This is breaking, and I may have more later on: “Kinky” Friedman, Texas musician, author, and politician. KVUE. KSAT. HouChron (archived). (Hattip: Lawrence.)
Bill Cobbs, actor. NYT (archived). Other credits include “A Mighty Wind”, “The Slap Maxwell Story”, and one of the spinoffs of a minor 1960s SF TV series.
Finally, a weird one:
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Frederick Crews, literary critic and anti-Freudian.
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One unlikely cause that he devoted himself to in recent years was to assert the innocence of Jerry Sandusky, the former Penn State assistant football coach who was convicted in 2012 of sexually abusing young boys and is now in prison.
“I joined the small group of skeptics who have concluded that America’s paramount sexual villain is nothing of the sort,” Professor Crews wrote in one article in 2021, adding, “believe it or not, there isn’t a shred of credible evidence that he ever molested anyone.”
Tamayo Perry, surfer and actor. He was 49, and apparently died after a shark attack.
Apropos of nothing in particular:
I believe when most of us think of Winston Churchill, we think of his rather pungent turns of phrase. Which is fair. But there’s a story:
There was a joke going around, attributed to Churchill: “An empty taxi arrived and out of it stepped Attlee.”
John Colville, Churchill’s private secretary, repeated the joke – and the attribution – to him. Churchill responded:
It wasn’t all clever quips. There was a neat sense of personal honor there, too.
I have said, more than once, that I am an equal opportunity observer of hyenas on fire. Democrat, Republican, Libertarian, or Communist, I don’t care. (Except maybe I take more joy out of Communist hyenas on fire.)
(“Communist Hyenas On Fire” is the name of my next band. We play covers of Trotsky Icepick.)
Also, I couldn’t pass this up because: strippers, always with the strippers.
Neil Friske is a Republican Michigan House representative. I’ve seen him described as a “prominent Second Amendment activist”. I’d never heard of him previously, but perhaps his 2A activism is more prominent in Michigan.
Rep. Friske was arrested early Thursday morning.
Lansing Police Public Information Director Jordan Gulkis confirmed to the Free Press. In a statement posted to Friske’s Facebook page, his campaign called the arrest “highly suspect.”
Gulkis said LPD officers were dispatched initially to the nearby 2100 block of Forest Road to respond to reports of a male with a gun, “as well as possible shots that were fired,” she said over email.
Friske was arrested “for a felony-level offense” after officers made contact. Additional investigation remains ongoing, Gulkis said. LPD expects to present the case to the Ingham County Prosecutor’s Office for review Friday.
Other reports (attributed to “sources”) claim that he “sexually assaulted an exotic dancer and then chased her with a firearm”.
Rep. Friske’s office denies the allegations, and claims the timing is suspicious: he’s currently running for re-election.
In other news that doesn’t quite rise to the level of flames, but definitely involves a lot of smoke: The FBI raided the home of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao yesterday. Nobody knows why, and the FBI isn’t saying much.
By the way, Mayor Thao is dealing with a recall election this November, a fact I did not previously know.
FotB RoadRich sent over a story (by way of Must Read Texas) that also isn’t quite flames, yet, but definitely a lot of smoke. Let me see if I can summarize it for you:
David R. Jones was a Federal bankruptcy judge in Houston.
Kirkland & Ellis is the world’s largest law firm.
Jones became the nation’s busiest bankruptcy judge after Kirkland, the top U.S. firm for advising financially-troubled companies, steered most of its largest chapter 11 cases to his court.
Elizabeth Freeman is an attorney who worked as co-council with Kirkland on bankruptcy cases in Jones’s court. She worked for a law firm, Jackson Walker, until December of 2022, when she left and started her own law office.
And you guessed it: Jones and Freeman were allegedly lovers.
And it gets better:
The anonymous letter first went to Michael Van Deelen, a former high-school math teacher with a history of filing lawsuits against people he believed had wronged him. He was angry over a bankruptcy plan from Kirkland—approved by Jones—that wiped out Van Deelen’s $146,541 investment in an oil-and-gas drilling company that had gone bust.
