The NFL regular season started last night.
The NFL loser update will return on Tuesday (because Monday night game) unless I am hit by a bus between now and then.
I am thinking that I will probably wait until Tuesday and combine the NFL loser update with the White Sox update, so I can take care of them both in one swell foop.
This may not the five-alarm fire I thought it was at first, but it is still pretty significant to say the least.
The police commissioner. They seized the police commissioner’s phones. Wow.
Among the other officials the federal investigators sought information from were the deputy mayor for public safety and a senior adviser to the mayor who is one of his closest confidants, the people said. Both men have had other legal challenges.
The agents also searched the home and seized the phone of a consultant who is the brother of both the schools chancellor and one of the deputy mayors, the people said.
The nature of the investigations is unclear, but it appears that one is focused on the senior City Hall officials and the other touches on the police commissioner, the people said.
…
Representatives of the City Hall officials — the first deputy mayor, Sheena Wright; her partner, Schools Chancellor David C. Banks; the deputy mayor for public safety, Philip Banks III; and a senior adviser to the mayor, Timothy Pearson — could not be reached or declined to comment.
The consultant, Terence Banks, a brother of Philip Banks and David Banks, recently opened a government and community relations firm aimed at closing a gap “between New York’s intricate infrastructure and political landscape.” He, too, could not be reached for comment.
Several of the officials had their phones seized or records of their communications subpoenaed.
…
…
In 2013, Ms. Wright and David and Philip Banks were involved in an incident that raised ethical questions. Ms. Wright and Gregg Walker, her then husband, had a dispute that led to mutual allegations of domestic abuse and the arrest of both people. The City reported that David Banks called his brother Philip, then a high-ranking police official. The charges were dropped.
Ms. Wright has denied any wrongdoing in the case, telling The New York Times in 2022 that she “never asked anyone to make any phone calls” on her behalf and that she was released “almost immediately not because of any outside influence, but because the facts of the case were so obvious.”
…
After taking office in 2022, Mr. Adams selected Philip Banks as his top aide overseeing public safety, though Mr. Banks himself had previously been ensnared in a federal criminal investigation.
Years earlier, the same federal prosecutors’ office conducting the current investigations named him an unindicted co-conspirator in an expansive corruption case that led to prison time for Mr. Banks’s then close friend Norman Seabrook, at the time a leader of the city’s correction officers’ union, among others.
Over the course of two years, prosecutors scrutinized Mr. Banks’s acceptance of gifts in 2013 and 2014 while he was chief of department, the city’s top uniformed police official. The gifts included paid vacations to the Dominican Republic and Los Angeles, cigars and a ring worn by Muhammad Ali. He received gifts from and socialized with two businessmen who were trying to curry favor with city leaders. One later pleaded guilty to criminal charges, cooperating with prosecutors, while the other was convicted at trial.
But prosecutors did not charge Mr. Banks, concluding that they did not have sufficient evidence to prove that he had taken official action in exchange for the gifts he received, people familiar with the case have said.
Nobody will go on the record as knowing what’s going on, but there’s speculation that it is tied to that whole weird Turkish consolate thing.
Or it could be something else. It sounds like the whole Adams administration is so packed with corruption, they can’t even keep the lid screwed on. Of course, all suspects are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. And to be fair, none of the subjects of the raids have been charged with any crimes.
Yet.
Rael Enteen, VP of content for the Washington Commanders, has been suspended. Which isn’t technically a firing, but I kind of have a feeling it is going to turn into one.
What happened?
Mr. Enteen met a woman on the Hinge dating app. He went out to dinner with her twice. During those dates, he made some…unfortunate comments.
He told…that, “over 50% of our roster is white religious, and God says, ‘F— the gays.’ Their interpretation. I don’t buy any of that. Another big chunk is low-income African Americans that comes from a community that is inherently very homophobic.”
…Enteen also said some players are “dumb as hell” and said some who were smart don’t stay that way after getting hit in the head too many times. He also said those who “get their heads knocked around a few times” are more susceptible to conspiracy theories.
Enteen also said, “I don’t think the commissioner of the NFL hates gay people, hates black people. Jerry Jones, who really runs the NFL, I think he hates gay people, black people.”
