Yesterday’s headline of the day:
Felix Smith, pilot for Civil Air Transport.
CAT evolved into the legendary Air America.
Obit watch: October 18, 2018.
October 18th, 2018Quote of the day.
October 17th, 2018Fairy tales do not give the child his first idea of bogey. What they give the child is his first clear idea of the defeat of bogey. The baby has known the dragon intimately ever since he had an imagination. What the fairy tale provides for him is a St. George to kill the dragon.
— G. K. Chesterton (@GKCdaily) October 17, 2018
I have loved that quote ever since I first read it in Martin Gardner’s annotated The Innocence of Father Brown. Gardner carries the quote out a bit more:
When somebody says something like “I’ve never understood why horror films exist at all.” it kind of bothers me. And this quote is why: this is what good horror does. It reminds us “these limitless terrors had a limit”.
Likewise, I remember people arguing that “Boyz in the Hood” deserved an Academy Award more than “Silence of the Lambs” because “‘Boyz in the Hood’ is about something.” You know what? “Silence of the Lambs” is about something, too: it’s about that Chesterton quote. Buffalo Bill is the bogey man, and Clarice Starling is the knight of God. Even the climax reflects this idea: “…there is something in the universe more mystical than darkness, and stronger than strong fear.”
Story time.
October 16th, 2018The last two Sears stores in Austin are closing.
My father did all of his own home and car maintenance, and he swore by (and sometimes at) his Craftsman tools. We didn’t get the Snap-On trucks much in our neck of the woods, and hey! Lifetime warranty!
He also swore by Sears DieHard batteries. True story: once upon a time he was running around the house, frantically searching for the warranty for the DieHard in one of our cars. I asked him several times where the owner’s manual for that car was, since it wasn’t in the glove box. He ignored me the first few times, and finally snapped: “Why do you keep asking me about the owner’s manual?!”
“Because,” I said, with the quiet confidence of a Christian holding four aces, “you’re exactly the kind of person who would stick the warranty paperwork inside the owner’s manual for safekeeping.” Whereupon he went to his briefcase, pulled out the owner’s manual for the car, flipped through it, found the warranty paperwork for the DieHard battery, and proceeded to rush off to the Sears store before it closed.
(He apologized later.)
(Side note: I remember DieHards being warrantied for five or even six years. Now, it seems like you can’t find any car battery that has more than a two year warranty. What’s up with that?)
(Another Dad story: once upon a time, we were on one of our driving vacations. The starter on the car (a Chevy Suburban from the mid-70s: you know, 350 V-8 and plenty of room to work) went out in some small town in Arkansas. Dad, being the type of person who brought tools with him on vacation, dropped the starter out of the car in the middle of a Sears Auto Center parking lot: the manager of the Sears AutoCenter took us over to the local automotive starter rebuild shop, who rebuilt the starter while we waited, then drove us back to the store, where Dad reinstalled the rebuilt starter, and we were on our way. I’m pretty sure he sent a nice letter to corporate about that manager.)
I was loyal to Sears for a long time because of those experiences. The first crack came when I went to one of those local Sears stores to get my personal DieHard replaced under warranty…and they refused, claiming that DieHard was “too small” for my car and thus my warranty was void. Even though I pointed out to them that the DieHard in question had been installed by the other local Sears, and their beef was with that Sears, not me, they still gouged me $60+tax that I could barely afford for a new battery. Yes, this infuriated me.
There were other things. Lawrence has his own story of being screwed over by NTB, back when they were owned by Sears: he’s been boycotting the chain for 20+ years now. As time went on, Sears just seemed to become sadder and sadder, and the only times I went into one were when I was cutting through to get to my parking space. Then I pretty much stopped going to malls, period.
I know Chapter 11 is a reorganization, not a liquidation. But the way things are going, it seems like this is the final turning out of the lights.
Goodbye, Sears. You managed to micturate through all of the goodwill I had for you when I was younger. And for what?
Thematically appropriate Twitter.
October 16th, 2018Thematically appropriate for Halloween, anyway.
I have at least a passing familiarity with modern horror, mostly from hanging around with Lawrence. So this Twitter thread would have had me snorting beverages out my nose if I had been unwise enough to be drinking at the time.
Sample (scroll up and down in the thread to catch them all):
Gaiman: [hours later] however the romans called bread "eattus" which explains the modern origins of the word "eat," but if you look at norse influence an interesting thing happens
Barker: are you going to tell a story
King: the sun's coming up, my mom is gonna be pissed— Agouti "Halloween Radio Voice" Rex (@bitterkarella) August 21, 2018
Brian Lumley: Submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society, I call this the Tale of the Two Squid Gods!!!
