Obit watch: November 29, 2023.

November 29th, 2023

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.)

Posted in Movies, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

TMQ Watch: November 28, 2023.

November 28th, 2023

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…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Well, that’s done.

November 27th, 2023

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.

Reich is the third full-time head coach to be fired by Tepper since taking over as owner in 2018. He chose not to hire former interim head coach Steve Wilks — who went 6-6 during his run last year — in favor of Reich this offseason.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: November 26, 2023.

November 26th, 2023

Betty Rollin, journalist and author.

In “First, You Cry” (1976), Ms. Rollin dealt candidly, and at times irreverently, with her cancer diagnosis, which was delayed a year after she first felt a lump in her left breast. She wrote that her internist had dismissed it as a cyst, and that her mammographer had looked at the images and told her to come back in a year for another look.

…

In the book, Ms. Rollin wrote about her mastectomy, a divorce and the love affair that followed it, and her acceptance that her life did not end with the loss of a breast. Her frank writing in “First, You Cry” was part of a growing openness about discussing breast cancer publicly and the need for early detection, as was highlighted dramatically in 1974 when Betty Ford, the first lady at the time, spoke of her radical mastectomy.

…

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.

…

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.

…

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.)

Posted in 1970s, Books, Media, TV | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

November 26th, 2023

Tom Allen out as head coach of Indiana. (“Sources say”)

Seven seasons, 33-49, and 18-43 in conference. Indiana lost their final three games and went 3-9 this season.

According to ESPN, Indiana will have to pay a $20.8 million buyout, since they fired Allen before December 1st of this year. If they had waited until next year, the buyout would have been only $8 million.

ESPN is reporting (“sources say”) that Dana Holgorsen is out at the University of Houston. I have been unable to find any backup for this on the HouChron website or the two local TV station websites I checked.

Houston went 4-8 in its inaugural Big 12 season, which included a loss at Rice in September and three straight losses to end the year. The Cougars finished 2-7 in the Big 12, with their wins coming in overtime against Baylor and on a last-second 49-yard touchdown against West Virginia.

31-28 over five seasons. The buyout is estimated at $14.8 million, but there’s an offset clause if he gets another coaching job.

Edited to add: the Holgorsen firing seems official now. HouChron

Edited to add 2: Some additional firing updates I ran across on ESPN. I’m just going to cover them quickly:

Terry Bowden gone as head coach of Louisana-Monroe. 10-26, 5-10 in conference, and 2-10 this season.

Frank Cignetti Jr. out as offensive coordinator for Pitt.

Dana Dimel out as head coach of UT-El Paso. 20-49 in six seasons, one bowl appearance in 2021, but 3-9 this season.

Posted in Firings, Sports | 1 Comment »

TMQ Watch watch.

November 26th, 2023

Well. Well well well. Well.

We were, as a matter of fact, sitting in church this morning, waiting for the service to start, when we received an email.

Someone who wishes to remain monogamous anonymous has gifted us a one-month subscription to Gregg Easterbrook’s Substack.

Our first reaction was: we’d really like to know who this person is. Perhaps they will out themselves in comments?

Our second reaction was: what a kind and thoughtful present to kick off the season of giving. Thank you, masked man!

Our third reaction was: how are we going to work this? At the very least, we feel an obligation to do a TMQ Watch for each new TMQ going forward. Should we go back and do the ones from earlier in the season? That’s doubtful, because the temptation to view them through the lens of hindsight is very high. Also, we currently have two major projects we’re working on for the Smith and Wesson Collector’s Association, so we don’t have as much time as we would like.

But we will promise to TMQ Watch TMQ, starting with this coming Tuesday’s entry. And, even though it is only a month subscription, we will promise to TMQ Watch TMQ through his post-Superb Owl column, which should wrap up the TMQ season. Even if we have to pay out of our own pocket. (That is not to say that we will not accept another gift subscription for another month, but even if that doesn’t happen, we’ll take on the assignment anyway.)

Posted in NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 24, 2023.

November 24th, 2023

Charles Peters, founder of the Washington Monthly. When I was young, I spent a lot of time in the high school library, which had a subscription to the WM under Peters. I remember the magazine’s habit of challenging conventional wisdom and orthodoxy: for example, an article arguing that abortion should remain legal…but should also be a rare event, and should be strongly discouraged under almost all circumstances.

Bob Contant, co-founder of the St. Mark’s Bookshop in NYC. I’m mostly noting this here because of the insight it provides into NYC bookselling:

After working as the manager of the 8th Street Bookshop in Greenwich Village, Mr. Contant, along with Mr. McCoy and two other colleagues, Tom Evans and Peter Dargis, opened the St. Mark’s Bookshop in November 1977 in a $345-a-month storefront at 13 St. Mark’s Place. (Today, apartments in the building sell for upward of $1.6 million, and the Thai-inspired dessert emporium on the ground floor offers Soku tangerine soju seltzer for $10 a can.)
As the East Village exploded with punk vibrancy and business boomed, the store moved to more spacious quarters at 12 St. Mark’s Place in 1987. Six years later, the two remaining partners, Mr. Contant and Mr. McCoy, were invited by the Cooper Union to relocate nearby to the institution’s new dormitory development at 31 Third Avenue, a sleek, award-winning space designed by Zivkovic Associates. They were able to do so thanks to a generous loan from Robert Rodale, a publisher of wellness books and magazines.
But the 2008 recession, combined with a proposed doubling of the store’s $20,000-a-month rent, made the space unaffordable, even after support from Salman Rushdie and Patti Smith, a crowdsourcing campaign that raised $24,000 and a concession by Cooper Union in 2011 to reduce the rent temporarily.
In 2014, the store moved to its fourth and final home, at 136 East Third Street, a side street, as a commercial tenant in a city housing project a half-mile southeast of the original location. Mr. Contant bought out Mr. McCoy for $1, and by the time he grudgingly shuttered the bookshop in its last incarnation in 2016, he owed the city something like $70,000 in back rent; he also owed hefty sums to publishers and wholesalers and some $35,000 in unpaid sales tax. Mr. Contant went bankrupt.

To be fair:

The store never invested in potential revenue add-ons like regular book fairs or readings, and it never sold used books, offered deep discounts or opened an in-store cafe.
Instead, it stubbornly stuck to its classic business model. It sold avant-garde literature, books from small independent presses on subjects like queer theory and anarchy, artisanal greeting cards, art monographs, photo albums of Russian prison tattoos and a selection of 2,000 magazines and underground newspapers, as well as booklets that hungry local writers delivered on consignment.

Posted in Books, Media, Obits | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

November 24th, 2023

Jack Del Rio out as defensive coordinator of the Washington NFL team.

The Commanders’ defense ranks last in points allowed and 29th in yards allowed — one year after ranking seventh and third, respectively, in those categories. The Commanders consistently gave up big plays and failed to make many of their own.
Washington has allowed a league-high 49 pass plays of 20 yards or more. The Commanders haven’t intercepted a pass in the past six games or caused a turnover in the past three.

Washington lost 45-10 to Dallas yesterday, is 4-8 this season, has lost three games in a row and eight out of the last 10.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Happy Thanksgiving!

November 22nd, 2023

You know, I always say “It’s just not Thanksgiving until the Detroit Lions lose.”

But this year, the Lions are 8-2. And they are favored by a good margin over Green Bay. While I am generally sympathetic to the Packers because of their unusual structure (as you know, Bob) they are 4-6 this year, and I kind of resent the way the team is being run.

Plus, pigpen51.

So I find myself in the unusual position this year, in terms of rooting for laundry, of actually hoping that..the Detroit Lions win.

What mad universe is this, anyway?

Posted in NFL, Sports | 3 Comments »

Entertainment news.

November 22nd, 2023

Another interesting story by way of Hacker News:

Carl Erik Rinsch is a director. He has one feature length credit in IMDB: “47 Ronin”, the Keanu Reeves movie. It apparently did not do well, and he allegedly fought with the producers.

However, in 2018, Neflix signed a deal with him to produce a SF series called “White Horse” (later “Conquest”). They’ve put $55 million into the series.

And they have nothing to show for it.

