Fiction has to be believable.

December 27th, 2024

Mike the Musicologist sent this over to me. While WFLA is a Florida news site, the most unbelievable part of this story (to me, anyway) is that the events took place in Maryland, not Florida.

A man was arrested and charged after disrupting religious services at two Maryland Catholic churches on Christmas Eve, according to the St. Mary’s County Sherriff’s Office.
A release from SMCSO said that around 5 p.m. on Christmas Eve, Thomas Campbell Bolling Von Goetz, 56, entered Holy Angels Catholic Church during Mass. He then proceeded to disrupt the service by dropping an onion in the aisle.
A citizen who followed Von Goetz into the church ushered him outside where, SMCSO said, Von Goetz began pelting the individual with tangerines.

Onions and tangerines? I guess there are worse things than being pelted with tangerines.

But wait, there’s more!

Later Tuesday night, deputies were called to a similar disruption at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church in Leonardtown during Midnight Mass. According to them, Von Goetz poured whiskey into the holy water and threatened parishioners who tried to intervene.
While being escorted from the building, Van Goetz attempted to strike church attendees with a whiskey bottle.

I don’t think this is what the Irish mean by “Uisce beatha“. Also, seems like a waste of both good whiskey and good holy water.

The gentleman in question is now facing a laundry list of charges, some of which I’ve never heard of before: “Obstructing a religious exercise”, “Religious crime against a group”.

Posted in Law, Religion | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: January 27, 2024.

December 27th, 2024

Geoffrey Deuel, actor.

Other credits include “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders”, “The F.B.I.”, “Mission: Impossible”, “The Magician”…

…and “Mannix”. (“Eagles Sometimes Can’t Fly”, season 3, episode 1. “Chance Meeting”, season 8, episode 15.)

(Lawrence, I’m about halfway tempted to add “In the Line of Duty: The F.B.I. Murders” to the list. It is available on DVD at a reasonable price, and it seems like a lot of big names from the time are in it. My only issue, other than convincing folks to watch it, is that Ed Mireles says it isn’t completely accurate. We might want to accompany that with the “FBI Files” episode, which I think is more historically accurate.)

Posted in 1970s, Mannix, Obits, TV | 1 Comment »

Post Christmas gun book blogging.

December 26th, 2024

“Did you get any gun books for Christmas?” asked nobody, ever.

Yes, actually, I did. Lawrence gave me a batch of older softcover books he picked up while shopping over Thanksgiving, including a Gun Digest I didn’t have. Someone at work sent me some “funny money” as a thank you for services rendered, which I plan to use to purchase the Standard Catalog of Smith & Wesson, 5th Edition in both the physical and Kindle editions. (It is supposed to be out January 7th according to Amazon, but some people on the forum have reported they’ve already received their copies.) And I’ve been told that I have at least one more present coming, but shipping has been delayed, so I don’t know what that is. Could be a gun book, could be not a gun book. Could be not a book at all.

I also got some books I ordered from Callahan and Company in two separate orders, so I am a bit backlogged. It is probably a good time to start cataloging those. All four of these came in the same C&C order, and there was a total of $8 media mail shipping on top of the stated prices.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Mannix, Smith and Wesson | 1 Comment »

Merry Christmas!

December 25th, 2024

I do like this version of the song, and (as far as I know) I’ve never used Maddy Prior before.

Don’t think I’ve used Dan Fogelberg, either.

Since it is Christmas, I’m going to put this here as a present for FotB RoadRich:

The great and good Pat Cadigan posts her favorite Christmas story every year (Merry Christmas, Pat!) so I think I’m going to start posting my favorite Christmas joke. This version comes by way of Bayou Renaissance Man and his weekly roundup of memes (click to embiggen):

Special Christmas best wishes to Borepatch. And to pigpen51 and Joe D: in the interest of preserving their OPSEC, I won’t reveal where the later two gentlemen are located, but I believe the temperature in their necks of the woods is somewhere around seven.

Posted in Cars, Christmas, Music | 2 Comments »

Have yourself a merry little…

December 24th, 2024

…Vincent Price Christmas.

Victoria Price told Fox News Digital that her father, the star of classic horror movies like “House on Haunted Hill” and “Edward Scissorhands,” had a “weakness for large jewelry that he loved buying his wives,” and after going to Poland in 1974 he gifted her stepmother a chunky bone butterfly necklace.
“My stepmother hated it,” Price said. “That wasn’t her cup of tea. And unlike us, she just said it. ‘I will never wear this. I hate it.’”

