Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

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Obit watch: March 24, 2025.

Monday, March 24th, 2025

Max Frankel, former executive editor of the New York Times.

Former Congressional representative Mia Love (R – Utah).

Brian James, of The Damned.

The Damned never shook British society, or the rock world at large, like the Sex Pistols, who sneered at the queen, hurled obscenities on television talk shows and had pundits mulling the collapse of Western values. Nor did they play the part of political revolutionaries like the Clash, who were billed as “the only band that matters.”
Nevertheless, the Damned made history. They were the first British punk band to release a single: “New Rose,” written by Mr. James, in October 1976 (the Sex Pistols’ anthemic “Anarchy in the U.K.,” soon followed); the first to release an album, “Damned Damned Damned,” in 1977; and the first to tour the United States.

Posted in Media, Music, Obits, Politics | No Comments »

Firings watch.

Wednesday, March 19th, 2025

This could also be an “Art, damn it! Art!” watch, but I decided to go this way.

Jackson Arn was the art critic for the New Yorker.

Arn’s last work for the magazine was a highbrow essay entitled: “Should We View Tatlin As A Russian Constructivist Or A Ukrainian,” which was published on March 10.

Note the past tense. Mr. Arn has been canned by the magazine. And not because the New Yorker has money troubles.

The New Yorker had a big 100th birthday celebration in February at some trendy place in NoHo.

Jackson Arn was accused of making “inappropriate overtures” at some of the party guests and appeared to be drunk at the shindig, whose attendees included star editor Tina Brown and author Zadie Smith, the New York Times reported Tuesday, citing anonymous sources with knowledge.

…

Writers including Smith, Jennifer Egan and Jeffrey Eugenides rubbed shoulders with former New Yorker editrix Brown, longtime art editor Françoise Mouly, staff writers Calvin Trillin and Adam Gopnik.

I almost wish I had been there, just so I could walk up to Calvin Trillin and ask him, “Do you want to blow this Popsicle stand and go get some dumplings in Chinatown?”

Here’s the NYT article, but it doesn’t add much detail.

Posted in Art, Firings, Media | No Comments »

Obit watch: January 22, 2025.

Wednesday, January 22nd, 2025

Jules Feiffer, artist. He was perhaps most famous as a cartoonist for the “Village Voice”, but he also did some movie and theater work.

In the mid-1950s, Norton Juster, a neighbor of Mr. Feiffer’s in Brooklyn, invited him to illustrate a children’s book he was writing, “The Phantom Tollbooth.” An ingenious kaleidoscope of wordplay arguably akin in style to Lewis Carroll, the book, published in 1961, was an instant hit.

…

Around 1980, the movie producer Robert Evans recruited Mr. Feiffer to write the screenplay for Robert Altman’s “Popeye.” Mr. Feiffer patterned his script after the Segar newspaper strip, not the animated adaptations made by the Fleischer brothers in the 1930s and ’40s. When E.C. Segar’s daughter saw the movie, Mr. Feiffer told The Comics Journal in 1988, she called to tell him that he had captured the essence of her father’s creation — at which, Mr. Feiffer added, he cried. Though it met a mixed critical reaction, the film, starring Robin Williams as Popeye and Shelley Duvall as Olive Oyl, was a hit.

…

In May 1997, Mr. Feiffer ended his affiliation with The Village Voice over a salary dispute. “It’s not that I’ve slipped,” he said at the time. “It’s that I’m too expensive.” (In April 2008, he returned for a one-shot, full-page take on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.)
Later in life he derived great pleasure from writing and drawing children’s books, some in collaboration with his daughter Kate, among them “The Man in the Ceiling” (1993), “Bark, George” (1999), “By the Side of the Road” (2002), “The Daddy Mountain” (2004) and “A Room With a Zoo” (2005). A 2010 reunion project with Mr. Juster, “The Odious Ogre,” was warmly reviewed.

Garth Hudson, of the Band.

