Archive for July, 2019

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Obit watch: July 10, 2019.

Wednesday, July 10th, 2019

RIP Rip Torn. THR.

…As he once acknowledged, “I get angry easily.”
In what is probably the most famous example, in 1968 Mr. Torn was filming “Maidstone,” an underground film written and directed by Mailer. Mailer was also the star, playing a writer running for president. Mr. Torn played his half brother. In a decidedly unscripted moment, Mr. Torn struck Mailer with a hammer; Mailer responded by attacking Mr. Torn and biting his ear. The fight became the centerpiece of the film.

…

…Dennis Hopper told a story on “The Tonight Show” in 1994 about how Mr. Torn had pulled a knife on him during an argument in the 1960s. (It was apparently as a result of this argument that Jack Nicholson and not Mr. Torn was cast as the Southern lawyer in Mr. Hopper’s hit film “Easy Rider.”) The way Mr. Torn remembered it, Mr. Hopper had pulled a knife on him, not the other way around, so he sued for defamation. He won.

I’m probably being unfair by highlighting the more colorful aspects of his life. He was apparently a rather talented movie and theater actor, and a good Texas boy (born in Temple, went to both Texas A&M and UT). For some reason, I keep thinking he was on a lot of game shows when I was a kid: am I confusing him with someone else? (I know I’m not confusing Rip Torn and Charles Nelson Reilly.)

Eva Kor.

Ms. Kor took young people on annual summer tours of Auschwitz. While conducting a tour, she died on Thursday at 85 at a hotel in Krakow, Poland, near the site of the former death camp. It was there that she and her twin, Miriam, had been among some 1,500 sets of twins who were victims of experiments, including the injections of germs, overseen by the German doctor Josef Mengele.

…

“Miriam and I were part of a group of children who were alive for one reason only — to be used as human guinea pigs,” she wrote. “Three times a week we’d be placed naked in a room, for six to eight hours, to be measured and studied.
“They took blood from one arm and gave us injections in the other. After one such injection I became very ill and was taken to the hospital. If I had died, Mengele would have given Miriam a lethal injection in order to do a double autopsy. When I didn’t die, he carried on experimenting with us and as a result Miriam’s kidneys stopped growing. They remained the size of a child’s all her life.”

…

Ms. Kor, who worked in real estate for many years, traveled to Germany in 1993 to meet with a former doctor at Auschwitz, Hans Münch, who had been acquitted of war crimes. He accepted her invitation to go to Auschwitz with her and sign a document acknowledging the existence of the camp’s gas chambers. On the 50th anniversary of its liberation, they stood together before the charred ruins of its crematories.
Ms. Kor composed a letter to Dr. Münch expressing her belief in forgiving tormentors, as a thank you for his gesture.
“Dr. Münch signed his document about the operation of the gas chambers while I read my document of forgiveness and signed it,” she recalled. “As I did that, I felt a burden of pain was lifted from me.”
“Some survivors do not want to let go of the pain,” she wrote in her Forgiveness Project remembrance. “They call me a traitor and accuse me of talking in their name. I have never done this. I do it for myself. I do it not because they deserve it, but because I deserve it.”

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Nazis, Obits, Theatre, TV | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: July 9, 2019.

Tuesday, July 9th, 2019

Ross Perot. (Edited to add: Lawrence. Dallas Morning News.)

He was no quitter: an Eagle Scout, a Navy officer out of Annapolis, a top I.B.M. salesman, the founder of wildly successful data processing enterprises, a crusader for education and against drugs, a billionaire philanthropist. In 1969, he became a kind of folk hero with a quixotic attempt to fly medicine and food to American prisoners of war in North Vietnam. In 1979 he staged a commando raid that freed two of his employees, and thousands of criminals and political prisoners, from captivity in revolutionary Iran.
And in 1992 he became one of the most unlikely candidates ever to run for president. He had never held public office, and he seemed all wrong, like a cartoon character sprung to life: an elfin 5 feet 6 inches and 144 pounds, with a 1950s crew cut; a squeaky, nasal country-boy twang; and ears that stuck out like Alfred E. Neuman’s on a Mad magazine cover. Stiff-necked, cantankerous, impetuous, often sentimental, he was given to homespun epigrams: “If you see a snake, just kill it. Don’t appoint a committee on snakes.”