Van Deelen sent a copy of the letter to Jackson Walker, where Freeman was a partner, and the law firm questioned her. Freeman acknowledged a romantic relationship with Jones that she said had ended about a year earlier. Jackson Walker forwarded the letter to Jones and shared its allegations with Kirkland, according to court papers filed by both firms.
Van Deelen tried to submit the letter to court in his effort to disqualify Jones from the bankruptcy case involving his lost investment. In a court hearing, a Kirkland partner argued that the letter was unsubstantiated and moved to exclude it as evidence. U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Marvin Isgur, Jones’s former law partner and a court colleague, sided with Kirkland. He denied Van Deelen’s request. Jones later signed an order to permanently seal the letter from public view.
Jackson Walker didn’t publicly disclose what it learned about the Jones-Freeman relationship at the time. Kirkland also kept quiet about the allegation. Jones remained Houston’s chief bankruptcy judge, and Freeman continued to work on Kirkland cases involving Jones.
So a judge and a lawyer were engaged in a pretty serious conflict of interest, and the two law firms involved plus the Federal bankruptcy court conspired to cover it up.
Months later, Van Deelen found the evidence he wanted on a website that searches public records for personal information. “All I had for proof was that anonymous letter,” he said. “Then I asked TruthFinder.” He learned from property records on the Harris County website that Jones and Freeman had bought a home together in Houston in 2017 and still owned it.
Armed with that information, Van Deelen filed a lawsuit against Jones in October. This time, he included the property records with the anonymous letter. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal shortly after, Jones confirmed the relationship.
The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals was alerted and initiated an investigation against Jones. After a little more than a week, the court’s chief judge said she found probable cause that Jones had committed misconduct regarding his intimate relationship with Freeman. Jones resigned days later.
I don’t know that there’s anything actually criminal here, though I suspect there is if someone cares to look hard enough. But this seems like the kind of thing that should get people disbarred from the practice of law. (And removed from the bench, but Jones is already gone. It seems like Judge Isgur is still a bankruptcy judge, though.)
Your Donald Sutherland obit roundup: NYT. THR. Variety. Variety tribute.
IMDB. I did not realize he was Wilhelm Reich in the video for “Cloudbusting”. And we’ve watched “Don’t Look Now”: I can’t recommend it, even with the sex scene. On the other hand, I would like to see “Kelly’s Heroes” again, not cut up for television. And I’ve never seen “M*A*S*H”.
Master Chief Petty Officer William Goines (US Navy – ret.). He was 87.
In his 32 years in uniform, which included three tours of duty during the Vietnam War, he received a Bronze Star and a Navy Commendation Medal among other decorations.
After the war, he joined the Chuting Stars, the U.S. Navy parachute exhibition team, performing 640 jumps over five years.
Master Chief Goines is credited as being the first black Navy SEAL (though the paper of record does note that there was at least one black frogman in the underwater demolition teams that preceded the SEALs).
From sumo, he went into acting. Other credits include both versions of “Magnum P.I.” (an uncredited appearance in the first, “Kamekona” in the second), the “MacGyver” reboot, and “One West Waikiki”.
“Back to Tulsa AGAIN? You were just there in November.”
True that. But the Smith and Wesson Collectors Association tries to rotate the symposiums around the country: “West Coast” one year (that was last year’s Glendale symposium), “East Coast” one year (Concord in 2022 and again next year), and “Central” (Tulsa this year).
I’m glad to say that this year’s hotel (which we were also at in 2021) was very very happy to see us. Last year’s hotel…wasn’t, and I’ll just leave it at that. The Renaissance Tulsa Hotel & Convention Center, on the other hand, could not have been more accomodating. (They did have “No Firearms or Weapons” stickers on the doors, but I never heard anything about anybody being hassled by the hotel staff.) I was privy to a conversation between one of my friends (who is a S&WCA officer) and one of the hotel managers, and the manager was very excited about having us back. We tip well, we don’t throw loud obnoxious parties, we have our own security, and we don’t trash the place.