…

She continued, “My dad loved Christmas; he was like Father Christmas. Christmas was his favorite holiday. They were married for 18 years. Every year for the next 18 years, [her stepmother] would get in her thing of Christmas packages some beautiful Tiffany box or something, and there it was, every damn year that bone necklace, so that was my dad’s humor.”

…

She got one of her favorite gifts, a portable typewriter, while they were spending Christmas in England one year, but her favorite gift was one she got from her dad every Christmas – a $10 gift certificate to a bookstore in Beverly Hills where she was able to buy a stack of books. “My dad and I would go to Hunter’s Books after I got my certificate, and he would amuse himself for as long as it took. There was no time limit,” she remembered.

This also gives me a chance to vent mildly about one of my disappointments this year. Vincent Price’s cooking show, “Cooking Price-Wise” is being reissued on blu-ray…

…but it is a region B/2 blu-ray that won’t play in the US, and I don’t have a region-free blu-ray player, alas.

Posted in Books, Christmas, Food, Movies | 3 Comments »

Obit watch: December 24, 2024.

December 24th, 2024

Col. Perry Dahl (USAF – ret.). He was 101.

Col. Dahl shot down nine planes during the Pacific campaign in WWII.

Colonel Dahl was only 5 feet 4 inches tall and needed extra seat cushions to reach the pedals of his plane. But his exploits brought him the Congressional Gold Medal, the Silver Star, the Distinguished Flying Cross and the Legion of Merit.

…

He scored his first aerial victory in November 1943 when he shot down a Zero fighter plane while escorting bombers on a strike against a Japanese airfield.
In April 1944 he downed his fifth plane, achieving the minimum required to become an ace, and was promoted to the rank of captain.
In November, during the Philippines campaign, he notched his seventh “kill” while escorting American B-25 bombers that were attacking Japanese shipping. Moments later, Japanese fire forced him to bail out of his plane, which he ditched in Ormoc Bay. But his co-pilot was unable to bail out and perished. Captain Dahl was initially captured by a Japanese Army patrol before being rescued by Philippine resistance forces, who hid him.
He later shot down another Japanese plane. His ninth and final aerial victory came on March 28, 1945, while he was escorting bombers attacking a Japanese naval convoy off the coast of French Indochina, earning him the Silver Star.
He lost four of his P-38s to Japanese fire and midair collisions.
“One more destroyed P-38 and you’ll be a Japanese ace,” the 475th Squadron commander Charles MacDonald once remarked, according to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum.
Colonel Dahl had flown 158 combat missions by the time the war ended.

He also served honorably during the Korean and Vietnam conflicts before his retirement in 1978.

Art Evans, actor. Other credits include the original “Fun with Dick and Jane”, the original “Death Wish”, and “The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again”.

Lawrence sent me an obit a few days ago for writer Barry Malzberg. I couldn’t do anything with it, because it was on Facebook and wouldn’t even come up for me unless I signed in with my (non-existent) Facebook account. None of the usual sources has published an obit yet, but Michael Swanwick put up a tribute at his blog.

Sophie Hediger, Swiss snowboarder and member of their Olympic team. She was 26, and was killed in an avalanche.

Burt, the crocodile from “Crocodile Dundee”.

The 1986 movie stars Paul Hogan as the rugged crocodile hunter Mick Dundee. In the movie, American Sue Charlton, played by actress Linda Kozlowski, goes to fill her canteen in a watering hole when she is attacked by a crocodile before being saved by Dundee.
Burt is briefly shown lunging out of the water.
But the creature shown in more detail as Dundee saves the day is apparently something else. The Internet Movie Database says the movie goofed by depicting an American alligator, which has a blunter snout.

Update to my Party City obit: while Part City as a chain is shutting down, there are at least two stores in Austin that are independent franchises, and those stores are planning to stay open.

They will still be party supplies stores, but exact logistics are unknown. The stores opened before the Party City company formed.

Posted in 1970s, Books, Heroism, Movies, Obits, Planes, Reptiles, Sports, TV | No Comments »

NYPD Blues.

December 23rd, 2024

I get the feeling the paper of record was caught flatfooted by the Maddrey scandal, and is playing catch-up.

Jessica Tisch, the head of the New York Police Department, is cracking down on apparent abuse of overtime pay as the agency faces internal and external investigations into the matter.
Among at least 29 officers who were moved into new jobs over the past two days, 16 earned more than $100,000 in overtime pay in the last fiscal year.

