Archive for October, 2021

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Art, damn it, art! watch (#60 in a series)

Friday, October 8th, 2021

This could be an obit watch, too, but I thought I’d go in this direction.

Over his long, provocative career, the artist Billy Apple changed his name, registered it as a trademark, branded products with it, had his genome sequenced and, finally, arranged to have his cells extracted and stored so that they might survive forever even if he could not. He died on Sept. 6 at his home in Auckland, New Zealand, at 85.

…

By 1964 he was in New York City (subletting a loft on the Bowery from the sculptor Eva Hesse) and showing his work. His cast bronze, half-eaten watermelon slice was one of many objects included in “The American Supermarket,” an early Pop spectacle at the Bianchini Gallery on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where one could buy artist’s versions of real products: a painted turkey by Roy Lichtenstein, candy made by Claes Oldenburg and Campbell’s soup cans signed by Andy Warhol. The gallerist took orders on a grocer’s pad.

…

Mr. Apple went on to work in neon, enchanting some reviewers like Robert Pincus-Witten of Artforum magazine, who described Mr. Apple’s rainbows as “sensuous neon impersonations.” But city inspectors were not charmed. In 1966, when Mr. Apple was 27, they unplugged a show of his at the Pepsi Gallery, in the lobby of the Pepsi-Cola Building at Park Avenue and 59th Street, saying the pieces weren’t wired to code.
The show’s opening had been so well attended that it caused a traffic jam. One attendee was Tom Wolfe, who later panned Mr. Apple’s pieces in New York Magazine — “they’re limp … they splutter,” he wrote. (Mr. Wolfe was writing about the artistry of commercial neon sign makers and poking fun at the art world in the process.)

…

Their art-making methods — Mr. Apple went through a tidying phase, washing windows, scrubbing floor tiles and vacuuming up the dirt on his studio’s roof — were not always well received. His “Roof Dirt” piece, which came in the form of an invitation in 1971, prompted John Canaday of The New York Times to write that it “belongs to an area of art‐related activity in which nothing but the word of the artists makes the difference between a put‐on and a seriously offered project.”
Mr. Apple then turned to less festive practices, like saving tissues from his nosebleeds and toilet paper from his bathroom activities. When this work was included in a solo show at the Serpentine Gallery in London, some objected, and the police shut it down. But Mr. Apple was no prankster. He was deadly serious about his work, which, besides meticulously documenting his bodily processes, often included renovation and redecorating suggestions to institutions like the Guggenheim. (He proposed getting rid of its planters; the museum ignored him.)
Back home in New Zealand, to which he returned for good in 1990, Mr. Apple began exploring, in a variety of work, ideas about the transactional nature of the art market, branding practices, mapping and scientific advances. Among the works was an apple cast from pure gold, Billy Apple coffee and tea (for sale in galleries only) and the “immortalization” of cells from his own body, which are now stored at the American Type Culture Collection and the School of Biological Sciences at the University of Auckland.

…

In 2016, Mr. Apple donated some of his early career bathroom tissues along with a contemporary fecal sample to a molecular biologist, who was able to determine that nearly half of the bacteria in Mr. Apple’s gut was still present in his body decades later, as The New Zealand Herald reported. It was a boon for science, and Mr. Apple, too, made new work from the study.

Posted in Art, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 7, 2021.

Thursday, October 7th, 2021

Juli Reding.

She was most famous for the Bert Gordon horror film “Tormented”, which was also a MST3K episode. She also did some TV work in the 1960s, and then pretty much dropped off the map (except for a guest shot on “Murder She Wrote” in 1987).

NYT obit for Alan Kalter.

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Good news, everyone!

Wednesday, October 6th, 2021

The Zodiac Killer has been identified!

Again.

For about the 16th time, based just on my rough count of Wikipedia entries. (Even if you throw out the Manson Family and Ted Kaczynski as not serious candidates, that still leaves what, 14? 15 if you count Ted Cruz?)

