Things I didn’t know about until today.

July 24th, 2024

But which I find interesting:

1. The Romance Writers of America filed for bankruptcy at the end of May.

2. The RWA convention is in Austin this year. Maybe. According to the article, it was supposed to take place at the end of July, but is now scheduled for October. Except, when I went to the registration page, it doesn’t seem to be allowing registrations.

Edited to add 7/26: conference registration is now open. Dates are October 11th – 13th, and the cost is $349 ($399 if you’re not a member of RWA).

How did they manage to go bankrupt? The way you’d expect: they angered a bunch of their members, who are now ex-members.

Today, the group’s membership hovers at around 2,000, and it owes approximately $3 million in hotel contracts for the group’s past annual conferences.

I kind of want to keep this post short-ish, so I’m not going into details about how RWA made so many people angry: the linked article discusses the Courtney Milan affair (which I remember reading about as it was unfolding: as much as I hate linking to Wikipedia, that entry fills in some missing details) and the 2021 VIVIAN controversy (I know, two Wiki links in a row, but the primary source link is broken and the other links are to sites I don’t link to, or are not good sources). You can click through if you want more details on those issues: I just find the collapse of RWA interesting, and a little sad. I feel like writers need strong organizations to protect them from predatory publishers and publishing practices, so I’ll be unhappy to see RWA go.

“It would have been easier if I could have just said, ‘Well, deeply racist organization gone forever,’” she said. “But that’s not the story as I saw it. For me, and for a lot of people in Romancelandia, this was a group where they had made lifelong friendships, where there were very promising signs of progress in terms of redressing past mistakes.”

And if RWA goes away, that’s going to reduce my chances to network and sell my gunsmith romance series.

(Also, another year, another Hugo controversy. But I already knew about that, and I don’t have any sites I’m willing to link to. Very short version: someone was trying to buy votes, and did it so clumsily a seven-year-old could have figured it out.)

3. On a happier note, at least for me – because I hate the Olympics – the IOC is threatening to revoke Salt Lake City’s hosting status for the Winter 2034 games.

The IOC seems to be upset that…wait for it…the United States government, specifically Congress and the Department of Justice, are looking into how the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) handled the case of the Chinese swimmers.

But many American athletes say they don’t trust WADA’s procedures and want probes to continue.
“What the athletes think, they want transparency,” said Katie Ledecky, the star U.S. swimmer, who spoke at a separate press conference on Wednesday. “They want further answers to the questions that still remain.”
In a statement, Travis Tygart head of the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) blasted the IOC for linking the China scandal to Salt Lake City’s bid.
“It is shocking to see the IOC itself stooping to threats in an apparent effort to silence those seeking answers,” Tygart said. “It seems more apparent than ever that WADA violated the rules and needs accountability and reform.”

…

“Russia and China have been too big to fail in [WADA’s] eyes and they get a different set of rules than the rest of the world does unfortunately,” Tygart said.

I’m excited about this. I hope the IOC pulls the Salt Lake City bid, I hope they have to frantically scramble to find a new host city, I hope they completely fail because nobody wants to host the Olympics because they are a giant money pit with no financial returns, and I hope some folks from the IOC and WADA wind up in prison.

Posted in Books, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: July 24, 2024.

July 24th, 2024

John Mayall, massively influential British bluesman. NYT (archived).

Though he played piano, organ, guitar and harmonica and sang lead vocals in his own bands with a high, reedy tenor, Mr. Mayall earned his reputation as “the godfather of British blues” not for his own playing or singing but for recruiting and polishing the talents of one gifted young lead guitarist after another.
In his most fertile period, between 1965 and 1969, those budding stars included Eric Clapton, who left to form the band Cream and eventually became a hugely successful solo artist; Peter Green, who left to found Fleetwood Mac; and Mick Taylor, who was snatched from the Mayall band by the Rolling Stones.
A more complete list of the alumni of Mr. Mayall’s band of that era, known as the Bluesbreakers, reads like a Who’s Who of British pop royalty. The drummer Mick Fleetwood and the bassist John McVie were also founding members of Fleetwood Mac. The bassist Jack Bruce joined Mr. Clapton in Cream. The bassist Andy Fraser was an original member of Free. Aynsley Dunbar would go on to play drums for Frank Zappa, Journey and Jefferson Starship.

