Brief loser update.

May 10th, 2023

We are into the baseball season, but not as far in as I would like to be. I sometimes try to post a loser update around the All-Star break.

But I did decide I wanted to throw up a link to this:

“Why the worst MLB teams of 2023 are historically bad“.

There are a lot of stats in the article for you baseball people, but summarizing:

Simply put, it is a real thing and it is very, very unusual in a historical context. We can argue about if it will continue, but for now, this is the reality of the big league competitive landscape: There are some teams playing very badly. There are an usual number of teams playing very badly. And there are an unusually large number of teams playing so badly.

Oakland is currently 8-30, for a winning percentage of .211. That works out to 127 losses this season if trends continue. The 1962 Mets lost 120 games, and the 2003 Tigers lost 119.

Posted in Loser, Sports | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: May 9, 2023.

May 9th, 2023

Bruce McCall, artist.

Borrowing from the advertising style seen in magazines like Life, Look and Collier’s in the 1930s and ’40s, Mr. McCall depicted a luminous fantasyland filled with airplanes, cars and luxury liners of his own creation. It was a world populated by carefree millionaires who expected caviar to be served in the stations of the fictional Fifth Avenue Subway and carwashes to spray their limousines with champagne.
“My work is so personal and so strange that I have to invent my own lexicon for it,” Mr. McCall said in a TED Talk in 2008. He called it “retrofuturism,” which he defined as “looking back to see how yesterday viewed tomorrow.”

…

In 1970, Mr. McCall and his friend Brock Yates, the editor of Car and Driver, invented a series of mythical airplanes, among them the Humbley-Pudge Gallipoli Heavyish Bomber, for which they wrote pseudo-scholarly historical notes. Playboy bought the idea, assigned Mr. McCall to do the illustrations and ran the collaboration in January 1971 under the title “Major Howdy Bixby’s Album of Forgotten Warbirds.” It went on to win Playboy’s annual humor award.

In addition to “Playboy”, “National Lampoon”, and the “New Yorker”, he was briefly a writer for “Saturday Night Live” and also did work for “Car and Driver”. Lawrence sent over an obit from that august publication.

Posted in Art, Obits | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#106 in a series)

May 9th, 2023

This story snuck up on me, which is why I haven’t covered it before today. It has nothing to do with the protagonist being a Republican: as I have said before, I am an equal opportunity observer of hyenas on fire.

Bryan Slaton (R-Royse City) resigned from the Texas House yesterday.

His resignation came one step ahead of his being expelled from the House, in what appears to be a massive bi-partisan consensus that he needed to go.

So what the heck happened? Former Rep. Slaton apparently plied one of his aides, a 19-year old woman, with rum and cokes until she was drunk. Then he had sex with her.

On Sunday, the Texas House Freedom Caucus, a group that includes some of the most socially conservative lawmakers in the chamber who are usually politically aligned with Slaton, also called for his resignation.
“The abhorrent behavior described in the report requires clear and strong action,” the caucus said in a statement. “He should resign. If he does not, we will vote to expel him Tuesday.”
Later that night, 36 members of the 62–member State Republican Executive Committee, party activists who help set the agenda for the party, also called for his resignation, calling his conduct “wrong and unacceptable.” They were joined by the party’s vice chair, Dana Myers, and secretary Vergel Cruz. Three more committee members who could not be reached Sunday night added their names to the call for resignation Monday morning.

More from KVUE, which does not appear to be a re-hashed Texas Tribune story (unlike Fox 7 and KXAN). Statesman coverage.

Posted in Law, Politics, Texas | 1 Comment »

Obligatory royals post.

May 8th, 2023

As my mother likes to say, “I stopped caring about the British royal family in 1776.”

However, this Substack piece mildly amused me. My favorite part:

Perhaps the most scandalous coronation took place at the newly completed St Paul’s Cathedral in February 1308. The young queen, Isabella, was the 12-year-old daughter of France’s King Philippe Le Bel, and had inherited her father’s good looks, with thick blonde hair and large blue, unblinking eyes. Her husband, Edward II, was a somewhat boneheaded man of 24 years whose idea of entertainment was watching court fools fall off tables.
It was a fairy tale coronation for the young girl, apart from a plaster wall collapsing, bringing down the high altar and killing a member of the audience, and the fact that her husband was gay and spent the afternoon fondling his lover Piers Gaveston, while ignoring her. Isabella’s two uncles, who had made the trip from France, were furious at the behaviour of their new English in-law, though perhaps not surprised.

Other than that, how was the coronation, Queen Isabella?

(Those with a historical bent may recall that Edward II ended up dying in prison: the unproven legend is that he was murdered by having a red-hot poker shoved up his neither regions.)

