The Truth About the Alec Baldwin Shooting Finally Comes Out

Story.

Basically this is what happened. The gun is, from what I've read, an Italian-made copy of a Colt Peacemaker, which is a single-action revolver, which means that the hammer must be cocked with the thumb for each shot. The gun was designed in 1873 and has no safety device. Although the gun can hold 6 cartridges, experts carry them with only 5 cartridges loaded, and an empty chamber under the resting hammer, because the hammer rests directly on the primer of the cartridge if all 6 chambers are loaded, and the gun WILL FIRE if the hammer is struck a sharp blow. That is NOT what happened to Baldwin.

Baldwin was handed a loaded revolver, either fully loaded with 6 cartridges or safely loaded with only 5. The number of cartridges loaded in this case is not germane, because as part of filming the scene, Baldwin thumbed the hammer back without allowing it to lock into the fully cocked position, but let the hammer slip off of his thumb, at which point it fell forward under tension from the mainspring, and fired the cartridge in the chamber, which turned out to be a live round. On a Colt Peacemaker or clone, you do NOT have to bring the hammer to full cock to fire it - - just thumbing the hammer back far enough to cause the cylinder to rotate and bring a cartridge into position to fire will result in a fired cartridge if the hammer is slipped off the thumb. In point of historical fact, some gunfighters used to file the full-cock notch entire off their Peacemaker and fire it by slipping it off of the thumb. OR they would file the full-cock notch to create a "hair trigger," which means a trigger that is much lighter than normal. A gun that has this sort of "hair trigger" can go off by itself if the gun is dropped.

So Baldwin is not lying if he says he never touched the trigger; the gun can fire without the trigger ever being pulled. Just thumbing the hammer back and slipping it off of the thumb will fire the gun. Presumably Baldwin didn't know that. Probably 99 out of 100 people don't.

Having said this, though, Baldwin's liability is far less than the armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, whose job it was to make sure no live rounds were on the set, and particularly not in the gun. She failed, and has admitted so. She'll be lucky to avoid jail.

She's Toast

‘Rust’ Armorer’s Industry Veteran Father Hands Police Possible Pivotal Tip On Origin Of Live Rounds; Hannah Gutierrez-Reed Admits She Didn’t Check Gun “Too Much”

All she can do at this point is start negotiations with the prosecutors to accept a plea deal.

2016: Annus Horribilus For Celebrities

Gene Wilder has passed, at 83.

The Fight We All Lose In the End

Muhammad Ali, the boxer who dominated the sport in the 1960's and 1970's, is dead at 74 of respiratory illness.

Sadly, he developed Parkinson's Disease shortly after his retirement and disappeared from the limelight, so many younger people have little clue how much a dominating force he was in his heyday. He won the heavyweight title three times - - which means he lost it twice, of course, mainly due to hubris and complacency - - lack of confidence was never a part of the Ali package, nor was humility.

Ceremonial First Pitch: The Brutal Facts

Story.

Res ipsa loquitur, they say:

Richard Attenborough, 1923-2014: R.I.P.

I best remembered him as Big X from The Great Escape:



He's also the brother of naturalist David Attenborough.

She Don't Whore Around

Been married three times, but she don't whore around.

Like some people we could name. *cough*(Madonna)*cough*

So He Won Some Cash...

...he'll never win his good name back, which is what he said he sued for.

And now he'll forever be known as the prick that sued a widow. Yah, he'll be welcome at SEAL functions.

Figures

Ben Affleck, the millionaire leftist actor who thinks governments should rig economies to benefit the poor, apparently likes to rig the game in his own favor when playing blackjack in Las Vegas.

Ben Affleck has been banned from playing balckjack at a Las Vegas casino after allegedly being caught counting cards.

The 41-year-old actor was gambling at a high rollers table of the Hard Rock Casino, close to the Las Vegas strip, when he was allegedly confronted Tuesday night for being 'too good'.

Staff are said to have accused him of the tactic, which is not illegal but is a ground for being banned.

Shirley Temple, 1929-2014: R.I.P.

The child star, beloved by millions during the Depression and WWII, has died at 85.

She was considered for the role of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, but was either busy with other projects or MGM wanted a more adult voice for the musical numbers, which Judy Garland certainly supplied. Temple, though, was closer in age to the little Kansas farmgirl that L. Frank Baum wrote of in his Oz novels.

