Archive for October, 2021

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Obit watch: October 24, 2021.

Sunday, October 24th, 2021

Two different people sent me this one, and neither one mentioned my hot button.

Val Bisoglio, actor.

He began acting under the tutelage of Jeff Corey and appeared on the New York stage in productions such as “Kiss Mama,” “A View from the Bridge” and “Wait Until Dark,” as well as in New York City’s Shakespeare in the Park with Arthur Penn.

He has 65 credits in IMDB. High points include: “Saturday Night Fever” (he was the father of Travolta’s character), “Cover Up” (ahem), “M*A*S*H” (he played “Sal Pernelli”, the cook. Not Igor, the guy who served the food, but the cook.), “B.J. and the Bear”, “Rockford Files”, “St. Ives” (the Charles Bronson movie based on a pseudonymous novel by Ross Thomas), “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” (“The Zombie“: if memory serves, he was a lower level mob thug), and “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”.

His most famous role (and the hot button one): he played “Danny Tovo”, the restaurant owner, on 138 episodes of “Quincy, M.E.”

And yes! He did do a “Mannix”! (“Run Till Dark”, season 5, episode 7.)

Paul Salata. He originated the “Mr. Irrelevant” award for the last player drafted in the NFL college draft.

He wanted to celebrate the unheralded honor of being picked last because players at the end of the line rarely get noticed — even though one might have a greater chance of being struck by lightning than of being picked by an N.F.L. team. Mr. Rozelle blessed the idea, and Mr. Irrelevant was born.
“Everyone who is drafted works hard, and some of them don’t get any recognition,” Mr. Salata told The New York Times in 2017. “They do their work and should be noticed.”

…

Starting in 1976, Mr. Salata and his friends in Orange County raised money to fly the last player picked in the draft to Southern California, where he would receive a champion’s welcome. In the years since, the players — some of whom who had never been to California — have been paraded through Newport Beach, taken to Disneyland and feted at a banquet, where they received the “Lowsman Trophy,” which depicts a player fumbling a football.
Mr. Salata and his team also fulfilled some of the players’ requests, including surfing lessons, visits to the Playboy Mansion and being a guest announcer on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
Many Mr. Irrelevants never made it past their first season or even past their first training camp, but a handful have stuck around in the N.F.L. In February the Tampa Bay Buccaneers kicker Ryan Succop became the first Mr. Irrelevant to score in and win a Super Bowl. He had been drafted last in 2009 by the Kansas City Chiefs.

James Michael Tyler, “Gunther” on “Friends”. I’m sorry if I am giving him the short end of the stick here, but this just came in, and I have never seen an episode of “Friends”.

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

Short historical note.

Sunday, October 24th, 2021

50 years ago today, Chuck Hughes died during a NFL game between Detroit and Chicago.

He is the last NFL player so far to pass away during a game.

NYPost tribute. Wikipedia entry.

Posted in History, NFL, Sports | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: October 23, 2021.

Saturday, October 23rd, 2021

Your Peter Scolari roundup: NYT. THR. Variety.

Mr. Scolari’s stage work over the years included two Broadway plays in which he portrayed sports figures. In “Magic/Bird” (2012), about the basketball stars Magic Johnson and Larry Bird, he played several characters, including the basketball coaches Pat Riley and Red Auerbach and the team owner Jerry Buss.
Two years later he played the Yankee star Yogi Berra in “Bronx Bombers,” a role that required him to spout Yogi-isms. The critic Charles Isherwood, in The Times, wrote that he “delivers these in a nicely offhand style that manages to keep the zing without turning each verbal pratfall into a cartoon caption.”

Posted in Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 22, 2021.

Friday, October 22nd, 2021

Halyna Hutchins, cinematographer. She was 42.

Information about this is still coming in, but the reports so far are that Ms. Hutchins was killed when Alec Baldwin discharged what is being described as a “prop firearm” on the set of a movie he was working on in New Mexico (“Rust”). The movie’s director, Joel Souza, was also injured: the last reports I saw were that he was in critical condition.

Deadline. NYT.

