Travel day.

April 2nd, 2025

Blogging is going to be as and when time permits, probably through Thursday of next week.

Obit watch: March 30, 2025.

March 30th, 2025

Sgt. Joe Harris (United States Army – ret.) has passed away. He was 108, and is believed to have been the oldest surviving paratrooper.

Mr. Harris was a member of the 555th Parachute Infantry Battalion, nicknamed the Triple Nickles (the word was deliberately misspelled) after their unit designation and the three buffalo nickels that formed their insignia.
He had enlisted in the Army in 1941, and he volunteered to join the 555th soon after it was formed in 1943. The Army was still rigidly segregated, and most Black service members served in support roles; the battalion was designed as an early step toward the military’s eventual desegregation.
It never served overseas. Instead, in 1945 it was transferred from its base in North Carolina to rural Oregon as part of a confidential program known as Operation Firefly.

The Triple Nickles were assigned to parachute in and fight fires started by Japanese balloon bombs.

Mr. Harris and his unit became the front line in fighting the blazes. Jumping from C-47 cargo planes, they wore leather football helmets with wire-mesh face masks and carried a brace of firefighting tools, including the Pulaski, a specialized tool that combines an ax and an adze.
They were trained to aim for trees, to avoid landing in dangerously rugged territory. Among their gear was a 50-foot rope that they would use to drop to the ground after getting snared in branches.
Mr. Harris performed 72 jumps, fighting fires started by the bombs as well as by lightning and other natural causes. He was honorably discharged in late 1945. The Army was desegregated in 1947, and the 555th was incorporated into the 82nd Airborne Division.

Richard Chamberlain. THR. IMDB.

Bruce Glover. Other credits include the 1973 “Walking Tall”, “Bearcats!”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man”.

Richard Norton, “Actor, Martial Arts Expert, Trainer and Stuntman”. Other credits include “Gymkata”, “Walker, Texas Ranger”, and “Road House 2: Last Call”.

Quick random gun crankery.

March 30th, 2025

Yes, this is an advertising video for Rock Island Auction. But it is also relevant to another one of this blog’s obsessions.

Summarizing: RIA is auctioning off one of the three Winchester 1873 “One of One Thousand” screen-used rifles from “Winchester ’73”.

We watched “Winchester ’73” not too long ago, but Criterion just issued a brand new 4K and blu ray restoration with extras. This is on my list for the next 50% off sale.

(As I understand it, these three rifles were specially built by Winchester for the film, and not original production “1 of 1,000” rifles from the 19th Century. Just sayin’. I would still be on this auction like flies on a severed cow’s head in a Damien Hirst installation, if I had the money.)

Don’t get a boo-boo, Boo Boo.

March 29th, 2025

I’ve been meaning to post this for a couple of days, but kept forgetting. I think it is relevant, especially since FotB Joe D. and I have discussed this in the past.

“These are the 10 deadliest national parks in the US — with one seeing more than 20 fatalities per year”.

Spoiler: Surprisingly, the deadliest “park” is…Lake Mead National Recreation Area, which averages 20.88 deaths per year. I say “surprisingly” because I would have figured Grand Canyon or Yosemite. But thinking about it, Lake Mead is mostly water, and there are a lot of ways to die around water.

Grand Canyon National Park comes in second (12.7 deaths per year), Yosemite National Park third (11.1), and Yellowstone ends up in tenth place (4.94 deaths per year).

Happy 1911 Day!

March 29th, 2025

I know I’ve written about this before, but as a reminder:

Following its success in trials, the Colt pistol was formally adopted by the Army on March 29, 1911, when it was designated “Model of 1911”, later changed in 1917 to “Model 1911”, and then “M1911” in the mid-1920s.

I posted a teaser for this a while back, and I want to do the promised full post soon. For now: Smith and Wesson PC1911, round butt, scandium frame, 4.25″ barrel, tuned by the Smith and Wesson Performance Center. Original SKU on this was #170344.

Unbearable.

March 28th, 2025

Taylor Jenkins is out as head coach of the Memphis Grizzlies.

Six seasons, 250-214 overall, and 9-14 in the playoffs.

Your loser update: March 28, 2025.

March 28th, 2025

The MLB season started yesterday. I guess? Sort of? Apparently, the Cubs and Dodgers played two regular season games in Japan a week or so ago, and the Cubs dropped both?

Shows how much I follow baseball.

