Archive for July, 2018

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Obit watch: July 30, 2018.

Monday, July 30th, 2018

Yesterday was a bad day for wrestling.

Nikolai Volkoff (an alias for Josip Nikolai Peruzovic) passed away on Sunday. He was 70.

Peruzovic, who was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2005, was best known in the world of professional wrestling for his over-the-top Soviet/Russian character during his time in the World Wide Wrestling Federation (later the WWF) in the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. In reality, Peruzovic was born in what was then Yugoslavia and now stands as part of Croatia.
Peruzovic’s most famous run came as part of the then-WWF’s explosion in popularity in the mid-1980s, as he teamed with the Iron Sheik to form one of the most successful heel teams in the history of pro wrestling while being managed by the legendary “Classy” Freddie Blassie. He famously sang the Soviet Union’s national anthem while the Iron Sheik taunted and stoked the anger of crowds around the world by playing upon real-life conflicts.

Volkoff and the Iron Sheik won the tag team championship in 1985.

Brian Christopher Lawler, son of Jerry Lawler, who wrestled as “Brian Christopher” also died on Sunday. Apparently, he was in jail on a DWI charge and committed suicide in his cell.

Ron Dellums, former Congressman.

Two obits that I thought made an interesting juxtaposition:

Mary Ellis, who died at 101.

Mrs. Ellis was one of the last two living members of the Air Transport Auxiliary, or A.T.A., which has since disbanded. She alone ferried 400 Spitfires and 76 other kinds of aircraft to airfields during the war.

…

In 1945, after the war ended, Ms. Ellis was invited to join the R.A.F. and became one of the first women to fly the Meteor jet fighter, according to Ms. Foreman.

…

Her death leaves Eleanor Wadsworth, who lives in Bury St. Edmunds, England, as the last surviving A.T.A. member.

Oksana Shachko, who the paper of record describes as “a Ukrainian artist and a founder of Femen, a women’s rights group famous for its topless political protests”.

Together with the Pussy Riot punk group in Russia, Femen became part of a post-Soviet protest phenomenon that sometimes drew a violent reaction. In 2011, Femen said that Ms. Shachko and other activists had been abducted in Minsk, the capital of Belarus, after campaigning in front of the K.G.B. headquarters there. Several members were beaten up in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, in 2013 ahead of a visit by President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.
Ms. Shachko and several other activists from the university town of Khmelnytsky, Ukraine, founded Femen in 2008. After a few conventional protests, they decided to demonstrate topless, often with political slogans written on their bodies.

…

In 2013, members of Femen ran topless in front of Mr. Putin as he visited Germany, drawing a grin and two thumbs up from him before guards wrestled the activists to the ground.
Ms. Shachko, along with several other Femen members, moved to Paris that same year and was granted political asylum by the French authorities. She maintained that the group’s members had been pursued by Russian special services and that the agents had planted a grenade in Femen’s office in Kiev, along with a photograph of Mr. Putin.

Ms. Shachko was 31. According to the NYT obituary, her death is being investigated as a suicide.

Posted in History, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Nine years.

Saturday, July 28th, 2018

I’ve been doing this for nine years?

Where does the time go?

Thanks to everyone for their continued support. I can name a few people specifically: Borepatch, Joe D., Lawrence, Roadrich, Mike the Musicologist, South Texas Pistolero, Infidel de Manahatta, pigpen51, roadgeek, thinkingman, Chuck Pergiel, Morlock Publishing…and probably a whole host of others I’m forgetting now.

Thanks, everyone. Can I keep this up for nine more years? I intend to try.

Posted in Admin | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 28, 2018.

Saturday, July 28th, 2018

Bill Loud, patriarch of the Loud family, is dead at 97.

I’m not sure how many people remember the Loud family. They were the stars of what may have been the first television “reality” show: “An American Family”, which ran on PBS in 1973.

“An American Family” shocked Americans families. Aired with the imprimatur of public broadcasting, it was portrayed as sociological exploration, not exploitation, and although many people found it irresistible, it was also hard to watch.
It showed Mr. Loud’s wife, Pat, bluntly discussing his adultery with her brother and sister-in-law. It showed her telling her husband to move out. It captured the Louds’ oldest son, Lance, living an openly gay life in New York — startling images for many people at the time.

