Category: In Memoriam

GIVE TIL IT HURTS!

RIP Roman Gabriel

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I won’t go so far as to say I was a fan, exactly—he was responsible for vanquishing my beloved Dallas Cowboys way too many times for that—but there’s no doubt he was one of the all-time greats of the long-gone era of rough and tumble, bare-knuckles NFL quarterbacking, and gave Roman’s Legions one hell of a lot to cheer about.


I don’t recollect him being regarded as what used to be called a “scrambler,” but when Gabriel did come out of the pocket he could sure do it well; being a big, rawboned sumbitch, he was pretty tough for the defense to bring down. For sure, he was expertly skilled at lofting the long ball and laying it right into the hands of his intended receiver, as the video attests. Fare thee well Roman Gabriel, we shan’t see your like again.

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Days that will live in infamy

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Both of these bitter anniversaries tremendous losses for America That Was and all who loved her and now lament her death—murder, actually. First up, probably the most outrageous, destructive trampling of liberty in all of US history.

15 Days to Slow the Spread
This story first appeared in 1600 Daily, the White House’s evening newsletter. Subscribe now to get breaking news from President Trump before anyone else.

This afternoon, President Trump and the White House Coronavirus Task Force issued new guidelines to help protect Americans during the global Coronavirus outbreak.

The new recommendations are simple to follow but will have a resounding impact on public health. While the President leads a nationwide response, bringing together government resources and private-sector ingenuity, every American can help slow the virus’ spread and keep our most high-risk populations safe.

Leslie Eastman offers a few salient points.

This is the vital point: The announcement and associated policies were suppose to be about slowing the spread…not stopping it cold. The idea was that the virus’ effects on the respiratory system were so bad, that slowing the spread was imperative to get the medical resources into position so the healthcare system could handle (it).

I would like to note that two weeks earlier, I was growing concerned about the nature of the Trump administration’s response to the virus. I urged the implementation of the severe flu protocol that had been successfully used in years previously. I also highlighted risk factors for severe infection that could only be addressed on an individual basis.

Subsequently, “15 days to Slow the Spread” morphed into a liberty-crushing horror with impacts that we are still feeling across the nation (and in many other parts of the world).

Now, the nation is facing the choice between the two top candidates:

  • Trump, who foisted Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx on this country.
  • Biden: The senile occupant of the Oval Office who mandated the vaccines and prolonged the pandemic response.

Personally, one part of my decision-making will be based on which candidate will not repeat the mistakes in the covid response…and avoid entangling this nation with the World Health Organization’s “Pandemic Treaty“.

I will never forget March 16, 2020.

Nor should you, nor should any of the truly liberty-oriented among us. Next, another costly loss, one which, in its own small way, might almost be considered as badly damaging to Real American prospects as the ScamDemic stampede has been.

Hushed Limbaugh
How did this nation ever get to the point where a man once considered nothing more than a tacky, loud, nouveau-riche liberal NYC real estate mogul/celebrity, with an orange complexion and a crazy pompadour/combover, would be transmogrified into the ultimate scapegoat for the failings, crimes, and corruption that have plagued our government and society since at least the end of the Second World War; the locus and symbol of the most unbridled hatred by the very same global elite that, in point of fact, are guilty of those sins and that he once perhaps was a part of? If I had to venture a guess, I’d say in nearly the same manner as “just some guy in golf pants” (as he once described how the elites tagged him) who at one time happened to have the largest sustained radio audience in history.

Last week marked the third anniversary of Rush Limbaugh passing away after a yearlong battle with terminal lung cancer. In a career that spanned nearly a third of a century, Limbaugh become far and away the most listened-to talk radio host in broadcast history. The conventional wisdom, which is something that Limbaugh defied on a daily basis, was that he had some sort of Svengali-like appeal over masses of mostly white, male, Bible-thumping bumpkins from flyover country by telling them what to think. In point of fact, it was just the opposite. Limbaugh’s success was being able to articulate what a vast swathe of the nation felt—a well-founded angst about the direction of the country especially since the beginning of the Clinton years and for sure with everything in the wake of the 9/11/01 attacks.

Last week marked the third anniversary of Rush Limbaugh passing away after a yearlong battle with terminal lung cancer. In a career that spanned nearly a third of a century, Limbaugh become far and away the most listened-to talk radio host in broadcast history. The conventional wisdom, which is something that Limbaugh defied on a daily basis, was that he had some sort of Svengali-like appeal over masses of mostly white, male, Bible-thumping bumpkins from flyover country by telling them what to think. In point of fact, it was just the opposite. Limbaugh’s success was being able to articulate what a vast swathe of the nation felt—a well-founded angst about the direction of the country especially since the beginning of the Clinton years and for sure with everything in the wake of the 9/11/01 attacks.

He, more than any other political and cultural leader, held both a moral high ground and most crucially a bully pulpit that gave voice to a true silent majority. In examining the life and times of Limbaugh, as well as the gigantic sword of Damocles above Donald Trump’s head, and collectively whatever is left of the United States as we knew or imagined it, a bit of reflection on how we got here, or to coin a phrase, how we—or at least I—got “woke” to the world as it is, is in order.

Although he passed just as the three years-plus FauxVid dumpster fire was really starting to blaze, Limbaugh was astute enough to see what was coming well beforehand.

I’m watching this coronavirus thing, and even the media that you would think would be on whatever we would call “our side,” they’ve lost it too. To them, this is nothing more than a story, and they can’t wait. I mean, everybody is waiting for the next worst headline, the next worst scenario, the next worst possibility. They can’t wait for it and they can’t wait to report it, and they can’t wait to talk about it. And that’s not me.

I resent this. I could never be a journalist. And these people, they’re a pack now. And I don’t care what network you’re talking about or website—there might be some exceptions to websites. Can’t read ’em all, don’t know. But you can’t turn on TV without seeing the same thing on any network. It doesn’t matter what network it is during the news coverage portion. Not so much the opinion programs and prime time. But the news coverage portion.

I mean, it’s now conventional wisdom that the country’s gonna shut down. It’s conventional wisdom that 150 million people are gonna get infected. It’s conventional wisdom that this is deadly, it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened, oh my God. It’s horrible. It’s worse. And nobody’s ever had it as bad or worse. And everybody gets caught up in it. As I watch the media, I don’t see one doubting Thomas. I don’t know how you do that.

JJ notes well the date of this tragically prescient analysis.

That was on March 13, 2020, literally just as the ChiCom/Anthony Fauci-created COVID-19 was just starting to swamp us. Or as Limbaugh seems to have clearly understood, the artificially generated fear of it. We now know, or at least we should know, that it was all one massive lie; from its origins, to its lethality, to the at-best uselessness to at-worst lethality of the vaccines. Yet anyone who back then stepped up and claimed the mantle of a “doubting Thomas” faced destruction.

America, the land of the First Amendment, has now openly toyed with the notion of “Disinformation Governance Boards,” a fancy name for what is essentially a Ministry of Truth. Universities that were supposed to be bastions of the free exchange of diverse viewpoints now silence anyone and anything even a micrometer to the right of Leon Trotsky. Our government is working hand in hand with Big Tech to have them act as censors for ideas, opinions, and facts that run contra to the narrative that they are putting out as truth, to be accepted blindly and unquestioningly without examination or critical review.

The only reason this is happening is because they no longer have a monopoly on the dissemination of information. Lacking that, as everything they have done to this country that has utterly collapsed our economy, erased our border, endangered our citizens at home, and threatened our national security abroad nearly to the point of a global conflict, the junta has no compunction about completely ignoring even the most basic red lines of ethics, morality, and the rule of law to silence all critique and squash all political opposition.

It’s academic as to whether or not we would have come to this point without the coming of alternative media to question the narrative, or what Limbaugh described as “the daily soap opera.” If nothing else, the mere presence of Rush Limbaugh and then Donald Trump has forced the junta to reveal itself for what it is, not for what their erstwhile media gatekeepers used to be able to bamboozle the public with ease. Trump’s greatest achievement as president isn’t actually what he achieved policy-wise (and they were some of the most incredible achievements ever); it was his mere presence as an oppositional force to the hypocrisy and corruption of the past eighty years that caused the masks and illusions of an America that no longer exists to drop. And there couldn’t have been a Donald Trump without a Rush Limbaugh to pave the way.

Mega dittos owed and mega dittos given.

Indeed so, with whipped cream and a cherry on top. May Rush Limbaugh forever rest in peace, much though it must pain him to look down from Heaven upon all that’s transpired since he departed this Earthly plane. Although I admittedly had problems with him over the years—enough so that by the time he died I’d long since stopped listening to him altogether, out of sheer frustration—it’s to our incalculable detriment that we shan’t ever see his like again.

Update! The Panic, and the damage done.

Four years ago, Las Vegas’ casinos shut down for 78 days. The fallout was brutal
About a month after casinos in Macao were closed for 15 days to slow COVID’s spread, then-Gov. Steve Sisolak on March 17, 2020 ordered all casinos as well as restaurants, bars and other nonessential businesses in the state to close for 30 days.

Brendan Bussmann, a gaming industry analyst with Las Vegas-based B Global, recalled the dark start of the shutdown.

“I still remember driving the Strip the next morning and there was nobody there and it either looked like we were occupied or that a bomb had gone off,” he said.

As a result of the 78-day closure, the Nevada Gaming Control Board estimated Nevada’s 219 major casinos lost $6.2 billion, a 25.2 percent decline from revenue generated a year earlier.

An estimated 26,140 people from a workforce of 162,066 lost their jobs and the unemployment rate soared to 33.4 percent. With demand for travel to Las Vegas lost, airlines canceled hundreds of flights.

