Obit watch: November 4, 2023.

November 4th, 2023

David Kirke. The NYT calls him the first person to make a modern bungee jump, and he was a co-founder of the Dangerous Sports Club.

“We hadn’t tested it or anything like that,” Mr. Kirke told the news site BristolLive in 2019. “We were called the Dangerous Sports Club, and testing it first wouldn’t have been particularly dangerous.”
Clad in a top hat and tails, with a bottle of Champagne in hand, Mr. Kirke, who was nursing a hangover from an all-night party, was the first to take the plunge thatday. The other jumpers — Alan Weston, Tim Hunt and Simon Keeling — “waited to see what would happen to me,” Mr. Kirke told ITV News in 2019. “When I started bouncing up again, they all jumped.”
Police promptly arrested the jumpers, charged them with breach of peace and tossed them behind bars for a spell before letting them off with a small fine. Jail was hardly a traumatic experience. “They were the only police force I’ve ever known to bring half-empty bottles of red wine, from the party, in a brown paper bag and give it to us in prison,” he told ITV.

Tim Cahill did a memorable profile of Mr. Kirke and the DSC, which is reprinted in one of his books.

Straddling the line between danger sports and performance art, his stunts included steering a carousel horse down a ski slope in the Swiss Alps; piloting an inflatable kangaroo suspended by balloons over the English Channel; skateboarding among the running bulls of Pamplona, Spain; and arranging a sit-down meal on the rim of an erupting volcano on the Caribbean island of Saint Vincent.

I have a recollection from Mr. Cahill’s profile of another incident involving a grand piano and a piano bench, both on skis, and a member of the DSC playing the piano as it skied downhill. These are the kind of gleeful British eccentrics that I wish I had been able to know while they were alive.

Lawrence sent over an obit for Peter S. Fischer, screenwriter and producer. He was already on my list, but I skipped over him yesterday.

Other credits include two out of five episodes of “Richie Brockelman, Private Eye”, “McMillan and Wife”, “Rest in Peace, Mrs. Columbo” (the “Columbo” TV movie: I wanted to specifically call that out, because at last week’s SDC we were discussing the odd history of “Mrs. Columbo“, the TV series, which has nothing to do with “Columbo”.), and ‘Ellery Queen” (the 1975 TV series).

Shannon Wilcox, actress. Other credits include “Jake and the Fatman”, “Alien Nation”, “Crazy Like a Fox”, “Magnum, P.I.”, “Mrs. Columbo”, and the good “Hawaii Five-O”.

Posted in Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

Firings watch.

November 3rd, 2023

According to ESPN, Connor Stalions, the guy at the center of the Michigan sign-stealing scandal, has been officially fired.

Also, according to the tabloid of record, Michigan fired Alex Yood, who I’ve seen described as a “low-level” staffer. This firing seems to have nothing to do with sign-stealing, and is quite frankly weird.

Back in September, a man who went by “Boopac Shakur” posted a video on Instagram that purported to show Alex Yood had tried to pick up a 13-year-old girl online. Mr. Yood has not been charged by any law enforcement agency with any crime. “Boopac Shakur”‘s persona on social media seems to have been a “To Catch a Predator” wanna-be.

In the video, the man alleged to be Yood is wearing Michigan gear and seen carrying a bottle of alcohol at a store when he is confronted by two men.
At first, Yood appears to believe he has been caught by the police, but the men inform him that they are not the authorities.
When the men ask Yood what he is doing, he answers that he bought the liquor for a graduation party that he is hosting in a couple days.
Yood is asked how old he is and says he is 22.
The men ask him what he’s doing at the store and how far he drove, and Yood responds, “I’m not looking for trouble.”
The men then present Yood with photos of his online exchange with the person he allegedly thought was a 13-year-old girl.
Yood says he didn’t know she was 13, and they respond that he had been told her age twice in the exchange.
The two men then start screaming in the store: “This man is here to meet a 13-year-old girl!”

Again, Mr. Yood has not been charged with any crime, to the best of my knowledge and according to the reports I’ve seen.

Interestingly, “Boopac Shakur” (real name Robert Wayne Lee) was murdered not too long after the video was posted.

On Sept. 29 at around 10:30 p.m., Lee was in a restaurant in the area of Pontiac, Mich., — a city 30 miles outside of Detroit — when he was shot and killed by a person during an argument.
The following day, investigators told reporters Lee confronted two males sitting at a table and accused one of them of being a pedophile before punching him. Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said one suspect pulled out a knife while the other pulled a gun, shooting Lee multiple times.
But in an updated statement on Tuesday, Bouchard said this no longer appeared to be the case.
“When we originally responded to the call, the community inferred he could have been there for that reason, to confront a pedophile,” Bouchard told NBC News.
“As we get deeper in the investigation, we have yet to find any corroborative information on that point,” he added.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 3, 2023.

November 3rd, 2023

Ken Mattingly, astronaut. NASA.

