You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#102 in a series)

March 30th, 2023

Remember Mark Ridley-Thomas? Don’t feel bad if you don’t: it has been a minute.

In brief, LA council member Ridley-Thomas was indicted for taking bribes from a dean at USC, in return for sending government funds to the “School of Social Work”.

The verdict came down today.

Guilty!

More accessible coverage from Deadline: he was convicted of one count of bribery, one of conspiracy, one count of honest services mail fraud, and four counts of honest services wire fraud. The jury acquitted him on 12 other counts.

Prosecutors alleged that the longtime local politician, while serving as a county supervisor, “put his hand out” and accepted perks from USC to benefit his son, Sebastian. Federal prosecutors based their case on a long string of emails and letters to bolster allegations that Ridley-Thomas and the former dean of the USC School of Social Work, Marilyn Flynn, had a quid pro quo arrangement during 2017 and 2018 in which the then-dean arranged for Sebastian’s admission to USC, a full-tuition scholarship and a paid professorship in exchange for his father’s support for county proposals that would ostensibly shore up the school’s shoddy financial picture and save Flynn’s job.

Ms. Flynn, who was also indicted, pled out to one bribery count in September. (I missed that story. Sorry.)

Posted in Law, Politics | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 30, 2023.

March 30th, 2023

As most of my readers know, I am something of a greedy gut. So here’s a semi-obscure food related obit that’s relevant to my interests: Yang Bing-yi.

He founded Din Tai Fung: they didn’t invent the soup dumpling, but they popularized it.

Mr. Yang and his wife, Lai Pen-mei, opened their first modest storefront in 1958, laying the foundation for what would become a franchise that their children and grandchildren have expanded to more than 170 locations across Taiwan, mainland China and 13 other countries, including the United States, Japan, Australia and the United Arab Emirates, with a menu that includes such specialties as wontons in red chili oil, shredded tofu and seaweed salad, and steamed truffle-and-pork dumplings.
A Hong Kong branch has been awarded a Michelin star five times.

…

The secret to the seemingly miraculous stuffing of soup in a dumpling is mixing a scoop of cold, gelatinized broth with the meat or vegetable filling. After the dumplings are placed into bamboo baskets and steamed, the broth melts, forming a rich, fatty soup within a pliant, paper-thin wheat skin. Biting into one delivers a piping hot explosion of flavors and textures.

…

Mr. Hom, the chef and writer, said in an interview that Mr. Yang’s drive for precision — down to the diameter of the wrappers and the weight of each soup dumpling — set a standard that has stood the test of time and transcended borders.
“It’s consistently good, no matter where I’ve eaten, in Singapore, Bangkok, L.A., London,” he said. He added that he had made a practice of eating the dumplings slowly, leaving some in the bamboo basket where they are served to observe whether the soupy filling would hold up within the thin skin. They always did.

D.M. Thomas, author. I never read it, but I remember back in the day The White Hotel was a huge deal.

FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for local figure Murray Callahan. He used to own Callahan’s General Store, which is kind of a famous local spot. It seems tourist oriented to me these days, but I think back in the day before Austin sprawled out that way, it was more of a feed and seed kind of place: a very early version of Tractor Supply Company, if you will. (I went out there once with my folks some years back, which is what I base my impressions on: while Austin has expanded in that direction, it’s still kind of off the beaten path for me.)

Posted in Books, Food, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 29, 2023.

March 29th, 2023

Bill Zehme, noted biographer.

Mr. Zehme’s biography of Mr. Sinatra, “The Way You Wear Your Hat: Frank Sinatra and the Lost Art of Livin’” (1997), was a best seller. He also shared the author credit on best-selling memoirs by Regis Philbin (“I’m Only One Man!” in 1995 and “Who Wants to Be Me?” in 2000) and Jay Leno (“Leading With My Chin” in 1996).
His other books included “Intimate Strangers: Comic Profiles and Indiscretions of the Very Famous” (2002), “Lost in the Funhouse: The Life and Mind of Andy Kaufman” (1999) and “Hef’s Little Black Book” (2004), a stream-of-consciousness collaboration with Hugh M. Hefner, the founder and publisher of Playboy magazine.