The Louds separated during the filming of the series, ended up divorcing…and thirty years later, moved back in together and cohabited until Mr. Loud’s death.

In the 1970s much of the outside world had taken moral measure of Mr. Loud and found him wanting. But Grant Loud said his father was not created by television and should not be defined by it. He noted that the family moved to Santa Barbara in 1962 with very little money, and that his father had created a successful business from scratch.
“It provided a family of five kids with a very comfortable life, and took him — and us — around the world,” he said by email in 2013. “As a kid, I never thought much about it. As a middle-aged guy, I can only shake my head in awe and respect.”

The Loud’s had five children. Four survive him: Lance passed away in 2001.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

I’ve seen scammers on Fyre…

Saturday, July 28th, 2018

I’m sure we all remember the Fyre Festival, now a synonym for “legendary fiasco”.

Loyal readers of my blog, and perhaps others, may remember that one of the principals, William McFarland, pled guilty to wire fraud charges related to the festival.

You’re probably not going to believe this. I have trouble believing it myself. On Thursday, Mr. McFarland pled guilty to even more charges.

Mr. McFarland pleaded guilty to wire fraud, bank fraud and making false statements to a federal law enforcement agent and agreed to a forfeiture of $151,000.

Astonishing part one: this had nothing to do with the Fyre Festival. From the Justice Department’s press release:

From at least in or about late 2017, up to and including at least in or about March 2018, McFARLAND owned and operated NYC VIP Access, a company based in New York, New York. NYC VIP Access purported to be in the business of obtaining and selling for profit tickets to various exclusive events such as fashion galas, music festivals, and sporting events, including the following events, among others: the 2018 Met Gala, Burning Man 2018, Coachella 2018, the 2018 Grammy Awards, Super Bowl LII, and a Cleveland Cavaliers game and team dinner with Lebron James. McFARLAND, while on pretrial release, perpetrated a scheme to defraud attendees of the Fyre Festival, former customers of Magnises (another company operated by McFARLAND), and other customers by soliciting them to purchase tickets from NYC VIP Access to these exclusive events when, in fact, no such tickets existed.

Astonishing part two: notice the dates? Yes! He was running this scam while under indictment for the Fyre Festival scam!

McFARLAND, 26, of New York, New York, pled guilty to one count of wire fraud while on pretrial release, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, one count of bank fraud while on pretrial release, which carries a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison, and one count of making false statements, which carries a maximum sentence of 5 years in prison. McFARLAND also affirmed his previously entered guilty plea to two counts of wire fraud, each of which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. In connection with his previously entered plea, McFARLAND agreed to forfeit $26,040,099.48. In connection with today’s guilty plea, McFARLAND agreed to forfeit an additional $151,206.80.

Max sentence, whale sushi, yadda yadda. But I would expect running a second scam while you’re under indictment for the first one to be what they call an “aggravating factor”, and I’d expect Mr. McFarland’s sentence to be on the high end of those ranges.

Of course, I Am Not a Lawyer, so take that with some salt.

Posted in IANAL, Law | Comments Closed

Public service announcement.

Friday, July 27th, 2018

If you need to do something with a car title, like a title transfer, please be aware of the following facts:

Universal Auto Title Service on Justin Lane in Austin is “permanently closed”. Their former location has a sign in the window directing you to the county tax assessor’s office on Airport Boulevard, which is open from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM.

While it is true that the Airport Boulevard office is open from 9:00 AM to 5:30 PM, they will not do any transactions involving vehicle titles after 4 PM.

If you are thinking about going to one of the many tax assessor’s satellite offices, such as the one in Oak Hill, those are all “temporarily closed” (except, I believe, the one in Pflugerville). (I did a sorry job of covering this, for which I apologize: there was a flap, with several arrests, because some employees of the various satellite offices were apparently diverting money into their own pockets.)

There is apparently a title and registration service still open in Oak Hill. I’ll report later on.