Anyway, MLB teams that still have a chance to go 0-162:

Tampa Bay Rays
Toronto Blue Jays
Minnesota Twins
Kansas City Royals
Detroit Tigers
Texas Rangers
City to be named later Athletics
Los Angeles Angels
New York Mets
Washington Nationals
Atlanta Braves
Pittsburgh Pirates
Cincinnati Reds
Milwaukee Brewers
Colorado Rockies
Arizona Diamondbacks

The Cleveland Indians Guardians won, which is nice. But Lawrence still hasn’t taken me up on my offer to bet $5 on the Guardians to win the World Series. Houston won, which is nice. And shockingly, the White Sox actually won. ESPN picked them to be the worst team in MLB this season, but could they be worse than last year? I think that would be hard.

You’ve gone down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#145 in a series)

March 27th, 2025

Some people might say that Robert Farley, the police chief of North Bergen, New Jersey, has an unusual sense of humor.

Other people might say that he’s an a–hole. Including some of his own officers, who are planning to sue the department.

The chief’s sense of humor includes such hits as:

Michael F. Derin, who worked as a special captain in an administrative role, accused the chief of chasing him around the office before cornering him and poking him with a hypothermic needle through his jeans and into his penis in August 2024.
“When I told chief Farley I was unhappy with his actions, he told me that I didn’t know how to take a joke,” Derin wrote in a notice of claim – the precursor to a lawsuit.

And:

“Chief Farley has, on several occasions, pulled his pants down and defecated on the floor in front of his entire office staff,” Guzman wrote in his notice of claim.
One time he even pooped in the trash can of an office he was moving out of so the next police official moving into the space would find it, Guzman alleged.

And:

“Chief Farley has also tampered with office coffee by adding prescription medications such as Adderall and Viagra, causing staff to inadvertently experience the effects of these substances without their consent,” Guzman wrote.

And:

Farley was also accused of sneaking hot peppers into officers’ food, sending sex toys and gay pride flags to the home of a cop and tossing eggs “in fits of anger” in the legal documents.

And:

Derin, a former detective in the department, also claimed Farley shaved his body hair over people’s property and their food.

These are just allegations, of course. And there are more of them, but those are relatively minor: the usual retaliation and harassment.

North Bergen stood by its police chief amid the accusations, telling NBC News the town “has full confidence in Chief Robert Farley’s leadership.”

Edited to add 3/28: The NYPost has a follow-up story. While these are still allegations, the story includes some photos that would tend to support the claims.

Warning: I don’t usually have to put a content warning on flaming hyenas. But these photos include a shirtless Chief Farley shaving himself (or pretending to shave himself) over a subordinate’s desk. These photos also include a pile of poop, allegedly from the chief, though it is unclear to me if any DNA testing was done to establish that.

Obit watch: March 27, 2025.

March 27th, 2025

Carole Keeton.

She was the first woman to serve as mayor of Austin, served as state comptroller, and served on the Texas Railroad Commission. The obits right now seem kind of short, but I remember she was a big deal in Austin and Texas politics when I first moved to Austin.

Clive Revill. Other credits include “Babylon 5”, “Pinky and the Brain”, “Let Him Have It” (which I highly recommend), and a spinoff of a minor SF TV show from the 1960s.

Oleg Gordievsky. He was a Commie spy.

Except he actually wasn’t. He was a double agent for British Intelligence.

In 1985 he was recalled to Moscow, given drugs and interrogated. Someone, it seemed, had tipped off the K.G.B. to the presence of a high-ranking mole in London.
Lacking solid evidence, the Soviets placed him on leave. A few days later he appeared at 7 p.m. on a Moscow street corner, holding a shopping bag. A man soon passed, eating a candy bar. They locked eyes.
That was the signal to activate Operation Pimlico, an emergency extraction. Mr. Gordievsky shook his K.G.B. tail and then hurried to the Finnish border. Two British agents, a man and a woman, along with their baby, awaited him there in their Ford Sierra.
They placed him in the trunk, wrapped in a foil sheet to confuse heat detectors. When dogs at the border grew suspicious, the agents began to change the child’s diaper, filling the car with odors that threw the canines off Mr. Gordievsky’s scent.
When they were finally across, they played Jean Sibelius’s “Finlandia” symphony on the car’s sound system, a signal to Mr. Gordievsky that he was safe.
Back in Moscow, he was sentenced to death in absentia. That sentence has never been rescinded.

L.J. Smith, author. I probably would not have noted this, but she had an interesting career.

She published her first book (The Night of the Solstice, for young readers) in 1987. It wasn’t a bestseller, but it did attract the attention of Alloy Entertainment, “a book packaging and production company that has since been acquired by Warner Brothers”. They hired her to write “The Vampire Diaries” series, and she wrote four of those books between 1991 and 1992.

But Ms. Smith — whose first agent was her typist, who had never represented a client — told The Wall Street Journal that she had written the trilogy for an advance of only a few thousand dollars without realizing that it was work for hire, meaning she did not own the copyright or the characters.

