Archive for the ‘Fish’ Category

Obit watch: October 30, 2024.

Wednesday, October 30th, 2024

Teri Garr. Tributes. NYT.

While making many of these films, she noticed troubling physical symptoms. She didn’t suspect their cause, but she remembered running in New York City in the late 1990s. “When I was jogging, I would get this horrible pain in my arm like a knife stabbing,” she told CNN in 2008. “And I thought, well, I’m in Central Park — well, maybe it is a knife stabbing.”

…

For years, she was a spokeswoman for MS research and support, continuing to make appearances in her wheelchair. “I really do count my blessings,” she wrote in a memoir, “Speedbumps: Flooring It Through Hollywood” (2005), written with Henriette Mantel. “At least I used to. Now I get so tired I have a woman come once a week and count them for me.”

Other credits include “One from the Heart”, “Honky Tonk Freeway”, “McCloud”, “Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood”, and an episode of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

John Gierach, author and fly fisherman. I recognized the name, probably because I’ve seen some of his books around. (Half-Price Books puts the fishing books right above the firearms books.)

Charles Brandt, former prosecutor and author.

But [“The Irishman”] was fiercely criticized by journalists and Mafia experts, who said Mr. Sheeran had exaggerated (at best) or fabricated (at worst) his role in Mr. Hoffa’s death.
“Frank Sheeran never killed a fly,” John Carlyle Berkery, an Irish mob figure in Philadelphia, was quoted as saying in a 2019 Slate article with the headline “The Lies of the Irishman.” “The only things he ever killed were countless jugs of red wine.”
Selwyn Raab, who wrote about the Mafia for The Times for more than two decades, told Slate: “I know Sheeran didn’t kill Hoffa. I’m as confident about that as you can be. There are 14 people who claim to have killed Hoffa. There’s an inexhaustible supply of them.”

I read I Heard You Paint Houses and I think Frank Sheeran’s claim that he killed Hoffa is B.S. Sheeran even admitted to the author at one point that he’d lied about an easily checkable point: if he lied about that, why should we believe the rest of what he said?

Posted in Books, Fish, Law, Movies, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: December 30, 2022.

Friday, December 30th, 2022

Pelé. ESPN.

“Pelé is one of the few who contradicted my theory,” Andy Warhol once said. “Instead of 15 minutes of fame, he will have 15 centuries.”

…

In his 21-year career, Pelé — born Edson Arantes do Nascimento — scored 1,283 goals in 1,367 professional matches, including 77 goals for the Brazilian national team.
Many of those goals became legendary, but Pelé’s influence on the sport went well beyond scoring. He helped create and promote what he later called “o jogo bonito” — the beautiful game — a style that valued clever ball control, inventive pinpoint passing and a voracious appetite for attacking. Pelé not only played it better than anyone; he also championed it around the world.

Dave Whitlock, fly fisherman.

“He was Everyman’s fly-fishing mentor,” Kirk Deeter, the editor in chief of Trout magazine, said in a phone interview. “He made fly fishing more accessible and tore down the notion that fly fishing was a stuffy sport. He just took the pins out from under that.”

…

In 2021, Mr. Whitlock, along with Lefty Kreh, Joe Brooks and Lee Wulff, was named to what Fly Fisherman called its Mount Rushmore of the sport. The magazine cited Mr. Whitlock for “his artistic creativity in his fly tying and his painting”; his love of teaching; and his improvements in the 1970s to the Vibert Box, an incubator and nursery for salmon and trout eggs that had been invented two decades earlier by Richard Vibert, a French fisheries researcher, to better stock streams. It is now called the Whitlock-Vibert Box.

Vivienne Westwood, fashion designer.

Ms. Westwood was just 30 when she and her boyfriend, Malcolm McLaren — who as a music impresario would go on to manage the Sex Pistols — opened a shop called Let It Rock at 430 King’s Road in London. The business, which had a pink vinyl sign out front, was an unconventional one, selling fetish wear and fashions inspired by the Teddy Boy look of the 1950s.
In shaping the look of the era, Ms. Westwood came to be known as the godmother of punk. After her partnership with Mr. McClaren ended, she began designing collections under her own name, and she soon established an international reputation. She went on to open more stores in London and across the globe; her provocative creations appeared on supermodels and celebrities and influenced mainstream fashion. The corsets, platform shoes and mini-crinis (a combination Victorian crinoline and miniskirt) became her hallmarks.
“People really associate her with punk and that whole aesthetic, which is accurate and how she made her name, but she’s so much more than that,” Véronique Hyland, the author of “Dress Code: Unlocking Fashion From the New Look to Millennial Pink” (2022), said in an interview for this obituary. “She was influenced by art history, old master paintings. She’s very focused on the English tradition of tailoring.”