Posted in History | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 8, 2023.

May 8th, 2023

Vida Blue.

After losing on opening day to the Washington Senators in 1971, Blue, a lefty, reeled off eight wins in a row. In his first dozen games, he threw five complete-game shutouts. By the summer, he was leading baseball in not just shutouts but also wins, strikeouts, complete games and earned-run average.

…

Opposing hitters spoke mystically of how Blue’s fastballs would disappear or jump over their bats. Reporters speculated about why he carried two dimes in his pocket when he pitched, with some suggesting it was a charm to help him win 20 games. Across the country, attendance at his outings swelled to levels that stadiums had not seen in years. Fans of an opposing team, the Detroit Tigers, chanted outside the clubhouse, “We want Vida!”
The A’s appeared in the playoffs for the first time since 1931, ultimately losing to the Baltimore Orioles in the American League Championship. Blue pulled off the feat of winning, in his first full season, both the Cy Young and the Most Valuable Player Awards (beating out his teammate Sal Bando to become the M.V.P.).

…

After the ’71 season, Blue said he should make $115,000. Finley countered with $50,000 and made the dispute public. Blue held a news conference and declared that he would retire from sports to become a vice president for public relations at a steel company.
Ultimately, Blue and Finley settled on $63,150.

…

Blue went on to cement a reputation as a standout regular season pitcher, recording 20 or more wins in three of his first five seasons. He was a contributor to the A’s subsequent success in the playoffs.

…

In 1983, as a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, Blue and several of his teammates were questioned as part of a federal cocaine inquiry. He pleaded guilty to possession of the drug, leading to 81 days in prison and a yearlong suspension from baseball.

Newton N. Minow. Some of you may recall that name: he was a former chairman of the FCC who, in 1961, gave a famous speech:

“Stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit-and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you, and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off,” Mr. Minow said. “I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.”
The audience sat aghast as he went on:
“You will see a procession of game shows, violence, audience participation shows, formula comedies about totally unbelievable families, blood and thunder, mayhem, violence, sadism, murder, Western bad men, Western good men, private eyes, gangsters, more violence and cartoons. And endlessly, commercials — many screaming, cajoling and offending. And most of all, boredom.”
He added, “If you think I exaggerate, try it.”

…

But the networks — still recovering from the payola and quiz show scandals of the 1950s — contended that they were only giving the public what it wanted, and an NBC special about Mr. Minow’s hearings appeared to bear them out. The program attracted only a small audience and was swamped by ratings for the western “Maverick” on ABC and the talking-horse sitcom “Mister Ed” on CBS.

…

Mr. Minow also pushed legislation that opened the era of satellite communications. It fostered the creation, by a consortium of interests, of the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat), and later the International Telecommunications Satellite Organization (Intelsat); both allowed the United States to dominate satellite communications in the 1960s and ’70s, and it ultimately led to greater program diversity.

Bill Saluga. You may not recognize the name, but those of a certain age will recognize his most famous character: Raymond J. Johnson Jr.

Posted in Obits, Politics, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#105 in a series)

May 5th, 2023

Kimberly M. Gardner, the head prosecutor (“Circuit Attorney”) in St. Louis, resigned yesterday.

In a letter addressed to Gov. Mike Parson, Gardner made no mention of the turmoil in her office nor the extensive staff departures in recent weeks. Instead, she said she was stepping down, effective June 1, to prevent the state Legislature from passing a bill that would strip her of most of her power and “permanently remove the right of every St. Louis voter to elect their Circuit Attorney.”

The Attorney General of Missouri was (and still is) suing to force her removal from office..

It sounds like she was…not good. There were large numbers of resignations among her staff: “…leaving her with half the number of attorneys as when she took office”. (She was elected in 2017, and re-elected in 2020.)

There were also other issues:

…about a year into office, she indicted sitting Gov. Eric Greitens for taking a partially nude photo of a woman in a Central West End basement without her consent. But charges were eventually dropped, an investigator she hired pleaded guilty in federal court to concealing documents in the case, and Gardner herself was reprimanded by the Missouri Supreme Court and forced to pay a $750 fee in an ethics case over her office’s mishandling of evidence.
She continued to face public scrutiny over her “exclusion list” of St. Louis police officers, whose work she didn’t trust, and also for her decision to charge a Central West End couple with brandishing guns at racial justice protesters.

…

Then in February, the scandals intensified when a car speeding through downtown streets crashed, pinning between two vehicles a teen visiting St. Louis for a volleyball tournament, and leading to the amputation of both of her legs. The car’s driver, Daniel Riley, had remained free after court delays, despite violating his bond dozens of times.

