Gun news.

February 6th, 2026

I think this is big news, but I’m having trouble finding any coverage of it outside of one news story, and a linked article in that story.

Big Rock Sports, LLC has filed for bankruptcy.

Big Rock is a major distributor of firearms and other outdoor gear. And the bankruptcy filing is a Chapter 7 – total liquidation – not a more common Chapter 11 reorganization.

The filings in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina so far have not detailed the reasons for the move to liquidate, but show the company was facing a wide range of lawsuits from suppliers, property owners and other business partners.

According to the articles, Big Rock has over $100 million in outstanding liabilities, and assets “between $10 million and $50 million”.

I registered for a PACER account in an attempt to find the filing, but they say it takes seven to ten days after registration to activate my search privileges. Plus I’ll have to pay a fee to get a copy of the filing once I can search for it. If I am able to find it somewhere, I’ll link it here.

The SGB article lists some of the creditors. I don’t see any of the major gun companies listed there, but the stories don’t provide a complete list of creditors.

Interesting fact: Big Rock had a Canadian subsidiary. “Had” is the operative word, as that was liquidated in December of 2025.

Posted in Guns | No Comments »

Obit watch: February 4, 2026.

February 4th, 2026

Chuck Negron, of Three Dog Night.

Mr. Negron’s bandmates’ initially rejected “Joy to the World,” but he argued that the group needed a “silly song” to keep success rolling. His instincts proved correct, as the track shot to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971. That same year, his jaunty vocals on Paul Williams’s “An Old Fashioned Love Song” helped propel that song to No. 4.

…

The band splintered in 1976, and Mr. Negron sank further into the abyss, in large part because of heroin addiction. His millions in savings vanished and, before long, he was living in a Skid Row drug den in Los Angeles. The police often raided crack dealer neighbors but “never bothered us,” he recalled in a 1998 interview with The Las Vegas Sun. “That’s how pathetic we were.”
He hit a particular low one day when he was zonked out on a curb and noticed people gawking. “It’s really embarrassing,” he remembered telling a companion next to him, “these people want an autograph.”
“Chuck, you just peed in the street,” the friend responded. “They don’t know who you are.”

…

After 35 trips to rehab attempts in 13 years, Mr. Negron said he finally got clean in 1991, leading to an attempt to rekindle things with his bandmates. “They kind of went, ‘Get screwed,’” he told The Sun, “so I went, ‘OK, some things are too late — move on.’”

Virginia Oliver. I’m not exactly sure she qualifies as “notable”, outside of a small circle. But the obit is fun, she led a good life, and it lets me use a tag I don’t get to use as often as I’d like.

On the frigid and crustacean-filled waters of Penobscot Bay, Mrs. Oliver was known as the Lobster Lady. She was a folk hero to Mainers — an enduring, if fading, emblem of the state’s hardy, matter-of-fact work ethic.
“She represented that no-nonsense Mainer who just got up every day and did what they had to do,” Barbara A. Walsh, the author of a children’s book about Mrs. Oliver, said in an interview. “It’s grit and determination.”
During lobster season — from June to December — Mrs. Oliver would wake up at 2:45 a.m., put on overalls and drive her four-wheel-drive pickup truck to the dock. After loading her boat, the Virginia, with bait and gas, she would head to sea before sunrise, hauling lobster pots until lunchtime.

…

Mrs. Oliver fished for more than 60 years with her husband, Maxwell Oliver Sr., known as Bill. After he died in 2006, Max Jr. took his spot. “I’m the boss,” she would occasionally remind both of them.
As a general rule, her authority was not to be questioned on land or at sea.
“She was a hard worker, a lovely lady, but you definitely didn’t mess around with her,” Dave Cousens, a lobsterman who knew Mrs. Oliver for several decades, said in an interview. “She had a mouth like a sailor. A lot of things she said you couldn’t print in a newspaper.”

…

A few years back, she needed stitches after a particularly obstreperous lobster sliced her finger.
“What are you out there lobstering for?” the doctor asked.
“Because I want to,” she replied.

She was 103 when a fall forced her to give up lobstering. She was 105 when she passed away.

Mickey Lolich, of the Detroit Tigers.

Pitching in the major leagues for 16 seasons, mostly with the Tigers, Lolich won 217 games and struck out 2,832 batters, posting more than 200 strikeouts in a single season seven times.

