Theodore Roosevelt’s Smith and Wesson went for $910,625.
Which is on the low end of what I expected.
Short gun crankery update.
December 15th, 2022Obit watch: December 14, 2022.
December 14th, 2022Curt Simmons, pitcher.
Simmons was the last survivor of the mostly young 1950 Phillies team known as the Whiz Kids, who captured the National League pennant on the final day of the season, only to be swept by the Yankees in the World Series.
While pitching for the Phillies, Simmons was a three-time All-Star. In his mid-30s, after coming back from elbow surgery, he pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals’ 1964 N.L. pennant winners and started twice in their seven-game World Series victory over the Yankees.
Relying on his fastball early on and later reinventing himself with a variety of pitches that kept batters off stride, Simmons had a career record of 193 victories and 183 losses.
The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You can also dial 988 to reach the Lifeline. If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.
For the record: NYT obits for Stuart Margolin and Mike Leach.
Obit watch: December 13, 2022.
December 13th, 2022Personally, my favorite “Rockford Files” episodes are the ones where Angel plays a key role. And the man worked: 123 acting credits in IMDB. Including “18 Wheels of Justice”, “Lanigan’s Rabbi” (he played Rabbi Small in the pilot (!), but was replaced by Bruce Solomon in the other four episodes), “Cannon” and “Kelly’s Heroes”.
Mike Leach. My sister and her family were big Mike Leach fans (and felt he was unjustly driven out of Texas Tech). Now who’s going to tell us about owning a trash panda as a pet?
Went through the @KREM2 archive today to put together a mashup of all-time Mike Leach moments – most with @WSUCougarFB. (I could have found MANY more)
A one of a kind guy.
Here's to hoping we get to enjoy more time with him 🙏🏼 pic.twitter.com/wryklkLoHh
— Travis Green (@ItsTravisGreen) December 13, 2022
No football coach has stronger opinions on weddings than Mike Leach
After we talked about the win, I got some advice straight from the source..
Coach Leach, big elopement guy 😂
Hi @TampaBayTre pic.twitter.com/C9pvrFsm0t
— Alyssa Lang (@AlyssaLang) October 2, 2022
Angelo Badalamenti, composer for David Lynch.
Marijane Meaker, author. She wrote an influential early lesbian novel, “Spring Fire”, under the pseudonym of “Vin Packer”:
Ms. Meaker said she had wanted to call the book “Sorority Girl,” but her editor, Dick Carroll, had a different idea.
“James Michener had just published his book ‘Fires of Spring,’” she said in a 2012 interview with Windy City Times, the L.G.B.T.Q. publication in Chicago. “Dick hoped if we called mine ‘Spring Fire’ the public might confuse it with Michener and we’d sell more copies.”
“Vin Packer” later evolved into a hard-boiled writer. She also wrote young adult novels:
…
Obit watch: December 10, 2022 (supplemental).
December 10th, 2022I think Lawrence is slightly annoyed at me. But it isn’t my fault.
There were a plethora of obits yesterday. It seems like I was sending emails every five minutes, though I know that’s not actually true. So here are the ones that weren’t for Col. Kittinger, because I wanted to break his out.
Dominique Lapierre, author. He started out as a foreign correspondent, and wrote some well-received travel books. Then he teamed up with Larry Collins, and they wrote several massive bestsellers: Is Paris Burning? and Freedom at Midnight, among others.
Mr. Lapierre also wrote other books, some collaboratively, some alone. Most famously, he wrote The City of Joy:
In 1981 he and his second wife, also named Dominique, returned to India as humanitarians. They lived for two years in a slum in Kolkata, once known as Calcutta, in a four-by-six room without running water.
“We left the slum every few weeks to take a good long bubble bath,” he told Metro, a French magazine, in 1986.
Mr. Lapierre wrote frequent dispatches from Kolkata and used his extensive reporting to write “City of Joy,” a 1985 novel populated by loosely fictionalized characters based on people he had met along the way, including a priest and a rickshaw puller.
The book was another giant hit — more than eight million copies were sold — and it was adapted into a 1992 movie starring Patrick Swayze. It brought attention to the conditions of India’s very poor, with mixed results.