As Ed quips, the operative words here might be—should be, in fact MUST be—THEN-Governor. Or, as a Fremen oath from Frank Herbert’s sprawling sci-fi epic Dune has it: Never to forgive. Never to forget. Damned skippy.

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Fare thee well to Randy Herring

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I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of my friend of 30-35 years’ standing, tattoo artist nonpareil Randy Herring, who worked for a good many of those years out of the venerable Skin Art tattoo shop, cpl-three doors down from Tony’s Ice Cream parlor on Franklin Blvd in Gastonia. Randy died in a terrible car crash on Saturday evening.

Randy did at least half of my 20-some-odd tattoos, and the overwhelming majority of the ones I love best. His nickname was Ol’ Heavy Hand, and I can attest to its absolute and excruciating veracity. Basically, there are two schools of thought among tattoo artists: 1) pound that ink in deep, hard, and slow, or 2) use a feather-light touch. If there’s a happy medium between them, I never have run across it in four decades-plus of going under the needle.

The debate betwixt the two approaches involves which of them will allow the piece to retain its appearance longer. The lines are going to spread a little no matter what, so the goal is to have the colors hold their brightness and integrity as long as possible, see. The light-touch contingent relies on something a dermatologist’s nurse gf of mine once told me: contrary to popular assumption, the tattoo doesn’t fade over time and depending on exposure to the sun, the skin itself does.

On the one hand, then, all the dig-deep work Randy did on me has held up extremely well. On the other hand, I have one (1) piece from a light-touch advocate, Colin LaRocque, and it has too, so who the hell knows?

Colin’s work is on my left forearm, a rendition of Sailor Jerry’s classic “Venomous Maximus” traditional-style flash: a cartoon cobra rampant, sporting clownishly-outsized fangs, tongue, and google-moogly eyes, with old-school crossbones spread like a set of wings behind his head. The piece is positioned so that most of Venomous’s hood and head cover what is known in the tattooist’s trade as “The Ditch”—a particularly tender patch of fleshly real estate that had me dreading the pain I anticipated when Colin passed the gun over it (hell no, I wasn’t watching him work; salty-dog tattooees wouldn’t dream of succumbing to such a greenhorn temptation).

But nope, not a bit of it. Fact is, I hardly noticed Colin digging around in The Ditch region at all, and the piece still looks nice despite many years of being beaten half to death by Trucker’s Tan every summer.

Now, immediately above Venomous Max is Randy’s variation on the hallowed Sacred Heart design, which Randy custom-converted into a Sacred Piston just pour moi. A stray gob of Pennzoil drips from the bottom of the Sacred Connecting Rod onto the tippy-top of VM’s head, not quite making it all the down into The Ditch proper.

Nevertheless, I almost cried like a little girl when Ol’ Heavy Hands got to pounding that one into me with the 14-needle Magnum shader. No, it wasn’t The Ditch, but it was damned well close enough.YEEEOWTCH!

Once I’d gotten to know him, Randy liked to josh me when I was in the chair and under the gun or just hanging around the shop shooting the breeze with him and the rest of the Skin Art crew (which I used to do frequently) that the only reason he ever got into tattooing at all was because he really enjoyed hurting people. If he’d told me that after the first time he inked me, I’d have taken him at his word.

But by then I knew the man better than that. A little-known fact among non-tattooed people is the powerful bond forged between artist and human canvas, particularly those who become regular customers. This bond is something a truly good tattooist will insist upon, as opposed to those fad-factory hacks derided by their betters in the trade as “scratchers.”

When you think about it, it’s almost inevitable: tattooing, at its highest level, is a profoundly personal, even intimate experience for both customer and artist. You’re in the chair for hours and hours, feeling those needles drill into you painfully, chit-chatting all the while, alternating between him telling you his life story and you telling him yours.

Ideally, the best tattooists try to nurture that bond and help it to grow and expand to its fullest potential; as every one of them I’ve known well has told me, the better they understand who you really are and what brought you to them in the first place, the better-quality work they’ll be able to do on/for you, and the more satisfied you’re going to be in the long run. Unlike any other commercial enterprise, good tattooing is a collaboration, not a simple exchange of money for services rendered. That’s what elevates top-shelf tattooing to the level of bona fide, upper-case Art.

And exactly like my old H-D shop boss Goose, Randy—despite his fondness for pretending to be a grouchy, grumpy old fart with noobs, Normies, and looky-loos—was a true master at fostering that critical bond with dedicated victims like myself. Trust me, he was nothing of the sort (also like Goose). Always quick with a horrible joke, a warm smile, or a raucous guffaw, Randy was the best imaginable example of his craft, a real credit to the profession.

He was renowned for his eagerness to take in talented youngsters for apprenticeship; nearly all the best tattooists in the area, up to and including one of the most talented tattooists currently extant, my friend Rodney Raines, bear the Herring stamp on themselves and their work.

Twenty or so years ago, Randy got religion and became a devout, sincere Christian. Every Monday night he took to the lanes with his Christian bowling team to compete in a local Gastonia league. Over the years, he repeatedly invited me to come out and bowl with ‘em sometime, which I never did get around to doing despite the best of intentions. Alas, to my eternal regret, now I never will.

The above are but a few of many more great stories I have about the man; our long, close relationship both in the tattoo shop and outside of it enriched my life, to a degree I can’t even begin to calculate or describe. He was a good man, a great tattooist, and a cherished friend. So rest ye well, Randy Herring. May the good Lord accept you into the warmth of his loving embrace, your unchainable spirit be forever at ease.

Update! After much poking and digging around the last two days, the obits are finally starting to show up.

Randy Herring Obituary, Death:
The vibrant city of Gastonia, N.C is shrouded in sorrow as news of Randy Herring’s tragic passing spreads throughout the community. As the owner and artist of Skin Art Tattoo at Living Arts, Randy’s sudden and untimely death in a deadly car accident has left friends, family, and patrons reeling with shock and grief.

Randy was not merely a tattoo artist; he was a creative force whose talent, passion, and kindness touched the lives of all who had the privilege of crossing paths with him. As we come together to mourn his loss, we also celebrate the indelible mark Randy left on the world through his artistry and spirit.

“Last night, my dear friend and iconic tattoo artist lost his life in a terrible car accident. Randy Herring was a passionate human being who mentored many artists into greatness. He was also my student for many years. I am honored to have his skin art on my body. My heart aches for his family and friends. He will be sorely missed by an army of people whose lives he touched. Rest in peace ‘Ole Heavy Hands! May you rejoice in heaven with our brother Piotr Kopytek.”

A Master of the Craft
Randy Herring was more than just a tattoo artist; he was a master of his craft. His journey in the world of tattooing began with a passion for art and self-expression, which he honed over the years through dedication and hard work. As the owner of Skin Art Tattoo, Randy’s studio became a sanctuary for creativity, where clients entrusted him with their most personal stories and visions. With each stroke of his needle, Randy transformed skin into living art, leaving behind a legacy of beauty and expression that will endure for generations to come.

A Beacon of Creativity
Randy’s artistry extended far beyond the confines of his studio; it was a reflection of his boundless imagination and love for the craft. Whether he was creating intricate designs inspired by nature, mythology, or pop culture, Randy approached each piece with meticulous attention to detail and a deep reverence for the art form. His passion for tattooing was infectious, inspiring countless aspiring artists to pursue their creative endeavors with courage and conviction.

A-Pillar of the Community
Beyond his role as a tattoo artist, Randy was a beloved figure in the Gastonia community. His warm smile and generous spirit endeared him to all who knew him, and his studio served as a gathering place for artists, musicians, and free spirits alike. Randy’s commitment to his craft was matched only by his dedication to supporting local artists and small businesses, making him a cherished friend and ally to many.

Although they might seem to be pouring on the hyperbole pretty thick and heavy here, I assure you that such is not the case. Every word is perfectly true and accurate, if somewhat thin on the details, which I’d say is pretty dang good for a crusty old tattoo-slinging reprobate. Original-article link is here, albeit paywalled. I 12 Foot Ladder’d it, but can’t find a good link-path that will allow me to just link directly to their de-paywalled version. Alternatively, you can always just disable Javascript in your preferred web browser; that’s how all those paywall thingamabobs work, or so I’m given to understand.

Another, probably better obit—one that reads less like it was AI-generated.

Tattoo artist dies after crash with Gaston County police officer
A Gastonia tattoo artist was killed in a crash with a Gaston County Police Department officer over the weekend.

Investigators said the Gaston County officer was responding to a shooting call Saturday when he collided with Randy Herring’s truck on West Franklin Boulevard.

Police said the officer had his lights and siren on when he drove through the Webb Street intersection. The police cruiser was gone by the time a Channel 9 crew arrived at the scene, but we were able to see a pickup truck smashed against a pole.

Herring’s daughter, Brittany Thomas, told Channel 9′s Ken Lemon she just wants to know how the crash turned fatal when her father was in such a large and protective truck. She said her dad meant everything to her.

“Everything,” she said crying. “My kids lost their Paw Paw.”

The crash happened about two miles from Herring’s tattoo shop, where so many people say he touched their lives.

“He loved painting, drawing, he would even draw on my kids with a pen,” Thomas said.

Herring’s son, Randall Herring II, told Lemon he found out about the crash when loved ones realized his father was missing.

He said there were no details about what happened but he recognized some of the faces at the crash scene.

“A lot of the police officers on the scene, my father tattooed them,” he said.

He said his father would have been happy to see that.

