Shot:
Chaser:
Bagatelle (#84)
April 4th, 2023Obit watch: April 4, 2023.
April 4th, 2023Sister Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou.
She was a world-class pianist:
…music that drew on her classical training but seemed to partake of rhythm and blues, jazz and other influences. The relatively few who discovered it knew they had found their way to something singular.
The musician Norah Jones was one who did, especially after hearing the album “Éthiopiques 21,” a collection of Sister Guèbrou’s piano solos that was part of a record series spotlighting folkloric and pop music from Ethiopia.
“This album is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever heard: part Duke Ellington, part modal scales, part the blues, part church music,” Ms. Jones told The New York Times in 2020. “It resonated in all those ways for me.”
As you may have guessed from the “Sister”, and the categories on this post, she went in a different direction:
She had a chance to study at the Royal Academy of Music in London and seemed on the way to a career as a concert pianist, the BBC documentary says, but that prospect fell through for reasons Sister Guèbrou would not detail. That led her to a spiritual reassessment of her life, and by her early 20s, she was a nun. She spent 10 years in a hilltop monastery in Ethiopia.
“I took off my shoes and went barefoot for 10 years,” she told Ms. Molleson. “No shoes, no music, just prayer.”
She returned to her family and by the 1960s was recording some of her music; her first album was released in Germany in 1967, according to the website of a foundation established in her name to promote music education.
She made several other records over the next 30 years, donating the proceeds to the poor. In the mid-1980s, she left Ethiopia and settled into an Ethiopian Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem, spending the rest of her life there. Information on her survivors was not available.
She was 99.
Sharon Acker passed over the weekend.
The “Perry Mason” mentioned in the headline was actually “The New Perry Mason”, in which she played “Della Street” opposite Monte Markham’s Perry Mason. It lasted one season. Other credits include three “Quincy, M.E.” appearances, “The Rockford Files”, “Hec Ramsey”, “The Bold Ones: The Senator”, and a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.
Roy McGrath. Mr. McGrath was the former chief of staff for the governor of Maryland. Three weeks ago, he went on the run: the day his corruption trial was supposed to start. He was charged with “wire fraud, embezzlement, misconduct in office and improper use of state funds”.
Authorities tracked him down in Tennessee yesterday. There was a confrontation with FBI agents, and Mr. McGrath was shot. He died in a local hospital. At this point, it isn’t clear if his wound was self-inflicted or if he was shot by the FBI.
Your loser update: April 4, 2023.
April 4th, 2023It has been a few days. Where are we in the season?
MLB teams that still have a chance to go 0-162:
Philadelphia
Obit watch: April 3, 2023.
April 3rd, 2023Ryuichi Sakamoto, Japanese musician. THR.
Cool story, bro:
More:
Equally comfortable in futuristic techno, orchestral works, video game tracks and intimate piano solos, Mr. Sakamoto created music that was catchy, emotive and deeply attuned to the sounds around him. Along with issuing numerous solo albums, he collaborated with a wide range of musicians across genres, and received an Oscar, a BAFTA, a Grammy and two Golden Globes.
His Yellow Magic Orchestra, which swept the charts in the late 1970s and early ’80s, produced catchy hits like “Computer Game” on synthesizers and sequencers, while also satirizing Western ideas of Japanese music.
“The big theme of him is curiosity,” the musician Carsten Nicolai, a longtime collaborator, said in a phone interview in 2021. “Ryuichi understood, very early, that not necessarily one specific genre will be the future of music — that the conversation between different styles, and unusual styles, may be the future.”
He also acted a little:
Mr. Sakamoto was beginning to achieve wide recognition in the early 1980s when the director Nagisa Oshima asked him to co-star, alongside David Bowie, in “Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence,” a 1983 film about a Japanese P.O.W. camp. Mr. Sakamoto, having no background in acting, agreed under the condition that he could also score the film.
