Archive for October, 2019

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And now here’s something we hope you really like…

Wednesday, October 30th, 2019

A little late on this one, but: Ken Whisenhunt out as offensive coordinator of the worthless Los Angeles Chargers.

The Arena Football League (also apparently known as Arena Football One) has “shut down all local business operations and services for all six of its teams“. I think I speak for everyone here when I say: they were still in business?

The paper of record asks the musical question:

Just How Bad Are the Miami Dolphins?

Summary: pretty bad.

And something non-sports related for my people: the Squibb Park Bridge, a pedestrian bridge in Brooklyn, is being demolished and replaced.

By the time the new bridge is completed, the group that operates Brooklyn Bridge Park will have spent about $14 million — $7.5 million for the original bridge and the failed attempts at repairs, and $6.5 million to $7 million for the new one.

Why? Well, the old bridge was designed to be bouncy. Turns out, it was a little too bouncy.

It was fun, at least at first, and it was deliberate. Its designer, Ted Zoli — the winner of a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2009 — intended it to bounce underfoot as people walked along.

It also was moving in unintended directions. Hilarity (and lawsuits) ensued. And then it turned out the wood was rotting…

Posted in Bridges, Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 29, 2019.

Tuesday, October 29th, 2019

For the historical record (and as a general matter of policy): Kay Hagan, former Senator from North Carolina.

This is scary:

Her husband, Charles T. Hagan III, said she died of complications of a type of encephalitis, or brain inflammation, caused by the rare Powassan virus. The virus is transmitted to humans by ticks, and Mr. Hagan said he believed that she had picked up the tick while hiking in 2016.

Robert Evans, noted Hollywood producer and figure. THR. Variety.

By the mid-1970s Mr. Evans had delivered hits like “Love Story,” “Harold and Maude” and “True Grit” and was nominated for an Oscar for producing “Chinatown.” He hobnobbed with statesmen; Mr. Kissinger was by his side at the 1972 premiere of “The Godfather.” But he was also a raging cocaine addict. As detailed in his memoir, addiction took over his life, a foreshadowing of the drug hangover that would sweep Hollywood by the end of the 1980s.

He was convicted of cocaine trafficking in 1980, though that conviction was later expunged.

He argues that he never should have been convicted of federal selling and distribution charges, as he was only a user.

I mentioned this in passing a few weeks ago at movie night, and it didn’t ring any bells with anyone: the “Cotton Club” murder.

Paul Barrere, of Little Feat.

Mr. Barrere wrote or co-wrote some of Little Feat’s best-known songs, including “All That You Dream,” “Time Loves a Hero” and “Old Folks Boogie.” He occasionally sang lead, although Mr. George remained the band’s focal point. Mr. George died in 1979, and Little Feat broke up that year.
Mr. Barrere went on to work with the group the Bluesbusters and recorded two albums as a leader, but he was largely inactive until Little Feat reunited in 1987. To fill the gap left by Mr. George’s death, the band added two members, and Mr. Barrere began doing more of the lead singing and songwriting, as well as taking more of the guitar solos.

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

Your loser update: week 8, 2019.

Tuesday, October 29th, 2019

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Miami
Cincinnati

NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:

Indiana
New Orleans
Sacramento

Since Miami lost, there will be a loser update next week, though it may not go up until Monday morning. As previously discussed, the Bengals have a bye in week 9. Miami plays at home against the 1-6 Jets Sunday afternoon: I’m thinking they have a good chance of winning that one.

Looking over the schedule, Miami plays the Jets again (on the road) in week 14, the Giants (also on the road) in week 15, and the Bengals at home in week 16.

Historically. at this point in the season, we’re averaging 1.0 winless teams, so we’re statistically a little bit ahead. But I’m skeptical that we will end up with a winless team this year: I think Miami has a good chance of beating the Jets, the Giants, and the Bengals, and I’m skeptical that the Bengals will be able to run the table the rest of the season.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Quick firings watch.

Monday, October 28th, 2019

Neal Huntington out as general manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Huntington has been the Pirates’ GM since Sept. 25, 2007. He was responsible for rebuilding the club into a playoff contender over three years before struggling the past four seasons.
Many of the recent trades Huntington made were flops. Players went elsewhere and thrived. The magic touch that played a part in producing those three consecutive playoff seasons disappeared.