I’m sure he would’ve at that. I know exactly where that Webb St intersection is, horribly enough; it isn’t far from where my ex-wife lives just off West Franklin, where I go to pick my daughter up. I musta driven through that same fateful junction about, oh, a bazillion and a half times over the years, going back to drag-racing up and down Franklin as a teenage hot-rodder.

I still can’t quite wrap my head around all this, folks. What a godawful tragedy, all the way around.

Updated update! Okay, another story I just gotta tell. The day I went in to have “Bang Zoom” tattooed on my knuckles, Randy sat me down before we got started and gave me the spiel, seriously and somberly, in that soft redneck drawl of his: “Look, Mike, I know you very well, and I already know how you feel and what you’re gonna say. I don’t mean to lecture or sound preachy, but I still have to warn you just the same: knuckles are the Final Frontier, ain’t no turning back from here. This, you won’t be able to cover up or hide, no way. It means you’ll never work a straight job in an office ever again. Are you sure you want to go through with it?”

Now at that time I was working at the H-D shop with Goose, who is more heavily tatted up than I am, even. This was in the halcyon days before every yuppie idjit and his sister’s cat’s grandmother started getting ink, mind. Tattooing was still strictly an outlaw, taboo sort of thing, the by and large exclusive province of sailors, bikers, Marines, ex-cons, and other sundry misfits. The usual reaction of Joe Normal, as he crossed the street to avoid passing close to you, could be summed up as: You’re tattooed? Ya loser!

By then, Randy had already finished both my arms shoulder to wrist, as well as the black cat on my neck—Lucky, we called him, done in loving memory of the incomparable Mr Kitty. Thus, I considered myself to be fully and firmly committed; I’d already gone well past the point of no return as a fully-paid-up Tattooed Freak, and didn’t give a tinker’s damn. I was perfectly content with my lifestyle choices to date, foolish though the Squarejohn world would doubtless think them.

Too, I’d spent a month in the office as dispatch manager at Airborne Express not long before and had loathed every second of it, considering the job a thirty-day sentence in the very bowels of Hell. Wanting no more of such, I wound up telling my boss to put me back in a truck again before I went bugfuck nuts and broke down in a frothing hissy fit out on the loading dock. T’weren’t no going back indoors for me, not if I had anything to say about it.

As it developed—UNEXPECTED!!!™—I was wrong about that: some years later, I would be hired on by Outlaw Biker/Art & Ink Publications, working in an office with people who cared not a whit that I was a tattooed, to-the-bone old-school biker; an itinerant rock and roll musician; a seedster Harley wrench, all that bushwa. Yeah, it was an office job, but I was among like-minded souls there, so it worked out pretty nicely for all concerned.

Even so, I always appreciated Randy being thoughtful enough, caring enough, to remind me of how high the stakes were, and have never forgotten it, bless his heart. Although I haven’t seen him in four-five years, I’ll always miss the man.

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Happy birthday!

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To the incomparable Franz Schubert, born on this day in 1797, of whom Beethoven said on his deathbed, “Truly, the spark of divine genius resides in this Schubert!” For his own part, Schubert practically worshipped Beethoven, leading to this lovely story.

Five days before Schubert’s death, his friend the violinist Karl Holz and his string quartet visited to play for him. The last musical work he had wished to hear was Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp minor, Op. 131; Holz commented: “The King of Harmony has sent the King of Song a friendly bidding to the crossing”.

Nice, no? Schubert served as a torch-bearer at Beethoven’s funeral, and was buried near Beethoven’s grave at his own request. The latter-day charge that Schubert was a homosexual and actually died of syphilis is arrant bullshit.

Schubert died in Vienna, aged 31, on 19 November 1828, at the apartment of his brother Ferdinand. The cause of his death was officially diagnosed as typhoid fever, though other theories have been proposed, including the tertiary stage of syphilis. Although there are accounts by his friends that indirectly imply that he had contracted syphilis earlier, the symptoms of his final illness do not correspond with tertiary syphilis. Six weeks before his death, he walked 42 miles in three days, ruling out musculoskeletal syphilis. In the month of his death, he composed his last work, “Der Hirt auf dem Felsen”, making neurosyphilis unlikely. And meningo-vascular syphilis is unlikely because it presents a progressive stroke-like picture, and Schubert had no neurological manifestation until his final delirium, which started only two days before his death. Lastly, his final illness was characterized by gastrointestinal symptoms (namely vomiting). These issues all led Robert L. Rold to argue that (although he believed Schubert had syphilis), the fatal final illness was a gastrointestinal one such as salmonella or indeed typhoid fever. Rold also pointed out that when Schubert was in his final illness, his close friend Schober avoided visiting him “out of fear of contagion”. Yet Schober had known of his earlier possible syphilis and had never avoided Schubert in the past. Eva M. Cybulska goes further and says that Schubert’s syphilis is a conjecture. His multi-system signs and symptoms, she says, could point at a number of different illness such as leukaemia, anaemia, or Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, and that many tell-tale signs of syphilis — chancre, mucous plaques, rash on the thorax, pupil abnormality, dysgraphia — were absent. She argues that the syphilis diagnosis originated with Schubert’s biographer Otto Deutsch in 1907, based on the aforementioned indirect references by his friends, and uncritically repeated ever since.

In any event, as I said the other day of Mozart, it’s a real pity Schubert left this world so soon, thereby robbing us of even more wonderful music. If I had to pick the Schubert composition I like best of all, it would have to be his overture for the play Rosamunde.

Happy birthday to Franz Schubert, with heartfelt thanks for all the wonderful music.

Update! Okay, okay, it just doesn’t sit well with me to leave this excellent piece out.

I went looking on YewToob for this one a few months back, misremembering that it was by Mozart for some unknown reason, and couldn’t find it anywhere until the “it’s SCHUBERT, you dope!” lightbulb finally switched on in my head.

Dear old Franz wrote so many good ‘uns—The Trout; his Symphony No 8 (a/k/a the Unfinished); the 4 Impromptus for piano (check out the third in particular, which starts at 20:05; SO achingly beautiful!)—that it’s damned difficult to choose a single favorite from among ‘em. But the above two would definitely top my personal Best Of list.

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Combat Tupperware?!?

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Bayou Peter eulogizes Gaston Glock.

The announcement of Gaston Glock’s death last week, at the age of 94, has brought forth a wave of obituaries and reminiscences about “the way things used to be” in the firearms industry. Very few individuals can be said to have changed the way arms manufacturers designed, built and marketed their products. Glock stands tall in the most illustrious of that group, including inventors such as John Moses Browning, Samuel Colt and Hiram Maxim. He does so, not because he improved the technology in the market at the time, but because he drastically streamlined and improved the productivity of the industry. Since then, no-one’s looked back.

Glock got into semi-auto pistol manufacturing in 1980 when by chance, he overheard two Austrian Army officers discussing the bidding process for a new service sidearm. Initially rebuffed by the military powers that be, because he’d never built a firearm before and they presumed him to be ignorant, he took his case to the Austrian Minister of Defense and gained permission to compete for the Army’s handgun program. He won the contest, and – over the next couple of decades – the worldwide handgun market as well.

Glock was in the right place at the right time, with a thoroughly modern engineering approach to his work that defied older stereotypes. While more “traditional” manufacturers made each of their successive models an improvement over their predecessor, never differing that much from their forebears, Glock was willing to ask every time, “Why should this be done like that? Is there any good reason to uphold the status quo, or can we get rid of older, more time-consuming, more material-dependent processes and use modern engineering to come at the problem(s) in a completely new way?” To everyone’s surprise, asking that question was the key to the handgun market; and Glock made very sure to grab hold of that key and retain it as long as he possibly could. Today, his firm dominates the handgun industry, with many clones of his designs available worldwide.

I liked the Glock from the first time I handled one. It was lighter than most of its early competitors, and had far fewer parts (34 of them in most full-size Glocks). That’s a major step forward in simplicity. As one who’d seen combat in the worst terrain in Africa, where complex weapons systems tended to get chewed up and spat out by the surrounding landscape at the drop of a hat, I’d long been a believer in the old proverb, “Keep It Simple, Stupid!” (K.I.S.S.). In my personal firearms today, I continue to maintain that perspective, which is why I own more Glocks than any other brand of pistol. They may look and feel clunky compared to a race-tuned competition pistol, and lack all the little details that illustrate that a gun is a prized possession that’s been “tweaked” to express its owner’s pride of ownership; but they’ve never let out a “Click” instead of a “Bang!” when failure was not an option. That sort of reliability in a personal defense weapon is worth gold, and then some.

I never liked Glocks until I actually shot one, which experience changed my mind completely. How it came about was, back when I was living in NYC, my co-bartender at the hallowed Mona’s was a native New Yorker name of Steve, with whom I quickly became close friends. On the eve of one of my frequent trips back to NC to do a few Playboys gigs, Steve handed me 700 bucks and requested that I pick up a Glock 17 for him, which I agreed to do. The day before I was to drive on back to the Big Bad Apple, I thought what the hey, I never shot a Glock before; why not hit my favorite indoor range and put a few rounds through this little beastie, just for shits and giggles?

So I did that thing, and gained a whole new perspective on Gaston Glock’s masterwork. A fine piece the gun turned out to be: light, steady, smooth, utterly reliable, processing three (3) boxes of cheap, shitty Confederate Arms reloads with nonchalant flawlessness, nary a burp nor balk the whole afternoon. Had the same experience years later at Knob Creek with the Uzi subgun, which I had likewise dismissed as just overhyped, overrated junk. I stand corrected on both counts, and ain’t too proud to admit my error. One of Peter’s commenters shares an intriguing shaggy-Glock story:

First…I hated the first glock I ever shot, a rental at a range…it was to me at the time the most uncomfortable gun I had ever shot from the feel of the recoil and the trigger. It was a Glock 27. However I shot such small groups with it that it matched my best groups with guns I had used for years with 5 and 6 inch barrels and it was the first time I had ever shot one. I seriously had some mental dissonance of the disparity between hating the feel of it and how well I shot it. That model is now my daily and after getting used to it I’m more than happy with it.

