Archive for March 29th, 2013

As an Austin resident…

Friday, March 29th, 2013

…let me just say this: I agree with Iowahawk.

Posted in Clippings, Sarcasm | 1 Comment »

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold…

Friday, March 29th, 2013

Steven Brooks was arrested last night near Barstow, California.

The arrest followed a high-speed chase that ended when police used spike strips to disable the runaway vehicle in which the driver was throwing metal objects at police, including a handgun, according to the Victorville Daily Press.

Up until Thursday, Mr. Brooks was a member of the Nevada State Assembly (a Democrat, representing District 17, which includes North Las Vegas). He was expelled from office earlier in the day.

Mr. Brooks has had an interesting few months. On January 19th, he was arrested on allegations that he had threatened Assembly Speaker Marilyn Kirkpatrick. The Reno newspaper states that there was “a gun and dozens of rounds of ammunition” in his car; however, no charges have been filed against Mr. Brooks as of this writing.

Mr. Brooks was arrested and charged after an incident in February “after a disturbance at the home of his estranged wife, when police say he tried to grab an officer’s gun”.

He was kicked out of a Reno restaurant, denied a gun purchase and posed bare-chested for a newspaper photographer, allegedly to show bruises and said he suffered while being arrested, though none were clearly visible. A Las Vegas veterans’ advocate said he sold Brooks a bulletproof vest, but didn’t give him night-vision goggles that he sought.

He’s also “been banned from meetings with party colleagues in the Assembly and was banished from the Nevada Legislature Building“.

I don’t know what to make of this: the fact that he hasn’t been charged in the alleged threats against Speaker Kirkpatrick after two months is strange. The domestic violence incident, well, this is why we have a legal system: to sort out conflicting claims. The denial of the gun purchase was probably a result of the domestic violence incident. The rest of his behavior could charitably be described as “eccentric”, but I’m not sure, based on the reporting, that it rises to the level of “danger to himself and others”. There are reports in both articles that Mr. Brooks was under psychiatric observation for a period of time: the Reno paper says his commitment was involuntary.

Leading the police on a high-speed chase and making them use spike strips to stop you? That goes past “eccentric” and into full-on “crazy”. Speaking of crazy:

Authorities said it was unclear why Brooks was in California.

Posted in Clippings, Guns, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch part II.

Friday, March 29th, 2013

I missed this one the other day, because of reasons. I also missed this story when it happened, because I was 5 at the time.

Paul Rose has died.

More than 40 years ago, Mr. Rose was a member of the Front for the Liberation of Quebec, or F.L.Q., an extremist group committed to using violence to win independence for French-speaking Quebec. It committed dozens of bombings from 1963 to October 1970.

Mr. Rose was convicted of murdering Pierre Laporte, the Quebec government’s minister of labor. Mr. Laporte was kidnapped by Mr. Rose’s F.L.Q. cell on October 10, 1970, and was found strangled in the trunk of a car on October 18th. Mr. Rose made statements implicating himself in the kidnapping, but “an investigation by a Montreal prosecutor concluded in 1980 that Mr. Rose could not have been present at the killing”. Mr. Rose served 11 years in prison.

Many Quebecers who favored independence from Canada were contemptuous of Mr. Rose and the F.L.Q. René Lévesque, father of the separatist Parti Québécois, which held seven seats in the provincial legislature in 1970 and gained power in 1976, called the members of the group subhuman. The party, which governs Quebec today, received mainly praise for denying requests that the legislature honor Mr. Rose’s death.

Also among the dead, Richard Griffiths. Most of the obits I have seen have concentrated on his Harry Potter role, but his full list of credits is even more interesting: “Withnail and I”, “Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides”, and “The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear”, along with a lot of TV work.

(I’d kind of like to see “The Brides in the Bath”, simply because the George Joseph Smith case is one of the seminal cases in British legal history.)

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

Obit watch: March 29, 2013.

Friday, March 29th, 2013

Paul S. Williams, noted music critic, founder of Crawdaddy. Hollywood Reporter. Locus Online.

The Locus Online obit touches on this briefly, but Mr. Williams was a friend of Philip K. Dick and, after Dick’s death, his literary executor. Mr. Williams founded the Philip K. Dick Society, which was a major force in getting Dick’s works out in front of the public. I did volunteer work as a secretary for the PKD Society for a period of time; Mr. Williams was always incredibly nice to me when we spoke, but I get the feeling he was the kind of person who was incredibly nice to everyone he met.

Post-PKD Society, he also was the force behind The Complete Stories of Theodore Sturgeon, which would make him a hero of mine even without the PKD connection.

If you want to get a feel for his writing and his philosophy, I commend to your attention his book The 20th Century’s Greatest Hits: A Top 40 List.

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