Archive for the ‘Chess’ Category

Obit watch: February 28, 2025.

Friday, February 28th, 2025

Another day, another damn.

Joseph Wambaugh. THR. I don’t see anything in the LATimes yet.

Mr. Wambaugh hoped to keep both careers, as a cop and a writer, but his celebrity and his frequent appearances on television talk shows made police work untenable. Suspects wanted his autograph or his help getting a film role. People reporting crimes asked that he be the one to investigate. When his longtime detective partner held the squad car door open for him one day in 1974, he knew it was time to go.

The story I’ve heard is that, as a working cop, he went to interview a robbery victim. The guy had blood streaming down his head, and Det. Wambaugh asked him if he could describe the suspect. The victim responded by asking him what George C. Scott was like. He quit shortly after, because he realized his fame was getting in the way of doing his job.

Many critics loved him. “Let us forever dispel the notion that Mr. Wambaugh is only a former cop who happens to write books,” the crime and mystery writer Evan Hunter wrote of “The Glitter Dome” in The New York Times Book Review in 1981. “This would be tantamount to saying that Jack London was first and foremost a sailor. Mr. Wambaugh is, in fact, a writer of genuine power, style, wit and originality, who has chosen to write about the police in particular as a means of expressing his views on society in general.”

…

“I’m very interested in the concept of the sociopath, very interested, because my conscience has bothered me all my life,” he told The Los Angeles Times in 1989. “Talk about regrets — I have about 20 every day. I was educated in Catholic schools, and they did that to me. So I have to cope with a conscience all the time. And I’m interested in a creature who has none of that.”

I tell people I read The Blue Knight at a very inappropriate age. Because I try to be family friendly here, I won’t describe the scene I most vividly remember. I got pretty far behind in Wambaugh’s fiction, but I think I’ve read all his non-fiction books. Obviously, The Onion Field had a huge impact on me, but The Blooding and Fire Lover are pretty good, too.

I kind of wish I’d met him.

Yet he was a shy, prickly loner who rarely gave interviews, had few friends aside from police officers, didn’t have a literary agent and even played golf alone. He sprinkled his books with cop scorn for the wealthy, especially for entertainment stars in Beverly Hills. His own Southern California homes were modest mansions in upscale places like Newport Beach, San Diego and Rancho Mirage.

(Is it just me, or does he look a little like Nicholas Cage in those photos from the 1970s?)

Boris Spassky, of Fischer-Spassky fame.

When they played the first match, in Reykjavik, Iceland, Mr. Fischer, with his brash personality, was something of a folk hero in the West. He was widely portrayed as a lone gunslinger boldly taking on the might of the Soviet chess machine, with Mr. Spassky representing the repressive Soviet empire.
The reality could not have been further from the truth. Mr. Fischer was a spoiled 29-year-old man-child, often irascible and difficult. Mr. Spassky, at 35, was urbane, laid back and good-natured, acceding to Mr. Fischer’s many demands leading up to and during the match.
The match almost did not happen. It was supposed to start on July 2, but Mr. Fischer was still in New York, demanding more money for both players. A British promoter, James Slater, added $125,000 to the prize fund, which doubled it to $250,000 (about $1.9 million today), and Mr. Fischer arrived on July 4.
The match was a best-of-24 series, with each win counting as one point, each draw as a half point and each loss as zero. The first player to 12.5 points would be the winner.
In Game 1, on July 11, Mr. Fischer blundered and lost. Afterward, he refused to play Game 2 unless the television cameras recording the match were turned off. When they were not, Mr. Fischer forfeited the game.
The match seemed in doubt, but a compromise was worked out to move the match to a tiny, closed playing area behind the main hall.
Mr. Fischer won Game 3, his first victory ever against Mr. Spassky, and proceeded to steamroll him, winning the match 12.5 to 8.5.
Mr. Spassky’s sportsmanship was on full display in Game 6 of the match, which by then had been moved back into the main hall. When Mr. Fischer won the game, taking the lead for the first time in the match, Mr. Spassky joined with the spectators in standing and applauding his victory.

