Archive for September, 2022

Hoplobibliophilia, act 3.

Friday, September 30th, 2022

When Mike the Musicologist and I were running around over the weekend, we swung by the Half-Price Books in Cedar Park. And I found a couple of interesting things for $7.99 (plus tax) each…

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Obit watch: September 30, 2022.

Friday, September 30th, 2022

Gavin Escobar, former tight end for the Dallas Cowboys. He was 31, and had been working for the Long Beach Fire Department. According to reports, he and Chelsea Walsh died in an apparent rock climbing accident “in San Bernardino National Forest near Tahquitz Rock”.

Obit watch: September 29, 2022.

Thursday, September 29th, 2022

Bill Plante, CBS news guy. I sort of vaguely remember him, but my family and I were never big CBS news people.

Coolio (Artis Leon Ivey Jr.). THR. Tributes.

David Foreman, founder of “Earth First!”.

Some of the actions he advocated were benign guerrilla theater, like dressing in hazmat suits outside national parks to highlight the risk of pollution. Others were more menacing, like driving metal spikes into trees to damage chain saws — and potentially kill their operators.

Still, even some in the movement found him beyond the pale. Murray Bookchin, a philosopher and environmental theorist, called him an eco-fascist for statements that appeared to prioritize animals over people, like when he seemed to endorse famine in Ethiopia and immigration restrictions in the United States as means to reduce the human population. (In both cases he had misspoken, he said.)

The stress of the legal proceedings nevertheless created fissures in the organization, as did the arrival of a new, younger cohort of activists who wanted to inject social justice issues into Earth First!’s environmentalism. Mr. Foreman, who called himself “a redneck for the environment,” had never shown much interest in left-wing politics, and in 1990 he and his wife, Nancy Morton, publicly split with Earth First!
The group, they wrote in a letter to its members, had become dominated by an “overtly counterculture/anti-establishment style.”
“We feel,” they added, “like we should be sitting at the bar of a seedy honky-tonk, drinking Lone Star, thumbing quarters in the country western jukebox, and writing this letter on a bar napkin.”

Hoplobibliophilia 18, Cowboys 13.

Wednesday, September 28th, 2022

Continuing my attempt to clean out the backlog…

I don’t think I buy a lot of new expensive gun books. I haven’t bought any of Ian’s, for example: while I am sort of interested in bullpups, French military rifles, and guns of the Chinese warlords, I look at Ian’s prices and say, “I’m not that interested.”

Paying $100+ for a book still gives me the leaping fantods. It has to be something I’m really interested in: either for collector value (like the Samworths) or on a topic I’m interested in (the history of sniping, for example).

So these two represent a departure from my norm. He says that while he considers paying $300 for another book. But in the meantime…

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Obit watch: September 28, 2022.

Wednesday, September 28th, 2022

Robert Cormier, actor. He was 33: according to reports, he died from “injuries suffered in a fall”.

Venetia Stevenson. Other credits include “77 Sunset Strip”, “The Third Man” (the TV series), and “The Sergeant Was a Lady”.

Ray Edenton, noted Nashville studio musician.

Ms. Cline’s “Sweet Dreams,” Webb Pierce’s “There Stands the Glass,” Kenny Rogers’s “The Gambler,” Roger Miller’s “King of the Road” and Loretta Lynn’s “You Ain’t Woman Enough” were among the blockbuster country singles, many of them also pop crossover successes, that featured his guitar work.

On the Everly Brothers’ “Wake Up Little Susie” and “Bye Bye Love,” both of which reached the pop, country and R&B Top 10 in 1957, Mr. Edenton played driving, syncopated acoustic guitar riffs alongside Don Everly.

Mr. Edenton’s work as a session musician reached beyond country music, with singers like Julie Andrews, Rosemary Clooney, Sammy Davis Jr. as well as rock acts like Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison and the Sir Douglas Quintet. He played on Mr. Young’s acclaimed 1978 album, “Comes a Time.”

Onward through the hoplobibliophiliac fog.

Monday, September 26th, 2022

Previously:

I believe I had mentioned that a friend of mine in the Association had been tipping me off to gun books online.

I believe I had also mentioned that my tax refund had come in. Plus my bonus payment from my employer is coming this week.

The end result is: I’ve accumulated a bunch more gun books. I have a stack. And I’m way behind in documenting them Lawrence style.

Which is…okay. Except they’re stacking up on the kitchen table, and if I don’t move them in the next few days, I’m going to get griped at. So I thought I’d do a couple a day, maybe every other day, until the backlog is cleared.

No, no, don’t thank me: I run a full service blog here. But I will put in a jump…

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If it ain’t a rambling wreck, it’ll do until the wreck gets here.

Monday, September 26th, 2022

Geoff Collins and athletic director Todd Stansbury out at Georgia Tech.

Collins was 10-28 as Georgia Tech’s coach after arriving from Temple. Stansbury had been Georgia Tech’s athletic director since 2016. Stansbury hired Collins and made the decision to bring him back last year after a 3-9 season.

Georgia Tech is 1-3 this season. That one win came against Western Carolina.