During its peak, the Band was famously a collaborative operation informed by the songwriting and barbed guitar playing of Robbie Robertson and the soulful singing and musicianship of Levon Helm, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel. But critics and his fellow band members agreed that Mr. Hudson played an essential role in raising the group to another level entirely.
Mr. Robertson, quoted in Barney Hoskyns’s 1993 book, “The Band: Across the Great Divide,” called him “far and away the most advanced musician in rock ’n’ roll.” “He could just as easily have played with John Coltrane or the New York Symphony Orchestra as with us,” Mr. Robertson said.

Posted in Media, Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre | No Comments »

Obit watch: November 21, 2024.

Thursday, November 21st, 2024

A lot of obits from the NYT today for people of questionable notability, but I have a reason for posting each of these.

Diane Coleman, disability rights activist and opponent of assisted suicide/”right to die” laws.

Gifted with a dark sense of humor, in 1996 she founded a group called Not Dead Yet, a reference to a memorable scene in the movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” in which a man tries to pass off an infirm — but very much alive — relative to a man collecting dead bodies.
“To put it bluntly, she was blunt,” Jim Weisman, a disability rights lawyer, said in an interview.

Vic Flick, British session musician.

The Bond films produced signature catchphrases (“shaken, not stirred,” “Bond, James Bond”) that have been endlessly recited and parodied since “Dr. No,” the first in the series, was released in Britain in 1962. But it was the sound of Mr. Flick’s guitar in the opening credits that helped make the spy thrillers instantly recognizable.
During the title credits of “Dr. No,” when moviegoers were introduced to or reacquainted with the works of the author Ian Fleming, who wrote the James Bond books, Mr. Flick’s thrumming guitar sounded out through a brass-and-string orchestra.

Bill Moyes, one of the pioneers of hang gliding.

One winter day in 1968, Mr. Moyes became a man with wings. He took a ski lift to the top of Mount Crackenback, in the Australian Alps, harnessed himself to a device that looked like a giant kite and skied off a cliff.

…

Mr. Moyes flew at 1,000 feet for almost two miles, setting the world record for the longest unassisted flight, according to newspaper accounts. The triumph marked the beginnings of hang gliding, a sport Mr. Moyes popularized by flying into the Grand Canyon, soaring off Mount Kilimanjaro and being towed behind an airplane at 8,600 feet.

…

He nearly killed himself several times.
In 1972, at a show in Jamestown, N.D., he fell 300 feet after the towing rope snapped. He sustained multiple fractures and was taken by ambulance to a hospital, where he spent several weeks recuperating.

…

On another occasion, he attempted, unsuccessfully, to launch from a speeding motorcycle that he was also driving. He did not break any bones. He also did not try that again.

Reg Murphy, newspaper guy. Beyond my well-known affection for crusty old newspaper people, Mr. Murphy was the centerpiece of a bizarre crime story I’d never heard of before.

Mr. Murphy was the editorial page editor of The Atlanta Constitution on Feb. 19, 1974, when a man later identified as William A.H. Williams, a drywall subcontractor, called Mr. Murphy’s office to ask his advice about how best to donate 300,000 gallons of heating oil to a worthy cause.
He called again the next day at dusk and arranged to meet Mr. Murphy at his home; the two of them would then drive to Mr. Williams’s lawyer’s office to sign some papers.
“I really had no choice but to go with him,” Mr. Murphy wrote in a lengthy account in The New York Times shortly after the incident, “for newspapermen have to lead open lives and be available to anonymous or strange people.”
So strange was Mr. Williams that he immediately displayed a .38-caliber gun in his left hand and announced, “Mr. Murphy, you’ve been kidnapped.” He identified himself as a colonel in the American Revolutionary Army and ranted against the “lying, leftist, liberal news media” and “Jews in the government.”

…

Mr. Murphy was held in a motel room, wedged tightly between a wall and a bed, and ordered to record an audiotape demanding $700,000 in ransom. The money was delivered in marked bills in two suitcases dropped off on a rural road.

That’s $700,000 in 1974 money. According to my preferred inflation calculator, that’s $4,482,044.62 in 2024 money.

