Archive for the ‘Clippings’ Category

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Obit watch: January 8, 2016.

Friday, January 8th, 2016

I’m still kind of hoping for an obituary from a more mainstream news source, but Florence King, writer and National Review columnist, has died. Tributes from Tam and Lawrence.

This was a little surprising:

I’m not going to say she was as influential on my writing as P.J.: I came to her relatively late in life. But she was a damn funny writer (even if I can’t quote some of my favorite lines here), and the world is a lesser place for her passing. Frankly, we could do a lot worse than a monarchy. Especially one run by Florence King.

Pat Harrington Jr. A/V Club.

Interesting career. He started out on “The Jack Paar Show” (or “The Steve Allen Show”, depending on which obit you read).

His film credits include “The Wheeler Dealers” (1963) and “Move Over, Darling” (1963), both starring James Garner; “The President’s Analyst” (1967), starring James Coburn; and “Easy Come, Easy Go” (1967), starring Elvis Presley.

Of course, he was most famous as Schneider on “One Day at a Time”.

Ashraf Pahlavi, sister of Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi.

According to an internal secret history of the C.I.A., she also played a crucial role in the British- and American-inspired military coup that overthrew Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953 and restored her brother to the throne.

Really? I wonder where the NYT got access to this “internal secret history”.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Clippings, History, Obits, TMQ watch, TV | Comments Closed

Your Raymond “Shrimp Boy” Chow update.

Thursday, January 7th, 2016

It took us a non-trivial amount of digging to find this, but:

The case against Chow went to the jury on Tuesday.

We will keep an eye out for the verdict, or lack of one.

Posted in California Über Alles, Clippings, Law, Leland "Uncle" Yee | Comments Closed

Firings and obits: January 7, 2016.

Thursday, January 7th, 2016

Lovie Smith out as coach of hapless the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. 8-24 in two seasons.

Smith is the third Bucs head coach to be dismissed since the firing of Jon Gruden at the end of the 2008 season, making Tampa Bay’s next coach the team’s fifth in nine seasons.

Your Pierre Boulez obit. An appreciation.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, Music, NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

More blood, more water.

Monday, January 4th, 2016

Tom Coughlin out as head coach of the New York Football Giants. ESPN. It seems that this is being spun as a resignation, though I suspect it was more “mutual agreement”.

The Tennessee Titans are “not renewing the contract” of general manager Ruston Webster. You may recall that they fired head coach Ken Whisenhunt in November.

The Chargers have fired offensive coordinator Frank Reich, but apparently plan to keep Mike McCoy as head coach.

Posted in Clippings, Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 4, 2016.

Monday, January 4th, 2016

Bad time for cinematographers.

Both the LAT and the A/V Club are reporting the passing of noted cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond.

He won an Oscar for “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, and worked on a whole boatload of other stuff: “Deliverance”, “The Deer Hunter”, “The Long Goodbye”, “Sugarland Express”…

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

You know what the problem with fiction is?

Saturday, January 2nd, 2016

A few nights ago, I had an excellent dinner with a bunch of my friends.

Recent events resulted in the dinner conversation going off on a tangent about Quaaludes and “roofies”, which prompted me to look up Wikipedia’s entry on Quaaludes.

…the massive cache of powder and tabletted methaqualone produced under the aegis of the apartheid-era South African government’s Project Coast in a segment thereof directed by Dr Wouter Basson (whose “Brownies” are capsules of pure MDMA in doses of up to 135 mg), who at one point was held by police in Croatia carrying $40m in Vatican bearer bonds when attempting to purchase 500 kilos of methaqualone.

I wasn’t even aware there was such a thing as “Vatican bearer bonds”.

Dr. Wouter Basson is a cardiologist who somehow managed to become head of the South African government’s chemical and biological warfare projects (the “Project Coast” mentioned above).

The entire drug cache disappeared into the underground in the final days of the National Party’s tenure in office. The total methaqualone cache may have approached a metric ton.

A metric ton of Quaaludes. Jordan Belfort, call your office, please.

Fiction has to be believable. You can’t put something like a government produced cache containing a metric ton of quaaludes, or a guy walking around with $40 million in bearer bonds from the Vatican, into a novel and expect people to believe you.

Posted in Clippings, Geek, History | Comments Closed

Random notes: December 30, 2015.

Wednesday, December 30th, 2015

Okay, so it isn’t exactly Ninja Part 3: The Ninjaing. But I was entertained by Pete Wells’ review of Señor Frog’s in the NYT.

Señor Frog’s is not a good restaurant by most conventional measures, including the fairly basic one of serving food.

