sober. He coached another Flyers goalie, Pelle Lindbergh, who won the Vezina Trophy in 1985. (Later that year, Lindbergh, 26, died of injuries from a car accident.)
“When death defeats greatness, we all mourn,” Parent said at a memorial service for Lindbergh at the Spectrum, the Flyers’ home arena at the time. “And when death defeats youth, we mourn even more.”
Parent worked for many years as a team ambassador for the Flyers, as a spokesman for an insurance company and as a motivational speaker. He also helped other recovering alcoholics.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports | 2 Comments »

I’m Gundy, damn it!

September 23rd, 2025

I guess this counts as a “big” firing, or at least a larger one:

Mike Gundy out at Oklahoma State.

Gundy, 58, is the winningest coach in program history with a record of 170-90 over his 20-plus seasons, accounting for 26.6% of the school’s all-time victories.
No single figure has had as much direct impact over such a significant amount of time as Gundy, who has spent 35 of the past 40 seasons at Oklahoma State in some form.

But this is kind of a “what have you done for me lately” thing. Especially if you define “lately” as “since 2021”.

The 2021 squad came inches short of defeating Baylor and potentially earning a College Football Playoff bid…
But since that moment, OSU has gone 21-21, despite a 10-4 season in 2023 that included another appearance in the Big 12 title game.
The 2024 team went 0-9 in conference play, and the 1-2 start with a 66-point loss to Oregon and a 19-12 loss to Tulsa spelled the end for Gundy, concluding his career with a record of 170-90 (.654 winning percentage), and 12-6 in bowl games.

Noted:

Screenshot

Not quite the war font, but fairly close.

Edited to add: ESPN, for those who want supplemental coverage.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

September 23rd, 2025

I figure that there’s going to be some kind of big firing this week. So far, I haven’t seen any, but there’s been a few small firings.

Sandy Brondello out as coach of the New York Liberty, although this is being presented as non-renewal of her contract. The Liberty won the WNBA championship last year, but were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs this year.

Ms. Brondello was 107-53 in four seasons.

Ike Hilliard out as wide receivers coach for the Atlanta Falcons.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | 2 Comments »

Car bomb explodes in Beirut.

September 22nd, 2025

Lawrence and I have a running joke about overused headlines:

“Car Bomb Explodes In Beirut”.
“Rosie O’Donnell Goes On Unhinged Rant”

And, to that list, we can add:

“The Broadway Musical Is in Trouble”.

None of the 18 commercial musicals that opened on Broadway last season have made a profit yet. Some still could, but several have been spectacular flameouts. The new musicals “Tammy Faye,” “Boop!” and “Smash” each cost at least $20 million to bring to the stage, and each was gone less than four months after opening. All three lost their entire investments.
Lavish revivals of much-loved classics are also fizzling. On Sunday, a revival of “Cabaret,” budgeted for up to $26 million and featuring a costly conversion of a Broadway theater into a nightclub-like setting, threw in the towel at a total loss. A $19.5 million revival of “Gypsy” that starred Audra McDonald and earned strong reviews closed last month without recouping its investment. Even a buzzy production of “Sunset Boulevard,” which won this year’s Tony for best musical revival, failed to make back the $15 million it cost to mount.

…

Only three new musicals have recouped their investments since the pandemic. Two are jukebox musicals: “MJ,” which features the music of Michael Jackson, and “& Juliet,” which features the songs of the Swedish hitmaker Max Martin. The third, “Six,” reimagines the ill-fated wives of King Henry VIII as pop stars.

So “Suffs” didn’t make money? Interesting to know.

But wait!

All three got assistance from the government. “Six” and “MJ” each got $10 million from the federal government in the form of Shuttered Venue Operator Grants, designed to help the arts recover from the shutdown. And “& Juliet” benefited from a $3 million tax credit through a New York State postpandemic program. The federal program ended, and the state program, which has aided almost every Broadway show to open over the last few years, will end this fall unless it is renewed.

Why was this money not going to the Montana State University Angling Oral History Project? Or the USCSB?

