This one’s for Lawrence:
Random NRA meeting photos.
May 17th, 2024NRA annual meeting day 1: short quick notes. I’m
May 17th, 2024Distance walked today: 4.7 miles.
Best swag bag: SAR USA. But that’s not 100% fair, since we haven’t made it to the Brownell’s booth yet.
Best swag so far: Sierra was handing out a really cool mat illustrating all of their bullets. It has a thinnish backing, so you could also use it as a work mat. But I wouldn’t hammer stuff on it.
Runner up: Shooter’s World combo pen/ruler (English and metric)/level. See, you don’t always have to go big.
Things that interested me: the Caliber Card. You pay for the card, and in return you get discounts and preferential treatment at participating ranges. There are about 100, as I understand it, right now. Unfortunately, due to the weather and power problems in Houston (where their IT is located) they haven’t been able to update the list.
Someone at the show is selling actual pen guns. I wasn’t able to get close to get a name or price, but I plan to swing back by.
Several of my friends spent a long time talking to a Beretta rep about the BRX1 and came away impressed. I admit, the idea of a rifle that’s ambidextrous and has interchangeable calibers intrigues me, too.
Magpul was showing off their version of Tracking Point. Heads-up display, atmospheric conditions sensor (it doesn’t do wind, but you can interface a Kestrel), and a round counter in the magazines so you know how many rounds you’ve got left.
It’s late, I’m tired, and WordPress ate part of my draft. More tomorrow.
Obit watch: May 17, 2024.
May 17th, 2024The great Dabney Coleman, who was also a good Texas boy.
IMDB. I’m riding shotgun on the way to dinner right now, so I’ll just note: he was, among all his other credits, a “Mannix” three-timer.
I always liked him.
Well, that was easy.
May 16th, 2024
The email I got from the NRA approving my credential request said to bring a copy of the email, a photo ID, plus “proof of media employment (business card, press credential, online bylines, etc)“.
I printed out some of the gun related articles from the blog. I have a press pass (thanks LawDog) so I brought that. I printed business cards.
They didn’t ask for anything except my ID. I was in and out in less than five minutes.
Show starts tomorrow. Tragically, our hotel is charging $14! Dollars! A! Day! for WiFi. I may be limited to phone blogging, unless I decide to eat the cost for you, my loyal and tolerant readers.
You’re scheming on a thing, it’s sabotage…
May 16th, 2024While Mike the Musicologist drives, I have just enough time to note:
My first reaction was: that’s a big space, what are they going to do with it?
Answer: they’re actually going to spend three years turning it into “Hard Rock Hotel & Casino and Guitar Hotel Las Vegas“.
There is no word yet about the volcano, though the press report mentions a “Save the Volcano” petition.
On the road again…
May 16th, 2024Heading to Dallas for the NRA Annual Meeting.
Reportage to come once we get checked in and etc.
Obit watch: May 14, 2024.
May 14th, 2024David Sanborn, jazz saxophonist. NYT (archived).
Alex Hassilev, the last surviving original member of the 1960s folk group the Limeliters.
Before Beatlemania gripped America’s youth in 1964, the country fell in love with the tight harmonies and traditional arrangements of folk music — and few acts drew more adoration than the Limeliters, a trio made up of Mr. Hassilev, Glenn Yarbrough and Lou Gottlieb.
Mr. Hassilev played banjo and guitar and sang baritone, not only in English but in French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian, all of which he spoke fluently. His bandmates were equally brainy: Mr. Gottlieb had a doctorate in musicology and Mr. Yarbrough once worked as a bouncer to pay for Greek lessons.
Urbane and witty, they packed coffeehouses and college auditoriums with a repertoire that mixed straight-faced folk standards like “The Hammer Song” and cheeky tunes like “Have Some Madeira, M’Dear,” “The Ballad of Sigmund Freud” and “Charlie the Midnight Marauder.”
They broke up in 1965, but reformed in various arrangements through the years.
Alice Munro, Nobel prize winning author.
Ms. Munro was a member of the rare breed of writer, like Katherine Anne Porter and Raymond Carver, who made their reputations in the notoriously difficult literary arena of the short story, and did so with great success. Her tales — many of them focused on women at different stages of their lives coping with complex desires — were so eagerly received and gratefully read that she attracted a whole new generation of readers.
Ms. Munro’s stories were widely considered to be without equal, a mixture of ordinary people and extraordinary themes. She portrayed small-town folks, often in rural southwestern Ontario, facing situations that made the fantastic seem an everyday occurrence. Some of her characters were fleshed out so completely through generations and across continents that readers reached a level of intimacy with them that usually comes only with a full-length novel.
She achieved such compactness through exquisite craftsmanship and a degree of precision that did not waste words. Other writers declared some of her stories to be near-perfect — a heavy burden for a writer of modest personal character who had struggled to overcome a lack of self-confidence at the beginning of her career, when she left the protective embrace of her quiet hometown and ventured into the competitive literary scene.