…

Chrissie Hynde, who would later become the lead singer of the Pretenders, was an assistant at the shop. She was quoted in Ms. Westwood’s memoir as saying that “I don’t think punk would have happened without Vivienne and Malcolm.”
“Something would have happened,” she continued, “and it might have been called punk, but it wouldn’t have looked the way it did, even in America. And the look was important.”

…

They saw the store as a laboratory and a salon. When Mr. McLaren managed the Sex Pistols, Ms. Westwood dressed them in T-shirts from the shop and bondage pants accessorized with chains and razor blades. Their aggressively delivered songs, with names like “Anarchy in the U.K.” and “God Save the Queen,” were a soundtrack to the nihilism of Britain in the 1970s.

Posted in Fish, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 19, 2022.

Thursday, May 19th, 2022

Vangelis (Evángelos Odysséas Papathanassíou).

Yeah, yeah, yeah, “Chariots of Fire”, “Blade Runner”…

…in the late ’60s, he found success as a member of the Greek rock band Forminx and then with the progressive group Aphrodite’s Child, which had hits with the single “Rain and Tears” in 1968 and the influential album 666 in 1972.
He enjoyed a partnership with Yes lead singer Jon Anderson, and they released four albums as Jon & Vangelis from 1980 through 1991. (He had been asked to join Anderson’s prog rock band in the wake of keyboardist Rick Wakeman’s departure but declined.)

…

His other big-screen work included Costa-Gavras’ Missing (1982), the Japanese film Antarctica (1983), Roger Donaldson’s The Bounty (1984), Roman Polanski’s Bitter Moon (1992) and Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004).

How about a musical interlude?

Ray Scott, pioneer of bass fishing as sport.

The idea for a bass fishing tour came to Mr. Scott, then an insurance salesman, when rain cut short a fishing outing with a friend in Jackson, Miss., in 1967. Stuck in his hotel room watching sports on television, he had an epiphany: Why not start the equivalent of the PGA Tour for bass fishing?
He held his first tournament at Beaver Lake, in Arkansas, where 106 anglers paid $100 each to compete over three days for $5,000 in prizes. A second tournament followed that year; in 1968 he formed a membership organization, the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society, or BASS.
In 1971, Mr. Scott started what has become known as the Super Bowl of bass fishing: the Bassmaster Classic, his organization’s annual championship tournament, which he paired with a merchandising expo for manufacturers of bass fishing boats and gear.

…

Mr. Scott was the showman of BASS, the umbrella company for tournaments, magazines and television shows. Easily recognized in his cowboy hat and fringed jackets, Mr. Scott memorably served as the M.C. for tournament weigh-ins, entertaining thousands of fans with his exuberant patter as anglers pulled flopping fish out of holding tanks.
“Now, ain’t that a truly wonderful fish?” he asked one tournament crowd. “How many of you want to see more fish like that? C’mon, let’s hear it for that fish!”

NYT obits for Rosmarie Trapp and Sgt. Maj. John L. Canley.

John Aylward, actor. Other credits include “Stargate SG-1”, “The X-Files”, and “3rd Rock from the Sun”. He also did some theater:

He appeared in stage roles at the Kennedy Center with Kentucky Cycle, and at Lincoln Center with the play City of Conversation. A classically trained actor, Aylward performed everything from Shakespearean roles to farce with plays by Alan Ayckborne, and dramas by David Mamet, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams.
His standout roles included playing Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, Richard III, Scrooge in Inspecting Carol and Shelley Levine in Glengarry Glen Ross, a role he played twice.

Marnie Schulenburg, actress. (“One Life to Live”, “As the World Turns”) She was only 37, and died from cancer.