(In case anyone was wondering: loser update tomorrow, since 0-6 Miami plays 2-4 Pittsburgh in prime time tonight. ESPN is giving Pittsburgh a 90.5% chance of winning.)

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 28, 2019.

Monday, October 28th, 2019

John Conyers Jr., for the historical record.

Don Valentine, founder of Sequoia Capital. This came across the Hacker News Twitter: I wouldn’t have noticed it otherwise.

We all know (and I’ve previously discussed this) that obits tend to try to make the subject look good. It’s very rare to see an obit that basically says, “Christ, what an asshole!” (See also.) Taking that into consideration, though, Mr. Valentine’s obit makes him sound like a really good guy who I would have enjoyed meeting.

In his later years Don was a ready source of advice for those who stopped by his office and, unlike most former leaders, resisted the temptation to criticize decisions which he considered misguided or to meddle in the business. Ever curious he relished spending time with young people brimming with ideas about the future. His family and friends and those who spent decades working with him harbor a trove of affectionate memories of the quirks and habits of a man who favored green ink, never drank coffee, listened carefully, understood the virtues of silence, built the foundation on which so many have the good fortune to stand, and insisted that the ultimate test for every startup was a thoughtful answer to his perpetual question about its quest, “Who cares?”

(Tweet of the day, though technically this is from yesterday.)

Posted in Obits, Politics | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Friday, October 25th, 2019

I didn’t get a chance to blog this last night (I was busy down at the cop shop) and it’s been well covered elsewhere, but:

Since this is sportsfirings.com, I do have to make note of Brandon Taubman’s firing as assistant general manager for the Houston Astros. ESPN. Chron.

As Sports Illustrated first reported on Monday night and the Chronicle later confirmed, Taubman yelled toward a group of three female reporters following the team’s American League pennant-clinching victory against the Yankees.
The 34-year-old Taubman yelled “Thank God we got (Roberto) Osuna! I’m so (expletive) glad we got Osuna!”
Osuna, the Astros’ closer, was acquired last July while serving a 75-game suspension for a violation of Major League Baseball’s Joint Domestic Violence, Sexual Assault and Child Abuse policy.
One of the women at whom Taubman shouted was wearing a purple domestic violence awareness bracelet. The Chronicle reported on Wednesday that Taubman’s ire was directed specifically at one woman, about whom Taubman had complained in prior conversations.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Worst. Joke. Ever.

Tuesday, October 22nd, 2019

Our Reporter Walked Into a Prison Full of ISIS Detainees

Posted in Media | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 22, 2019.

Tuesday, October 22nd, 2019

Scotty Bowers, alleged pimp to the stars.

If “pimp to the stars” seems harsh, well, that’s what he called himself:

Mr. Bowers’s raunchy best seller, “Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars,” written with Lionel Friedberg, left out few details as it told of his metamorphosis from gas-station employee to hookup-provider and sex partner to the rich and famous.
Men he knew from his military service during World War II began socializing at the gas station where he worked, and he paired those who were willing with the Hollywood people who found their way to him by word of mouth. Although he described catering to all sorts of sexual combinations, he said he had often surreptitiously provided willing men to male Hollywood figures and willing women to female ones in an era when being gay could ruin a career.
He wrote of funneling women to Katharine Hepburn, of having a sexual encounter himself with Spencer Tracy, of arranging same-sex partners for the duke and duchess of Windsor.

I’m not linking to his book for the same reason I use the term “alleged” above: Mr. Bowers was, most probably, a damn liar. (Speak no ill of the dead? Mr. Bowers had no problem telling stories about people who were dead and couldn’t defend themselves, so I see no reason not to give him the same treatment.)

Larry Harnisch at the “Daily Mirror” blog did a 26 part series on the book back in 2012. Here’s his obit for Mr. Bowers, which contains links to all 26 parts.

Matthew Wong. I had not heard of him, but the NYT calls him a “painter on the cusp of fame”. Some of the pictured artwork is, to me, striking: I really like “Winter’s End”, to take one example.

He was 35 years old.