There are two popular questions people ask me. Well, maybe one “popular” question and one not-so-popular.
“Did I buy any guns?” Answer: yes, but we’re still going through the transfer process. Once that’s complete, I plan to do a post. Here’s a hint:
“Did I buy any books?” asked nobody, ever. Answer: Yes! My book buddy from the Association came down from Canada and brought a stack of books. He thought I might be interested in “some” of them and planned to put the others on his sales table. I bought the whole lot, which came out to ten books by my count. This includes two new-to-me Samworths, one duplicate Samworth that’s in better shape than my copy, three Jack O’Connor books that I didn’t have, and some miscellaneous books from other publishers. I will be annoying my loyal reader with posts on those books as time permits.
Additionally, I happened to be working the registration table with another gentleman who, it turned out, was also a gun book person. He had somehow wound up with a spare copy of a recent gun book and gifted his spare to me.
I also picked up a fair amount of old paper, some of which my book buddy threw in as part of my purchase and some of which I bought from other dealers. I may scan and post some of this, especially when I do the gun post.
(And as a side note: the night before I left, I got two huge and heavy packages from an auction lot I’d placed a lowball bid on, and won. The lot was for old “gun and ammo” books. So I’ll be sharing interesting bits from that lot as well.)
Since Sunday was an off day, I drove up to Oklahoma City specifically to see the 45th Infantry Division Museum, which is now known as the Oklahoma National Guard Museum (and which is moving to a new facility). You may recognize the 45th Infantry Division Museum from such hits as:
(Hattip: Lawrence.)
I thought it was a very nice museum. They had me when I discovered there was an entire room devoted to Bill Mauldin.
Here. Have a random photo of some bazookas.
I’m very glad I went, especially now. As I noted above, the museum is moving to a new location. And I got into a conversation with the curator, who told me that they are planning to deaccession some things, as the new museum will be placing more emphasis on “telling stories”. I think that’s kind of a shame. Where else are you going to see this?
Except maybe in “The Green Berets“.
I encourage you to go now, if you’re in the area and have the opportunity. I would actually like to spend more time at the museum, but I wanted to get back in time for dinner and to take a couple of photos in Muskogee:
The first Girl Scout cookie sale took place in Muskogee in 1917. I could not find a reference to price at the time, but in 1922, the Girl Scouts recommended selling home-baked cookies for “25 to 30 cents per dozen”. $6 in 2024 money works out to 32 cents in 1922 money, and 24 cents in 1917 money, according to the inflation calculator I like to use.
I took a group of my friends to Siegi’s Sausage Factory and, as far as I could tell, everyone loved it. Another large group of my friends took me to the White River Fish Market and Restaurant, which I liked, but which was in a really gritty part of Tulsa.
We also went to an Abuelo’s one night, because it was very near the hotel. I went by myself one night to a place Mike the Musicologist calls “The Laugh-In Restaurant”: Sake 2 Me Sushi. It is all-you-can-eat, but I wasn’t wild about the sushi.
And Sunday night’s celebratory dinner was at The Chalkboard, because I haven’t been in forever and wanted some Beef Wellington.
Everything went smoothly. No complaints here, except that eight hours in a car does get a little tiring.
Usual thanks to the usual suspects. You know who you are. (It appears that word has gotten around within S&WCA circles that I have a blog.)
Willie Mays. SF Chronicle (archived). ESPN.
The Awful Announcing blog has a link to a video tribute to Mr. Mays narrated by Jon Miller.
Neil Goldschmidt, former mayor of Portland and governor of Oregon. He seemed to have a promising political career (he was also transportation secretary under Jimmy Carter) but left office in 1990. There were a lot of rumors about his extramarital activities at the time.
In 2004, it came out that he’d been raping a teenage girl.
The statute of limitations on any criminal charges that might have been brought against Mr. Goldschmidt, including statutory rape, had expired decades earlier. The woman he abused later gave a series of interviews to Margie Boulé, a columnist for The Oregonian, describing her relationship with the mayor.
