Archive for January, 2023

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At the weird intersection of sports firings and legal news…

Wednesday, January 18th, 2023

Firings news (sort of): Matt Weiss, “co-offensive coordinator” for the University of Michigan, has been placed on leave.

Legal news: He’s involved in a criminal investigation.

Weird news: It doesn’t involve domestic violence or any of the usual crimes.

“The University of Michigan Police Department is investigating a report of computer access crimes that occurred at Schembechler Hall during December 21-23, 2022,” University of Michigan Deputy Chief of Police Crystal James said in the statement. “Since this is an ongoing investigation there is no additional information to share.”
An entry from the university police’s online daily crime log on Jan. 5 notes that police received a report about “fraudulent activity involving someone accessing university email accounts without authorization” at Schembechler Hall. It is the only report of police activity at the football facility in the past month.

Posted in Firings, Law, Sports | Comments Closed

Frank Mansfield, call your office, please.

Wednesday, January 18th, 2023

According to some rooster men, the game fowl, or fighting chicken, was almost chosen to be the national bird of America. “And it should’ve,” a breeder once told me. “An eagle ain’t nothing more than a glorified buzzard.” Such game-fowl lore and sentiment abound: George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were devoted rooster fighters. Union and Confederate soldiers put aside their differences on Sundays during the Civil War to pit their chickens against one another. Abraham Lincoln was given the nickname Honest Abe after he displayed impartiality as a cockfighting judge. Whatever the (dubious) historical merit of claims like these, they are meant to establish the deeply American identity of game fowl. “They fought them right out on the White House lawn,” says David Thurston, president of the United Gamefowl Breeders Association, a national nonprofit dedicated to the birds’ preservation.

(Alternative link for the NYT challenged.)

(Title reference explained.)

Posted in Birds, Clippings | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Tuesday, January 17th, 2023

Offensive coordinator Joe Lombardi and quarterbacks coach Shane Day out at the worthless Los Angeles Chargers.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Day of the .45, part 1. (Random gun crankery)

Monday, January 16th, 2023

Before I get too far into this, I want to say: McThag is responsible for this. I don’t “blame” him, but he is responsible (as he noted in a previous post), and I owe him a very public “thank you” for this. So: thank you, Angus McThag. I also owe you a beer or three if we’re ever in the same place at the same time.

After the jump, an explanation of why McThag is responsible, as well as some background and pictures. I’m doing a jump because I expect this to be long, there will be pictures, and a lot of background for my readers who are not People of the Gun…

(more…)

Posted in 1911, Guns, History | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: January 16, 2023.

Monday, January 16th, 2023

Gina Lollobrigida. THR.

A 1955 film, “La Donna Più Bella del Mondo” (“The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” — a term some in Hollywood came to use about Ms. Lollobrigida herself), released in the United States as “Beautiful but Dangerous,” brought Ms. Lollobrigida her first major acting award: the David di Donatello, Italy’s equivalent of the Oscar. She won the Donatello twice more, for “Venere Imperial” (1962), in a tie with Silvana Mangano, and for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” in a tie with Monica Vitti.
Ms. Lollobrigida was always considered more a sex symbol than a serious actress — at least by the American press — but she was also nominated for a BAFTA award as best foreign actress in “Pane, Amore e Fantasia” (1953). She received Golden Globe nominations for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell” in 1969 and for a recurring role on the prime-time television soap “Falcon Crest” in 1985.

Al Brown. Other credits include “12 Monkeys” (the Gilliam film, not the TV series), “Forensic Files”, “The F.B.I. Files”, and something called “Fartcopter”.

Charles White, 1979 Heisman Trophy winner with U.S.C.

White, who went on to play eight seasons in the N.F.L., was part of U.S.C.’s lineage of elite running backs, four of whom also won the Heisman: Marcus Allen, O.J. Simpson, Mike Garrett and Reggie Bush. White’s 6,245 rushing yards exceed the 4,810 gained by Allen, who ranks second on U.S.C.’s all-time list.
White was not especially big or fast; rather than elude defenders, he bulled his way through them. And he was a workhorse: In 1978, he rushed 374 times (65 more than anyone else in the N.C.A.A.’s top ranks) for 1,859 yards. The next year he ran for 2,050.

