Silly food blogging.

December 1st, 2024

Regular readers of this blog know of my fascination with things that sit at the weird intersection of food and popular culture.

The holidays are here! “Elf on the Shelf” cereal is at the H-E-B! Two flavors, even!

I didn’t buy any. I don’t eat cereal for breakfast, the last box I bought disappeared, and I don’t want to get yelled at for bringing food into the house that nobody’s going to eat.

However, I think it is more likely we will use these:

“Yellowstone” branded spice mixes. In “Cattleman Steak”, “Skillet Butter & Herb”, and “Cowboy BBQ”.

“Life on the Dutton Ranch requires a fistful of grit and the spirit of a cowboy! After a hard day of taking people to the train station, nothing hits the spot like a good steak seasoned with our Cattleman Steak seasoning!”

(No, I don’t watch “Yellowstone”, due to my “won’t pay for TV” policy. But I have picked up a few things about the series…)

Posted in Christmas, Food, TV | Comments Closed

The logjam breaks…

November 29th, 2024

I’ve been in kind of a dry spell for vintage gun books. But that broke this week: I have four on the way from Callahan and Company (and I ordered them before Thanksgiving, so I can get away with this), and will be blogging those when they arrive.

In the meantime, though, I’m not working on Black Friday. I did swing by Half-Price Books and picked up two more Gun Digests I didn’t have: 1969, with an article by James E. Serven about “Captain Samuel H. Walker”, and 2022, with an article by Terry Wieland about “The Colt Walker”. I’ll tie this back at the end.

Let us get started…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in 1911, Books, Cops, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Kindleing, Law, Texas Rangers, Winchester | 1 Comment »

da Bears.

November 29th, 2024

I’m trying to get out of the house to do some shopping, but stuff keeps coming up.

The Chicago Bears fired Matt Eberflus this morning. Tribune. ESPN.

This was not entirely unexpected. The Bears have lost six straight games, and are 4-8 this season. The big reason for pulling the trigger seems to be yesterday’s Lions game. It wasn’t just that they lost to Detroit, it was that the Bears completely botched the end of the game.

Instead of calling his final timeout, Eberflus watched as rookie quarterback Caleb Williams threw a long pass out of the reach of Rome Odunze as time expired.

(I don’t know why ESPN keeps referring to this as “Sunday’s game”. It was Thursday, right? My internal clock isn’t that messed up, is it?)

I didn’t see the game (we were busy eating Thanksgiving dinner out with our people) but from what I hear and read, Eberflus completely botched things. For crying out loud, the game ended with an unused timeout by da Bears!

“Bears fire Matt Eberflus shortly after making him meet with media” from Awful Announcing. Yes, he had a press conference this morning, in which he said “I’m confident I’ll be working to San Francisco and coaching that game.”…and then they fired him about two hours later.

The likeliest explanation, however, is merely that this is an organization where dysfunction has often been the default setting, and much like Eberflus on Thursday, the Bears were caught flat-footed. So while Eberflus’ firing may have been justified, there’s also plenty of evidence to suggest that Chicago’s problems extend well beyond whoever’s not calling timeouts from its sideline.

Eberflus was 14-32 in “three years”.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Relevant to my interests…

November 29th, 2024

…and possibly other people’s as well.

I follow the Jack Carr podcast, but I don’t listen to every episode. I generally only listen to the ones where he has a guest I’m interested in, such as Clint Smith or Steven Pressfield.

In this case, I’m recommending an episode, not because of the guest, but because of the subject matter:

“Inside The Biggest US Navy Security Breach: The Rise of Fat Leonard” with Dr. Matthew Levitt Craig Whitlock.

Kind of thing you could listen to in the car driving back home, if you’re interested in the Fat Leonard saga (which both Lawrence and I have covered).

Edited to add: Well, this is embarrassing, but I don’t think it is my fault. Even though the episode title is “Fat Leonard” etc., the feed appears to be carrying a repeat of the previous episode which was about Hezbollah. I’m guessing this will be fixed in a day or two.

Edited to add 2: Looks like they fixed the feed now.

I wonder how many people were being paid with US taxpayer dollars to review scripts for NCIS, which bear almost no resemblance to the actual NCIS.

Posted in Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 28, 2024.

November 28th, 2024

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! Yes, I know it’s weird to wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving in an obit watch, but it is a weird Thanksgiving. I’m actually rooting for Detroit to win this year. (And the odds look good: they’re playing da Bears.)

Rev. Robert W. Dixon Sr. (United States Army – ret.) passed away on November 15th. He was 103 years old, and was the last surviving “Buffalo Soldier”.

Created after the Civil War, the Army’s all-Black cavalry and infantry regiments were nicknamed “Buffalo Soldiers” by Native Americans who encountered them in the nation’s Western expansion in the post-Civil War 19th century. The name may have been a reference to the soldiers’ curly black hair or to the fierceness that buffalo show in fighting. In either case, the soldiers embraced the name.
The troops could serve only west of the Mississippi River because most white Southerners would not tolerate armed Black soldiers in their communities. They fought in the Indian Wars and protected settlers moving West. During the Spanish-American War, the experienced horsemen of the 10th Cavalry led the way for Col. Theodore Roosevelt’s novice Roughriders in fighting in Cuba.
In the 20th century, official racism by the Army diminished the role that Buffalo Soldier regiments played in major engagements during both world wars, although some troops saw action in World War II during the invasion of Italy and in the Pacific theater.