The Indian government committed billions to bring running water and other services to Kolkata’s slums, but the light the book cast on the city also attracted thousands of international tourists to see the poverty for themselves.
“On the streets of Calcutta these days, the book is often seen clutched in the hands of Western tourists,” wrote The Los Angeles Times in 1987. “If Paris has the Guide Michelin, Calcutta has ‘The City of Joy.’”
Mr. Lapierre promised to give half his royalties from the book to improve public health in the city’s slums. He created a nonprofit to direct his efforts, and over time spent more than $1 million of his own money on things like mobile health clinics.
Others gave as well: Within a year of the book’s publication he had received more than 40,000 letters from readers seeking to help. Some sent cash or checks; one sent a wedding ring taped to a piece of paper.
Grant Wahl, soccer journalist.
Gary Friedkin, actor. The NYPost says he was in “Blade Runner” and “Return of the Jedi” but those are not reflected in his IMDB credits. Lawrence says he remembers him from “Young Doctors In Love”, which I have never seen, and he was also in “Under the Rainbow”.
Helen Slayton-Hughes, actress. Other credits include “Mafia on the Bounty”, “The Greatest Event in Television History”, amd “Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot”.
Obit watch: December 10, 2022.
December 10th, 2022Colonel Joseph William Kittinger II (USAF – ret.) has passed away at the age of 94.
Col. Kittinger severed honorably in Vietnam:
He flew 483 fighter-plane missions in the Vietnam War before he was shot down and taken prisoner.
…
Mr. Kittinger flew three tours of duty in Vietnam, became a squadron commander and shot down a North Vietnamese jet. His fighter was downed in May 1972, and he spent 11 months in the prison camp known as the Hanoi Hilton.
He retired from the Air Force as a colonel in 1978 and was a multiple winner of the Distinguished Flying Cross.
He was also the first man to fly a balloon solo across the Atlantic.
…in the 106,000-cubic-foot (3,000 m3) Balloon of Peace, from September 14 to September 18, 1984, launched from Caribou, Maine and organized by the Canadian promoter Gaetan Croteau. As an official FAI world aerospace record, the 5,703.03-kilometre (3,543.70 mi) flight is the longest gas balloon distance flight ever recorded in the AA-10 size category. For the second time in his life, he was also the subject of a story in National Geographic Magazine.
He is perhaps most famous for the act that got him his first National Geographic story.
On August 18, 1960, he jumped out of a balloon at an altitude of 102,800 feet.
…
Those records were broken by Felix Baumgartner in 2012. Col. Kittinger assisted Mr.Baumgartner in the jump.
Mr. Kittinger piloted the Excelsior I balloon to 76,400 feet in November 1959, then prepared to jump out of his gondola. What happened next almost cost him his life.
His left arm caught on the door as he emerged, and the delay in freeing himself caused the premature deployment of the small parachute designed to prevent him from going into a catastrophic spin. The parachute caught Mr. Kittinger around the neck and sent him spinning. He tumbled toward Earth at 120 revolutions per minute, but his main parachute opened at 10,000 feet, as designed, slowing him down and saving his life.
A little more than three weeks later, he was aloft again, climbing to 74,400 feet in Excelsior II before jumping out.
In August 1960, soaring to 102,800 feet in the Excelsior III balloon, Mr. Kittinger eclipsed by almost 1,300 feet the altitude record set by Major David Simons of the Air Force in 1957 in his Man High II balloon.
And then Mr. Kittinger jumped from a gondola once more. “I said, ‘Lord, take care of me now,’” he recalled. “That was the most fervent prayer I ever said in my life.”
The right glove of his pressure suit had failed during his ascent, leaving his hand swollen and in pain, but he was otherwise in fine shape when he touched down.
I’ve said this before, but I really liked Craig Ryan’s The Pre-Astronauts: Manned Ballooning on the Threshold of Space (affiliate link) and the price on it seems much more reasonable than the last time I looked.
When Joe Kittinger was 13, he once scrambled atop a 40-foot-high tree to snare some coconuts, ignoring warnings to stay put. His father recalled that venture as symbolizing the derring-do that would be his son’s life.
