Obit watch: March 8, 2023.

March 8th, 2023

Dr. Justin O. Schmidt. He was an entomologist, and you may actually have heard of him.

Dr. Schmidt invented the “Pain Index for Stinging Insects”.

He ranked, from 1 to 4, the pain caused by the stings of 80 types of bees, wasps and ants that he had encountered, and gave vivid descriptions of what they felt like.
Anthophorid bee, Level 1: “Almost pleasant, a lover just bit your earlobe a little too hard.”
The bullhorn acacia ant, Level 1.5: “A rare, piercing, elevated sort of pain. Someone has fired a staple into your cheek.”
Red-headed paper wasp, Level 3: “Immediate, irrationally intense and unrelenting. This is the closest you will come to seeing the blue of a flame from within the fire.”
Bullet ant, Level 4: “Pure, intense, brilliant pain. Like walking over flaming charcoal with a 3-inch nail in your heel.”

…

“He was one of the most insatiably curious people I’ve ever met,” Stephen Bachmann, a colleague at the Hayden center and a close friend, said in a telephone interview. “He questioned everything and didn’t suffer fools, especially administrators.”
Martha Hunter, a professor of entomology at the University of Arizona, where Dr. Schmidt was an adjunct scientist, called him “an amazing natural historian” with an extensive knowledge of the plants of the Sonoran desert, in addition to stinging insects.
“The story is that Justin once grabbed a tarantula hawk, just to see what the sting would be like,” she said. “It’s the last thing I would do.”
The tarantula hawk, a kind of wasp, ranked a 4 on the pain index:
“Blinding, fierce, shockingly electric. A running hair dryer has just been dropped in your bubble bath.”

David Lindley, noted musician. He did a lot of session work:

With his head-turning mastery of seemingly any instrument with strings, Mr. Lindley became one of the most sought-after sidemen in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Mixing searing slide guitar work with global stylings on instruments from around the world, he brought depth and richness to recordings by luminaries like Bob Dylan, Dolly Parton, Warren Zevon, Ry Cooder and Iggy Pop.

…

He is best known for his work with Mr. Browne, with whom he toured and served as a featured performer on every Browne album from “For Everyman” (1973) to “Hold Out” (1980). His inventive fretwork was a cornerstone of many of Mr. Browne’s biggest hits, including the smash single “Running on Empty,” on which Mr. Lindley’s plaintive yet soaring lap steel guitar work helped capture both the exhaustion and the exhilaration of life on the road, as expressed in Mr. Browne’s lyrics.
Mr. Lindley’s guitar and fiddle could also be heard on landmark pop albums like Ms. Ronstadt’s “Heart Like a Wheel” (1974), which included the No. 1 single “You’re No Good,” and Rod Stewart’s “A Night on the Town” (1976), highlighted by the chart-topping single “Tonight’s the Night (Gonna Be Alright).”
Ever on the hunt for new sounds and textures, Mr. Lindley had “no idea” how many instruments he could play, as he told Acoustic Guitar magazine in 2000. But throughout his career he showed a knack for wringing emotion not only from the violin, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer and autoharp, but also from the Indian tanpura, the Middle Eastern oud and the Turkish saz.

Ed Fury. He has a fair number of credits in IMDB, mostly small roles, including “The F.B.I.”, “The Wild Women of Wongo”, “The Magician”, and a minor SF TV show from the 1960s.

Posted in Geek, Movies, Music, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 7, 2023.

March 7th, 2023

Sara Lane, actress.

As the headline notes, she was in 105 episodes of “The Virginian”. She only has four other credits in IMDB, two of which are Billy Jack movies. (“The Trial of Billy Jack” and “Billy Jack Goes to Washington”) The other two were “I Saw What You Did” and “Schoolgirls in Chains”.

For the record: NYT obit for Gary Rossington.

Posted in Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 6, 2023.

March 6th, 2023

Gary Rossington, founding member of Lynyrd Skynyrd.

In 1976, Rossington survived a devastating car wreck in which he drove his Ford Torino into a tree. The crash inspired Lynyrd Skynyrd’s song “That Smell.” Only a year later, in 1977, he survived the tragic plane crash in Mississippi that killed lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, guitarist Steve Gaines and backing vocalist Cassie Gaines.
Rossington broke both arms and a leg and punctured his stomach and liver in the infamous plane crash.

