I don’t know why I find “the Olympic torch has only set people on fire three times” so funny, but I do. It reminds me of the line from the Spinal Tap commentary track about the pods working…maybe 70% of the time, but Marty DiBergi had to pick one night they didn’t work and make a big deal out of it…
Also tickling my funny bone:
“supposedly Greek virgin priestesses”? I’m not sure I want to think about that.
(For folks unfamiliar with Austin, Sunset Valley is an independent municipality located on the south side of town.)
Gee, if only there was some other solution to the problem of coyotes attacking dogs…
Harold Camping. I’m really kind of curious what’s going to happen to Family Radio now; does it survive with a new leader? Do the stations get sold off? I think most of them are non-commercial licenses; is there another religious group that would want to buy them?
Janet Dailey, noted romance author.
You know, “Start writing or stop talking about it” is actually pretty good writing advice.
It is that time of year again.
Stuff you might have heard of:
Pretty much all of these strike me as good choices, except “Roger and Me”. “Pulp Fiction”, I’m sure, will be divisive. More at the LAT link, including the stuff you probably haven’t heard of. On that list, I’m kind of intrigued by “Daughter of Dawn”, “King of Jazz”, and “Notes on the Port of St. Francis”.
Ronnie Biggs, one of the conspirators in the Great Train Robbery and (briefly) vocalist for the Sex Pistols, has passed away at the age of 84.
I have the feeling that Biggs was often viewed as a loveable rogue. This is worth keeping in mind:
As is this:
(According to Wikipedia, Mills died from leukemia in 1970, and one of the robbers who wasn’t Biggs confessed to the beating last year. There does appear to be some question about whether that confession was truthful.)
Edited to add: more from the paper of record. And in case you are asking yourself, “Don’t they have newspapers in England?”: they do, but I haven’t found one I trust that doesn’t have the Biggs obit behind a pay wall.
A prominent dinosaur “hobbyist” is claiming “’serious errors and irregularities’ in dinosaur research involving some of the world’s top paleontologists”.
Why is this interesting? Well, scientific disputes of this sort are a topic for coverage on this blog. After all, we do have “Retraction Watch” on our blog roll.
But there’s another good reason: the “hobbyist” in question is Microsoft millionaire, Modernist Cuisine author, and notorious patent troll Dr. Nathan P. Myhrvold.
I’m not a big fan of Dr. Myhrvold, but that kind of answer…well…it stinks.
And now that I have it stuck in your head:
Colorado’s package of gun laws, enacted this year after mass shootings in Aurora, Colo., and Newtown, Conn., has been hailed as a victory by advocates of gun control. But if Sheriff Cooke and a majority of the other county sheriffs in Colorado offer any indication, the new laws — which mandate background checks for private gun transfers and outlaw magazines over 15 rounds — may prove nearly irrelevant across much of the state’s rural regions.
Some sheriffs, like Sheriff Cooke, are refusing to enforce the laws, saying that they are too vague and violate Second Amendment rights. Many more say that enforcement will be “a very low priority,” as several sheriffs put it. All but seven of the 62 elected sheriffs in Colorado signed on in May to a federal lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the statutes.
Last week, I asked the musical question:
Does LACSD make it a practice to hire and promote deputies who are dumber than a bag of hair?
Apparently, “dumber than a bag of hair” does not even begin to cover it.
Yes. Not only did they try to intimidate an FBI agent, they recorded themselves doing it. And the prosecution has those recordings now.
(I did give some thought, for just a moment, to the idea that this might have been an ass-covering measure. But on second thought, that doesn’t make much sense; you want to cover your butt on something like this, you record the supervisor giving the illegal order. You don’t record yourself committing the crime.)
Man, yesterday was a rough day for actors and actresses. I decided to hold off until this morning on posting obits, figuring that would give the various papers of record some time to get their thoughts and acts together.
Peter O’Toole: NYT. LAT. Kenneth Turan appreciation. AV Club. Lawrence.