Producers and general managers say that every element of making musicals has gotten more expensive in recent years: labor (paying actors and musicians and stage hands as well as the creative teams), material (the lumber and steel, as well as the technology, that go into sets), rent (to theater owners) and fees (to all kinds of vendors who work on shows).

…

A decade ago, the big musical comedy “Something Rotten,” with a cast of 25, cost $14 million to capitalize; last season’s “Death Becomes Her,” another big musical comedy with a cast of 20, cost up to $31.5 million. The high capitalization costs, combined with high running costs, means shows have to run much longer to become profitable.

…

One Broadway investor, James L. Walker Jr. of Atlanta, is so frustrated by the current economics that he’s litigating. After putting $50,000 into the “Cabaret” revival, he filed suit against the producers, alleging fraud. In an interview, Walker pointed out that the show has grossed nearly $90 million in ticket sales, plus whatever it made in sales of liquor, food and merchandise, and that he can’t accept that the investors who raised up to $26 million to finance the show have gotten nothing back. “How is that a good business model?” he asked.

I wish him all the luck in the world, but this sounds like “Hollywood accounting”, and I don’t think any of the suits around that have had much success.

The two this fall include “The Queen of Versailles,” based on a documentary and starring Kristin Chenoweth, and “Two Strangers (Carry a Cake Across New York),” a British rom-com with just two actors. Next spring’s slate has not yet taken shape, but among the new musicals circling are stage adaptations of the films “The Lost Boys” and Prince’s “Purple Rain,” of the book “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” and of the streaming series “Schmigadoon!,” as well as an original title, “Wanted.”

“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”, the musical? Maybe the problem is that Broadway is out of ideas.

And haven’t people been saying “The Broadway Musical Is in Trouble” since…1942?

Posted in Theatre | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 22, 2025.

September 22nd, 2025

Playing catch-up from the last few days:

Marilyn Hagerty. If you’ve been around the Internet for a while, that name may ring a bell with you.

Ms. Hagerty wrote a restaurant review column (“The Eatbeat”) for the Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald. In 2012, she wrote a review of the new (and first) Olive Garden in Grand Forks. It went viral on the Internet.

When the article first began to ricochet across social media, the initial consensus was that the writer was a kindly Midwestern grandmother who had lost the script. This seemed to be the view of an out-of-town reader who sent her a one-word email: “Pathetic.”
In fact, Ms. Hagerty was following a script of her own. It was her long-running custom to provide factual rundowns of the dining options in Grand Forks, a college town near the Minnesota border that has fewer than 60,000 people and few restaurants intent on culinary innovation.
She covered truck stops, diners and fast-food joints, some of them more than once. Although she wrote about places serving Vietnamese and Somali cuisine in Grand Forks, Eatbeat readers craving a new thrill generally had to look for it in Fargo, about 80 miles to the south.
“If you were going to review the fine dining here, you’d be done in three weeks,” Ms. Hagerty once said of her community.

What she said. It bothered me at the time, and it still bothers me. Why not seriously engage with and critique with what Olive Garden has to offer? (Back when we were still doing regular reviews, the Saturday Dining Conspiracy also reviewed our local Olive Garden, and our logic was the same: why should they be above criticism?)

Reaction to the review shifted as it became clear that Ms. Hagerty didn’t give a flying breadstick what the cynics thought. Within days, she was in New York, being welcomed by the national media. She gave interviews to “CBS Sunday Morning,” NBC’s “Today” morning program and Anderson Cooper’s syndicated talk show.

…

“My son is full of prunes,” she said.

She was 99.

Jim Edgar, Republican governor of Illinois during the 1990s.

Marian Burros, noted food writer. She worked at various times for the Washington Post, Washington Star, and the NYT.