(Apologies for linking to ESPN, but the AJC is pretty much unreadable and unlinkable without a subscription.)

Obit watch: September 26, 2022.

Monday, September 26th, 2022

Dale McRaven. He co-created “Mork & Mindy” (with Garry Marshall) and created “Perfect Strangers”.

…McRaven wrote and produced The Partridge Family while also producing albums from the “band” made up of castmates Shirley Jones, David Cassidy, Danny Bonaduce and Susan Dey.

Zack Estrin.

Estrin had a successful career in TV, starting with credits on Charmed, Dawson’s Creek and Tru Calling, before rising through the ranks to serve as co-executive producer of Fox’s Prison Break.
Estrin was showrunner and executive producer of two ABC paranormal thrillers, The River and The Whispers, as well as co-creator and executive producer of ABC’s Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.

He was only 51.

Rita Gardner.

In 1960, Gardner, who had recently appeared Off Broadway in the Jerry Herman musical review Nightcap, was cast in what would be her signature role: Luisa, or “The Girl,” in the Harvey Schmidt-Tom Jones musical The Fantasticks. Based loosely on Edmond Rostand’s 1894 play The Romancers, the musical told the allegorical story of two fathers who trick their children – The Girl, Luisa, and The Boy, Matt – into falling in love by pretending to oppose the union.
The production, at a tiny Off Broadway venue in Greenwich Village called the Sullivan Street Playhouse, became a huge success, spawning a hit song (“Try To Remember”), running 42 years and boosting the careers of Gardner and other cast members (including Kenneth Nelson, who went on to star in The Boys in the Band, and, most notably, Jerry Orbach, the Law & Order star who enjoyed a long career on stage, film and television).

She did a considerable amount of theater work, both on and off Broadway. She also did some TV, including three of the shows in the “Law and Order” franchise.

Jim Florio. former governor of New Jersey, “who then pushed through a record increase shortly after taking office, incurring public wrath that led to his defeat in his bid for a second term“.

Nancy Hiller, woodworker. (Alt link.)

…she steadily built a quiet but forceful reputation as one of the best woodworkers in the country, turning out custom, precisely built cabinets, side tables and whole kitchens for clients as far as New York and Chicago. The actor Nick Offerman, himself an accomplished woodworker and a member of Ms. Hiller’s legion of admirers, called her an “Obi-Wan Kenobi level master.”

There was nothing fancy about her work. She resisted the label “artist,” though people tried to pin it on her. And she deliberately charged less than her peers, not to undercut them, but to make her work affordable to middle-class clients who appreciated good design and hard work.
“She didn’t want to do work that was only accessible to a few people,” Megan Fitzpatrick, a woodworker and editor, said in an interview. “She wanted work that was accessible to everybody.”

Just Jaeckin, director. His most famous film was probably the 1974 soft-core porn film “Emmanuelle”. Other credits include “The Story of O”, “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, and “The Perils of Gwendoline in the Land of the Yik Yak”.

Your loser update: week 3, 2022.

Monday, September 26th, 2022

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

Las Vegas

Still nothing much to say about the weekend’s games, since I was busy having fun all day yesterday. But I will throw in a quick obit watch: The Pro Bowl.

Obit watch: September 24, 2022.

Saturday, September 24th, 2022

This is shaping up to be another one of those busy weekends: Mike the Musicologist is in town and we’re going to a fun show.

However, I have a few minutes, and I didn’t want to let Louise Fletcher get past me. THR.

Other credits include “Perry Mason” (the original, twice), “Maverick”, “The Untouchables”, and several appearances on one of the spinoffs of a minor 1960s SF TV series.

Edited to add: slipping another one in. John Hartman, drummer for the Doobie Brothers. I apologize that I don’t have more time to go into detail: I might try to do a musical interlude on Monday.

Leonard, Part (N).

Friday, September 23rd, 2022

I’ve lost track at this point, but a quick Fat Leonard update.

He’s been caught.

In Venezuela.

The U.S. government faces an uphill challenge returning the fugitive back to American soil. The U.S. government doesn’t recognize Nicolas Maduro’s socialist government, has no embassy in the country and has imposed crushing sanctions on the country that has further embittered relations. Law enforcement cooperation between the two countries is rare.

And according to this story, he was trying to get to Russia.

The official said Francis intended to board a plane to the Venezuelan Caribbean Island of Margarita, which Venezuela wants to turn into a popular destination for Russian tourists because of its pristine beaches accessible by ferry or flights from the mainland. The government said last month it plans to offer five flights a week between Margarita and Moscow starting Oct. 1. Signs in Russian can already be seen at the island.

Obit watch: September 23, 2022 (supplemental).

Friday, September 23rd, 2022

Senior Austin Police Department Officer Anthony “Tony” Martin passed away this morning.

According to news reports, he was returning home from work when he hit a car that turned left in front of him.

The Austin Police Honor Guard says Martin had been with APD since 2006, and during his career served in a variety of assignments including on patrol, Motors, and DWI units. He is survived by his wife Amberlee, a son, two daughters, and one granddaughter.