Years later I got another .40 the glock 35 I bought it used supposedly in mint condition a police trade in. I was so mad at what they shipped me. It had so much wear on the frame all the rubbing edges were silver from use and holster wear. It was so dirty that you could see buildup of carbon that could have been measured with a caliper for depth. The barrel where it went through the front opening in the slide was worn completely through the nitrated finish and was also silver. I have glocks with thousands of rounds through them that look factory new. I can’t even imagine how many rounds through that gun to show that amount of wear. I made one of the best decisions ever when I calmed down on opening it at the FFL it was delivered to and said let me try it on the gun range before I threw a fit over the internet to the seller (a gunstore). It is my favorite pistol ever. Smooth as silk in all respects and with it I can hit a 8 inch steel 80% of the time at 100 yards. That much wear on the gun simply made it the equivalent of any of the fully tuned race guns I had ever tried. Maybe better in my opinion. Because of it I have never purchased a new glock again. As I know that even with 10’s of thousands of rounds through them they will just keep going. They make the energizer bunny look weak.

Everything above is just my personal opinion and worth every dollar you paid me.

Can’t argue with that. What a story, eh? Another commenter testifies:

I was participating in a GSSF* event in Kentucky and at the second stage I pulled the trigger and nothing happened. I withdrew and went to the event headquarters where a Glock armorer was set up. He replaced the trigger spring in about three minutes and I was back in the game. (IMO *Great* customer service!) He also gave me a helpful hint in the unlikely event I should face a similar situation in a SHTF event: Mash down on the trigger as hard as you can while manually operating the slide, let up on the trigger just until the group resets, then fire; wash, rinse, repeat. Granted, you waste every other remaining round in the magazine but you’re still in the fight. +

The group conducting the event permitted me to re-enter and complete the stages, and I actually had my best showing ever. If I’d shot 6/10ths of a second slower, I would have won a gun as I would have been the top shooter in the second bracket (At the time, GSSF divided shooters into three brackets with appropriate prizes for the winners.

* GSSF = Glock Sport Shooting Foundation.

+ Great argument for the carrying of backup weapons.

Can’t argue with that, either. Hats off and happy trails to Gaston Glock, one of those rare souls who set out to build a better mousetrap and ended up changing the world in the doing.

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1

Ask a silly question Part the Eighty Bajillion And Eleventh

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Man, I really gotta start properly keeping up with the numbers on these “silly question” posts of mine, instead of just making ‘em up as I go along.

Spaniards Aren’t Afraid To Protest, So Why Are American Conservatives?

Hmmm, lemmesee now: because they’re aware that they have an overly powerful enemy in Amerika v2.0’s FBI/Stasi/Waffen SS, and will surely be summarily pronounced guilty—without benefit of legal representation, formal indictment, or trial by jury—of multiple counts of the Sacred Democracy™-annihilating Secret Felony of “unarmed parading with aggravated counter-revolutionary intent” and end up Goo(g)lagged as “violent insurrectionists” if they do?

Tens of thousands of protesters have flooded city streets across Spain since October in sustained demonstrations opposing a socialist takeover of the Spanish government. Protesters are showing their opposition toward an amnesty deal between Spain’s socialist President Pedro Sánchez and treasonous Catalan separatists, who violated the Spanish constitution in 2017 by attempting to secede from Spain. By striking a deal to free incarcerated and exiled Spanish criminals, Sánchez was able to secure a third term in power.

The protests are organized by Spain’s conservative People’s Party and Vox, its further right, populist party. In an interview between Vox President Santiago Abascal and Tucker Carlson last week, Abascal explained that the amnesty deal is a crime “against the constitution” and “national unity.”

But the massive demonstrations are not just in defense of the Spanish Constitution, Abascal explained; they’re about what an illegal third Sánchez term means for Spain, namely a failing Spanish economy, two-tier justice, mass illegal immigration from Muslim countries, speech policing, globalism, the demonization of Spanish history, and loss of Spanish identity.

The problems faced by Spaniards are strikingly similar to those facing Americans. The American left hates our heritage so much they torched American cities and destroyed historical statues and monuments for an entire summer. Our corrupt president, Joe Biden, was able to take power thanks to a rigged election, and his administration has weaponized the federal government against his most prominent political adversary, former President Donald Trump, and anyone in ideological opposition to the Democrats.

Using fear and intimidation, the left is scaring conservatives into giving up their freedom to assemble. One of the primary fear tactics is to severely punish those who, on Jan. 6, 2021, opted to protest Democrat’s election-rigging practices, such as mass mail-in balloting and Big Tech censorship. As newly-released Jan. 6 footage further reveals, many of the Jan. 6 protesters accused of rioting were peaceful.

Conservatives aren’t just afraid — they’re also hopeless. After witnessing the Marxist race riots of 2020 and the erasure of their civil liberties during Covid, many Americans no longer recognize their homeland.

Spain Understands The Stakes

Spain has first-hand experience with communism. When communists controlled Spain, both in the lead-up to and during the civil war in the 1930s, it resulted in the persecution of Spanish intellectuals, clerics, and Christian laypeople.

Spanish communists began their anti-Christian hate by banning all religious schools, removing crucifixes from classrooms, and deeming all religious marriages invalid in the eyes of the state. Eventually, they started burning Catholic Churches and mass executing Catholic religious and laypeople. Property rights were thrown out, and conservatives were unjustly convicted in kangaroo courts and executed.

In America, we are blessed not to know. However, that blessing is also a curse. We don’t appreciate how easily a free nation can fall into tyranny. Unable to oppose or even recognize tyranny, younger generations have lost touch with the American revolutionary spirit after sending generations of Americans to spend their formative years in reeducation camps run by cultural Marxists (aka public school and the university system).

Perhaps a way to regain America’s lost fortitude is by watching conservative freedom fighters in Spain. We may not have the national memory of communists burying priests alive or defiling and decapitating nuns, but we can look to Spain for motivation.

Indeed, the Spanish protests should inspire Americans, and Spanish history should be a warning. If we resign ourselves to failure or allow ourselves to be intimidated into silence, the consequences will be nothing short of complete national destruction.

After having been unequivocally and repeatedly schooled, in writing no less, by their own Founding Fathers in all anyone should ever need to know about the subject, if American conservatives don’t appreciate fully by now “how easily a free nation can fall into tyranny”—if they don’t understand the warning provided by not only contemporary Spanish history but more than a century’s historical experience with communism all over the planet—then American conservatives are just too fucking stupid to live, and richly deserve what they’re going to get.

Forget Spain; OUR OWN history, heritage, and powers of observation should provide more than sufficient inspiration to fight the menace of insidious Communism with every ounce of our strength, to our last dying breath. It’s a mark of the Left’s total success at penetrating, taking over, and perverting our education/indoctrination apparat entire that we should need to be reminded of that absolute imperative.

It’s incomprehensible to me that, to our eternal disgrace, we should remain lackadaisical about offering much in the way of meaningful resistance to the damnable Commies, much less openly denounce and defy them, much less take any action against them more effective than sotto voce grumbling amongst our fellows, then scurrying on out to VOAT HARDERER AT THEM!!!© just one more time.

Guess that would be downright uncouth of us, eh? Sometimes, despair can come to feel like the only sensible option in light of all this.

The one and only example Real American patriots need look to and follow is the one set by our illustrious, heroic forefathers. Every day, in every way, let them be our mentors, our inspiration, our spiritual guides. Without them, we are lost. We all know full well what those men would be doing in our situation right about now.

Then again, we also know they’d never have let things slide to such a dire extent that they’d find themselves in our situation in the first place. They’d consider such straits as these to be utterly intolerable, a lowly condition which no proud, self-respecting American man could ever even think of enduring without acting to avenge the insult and redeem his personal honor and dignity—promptly, vigorously, in a fashion brusque enough to preclude any possibility of misinterpretation or mistake.

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RIP Xenia Ley Parker

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Learned earlier today that my beloved mother-in-law passed away this past Saturday, victim of a severe stroke during what should have been a relatively routine surgery to remove a benign tumor from her eye. Xenia was one hell of a woman, without doubt the smartest, wittiest, most erudite person I’ve ever had the privilege to know. After her daughter, my late wife Christiana, departed this vale of tears sixteen years ago, Xenia and I remained very close; as I told her back then, she was family to me, and would always remain so.

Xenia, as I’ve mentioned here before a time or three, was the daughter of Willy and Olga Ley; Olga was prima ballerina of the Moscow Ballet before emigrating to Germany to marry Willy, and he was….well, he was Willy friggin’ Ley, ferchrissake. A promo pic of Olga after the Leys had relocated to NYC, fleeing pre-WW2 Germany just in the nick of time:

OlgaLeyNYC

In this next one, Xenia is the black-haired young lady at left of the group shot in the bottom-right corner:

SpaceTaxi

One more photo, this one a print of Xenia’s high-school senior portrait:

XeniaSrPortrait

That one has enjoyed pride of place on the living-room wall of every hovel, shack, and miserable-ass shanty I’ve lived in for the last, oh, eighteen-nineteen years, I reckon.

I simply can’t begin to express my shock upon learning this morning that my dear MiL was gone. The running joke between us, especially since my catastrophic ordeal nearly two years ago, was that she would easily outlive me—I always loved to josh her that she was just too damned mean to die.