…

White was chosen by the Cleveland Browns in the first round of the N.F.L. draft in 1980, but in four seasons, he never rushed for more than 342 yards. After he was released by the Browns, he was signed by the Rams, who were then coached by Robinson, for the 1985 season.
His first two seasons with the Rams were uneventful, but he was spectacular in 1987, carrying the ball 324 times for a league-leading 1,374 yards and 11 touchdowns. However, the season was tainted by a 24-day players’ strike, during which games were played largely by nonunion replacements for three weeks. White was one of a group of players who crossed the union’s picket lines.
He started the 1988 season serving his four-game suspension and never regained his starting job. He gained only 323 yards that year, and Greg Bell led the Rams with 1,212 rushing yards.

He also struggled with substance abuse and dementia (possibly caused by CTE). He was 64 and died of esophageal cancer.

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Brief note on film.

Monday, January 16th, 2023

The management of this theater suggests that, for the greater entertainment of your friends who have not yet seen the picture, you will not divulge to anyone the secret of the ending of Witness for the Prosecution.

Don’t worry. I’m not going to give away the ending.

The Saturday Movie Group did watch Witness, though. I had never seen the movie until now, and one thing I did not realize until we got settled in:

Witness for the Prosecution is hilarious.

This is unusual, for a documentary about the treatment of cardiac patients in the late 1950s British court procedural. Make no mistake: it is a drama, with high stakes, but it also sparkles with wit and sharp writing. RoadRich compared it to a good episode of “M*A*S*H” and I kind of agree.

In particular, the interplay between Sir Wilfrid Robarts Q.C. (Charles Laughton) and Miss Plimsoll (Elsa Lanchester) is a delight. The nurse and the barrister play off each other well. (Of course, the screenplay by Billy Wilder, Larry Marcus, and Harry Kurnitz helps with that. While Witness is based on a 1953 play written by Agatha Christie, the entire Robarts/Plimsoll relationship was added for the movie.)

(And a bit of triva I did not realize until I looked up Laughton: he was married to Elsa Lanchester, which may explain why they had such great on-screen chemistry. They met in 1927, when they were cast in the same play, married in 1929, and stayed together until Laughton’s death in 1962.)

Spoiler free clip of my favorite bit from the movie. While the full clip is 3:10, the part that had me in stitches is in the first 20 seconds.

I commend Witness for the Prosecution to your attention, especially if you wait for one of Kino Lorber’s periodic sales. I think I paid $9.99 for the blu-ray.

Posted in Movies | 3 Comments »

Murder, he wrote.

Sunday, January 15th, 2023

As best as I can determine, Elizabeth Short was murdered either on January 14 or 15, 1947: it isn’t clear which day.

So I can claim that this is timely: “Black Dahlia: On the Anniversary of Elizabeth Short’s Murder, a Guide for the Hasty Reporter“, by Larry Harnisch. This is a re-run of an article originally published in the LAT, but now paywalled.

And as an extra bonus for you, freshly posted, and featuring Mr. Harnisch himself:

Posted in California Über Alles, Law | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 14, 2023.

Saturday, January 14th, 2023

Robbie Knievel, daredevil and Evel’s son. He was 60: pancreatic cancer got him.

In one of his best known jumps, in 1989, Mr. Knievel, decked out in a star-spangled, white-leather suit, vaulted 150 feet over the fountains at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. It was a kind of tribute to Evel Knievel, who had cleared the same fountains in 1967, only to land in a bone-breaking crash that horrified viewers.
“When I made the jump and said, ‘That was for you, Dad,’ he ran up and hugged me, with tears in his eyes,” the son recalled years later. “I had never seen him so emotional.”

