A truly wretched month for celebrity deaths

October was absolutely brutal when it came to celebrity deaths. It started to feel like every time I got online I wondered who's obit was going to pop up.

 

The month started with the loss of Mary Louise Weller, probably best remembered as Mandy in National Lampoon's Animal House, and legendary Hollywood boss Frank G. Mancuso (Paramount and MGM). Then actor Marjoe Gortner, author Jeffrey Archer, and former disgraced televangelist Jim Bakker.

 

Eva Marie Saint died at the age of 102. Legendary football coach Mike Ditka followed, then the horrible news that Breaking Bad costar RJ Mitte had died at age 34, followed by the even worse news that Mitte had committed suicide. Next was Richard Riehle, he of the "jump to conclusions" mat in Office Space. My brother had worked with him and described him as just the nicest guy. Next we lost Tom Skerrit, whose numerous credits included the ill-fated Captain Dallas in Alien.

 

Ron Duguay, who managed to be both a skilled and glamorous player in the NHL, passed after a battle with cancer. Duguay was famous for his long flowing locks in an era where helmets had not yet become mandatory. Then we lost actors Walter Koenig and Susan Saint James. Then I saw the news that singer Donnie Iris ("Ah, Leah" - love that song) had passed at the age of 83. For some reason I was surprised that he was that old. I also had never know before reading his obit that he was part of the Jaggerz of "The Rapper" fame.

 

Then, in quick succession, we learned of the deaths of actresses Barbara Barrie and Elke Sommer, then Sir Patrick Stewart, all on October 28. I hadn't even heard that Stewart was ill, but it turns out he was battling Alzheimer's and Lewy Body Dementia. Brutal. The outpouring of grief at his death that I've been seeing online has been huge. This one hit people hard.

 

I'm posting this on the morning of the 31st, hoping I'm not tempting fate by not waiting until the end of the day. Praying I won't need to add an update this post. 

 

Good riddance to you, October 2026.

October Words of Wisdom

Horses should be trained in such a way that they not only love their riders, but look forward to the time they are with them. (Xenophon, 350 B.C.) 

 

Laughter is an instant vacation. (Milton Berle) 

 

The first chapter sells the book, the last chapter sells the next book. (Mickey Spillane) 

 

Civilization is the process of setting man free from men. (Ayn Rand)

 

An evil enemy will burn his own nation to the ground to rule over the ashes. (Sun Tzu) (And don't we Californians - especially Angelenos - know this?)

 

Never confuse education with intelligence, you can have a PhD and still be an idiot. (Richard Feynman)

 

If we did the things we are capable of doing we would literally astound ourselves. (Thomas Edison)

 

Right is still right, even if you stand by yourself. (Clarence Thomas) 

 

Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously. (Hunter S. Thompson)

 

The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly. (Friedrich Nietzsche) 

 

Common sense is not a flower that blooms in everyone's garden. (Unknown) 

 

It's National Cat Day

This popped up on the social medias today: Apparently it's National Cat Day.

 

 

Just not for me and Sophie. :( 

 

Six months

Sophie died six months ago (April 25) and as usual, I can't let a date like this go without noting it. It's crazy to think it's already half a year. With the apartment renovation and moving back, things were hectic for a while, but it's starting to settle down now. I'm really loving the updated apartment and it's starting to feel really homey. But it's still weird not to have Sophie around. I've still got her favorite chair, and I still think of her every time I turn the fireplace on.

 

 

RIP, baby. You are missed.

 

Recent reading: EQMM and AHMM

I finally received my March/April issues of Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine last month. They were bought by a new publisher about a year ago, then that publisher changed to a different printer that apparently had so many problems that the magazines weren't being sent out. The last issues I had received were the January/February issues, which came in late February. Since then, the only thing I received from them for months were multiple requests to renew, and these are not inexpensive magazines. I was relieved to finally receive my issues, but it's the middle of October and I'm still waiting on the rest of the year.

 

Here are my favorite stories from these issues. 

 

 Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

March/April 2026

•  "Two-Hour Vacation" by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier: A young mother taking some time for herself (while her highly critical mother-in-law babysits) gets caught up in investigating the death of a kind, elderly man who had just won a lottery. 