…

Mr. Dixon, who grew up in New York City, enlisted in the Army in 1941 and remained at West Point through the war.
His wife, whom he married in 1977, said she did not know where he learned to ride or what he did at West Point; he was a disciplined, modest man and a Baptist pastor, who never spoke of his wartime service, preferring to focus on the future.

…

The Buffalo Soldiers unit at West Point was disbanded in 1946, when the Army became fully mechanized. Two years later, President Harry S. Truman ordered the desegregation of the military. In 2005, Mark Mathews, who was then the oldest living Buffalo Soldier, died at 111 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

…

Mr. Dixon returned to West Point at 101 to visit a monument to Buffalo Soldiers erected in 2021 on the open grasslands where they had trained future officers; the area is now named Buffalo Soldier Field.
At a celebration of Mr. Dixon’s life this week, Aundrea Matthews, the granddaughter of a Buffalo Soldier who serves as president of the Buffalo Soldiers Association of West Point, recalled that Mr. Dixon declined the help offered by cadets during his visit.
“When the soldiers went to grab Rev. Dixon to bring him up, he shook them off,” she said. “At 101, he walked by himself, and he saluted the Buffalo Soldier monument.”

For the historical record, archived NYT obits for Jim Abrahams and Helen Gallagher, which were posted after I put up yesterday’s obit watch.

Edited to add: 11-1! Go Lions!

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 27, 2024.

November 27th, 2024

Jim Abrahams, of Zucker/Abrahams/Zucker (ZAZ), the people who brought you “Airplane!”, “Police Squad!” (In color), and “Top Secret!”

I know I’ve mentioned this, but: I enthusiastically endorse Surely You Can’t Be Serious: The True Story of Airplane! by ZAZ, and think it would make a great Christmas present for someone in your family.

Earl Holliman. He had an interesting lineup of other credits, including “Forbidden Planet”, “The F.B.I.”, and “The Sons of Katie Elder”.

Helen Gallagher, actress. Other credits include “The Cosby Mysteries”, “Law and Order”, and “Roseland”.

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

Knife the Mack.

November 26th, 2024

Mack Brown has been shived by the North Carolina Tar Heels.

He is going to coach the final game of the season, and might coach a bowl game (reply hazy, ask again later) but he won’t be back next year.

ESPN.

The team is 6-5 this season.

Brown has coached 192 games at UNC over 16 seasons. He has won more games (113) than any coach in school history, and during first tenure at the school, which ran from 1988 through 1997, UNC became a top-10 program. During his second tenure with the school, though, his teams have been defined by late-season collapses and porous defenses. The highs were an Orange Bowl appearance at the end of the pandemic-altered 2020 season and a Coastal Division championship, followed by a loss against Clemson in the ACC title game, in 2022.
But the lows were many. A preseason top-10 ranking gave way to a 6-7 finish in 2021. In 2022 and ‘23, the Tar Heels started strong and entered the top 15 of the national rankings, only to endure agonizing late-season losing streaks that called into question their ability to finish. Throughout it all, UNC recruited well but the success there didn’t often translate to the field. Defensively, UNC has been among the worst teams in the ACC throughout Brown’s second head coaching tenure — a stunning contrast to its performance on that side of the ball during his first stint at head coach. On offense, the Tar Heels have had two of the best quarterbacks in school history in recent years in Sam Howell and Drake Maye, but sustained success proved elusive.

In two stints at North Carolina, Brown has gone a combined 113-78-1.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

As God is my witness…

November 26th, 2024

A woman is delivering Thanksgiving turkeys to her neighbors living off the grid.
For the last three years, Esther Sanderlin has been loading frozen turkeys onto her plane to drop them off to Alaskans who live off the road system.

(Hattip: my beloved and indulgent aunt and uncle.)

Posted in Bagatelle, Birds | 1 Comment »

Can’t get no antidote for Blues…

November 25th, 2024

Drew Bannister was fired yesterday as head coach of the St. Louis Blues.

The Blues lost 13 of their first 22 games this season. Only two teams have scored fewer than their 2.36 goals a game, and they rank in the bottom third of the league on the power play and penalty kill while ravaged by injuries.

This isn’t SportsHirings.com, but it is interesting: the Blues have already replaced Bannister…with Jim Montgomery, who you may recall was fired last week.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 25, 2024.

November 25th, 2024

Two members of the Civil Air Patrol were killed in a crash in Colorado over the weekend. Susan Wolber was the pilot and Jay Rhoten was serving as an aerial photographer. They were on a routine training mission when the plane crashed near Storm Mountain in Larimer County, Colorado. A third member of the crew, co-pilot Randall Settergren, survived the crash but was seriously injured.

I’m putting this up to give FotB RoadRich a chance to comment if he wishes. From private discussions with him, I know he was a friend of the pilot, but I’m going to leave it up to him how much more he wants to say.

Barbara Taylor Bradford, author. Her books were huge.