Xenia was of a personality type like to my old H-D shop boss Goose: loved fronting as a grouchy, irascible old curmudgeon, a crusty misanthrope, a human-hater’s human-hater, when anyone who was close to either of them knew otherwise. Quite the opposite, in fact; both are/were the most warm-hearted, courteous, giving, and fun-loving characters you’d ever want to meet.

Not that Xenia couldn’t effortlessly intimidate the ever-loving shit out of lesser mortals who unwisely got in her face and annoyed her, mind. Like Goose, she didn’t suffer fools AT ALL, never mind gladly. It took quite a bit of provocation, but when Xenia shut some obnoxious, persistent lackwit down, she by God shut ‘em the fuck DOWN. I know; I saw it happen once or twice, and loved her all the more for it too.

Xenia, as I said, was a bona fide genius. Spoke seven languages, had 12+ books published—everything from glossy hardcover how-to manuals on leatherworking, macrame, and horse-tack to tomes on the joys of horseback-riding, gardening, and rock and roll music. Speaking of, she was the consummate rock and roll mom: attended the first Woodstock festival; made trips down to the Stone Pony to see Springstreet before he was anybody; saw Led Zep’s NYC stops on their very first US tour; ditto for the Stones, The Who, you name it, she was there, with big ol’ bells on.

In fact, it was Xenia who was responsible for myself and her lovely daughter attending the Rolling Stones’ Giants Stadium show with her back in 2005. Neither Christiana nor I were terribly excited about going (a-HENH!), not being Stones fans by any stretch of the imagination. Happily, Xenia insisted in that stern way of hers that brooked NO dissent, popping for expensive close-in seats for the three of us and then burning a goodish chunk of her gazillion-plus frequent flyer miles to schlep us on up for the weekend. To my stunned delight, it was one HELL of a show—one of the best I ever did see, in fact. So good was it that I had no problem at all swallowing my stubborn pride afterwards and thanking her profusely for dragging us along.

About, oh, I dunno, ten years back or so, Xenia was herself dragged to her father’s hometown in Germany for the official celebration of his birth anniversary. German TV made a whole big do of it, filming her on a private tour of the modest home her mom and dad had lived in for years before coming to the States. After that, it was a studio interview with her about her thoughts on the whole experience.

She was nonplussed, to say the very least. When she got back home, she called right away to tell me all about it, saying, “I kept telling them and telling them, this house means nothing to me; I never lived here, I was born in New York! This is just some damned house to me, how the hell am I supposed to be all nostalgic about it!” We both had a good laugh over that, one of so, so many we shared over the years.

And now she’s gone, and my world won’t ever be the same again. Her second husband Glenn, a truly wonderful guy I got to know well through her and Christiana, called me to let me know she’d died, in the process giving me some details of sitting with her in the hospital both during and after the fateful surgery that say all you’ll ever need to know about what a sweet man he really is.

After being notified by the docs that things looked bleak at best for her, Glenn raced home for his acoustic guitar, then came back to spend hours strumming and singing all of this Rock and Roll Mom’s favorites: Elvis, Dylan, etc. There’s a beautiful phrase from Shakespeare that I sometimes like to toss into these obits of mine: May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. Thanks to an angel in human shape name of Glenn, that was precisely the case with my mother-in-law.

Forever may you rest easy in God’s loving embrace, Xenia Parker, until the joyous day we meet again. You will never be forgotten.

Update! Just remembered another great Xenia story: way back in ’92, well over a decade before I made her or her lovely daughter’s acquaintance, she was at the BPs Tramps show with Little Richard, was scheduled to fly up to Canada someplace for work the next morn. Her job entailed a great deal of air travel, see (hence those several million frequent-flyer miles that got us to the wilderness of New Jersey for the Stones), and being a lifelong Horse Person, wherever she went on this continent she’d always try to grab a Racing Form just to see if there might be a horse worth playing from the comfort of her palatial hotel suite.

On this occasion, what to her wondering eyes should appear but a horse yclept—no fooling, I’m serious—Belmont Playboy, of all things, running at 20 to 1 odds. She dropped a few bucks on him to win, thinking the name might be some kind of omen or something. Against all odds, in a manner of speaking, the horse won, and Xenia glommed a cool four or five grand off the plunge. When she told me that story years later, she almost cracked a rib laughing over it.

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A Cowboy through and through

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RIP to the late, great Walt Garrison.

Walt Garrison, Dallas Cowboys legend, dies at age 79
Walt Garrison was a throwback fullback who used to ride the rodeo circuit as soon as the Dallas Cowboys season ended. And later in his career, he gained fame as a national spokesman for Skoal.

So call Garrison the ultimate cowboy whether he was in season or not for the Dallas Cowboys or earlier, the Oklahoma State Cowboys, where he was a collegiate star. On Wednesday, he died at the age of 79. Pokes Report, which covers Oklahoma State, confirmed the news of his death. The site said Garrison had been residing in a memory care facilitiy in Weatherford, Texas, about a 30-minute drive from where his Cowboys play each Sunday.

News of Garrison’s death started breaking on social media late Wednesday and early Thursday morning. Tony Casillas, a former Dallas Cowboy turned media host, wrote: “This man was a true gentleman and Cowboy, his storytelling was magnificent!! RIP Walt Garrison.”

I used to come to my feet in excitement every time Garrison got his hands on the football back in the Cowboys’ 1970s heyday; in a time and place where absolutely everybody around me pulled for the hated Washington Redskins (now operating under their new name, the Washington Innocuous Whatevers, No Offense!), I was the most diehard of Cowboys fans. Walt Garrison; Bob Hayes; Bob Lilly; Mel Renfro; Thomas “Hollywood” Henderson”; Lance Rentzel; Herb Adderly; so many great names from those halcyon days of my youth.

For his part, Walt Garrison was not just a pro football Hall of Famer, he was also a real character to boot.

Garrison’s pro football career started before the NFL merger. So both the Cowboys and Kansas City Chiefs drafted him in 1966. The Cowboys gave him a convertible and a horse trailer as his signing bonus. Garrison was a kick returner early on, then he moved up the running back depth chart. By 1971, Garrison even led the Super Bowl champions in receiving.

And you couldn’t keep him off the field. He played in the 1970 NFC title game against the 49ers with a cracked collarbone and a sprained ankle. Neither injury prevented him from carrying the ball 17 times for 71 yards.

Sports Illustrated used a photo of him for their 1972 preview cover. During that season, he needed 16 stitches to close the gash on his finger. He’d accidentally cut himself while whittling. Then after the season ended, Garrison played in the Pro Bowl, despite a cut on the face he sustained while steer wrestling days before.

Overall, he played nine seasons with the Cowboys, retiring as the team’s third all-time leading rusher (3,886 yards) and fourth-best receiver (1,794).

Garrison competed for the Oklahoma State rodeo team for a year before his pro football career started. Cowboys coach Tom Landry didn’t want him to compete during the season. But Landry said yes to off-season events.

Eventually, the Pro Rodeo Hall of Fame inducted Garrison. Marty Garrison, Walt’s son, told the organization:

“His first love was rodeo, no doubt, ever since he was really young,” Marty said of his dad. “That’s what he would have done had he not played football in college and then got drafted by the Dallas Cowboys. His whole life, his love was rodeo.”

They just aren’t making ‘em like good old No 32 anymore, and that’s a damnable shame. Rest ye well, Walt Garrison. Let the witty words of another Cowboys icon, Dandy Don Meredith, stand as a sort of epitaph:


Update! A Dallas fan of my advanced years would be totally remiss not to include another unforgettable image from the Aulden Thymes:

DallasCowboysCheerleaders1977

Not a taped-down penis to be found amongst those winsome lasses, which would surely not be the case nowadays.

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Happy Pearl Harbor Payback Day!

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Surber just comes right out and says it.

We should have dropped three bombs
Sunday marks the 78th anniversary of the Enola Gay, piloted by Colonel Paul Tibbets, dropped the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Three days later, we dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The Japanese warlords still voted 3-3 on surrendering. Intervention by the emperor ended the war and the Japanese told the allies it planned to surrender, which it did on September 2.

With the new movie Oppenheimer‘s debut last month and the end of the teaching of American history in a positive light, lefties have resurrected the argument against using the A-bomb to end World War II.

The Atlantic published the first and perhaps only rebuttal you need to read to this daft argument in December 1946. Written by Karl T. Compton, an atomic physicist and president of MIT, one of the many people involved in the development of these two bombs, the article addressed the argument against the bombings.

Compton wrote, “About a week after V-J Day I was one of a small group of scientists and engineers interrogating an intelligent, well-informed Japanese Army officer in Yokohama. We asked him what, in his opinion, would have been the next major move if the war had continued. He replied: ‘You would probably have tried to invade our homeland with a landing operation on Kyushu about November 1. I think the attack would have been made on such and such beaches.’

“‘Could you have repelled this landing?’ we asked, and he answered: ‘It would have been a very desperate fight, but I do not think we could have stopped you.’

“‘What would have happened then?’ we asked.

“He replied: ‘We would have kept on fighting until all Japanese were killed, but we would not have been defeated,’ by which he meant that they would not have been disgraced by surrender.

“It is easy now, after the event, to look back and say that Japan was already a beaten nation, and to ask what therefore was the justification for the use of the atomic bomb to kill so many thousands of helpless Japanese in this inhuman way; furthermore, should we not better have kept it to ourselves as a secret weapon for future use, if necessary? This argument has been advanced often, but it seems to me utterly fallacious.”

