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.”
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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.
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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.
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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”.
Lawrence and I have bet $5 straight across on the Houston Texans’s chances of making the playoffs. Lawrence is taking the pro-playoffs side, while I am skeptical enough about Houston sports teams in general that I am willing to put up $5 that they won’t make the playoffs.
This is probably a sucker bet, but I get more than $5 worth of entertainment out of my bets with Lawrence, and we haven’t done a bet in a while, so why not?
Lawrence also sent over a story from Not the Bee, though I was already on it and planning to cover it today.
Danny Jansen became a historical footnote on Monday. He was the first (and so far only) baseball player to play for both sides in a baseball game.
As a matter of fact, not just both sides, but both sides in the same inning.
How did this happen? He was playing for the Toronto Blue Jays on June 26th. In the second inning, he hit a foul ball off of Boston pitcher Kutter Crawford. Then the rain started and the game was postponed.
On July 27th, Mr. Jansen was traded to Boston for three minor league players.
The postponed game was resumed on Monday.
Before the game resumed at 2:06 p.m. ET Monday — a delay of 65 days, 18 hours and 35 minutes — Red Sox media relations coordinator Daveson Perez announced the changes in the Fenway Park press box: “Pinch hitting for Danny Jansen: Daulton Varsho. Defensive changes: Danny Jansen now at catcher.”
With Jansen behind the plate, Nick Pivetta struck Varsho out to complete the at-bat Jansen started. Then Jansen came up for the Red Sox with two outs in the bottom half of the frame, getting a nice cheer from a sparse makeup game crowd, and hit a lazy liner to first base to end the inning.
Toronto won, 4-1.
The Chicago White Sox lost their 100th game on Sunday.
The Sox are currently 31-100, for a .237 winning percentage. Projected out, that comes to 123 losses.
Put another way, in order to go 43-119, and miss tying the record set by the 1962 Mets, the Sox will have to go 12-19 in their remaining games, for a .387 winning percentage. They play Detroit at home tonight: Detroit is favored about 55% – 45%.