The holidays come thick and fast this time of year.

June 28th, 2026

Happy Gavrilo Princip Day! I hope everyone has, or will shortly, collect their bag limit of archdukes.

(Remember: responsibly harvested, archdukes are a renewable resource.)

Don’t forget to drink a toast to the memory of the late guffaw, originator of the holiday.

(I did go to a gun show yesterday. But I did not see any FN 1910s for sale.)

Also, on a just slightly more serious note: today is Mel Brooks’s 100th birthday.

Mr. Brooks has given me a fair amount of pleasure over the years. I hope somebody gave him a nice urine jacket as a birthday present.

Posted in History | No Comments »

Mendoza!

June 26th, 2026

Carlos Mendoza out as manager of the New York Mets.

…with the team sitting 13 games below .500 following their sixth straight loss on Thursday in what will likely be a second straight season without playoff baseball.

ESPN.

Mendoza, 46, was in his third season as manager with a club option for 2027 that was not exercised. He led the Mets to an improbable appearance in the NL Championship Series in his first year at the helm in 2024, guiding the club from one of the worst records in the majors in June to within two games of the World Series.
But his second season was a failure as the Mets inverted the results from 2024, jumping out to the best record in the majors before capsizing over the season’s final 3½ months and failing to reach the postseason.

Posted in Firings, Sports | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 25, 2026.

June 25th, 2026

Dr. Roy G. Jinks passed away last night. I’m sorry that I don’t have anything to link to at the moment.

Dr. Jinks was a driving force in Smith and Wesson collecting. Arguably, he was the driving force. He was one of the founders of the Smith and Wesson Collector’s Association. He was a long time S&W employee, working in multiple positions within the company (including as their official historian for quite a while). He did more to preserve S&W history than any other person. And he wrote the definitive (though about 1980) history of S&W.

This is a great loss. I will perhaps have more to say about this in the coming days. I will say that we were (sort of) friends, in the sense that he could probably have picked me out of a police lineup, and we talked pretty regularly at the Symposiums.

Shirley Lord, writer.

Excuse me. That’s “bosomy dirty book writer Shirley Lord“, as the late lamented (by me, anyway) “SPY Magazine” used to refer to her.

Lawrence gave me copies of a couple of her books one year. I have to say, “steamy” is a pretty accurate description of those books. I also would accept “kinky”.

Posted in Books, Guns, Hoplobibilophilia, Obits, Smith and Wesson | No Comments »

Am I lazy or what? (Random gun crankery.)

June 24th, 2026

I was armed to the teeth with a pitiful little Smith & Wesson’s seven-shooter, which carried a ball like a homeopathic pill, and it took the whole seven to make a dose for an adult. But I thought it was grand. It appeared to me to be a dangerous weapon. It only had one fault—you could not hit anything with it. One of our “conductors” practiced awhile on a cow with it, and as long as she stood still and behaved herself she was safe; but as soon as she went to moving about, and he got to shooting at other things, she came to grief.

–Mark Twain, Roughing It

According to Wikipedia, the source of all vaguely accurate (and a lot of inaccurate) information, the events of Roughing It took place between 1861 and 1867. So it is likely that Twain’s “pitiful little Smith & Wesson’s seven-shooter” was something very much like this:

That’s a Smith and Wesson, Model 1, Second Issue.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Guns, History, Smith and Wesson | 1 Comment »

Not gun book blogging, for once.

June 22nd, 2026

I’ve been tied up with various things and haven’t been able to book blog as much as I would like. Plus blogging with Bluehost is a constant struggle, and I really need to get on the stick about moving this blog.

But I had a three day weekend, and I had a little time, so I thought I’d blog some things from the backlog. It took a little longer than I expected, for the usual reasons.

This time, though, I’m not doing gun books. Oh, I have plenty of those to blog. But I wanted to do something different. So these are not “gun” books in the sense I would use. A couple of these are peripherally “gun” books, and a couple are completely not “gun” books.

So: weird Australian mammals, a cookbook, a history book, and Roy Chapman Andrews after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Books, Food, Hoplobibilophilia, Mammals | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 22, 2026.

June 22nd, 2026

Another one of those “it got busy up in here” obit watches.

James Bradley, author (Flags of Our Fathers).

I haven’t read the book, but the Saturday Movie Group watched the movie. I can’t put it any better than Lawrence did: “I wanted to see a movie about the flag raising, not a movie about a bond drive.”

James Burrows, sitcom guy.

Mark Singer (paywall link: sorry), New Yorker writer. Among his works: the Ricky Jay profle.

Also among his works:

Mr. Singer is also the author of “Citizen K: The Deeply Weird American Journey of Brett Kimberlin” (1996), an expanded version of a New Yorker profile of a drug smuggler, murder suspect and media manipulator, that was a finalist for a National Magazine Award; and the collection “Somewhere in America: Under the Radar with Chicken Warriors, Left-Wing Patriots, Angry Nudists and Others” (2004).