…

The Tigers finished 12 games ahead of the Baltimore Orioles as they won the 1968 American League pennant, led by the right-hander Denny McLain, who won 31 games and lost only 6 that season in becoming the first pitcher to reach the 30-game milestone in 34 years, a feat that hasn’t been matched since. Lolich, meanwhile, compiled a laudable 17-9 record.
McClain was bested by the future Hall of Famer Bob Gibson in the World Series opener, at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Despite battling a groin infection that had developed overnight, Lolich pitched the Tigers to an 8-1 victory in Game 2 and hit the only home run of his career, a drive down the left-field line off the Cardinal starter, Nelson Briles.
The Tigers lost the next two games at home and were facing elimination when Lolich took the mound again, once more against Briles, but this time at Tiger Stadium. Lolich yielded three runs in the first inning, but the Tigers managed to rally for a 5-3 victory.
They won again in Game 6, in St. Louis, behind solid pitching by McLain and a 10-run third inning.
The durable Lolich was called on again for Game 7, when he faced Gibson.
With the game scoreless in the seventh inning, the Tiger outfielder Jim Northrup connected on a liner over the head of Curt Flood, the Cardinals’ center fielder, for a two-run, two-out triple. Detroit went on to a 4-1 victory, giving the Tigers their first World Series championship since they defeated the Chicago Cubs in seven games in 1945.

…

With that final out — a foul pop-up by Tim McCarver of the Cardinals that spurred Tiger catcher Bill Freehan to leap into Lolich’s arms — Lolich became the only left-handed pitcher in American League history to win three complete games in a World Series.

ESPN. Baseball Reference.

Posted in Lobsters, Music, Obits, Sports | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: January 31, 2026.

January 31st, 2026

Catherine O’Hara. NYT (share link).

Other credits include “A Mighty Wind”, voice work in “Where the Wild Things Are”, and “The Greatest Event in Television History”.

Demond Wilson. Other credits include “Today’s F.B.I.”, “Dealing: Or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues”, and the original “Mission: Impossible”.

He studied acting at the American Community Theater and at Hunter College but was drafted and then wounded in Vietnam while serving in the 4th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Firings watch.

January 30th, 2026

Oh, Minnesota.

Kwesi Adofo-Mensah out as general manager of the Minnesota Vikings.

The team went 43-25 in Adofo-Mensah’s four seasons, but it missed the playoffs by a half-game this year after a disappointing season that began with lofty expectations following a surprising 14-3 record in 2024.

And Derek Falvey out as president of the Minnesota Twins.

Falvey had led the team’s baseball operations since Oct. 2016, and the business operations department since last year, becoming one of only two baseball executives in a dual president role.

…

Falvey’s departure was framed publicly as a mutual decision to part ways.

Missed this the other day, but Joe Lombardi out as offensive coordinator in Denver.

Wide receivers coach Keary Colbert and cornerbacks coach Addison Lynch also were fired.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: January 30, 2026.

January 30th, 2026

I’m going to do a round-up from the past couple of days. I’m also going to draw heavily on the NYT since we’re reaching the end of the month, and I have a bunch of share links to burn off before February.

Sly Dunbar, of Sly and Robbie.

For nearly 50 years, Mr. Dunbar and his partner, the bassist Robbie Shakespeare, who died in 2021, single-handedly shaped the various music styles — ska, reggae, rocksteady, dancehall — coming out of Jamaica’s heady cultural ferment of the 1960s.

…

Mr. Dunbar was known for his precise, propellant and somehow also relaxed drumming. After mastering the one-drop rhythm, a reggae standard that leaves out the kick drum on the first beat of a 4/4 measure, he pioneered the rockers rhythm, which deploys the drum on the first and third beats, and the snare on the second and fourth, making it even more danceable and energetic.
The rockers rhythm challenged the reggae orthodoxy of the 1970s. It fostered new genres like dancehall and made it easier for adjacent styles, like R&B, funk and rock, to incorporate reggae influences.

John L. Allen Jr., prominent Catholic journalist and author. I haven’t read any of his books, but I should probably at least buy the Opus Dei one. (Lawrence likes to give me a hard time about my Opus Dei membership.)

Johnny Legend, a polymath of the perverse who became something of a cult hero as — among other outré personas — a punk-rock wrestling impresario, an accomplice to the comedian Andy Kaufman, a B-movie archivist and erotic film auteur, and, with his flowing beard, a recording curiosity known as the Rockabilly Rasputin, died on Jan. 2 in South Beach, Ore. He was 77.

He’s not someone I’d ever heard of, but the obit is mildly interesting, so I’m just going to quote the first paragraph and send you over to the paper of record if it grabs you.

Finally, Dr. Peter H. Duesberg. That name may ring a bell for some people.

He did important early work on cancer.