After 49 hours of captivity, Mr. Murphy was released in the parking lot of a Ramada Inn. Mr. Williams, whom Mr. Murphy identified from photos of suspects, was arrested six hours later.
He was convicted on federal extortion charges and sentenced to 40 years in prison, of which he served nine. His wife received a three-year suspended sentence for failing to report his crimes. The ransom was recovered.
In 2019, Mr. Williams, stricken with Stage 4 melanoma, called the newspaper to apologize. He said he had been high on amphetamines when the kidnapping took place.

…

In 1975, Mr. Murphy left Atlanta to become editor and publisher of The San Francisco Examiner, owned by Randolph Hearst, whose daughter was on trial at the time for participating in a bank robbery linked to the radical group that had abducted her. After she was convicted, Mr. Hearst appeared in The Examiner’s office and dropped the key to a new Porsche on his desk in appreciation of the newspaper’s coverage.
“It takes integrity of a different kind for a father to come in and say, ‘You did a good job covering the trial of my daughter,’” Mr. Murphy said in an interview published this year in The Mercerian, the magazine of Mercer University in Macon, Ga., his alma mater.

Posted in Law, Media, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 21, 2024.

Monday, October 21st, 2024

John Kinsel Sr. died on Saturday at the age of 107.

Mr. Kinsel was one of the Navajo Code Talkers.

An estimated 400 Navajo Code Talkers served during World War II, transmitting a code crafted from the Navajo language that U.S. forces used to confuse the Japanese and communicate troop movements, enemy positions and other critical battlefield information. Mr. Kinsel, who served from October 1942 to January 1946, was part of the second group of Marines trained as code talkers at Camp Elliott in California, after the original 29 who developed the code for wartime use.

…

The Associated Press reported that the only two surviving Navajo Code Talkers are Thomas H. Begay and Peter MacDonald, a former Navajo chairman.

Nicholas Daniloff passed away last Thursday. He was 88.

He was a foreign correspondent in Russia for UPI and, later, for U.S. News and World Report.

After taking a call at his Moscow apartment on Aug. 30, 1986, Mr. Daniloff met a trusted Russian friend and news contact, Misha, in a park for a farewell exchange. He gave Misha several Stephen King novels, and Misha gave him a sealed packet that supposedly contained news clippings from a Soviet republic and some photographs that he said might be useful.
After they parted, a van pulled up alongside Mr. Daniloff. Several men leapt out, handcuffed him, dragged him into the vehicle and took him to the infamous K.G.B. torture center, Lefortovo Prison. Misha’s packet turned out to contain photographs and maps of military installations, all marked “secret.” The fix was in — a heavy-handed throwback to Stalinist tactics.
In Room 215, a chamber that reeked of interrogations, Mr. Daniloff was met by a tall, imposing man in a dark gray suit. “He walked toward me, pinning me with his dark eyes,” Mr. Daniloff wrote in his book “Two Lives, One Russia” (1988). “This senior K.G.B. officer said solemnly in Russian, ‘You have been arrested on suspicion of espionage. I am the person who ordered your arrest.’”
For the bewildered Mr. Daniloff, that moment set off 14 days of grueling interrogations, confinement in a tiny underground cell and the anguish of being cut off from the world, facing what his captors called years in a Siberian labor camp or a death sentence. His claims of innocence hardly mattered; as he guessed, he had been arrested as a bargaining chip in a larger game.

Ultimately, Mr. Daniloff was traded for Gennadi F. Zakharov (a confessed Soviet spy, who had been arrested two weeks before Mr. Daniloff’s arrest) and human rights activist Yuri Orlov.

But the affair continued to roil Soviet-American relations. About 100 Soviet officials, including 80 suspected spies, were eventually expelled by the United States. Moscow expelled 10 American diplomats and withdrew 260 Russian employees from the American Embassy in Moscow.

(By the way, for those of you out there who are connoisseurs, this is a Robert D. McFadden obit.)

Michael Valentine, one of nature’s noblemen. He helped pioneer the radar detector.