(Spoiler: he still liked it better than Guy’s American Kitchen and Bar.)

From the HouChron: off-duty HPD officer lists a couple of personal firearms on Texas Gun Trader, meets up with potential customers, and gets into a shootout.

Mildly interesting, but I call it out here for this quote:

Senties did not know how much Curry was asking for the guns, but on the website, the price tag for pistols can range from about $300 to almost $2,000 depending on the model and the condition.

“…from about $300 to almost $2,000”. Wow. That certainly narrows it down.

Seriously, if you don’t have specific information on what Curry (the HPD officer) was selling and how much he was asking, why put that in? Does the HouChron even have editors these days?

Posted in Clippings, Cops, Food, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 29, 2015.

Tuesday, December 29th, 2015

Ian Fraser Kilmister, also known as Lemmy from Motörhead.

“Please,” the band added, “play Motörhead loud, play Hawkwind” — Mr. Kilmister’s earlier group — “loud, play Lemmy’s music LOUD. Have a drink or few.”

Posted in Clippings, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 28, 2015.

Monday, December 28th, 2015

Haskell Wexler, noted cinematographer.

Mr. Sayles said Mr. Wexler had once told him the story of being torpedoed. “He said the U-boat surfaced as the sailors were swimming to their lifeboats,” he said, “and they all were afraid it was coming up to machine-gun them. Instead, the captain lifted a small movie camera to document his kill, and Haskell remembered thinking, ‘I wonder if he’s shooting color or black and white?’”

Meadowlark Lemon.

“Meadowlark was the most sensational, awesome, incredible basketball player I’ve ever seen,” basketball great Wilt Chamberlain, Lemon’s onetime teammate, said in a television interview shortly before his death in 1999, as the Times reported. “People would say it would be Dr. J or even Jordan. For me, it would be Meadowlark Lemon.”

Edited to add: NYT obit wasn’t up previously, but is now.

NYT obit for George Clayton Johnson.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 27, 2015.

Sunday, December 27th, 2015

Robert D. Douglas Jr.

I hadn’t heard of him before the NYT obit, but he led an interesting life: he became an Eagle Scout in 1925. In 1928, he and two other Eagle Scouts were selected to go on a safari with Martin and Osa Johnson; the three Scouts later published a book about their experience. He later went hunting for whales and bears off the Alaskan coast (and wrote another book), flew with Amelia Earhart in an early autogyro, and spent more time in Alaska stomping around with “the Glacier Priest” (and got another book out of that).

This has been floating around for a few days, but I finally found an obit I was willing to link to: George Clayton Johnson. Johnson wrote several of the best “Twilight Zone” episodes (odds are, if the episode you’re trying to remember wasn’t a Matheson episode, it was one of his). He also wrote “The Man Trap” for “Star Trek”, the story that “Ocean’s 11” was based on, and co-wrote “Logan’s Run”.

Posted in Clippings, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

1D20.

Thursday, December 24th, 2015

Speaking of Ross Thomas, I’ve been meaning to link to (and bookmark) Ethan Iverson’s “Ah, Treachery!” essay for a while now. There are a few things in it that I disagree with, but I think Iverson’s essay is generally perceptive about Thomas and his writing; I find myself referring to it periodically.

Young Joseph Wambaugh and the hobo, from the LAT.

Dave Barry’s year in review, in case you haven’t seen it yet.

An OPM statement plays down the seriousness of the data breach, stressing that “if anybody publishes any photos allegedly depicting an alleged Cabinet secretary with an alleged goat, those are fake,” further noting that “it was totally a consenting goat.”

For the record: NYT obit for Joe Jamail.

Posted in Bookmarks, Books, Clippings, Cops, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: December 24, 2015.

Thursday, December 24th, 2015

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Eden Pearl.

Pearl joined the Marine Corps in July 1994 from the town of Monroe, N.Y., before turning 19. After graduating from recruit training at Parris Island, S.C., he became an infantry rifleman, and then completed virtually every difficult form of training the service had, becoming a scout sniper, reconnaissance Marine, combat diver and critical skills operator in MARSOC. His training left him capable of performing anything — from free-fall aerial dives from airplanes to close-quarters combat after breaking down a door.

Sgt. Pearl was critically injured by an IED in 2009, and died on Sunday as a result of his injuries.

Fernande Grudet, aka “Madame Claude”. I note this here for two reasons:

1) Hookersnblow.org.
2) In one of my favorite Ross Thomas books, The Seersucker Whipsaw, there’s a character named “Madame Claude”. I’m wondering if this was a very subtle reference on the part of Thomas…

Posted in Books, Clippings, Heroism, Obits | Comments Closed

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