The New York gallery Karma, which represented him, said the cause was suicide. His mother, Monita (Cheng) Wong, said Mr. Wong was on the autism spectrum, had Tourette’s syndrome and had grappled with depression since childhood.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a surprisingly good page of additional resources.

Posted in Art, Books, Movies, Obits | Comments Closed

70s television (and aircraft) geekery.

Tuesday, October 22nd, 2019

Those of us who are, shall we say, of a certain age, fondly remember “Baa Baa Black Sheep“.

By way of McThag (and thank you sir): a history of the Corsairs used in filming the show.

A total of eight Corsairs, of varied backgrounds, participated in the filming: four FG-1Ds, two F4U-7s, one F4U-1A, and one F4U-4. Five were combat veterans, two have turned hot laps at Reno, and two later became Oshkosh Grand Champions. Since the conclusion of Black Sheep in 1978, one FG-1D and one F4U-7 have been lost. Of the remaining six aircraft, four are actively flying, one is maintained in airworthy condition but not flown, and the last is awaiting restoration to airworthy condition.

Posted in 1970s, Geek, History, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 20, 2019.

Sunday, October 20th, 2019

Nick Tosches, fiction writer and biographer.

One of his most attention-getting biographies followed in 1992. It was “Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams,” about Dean Martin.
“Recordings, movies, radio, television: He would cast his presence over them all, a mob-culture Renaissance man,” he wrote of Martin. “And he would come to know, as few ever would, how dirty the business of dreams could be.”
For Mr. Tosches, Martin was a celebrity who beat the unrelenting fame machine, the one that often ground stars up and consigned them to early deaths. (Martin himself died in 1995 at 78.)
“I would describe Dean as a noble character in an ignoble racket in an ignoble age,” Mr. Tosches told The New York Times in 1992.
“Life is a racket,” he added. “Writing is a racket. Sincerity is a racket. Everything’s a racket.”

If everything is a racket, is anything worthwhile? Like trying to help out the poor?

Dr. Paul Polak, a former psychiatrist who became an entrepreneur and an inventor with a focus on helping the world’s poorest people create profitable small businesses, died on Oct. 10 in Denver. He was 86.

…

In an era when foreign aid is largely based on charity, Dr. Polak (pronounced POLE-ack) instead advocated training people to earn livings by selling their neighbors basic necessities like clean water, charcoal, a ride in a donkey cart or enough electricity to charge a cellphone.
Although the nonprofit companies he created did accept donations, their purpose was to help poor people make money. His target market was the 700 million people around the world surviving on less than $2 a day, and he traveled all over the world seeking them out.

…

His most successful project was in foot-powered treadle pumps to pull water out of the ground. Beginning in 1982, he sold millions for about $25 each in Bangladesh and India, he said. The company he created for the project, iDE for International Development Enterprises, now operates in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The cost included the mechanism, which could be built in a local welding shop, and drilling the well. Dr. Polak’s organization trained thousands of welders and drillers. The customers — small farmers — supplied the foot power and long bamboo handles for the pumps, the device resembling a crude elliptical trainer.
To sell them, Dr. Polak ran a publicity campaign: a singing, dancing Bollywood-style movie about a couple that could not marry because her father could not afford a dowry. But once he bought a pump and could grow vegetables in the dry season, when they fetch more money, love triumphed.

…

By contrast, he said, the World Bank was subsidizing expensive diesel pumps that drew enough water to cover 40 acres. They were handed out by government agents, who could be bribed, he said, and the richest landowner would thus become “a waterlord,” who could drain the aquifer supplying everyone else’s wells and then charge them for water.
“It was very destructive to social justice,” Dr. Polak said.
Another franchise company he started in India was Spring Health, which uses battery power to convert salt into chlorine. The bleach is used to disinfect local water, which is then sold door-to-door in refillable containers.
Franchisees get caps and shirts with distinctive blue raindrops, and street theater troupes help uneducated people make the connection between dirty water and diarrhea, which sickens millions of children every day and, when chronic, can leave them mentally and physically stunted.

Bill Macy. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Maude’s husband. But he knocked around a bunch of other stuff too.