Robbie Bachman, of Bachman-Turner Overdrive.

Hannes Keller, one of the pioneers of deep diving.

On December 3, 1962, he dived down 1,000 feet.

Mr. Keller and his expedition partner, Peter Small, a journalist and a veteran diver, knew that critical to the mission would be how well the gas they breathed mitigated the possibility of getting “the bends” — the potentially deadly decompression sickness caused when bubbles of nitrogen form in divers’ bodies during rapid ascents.
Mr. Keller enlisted the help of a cardiopulmonary specialist in Zurich and an IBM computer to conceive a secret formula of oxygen, nitrogen and helium, as well as a plan to dispense it at different mixtures at different depths.
The descent, on Dec. 3, 1962, went well — “Anybody can go down,” Mr. Keller told Life magazine in 1961 — but when Mr. Keller exited the Atlantis on the floor of the Pacific Ocean to plant Swiss and American flags, his breathing hoses became entangled with them. He dropped the flags and returned to the vessel. But he started to feel dizzy and soon fell unconscious. So did Mr. Small.
When the mission’s operations crew was pulling up the vessel, they saw the unconscious men on a television feed and sent two divers to investigate. One of them was able to shut the vessel’s hatch after cutting away a piece of Mr. Keller’s flipper, which had become stuck between the door and its frame, allowing pressure to build inside the bell. The other diver went missing. His body was never found.
Mr. Keller revived while still inside the bell. Mr. Small woke up, too, but he was weak, thirsty and sleepy, and eventually Mr. Keller had to give him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Mr. Small died of decompression sickness before he could be transported to a hospital.

…

Despite the deaths on that dive, Mr. Keller and Dr. Albert Buhlmann, the cardiopulmonary specialist who had helped Mr. Keller design his gas mixture, signed a contract in 1964 with Shell International Petroleum to continue their research.
“Hannes Keller’s prominence in the world of deep diving was relatively brief but definitely bold,” Mr. Hellwarth said in an email. “His thousand-foot dive turned into a Houdini-like spectacle, unfortunately with disastrous consequences.”
Mr. Keller moved on. In the late 1960s, he and a business partner, Hans Hess, developed a deep-sea diving suit and an aerodynamic ski-racing suit. Over the next few decades he started a line of computers, developed software programs and created an online art and photo museum.

He was also “a classical pianist who occasionally appeared in concert”, but I’ll leave that story for the reader.

Posted in Geek, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 13, 2023.

Friday, January 13th, 2023

Paul Johnson, noted conservative British historian.

A writer of immense range and output, capable of 6,000 words a day when in harness, Mr. Johnson modeled his career after earlier English men of letters, like Thomas Babington Macaulay and G.K. Chesterton. With an affable prose style and supreme confidence in his own opinions, he was happy to deliver forceful judgments on almost anything: the tangled politics of the Middle East, his personal quest for God or the cultural meaning of the Spice Girls.
The author or the editor of more than 50 books, Mr. Johnson alternated between large histories (of Christianity, Judaism, England, the United States, the middle years of the 20th century, art) and slim biographies of eminences from the ancient or more immediate past (Socrates, Jesus, Edward III, Elizabeth I, George Washington, Mozart, Napoleon, Darwin, Churchill, Eisenhower, Pope John XXIII.)
Writing more for a popular audience than for the approval of specialists, he filtered his wide reading through an ethical lens. As a historian, he looked back to the Victorians, for whom readable prose was as crucial as archival research, and, like those old-fashioned moralists, he was fond of hierarchies. Whether the subject was Renaissance sculptors or American humorists, no era, nation, religion, politician, event, building or piece of art or music was safe from his need to compare and rank.

…

He had an eye for the telling fact: “Between 1800 and 1835 Parliament debated no less than 11 bills seeking to make the deliberate ill-treatment of animals unlawful; all failed, mostly by narrow margins.” And: “In 1730 three out of four children born in London failed to reach their fifth birthday. By 1830 the proportion had been reversed.”