…

Several of the employees who were moved worked under Mr. Maddrey, formerly the chief of department, and other top police officials, according to city payroll records and internal police documents obtained by The New York Times.
Two officers who worked for Mr. Maddrey collectively made $312,769 in overtime alone.
Two other officers, who together made around $289,000 in overtime, were transferred out of the operations bureau led by Kaz Daughtry. Eleven officers were moved out of the department’s public information office. Ms. Tisch last week announced that the head of that office, Tarik Sheppard, is also being replaced.

…

Even before the accusations against Mr. Maddrey, the Police Department has long attracted scrutiny for its high overtime spending. As of March, the agency had spent close to $271 million more on overtime in fiscal year 2024 than originally budgeted, the City Council speaker, Adrienne Adams, said at a public hearing in May, noting that the department routinely exceeded its overtime budget.
Word of personnel changes quickly swept through police headquarters in Manhattan over the weekend, and some officers privately praised Ms. Tisch, calling the changes long overdue. Several said they had been exasperated with officials who showed favoritism toward some subordinates and awarded them with cushy positions and bigger paychecks.
Some were also glad to see Mr. Maddrey and Mr. Iglesias go. In group text chats, the rank-and-file lauded the police commissioner, and shared a photo a with a golden halo around her head. Underneath the picture it said: “Saint Tisch. Patron saint of common sense.”

I want to be clear about this. I don’t think overtime, even a lot of overtime, is necessarily a criminal violation, or even an ethical one. That is, if the officers in question actually collected the overtime honorably: they actually worked the time, did their jobs, and had the proper approval.

If the overtime was being collected based on a quid pro quo – like sex for overtime hours, or kickbacks to supervisors, or something equally sleezy – yes, go after the people involved for the unethical and/or criminal behavior. But just accumulating lots of hours isn’t a crime by itself.

Posted in Cops, Law, NYPD | No Comments »

Obit watch: December 23, 2024.

December 23rd, 2024

I hope all of my readers are having a Festive Festivus.

Rickey Henderson, for the historical record, as I think this was well covered over the weekend. NYT. ESPN. Baseball Reference.

Michael Brewer, of Brewer & Shipley (“One Toke Over the Line”).

Miguel Angel Aguilar, fitness influencer.

Aguilar was hospitalized in a critical condition on Sept. 13 after he got caught up in an attempted robbery in Los Angeles, KTLA reported.
According to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), Aguilar and his wife, celebrity hair stylist Priscilla Valles, were confronted by four armed men in the driveway of their Bel-Air home on Sept. 13.
The armed intruders ultimately struck Aguilar multiple times, including once in the face, before fleeing, TMZ reports. LAPD officers were called at around 4:30 p.m. that day.

He had been hospitalized since, and passed away on Saturday.

Posted in Music, Obits, Sports | No Comments »

You’re going down in flames, you tax-fattened hyena! (#137 in a series)

December 21st, 2024

Wow. Just wow.

You know, you go to church last night for the “Lessons and Carols” service (which, at my church, was a very nice service, but lightly attended). Then you go pick up your car from the repair shop (yes, Daddy spoke too soon. Fortunately, I have the reserves to cover it.)

Meanwhile, all heck breaks loose.

New York City’s second-highest-ranking police officer, who served as chief of department, abruptly resigned Friday night following allegations of sexual misconduct, according to the Police Department.
The former top chief, Jeffrey Maddrey, submitted his resignation and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch accepted it Friday night, according to a statement from the department.

The NYPost broke the story. This being the Post, they go into more explicit detail.

Chief of Department Jeffrey Maddrey stepped down soon after The Post contacted the NYPD about Lt. Quathisha Epps’ claims in an exclusive interview that he routinely preyed upon her, asking for sex in NYPD headquarters.

And here’s a fun fact:

Epps recently made headlines as the NYPD’s top earner, pulling in a whopping $400,000 — including roughly $204,000 in overtime alone last year for her administrative job in Maddrey’s office, payroll records show.

I am leaving a lot out of the Post story. You can go over there and read it if you want, but I warn you: the details are very explicit.

In the interest of fairness:

When she started to try to get away from Maddrey recently, Epps was outed on a list of high overtime earners in retaliation, Sanders said.
Epps was suspended for 30 days and is being investigated over the excessive overtime, police sources said.

Also in the interest of fairness:

Former Police Officer Tabitha Foster filed an unsuccessful 2016 civil suit alleging he took advantage of her by exchanging sex for job perks. A judge threw the case out and cleared Maddrey. Foster also accused Maddrey of hitting her.