The woman said the abuse first began when she was 13, on her mother’s birthday. It virtually destroyed her, she said. She attempted suicide at age 15 and later become addicted to alcohol and cocaine. She died in 2011.
George R. Nethercutt Jr., former House member. He’s most famous for having defeated Thomas S. Foley, who was Speaker of the House at the time.
Paul Pressler. He was sort of a “power behind the throne” in the Southern Baptist Convention:
He was also involved in a messy sex scandal, which led to the Southern Baptist Convention distancing themselves from him.
Angela Bofill, R&B singer of the 1970s and 1980s.
Monty Williams out as head coach of the Detroit Pistons after one season.
After starting the season 2-1, the Pistons went on a historic 28-game losing streak…
…The Pistons ultimately finished with a franchise-low 14-68 record, leaving Detroit with the worst record in the league for the second consecutive season.
Yesterday was an extended travel day. I got in around 5 PM last night, and had to unpack the car and take care of other business. So blogging opportunities were limited.
Oddly, I have to work today, and have meetings tonight. But tomorrow is a company holiday. I’m planning to post something of a trip report then.
In the meantime, a few obits.
Anouk Aimée, French actress. NYT (archived). IMDB.
Kevin Brophy, actor. Other credits include “Matt Houston”, “Trapper John, M.D.”, and a spinoff of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s.
Ben Vautier, French artist. I haven’t done an “Art, damn it! Art!” watch for a while, and he seems like a good candidate.
Forever looking to provoke, Mr. Vautier found a kindred spirit in 1962 when he met George Maciunas, who spearheaded the avant-garde Fluxus movement of the 1960s, which included Yoko Ono, Nam June Paik and other artists, and which drew from the iconoclastic Dada movement of the early 20th century.
Fluxus, as articulated in Mr. Maciunas’s 1963 manifesto, was intended as a revolution, a call to comrades to “promote living art, anti-art, promote non-art reality,” while purging the world of “dead art, imitation, artificial art.”
Mr. Vautier certainly did his part, as both a visual and performance artist, with works that straddled the line between conceptual art and punchline.
At the Documenta art festival in Kassel, Germany in 1972, he famously strung a banner that read “Kunst Ist Überflüssig” (“Art Is Superfluous”) across the top of the august Fridericianum museum.
He strove to show that art could be found in daily life, and in ordinary objects, as with his series “Tas,” in which he piled dirt and garbage into lots and signed them as if they were masterpieces.
Starting in the 1960s, Mr. Vautier gave staged performances — he called them “gestes” (“gestures”) — that could seem like practical jokes on the audience. In one, “Audience Piece No. 8” (1965), guests were informed that the next piece was to be presented in a special area. Ushers then led them in groups through back exits and abandoned them.
In “Piano Concerto No. 2 for Paik,” an apparent concert from the same year, a pianist fled the stage before playing a note and the orchestra chased him in hot pursuit, trying to drag him back.
Mr. Vautier was often all too willing to shock. In one performance piece, he urinated in a jar, which he then exhibited as if it were high art. In another, he repeatedly slammed his head against a wall.
James Kent, NYC chef.
He opened his own restaurant, Crown Shy, in 2019 with a partner, Jeff Katz, the general manager of Del Posto, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan that closed in 2021. “At Crown Shy, the Only False Step Is the Name” read the headline of a “critic’s pick” review by Pete Wells, the restaurant critic of The New York Times. (The name refers to tall trees’ tendency not to allow their upper stories to grow entangled with the branches of their neighbors.)
Mr. Wells wrote that Mr. Kent’s dishes “regularly over-deliver.” He singled out for praise “an almost absurdly creamy purée of white bean hummus under a fiery red slick of melted ’nduja; a beef tartare with toasted walnuts and rye croutons; and oysters served with “cucumber jelly, diced cucumbers, grains of jalapeño and microleaves of purple shiso.”
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Crown Shy garnered one star from the Michelin restaurant guide. Saga earned two.
It was fine dining worthy of the European tradition, but with American casualness and an embrace of pop culture.