Posted in Cars, Politics, Texas | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: July 24, 2018.

Tuesday, July 24th, 2018

Tony Sparano, offensive line coach for the Vikings and former head coach of the Dolphins and Raiders. StarTribune.

This is kind of a half-obit, but I want to bring it up here so I can call out a couple of things. Tess Henry was an opiate addict. Beth Macy, a writer for the NYT, covered her struggle to get off opiates using “medication-assisted treatment”. Sadly, that struggle ended last December: someone beat her head in and threw her in a dumpster.

This jumped out at me:

Tess’s mother, Patricia, wasn’t a believer in M.A.T because she thought it was widely abused. She worked as a hospital nurse and had seen patients admitted for infections after injecting themselves with buprenorphine and other opioids, as well as countless others, like Tess, who had relapsed after being on the program.

…

As a reporter, I’m not supposed to try to change the outcome of a story. But in Tess’s case, it seemed wrong to remain silent. When Tess was stuck in Las Vegas and couldn’t board a plane because she’d lost her ID, I urged Patricia to help her get on maintenance drugs so that she could make the three-day bus journey home without getting dope sick. Once, when Patricia texted me about taking care of a 25-year-old patient on Suboxone who had contracted endocarditis, an infection of one of his heart valves, from injecting it and other drugs, I gently replied that while Suboxone was sometimes abused, at least there wasn’t any fentanyl in it, “so it’s somewhat safer than street heroin.”

So, on the one hand, we have the addict’s mother, who not only knows her better than just about anyone else, but who is also a nurse who has treated addicts. On the other hand, we have…a NYT reporter.

This, too:

The day of her funeral in January, Dan Polster, a federal judge in Cleveland, was presiding over a hearing in the continuing mass litigation case against opioid makers, distributors and retailers. “About 150 Americans are going to die today, just today, while we’re meeting,” Judge Polster said.
Last month, a lawyer representing some of the plaintiffs in that case called me to discuss a potential settlement. She wanted my ideas about how to treat the more than two million opioid-addicted Americans.

Settlement for what? We’ve decided we’re going to demonize the drug companies for making effective painkillers available, and make it harder for people with real, chronic, crippling pain to get the drugs those companies make – drugs that can improve their quality of life – because we’re so damn concerned with what other people put into their bodies.

I’m not exactly “pro-heroin”. But if Tess Henry had been able to spend $20 a day on a couple of shots – shots of known dosage and purity – would she have been able to work? Hold down a job? Take care of her child? Would she have been any different than the person who comes home at night and drinks some Scotch over ice?

Would Tess Henry be alive today, if we weren’t so insistent on the “demon opiates” line of thinking?

Beth Macy is the author of the forthcoming “Dopesick: Dealers, Doctors, and the Drug Company That Addicted America,” from which this essay is adapted.

“the Drug Company That Addicted America”. I think we know where she’s coming from.

Posted in Law, NFL, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

I deny the allegations and I defy the alligators.

Monday, July 23rd, 2018

Contrary to what (some of) my friends believe, this is NOT my secret Twitter account:

Though I do fully support the sentiment.

Yeah. That’s a negatory, GhostRider. First off, there’s tomato residue left on the burger. Second, and more importantly: when I go somewhere and order a burger (or, for that matter, most other foods) and I say “I want it this way, with these toppings,” I expect to get what I ordered. If I ask for “ketchup and onions only” I expect to get that, not something with lettuce, tomato, and a bunch of vile glop on top. Don’t tell me “scrape it off”: FIX MY FOOD THE WAY I ASKED!

(Sorry if it seems like I’m worked up, but I’ve lost count of the number of meals I’ve had ruined or had to send back because someone didn’t get my order right, or added things that weren’t listed on the menu, or or or…)

Posted in Admin, Food | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: July 22, 2018.

Sunday, July 22nd, 2018

Jonathan Gold, restaurant critic for the LA Times and Pulitzer Prize winner. NYT.

This hit me kind of hard, and I’m not exactly sure why. I don’t live in LA, I barely even consider California to be part of the United States these days, and the LAT website has become so obnoxious I rarely read it. At most, I was an intermittent follower of Gold’s.