…

Then, last week, a St. Louis judge found there was evidence Gardner should be held in contempt of court for failing to show up for a pair of court dates in an assault case. Bailey’s lawsuit cleared its first legal hurdle. And state senators announced they would debate a bill stripping Gardner of most of her power.

…

…on Thursday, city officials, attorneys and former staffers said Gardner had to leave.
Prominent St. Louis defense attorney Scott Rosenblum called her leadership untenable.
“This was overdue,” he said. “The office was running amok.”
Former assistant prosecutor Natalia Ogurkiewicz, who quit last month, blasted Gardner for taking “the easy way out.” She wanted to see what Bailey would uncover in trial.
“She asked for this fight and then she backed down so that the information would not get out, and the people in the city, the countless lives that she has ruined with all of this, they all deserve to have these answers,” she said.

(Hattip on this to Mike the Musicologist, who has been feeding me links to this story.)

Edited to add: while I generally prefer local news sources when I can get them, I think this NYT story is a good basic primer on the Gardner situation.

Also, I’m putting this here as a sub-story, since I don’t think Andrew Gillum counts as a tax-fattened hyena any longer:

A federal jury acquitted Andrew Gillum, the Democrat who lost the 2018 Florida governor’s race to Ron DeSantis, of lying to the F.B.I. on Thursday. But jurors failed to reach a verdict on charges related to whether Mr. Gillum and a close associate diverted campaign funds when Mr. Gillum was running for governor.
After more than four days of deliberation, the 12-member jury said it had reached agreement only on the charge that Mr. Gillum made false statements when the F.B.I. interviewed him in 2017. Judge Allen C. Winsor of the Federal District Court in Tallahassee declared a mistrial on one conspiracy charge and 17 fraud charges against Mr. Gillum and Sharon Lettman-Hicks.

He can still be tried again on the charges where the jury did not reach a verdict.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 5, 2023.

May 5th, 2023

Katie Cotton, former Apple PR head.

“She was formidable and tough and very protective of both Apple’s brand and Steve, particularly when he got sick,” Walt Mossberg, a former technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal, said in a phone interview, referring to Mr. Jobs’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer in 2004. He added: “She was one of the few people he trusted implicitly. He listened to her. She could pull him back from something he intended to do or say.”

…

Ms. Cotton also chose which reporters could speak to Mr. Jobs (even though he would occasionally speak, on his own, to journalists he knew well). In 1997 she invited a Newsweek reporter, Katie Hafner, to watch the first commercial in Apple’s new “Think Different” advertising campaign, along with Mr. Jobs.
A tribute to “the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels and the troublemakers,” a narrator intoned as the commercial opened with a still picture of Mr. Jobs holding an apple in his left hand and continued with clips of people who changed the world, among them Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, John Lennon, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Thomas Edison and Muhammad Ali.
“I looked over and Steve was crying,” Ms. Hafner, who wrote about Apple for Newsweek and later for The New York Times, said in a phone interview. “I looked at Katie and I couldn’t tell if she was moved or feeling triumphant — I don’t know — but I was filled with admiration for her, because she knew how to play this and to give me access.”
Richard Stengel, a former managing editor of Time magazine, said in an email that Mr. Jobs “would call me five or six times in a day to tell me I should do a story or not,” and that Ms. Cotton would “frequently call right after and gently apologize or pull back something he had said.” He added, “She was very loyal, but she saw him in an unvarnished way.”

She was 57.

Posted in Apple, Obits | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

May 5th, 2023

Mike Budenholzer out as coach of the Milwaukee Bucks.

Milwaukee went 271-120 (.693) during the regular season with Budenholzer at the helm, the best record in the league across that span. The Bucks finished with the best record in the NBA during three separate seasons (2018-19, 2019-20 and 2022-23), but never made it to the Finals in any of those years. They dropped two playoff series against the Heat — this season and in the Orlando bubble in 2020, both in five games — when they were overwhelming favorites.

They lost to Miami in this year’s playoffs. I get the impression that they consistently did well in the regular season, and were a consistent disappointment in the playoffs. But as you know, Bob, I don’t follow basketball closely, so I could be wrong about this.

Rob Murphy out as assistant GM of the Detroit Pistons for being a sexual harasser.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 4, 2023.

May 4th, 2023

Barbara Bryne. She was in the original Broadway productions of “Sunday in the Park With George” and “Into the Woods”. Other credits include “Amadeus”, “Love, Sidney”, and “Best of the West”.

Eileen Saki. Other credits include “Meteor”, “History of the World: Part 1”, and “Victims for Victims: The Theresa Saldana Story”.

Another obit for Bart Skelton, this one from American Handgunner.

• All the world loves you if you have a song to sing, or a story to write: Unless that narrative is a warrant, then expect you will piss some people off, and they will hate you.