…

He joined the Boy Scouts at 12 and in little more than a year was an Eagle Scout, an extraordinary achievement that became part of his striver’s legend.

…

His folk-patriot reputation stemmed from two adventures. In 1969, after months of speaking on the plight of 1,400 American prisoners of war in North Vietnam, he chartered two jetliners, filled them with 30 tons of food, medicines and gifts and flew to Southeast Asia. Hanoi rejected the mission, but it was hardly a failure. The spotlight on prisoners’ hardships embarrassed Hanoi and led to better treatment for some.
In 1979, as an Islamic revolution swept Iran, Mr. Perot mounted a commando raid on a prison in Tehran to free two employees being held for ransom. A riot was orchestrated at the gates, and in the chaos of an ensuing breakout 11,800 inmates escaped, including both employees. The episode was chronicled in Ken Follett’s best-selling book “On Wings of Eagles” and in a 1986 mini-series on NBC.

You know, I need to read that book. (Also The Pillars of the Earth.)

Also among the dead: Jack Renner, co-founder of Telarc and a good Cleveland boy.

In 1978 the company made what Mr. Renner said was the first commercially released digital recording of symphonic music in the United States, featuring Frederick Fennell and the Cleveland Symphonic Winds.
“It created a lot of stir among audiophiles,” he said. “It had a bass drum that blew up speakers. Everybody accused us of hyping the bass drum. We didn’t.”

Back in the day, I had a fair number of Telarc CDs (including some of their P.D.Q. Bach).

Posted in History, Music, Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#57 in a series)

Monday, July 8th, 2019

There’s an interesting article in today’s NYT about Jenna Garland, the former press secretary for Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed.

Ms. Garland is currently under indictment. She’s charged with two misdemeanors. But, unlike the usual run of tax-fattened hyenas, the charges against Ms. Garland involve…

…violations of the Georgia open records law.

One of the charges against Ms. Garland accuses her of attempting to frustrate a reporter’s 2017 request for billing documents from the city water department by telling a subordinate, in text messages, to “drag this out as long as possible” and “provide information in the most confusing format available.”

…

In one text message that later came to light, Ms. Garland advised a water department spokesperson to be “as unhelpful as possible.” In another, she told the spokesperson to “hold all” requested documents pertaining to certain members of the City Council until the reporter “asks for an update.”

There are two interesting things about this.

1. Criminal charges against public officials for open records act violations are “extremely uncommon”, as the paper of record describes it.

Open-records or “sunshine” laws in a number of other states include no criminal sanctions for noncompliance, although a number of them call for civil penalties or the payment of attorneys’ fees and court costs if a news organization or a member of the public successfully sues a government agency for documents.
In Colorado, lawmakers removed criminal penalties for violating the state’s open-records law two years ago because almost no one was ever charged.

2. “The case is perhaps the most notable fallout from an epic, extended public battle between Mr. Reed, a forceful personality and one of the most important African-American politicians in the South, and two titans of the Atlanta media scene: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and WSB-TV, the local ABC affiliate. The paper and TV station are owned by the same parent company and often team up for coverage.”

And something that’s feeding into this: even though Kasim Reed left office last year, his administration is still under federal investigation.

Federal agents have been scrutinizing construction contracts issued during Mr. Reed’s tenure, the use of city-issued credit cards, and concessions at the city’s international airport, among other matters. The federal investigation has resulted in numerous indictments.

It kind of sounds like the charges against Ms. Garland are more fallout from the ongoing investigation of Mr. Reed. I’d be tempted to suggest that they’re trying to flip her: but that seems unlikely with misdemeanor charges.

Scott R. Grubman, an Atlanta-based lawyer experienced in white-collar crime matters who is not involved in the Garland case, read Ms. Garland’s text messages the same way. He said he thought the government’s case against her was “flimsy” and an overreaction, given that civil penalties could be levied instead.
In Georgia, both state agencies and local governments “regularly engage in delay tactics” in response to open-records requests, Mr. Grubman said in an email. “By bringing a criminal prosecution against Ms. Garland without having ever criminally prosecuted any other violation in the past, the A.G.’s office appears to be unfairly targeting Ms. Garland and opening up a can of worms that will be difficult to close.”