I know obituaries generally concentrate on the positive about the subject – I’ve seen very few that say, “Christ, what an a–hole” – but the tributes to him make him sound like an incredibly kind and funny guy who loved food, and even more loved telling people about food.

Gold was mission-driven as a critic, hoping his food adventures through the city’s many immigrant enclaves would help break down barriers among Angelenos wary of venturing outside their comfort zones. In the process, he made L.A.’s enormousness and diversity feel accessible and became one of the city’s most insightful cultural commentators.

…

He may not have eaten everything in Los Angeles, but nobody came closer. He rarely went to the subject of one of his reviews without stopping to try four or five other places along the way. He once estimated that in the hunt for interesting new things to eat and write about, he put 20,000 miles on his green Dodge Ram 1500 pickup truck each year. While driving, he liked listening to opera.

…

He preferred to praise chefs rather than pan them. If Gold wrote about you, he generally liked your food. Earnest and slightly awkward in person, he would voice displeasure with a gentle rebuke instead of the gleeful excoriating that other critics tend to dabble in.
“He wasn’t looking down his nose at the world, he was looking out from the table and trying to put restaurants, meals and cuisines in context. Empathy, understanding, commensality: That’s what he brought to the game,” Meehan said. “Jonathan didn’t write restaurant reviews, he wrote about who we are and how we feed each other. He wasn’t just a better writer than the rest of us, he cared more, too.”

Also, he was only 57: pancreatic cancer got him so fast most people didn’t even know he was sick, according to the obits. I’ve linked to them before, but The Lustgarten Foundation for Pancreatic Cancer Research still gets four stars from Charity Navigator.

Also among the dead: Shinobu Hashimoto, screenwriter perhaps most famous for his work with Akira Kurosawa (including “Rashomon”, “Ikiru”, and “Seven Samurai”.

Of the writers in Kurosawa’s stable, Mr. Hashimoto was among the longest-serving, contributing to eight screenplays from 1950 to 1970. Their other pictures together include “Throne of Blood” (1957), a reworking of “Macbeth” set in feudal Japan; “The Hidden Fortress” (1958), an adventure film about a princess escorted in disguise through enemy territory; and “Dodes’ka-den” (1970), about the residents of a Tokyo slum.

Madeleine Kamman, noted French chef and author.

By the time she died, Ms. Kamman had established a reputation as a strong-willed teacher of traditional French cuisine for modern tastes and an influential chef whose cooking was deeply informed by her knowledge of food chemistry, botany, history and geography.

Last, least, and burning in Hell: Barry Mills, leader of the Aryan Brotherhood.

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

Important safety tip (#21 in a series)

Friday, July 20th, 2018

Don’t let yourself get bitten by an Egyptian cobra.

Posted in Magic, Reptiles, Safety, Snakes | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: July 20, 2018.

Friday, July 20th, 2018

Adrian Cronauer, the inspiration for “Good Morning, Vietnam”.

Mr. Cronauer, who in reality was not quite the wild man the film suggested — later in life he worked for Republican causes and became a lawyer — admitted to some unease when he first saw the screen portrayal. But he got over it.
“Finally I said: ‘Wait a minute. It was never intended to be a biography. It’s a piece of entertainment. Sit back, relax and enjoy it,’ ” he said. “And that’s what I did.”

Annabelle Neilson. I can’t stand celebrity for celebrity’s sake, and I don’t worship celebrities in general. But there’s something about this story I find touching.

Ms. Neilson was severely dyslexic and, after being badly bullied, left school at 16. A vicious assault during a gap-year visit to Perth, Australia, left her with injuries requiring reconstructive surgery, and she soon began struggling with drug addiction.

She eventually got over her heroin problem, became a model, and was introduced to fashion designer Alexander McQueen. She went on to become his model, muse, and girlfriend until his death in 2010.

In 2014, Ms. Neilson became a star of the Bravo television series “Ladies of London,” and for two seasons viewers watched her recovery from a 2013 horseback riding accident that had left her with a broken back and pelvis.