…

“Bill didn’t dig around for dirt or comb through the proverbial closet hunting for skeletons,” David Hirshey, a former deputy editor of Esquire magazine, said by email. “What interested him was more subtle than that. Zehme looked for the quirks in behavior and speech that revealed a person’s character, and he had an uncanny ability to put his subjects at ease with a mixture of gentle playfulness and genuine empathy.”

…

Mr. Zehme provided tips from Mr. Sinatra about what men should never do in the presence of a woman (yawn) and about the finer points of his haberdashery: “He wore only snap-brim Cavanaughs — fine felts and porous palmettos — and these were his crowns, cocked askew, as defiant as he was.”
“Mr. Sinatra’s gauge for when a hat looked just right,” Mr. Zehme wrote, was “when no one laughs.”

George Nassar is burning in Hell. The name might ring a bell for some of you: he was Albert “The Boston Strangler” DeSalvo’s cellmate, and DeSalvo supposedly confessed his crimes to Nassar.

In 1995, Mr. Nassar recalled in an interview with The Boston Globe that Mr. DeSalvo had described the killings 30 years earlier as they walked along a concrete hallway at Bridgewater State Hospital in Massachusetts, where both men were incarcerated and undergoing mental health evaluations. Mr. DeSalvo was being held on unrelated charges of armed robbery, assault and sex offenses involving four women.
“He began describing a crime and watching my reaction to see if it was too abhorrent to listen to,” Mr. Nassar said. “Some of it was horrible, particularly the crimes of stabbing a woman under her breasts in Cambridge. But I wasn’t there to condemn.”

…

Mr. Nassar told his lawyer, the famed criminal defense attorney F. Lee Bailey, about the confession and recruited him to represent Mr. DeSalvo.“We were setting it up,” he told WBZ, “saying, ‘Al, you’re going to confess, you’re going to trial, you’re going to do your book, we’re going to take care of your family,’ and he was saying, ‘OK, OK, OK.’”
Mr. DeSalvo subsequently confessed to Mr. Bailey and gave his account to psychiatrists, a state investigator and the Boston police, but for reasons that are unclear he was never charged with any of the killings. He later retracted the confession.
In 1967, Mr. DeSalvo was convicted of the robbery, assault and sex offenses he had been charged with and sentenced to life imprisonment. During the trial, another inmate, Stanley Setterlund, testified that Mr. DeSalvo had confessed to the murders “and laughed.”

This is one of those odd obits: Mr. Nassar actually died in December of 2018, but for various reasons, his death only became public knowledge recently.

Posted in Books, Clothing, Hats, Law, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 28, 2023.

March 28th, 2023

Things have been quiet on the obit front the past few days. Now watch as someone prominent dies later on today. (I don’t want this to happen, but it seems that whenever I’m thinking things have been quiet, something happens.)

In the meantime, Lawrence sent me a couple of obits a few days ago:

Michael Reaves, writer. He worked on “Batman: The Animated Series”, wrote some “Star Wars” novels, and had a lot of other credits.

Eric Brown, SF author and critic for The Guardian.

Great and good FotB Borepatch lost his beloved dog, Wolfgang. Those of you who are familiar with Borepatch and Wolfgang might want to send condolences his way.

Posted in Books, Mammals, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 25, 2023.

March 25th, 2023

Gordon E. Moore, co-founder of Intel and the “Moore” in “Moore’s Law”.

In 1965, in what became known as Moore’s Law, he predicted that the number of transistors that could be placed on a silicon chip would double at regular intervals for the foreseeable future, thus increasing the data-processing power of computers exponentially.
He added two corollaries later: The evolving technology would make computers more and more expensive to build, yet consumers would be charged less and less for them because so many would be sold. Moore’s Law held up for decades.

