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.
Major General William A. Anders (USAF – ret.), Apollo 8 astronaut.
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On Christmas Eve, during their 10 orbits of the moon, the three astronauts, whose movements were telecast to millions around the world, took photos of Earth as it rose over the lunar horizon, appearing as a blue marble amid the blackness of the heavens. But only Major Anders, who oversaw their spacecraft’s electronic and communications systems, shot color film.
His photo shook the world. Known as “Earthrise,” it was reproduced in a 1969 postage stamp bearing the words “In the beginning God …” It was an inspiration for the first Earth Day, in 1970, and appeared on the cover of Life magazine’s 2003 book “100 Photographs That Changed the World.”
Betty Anne Rees, actress. Other credits include “Lou Grant”, “The F.B.I.”, “Bearcats!”…
…and “Mannix”. (“With Intent to Kill”, season 4, epsiode 17. She was “Cora Hayden”.)
Seriously, I thought by now I’d have a clever intro for this. But I don’t. My Strategic Clever Reserves are exhausted. So why don’t we jump into this one? Warning: I think this is longer than usual…
Alan Scarfe, actor.
Other credits include “Jake and the Fatman”, “Columbo”, two spinoffs of a minor 1960s SF TV series, and “Iron Eagle II”.
Harry Roland. This is an odd obit, but an example of the kind of thing the NYT does well.
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David Boaz, noted libertarian.
Robert Persichitti (US Navy – ret.) has passed away at the age of 102.
Persichitti, meanwhile, had served in Iwo Jima, Okinawa and Guam as a radioman second class on the command ship USS Eldorado during WWII.
He was among the US troops who witnessed the raising of the American flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945 — a moment that would go on to become one of the most famous photos captured during the war.
“I was on the deck,” Persichitti told Stars and Stripes in a 2019 interview when he returned to the region. “When I got on the island today, I just broke down.”
He was part of a group of veterans traveling to Normandy when he fell ill, was airlifted off the ship, and passed away in a hospital.
Bob Kelley. You might not know the name, but if you’re into cars, you know the book.
The Kelley Blue Book started in 1926 at the Kelley Kar Co., a Los Angeles dealership founded by Mr. Kelley’s father, Sidney, and an uncle, Leslie Kelley. As one of the biggest used-car dealerships in the region — and eventually the country — they had a constant need for new inventory, and the book originated as a simple list of prices that they were willing to pay for certain cars in certain conditions.
Mr. Kelley joined the company after the end of World War II, a prime time to get into the used-car business. The war had put an end to new-car production, and it would be several years before automakers could meet the demand.
He was initially in charge of both valuations on new inventory and compiling the book, and he brought a jeweler’s eye to the job. He studied all the factors that go into deciding a car’s road-worthiness and visual appeal — mileage, sound system, paint color — then developed a long list of data points that, combined, would produce a price.
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The Kelleys closed their dealership in 1962 and sold the Kelley Blue Book to a fellow dealer in Los Angeles. By then Sidney and Leslie Kelley had largely left the business, but the new owners kept Bob Kelley and the rest of the team as employees.Mr. Kelley worried at first that without the dealership, confidence in the book would diminish. Instead its popularity continued to grow, largely because of Mr. Kelley’s reputation for evaluating cars.
As he deepened the data underlying his valuations, the Kelley Blue Book became increasingly valuable beyond used-car dealerships. Courts, insurance companies and banks all used it to evaluate what for most people constituted one of the biggest assets they would ever own.
He also expanded the scope of the book to encompass new cars as well as used, and to include motorcycles, boats, RVs and trucks as well as luxury vehicles and imports. Eventually, an updated edition of the book appeared every other month, selling a total of a million copies a year.
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Tom Bower, actor. Other credits include “Hill Street Blues”, “Hardcastle and McCormick”, and “The Rockford Files”.
Parnelli Jones, one of the great racers.
Jones was best known for his exploits at the Indy 500 in the 1960s, when it was still the premier event in auto racing. He was the oldest surviving winner of the race.
“Parnelli Jones was the greatest driver of his era,” his contemporary Mario Andretti once said. “He had aggressiveness and also a finesse that no one else possessed. And he won on everything he put his hands on.”Jones captured dozens of races, winning six times in Indy races and four times in NASCAR events and triumphing in off-road, sports car, sprint and midget races as well.
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Janis Page, actress. She was 101. NYT (archived).
Other credits include “The Rockford Files”, “Lanigan’s Rabbi”, “Banacek”…
…and “Mannix”. (“A Way to Dusty Death”, season 7, episode 2. She was “Georgia Durian”.)
Brother Marquis, rapper with 2 Live Crew.
Larry Allen, of the Dallas Cowboys.
Allen was a second-round pick out of Sonoma State in 1994 and quickly became one of the most dominant offensive linemen in the NFL.
He was named to the Pro Bowl 11 times and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013. He played for the Cowboys from 1994 to 2005, winning a Super Bowl in 1995. He spent his final two seasons with the San Francisco 49ers.
He was 52.