Dana Brown out as general manager of the Houston Astros.
The Chron calls it a mutual parting of the ways, but it sure sounds like a firing to me.
ESPN.
You are not going to space today.
August 24th, 2026Obit watch: August 24, 2026.
August 24th, 2026Shelley Fabares, actress. THR.
Previously on WCD. Credits other than those in the headline and “Hello, Larry” include “The Incredible Hulk”, “The Rockford Files”, and “Longstreet”.
Her “Mannix” was “A Step in Time“, season 5, episode 3. She was “Gwen Townsend”.
Dave Marsh, cantankerous music critic. (NYT share link, may require registration or an email address or something.)
Another one of the publications that I used to read when I holed up in the UT library was “Rock & Roll Confidential”. I liked Marsh’s prose style, even if I would probably have disagreed with him on a lot of things. Then again…
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#161 in a series)
August 21st, 2026Before I begin this latest entry, I want to give folks a brief peek behind the scenes of how the sausage is made.
Every once in a while, I run across a story that might be blog worthy, but that I won’t blog because I think the details are just too much for my readers, even with a warning. There was a flaming hyena I saw the other day, but didn’t blog for exactly that reason. I realize my readers are all adults (well, I hope so anyway), but there’s just some things that I don’t feel like I need to blog.
This story is right on the edge, for what that’s worth.
William Monroe Palmer is the president of the “San Francisco Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board”.
Allegedly, he picked up the young woman two days later, (allegedly) got her into his car, (allegedly) took her back to his place, and (allegedly) spent the next five days smoking drugs and having sex with her.
At one point, she was told she had to be resuscitated from an overdose. The drug use made her unsure in her decision-making, she said.
“I felt hesitant, but I took my clothes off because he told me to take my clothes off,” she said. “I felt very messed up, I couldn’t tell if I wanted to have sex or not.”
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Meanwhile, her mother reported her missing on July 3, panicking about her daughter’s whereabouts. Four days later, an unidentified man called the mother and said her daughter was at an art studio near Market Street.
The mom called the police, who found both her daughter and Palmer together. Officers handcuffed Palmer and placed the woman in a mental health hold, but he was eventually released.
But wait, there’s more.
Palmer later tried to visit the woman at San Francisco General Hospital using his official position, but was turned away. He reportedly even emailed the district attorney’s office that he was “deeply” concerned about how police had ended his “trauma-informed intervention” in the woman’s life.
According to Palmer, he said he took care of the woman. He spotted her and got her out of a situation she didn’t belong in, he said. He allegedly took her to acupuncture sessions, and Palmer said he gave her a drink that he claimed turned people into a “total different person.”
“I’m her life coach,” Palmer told the Chronicle. “I talked to her and told her the things that she needed to hear to snap out of the lifestyle she was in and to get into the life that she wants to be in.”
He refused to confirm whether he had sex or did drugs with her.
But wait, there’s more.
But wait, there’s more. He was appointed to the board because they were looking “to include people with ‘lived experience’ to shape the jail system.” What was his “lived experience”? If you said “doing time”, take two gold stars and advance to the next blue square.
He had served 31 years of a life sentence in prison for a crime he committed as a teenager.
There’s an effort underway to remove him, but (quel fromage!) that’s not an easy thing for the SF Board of Supervisors to do.
…
Obit watch: August 21, 2026.
August 21st, 2026I’ve been reading a fair number of books about shipwrecks recently. I owe everyone longer reviews, but The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald gets an unqualified rave from me, while Until the Sea Shall Free Them: Life, Death, and Survival in the Merchant Marine gets a slightly qualified endorsement.
I haven’t read this book yet, but when I saw the NYT obit for John Rousmaniere, I felt like I had to mention it. (Share link, may require you to register or put in an email address or something.)
He was an author and a sailing historian.
But his most famous book is probably Fastnet, Force 10: The Deadliest Storm in the History of Modern Sailing.