Jerry Richardson, former NFL player and former owner of the Carolina Panthers.

Mr. Richardson was only the second former player to own a team (George Halas of the Chicago Bears was the other), and he made the most of his two seasons in the league. A wide receiver for the Baltimore Colts, he caught a touchdown pass from quarterback Johnny Unitas in the 1959 N.F.L. title game and used his bonus of several thousand dollars to pay for the first Hardee’s hamburger restaurant in Spartanburg, S.C.
Mr. Richardson would open hundreds more restaurants in the next 30 years, making him one of the richest men in the Carolinas.

…

In 2017, he announced he was selling the Panthers soon after Sports Illustrated reported on accusations that he sexually harassed women working for the team and that he had used a racial slur in the presence of a Black scout. The league investigation into Mr. Richardson’s workplace behavior led to a $2.75 million fine. But by then, he had already reached an agreement to sell the team for a then-record $2.3 billion. Mr. Richardson never publicly addressed the allegations.

…

After his second season, he asked for a raise to $10,000. After the team offered $9,750, Richardson returned to Spartanburg, and with his former college teammate, Charles Bradshaw, bought the first Hardee’s hamburger restaurant there. Mr. Richardson was hands-on, cleaning parking lots, mopping floors and flipping burgers.
“He was very serious, very intent, and very quickly found himself to be interested in the running of the businesses,” said Hugh McColl, the former chief executive of Bank of America who, in the 1960s, lent Mr. Richardson $25,000 to open a Hardee’s in Charlotte, and who later helped him purchase the Panthers and build a new stadium.
Decades ago, Mr. McColl visited a Hardee’s with Mr. Richardson and watched him pick up trash outside the restaurant and hand it to the manager. “I’ve never seen it before or since,” he said of Mr. Richardson’s attention to detail.

Dave Wills, radio guy for the Tampa Bay Rays. He was 58.

Darin Jackson, a veteran member of the Sox broadcast team, always looked forward to catching up with Wills when the teams met.
“Man, he was as big as life. Dave was always a legend in the city of Chicago,” Jackson said. “And he was a good man for the game of baseball. If you had Dave as part of any organization, you’ve got yourself a true warrior going to war with you guys and for you guys.
“That’s what I remember most about Dave when he was doing his job. He was there to let the people know the truth. He was there to be honest about the organization. And he wasn’t afraid to go ahead and hold people to task. I loved that about him. He’s going to be missed.”

For the record: NYT obits for Ricou Browning and Gordon Pinsent.

Posted in Movies, Music, NFL, Obits, Radio, Sports | Comments Closed

Brief notes on film.

March 5th, 2023

We went to see “Cocaine Bear” yesterday.

Summary: if you only see one movie called “Cocaine Bear” this year, this is the one to see.

More seriously, “Cocaine Bear” delivers exactly what it advertises. There’s a bear, it eats a bunch of cocaine, and it mauls people. If this sounds like your cup of dark humored tea, you’ll probably enjoy this movie. If you’re asking yourself “Why would anyone go see a movie called ‘Cocaine Bear’?” or “Is there anyone in it I’ve ever heard of?”, this is almost certainly not the movie for you.

Two quick spoiler free notes:

1. There is not, as of this moment, an Internet Movie Firearms Database entry for “Cocaine Bear”. I hope this changes soon. I want to know what Ranger Liz was carrying. (It looked like some sort of Smith and Wesson to me. Maybe a Model 19 Combat Magnum, although it could possibly have been a Model 27. Lawrence observed that he thought the gun changed size in between scenes, so there could have been a continuity problem and perhaps they used both?) Other people wanted to know what Syd was using, and I’m kind of curious about that myself. And then there’s Bob (a Detective Special?) and Daveed (a Tokarev?)…

2. It is rare that a trailer actually makes me angry. But there’s a upcoming movie with Will Ferrell and Jamie Foxx doing voice work that succeeded in doing so. I won’t name the movie here (though a quick IMDB search would probably turn it up) so that I don’t give it any publicity. But based on what I saw in the trailer, everyone who worked on this pile of canine (waste) starting with the producers, extending down to Ferrell and Foxx, and going on down the line until we get to the craft services people, should have their license to work in film revoked and should be forced to get honest work. Perhaps cleaning out dog kennels.

