Audit time is like steam engine time, except more boring to watch from the outside, and more interesting from the inside. Especially when you get what the late Neptunus Lex referred to as “short but exciting” conversations.
Getting around to the point, though, two smart people have written smart things about audits and auditing.
LawDog:
Larry Correia:
I commend both of these gentlemen to your attention, while I work on pulling together some other things and try to stay warm.
Two things that popped up in my reading that I thought were worth sharing.
1. CrimeReads has a fairly good piece by Keith Roysdon (generally one of their less pretentious writers): “To Film and Thrive in L.A.: Three Lesser-Praised Friedkin Films Are Classics“.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen “To Live and Die in L.A.” and I’d kind of like to see it again. My feelings about “Sorcerer” are well known. I’ve never seen “Cruising” but I do want to as part of my “watch all of Friedkin’s films” project.
2. “Facts of Life: For Outdoorsmen and Ordinary Gentlemen” by Richard (The Scout Rifle Study) Mann.
I think there’s some pretty sound advice here. You should interpret that as “it agrees with my prejudices”. For example:
And:
By way of my beloved and indulgent sister: a man and his wife are planning to celebrate the holiday holed up in their house. In Buffalo.
Cutting to the chase, instead of digging the van out (these people weren’t going anywhere in that snow) they invited the travelers in.
The visitors — seven women and three men — filled the three-bedroom house, sleeping on couches, sleeping bags, an air mattress and in the home’s guest bedroom. The other travelers included parents with their daughter, an Indiana college student, and two college-age friends from Seoul. Three of them spoke English proficiently.
They spent the weekend swapping stories, watching the Buffalo Bills defeat the Chicago Bears on Christmas Eve and sharing delicious Korean home-cooked meals prepared by the guests, like jeyuk bokkeum, a spicy stir-fried pork dish, and dakdori tang, a chicken stew laced with fiery red pepper. To the surprise and glee of the Korean guests, Mr. Campagna and his wife, who are both fans of Korean food, had all the necessary condiments on hand: mirin, soy sauce, Korean red pepper paste, sesame oil and chili flakes. There was also kimchi and a rice cooker.
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Really, the only downside to this story from my point of view is that the Buffalo Bills won. The rest of the tale warms the cockles of my heart.
This story is a couple of days old, but I only got around to reading it this morning. When Rod Dreher says the NYT got a story about religion right, you should probably pay attention.
“The Miraculous Life and Afterlife of Charlene Richard“, about a Cajun farm girl who died in 1959 and the lengthy effort to make her a saint.
This is long, but I think it repays the effort. There’s a lot of discussion in the article about the specifics of the canonization process (including the relatively recent changes) and the internal Church politics involved in making someone a saint. If this isn’t the kind of thing that makes your eyes glaze over, I commend this article to your attention.
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.
I used to pay a lot of attention to the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship awards (the “genius grant). I don’t pay as much attention these days, because reasons.
However, I did know that Josh Miele, who I have written about before, was one of last year’s recipients.
Here’s a pretty cool profile of Mr. Miele and what he’s doing now. In brief, he’s working for Amazon on accessibility.
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Miele helped the team understand that they needed only to provide useful context, even just a word or two, for a person who is blind or visually impaired to identify the product. The team focused on kitchen and pantry items — things that come in cans, boxes, bottles, and tubes. The goal: Recognize items in Amazon’s vast product catalogue, or if that wasn’t possible, recognize brands and logos that could give the customer enough information to know what they held in their hand.
“If I touch a can of something, I know it’s a can,” Miele explained, “but I don’t know if it’s a can of black beans or pineapple. So, if I’m making chili, and I open a can of pineapple, I’m going to be pretty irritated.”
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(Technically, this popped up last night.)
It’s more like trying to pick up someone who doesn’t speak your language out of a crowd. At a f–king death metal concert at Madison Square Garden.
And it’s at triple capacity.
And only one door is open.
And the place is on fire.
I’m not a religious person, but the word that comes to mind is “biblical.” It’s like Hurricane Katrina meets Dien Bien Phu.
…here I am at Camp Granada Quinebarge.
The rustic overnight camp abruptly shut down earlier this month after just six days. Camp directors informed parents, who had shelled out $3,400 for two weeks, that they needed to pick up their children the next morning, following a “summer of challenges” capped off by delays from the camp’s food supplier that made continuing untenable.
The decision to close the 85-year-old camp in Moultonborough, N.H., in the middle of the summer left campers bereft, counselors stewing, and some parents furious. Soon, stories began to circulate of problems that went much deeper than late deliveries: counselors hired just days before camp and lacking basic training; a counselor punched in the face by a child and a camper later hit in the head by the same child; dirty dishes provided at multiple meals; at least four campers vomiting and getting quarantined, while some parents said they weren’t informed; and staff quitting and being fired in high numbers.
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I had to post this for two reasons. One is that I can’t pass up a good Fyre Festival reference. And the other? I also can’t pass up a good classical reference.
This is the first time that I’ve ever found a story with a headline that I wanted to link, but I don’t even want to mention the headline here for reasons.
So I’m just going to put a link right here. I’m not going to tell you what the headline is, though I will tell you it is from the NYPost. Click at your own risk. You have been warned.
One hint: it involves a famous and controversial musician. Think “Chappelle’s Show”. Not Prince.
This popped up on Hacker News, and, while I have reservations about linking to Esquire for anything but drinks, it did entertain me: “The Rise and Fall of Planet Hollywood“.
I never went to a Planet Hollywood: when it first opened, it struck me as a cynical cash grab, and nothing in this article convinces me otherwise.
Some relevant quotes:
The ax Jack Nicholson wielded in The Shining, still caked in fake blood, was buried in the back of the garden shed of a guy who worked on the film.
“We asked what he wanted for it,” Todd told the Los Angeles Times in 1995, “and he said, ‘Well, I’ll need another ax.’ That was an easy deal.”
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(For those who don’t recognize Natalie Zea’s name, she did get discovered eventually. She was “Raylan Givens” ex-wife/current girlfriend on “Justified”, and was “Wade Felton”‘s (Walton Goggins) girlfriend on “The Unicorn” before that got cancelled.)
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Bonus: I was sort of on the fence about using this. But in the end, it told me something I didn’t know, and the presenter isn’t quite as grating as some of those other “abandoned thing” guys.
Did you know there was a Hard Rock theme park? It opened in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in April of 2008. The plan was for it to be the first of a chain of Hard Rock theme parks.
It closed in September of 2008. The parent company filed for Chapter 11, and the park was sold off. It reopened in May of 2009 as “Freestyle Music Park“, with the Hard Rock branding removed. Freestyle’s parent company was sued multiple times by various entities for various reasons, and the park closed again at the end of the 2009 season. It never reopened and remains abandoned today.
(I’ve been to Myrtle Beach once or twice, but it was when we lived in Virginia, so about 50 years ago, long before Hard Rock Park. My most vivid memory of those trips was us going to some other amusement park, and being upset that I was too short for the bumper cars. I do know people in the North Carolina area, but I’m not sure if any of them ever made the trip down to Hard Rock Park.)
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