The Japanese would rather die than surrender. They proved this in battle after battle.

That’s about the size of it, yeah; as Don goes into later in the piece, if you don’t think so, ask any survivor of the Bataan Death March or the Rape of Nanking about it, if you can find one. Truman knew it too:

Bombing Japan into surrender was the only option. Harry S. Truman considered the bombing to be his biggest achievement as president and rightly so. He had survived as a field artillery officer that meatgrinder we now call World War I.

Truman wrote a letter to Compton in response to that Atlantic article.

The president said, “Your statement in the Atlantic Monthly is a fair analysis of the situation except that the final decision had to be made by the President, and was made after a complete survey of the whole situation had been made. The conclusions reached were substantially those set out in your article.

“The Japanese were given fair warning, and were offered the terms which they finally accepted, well in advance of the dropping of the bomb. I imagine the bomb caused them to accept the terms.”

The only reason we did not drop three bombs is that we did not have a third one.

We do now.

Heh. Yep. Roger Kimball says it wasn’t only American lives that were saved.

The atomic bomb saved Japanese lives, too
The choices we face are often not between good and bad but between bad and worse

Something else that has contributed to the fraught atmosphere is the war in Ukraine. After all, one side in that conflict, Russia, controls the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, more than 6,000 warheads. My friend Roger L. Simon is right: atomic weapons are “as close or closer to being used today than ever since World War Two because of the endless war in Ukraine.”

That is a sobering thought.To his succeeding questions “Was this worth doing? Was it moral to build such an extreme weapon?” I would answer “yes” and “yes.” I also, by the way, support our use of this most horrible weapon in Japan. Why? Because its use at Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended World War Two. In so doing, it saved hundreds of thousands of American lives. Data point: the military is still using the huge supply of Purple Hearts it manufactured in anticipation of an invasion of the Japanese home islands.

But put the number of American lives saved to one side. The use of the bomb, by ending the war, also saved millions of Japanese lives.

This was widely understood at the time. In subsequent years, however, a new, mostly left-wing, narrative has grown up which faults President Truman for using the bomb. Today, as Oliver Kamm noted in the Guardian, “Hiroshima” and “Nagasaki” are often used as a shorthand terms for war crimes.

That is not how they were judged at the time. Our side did terrible things to avoid a more terrible outcome. The bomb was a deliverance for American troops, for prisoners and slave laborers, for those dying of hunger and maltreatment throughout the Japanese empire — and for Japan itself. One of Japan’s highest wartime officials, Kido Koichi, later testified that in his view the August surrender prevented 20 million Japanese casualties. The destruction of two cities, and the suffering it caused for decades afterwards, cannot but temper our view of the Pacific war. Yet we can conclude with a high degree of probability that abjuring the bomb would have caused greater suffering still.

What is the essence, the core, of conservative wisdom? One part is that when it comes to the real world, the choices we face are often not between good and bad but between bad and worse. This is particularly true in times of war. A difficult lesson. But crucial for those who wish to do good as well emit good-sounding slogans.

Of course, for the Left there is no sincere regard for numbers of lives lost or saved; by their facile, jejune calculus, they don’t really care about such mundanities at all. No, what chaps modern-day shitlib asses the hardest is that American won.

SIDE NOTE: my post title was hijacked from WRSA.

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Greatest meme EVAR?

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I know I’ve said that several times before, but this one just might top them all to permanently retire the crown.

FokkerVsFucker

Heh. Fuckers.

Update! I knew of Bader from all the Battle of Britain histories and historical fiction I’ve read over lo, these many years, but went poking around for more info on him. And BOY, did I ever find it. To wit (bold mine throughout):

Group Captain Sir Douglas Robert Steuart Bader, CBE, DSO & Bar, DFC & Bar, DL, FRAeS (/ˈbɑːdər/; 21 February 1910 – 5 September 1982) was a Royal Air Force flying ace during the Second World War. He was credited with 22 aerial victories, four shared victories, six probables, one shared probable and 11 enemy aircraft damaged.

Bader joined the RAF in 1928, and was commissioned in 1930. In December 1931, while attempting some aerobatics, he crashed and lost both his legs. Having been on the brink of death, he recovered, retook flight training, passed his check flights and then requested reactivation as a pilot. Although there were no regulations applicable to his situation, he was retired against his will on medical grounds.

After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, however, Douglas Bader returned to the RAF and was accepted as a pilot. He scored his first victories over Dunkirk during the Battle of France in 1940. He then took part in the Battle of Britain and became a friend and supporter of Air Vice Marshal Trafford Leigh-Mallory and his “Big Wing” experiments.

In August 1941, Bader baled out over German-occupied France and was captured. Soon afterward, he met and was befriended by Adolf Galland, a prominent German fighter ace. Despite his disability, Bader made a number of escape attempts and was eventually sent to the prisoner of war camp at Colditz Castle. He remained there until April 1945 when the camp was liberated by the First United States Army.

Bader left the RAF permanently in February 1946 and resumed his career in the oil industry. During the 1950s, a book and a film, Reach for the Sky, chronicled his life and RAF career to the end of the Second World War. Bader campaigned for disabled people and in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 1976 was appointed a Knight Bachelor “for services to disabled people”. He continued to fly until ill health forced him to stop in 1979. Bader died, aged 72, on 5 September 1982, after a heart attack.

A truly remarkable man, no? His legs were amputated after that ill-advised aerobatics attempt, one BTK (ie, Below The Knee) and one ATK (Above etc), in amputee jargon (mine was ATK, just so’s ya know). Baden was flying a Bristol Bulldog, a single-seat, unequal-wingspan (ie, lower wing shorter in length than the upper) biplane of some renown and excellent reputation at the time. His logbook entry after the crash was a true masterpiece of dry, laconic, British stiff-upper-lip understatement:

Crashed slow-rolling near ground. Bad show.

— Douglas Bader

In 1932, after a long convalescence, throughout which he needed morphine for pain relief, Bader was transferred to the hospital at RAF Uxbridge and fought hard to regain his former abilities after he was given a new pair of artificial legs. In time, his agonising and determined efforts paid off, and he was able to drive a specially modified car, play golf, and even dance.

Daring, dauntless, utterly without fear and indomitable, Sir Douglas Bader was outstanding even amongst an entire generation of real, true men; clearly, the words “quit” or “give up” simply were no part of his vocabulary. We shan’t see his like again, to our incalculable cost. Lots more great, great stuff at the link, of which you should damned-skippy read the all.

Ironically enough update! As it happens, Leigh-Mallory and Bader’s “Big Wing” theory, along with the resultant political battles with Air Vice-Marshall Keith Park, was recounted in great depth in one of those historical-fiction novels I’ve always been so fond of, namely Vol 2 of John Rhodes’ gripping Breaking Point series (highly recommended, if you’re into that sort of thing at all). “Big Wing,” while still controversial, was nonetheless pretty much a disaster.

After the Battle of Britain Leigh-Mallory never really had a chance to use the Big Wing defensively again, and it quickly mutated from a defensive to an offensive formation—Bader would eventually lead one of these new wings on massive fighter sweeps over France. To this day there is debate over the effectiveness of the “Big Wing” as it was used during the Battle. Although Leigh-Mallory and Bader argued it was a great success, post-war analysis suggests the actual number of German aircraft shot down by the wing was probably a fraction of those claimed (the claims for the Big Wing were never credible even at the time. On 15 September 1940, the Big Wing was scrambled twice against incoming raids and claimed 52 kills, eight probables and others damaged. (German records showed that six aircraft were lost). Some senior officers like Leigh-Mallory and Sholto Douglas wanted to believe these claims so that they could use the Big Wing as a political tool against Dowding. This would seem to support the idea that, for a “Big Wing”, there were “not enough enemy to go around”; the Wing had too high a concentration of aircraft in the same air space looking for targets.

It could be argued that 12 Group had more time to get fighters into position but even then it failed to do so. When 11 Group was stretched to its limits and required support, due to the delay imposed by 12 Group, 11 Group airfields were left undefended. This was due not only to time wasted in forming up the Big Wing but also due to 12 Group commanders not following 11 Group’s instructions and thus arriving in the wrong place. Not only did 12 Group fail to support 11 Group, they left their own airfields undefended; a large portion of UK airspace was left undefended while Leigh-Mallory and Bader tested their Big Wing theory. The time taken to form a Big Wing also wasted fuel and combined with the limited range of the fighters, reduced time over the combat zone. When 10 Group was asked to provide cover for 11 Group in similar circumstances, it was provided and 11 Group airfields defended.

Casualties for the “Big Wing” were significantly lower than in the smaller formations—suggesting that they did indeed benefit from protection in numbers. The “Big Wing” invariably joined combat with the enemy over Northern London, where the German fighter escort was at the very limit of its range and effectiveness. Consequently, the Big Wing also made very few interceptions, and as a result lower casualties would be expected on both sides. Park’s tactics (which had included the occasional use of two- and three-squadron wings) were correct for the conditions he had to fight under. The most powerful argument against the Big Wing in the Battle of Britain is that without a clear idea of a target as a raid assembled over France, it was impossible for the Big Wing to get airborne and form up in time to meet it.

Not all of the problems with “Big Wing” can be attributed to the concept itself; as always, the 7P Rule (Proper Previous Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance) axiom comes into play. That, in concert with the unavoidable influence of Murphy’s Law and the proverbial “fog of war,” all had their own part in things, also.

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Catch ya on the flip, Pee-wee

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One of the most unique and original comedians ever, Paul Reubens, dead at 70.