Mr. Valentine, who didn’t believe that road safety was determined by finite speed limits, went into battle armed with the Escort, a radar detector that he built with Jim Jaeger, his college friend and business partner, for their company, Cincinnati Microwave.
They were met with early success. In 1979, a year after the Escort’s debut, Car and Driver magazine tested 12 radar detectors and ranked it the best — “by a landslide” — for its ability to pick up the signals of police radar equipment.

…

Car and Driver’s obituary of Mr. Valentine quoted Mr. Jaeger as recalled that they disassembled a Fuzzbuster and “were amazed at how primitive it was. There was almost nothing inside. Mike and I started noodling about how to build a superior, cost-no-object detector.”

Sammy Basso, an advocate for research into progeria, an ultrarare fatal disease that causes rapid aging in children, who was known for living with gusto and humor with the condition as he faced the certainty of premature death, died on Oct. 5 near his home in Tezze sul Brenta, in the Veneto region of northern Italy. He was 28.

I wanted to share this one because cool story, bro:

He once posed outside a U.F.O. museum in Roswell, N.M., in green “alien” eyeglasses, which accentuated his egg-shaped head, to make tourists think he was a real visitor from outer space.
“He made everyone around him feel comfortable with him and with progeria,” Dr. Gordon said. “All he had to do was say two words and you’d be smiling and laughing.”

Posted in Cars, Heroism, History, Media, Obits | 1 Comment »

Random notes: September 18, 2024.

Wednesday, September 18th, 2024

Lawrence sent over two stories that I don’t think justify a blog post individually, but together might make a good one.

Story #1, which is actually getting a surprising (to me) amount of press coverage: Adrian Wojnarowski is leaving ESPN to become the GM of the St. Bonaventure men’s basketball team.

The GM role has become more common in college basketball in recent years, as the transfer portal has made wholesale roster turnover an inherent part of the sport. The role includes name, image and likeness allocation, recruiting and supporting successful Bonnies coach Mark Schmidt.

The New York Post says he could be walking away from up to $20 million dollars. I probably wouldn’t have noted this, since it isn’t a firing, but Lawrence tells me this is a big freaking deal for basketball fans: Mr Wojnarowski has a reputation for breaking NBA news on Twitter.

I saw in another story (which, of course, I can’t find now) that Mr Wojnarowski had talked for years about his fantasy of throwing his cell phone into the ocean when he retired, as he was pretty much tied to it 24/7/365. “Kemosabe kiss my ass, I bought a boat, I’m going out to sea” indeed.

Story #2: Erma Wilson had her lawsuit against Midland County and former prosecutor Ralph Petty dismissed by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in a “plurality decision”, which apparently means that it doesn’t set a binding precedent. The decision was on somewhat narrow technical grounds: the Court of Appeals felt she hadn’t exhausted her remedies in state court yet.

Why was she suing?

…Wilson had been convicted in Midland County 23 years ago on felony possession of cocaine charges and given an eight-year probation sentence.
Long ago, Wilson had appealed her conviction to the state’s 11th Circuit Court of Appeals and lost.

Okay, so? Turns out that prosecutor Petty was moonlighting. He was a prosecutor by day…and a law clerk for “several district judges” at the same time.

By day the prosecutor was making the case against the defendants, while by night he was siding with himself from the judge’s chambers.

And I’m going to pause here to insert a quote from one of the greatest philosophers currently walking the earth, Judge Don Willet.

“This was a DEFCON 1 legal scandal,” Willet wrote in a dissent describing the background of the case.

…

“Wilson claims it would be unfair to force her back into the very state system that injured her,” states the plurality decision by Judge Andrew Oldham. “But it is also important that civil plaintiffs do not put the cart before the horse. Criminal proceedings and criminal judgments require criminal remedies—not civil ones. If and when Ms. Wilson pushes aside her criminal conviction, then but only then can she come back to civil court and ask for money. Until then, her § 1983 suit must be dismissed.”

Judge Willet disagrees. Strongly.

