Random crankery.

August 29th, 2026

First off, a matter of somewhat pecuniary interest, since I’d like to keep good relations with Jacob and the Widener’s blog folks.

Jacob was kind enough to send over a link to a recent post: “1986 VS 2026: Guns And Ammo Pricing“.

Jacob goes through and compares prices between 1986 and 2026, and does some historical and cultural analysis of the changes during that period (the rise of the Internet, regulatory factors, panic buying after certain events, etc.)

In 1986, a box of 9mm cost $22.50, or about $0.45 per round.
In 2026, it averages $10.00 per box, or $0.20 per round.
Even without adjusting for inflation, that’s a dramatic decrease. When adjusted for inflation, 9mm is significantly cheaper today than it was in the 1980s.

My main quibble with Jacob here is: that’s really the only place where he mentions “adjusted for inflation”. Though he does say:

Firearms: Moderately more expensive, but roughly in line with inflation

I would have liked to see more of a breakdown of this.

The two inflation calculators I use are: the US Inflation Calculator and the CPI Inflation Calculator from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

If we plug some of Jacob’s numbers into those calculators and compare 1986 to 2026 dollars:

  • The $249 in 1986 Glock 17 would be $758.63 in 2026. A veritable bargain, since Jacob has it for $649!
  • The $79 Ruger 10/22 would be $240.69 today. MSRP on the cheapest 10/22 I could find on Ruger’s site is $339, Jacob has it for $349 (which is also correct: Ruger has various models with various prices, of course.)
  • The Colt AR-15 Carbine that was $499 would go for $1,520.30 adjusted for inflation today. I find it hard to do a direct comparison, because so much depends on configuration, but MidwayUSA lists a Colt AR15A4 for $1136.41. Another bargain! (Jacob has it for $1,099.)
  • Your $5.49 .22 LR ammo would come out to $16.73 in 2026 dollars.

That’s probably enough examples. I’ll leave additional analysis as an exercise for the reader. I’ll note that both of the calculators I use gave exactly the same numbers for the 1986-2026 comparisons: I suspect they draw from the same source. Generally, $1 in 1986 is equal to $3.05 today, so you can use that as a factor when doing your math.

I like Jacob’s post. I just think it would be worthwhile to do a direct 1986-2026 dollar value comparison as part of the analysis. Jacob (or anyone else, for that matter) is welcome to flame me in comments if they think I’m wrong.

After the jump, a couple of books, mostly because I’m done with them and would like to move them from the downstairs stack to the upstairs shelves.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books, Food, Guns, Holsters, Hoplobibilophilia | No Comments »

Obit watch: August 28, 2026.

August 28th, 2026

I am reliably informed by a reliable source who sent me a private message (that I don’t have permission to share here) that “Rocky Horror Picture Show” is actually still a thing, in Austin and in Washington, DC. (“The wash dc monthly showings still draw hundreds of people.”)

It is nice to leave a legacy behind you.

NYT obit for Jaye P. Morgan, for the record. (May require registration or an email address or something.)

King Harald V of Norway (NYT share link, yadda yadda.)

This is an interesting obit. The king’s daughter-in-law was close to Jeffrey Epstein. Her son is serving time for rape. And his daughter married “a self-proclaimed shaman who counted Gwyneth Paltrow among his celebrity clients and friends.”

Their relationship brought hostile attention to some of Mr. Verrett’s past utterances, including his claim that he had used an amulet — which he sold for $222 on his website — to combat Covid-19, and his assertion that cancer is a choice. The princess had also been criticized for many years for claiming to be clairvoyant and for urging others to contact “the angels and the divine universe.”

Several people sent me obits for voice actor Peter Cullen: NYT (you know the drill). The Internet Movie Voice Actor Database.

And a burning in Hell watch: Ratko Mladic, the “Butcher of Bosnia”.

On the eve of the Srebrenica massacre, he promised to avenge the conquest of Serbia centuries before by the Ottoman Muslim Turks. Over 10 days, his soldiers hunted down, captured and summarily executed thousands of Bosnian Muslims, lining them up with hands tied behind their backs and shooting them. Women were raped. International pleas for restraint were ignored.
Serb forces buried the remains, dug them up again and scattered them in distant mass graves in an organized effort to hide damning evidence of war crimes.

Posted in 1970s, Horses, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

Obit watch: August 27, 2026.

August 27th, 2026

Tim Curry. NYT share link (may require registration or an email address or something).

Oddly, I have never seen “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”. I didn’t move in the right circles when I was in school, and now it seems like that particular moment has passed.

Other credits include “Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties”, the 2000 “Charlie’s Angels”, “The Blues Brothers Animated Series“, and “Pinky, Elmyra & the Brain”.

The NFL Pro Bowl. Awful Announcing. Enough said.

Posted in Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: August 26, 2026.

August 26th, 2026

Dolly Parton. NYT share link (may require registration or an email address or something).

Everyone was on this yesterday: I held off, per the policy of this blog, and I think pretty much everything that can be said has been, or will be. I only have two thoughts:

1. I know this isn’t original to Ms. Parton (it’s actually a cover of a Neil Young song, with a slightly modified lyric) but I find this to be incredibly haunting.

2. She was a zealous advocate of literacy. She wanted to put books in kid’s hands. I swear I read somewhere (but can’t find it now) that she believed books were the best way for kids to broaden their horizons and lift themselves up from poverty.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library. You know, just in case you feel like tossing a few bucks in.

Dolly Parton’s letter to Eminem.

In other news: Jaye P. Morgan. Yes, from “The Gong Show”. (Kids, ask your parents about “The Gong Show”.)