Geez. Even the trailer for “Indiana Jones and I’m Getting To Old for this Stuff” didn’t make me mad. (Actually, I think there’s a possibility that could be fun. But I’ve only seen “Last Crusade” out of all the Indy films. No, I’ve never seen “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, and I never watched “The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles”. Point being, I don’t have a huge personal investment in the Indy franchise, so I may not be the best judge of these things.)

(The last trailer I can think of that actually made me angry was “All the Vermeers in New York”. And the problem with that wasn’t so much the movie itself, or even the trailer. It was that I seemed to be going to a lot of movies at the old Dobie Theater back then, and every time I went to one, they played that d–ned trailer until I got sick of it.)

Posted in Guns, Movies, Smith and Wesson | Comments Closed

This. This right here is why the Internet was invented.

March 4th, 2023

It is a few days old, but I only encountered it last night. And not so much for Joe Biden, but: Theodore Roosevelt.

Abe Lincoln.

And is it just me, or does Andrew Jackson look like he stepped out of a Universal werewolf movie?

Posted in History | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 4, 2023.

March 4th, 2023

Tom Sizemore. THR.

I did not know he was in “Twin Peaks” or “Shooter”. Or the bad “Hawaii 5-0”. And he was in the legendary “Zyzzyx Rd”. I did remember he was in the short-lived but stylishly violent “Robbery Homicide Division”.

Steve Mackey, of Pulp.

Thing I did not know:

In 2007, a ballet called Common People, set to the songs from [William Shatner’s] Has Been, was created by Margo Sappington and performed by the Milwaukee Ballet.

Ted Donaldson. Other credits include an episode of “The Silent Service” in 1958 (his last one in IMDB) and “The Red Stallion”.

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 3, 2023.

March 3rd, 2023

Wayne Shorter, saxaphone player and composer.

His career reached across more than half a century, largely inextricable from jazz’s complex evolution during that span. He emerged in the 1960s as a tenor saxophonist and in-house composer for pace-setting editions of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and the Miles Davis Quintet, two of the most celebrated small groups in jazz history.
He then helped pioneer fusion, with Davis and as a leader of Weather Report, which amassed a legion of fans. He also forged a bond with popular music in marquee collaborations with the singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, the guitarist Carlos Santana and the band Steely Dan, whose 1977 song “Aja” reaches a dynamic climax with his hide-and-seek tenor solo.

…

Mr. Shorter often said he was drawn to music because it has “velocity and mystery.” A lifelong fan of comic books and science fiction, he kept a shelf crowded with action figures and wore T-shirts emblazoned with the Superman “S” logo. In his later years, he cut the figure of a sage with a twinkle in his eye, issuing cryptic or elliptical statements that inevitably came back to a sense of play.
“Don’t throw away your childish dreams,” he said in 2012. “You have to be strong enough to protect them.”
Throughout his career he refused to hew too closely to any tradition except that of fearless expedition. “The word ‘jazz,’ to me,” he liked to say, “only means ‘I dare you.’”

…

In total, Mr. Shorter won 12 Grammy Awards, the last bestowed this year for best improvised jazz solo, for “Endangered Species,” a track, written with Ms. Spalding, from the album “Live at the Detroit Jazz Festival,” where he performed in a quartet with her, Terri Lyne Carrington and Leo Genovese.
He also received a lifetime achievement honor from the Recording Academy in 2015. He was a 2016 Guggenheim Fellow and a 1998 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. He received the Polar Music Prize, an international honor recognizing both pop and classical music, in 2017. And he was among the recipients of the 2018 Kennedy Center Honors, in a class that also included the composer Philip Glass.

Greta Andersen, long-distance swimmer. She was 95.

Ms. Andersen, who broke 18 world marathon records, has been called the greatest female swimmer in history, according to Bruce Wigo, former president of the International Swimming Hall of Fame, which honored her with its lifetime achievement award in 2015. “She often beat all of the men,” he said.

…

She was the first woman to complete five crossings of the English Channel and the first to win the race across it twice in a row, which she did in 1957 and 1958. (The first woman to swim the English Channel was Gertrude Ederle, a New Yorker born to German immigrants, who did so in 14½ hours in 1926, breaking the records of the five men who had preceded her.)

Christopher Fowler, author. (Hattip: Lawrence.)

FotB RoadRich sent over a nice obit for David Rathbun. He spent 26 years with Cirrus Aircraft, and did a lot of work on the SR20, SR22, SR22T, and the SF50 Vision Jet.