…

In interviews, Mr. Moore was characteristically humble about his achievements, particularly the technical advances that Moore’s Law made possible.
“What I could see was that semiconductor devices were the way electronics were going to become cheap. That was the message I was trying to get across,” he told the journalist Michael Malone in 2000. “It turned out to be an amazingly precise prediction — a lot more precise than I ever imagined it would be.”
Not only was Mr. Moore predicting that electronics would become much cheaper over time, as the industry shifted from away from discrete transistors and tubes to silicon microchips, but over the years his prediction proved so reliable that technology firms based their product strategy on the assumption that Moore’s Law would hold.

…

As his wealth grew, Mr. Moore also became a major figure in philanthropy. In 2001, he and his wife created the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation with a donation of 175 million Intel shares. In 2001, they donated $600 million to the California Institute of Technology, the largest single gift to an institution of higher learning at the time. The foundation’s assets currently exceed $8 billion and it has given away more than $5 billion since its founding.

I believe he was the last surviving member of “the traitorous eight”, the men who defected from William Shockley and founded the hugely influential Fairchild Semiconductor Corporation.

In the 1960s, when Mr. Moore began in electronics, a single silicon transistor sold for $150. Later, $10 would buy more than 100 million transistors. Mr. Moore once wrote that if cars advanced as quickly as computers, “they would get 100,000 miles to the gallon and it would be cheaper to buy a Rolls-Royce than park it. (Cars would also be a half an inch long.)”

…

In 2014, Forbes estimated Mr. Moore’s net worth at $7 billion. Yet he remained unprepossessing throughout his life, preferring tattered shirts and khakis to tailored suits. He shopped at Costco and kept a collection of fly lures and fishing reels on his office desk.

Greg Wittine.

His death was not widely noted; it had been decades since Mr. Wittine’s name appeared in the news, and interviews with local and national Scouting representatives indicated that he had largely fallen out of the organization’s institutional memory. But for a brief period, in the spring of 1978, Mr. Wittine enjoyed the status of a national hero.

Mr. Wittine was a Boy Scout. He also had cerebral palsy. He busted his hind end to earn Eagle Scout rank:

Over nearly a decade, he earned merit badges in subjects like fire safety and wildlife. To get his hiking badge, he crawled down a wooded trail for a mile until his knees were too bruised and bloody for him to go on, at which point he wheeled himself another nine miles.

By 1978, he had all the required badges. But the Boy Scouts wouldn’t let him advance to Eagle because he was 23 at the time, and the Scouts required that you be under 18.

His scoutmaster, Richard Golden, wrote letters to local newspapers, and in late March of that year journalists began relating Mr. Wittine’s story. The two men were soon on “Good Morning America,” Mr. Wittine pointing at his word board and Mr. Golden spelling out the letters.
The public “bombarded” the Boy Scouts of America with letters and phone calls, The Times reported. In a spontaneous outburst of shared sentiment, former scouts throughout the nation rooted around in their attics, found their Eagle medals and mailed them to Mr. Wittine.
“Allow me to share my medal with you,” a Florida man wrote in a handwritten letter. “It is old and tarnished, awarded fifteen years ago, but the cherished memories are as fresh and exciting as if it were yesterday.”
Adding to the pressure on the Boy Scouts of America, Mr. Golden issued a warning: He and Mr. Wittine would appear at a national Scouting conference soon to be held in Phoenix, even though they had not yet been invited. “We may go anyway, not only to argue Greg’s case but that of Scouting’s approach to all handicapped persons,” Mr. Golden told The Associated Press.
Days after that interview, on May 5, the Boy Scouts issued a news release. The first sentence read, “The Boy Scouts of America has changed its regulations, and the way is now clear for 23-year-old Scout Gregory Wittine of Roosevelt, N.Y., to become an Eagle Scout.”
It was a major change in policy, dropping “all age restrictions” for “severely handicapped” scouts while still requiring that they earn the same badges as other Eagle Scouts. And it brought Mr. Wittine a flood of more attention.