Beginning with the runaway success of her 1979 debut novel, “A Woman of Substance,” Ms. Bradford’s 40 works of fiction sold more than 90 million copies in 40 languages and were all best sellers on both sides of the Atlantic, according to publishers’ reports.
Ten of her books were adapted for television films and mini-series, and the author, a self-described workaholic whose life mirrored the rags-to-riches stories of many of her heroines, achieved global celebrity and amassed a $300 million fortune.

Charles Dumont has passed away at 95. He was a French songwriter, and you might recognize his name: he wrote (with Michel Vaucaire) “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien”.

At 44, Piaf was racked by pain after a car accident and expressed little apparent interest in returning to the stage — certainly not with a song by Mr. Dumont, whom she had previously dismissed as “a mechanical songwriter of no great talent,” he recalled in a 2010 interview with The Independent.
That day, Piaf’s secretary had already informed them that the meeting was canceled when the singer piped up in a weary voice from her bedroom and agreed to see them. It took an hour for the frail figure to emerge, Mr. Dumont said, and when she did, she told them. “I’ll hear only one song — just one.” Mr. Dumont raced to the piano and began belting out “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien,” which he and Mr. Vaucaire had written with Piaf in mind.
“When I finished,” he said in 2010, “she asked, rather rudely, ‘Did you really write that song? You?’ Then she made me play it over and over again, maybe five or six times. She said that it was magnificent, wonderful. That it was made for her. That it was her. That it would be her resurrection.”

Noted:

Piaf dedicated her recording of the song to the Foreign Legion. At the time of the recording, France was engaged in a military conflict, the Algerian War (1954–1962), and the 1st REP (1st Foreign Parachute Regiment)—which backed the failed 1961 putsch against president Charles de Gaulle and the civilian leadership of Algeria—adopted the song when their resistance was broken. The leadership of the Regiment was arrested and tried but the non-commissioned officers, corporals and Legionnaires were assigned to other Foreign Legion formations. They left the barracks singing the song, which has now become part of the Foreign Legion heritage and is sung when they are on parade.

Chuck Woolery. NYT (archived).

After the Kentucky native performed “Delta Dawn” on The Merv Griffin Show, Griffin offered him a chance to audition as the host of a new game show he had just developed called Shopper’s Bazaar. Woolery beat out former 77 Sunset Strip star Edd “Kookie” Byrnes for the job, and the renamed Wheel of Fortune premiered on NBC on Jan. 6, 1975.
With the show pulling in a 44 share in 1981, Woolery requested a raise from $65,000 a year to about $500,000, what other top game show hosts were making at the time, he recalled in 2007. Griffin offered him $400,000 and NBC said it would pony up the rest, but that somehow infuriated Griffin, who threatened to take Wheel of Fortune to CBS, according to Woolery.
Not wanting to lose the game show, NBC withdrew the offer, and Griffin proceeded to fire Woolery and hire Pat Sajak. Also let go: original letter-turner Susan Stafford, who was replaced by Vanna White.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Music, Obits, Planes, TV | 6 Comments »

This is an obit about Alice, and about the restaurant…

November 23rd, 2024

Alice Brock, restaurant owner.

Most people would know her best as the “Alice” of Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree”.

She closed the Back Room in 1967 and sold the church in 1971; Mr. Guthrie bought it in 1991 to house his archives and a community action center. By then she had moved to Provincetown, where she tried to put her fame behind her in favor of the tight-knit community she found on the Cape, which she considered her “chosen family.”

Also among the dead: Peter Sinfield, King Crimson guy.

Mr. Sinfield, who once referred to himself as the band’s “pet hippie,” linked up with Mr. Fripp in 1968 after living an itinerant life in Spain and Morocco. He was the lyricist on the first four King Crimson albums, starting with “In the Court of the Crimson King” in 1969, which is widely regarded as the first album in the genre that came to be known as prog rock.
But his role was varied. He also helped produce King Crimson’s albums and worked as a roadie, lighting operator and sound engineer and, as art director, oversaw the band’s album covers. He even came up with the name of the band, plucked from his lyrics for the song “The Court of the Crimson King.”

Spencer Lawton Jr. He was a DA for 28 years.

Mr. Lawton served as district attorney for Chatham County, Ga., from 1981 to 2009, a tenure in which he combined a tough-on-crime message with a pioneering program to provide help to victims and witnesses.
After recognizing that the criminal justice system, which pits the government against the defendant, often left victims and witnesses as an afterthought, he created an office to give them counseling and resources as they navigated a labyrinth that they usually had not chosen to enter.His Victim-Witness Assistance Program swiftly became a model in other jurisdictions, first around Georgia and eventually nationwide.

He may be better known as the lead prosecutor in the murder case against James Arthur Williams for the killing of Danny Hansford, or the Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil murder case.

Mr. Berendt, who spent several years in the 1980s living in Savannah and peppered his gossipy story with denizens of the city’s quirky demimonde, clearly believed Mr. Williams, and he went to great lengths to depict Mr. Lawton as dimwitted and opportunistic, yet also “eloquent and venomous.”
He strongly implied that Mr. Lawton chose a charge of first-degree murder, instead of manslaughter, at the behest of Lee Adler, who had an ongoing feud with Mr. Williams, a neighbor, according to the book, and who was one of Mr. Lawton’s major campaign donors.
Mr. Lawton declined to speak with Mr. Berendt during the trials, saying it would be unprofessional.
Nor did he speak out after the book appeared, though he let friends and colleagues know he was frustrated — especially after its success sent a flood of tourists to Savannah and led to a film version that leaned into Mr. Berendt’s depiction of Mr. Lawton as a bumbling hack (though it did use a pseudonym for him, Finley Largent).