In a social media post, David’s brother, Daniel Rathbun, called him a “brilliant” engineer and credited him for being instrumental in the design of the Cirrus single-engine jet that recently won the coveted Robert J. Collier Trophy bestowed each year by the National Aeronautic Association. “David was indeed a gifted mover and shaker in the aviation world and will be horribly missed,” Daniel said.

Richard Anobile. I had not heard of him previously, but his story is relevant to my interests.

Mr. Anobile went on to combine movie frames and dialogue in books that ambitiously reconstructed complete films, including “Casablanca,” “Psycho,” Stagecoach,” “The Maltese Falcon,” “Frankenstein” and “Play It Again, Sam.” He used the same formula to describe “verbal and visual gems” in the films of W.C. Fields, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers.

This was in the days before VCRs, DVDs, and widespread availability of older movies for easy viewing. Most famously, he got involved with Groucho Marx.

“The Marx Bros. Scrapbook,” published two years later, was a more ambitious project, and it brought Mr. Anobile into closer contact with Groucho, then in his 80s, through an introduction by his agent.
In addition to excerpts from his many hours of interviews with Mr. Marx, the book included photographs and illustrations, as well as playbills, reviews, advertisements, family scrapbook entries and pages from film scripts. Mr. Anobile also interviewed the other two surviving Marx brothers, Gummo (who left the group long before they started making movies) and Zeppo, as well as friends like the comedian Jack Benny.

I’m going to note here that used paperback copies of this are available on Amazon for reasonable prices.

Getting back to Groucho and Mr. Anobile, there was a problem:

But Mr. Marx regretted the publication of his raw opinions of people like his brother Chico (“All he could do was shoot the piano keys”); Noël Coward and Truman Capote (whom he tarred with gay slurs); George M. Cohan (“a no-good Irish son of a bitch”); S.J. Perelman, who contributed to the scripts of two Marx Brothers films (“I hated the son of a bitch and he had a head as big as my desk”); and Marilyn Monroe, who had a small role in “Love Happy” (1949), the brothers’ last film.
In late 1973, Mr. Marx sought an injunction in New York State Supreme Court to stop the distribution of the book, although it had already been delivered to bookstores nationwide. He argued that it contained “defamatory, scandalous, obscene and inflammatory matter” and that Mr. Anobile had assured him that he was going to turn his raw language into respectable prose.
Whatever it was he had said — to paraphrase a song he had sung in “Horse Feathers” (1932) — he was against it.
To prove that Mr. Marx said what he had said, Mr. Anobile brought the tapes of their interviews into court. In a letter to the editor of The New York Times in 1974, he recalled cautioning Mr. Marx not to say anything during the interviews that he did not want to see published.
He added, “He signed a jacket of the book, ‘This is a wonderful book, Richard, thanks to you.’”
Mr. Marx — who staged one of his depositions in a Manhattan hotel suite wearing a shirt patterned with the titles of Marx Brothers films and bearing the slogan “Money talks” — never got the injunction or the $15 million in damages that he had demanded.
Mr. Anobile told the blog Brain Dead and Loving It in 2018 that the case was settled after Mr. Marx’s death in 1977.

Posted in Books, Movies, Music, Obits, Planes | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#100 in a series)

March 3rd, 2023

Number 100. I was hoping for something more spectacular, or at least less distasteful, for such a milestone event. But you take what you get.

The mayor of College Park, Maryland, Patrick L. Wojahn, resigned Wednesday night.

He was arrested Thursday morning.

The charges against him are “40 counts of possession of child exploitative material, a misdemeanor, and 16 counts of distribution of child exploitative material, a felony, according to the Prince George’s County Police Department.”

Specifically:

The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children had notified the county police on Feb. 17 that a social media account operating in the county possessed and distributed what were suspected to be images of child sexual abuse, the police said.
Court records indicate that the account was on the social media app Kik.
Prince George’s County Police investigators determined that videos and an image had been uploaded to the account in January, and that the account belonged to Mr. Wojahn, the police said.
On Tuesday, detectives served a search warrant at Mr. Wojahn’s home, where they seized cellphones, a storage device, a tablet and a computer, the police said.