Here's Temple in a dance routine with Buddy Ebsen (Jed Clampett, Barnaby Jones), who himself was cast for The Wizard of Oz but who had to drop out from an allergic reaction to his makeup as the Tin Man.



What a little cutie she was.

Clint Eastwood, 83, Saves Man From Choking

Hero. Not just playing one.

For Anyone Interested...

...Elvis Presley's personal Smith & Wesson .357 Magnum is for sale.

LIndsay Lohan: The Only Actress...

whose mugshot file is nearly as thick as her publicity photo file.

Who Knew That Kevin Spacey...

...could do a dead-on imitation of Johnny Carson?

Jesse Ventura's Evil Twin

We'll call the evil twin "Scruff Face."

A lawyer for the ex-Navy SEAL sniper who is being sued for defamation by Minnesota's former governor over an alleged punch argued Tuesday, Dec. 18, that in order to claim punitive damages, Ventura must prove the former SEAL didn't punch someone who "looked and acted like Ventura."

John Borger, the attorney representing former SEAL and best-selling author Chris Kyle, told a federal magistrate that Ventura has to prove Kyle fabricated the story about the punch and knew it was false when he stuck it in his book.

Ventura's lawyers haven't shown that Kyle knew his statement was false, Borger said.

"They can't rule out the possibility there was a Ventura impersonator," Borger told U.S. Magistrate Arthur Boylan in the pretrial hearing in federal court in Minneapolis.

Lawyers. They fuck everything up, don't they?

A Proud Man Makes a Stand

Gérard Depardieu:

Gérard Depardieu has said he is handing back his French passport and social security card, lambasting the French government for punishing "success, creation, talent" in his homeland.

A popular and colourful figure in France, the 63-year-old actor is the latest wealthy Frenchman to seek shelter outside his native country by buying a house just over the border in Belgium in response to tax increases by the Socialist president, François Hollande.

The prime minister, Jean-Marc Ayrault, described Depardieu's behaviour as pathetic and unpatriotic at a time when the French are being asked to pay higher taxes to reduce a bloated national debt.

"Pathetic, you said pathetic? How pathetic is that?" Depardieu said in a letter to the weekly newspaper le Journal du Dimanche.

"I am leaving because you believe that success, creation, talent, anything different must be sanctioned," he said.

The Cyrano de Bergerac star recently bought a house in Nechin, a Belgian village a short walk from the border with France where 27% of residents are French nationals, and put his sumptuous Parisian home up for sale.

Depardieu has also inquired about procedures for acquiring Belgian residency.

He said he had paid €145m (£120m) in taxes since beginning work as a printer at the age of 14.

"People more illustrious than me have gone into [tax] exile. Of all those that have left none have been insulted as I have."

"Who are you to judge me, I ask you Mr Ayrault, prime minister of Mr Hollande? Despite my excesses, my appetite and my love of life, I remain a free man," Depardieu wrote.

Never seen Depardieu? Check him out in this scene from Cyrano de Bergerac:

Yer LOL of the Day

Whiplash? Maybe he should have been billed as "Scarecrow."

See for yourself:

R. Crumb Reflects On...

...Abraham Lincoln, Lyndon Johnson, Tom Waits, John Steinbeck, et.al.

In the discussion on Steinbeck, Crumb talks of how success changes an individual:

You get successful, you give a lot of interviews, you're constantly dealing with business and money and all that stuff I talked with you about when we were in Chicago. You just slowly lose touch with your original source of inspiration. It has something to do with being involved with real, common life; that's what makes any kind of story writing interesting to me. And then you get successful and you get separated from real life. It just happens. When I say real life, I'm talking about the common, everyday life of most people. Then you start getting treated like royalty — like you're something special — and it's not the same. And you're no longer the observer, you are the observed. That puts you in a whole different position in society; a whole different perspective. Now you're hunted, you're looked at, you're watched, you're admired, you're vilified, whatever. But you can't just go out and be part of the world as an observer anymore. It's hard. It's hard for me anyway.

Click the link to read the rest. In the sidebar at the Crumb website are the other parts of this extended interview (this is part 4).

Hey, Even Iron Man...

...can turn his ankle.

Robert Downey, Jr., injured performing a stunt on the set of Iron Man 3 in Wilmington, NC.

Treasure Blog: Elvis Presley's Bible

Expected to fetch "thousands" at auction.

Pic: