Hand to God, I thought this was a joke at first: Bernie Tiede, who killed his “long-time companion” Marjorie Nugent and inspired Richard Linklater’s movie “Bernie”, has been freed from prison.
In other news:
And who was the “now discredited homicide detective”? Louis Scarcella. (I’m starting to think I need a “Scarcella” sub-category. And maybe an NYPD one as well.)
Efrem Zimbalist Jr. (Edited to add: NYT obit.)
I was five months old when it first aired, and nine years old when it went off the air, so the show is kind of at the fringes of my memory. But I remember thinking “The F.B.I.” was a swell show.
And, of course, it was a Quinn Martin production.
The NYT is reporting the death of Walter R. Walsh on Tuesday at the age of 106.
I linked to the American Rifleman‘s profile of Mr. Walsh some time ago. That article is still up, and I commend it to your attention.
On Oct. 12, 1937, Mr. Walsh was in the sporting goods store Dakin’s in Bangor, Me., posing as a gun sales clerk and waiting for Public Enemy No. 1, Alfred Brady, and two gunmen, James Dalhover and Clarence Lee Shaffer.
Wanted for four murders, 200 robberies and a prison breakout, they had been in the store days earlier and were returning for Thompson submachine guns. But a large force of federal agents and state and local police officers were waiting in ambush, hidden in cars, storefronts and offices across the street.
The gang’s car drew up at 8:30 a.m. Dalhover got out and entered the store. He was immediately seized and disarmed by Mr. Walsh and taken to the back by other agents. Shaffer and Brady, sensing something was wrong, emerged with guns drawn.
Mr. Walsh, meanwhile, approached the store’s front with a .45 in his right hand and a .357 Magnum in his left. But as he reached the door he realized he was looking through the plate glass at Shaffer. The glass exploded as both men fired simultaneously.
Shaffer fell, mortally wounded, to the sidewalk. Mr. Walsh, although hit in the chest, shoulder and right hand, stepped outside firing his Magnum at Brady, who was cut down in a thundering fusillade from all sides as he shot back wildly. Witnesses said he was still moving as Mr. Walsh put another bullet in him.
Edited to add: tribute from the American Rifleman.
Hooray, hooray, the first of May!
Happy Victims of Communism Day, everyone.
My first encounter with Bob Hoskins wasn’t “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” or “Super Mario Brothers”. I encountered him through Siskel, Ebert, and a low-budget crime film that nearly didn’t get a theatrical release:
I’m going to have to watch that again, soon. (The Criterion edition
Also among the dead: Al Feldstein, who made Mad what it was in the 1960s and 1970s.
So what?
Mr. Piquette is a deputy with the LA County Sheriff’s Office.
Mr. Piquette also has admitted to possessing a shotgun “that had been stolen from the Sheriff’s Department” and “three assault weapons that are banned under California law”.
Really? There’s a lot of short barreled ARs on the streets of LA? I’d love to see some evidence of that.
Then again, given that this is the “first plea agreement by one of 20 sheriff’s officials charged or indicted since December”, Hedding may be right, and the “criminals” who are carrying these types of weapons on the street work for the LA County Sheriff.
Apologies for the extended radio silence. The past few days have been busy.
As many of the Whipped Cream Irregulars know, Sunday was my birthday, as well as Easter. This will not happen again until 2025.
Anyway, Mike the Musicologist came up late Friday night, rented a Silvercar, and we drove down to San Antonio on Saturday to do some gun shopping, tour Ranger Creek (which will be the subject of another post), and have dinner with Andrew and Lawrence at Bohanan’s (which may be the subject of another post).
I spent Easter Sunday with family, eating an excellent ham from the Noble Pig and a very good cake baked by my sister. (I don’t remember which cookbook she got the recipe from, but I thought it was very good; perhaps she’ll post here and update.)
Then on Monday, MtM and I took the Silvercar to Dallas, where we did some more gun shopping (including a stop at Cabela’s, but not that one), had a very good lunch at Chop House Burgers, and did some shopping for tacky souvenirs of pre-revolutionary America at the 6th Floor Museum shop.