A small bonus: I can’t say for sure that Mr. Wojahn is a card-carrying, dues-paying member, of Criminal Mayors Against Law-Abiding Gun Owners, but: he did sign this “Bipartisan Mayors Call for Background Checks” letter, along with 99 other mayors (including the late unlamented Lori Lightfoot and Lovely Warren), so I feel like calling him a member is a safe bet.

Posted in Guns, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 1, 2023.

March 1st, 2023

Ricou Browning has passed away at 93.

For those of you going, “Who?”, he was perhaps most famous as the guy in the rubber suit in “Creature From the Black Lagoon” and the two sequels (“Revenge of the Creature” and “The Creature Walks Among Us”). He had quite an interesting career beyond those:

The Florida native also served as a stuntman on Richard Fleischer’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), doubled for Jerry Lewis in Don’t Give Up the Ship (1959) and “played all the bad guys in [TV’s] Sea Hunt,” he said in a 2013 interview.
Plus, Browning directed the harpoon-filled fight in Thunderball (1965), another underwater scene in Never Say Never Again (1983) and the hilarious Jaws-inspired candy bar-in-the-pool sequence in Caddyshack (1980).

He was also intimately involved with “Flipper” and “Gentle Ben”. He directed two movies, “Salty” and “Mr. No Legs“, the latter of which sent me down a rabbit hole based on the description (from an obit Lawrence sent me): “centered on a man with shotguns built into his wheelchair”.

I don’t think that begins to cover how crazy “Mr. No Legs” sounds. Richard Jaeckel! Lloyd Bochner! John Agar! Rance Howard!

Imagine you’re hanging out by the pool in your wheelchair with a friend, and a group of thugs emerges from the bushes, knocks out your friend and rushes your chair. What do you do? 
Double amputee Ted Vollrath found himself in exactly this situation and he didn’t hesitate. He knocked down the closest attacker with two quick punches, grabbed a ninja star from his spokes and zipped it across the pool, right into the jugular of another assailant who was reaching for a gun. Vollrath then finished off the remaining thugs with an array of punches and body attacks, eventually dragging two of them into the pool and subduing them.

Mr. Vollrath plays the titular character. In real life, he was a Korean war vet who lost both legs due to injuries sustained in combat. He went on to become “the first person to earn a black belt in karate while training out of a wheelchair”, and did a lot of work promoting accessibility to martial arts training for the disabled before his death in 2001.

Lawrence also sent over an obit for Gordon Pinsent, noted Canadian actor.

Walter Mirisch, producer. He was 101. Some of his credits: “In the Heat of the Night”, “The Magnificent Seven”, “The Apartment”.

Linda Kasabian. I am having a hard time deciding if she qualifies for the “Burning In Hell” watch.

On the one hand:

Mr. Manson harbored hateful ideas about Black people and sought to set off a race war, leading him to send Ms. Kasabian, Susan Atkins, Patricia Krenwinkel and Charles Watson out on a murderous mission. In the early hours of Aug. 9, 1969, Ms. Kasabian waited at the car while the others killed five people, including the actress Sharon Tate, the wife of the director Roman Polanski, in Ms. Tate’s Los Angeles home.
The next night, this time with Mr. Manson along, a group went to the home of Leno and Rosemary LaBianca. Mr. Manson tied the couple up and left with Ms. Kasabian; several of his followers then stabbed the LaBiancas to death.

On the other hand, she rolled on the Family:

Once “Susan bolted,” the prosecution gave Ms. Kasabian conditional immunity — it would be revoked if she did not testify fully and truthfully — and she became the centerpiece of the trial of Mr. Manson and the three women. (She was later important in the case against Mr. Watson, who was tried separately.)
That trial was a wild affair that lasted months. Ms. Kasabian testified for 17 days, withstanding badgering by the defense lawyers and sometimes by Mr. Manson himself.
“Though the defense had been given a 20-page summary of all my interviews with her, as well as copies of all her letters to me,” Mr. Bugliosi, who died in 2015, wrote in “Helter Skelter,” “not once had she been impeached with a prior inconsistent statement. I was very proud of her.”
In a 2009 interview on “Larry King Live,” where he appeared alongside Ms. Kasabian (her image obscured to protect her privacy), Mr. Bugliosi left no doubt that she had put Mr. Manson behind bars.
“If there ever was a star witness for the prosecution, it was Linda Kasabian,” he said. “Without her testimony, Larry, it would have been extremely difficult for me to convict Manson and his co-defendants.
“We all owe a tremendous debt of gratitude towards Linda,” he added, “because if Manson had gotten out, there’s no question he would have continued to kill. He would have killed as many people as he could have.”