Posted in 1970s, Books, Music, Obits, TV | 3 Comments »

You are not going to space today.

August 24th, 2026

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.

The Astros are currently in first place in the AL West, but with a 65-66 record. They have lost six of their past eight games.

Posted in Firings, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: August 24, 2026.

August 24th, 2026

Shelley 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”.

(Edited to add 8/25: NYT share link, may require registration or an email address or something.)

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…

In the same record guide, Mr. Marsh called the Grateful Dead, with their interminable space jams and druggy aura, an “assertedly major oeuvre that’s virtually worthless except for documentary purposes.”

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Movies, Obits, TV | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#161 in a series)

August 21st, 2026

Before 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.

A San Francisco official who’s already in trouble for antisemitic online rantings and allegedly abusive relationships with women faces even more explosive allegations that he gave drugs to a vulnerable woman and had sex with her.

William Monroe Palmer is the president of the “San Francisco Sheriff’s Department Oversight Board”.

In the latest incident, a young woman, 26, told the San Francisco Chronicle that she left her family’s home on June 30 with no money or cell phone after a dispute about her job at a strip club.

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.”

…

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.

The latest allegations add to what is already a troubling string of accusations against Palmer. The Post reported that he freely ranted about Jews on social media while serving on multiple City Hall boards. He has also been accused by four women of abuse, and he claimed homelessness to get out of 97 parking tickets with fines of $9,743.

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.

The city Board of Supervisors has the power to remove him through a process that requires multiple votes and a hearing. Supervisor Stephen Sherrill requested an investigation into whether Palmer committed misconduct and said the removal process must begin soon.

…

However, he said the city requires an “absurd” process and he is in conversations about moving the investigation more quickly. He told The California Post in an interview that the removal process is hopefully “weeks away.” Sherrill called attention to a measure on the November ballot that would enable quicker removals without cause.

Posted in Admin, California Über Alles, Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 21, 2026.

August 21st, 2026

I’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.

He wrote “The Annapolis Book of Seamanship,” a practical reference that has been used by the U.S. Naval Academy and many recreational sailors, first published in 1983 and now in its fourth edition. In a more lyrical vein, he wrote “The Golden Pastime: A New History of Yachting” (1986).

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.

…

As Mr. Rousmaniere intended, the book helped spur changes that made yacht racing safer. Boats evolved to become less prone to capsize; harnesses that tether sailors to their boats became stronger; and education about the risks of offshore sailing, and how to survive life-threatening scenarios, became more than an afterthought. Mr. Rousmaniere also helped to create the U.S. Sailing Association’s Safety at Sea course, which some 2,500 sailors take every year.

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.

Posted in Boats, Books, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: August 19, 2026.

August 19th, 2026

Frank 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).

Beard isn’t technically a founder of ZZ Top (that’d be Dan Mitchell), though he joined the group in its infancy in 1969 and led its rhythm section for over five decades.

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.

She also is known for her turn as the newlywed who moves into a mansion where her husband’s (John Hudson) first wife died under suspicious circumstances in the cult horror classic The Screaming Skull (1958). American International Pictures promised a free burial to anyone who died of fright watching the movie, a thinly veiled remake of Hitchcock’s Rebecca.

“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”.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: August 17, 2026.

August 17th, 2026

Violet 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.

…

She performed twice more at the Opry, in 2017 and in 2018, the year she was inducted into the National Fiddler Hall of Fame in Tulsa, Okla.

…

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.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: August 13, 2026.

August 13th, 2026

Noted 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.

Notorious C.O.P.: The Inside Story of the Tupac, Biggie, and Jam Master Jay Investigations from NYPD’s First “Hip-Hop Cop” on Amazon.

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.

…

A Denver District Court judge ruled that the university did not have to reinstate or compensate Mr. Churchill, a decision which was upheld by the Colorado Court of Appeals. In 2012, the Colorado Supreme Court affirmed the lower courts’ rulings.

Posted in Books, Cops, Law, NYPD, Obits | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#160 in a series)

August 12th, 2026

Gina LaPlaca is the former mayor of Lumberton Township in New Jersey.

In March of last year, she was arrested for DUI and child endangerment.

LaPlaca is currently serving a three-year supervision sentence for the March 17, 2025, arrest where she had a Blood Alcohol Concentration of .30%, nearly four times the legal limit in the Garden State.

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.

She was effortlessly defeated by current Mayor Terrance Benson and former committeewoman Kendra Hatfield, who received 1,100 and 1,052 votes, respectively.

Posted in Law, Politics | 1 Comment »

Random pop culture crankery (with a little bit of gun stuff).

August 11th, 2026

This 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.

Posted in Guns, TV | No Comments »

Notes on film.

August 10th, 2026

Keeping 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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Movies, Music | 7 Comments »

Obit watch: August 11, 2026.

August 10th, 2026

Former 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.

Tom was one of the true “industry insiders.” He began as a Chicago cop and then focused on the gun world, working at various times for Smith & Wesson, Ruger, and Blackhawk among others. His consulting encompassed design, engineering, and marketing. Marx specialized in handguns and particularly defensive handguns.

From the same obit (by Massad Ayoob in Backwoods Home), Greg Moats.

Greg had been at the legendary Columbia Conference held at world combat pistol champion Ray Chapman’s Chapman Academy in Columbia, Missouri in 1976 at which the International Practical Shooting Confederation was founded under the leadership of the legendary Jeff Cooper.

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.

Posted in 1970s, Guns, Movies, Obits, Politics, Smith and Wesson, TV | 2 Comments »

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