And speaking of holidays…

July 12th, 2024

…happy 45th anniversary of Disco Demolition Night!

For those of my readers who may be unfamiliar with what is (in my humble opinion) one of the three great events in sports history, here’s a “game story” from SABR.

Among those taking to the field was 21-year-old aspiring actor Michael Clarke Duncan; during the melee, Duncan slid into third base, had a silver belt buckle stolen, and went home with a bat from the dugout.

You know, I’m not sure I would consider a bat to be a good trade for a silver belt buckle. Also, how do you steal a belt buckle? Unless you’re Apollo Robbins…

Here’s a 25th anniversary documentary that I don’t think I’ve linked to before:

And a more recent 45th anniversary compilation:

Finally, Steve Dahl’s “Do You Think I’m Disco?”:

As someone with no musical talent at all, I will leave it to my loyal readers to judge the quality of this song.

Posted in History, Sports | 1 Comment »

Brief sports notes.

July 11th, 2024

I feel like I have to say something about the firing of Gregg Berhalter, since this is SportsFirings.com. Even though I hate soccer.

On a happier note, here’s a fun article from The Society for American Baseball Research: “You’re Out of Here: A History of Umpire Ejections”.

Yes, I don’t like baseball either. But I dislike it less than I do soccer, and a history of baseball ejections is the kind of weird thing that appeals to me. Much like Disco Demolition Night…

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 11, 2024.

July 11th, 2024

Shelley Duvall. This is breaking, and the NYT is in “full obit to come” mode. I’ll link to that later.

Edited to add: NYT obit.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment. As noted, they own Redbox. They also own the Crackle streaming service.

Fun fact:

In April 2021, Chicken Soup for the Soul acquired the film and television catalogue of Sonar Entertainment. In return, Sonar will hold a 5 percent stake in a new AVOD network featuring its library. Through the acquisition, Chicken Soup now currently owns the North American rights to a majority of the Laurel & Hardy films and shorts, and most of the Our Gang library, as well as the holdings of the former RHI/Hallmark/Cabin Fever/Sonar outputs, and a majority of the Hal Roach library, all via their Halcyon Studios division.

They had filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition (which would have allowed them to re-organize) but yesterday it was converted into a Chapter 7 petition, which is total liquidation. And it sounds like there was some sleazy stuff going on.

Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment had failed to pay employees and vendors for at least four weeks prior to its Chapter 11 filing. In court documents, HPS, the company’s top lender, had alleged gross mismanagement by the company. Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment chairman and CEO Bill Rouhana Jr., in a declaration supporting the bankruptcy petition, claimed that the company’s financial straits were in part due to “refusals” by its lenders “to live up to their obligations, resulting in asserted defaults and/or contractual terminations across critical content and service providers.”

I have seen reports that they were pocketing employee health insurance premiums, but not actually paying the insurers. Those are just reports, and the executives are entitled to the presumption of innocence. But if it is true that they weren’t paying employees, and weren’t paying employee health insurance…the kind side of me thinks those people should be in jail. The unkind side of me thinks that rope and lampposts are in order.

Edited to add: more from THR, concentrating on the RedBox part of the business, but including the accusations of financial mismanagement.

Benji Gregory. Other credits include “Amazing Stories”, “The Twilight Zone” (the 1985-1986 revival), and “T.J. Hooker”.

Playing catch-up:

Joe Bonsall, of the Oak Ridge Boys.

James M. Inhofe, Republican senator from Oklahoma and former mayor of Tulsa.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Politics, TV | Comments Closed

Brief historical note, suitable for use in schools.

July 11th, 2024

Today is the 220th anniversary of the Burr-Hamilton duel.

Here’s a fairly good article about the pistols.

Fun fact that I did not know until a few days ago, when I went looking for the video online: Michael Bay directed this commercial.

Posted in Guns, History, TV | Comments Closed

Breaking the law, breaking the law…

July 10th, 2024

I think this is a rare example of a headline that does not comply with Betteridge’s law of headlines.

Should You Hug a Sloth?

Obviously, the answer to that question is, “Yes, and you should ignore the joyless fun suckers who want to suck all the fun out of life.”

The number of those U.S.D.A.-licensed exhibitors almost doubled from 2019 to 2021, with over 1,000 sloths inspected annually in the last two years.

It must be fun to tell people at parties, “I’m a sloth inspector.”

Posted in Bagatelle, Mammals | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 8, 2024.

July 8th, 2024

Yoshihiro Uchida. I had not heard of him previously, but he sounds like a fascinating guy.

Mr. Uchida brought judo to the United States.

The son of Japanese immigrants, Uchida, who went by the nickname Yosh, began coaching judo at San Jose State in the 1940s, while he was still a student there.
It was a pivotal moment for the sport, which had been created in 1882 in Japan as a means of self-defense, built around a series of throws and holds that use opponents’ weight and movement against them. Americans had long incorporated elements of judo into other combat sports, and returning soldiers from the Pacific Theater brought a new level of interest in martial arts to the country.
Uchida, who had been practicing judo since he was 10, despaired over the quality of the training available, especially at the higher levels. Working with a judo coach at the University of California, Berkeley, he established standards for competition, including weight classes, and in 1953 won approval from the Amateur Athletic Union.
The first national amateur championships took place at San Jose State that same year. The first collegiate championships took place in 1962, and Mr. Uchida’s team won.