…

The Boy Scouts of America does not track how many Eagle Scouts have been able to earn their rank after age 18 because of a disability, but in an interview, Mike Matzinger, a national leader of the organization with knowledge about scouts who have disabilities, estimated the number to be in the tens of thousands.
Ben Burns has been the scoutmaster of a troop of disabled scouts in Dallas since 2010. In an interview, he said that the possibility of becoming an Eagle Scout gave his troop members a sense of mission, and that six of them — all over the age of 18, including his son Tim — had attained the rank.
Tim has Down syndrome and struggles to talk. But at his Eagle Scout ceremony in 2021, he gave a speech.
“That’s been the biggest moment in his life, because he was the center of attention, and it was all about him,” Mr. Burns said. “I’m not sure what he’d be doing with his life if he didn’t have Boy Scouts.”
Mr. Burns said that the approach Mr. Wittine conceived — working extremely hard to obtain badges that might seem out of reach, but getting ample time to do so — struck him as ideal. His scouts, who have a wide range of disabilities, pitch their own tents, use hand saws and learn how to climb back into sailboats after they capsize.
“When our boys earn it, they earn it,” he said.

Posted in Geek, History, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 24, 2023.

March 24th, 2023

Great and good FotB Borepatch lost his younger brother yesterday. We extend our condolences to him and to the other members of his family. May his brother rest in peace, and may his memory be a comfort to them.

I’m a little late on this one, but I just found out today: John Linebaugh passed away on Sunday.

Mr. Linebaugh was an influential maker of big-bore revolvers.

In 1985 he cut down a .348 Winchester case to craft the .500 Linebaugh caliber — the first successful .50 caliber revolver/cartridge – then followed that with the .475 Linebaugh cartridge two years later. He would go on to revamp both cartridges into Max variants.

Linebaugh was a true pioneer in the big bore game by living, breathing and believing in Sir Samuel Baker’s theory, “Bullet diameter and weight are constant. Velocity is the only diminishing characteristic.” This statement is the heart and soul of big bore enthusiasts. Large-diameter, heavy bullets, at moderate velocity, drive deeper and straighter, creating large wound channels. Linebaugh believed in chambering a gun with cartridges having these characteristics in compact, packable handguns. And that is exactly what he strived for and accomplished with his guns.

Fuzzy Haskins, of the Parliaments, which became Parliament, which became Parliament-Funkadelic.

Since this is from 1976, I am assuming (but can’t confirm) Mr. Haskins is in this. (According to the obit, he left the group in 1977.) Even if he isn’t, this is still a neat slice of history.

Posted in Guns, Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 23, 2023.

March 23rd, 2023

Norman Steinberg, screenwriter.

Gordon T. Dawson, writer and producer. He worked on five Peckinpah movies, wrote nine “Rockford Files” scripts, and did a lot of work on “Walker, Texas Ranger”. Other credits include “Lou Grant”, “Black Sheep Squadron”, and two episodes of a spinoff of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s.

Peter Werner, director. Lawrence sent this over because he’d done a lot of “Justified” and “Elementary”. Other credits include “Boomtown”, “Almost Golden: The Jessica Savitch Story”, and “Moonlighting”.

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#80)

March 23rd, 2023

Shot:

Chaser:

Posted in Bagatelle | Comments Closed

Yet another thing I did not know.

March 23rd, 2023

According to the bear’s owners, the Cocaine Bear has the authority to officiate legally binding weddings in the mall where it is kept due to Kentucky’s marriage laws. This claim is only partly true; the bear does not have the authority to solemnize weddings, but the state of Kentucky cannot invalidate marriages performed by unqualified persons if the parties believe that the person marrying them has the authority to do so. As such, it is a belief in the Cocaine Bear’s authority that allows it to officiate legally binding weddings in Kentucky.

So as long as you believe, the marriage is valid. But when you stop believing, the marriage is invalid. And Pablo Escobear’s authority to officiate weddings is a giant consensual hallucination…and doesn’t the fact that Wikipedia states the bear does not have that authority invalidate the claim that the parties believe the bear has that authority?