…

Mr. Lawton built his campaign on promises to resolve an enormous backlog of cases the Ryans had accumulated and to fix an antiquated local criminal-justice system that he claimed was failing the public. He won handily, and over the next 28 years won acclaim for making the system more responsive and humane.
It was, he always insisted, his real legacy, regardless of what millions of readers and tourists might think. In an obituary prepared by his family, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” or Mr. Lawton’s role in it, does not get a single mention.

I haven’t read Midnight and I don’t plan to. My understanding is that Berendt is a hack, and a lot of Midnight is fabricated. That bothers me, and I owe you guys a longer more thoughtful essay on the subject of fabrication in true crime books, and why Midnight bothers me when In Cold Blood doesn’t. I think the best answer I have right now is that In Cold Blood seems less egregious to me than Midnight.

Posted in History, Law, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 21, 2024.

November 21st, 2024

A lot of obits from the NYT today for people of questionable notability, but I have a reason for posting each of these.

Diane Coleman, disability rights activist and opponent of assisted suicide/”right to die” laws.

Gifted with a dark sense of humor, in 1996 she founded a group called Not Dead Yet, a reference to a memorable scene in the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in which a man tries to pass off an infirm — but very much alive — relative to a man collecting dead bodies.
“To put it bluntly, she was blunt,” Jim Weisman, a disability rights lawyer, said in an interview.

Vic Flick, British session musician.

The Bond films produced signature catchphrases (“shaken, not stirred,” “Bond, James Bond”) that have been endlessly recited and parodied since “Dr. No,” the first in the series, was released in Britain in 1962. But it was the sound of Mr. Flick’s guitar in the opening credits that helped make the spy thrillers instantly recognizable.
During the title credits of “Dr. No,” when moviegoers were introduced to or reacquainted with the works of the author Ian Fleming, who wrote the James Bond books, Mr. Flick’s thrumming guitar sounded out through a brass-and-string orchestra.

Bill Moyes, one of the pioneers of hang gliding.

One winter day in 1968, Mr. Moyes became a man with wings. He took a ski lift to the top of Mount Crackenback, in the Australian Alps, harnessed himself to a device that looked like a giant kite and skied off a cliff.

…

Mr. Moyes flew at 1,000 feet for almost two miles, setting the world record for the longest unassisted flight, according to newspaper accounts. The triumph marked the beginnings of hang gliding, a sport Mr. Moyes popularized by flying into the Grand Canyon, soaring off Mount Kilimanjaro and being towed behind an airplane at 8,600 feet.

…

He nearly killed himself several times.
In 1972, at a show in Jamestown, N.D., he fell 300 feet after the towing rope snapped. He sustained multiple fractures and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he spent several weeks recuperating.

…

On another occasion, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to launch from a speeding motorcycle that he was also driving. He did not break any bones. He also did not try that again.

Reg Murphy, newspaper guy. Beyond my well-known affection for crusty old newspaper people, Mr. Murphy was the centerpiece of a bizarre crime story I’d never heard of before.

Mr. Murphy was the editorial page editor of The Atlanta Constitution on Feb. 19, 1974, when a man later identified as William A.H. Williams, a drywall subcontractor, called Mr. Murphy’s office to ask his advice about how best to donate 300,000 gallons of heating oil to a worthy cause.
He called again the next day at dusk and arranged to meet Mr. Murphy at his home; the two of them would then drive to Mr. Williams’s lawyer’s office to sign some papers.
“I really had no choice but to go with him,” Mr. Murphy wrote in a lengthy account in The New York Times shortly after the incident, “for newspapermen have to lead open lives and be available to anonymous or strange people.”
So strange was Mr. Williams that he immediately displayed a .38-caliber gun in his left hand and announced, “Mr. Murphy, you’ve been kidnapped.” He identified himself as a colonel in the American Revolutionary Army and ranted against the “lying, leftist, liberal news media” and “Jews in the government.”

…

Mr. Murphy was held in a motel room, wedged tightly between a wall and a bed, and ordered to record an audiotape demanding $700,000 in ransom. The money was delivered in marked bills in two suitcases dropped off on a rural road.

That’s $700,000 in 1974 money. According to my preferred inflation calculator, that’s $4,482,044.62 in 2024 money.

After 49 hours of captivity, Mr. Murphy was released in the parking lot of a Ramada Inn. Mr. Williams, whom Mr. Murphy identified from photos of suspects, was arrested six hours later.
He was convicted on federal extortion charges and sentenced to 40 years in prison, of which he served nine. His wife received a three-year suspended sentence for failing to report his crimes. The ransom was recovered.
In 2019, Mr. Williams, stricken with Stage 4 melanoma, called the newspaper to apologize. He said he had been high on amphetamines when the kidnapping took place.