Oh, yeah: the Riverside Police Department says these people are full of you-know-what.

I report, you decide. Except for the George Hodel theory.

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Obit watch: October 6, 2021.

Wednesday, October 6th, 2021

Eddie Robinson has passed away. He was 100.

I’m not going to snark here. He was part of baseball for 60 years, as a player:

At 6 feet 2 inches and 210 pounds — good size for his era — the left-handed-hitting Robinson clubbed 16 home runs and drove in 83 runs to help the 1948 Indians capture the team’s first pennant since 1920 en route to defeating the Boston Braves in a six-game World Series. Playing in every Series game, Robinson batted .300.
He drove in more than 100 runs and played in the All-Star Game in three consecutive seasons in the early 1950s, with the Chicago White Sox and the Philadelphia Athletics, and in 1951 became the first White Sox player to drive a home run over the roof of the old Comiskey Park.
The Yankees obtained Robinson before the 1954 season in a multiplayer trade with the Athletics. He pinch-hit and played behind first basemen Joe Collins and Bill Skowron and flashed his power when 16 of his 36 hits in 1955 were home runs. He played in his second World Series when the Yankees lost to the Brooklyn Dodgers in seven games that October.

As a scout:

In his memoir, “Lucky Me” (2011, with C. Paul Rogers III), Robinson wrote how the Yankee owner George Steinbrenner offered him the team’s general manager’s post in June 1982 and related that he “considered George one of my real friends in baseball.” But he decided to work as a Yankee scout and consultant instead, since he was well aware of Steinbrenner’s reputation as a difficult boss.
“It didn’t take long for George and me to get crossways,” Robinson recalled. He told how Steinbrenner had cooled to him after he agreed only reluctantly to be present for an October 1982 draft session; he and his wife had had a trip to Europe planned. He continued as a Yankee scout through 1985.

…

After his playing days, Robinson was a coach for the Orioles, a farm director for several teams, the general manager of the Atlanta Braves and the Texas Rangers, and a scout for the Red Sox, whom he worked for in 2004, his last year in baseball, as well as for the Yankees before that.

How long was he in baseball? This long:

Robinson played a role in a poignant baseball event in the summer of 1948.
When Babe Ruth, dying of cancer, was about to take the field at Yankee Stadium on the afternoon of June 13 for a ceremony retiring his No. 3, Robinson was in Cleveland’s dugout.
“He looked like he needed help physically, and I took a bat out of the bat rack and gave it to him,” Robinson told Major League Baseball in a 2020 interview. “He carried it up to home plate, and he used it as a kind of a crutch. When he came back, I got the bat and had him sign it.”
Nat Fein of The Herald Tribune in New York won a Pulitzer Prize for his rear view photograph depicting Ruth in Yankee pinstripes leaning on the bat, which belonged to Feller.

Cynthia Harris.

A veteran of the New York stage, Harris joined the original Broadway production of Stephen Sondheim’s Company in 1971, playing the role of Sarah originated by Barbara Barrie, and in 1993 co-founded The Actors Company Theater, where she served as artistic director and appeared in dozens of productions.

She also knocked around TV a bit: she was Wallis Simpson in the “Edward and Mrs. Simpson” mini series, played Dr. Asten’s wife on a couple of episodes of “Quincy”, and the mother of Paul Reiser’s character on “Mad About You”, among other roles.

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

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#74 in a series)

Tuesday, October 5th, 2021

I would have missed this one if Mike the Musicologist hadn’t pointed it out to me.

Remember Lovely Warren, the soon to be former mayor of Rochester, New York? Indicted for criminal possession of a firearm and endangering the welfare of a child?

She’s going to be the former mayor sooner than expected: Ms. Warren took a plea.

Warren, 44, was readying Monday for what was expected to be a month-long trial on felony charges that she and two assistants violated campaign contribution limits, but she pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor, admitting that she knowingly exceeded the $8,557 limit, the Democrat & Chronicle reported.