He was an experienced offshore sailor when he joined the crew of a 48-foot Swan sloop, one of 300 yachts entered in the Fastnet Race in August 1979, with a planned route of 605 miles from the Isle of Wight to Fastnet Rock off Ireland and back.
A freakish storm slammed the fleet with gale-force winds and 50-foot frothing waves. Mr. Rousmaniere was at the wheel of the vessel when the owner raised his head from monitoring radio traffic and said, “People are dying out here.”
Amid seas that flipped 35-foot yachts “like bathtub toys,” as Mr. Rousmaniere later wrote, 24 crews abandoned their vessels, and 15 sailors died. Helicopter crews and commercial and naval seamen rescued 136 sailors.
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Margo Howard, columnist. (NYT share link, you know the drill.) I used to read, and enjoy, “Dear Prudence” in Slate before they replaced her, and went off the deep end.
Obit watch: August 19, 2026.
August 19th, 2026Frank Beard, drummer for ZZ Top. NYT (share link, but they’re going to want you to create an account or put in your Google or Apple address or something).
There are a lot of great Top songs, but I thought I’d go for a slightly deeper cut. Mostly because this video has been on my mind recently:
Peggy Webber, actress.
“The Screaming Skull” on the MST3K site.
She was also part of Jack Webb’s stock company. The obit mentions her role as “Ma Friday”, but she also appeared four times on the 1960s color “Dragnet”, twice on “Adam-12”, and one time each on “Emergency!” and “Project U.F.O.” She also did a “Quincy, M.E.” and two episodes of “Night Gallery”.
Obit watch: August 17, 2026.
August 17th, 2026Violet Hensley, fiddler. (Share link, but they’re going to want you to create an account or put in your Google or Apple address or something).
Ms. Hensley made a clear distinction between a fiddle and a violin, even though they are essentially the same instrument. “If you can read music, you play the violin,” she told The Tulsa World in 1982. “I can’t read music, so I just play the fiddle.”
By the time she turned 99, Ms. Hensley had performed old-time mountain music — not bluegrass, which she deemed too fancy — at the Silver Dollar City theme park in Branson, Mo., for more than 50 years; played on radio stations and at schools; recorded at least two albums, one of them, with family members, called “Old-Time Hoedowns”; and appeared on TV programs like “Captain Kangaroo,” “The Beverly Hillbillies” and “Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee.”
She also handcrafted 73 fiddles — she played No. 4, which she made in the 1930s — thus acquiring nicknames like “The Whittlin’ Fiddler” and “Stradivarius of the Ozarks.” She could have built more fiddles if not for time spent gardening, canning, sewing and cutting her neighbors’ hair, she told CBS News when she was 90. To make ends meet, she was a cleaning lady at a hospital for many years.
There was one thing she wanted to do: play the Grand Ole Opry.
When another fiddler, Tim Crouch, read about that desire in Ms. Hensley’s autobiography, “Whittlin’ and Fiddlin’ My Own Way” (written with Randall Franks and published in 2014), he called the banjo player Mike Snider, who brought her onstage at the Opry on Aug. 6, 2016.
“This little lady was born in 1916,” he said as he introduced her, to cheers. She played “Angeline the Baker” and “Black Eyed Susie” with Mr. Snider, Mr. Crouch and other fiddle players, and received three standing ovations, Ms. Flagg, her daughter, said.
…
…
In addition to Ms. Flagg, Ms. Hensley is survived by two other daughters, Beatrice Porter and Lewonna Nelson; three sons, Marvin, R.G. and Eddie Hensley; Wilma Flagg, a family friend who came to live with her as a teenager; 32 grandchildren; 85 great-grandchildren; 29 great-great-grandchildren; and two great-great-great-grandchildren. Her husband died in 1997. Four of their sons — Calvin, Russell and Gary Hensley and Larry Hensley, who was stillborn — predeceased her.
Making fiddles was one of many skills Ms. Hensley developed over her lifetime. She also made lye soap, tanned leather, broke horses and tended crops.
