Sheila Jackson Lee (D – Houston). Fox 26 Houston. McThag.
Whitney Rydbeck, actor. Other credits include “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island”, “Battle Beyond the Stars”, “Switch”, and one of the spin-offs of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.
Bob Newhart. THR. Tributes. Appreciation. Variety.
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What do you think happens on the other side?
God has an incredible sense of humor, an unimaginable sense of humor. Just look around.
I’ve had this discussion – God is a punster and has a sense of humor – with people at my church, too. I think it it worth noting that he was a faithful Catholic, and was married to the same woman for 60 years. (Ginny Newhart passed away in 2023.)
One of the less-reputable over the air networks used to run “The Bob Newhart Show” and “Newhart” back to back in the afternoons, and I’d have both on while I worked. I think “TBNS” is just about perfect as a show, but, oddly, I didn’t like “Newhart” so much. I do remember watching and enjoying it first run, but not so much as an adult. My dislike for it now is mostly because I felt the show shifted focus away from Dick to Michael and Stephanie, and I really didn’t like those two characters. But when Bob was dominating the screen, it was a pretty good show.
It turns out one of my favorite “Newhart” episodes is available on the ‘Tube (until someone files a copyright strike): “Dick the Kid”, season 5, episode 3.
Dick has a case of writer’s block, so he goes off to work as a cowboy on a ranch. The comic element of this episode isn’t Dick’s ineptitude as a cowboy. Just the opposite: he’s so good at being a cowboy, he wins the respect of everyone. Even the toughest most macho of the cowboys breaks down when Dick goes back to the inn.
The world is a lesser place today.
Edited to add: per THR, CBS will be airing a tribute to Bob Newhart on July 22nd, but I don’t have a specific time yet.
Cheng Pei-pei, Chinese actress. IMDB.
Nguyen Phu Trong, Vietnamese Communist leader.
Wow. It has been a weekend, hasn’t it?
Happy Bastille Day to all my readers, since I don’t expect to do a second post today.
The only thing I have to say about Trump is: in my opinion, 130 yards is not a sniper shot. It really isn’t even a very long shot for the average person. I believe most people zero their rifles so they’re on target at 100 to 150 yards. Calling this guy a “sniper” is an insult to actual snipers.
With all that out of the way:
Shannen Doherty. NYT (archived). IMDB.
And finally, speaking of snipers, Dr. Ruth Westheimer. NYT (archived).
I’m sorry if it seems like I’m shorting these three people on coverage, but I feel like they all are getting a tremendous amount of coverage already (modulo the ongoing news coverage) and I just don’t have anything to add.
Shelley Duvall. This is breaking, and the NYT is in “full obit to come” mode. I’ll link to that later.
Edited to add: NYT obit.
Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment. As noted, they own Redbox. They also own the Crackle streaming service.
Fun fact:
They had filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition (which would have allowed them to re-organize) but yesterday it was converted into a Chapter 7 petition, which is total liquidation. And it sounds like there was some sleazy stuff going on.
I have seen reports that they were pocketing employee health insurance premiums, but not actually paying the insurers. Those are just reports, and the executives are entitled to the presumption of innocence. But if it is true that they weren’t paying employees, and weren’t paying employee health insurance…the kind side of me thinks those people should be in jail. The unkind side of me thinks that rope and lampposts are in order.
Edited to add: more from THR, concentrating on the RedBox part of the business, but including the accusations of financial mismanagement.
Benji Gregory. Other credits include “Amazing Stories”, “The Twilight Zone” (the 1985-1986 revival), and “T.J. Hooker”.
Playing catch-up:
Joe Bonsall, of the Oak Ridge Boys.
James M. Inhofe, Republican senator from Oklahoma and former mayor of Tulsa.
“Kinky” Friedman followup: NYT. THR.
How about a little music?
Edited to add: Reason tribute. Noted here for two reasons:
1. Jesse Walker mentions another of my favorite Kinky songs that I decided not to use, but it was a close decision: “We Reserve the Right to Refuse Service to You”.
2. I had always associated Kinky with the “dropped acid and listened to Shiva’s Headband at the Armadillo World Headquarters” crowd, so this is an interesting quote:
This is pushing the definition of an “obit” just a bit, but Will Dabbs, MD, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite modern gun writers, has a nice tribute up to Donald Sutherland.
More specifically, it is a tribute to Donald Sutherland’s role as “Oddball” in “Kelly’s Heroes”.
I’ve seen “Kelly’s Heroes”, but when I was a child, on the late night movies. (Kids, ask your parents about late night movies on TV.) I think the Saturday Movie Conspiracy is going to be re-watching it in the fairly near future. And I had not heard the story about the grenades.
This is breaking, and I may have more later on: “Kinky” Friedman, Texas musician, author, and politician. KVUE. KSAT. HouChron (archived). (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Bill Cobbs, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “A Mighty Wind”, “The Slap Maxwell Story”, and one of the spinoffs of a minor 1960s SF TV series.