Also taking pleas: “campaign treasurer Albert Jones Jr. and Rosiland Brooks-Harris, treasurer of political action committee Warren for a Strong Rochester”.

The campaign finance charges go back to an earlier indictment. But as part of the deal:

Warren, Jones and Brooks-Harris had faced up to four years in state prison if convicted on the felony charge, according to WHAM. But a judge sentenced all three to a year-long conditional discharge, meaning they could face additional penalties if they commit additional crimes during that period, the Democrat & Chronicle reported.

…

Warren’s plea deal Monday also resolved separate gun and child endangerment charges. In July, a grand jury indicted her and her estranged husband, Timothy Granison, with criminal possession of a firearm and endangering the welfare of a child and failure to lock or secure firearms in a dwelling, the newspaper reported.

So the way I’m reading this, she pled guilty to a single misdemeanor, if she keeps her nose clean for a year that goes away, and she gets to keep her law license.

But as part of the deal, she has to resign by December 1st. She’d already lost the Democratic primary, so she would have been out as of January 1st next year anyway: this just speeds things up a bit.

As best as I can tell, the charges against her “estranged husband”, the alleged dope dealer, are still pending.

Posted in Guns, Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Most Shocking!

Tuesday, October 5th, 2021

Here’s a surprise for you:

Federal investigators on Tuesday morning raided the Manhattan office of one of New York City’s main police unions in connection with an ongoing investigation, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.
The union, the Sergeants Benevolent Association, represents about 13,000 active and retired police sergeants in New York. Its headquarters were searched as part of an investigation by the F.B.I. and the public corruption unit in the U.S. attorney’s office in Manhattan, the people said.

The home of the union’s president, Edward D. Mullins, was also searched.

Though the focus of the investigation into the Sergeants Benevolent Association is unclear, it comes as Mr. Mullins faces departmental discipline over his conduct on social media. Known in recent years for making brash and incendiary remarks on Twitter, particularly about Mayor Bill de Blasio, Mr. Mullins declared war on the mayor last year after two officers were shot, accusing Mr. de Blasio of promoting anti-police attitudes.
Mr. Mullins is being brought up for department discipline over his posts on Twitter, including for sharing a police report documenting the arrest of Mr. de Blasio’s daughter, Chiara, during protests over police brutality and racial justice in New York last year. The Police Department does not typically release internal reports, and the one that Mr. Mullins shared contained personal information about Ms. de Blasio.
A disciplinary hearing on the charges started last month and is scheduled to resume on Oct. 27. Mr. Mullins’s lawyer, Andrew C. Quinn, has defended his conduct as free speech and as part of his obligation to advocate on behalf of the union’s members.

…

Mr. Mullins also faces internal discipline over tweets in which he used profane language against Dr. Oxiris Barbot, the former city health commissioner, and Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democratic congressman who represents the Bronx.
Mr. Torres, who has called for Mr. Mullins’s resignation over what he has described as racist, misogynistic and homophobic remarks, tweeted on Tuesday that Mr. Mullins had received a “first-class raid” from the F.B.I.
Mr. Mullins has also drawn scrutiny for his outspoken right-wing politics in a city where Democrats significantly outnumber Republicans. Both the sergeants’ union and its larger sister union, the Police Benevolent Association, have been run mostly by conservatives whose views are not widely shared by many in the metropolis they police.
Mr. Mullins has praised former President Donald J. Trump, a Republican who was deeply unpopular among city residents. He also came under fire from liberal lawmakers after giving an interview to Fox News surrounded by paraphernalia linked to QAnon, a fringe conspiracy theory popular among Trump supporters.

(Side note: “one of New York City’s main police unions”? You may be asking: how many police unions does NYC have? Mike the Musicologist asked me that same question a while back, in relation to a different scandal. Other than the Sergeants Benevolent Association, there’s also the Police Benevolent Association, which represents the line officers, and the Detectives Endowment Association, which represents the detective ranks. It isn’t clear to me if the command ranks (above sergeant) and the civilian staff have their own unions.)