“I always say,” she told The Tulsa World, “making a fiddle is a lot easier than plowing a field with a team of mules.”
She was 109 when she passed.
Mark Rydell, director. Other credits include “The Reivers”, “Harry and Walter Go to New York”, and “The Fugitive” (the original series). NYT share link for the record.
The NYT finally got around to running an obit for Zale Parry. (Previously.) (Share link, but they’re going to want you to create an account or put in your Google or Apple address or something).
What the NYT obit lacks in timeliness, it makes up for by covering another aspect of Ms. Parry’s life: she was involved in early LSD studies. The NYT obit also reproduces her SI cover, in color.
Tommy John, pitcher.
After suffering what had been up to then considered a career-ending injury, John, then 31, underwent ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction surgery on his left (pitching) elbow in 1974, with the revolutionary procedure being performed by Dr. Frank Jobe. The procedure was named after John and has since become commonplace, performed on thousands of players — not just pitchers — with a typical recovery time of a year to 18 months.
John, nicknamed “The Bionic Man,” went on to pitch for 14 more seasons after the surgery.
…
John had 124 wins in 355 games at the time of the procedure. He pitched in 405 more games, winning 164, and finished with a career record of 288-231 — the second-most wins of any pitcher since 1900 not to be elected to the Hall of Fame — with a 3.34 ERA and 2,245 strikeouts in 760 career appearances.
Besides eight seasons with the Yankees, for whom he won 91 games over two stints, John pitched for the Chicago White Sox, Dodgers, California Angels, Cleveland Indians and Oakland Athletics during his career.
He is tied for third on the list of most seasons played, with 26. Only Nolan Ryan and Cap Anson (27 seasons) are ahead of him.
NYT share link. Baseball Reference.
Hayden Panettiere. Everyone is on this, and I’ve got nothing to add. IMDB. NYT share link, for the record.
Obit watch: August 13, 2026.
August 13th, 2026Noted fantasy and SF writer John Crowley passed away last Saturday. Michael Swanwick. Lawrence. And I will be sheep-dipped: NYT (share link, but they’re going to want you to create an account or put in your Google or Apple address or something).
The only Crowley work I’ve read is Great Work of Time and I agree with Lawrence: that is a fine novella.
Derrick Parker, former detective with the NYPD. He…
…was the former head of the NYPD’s rap intelligence unit when the city’s hip-hop scene exploded in popularity in the 1990s.
His work included monitoring high-profile artists and their entourages as they came and went from the Big Apple.
He said he shared his strategies to reduce violence in the music industry in other parts of the country, including in Miami and Atlanta.
He also served as a homicide and cold case detective during a career that spanned more than 20 years and worked alongside the US Marshals, the ATF, the DEA and the FBI, according to his website.
Burning in Hell watch: Ward Churchill, disgraced plagiarist university professor. (NYT share link, but they’re going to want you to create an account or put in your Google or Apple address or something).
When he was dismissed, Mr. Churchill had been a tenured professor at the university’s Boulder campus since 1991 and had served as chairman of its ethnic studies department. In 2007, a faculty panel found that he had plagiarized and falsified parts of his research on Native Americans, prompting his dismissal.
He filed a wrongful termination suit against the university, claiming that the real cause for his firing was to punish him for an essay he had written on Sept. 12, 2001, and published online a few days later, in which he argued that the United States had brought on itself the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
In the essay, he compared office workers who had been killed to Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi official whose later defense that he was merely “following orders” helped inspire the writer Hannah Arendt to develop the concept of “the banality of evil.”
In Mr. Churchill’s essay, titled “Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens,” he wrote that the financial workers who died at the World Trade Center were not innocent bystanders, but “little Eichmanns” who were part of “a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire.”
…
When the lawsuit went to trial in March 2009, Mr. Churchill’s lawyers described the university panel’s search for professional misconduct as a pretext for a foregone decision to dismiss him. Mr. Lane, his lawyer, said at the time that Mr. Churchill was the victim of a “howling mob” of university administrators, conservative media and politicians “falling over themselves” to secure his removal.