•  "Lest We Forget" by Marilyn Todd: Amber Masters is a teenager who discovers her murdered mother on September 11, 2001. Her father has vanished, and the thought is that he was kidnapped by the murderer(s). Amber's roller coaster life over the next eight years is marked by more historic events, until she finally finds peace. The story also has a great reveal of her mother's murderer that I didn't see coming at all.

• "Her Last Vinyasa" by Christine Eskilson: A yoga teacher is murdered during a class and no one saw it happen. Another one with a twist as Grace, the student who first discovered the death, realizes the wrong person may have been arrested.

• "GOMAAKOD" by Josh Pachter: An aging PI is hired by a bank president to find out which of his tellers is pilfering money. Faced with three highly unlikely suspects, Helmut Erhard has to get creative in finding who is the real thief. GOMAAKOD stands for Erhard's take on how to proceed: "Get off my ass and knock on doors."

• "Me and Jan and the Handyman" by John M. Floyd: What starts out as a story about a handyman offering to hide a body for a client turns into an attempted police sting and more. Lots of twists and turns in this one. 

• "Intervention" by Terry Black. A young man about to jump to his death sees something suspicious in the window of a neighboring building and decides to take action.

 

Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine

March/April 2026

• "Deferred Sentence" by Al Onia: A bizarre but entertaining tale of a judge known for being soft on criminals trying to argue his way out of a deal with the devil he'd made decades earlier, after a demon shows up to collect.

• "The Summer of David" by Elaine Menge: A look back at a nine-year-old girl's summer experience in New Orleans, 1960, when a new boy with a fraught relationship with his step-father moves into the neighborhood. Really great job with the young girl's voice and relationships with her family, friends, and neighbors.

• "The Other Woman" by Janice Law: An assistant to a famous "Domestic Goddess" (or DG as she refers to her boss) finds herself set up for the DG's murder and turns the table on the victim's cheating (and murderous) husband. 

• "Alan Duncan Did This" by Stephen Ross: The story begins with Alan Duncan breaking into the home of Howard Fletcher and shooting him in the head. We then learn that thirty-five years earlier, in their university days, Howard had ruined Alan's relationship with Alison by making up a story that Alan had impregnated a barmaid, leading Alison to promptly drop him. Alan spent the next three-plus decades meticulously planning Howard's demise in a way that insured he wouldn't be caught. Complications ensue when Alison is arrested for Howard murder, and when Alan decides to save her, things get even more complicated. A really great story. 

Okay, I'm ready for more magazines, EQMM and AHMM!

 

What is this crap?

Got this cheery email from Southern California Edison today.

 

Oh, joy.

 

Gotta love the dramatic exclamation mark. You'd think I did nothing but run electric appliances all damn day.

 

Let's see. Lights are only on when I'm in the room, and I have floor to ceiling windows so I don't need to have lights on during much of the day. The only exception is the kitchen and bathrooms, which don't have window exposure, plus I leave the kitchen light on when there's something on the stove or in the oven so I don't forget about it (plus I always use a timer).

 

As of August I have a washer and dryer in the unit, but it's not like I'm constantly doing laundry. It's just me. There's no kids generating tons of laundry. I also have a dishwasher that I never use. I have a lot of kitchen items that can't go in a dishwasher, plus I have to wash them before anyway, so I stopped using the dishwasher years ago. I use it for storage.

 

Because I now have wood floors, I no longer run a vacuum cleaner. I have a Swiffer mop that doesn't use any power.  

 

I do have A/C now and have used it quite a bit due to the heatwaves we've had since I moved back into this apartment, and I was grateful to have it. However, it's not like it runs constantly. I turn it on only in the room I'm in (I have separate controls in the living room, bedroom, and office where the A/C units are) and turn it off as soon as it cools down. So again, I don't see how I'm an energy use offender compared to the rest of the neighborhood.

 

One thing I'm pretty sure that SCE isn't taking into consideration is that I'm retired, so I'm home a lot. So I'm using electricity that I wouldn't be using if I was at work all day long. There's not much I could cut out because I'm already not overusing electricity. I was raised by a mother who hounded us about not leaving lights on when we left a room, so I was programmed from childhood not to waste electricity, especially now that I'm the one paying for it.