Lawrence emailed an obit for William Consovoy, prominent lawyer.

Over the course of a relatively short career, Mr. Consovoy established a reputation as one of the best and most dogged conservative litigators before the Supreme Court, with a penchant for cases aimed at making major changes to America’s constitutional landscape.He clerked for Justice Clarence Thomas during the 2008-9 Supreme Court term, and he came away with the conviction that the court was poised to tilt further to the right — and that constitutional rulings that had once been considered out of reach by conservatives, on issues like voting rights, abortion and affirmative action, would suddenly be within grasp.

…

In 2013, in one of his early cases before the Supreme Court, Mr. Consovoy successfully argued the Section 4 case, Shelby County v. Holder, persuading the Court to get rid of the requirement that several states and counties, mostly in the South, had to receive federal clearance before changing their election laws.

…

Mr. Consovoy often led the charge in attacking existing laws in court or defending new ones. In 2020 alone, he argued against an extension of the deadline for mail-in ballots in Wisconsin, the re-enfranchisement of felons in Florida and a California plan to send absentee ballots to all registered voters.
He was equally involved in efforts to strike down affirmative action by colleges and universities. He played a supporting role in Fisher v. the University of Texas, a case that originated in 2008 and came before the Supreme Court twice. In both instances, the university successfully defended its plan to automatically admit in-state students who had graduated in the top 10 percent of their class.
Mr. Consovoy then worked closely with Mr. Blum on cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, arguing that their affirmative action programs — and, by extension, college and university affirmative action programs generally — were unconstitutional.
Those cases, brought on behalf of Students for Fair Admissions, an organization that Mr. Blum founded, reached the Supreme Court last fall. By then, Mr. Consovoy was too ill to argue them himself, so two of his partners did instead. The court is widely expected to decide in favor of Students for Fair Admissions before the end of the term, most likely in June.

…

The new firm took on a variety of cases, not all of them concerned with constitutional matters but most of them in service of conservative causes and ideas. After Uber announced in 2020 that its food-delivery branch, Uber Eats, would waive fees for Black-owned businesses, Consovoy McCarthy arranged for some 31,000 complainants to claim reverse discrimination through arbitration, leaving the company owing as much as $92 million.

Lisa Marie Presley. THR. Pitchfork.

Constantine II, Olympic gold medalist (sailing, 1960) and the last king of Greece.

A lot of this took place shortly before or shortly after I was born, but it’s an interesting story I was previously not aware of.

…public support faded after he tried to influence Greek politics, machinations that led to the collapse of the newly-elected centrist government of Prime Minister Georgios Papandreou.
Constantine appointed a series of defectors from Mr. Papandreou’s party as prime minister without holding elections, a widely unpopular chain of events that became known as “the Apostasy.”
The increasing instability culminated in a coup led by a group of army colonels in 1967, considered one of the darkest moments in Greece’s modern history. It set off seven years of a brutal dictatorship for which many Greeks still blame the former king.
Constantine initially accepted the junta before attempting a counter-coup in December of the same year. When it failed, he was forced to flee to Rome, where he spent the first years of his exile.
After the dictatorship ended in 1974, Greece’s new government called a referendum on the monarchy, and 69 percent of Greeks voted to abolish it. The vote effectively deposed Constantine and ended a monarchy that had ruled Greece since 1863, except for the period from 1924 to 1935, when it was first abolished and then restored.

…

In exile he lived mostly in London, where he is said to have developed a close relationship with his second cousin, Charles, now King Charles III. He was chosen to be one of the godfathers to Prince William, heir to the British throne.

…

His relationship with the Greek authorities after his dethroning remained prickly. In 1994, the Socialist government passed a law stripping him of his nationality and expropriating the former royal family’s property. Constantine took the case to the European Court of Human Rights, which in 2002 ordered Greece to pay him and his family nearly $15 million in compensation, a fraction of what he had sought. He accused the government of acting “unjustly and vindictively.”
“They treat me sometimes as if I’m their enemy,” he said in 2002. “I am not the enemy. I consider it the greatest insult in the world for a Greek to be told that he is not a Greek.”
The former king could have regained a Greek passport by adopting a surname, which the government demanded that he do to acknowledge that he was no longer king. But he insisted on being called only Constantine, and continued to cast himself as king and his children as princes and princesses.

