Dr. William P. Murphy Jr., another one of those unsung big damn heroes.
His most famous invention was probably the plastic blood bag:
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No matter what I may have thought of Lear’s politics, he served honorably in WWII (52 combat missions in B-17s).
John Nichols, author. (The Milagro Beanfield War)
Denny Laine, of the Moody Blues and Wings.
No clever introduction this week. Just this week’s TMQ (which you won’t be able to read in its entirety unless you subscribe to “All Predictions Wrong”, which is the actual title of Gregg Easterbrook’s Substack) after the jump…
Tim Dorsey, mystery author. Obit from The Rap Sheet.
I’ve never read any of his books, but he seems to be generally classified as a member of the Florida School of Wackos genre. (See also: Carl Hiaasen, Dave Barry).
Long before Florida Man became the Sunshine State’s unofficial mascot, there was Serge A. Storms, the antihero at the heart of Mr. Dorsey’s 26 novels, beginning with “Florida Roadkill” in 1999.
Brilliant and high-strung, Serge is also a serial killer who channels his homicidal urges into taking out various baddies he encounters during a series of improbable adventures around Florida. He usually rolls in the company of Coleman, his semi-lucid friend whose proficiency with various narcotics is so well known that strangers ask him for autographs.
The Firearm Blog coverage of the Remington Ilion shutdown. Per their story, Model 700 production had already shifted to Georgia earlier this year.
This is prompted by an email I got from Kino Lorber about their current sale. (Not an affiliate link.)
One of the things they have on sale is “Goldengirl“, a movie I remember from the 1980s but never saw. Check out that cast: James Coburn! Robert Culp! Harry Guardino! Michael Lerner! And Susan Anton, who I also remember from the 1980s but never saw.
I got curious about the plot and went over to Wikipedia, which describes “Goldengirl” as a “American drama sci-fi sports film“.
Which got me to racking my brain. Perhaps I am getting senile, but: how many sci-fi sports films are there? “Goldengirl” and “Rollerball” are really the only two I can think of. (I don’t know that I’d call “Field of Dreams” sci-fi, though I think there’s a strong argument for it being fantasy.)
Gentle readers, what sci-fi sports films am I missing that will cause me to slap my forehead and say “Of course! How could I have forgotten about that one!”
Sandra Day O’Connor, a good El Paso girl (thanks, Rich!). WP.
You know who writes really good obits? Murray Newman writes really good obits, thought it probably helps that his obits are for people he knew personally. Anyway, he put up another excellent one for former Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal, who passed away November 23rd. I have not seen this reported elsewhere.
The Remington plant in Ilion, New York. My brother forwarded some tweets yesterday, and Mike the Musicologist found press coverage, but I prefer the Outdoor Life link.
The Ilion plant had been making guns since 1828. I have seen references (but can’t back them up) to this being the oldest continuously operating manufacturing plant making the same product in the United States. At the time of the announcement, they were making the Remington 870 shotgun and the Model 700 bolt-action rifle.
Remington (well, the new “RemArms, LLC”, which is one of the parts that emerged from bankruptcy) is moving all of their production to their new facilities in Georgia, and plans to shut down the plant in March of next year. However, the tweets my brother sent over were from people who said they’d already been laid off.
Frankly, this doesn’t surprise me, though I feel bad for the people who get fired right before Christmas. (Been there, done that, got the t-shirt.) New York is consistently hostile to firearms, so moving everything out of there seems like a good decision. It also sounds like a lot of the equipment is old and needs replacement or refurbishment. I’m surprised that they apparently aren’t offering Ilion employees jobs and relocation allowances to move to Georgia, but the linked article says the employees were represented by the United Mine Workers of America. That could have been another factor: move to Georgia and get cheap non-union labor. (Hi, Lawrence!)
It should be interesting to watch this play out. I’m wondering if Remington also plans to move their museum to Georgia as well.
Shane MacGowan. Pitchfork. NYT. THR.
I’ve never been a Pogues fanatic. I pretty much missed them when they were an operational band, and the first thing I ever heard from them was “Fairytale Of New York”. I think we can play that now. After all, it is the Christmas season.