Edited to add 10/6: Sergeant Mullins resigned his union presidency last night, after I posted this. The Post reports that he remains a NYPD sergeant, and that he made “$88,757 from the union and $133,195 from the NYPD” last year.

When was the last time there was a shootout on a train? Maybe the Long Island Rail Road, but was that a shootout?

Posted in Cops, FBI, Law, NYPD, Trains | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 5, 2021.

Tuesday, October 5th, 2021

Alan Kalter, David Letterman’s announcer on CBS.

The red-haired Kalter took over for the retired Bill Wendell as the Late Show announcer in September 1995 — about two years after Letterman moved from NBC to CBS — and remained through the host’s final program on May 20, 2015. On his first day on the job, Letterman tossed him into a pool.
With musical accompaniment from Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra, Kalter announced the guests and cheekily introduced the host at the top of each show, then voiced the comic one-liner over the Worldwide Pants title card on the end credits.
In between, Kalter often acted in funny sketches that included hosting “Alan Kalter’s Celebrity Interview” after Letterman was finished with the guest and speaking from his announcer’s podium as the studio lights dimmed, trying to come on to lonely, divorced women as “Big Red” — much to the dismay of a “shocked” Letterman.

…

“When I came home and said I was offered the job as the announcer on the Late Show, I told my wife I wasn’t sure if I really wanted it because it would really rock the boat on those commercials I was doing around the country,” he recalled in 2019. “I wouldn’t be able to go away for three or four days at a time whenever I wanted to, to do that work. And my kids, who were in high school at the time, sort of immediately in chorus said, ‘Dad this is the first cool thing you’ve ever done in your life. Take it!’”

Pearl Tytell has passed away at 104. She was a leading examiner of questioned documents.

Mrs. Tytell worked with her husband, Martin, at their typewriter repair and rental business on Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan, which branched out into the scientific examination of documents in the early 1950s. A rare woman in a male-dominated field, Mrs. Tytell ran that end of the business and trained her son, Peter, a widely known examiner of documents until his death last year.
Mrs. Tytell was an expert witness for the federal government in 1982 in the tax-evasion case against the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, the head of the Unification Church. By analyzing changes in his handwriting — particularly how his printed “S” had turned cursive — she testified that he signed checks in 1974, not in 1973 as his lawyers had said.
At another point, Mrs. Tytell used paper-mill records and her knowledge of watermarks to prove that a piece of paper had not been produced until after the date written on it.
“She was an exceptional witness,” Martin Flumenbaum, a prosecutor in the case, said in a phone interview. “She dominated the courtroom. I remember the jury being enthralled by her testimony.”

…

In one of her best-known cases, she was hired in 1972 by International Telephone and Telegraph to analyze a politically explosive memorandum written a year earlier by one of the company’s lobbyists, Dita Beard (who denied writing the memorandum). Its existence was revealed by the investigative journalist Jack Anderson.
It suggested a connection between the settlement of a government antitrust lawsuit against I.T.T. and a pledge by the company to pay $400,000 in costs for the 1972 Republican National Convention.
A report issued by I.T.T. said that Mrs. Tytell and a chemist, Walter McCrone, had used “microscopic, ultraviolet fluorescence and highly sophisticated micro chemical analyses” of the memorandum and other samples that had been typed on Mrs. Beard’s typewriter between June 25, 1971 (the date on the document) and February 1972. They determined that the memo had most likely been written in January 1972, nearly six months after the antitrust settlement, meaning a connection to the payment was not likely.
Their report — submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which investigated the financial pledge made in the memo — contradicted the F.B.I.’s analysis of the document, which suggested it had been written on June 25.

Todd Akin, former House member from Missouri. He gave up that seat to run for the Senate, and lost after making some controversial remarks about rape.

Angelo Codevilla, conservative author and theorist. (The Ruling Class: How They Corrupted America and What We Can Do About It)

Posted in Books, Law, Obits, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

Travel day.