Willet, on the other hand, led a fiery dissent in which he stated that he would have let Wilson’s lawsuit proceed, noting, “A fair trial in a fair tribunal is a basic requirement of due process.”
“The Constitution’s fair-trial requirement is Con Law 101 — a bedrock due-process guarantee. In fact, the Framers cared so much about the sanctity of the criminal jury trial that our Constitution specifically mentions it twice — not only in the Sixth Amendment, but also in Article III,” he wrote.
“And to underscore they really meant it — that criminal-justice fairness is sacrosanct — the Founding generation doubled down, enshrining a host of procedural non-negotiables in multiple provisions of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, more words are devoted to We the People’s fair-trial right than to any other constitutional guarantee. Safe to say, the Framers were fixated on the adjudication of criminal charges — both the power to bring them and the process for resolving them — and spilled a lot of ink to ensure that the Constitution’s inviolable fair-trial guarantee is no empty promise.”

…

“Unfortunately for our circuit — and unfortunately for Wilson — wisdom remains a no-show. The only hope for wronged noncustodial plaintiffs like Erma Wilson is that the Supreme Court will at last confront the persistent circuit split, seize this occasion to settle the issue, and vindicate a bedrock constitutional guarantee that, sadly, is even more tenuous in today’s plea-bargain age than when the Founding generation first enshrined it.”

Just in case you were wondering, Mr. Petty has been disbarred, and according to “The Texan”, has been ordered not to use his name “in any manner in conjunction with the words ‘Attorney at Law,’ ‘Counselor at Law,’ or ‘Lawyer.'” He was also fined $50 and had to pick up the garbage. No, wait: “He also had to notify any of his clients in writing of his disbarment, give them back their money and documents, and notify all judges with whom he may have business pending.“

Posted in Law, Media, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: September 10, 2024.

Tuesday, September 10th, 2024

James Earl Jones. NYT (gift link). THR. Variety.

I didn’t realize he was an EGOT (but the Oscar was honorary, not competitive).

The IMDB trivia asserts he was a NRA member, which is interesting. It also asserts that he was considered for the lead role in one of the spin-offs of a minor 1960s SF TV series, but they cast Avery “Hawk” Brooks instead.

Other credits include three episodes of “Homicide: Life on the Street”, something called “Excessive Force” that sounds fun, “The Last Remake of Beau Geste”, “Exorcist II: The Heretic”, and, of course, “The Star Wars Holiday Special”.

Once, while traveling cross-country, Jones broke out his Darth Vader voice on the CB radio scanner. “The truck drivers would really freak out — for them, it was Darth Vader. I had to stop doing that,” he told The New York Times magazine.

As a not-quite-an-obit but belongs here anyway note, the NYT obit is credited to Robert D. McFadden. Mr. McFadden retired from the Times on September 1st, and the paper of record ran a very nice tribute to him. I’ll say something nice about the NYT for once: I agree, Mr. McFadden was a pretty swell obit writer. I think he belongs in the same class as the legendary Robert McG. Thomas Jr..

He retired with more than 250 advance obituaries still in the pipeline, each awaiting its day.

Also among the dead: Ed Kranepool, one of the original Mets.

When Stengel assessed Kranepool’s talent, he told The New York Times: “He don’t strike out too much and he don’t let himself get suckered into goin’ for bad pitches. I wouldn’t be afraid to play him. He don’t embarrass you.”

…

After the ’69 Series, Kranepool and several teammates, including Tom Seaver and Cleon Jones, put together a musical act that performed in Las Vegas, singing, among other songs, “The Impossible Dream.” After the group’s debut on the Circus Maximus stage at Caesars Palace, Kranepool conceded that the singing Mets were nervous.
“It’s not like Shea Stadium, where we know what we’re doing,” he told The Times. “But we had enough Scotch.”

Baseball Reference.

Posted in 1970s, Media, Movies, Obits, Sports, TV | 3 Comments »

Flaming hyena update.

