…and what could be more patriotic than guns and gun books?
This isn’t quite as patriotic as it could be, since the first two of these are about Africa. And the second two are duplicates of existing books in my collection, so I’m not going to spend as much time on them as I usually do.
El jumperino here…
Robert Towne. NYT. IMDB.
A couple of quibbles:
I think all of these are fine writers, but I would also add William Goldman. I don’t think I’d put him ahead of Wilder, but I think I would put him ahead of the Coen brothers (maybe, and just by a nose) and possibly ahead of Towne. And I suspect Goldman would tell me it isn’t a competition and I shouldn’t worry about it.
Interesting, since “8 Million Ways to Die” seems to be thought of as a piece of s–t: not just by Block/Scudder fans, but by almost everyone. (To be fair, there was a lot of studio interference with the movie.)
Michael Corcoran, local music journalist and historian.
Very brief catch up here:
Martin Mull. NYT. IMDB.
I was involved in the Great Folk Music scare back in the sixties, when it almost caught on.
Happy Bobby Bonilla Day, one and all!
…I’m going to sit back with a large knock of bourbon and some ginger ale (real ginger ale, not diet: Drink Canada Dry, or die trying), and drink a toast to guffaw and Gavrilo Princip Day!
I suppose, technically, it would be more fitting to take a shot. But I have a bottle around the house that I wanted to finish up.
Celeste Murphy used to be the police chief in Chattanooga. (The one in Tennessee, in case you were wondering.)
She resigned on Wednesday.
She turned herself in on Thursday.
This sounds like more of that voter fraud that never happens. Or it could be someone trying desperately to hold onto a position that requires residence in the area:
We looked into her residency information, and found that she is listed as a homeowner in Atlanta on the Fulton County Property Records website.
She is listed as having purchased a home in September 2020, and still being one of two primary homeowners.
Property tax logs show that taxes were still paid on the home.
Meanwhile, a look at Hamilton County Property Records shows that she is not listed as a homeowner in Chattanooga.
“Kinky” Friedman followup: NYT. THR.
How about a little music?
Edited to add: Reason tribute. Noted here for two reasons:
1. Jesse Walker mentions another of my favorite Kinky songs that I decided not to use, but it was a close decision: “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You”.
2. I had always associated Kinky with the “dropped acid and listened to Shiva’s Headband at the Armadillo World Headquarters” crowd, so this is an interesting quote:
This is pushing the definition of an “obit” just a bit, but Will Dabbs, MD, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite modern gun writers, has a nice tribute up to Donald Sutherland.
More specifically, it is a tribute to Donald Sutherland’s role as “Oddball” in “Kelly’s Heroes”.
I’ve seen “Kelly’s Heroes”, but when I was a child, on the late night movies. (Kids, ask your parents about late night movies on TV.) I think the Saturday Movie Conspiracy is going to be re-watching it in the fairly near future. And I had not heard the story about the grenades.
A while back, some jerk said:
We have our answer: yes, you can.
The auction opens tomorrow, though some things have already sold at the “Buy It Now” price. Yes, it is pricy stuff, but it is also for (what I think is) a good cause.
And even if you don’t buy anything from the auction, there’s a lot of artists participating that might be worth looking into.
This is breaking, and I may have more later on: “Kinky” Friedman, Texas musician, author, and politician. KVUE. KSAT. HouChron (archived). (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Bill Cobbs, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “A Mighty Wind”, “The Slap Maxwell Story”, and one of the spinoffs of a minor 1960s SF TV series.
Finally, a weird one:
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Frederick Crews, literary critic and anti-Freudian.
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One unlikely cause that he devoted himself to in recent years was to assert the innocence of Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach who was convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing young boys and is now in prison.
“I joined the small group of skeptics who have concluded that America’s paramount sexual villain is nothing of the sort,” Professor Crews wrote in one article in 2021, adding, “believe it or not, there isn’t a shred of credible evidence that he ever molested anyone.”
Tamayo Perry, surfer and actor. He was 49, and apparently died after a shark attack.
Apropos of nothing in particular:
I believe when most of us think of Winston Churchill, we think of his rather pungent turns of phrase. Which is fair. But there’s a story:
There was a joke going around, attributed to Churchill: “An empty taxi arrived and out of it stepped Attlee.”
John Colville, Churchill’s private secretary, repeated the joke – and the attribution – to him. Churchill responded:
It wasn’t all clever quips. There was a neat sense of personal honor there, too.