She might offer a recipe for, say, Martha Washington’s Great Cake, usually in the weekly De Gustibus column, which she took over in 1983, while reporting on a sodium labeling bill being debated in Congress or regulatory battles over the wording of federal dietary guidelines.
From her home base in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, she became a close observer of the White House kitchen, reporting on a succession of presidential chefs, inaugural meals and the dining styles of new administrations. She took a particular interest in the White House vegetable garden planted by Michelle Obama.
On the pleasure side of the equation, her plum torte was one of the most popular recipes in the history of The Times, reprinted every September from 1983 to 1989.

“The Story Behind Our Most Requested Recipe Ever” (archived). Recipe (archived).

Martha Washington’s Great Cake (archived).

Ms. Burros alerted readers of The Post to the potential dangers of food dyes derived from coal tar, notably Red Dye No. 2, which the Food and Drug Administration banned in 1976. And, in a widely reprinted article, she revealed that Fresh Horizons Bread, marketed as a low-calorie alternative to regular bread, contained large amounts of powdered cellulose.

Posted in Food, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Your NFL loser update: week 3, 2025.

September 22nd, 2025

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

NY Jets
Miami
Tennessee
Houston
New York Football Giants
New Orleans

The worthless Bills are 3-0.
The worthless Chargers are 3-0.
Houston is 0-3.

And as soon as I suggest that Cleveland might go 0-17, they go out and win a game.

But we still have the Jets and the New York Football Giants.

In other news, we’re coming down to the final stretch of the baseball season. The Chicago Cubs have clinched a playoff spot. (No, Lawrence, I’m not betting on the Cubs with you.)

What of our favorite teams?

The White Sox are 58-98, for a .372 winning percentage. That projects out to about 102 losses.

And the Rockies are 43-113, for a .276 winning percentage. That projects out to about 117 losses, which is in the historical range. But at this point, they can’t tie the 2024 White Sox record, or even the previous 1962 Mets record of 120 losses. Wikipedia currently puts them between the 1952 Pirates (.273) and the 1909 Senators (.276).

Their final games are in Seattle (who hasn’t quite clinched a playoff sport, but is very close) and in San Francisco (who hasn’t quite been mathematically eliminated, but is very close). If I had to guess, I’d say they’ll get swept by Seattle and win one in San Francisco, for a final record of 44-118. We’ll see if I’m right.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: September 18, 2025.

September 18th, 2025

Maj. John H. Luckadoo (USAAF – ret.) has passed away. He was 103.

Maj. Luckadoo was a pilot in the 100th Bombardment Group, also known as “the Bloody 100th”.

… even in a campaign that saw extensive losses of planes and crews, it stood out for its deadly turnover: During its 306 missions, the unit lost 757 men and 229 planes.
“Prior to being sent over, our commander called us together and he said, ‘Now I want you to look to your right and you look to your left and look ahead and look behind you, and only one of you is gonna come home,’” he recalled in January to News Channel 9 in Chattanooga, Tenn., his hometown.

…

Mr. Luckadoo’s most harrowing mission came on Oct. 8, 1943, as U.S. forces launched a series of massive air raids over the German port city of Bremen. By then, the life expectancy of a B-17 pilot like Mr. Luckadoo was 11 missions — a virtual death sentence for the officers, who were required to fly 25 missions during their tour.
“Some later described the flak that day as being so thick we could have put down our wheels and taxied on it!” he said in an interview for the 100th Bombardment Group’s historical association.
At one point Mr. Luckadoo looked up to see a flight of German Fw-190 fighters headed straight for them. The lead plane, either by accident or because the pilot was shot, slammed straight into the bomber directly above Mr. Luckadoo’s. Both aircraft exploded, nearly taking down his B-17 with it.
By the time they dropped their payloads, Mr. Luckadoo’s formation had lost 12 of its 18 bombers. An engine had been shot out, and a hole had been punched into a window near his seat. Freezing air poured in. Even with heated sheepskin boots, Mr. Luckadoo’s foot froze to a control pedal.

…

Only three other pilots of the original 40 in Mr. Luckadoo’s training class reached their 25th flight.

Maj. Luckadoo was the last surviving pilot from the 100th.