Posted in Fish, Music, Obits, Sports, Theatre, TV | 1 Comment »

Fish heads, fish heads, rolly polly fish heads…

Friday, October 29th, 2021

I have food on my mind.

McThag put up a post over at his place about bagna cauda. This is something I’d like to try as well. And actually, I think I first heard about it from reading about “Babylon 5”.

(I have never seen a complete episode of “B5”. I feel like SF on TV has been dumbed down and mostly hasn’t been good since the first incarnation of “Twilight Zone” went off the air (though the second incarnation was a bright spot in some ways). I’ve never been a fan of that minor SF TV series from the 1960s or any of the followup products (though I would like to watch the adaptation of a Larry Niven story they did on the animated series). However, the more I read about “B5” and the more clips I watch on the ‘Tube, the stronger my impression gets that it was an actual thoughtful intelligent SF series with many of the right people involved, and it might be something that’s worth my time. Perhaps next time I see a box set at Half-Price.)

But I digress. I’m also kind of craving Swedish meatballs. A supper of bagna cauda and Swedish meatballs doesn’t sound too bad. Perhaps not really healthy, but not too bad…

Anyway, I don’t know where I’m going to get bagna cauda or Swedish meatballs. I could make them myself, but I’m kind of hesitant about stinking up the kitchen with the former. As for the latter, I guess I could schlep out to Ikea and get some frozen ones, but that doesn’t seem like an optimal experience. And I don’t know any place in Austin that serves either one. If you do, please feel free to leave a comment.

(Also, while I can cook, the kitchen is really someone else’s territory, and I’m hesitant about treading in there. Especially if I’m cooking things they might find disgusting, like bagna cauda or anything with onions.)

(Something else I have a craving for, not related to anchovies: Vincent Price’s cocktail franks.)

(There! Vincent Price! There’s your Halloween content! Are you not entertained?!)

Something else I’ve been interested in for quite a while that is (semi-) related to anchovies, and prompted by “The Delicious Legacy” and food anthropology in general: the lost Roman condiment garum.

See also: “Culinary Detectives Try to Recover the Formula for a Deliciously Fishy Roman Condiment” by the same guy, Taras Grescoe. (I’ve read his book, The Devil’s Picnic (affiliate link), and based on that, I’d be willing to give Lost Supper a chance when it comes out.)

I’m also intrigued by The Story of Garum, but damn! $158! $37 for the Kindle edition! At those prices, it had better come with a case of garum! Or at least a six-pack.

(I’ve heard that this is the closest you can get today to garum. Amazon has the 40°N, but not the 50°N. I might have to order a bottle directly. And the Vincent Price cookbook.)

(This food anthropology thing rapidly gets expensive. And I haven’t even bought any imported anchovies yet.)

Anyway, McThag’s probably peeved at me by now for wandering all over the place. And I’m hungry. Time to rummage up something to eat. Then maybe order some fish sauce.

Never shop when you’re hungry.

Posted in Books, Fish, Food, Kindleing, TV | 2 Comments »

“What you gonna do when you get out of jail?…” part 404

Sunday, May 9th, 2021

Science Sunday!

My paternal grandmother was a teacher. There were always books and magazines around the house, many of which were appropriate for the younger set.

One book that I vividly remember (and wish I could find today) was a book published by Scholastic about the coelacanth: specifically, about how it was thought to be extinct, until a museum curator found one in the daily catch of a local fisherman.

I was fascinated by this. Still am: I haven’t found the original Scholastic book, but Samantha Weinberg’s A Fish Caught in Time: The Search for the Coelacanth (affiliate link) is a pretty swell book, and is targeted more at the adult reader. And I think my grandmother would have endorsed this (ditto).

(I was hardly a “reluctant reader”, but I believe the kids she taught sometimes fell into that category.)

“Diving With Coelacanths”. Be warned: the people in this video are doing highly technical diving at great depth. Which means mixed gasses. Which means they sound like Donald Duck. There are subtitles: but as some of the comments point out, what’s in the subtitles doesn’t always match up with what’s actually being said.

Bonus: Another one of the Scholastic books she had lying around was a biography of Clyde Tombaugh and how he discovered Pluto.

“Reflections on Clyde Tombaugh” from NASA.

And here’s an approximately 30 minute interview with Dr. Tombaugh from 1997, shortly before his death.

