America’s Test Kitchen recipe for Key Lime pie (archived).
If you live in Austin or Houston, or are in town for South by So What, Tumble 22 has a really really good chocolate cream pie.
Happy Pi Day, everyone!
March 14th, 2024Obit watch: March 14, 2024.
March 14th, 2024Admiral Philippe de Gaulle has passed away at 102. He was the oldest son of Charles de Gaulle.
I’ve noted before that I don’t like doing obits for children of celebrities simply because of their birth. In that vein, I think it is important to point out that Philippe de Gaulle himself had a long history of heroism:
As a young naval officer in World War II, he fought in the English Channel and in the Atlantic; personally received the surrender of German troops in Paris occupying the Palais Bourbon, now the French Senate, in August 1944; “took part in all the battles of the Liberation,” the Elysée said; and was wounded six times.
He later became a naval pilot and fought in France’s wars in Indochina and Algeria. He ended his military service in 1982 as inspector general of the French Navy.
Robyn Bernard, actress. Other credits include “Diva”, “Simon & Simon”, and “Tour of Duty”.
Michael Culver, actor. Other credits include “Space: 1999”, “Goodbye, Mr. Chips”, “Thunderball”, and “From Russia With Love” (the last two were uncredited).
Paul Alexander, TikTok and iron lung guy.
Firings watch.
March 13th, 2024Kenny Payne out as head coach of men’s baskeball at Louisville. ESPN for the archive challenged.
12-52 in two seasons, with one road win. 8-24 this season, 3-17 in conference.
Obit watch: March 12, 2024.
March 12th, 2024Eric Carmen, musician. NYT (archived).
I don’t have any association with or memories of “All By Myself”, but I do remember hearing “Hungry Eyes” a lot on the radio.
Jean Allison, actress. No “Mannix”, but she did do a fair number of cop and cop adjunct shows. Other credits include “Hec Ramsey”, “McCloud”, and “Lou Grant”.
Obit watch: March 11, 2024.
March 11th, 2024Malachy McCourt, Frank McCourt’s brother and (as the NYT puts it) “professional Irishman”.
I’m leaving out the overcoat story. Check the obit for that one.
Firings watch.
March 11th, 2024Roberto D’Aversa has been fired as manager of Lecce. Lecce is a team in the Italian Serie A soccer league.
This is not ordinarily something I would take notice of, but the reason for his firing is interesting:
Hellas Verona was the opposing team, and is in 13th place in Serie A. Lecce is in 15th place.
Obit watch: March 8, 2024.
March 8th, 2024Vice Admiral Richard Truly (US Navy – ret.), astronaut and former NASA administrator. NASA.
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But he returned to NASA as its associate administrator in charge of the shuttle program in 1986, less than a month after the Challenger broke apart 73 seconds into its flight due in part to launching in too cold temperatures, killing its seven-person crew, which included a teacher, Christa McAuliffe.
A month into his new job, Captain Truly said that the next shuttle would be launched only in daylight and in warm weather (the Challenger was launched at 36 degrees Fahrenheit), and that it would land in California instead of Cape Canaveral, Fla.
“I do not want you to think this conservative approach, this safe approach, which I think is the proper thing to do, is going to be a namby-pamby shuttle program,” he said. “The business of flying in space is a bold business.”
He added: “We cannot print enough money to make it totally risk-free. But we certainly are going to correct any mistakes we may have made in the past, and we are going to get it going again just as soon as we can under these guidelines.”
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He remembered walking to his office on his first day as associate administrator to find people crying in the corridor “because of the pounding they had been taking in the media,” he said in a 2012 interview with the Colorado School of Mines, where he was a trustee at the time.
“By that time,” he added, “rather than an airplane accident, it had been portrayed as NASA killed its crew. It was the start of the most tumultuous engineering, political, cultural, social endeavor that I ever found myself in.”
He was appointed administrator by George H.W. Bush, but (according to the NYT) left after three years because of a dispute with “Vice President Dan Quayle and his staff at the National Space Council, of which Mr. Quayle was the chairman.”
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Steve Lawrence, of Steve and Eydie fame. NYT (archived).
FotB RoadRich sent over an obit for Akira Toriyama, manga guy and creator of “Dragon Ball”.
John Walker, AutoCAD and Autodesk guy.
The idiosyncratic Mr. Walker put his mark on a company that was anything but corporate in spirit. A 1992 article in The New York Times described Autodesk under Mr. Walker as “a cabal of counterculture senior programmers” who “took their dogs to work and tried to reach a consensus on strategy through endless memos sent by electronic mail.” (In those days, email was still a novelty in the business world.)
