Thomas Cahill, author. (How the Irish Saved Civilization)
D.H. Peligro, drummer for the Dead Kennedys. (Actually, he replaced the original drummer, “Ted”, in early 1981. Also, if you haven’t looked at the recent history of the Dead Kennedys, it’s a pretty sad story.)
Jerry Lee Lewis. THR. Variety. Pitchfork.
Noted: Jimmy Swaggart is still alive. (As you may recall, Mickey Gilley died in May.)
I feel like I’m not giving the Killer the coverage he deserves, and I’m sorry for that. At the same time, I’m really not a music guy and don’t have the knowledge to put him in context. Plus, everyone is on this story like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst installation.
“Patrick”, also known as “Patrick Non-White” formerly of Popehat. He passed away in September, and I had noticed his Twitter feed had been silent for a while. But I did not become aware of his death until yesterday.
I feel like Patrick and I would have disagreed somewhere between 25% and 50% of the time. But our disagreements would have been based on reason, not personalities. Patrick was incredibly kind to me when I first started out blogging, and I regret having lost touch with him. I knew he was having health problems, but I thought he was over the hump on those. I regret that I never got to eat barbecue with him.
Thinking about him, I kind of like this as a eulogy:
I didn’t know Patrick, but I doubt that he ever in his life glanced around him to see what other men would do before doing what he thought was right.
While the death of Jerry Lee Lewis is being reported, it was also reported earlier in the week by an unreliable source I don’t link to, and that report turned out to be false.
The latest report is apparently from the AP, and seems more reliable. But I am still going to wait until tomorrow to post the obit watch.
Lawrence pinged me this morning, but in truth, he was just nudging me to do something I was contemplating anyway.
Yes, there are no NFL teams that can go 0-17. Or at this point, even 0-16-1.
But: the NBA season has started. I don’t care much about basketball, but why not kick a few teams around?
NBA teams that have a shot at going 0-82 this season:
Orlando Magic
Sacramento Kings
Los Angeles Lakers
Lucianne Goldberg, literary agent who was behind the Lewinsky scandal.
It was Ms. Goldberg who advised Linda Tripp, a Pentagon aide, to record her conversations with her young co-worker Monica Lewinsky, who as a White House intern had an affair with President Bill Clinton.
Those recordings became crucial evidence in the special counsel investigation that led to Mr. Clinton’s impeachment for lying under oath in claiming that he had not had an affair with Ms. Lewinsky.
Rod Dreher put up a very nice tribute to her, and links to John Podhoretz’s equally nice tribute.
Robert Gordon, musician.
Mr. Gordon had been the frontman for the buzzy CBGB-era band Tuff Darts when he traded his punk attitude for a tin of Nu Nile pomade and released his first album, a collaboration with the fuzz-guitar pioneer Link Wray, in 1977. At the time, 1950s signifiers like ducktail haircuts and pink pegged slacks had scarcely been glimpsed for years outside the set of “Happy Days” or the Broadway production of “Grease.”
But, turning his back on both the pomp of ’70s stadium rock and the rock ’n’ roll arsonist ethos of punk, Mr. Gordon helped seed a rockabilly resurgence that would flower during the 1980s, with bands like the Stray Cats and the Blasters hitting the charts and punk titans like the Clash and X also paying their respects.
Lawrence emailed an obit for Edward Dameron IV, SF and fantasy artist. He did illustrations for The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands and designed the base for the 1988 Hugo Awards.
Ian Whittaker, set decorator. Among his credits: “Alien”, “Tommy”, and “Highlander”. He did also do some acting. IMDB.
John Jay Osborn Jr., author. (The Paper Chase.)
Between 1978 and 1988, Mr. Osborn was credited with writing 14 episodes of “The Paper Chase” and one episode apiece of “L.A. Law” and “Spenser: For Hire.” In that period, he also wrote his fourth novel, “The Man Who Owned New York” (1981), about a lawyer trying to recover $3 million missing from the estate of his firm’s biggest client.
In the 1990s, he became a private estate planner and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, and then at the University of San Francisco School of Law, where he taught contract law until his retirement in 2016.
Mike Davis, author. I’ve heard a lot about City of Quartz, and should probably read it one of these days.
Detractors questioned the accuracy of some of Mr. Davis’s assertions and the hyperbole of his prose. That criticism seemed to peak after he won a $315,000 MacArthur “genius” grant in 1998.
“A lot of writers are tired of Mike Davis being rewarded again and again, culminating in the MacArthur fellowship, for telling the world what a terrible place L.A. is,” Kevin Starr, California’s state librarian, told The Los Angeles Times in 1999.
…
Signed by Capitol Records as a folk singer, Ms. Miller released her first album in 1963 and cracked the Billboard Hot 100 the next year with the pop song “He Walks Like a Man.”
Her career took off in 1965 when Capitol, seizing on the popularity of Roger Miller’s “King of the Road,” had her hastily record “Queen of the House,” which set distaff lyrics by Mary Taylor to Mr. Miller’s melody and finger-snapping rhythm.
Where Mr. Miller (no relation to Ms. Miller, although they both grew up in Oklahoma) sang of “trailers for sale or rent; rooms to let, 50 cents,” Ms. Miller rhapsodized in a similarly carefree fashion about being “up every day at six; bacon and eggs to fix.”
“I’ll get a maid someday,” she sang, “but till then I’m queen of the house.”