As you know, Bob, music – especially music of this period – is outside of my area of competence, so I am going to defer to valued commenter pigpen51 for additional comment on Mr. Mayall and his legacy.

Also outside of my area of competence (Hello, pigpen51! Really, I should give you posting privileges here.): Duke Fakir, of the Four Tops.

His family said in a statement that the cause was heart failure.

“Heart failure,” MacAdoo said in an almost sorrowful tone.
“Heart seizure,” Haere said automatically.
“What’s the difference?”
‘Everyone dies of heart failure.”

–Ross Thomas, Missionary Stew

Lewis H. Lapham, of “Harper’s Magazine” and “Lapham’s Quarterly”.

This might just be me, and I may very well be speaking ill of the dead. But when I see someone described as a “scholarly patrician”, I mentally translate that to: someone who thinks they are better and smarter than you are, therefore they know better than you how to run your life, and believe the government should enforce their point of view on you.

Finally, one I’ve been holding for a couple of days and want to get in: Robert L. Allen, “writer, activist and academic”. I knew of Mr. Allen because he wrote the book on “The Port Chicago Mutiny“, which was proceeded by the Port Chicago explosion.

There were a large number of black soldiers stationed at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine, loading and unloading ammunition. Safety procedures may not have been what they should have been. On July 17, 1944, the E.A. Bryan exploded during the loading process. It was a massive explosion which destroyed everything within 1,000 feet, including another ship. 320 people died, many of them black sailors.

White officers were given leave to recover, but Black sailors were soon ordered to continue their dangerous work loading munitions at a nearby port. They did not know why the ships had exploded — a cause has never been determined — and 258 refused to keep working, leading an admiral to threaten to execute them by firing squad, Mr. Allen said.

…

Of the 258 men, 208 returned to work, but they were still court-martialed for disobeying orders. The 50 others, in a summary court-martial, were convicted of conspiracy to commit mutiny and sentenced to eight to 15 years of confinement.

Interestingly, Mr. Allen’s death apparently prompted the Navy to exonerate all the sailors last week.

“The secretary of the Navy called to offer condolences,” Ms. Carter said in an interview, referring to Carlos Del Toro. “And he said, ‘I’m going to do more than that — I’m going to exonerate these sailors.’”

I haven’t read Mr. Allen’s book, though I kind of want to. I know about the book and the incident from a long piece John Marr wrote in the late and very much missed “Murder Can Be Fun” zine (issue #11).

Posted in Books, History, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Brief programming note.

July 22nd, 2024

For the benefit of those who might want to watch it, it looks like the Bob Newhart tribute special will be airing at 8 PM Eastern, 7 PM Central, tonight. This is per the online CBS schedule.

Posted in Bagatelle, TV | Comments Closed

Sunday is my gun book day…

July 21st, 2024

…and given the breaking news today, I suspect it’s going to be a manic Monday. (Also, I have to go to the eye doctor tomorrow.) So how about a little distraction?

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books, Guns, History, Hoplobibilophilia, O'Connor | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 21, 2024.

July 21st, 2024

Sheila Jackson Lee (D – Houston). Fox 26 Houston. McThag.

Whitney Rydbeck, actor. Other credits include “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island”, “Battle Beyond the Stars”, “Switch”, and one of the spin-offs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

Posted in Movies, Obits, Politics, Texas, TV | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

July 19th, 2024

Blake Anderson was fired as football coach of Utah State yesterday.

Their season starts August 31st. Should be interesting to see who they find to coach.

The reason?

Utah State said an external investigation found Anderson did not comply with the school’s Title IX policies, which require timely reporting of sexual misconduct and domestic violence and bar employees from investigating reports of sexual misconduct themselves. The school also fired deputy athletic director Jerry Bovee and football staff member Austin Albrecht for violating university policies connected to the reporting of domestic and sexual violence. Bovee last week announced his intention to file a grievance, pursuant to university policy, and said he and two other Utah State employees reported an incident that occurred in April 2023 to the university’s Office of Equity.

There’s a second day story that gives more specifics. Apparently, Coach Anderson decided he was going to play Perry Mason (or was it Paul Drake):

Anderson contacted the girlfriend and roommate of a Utah State football player in April 2023 after learning that the player had been arrested due to an alleged domestic abuse incident, according to an investigation commissioned by the university. Anderson said he was on a “fact-finding mission” to determine if the player should be suspended or if they needed to take any further action, according to an investigative report obtained via public records request.

…

“Most egregiously, you engaged in investigative efforts regarding the domestic violence arrest, including meeting with and collecting written statements from the potential victim and another witness,” the letter states. “You undertook these actions following an arrest and while a criminal investigation was ongoing.”

Coach Anderson, of course, says the university was out to get him, the charges are unfounded, and he did nothing wrong or in violation of policy.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Revisionist history watch.

July 19th, 2024

“Hello Kitty is not a cat,” Jill Cook, the director of retail business development at Sanrio, the creators of the iconic cartoon, told Today. “She’s actually a little girl.”
In fact, she’s a tiny girl — who “weighs three apples” and stands five apples tall — raised in the London suburbs with her twin sister Mimmy, their parents and even her own pet cat.

Posted in Bagatelle | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: July 19, 2024.

July 19th, 2024

Bob Newhart. THR. Tributes. Appreciation. Variety.

Something very sick makes me laugh. My wife says to me, “If people ever found out what you find humorous, they’d stop showing up.” I said to her: “That’s our little secret.

…

“I tend to find humor in the macabre. I would say 85 percent of me is what you see on the show. And the other 15 percent is a very sick man with a very deranged mind,” he said during a 1990 interview with Los Angeles magazine.

…

What do you think happens on the other side?

I think if you lived a good life, some people say it is rapture. You spend the rest of your life in a state of rapture. That’d be nice. What I’m actually hoping is there’s the Pearly Gates and God’s there and he says to me, “What did you do in life?” And I say, “I was a stand-up comedian.” And he says: “Get in that real short line over there.”

Ha!

God has an incredible sense of humor, an unimaginable sense of humor. Just look around.

I’ve had this discussion – God is a punster and has a sense of humor – with people at my church, too. I think it it worth noting that he was a faithful Catholic, and was married to the same woman for 60 years. (Ginny Newhart passed away in 2023.)

One of the less-reputable over the air networks used to run “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart” back to back in the afternoons, and I’d have both on while I worked. I think “TBNS” is just about perfect as a show, but, oddly, I didn’t like “Newhart” so much. I do remember watching and enjoying it first run, but not so much as an adult. My dislike for it now is mostly because I felt the show shifted focus away from Dick to Michael and Stephanie, and I really didn’t like those two characters. But when Bob was dominating the screen, it was a pretty good show.

It turns out one of my favorite “Newhart” episodes is available on the ‘Tube (until someone files a copyright strike): “Dick the Kid”, season 5, episode 3.

Dick has a case of writer’s block, so he goes off to work as a cowboy on a ranch. The comic element of this episode isn’t Dick’s ineptitude as a cowboy. Just the opposite: he’s so good at being a cowboy, he wins the respect of everyone. Even the toughest most macho of the cowboys breaks down when Dick goes back to the inn.

The world is a lesser place today.

Edited to add: per THR, CBS will be airing a tribute to Bob Newhart on July 22nd, but I don’t have a specific time yet.

Lou Dobbs.

Cheng Pei-pei, Chinese actress. IMDB.

Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnamese Communist leader.

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, Politics, Religion, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: supplimental.

July 18th, 2024

Both THR and Variety are reporting the passing of Bob Newhart at the age of 94.

I think this needs to wait until tomorrow for a round-up, but I wanted to get the news out there.

One of my favorite Bob Newhart memories:

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 18, 2024.

July 18th, 2024

Robert Pearson, hair stylist turned…barbecue chef.

He was pretty successful as a stylist, working with Vidal Sassoon and Paul Mitchell, as well as setting up a chain of salons in Bloomingdale’s.

By the end of the 1970s, Mr. Pearson was growing tired of the stylist’s life, in particular the long trips around the country to train stylists and speak at industry conventions. He did enjoy visits to one city, though: Lubbock, where he first encountered Texas-style barbecue.

He took up Texas-style barbecue seriously.

He purchased a $13,000 custom-made pit from Texas. He bought mesquite wood at $800 a cord, which he blended with local green oak (at just $110 a cord); after much experimentation, he found that a one-to-four ratio created the right balance of smoke from the mesquite and moisture from the oak to fuel the six- to 18-hour fires he needed to cook his meats.
Mr. Pearson was a purist: He insisted on wood, and only wood, as fuel. He cooked low and very, very slow. He eschewed rubs and sauces, letting flavor emerge from the meat and smoke. He specialized in brisket, the lodestar of Texas barbecue, but also offered half chickens, pork shoulder and the occasional exotic fare, like alligator, elk loin and rattlesnake.