Lumley: See, first there's Nargolog the Black Toad Under the Hearth, the unfeeling monstrosity of eons!!!
Lumley: And then there's his brother Ed, who's an okay guy!!!!— Agouti "Halloween Radio Voice" Rex (@bitterkarella) August 26, 2018
(I know this is a few months old, but hattip to Morlock Publishing who retweeted it yesterday.)
Obit watch: October 16, 2018.
October 16th, 2018For the historical record, and by popular demand: Paul G. Allen.
Obit watch: October 15, 2018.
October 15th, 2018Catching up:
William Coors is dead at 102.
…
Along with his younger brother, Joseph, a Coors executive who supported Ronald Reagan’s rise to the presidency, William Coors, although not as overtly political, championed bootstrap success and free enterprise, and was widely admired by conservatives.
But he alienated unionists, blacks, Hispanics, women and gays with views and policies that critics called racist, sexist and homophobic, and members of those groups joined informal boycotts of Coors beer in increasing numbers in the 1970s.
Jim Taylor, one of the great Green Bay Packers:
NYT.
Cindy Lobel, food historian. I actually wasn’t familiar with her work, but I generally admire people who write about food and food history: I’m adding her book to my list. Plus: 48 is too damn young to die.
Betty Grissom, Gus Grissom’s widow. Thing I didn’t know: she ticked off a lot of people by suing North American Rockwell (the primary contractor for the Apollo program).
Her action brought Ms. Grissom considerable grief, with strangers accusing her of being unpatriotic and the close-knit space community shunning her.
The experience embittered the family, said Mark Grissom, who was 13 when his father died.
“We got the dark side of NASA,” he said in a telephone interview on Thursday. “People who were my friends were no longer my friends. A lot of people turned their back on us, and Mom got a lot of hate mail. They were like, ‘How dare you sue NASA?’ We were no longer part of the NASA family.”
…
She told an interviewer that her husband’s sacrifice had helped pave the way for future missions in which other astronauts made it to the moon.
Still, she said, “I’m pretty sure he got to the moon before they did.”
“Of course he didn’t make it,” she added, “but in spirit I think he was already there.”
TMQ Watch: October 9, 2018.
October 10th, 2018Geezers on geezers on geezers. Wheel in the sky keep on turning.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
Obit watch: October 9, 2018.
October 9th, 2018He played Richard Hickock (opposite Robert Blake’s Perry Smith) in the 1967 adaptation of “In Cold Blood”. He was also in “In the Heat of the Night”.
Mr. Wilson appeared in several dozen more films, including “The Great Gatsby” (1974), “The Right Stuff” (1983), “Dead Man Walking” (1995), “The Last Samurai” (2003) and “Monster” (2003).
He played a cruel dog-owner in three movies based on Phyllis Reynolds Naylor’s “Shiloh” novels, and Saint Albert Chmielowski in “Our God’s Brother” (1997), a film adaptation, by the Polish director Krzysztof Zanussiof, of a play written by Pope John Paul II.
Mr. Wilson also had recurring parts on the CBS police procedural “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation” and Netflix’s science fiction drama “The OA.”
Oddly, it doesn’t seem that he ever did a guest shot on “Mannix”.
Bagatelle (#8)
October 9th, 2018The second most amusing thing I read yesterday:
“less than five seconds”. As a friend of mine put it, that’s “Oops, I clicked on the wrong link. (close)”
(If that’s second, what was the most amusing thing? The MLB RICO story, of course.)
Norts spews.
October 9th, 2018We have our first firing of the NBA season. You know, the NBA season that hasn’t started yet.
Phoenix Suns general manager Ryan McDonough out.
From ESPN:
He drafted the likes of Devin Booker, Josh Jackson, TJ Warren, Alex Len, Dragan Bender and Deandre Ayton. He had some early success, but the Suns are still in the same rebuilding mode that they were in when McDonough was hired. The team went 155-255 during his tenure.
The Suns also had five different coaches under McDonough. Last season, they fired coach Earl Watson three games into the season and named Jay Triano interim coach. In the offseason, they named Igor Kokoskov head coach.
In other news, I missed this story until Popehat tweeted part of it. Ken White’s take on this was more “look at the stupid things clients do”, which surprised me: I’ll touch on the reason why shortly.