Pilar Del Rey, actress. Other credits include “Police Story” (which, as you know, Bob, was a Joseph Wambaugh creation), the “Travis McGee” TV movie, “The Forbidden Dance”, the 1960s “Dragnet”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Bird of Prey”, parts 1 and 2, season 8, episodes 20 and 21. She played “Marquesa”.)

Michael Preece, prominent TV director. Other credits include “Stingray”, “B.J. and the Bear”, “Renegade”, “Jake and the Fatman”…

…and, as a script supervisor before being a director, “Mitchell”, “The Getaway”, and “Mannix”. (“Another Final Exit”, season 1, episode 20. “Eight to Five, It’s a Miracle”, season 1, episode 21.)

Posted in 1970s, Books, Chess, Mannix, Movies, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: February 23, 2022.

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2022

Mark Lanegan, singer. (Queens of the Stone Age, Screaming Trees)

The Amazing Johnathan (John Edward Szeles).

Detroit native Szeles gained mainstream fame on Vegas headliner Criss Angel’s mid-2000s reality TV show “Mindfreak,” and often injected gonzo, faux-gore bits into his shows. Signature shock value moments included pretending to suck on his own dangling eyeball, slitting his wrists and spiking his own tongue.

…

The “alt-magician” gained further notoriety as the subject of a controversial 2019 Hulu documentary, “The Amazing Johnathan Documentary.” The film followed Szeles, then 60, as he mounted a comeback tour after defying his terminal illness diagnosis — and simultaneously dealing with an ongoing drug addiction.

Gary Brooker, of Procol Harum.

Arthur Feuerstein. He’s probably one of those people you’ve never heard of, but the obit fascinates me (for reasons that will become apparent shortly).

Mr. Feuerstein was a chess player. A really good chess player. How good?

Over his career, Mr. Feuerstein had a record of one win, one loss and three draws with Mr. Fischer.

More:

At the 1956 United States Junior Championship, he took third, behind Mr. Fischer. He then edged Mr. Fischer for the United States Junior Blitz Championship, in which each player had five minutes for the entire game.
The third Rosenwald tournament, played in October 1956 at the Manhattan Chess Club, is usually remembered because of Mr. Fischer’s remarkable win against Donald Byrne, Robert’s younger brother. But Mr. Fischer finished in a tie for eighth, while Mr. Feuerstein was third — just behind Arthur Bisguier, another New York prodigy, who had won the United States Championship two years earlier.
Then, in the 1957-58 championship, Mr. Feuerstein tied for sixth with Arnold Denker, a former champion, and Edmar Mednis, a future grandmaster. Mr. Fischer, who was then only 14, won the championship, beating Mr. Feuerstein in the process for the first and only time…

The NYT obit describes the 1950s as being “a golden age for the game in the United States, particularly in New York City”. It would probably have a limited audience, but I’d read a book about this time in the chess world.

Anyway, Mr. Feuerstein didn’t want to turn pro. He thought professional chess was “too unstable and too poorly paid”, so he went into the corporate world. But he continued to play as an amateur.

Then, one day in 1973, Mr. Feuerstein, his wife, and their dog were driving to their vacation home. They got hit by a semi.

The dog was killed. Mrs. Feuerstein broke her back and spent six weeks in a cast.

Mr. Feuerstein suffered a horrible head injury. The doctors on his case gave his wife an extremely negative prognosis.

Then one day Mr. Feuerstein woke up, pulled the breathing tube out and began trying to talk. A nurse called Alice, who rushed to the hospital. She found him playing chess with the neurosurgeon, who had also been called.
Years later, in a profile that appeared in 2012 in Chess Life, the magazine of the United States Chess Federation, the game’s governing body, Alice Feuerstein said her husband, after waking, did not even know what a toothbrush was. But, Mr. Feuerstein recalled, “I remembered everything about chess, even my openings.” He also recalled that he had won that game with the doctor.

This isn’t a miracle story. According to the obit, Mr. Feuerstein was never able to work full-time again.

But he did return to competition at something approaching his pre-accident ability, sometimes beating grandmasters, and he remained a master-level player into his late 70s.
He played his last tournament in October 2015, when he was nearly 80, and scored 50 percent, with one win, one loss and a draw.