She also wrote other YA series books. In the late 1990s, though, she stopped writing for a time due to family health issues.

During her fallow period, though, vampire books soared in popularity, lifted on the success of Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series. By 2007, sales of “The Vampire Diaries” had increased, and Ms. Smith was contracted to continue the series by writing a new trilogy for Alloy Entertainment, for which she was entitled to half the royalties.

Yes, this is “The Vampire Diaries” that became the CW series. Which may have been part of the problem: Ms. Smith was fired as the writer in 2011. She stated that she thought the publisher wanted “wanted shorter books more closely associated with the TV series”.

But wait, there’s more! She started writing “The Vampire Diaries” fan fiction!

In 2013, Amazon created Kindle Worlds, an online service that gave writers of fan fiction permission to write about certain licensed properties, including Alloy’s “Vampire Diaries” series, and to earn money for their ventures.
In 2014, Ms. Smith became the rare celebrated author to produce fan fiction as a way to recoup characters and story arcs she had lost, publishing a novel and novella in an informal continuation of the “Vampire Diaries.” (Kindle Worlds was discontinued in 2018).

I had actually never heard of “Kindle Worlds”. But I don’t follow fan fiction.

In addition to “The Vampire Diaries,” Ms. Smith wrote three other popular series for young adults: “Night World,” “Dark Visions” and “The Secret Circle,” which also became a series on the CW, lasting one season.

Firings watch.

March 25th, 2025

Stanford hit the reset button on their football program.

I mean that semi-literally.

“Since beginning my role as General Manager, I have been thoroughly assessing the entire Stanford football program. It has been clear that certain aspects of the program need change,” Stanford football general manager Andrew Luck said in a statement. “Additionally, in recent days, there has been significant attention to Stanford investigations in previous years related to Coach Taylor.
“After continued consideration it is evident to me that our program needs a reset. In consultation with university leadership, I no longer believe that Coach Taylor is the right coach to lead our football program. Coach Taylor has been informed today and the change is effective immediately.”

Per the linked article, Troy Taylor had back-to-back 3-9 seasons. But the bigger problem seems to be: he was a jerk.

According to documents obtained by ESPN, the investigations began after multiple employees filed complaints against Taylor for what they called hostile and aggressive behavior, as well as personal attacks, the reports said. The school hired Kate Weaver Patterson, of KWP Consulting & Mediation, to investigate in spring 2023.
After the first investigation, Taylor signed a warning letter on Feb. 14, 2024, acknowledging he could be fired if the conduct continued, according to the documents. Additional complaints were documented in a second investigation that ended last July 24, but Taylor remained on the job.
The second investigation cited evidence “that this is an ongoing pattern of concerning behavior by Coach Taylor.” It was conducted last June and July by Timothy O’Brien, senior counsel for the Libby, O’Brien, Kingsley & Champion law firm in Maine. O’Brien, who has advised several Division I and Power 5 programs, said in his report that he has never encountered “this palpable level of animosity and disdain” for a university compliance office.

He called Taylor’s treatment of the team’s compliance officer “inappropriate, discriminatory on the basis of her sex,” saying it had a “significant negative impact” on the staffer. O’Brien concluded that Taylor retaliated against the compliance staffer by “seeking her removal from her assigned duties” after she raised concerns about NCAA rules violations related to illegal practices and player eligibility.

One source with direct knowledge told ESPN that Taylor has “lost the locker room.” Two sources told ESPN that Taylor’s behavior extended beyond athletic department and compliance office staff and onto the field.

Obit watch: March 24, 2025.

March 24th, 2025

Max Frankel, former executive editor of the New York Times.

Former Congressional representative Mia Love (R – Utah).

Brian James, of The Damned.

The Damned never shook British society, or the rock world at large, like the Sex Pistols, who sneered at the queen, hurled obscenities on television talk shows and had pundits mulling the collapse of Western values. Nor did they play the part of political revolutionaries like the Clash, who were billed as “the only band that matters.”
Nevertheless, the Damned made history. They were the first British punk band to release a single: “New Rose,” written by Mr. James, in October 1976 (the Sex Pistols’ anthemic “Anarchy in the U.K.,” soon followed); the first to release an album, “Damned Damned Damned,” in 1977; and the first to tour the United States.

ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?!

March 23rd, 2025

More than $5 worth of entertainment indeed.

Rodney Terry fired as University of Texas men’s basketball coach.

He coached for two seasons, but I can’t find an overall record. Texas was 19-16 this season, 6-12 in conference, and lost their first game in the NCAA tournament to Xavier.

ESPN, who is spinning it more as Texas is going to hire Sean Miller…the current coach at Xavier.