I don’t have a lot to say about this right now because I don’t think there’s enough information. I have no special fondness for Alec Baldwin (though I think he was good in “Hunt For Red October”) but I want to give him and everyone else involved the same benefit of the doubt I’d give anyone else in this situation.

Earl Old Person, chief of the Blackfeet Nation.

Beginning in 1954, when he was first elected to the Blackfeet Tribal Business Council, the tribe’s governing body, Chief Old Person positioned himself as a go-between linking his isolated, impoverished Native American community with the rest of the country and beyond. At his retirement from the council, in 2016, he was the longest-serving elected tribal leader in the country.
He was a regular witness at congressional hearings and a frequent guest of heads of state around the world. He drank tea with the shah of Iran and spoke at the 1988 Republican National Convention. He urged his tribe to be more entrepreneurial, and he persuaded government officials and venture capitalists to provide seed money for Blackfeet-owned businesses.
“His message is plain,” the magazine Nation’s Business wrote in 1981. “‘We don’t want your help, we want your business.’”

…

In the 1980s, the Department of the Interior began to lease land to oil and gas prospectors in the Badger-Two Medicine region, adjacent to the Blackfeet reservation, in northwestern Montana. The land is sacred to the Blackfeet, but an 1896 treaty ceded it to the federal government.
Chief Old Person insisted that the tribe had given only the land rights, not the mineral rights, and he helped lead a 40-year campaign to render the region off limits to outside interests (leaving open the possibility that the tribe might one day get into the energy business itself). Last year a court ruling closed the last of the leases on the land.
“Chief Old Person was a fierce advocate for the Blackfeet Nation and all of Indian Country for his entire life,” Senator Jon Tester, Democrat of Montana, said in a statement after the chief’s death. “The world is a better place because he was in it.”

Edited to add: current reports are that Joel Souza is out of the hospital. I wish him a speedy recovery.

Peter Scolari has passed away at 66. Since this is breaking, I’ll plan to do a more complete post tomorrow.

Edited to add 2: “How can a prop gun used on a movie set be deadly?” I feel like most of my readers know all this already, but this is a decent explainer for anybody who does not. Also, somebody tweaked me for not referencing Jon-Erik Hexum (which I didn’t do because it isn’t clear if the Baldwin situation is anything like the Hexum one, or the Brandon Lee one), so here’s your reference.

Edited to add 3:

The 28-year-old son of martial arts icon and legendary screen star Bruce Lee was killed in a freak accident on the set of “The Crow” on March 30, 1993, when fellow actor Michael Massee was supposed to shoot him at close range with a harmless pistol.
But when Massee fired the .44 Magnum revolver, the gunpowder in the blank cartridge ignited a bullet fragment that became embedded in the barrel — propelling it into Lee’s body about 15 feet away at the Carolco Studios in Wilmington, North Carolina, the Sun reported.

Posted in Guns, History, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Administrative note.

Thursday, October 21st, 2021

I value and highly esteem all of the people who comment here.

(Except Eric from talk to customer dot com or whatever it is today. He can die in a fire.)

If I don’t respond to your comment, it isn’t because I don’t like you. It may be because I don’t have time. It may be because you said what needed to be said and responding “Mega dittos, Rush!” would be as superfluous as painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa.

(Duchamp did it.)

(You know, if you’re going to put a button on your page that says “Order Oil Painting Reproduction”, when I push that button…take me to the page where I can actually order an oil painting reproduction of that specific piece, not your generic art page.)

(Of course, the original wasn’t an oil painting anyway, so an oil painting reproduction would be odd.)

(“1940, Paris
Color reproduction, made by Duchamp from original version
Stolen in 1981 and never recovered”

Yet another piece to add to the “decorate my house with reproductions of stolen art” list.)

But I digress.

Anyway, thank you to all my valued commenters, especially the ones who have been commenting over the past week or so. This isn’t prompted by anything in particular or any specific complaints. Just wanted to get this on the hysterical record.

Posted in Admin, Art | 2 Comments »

Tweet of the day.

Wednesday, October 20th, 2021

(Admittedly, it is a couple of days old.)