She also wrote children’s books. Ms. Neilson was 49 when she died.

Posted in Books, History, Movies, Radio, TV | Comments Closed

Dumb de dumb dumb.

Thursday, July 19th, 2018

Dumb de dumb dumb…

The stories I am about to link to are true. I haven’t changed any names, because none of these people are innocent.

Dumb: threatening a judge.
Dumber: threatening two judges.
Dumbest: threatening two judges, one of whom was already shot and wounded by another idiot three years ago.

“I have every right to hang your (expletive),” Holgate said in a message according to the affidavit. “You have every goddamn right to be afraid of me. I am the law and you shouldn’t have crossed me.”
In another message, Holgate threatened to kill one of the judges, according to the document.
“I have the right to (expletive) kill you. You understand that?” He said. “…But we will see if we can resolve it. I don’t think we can, I think we are just going to hang your (expletive).”

And by the way…

…his arrest affidavit said he identified himself at the beginning of each of his threatening messages.

Meanwhile, over in Williamson County, the relatively new sheriff and prolific tweeter Robert Chody is in a micturition contest with one of the county commissioners, Dan Gattis.

Sheriff Chody has opinions about how county government is run, especially when it comes to sewage leaks, and does not hesitate to share them. This, in turn, seems to upset Judge Gattis:

“He stuck his finger in my chest — he didn’t actually touch me — and said, ‘Tell that sheriff if he doesn’t quit tweeting, I’m going zero his budget out,’” Chief Deputy Tim Ryle told the American-Statesman on Wednesday. “My comment to him was, ‘Judge, are you sure you want to say that?’ He said, ‘Yes, tell him to stop tweeting about me and my people.’

This little spat wouldn’t be noteworthy to me, except for what happened next:

Gattis’ alleged threat crossed a legal line, say Williamson County prosecutors, who filed a misdemeanor official oppression charge against him. Law enforcement officials issued a summons for Gattis to appear in state District Court in lieu of being arrested.

Yes, you read that correctly: the WillCo DA filed criminal charges against a county commissioner (who, by the way, is not running for re-election this year) because he shot his mouth off.

Personally, I think they’re all idiots: the sheriff’s office and the DA for filing charges over a political disagreement, and Judge Gattis for making empty threats. (“I’m going zero his budget out”. Yeah, Judge, you’re going to zero out the sheriff’s department budget. Call me when the pigs start flying.)

Posted in Law, Politics, Stupid, WCDA, WillCo | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 18, 2018.

Wednesday, July 18th, 2018

John A. Stormer, author of None Dare Call It Treason.

Mr. Stormer’s book, published by his own Liberty Bell Press, tapped into a vein of conservative alarm that was still very much present in the early 1960s, even though the Red-baiting era of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy had faded in the 1950s.
…
Communists, Mr. Stormer wrote, were bent on infiltrating the American government and had largely succeeded, as evidenced by American and United Nations economic support for Communist countries.
“The Communists have sworn to bury us,” Mr. Stormer wrote. “We are digging our own graves.”

…

The book was heavily footnoted, but its accuracy was quickly called into question. A group in Ohio, the National Committee for Civic Responsibility, did a page-by-page fact-checking and labeled the book “at best, an incredibly poor job of research and documentation and, at worst, a deliberate hoax and a fraud.” A political-science professor in California, Julian Foster, published a monograph cataloging the book’s distortions. He titled it “None Dare Call It Reason.”

…

Though the accuracy of “None Dare Call It Treason” was often disputed, Mr. Stormer was confident he was right, so much so that in the book’s final chapter, “What Can You Do?,” he urged his readers to scrutinize him.“First, you must educate yourself,” he wrote. “Determine that the facts in this book are true.”
Among his other advice was that people read two newspapers a day of opposite editorial viewpoints. He also urged his readers to make God a meaningful force in their lives and to be politically active.

You know, all of that is pretty good advice. But good luck finding “two newspapers a day of opposite editorial viewpoints” in this day and age.

Posted in Books, Obits, Politics | 2 Comments »

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