And from the accounts I’ve seen, she lived out the rest of her life quietly and tried to atone for her actions.

She told Mr. King that since the trial she had been “trying to live a normal life, which is really hard to do.”
“I’ve been on a mission of healing and rehabilitation,” she said. “I went through a lot of drugs and alcohol and self-destruction and probably could have used some psychological counseling and help 40 years ago.”

Posted in Law, Movies, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: February 28, 2023.

February 28th, 2023

Bob Richards, aka the “Vaulting Vicar”, ordained minister…and legendary pole vaulter.

Although he broke Olympic records and Russian hearts, and although he became one of America’s most lionized and familiar celebrities — a motivational speaker and Wheaties pitchman who personified wholesome values and once ran for president of the United States on a third-party ticket — Richards, even at the peak of his athletic power, was not the greatest American pole-vaulter of all time.

…

Richards himself never vaulted more than 15 feet 6 inches. But from 1947 to 1957, he dominated national and international competitions by clearing 15 feet more than 125 times. Besides winning two gold medals in the Olympics in the 1950s, he took a bronze medal at the 1948 Olympics in London and gold at the Pan American Games in 1951 and 1955. He also won 17 A.A.U. championships in indoor and outdoor vaulting competitions, and United States decathlon championships in 1951, 1954 and 1955.

In case you were wondering…

Today’s top male vaulters, with refined techniques and springy fiberglass poles that bow almost to U shapes, routinely soar over crossbars set above 19 feet. The world record is held by Armand Duplantis, an American-born Swedish athlete known as Mondo, who on Feb. 25 vaulted 20 feet 4 ¾ inches. That mark (pending official ratification) surpassed his own previous five world records, all over 20 feet and all set since 2020.
Even Richards’s son Brandon, as a teenager using a fiberglass pole in 1985, vaulted 18 feet 2 inches, which was then a national record for a high schooler and stood for 14 years.

And the greatest American pole vaulter was probably Cornelius Warmerdam, who set world records in the 1940s (using bamboo poles) but never got to compete in the Olympics because of WWII.

Fred Miller, Baltimore Colt.

Miller, who was drafted out of LSU in the 7th round by the Colts in the 1962 NFL draft, made the Pro Bowl as a defensive tackle three straight seasons from 1967-69.

…

Miller was part of the Colts’ 1968 NFL title team which shutout four teams, including the Browns in a 34-0 win in the NFL championship game before losing to the Jets in Super Bowl III.
He was also in Baltimore’s 1970 championship squad that found redemption with a 16-13 win over the Cowboys in Super Bowl V, with Miller making five tackles against Dallas.
“What a bond we had as a team,” Miller told the Baltimore Sun in 2009. “We gave a damn about each other. No cliques. Our wives socialized. We babysat for each other. That didn’t happen on other clubs.”

Posted in NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Missed it by THAT much…

February 24th, 2023

…that much being 2-13 in conference play this season.

Kermit Davis out as men’s basketball coach at Ole Miss.

The Rebels are among the worst offenses in the SEC this season. They present no real interior threat, and shoot only 28.9% from 3-point range. Without a true strength on that end of the court, Ole Miss is often prone to long, listless stretches of offense that cost it games. Defensively, the Rebels are better, but the analytics ultimately place them comfortably in the SEC’s bottom half. Ole Miss is good enough to offer some resistance at times, but not good enough for Davis to get the wins he needed to keep his job.

He coached for close to five seasons, but I can’t find an overall record for his tenure.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: February 24, 2023.

February 24th, 2023

Chief Special Warfare Operator Michael Ernst (USN).

During his military tenure, Enrst was awarded a Silver Star — the third highest award for valor a military member can receive for gallantry during combat, a Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and three Combat Action Ribbons — having been in combat situations in three different theaters of war.
“Mike was an exceptional teammate. He was a dedicated NSW Sailor who applied his talents and skills towards some of our nation’s hardest challenges, while selflessly mentoring his teammates,” Adm. Keith Davids said.

He was killed in a parachute training accident in Arizona.

Thomas H. Lee, “billionaire financier and investor”. He was found dead in his office yesterday, apparently of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Tom Whitlock, lyricist.

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

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