In April 2009, the jury found that Mr. Churchill had been wrongfully dismissed, awarding him a symbolic $1 in damages. It found that his political views had been a “substantial or motivating” factor in his dismissal, and that the university had not shown that he would have been dismissed anyway for his academic misconduct.
…
You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#160 in a series)
August 12th, 2026Gina LaPlaca is the former mayor of Lumberton Township in New Jersey.
In March of last year, she was arrested for DUI and child endangerment.
But that’s not why she’s going down in flames.
Ms. LaPlaca and her husband, Jason Carty, are charged with forging signatures to get her on the primary ballot this year.
The troublesome couple, who both “collected signatures,” allegedly put people’s names on a nominating petition supporting LaPlaca and signed for them without their consent ahead of the June 3 primary vote.
Multiple individuals who appeared to support the controversial politician told investigators they did not sign or authorize anyone to endorse LaPlaca’s run on their behalf, officials said.
LaPlaca signed the petition swearing she “personally circulated the petition [and] that such petition was signed by each of the signers thereof in his/her own handwriting.”
…
Officials did not reveal how many signatures the couple forged, but specified LaPlaca wouldn’t have made the ballot without them.
“Without the fraudulent signatures, the investigation revealed, LaPlaca’s petition would have lacked the requisite number of signatures required to be a candidate for the primary,” the county prosecutor’s office said.
…
LaPlaca was charged by summons with Making a False Statement Under Oath, Knowingly Filing a False Petition, two counts of Tampering with Public Records or Information and Falsifying or Tampering with Records.
Carty was charged with Knowingly Filing a False Petition, two counts of Tampering with Public Records or Information and Falsifying or Tampering with Records.
By the way, the alleged forgery accomplished exactly nothing. Ms. LaPlaca finished third, with 323 votes.
Random pop culture crankery (with a little bit of gun stuff).
August 11th, 2026This is from Rock Island Auction, and is a promo for an item in an upcoming auction. But it also touches on one of this blog’s areas of interest. And some friends of the blog are currently working their way through “Miami Vice”, so…”The Bren Ten Origin Story”.
Changing gears to something that’s a little less gun crankery, if MeTV sticks to their schedule, Thursday morning’s episode (8 AM Central, 9 AM Eastern) of “Perry Mason” will be “The Case of the Final Fade-Out“. This is the final episode of the original run.
The general consensus of opinion seems to be that “Mason” got progressively weaker as time went on, and season 9 has issues. While there are some good episodes in this season (I like “The Case of the Midnight Howler” and “The Case of the Cheating Chancellor“) there are some that are just remakes or stunts. (“The Case of the Dead Ringer” stands out in particular as a stunt episode. This season also includes “The Case of the Twice-Told Twist”, the only episode to be filmed in color. While I don’t consider that a “stunt” – they were preparing to move to color if the series had been renewed for season 10 – it is yet another juvenile delinquent episode.)
However, “Final Fade-Out” is a lot of fun, and a great way to end the series. There are a bunch of inside jokes, many of which are documented in the IMDB trivia. Many of the people who worked behind the scenes got (uncredited) on-screen roles in this episode. Even ErleStanleyGardnerTheCreatorOfPerryMason makes a cameo appearance as a judge in the second of the two courtroom scenes.
This is a fun episode. I always find it worth re-watching when it comes up in reruns, and I recommend it if you have not seen it previously.
Notes on film.
August 10th, 2026Keeping with our “worst movies to win the Academy Award for Best Picture” watching, we saw “Gigi” the other night. I don’t think it was a conscious choice to watch another movie from that list – it was more “let’s watch a musical”, that was what Lawrence had on hand, and “Gigi” is more of a “honorable mention” on the list of worst Oscar winners.