Posted in Bagatelle, Law, Mammals | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: March 22, 2023.

March 22nd, 2023

John Jenrette Jr., former Democratic congressman from South Carolina.

Mr. Jenrette was, famously, caught up in the ABSCAM scandal.

A former social acquaintance, John Stowe, got in contact with Mr. Jenrette in 1979, saying that he had found a wealthy investor, sometimes referred to as a sheikh — an invention of the F.B.I. — who was willing to finance the revival of an empty munitions factory, bringing 400 jobs to Mr. Jenrette’s district. To sweeten the deal, Mr. Stowe said, he needed legislation that would let the sheikh emigrate to the United States.
Mr. Jenrette was captured on videotape, during one of his visits to a townhouse in the Georgetown section of Washington in December 1979, discussing a payment he would accept with people said to be lieutenants of the phony sheikh.
To an offer of $100,000, with $50,000 up front, Mr. Jenrette said, ”I have larceny in my blood — I’d take it in a goddamn minute.”
Five envelopes, each containing $10,000, were laid out on a desk.
Despite the urgings of Anthony Amoroso, an F.B.I. agent posing as one of the sheikh’s executives, Mr. Jenrette didn’t take the money. Instead, two days later, Mr. Stowe picked it up. Mr. Jenrette, fearful of appearing to have accepted a direct payoff to help the sheikh, agreed to receive $10,000 from Mr. Stowe as a loan, and received a promissory note for it.
The jury delivered a quick verdict, convicting Mr. Jenrette and Mr. Stowe of one count of conspiracy and two counts of violating the federal anti-bribery statute by promising to introduce legislation to let a fictitious Arab businessman into the United States.

…

The case put a great strain on his marriage, which had already been roiled by his womanizing. His wife, Rita (Carpenter) Jenrette soon wrote, with a co-author, an article for The Washington Post with the headline “Diary of a Mad Congresswife,” in which she declared, “I hate my life as a congressional wife” and described Mr. Jenrette’s struggles with alcohol.
A few months later, she posed for Playboy and, in an accompanying article, said that she and her husband had once made love on the steps of the United States Capitol. When she was profiled in 2017 on “CBS Sunday Morning,” she amended that to say that they had simply shared a passionate kiss behind a Capitol column.
The Jenrettes divorced in 1981 after five years of marriage.

…

“Between our two salaries we were OK but not flush with money,” Ms. Jenrette, now known as Princess Rita Boncompagni Ludovisi, wrote from Italy. “This evoked his childhood to him, the poverty, the lack, the uncertainty brought to a child with elderly parents. He drank more, and the rest is history.”

Willis Reed, noted player for the New York Knickerbockers.

Reed won the N.B.A.’s Most Valuable Player Award for the 1969-70 season and was named the M.V.P. of the championship series. He won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1965, was voted an All-Star seven times and won another N.B.A. title and finals M.V.P. with the Knicks in 1973. For his career, he averaged 18.7 points and 12.9 rebounds per game.
He was chosen by the N.B.A. for its 50th and 75th anniversary teams. In 1996, he was chosen by the N.B.A. as one of its 50 greatest players. His No. 19 uniform jersey — white with blue and orange trim — was the first to be retired by the Knicks, on Oct. 21, 1976. He was enshrined in the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 1982.

Bobbi Kelly. This is probably going to be a “Who?” moment for most of you.

She was the woman on the cover of “Woodstock: Music from the Original Soundtrack and More”.

The man, Nick Ercoline, was her boyfriend at the time. They married in 1971 and stayed married until her death.

It wasn’t until the 20th anniversary of Woodstock, in 1989, that Nick and Bobbi were publicly identified as the couple in the iconic photo that they now proudly display in their kitchen.

Posted in Law, Music, Obits, Politics, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: March 21, 2023.

March 21st, 2023

The athletic program at St. Francis College in Brooklyn.

All of it. All 19 sports will be abolished after the spring semester.