The movie’s synth-heavy title track remained one of Mr. Sakamoto’s most famous compositions. He often adapted it, including for “Forbidden Colors,” a vocal version with the singer David Sylvian, as well as piano renditions and sweeping orchestral arrangements.
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He began piano lessons at age 6, and started to compose soon after. Early influences included Bach and Debussy — whom he once called “the door to all 20th century music” — and he discovered modern jazz as he fell in with a crowd of hipster rebels as a teenager. (At the height of the student protest movement, he and his classmates shut down their high school for several weeks.)
Mr. Sakamoto was drawn to modern art and especially the avant-garde work of Cage. He studied composition and ethnomusicology at Tokyo University of the Arts and began playing around with synthesizers and performing in the local pop scene.
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In 1978, Mr. Sakamoto released his debut solo album, “Thousand Knives,” a trippy amalgam that opens with the musician reciting a poem by Mao through a vocoder, followed by a reggae beat and a procession of Herbie Hancock-inspired improvisations. That year, the bassist Haruomi Hosono invited him and the drummer Yukihiro Takahashi to form a trio that became Yellow Magic Orchestra. (Mr. Takahashi died in January.)
The band’s self-titled 1978 album was a huge hit, and influenced numerous electronic music genres, from synth pop to techno. The group broke up in 1984, in part because Mr. Sakamoto wanted to pursue solo work. (They have periodically reunited since the 1990s.) Mr. Sakamoto continued tinkering with outré, high-tech approaches in his 1980 album “B-2 Unit,” which included the otherworldly electro single “Riot in Lagos.”
Lawrence mentioned that we’ve actually seen two films scored by Mr. Sakamoto in the past 12 months (“The Last Emperor” and “The Revenant”).
Your loser update: March 31, 2023.
March 31st, 2023MLB teams that still have a chance to go 0-162:
Boston
Cleveland
Detroit
Kansas City
Houston
LA Angels
Miami
Philadelphia
Washington
Cincinnati
Milwaukee
St. Louis
Arizona
San Diego
San Francisco
In other news, the Astros lost to the White Sox yesterday. As we all know, this means they won’t be able to sell beer at Minute Maid Park this year…
…because they lost the opener.
Obit watch: March 31, 2023.
March 31st, 2023Presidents from Eisenhower to Trump caught the flak. He sang “Bail to the Chief” for Richard M. Nixon, urged George H.W. Bush to retire “to a home for the chronically preppy,” likened Jimmy Carter’s plan to streamline government to “putting racing stripes on an arthritic camel,” and recalled first seeing Ronald Reagan “in the picture-frame department at Woolworth’s, between Gale Storm and Walter Pidgeon.”
Did he have any writers? “Oh, yes — 100 in the Senate and 435 in the House of Representatives.” The true meaning of the Cold War? “In communism, man exploits man. But with capitalism, it’s the other way around.” Gun control? “I will defend my Second Amendment right to use my musket to defend my Third Amendment right to never, ever allow a British soldier to live in my house.”
I was a big Mark Russell fan when I was in high school, but I lost touch with his work after I went to college the first time.
Michael Blackwood, filmmaker. He wasn’t someone I’ve heard of before, but I want to find some of his work.
He followed the jazz pianist and composer Thelonious Monk on tour in Europe. He tagged along as the minimalist composer Philip Glass prepared for the 1984 premieres of his opera, “Akhnaten,” in Houston and Stuttgart, Germany.
He observed the creative process of the Bulgarian-born conceptual artist Christo during his creation of epic environmental projects like “Running Fence” and “Wrapped Walkways.” And he let Isamu Noguchi explain his approach to his art as they walked among his sculptures.
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His fascination with architecture led him to make films about some of its stars, including Louis Kahn, Richard Meier, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Peter Eisenman and Frank Gehry.
In his review of “Frank Gehry: The Formative Years” (1988) in The New York Times, the architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote that Mr. Blackwood “has built up an admirable oeuvre of films about architects and architecture,” and that Mr. Blackwood has Mr. Gehry “ramble though his work in a way that is both inviting and informative.”