Mr. Kent played Wu-Tang Clan and the Notorious B.I.G. at Crown Shy. He eschewed a formal dress code. With his chef coat he could often be seen wearing expensive sneakers.
His spray-painted murals earned him a reputation as “a chef that’s also a wildly talented graffiti artist,” as Bloomberg reported in 2016. He was commissioned to do artwork at NoMad Hotel and the restaurant tech company Salido.
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In April, The Times reported that Mr. Kent and Saga Hospitality Group had leased 3,000 square feet on the ground floor of the former Domino Sugar refinery in Brooklyn for a bakery and a “casual all-day restaurant.”
That same month, the lifestyle magazine The Robb Report described yet more ambitious plans. Mr. Kent was opening a new 140-seat restaurant on Park Avenue inspired by the Grand Central Oyster Bar, where his grandmother Sue Mingus first went on a date with the jazz musician Charles Mingus, who became her husband and whose legacy she took charge of overseeing until her death in 2022.
At the same time, Mr. Kent was planning a fast-casual fried chicken sandwich restaurant on the level of Shake Shack, The Robb Report said. LRMR Ventures, a private investment firm of LeBron James and his friend and business partner Maverick Carter, was backing Saga Hospitality Group’s expansion.
Investors “believe Kent’s a rare, multidimensional talent who’s primed to become the next great American restaurateur,” The Robb Report wrote.
He was 45.
This is a nice tribute to Mike “Duke” Venturino from American Handgunner. Obit by the same author for GunMag.com.
Edward Stone, physicist. He was behind the two Voyager missions.
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“We were on a mission of discovery,” Dr. Stone told The New York Times in 2002. “But we didn’t appreciate how much discovery there would be.”
In 2012, Voyager 1 became the first human-made object to pass the heliopause frontier, where the fierce solar wind of subatomic particles yields to the force of other suns. Today, Voyager 1 is estimated to be 15 billion miles from Earth and traveling at a speed of 38,000 m.p.h., according to NASA. Voyager 2 crossed the border to interstellar space in 2018.
Geneviève de Galard has passed away at the age of 99.
After studying English at the Sorbonne during and after the war, Ms. de Galard received her nursing diploma in 1950. And, after a retreat at a Benedictine convent, she was admitted to the French armed forces’ corps of flight nurses, charged with tending to the wounded who had been evacuated from battlegrounds by plane.
With the war in French Indochina raging since late 1946, she went there for the first time in 1953, attached to Hanoi’s Lanessan hospital.
She was flown into a French base as a nurse, but the plane that brought her and the airstrip were knocked out. She was trapped.
The base was Dien Bien Phu.
Ms. de Galard, who was 29, was put “in charge of emergency care of the most seriously wounded,” she wrote.
“I worked under the light of an electric lamp in the corridor, one knee on the ground, the other on the edge of the stretcher,” she continued. “In this underground of suffering, every day I attended to the wounded, giving shots, changing bandages and distributing medicine.”
The doctor in charge, Major Paul-Henri Grauwin, wrote in a memoir: “While the shells were falling, I watched her and was astonished by her calm. She went from wounded man to wounded man, thinking nothing of it. She had the gestures that were needed, the sweetness, the precision.”
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On April 29, with the Viet Minh closing in, she was summoned to the underground bunker of the commanding officer, Gen. Christian de la Croix de Castries, who pinned on Ms. de Galard the Légion d’Honneur, France’s highest civilian decoration, as shells exploded outside.
“She will always be, for the combatants at Dien Bien Phu,” the citation read, “the purest incarnation of the heroic virtues of the French nurse.”
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Still traveling, so these are going to be on the brief side.
Mike “Duke” Venturino, longtime gun writer. I had been reading his articles since Jesus was a lance corporal at least, so this hits a little hard.
I never met him, but he was a swell writer. I don’t have any more information other than the linked article, but I’ll post anything additional I find.
Tony Lo Bianco, actor. Other credits include “Homicide: Life on the Street”, “The Twilight Zone” (the 1985 revival), and “Police Story”.
Jerry West, NBA player, coach, and executive.