…

In 1975, Mr. Murphy left Atlanta to become editor and publisher of The San Francisco Examiner, owned by Randolph Hearst, whose daughter was on trial at the time for participating in a bank robbery linked to the radical group that had abducted her. After she was convicted, Mr. Hearst appeared in The Examiner’s office and dropped the key to a new Porsche on his desk in appreciation of the newspaper’s coverage.
“It takes integrity of a different kind for a father to come in and say, ‘You did a good job covering the trial of my daughter,’” Mr. Murphy said in an interview published this year in The Mercerian, the magazine of Mercer University in Macon, Ga., his alma mater.

Posted in Law, Media, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

UnBearable.

November 20th, 2024

Jim Montgomery out as head coach of the Boston Bruins hockey team.

They were 120-41-23 in “three seasons”. 20 games into the current season, they’re 8-9-3.

The Bruins have been one of the NHL’s most notable disappointments this season. They’re 31st in team offense (2.40 goals per game) and 28th in defense (3.45 goals against per game).
Previously dependable aspects of the team have malfunctioned, in particular the goaltending. The team traded former Vezina winner Linus Ullmark to the Ottawa Senators for goalie Joonas Korpisalo. The Ullmark deal broke up the best goalie tandem in the NHL with 26-year-old Jeremy Swayman, who missed training camp during a bitter negotiation before signing an eight-year contract that will pay him $66 million.

(Apologies for the ESPN link, but I flat out cannot get around the various Boston media paywalls/”disable your ad blocker” prompts.)

Posted in Firings, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: November 19, 2024.

November 19th, 2024

Lawrence, the Guardian, and the New York Times have all noted that two drummers for the Bee Gees have died in the past few days.

Dennis Bryon, 76, the Bee Gees’ drummer starting in 1973, died on Nov. 14, according to Blue Weaver, who played in the band Amen Corner with Mr. Bryon. He announced his death on Facebook on Thursday, but gave no cause of death for Mr. Bryon.
Colin “Smiley” Petersen, the band’s first professional drummer, died on Nov. 18 at the age of 78, according to Evan Webster and Sue Camilleri, who work on The Best of The Bee Gees Show, a tribute band. Mr. Petersen died from a fall, they said.
Mr. Petersen, who joined the Bee Gees in 1967, played on the band’s first four albums. He started playing in the The Best of The Bee Gees Show five years ago, Mr. Webster said.

…

Mr. Petersen played on a string of hit ballads from 1967 to 1970, including “Massachusetts,” “To Love Somebody,” “I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You,” “I Started a Joke” and “Words.” He was also a child actor, known for his role in the 1956 film “Smiley,” which was the origin of his nickname, among a few other movies in the late ’50s.

…

Mr. Bryon, born in Cardiff, Wales, was a part of the Bee Gees for many of its greatest hits in the 1970s, including “Stayin’ Alive,” “How Deep is Your Love,” “You Should Be Dancing,” “More Than a Woman” and the rest of the “Saturday Night Fever” soundtrack. He started playing drums when he was 14.

Arthur Frommer, travel book guy.

Mr. Frommer built an empire of guidebooks, package tours, hotels and other services on the bedrock of his first book, published in 1957, which sold millions of copies in annually updated editions until 2007. (It was “Europe From $95 a Day” by then.)

…

“This is a book,” he wrote, “for American tourists who a) own no oil wells in Texas, b) are unrelated to the Aga Khan, c) have never struck it rich in Las Vegas and who still want to enjoy a wonderful European vacation.”

Thomas E. Kurtz, one of the great men of history. He co-created the BASIC computer language.

At 4 a.m. on May 1, 1964, in the basement of College Hall on the Dartmouth campus, the time-sharing system and BASIC were put to a test. A professor and a student programmer typed a simple command, “RUN,” into neighboring Teletype terminals and watched as both received the same answer simultaneously. It worked.

Posted in Books, Geek, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

More firings!

November 19th, 2024

According to “sources”, the NY Jets have fired general manager Joe Douglas. ESPN.

Under Douglas, the Jets have a 30-64 record, no winning seasons and no playoff appearances.

The Charlotte 49ers have fired football coach Biff Poggi.

Poggi went 6-16 in his two seasons and was the second American Athletic Conference coach to be fired Monday after just two campaigns. (FAU fired Tom Herman earlier in the day.)

…

Poggi went 3-9 last year, with the team’s discipline issues spilling over with a spree of personal foul penalties in a game against FAU. Poggi suspended an unspecified number of players and issued a statement in which he said he was “extremely disappointed with our comportment as a football team.”

The good news is, former coach Biff is going to have more time to drink white wine spritzers at the club with Muffy, Buffy, and Brock.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

November 18th, 2024

There’s been a lot going on. I’m sorry to be linking so much to ESPN, but I’m having trouble finding local coverage for some of these.

Tom Herman out at Florida Atlantic. 6-16 in two seasons, and 0-6 in the AAC this season.

Don Brown out at the University of Massachusetts. 6-28 over “two plus seasons”, and they’re 2-8 so far.

Phil Longo out as offensive coordinator of the Wisconsin Badgers. I have not heard anything about mushrooms or the snake.

Stan Drayton out at Temple. 9-25 in “two plus” seasons, 4-18 in the AAC, and 0-15 on the road. But they actually won (in overtime) Saturday.

Noted: “Temple’s firing of Stan Drayton should open the door to dropping the football program“.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: November 18, 2024.

November 18th, 2024

Bela Karolyi, gymnastics coach.