In the late 1960s, when scientists had little understanding of what caused cancer, Dr. Duesberg studied a virus called Rous sarcoma, which had been associated with malignant tumors in chickens. He published the results of his experiments in 1970, showing that the virus carried a gene, known as Src, that triggered cancer in the birds.
It turned out to be the first known cancer-causing gene, or oncogene.
Dr. Duesberg’s work, at the University of California, Berkeley, set the stage for other researchers who were able to show that normal cells in many animals, including humans, carry a version of this gene, known as a proto-oncogene. Modern cancer treatments are based in part on the understanding that those proto-oncogenes can turn into cancer-spawning oncogenes when damaged over time by carcinogens, radiation or random mutations.

…

But he didn’t pursue his research on oncogenes. Instead, in his work at Berkeley and at the University of Heidelberg in Germany, where he held an appointment starting in 1997, he focused on the more established theory that cancer is caused by damage to the chromosomes, the structures that carry our genetic material.
And in a startling about-face, he inexplicably contradicted his own research, insisting that oncogenes didn’t, in fact, cause cancer; he even went so far as to heckle colleagues at scientific meetings if they supported that idea.

He became more famous as an H.I.V. denialist.

In the 1980s, Dr. Duesberg adopted another contrarian view, publicly rejecting the theory that the newly discovered disease known as AIDS was caused by human immunodeficiency virus, or H.I.V., a link that is widely accepted today. The theory he promoted was that AIDS was caused by poverty, malnutrition, the use of recreational drugs and azidothymidine, or AZT, an early antiviral drug used to treat the disease.

…

Throughout his life, Dr. Duesberg maintained his position that H.I.V. does not cause AIDS, a contention that raised questions about the perils of undermining public trust in established scientists during an epidemic.

…

By 1987, when Dr. Duesberg published his theory about AIDS in the journal Cancer Research, a consensus had formed around H.I.V. as the cause of the disease. Eventually, scientists figured out how H.I.V. caused AIDS — through the slow destruction of a white blood cell known as CD4, which is essential for the maintenance of the immune system. None of the factors Dr. Duesberg had proposed as the cause of AIDS led to this immune collapse.

Posted in Books, Music, Obits, Science | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#157 in a series)

January 29th, 2026

Both Bugs and Daffy are wrong. It is forgery season! And what was that about “Forgery is uncommon among the hyenas“?

Sonya Jaquez Lewis was convicted yesterday.

A jury found former [Colorado] state Sen. Sonya Jaquez Lewis, a Boulder County Democrat, guilty of four counts — one count of attempting to influence a public servant and three counts of forgery.

Apparently, Colorado has a crime called “attempting to influence a public servant”? I was under the impression that “attempting to influence a public servant”, especially an elected official, falls under the heading of “democracy”. “Forgery”, on the other hand…

Attempting to influence a public servant is the most serious charge Jaquez Lewis was convicted of. It’s a Class 4 felony, punishable by up to six years in prison and a $500,000 fine. Forgery is also a felony, though it’s a lower-level offense and carries a maximum penalty of three years in prison per count.

The former senator got crosswise with the state senate’s Ethics Committee last year. She was accused of “mistreating” some of her aides.

She stepped down when the committee announced that Jaquez Lewis had submitted at least one fabricated letter of support, purported to be from a former aide, to the panel. The aide whose name was on the letter told legislative investigators that she didn’t write it and that she had not been in touch with Jaquez Lewis for roughly a year before the missive was sent.
When confronted, Jaquez Lewis told legislative investigators that she was relaying information she had gathered from conversations with the former aide in years past. The letter, however, appeared on letterhead with the aide’s name on it and was written in the first person.
Prosecutors found that Jaquez Lewis had actually written multiple letters purporting to be from former aides.
During a three-day trial this week, Jaquez Lewis admitted to writing the letters of support. But she denied that they were fabrications, saying they were based either on information that was relayed to her previously and, in one instance, that she misattributed a letter to the wrong former aide.

More from the Denver Post:

Her Senate colleagues convened the ethics committee in January 2025 to investigate a litany of accusations that Jaquez Lewis tried to withhold pay from one aide and used others to perform work around her house. If found to violate Senate rules, Jaquez Lewis could have faced an expulsion vote.

Yeah, don’t mess with people’s pay.

Her attorney, Craig Lewis Truman, emphasized the stress that Jaquez Lewis felt in the Capitol, compounded by an ethics committee that Jaquez Lewis felt was biased against her.
“Do you think she would put it all on the line for a letter to these kangaroo courts? Or was it because she was under the gun?” Truman said to jurors before their deliberations began.

Just leaving this here:

And keeping with our theme for the day:

Separately, Jaquez Lewis last year agreed to pay nearly $3,000 to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office to settle allegations that she violated campaign finance laws. She admitted to failing to report campaign spending on several occasions. She also admitted to using campaign funds to hire a staffer to campaign on behalf of another candidate, which is prohibited.