Enteen, who was with the New York Jets for two years before coming to Washington, called the league’s social justice initiatives “performative.”
“It’s not done out of the goodness of their heart,” he said. “It’s done because George Floyd changed the game … It’s to make as much money as possible. The NFL cares about the bottom line, like any corporation, above all else.”
Enteen said because the league makes so much money, “they can faux prioritize DEI for the sake of good publicity.
“Enteen told…that “most of the fans are high-school-educated alcoholics” and called them “mouth breathers.”
There were just two problems with these comments:
1) His date recorded them.
2) His date was actually “…an undercover reporter for the O’Keefe Media Group.”
Kind of a big “whoops” there. But remember: these people hate you, and they want your money.
Edited to add 9/5: The suspension indeed became a firing.
Paul Harrell, noted gun YouTuber. (Hattip: Lawrence.) McThag.
Edited to add: The Firearm Blog. NYPost, which kind of makes me want to go “!!!!”. On the other hand, the NYP ran an article yesterday about a heron eating a rat, so running an obit for a popular YouTuber, even if he was a gun guy, is probably closer to news.
Rob “Rabbit” Pitt, car guy. Sacramento Bee. (Hattip: FotB RoadRich.)
Archived NYT obit for James Darren, which did not go up until after I posted yesterday.
James Darren, actor and musician.
Other credits include the good “Hawaii Five-O”, “S.W.A.T.” (the original), “Black Sheep Squadron” (aka “Baa Baa Black Sheep”), and “Renegade”.
Simon Verity, stone carver.
Mr. Verity was chosen to direct the St. John the Divine project in 1988. That venture placed him on a scaffold on Amsterdam Avenue for parts of nine years, leading a team that, using hammers, mallets and chisels, carved 31 biblical figures, including Moses, Elijah, John the Baptist, Abraham and Sarah, from limestone blocks in the niches that frame the great brass doors at the Portal of Paradise.
One carving, a reimagining of the burning of Jerusalem, depicts the destruction of the World Trade Center and other city landmarks under a nuclear mushroom. (It was created more than a decade before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.) The carving illustrates signs of a rebirth, building on the city’s ashes.
The Very Rev. Patrick Malloy, dean of the cathedral, said in a statement that many tourists visited the cathedral just to see the portal.
“Mr. Verity took the long-dead worthies of the Hebrew and Christian traditions and made them things of wonder for people in our own day,” he added. “Beyond this present age, his work will endure into a future beyond us.”
…
…
One of his original grottoes was at Leeds Castle, in Kent, England, which visitors entered through a suite of rooms. Nearly all the rooms were encrusted, from ceiling to floor, with colorful mosaics made from minerals, shells and animal bones, and some of the walls were covered with elaborate limestone sculptures.
In addition, he carved statues of four whales and a fountain for King Charles III when Charles was the Prince of Wales; a teacup made of broken crockery for Elton John’s garden; a seated king in the front of Wells Cathedral, whose restoration he also worked on; and “The Agony in the Garden,” which depicts Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane before his betrayal.
Mr. Verity created fountains and a sundial at the American Academy in Rome and headstones for the writer Nancy Mitford; George Wein, the Newport Jazz Festival impresario, and his wife, Joyce (for which he sculpted a jazz band); and the British poet laureate John Betjeman.
Final score of today’s game: White Sox 3, Baltimore 13.
The White Sox are currently 31-108 and have lost their last 11 games. 31-108 puts them at a .223 (heh!) winning percentage, which projects out to nearly 126 losses this season. Over the weekend, they set a franchise record for most losses in a season.
At this point, with 23 games left in the season, the Sox will have to win 12 of those just to finish at 119 losses and miss tying the modern MLB record for futility. That would be a winning percentage of .521 in the stretch.
Big Boy is coming to Texas!
No, not that one.
Not them, either. They are (or were) already good Texas boys. But I threw that in because I recently discovered a fun fact about one of the Big Boys, which I will put at the bottom of this post.