Cancer got him at 86.

Posted in Chess, Music, Neuroscience, Obits | Comments Closed

Quick random notes.

Friday, June 5th, 2020

Two by way of Hacker News:

Akira Kurosawa’s storyboards. Oh, wait, I’m sorry: Akira Kurosawa’s painted storyboards.

(They keep saying “hand-painted storyboards”. As opposed to what: machine painted? Foot painted?)

The early history of computer chess, including the first national computer chess tournament.

I’m fascinated by computer chess, so I would probably have posted this anyway. Interestingly, though, this article also features (and quotes) an unexpected appearance by a now very prominent science fiction and fantasy writer, who at the time had recently graduated from Northwestern University and was interested in both computers and chess.

Posted in Art, Chess, Geek, Movies | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 17, 2017.

Tuesday, January 17th, 2017

Eugene Cernan, Gemini 9, Apollo 10, and Apollo 17 astronaut. NYT. NASA.

Hans Berliner, master chess player and prominent developer of early game playing computers (such as HiTech and BKG 9.8.)

Mr. Berliner was an expert at correspondence chess, in which moves can be sent by postcard or, more recently, over the internet. Players have days to think about each move, and games usually last months or even years. When Mr. Berliner won the Fifth World Correspondence Chess Championship, the final began on April Fools’ Day in 1965 and did not end until three years later.

Posted in Chess, Geek, Heroism, History, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: June 29, 2015.

Monday, June 29th, 2015

Chris Squire, bass player for Yes. A/V Club.

Walter Shawn Browne, noted chess grandmaster.

Mr. Browne’s competitiveness extended beyond chess. “I can beat 97 out of 100 experts in Scrabble, 98 of 100 in backgammon and 99.9 of 100 in poker,” he told Sports Illustrated in 1976. “At hi-lo, table-limit poker, I’m the best in the world.”

Finally, Red Mascara. Mr. Mascara wrote a song, “I’m From New Jersey” in 1960 and spent the next 55 years on a quixotic quest to have it made the official state song.

He came closest to his goal in 1972, when the Legislature passed a bill recognizing “I’m From New Jersey” as the official state song. Mr. Mascara had hired a band to play it from the gallery of the Assembly chamber. But Gov. William Cahill vetoed it, telling reporters that the only thing worse than that song was hearing Mr. Mascara sing it.

Posted in Chess, Clippings, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Norts spews.

Tuesday, April 14th, 2015

Lawrence Phillips, former NFL running back who is serving out a 31-year prison sentence, may have killed his cellmate.

Gaioz Nigalidze’s rise through the ranks of professional chess began in 2007, the year the first iPhone was released. In hindsight, the timing might not be coincidental.

Nigalidze is suspected of stashing an iPhone in a men’s room stall and using it to cheat during games.

“When confronted, Nigalidze denied he owned the device,” according to the tournament’s Web site. “But officials opened the smart device and found it was logged into a social networking site under Nigalidze’s account. They also found his game being analyzed in one of the chess applications.”

Posted in Apple, Chess, Clippings, Law, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Random notes: October 13, 2014.

Monday, October 13th, 2014

The New York Times may have killed their chess column. Or perhaps not.

Greg “Three Cups of Tea” Mortenson is trying to make a comeback. (Previously.)

The WP also has a longish story about the Navy silencer scandal, covered previously here.

At one pretrial hearing, a defense attorney for the auto mechanic, Mark S. Landersman of Temecula, Calif., accused the Navy of impeding the investigation by destroying a secret stash of automatic rifles that the silencers were designed to fit. Prosecutors immediately objected to further discussion in open court, calling it a classified matter.
The destroyed weapons were part of a stockpile of about 1,600 AK-47-style rifles that the U.S. military had collected overseas and stored in a warehouse in Pennsylvania, according to a source familiar with the investigation.

I really don’t have much to say, but the thought of a warehouse full of “AK-47 style rifles” brings a goofy smile to my face.

Posted in Books, Chess, Clippings, Guns, Law, Media, Sports | Comments Closed