And, because Lawrence’s happiness is one of the fifteen to thirty-five most important things to me: the Colorado Sun mentions her party affiliation in the subhead and the second paragraph. The Denver Post waits until the third paragraph.

The state supposedly plans to ask for probation. Hattip to Mike the Musicologist again.

Posted in Law, Politics | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#156 in a series)

January 29th, 2026

It has been a minute since we had one of these, but this one is swell. Hattip to Mike the Musicologist on it.

Ayshia “Ajay” Pittman pled guilty to felony charges yesterday, and resigned from the Oklahoma House of Representatives. This moved fairly quickly: as I understand the story, her plea and resignation came just “hours” after she was charged.

She was charged with three felonies: conspiracy to commit a felony, second-degree forgery, and “violation of the Oklahoma Computer Crimes Act”. (Trena Byas, an executive assistant, was also charged. As far as I can tell, she has not taken a plea.)

What exactly did she do? Well, she forged a cashier’s check.

Forgery is uncommon among the hyenas, so this would be noteworthy by itself. But that’s not the best part. She forged a cashier’s check…

…and sent it to the Oklahoma Ethics Commission.

The background for this is that former rep Pittman has a problem with campaign funds. Specifically, she has a problem with diverting campaign funds for personal use.

The Ethics Commission reached a settlement in 2024 with Pittman over her misuse of campaign funds. Under the 2024 settlement, she was required to reimburse her campaign $17,858 and pay a $17,141 civil penalty to the state.

The Ethics Commission wanted to see proof she was making payments.

Pittman said on a campaign report she had repaid her campaign account $2,500 on Jan. 27, 2025. The investigation found the Jan. 27, 2025, deposit was actually a $2,500 donation from the Osage Nation.

…

According to the filing, Byas — an Executive Assistant in the Oklahoma State Senate and owner of GraphixByUs, Inc. — allegedly received instructions from Pittman to alter an image of a check. Investigators say Byas used a computer to modify the document before sending it back electronically. Records also note that Byas previously worked as an assistant finance manager for Pittman’s mother.

…

Search warrant affidavits from October 2025 outline an alleged scheme in which Pittman provided the Ethics Commission with a fraudulent $2,500 cashier’s check, dated January 27, 2025, from Sovereign Bank, as proof she was making payments toward a $35,000 restitution agreement. Investigators later confirmed Sovereign Bank never issued the check.

Ms. Pittman agreed to a seven year probated sentence, with deferred adjudication. So if she keeps out of trouble, the charges won’t go on her record.

Her resignation was part of her plea deal.
While on probation, she cannot seek state office, cannot work in state government and cannot work for a government contractor. She must make restitution for misuse of campaign funds, with the money going to charity.
Under a separate settlement with the Ethics Commission, she agreed not to run for any state office, city office, county office, school board office “or any other elected position” in Oklahoma for 15 years.

…

Under her new settlement with the Ethics Commission, she must pay what was still owed her campaign − $7,858 − to a non-profit organization. She also still must pay the $17,141 civil penalty.

Posted in Law, Politics | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: January 27, 2026.

January 27th, 2026

Thomas Fogarty, another one of those big damn heroes of medicine.

Dr. Fogarty invented the Fogarty catheter.

“When people had a blood clot in their arm or leg, they usually ended up having three operations,” he told Stanford Medicine magazine in 2006. “Fifty percent of the patients died. I thought there must be a better way.”
Dr. Fogarty, who died at 91 on Dec. 28 in Los Altos, Calif., found a solution while a student at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1960. There, he conceived a device that would revolutionize vascular surgery — a balloon catheter that removed blood clots from patients’ limbs through a minimally invasive technique that became an industry standard.

…

For the first balloon-catheter procedure — in 1960 or 1961, according to various accounts — Dr. John J. Cranley, a vascular surgeon who was Dr. Fogarty’s mentor, first made a small incision in an occluded artery in a patient’s leg. He inserted the catheter — with the balloon deflated — past the blood clot. The balloon was then inflated with saline solution and retracted, pulling the clot along with it.
His response was, “Holy Cow!,” Dr. Fogarty told the publication Endovascular Today in 2004. Dr. Cranley exclaimed, “Wow, this really works!

…

Six-plus decades after its invention, the Fogarty catheter is used hundreds of thousands of times a year around the world in vascular, cardiac and thoracic surgeries. According to the American College of Surgeons and Fogarty Innovation, a nonprofit he founded, it remains the most widely used catheter for removal of blood clots and is credited with having saved an estimated 20 million lives globally.