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You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#103 and #104 in a series)
March 31st, 2023Yeah, yeah, yeah. Donald Trump. This is well covered everywhere, but I don’t want anyone saying that I’m not an equal opportunity promoter of hyenas in flames. I try very hard to be impartial in my coverage.
Mike the Musicologist sent over an interesting story: Joanne Marian Segovia is the executive director of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, which I guess is their union.
Ms. Segovia has been indicted for smuggling fentanyl.
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Law enforcement first learned of the connection to Segovia, who has been with the SJPOA since 2003, when investigating a network in India that ships drugs into the United States. A network operative’s phone was searched, and Homeland Security agents found messages that mentioned “J Segovia” at an address in San Jose, including the words “180 pills SOMA 500mg,” the complaint shows.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection records showed that five shipments to Segovia’s address were intercepted between July 2019 and January 2023. The packages contained more than a kilogram of controlled substances such as Zolpidem (a sedative used to treat insomnia) and Tramadol (a narcotic used to treat pain), per the court document.
The packages mailed to Segovia’s home had innocuous labels, such as “Shirts Tops,” “Chocolate and Sweets” and “Gift Makeup,” according to the DOJ. Homeland Security said shipments from several foreign countries with such labels often contain illicit drugs.
I’m not sure if this falls under “dumber than a bag of hair” or “narcotics are a hell of a drug”:
Vargas said he believes Segovia continued to order and pay for controlled substances after being interviewed by Homeland Security agents. He also believes Segovia knowingly gave false information to investigators.
Segovia is charged with an attempt to unlawfully import valeryl fentanyl. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison.
To be clear (and I feel like this is kind of buried in the story) she was a civilian employee, not a sworn member of the SJPD. Also, trying to give her some grace, she may have been dealing with an addiction, or self-medicating for chronic pain. However, the article seems to indicate that she wasn’t just ordering drugs, but she was also sending them to others: in one case, she gave the return address as the SJPOA’s office.
And, of course, for both of these: “All suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law.“
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#102 in a series)
March 30th, 2023Remember Mark Ridley-Thomas? Don’t feel bad if you don’t: it has been a minute.
In brief, LA council member Ridley-Thomas was indicted for taking bribes from a dean at USC, in return for sending government funds to the “School of Social Work”.
The verdict came down today.
More accessible coverage from Deadline: he was convicted of one count of bribery, one of conspiracy, one count of honest services mail fraud, and four counts of honest services wire fraud. The jury acquitted him on 12 other counts.
Ms. Flynn, who was also indicted, pled out to one bribery count in September. (I missed that story. Sorry.)
Obit watch: March 30, 2023.
March 30th, 2023As most of my readers know, I am something of a greedy gut. So here’s a semi-obscure food related obit that’s relevant to my interests: Yang Bing-yi.
He founded Din Tai Fung: they didn’t invent the soup dumpling, but they popularized it.
Mr. Yang and his wife, Lai Pen-mei, opened their first modest storefront in 1958, laying the foundation for what would become a franchise that their children and grandchildren have expanded to more than 170 locations across Taiwan, mainland China and 13 other countries, including the United States, Japan, Australia and the United Arab Emirates, with a menu that includes such specialties as wontons in red chili oil, shredded tofu and seaweed salad, and steamed truffle-and-pork dumplings.
A Hong Kong branch has been awarded a Michelin star five times.
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Mr. Hom, the chef and writer, said in an interview that Mr. Yang’s drive for precision — down to the diameter of the wrappers and the weight of each soup dumpling — set a standard that has stood the test of time and transcended borders.
“It’s consistently good, no matter where I’ve eaten, in Singapore, Bangkok, L.A., London,” he said. He added that he had made a practice of eating the dumplings slowly, leaving some in the bamboo basket where they are served to observe whether the soupy filling would hold up within the thin skin. They always did.
D.M. Thomas, author. I never read it, but I remember back in the day The White Hotel was a huge deal.
FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for local figure Murray Callahan. He used to own Callahan’s General Store, which is kind of a famous local spot. It seems tourist oriented to me these days, but I think back in the day before Austin sprawled out that way, it was more of a feed and seed kind of place: a very early version of Tractor Supply Company, if you will. (I went out there once with my folks some years back, which is what I base my impressions on: while Austin has expanded in that direction, it’s still kind of off the beaten path for me.)
Obit watch: March 29, 2023.
March 29th, 2023Bill Zehme, noted biographer.
Mr. Zehme’s biography of Mr. Sinatra, “The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’” (1997), was a best seller. He also shared the author credit on best-selling memoirs by Regis Philbin (“I’m Only One Man!” in 1995 and “Who Wants to Be Me?” in 2000) and Jay Leno (“Leading With My Chin” in 1996).
His other books included “Intimate Strangers: Comic Profiles and Indiscretions of the Very Famous” (2002), “Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman” (1999) and “Hef’s Little Black Book” (2004), a stream-of-consciousness collaboration with Hugh M. Hefner, the founder and publisher of Playboy magazine.
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Mr. Zehme provided tips from Mr. Sinatra about what men should never do in the presence of a woman (yawn) and about the finer points of his haberdashery: “He wore only snap-brim Cavanaughs — fine felts and porous palmettos — and these were his crowns, cocked askew, as defiant as he was.”
“Mr. Sinatra’s gauge for when a hat looked just right,” Mr. Zehme wrote, was “when no one laughs.”
George Nassar is burning in Hell. The name might ring a bell for some of you: he was Albert “The Boston Strangler” DeSalvo’s cellmate, and DeSalvo supposedly confessed his crimes to Nassar.
In 1995, Mr. Nassar recalled in an interview with The Boston Globe that Mr. DeSalvo had described the killings 30 years earlier as they walked along a concrete hallway at Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts, where both men were incarcerated and undergoing mental health evaluations. Mr. DeSalvo was being held on unrelated charges of armed robbery, assault and sex offenses involving four women.
“He began describing a crime and watching my reaction to see if it was too abhorrent to listen to,” Mr. Nassar said. “Some of it was horrible, particularly the crimes of stabbing a woman under her breasts in Cambridge. But I wasn’t there to condemn.”
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Mr. Nassar told his lawyer, the famed criminal defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, about the confession and recruited him to represent Mr. DeSalvo.“We were setting it up,” he told WBZ, “saying, ‘Al, you’re going to confess, you’re going to trial, you’re going to do your book, we’re going to take care of your family,’ and he was saying, ‘OK, OK, OK.’”
Mr. DeSalvo subsequently confessed to Mr. Bailey and gave his account to psychiatrists, a state investigator and the Boston police, but for reasons that are unclear he was never charged with any of the killings. He later retracted the confession.
In 1967, Mr. DeSalvo was convicted of the robbery, assault and sex offenses he had been charged with and sentenced to life imprisonment. During the trial, another inmate, Stanley Setterlund, testified that Mr. DeSalvo had confessed to the murders “and laughed.”
This is one of those odd obits: Mr. Nassar actually died in December of 2018, but for various reasons, his death only became public knowledge recently.
Obit watch: March 28, 2023.
March 28th, 2023Things have been quiet on the obit front the past few days. Now watch as someone prominent dies later on today. (I don’t want this to happen, but it seems that whenever I’m thinking things have been quiet, something happens.)
In the meantime, Lawrence sent me a couple of obits a few days ago:
Michael Reaves, writer. He worked on “Batman: The Animated Series”, wrote some “Star Wars” novels, and had a lot of other credits.
Eric Brown, SF author and critic for The Guardian.
Great and good FotB Borepatch lost his beloved dog, Wolfgang. Those of you who are familiar with Borepatch and Wolfgang might want to send condolences his way.
Obit watch: March 25, 2023.
March 25th, 2023Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel and the “Moore” in “Moore’s Law”.
