Yes, I know.
I think it’d be better to wait until tomorrow for the James Earl Jones obits, to allow the dust to settle and the corrections to be made. I know I’m sacrificing timeliness, but I’d rather be right.
Archive for September, 2024
Obit watch watch.
Monday, September 9th, 2024Bob and Jack and Julian and John.
Friday, September 6th, 2024It was a busy weekend. There’s a new gun show near Leander that a bunch of us ended up going to, and I found quite a bit of stuff. Including .220 Swift and – believe it or not – .22 Remington Jet ammo.
Then I ate something that disagreed with me on Tuesday and haven’t been feeling great. Things are looking up, but all of this is to say that I’ve been behind the curve, so I’m only now getting to more gun book blogging.
I think I’m going to try to knock off the last five books that are down here on the kitchen table so I can move those upstairs. And bring some more down later, but don’t tell anybody I said that. This is going to be a long one, so I’m putting a jump here.
Loser update update.
Friday, September 6th, 2024The NFL regular season started last night.
The NFL loser update will return on Tuesday (because Monday night game) unless I am hit by a bus between now and then.
I am thinking that I will probably wait until Tuesday and combine the NFL loser update with the White Sox update, so I can take care of them both in one swell foop.
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#128 in a series)
Thursday, September 5th, 2024This may not the five-alarm fire I thought it was at first, but it is still pretty significant to say the least.
The police commissioner. They seized the police commissioner’s phones. Wow.
Among the other officials the federal investigators sought information from were the deputy mayor for public safety and a senior adviser to the mayor who is one of his closest confidants, the people said. Both men have had other legal challenges.
The agents also searched the home and seized the phone of a consultant who is the brother of both the schools chancellor and one of the deputy mayors, the people said.
The nature of the investigations is unclear, but it appears that one is focused on the senior City Hall officials and the other touches on the police commissioner, the people said.
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Representatives of the City Hall officials — the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright; her partner, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks; the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III; and a senior adviser to the mayor, Timothy Pearson — could not be reached or declined to comment.
The consultant, Terence Banks, a brother of Philip Banks and David Banks, recently opened a government and community relations firm aimed at closing a gap “between New York’s intricate infrastructure and political landscape.” He, too, could not be reached for comment.
Several of the officials had their phones seized or records of their communications subpoenaed.
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In 2013, Ms. Wright and David and Philip Banks were involved in an incident that raised ethical questions. Ms. Wright and Gregg Walker, her then husband, had a dispute that led to mutual allegations of domestic abuse and the arrest of both people. The City reported that David Banks called his brother Philip, then a high-ranking police official. The charges were dropped.
Ms. Wright has denied any wrongdoing in the case, telling The New York Times in 2022 that she “never asked anyone to make any phone calls” on her behalf and that she was released “almost immediately not because of any outside influence, but because the facts of the case were so obvious.”
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After taking office in 2022, Mr. Adams selected Philip Banks as his top aide overseeing public safety, though Mr. Banks himself had previously been ensnared in a federal criminal investigation.
Years earlier, the same federal prosecutors’ office conducting the current investigations named him an unindicted co-conspirator in an expansive corruption case that led to prison time for Mr. Banks’s then close friend Norman Seabrook, at the time a leader of the city’s correction officers’ union, among others.
Over the course of two years, prosecutors scrutinized Mr. Banks’s acceptance of gifts in 2013 and 2014 while he was chief of department, the city’s top uniformed police official. The gifts included paid vacations to the Dominican Republic and Los Angeles, cigars and a ring worn by Muhammad Ali. He received gifts from and socialized with two businessmen who were trying to curry favor with city leaders. One later pleaded guilty to criminal charges, cooperating with prosecutors, while the other was convicted at trial.
But prosecutors did not charge Mr. Banks, concluding that they did not have sufficient evidence to prove that he had taken official action in exchange for the gifts he received, people familiar with the case have said.
Nobody will go on the record as knowing what’s going on, but there’s speculation that it is tied to that whole weird Turkish consolate thing.
Or it could be something else. It sounds like the whole Adams administration is so packed with corruption, they can’t even keep the lid screwed on. Of course, all suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And to be fair, none of the subjects of the raids have been charged with any crimes.
Yet.
UnHinged.
Wednesday, September 4th, 2024Rael Enteen, VP of content for the Washington Commanders, has been suspended. Which isn’t technically a firing, but I kind of have a feeling it is going to turn into one.
What happened?
Mr. Enteen met a woman on the Hinge dating app. He went out to dinner with her twice. During those dates, he made some…unfortunate comments.