He was the command module pilot for Apollo 16 and commanded two shuttle missions (STS-4 and STS-51C). But he’s perhaps most famous for a mission he didn’t fly.

He was scheduled to be the command module pilot for Apollo 13, but was pulled from the mission at the last minute (after it was determined he’d been exposed to measles) and was replaced by Jack Swigert. We all know what happened next.

Commander Mattingly did not, in fact, develop German measles, and he played a significant part in the plan developed by the astronauts and mission control in Houston to get them home safely.
The three astronauts crowded into the undamaged lunar module, although it had been built to hold only two astronauts and was designed solely for landing on the moon and then returning to the orbiting mother ship.
Commander Mattingly read off a long and detailed list of instructions for the astronauts to follow as they used the lunar lander as a “lifeboat” to get them back toward Earth while short on power and food.

Interview with Mr. Mattingly:

Posted in Obits, Science | Comments Closed

Bagatelle (#97)

November 2nd, 2023

Shot (click to embiggen):

(It’s the “inspirational sign” clearly labeled “inspirational sign” that gets me.)

Chaser:

“It’s Not A Crack House, It’s A Crack Home”.

Posted in Bagatelle | Comments Closed

Norts spews (also, loser update).

November 2nd, 2023

I feel an obligation to say something about the Texas Rangers winning the World Serious.

I was thinking about making a “Damn Yankees” reference, but it turns out that’s the wrong Washington Senators. Good thing I checked first.

NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:

Memphis

Kind of looks like a bad year for bears. And it started out with such promise…

Posted in Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 2, 2023.

November 2nd, 2023

Bobby Knight. NYT. ESPN.

Tribute from ESPN by Jay Bilas.

Knight’s acts of kindness were rarely publicized, and if I had publicized those I knew of while he was alive, he would not have liked it. Knight played for the legendary Fred Taylor at Ohio State, and near the end of Taylor’s life, Knight would sneak into Taylor’s hospital room to hold his hand. When a legendary basketball talent evaluator was having financial difficulty late in life, Knight paid his outstanding bills and rent, without telling a soul.

Don Laughlin. You may never have heard of him, but you’ve heard of the town he created: Laughlin, Nevada.

Taking chances seemed to come naturally to Donald. As a teenager, he stockpiled cash from trapping mink and muskrat and used it to buy mail-order slot machines, installing them himself in local pubs.
Demand was high, and before long he was making $500 a week (nearly $7,000 in today’s money).
The principal of the one-room schoolhouse he attended for high school was not amused. “He said to get out of the gambling business or get out of high school,” Mr. Laughlin told The Review-Journal. “I said, ‘I’m making three times what you are, so I’m out the door.’”

David Mitchell. Here’s another person who you may not have heard of. I had, because this is a great story.

In 1975, Mr. Mitchell and his then-wife bought a struggling weekly newspaper, the Point Reyes Light.

In 1973, a grand jury raised questions about fiscal improprieties and child abuse by Synanon, which had once been widely respected but had devolved into an authoritarian cult that declared itself a religion — the Church of Synanon — to become tax exempt. Later that year, reporters in San Francisco found that the Synanon drug rehabilitation center in Marshall, Calif., less than 10 miles from Point Reyes Station, was hoarding what turned out to be $60,000 worth of weapons.
Mr. Mitchell began his own investigation that same year, joined by his wife; their one reporter, John Maddeen; and Richard J. Ofshe, a sociology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who had studied Synanon. To them, it was a story in their own back yard that they couldn’t ignore.

…

The Mitchells wrote articles and editorials reporting on violence, terrorism and financial improprieties at Synanon. There were accounts that its founder, Charles Dederich, had demanded that men enrolled in the program undergo vasectomies and that pregnant women have abortions, and that hundreds of married couples switch partners.
In 1980, Mr. Dederich pleaded no contest to charges that he and two members of Synanon’s security force had conspired to commit murder by placing a rattlesnake in the mailbox of a lawyer who had sued the organization. Synanon disbanded in 1991.

The Point Reyes Light won the Pulitzer for public service in 1979 for the Synanon stories.

The lawyer and the rattlesnake.

It was said to have been only the fourth time since the prizes were first presented in 1917 that a weekly or one of its reporters won a Pulitzer. Mr. Mitchell kept the medal in his office safe.

One other aspect of the story I remember: most of the Pulitzer prizes come with a cash award. The public service prize does not. Which was sort of unfortunate, as the Light was a constantly struggling newspaper. (The Times blames Mr. Mitchell’s divorce from his second wife on the financial pressures involved in keeping the paper alive.)

Dwight Twilley, musician. As I’ve said before, I’m not much of a music guy and rely on other people for music commentary, but the name rings a faint bell with me…

Posted in Media, Music, Obits, Sports | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: November 1, 2023.

November 1st, 2023

Tyler Christopher, actor. Other credits include “20.0 Megaquake”, “Super Volcano” (both of those were Asylum movies), “Boomtown”, “Crossing Jordan” (the “Quincy” of the 2000s except it sucked), and “CSI: Original Recipe“.

