For all the issues I have with Gregg Easterbrook, I do think this is a pretty swell meditation on model trains and Christmas.
While this is on the “All Predictions Wrong” substack, it is a re-run, so Easterbrook doesn’t have it paywalled.
The Spirit of Christmas 5.
December 24th, 2025Obit watch: December 23, 2025.
December 23rd, 2025This is a couple of days old, but it got past me because the weekend was busy: May Britt.
She had a career as an actress, including the original “Mission: Impossible” and the 1959 “The Blue Angel”. She married Sammy Davis Jr. in 1960.
There was a lot of backlash at the time, and the marriage pretty much cost Ms. Britt her career.
Chris Rea, musician. I wouldn’t say I was a big fan of his work, but back in the day when I listened to the radio, KGSR would play “Texas”. I thought that was a pretty swell song.
And it is Christmas, right?
Crazy horse people update.
December 22nd, 2025Tatyana Remley took her own life outside a bar in San Diego Thursday night, authorities confirmed to the Daily Mail.
Remely, 44, died from a “gunshot wound to the head” after she called her estranged husband from the bar, complaining about her new partner, her husband, Mark Remeley said.
“She FaceTimed me while in the bathroom stall and told me, ‘I’m with this guy and he’s being a jerk,”‘ Mark Remely told the Mail.
…
In August 2023, she was charged with trying to take out a hit on her ex, along with charges of carrying a concealed weapon in a vehicle and possessing a firearm in public.
She pleaded guilty to the charges and served one year of her nearly four-year prison sentence.
The Spirit of Christmas 4.
December 22nd, 2025A 2025 RevolverGuy Christmas Story.
It isn’t required, and it isn’t a Christmas story, but it might help put some of the “theology” here in context if you also read “Homecoming Day” from earlier this year as well.
Obit watch: December 22, 2025.
December 22nd, 2025James Ransone, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “Oldboy” (the Spike Lee remake), the bad “Hawaii Five-0”, and “Law and Order”.
Theodor Pistek, artist. As the NYT notes, he won an Academy Award for costume design for “Amadeus”. He was also a racing driver, and did paintings inspired by racing. I find “Ecce Homo” (reproduced in the obit) particularly striking.
Obit watch: December 19, 2025.
December 19th, 2025Peter Arnett, noted war correspondent.
From Vietnam’s jungles to Iraq, where he interviewed President Saddam Hussein, Mr. Arnett broke news and rules, infuriated national leaders and inspired generations of journalists. He was twice among the last Western TV broadcasters in Baghdad — as the Persian Gulf War began in 1991 and as an American-led coalition invaded in 2003.
Over 45 years, by his own account, he covered 17 wars in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America, first for The Associated Press and later for CNN and other television and print organizations. He made television documentaries, wrote two books, lectured widely and in 1997 interviewed Osama bin Laden, the leader of the Al Qaeda terrorist organization, somewhere in Afghanistan.
…
…
Sue Bender, author.
Greg Biffle, former NASCAR driver. He, his wife and two children, and three other passengers were killed yesterday when their small plane crashed on approach to Statesville Regional Airport.
The Spirit of Christmas 3.
December 19th, 2025Another good Christmas story, this one from Dr. Dabbs. And I’m not just saying that because the story features a F-4 Phantom II jet.
Flaming hyena update.
December 18th, 2025Remember Marty Small, Sr., the mayor of Atlantic City? Charged with beating the s–t out of his teenage daughter?
Merry Christmas! Not guilty on all counts!
Mr. Small was accused of using a broom to strike his daughter in the head, causing her to lose consciousness. At other times in the two-month period, he hit her in the legs repeatedly, causing bruising, and threatened to “earth slam” her, prosecutors said.
“We’re not saying there shouldn’t be disagreements in the home,” a prosecutor, Elizabeth Fischer, told jurors Tuesday in a closing statement, “but we’re saying it shouldn’t be met with violence.”
The jury began deliberating late Tuesday. Almost immediately, the panel requested to listen again to a recording, made by Mr. Small’s daughter and her boyfriend, in which the mayor can be heard threatening to slam her to the ground.
Prosecutors had said that the threats were meant to instill terror; Mr. Small’s lawyers argued that they were the warnings of a parent trying to correct the behavior of a child who, in a video also shown to jurors, was prone to extreme agitation when punished.
“A father takes a phone away from his daughter, and that results in the Tasmanian devil coming out,” Mr. Small’s lawyer, Louis M. Barbone, told jurors after replaying footage taken during a separate family conflict.
In New Jersey, corporal punishment that is not considered excessive is legal.
The charges against his wife are still pending.
Firings watch.
December 17th, 2025Brian Smith out at Ohio University.
“For cause”.
Not much more information than that, though he had been previously placed “on leave”.
He was hired almost exactly a year ago: the team was 8-4 this season.
ESPN.
Obit watch: December 17, 2025.
December 17th, 2025Gil Gerard, actor.
Other credits include “Airport ’77”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, and “E.A.R.T.H. Force”.
Robert Samuelson, long time economics columnist for “Newsweek” and the Washington Post.
Norman Podhoretz, conservative political writer.
(Hattip on Mr. Gerard and Mr. Podhoretz to Lawrence.)
Edited to add: archived NYT obits for Mr. Gerard and Mr. Podhoretz.
The spirit of Christmas 2.
December 17th, 2025Remember the other day, I linked to a swell Christmas meditation from LawDog?
Well, he’s expanded it some, with the intent of publishing a children’s book for Christmas next year.
Christmas car update.
December 16th, 2025The car passed the state emissions inspection with no problem. Other than a little bit of confusion because I’d never been to this place before, it was mostly a smooth process.
With an inspection in hand, I can renew my car registration.
The State of Texas used to have a simple and straightforward website for registration renewal.
Not any more. Oh, no. Everything has shifted to something called “Texas By Texas”. So, first of all, you have to set up an account if you’ve never used “Texas by Texas” before. (I had not: I think TxT is new this year.)
Not only do they want your email address, they also want all kinds of other information. Including your physical address, your mailing address, your driver’s license number, the audit code off your driver’s license, etc. etc. et bloody cetra.
Then, once you have your TxT account set up…as far as I can tell, that’s just for your driver’s license. You have to go through a separate step to link your car registration to TxT.
At least, once I finished that, I didn’t have to fill in a lot of information to actually get the renewal done. It didn’t even ask me for proof of insurance or inspection: I think all this stuff is linked by computer statewide these days.
Of course, there were the donations. Literally half a page of donations you could make while renewing your registration:
- “Support Texas Veterans”
- Texas state parks (as I recall, they want at least $5 for that)
- Organ donation
- Special Olympics
- “Ending Homelessness Fund”
- “Evidence Testing Grant Program”
- “Stop Human Trafficking”
And the registration itself is $78.25 before any donations. Including $10 for bridges, $1.50 for “child safety”, $7.50 for the “inspection replacement fee” (just because the state did away with safety inspections doesn’t mean that they don’t want their money), $2.75 for the “emissions inspection fee” (that’s over and above the $11.50 state fee for the emissions inspection, plus $7 for something, I’m not exactly sure what, plus 75 cents for using a credit card), and $4.75 for “processing and handling”. Tell you what, I’ll give you $2 for processing, and I’ll do the “handling” myself.
Nickels. Dimes. They add up, you know?