His first location was in Connecticut, just off of I-95. Later on, he moved it to Queens.

After establishing himself in Queens, Mr. Pearson tried to open an outlet in Manhattan, which he supplied with food cooked in Queens. But he found that the cooked meat lost its zing during the drive across the East River, and in any case the space caught fire a few days after opening.
In the late 1990s, he stepped back from his restaurant, not long before it lost its lease under pressure from neighbors who, despite loving his food, were less enamored with its constant, thick smoke.

…

While many young pit masters looked to Mr. Pearson as a mentor, few chose to follow his near-religious devotion to an austere interpretation of Texas barbecue, and in particular his aversion to sauce.
Conceding to consumer tastes, he did offer a quartet of sauces as an accompaniment: mild, medium, “madness” and “mean,” which he said, with some disdain, was a further concession to “macho” diners who insisted that real barbecue had to be wet and spicy. Mean, made with a pile of Szechuan peppercorns, gave them what they wanted, and more.
“When I’m making that sauce at the store, I’ve got to make sure it’s very quiet, and nobody else is around,” he told Newsday. “It’s very volatile. Mean is not really meant for human consumption.”

Peter Buxtun, one of the people responsible for exposing the Tuskegee Study.

For the benefit of my younger readers:

Officially known as the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male, the research began in 1932 with the recruiting of about 400 poor, undereducated Black men in Macon County, Ala., whose seat is Tuskegee. All had been found to have syphilis.
The infected men were deceptively told that they had “bad blood,” not a sexually communicable disease that could lead to blindness, heart injury and death. The researchers wanted to use them as human guinea pigs, without their informed consent, to study the ravages of syphilis.
Even after penicillin was found in the 1940s to be an effective cure for syphilis, the men were not offered treatment. In one sample of 92 deceased men from the study, 30 percent were found to have died of syphilis complications.

…

But in the early 1970s, after Mr. Buxtun had left the health service for law school, he turned his files over to reporters for The Associated Press. An article by Jean Heller, an A.P. investigative reporter, ran on front pages around the country, including in The New York Times on July 26, 1972.
“All hell broke loose,” said Susan M. Reverby, the author of “Examining Tuskegee: The Infamous Syphilis Study and Its Legacy.”

…

Hearings called by Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts, at which Mr. Buxtun testified, led to the termination of the study. A class-action lawsuit on behalf of survivors and descendants was settled for $10 million. In 1997, President Bill Clinton invited surviving Tuskegee subjects to the White House, where he offered a formal apology and called the government’s actions over four decades “shameful” and “clearly racist.”

I like this quote:

Dr. Reverby, who got to know Mr. Buxtun, described him as a political libertarian and National Rifle Association member who was angry that the health agency where he worked, tracing people with sexually transmitted diseases, was denying treatment to the Alabama men.
“He thought it was outrageous and wrong,” she said, adding, “He was really a strong-willed, irascible guy.”

Posted in Beef, Food, History, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 17, 2024.

July 17th, 2024

Naomi Pomeroy, prominent Portland chef. She appeared on a few reality shows, but probably wasn’t that well known to my readers. The obit is interesting, though.

She and her first husband, Michael Hebb, got started by hosting “underground suppers”. They proved popular enough that they were able to get investors and started opening brick and mortar restaurants. They got widespread acclaim in Portland for “revitalizing” the restaurant scene there, and some national acclaim.

Then it all fell apart. One day, Mr. Hebb told Ms. Pomeroy that there wasn’t any money left to pay the staff or run the restaurants, and left town that night. (There’s a good article from “Portland Monthly” in 2009 about what happened, if you want more details.)

Ms. Pomeroy was left holding the bag. The “Portland Monthly” article and, to some extent, the NYT obit, make it sound like she was the real talented chef of the two, while Mr. Hebb was more of an idea and hype man.

Ms. Pomeroy did manage to recover and re-enter the restaurant business. She was 49, and died in a tubing accident on the Willamette River.

NYT obit for James B. Sikking (archived).

Posted in 1970s, Food, Mannix, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 16, 2024.

July 16th, 2024

Evan Wright, journalist and author. (Generation Kill)

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You can also dial 988 to reach the Lifeline.

Posted in Books, Media, Obits | 1 Comment »

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