I ordered a copy of Down on the Border: A Western Lawman’s Journal (affiliate link) and am about four chapters into it. I’ll let you know when I’ve finished it.

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

Roll Wide! Tar Eagle!

May 4th, 2023

Brad Bohannon out as baseball coach of the Alabama Crimson Tide.

The reason why is a bit shocking:

“Alabama director of athletics Greg Byrne announced he has initiated the termination process for head baseball coach Brad Bohannon for, among other things, violating the standards, duties, and responsibilities expected of University employees,” the university said in a statement Thursday morning. “Bohannon has been relieved of all duties and Jason Jackson will serve as the interim head coach. There will be no further comment at this time pending an ongoing review.”

What’s specifically going on is that there’s an investigation into “suspicious wagering activity” on Tide games. Three states where betting is legal (Ohio, New Jersey and Pennsylvania) have stopped all betting on Alabama.

ESPN first reported Monday evening that the Ohio Casino Control Commission had suspended betting on Alabama baseball games at the state’s legal sports books after U.S. Integrity, a Las Vegas-based independent monitor, detected suspicious bets on last Friday’s Alabama-LSU game in Baton Rouge.
U.S. Integrity, which monitors gambling data to detect abnormalities and misuse of insider information, sent a warning to all of its clients after Friday’s game. Ronnie Johns, the chairman of the Louisiana Gaming Control Board, told NOLA.com that one of the bets was a parlay involving the Alabama-LSU game, and another was a “large” straight-up bet on the game. Both wagered LSU would win.

Alabama lost to LSU, 8-6.

Alabama sophomore pitcher Luke Holman was scheduled to start Friday’s game, but according to UA’s game recap, reliever Hagan Banks was told “an hour before” first pitch that he would be starting in Holman’s place. Holman was scratched after experiencing back tightness before the game, The Advocate in Baton Rouge reported Friday evening.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 2, 2023.

May 2nd, 2023

Gordon Lightfoot. THR.

I have poked my fair share of fun at the song, and will probably continue to do so. But there is something affecting about those lyrics. I think maybe it’s the idea of calm acceptance in the face of certain death.

Posted in Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 1, 2023.

May 1st, 2023

Rabbi Harold S. Kushner, author. (When Bad Things Happen to Good People and other books).

Detective Troy Patterson of the NYPD.

One night in 1990, three punks tried to hold Officer Patterson up. The robbery went bad, and Officer Patterson was shot in the head. He’d been in a vegetative state for the past 33 years.

Patterson was promoted to detective in 2016.
The three suspects — Vincent Robbins, Tracey Clark and Darien Crawford — were later arrested in the unprovoked shooting.
Robbins, now 53, was convicted of assault and attempted-robbery charges and sentenced to a prison term of five to 15 years. He was released in 2000, state records show.
Clark, the alleged gunman in the shooting, also went to trial in the case. The outcome of the case is not immediately available, nor are any details of the charges against Crawford.

Tim Bachman, of Bachman-Turner Overdrive. You may recall that his brother, Robbie, passed in January.

Mike Shannon, former player and later broadcaster for the St. Louis Cardinals.

John Stobart, artist.

A product of Britain’s Royal Academy of Art, Mr. Stobart moved to the United States in 1970, when conceptual art, Op Art and minimalism were riding high in the wake of Abstract Expressionism.
Affable, unassuming and unfailingly candid, Mr. Stobart would have none of it. “I’ve never bought it, and the general public has never bought it either,” he said of abstract art in an interview with The Boston Globe in 1986. “That’s a lot of baloney, that stuff.”
Instead, he conjured the past as a master of richly detailed historical works brimming with schooners, brigs and sloops, their sails flapping under moody clouds, with shore lights twinkling in the distance.
Working out of studios in the Boston area, Martha’s Vineyard and several other locations, Mr. Stobart, who lived in Medfield, Mass., employed the same taste for exhaustive historical detail as Patrick O’Brian, the prolific Anglo-Irish author known for his bracing tales of naval heroics.
He left no detail to chance, traveling to the locations he painted, consulting old daguerreotypes of harbors and ships and going out to sea on various watercraft to learn the most arcane points about their engineering and behavior on the water.

…

By the mid-1980s, he had written the first of his three books, “The Rediscovery of America’s Maritime Heritage,” and thanks in part to a lucrative operation selling first-edition prints, was making up to $2.5 million a year. In recent years, his originals were selling for $15,000 to $400,000 through the Rehs Galleries in New York.

The obit reproduces some of Mr. Stobart’s paintings. I’m probably a sucker for representational art, but I like what I see there, and would be happy to have an original Stobart on my wall.

Posted in Art, Boats, Books, Cops, Law, Music, NYPD, Obits, Religion | Comments Closed

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