Reubens began his brilliant comedic career as a member of The Groundlings improv and sketch troupe in Los Angeles. His legendary character, Pee Wee Herman, was Reubens’ biggest sensation, though he flexed some serious acting muscle in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and “Gotham” as well as television shows such as “The Blacklist.”

Reubens was notoriously arrested in a Sarasota, Fla., porn theatre (you can read why he was arrested here) back in 1991. Some believed he planned to get arrested to shake off the Pee-wee Herman character, but it was later revealed that he got busted during a random police raid.

After the arrest, Pee-wee Herman jokes became all the rage, such as this one: What are Pee Wee Herman’s favorite baseball teams? The Expos and the Yankees.

Reubens withdrew for months as the humor flew. He re-appeared as his Pee-wee Herman character on an MTV awards show — to thunderous applause — and quipped, “Heard any good jokes lately? So funny I forgot to laugh.”

On Instagram, Reubens thanked his fans and apologized for not revealing that he had been fighting cancer. “Please accept my apology for not going public with what I’ve been facing the last six years. I have always felt a huge amount of love and respect from my friends, fans and supporters. I have loved you all so much and enjoyed making art for you,” he posted.

So sorry to hear about this. I was an avid fan of the reliably brilliant Pee-wee’s Playhouse TV show right from the beginning, whatever Reubens’ personal foibles may have been. Then again, though, getting caught spanking it in a pRoN theater? Meh; trite, piffling, mundane stuff. Hell, that sort of thing has become the fabric of everyday life in the Bribem White(bag) House nowadays—that, and much worse to boot. Enjoy this happy little song, and brace yourself for a little something UNEXPECTED!™ afterwards.

As you may or may not know (I confess, I didn’t until just now), the fella playing the role of Kowboy Kurtis above is one of our verymost talented actors of any race, creed, color, or national origin: Laurence Fishburne, who, as it turns out, caught one of his first big breaks on Pee-wee’s Playhouse. Nope, not even joking about that, folks:

It might sound like the stuff of Hollywood urban legends but it was a role on the kids’ TV show Pee-wee’s Playhouse as Cowboy Curtis that helped make award-winning actor Laurence Fishburne a star. Pee-wee’s Playhouse was by no means Fishburne’s first rodeo, of course. He’s been acting since he was a child and counts the 1975 film Cornbread, Earl And Me and a 12-episode stint on soap opera One Life To Live among his early credits.

After lying about his age, a 14-year-old Laurence Fishburne landed a part in Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now as young G.I. Tyrone ‘Mr. Clean’ Miller which led to roles in other Coppola films including Rumble Fish and The Cotton Club during the 1980s. Bit parts in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated film The Color Purple and TV shows like Hill Street Blues and Miami Vice followed but his recurring role on Pee-wee’s Playhouse introduced Fishburne to a wider audience and helped put him on the map.

Fishburne wasn’t the only young talent to get their start on Pee-wee’s Playhouse either. Actors including Sons Of Anarchy star Jimmy Smits, Russian Doll co-creator and star Natasha Lyonne and Golden Globe-winner S. Epatha Merkerson all had parts on the show. Behind the scenes, metalhead and future horror movie director Rob Zombie worked as a production assistant and future filmmaker John Singleton – then a student – worked as a security guard.

Quite the resume Fishburne has going, no? All this, mind, before even getting around to his Morpheus star-turn in the Matrix flicks, too. And to think, it all started with Paul Reubens’ truly inspired Pee-wee Herman character.

Fare thee well, Pee-wee, wherever your irrepressible spirit may roam. Those of us who loved your work won’t soon forget you.

1

Flying off into aviation history

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After trying for decades to rid themselves of it—and, happily, failing miserably—the venerable, awesomely-capable A10 Thunderbolt II is finally getting shuffled off to Buffalo by the Chair Farce shitwits.

The A-10 Warthog Making One Final Flight — to the Boneyard
Beloved as much by the grunts on the ground as the pilots who flew it, the A-10 ground attack jet is being retired after five decades of very loud and effective service. Air Force enthusiasts everywhere are going to miss that ugly S.O.B.

The Air Force announced plans last week to replace two of the last remaining A-10 squadrons with more modern F-16s and F-35s. “This is all in line with the service’s goal of divesting the last A-10s before the end of the decade, if not sooner,” according to Yahoo News. Air Force brass have been trying to retire the hog for years but Congress has kept telling them no. This new announcement indicates that the A-10 will not keep flying until the 2040s, after all.

But what a jet, even if it did have a face not even a mother could love.

Hey, speak for yourself, Steve. I think they’re goddamned beautiful, myself.

Fairchild-Republic stepped up to meet the Air Force’s need, and the result was the A-10 Thunderbolt II. Neither sleek nor sexy, the Thunderbolt is usually called the Warthog or just the Hog. The whole jet was designed around the 30 mm GAU-8 Avenger rotary autocannon whose (airborne!) ammo magazine is the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. It’s capable of firing depleted uranium shells that tear through the thickest armor like a hot knife moving at 3,324 feet per second through melted butter.

Because the A-10’s job is to get in close, the pilot sits in a “bathtub” made out of titanium. During the Gulf War — when the Warthog first really captured the public’s imagination — I saw one jet on CNN that returned from a mission missing almost a third of one wing and probably half of the other. (I’ve searched for years for that clip but to no avail.) A fully-loaded Hog can carry an additional eight tons of various missiles and bombs.

The Hog’s engines are mounted high and to the rear with a slight tilt up towards the front. That’s to avoid sucking in debris on damaged airfields. Those Fairchild engineers really did think of everything.

The first development version of the Warthog flew in 1972, and it entered service in 1977. More than 700 were built, but only a few dozen are still in service. Although built in numbers to counter Soviet armor, our much-reduced force of A-10s found plenty of jobs that only they could do in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yup—which tends to be the way such things go, even in an age of overemphasis on flashy new technological gew-gaws and gimcracks: the older, sturdier, battle-tested platforms seem almost to be imbued with a will to live as powerful as any sentient being’s, and somehow always find a niche to fill. This next passage makes me want to throw up in my mouth a little.

For what it’s worth, the Air Force has long argued that the F-35 Lightning II multirole stealth fighter is better prepared for ground attack in the 21st Century.

As a lifelong Warthog fan, it pains me to say this, but they’re probably right.

I wrote years and years ago at the original VodkaPundit.com that “stealth is the price of admission to the modern battlespace.” Non-stealth jets simply don’t stand a chance against the latest generation of air defense systems. Hell, they barely stand a chance even against a slightly older one.

The war in Ukraine has proven me (and many others) correct on that score. Despite having a much larger and more modern air force than Ukraine, Russia has been unable to achieve air superiority — even in the early months of the war, long before Western antiaircraft systems began service with Ukraine. Russia has no combat stealth aircraft in service, so even their most advanced Su-34 attack jets have been mostly limited to lobbing inaccurate dumb bombs from safe distances, outside the reach of Kyiv’s air defenses.

In a war with China or Russia, the A-10 likely wouldn’t survive. If — and this is a big if — there’s still a role for manned ground-attack jets, it’s with stealthy planes like the F-35 that are hard to see, harder to kill, and can fire a variety of long-range stand-off weapons.

Yeah, no, not so much. In the first place, war with China or Russia is unlikely in the extreme. In the second, you’re (and the Chair Farce as well) making some highly unfounded assumptions about the one-size-fits-nothing F35 Turducken, which is so bug-ridden, fantastically expensive to build and maintain, and over-engineered it’s no better than fifty-fifty whether a full squadron could even manage to get off the ground in-theater.

As for the casual dismissal of manned combat aircraft, that’s another thing the desk-bound zoomies have been pimping for decades now with little to no success, for a very simple reason: there is no substitute for boots on the ground, swabbies on deck, eyes in the sky, and Marines storming ashore. All the adolescent onanism extolling futuristic, bloodless warfare waged exclusively via drones, combat mechs, and AI geekery controlled from extreme standoff range will never replace the human ability to adapt, improvise, and overcome on-scene, in the heat of the moment—especially in the kind of 5G brushfire conflict against some dimestore dictator in Shitholistan’s ragtag army of goatherds we’re much more likely to find ourselves engaging in going forward.

Stephen’s point about latest-generation air defenses is well-taken, certainly. But how many of those exorbitantly expensive cutting-edge systems are going to be finding their way into the hands of the kind of backasswards Third Worlders we’re likely to be squaring off against, really? Admittedly, I damned sure wouldn’t want to be caught with my ass in the breeze at the stick of an A10 and have some illiterate yahoo set off my threat-warning alarms by pointing one of those high-tech death spikes at me. But still. I don’t have any numbers on how many times such a thing has happened to some poor ‘Hog jock, so I won’t offer any guesstimates on the odds for or against, or what the frequency of such incidents might actually be.

Looking at the bigger picture, though, the days of massive armies marching in serried ranks to take up entrenched positions along a clearly-defined MLR, underneath a sky-full of overly delicate air-superiority aircraft, are over. At least for the foreseeable future, war will be grubbier, dirtier, closer-in, and more vicious than some tech weenie peering at a computer screen a thousand miles away can begin to imagine. Modern warfare has become more of a shoot-and-scoot proposition, fought by adversaries close enough to smell each other’s weeks-ripe BO before things go loud. Hyper-sensitive, persnickety gadgetry that can be rendered combat-ineffective by a fistful of dust in the avionics suite or sucked into an intake won’t be up to the job.

Maybe the A10 really is past it, I’m hardly qualified to say. But I bet there would still be plenty of occasions when some poor ground-pounder up to his eyeteeth in the real, the bad, and the scary would be mighty glad to hear one in the hands of an experienced, crafty pilot loitering overhead. To abandon a proven-effective tool in favor of the premature forced adoption of an apteryx like the Turducken is exactly the kind of fanciful wishful-thinking shitlibs have become notorious for.