Monday, October 4th, 2021

Heading home. It will be a long day of driving. Expect blogging to resume sometime tomorrow.

Posted in Admin, Travel | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 4, 2021.

Sunday, October 3rd, 2021

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

Detroit
Jacksonville

So as soon as I call out both New York teams, both of them win – in overtime, no less.

Always bet against my picks. I guess that’s the moral here.

Lawrence made a point to me the other day that I had totally missed: Jacksonville is now on a 19 game losing streak. They’re playing Tennessee next week, so it isn’t impossible that they’ll run the streak to 20. The only other teams that have lost 20 straight games are the 1942-1945 Chicago Cardinals (29 straight) and the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (26 straight).

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

More adventures in hoplobibliophila.

Sunday, October 3rd, 2021

The Smith and Wesson Collector’s Association Symposium has wrapped up.

I thought I’d stay over a day, relax, and kick around a bit. Unfortunately, a lot of the places I’d like to kick around are closed on Sundays. But my loss is your gain. At least if you like gun books.

Pistol and Revolver Shooting by Walter F. Roper. The colophon lists it as Macmillan, 1945, and “First Printing”, but the “Olympic Edition” on the cover makes me wonder. Maybe first printing in this edition?

Mr. Roper was a prominent gun guy and gun experimenter: here’s a short article by John Taffin from Guns magazine about him. Purchased for $40 from a fellow collector at the Symposium.

I would have sworn great and good FotB (and official firearms trainer of WCD) Karl Rehn of KR Training had reviewed this book on his blog. But if he did, I can’t find the review now.

Two of a perfect pair:

(Previously on Experiments of a Handgunner.)

I do have a copy of what I believe is Mr. Roper’s only other book, Smith and Wesson Hand Guns (with Roy McHenry) but I didn’t bring it on the road with me, and my copy is a reprint anyway.

Not exactly a gun book, but worth noting, in my humble opinion:

Smith and Wesson ties, tie bar, and tie pin. The tie bar and pin were purchased from one collector, the ties were purchased from another. I think they add that subtle touch of class when I’m wearing a suit. And I paid $25 for both ties (and another $10 for the bar and pin).

There was another very classy S&W tie in the auction on Saturday: sadly, it got bid beyond what I was willing to pay early, and I did not get a photo of it. You’ll have to trust me when I say this tie was about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

Final totally unrelated side note: of course there’s an Internet Movie Firearms Database entry for “Johnny Dangerously”. Just in case you were wondering what the “.88 Magnum” actually was.

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 2, 2021.

Saturday, October 2nd, 2021

For the historical record: NYT obits for Tommy Kirk and Commander Cody. The obit for the latter includes a video of “Hot Rod Lincoln”, which I was intending to go back and embed anyway.

Carlisle Floyd, opera guy.

Among the leading 20th-century American opera composers, Mr. Floyd is often cited with Ned Rorem, Philip Glass, John Coolidge Adams, the Italian-American Gian Carlo Menotti, Samuel Barber and others whose works have joined the standard repertory, including George Gershwin, who called his “Porgy and Bess” a folk opera, and Leonard Bernstein, whose “Candide” was an operetta.

…

His best-known opera was “Susannah,” based on the Apocrypha story of Susanna and the Elders. Taken from the Book of Daniel to the Tennessee hills and rendered in Smoky Mountain dialect, it portrays a young woman wrongly accused of promiscuity and a traveling preacher who incites a mob, then seduces her. The preacher is slain by her brother, and Susannah stands defiant, holding off the mob with a shotgun.

…

Other notable Floyd operas included “Of Mice and Men,” his adaptation of John Steinbeck’s story of two tragic migrant farm workers in the Dust Bowl; “Willie Stark,” his treatment of Robert Penn Warren’s “All the King’s Men,” about a ruthless politician modeled on Louisiana’s Huey P. Long; and “The Passion of Jonathan Wade,” about a Reconstruction-era love affair destroyed by intolerance and hate.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

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