…

In a video tribute on his 90th birthday in 2024, colleagues at Fogarty Innovation described him as unconventional, stubborn and “about as touchy-feely as a steel screw.” Colleagues also paraphrased the mantra that drove Dr. Fogarty’s career: “How can I make this better? How can I reduce pain? How can I get the patient out of the hospital more quickly?”
At the same time, Andrew Cleeland, the organization’s chief executive, said in an interview that Dr. Fogarty had been a prankster who didn’t always take himself so seriously. Thomas Fogarty Jr. added that his father “wouldn’t tolerate foolishness except foolishness of the highest quality; well into his 80s, nothing was funnier to him than a whoopee cushion.”

He was also a fly fisherman.

During medical school, he experimented in his attic by cutting the pinkie finger from a surgical glove to use as a balloon, and then attaching it to a urethral catheter by using fly-tying techniques. He had learned to tie fly knots as a boy, when he would fish, at least part of the time, in a cemetery pond.

Posted in Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: January 23, 2026.

January 23rd, 2026

James Bernard, “founding editor and star writer” of the hip-hop magazine “The Source”.

His sister, Emily Bernard, who confirmed the death, said he died by suicide. His body was discovered on Dec. 29 in a wooded area in Pemberton Township, N.J., near his home.
Mr. Bernard is believed to have died around the time he was reported missing, in March 2024. He would have turned 60 last August.

…

His career at The Source unraveled in 1994, when he and other staff members organized a walkout after Mr. Mays published a laudatory article about the little-known group Almighty RSO, with which he was close, without consulting other editors. When calls for Mr. Mays’s resignation went nowhere, Mr. Bernard and others left the magazine.
In 1997, he and Mr. Dennis started a rival magazine, XXL. The founders conceived the quarterly as both a hip-hop tastemaker and a broader lifestyle magazine, like Playboy in its 1960s and ’70s heyday.

The Wikipedia entry on ‘The Source” goes into more detail about this and other issues.

Posted in Media, Music, Obits | No Comments »

Firings watch.

January 22nd, 2026

Kevin Abrams out at the New York Football Giants. I can’t exactly figure out what his title was: at one point, he was assistant general manager, but he gave that up in 2022, according to the linked article.

Also out: defensive line coach Andre Patterson, inside linebackers coach John Egorugwu, secondary coach/pass game coordinator Marquand Manuel, and cornerbacks coach Jeff Burris.

All of this is being attributed to John Harbaugh coming in and cleaning house.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: January 21, 2026.

January 21st, 2026

This isn’t quite an obit, but Mike the Musicologist sent it to me a few days ago, and I’ve been waiting for a chance to use it: a tribute to Phil Schreier. (Previously.)

His character was unlike anyone I’ve ever known. Smart, funny and stubborn. Whatever standard an organization or the world imposed, his own was higher. He was a public face of NRA, not because he sought fame and fortune; the latter is extremely unlikely as an NRA employee of 36 years. He took that role on as not only his vocation but as a responsibility. Most of NRA’s millions of members will never meet an NRA staffer, one of the dedicated people that goes to work for them every day, so you better leave a good impression. Phil had the Cal Ripken attitude: No matter what’s going on in your life, you stay and sign the last baseball. At the thousands of gun shows he attended, and the dozens of NRA Annual Meetings, he would always make time to answer a question or shake a hand, much to his own peril when seeking to reach the bathroom on time. He once told me that if you’re on TV enough, you’ll never make it to the men’s room alone again. There was simply no quit in him.

Rob Hirst, drummer for Midnight Oil.

As I’ve observed before, if our Earth isn’t turning, our ability to dance will be the smallest of our possible problems. And if our beds are burning and we want to sleep…maybe get a hotel room? Or a fire extinguisher?

Posted in Guns, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo.

January 19th, 2026

I’ve been silent the past few days because there hasn’t been a lot to write about. Now there is.

The Buffalo Bills fired coach Sean McDermott.

This is very breaking: the Buffalo News story is short and mostly video. ESPN. NFL Network.

98-50 over nine seasons, with an 8-8 playoff record.

In eight playoff campaigns, the Bills exited in the Wild Card Round twice, lost in the Divisional Round four times and fell in the AFC Championship Game twice.

Sounds like a good start. Now, if they would just shut down the team, ban the players from the NFL for life, burn the stadium, practice facilities, and offices, plow the rubble into the earth, sow the ground with salt, and drive the players and staff before us in chains while we listen to the lamentations of their women, I’d be well on my way to happy.

(Subject line hattip. Shoutout to Lawrence Block.)

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | No Comments »

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