…
Michael Kopsa, actor.
Other credits include “Black Lagoon: Roberta’s Blood Trail”, “The Dead Zone”, “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids: The TV Show”, and lots of voice work, especially on “Mobile Suit Gundam” related properties.
Jules Bass, the “Bass” in “Rankin/Bass Productions”, the folks who brought you such timeless classics as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, “Frosty the Snowman”, and “Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town”.
“Mad Monster Party?” on IMDB. Oddly, it seems to be available on blu-ray (affiliate link).
Lawrence emailed an obit for Ashton B. Carter, defense secretary under Obama.
Dietrich Mateschitz, Red Bull guy. He didn’t invent it, but he adapted and “Westernized” an existing Thai energy drink.
Another batch of books is icumen in, so time for some more documentation. I’m happy about this first one, as it fills a much needed void in my collection.
Smith and Wesson Hand Guns, Roy C. McHenry and Walter F. Roper. Standard Publications, 1945. As far as I can tell, this is a first printing. Riling 2527.
This was the first book that attempted to comprehensively cover S&W history (up through about 1944), and remains an important work for collectors.
I can’t find a flaw in this. I’d call it “fine”. Bought for just under $60 from a eBay vendor.
My Ropers, let me show them to you:
These are all (as far as I can tell) firsts of all three books Walter Roper wrote or co-wrote. They’re not quite three of a perfect pair, as the Experiments has a bit of wear. But I’ve still never found another first in the wild in a better state.
(Previously on Pistol and Revolver Shooting. Previously on Experiments of a Handgunner.)
After the jump, another small curiosity…
Ian Hamilton, historical footnote.
Mr. Hamilton was the last survivor of the four men who stole the Stone of Destiny on Christmas Day in 1950.
…
…
“You sort of know that when you take a crowbar to a side door of Westminster Abbey and jimmy the lock that there really isn’t any going back, don’t you?” Mr. Hamilton told British newspaper The Telegraph in 2008.
They moved swiftly into the darkness of the abbey and found their way to the Coronation Chair. They pried off a wooden retaining bar across the front of the chair, but freeing the stone was more difficult. They pushed and jimmied it until they were able to lift it and carry it for a yard before realizing that it was too heavy to take any further.
They then heaved the stone onto Mr. Hamilton’s coat, hoping to slide it to freedom. But as he pulled at one of the stone’s iron rings, it came apart, one chunk of about 100 pounds, another more than double that weight. Mr. Hamilton ran outside, almost giddily, lugging the smaller piece. The fourth member of the group, the getaway driver, Kay Matheson, drove up, and Mr. Hamilton laid it on the back seat.
…
Mr. Hamilton returned later with the other car, dragged the remaining stone to it, and drove off.
…
The four plotters were interrogated by a Scotland Yard detective in March 1951, but they denied any involvement and none were arrested.
In April, deciding that he had done all he could to advance Scottish nationalism, Mr. Hamilton decided to surrender the stone anonymously. He, the politician who had repaired it and another nationalist friend laid it at the altar in the ruins of the Abbey of Arbroath, about 100 miles northeast of Glasgow.
…
Neat profile in the Detroit Free Press of Gregg Sutter. Alt link.
“Who?” For many years, he was what the Freep refers to as “Elmore Leonard’s leg man”.
He also operates ElmoreLeonard.com and oversees a Leonard Facebook page, lends periodic expertise to the archivists handling Leonard’s papers at the University of South Carolina, and leads the push to put Leonard on a 100th anniversary postage stamp.
Actually, he is the push. His idea, his research into the postal service’s Literary Arts series, his three-page nominating letter that will, according to the Oct. 6 response, “be submitted for review and consideration before the Citizens’ Stamp Advisory Committee at their next meeting.”
Damn skippy Leonard deserves a stamp.
In early October, he stumbled across the unveiling of Mama Cass Elliot’s star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with Stephen Stills and the Monkees’ Mickey Dolenz in attendance, and it reminded him of a disappointment.
“I have inquired about getting Elmore a star on Hollywood Boulevard,” he said, “but that costs $55,000,” and the appetite for a deceased author and screenwriter seems slight.
Kickstarter or one of the other funding services. (Not GoFundMe, because GoFarkThem.) I’d throw a few dollars in the direction of the Elmore Leonard Hollywood Boulevard Star. I bet you could get at least a few more out of the producers of “Justified” and “Justified: City Primeval”.
Mr. Sutter is also writing a memoir about his time with Leonard.
The library hopes to build an event around Leonard’s 100th birthday in 2025, she said, with exhibits, a movie or two, and presentations by Sutter and Leonard’s authorized biographer, C.M. Kushins, who has written books about rockers John Bonham and Warren Zevon.
That will require Sutter to finish his memoir. He says he will, in plenty of time.
I’ll be looking forward to both these books.
Ron Masak, actor.
He had a pretty extensive movie and TV career. Beyond being the guy who let Jessica Fletcher get away with all those murders, he was in “Laserblast”, “Tora! Tora! Tora!”, and “Ice Station Zebra”. TV credits include late period “Columbo”, “McMillan & Wife”, “Mission: Impossible”, multiple appearances on “Police Story”, “Quincy M.E.”…
…and “Mannix”. (“The Sound of Murder“, season 5, episode 17. He played “Barry Gates” in an unaccredited appearance.)