Posted in History | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#76 in a series)

Wednesday, October 20th, 2021

Representative Jeff Fortenberry (R-Nebraska) was indicted yesterday.

Specifically, he’s charged with the ever popular lying to the Feds.

The indictment stems from a separate federal investigation into Gilbert Chagoury, a Lebanese Nigerian billionaire who was accused of conspiring to make illegal campaign contributions to American politicians in exchange for access to them.
Foreign citizens are prohibited by federal law from contributing to U.S. election campaigns. Mr. Chagoury admitted this year to providing approximately $180,000 to four candidates from June 2012 to March 2016. He said he had used others, including Toufic Joseph Baaklini, a Washington lobbyist, to mask his donations.
Mr. Fortenberry, who has served in Congress for 15 years, was one of those politicians. He is not disputing the fact that the donations, ultimately from Mr. Chagoury, were illegal.
“Five and a half years ago, a person from overseas illegally moved money to my campaign,” Mr. Fortenberry said in his video. “I didn’t know anything about this.”

But the government is saying he’s lying about not knowing the donations were illegal.

The government said in court filings that in spring 2018, one of Mr. Fortenberry’s fund-raisers told the congressman that he had funneled $30,000 from Mr. Baaklini to the 2016 re-election event, but that the money “probably did come from Gilbert Chagoury.”
The fund-raiser, referred to as Individual H in the indictment, was cooperating with law enforcement when he spoke with Mr. Fortenberry, according to the indictment.
Despite the fact that the donations were most likely illegal, Mr. Fortenberry did not take appropriate action, such as filing an amended report with the Federal Election Commission or returning the contributions, the indictment said. It was not until after the Justice Department contacted him in July 2019 that Mr. Fortenberrry returned the contributions, according to the document.
In his initial interview with the F.B.I. in 2019, Mr. Fortenberry said that the people who had contributed during his fund-raising event in 2016 were all publicly disclosed, and that he was unaware of any contributions made by foreign citizens, according to the indictment.

Noted:

Mr. Chagoury entered into a deferred prosecution agreement with the Justice Department in 2019. Under that agreement, he admitted to wrongdoing. The department can use those admissions in other matters. He also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in their investigation. In return, the U.S. government agreed to drop the charges. The matter was ultimately resolved this year, when Mr. Chagoury paid a $1.8 million fine.

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Noted for the record.

Tuesday, October 19th, 2021

Since a couple of people sent this to me, and it has been going around.

Nick Rolovich out as football coach of Washington State. Also out: assistants Ricky Logo, John Richardson, Craig Stutzmann and Mark Weber.

This wasn’t a record thing: all five were fired because they refused to get the Chinese Rabies shot.

Not much to say beyond that, but this is sportsfirings.com, so I felt like I had to note it here.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 1 Comment »

The world is still a smaller, colder, lesser place…

Tuesday, October 19th, 2021

…and Sotheby’s is going to be auctioning off part of Ricky Jay‘s collection starting October 27th.

Link to the auction. Sotheby’s video.

NYT article tied to the auction. It’s worth reading, if for no other reason than the story about Siegfried and Roy’s tiger at the beginning. (Alternative link.)

Not that Jay was a hoarder. With the help of assistants, he photographed and cataloged every item in a digital database. His books were arranged by category — magic, circus, eccentric characters — and his file drawers were labeled, which made it easier, say, to find that handbill for “Prof. William Fricke’s Original Imperial Flea Circus.”
Under “flea bills,” of course.

There’s a punchline at the end that I won’t spoil for you, because Mr. Jay would haunt me in the afterlife.

I don’t think I’ll be placing any bids, as I expect anything from the Ricky Jay Collection will be way out of my price range.

Posted in History, Magic, Urine | 4 Comments »

Obit watch: October 18, 2021.

Monday, October 18th, 2021

Colin Powell. Everybody is on this like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst exhibition, but for the historical record: NYT. WP. (Edited to add: Lawrence.)

Betty Lynn. Her most famous role was as “Thelma Lou”, Barney’s girlfriend on “The Andy Griffith Show”.