Greg Ellifritz has a nice obit up for John Holschen, professional trainer. I recommend you go read it, if for no other reason than the story about the “rocket attack”. I don’t want to quote it here, because I would like for you to go over to Active Response Training and read it yourself.

While you are there, I also recommend you read the related “The Gas Station Clerk”.

Why are you more likely to shoot to defend the life of an innocent acquaintance than you are to pay for her surgery when both actions cost the same?

By way of the Rap Sheet, I’ve learned that Thomas Perry passed away on Monday.

Mr. Perry is one of those writers who I haven’t read a lot of, but would like to read more. I’m especially interested in his “Butcher’s Boy” trilogy. The only book of his I’ve read so far is Pursuit, which I thought was terrific: the world’s best criminalist goes up against the world’s best hit man.

Ethan Iverson wrote a pretty good essay on Mr. Perry’s work, which I commend to your attention.

Posted in Books, Guns, History, Obits | 4 Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyenas! (#151 in a series)

September 17th, 2025

This is a bit of a round-up post, and some of these are a little outside of the normal flaming hyenas.

Joel Engardio, Supervisor for the Sunset District of San Francisco, got booted from office in a recall election yesterday.

Former Supervisor Engardio has not been accused of a crime – yet, as far as I know. His fundamental problem was that he supported closing the “Great Highway”.

The election is a culmination of a more than yearlong saga that began in June 2024 when Engardio, alongside four other supervisors, placed a measure on the November ballot to permanently ban vehicles on a two-mile stretch of the city’s westernmost coastal boulevard between Lincoln Way and Sloat Boulevard, also known as the Upper Great Highway.
Residents who said they relied on the highway to drive around their neighborhood moved to recall Engardio, outraged by what they perceived as a “betrayal.” Engardio has argued throughout the recall campaign that his district should judge him based on his entire record and not a single policy disagreement.

More from the NYT:

The city as a whole favored the change, ensuring its passage. In April, it officially became a new park — called Sunset Dunes — and it is dotted with benches, murals, exercise equipment, hammocks and a children’s play structure shaped like an octopus.
There are pianos there, too, and on a recent day, a man played Tony Bennett’s “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” as people strolled and roller skated past him. Wooden signs point people to nearby shops and cafes, many of which say business is up since the park opened.

…

But residents in Mr. Engardio’s district never loved the idea of losing a thoroughfare for the sake of a park. Nearly two-thirds of the Sunset District voted against the measure and resented the fact that residents farther from the beach got a park at the expense of nearby residents’ convenience.
Some Sunset residents relied on the street to travel in and out of the city. Others felt that the Sunset District had to bear the brunt of added cars on their neighborhood streets. The data has been mixed on the traffic impacts, but advocates of the park say such frustrations were overblown.
Many Sunset District residents say that the park is not used much on the weekdays or during the area’s notoriously chilly, foggy spells. John Crabtree, a volunteer for the campaign to recall Mr. Engardio, said he drove the Great Highway one last time on its last day in operation and felt sad to be losing it.
“It was an iconically beautiful drive,” he said. “People had a relationship with it, and it meant something. People were connected to this piece of infrastructure because it was part of living out here. It was part of the Sunset.”

Meanwhile, on the other coast:

A major strip club group bribed a state auditor — including with lap dances — to avoid paying more than $8 million in New York City sales taxes over the last 14 years, prosecutors charged Tuesday.
The State Attorney General’s Office unsealed a 79-count criminal indictment against the company, RCI, and five of its executives, accusing them of engaging in a naked, tax fraud scheme.
The affair was so brazen, a top RCI accountant even allegedly made at least 10 trips from Texas to New York to treat the former auditor at the company’s Manhattan jiggle joints, Rick’s Cabaret, Vivid Cabaret and Hoops Cabaret and Sports Bar, court papers state.

“naked, tax fraud scheme”. New York Post, I see what you did there.