…
The Irish novelist Edna O’Brien ranked Ms. Munro with William Faulkner and James Joyce as writers who had influenced her work. Joyce Carol Oates said Munro stories “have the density — moral, emotional, sometimes historical — of other writers’ novels.” And the novelist Richard Ford once made it clear that questioning Ms. Munro’s mastery over the short story would be akin to doubting the hardness of a diamond or the bouquet of a ripened peach.
“With Alice it’s like a shorthand,” Mr. Ford said. “You’ll just mention her, and everybody just kind of generally nods that she’s just sort of as good as it gets.”
Obit watch: May 13, 2024.
May 13th, 2024Mark Damon, actor and producer. Other credits include “Pistol Packin’ Preacher”, “Ivanhoe, the Norman Swordsman”, and an uncredited role in “The Longest Day”, followed a year later by an uncredited role in “The Shortest Day”.
Celebrity coroner Cyril Wecht.
…
Months before his death, Dr. Wecht donated his massive cache of records and research to Duquesne in the months before his death.
The collection includes his case files on such high-profile killings as David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, JonBenet Ramsey, the Menendez brothers, Casey Anthony, Scott Peterson, and Chandra Levy.
(Hattip to my brother on this. Archived because the Post-Gazette really doesn’t like adblock.)
Obit watch: May 12, 2024.
May 12th, 2024Yeah, yeah, yeah. “King of the B’s” and all that crap. But it’s worth noting that he gave a lot of obscure filmmakers – Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, Jonathan Demme, etc. – their starts in movie making. It’s also worth noting that his company took chances on a lot of foreign films that ended up doing well over here.
It’s also worth noting that (from what I hear) he was responsible for the only decent “Fantastic 4” movie.
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Ever restless, Corman ventured into weightier territory, producing The Intruder (1962), a hard look at racial prejudice. It was his first “message” film, and he financed it himself when the major distributors balked at the subject. The story centered on a hatemongering racist (William Shatner) who organized violent opposition to court-ordered school desegregation. It used the N-word in a realistic, non-gratuitous manner, but the film was denied the Production Code’s seal and screened in only a few movie houses in the country.
Although it received commendations from such critics as The Hollywood Reporter‘s Arthur Knight and The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther, it was to be Corman’s first money-losing film. He vowed never again to make a movie with “so obviously a personal statement.”
I’m hoping Lawrence is going to do his own tribute to Corman later, and he’ll almost certainly talk about “The Intruder”, so I’ll just say: if you haven’t seen it, go watch it. Shatner is amazing.
Susan Backlinie. Other credits include “Two Minute Warning”, “The Fall Guy” (the TV show), and “Quark”.
Mary Wells Lawrence, noted advertising executive.
Obit watch: May 10, 2024.
May 10th, 2024Dennis Thompson, drummer for the MC5. He was also the last surviving member.
Pete McCloskey (R – California). He may be more famous for having run against Nixon for the presidential nomination in 1972.
I’ve been holding this one for a few days for reasons, but KVUE has a nice tribute to Robert “Bob” Reale. Mr. Reale was the founder and owner of Reale’s Italian Cafe, which is a swell Italian restaurant and a favorite of both myself and Lawrence.
Firings watch.
May 10th, 2024Obit watch: May 8, 2024.
May 8th, 2024Wow. Busy.
Susan Buckner, actress. We may have to add “Deadly Blessing” to the movie list. Other credits include “B.J. and the Bear”, “Switch”, and “Police Academy 6: City Under Siege”.
Judy Devlin Hashman, badminton champion.
Before badminton established a world championship or joined the Olympics, the All England Open Badminton Championships was the sport’s pinnacle. Hashman won the women’s singles title in that event for the first time in 1954 at age 18. Then she added her record-setting nine more, the last in 1967.
She also won seven women’s doubles titles, six of them with her sister Susan Devlin, later known as Susan Peard.
Ian Gelder, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “EastEnders”, “Father Brown”, and “Rumpole of the Bailey”.
The paper of record finally ran an obit for Dick Rutan.
Milton Diamond, who the NYT describes as a “sexologist and advocate for intersex babies”.
I probably would have skipped this one for notability, but the obit starts off with an account of the 1973 International Symposium on Gender Identity, at which Dr. Diamond got into a confrontation with Dr. John Money. Dr. Money was an advocate of “genital correction” surgery, while Dr. Diamond advocated leaving them alone.
Dr. Money rushed over to Dr. Diamond, getting in his face, furiously insisting he was right.
Dr. Diamond only replied, “The data is not there.”
At one point, eyewitnesses reported that Dr. Money slugged Dr. Diamond, though Dr. Diamond later said he didn’t remember it.
Turns out Dr. Diamond may have been right, and Dr. Money was (at best) a crank and possibly worse.