Posted in History, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Your loser update: week 6, 2021.

Sunday, October 17th, 2021

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

Detroit

So Jacksonville managed to avoid running the streak to 21…on a desperate last second field goal.

Sigh.

I still think Urban Meyer is out before the end of the season. Possibly still this week? I mean, if I own the team, beating the Dolphins in London just isn’t enough to save your job.

Next week, Detroit plays the Rams.

Speaking of out, Ed Orgeron out as LSU head coach at the end of the season, apparently by mutual agreement.

He won a national championship in 2019, but they went 5-5 in 2020. Of course, 2020 was so screwed up that, frankly, if I were in college or pro athletics, I’d just throw any stats from that year out the window.

They’re 4-3 so far this year. And Orgeron has allegedly had problems with some of his players sexually assaulting women and NCAA investigations.

Posted in Firings, Loser, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: October 15, 2021.

Friday, October 15th, 2021

Gary Paulsen, author.

I was a little old for Hatchet (affiliate link) when it came out, and haven’t gotten around to reading it. But whenever I see discussions of young adult books people liked, or liked when they were that age, Hatchet always comes up. It seems to have had a strong influence on many young people.

And he was the kind of guy who could write that book.

When Gary was 4, his mother, Eunice (Moen) Paulsen, moved with him to Chicago, where she got a job in an ammunition factory. An alcoholic, she would dress Gary in a child-size soldier’s outfit and take him to bars, where she made him sing on tables as a way to get men to pay attention to her.
She could also be fiercely protective. Once he sneaked outside their apartment when she was sleeping. A man dragged him into an alley and began to molest him. Suddenly his mother appeared, beating and kicking the assailant into unconsciousness.
Eventually, her own mother forced her to send Gary to live with an aunt and uncle in northern Minnesota, where he learned to hunt, fish and live outdoors for long stretches.

…

In “Gone to the Woods,” a memoir published this year, Mr. Paulsen recalled how at one point the passengers watched in horror as a plane crash-landed nearby. As the plane’s passengers struggled in the water, a pack of sharks descended on them, pulling men and women and children below the water.
His family later returned to Minnesota, where his parents drank and fought constantly. To get away from them, Gary would take to the woods, exploring, hunting and trapping, or wander around their small town, Thief River Falls, near the Canadian border. He worked odd jobs, like setting pins at a bowling alley and delivering newspapers, and used the money to buy his own school supplies, as well as a .22-caliber rifle.
One day he ducked into a library to get warm. A librarian asked if he had a library card. When he said no, she gave him one, along with a Scripto notebook and a No. 2 pencil, with instructions to read everything he could and write down everything he thought.

…

When he was 14 he ran away and joined a carnival. He returned home just long enough to forge his father’s signature and join the Army.
The Army trained him in engineering, and he later tracked satellites for a government contractor at a facility in California. He also spent time in Los Angeles, writing dialogue for television shows like “Mission: Impossible.”
All along, he had been reading and writing, and one day in 1965 he decided to try his hand at a novel. He moved back to Minnesota, where he rented a cabin and went to work.
For several years he wrote westerns for adults under a pseudonym. He made just enough money to sustain a simple rural life, living off what he could grow and hunt.

…

He also fell in love with dog-sledding. He took part in the Iditarod, the grueling 1,000-mile race across Alaska, three times before giving up the sport in 1990, citing heart problems.
“When you run a thousand miles with a dog team, you enter a state of primitive exaltation,” he said in an interview with the American Writers Museum in January. “You go back 30,000 years, you and the dogs, and you’re never the same again.”

…

A proud Luddite and misanthrope, he considered the internet “just stupid, faster,” and said organized sports had become a perverse form of religion.

For the historical record: Sir David Amess, Conservative MP. Everybody’s covered this by now, and I don’t have anything to add.

Well, okay, perhaps one thing: I don’t mean to make fun of our friends in the UKOGBNI, nor do I mean to seem provincial. But “constituency surgery” is such an interesting term…

Posted in Books, Obits, Politics | 1 Comment »

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