RCI and the top execs allegedly bribed the auditor with a slew of lascivious treats starting in 2010, including at least 13 free multi-day trips to Miami “with complimentary hotel stays, restaurant meals, and up to several thousand dollars’ worth of private dances per day at RCI-owned strip clubs,” the indictment states.
The company bigwigs texted each other about haggling over how much cash they should bribe the crooked auditor with — and how much of a tax discount they should demand in return, the AG’s office alleged.
“We need to talk about New York and dance dollars,” RCI president Eric Langan texted to CFO Ahmed Anakar, the filing claims. “We are going to be hit by 3m in sales taxes soon.”
In exchange for cash, trips and dining, the state worker — who hasn’t been publicly identified — gave RCI favorable treatment during six state audits, the indictment states.

“dance dollars”. I can not tell a lie: I love that phrase.

Robert P. Burke was sentenced to six years in prison yesterday.

Mr. Burke was a former four-star admiral in the Navy, and “was once the Navy’s second-highest-ranking officer”. Oddly enough, this is not fallout from Fat Leonard: this was a separate sleazy deal. He…

…ordered his staff to award a $355,000 contract to Next Jump, a New York-based technology and work force training company, prosecutors for the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said. He also tried to persuade another senior admiral to do the same, prosecutors said. In exchange, Next Jump offered Admiral Burke a position with a yearly base salary of $500,000 and a grant of 100,000 stock options for when he retired, according to prosecutors.

…

According to prosecutors, from August 2018 through July 2019, Next Jump provided a work force training pilot program to a small part of the Navy that was under Admiral Burke’s command at the time. But the Navy terminated its contract with Next Jump in late 2019 and directed it not to contact Admiral Burke.
In July 2021, Mr. Kim and Ms. Messenger met with Admiral Burke in Washington, D.C., where they offered him the job and stock options in exchange for a government contract. According to prosecutors, the three also agreed that Admiral Burke would push other Navy officials to award another training contract to Next Jump estimated to be in the “triple digit millions.”
Admiral Burke ordered his staff in December 2021 to award a $355,000 contract to Next Jump to train personnel under his command in Italy and Spain, prosecutors said, which was completed in January 2022. In their sentencing memo, prosecutors said the training was “widely disparaged,” receiving mostly negative reviews.

…

Admiral Burke retired in July 2022, and that October began working at Next Jump with a yearly starting salary of $500,000 and a grant of 100,000 stock options, prosecutors said.

Finally, and close to home, Lawrence has a good story up. Urban Alchemy is an organization that ran homeless shelters in Austin. They lost their contract with the city…because they were apparently falsifying records. I’m not sure if it was malice or stupidity (I know, why not both?) but I encourage you to wander over to his blog and read the coverage.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: September 17, 2025.

September 17th, 2025

For the historical record, Robert Redford: THR. NYT. LAT. Park Record. IMDB.

NYT obit for Pat Crowley (archived). (Previously.)

John Penton, one of the pioneers of off-road motorcycle riding.

Traveling home from Mexico in late 1958, he rode nonstop from California to Ohio, prompting one of his brothers to challenge him to try to break the transcontinental motorcycle record, riding from New York to Los Angeles.
At 5:59 a.m. on June 8, 1959, Mr. Penton set out from New York City on a 35-horsepower BMW R69S, outfitted with an oversize gas tank and a fender rack to hold rain gear and candy bars. To officially record his progress, he carried Western Union letterhead that he got stamped at tollbooths along the route.
In St. Louis, a cycling group, including two police officers, was expecting him and provided an escort through the city, offering him two ham sandwiches and two cups of milk, according to the podcast We Went Fast.
Mr. Penton intended to stop only to refuel. But by the time he reached Flagstaff, Ariz., he was exhausted and seeing double. So he set two alarm clocks and slept for an hour, then hit the road again.
On June 10, he arrived at the Western Union office in downtown Los Angeles at 8:10 a.m., having traveled 3,051 miles. His official time — 52 hours, 11 minutes, 1 second — broke the previous record by over 25 hours. Mr. Penton’s record stood for nine years.