Soon after he signed the contract, Mr. Rinsch’s behavior grew erratic, according to members of the show’s cast and crew, texts and emails reviewed by The New York Times, and court filings in a divorce case brought by his wife. He claimed to have discovered Covid-19’s secret transmission mechanism and to be able to predict lightning strikes. He gambled a large chunk of the money from Netflix on the stock market and cryptocurrencies. He spent millions of dollars on a fleet of Rolls-Royces, furniture and designer clothing.

…

Mr. Rinsch transferred $10.5 million of the $11 million to his personal brokerage account at Charles Schwab and, using options, placed risky bets on the stock market, according to copies of his bank and brokerage statements included in the divorce case. One of his wagers was that shares of the biotech firm Gilead Sciences, which had announced that it was testing an antiviral drug on Covid patients, would soar. Another was that the S&P 500 index, which had already declined more than 30 percent, would fall further. Mr. Rinsch lost $5.9 million in a matter of weeks.

Relevant to Lawrence‘s interests:

Mr. Rinsch had begun using what remained of the $11 million that Netflix had wired his production company to place bets on crypto. He transferred more than $4 million from his Schwab account to an account on the Kraken exchange and bought Dogecoin, a dog-themed cryptocurrency, according to an account statement reviewed by The Times. Unlike his stock market investments, this one paid off: When he liquidated his Dogecoin positions in May 2021, he had a balance of nearly $27 million.

(Non-archive NYT link. You may be able to read this if you use incognito mode.)

Posted in TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: November 22, 2023.

November 22nd, 2023

Willie Hernández, relief pitcher for the Detroit Tigers. ESPN.

The left-handed Hernández had a 13-year career but is mostly known for his role as the closer on one of the most dominant teams in the past 40 years. The 1984 Tigers, led by Alan Trammell, Lou Whitaker and Jack Morris, opened 35-5 and cruised to the AL East title with a 104-58 mark before sweeping Kansas City in the AL Championship Series and beating San Diego in a five-games World Series.
Hernández had a 9-3 record and 32 saves in 33 chances in 1984, with a 1.92 ERA over 80 games and 140⅓ innings. He is among just 11 pitchers to win the Cy Young and MVP in the same year, edging Kansas City’s Dan Quisenberry for Cy Young in 1984 and Minnesota’s Kent Hrbek for MVP.

(Thanks to pigpen51 for the tip.)

Herbert Gold, novelist.

Carlton Pearson. I had not heard of him previously, but I find his story interesting. He was a prominent evangelist who ran a megachurch in Tulsa. He was a board member of Oral Roberts University. And then…

While watching a TV report in the 1990s on children starving during the Rwanda genocide, Bishop Pearson had an epiphany. He could not believe that God would consign innocent souls to hell who had not accepted Jesus Christ as savior before their deaths. He concluded that hell does not exist, except as earthly misery created by human beings; that God loves all mankind; and that everyone is already saved.
It was a view he shared in interviews and preached at his church, the Higher Dimensions Family Church, which he co-founded in 1981 and which grew into one of the largest in Tulsa, known for its multiracial pews in a city and a faith, evangelical Christianity, that was largely segregated.
“I believe that most people on planet Earth will go to heaven, because of Calvary, because of the unconditional love of God and the redemptive work of the cross, which is already accomplished,” Bishop Pearson told The Tulsa World in 2002, adding that he included Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists among the loved. “I’m re-evaluating everything,” he said.

This led to him being branded a heretic, leaving the denomination he’d been ordained in, and losing his megachurch.

Mr. Bogle, Bishop Pearson’s agent, said he often asked him about whether he regretted the loss of prestige, income and worshipers that followed his turning away from Pentecostal Christian orthodoxy.
“I said, ‘You’ve lost a lot of money, don’t you think you should have just shut up?’” Mr. Bogle said. “He would always say, ‘No, I don’t believe I made a mistake.’”

Posted in Books, Obits, Religion, Sports | Comments Closed

Blame Canada! Blame Canada!

November 21st, 2023

Matt Canada out as offensive coordinator of the Pittsburgh Steelers. Non-archive link, extremely aggressive about turning off your ad blocker. Archive link, which may not work for some people. ESPN, which will probably work for almost everyone.

Posted in Firings, NFL, Sports | 2 Comments »

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