Finally, a weird one:
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Your Donald Sutherland obit roundup: NYT. THR. Variety. Variety tribute.
IMDB. I did not realize he was Wilhelm Reich in the video for “Cloudbusting”. And we’ve watched “Don’t Look Now”: I can’t recommend it, even with the sex scene. On the other hand, I would like to see “Kelly’s Heroes” again, not cut up for television. And I’ve never seen “M*A*S*H”.
Master Chief Petty Officer William Goines (US Navy – ret.). He was 87.
In his 32 years in uniform, which included three tours of duty during the Vietnam War, he received a Bronze Star and a Navy Commendation Medal among other decorations.
After the war, he joined the Chuting Stars, the U.S. Navy parachute exhibition team, performing 640 jumps over five years.
Master Chief Goines is credited as being the first black Navy SEAL (though the paper of record does note that there was at least one black frogman in the underwater demolition teams that preceded the SEALs).
From sumo, he went into acting. Other credits include both versions of “Magnum P.I.” (an uncredited appearance in the first, “Kamekona” in the second), the “MacGyver” reboot, and “One West Waikiki”.
Yesterday was an extended travel day. I got in around 5 PM last night, and had to unpack the car and take care of other business. So blogging opportunities were limited.
Oddly, I have to work today, and have meetings tonight. But tomorrow is a company holiday. I’m planning to post something of a trip report then.
In the meantime, a few obits.
Anouk Aimée, French actress. NYT (archived). IMDB.
Kevin Brophy, actor. Other credits include “Matt Houston”, “Trapper John, M.D.”, and a spinoff of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s.
Ben Vautier, French artist. I haven’t done an “Art, damn it! Art!” watch for a while, and he seems like a good candidate.
Forever looking to provoke, Mr. Vautier found a kindred spirit in 1962 when he met George Maciunas, who spearheaded the avant-garde Fluxus movement of the 1960s, which included Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik and other artists, and which drew from the iconoclastic Dada movement of the early 20th century.
Fluxus, as articulated in Mr. Maciunas’s 1963 manifesto, was intended as a revolution, a call to comrades to “promote living art, anti-art, promote non-art reality,” while purging the world of “dead art, imitation, artificial art.”
Mr. Vautier certainly did his part, as both a visual and performance artist, with works that straddled the line between conceptual art and punchline.
At the Documenta art festival in Kassel, Germany in 1972, he famously strung a banner that read “Kunst Ist Überflüssig” (“Art Is Superfluous”) across the top of the august Fridericianum museum.
He strove to show that art could be found in daily life, and in ordinary objects, as with his series “Tas,” in which he piled dirt and garbage into lots and signed them as if they were masterpieces.
Starting in the 1960s, Mr. Vautier gave staged performances — he called them “gestes” (“gestures”) — that could seem like practical jokes on the audience. In one, “Audience Piece No. 8” (1965), guests were informed that the next piece was to be presented in a special area. Ushers then led them in groups through back exits and abandoned them.
In “Piano Concerto No. 2 for Paik,” an apparent concert from the same year, a pianist fled the stage before playing a note and the orchestra chased him in hot pursuit, trying to drag him back.
Mr. Vautier was often all too willing to shock. In one performance piece, he urinated in a jar, which he then exhibited as if it were high art. In another, he repeatedly slammed his head against a wall.
James Kent, NYC chef.
He opened his own restaurant, Crown Shy, in 2019 with a partner, Jeff Katz, the general manager of Del Posto, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan that closed in 2021. “At Crown Shy, the Only False Step Is the Name” read the headline of a “critic’s pick” review by Pete Wells, the restaurant critic of The New York Times. (The name refers to tall trees’ tendency not to allow their upper stories to grow entangled with the branches of their neighbors.)
Mr. Wells wrote that Mr. Kent’s dishes “regularly over-deliver.” He singled out for praise “an almost absurdly creamy purée of white bean hummus under a fiery red slick of melted ’nduja; a beef tartare with toasted walnuts and rye croutons; and oysters served with “cucumber jelly, diced cucumbers, grains of jalapeño and microleaves of purple shiso.”
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Crown Shy garnered one star from the Michelin restaurant guide. Saga earned two.
It was fine dining worthy of the European tradition, but with American casualness and an embrace of pop culture.
Mr. Kent played Wu-Tang Clan and the Notorious B.I.G. at Crown Shy. He eschewed a formal dress code. With his chef coat he could often be seen wearing expensive sneakers.
His spray-painted murals earned him a reputation as “a chef that’s also a wildly talented graffiti artist,” as Bloomberg reported in 2016. He was commissioned to do artwork at NoMad Hotel and the restaurant tech company Salido.