…

In the late 1940s, Mr. Penton began to realize that smaller, more agile off-road motorcycles could outperform heavier, unwieldy roadster models like Harleys, Triumphs and Indians. By the 1960s, he was determined to design a bike that would not have to be modified for off-road use.
In 1967, while in Europe competing in a six-day team endurance event that is considered the Olympics of off-road racing, he paid $6,000 to the Austrian company KTM, a manufacturer of bicycles and mopeds, to build a prototype for a design he called the Penton.
The first Pentons were delivered in 1968; the 125cc model weighed 185 pounds, about half the weight of some bikes that Mr. Penton had ridden. The Penton came with innovations like a folding gearshift lever to prevent the bike from being caught on rocks and in muddy ruts, and an air-filter system that enhanced water resistance to keep the engine running smoothly.
“Our claim to fame,” Jack Penton said, “was that it was ready to perform at the highest level just as you bought it” — no modifications needed.
In 1978, Mr. Penton sold his distributorship to KTM, which rebranded the motorcycle with its company name. By then, more than 25,000 Penton motorcycles had been sold in the United States, according to the American Motorcyclist Association.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 16, 2025.

September 16th, 2025

In keeping with the policy of this blog, I’m going to wait until tomorrow to post the Robert Redford obits. By then, any corrections and additions should be in place and the final versions should be up.

Patricia Crowley, actress. Other credits include “Today’s F.B.I.”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “The Rockford Files”, “Columbo”, and the good “Hawaii Five-O”.

Patrick McGovern. His obit is relevant to my interests:

Bespectacled, bearded and more professorial in appearance than the Indiana Jones character that Harrison Ford played onscreen, Dr. McGovern used modern scientific methods, including multiple forms of spectrometry, to identify biomarkers in the residue in primitive drinking vessels.
“When analyzing something, I work from a minuscule amount of chemical, botanical and archaeological data,” he told National Geographic magazine in 2016. “I look for principal ingredients: Does it have a grain? A fruit? An herb?”
One of his discoveries, found in shards of pottery dating back 9,000 years to a Neolithic village in China, was believed to be the oldest alcoholic beverage in the world — a mix of fermented rice, honey and hawthorn fruit, a red berry.
Another was the world’s oldest grape wine, dating to 6,000-5,800 B.C. in Georgia’s South Caucasus region.
And from 157 bronze vessels left behind in the tomb of King Midas in Turkey, Dr. McGovern identified a beverage made of barley beer, grape wine and honey mead. Given the proximity of the drinkware to the king’s body, the concoction was probably passed around during his funerary feast, as at an Irish wake.

…

Dr. McGovern was sometimes asked which came first: bread or beer?
“You need food to exist,” he said. “But if you want to have a good time,” he added, “if you want social lubrication, if you want to up your sexual relations and so produce more children, then alcoholic beverages help.”

Posted in History, Mixology, Movies, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

Your NFL loser update: week 2, 2025.

September 16th, 2025

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

Kansas City
NY Jets
Miami
Cleveland
Tennessee
Houston
New York Football Giants
da Bears
New Orleans
Carolina

The worthless Chargers are 2-0.
The worthless Bills are 2-0.
Houston is 0-2.

I think it is time to start panicking.

More seriously, who do I think has a shot at the Owen 17 record? I can see Cleveland finishing 0-17. There’s historical precedent for that.

But something makes me think that one of the New York teams is more likely to finish out the season with no wins. I don’t know what is making me think that, and I could be wrong, but right now that’s the way I would bet.

In other news:

The Chicago White Sox are at 57-94, for a .377 winning percentage. That projects out to about 101 losses. And since my last update, they have been mathematically eliminated (the best kind of eliminated) from post-season play.

And the Colorado Rockies are at 41-109, for a .273 winning percentage. Right now, that projects out to about 118 losses. At this point, they can’t break the record set by the 2024 White Sox, but they can still tie it.

Also mathematically eliminated: the Pirates, the Nationals, the Angels, and the Twins. And the Tigers are at the top of their division, though they haven’t clinched yet. I’m hoping pigpen51 is happy.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

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