Summary: the Los Angeles Dodgers (and other baseball teams) may be in trouble. Legal trouble.
…
…
FanGraphs has an interesting supplemental piece. The part that jumps out at me – and the one that I’m surprised Ken wasn’t all over:
Did the Dodgers do the RICO? I am not a lawyer. But the person who wrote the FanGraphs article is: I think she presents a good argument that, if the Dodgers are found guilty of human trafficking, that’s a “predicate offense” for RICO purposes.
Mail and wire fraud are also predicate crimes. So one count of human trafficking, and one count of wire fraud…to quote FanGraphs:
Admit it: wouldn’t you love to see the Department of Justice seize the Dodgers in asset forfeiture and try to run a baseball team? I know I would: a government run baseball team would make the 1899 Cleveland Spiders look like a model of competence and sanity.
Your loser update: week 5, 2018.
October 8th, 2018The Browns actually won a second game this season. The New York Football Giants are 1-4. And the worthless San Francisco 49ers lost, which is good: but to Arizona, which is bad.
Also: Mike Stoops out as Oklahoma’s defensive coordinator.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
None.
The loser update will return at the start of the NFL season next year. There may possibly be special updates between now and then, but it will definitely be back in 2019 (assuming we all live that long).
Obit watch: October 5, 2018.
October 5th, 2018Mr. Romero was a teenage busboy working in the kitchen of the Ambassador Hotel in June 1968 when [Robert F.] Kennedy, moments after giving a victory speech in the California Democratic primary, came walking through and was shot in the head by an assassin.
Mr. Romero rushed to Kennedy and held him as he lay on the floor mortally wounded. Mr. Romero later said he had struggled to keep the senator’s head from hitting the floor.
Dave Anderson, sportswriter for the NYT.
Quickies.
October 3rd, 2018Our short national nightmare is over:
The Republic of Texas Biker Rally and the Heat Wave car show will go on at the Travis County Exposition Center, but the Travis Central Appraisal District will have to scramble to find another venue for thousands of property tax protest hearings after county commissioners voted Tuesday to continue contract negotiations for the two highly popular events.
After a heated debate, commissioners voted 3-2 Tuesday, with County Judge Sarah Eckhardt and Commissioner Margaret Gómez against, to move toward contracts with the event organizers on renting the Expo Center, leaving the appraisal district out of the mix.
Chimene Onyeri, the guy who shot Judge Kocurek: life in federal prison.
Paul Molitor out as manager of the Minnesota Twins. 78-84 this season and no playoffs.
Your loser update: week 4, 2018.
October 1st, 2018Four weeks into the season, and one team left standing. By comparison, at this time in 2017, there were four 0-4 teams. On the other hand, Cleveland was the only winless team at this point in 2016, and Detroit was the only one left in week four of 2015. So I don’t know, Bob.
Also: TMQ is either going to ignore this story, or be his usual insufferable self this week.
And this amuses me:
I doubt Ryan Fitzpatrick was the problem, and I doubt Jameis Winston is the fix. Then again, I didn’t watch a minute of the game.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Arizona
And it looks like the MLB regular season is (more or less) over, and B’more finished 47-115. By my count, that’s 15th on the all-time list.
Podcasters hate this one weird trick!
October 1st, 2018Or, how to get me to stop listening to your podcast:
The rest of this season of Crimetown will be available exclusively on Spotify.
This is a shame: I liked the first season of Crimetown. I’ve even written about it here previously, since (as you know, Bob) I have an abnormal interest in Rhode Island politics.
But if you can’t put your show into an RSS feed, like “Gimlet Media” did with the first “season” of Crimetown, I’m not interested. I’m not signing up for yet another account, even if I can get a Spotify account for “free” (translation: give up your personal data), just to listen to your damn podcast.
(I would point out that “Gimlet Media” is losing my potential advertising views as well by going this route. But since “Crimetown” season one had some of the worst podcast sponsors there are, since I fast-foward through podcast advertisements whenever I can, and since I make it a policy never to buy any product advertised on a podcast, technically, “Gimlet Media” isn’t losing anything from me.)
(Also: podcasts do not have “seasons”. Stop saying that. If you want to do a block of thematically related episodes and take a break between them, fine: just don’t call it a season. TV shows have “seasons” and they have seasons because they take a break between spring and fall for ratings and demographic reasons. Podcasts are not TV shows and do not have to follow that model. Calling your block of episodes a “season” makes you sound like maroons, as far as I’m concerned.)