As the elder Mr. Kittinger put it: “Everybody wants coconuts, but nobody has the guts to go up there and get them.”
Obit watch (the lighter side): December 9, 2022.
December 9th, 2022A couple of quick obits that I felt were just too un-serious to be included in the previous two obit watches.
“A Very Backstreet Holiday”, the Backstreet Boys holiday special. It was supposed to be on ABC Wednesday night (December 14th) but got canned because of rape accusations against Nick Carter.
“Monarch“. I confess: I was sort of vaguely interested in this. A trashy Fox soap opera about a country music dynasty? Sounds like the sort of thing I can sit down in front of and turn off my brain for a while. Plus: Susan Sarandon.
When the rubber met the road, though, I never watched an episode. I also kind of expected it to be cancelled after two episodes, like “Lone Star” or “Viva Laughlin“. (Also, the reviews spoiled the fact that Susan Sarandon dies in the first episode, though she apparently shows up in flashbacks later on.)
I guess if I want country music drama, I’ll have to stick with reading the transcripts of “Cocaine and Rhinestones” episodes, and waiting for a new batch to drop.
(Sort of an) obit watch: December 9, 2022.
December 9th, 2022I wanted to break this out into a separate entry because it didn’t feel like it belonged with the previous one. Also, it’s another one of those “not quite an obit” things.
Philadelphia’s “Boy in the Box” has been identified.
The boy, then believed to be between 4 and 6 years old, had been beaten to death, an autopsy later revealed. But clues were scant, and copious efforts over decades to solve the crime proved futile. The unknown victim became known as “The Boy in the Box.” Others called him, more gently, “America’s Unknown Child.”
His name is now known: Joseph Augustus Zarelli. Born on Jan. 13, 1953, he was 4 when he died, Philadelphia police officials said Thursday, at a news conference where they described a breakthrough using DNA and genetic genealogy techniques that have revolutionized cold case work in recent years.
He was found in a cardboard box in February of 1957.
…
Capt. Jason Smith said officers did not yet know who killed the boy or the circumstances of how he had died, and that investigations would continue.
“We have our suspicions as to who may be responsible, but it would be irresponsible of me to share these suspicions as this remains an active and ongoing criminal investigation,” Captain Smith said.
I remember this case getting a lot of coverage from John Walsh on the old America’s Most Wanted. I’m glad they have a name for the child now.
Obit watch: December 9, 2022.
December 9th, 2022He was the last surviving participant in the May 17, 1943 “Dambusters” raid by 617 Squadron.
This is a great story:
The crew of Sergeant Johnson’s plane — flown by the lone American on the raid, Flight Lt. Joe McCarthy, a native of Long Island who had joined the Royal Canadian Air Force — had an even tougher task
Its target, the Sorpe Dam, was an embankment lined with soil and rocks that was expected to absorb much of a bomb’s explosive power, in contrast to the two more vulnerable masonry dams.
…
Lieutenant McCarthy had to clear the steeple of a church, then dip to a level of 30 feet and fly parallel and extraordinarily close to the wall for his plane’s bomb to make a significant impact when it exploded underwater. He made repeated runs along the dam before Sergeant Johnson was satisfied that he could drop his bomb at the center point, where it could do the most damage.
“I found out very quickly how to be the most unpopular member of the crew,” Mr. Johnson recalled in a 2013 interview with the University of Huddersfield in England, explaining that his patience had increased the chances of his plane being spotted by the Germans.
At one point, he said, his rear gunner pleaded, “Will somebody just get that bomb out of here?”
“After nine dummy runs, we were satisfied we were on the right track,” Mr. Johnson wrote in his memoir. “I pushed the button and called, ‘Bomb gone!’ From the rear of the plane was heard ‘Thank Christ for that!’ The explosion threw up a fountain of water up to about 1,000 feet.”
Two Lancasters hit the Sorpe: the dam was damaged, but not breached.
…
His death, announced by his family on Facebook, came five years after Queen Elizabeth II conveyed the title Member of the Order of the British Empire on Mr. Johnson in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
The honor was bestowed after thousands had signed a petition asking that Mr. Johnson, a bomb-aimer during the war (the equivalent of an American bombardier), be accorded recognition in his final years as a collective tribute to the Dambusters.