You may remember him from such hits as Nadia Comaneci:

Karolyi helped usher in an exciting and more challenging era of women’s gymnastics as the Romanian coach who turned Nadia Comaneci into an Olympic champion in 1976. Under his tutelage, Comaneci, then 14, scored the first perfect 10 in Olympic competition.

Mary Lou Retton:

In 1981, Karolyi and his wife defected from Romania and tried to make a name for themselves in the United States. He took on a young gymnast named Mary Lou Retton as a pupil. In 1984, she became the first American woman to win a gold medal in gymnastics.

And Dr. Larry Nassar:

As early as the 1980s, some said that Karolyi’s insatiable drive to win fostered a culture of abuse. Yet accusations about unhealthy diets, unsafe treatment of injuries and even physical attacks did not halt his rise. When, amid fighting with fellow coaches, he stepped down as national coordinator of the U.S. women’s gymnastics team, he was replaced by his wife, who ran the program for another 15 years. At the same time, the couple owned a Texas ranch that served as the team’s training headquarters.

…

Yet after 2016, the Karolyis found themselves in the news not for gymnastics triumphs but for their relationship with Dr. Nassar, who as a doctor at their ranch spent years sexually abusing girls who were training with the couple. Around the same time, many gymnasts accused the Karolyis themselves of being abusive in their coaching.

…

In fact, a reckoning was already underway. That August, accounts emerged that Dr. Nassar had regularly molested young female athletes at the Karolyis’ ranch and at Michigan State University, where he was a faculty member and sports doctor. Gymnasts began discussing publicly how, while training with the Karolyis, they had practiced with fractured bones, suffered ridicule of their developing bodies, faced food restrictions and felt discouraged from complaining about hunger or pain.
Many former gymnasts said they had dreaded going to the Karolyis’ ranch. One testified that she once purposefully hit her head against a bathtub to avoid the abuse.

…

The Karolyis denied knowing about Dr. Nassar’s behavior and rejected the abuse accusations against them. A district attorney in Texas who brought charges against Dr. Nassar did not file charges against the Karolyis, saying they had fully cooperated with the investigation.

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 15, 2024.

November 15th, 2024

Theodore B. Olson, noted lawyer. I sort of vaguely remember him from the Reagan administration:

He was a founding member of the Federalist Society, the influential conservative legal group, and a leading figure in many conservative legal triumphs of the 2000s, including Bush v. Gore (2000) and Citizens United (2010).

Later on, he became involved in the effort to overturn California’s gay marriage ban, and opposed the first Trump administration’s efforts to repeal the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program.

His political views emerged in college, centered on a particularly Western, libertarian brand of conservatism. During a debate trip to Texas, he watched as a restaurant manager in Amarillo refused to seat a Black teammate. Mr. Olson shouted down the manager, telling him they would all leave if he wouldn’t serve everyone.

…

Mr. Olson worked on the White House’s behalf during the initial stages of the Iran-contra affair, Congress’s investigation into the illegal arms sales to Iran to support right-wing rebels in Nicaragua. He was also accused of committing perjury during a congressional investigation into the White House’s withholding of environmental records.
That investigation, which lasted five years and personally cost Mr. Olson $1.5 million, ended without charges. It made him a darling among conservative commentators, but left many Democrats convinced that he was dangerously partisan.

…

His third wife, the conservative commentator Barbara (Bracher) Olson, was aboard American Airlines Flight 77 to Los Angeles from Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, when Al Qaeda terrorists hijacked it, crashing it into the Pentagon and killing everyone aboard.
She had planned to leave the day before, but had stayed an extra day to be with Mr. Olson on the morning of his birthday. As the plane veered back toward Northern Virginia, where they lived, she called him from a bathroom, and Mr. Olson was able to record some of the call. His telephone is now in the collection of the National Museum of American History.

Gerry Faust, former coach at Notre Dame.

John Robinson, former coach at the Universty of Southern California and of the Rams.

…Attending Our Lady of Perpetual Help School, he met a fellow fifth-grader, John Madden, the future Hall of Fame coach and broadcaster, and they became lifelong friends.
“Just two doofuses from Daly City,” Robinson told The Los Angeles Times in 2021.

Timothy West, noted British actor. Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Nicholas and Alexandra”, “Crime and Punishment” (the 1979 TV miniseries)…

…and what was, according to the obit, a disastrous production of “Macbeth” with Peter O’Toole.

Mr. O’Toole, who had not appeared on the London stage for 15 years, had insisted on complete artistic control over the production, Mr. West wrote in a memoir — “a sure recipe for dissent if not disaster” — and refused to make any suggested changes.
The first night was a critical failure (“Not so much downright bad as heroically ludicrous,” The Daily Mail wrote), and ignited a public war of words (“West Disowns MacBeth,” one headline blared). But the play drew so many curious theatergoers that it became a box office hit.

He was also married to Prunella “Sybil Fawlty” Scales, who I did not know (until I read the obit) has Alzheimer’s. Damn.

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

Obit watch: November 11, 2024.

November 11th, 2024

Playing catch-up here:

Tony Todd, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “Crossing Jordan” (the “Quincy” of the 2000s except it sucked), “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “Cop Rock”, “Jake and the Fatman”, and multiple spinoffs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

Bobby Allison. NASCAR. ESPN.