That same year, The Wall Street Journal scored a rare interview with Autodesk’s “founding genius.” The resulting article noted his quirks, including the fact that he did not allow the company to distribute his photograph in any form. He was prickly in manner during the interview, the reporter noted, and insisted that it be conducted in front of a video camera, debated each question and claimed a copyright on the conversation.
Ketchup.
March 7th, 2024Apologies for the silence the past two days. I have been busy assisting the police with their inquiries.
That old devil is at it again…
March 4th, 2024Obit watch: March 4, 2024.
March 4th, 2024Brigadier General John C. Bahnsen Jr. (US Army – ret.) has passed away at the age of 89.
Gen. Bahnsen was a genuine, certified, American badass.
General Bahnsen was among the most decorated combat veterans in U.S. history. He was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross, the nation’s second-highest honor for heroism, behind the Medal of Honor; five Silver Stars; four Legions of Merit; three Distinguished Flying Crosses; four Bronze Stars (three for valor); two Purple Hearts; and the Army Commendation Medal with a “V” device for valor.
He earned most of those awards during the second of two Vietnam tours, when he led a troop in the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment that was commanded by Maj. Gen. George S. Patton, the son of Gen. George S. Patton Jr. of World War II fame.
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Unlike fellow commanders who led from a desk, General Bahnsen led troops from his own helicopter — a tactic that allowed him to coordinate air and ground forces simultaneously, which he did while firing his rifle and dropping grenades from his window.
“We thought he had a death wish sometimes,” Mr. Noe said.
He did, but not for himself.
“The enemy of my country is my enemy, and our mission was to kill them,” General Bahnsen said in a 2013 interview with the American Veterans Center. “You could capture them if you could. We captured a lot of them in my units, but we also killed them. And my feeling was, that’s our job.”
He was unrelenting. He often landed his helicopter to fight alongside his ground troops. One day, he was shot down three times. Each time, he ordered delivery of a replacement helicopter so that he could return to attacking.
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General Bahnsen was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for his actions during a battle in early 1969.After his crew chief was severely wounded amid heavy gunfire at low altitudes, General Bahnsen evacuated him, refueled and rearmed.
“I was mad as hell!” he wrote in his autobiography. “I thought those bastards had just killed my crew chief.”
Not knowing whether the crew chief was alive or dead — he survived but was paralyzed — General Bahnsen returned to the battle site.
“Forcing them to a confined area, he marked their position and directed five airstrikes against them, while at the same time controlling four separate rifle platoons,” his award citation reads.
Enemy fire crippled his helicopter, so he returned to his base and got another.
Upon returning, the citation says, he “landed to guide in the lift ships carrying an additional infantry unit, and then led a rifle platoon through dense terrain to personally capture two enemy who were attempting to escape.”
He ordered the captives to be evacuated by helicopter while he remained on the ground, and led his squad on foot for more than a mile to a safe position.
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Chris Mortensen, ESPN guy.
David Bordwell, film scholar. He did a lot of work for the Criterion Collection.
Interesting list. I kind of feel like calling “Song of the South” one of your favorite films in this day and age is just setting yourself up for cancellation. But then again, he’s dead, so what does he care if he gets cancelled? (And to be frank, the Criterion Collection could probably do a great job of preserving and showing “Song” in a historical and scholarly context.)
Mark Dodson, voice actor. Other credits include a video game inspired by a minor 1960s SF TV series, “Darkwing Duck”, and “Legend of the Superstition Mountains”.
Obit watch: March 1, 2024.
March 1st, 2024Mr. Abath was one of the two guards on duty at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum early in the morning on March 18, 1990. He was the one who let the two robbers, disguised as police officers, into the museum.
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All together they took some $500 million in art, the equivalent of $1.2 billion today, making it by far the biggest art heist in history.
Suspicion immediately turned to Mr. Abath. City and federal investigators zeroed in on important details, like the coincidence of the thieves arriving so soon after the second guard left to make the rounds. A video camera outside the museum showed Mr. Abath briefly opening a side door not long before the robbery occurred.
Mr. Abath maintained his innocence throughout the rest of his life, and he was never named as an official suspect. He said that he regularly opened the side door to make sure it was locked and that while museum protocol forbade him from letting anyone in after hours, there was no contingency should the visitors be uniformed police officers.
“You know, most of the guards were either older or they were college students,” he told NPR in 2015. “Nobody there was capable of dealing with actual criminals.”
Brian Mulroney, former Canadian PM.
Obit watch: February 29, 2024.
February 29th, 2024Richard Lewis. Tributes. (The one from Jamie Lee Curtis is particularly nice.) NYT (archived).
Anne Whitfield, actress. Other credits include “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, “Dragnet 1967”, and “Kolchak: The Night Stalker”.