I actually kind of agree with Mr. Grubman’s position, at least in part. This does seem like selective prosecution. But: I only agree with him in part because I think more public officials should face criminal charges for open records act violations. The heck with “civil penalties”, which are probably going to be paid by the taxpayers anyway: let’s hold these people personally responsible for violating the law. And if that means some of them wind up in jail…fiat justitia ruat caelum.

Posted in Law, Media, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 6, 2019.

Saturday, July 6th, 2019

Dr. Mitchell Feigenbaum, theoretical physicist.

When Feigenbaum began his career in the early 1970s, the term “chaos theory” did not exist. Generations of scientists dating back to Isaac Newton had worked on problems related to the predictability of complex systems, such as the orbits of the planets in the solar system. By the middle of the 20th century, physicists and mathematicians—inspired by the pioneering work of the French physicist and mathematician Henri Poincaré—had succeeded in characterizing chaotic states, often enabled by computers, by framing such questions as geometric problems. But the boundary between regular and chaotic behavior remained fuzzy, particularly as it applied to real physical systems.
Feigenbaum stepped into this foggy arena, developing methods capable of computationally modelling the period-doubling transition to chaos, which proceeds in a series of geometrically focused steps that remain similar when scaled across orders of magnitude, an example of so-called fractal geometry. He first studied a simple iterated algebraic equation known as the logistic map, and was later able to demonstrate that these steps are “universal:” all physical systems that become chaotic via this period-doubling route to chaos exhibit the same behavior. Feigenbaum also found that this behavior is determined by two universal constants, now known as the Feigenbaum constants.

Gene Pingatore, Illinois high school basketball coach. He holds the state record for most wins, but is perhaps more famous as the coach in “Hoop Dreams”.

Mickey Kapp. No, I hadn’t heard of him before, either, but the story is interesting: he was the provider of mixtapes to the astronauts through the Gemini and Apollo programs.

And it all started with José Jiménez.

At Mr. Kapp’s urging, Mr. Dana booked an appearance at the Kings Inn in Cocoa Beach, Fla., near where the astronauts trained. He usually did the astronaut bit with a straight man acting as interviewer, but for Cocoa Beach he was working alone.
“A few minutes into the routine, a guy in the front row began yelling out the straight man’s lines,” Mr. Thompson wrote. It was Mr. Shepard, who joined Mr. Dana onstage but was laughing so hard that another Mercury astronaut, Wally Schirra, who was there, took over, followed by another, Deke Slayton.

Paul Benjamin, actor. He knocked around quite a bit from the 1970s through to 2016: never did a “Mannix”, but he was in various other 70s cop shows, “Escape From Alcatraz” and was one of the guys on the corner in “Do the Right Thing”.

Sid Ramin.

Mr. Ramin (pronounced RAY-min) was one of two orchestrators — three, if you count the contributions of the composer, Leonard Bernstein, a lifelong friend — on the original Broadway production of “West Side Story,” which opened in 1957. According to “The Sound of Broadway Music” (2009), by Steven Suskin, Mr. Ramin worked on the haunting ballad “Somewhere,” the evocative “Something’s Coming,” the sweetly comic “I Feel Pretty,” the bravado-of-youth anthem “Here Come the Jets” and the irreverent “Gee, Officer Krupke.”

…

Shows whose orchestrations he worked on, in addition to “West Side Story,” included “Gypsy” (1959), “I Can Get It for You Wholesale” (1962), “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum” (1962), Bette Midler’s “Clams on the Half Shell Revue” (1975), “Jerome Robbins’ Broadway” (1989) and “Crazy for You” (1992).

Posted in 1970s, Movies, Obits, Physics, Sports, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Woo! Chugga! BOOM!

Friday, July 5th, 2019

Bookmark:

“For 40 Years, Crashing Trains Was One of America’s Favorite Pastimes“.

I read a similar article some years ago in an Old Farmer’s Almanac, but haven’t been able to find it since, and people don’t believe me when I tell them about this.

Oh, they believe in the Great Crush Crash (which is given much love in this article), but people seem incredulous when you tell them staged locomotive crashes for crowds were a regular spectator event, and Crush wasn’t a one-off.