This is a little old, but as I recall, it came up while Mike the Musicologist and I were wandering around: Jonathan Haze, actor. Other credits include OG “Dragnet”, “Highway Patrol”, “The Fast and the Furious” (1954), and “The Saga of the Viking Women and Their Voyage to the Waters of the Great Sea Serpent”.

Finally, Baltazar Ushca has passed away at 80. He is believed to have been the last of the Andean ice harvesters.

Once or twice a week, he climbed snow-capped Mount Chimborazo, Ecuador’s highest peak, to hack ice from a glacier with a pickax, wrap the 60-pound blocks in hay and transport them on the backs of his donkeys. He would then sell them to villagers who did not have electricity and needed refrigeration to conserve their food.

…

“The natural ice from Chimborazo is the best ice,” Mr. Ushca said in a short documentary, “El Último Hielero,” or “The Last Ice Merchant” (2012), directed by Sandy Patch. “The tastiest and the sweetest. Full of vitamins for your bones.”

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

Armistice Day.

November 11th, 2024

I apologize. I have been more than a little distracted, with recovery from the previous eye surgery and planning for the next eye surgery (which is tomorrow). So I haven’t really had a chance to write anything special for Armistice Day.

In lieu of something from me, I’m going to point you to this recent article/book review from American Handgunner: “Fearless: The Adam Brown Story“.

I had not heard of Adam Brown before reading this, but cheese louise, what a guy.

One year after losing his eye, Adam completed Navy sniper school, shooting left-handed and using his left eye. Adam once again graduated at the top of his class.

…

…here’s a man who lost his dominant eye, re-trained himself to shoot weak-handed, to the rigorous standards of a top-tier anti-terrorist unit, and completed the tough physical standards with reattached fingers and one eye.

Since there’s not a link in the article, if you want to read Fearless: The Undaunted Courage and Ultimate Sacrifice of Navy SEAL Team SIX Operator Adam Brown, you can find it at the above affiliate link.

Posted in Heroism, History | 2 Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#133 in a series)

November 8th, 2024

Winter is coming, if it hasn’t showed up already in your neck of the woods. We need something to keep us warm, and what better than flaming hyenas?

The mayor of Jacksonville, Mississippi, Antar Lumumba, has been indicted on federal bribery charges.

Also indicted: Aaron Banks, who is a councilman, and Jody Owens, the county DA.

I missed this, but another city council member, Angelique Lee, pled guilty to “conspiracy to commit bribery” charges in August. I get the impression she hasn’t been sentenced yet, and I’m wondering if she’s now a “cooperating witness”.

Owens is facing eight felony counts; Lumumba is facing five felony counts and Banks is facing two felony counts.
Owens faces one count of conspiracy, three counts of federal program bribery, one count of use of an interstate facility in aid of racketeering, one count of wire fraud, one count of money laundering and one count of making a false statement.
Lumumba faces one count of conspiracy, one count of federal program bribery, one count of use of an interstate facility in aid of racketeering, one count of wire fraud and one count money laundering.
Banks faces one count of conspiracy and three counts of federal program bribery.

…

According to the recently unsealed indictment, Owens facilitated over $80,000 in bribe payments to Lumumba, Lee and Banks in exchange for their agreement to take official action on the city’s long-sought after hotel development project across the street from the Jackson Convention Complex. It is a project the city has been trying to build since the mid-2000s. The city released a statement of qualifications, or SOQ, for the project on Jan. 31.
Owens accepted at least $115,000 in cash and “promises of future financial benefits” from two developers from Nashville who turned out to be undercover FBI agents. The agents used Owens’ relationships with the elected officials “to act as an intermediary” for the bribes. Smith helped Owens facilitate the bribes.
“Owens, Banks, Lumumba, Lee and Smith were not aware that, in reality, the Developers were working for the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the indictment states.

…

On Jan. 11, Banks allegedly requested $50,000 in exchange for his future vote in favor of the “developers” bogus real estate company that was bidding on the city’s SOQ. In February, Banks allegedly accepted an “initial payment” of $10,000 from the undercover agents through Owens, along with a promise of an employment opportunity for a family member. Additionally, Lee accepted nearly $20,000 in February and March also in exchange for her vote in favor of the undercover agents’ company.
During the meeting, Owens dismissed Banks then told the agents:
“We never give them the asking price. I buy [expletive for women’s genitalia], I buy cars, I buy cows, I buy drugs, whatever. My point is like [Banks] need 50, you get 30. He gets installments. That’s my game,” according to the indictment.

…

On Feb. 12, 2024, Owens arranged a dinner with the agents, Lumumba and Smith. After introductions, Owens told Lumumba, “I’ve done background checks. They’re not FBI by the way.” He also told the mayor the agents’ focus “shifted” to the hotel project across from the convention center.

…

Owens then allegedly stated:
“I don’t give a [expletive] where the money comes from. It can come from blood diamonds in Africa, I don’t give a [expletive]. I’m a whole DA. [Expletive] that [expletive]. My job, as I understand it, with a little paperwork, is to get this deal done, and get it done most effectively … We can take dope boy money, I don’t give a [expletive]. But I need to clean it and spread it. I can do it in here. That’s why we have businesses. To clean the money. Right? I don’t give a [expletive]. You give us cash, we deposit it and give it back that way. That’s easy.”