So Saturday through Monday were jam packed. (For the record, I did not buy any guns. Though I was really tempted by the Sig Sauer 1911 22 at GrabAGun. I was also tempted at one of the San Antonio gun stores that had a couple of Nylon 66s, but I just can’t bring myself to pay $350 for one, even if it did have a scope.)
(Edited to add: Also, $1,300 for a K-22, even if it was an early post-war gun with the box, seems really really high.)
Anyway, I’m back and trying to get caught up on blogging. Profuse thanks to MtM for organizing the weekend.
NYT. Tribute from Michiko Kakutani.
LAT.
WP. WP original 1970 review of One Hundred Years of Solitude.
Edited to add: “Love in the Time of Cholera: why it’s a bad title“.
Funny thing: I’ve never read any of Márquez’s work. I have One Hundred Years of Solitude
I actually went by one of the Half-Price Books locations last night looking for Márquez’s works. They had nothing. Nada. Zero. Surprising: I would have figured they’d have some copies of Love or Solitude at least.
Gabriel García Márquez is dead. Roundup tomorrow.
Second day story on the Robert “Ratso” Rizzo sentencing. Not much new, but linked here for the historical record.
Okay, the miniature golf course is the first good thing I’ve heard about him.
I knew about Ratso’s horse racing, but “more to care for than what they were worth”? Hadn’t heard that before.
Robert “Ratso” Rizzo has just been sentenced to 12 years in prison.
This is breaking news: watch this space for updates and links.
Edited to add: link with more details.
In addition to the prison sentence, Ratso will also have to pay $8.8 million in restitution to the city of Bell: but he will get credit for “money he and the city’s former police chief have already returned to the city”.
The LAT also states that Ratso will be allowed to serve this sentence concurrently with his 33 month sentence on tax fraud charges. One of the LAT‘s editors tweets:
When will we see #Rizzo again? Here's the brkdwn: 33 months in federal prison, then off to state prison. Likely out in 6 years, maybe less
— steve marble (@StephenMarble) April 16, 2014
In other news, Superintendent Jose Fernandez of the Centinela Valley Union High School District was paid $674,559 last year. For comparison purposes, the head of the NYC schools made $412,193. The head of the LA school district made $393,106.
Isn’t that kind of “Here, let us give you some money so you can end up taking even more money out of our pockets?”
The FBI may be investigating. Or at least asking questions before they start an investigation. (I’m not sure what laws may have been broken: being paid a lot of money isn’t a crime by itself.)
Doesn’t that still seem kind of high? The Centinela school district has “6,600 students, five high schools and a $70-million budget.” There seems to be an argument being made that Fernandez pulled the district out of possible bankruptcy; but at the same time, there are also claims that teachers were being laid off while he was getting paid to purchase more seniority in the retirement system.
Edited to add 2:
On a completely unrelated note, there’s an iPhone app called “Tiny Violin“.
I have written before about the California city of Cudahy: election fraud, marijuana dispensary bribes, the bimbo and the badge, payoffs in the Denny’s…
Latest developments:
The city has been ordered to repay $22.7 million in “redevelopment funds”.
On a totally unrelated note, here because I just love typing the name, Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow has pled not guilty to the charges against him.
By way of the Y Combinator Twitter, I found this rather interesting Fast Company article about “Better Place”.
Better Place was born to be revolutionary, the epitome of the kind of world-changing ambition that routinely gets celebrated. Founder Shai Agassi, a serial entrepreneur turned rising star at German software giant SAP, conceived Better Place “on a Davos afternoon” in 2005 when he asked himself, “How would you run a whole country without oil?” Four years later, onstage at the TED conference, Agassi, a proud Israeli with a bit of a Steve Jobs complex, wore a black turtleneck and promised, with the confidence of a man who has known the future for some time but has only recently decided to share his findings, that he would sell millions of electric vehicles in his home country and around the world. He implied that converting to electric cars was the moral equivalent of the abolition of human slavery and that it would usher in a new Industrial Revolution.
Shai Agassi was on FC‘s “2009 Most Creative People in Business” list. He was on the cover of Wired. Better Place raised almost a billion dollars.
And if being on the cover of Wired wasn’t a dead giveaway for you, they collapsed.
I have been, and continue to be, somewhat critical of Tesla. But I think one thing they’re doing right is positioning their vehicles as a premium product that’s worth the asking price.