Frank Howard, player for the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Washington Senators.

As a Dodger in 1960, he hit a ball over the left-field wall at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh that was found alongside a parked car some 560 feet from home plate.
Batting against Whitey Ford in Game 1 of the 1963 World Series, at the original Yankee Stadium, he hit a drive that landed, in fair territory, just to the left of the monuments to Yankee greats in center field, about 460 feet from home plate. He lumbered only as far as second base in what has been called the longest double in Yankee Stadium history.
In Game 4, he hit a 450-foot homer off Ford into the left-field mezzanine at Dodger Stadium, in a 2-1 victory that completed a Dodger sweep of the Series.
Howard drove in 1,119 runs in his long career. But he also struck out 1,460 times.

…

“Somebody was explaining to a visitor that some of the outfield seats in R.F.K. Stadium had been painted white to mark where some of my long home runs had landed,” Howard told The New York Times in 1981. “Ted turned to the guy and said, ‘All the green seats are for the times he struck out.’”

…

He was an All-Star for four consecutive seasons as a Senator, mostly with losing teams. On Sept. 30, 1971, he hit the Senators’ last home run at R.F.K. Stadium before the team left Washington and became the Texas Rangers.

Posted in Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Firings watch.

November 1st, 2023

What a great time of year. We’re in the middle of a cold snap right now…

…and the Raiders fired head coach Josh McDaniels and general manager Dave Ziegler.

McDaniels and Ziegler, both hired in January 2022, inherited a 10-7 team that made an unexpected run to the playoffs during the 2021 season — the organization’s second postseason bid since 2002 — under interim coach Rich Bisaccia and then-GM Mike Mayock, who took over following the in-season resignation of coach Jon Gruden.
Davis said at the time that McDaniels and Ziegler were expected to take the team to the “next step” in its evolution. Instead, the Raiders went a combined 9-16 without a playoff appearance under the new regime, as McDaniels finished his tenure with the third-worst record of any Raiders coach with at least 25 games.

Edited to add: ESPN is now reporting that the Raiders also fired Mick Lombardi, offensive coordinator.

da Bears fired David Walker, running backs coach.

Interestingly, while da Bears stink, the firing apparently wasn’t for that reason, but for unspecified “workplace conduct” issues.

Also interestingly:

Walker is the second coach on Matt Eberflus’ staff to leave in 2023. Defensive coordinator Alan Williams resigned suddenly on Sept. 21 and said he was going to “take care of my health and family.” The Sun-Times later confirmed his departure was related to conduct at Halas Hall.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 31, 2023.

October 31st, 2023

Judy Nugent, actress.

Other credits include “The Greatest Show on Earth”, “77 Sunset Strip”, and the “The Thin Man” TV series.

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 29, 2023.

October 29th, 2023

It turned into a busier weekend than I thought it was going to be, and it also turned out that there was more going on this weekend than I expected. I wanted to get these up today, as I have an eye doctor’s appointment tomorrow and am not sure how things are going to go afterwards.

Richard Moll. THR. I’ve mentioned before how much I liked the original “Night Court” and what a great ensemble those folks were.

Moll had a shaved head — he did that to play the warrior Hurok in the sci-fi film Metalstorm: The Destruction of Jared-Syn (1983) — when he auditioned for the role of Shannon on Night Court, created by Reinhold Weege.
“They said ‘Richard, the shaved head looks good. Will you shave your head for the part?” he recalled in a 2010 interview. “I said, ‘Are you kidding? I’ll shave my legs for the part. I’ll shave my armpits, I don’t care.’”

IMDB.

Joan Evans, actress who was shot by Farley Granger.

While director Nicholas Ray was doing reshoots on the film, Evans was “accidentally shot very, very seriously” in the arm by Granger when a gun he was carrying discharged in the hills outside Columbia, California, she told Hirsch. She needed emergency surgery and was hospitalized.

This is in the obit, but I did want to note that she was the love interest for Charles Drake’s character in “No Name On the Bullet“, about which I have written before and probably will again.

IMDB.

Matthew Perry. THR. IMDB. Everyone is on this like flies on a severed cow’s head at a Damien Hirst installation, and I don’t have anything to add.

Posted in Guns, Movies, Obits, TV | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 8, 2023.

October 29th, 2023

Houston sports teams will always break your heart.

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-17:

None.

That’s a wrap for this year. Maybe. We’ll see how the NBA looks later on this week.

Posted in Loser, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: October 27, 2023.

October 27th, 2023

Lawrence sent over an obit for Stephen Kandel, screenwriter.

He has 103 credits as a writer in IMDB. Man wrote for everything. “Harry O”. “The Magician”. “Bearcats!”. “Banacek”. “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”. “The Bold Ones: The Lawyers”. The good “Hawaii Five-0”. Two episodes of a minor SF TV series from the 1960s, and two episodes of the animated spinoff…

…and eleven episodes of “Mannix”, which is more than I want to list here.

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Obits, TV | 2 Comments »

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