Archive for April 15th, 2022

Those Glorious ’70s…

Friday, April 15th, 2022

There’s a high bar that has to be cleared for me to link to something on ESPN.

The story of the [World Football League] is one that includes a mortally wounded NFL dynasty, Elvis Presley, Arnold Palmer, the guy who played Sloth in “The Goonies,” an enraged Canadian Parliament, sheriff raids on locker rooms, and a member of the witness protection program trying to buy a team. It’s a story of a remarkable dumpster fire that damn near kneecapped the NFL.

Bonus: the Canadian Football Act (which isn’t really an act, as it has never been signed into law).

Posted in 1970s, Bagatelle, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Important safety tip (#25 in a series)

Friday, April 15th, 2022

I admit: I am not a NRA certified firearms instructor. Perhaps I should consult Karl of KR Training (official firearms trainer of WCD) before posting this.

Then again, this just seems like common sense to me.

When you’re teaching classes, a little humor is good. It keeps the students alert.

But you might want to avoid the racial jokes. Doesn’t matter if you are a minority, doesn’t matter if you’re an equal opportunity roaster, somebody’s going to run with this and try to make you (and people of the gun in general) look bad.

Again, nothing wrong with jokes: I’m just saying, steer clear of the racial ones. Probably ought to stay clear of sexist ones, too.

Posted in Guns, Safety | Comments Closed

Obit watch: April 15, 2022.

Friday, April 15th, 2022

Jack Newton, noted golfer.

Newton turned professional in 1971 on the European Tour and won his first event, the Dutch Open, the following year. A week later, he won another tournament at Fulford, England and, in 1974, the tour’s match play championship.
The Australian’s playoff loss in the 1975 British Open at Carnoustie came after Watson had a few rather fortuitous shots. A wire fence kept Watson’s ball in bounds on the eighth hole and the American chipped for eagle at the 14th to claim the Claret Jug by a shot over Newton.

Then, on July 24, 1983, he walked into an aircraft propeller.

His right arm was severed, he lost sight in his right eye and also sustained severe injuries to his abdomen. Doctors gave him only a 50-50 chance of surviving, and he spent nearly two months in intensive care and required lengthy rehabilitation from his injuries.
“Things weren’t looking too good for me. I knew that from the priest walking around my (hospital) bed,” Newton said later. He was 33 at the time of the accident.

…

Not to be denied from playing the game he loved, he taught himself to play golf one-handed, swinging the club with his left hand in a right-handed stance. He regularly had scores in the mid-80s for 18 holes. That translates to a handicap of about 12 or 14, one that most able-bodied amateur players would aspire to.

Mike Bossy, of the New York Islanders.

Bossy played the entirety of his 10-year career on Long Island, earning a place as both a franchise great and one of the best goal scorers the sport has ever seen, before retiring with a chronic back injury. He finished his career with 573 goals, scoring over 50 in nine straight seasons, an all-time record. Famously, he scored 50 goals in 50 games during the 1980-81 season, matching Maurice “Rocket” Richard’s record.

Franz Mohr, who the paper of record describes as the “piano tuner to the stars”. He was Steinway’s chief concert technician for 24 years.

For years, he went where the pianists went. When Vladimir Horowitz went to Russia in the 1980s, Mr. Mohr traveled with him, as did Horowitz’s favorite Steinway. Mr. Mohr made house calls at the White House when Van Cliburn played for President Gerald R. Ford in 1975, and again in 1987, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev was in Washington for arms-control talks with President Ronald Reagan.
Mr. Gorbachev’s wife, Raisa, wanted Cliburn to play one of the pieces that had made him famous — Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 — but there was no orchestra. Instead, Cliburn played some Chopin and, as an encore, played and sang the Russian melody “Moscow Nights.”
“I was amazed that Van Cliburn, on the spur of the moment, remembered not only the music but all the words,” Mr. Mohr recalled in his memoir, “My Life with the Great Pianists,” written with Edith Schaeffer (1992). “The Russians just melted.”

He was also Glenn Gould’s New York piano tuner.

Mr. Mohr not only worked on the piano at the recording studio, he also rode around New York with Gould. “He loved Lincoln Town cars,” Mr. Mohr wrote in his memoir. “That is all he would drive. He once said to me: ‘Franz, I found out that next year’s model will be two inches shorter. So, you know what I did? I bought two Town Cars this year.”

And (as noted in the obit) he wrote a book, My Life with the Great Pianists (affiliate link).

He also attended to performers’ personal pianos. The pianist Gary Graffman, whose apartment is less than a block from the old location of Steinway’s Manhattan showroom, and Mr. Mohr’s home base, on West 57th Street, recalled that Mr. Mohr would come right over when a problem presented itself.
“If he came because I broke strings, he would replace the strings,” Mr. Graffman said in an interview. But if more extensive work was needed — if Mr. Graffman’s almost constant practicing had worn down the hammers and new hammers had to be installed, for example — “he would take out the insides of the piano and carry it half a block to the Steinway basement. He would work on it and carry it back.” (The unit Mr. Mohr lifted out and took down the street is known as the key and action assembly, a bewildering combination of all 88 keys and the parts that respond to a pianist’s touch, driving the hammers to the strings.)

Mr. Mohr was 94 when he passed.

Posted in Music, Obits, Planes, Sports | Comments Closed