In 1965, in what became known as Moore’s Law, he predicted that the number of transistors that could be placed on a silicon chip would double at regular intervals for the foreseeable future, thus increasing the data-processing power of computers exponentially.
He added two corollaries later: The evolving technology would make computers more and more expensive to build, yet consumers would be charged less and less for them because so many would be sold. Moore’s Law held up for decades.
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In interviews, Mr. Moore was characteristically humble about his achievements, particularly the technical advances that Moore’s Law made possible.
“What I could see was that semiconductor devices were the way electronics were going to become cheap. That was the message I was trying to get across,” he told the journalist Michael Malone in 2000. “It turned out to be an amazingly precise prediction — a lot more precise than I ever imagined it would be.”
Not only was Mr. Moore predicting that electronics would become much cheaper over time, as the industry shifted from away from discrete transistors and tubes to silicon microchips, but over the years his prediction proved so reliable that technology firms based their product strategy on the assumption that Moore’s Law would hold.
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I believe he was the last surviving member of “the traitorous eight”, the men who defected from William Shockley and founded the hugely influential Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation.
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Mr. Wittine was a Boy Scout. He also had cerebral palsy. He busted his hind end to earn Eagle Scout rank:
By 1978, he had all the required badges. But the Boy Scouts wouldn’t let him advance to Eagle because he was 23 at the time, and the Scouts required that you be under 18.
His scoutmaster, Richard Golden, wrote letters to local newspapers, and in late March of that year journalists began relating Mr. Wittine’s story. The two men were soon on “Good Morning America,” Mr. Wittine pointing at his word board and Mr. Golden spelling out the letters.
The public “bombarded” the Boy Scouts of America with letters and phone calls, The Times reported. In a spontaneous outburst of shared sentiment, former scouts throughout the nation rooted around in their attics, found their Eagle medals and mailed them to Mr. Wittine.
“Allow me to share my medal with you,” a Florida man wrote in a handwritten letter. “It is old and tarnished, awarded fifteen years ago, but the cherished memories are as fresh and exciting as if it were yesterday.”
Adding to the pressure on the Boy Scouts of America, Mr. Golden issued a warning: He and Mr. Wittine would appear at a national Scouting conference soon to be held in Phoenix, even though they had not yet been invited. “We may go anyway, not only to argue Greg’s case but that of Scouting’s approach to all handicapped persons,” Mr. Golden told The Associated Press.
Days after that interview, on May 5, the Boy Scouts issued a news release. The first sentence read, “The Boy Scouts of America has changed its regulations, and the way is now clear for 23-year-old Scout Gregory Wittine of Roosevelt, N.Y., to become an Eagle Scout.”
It was a major change in policy, dropping “all age restrictions” for “severely handicapped” scouts while still requiring that they earn the same badges as other Eagle Scouts. And it brought Mr. Wittine a flood of more attention.
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The Boy Scouts of America does not track how many Eagle Scouts have been able to earn their rank after age 18 because of a disability, but in an interview, Mike Matzinger, a national leader of the organization with knowledge about scouts who have disabilities, estimated the number to be in the tens of thousands.
Ben Burns has been the scoutmaster of a troop of disabled scouts in Dallas since 2010. In an interview, he said that the possibility of becoming an Eagle Scout gave his troop members a sense of mission, and that six of them — all over the age of 18, including his son Tim — had attained the rank.
Tim has Down syndrome and struggles to talk. But at his Eagle Scout ceremony in 2021, he gave a speech.
“That’s been the biggest moment in his life, because he was the center of attention, and it was all about him,” Mr. Burns said. “I’m not sure what he’d be doing with his life if he didn’t have Boy Scouts.”
Mr. Burns said that the approach Mr. Wittine conceived — working extremely hard to obtain badges that might seem out of reach, but getting ample time to do so — struck him as ideal. His scouts, who have a wide range of disabilities, pitch their own tents, use hand saws and learn how to climb back into sailboats after they capsize.
“When our boys earn it, they earn it,” he said.