 

One thing that would help was if I had gotten a gas stove instead of electric as part of the renovation,  but the state of California is hell-bent on taking this option away from us. As a trained chef I would prefer gas and it's less expensive. I cook a lot so that's probably where a lot of my electricity usage is coming from, but I don't have a choice about that.

 

Luckily for me, SCE has some "helpful" suggestions for me, the person who is apparently hogging all the electricity in my area:

 

Unfortunately, my spiffy new fridge doesn't have a simple knob to adjust the temperature. It has some weird thing on the door that I keep resetting only for it to reset back. The joy of "smart" appliances". I shouldn't have to bust out an owner's manual to set the temperature like I've done all my life.

 

I literally have never adjusted the brightness on a TV set in my life and I'm not going to screw around with it. It's as bright as it needs to be, no more, no less.

Why should I? If you want me to use one send it to me. I've never used one in my life and am not about to start now to appease your highly questionable comparisons about my energy usage.

 

And one last thing - check out the email address this came from:

 

"No reply." This is the kind of thing you do when you don't want to hear back from your customer. Because if they did, they'd probably get an earful about sending this crap and they know it. So I get this preachy email chastising me for being an energy hog (which I'm not) but they don't give me the opportunity to respond or ask them just who they're comparing my usage to. No accountability and lousy customer service. I'm thinking of un-susbscribing just to send a message.

 

Jerks.

 

Columbus Day

My great-grandparents on my Mother's side were Italian immigrants. They ended up in Boston. Back then, there were no benefits for immigrants much less loads of freebies at taxpayer expense. Yet within one generation - their children - there was success. They also lost two sons in World War II. My Grandmother made the move to Southern California as an adult.

 

Because immigrants back then wanted to become Americans, not much about our Italian heritage was passed down to my generation. I had to ask what the family name was: Massino, Americanized to Masci (pronounced Massey) and when I expressed that it wasn't a difficult name that needed to be changed, I was advised that, "The long 'O' on the end was a dead giveaway," (that they were foreign).

 

This was posted by Italian Sons and Daughters of America on Facebook. I had no idea. You learn something new every day. Bet they aren't teaching this in public schools.

 

 

 

The return of Jonathan Quick?

You've got to feel for New York Rangers goaltender Igor Shesterkin. October 1 he was celebrating scoring a goalie goal as the Rangers beat the Tampa Bay Lightning 5-1. A little over a week later, he's out for the season with what sounds like a horrific leg injury. I found out about it when this popped up on my Facebook feed this morning:

 

 

This sucks not only for Shesterkin, but also for the Rangers. Shesterkin is a Vezina-winning goalie and losing him means this could be a long, miserable season for the Rags and their fans. According to the article linked above, their backup goalie is also currently injured. The hockey gods can be cruel.

Of course, when I saw this, after my initial reaction of how awful this is, was to think of Jonathan Quick. Kidding, of course. Then, a few hours after the Shesterkin news, this popped up:

 

 

Quick retired from the Rangers last season and is now NY's Director of Goaltender Development, but with all the team's injured netminders he may need to develop himself right back onto the ice. And of course I think that would be amazing, to see him back in net, even if it's not with the Kings. Probably not what the Rags wanted, but I'd love to see it. The improbability is what makes it so fascinating. Imagine if he went back into net and had a bang-up season. Crazier things have happened in this sport.

 

I do have a lot of sympathy for Shesterkin. The season isn't even two weeks old and his season is over. This is also devastating for the team and their fans. As a fan I can't imagine how crushed they are right now. 

 

Props to Complete Hockey News on Facebook for making my day a lot more interesting with this news.

 

86 years!

My Dad would be 86 years old today! He would have been an interesting old guy. Staggering to think he's been gone for so long (15 years).

 

The Ironman is going on in Dad's beloved Kailua-Kona this weekend. He would have been enjoying the heck out of it.

 

Aloha, Dad!

 

 

Happy autumn, sort of

Today is officially the first day of autumn. However, it doesn't feel like autumn as the weather doesn't seem to have gotten the memo about seasonal change:

 

 

High 70's - low 80's is considered hot for the beach, where our weather is generally milder than other parts of Southern California. Even if it is officially autumn, it looks like it's going to feel like summer for a while longer.

 

That's Captain Doughty to you

The Los Angeles Kings have named Drew Doughty as team captain, succeeding Anze Kopitar, who retired at the end of last season. Doughty becomes the franchise's 15th captain.