Punisher, punished

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I seem to recollect mentioning here a time or three that the Left’s hatred for us is so deep, so frenzied, so caustically desperate that there really is nothing they can leave alone. We HAVE talked about that here before, right?

WELL. About all that.

 A year ago progressive news outlets were calling the idea of the culture war a “right-wing conspiracy theory” that had no basis in reality. Yet, the injection of far-left politics into entertainment media had already started years previous, with noticeable propaganda efforts in movies, streaming television, children’s shows and books, even commercial advertising was replete with progressive ideological imagery by 2016 onward.

The goal is relatively obvious – To erase competing ideals and viewpoints while saturating the market with only one political vision; a woke vision. It’s called social engineering, and anyone who claims this is not happening in the US today is gaslighting.

Strangely, the American comic book industry has become a major battleground in the culture war, with heroic symbols being increasingly erased or hijacked as vehicles for woke talking points. A vast array of comic book characters are now race-swapped, converted to LGBT or they have had their histories rewritten to make them more “acceptable for modern audiences.” At the same time, they promote everything from BLM, to climate change propaganda, to gender identity politics and anti-gun messaging.

Why would leftists target something as frivolous as comic book heroes? Because pop-culture is first and foremost a playground where children grow up, and by rewriting heroes as social justice crusaders and communists they hope to indoctrinate the next generation.

The Punisher character (Frank Castle), originally created by writer Gerry Conway in 1974 with artists Ross Andru and John Romita, was a product of a chaotic era; a reaction to the rise of war, stagflation, instability and exploding crime rates in the US. The Punisher’s story is a tragedy of a returning military veteran whose family is killed during what seems to be a gangland hit. With federal agencies doing little to arrest the perpetrators, Castle takes matters into his own hands and begins systematically assassinating the criminals.

The Punisher as an icon has been highly popular among conservatives, military veterans and law enforcement officers in recent years. The trademark skull symbol can be found everywhere, with patches, gear and flags sporting the image, often as a representation of citizens taking matters into their own hands. The symbol was also seen at the January 6th protests.

This has made leftists at Marvel Comics livid. They first attempted to make fundamental changes to the character, including a redesign of his popular skull symbol, as well as taking away his guns and giving him swords in 2021. Instead of fighting against criminal organizations, Frank Castle joins with one, violating his fundamental code of ethics.

This month, though, Marvel officially declared the Punisher persona non grata, eliminating the character as readers know him. Did he go out in a blaze of glory? No, in typical woke fashion Frank Castle is captured by progressive heroes, chained up and forced to go through a struggle session in which he is admonished as a murderer and a terrorist. Marvel even brings the Punisher’s wife back from the dead, only so that she can divorce him and take his money and property, and then inform him that his lifelong crusade against the criminal underworld was all for nothing.

Marvel writers, including original Punisher creator Gerry Conway, specifically cite the popularity of the character among conservatives as the reason for his virtual elimination. As Newsweek noted, the Punisher was “problematic” for Marvel because conservatives liked him too much. He represents the every-man: He has no superpowers, he’s not a billionaire like Batman, but he still fights evil with an immovable will and a lot of guns.

Emphasis mine, because Jesus tapdancin’ CHRIST. I mean, seriously, folks: kill off a popular, profitable franchise entire simply because people you hate are among those who enjoy it? Sheesh. Mere “crazy” doesn’t even begin to cover this; it’s far too gentle a word to adequately describe it. Confirming yet again that these “people” truly are just totally, hopelessly, irremediably bugfuck nuts.

(Via Wes Renegade)

4

Lightfoot redux

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Owing to Mark Steyn’s near-total absence from his SteynOnline site because of his long, slow convalescence from two (2!) heart attacks, I scarcely bother checking up there these days. So I missed his Gordon Lightfoot SteynMusic post, which as per usual is the definitive Last Word on the subject.

On February 18th 2010 Gordon Lightfoot was driving in Toronto en route to the office when he heard on the radio that he had died. In such circumstances, most of us would turn round and go back to bed. But Lightfoot kept on, to the office, and to new tour dates and live albums – for almost another decade-and-a-half. He died, for real, a few days before the Coronation, having been garlanded with every bauble in the gift of his native land – Commander of the Order of Canada, recipient of the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal – and honoured by his peers around the world. Here is what Mark had to say about him on the occasion of his eightieth birthday:

Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr was born on November 17th 1938 in Orillia, Ontario, which is a straight shot north of Toronto, although you’ll be driving your Honda Civic through Lake Simcoe if you try it as the crow flies. Gordon Lightfoot Sr owned a large dry cleaner’s, and Mrs Lightfoot thought Junior had the makings of a child star. His first public solo performance was in Grade Four, over the school’s PA system for Parents’ Day, singing “Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral”, an early example (1913) of a commercial pop song that everybody thinks is a(n) ancient traditional tune, which isn’t bad practice for a chap who’d eventually emerge in the “folk revival” of the early Sixties. He was a boy chorister in Orillia, and by the age of twelve singing in Toronto, at Massey Hall. At eighteen he went to Westlake College of Music in Hollywood to study jazz composition and orchestration, which I can’t honestly say I hear a lot of in his music. At any rate, he missed Canada and came home, and landed a spot in the Singing Swinging Eight, the square-dance group on the CBC’s “Country Hoedown”.

One day a couple of years later Gord thought back to how homesick he’d felt in Los Angeles. So he set down his five-month-old baby in a crib on the other side of the room, and wrote a song about it:

In the Early Morning Rain
With a dollar in my hand
With an aching in my heart
And my pockets full of sand
I’m a long ways from home
And I miss my loved one so
In the Early Morning Rain
With no place to go…

On rainy mornings in Los Angeles, a lonely Lightfoot liked to go to the airport and watch the planes take off. If you try that now at LAX, even if you survive the tasing or shooting, you’ll be on the no-fly list for thirty years. But back then it was different, and so a young songwriter wrote, in effect, a train song for the jet age. Just as Johnny Mercer heard the lonesome whistle blowing ‘cross the trestle, Gordon Lightfoot heard a wistful echo in the 707s on runway nine:

Hear the mighty engines roar
See the silver wings on high
She’s away and westward bound
Far above the clouds she’ll fly…

Except, of course, that there’s no boxcar on Pan Am or TWA:

You can’t jump a jet plane
Like you can a freight train
So I best be on my way
In the Early Morning Rain.

It was on his debut album – the exclamatory Lightfoot! – in 1966, by which time Ian & Sylvia, the Canadian folk act with the arrestingly prosaic name, and the Grateful Dead, the American rock band with the prosaically arresting name, had both recorded the number. And Judy Collins, George Hamilton IV and Peter, Paul and Mary had put it, respectively, on the Billboard album, country and pop charts. “Early Morning Rain” isn’t quite the first song Gordon Lightfoot wrote, but it was the first to get any notice internationally, and I do believe to this day it’s the most recorded of his compositions. Jerry Lee Lewis did it, and Paul Weller from The Jam, and the Kingston Trio, Eva Cassidy, Billy Bragg… oh, and Bob Dylan, on one of his worst received albums (first line of Greil Marcus’s Rolling Stone review: “What is this sh*t?”). It’s a simple song, and for my tastes it can go awry in the wrong key or an insufficient travelin’ accompaniment. The composer likes Elvis’s version, and so do I.

We probably should mention one other take on “Early Morning Rain” – as a marching song for the US Army:

In the Early Morning Rain
With my weapon in my hand
With an aching in my heart
I will make my final stand…

I’m not sure how the author feels about the rewrite, but maybe he could do a Canadian version for the Princess Patricias.

An oldie but goodie, the piece carries on from there in Mark’s usual surpassingly brilliant vein, of which you will surely want to read the all.

5

When football was FOOTBALL, by God

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The unstoppable Jim Brown has finally been stopped, alas.

Jim Brown, one of football’s greatest ever, dies at 87
Jim Brown, one of the greatest professional and college football players of all time, has died. He was 87.

His wife, Monique, announced Brown’s death in an Instagram post Friday afternoon. She said Brown “passed peacefully” Thursday night in their home in Los Angeles.

“To the world he was an activist, actor, and football star,” the post stated. “To our family he was a loving and wonderful husband, father, and grandfather. Our hearts are broken…”

In 2020, Brown was selected to the NFL 100 all-time team and also was ranked as the No. 1 all-time player on the College Football 150 list to celebrate those sports’ anniversaries. He was named the greatest football player ever by the Sporting News in 2002.

Brown, who was selected in the first round of the 1957 draft, played nine seasons for the Cleveland Browns (1957-65) and led the league in rushing eight of those years. He rushed for 12,312 yards and averaged 5.2 yards per carry over his career. He also was named a Pro Bowler every year he played. He led the Browns to the league championship game three times, winning the title in 1964, and was named MVP three times.

He ran for at least 100 yards in 58 of his 118 regular-season games, never missing a game. He rushed for more than 1,000 yards in seven seasons, including 1,527 yards in one 12-game season and 1,863 in a 14-game season.

As a diehard Cowboys fan when I was a kid, I absolutely HATED it whenever the Browns QB put the football in Jim Brown’s hands, knowing all too well what was gonna happen next to my poor ‘Boys on the Doomsday Defense squad. And sure enough, the accompanying vid features a remembrance from Cowboys Hall of Famer Bob Lilly. Be sure to click over and watch it; Rosey Grier’s comment alone is worth the trip.

(Via Ed Driscoll)

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