Samuel Hynes, literature professor, author, and WWII torpedo bomber pilot. I’ve heard that Flights of Passage: Recollections of a World War II Aviator is a terrific book: anyone out there care to comment?

Not an Oracle guy, but for the historical record: Mark Hurd.

Sara Danius. She was the first woman to head the Swedish Academy. The Academy gives out the literature prize, and she was behind Bob Dylan winning in 2016. She was forced out in 2018.

I note this obit here less because of interest in the literature Nobel, and more because I find that it contains a remarkably high level of editorializing for a NYT obit.

She herself was never accused of wrongdoing. But she was the public face of a global institution whose reputation had been severely damaged.
Behind the scenes, her enemies within the academy sought to protect the accused man. They resisted her attempts to bring in law enforcement and forced her out.
When she left, Ms. Danius acknowledged that her colleagues had lost confidence in her leadership. She also defiantly suggested that arrogant and anachronistic forces within the academy had invoked the institution’s traditions to deny accountability.
“Not all traditions are worth preserving,” she said.
Her abrupt departure infuriated many women — and many men as well — across Sweden, a country that prides itself on gender equality. She was widely viewed as a scapegoat.

…

The man at the center of the sex scandal, Jean-Claude Arnault, was found guilty last year of raping a woman in 2011 and sentenced to two years in jail. In his appeal of the verdict, the appeals court found him guilty of raping the same woman twice and extended his sentence.
In addition, his wife, Katarina Frostenson, a poet who resigned from the academy, was accused of leaking the names of prize recipients to Mr. Arnault on at least seven occasions so that their friends could profit from bets. The two have denied all charges and said they were the objects of a witch hunt.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Geek, History, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 7, 2019.

Sunday, October 20th, 2019

Even though this isn’t quite loser update material, and even though my feelings about baseball are well known, I think I need to say something about the Houston Astros beating Satan’s minions on Earth, the New York Yankees, and going to the World Series again.

With that said, NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Miami
Cincinnati

My historical data is mostly at work, but I think we’re a little ahead of the average for NFL week 7.

The Bungles Bengals bye comes in week 9, for those keeping score at home.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Clippings.

Friday, October 18th, 2019

I went back and forth on linking this one: as I’ve said before, I don’t really like ESPN. But this morning’s Linkswarm (with the Deshaun Watson article) pushed me into it.

Profile of Sabrina Greenlee, mother of Houston Texans receiver DeAndre Hopkins.

Every time the Houston Texans play at home, DeAndre Hopkins’ mother, Sabrina Greenlee, sits in the same spot in the end zone, close enough to the field to hear the ball smack against the turf. It’s Week 2, and Houston is playing the Jacksonville Jaguars; she’s flanked by her two daughters, sitting perfectly still as the countdown clock ticks down to zero. When it’s time for the home team to run through the gate, a massive flamethrower erupts nearby. Greenlee recoils, and her eyes, which are the same cloudy shade of white as an overcast sky, glisten from the heat. A few minutes later, Hopkins emerges from the tunnel — he’s always the last player on offense to come out, Greenlee explains — and she smiles.
She can’t see her son, but she knows he’s there.

This is old, but still interesting, and it just came across the Hacker News Twitter: I survived the “Destroying Angel”.

I felt queasy. It was the same feeling I had when I had food poisoning. Before I had any more time to assess my state, I realized I needed to get to the bathroom. I barely made it to the royal throne when I started heaving my guts out. The vomiting reflex was strong. The pressure of the strong contractions forced stuff out both ends of the GI tract, uncontrollably. I had a severe case of vomiting and diarrhea. At that point, deep down I knew I had made the big mistake: I HAD EATEN AMANITA VIROSA, AKA, “THE DESTROYING ANGEL”.

Amazingly, the author lived. Without a liver transplant.

I found out that of three people admitted in 2006 to Strong Memorial with Amanita poisoning, I am the only one to have survived; 66% died.

I think part of the reason I like this is that it reminds me of one of my favorite Berton Roueché “Annals of Medicine” essays: a first-hand account by a professional snake handler of being bitten by a red diamond rattlesnake. If you’re a subscriber, you can read that on the New Yorker web site here.

Posted in Geek, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

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