NYT coverage. I think this is better organized for non-locals, but it lacks a lot of the more colorful quotes from DA Owens.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Bagatelle (#122).

November 7th, 2024

A few food related things Mike the Musicologist and I saw while running around:

The New Braunfels Rotary Club has gone up to $16! for the sausage and potato pancakes plate. Thanks, Joe Biden!

(Seriously, I think it was $12 the last time I went to Wurstfest.)

Because it just isn’t charcuterie unless it is on a stick. Also, that raclette sounds really good.

(We’ve driven past that cheese shop when we’ve been in New Braunfels, but I’ve never been in. May have to fix that.)

They’re not just pork rinds. They’re “small batch” pork rinds. I don’t think they are “artisanal”, however.

Posted in Bagatelle, Cheese, Food, On a stick | Comments Closed

Sorry, not sorry.

November 7th, 2024

Part of me thinks I should apologize for not posting yesterday. The other part of me doesn’t.

I got about 3.5 hours of sleep Tuesday night, though I did nap some on Lawrence’s dog couch. So I was pretty worn out yesterday and still had to put in a full day at work. Plus, as I’ve said before, I am not a politics or geo-politics person. I have some things I could say about politics and gun politics, like what I’m hoping for out of the new boss (same as the old boss) but I’d just be stirring the metaphorical pot with a metaphorical stick.

There are plenty of other people who are smarter about politics than I am. I’d suggest Lawrence and Borepatch to start with. I’d also recommend the folks on Lawrence’s sidebar.

At least I can stop muting political ads, and continue muting Medicare supplement ads and lawyer ads.

In other news, I wanted to bookmark this article from American Handgunner, “Sixguns To The Rescue: The M1917 In World War One” about the M1917 revolvers. (Previously on WCD.)

From the obit front: Geoff Capes. I’d never heard of him, but he was hugely popular in the United Kingdom. He was a multiple time winner of the World’s Strongest Man competition, a six-time winner of the Highland Games, and won the “U.K. Truck-Pulling Championship” in 1986.

At 6-foot-6 and 365 pounds, Mr. Capes was a crushing Adonis whose daily diet consisted of seven pints of milk, two loaves of bread, a dozen eggs, two steaks, a jar of baked beans, two tins of sardines, a pound of butter and a leg of lamb.
His gargantuan caloric intake powered his extraordinary feats in strongman competitions: pulling 12-ton trucks uphill, flipping cars, tearing London phone books in half and tossing five-pound bricks as if they were Kleenex boxes. He could run 200 meters — nearly the length of two American football fields — in under 25 seconds.

…

His physical prowess made him a favorite of Queen Elizabeth II, who howled in laughter after her glove stuck to his sweaty, sticky hands when she congratulated him on winning the Braemar Games, another Scottish skills competition, in 1982. Prince Charles and Princess Diana stood nearby having a giggle.

He was also a world-class breeder of budgies.

He competed in budgerigar shows throughout Europe, winning a world championship in 1995. He was named president of the Budgerigar Society in 2008 and frequently judged competitions.
“There’s something about their color and beauty that fascinates me,” Mr. Capes told The Sunday People. “They bring out my gentler side.”

This is one that I’ve been a little behind on: Richard A. Cash, big damn hero.

One of the things that people don’t understand until they’ve read at least a little bit about medicine is: dehydration will kill you. And there are lots of diseases, such as cholera and dysentery, that trigger fatal dehydration.

Patients could go “from a grape to a raisin” within hours, Dr. Cash often said.

Dr. Cash and Dr. David Nalin were working in Pakistan in 1967, and together developed an experimental oral rehydration therapy. It worked exceptionally well in trials.

Their approach was put to the test in 1971, when Bangladesh’s war of independence drove tens of thousands of refugees into camps across the border in India. Cholera and other diseases soon spread rapidly.
An Indian pediatrician helping with the response, Dilip Mahalanabis, made oral rehydration a cornerstone of his strategy, with astounding success — proof for all the world that a simple solution could be brought to bear against one of the world’s greatest killers.

…

The World Health Organization estimates that oral hydration therapy has saved more than 50 million lives, a majority of them children. In 1978, the British medical journal The Lancet called their innovation “potentially the most important medical advance this century.”

Posted in Admin, Birds, Bookmarks, Guns, History, Obits, Politics, Smith and Wesson, Sports | Comments Closed

Please to remember…

November 5th, 2024

Happy Guy Fawkes Day to all my peeps everywhere!

(Still busy as all get out running around with Mike the Musicologist. I did accomplish something yesterday, though: I managed to get one of the Lipsey’s/S&W Ultimate Carry guns. Mine is a 442 in .38 Special: Cabela’s, it turns out, had a few and I think I got the last non-display one. They had no .32 Magnums. I hope to be able to post at least a brief range report, maybe even with chronograph data, once my eye doctor clears me to shoot.)

Posted in Guns, History, Smith and Wesson | Comments Closed

Obit watch; November 4, 2024.

November 4th, 2024

Quincy Jones. NYT.

Alan Rachins, actor. I watched enough “L.A. Law” that I remember him. THR.

Other credits include “Stargate SG-1”, “Showgirls”, and the “Fear on Trial” TV movie, which some of us had to watch in high school.

Posted in Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

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