Noted actress Joan Fontaine also passed away yesterday. NYT. LAT. (ETA: AV Club.)
And finally, Tom Laughlin, of “Billy Jack” fame. LAT. (ETA: Also AV Club.)
To be fair, Ms. Kael wrote that line long before Steven Seagal and “On Deadly Ground”.
Once upon a time, a long time ago, I loved the “worst” lists published in various places. Jeff Millar‘s worst movies list in the HouChron. Siskel and Ebert’s “worst movies of the year” episode. High points, things I looked forward to every year.
(On a side note, it fills me with delight down to the bottom of my coal-black little heart that Siskel & Ebert.org has the complete 1992 worst up on their site. This is the year that Roger lost the coin flip and picked Shining Through as his worst movie of the year, complete with the interminable strudel scene. Really. I kid you not. Melanie Griffith just goes on. And on. AND ON. Here, watch for yourself:
Edited to add: Actually, go over to their web site and watch there, because whoever runs the site has decided to make embedded videos auto-play.
The Shining Through section begins at about 15:30, but you should really watch the whole thing.)
But things have changed. Siskel and Ebert and Millar are all dead. For a while, the AV Club was an acceptable substitute.
But this year’s AV Club is a little off. Take their worst movies of the year, for example. I admit I have not seen Planes (I don’t care for Pixar films) or A Good Day to Die Hard. But were they really among the worst movies of the year, in a year that included The Purge and The Incredible Burt Wonderstone? Worse than Last Vegas or the Carrie remake? At least Battle of the Year made their list. (Didn’t see it, but saw the trailer for it.)
Smurfs 2 came out this year. It isn’t on the AV Club list. Enough said.
Likewise, a “worst TV” list that doesn’t include Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, or Raising Hope is pretty much worthless, and tells me that the AV Club writers are either on drugs or taking payoffs from Fox.
But there is one thing I can count on, although it technically isn’t a “worst” list (except maybe of family disasters): the Carolyn Hax Hootenanny of Holiday Horrors. The 2013 edition is here.
All of the sudden she stuck out her hand and bellowed “SPOOOOOON!” at which point someone meekly handed her a spoon and she proceeded to stir the gravy.
(And dryer lint really is great for starting fires. Especially with a flint and steel. At least, that’s what I learned in the Boy Scouts.)
Edited to add more: someone on the AV Club posted a link to “The Dissolve”, aka “Where Many of the AV Club’s Most Interesting Writers Went to Languish In Obscurity”. And they have their own worst list, which I find…kind of credible.
Yeah, okay, the Die Hard movie is on it, and Smurfs 2 isn’t, but they do get points for reminding me of some other candidates for year’s worst movie. For example, The Internship, aka “A Two Hour Long Commercial for Google”, and Movie 43. Might be worth keeping an eye on this site in 2014.
…and the International Olympic Committee:
Vivian and Ronald Joseph finished in fourth place in the pairs skating competition at the 1964 Winter Olympics.
However, after the Olympics, it came out that the second place West German team of Marika Kilius and Hans-Jürgen Bäumler had signed a contract with Holiday on Ice before the Olympics. This violated IOC rules, and, in 1966, the West Germans gave their medals back. The Canadian team of Debbi Wilkes and Guy Revell were moved up to second, and the Josephs were moved up to third. There was even a small subdued ceremony in Chicago for the Josephs, and the Wilkes/Revall team were awarded their medals at the 1967 national championships in Canada.
But the IOC never asked the Josephs or the Wilkes/Revell team for their medals back. (Guy Revell died in 1981 and was buried with his medal, so that might have been interesting.) Nor did the IOC tell anyone in the Canadian or US figure skating associations.
As of now, 26 years later, the IOC is officially stating that the Wilkes/Revell Canadian team shares the silver medal with the West Germans, and the Josephs are the bronze medal winners. “Despite the information on its website over the years, the I.O.C. said in an email that since 1987 this was always intended to be the official result.”
Uh-huh. Pull the other one, guys; it has silver bells on it, just in time for the Christmas season.