I am not a gay man. But I like theater, I like musicals, and I like movie musicals. And I have a passing familiarity with Lerner and Loewe. (I’ve seen “My Fair Lady” cut up for TV, and (I think) in a Houston Grand Opera production. And some years ago, I saw what I also think was a HGO production of “Brigadoon”. I remember that because one of the leads was the aerial traffic reporter for a local radio station. I wish I could remember that guy’s name. It was KPRC 950 AM in the late 1970s – early 1980s, if that helps anybody.)
As good as ”The Greatest Show On Earth” is…”Gigi” isn’t.
Obit watch: August 11, 2026.
August 10th, 2026Former Representative Ben Jones (D-Georgia). THR.
Most people would know him as “Cooter Davenport” on “The Dukes of Hazzard”. Other credits include “Movin’ On”, “Smokey and the Bandit”, and “The Lincoln Conspiracy”.
Tedde Moore, actress. Other credits include “Police Surgeon”, “Torso: The Evelyn Dick Story”, and “Odyssey 5”.
It has been a bad few days for people of the gun. One of my book buddies in the Association has been sending me obits.
Tom Marx passed away in February, but his death was announced only recently.
From the same obit (by Massad Ayoob in Backwoods Home), Greg Moats.
And Steven Dodd Hughes, gunsmith, author, and photographer.
I think I actually bought a gun from him about 14 years ago. I remember him being a pretty darn good guy and a pleasure to do business with.
Joyless fun-suckers, sucking all the joy out of everything.
August 9th, 2026One of the things that I have learned, admittedly fairly late in life, is: if you see something specifically called out in rules or guidelines that seems odd or out of place (for example. “DON’T buy a parrot figuring that it will be a fun surprise for me.”) that thing is more than likely there because someone did it and it caused…issues.
What brings this to mind?
The longer version of the story: two Cornell students who had some spare time on their hands, rifles, and appropriate permits, went hunting and CillED A. BAr.
Having killed the bear, they did what any normal person would do: they took the bear back to their dorm and dressed it out in the kitchen. (Their original plan was to go to a friend’s house, but “their friend’s place was unavailable”.)
“We were really diligent,” he said. “We made sure we did everything by the book. We knew we’d be under scrutiny.”
As Mr. Chin and his friend carved up the bear in the first-floor kitchen, some of their peers were studying at nearby tables. Other students walked by and took pictures.
“Most people were really curious,” he said. “Like, ‘Hey, we’d love to try some.’”
“We were just explaining, like, ‘Hey, none of this goes to waste,’” Mr. Chin said.
But, sure enough, some joyless fun-sucker (probably a vegan) complained, and the university started an investigation.
Turns out:
The police probably did not file charges because no crime had been committed, would be my guess. However, Cornell has decided to ban wild game processing in residence halls anyway.
There have been no other known instances of wild animals being processed in residence halls, Ms. Knewstub added.
For those students who would like to hunt, she said, “there are many certified vendors near and around campus who can work with hunters to process game.”
I am left with some questions, though. How do you make “black-bear pastrami”, and what does it taste like? (Somehow, I doubt you can use a standard pastrami recipe, and a quick Google search did not turn up a specific black bear one.)
I’m also vaguely curious about what rifles they used, and where they kept them.
(Short true story: I know someone who, when they were in school, wanted to take their shotgun back to the university with them so they could do some bird hunting. This was a fairly large university in Texas, but not one of the ones you usually think of. This person’s plan was to keep the gun at a friend’s house…the HMFWIC that was in charge of this person instead arranged for the shotgun to be kept at the home of a close personal friend of theirs. Namely, the university’s marching band director. Who, I was given to understand, was pretty heavily armed his ownself.)
(Guys, if you want to move to Texas after graduation, I’ll be happy to sponsor your application. The bear hunting here isn’t great, I don’t think. But we’ve got other game to make up for it.)
Short random AI thought.
August 5th, 2026Remember Ashley Madison?
They must have had battalions of people creating and manipulating fake accounts.
These days, all you need is a single generative AI instance, and you can create all the fake users for your dating site that you need.
Another example of hard working people losing their jobs to AI.
Bonus:
Obit watch: August 4, 2026.