Bonus #2: This is borderline science and/or technology, but I have a reason for posting this. A week ago Saturday, for some reason, we got into a discussion of auto racing and racing technology. I mentioned, but could not recall the details at the time, that there was a gas turbine powered car that competed in the Indianapolis 500, back when you could still do stuff like that. You know, before everything became standardized and homogenized and experimentation was limited…

“The Silent Screamer”, a short-ish (17 minutes) documentary about Andy Granatelli’s turbine powered car at the 1967 Indy 500.

Posted in Books, Cars, Fish, Geek, History, Sports | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: July 16, 2020.

Thursday, July 16th, 2020

Over the past few days, the paper of record has run two obits that fall into the “obscure outside of a specific niche, but interesting” category.

Jay Riffe. He took up spearfishing when he was 10 years old (“to get food for the table”). He became the Pacific Coast spearfishing champion at 22.

When he died on May 11 at 82, at his home in Dana Point, Calif. — a death not widely reported beyond spearfishing circles — Mr. Riffe left behind a trail of accomplishments in his undersea world, including breaking three world records for deepwater sport fishing; founding Riffe International, a premier American spearfishing and freediving equipment maker; and advancing a campaign for sustainable-fishing regulations. His family said the cause was heart failure.

…

For nearly 50 years, beginning in the late 1960s, Mr. Riffe built and developed spearguns and other devices that revolutionized the sport in the United States. His company used supple woods, like teak, which could be grooved to fit a spear shaft snugly; corrosion-resistant magnets, which kept spear tips from wobbling; and textured nylon grips, which kept guns from slipping from the spearfisher’s hand.

Louis Colavecchio. He used to make jewelry, but turned his skills to a more lucrative occupation: counterfeiting.

…there was nothing more thrilling than creating counterfeit slot machine coins. The coins he made were so detailed that even federal officials and casino workers found it challenging to distinguish his fakes from legitimate ones under a microscope.

…

All of Mr. Colavecchio’s work was meticulous. He could toil alone under microscopes for days, filled by a desire to trick the federal government and the casinos. He would not brook the possibility of an error; each die had to be perfect.
“Making counterfeit items must have appealed to me in some way that I didn’t understand,” Mr. Colavecchio wrote in his book.

…

Mr. Colavecchio perfected his illicit craft over about four years, Mr. Longo said, making thousands of chips and slot tokens for 36 casinos. At one point, the Treasury Department even sought his expertise. According to court records, the department paid him $18,000 after he was released from federal prison in 2000 because his manufacturing dies had outlasted those of the U.S. Mint.

…

His tokens were masterly because he crushed the originals and got the exact breakdown of their composition, Mr. Longo said. Mr. Colavecchio purchased the material, bought a press and, using a laser-cutting die, made molds and copies.
“It’s like having access to the U.S. Mint on the weekend, printing your money and leaving,” Mr. Longo said.

In case you were wondering, his book is You Thought It Was More: Adventures of the World’s Greatest Counterfeiter, Louis the Coin (affiliate link). I may have to order a copy of that for myself.

Great and good FotB Borepatch sent over a nice obit from ArsTechnica for Grant Imahara, which I very much appreciated. There’s also a very good Hacker News thread.

Posted in Books, Fish, Food, Law, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Random notes: June 26, 2015.

Friday, June 26th, 2015

Obit watches: Patrick Macnee. A/V Club. LAT.

Phil “Nick Danger” Austin, founding member of the Firesign Theater, passed away on the 18th, but the paper of record just got around to running his obit.

Shepard Fairey has been charged with two counts of “malicious destruction of property” for tagging buildings in Detroit.

The police say he tagged as many as 14 buildings with his signature images, which include the face of Andre the Giant. Nine of the building or business owners were interested in pressing charges.

Two things from the WP that kind of tickled my fancy:

1. How much water do California pot growers use? The answer is: well, that’s hard to quantify, for obvious reasons. But a group of researchers have made an attempt to come up with a number, and their estimate is that pot growing uses about the same amount of water as almond growing.

2. Don’t let your pet goldfish loose in the nearest pond, because they will become gianormous and screw up the ecosystem.

(Do I need a “Fish” category?)

Posted in Clippings, Fish, Law, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »