Ugh.

I am sick unto death.

Plus, it's been a weekend around here.

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Boldly Gone...

It's been a rough week for Starfleet, losing both Chekov and Picard in the space of a few days.

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RIP to a Legend

Possible the last universally beloved American we'll see for a while has passed.

Indy Flood Update...

I've posted plenty of pictures from the sculpture gardens that surround the Indianapolis Arts Center, including photos of my favorite one, Twisted House, by John McNaughton.

Here's a photo of my friend Dave standing in front of it for scale:

I saw a photo of it in the news yesterday afternoon...

Bonnie Tyler has left the building.

Like everyone else who secretly loved the shit out of the song "Total Eclipse of the Heart" and its bizarro video but was too cool to admit it, I am saddened by this news.

In tribute, the best spoof video of all time:

What a loss...

The sun went down on Saturday with the news of the shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island and rose on Sunday with reports of an antisemitic terrorist attack in Australia.

Then on Sunday night comes the news from California, where Rob Reiner and his wife had been found stabbed to death in their home in the Brentwood neighborhood of LA. The danger here wasn't a random shooter or an ideological terrorist; no, the suspect in the double homicide is the couple's own adult son.

I immediately thought about 99-year-old Mel Brooks, who has already buried his best friend, Carl Reiner, and now will be attending the funeral of his friend's son, who was practically a nephew to Brooks.

What a legacy Rob Reiner left, though! From his acting role as Mike "Meathead" Stivic in All in the Family to maybe one of the most amazing decade-long streaks in motion picture directing history, starting off with the iconic mockumentary This is Spinal Tap in 1984, followed by...

Tab Clearing...

• PHLster Holsters has a new newsletter...and a new newsletter editor.


• The Devil and Sergeant Danny Applewhite


• Deputy Cletus has left the building.

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Val has left the building.

Val Kilmer, who passed away yesterday at age 65, was one of my first movie crushes, in Willow. He did a brilliant comedic turn in the Abrahams, Zucker, and Zucker classic, Top Secret. Check out his spot-on timing in this scene...

Of course he was in three gun nerd movie classics: Tombstone, The Ghost and the Darkness, and Heat. His story in this Reddit thread about filming the latter is pretty cool.

I'm going to choose to believe that my AR mag body that was used in the big shootout scene in Heat is one of the ones used by Chris Shiherlis.

So it goes...

Famed director David Lynch has left the building. Keep it weird in his honor.

(In case you don't get the Pabst Blue Ribbon reference, Blue Velvet is available to stream on Prime Video.)

Bug

So the germ that had me feeling a little ookie for a couple days last week has pretty much knocked Bobbi flat.

She's definitely improved over yesterday, but I imagine it's going to be tomorrow before she's feeling up to going anywhere.

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Tab Clearing...

• Basically, nowadays Twitter is just 4chan but with a constant barrage of ads for crypto schemes and janky Chinese consumer goods, except 4chan doesn't keep pestering you to give them eight bucks a month.


• Flaco the owl's glorious year of freedom has come to a sad ending.


• Some men just want to watch the world burn.

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And so it goes...

Mojo Nixon is with the King now.

Requiem for a Heavyweight

I had my Nikon D1X out to get some exercise a couple days ago, and when I went to take a shot, the shutter made a weird noise and it looked like the mirror didn't cycle properly. I powered it off for a quick count of ten Mississippi and turned it back on again and everything seemed to return to normal.

Then yesterday after noon I was out with it again and when I went to take a shot the mirror stuck in the up position. Even with a fresh fully-charged battery, the camera just makes a muted whirring noise when the shutter button is pressed and the mirror doesn't budge.

Nikon D1X & 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6D VR

I think this is the end for my D1X. Time to put a body cap on it and shelve it alongside my Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, which had taken to spending more time throwing error codes than functioning properly.

Considering that Nikon launched the D1X in early February of 2001 with serial number 5100000 and mine is serial number 5100496, it's an old one. I was down to one really good NiMH battery pack and one that was on its last legs. It was too old to even work with my favorite Nikon DX lens, because it couldn't control the electronic diaphragm on the 16-80mm f/2.8-4E.

At this point it's a 20+ year-old DSLR that, to judge by the body, saw years of hard pro service before I bought it back in 2015; the equivalent of a workhorse getting a job giving kiddie rides at a petting zoo as a retirement gig. It's not economically repairable, but I've had some good times with it. Took it to Blogorado back in '15, shot some roller derby with the Atomic Nerds in Albuquerque, and it accompanied me on plenty of neighborhood walks.

I knew this day was coming, but I'm still a little sad.

Good job, Nikon.

Mixed Legacy

So, as you have probably heard, Gaston Glock shuffled off his mortal coil a couple days ago.

He probably had more impact on the world of handguns today than any other single individual not named "Sam Colt" or "John Browning".

Not that he was necessarily a design genius or brilliant gunsmith or whatever. He was an engineer who owned a company that hired designers and gunsmiths, but the end result is that he made a pistol that was dirt cheap to manufacture yet adequately reliable, accurate, and durable.

I carried Glocks for years. I likely will again at some point. I was a moderator at the GlockTalk forum twenty-three years ago. I even had a Glock desktop theme on my Win95 computer. (Remember desktop themes? Mine played a .WAV of that Tommy Lee Jones "nickel plated sissy pistol" quote when I shut it down.)

At the same time, there's no denying that Gaston's dirt-cheap-to-manufacture pistol really kicked off the race to the bottom that has consumed the handgun market over the last thirty years.

So my feelings on hearing this week's news are... complex.

And so it goes...

Via Facebook I learned that David Drake passed away yesterday. His website confirms the sad news.

The sheer number of times I referenced him on this blog should tell you what a loss this is. Other than a few fantasy series and some of his "co-authored" stuff (meaning Drake sketched the outline and the junior author did the grunt work of writing), I have pretty much nearly everything he wrote.

I think I'll re-read With the Lightnings in memorium.

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A Dark Day in Hoosieropolis...

Former IU coach Bobby Knight went to that great Assembly Hall in the sky yesterday. 

He was a titan of basketball, which is the official state religion of Indiana (and my lack of appreciation for squeaky round ball is how I know I'm merely a naturalized Hoosier and not a true native) and his passing is the top story in the local news.

Tom Cochrun wrote about his memories of Coach Knight here.

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Sad news...

I just learned that Bruce McCall passed away.

You might know him from his illustrations for The New Yorker, who eulogized him yesterday:

Bruce McCall, the artist behind the cover for the May 15, 2023, issue, died on May 5th, at the age of eighty-seven. McCall, who insisted upon chewing his beloved Groucho Marx cigars long after a taste for tobacco stopped being even remotely acceptable, was a dear friend and a poet at heart. His artistic sensibility was formed far beyond the strictures of art school, first in the stark and frigid landscape of Ontario, then in the stark and frigid world of Madison Avenue advertising. His work as an ad man lent him an extraordinary drawing fluency and speed, and a knack for copywriting—his paintings are often filled with a droll humor splayed across billboards and signs. Ardor for the shining mirage of Detroit, Michigan—on the other side of Lake St. Clair—never left his heart. He loved cars, and drove everywhere in congested Manhattan traffic long after most everyone else had opted for public transportation.

I first encountered him on the pages of Car and Driver, where he was a frequent contributor.

So it goes.

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And so it goes...

Apparently Tim Vanderweert, the blogger behind Leicaphilia, which I have linked frequently, passed away yesterday.

As followers of his blog know, it was only a matter of time...in fact, we all thought we'd lost him once already...but he stared down the Grim Reaper with grace and aplomb for quite a while.

RIP

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Space Fail

Artemis will not be going to space today.

The launch of #Artemis I is no longer happening today as teams work through an issue with an engine bleed. Teams will continue to gather data, and we will keep you posted on the timing of the next launch attempt. https://t.co/tQ0lp6Ruhv pic.twitter.com/u6Uiim2mom

— NASA (@NASA) August 29, 2022

Coda

Tim at Leicaphilia has made a final post...

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