Obscure school, who cares, right? They were actually a Division 1 school, which kind of surprised me: the basketball team was 14-16 this season, and 7-9 in the Northeast Conference.

In its statement the school cited “increased operating expenses, flattening revenue streams, and plateauing enrollment in part due to a shrinking pool of high school graduates in the aftermath of the pandemic” as reasons for the need to restructure. Former chief operating officer Tim Cecere has also been appointed acting school president with the board granting Dr. Miguel Martinez-Saenz his request for a personal leave.

…

The men’s basketball program, which dates back to 1896, was the oldest college program in New York City and a charter member of the NCAA.

The school states they intend to honor all current athletic scholarships, but the athletic staff will be let go at the end of the semester.

More from ESPN, which claims 21 teams instead of 19:

The move comes as part of larger restructuring of the private Catholic school located in Brooklyn. Enrollment at the school is about 2,300 undergraduate students.

Just for the sake of comparison, my old school has an undergraduate enrollment of 2,800 to 3,500 (US News gives two different figures)…and the basketball programs are DII. As far as I know, St. Ed’s has never tried to compete in D1.

It seems to me that it might have made more sense to drop down to D2, rather than eliminating athletics totally. But St. Francis just moved to a new facility…that doesn’t have a gym or pool. The original plan was apparently that they were going to share those things with some other school. Perhaps that turned out to be impractical?

Posted in Firings, Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: March 20, 2023.

March 20th, 2023

Simone Segouin. She was 97.

She was a French resistance fighter as a teenager.

Given false papers saying she was Nicole Minet, of Dunkirk, Ms. Segouin ferried messages and weapons among members of the local partisan network on a bicycle she had stolen from a German. Lt. Boursier said he taught her how to use submachine guns, rifles and handguns. According to President Macron’s office, she also helped the partisans sabotage German troop trains.

She was also the subject of a “Life” profile by Jack Belden:

His article, headlined “The Girl Partisan of Chartres” in the Sept. 4, 1944, issue of Life, made “Nicole” an international symbol of the French resistance. Its sub-headline — “Pretty 17-year-old Nicole tells Life’s war reporter the story of how she killed a Boche,” French slang for a German — offered a whiff of the sensational.

…

“The article gave her a larger-than-life profile,” Robert Gildea, the author of “Fighters in the Shadows: A New History of French Resistance,” wrote in an email. “Most women resisters operated in the shadow and were modest about their resistance activities.”

New York Public Library digital archive.

Lawrence sent over two interesting obits:

Gloria Dea, the first magician to perform on the Vegas Strip.

On May 14, 1941, at only 19 years old, Dea performed in the Roundup Room at the El Rancho Vegas. That made her the first magician to ever perform on Highway 91, which wouldn’t be renamed Las Vegas Boulevard for 18 more years. (At the time, only the El Rancho Vegas and Last Frontier lined the road. The Flamingo was still under construction.)
Dea performed two shows that night. The crowds went wild for her billiard-ball trick and a floating-card trick, both taught to her by her father.
“It felt good,” Dea told the R-J at her birthday bash in August. “Anytime someone likes something that you do, you feel good don’t you? Oh, yeah. I was received wonderfully. It was a great room. You had the audience seated, then floor-to-ceiling glass in the back, and on the other side of that was the swimming pool.”
“Then you were onstage, facing that. It was fancy. It was a fun place.”

Byrd Odum Holland, makeup artist and actor.

Lawrence pointed out “The Creeping Terror”. We have “Five Minutes to Live“: I bought it on a cheap gas station DVD that I couldn’t pass up because it also had “Land of the Free” (Shatner!) We haven’t watched “Five Minutes” yet, but I am trying to sell the Saturday Movie Group on it because it sounds interesting. Johnny Cash plays a psychotic killer in one of only two “theatrical film roles” he played in his career (as opposed to appearances on TV and in documentaries).

Mr. Holland’s other acting credits include “Swamp Girl” and “The Black Klansman” (1966).

NYT obit for Jim Gordon, which, while late, is better than some of the other obits I’ve seen.

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

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