Unmentioned in the obit: Brett Kimberlin is the guy who claimed to have sold marijuana to Dan Quayle.

However, Singer “decided that [he] had been lied to repeatedly by Kimberlin.” Singer concluded that Kimberlin “was not telling the truth about Quayle.” In print, Singer said he believed Kimberlin had known someone who had claimed to sell marijuana to Quayle and had then appropriated the story as his own.

Alan Greenspan, former chairman of the Federal Reserve. WP.

Clive Davis, music guy.

Posted in Books, History, Music, TV | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: June 18, 2026.

June 18th, 2026

FotB RoadRich sent over two obits:

Daveigh Chase. Other credits include “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation”, “Cold Case”, “S. Darko”, and “Without a Trace”.

Margaret Kerry. Other credits include “Clutch Cargo”, “The Sickle or the Cross”, and “The New 3 Stooges”.

Posted in Movies, Obits | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 16, 2026.

June 16th, 2026

NYT obit for Jane Yolen. (Previously.)

Anne Schedeen, actress. Credits other than one of the worst shows ever to air on television include “Ironside”, “Lanigan’s Rabbi”, and “The Six Million Dollar Man”.

William Smithers, actor. Other credits include “Quincy, M.E.”, “The Bold Ones: The New Doctors”, the good “Hawaii Five-0”, “The F.B.I.”, a minor SF TV series from the 1960s…

…and “Mannix”. (“Eight to Five, It’s a Miracle”, season 1, episode 21. He was “Salvatore Pucci”.)

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

Obit watch: June 13, 2026.

June 13th, 2026

Gene Shalit. THR. I realize that there’s a “don’t speak ill of the dead” factor here, but the THR story reads like a hastily and slightly re-written press release from the family.

I do remember liking the guy when I was a young person watching the “Today” show, and I’m impressed he lived to 100.

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

Obit watch: June 12, 2026.

June 12th, 2026

Dr. Alan Hale, the Hale in the Hale-Bopp comet.

I really like Dr. Hale’s telescope. If I had space and time…

(Thomas Bopp died in 2018.)

Jane Yolen, noted writer. I don’t have much I can link to (Lawrence tipped me off to this, based on a Facebook post) but Michael Swanwick posted a very nice tribute on his blog.

David Hockney, noted artist. He’s one of those people that even I had heard of, and I’m very much an outsider to the art scene.

Cleve Moler.

In the early 1970s, computing was at an impasse. Scientists knew that computing power and memory had the potential to be nearly limitless. At the same time, fields like engineering and biomedical research were running up against quantitative problems far too complex for humans to solve with pen and paper.
Computers could, in theory, help with those problems. But especially early on, working with them was extremely difficult, requiring a deep understanding of FORTRAN, the first high-level programming language, along with hours spent writing the necessary code.

…

In the 1970s, he played a central role in developing two libraries — essentially collections of prewritten code — within FORTRAN, called EISPACK and LINPACK, which provided a standardized set of shortcuts.

…

Starting in the late 1970s, he developed MATLAB, an interface that allowed students to engage directly with a computer, at first through a Teletype machine. His invention was akin to a super-calculator that was able to quickly process mountains of data without the need to program each calculation in advance and without going through the process of creating punch cards.

…

The advent of the personal computer gave every engineer access to a powerful computational device. MATLAB offered a relatively simple way of unlocking those computers’ full potential.
“I was lucky in that the things that I was personally interested in were useful to other people,” he told Scientific Computing World magazine. “I didn’t invent MATLAB to be used by a lot of other people. I put things into MATLAB that I found useful, and other people have also found them useful.”

There’s a fun little note in the obit involving a movie based on a minor SF TV series from the 1960s, but I am leaving that as an exercise for the reader.

Edited to add: And, since I posted this obit, the NYT has added a correction…related to a main character from that same minor SF TV series from the 1960s. I cannot make this stuff up. Seriously, go read the obit: the link I posted is a share link and should be free.

Princess Bajrakitiyabha Narendira Debyavat of Thailand. She was 47.

According to reports, she collapsed while training dogs for a competition in December of 2022, and had been in a coma since that time.

Posted in Art, Books, Geek, Science | 2 Comments »

Obit watch: June 11, 2026.

June 11th, 2026

Lance Rentzel. He was 82.

Mr. Rentzel started out with the Vikings, but didn’t do that well, mostly due to injuries. He was traded to the Cowboys, and was a solid player. Quoting Wikipedia:

On May 2, 1967, Rentzel was traded to the Dallas Cowboys in exchange for a third-round draft choice (#76-Mike McGill). Rentzel was converted into a flanker, where he became not only an immediate starter over Pete Gent but also one of the best wideouts in the NFL. Rentzel led the team in receptions with 58 for 996 yards (two yards less than Bob Hayes). If Rentzel had gotten four more yards and Hayes two more, it would have been the first time in NFL history that a team had two 1,000-yard wide receivers. In the tenth game of the season against the Washington Redskins, Rentzel had 13 receptions for 233 yards. His 13 receptions set a franchise record and stood for 40 years until it was broken by Jason Witten in 2007. The 233 yards were good enough for third on the team at the time (now sixth). Rentzel also starred in the 1967 NFL Championship, known since as the “Ice Bowl”, scoring a fourth-quarter, go-ahead touchdown later negated by the Green Bay Packers’ game-clinching drive.