In August, Edward Caban, the police commissioner at the time, dismissed internal charges against Mr. Maddrey that he had interfered with the arrest of a retired officer who had chased three boys while armed.

Updated 12/23: And over the weekend, Miguel Iglesias, the Chief of Internal Affairs, was “relieved of his command and has notified the Department of his intent to retire”. The NYPost coverage is being played like it was an open secret within the department that Maddrey was a sex predator, and nobody – including IAD – was willing to do anything about it before now.

Posted in Cops, Law, NYPD, Politics, Religion | No Comments »

Obit watch: December 20, 2024. (Supplemental)

December 20th, 2024

Turn out the lights, Party City is over.

Barry Litwin, the company’s chief executive officer, told corporate employees on Friday that Party City is “winding down” operations immediately and that today will be their last day of employment.

…

The development team was recalled from its yearly trip with vendors and told to go home immediately two weeks ago, according to a former corporate office employee who spoke to CNN.
The team was informed that the company believed the trip posed a safety risk since Party City stopped paying its suppliers.
All Party City corporate employees were sent home on Dec. 10 and security locked the front entrance of company headquarters in Woodcliff Lake, NJ.

…

Party City, which is known for selling balloons and other party supplies, first filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January last year, with $150 million in debtor-in-possession financing to support its operations and reported $1 billion to $10 billion of estimated assets and liabilities.
In September, the retailer reached a plan to exit bankruptcy, which saw a cancellation of about $1 billion in company debt and turned all its equity value over to the retailer’s lenders.

So what the heck happened with that plan? It isn’t clear from the article. Though “The company had considered filing for bankruptcy a second time earlier this month…”

Posted in Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: December 20, 2024.

December 20th, 2024

Joanne Pierce Misko, historical footnote. And I say that in the kindest possible way.

She spent 10 years as a nun with the Sisters of Mercy, but she decided she wanted to marry and have kids. She was looking for something to do other than teaching.

One day an F.B.I. agent came to her school in Olean to talk about jobs in the bureau. She had already been thinking about leaving her order, and the idea of a career in the F.B.I. intrigued her.

She signed on as a researcher in 1970. Research or clerical work were the only options available to women at that time. But when Hoover died in 1972, L. Patrick Gray III allowed women to sign up as agents.

With her supervisor’s encouragement, Mrs. Misko applied, and within a few months she was being sworn in with 44 others at the F.B.I. headquarters in Washington. She and another woman, Susan Roley Malone, a former Marine, then traveled with the others to the new F.B.I. Academy in Quantico, Va., for 14 weeks of training.

They were the first two female FBI agents.

“I can remember very vividly the first case I had,” she told the Buffalo TV station WGRZ in 2022. “We went out to get the guy, and he found out that we were looking for him and he called back into the office; he was incensed that a woman was being sent out to get him, you know, that he wasn’t worthy of a guy. He had to have a woman go after him.”
Often, she found her gender could be an advantage, as suspects often let their guard down around her.
“Most people back then didn’t even realize the F.B.I. had female agents,” Mrs. Misko said on the Madame Policy podcast in 2022. “Many times a subject would simply open the door when I knocked, not expecting me to say, ‘F.B.I.’”

“Celebrating Women Special Agents: Joanne Pierce Misko” on the FBI website. One thing not mentioned there, but in the NYT obit:

She retired in 1994 and went to work for a bank. That same year, she filed a lawsuit against the Department of Justice, saying she had been held back from promotion because of her gender. She settled the suit in 1996 for an undisclosed sum.

By the way, she did marry a fellow FBI agent, but the NYT does not mention children.

Posted in Cops, FBI, Law, Obits | No Comments »

Flaming hyena update.

December 20th, 2024

A while back, I wrote about Burnet County Judge James Oakley, who had just been indicted on both felony and misdemeanor charges.

A jury found him not guilty of one charge, and a judge threw out the other charges. However, a panel of judges from the Third Court of District Appeals recently ruled that judge “erred” in his decision.

Judge Oakley was also reprimanded by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct earlier this month.

One of the things he’s accused of is removing the lock to Justice of the Peace Lisa Whitehead’s courtroom door. Whitehead ended up filing a formal complaint over safety concerns after she said she could not find a “workable solution” with Oakley.
Oakley also faces allegations of sexual harassment from Whitehead that stem from 2023 and for creating a “hostile work environment.”

Judge Oakley resigned on Wednesday. For what it may be worth, the text of his reprimand is included in the linked KXAN article.

Posted in Law, Politics | No Comments »

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