Connolly began to criss-cross the country putting on wrecks from Boston to Los Angeles, Tampa to Salt Lake City. According to Reisdorff, he also found ways to add to the spectacle, including strapping dynamite to the front of the locomotives and filling freight cars behind the engines with gasoline and hot coals so the vehicles would be engulfed in flames after they derailed. Connolly and other train wreckers also liked to paint names and phrases on the sides of the trains for different political candidates or causes so that spectators could cheer for their respective locomotive. One wreck in 1932 featured “Hoover” versus “Roosevelt.” Connolly got so proficient at putting on train wrecks that he allegedly even tried copyrighting it, although Reisdorff was unable to find proof that he ever actually filed the paperwork to do so.

Posted in Bookmarks, Trains | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 5, 2019.

Friday, July 5th, 2019

For the historical record: Arte Johnson, of “Laugh-In” fame.

His success on “Laugh-In” led to a half-hour special in 1971; stints hosting other programs, including the short-lived game show “Knockout;” and repeat appearances on series like “The Love Boat” and “General Hospital.” He voiced a character named Tyrone on the cartoon series “Baggypants and the Nitwits,” which also featured the voice of Ruth Buzzi, in 1977, and played Renfield in the vampire movie comedy “Love at First Bite,” with George Hamilton as Count Dracula, in 1979.

You know, I’d never even heard of “Baggypants and the Nitwits” until now…

Posted in 1970s, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 3, 2019.

Wednesday, July 3rd, 2019

Lee Iacocca.

Max Wright. He has an interesting back story: Mr. Wright knocked around a lot in television, movies, and theater.

His other television credits include appearances on “Murphy Brown,” “Quantum Leap,” “Misfits of Science,” “Cheers,” “Buffalo Bill,” “Taxi” and “The Drew Carey Show.”
He also appeared in early episodes of “Friends” as the manager of Central Perk, the coffee shop where the show’s main characters hung out, and played Norm Macdonald’s boss on the ABC sitcom “Norm.” His film credits include “All That Jazz,” “Snow Falling on Cedars,” “Reds,” “The Sting II,” “Soul Man” and “The Shadow.”

…

On Broadway he was the Second Murderer in “Richard III,” starring Al Pacino, in 1979; a neurotic landlord in Jean Kerr’s “Lunch Hour” in 1980; and an accident-prone clerk in an Andrei Serban production of Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” in 1977…
He made his Broadway debut in 1968 in the original production of “The Great White Hope,” Howard Sackler’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play based on the life of the heavyweight boxer Jack Johnson, which starred James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander. He earned a Tony nomination for best performance by a featured actor in a play for his role as Pavel Lebedev in the Chekhov play “Ivanov” in 1998, a performance that also earned him a nomination for a Drama Desk Award.
He performed Shakespeare regularly; one of his most noted roles was Sir Andrew Aguecheek in the Lincoln Center Theater production of “Twelfth Night” in 1998.

Sadly and tragically, he was best known as the father on “ALF”, one of the worst television series ever to pass across the small screen.

By the time the show’s four-year run ended in 1990, Mr. Wright told People magazine in 2000, “I was hugely eager to have it over with.” In fact, on the last day of filming, his colleagues told People, he grabbed his things and got into his car without even saying goodbye.

Lawrence sent over this THR obit for Milton Quon. Speaking of back story, wow: Mr. Quon was one of the Golden Age Disney animators (he worked on “Fantasia” and “Dumbo”).

The Chinese American Museum in Los Angeles presented a retrospective exhibit of his work in 2005; he was one of five artists featured in ” ‘Round the Clock: Chinese American Artists Working in Los Angeles” at the Vincent Price Art Museum in Monterey Park, California, in 2012; and he received the Golden Spike Award from the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California in 2013.
And in 2017, he was featured in a father and son art exhibition in Red Bank, New Jersey, with his son Mike and in a solo exhibition at Santa Monica College’s Emeritus Gallery.

He also had a career as an actor and extra: he may have been best known as “the old Asian guy on the bus” in “Speed”. Mr. Quon was 105.

Posted in Cars, Movies, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 2, 2019.

Tuesday, July 2nd, 2019

Tyler Skaggs, pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels.

He was found dead in his hotel room a few hours before the Angels played the Texas Rangers. Mr. Skaggs was 27.

ESPN. I’d link to the Dallas Morning News, but they’re being really obnoxious.

No foul play is suspected, and an investigation is ongoing, police said.
A Southlake police spokesperson said it “is not suspected” that Skaggs took his own life, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

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