…
For all the harrowing missions he took part in, Mr. Johnson said, he felt confident that he would survive.
“I didn’t feel afraid,” he told James Holland for his book “Dam Busters” (2012), in recalling his combat service between 1942 and 1944. “I was sure I was going to come back every time.”
Obit watch: December 8, 2022.
December 8th, 2022Lawrence sent over an obit for Al Strobel, the one-armed man from “Twin Peaks”.
Representative Jim Kolbe (R-Arizona).
Sal Durante, historical footnote. He caught the ball from Roger Maris’s 61st home run.
Mills Lane. He was the ref in the Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield 1997 fight (that was the ear biting one) and later went on to have a syndicated court show.
“Stomp”. 29 years off-Broadway.
“KPOP”. the musical. 17 regular performances on Broadway and 44 previews.
I had forgotten about the associated drama: the NYT pretty much panned the show, the producers accused the NYT of racism, and the NYT basically responded with the bedbug letter.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#99 in a series)
December 6th, 2022Mike the Musicologist asked me if I do foreign flaming hyenas.
The answer is: sure! I did the Germans a while back!
Now it is the Argentinians turn.
Cristina Fernández de Kirchner, a political titan in Argentina, was found guilty on Tuesday and sentenced to six years in prison and banned from holding public office for a fraud scheme that directed public roadworks contracts to a family friend while she was the first lady and president.
The verdict was a major blow to Mrs. Kirchner, the current vice president and a deeply polarizing figure who has helped split Argentina between those who favor her and her leftist movement, called Kirchnerismo, and those who say she has helped ruin a country that has struggled with high inflation, poverty and failed economic policies.
…
A panel of three judges in Buenos Aires, the capital, rendered the verdict on a public broadcast after a three-year trial in which Mrs. Kirchner was accused of steering hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer-funded contracts to a business associate to build roads in Patagonia, on the tip of South America.
The panel found her not guilty of a second charge of directing an “illicit association” that oversaw that kickbacks scheme.
“We are certain” the ruling said, that “an extraordinary fraudulent maneuver took place that harmed the pecuniary interests of the national public administration under the terms and conditions established by criminal law.”
…
Twelve other people were also accused in the corruption case including Lázaro Báez, the Kirchner associate who received the roadworks contracts, and two former Kirchnerista government ministers who have been convicted in other corruption cases.
Mr. Báez was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to six years in prison. He was already serving a 12-year sentence for money laundering in a separate case. José López, a former public works secretary, was also sentenced to six years in prison for fraud and banned from holding public office.
…
The focus of Mrs. Kirchner’s trial has largely been 51 roadworks contracts that were awarded to companies linked to Mr. Báez, who went from being a bank employee in Santa Cruz to forming a construction company in the days before Mr. Kirchner became president in 2003. The prosecution said that from 2003 to 2015 the scheme defrauded the Argentine state of more than 5 billion pesos, or about $926 million, according to officials.
The contracts were often awarded at inflated prices, went over budget or granted other special considerations, according to the prosecution. Almost half of the road projects were never finished.
…
Last year, a court dismissed charges against her over accusations that she conspired to cover up Iran’s purported role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. The accusations against Mrs. Kirchner were first made in 2015 by a prosecutor, Alberto Nisman, who was found dead of a gunshot wound in his apartment days later.
His death was never solved, and the matter has been a source of frenzied speculation and political infighting ever since.
I feel like there’s really only one thing I can say about this:
Crash of the Titans.
December 6th, 2022Jon Robinson out as general manager of the Tennessee Titans.
Interestingly, the Titans are 7-5 and at the top of their division…
Obit watch: December 6, 2022.
December 6th, 2022Other credits include the second movie based on a minor SF TV series from the 1960s, the 1995 “Village of the Damned”, and “The Love Boat”.
(Thank you to pigpen51 for tipping me off to this last night.)
Lawrence sent over an obit for Meg Wynn Owen, who passed away in June (but her death was only announced recently).
She appears to have been best known for “Upstairs Downstairs”. Other credits include “The Dirty Dozen: The Deadly Mission”, “Gosford Park”, and “The Duellists”.