He told…that, “over 50% of our roster is white religious, and God says, ‘F— the gays.’ Their interpretation. I don’t buy any of that. Another big chunk is low-income African Americans that comes from a community that is inherently very homophobic.”
…Enteen also said some players are “dumb as hell” and said some who were smart don’t stay that way after getting hit in the head too many times. He also said those who “get their heads knocked around a few times” are more susceptible to conspiracy theories.
Enteen also said, “I don’t think the commissioner of the NFL hates gay people, hates black people. Jerry Jones, who really runs the NFL, I think he hates gay people, black people.”
Enteen, who was with the New York Jets for two years before coming to Washington, called the league’s social justice initiatives “performative.”
“It’s not done out of the goodness of their heart,” he said. “It’s done because George Floyd changed the game … It’s to make as much money as possible. The NFL cares about the bottom line, like any corporation, above all else.”
Enteen said because the league makes so much money, “they can faux prioritize DEI for the sake of good publicity.
“Enteen told…that “most of the fans are high-school-educated alcoholics” and called them “mouth breathers.”
There were just two problems with these comments:
1) His date recorded them.
2) His date was actually “…an undercover reporter for the O’Keefe Media Group.”
Kind of a big “whoops” there. But remember: these people hate you, and they want your money.
Edited to add 9/5: The suspension indeed became a firing.
Obit watch: September 4, 2024.
Wednesday, September 4th, 2024Paul Harrell, noted gun YouTuber. (Hattip: Lawrence.) McThag.
Edited to add: The Firearm Blog. NYPost, which kind of makes me want to go “!!!!”. On the other hand, the NYP ran an article yesterday about a heron eating a rat, so running an obit for a popular YouTuber, even if he was a gun guy, is probably closer to news.
Rob “Rabbit” Pitt, car guy. Sacramento Bee. (Hattip: FotB RoadRich.)
Archived NYT obit for James Darren, which did not go up until after I posted yesterday.
Obit watch: September 3, 2024.
Tuesday, September 3rd, 2024James Darren, actor and musician.
Other credits include the good “Hawaii Five-O”, “S.W.A.T.” (the original), “Black Sheep Squadron” (aka “Baa Baa Black Sheep”), and “Renegade”.
Simon Verity, stone carver.
Mr. Verity was chosen to direct the St. John the Divine project in 1988. That venture placed him on a scaffold on Amsterdam Avenue for parts of nine years, leading a team that, using hammers, mallets and chisels, carved 31 biblical figures, including Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, Abraham and Sarah, from limestone blocks in the niches that frame the great brass doors at the Portal of Paradise.
One carving, a reimagining of the burning of Jerusalem, depicts the destruction of the World Trade Center and other city landmarks under a nuclear mushroom. (It was created more than a decade before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.) The carving illustrates signs of a rebirth, building on the city’s ashes.
The Very Rev. Patrick Malloy, dean of the cathedral, said in a statement that many tourists visited the cathedral just to see the portal.
“Mr. Verity took the long-dead worthies of the Hebrew and Christian traditions and made them things of wonder for people in our own day,” he added. “Beyond this present age, his work will endure into a future beyond us.”
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One of his original grottoes was at Leeds Castle, in Kent, England, which visitors entered through a suite of rooms. Nearly all the rooms were encrusted, from ceiling to floor, with colorful mosaics made from minerals, shells and animal bones, and some of the walls were covered with elaborate limestone sculptures.
In addition, he carved statues of four whales and a fountain for King Charles III when Charles was the Prince of Wales; a teacup made of broken crockery for Elton John’s garden; a seated king in the front of Wells Cathedral, whose restoration he also worked on; and “The Agony in the Garden,” which depicts Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane before his betrayal.
Mr. Verity created fountains and a sundial at the American Academy in Rome and headstones for the writer Nancy Mitford; George Wein, the Newport Jazz Festival impresario, and his wife, Joyce (for which he sculpted a jazz band); and the British poet laureate John Betjeman.
Loser update: September 2, 2024.
Monday, September 2nd, 2024Final score of today’s game: White Sox 3, Baltimore 13.
The White Sox are currently 31-108 and have lost their last 11 games. 31-108 puts them at a .223 (heh!) winning percentage, which projects out to nearly 126 losses this season. Over the weekend, they set a franchise record for most losses in a season.
At this point, with 23 games left in the season, the Sox will have to win 12 of those just to finish at 119 losses and miss tying the modern MLB record for futility. That would be a winning percentage of .521 in the stretch.