He was on top of the world. He married Joey Heatherton in 1969. But he had a problem.

In 1966, he exposed himself to two young girls in St. Paul. That incident didn’t get a lot of attention, and he pled down to “disorderly conduct”. But in 1970, he exposed himself to a 10-year old girl in University Park, Texas. That got more attention: Ms. Heatherton divorced him, and he was traded to the LA Rams. He was less successful there, and was suspended at the start of the 1973 season after being convicted of possession of marijuana. (He was still on probation for the indecent exposure charge.)

He also wrote a book, When All the Laughter Died in Sorrow, which I have in a box somewhere but haven’t read.

“Doctor Who”.

The British broadcaster has canceled a Christmas special previously announced for later this year, and showrunner Russell T. Davies has confirmed his exit.

There were rumors a few weeks ago that the Christmas special was going to be cancelled, as the BBC and showrunners couldn’t find anybody who was willing to play “Doctor Who”.

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

Obit watch: June 7, 2026.

June 7th, 2026

Bob Packwood, former Senator from Oregon. WP (archived).

He resigned in 1995, before he could get thrown out, due to a sexual harassment scandal.

The case against Mr. Packwood, who had spent nearly half his life in the Senate, unfolded long before the #MeToo movement spurred society to take more seriously allegations of sexual misconduct against high-profile men. An inquiry by the bipartisan Senate Select Committee on Ethics dragged on for more than three years before the committee recommended unanimously that he be expelled.
That recommendation was based in part on Mr. Packwood’s diary, in which he detailed his predatory behavior, including toward women he supervised. “Twenty-two staff members I made love to,” he boasted, “and probably 75 others I’ve had a passionate relationship with.”

…

Shortly after his re-election to a fifth term, The Washington Post reported that he had made uninvited advances toward 10 women, many of whom were on his staff.
“Several said he was abrupt, grabbing them without warning, kissing them forcefully and persisting until they made clear that they were not interested or had pushed him away,” The Post reported.
Before the article was published, Mr. Packwood denied the allegations and refused to cooperate with The Post. Instead, he gave the newspaper embarrassing information about some of the women’s sexual histories to undermine their credibility.

…

But the Ethics Committee’s investigation continued.
As it expanded to include accusations of corruption, Mr. Packwood stonewalled it with legal challenges. In May 1995, though, the committee issued a damning bill of particulars, saying it had “substantial credible evidence” that Mr. Packwood had committed at least 18 sexual assaults between 1969 and 1990.
It also said that he had tampered with evidence by destroying parts of his diary, an incriminating document replete with scenes out of a bodice-ripper.
“If she didn’t want me to feather her nest, why did she come into the Xerox room?” he wrote at one point. “She knew I was copying stuff in there. I had my jacket off and my sleeves rolled up, revealing the well-defined musculature of my sinewy arms, which were always bulging with desire. I know what she wanted.”

Posted in History, Obits, Politics | No Comments »

Obit watch: June 5, 2026.

June 5th, 2026

James Handy, actor. Other credits include “Crossing Jordan” (the “Quincy” of the 2000s except it sucked), “Gideon’s Crossing”, and “Walker, Texas Ranger”.

Max Kleven. Man, he had one heck of a career. Stunt work on “Cotton Comes to Harlem” and “Come Back Charleston Blue”, second unit director on “Rollerball” and “Silver Streak”, and acting credits on “The F.B.I.”, a minor SF TV series from the 1960s…

…and he was a “Mannix” five-timer, too.

This just in: Anthony Head. Other credits include “Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance”, “NYPD Blue”, and “Two Guys, a Girl and a Pizza Place”.

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

Obit watch: June 4, 2026.

June 4th, 2026

Marjane Satrapi, author of the graphic novel “Persepolis”.

I haven’t read it, but “Persepolis” got a lot of praise from the usual suspects.

Peabo Bryson, musician.

Posted in Books, Music, Obits | No Comments »

Happy anniversary!

June 4th, 2026

Today is the 52nd anniversary of Ten Cent Beer Night!

If you live in the area around Cleveland or Euclid, Collision Bend is hosting their fifth observance of the event.

I thought about doing a top ten list of my personal “greatest sporting events”, but I have trouble deciding between Ten Cent Beer Night and Disco Demolition Night for second place. (First place is, of course, the Heidi Bowl.)

Also, I have trouble coming up with a list of ten. I’d probably put this one on the list:

mostly for childhood nostalgia. I might add the final game of the Washington Senators in 1971. But then it gets tough.

Posted in History, Sports | No Comments »

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