August 4th, 2026Kay Granger, former Congresswoman from Texas.
Ms. Granger left Washington in 2024, during her final year in the House, and moved into an independent living facility in Fort Worth — an arrangement that her office did not disclose for months.
When a conservative website broke the news in December 2024, Ms. Granger’s son Brandon told The Dallas Morning News that she had been experiencing “dementia issues.” In a statement at the time, Ms. Granger said she had been navigating “unforeseen health challenges that have progressed since September and made travel to D.C. difficult.”
The news caused a stir in Washington, coming as several older members of Congress also faced health issues and the Republican majority in the House was razor-thin.
Monty Roberts, horse trainer. I remember vaguely hearing about him around the time the “Horse Whisperer” was big, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to do an obit watch. Then I read the article:
“You have to give him credit. He was one of the first people to get away from the rough stuff, tying a horse to a pole and sacking it out,” Temple Grandin, the noted animal behaviorist and proponent of the humane treatment of livestock, said. “He was really observant out in the field and got to thinking about what a horse really has to say to you. A lot of people are good at reading horses, but he was a pioneer in telling people there were better ways to train horses.”
And unlike some trainers, she said, he demonstrated his methods.
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When he was just 7, he showed his father how effective it was to treat a young stallion with kindness to instill trust.
His father, he said, flew into a rage and beat him so severely with a chain that he had to be hospitalized. He vowed never to share his unconventional ideas with his father again. But he remained convinced that there was a better way to work with horses.
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Among his admirers was Queen Elizabeth II, who had read articles in equestrian magazines about Mr. Roberts’s methods and had longed to find a less violent method for training horses.
In April 1989, she invited Mr. Roberts to visit her and demonstrate his unconventional ideas. She was so impressed that she brought him into her royal equestrian orbit as an adviser, and he became a friend.
“She believed that no one should ever say to any human being or animal, ‘You do what I tell you to do or I’ll hurt you,’” Mr. Roberts told The New York Times in 2022.
Scott Hylands. You know, I’d never actually even heard of “Night Heat”, which surprises me: I thought I had a pretty good knowledge of cop shows. Other credits include “Blue Thunder” (the series), “Today’s F.B.I.”, “Harry O”, and “The Magician”.
For the record: Vincent Pastore, of “The Sopranos” fame. IMDB. You know, I might actually watch “Wu-Tang: An American Saga”, if I can find it.
Shortish lazy gun book blogging.
July 28th, 2026First of all, I recommend you go over to the Revolver Guy blog and read Darren S.’s article, “The RevolverGuy’s Reading List“.
I think this is a pretty swell list. And yes, there were a few on there that I was not previously familiar with.
Changing gears a bit…I’ve found out some interesting information about this old Smith and Wesson. I have not received the actual history letter yet, and I want to wait on that before I post. I’ll update when I do get the history letter, and I’m hoping that my saying “I have not received the actual history letter yet” will cause the history letter to show up before the weekend. Because the fundamental perversity of the universe tends towards a maximum, as we like to say around here.
Changing gears a bit again…Jacob at the Widener’s Shooting, Hunting & Gun Blog sent me a nice email about their recent blog post: “Armor Piercing Rounds: 308 Winchester?” I swear that I had already seen this post and that it was linked somewhere else (maybe McThag linked to it?) but AP ammo is something I’m interested in, the email from Widener’s was flattering, and I might want to take Jacob up on his offer (“If you ever need a caliber or two sent your way, let me know.”) one of these days.
There’s also a YouTube video with Chad Finchum, who’s a NASCAR driver. I don’t follow NASCAR as much as I did when I was younger, but I do sort of keep an eye on it. Haven’t watched the video yet, but I’ll embed it anyway.
Changing gears a bit again (I feel like I’m driving an 18-wheeler. On the downhill side. Of Wolf Creek Pass.)…I’m not sure if this actually qualifies as “lazy”, but I did want to get this in. The moderately lazy part is that it ties back to a book I’ve previously written about, so I can cover it in a shorter post.