This Big Boy is Big Boy 4014, the Union Pacific steam locomotive. It is the second largest steam locomotive ever built, and the largest still in operation.
You may recall that I linked to a couple of videos on Big Boy during the recent unpleasantness.
Here’s the UP schedule for the “Heartland of America Tour”. The tour has already kicked off, but it doesn’t look like Big Boy will reach Texas until September 17th.
It will be in:
Check the schedule for more details, and keep in mind that the schedule may change due to mechanical or other issues.
I’m trying to decide if I want to go to Bryan, which is slightly closer, but is “viewing only”, or Houston, which is a little further away, but seems to be more open to the public for touring. If I can pull it together to do one or the other, I’ll post a report here.
That fun Big Boys fact I promised you? Tim Kopra, who played horns with the band, went on to bigger and better things. He became a NASA astronaut. Here’s his NASA biography.
Unusual career trajectory, I think.
Lawrence sent this over, but it was already on my radar and just waiting until I had time.
Johnny Gaudreau, winger for the Columbus Blue Jackets of the NHL, was killed yesterday along with his brother. He was 31. His brother was 29. NHL.
According to the reports, Mr. Gaudreau and his brother, Matthew, were out cycling. A car moved over to one side to give them clearance as it passed: another driver, who was allegedly drunk, tried to pass that vehicle on the right and hit the two brothers from behind.
…
I do not want to say this is the highest and best achievement of Western civilization: that would be either Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or deep-fried butter on a stick, depending on my mood.
But this. This is up there.
At the Minnesota State Fair, you can get deep-fried ranch dressing.
…
Personally, I’m not that big a ranch dressing fan. Also, this loses points for not being on a stick (as far as I can tell). But it is a pretty solid effort. Perhaps we will see this at next year’s State Fair in Texas.
I have an impression that the Colt Woodsman looms large in American popular culture.
Chandler, in one of his stories (“Trouble Is My Business“), had two gunmen come through the door, one armed with “a Colt Woodsman with a long barrel and the front sight filed off. That meant he thought he was good.”
(Sorry. Just wanted to break the wall of text up a bit.)
I wrote a while back about Robert Telles, the former public administrator of Clark County, who was charged with murdering Jeff German. Mr. German was a reporter for the Las Vegas Review-Journal who had been covering Mr. Telles management of the office, and discovered all sorts of problems: hostile work environment, affairs with subordinates, those kind of things.
Mr. Telles went on trial a couple of weeks ago.
He was convicted yesterday of first degree murder. He’s already been sentenced to life in prison, though he can apply for parole in 20 years.
Coverage from the R-J by way of archive.is. Since it is close to the end of the month, I’m going to burn a NYT gift link to their coverage of the story.
Things have been kind of slow on the obit front. I don’t know if it just too hot for people to die, or what’s going on, but it just doesn’t seem like there’s been a lot to report.
I have had this one in my pocket for a few days now. I’m wondering if it will ring a bell with any of my readers: Mitzi McCall.
Ms. McCall was a pretty successful entertainer. She had a comedy act with her husband, Charlie Brill.
They got a big break on the night of February 9, 1964. They were booked to appear on “The Ed Sullivan Show”. The lists of acts that night included:
Oh, yeah, there was one other act booked that night: a group of obscure British musicians that called themselves the Beatles.
In their sketch, Mr. Brill played a producer casting a young actress for a new movie. Ms. McCall played his secretary and three other roles: a nervous former Miss Palm Springs, a pushy stage mother and a Method actor. The sketch fell with a thud, except for some chuckles when Ms. McCall tossed in an ad lib as the stage mother.
“My little girl was waiting outside, you know,” she said. “She used to be one of the Beatles.”
“Oh, what happened?” Mr. Brill asked.
“Somebody stepped on her.”
They bombed. Their agent didn’t call them for six months. But they recovered:
Ms. McCall was 93. Her husband, Mr. Brill, survives her.
She was also the dry cleaner’s wife in that “Seinfeld” episode. Other credits include “Twilight Zone” (both the original and the 1986 revival), “The Jim Backus Show”, “The Dennis O’Keefe Show”, the 1990 “Dragnet”, and “Madman of the People”.