 

Love him, but this is why I never bothered to collect autographs.

 

Doughty is the last remaining player from the Kings' 2012 and 2014 Stanley Cup Champion teams. He had been vocal about wanting the captaincy and with his experience (both NHL and internationally) he's a good choice. The team also named three alternate captains: Mikey Anderson, Adrian Kempe, and Artemi Panarin.

 

This is the last year of Doughty's contract and could end up being his final NHL season, although I don't know if he feels that way about it. There's been talk he might take a "hometown discount" to stay on the team beyond the 2026-27 season. All I know is that it's going to be tough when he retires, whenever that is. He has been beyond entertaining to watch and was a huge part of the team's Stanley Cup successes.

 

Now if I can just figure out where the games are broadcast, I could actually watch them instead of just following them on NHL.com. It's like a play by play with no audio or video. But games (for various sports) are all over the place and hard to find these days. There's even a thread about it on LetsGoKings.com because even diehard fans are having difficulty finding where games are shown. The days of pretty much everything being on one channel (Prime Ticket and then Fox Sports West for the Kings over the years) seem to be over. 

 

So, congrats Drew, and I hope you have a great (and healthy!) season. 

 

Updated 9/19/26: Around the time I was writing this post, the Kings announced that their games will be carried on ABTV (previously Fan Duel). My first thought - what the heck is ABTV? Well, I found it on the Spectrum lineup and to my great surprise, it's the Angels' channel. It's where The Brother goes to watch the Angels lose. So I think I've finally found my Kings again! Between this and Doughty's excitement about being named captain, I actually feel like this could be a fun hockey season! The Kings' first regular season game is September 30 at Colorado.

 

News from Hollywood, and it isn't good

 

 

More runaway production: American Idol is leaving L.A. for Atlanta, Georgia. According to the linked article, The Masked Singer had previously left California for New Jersey. 

 

First the Oscars left broadcast TV for YouTube, now the Emmys are negotiating to air on Amazon streaming. Most recently, the broadcast networks have taken turns airing the ceremony, but in addition to less and less public interest in Hollywood awards shows, according to the article the networks interest has also waned "given that the number of awards that they win continue to dwindle..." which is understandable. The days of broadcast TV dominating the Emmys is long gone. The awards are now dominated by cable networks like HBO or streaming networks like Amazon and Netflix. Why promote your competition? It also probably didn't help that viewership was down 10% from last year.

 

Robert DeNiro in negotiations to play Tommy Lasorda. Having grown up as a Dodgers fan during Lasorda's time with the team (from third base coach to legendary manager) I have mixed feelings about this. Lasorda was a truly larger than life character and it would be great to see a well-done biopic. The concern is always whether or not the actor will be doing an impression of the real-life person, or if he will be able to make you feel like you're watching the real person, the suspension of disbelief. Helen Mirren did it with Queen Elizabeth and word is that Anthony Ippolito absolutely disappears into Sylvester Stallone in the upcoming I Play Rocky. Also, the project is titled Tommy & Me, and I wonder who the "Me" is who is telling Lasorda's story. Time will tell if this works or not.

 

And then there's the increasingly real possibility that Paramount may actually go with the nuclear option and leave L.A. I'm not even sure how to process it if this happens, but the idiots running our city and state have made the place so economically uninhabitable for business (not to mention standard of living) that it could happen. Our politicians are just stupid enough to drive away a historic Hollywood studio.

Foodie humor

 

 

 

I never noticed, but now that you mention it...yup.

 

Hat tip to im not right in the head.com on Facebook.

 

NEVER, EVER FORGET

I NEVER will. I will never, ever forget.

  

I just watched it on the news. Other people had to live it. 

 

From around the internet:

 

Michael Cammarata, the youngest firefighter lost on 9/11. He had been on the job nine weeks. We need more fine men like him, not less. Imagine the life he was robbed of.

 

Drone show in NYC recreates the Twin Towers. 

 

A memorial from Fullerton, CA (Orange County). You can watch the video here.

 

I remember reading about this years ago, and it's just as devastating now as it was then: 9/11 Search and Rescue dogs became depressed over not finding survivors, so "fake" survivor discoveries were staged to keep their morale up.