…

Uchida was also one of the winningest coaches ever, of any sport. Under his leadership the men’s team won 52 national championships in 62 years, and the much newer women’s team won 26. He remained involved with the team until shortly before his death.

…

Soon after the beginning of World War II, he was drafted into the Army. He served in a segregated all-Japanese-American unit, where he worked as a medical technician. The rest of his family was dispersed to internment camps — his parents to Arizona, his brothers to Northern California, his sister and her husband to Idaho.

…

He returned to San Jose State and graduated with a degree in biology in 1947. He also continued to coach judo, though the position paid so little that he had to find a second job.

…

On the side, Uchida obtained a loan to buy a run-down medical laboratory. He renovated it and within a few years was doing extensive business for San Jose doctors. He eventually owned a chain of 40 laboratories across Northern California, which he sold for $30 million in 1989.
He used the proceeds to partner with a group of investors to build an $80 million complex of affordable housing and commercial space in San Jose’s Japantown neighborhood.

He was 104 when he passed.

Paal Enger, the man who stole “The Scream”. (Well, one of them, anyway.)

Joan Benedict, actress. Other credits include “The Happy Hooker Goes to Washington”, “T.J. Hooker”, and “The Incredible Hulk”.

Doug Sheehan, actor. Other credits include “Columbo”, “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders”, and “MacGyver” (original recipe).

Posted in Art, Law, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Buster Keaton, call your office, please.

July 4th, 2024

Private Philip G. Shadrach (US Army) and Private George D. Wilson (US Army) were awarded the Medal of Honor on Wednesday.

The awards were posthumous, as the action they were involved in took place about 162 years ago.

Private Shadrach and Private Wilson were involved in the Great Locomotive Chase.

In the spring of 1862, a small group of Union Army saboteurs came up with a daring idea to cut off Confederate supply lines near Chattanooga by stealing a train, tearing up railroad tracks, burning bridges and cutting down telegraph wires — which would have denied means of travel and communication to enemy forces in the area.
Dressed in plain clothes, they launched their mission in April, sneaking behind enemy lines in Georgia, taking over a locomotive near Marietta and wreaking havoc for seven hours along miles of railway in an effort to help take the battle deep into Tennessee.But the stolen train, called “the General,” ran out of fuel 18 miles from Chattanooga, according to a U.S. Army account of the heist, which became known as the Great Locomotive Chase. The Union soldiers and civilians who took part in the mission fled, but all were captured after less than two weeks on the run.

…

In 1863, six survivors of the raid were the first American soldiers awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest decoration for valor in combat, which had been authorized by President Abraham Lincoln the year before.
In all, 19 of the men received the Medal of Honor in the years that followed. But two soldiers who were executed by Confederates soon after the mission were never recognized.

Private Shadrach and Private Wilson were those two soldiers.

Private Shadrach’s page at the Congressional Medal of Honor Society website. The citation is listed as “coming soon”.

Private Wilson’s page at the Congressional Medal of Honor Society website. Ditto on the citation.

Posted in Heroism, History | Comments Closed

Wordplay.

July 4th, 2024

As Mike the Musicologist likes to point out, this is a local crime story that doesn’t deserve or need national coverage.

I agree with him, but I do want to note: it is wonderful to see “canoodling” in a headline. “Canoodle” is a delightful word that deserves to be used more often.

Posted in Bagatelle, Law, Wordplay | 1 Comment »

I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy…

July 3rd, 2024

…and what could be more patriotic than guns and gun books?

This isn’t quite as patriotic as it could be, since the first two of these are about Africa. And the second two are duplicates of existing books in my collection, so I’m not going to spend as much time on them as I usually do.

El jumperino here…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Photography | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 2, 2024.

July 2nd, 2024

Robert Towne. NYT. IMDB.

A couple of quibbles:

In 2017, Vulture placed him No. 3 on its list of the 100 Best Screenwriters of All Time; only Billy Wilder and Joel & Ethan Coen ranked higher.

I think all of these are fine writers, but I would also add William Goldman. I don’t think I’d put him ahead of Wilder, but I think I would put him ahead of the Coen brothers (maybe, and just by a nose) and possibly ahead of Towne. And I suspect Goldman would tell me it isn’t a competition and I shouldn’t worry about it.

In fact, some of his best work was done on other’s screenplays — like The Yakuza (1974) and 8 Million Ways to Die (1986), which featured screenplays by Paul Schrader and Oliver Stone, respectively — or on abandoned projects.

Interesting, since “8 Million Ways to Die” seems to be thought of as a piece of s–t: not just by Block/Scudder fans, but by almost everyone. (To be fair, there was a lot of studio interference with the movie.)

Michael Corcoran, local music journalist and historian.

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: July 1, 2024.

July 1st, 2024

Very brief catch up here:

Martin Mull. NYT. IMDB.

I was involved in the Great Folk Music scare back in the sixties, when it almost caught on.

Orlando Cepeda. ESPN. Baseball Reference.

Posted in 1970s, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Man, we are just jam-packed with holidays, aren’t we?

July 1st, 2024

Happy Bobby Bonilla Day, one and all!

Posted in History, Sports | Comments Closed

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