I have said, more than once, that I am an equal opportunity observer of hyenas on fire. Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Communist, I don’t care. (Except maybe I take more joy out of Communist hyenas on fire.)
(“Communist Hyenas On Fire” is the name of my next band. We play covers of Trotsky Icepick.)
Also, I couldn’t pass this up because: strippers, always with the strippers.
Neil Friske is a Republican Michigan House representative. I’ve seen him described as a “prominent Second Amendment activist”. I’d never heard of him previously, but perhaps his 2A activism is more prominent in Michigan.
Rep. Friske was arrested early Thursday morning.
Lansing Police Public Information Director Jordan Gulkis confirmed to the Free Press. In a statement posted to Friske’s Facebook page, his campaign called the arrest “highly suspect.”
Gulkis said LPD officers were dispatched initially to the nearby 2100 block of Forest Road to respond to reports of a male with a gun, “as well as possible shots that were fired,” she said over email.
Friske was arrested “for a felony-level offense” after officers made contact. Additional investigation remains ongoing, Gulkis said. LPD expects to present the case to the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office for review Friday.
Other reports (attributed to “sources”) claim that he “sexually assaulted an exotic dancer and then chased her with a firearm”.
Rep. Friske’s office denies the allegations, and claims the timing is suspicious: he’s currently running for re-election.
In other news that doesn’t quite rise to the level of flames, but definitely involves a lot of smoke: The FBI raided the home of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao yesterday. Nobody knows why, and the FBI isn’t saying much.
By the way, Mayor Thao is dealing with a recall election this November, a fact I did not previously know.
FotB RoadRich sent over a story (by way of Must Read Texas) that also isn’t quite flames, yet, but definitely a lot of smoke. Let me see if I can summarize it for you:
David R. Jones was a Federal bankruptcy judge in Houston.
Kirkland & Ellis is the world’s largest law firm.
Jones became the nation’s busiest bankruptcy judge after Kirkland, the top U.S. firm for advising financially-troubled companies, steered most of its largest chapter 11 cases to his court.
Elizabeth Freeman is an attorney who worked as co-council with Kirkland on bankruptcy cases in Jones’s court. She worked for a law firm, Jackson Walker, until December of 2022, when she left and started her own law office.
And you guessed it: Jones and Freeman were allegedly lovers.
And it gets better:
The anonymous letter first went to Michael Van Deelen, a former high-school math teacher with a history of filing lawsuits against people he believed had wronged him. He was angry over a bankruptcy plan from Kirkland—approved by Jones—that wiped out Van Deelen’s $146,541 investment in an oil-and-gas drilling company that had gone bust.
Van Deelen sent a copy of the letter to Jackson Walker, where Freeman was a partner, and the law firm questioned her. Freeman acknowledged a romantic relationship with Jones that she said had ended about a year earlier. Jackson Walker forwarded the letter to Jones and shared its allegations with Kirkland, according to court papers filed by both firms.
Van Deelen tried to submit the letter to court in his effort to disqualify Jones from the bankruptcy case involving his lost investment. In a court hearing, a Kirkland partner argued that the letter was unsubstantiated and moved to exclude it as evidence. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur, Jones’s former law partner and a court colleague, sided with Kirkland. He denied Van Deelen’s request. Jones later signed an order to permanently seal the letter from public view.
Jackson Walker didn’t publicly disclose what it learned about the Jones-Freeman relationship at the time. Kirkland also kept quiet about the allegation. Jones remained Houston’s chief bankruptcy judge, and Freeman continued to work on Kirkland cases involving Jones.
So a judge and a lawyer were engaged in a pretty serious conflict of interest, and the two law firms involved plus the Federal bankruptcy court conspired to cover it up.
Months later, Van Deelen found the evidence he wanted on a website that searches public records for personal information. “All I had for proof was that anonymous letter,” he said. “Then I asked TruthFinder.” He learned from property records on the Harris County website that Jones and Freeman had bought a home together in Houston in 2017 and still owned it.
Armed with that information, Van Deelen filed a lawsuit against Jones in October. This time, he included the property records with the anonymous letter. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal shortly after, Jones confirmed the relationship.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was alerted and initiated an investigation against Jones. After a little more than a week, the court’s chief judge said she found probable cause that Jones had committed misconduct regarding his intimate relationship with Freeman. Jones resigned days later.
I don’t know that there’s anything actually criminal here, though I suspect there is if someone cares to look hard enough. But this seems like the kind of thing that should get people disbarred from the practice of law. (And removed from the bench, but Jones is already gone. It seems like Judge Isgur is still a bankruptcy judge, though.)