 

Also on the subject of 9/11 search and rescue dogs, the legacy of Bretagne, the last surviving 9/11 search dog. She would later work in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

 

Twice.

 

One of the bodies actually found:

 

 

This is a fantastic article about the famous "Falling Man" photograph and the photographer who took it.

 

Make yourself watch this video.

 

Various images snicked from the internets over the years:

 

 

 

In addition to American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, which were hijacked and flown into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, American 77 was flown into the Pentagon and United 77 was heading for Washington DC when passengers fought back, resulting in the plane crashing into a field in Pennsylvania. 

 

 

Getty Images

Two members of the Los Angeles Kings scouting staff, Ace Bailey and Mark Bavis, were onboard Flight 175. The Kings mascot, Bailey, is named for Ace. This article about them was published on the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

 

The Budweiser tribute commercial that only ran once because the company didn't want to be perceived as benefiting from the tragedy. It's probably been viewed millions of times on YouTube.

 

 

Updating (some more from today):

 

I don't think I've ever seen this one before: "They did it on purpose."  

 

Hell has prepared a special place for these non-humans:

 

Because 9/11 memorials are apparently hilarious to some people.

See the video here.

 

Recent reading: "The Rose and the Yew Tree"

 

 The Rose and the Yew Tree by Agatha Christie (Writing as Mary Westmacott)

 

I am way behind in #ReadChristie2026. I haven't finished The Labours of Hercules stories yet, but I did just finish my first Mary Westmacott novel: July's entry (Best-Kept Secret), The Rose and the Yew Tree. 

 

Westmacott was a pseudonym Christie used to write six non-crime novels. The book jacket describes this as "A captivating psychological tale of politics, intrigue, and love..." It also looks at the separation of the classes in 1940's England and is described as a favorite of Christie and her daughter Rosalind.

 

For me, the story started out really spectacularly. The narrator, Hugh Norreys, is summoned to the deathbed of John Gabriel, a man he hasn't seen in decades and initially has no interest in seeing again. Norreys then goes back to tell how he met Gabriel, along with a number of other residents of St Loo, including the mysterious, aristocratic Isabella, whose fate will affect both men for years after. Norreys falls in love, while Gabriel, who carries a large working-class chip on his shoulder, seems to despise the upper-class Isabella and her family, but also finds himself fascinated by her. 

 

The political aspect of the story is Gabriel being recruited to run for political office, which he plans on using to advance himself in life, and a lot of the book is devoted to British politics, which goes on quite a bit, and that's where it dragged for me. There's also the psychological aspects of the seemingly unflappable Isabella, the bitter Norreys (who has been crippled in a car accident) and calculating Gabriel. Norreys sets up the story by indicating something terrible had happened to Isabella and I got to the point where I wanted to get past Gabriel's election and get to the tragic fate that was so pivotal in both these men's lives.

 

The next two novels (for August and September) are By the Pricking of My Thumbs (Tommy and Tuppence) and Endless Night (a standalone). 

 

Unhappy Birthday

Today is Sophie's birthday. She would be 21 years old if she was still here. 

 

 

The past few years on her birthday, I would wonder if she would be around for the next one since she was getting up there in years. My previous cat, Wilma, made it to 18 years old, so that was the benchmark. Once Sophie got near that and surpassed it, I kind of felt like she was on borrowed time. But up until April I felt like she felt good, she was herself, and she had a good quality of life. Mid-April is when she really started to go downhill in a way that made it clear she'd reached the end of the road.

 

I realize I was lucky to have Sophie as long as I did. A 20 year old cat is equivalent to a person in their mid to late nineties. But I still miss her terribly. It still feels weird that she's not here. I wish I was writing yet another blog post marveling at her longevity. But today, 19 weeks to the day after she died, it's a sad birthday.

 

 

In addition to great food, In-N-Out has some really crazy and awesome products

I'd love to be a fly on the wall when the people at In-N-Out marketing start tossing around ideas for new products.

 

There's the burger mug I mentioned in a previous post:

 

This attention-grabbing beach towel:

 

Your dog can dress just like an In-N-Out associate (they don't call them employees):

 

 

Even if you're not the kind of person who dresses up your dog, your furry buddy can still sport some In-N-Out accoutrements:

Can't lie, I really like these bags:

 

 

 

All these and more can be yours at the In-N-Out Burger Company Store.