Thursday, August 29th, 2024

I wrote a while back about Robert Telles, the former public administrator of Clark County, who was charged with murdering Jeff German. Mr. German was a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal who had been covering Mr. Telles management of the office, and discovered all sorts of problems: hostile work environment, affairs with subordinates, those kind of things.

Mr. Telles went on trial a couple of weeks ago.

He was convicted yesterday of first degree murder. He’s already been sentenced to life in prison, though he can apply for parole in 20 years.

Coverage from the R-J by way of archive.is. Since it is close to the end of the month, I’m going to burn a NYT gift link to their coverage of the story.

Posted in Law, Media, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 16, 2024.

Tuesday, July 16th, 2024

Evan Wright, journalist and author. (Generation Kill)

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You can also dial 988 to reach the Lifeline.

Posted in Books, Media, Obits | 1 Comment »

Headline of the day.

Tuesday, May 7th, 2024

Slain beauty queen Landy Párraga may have tipped off killers by posting photo of octopus ceviche

I really do need to do that OPSEC post, don’t I?

Her food pic showed the distinctive-looking seafood dish and a side of eggs with a restaurant logo on either a placemat or menu on the table.

They didn’t even have to look at the EXIF data.

Also, she was making the sign of the two-backed beast with a convicted drug lord, who was married to someone else.

“If my wife comes across anything about her, I’m screwed,” Norero had said of Párraga to Ángulo.
He reportedly added: “My friend, her name cannot come out anywhere. Otherwise, my world will come crashing down.”

The drug lord got whacked in prison. Authorities suspect that his widow is behind the assassination of Ms. Párraga.

Posted in Food, Law, Media | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 19, 2024.

Friday, January 19th, 2024

“Sports Illustrated”. They are supposedly laying off all of their staff, and (according to other stories I’ve seen) Authentic Brands Group (ABG) who owns SI, has terminated the license of Arena Group to actually run SI.

“Pitchfork”, at least in current form. Conde Nast says they are folding it into “GQ”.

Some follow up housekeeping:

Michael Swanwick’s obit for Howard Waldrop.

The other day, Mike the Musicologist texted me:

Have I told you I performed in a Schickele world premiere?

This is a story I had not heard before. Below, and with his permission, is his version of the story.

One of my professors at CUNY, Leo Treitler, was a close friend of Schickele’s, and for Leo’s retirement party, Schickele wrote a short, 3-4 minute, choral piece for him.

I think there were twelve of us students of Leo’s (three per part) who briefly rehearsed and performed it for him at the party.

Although he has published scholarship on every historical period, Leo is mostly known as an early music scholar, and Schickele wrote him a mensuration canon. It’s a very difficult and restrictive form composers usually use demonstrate their skill. Mostly associated with Renaissance music, composers still use it up to this day; Arvo Pärt’s “Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten” is probably the most well-known, contemporary one. Schickele was not at the party, so, being an occasional piece, I doubt he ever heard “Leo, Don’t Slow Down” or that it was ever performed again.

MtM says this is a good version of the Britten Cantus, done by an Estonian orchestra and conducted by a friend of Pärt.

Posted in Media, Obits | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: January 15, 2024.

Monday, January 15th, 2024

Tom Shales, former TV critic of the Washington Post and Pulitzer prize winner. WP (archived).

I was a big fan of his TV criticism when he was with the WP. Especially (as I’ve noted before) his reviews of Kathy Lee Gifford’s Christmas specials. I also thought Live From New York was a pretty spiffy book. (I haven’t read the expanded edition, or the ESPN book.)

Joyce Randolph. IMDB. NYT.

Alec Musser, actor. IMDB.

Peter Crombie. Other credits include “Se7en”, “Spenser: For Hire”, and a spin-off of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

Noted SF writer Howard Waldrop, who was also a personal acquaintance, apparently passed away yesterday. I am putting this at the bottom of the obit watch because, so far, the news is just circulating among the Austin SF community and my circle of friends. I don’t have anything to link to right now. Also, I want to spend some time and write a longer obit for him, possibly tomorrow.

Posted in Books, Media, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

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