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In April, The Times reported that Mr. Kent and Saga Hospitality Group had leased 3,000 square feet on the ground floor of the former Domino Sugar refinery in Brooklyn for a bakery and a “casual all-day restaurant.”
That same month, the lifestyle magazine The Robb Report described yet more ambitious plans. Mr. Kent was opening a new 140-seat restaurant on Park Avenue inspired by the Grand Central Oyster Bar, where his grandmother Sue Mingus first went on a date with the jazz musician Charles Mingus, who became her husband and whose legacy she took charge of overseeing until her death in 2022.
At the same time, Mr. Kent was planning a fast-casual fried chicken sandwich restaurant on the level of Shake Shack, The Robb Report said. LRMR Ventures, a private investment firm of LeBron James and his friend and business partner Maverick Carter, was backing Saga Hospitality Group’s expansion.
Investors “believe Kent’s a rare, multidimensional talent who’s primed to become the next great American restaurateur,” The Robb Report wrote.
He was 45.
Still traveling, so these are going to be on the brief side.
Mike “Duke” Venturino, longtime gun writer. I had been reading his articles since Jesus was a lance corporal at least, so this hits a little hard.
I never met him, but he was a swell writer. I don’t have any more information other than the linked article, but I’ll post anything additional I find.
Tony Lo Bianco, actor. Other credits include “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “The Twilight Zone” (the 1985 revival), and “Police Story”.
Jerry West, NBA player, coach, and executive.
Janis Page, actress. She was 101. NYT (archived).
Other credits include “The Rockford Files”, “Lanigan’s Rabbi”, “Banacek”…
…and “Mannix”. (“A Way to Dusty Death”, season 7, episode 2. She was “Georgia Durian”.)
Brother Marquis, rapper with 2 Live Crew.
Larry Allen, of the Dallas Cowboys.
Allen was a second-round pick out of Sonoma State in 1994 and quickly became one of the most dominant offensive linemen in the NFL.
He was named to the Pro Bowl 11 times and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013. He played for the Cowboys from 1994 to 2005, winning a Super Bowl in 1995. He spent his final two seasons with the San Francisco 49ers.
He was 52.
Doug Ingle, lead singer and organ player for Iron Butterfly.
Mr. Ingle was the last surviving member of the classic lineup of Iron Butterfly, the pioneering hard rock act he helped found in 1966. The band released its first three albums within a year, starting with “Heavy” in early 1968, and, after a lineup shuffle, cemented its place in rock lore with its second album, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” released that July.
“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” spent 140 weeks on the Billboard album chart, peaking at No. 4, and was said to have sold some 30 million copies worldwide. A radio version of the title song, whittled to under three minutes, made it to No. 30 on the Billboard Hot 100.
But it was the full-length album version — taking up the entire second side of the LP in all of its messy glory — that became a signature song of the tie-dye era. With its truncheonlike guitar riff and haunting aura that called to mind a rock ’n’ roll “Dies Irae,” the song is considered a progenitor of heavy metal and encapsulated Mr. Ingle’s ambition at the time:
“I want us to become known as leaders of hard rock music,” Mr. Ingle, then 22, said in a 1968 interview with The Globe and Mail newspaper of Canada. “Trend setters and creators, rather than imitators.”
Obiligatory:
Adding to the legend of the song was that it was essentially an in-studio soundcheck that became the final version.
Don Casale, an engineer at the session, had asked the band to run through the song so he could set the recording levels, but he hit “record” as the band meandered through a sprawling free jam featuring solos by the guitarist Erik Braunn, fills by the bassist Lee Dorman and a two-and-a-half-minute drum solo by Mr. Bushy.
“After 17 minutes and five seconds I ended the tape,” Mr. Casale recalled in a 2020 interview with The Rochester Voice, a New Hampshire newspaper. “I then called down to the band and said, ‘Guys, come on up and listen to this.’ They loved it.”
Obligatory 2:
Darryl Hickman, actor. Other credits include “Network”, “Looker”, and “Sharky’s Machine”.
Burning in Hell watch: Canadian serial killer Robert Pickton. I won’t go into detail about his crimes, out of respect for the sensibilities of my readers: you can click through to the linked article for that if you wish.
He died of natural causes at the age of 74. Two weeks ago, somebody rammed a broken broomstick through his head in prison, so naturally he died.
I didn’t want to post an obit watch yesterday because I thought it would distract from Memorial Day. So catching up…
Bill Walton. ESPN. Boston Globe (archived).
Richard “It’s a Small World” Sherman. NYT (archived).
Don Perlin, comic artist. (“Moon Knight”)
Adele Faber, author. I’m not a parent, but I have heard a lot of raves for How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk.
FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Al Ruddy. He produced a couple of movies, and co-created “Hogan’s Heroes” and “Walker, Texas Ranger”.
Not exactly an obit, but Lee Goldberg wrote a nice tribute to Roger Corman.
He was cheap, but he paid us on time, treated us well and was a wonderful, creative collaborator.