Later on, I picked up some more Pogues by way of “The Wire”. Unfortunately, I can’t find a clip of a drunk McNulty (not the valued commenter here, the other one) repeatedly ramming his car into a bridge abutment while playing “Transmetropolitan”…
And Shane MacGowan was Irish, but I think I’d be willing to grant him honorary US citizenship just for this song, which should probably be the national anthem. (Well, either that, or “You Never Even Called Me By My Name”.)
Frances Sternhagen, actress. THR. Other credits include “Law and Order”, “Up the Down Staircase”, and “Communion”.
Henry Kissinger. NYT. WP. LAT. McThag. Henry Kissinger official website.
Political satire became obsolete when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
–Tom Lehrer
Kissinger obits tomorrow, when I have a chance to search the ‘Tube for that Python bit.
This is being well covered, but for the historical record: Charles Munger, generally described as Warren Buffett’s right hand man. ZeroHenge obit by way of Lawrence.
Marc Thorpe, “Robot Wars” guy.
Victor J. Kemper, cinematographer. Pretty impressive body of work.
(The Saturday Movie Group watched “They Might Be Giants” before Thanksgiving. I like George C. Scott, and I’d never really realized how good looking Joanne Woodward is. But the movie seems interesting but flawed. I don’t want to spoil the ending because there really isn’t one.)
Looking over the hysterical records, the last real TMQ watch we did was December 11, 2018. So it has been very close to five years. We’re not even sure we remember how to do this.
But a gift is a gift, a promise is a promise, and after the jump, this week’s Tuesday Morning Quarterback (which you won’t be able to read in its entirety unless you subscribe to “All Predictions Wrong”, which is the actual title of Gregg Easterbrook’s Substack) after the jump…
Frank Reich fired as head coach of hapless the Carolina Panthers. ESPN for the archive challenged.
The Panthers are currently 1-10. Which, by a curious coincidence, is also the number of games Frank Reich coached.
Betty Rollin, journalist and author.
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Readers’ response to “First You, Cry” was strong. “The letters I loved were from women who had it, sending me their cancer jokes,” Ms. Rollin told The Times in 1993, when the book was rereleased. “That kind of laughter is my favorite thing — it’s such a diffuser.”
She added: “Somebody once said that I was the first person to make cancer funny, which was the best compliment I ever had. I mean, cancer isn’t funny, but if you’ve got it and if you’re able to make jokes about it, I think that keeps you sane.”
Marty Krofft. THR. Thing I did not know: Sid and Marty got their start in the 1950s doing puppet shows…adult puppet shows.
Marty joined his brother full-time in 1958 after Sid’s assistant left, and they opened Les Poupees de Paris, an adults-only burlesque puppet show that played to sold-out crowds at a dinner theater in the San Fernando Valley.
“Les Poupees took us from an act, Sid’s act, to a business,” Marty said. Shirley MacLaine was there on opening night, and Richard Nixon came during his run for president.
Les Poupees went on the road and played world’s fairs in Seattle in 1962, New York in 1964 and San Antonio in 1968. It featured 240 puppets, mostly topless women, and Time magazine called it a “dirty puppet show.”
After that, it was so popular, “we couldn’t even get our own best friends in the theater,” Sid said. It drew an estimated 9.5 million viewers in its first decade of performances.
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Pufnstuf‘s psychedelic sets and costumes were a big hit with college kids, and The Beatles asked for a full set of episode tapes to be sent to them in England. The look of the show prompted many whispers that the brothers took drugs (pot for sure, maybe LSD as well?), something Marty denied.
“You can’t do a show stoned,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in January 2016.
The Kroffts followed Pufnstuf with The Bugaloos (1970-72), the Claymation series Lidsville (1971-73), Sigmund and the Sea Monsters (1973-75) and Land of the Lost (1974-76), which spawned an ill-fated Will Ferrell movie adaptation released in 2009. Those shows were wildly popular in syndication as well.
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In “Lost,” which premiered on NBC in 1974, a family plunges into another dimension populated by dinosaurs, primates called Pakuni and dangerous lizard-men called Sleestaks. Like “Pufnstuf,” the show was about the family’s attempts to get home while navigating their strange new surroundings.
Episodes were written by seasoned science fiction writers like Ben Bova, Larry Niven and Norman Spinrad, and a linguist developed a language of sorts for the Pakuni.
Question: is Land of the Lost the earliest TV show with a constructed language? (No, don’t say it: according to Wikipedia, development of the Klingon language didn’t begin until ST3, so LotL precedes.)