…

In 1964, he married Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, who became queen.
She survives him, as do their five children: Alexia, Pavlos, Nikolaos, Theodora and Philippos; nine grandchildren; and two sisters, Sofia, the former queen of Spain, and former Princess Irene.

Posted in Books, Elvis, History, Law, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 12, 2023.

Thursday, January 12th, 2023

Jeff Beck. Pitchfork.

I find it difficult to write about music: I just don’t know enough. Perhaps one of my commenters will have something more to say about Mr. Beck.

Dorothy Tristan. Other credits include “Fear on Trial”, “Down and Out in Beverly Hills”, and “Rollercoaster”.

Carole Cook. Other credits include “The Gauntlet”, “Quincy M.E.”, and “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis”.

Ben Masters. Other credits include “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”, “Petrocelli”, and “Noble House”.

Barrie Youngfellow. Other credits include “Carter Country”, “The Eddie Capra Mysteries”, and “WKRP in Cincinnati”.

Hubert G. Wells, noted animal trainer.

“Sheena was a bad picture, almost painful to watch, but for me and my crew, it was fun to do and financially rewarding,” he wrote in his 2017 memoir, Lights, Camera, Lions: Memoirs of a Real-Life Dr. Doolittle.

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

Quick firings watch.

Wednesday, January 11th, 2023

There haven’t been any additional head coach firings in the past couple of days, but there have been a few lower level firings:

Mike LaFleur out as offensive coordinator for the Jets.

Scott Turner out as offensive coordinator for the Washington Generals Redskins Commanders.

The Tennessee Titans fired offensive coordinator Todd Downing on Monday. Also out: ffensive line coach Keith Carter, secondary coach Anthony Midget and offensive skill assistant Erik Frazier.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: January 11, 2023.

Wednesday, January 11th, 2023

George Pell, Cardinal and former Vatican treasurer.

From 2014 to 2019, Cardinal Pell was the church’s financial czar and third-in-command, and he tried to push through reforms to make its finances more transparent. Those efforts were truncated in 2017, when he was forced to return to Australia to face trial on charges of sex abuse dating to the 1990s. The case transfixed Australia — cameras met Cardinal Pell at the airport when he arrived from Rome.
In December 2018, he was convicted by an Australian jury of five counts of child sexual abuse of two choir boys that were said to have occurred in 1996, during his time in Melbourne. Less than two years later, in April 2020, Australia’s highest court overturned the conviction, saying that there was “a significant possibility” that he was not guilty.
Throughout the proceedings, Cardinal Pell maintained his innocence. At a news conference in Rome in 2017, he said he had been a victim of “relentless character assassination.” He said, “The whole idea of sexual abuse is abhorrent to me.”
At the time of his death, Cardinal Pell faced a civil suit by the father of a now-deceased choir boy who alleged that the cleric had abused the boy when he was archbishop of Melbourne. In a statement, the claimant’s lawyer said the suit would continue, adding: “There is still a great deal of evidence for this claim to rely upon.”
Separately, a 2017 Australian government inquiry into the abuse of tens of thousands of children in churches, schools and other institutions over a period of decades found that Cardinal Pell had been aware of the sexual abuse of children by other Roman Catholic priests as early as 1974, but failed to take action.

Blake Hounshell, NYT reporter and editor.

His family said in a statement that he had died “after a long and courageous battle with depression.” The police in Washington were investigating the death as a suicide, a police official said.

The number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-TALK (8255). You can also dial 988 to reach the Lifeline. If you live outside of the United States or are looking for other help, TVTropes has a good page of additional resources.

Posted in Media, Obits, Religion | Comments Closed

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