I’m sorry you lost your friend, Nabiki. 
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Oh no. Im so so sorry. I love all of your kitties and seeing any of them pass breaks my heart.
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She was so sweet too. She purred her little chirpy purr all the way up to the end.
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This breaks my heart, she was always so so sweet.
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Actor Michael K. Williams, known for The Wire, Boardwalk Empire, Lovecraft Country, and others.
Turd Ferguson. It’s a funny name.
And what the hell, here’s 35 minutes of the Weekend Update OJ jokes that got him fired.
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The guy who fixed me & my wife up at his first wedding lost his father yesterday. Got a cancer diagnosis on Thursday, was gone Tuesday.
His obituary was nothing less than I expected from his family, with choice statements like “this is not a ploy to avoid creditors” and “if he owes you a beer and you can find him in the afterlife, he’ll let you buy him another.” We should all be so creative in our time of grief.
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Former US Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell, 84 of complications from cancer and COVID-19.
Oof. His legacy is… complicated. I think he meant well, which may seem like faint praise, but you don’t hear what I think about the rest of the people wielding political and military power in this country.
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I was reading about that this morning. How does a loaded gun make it from props into an actor/actress’ hands?! And yet, it’s happened more than once.
And aren’t prop guns supposed to be loaded with blanks?
Yes. That’s what they’re investigating.
Blanks can still kill, especially at close range, because they still have to be closed off by a wad of paper or cotton or something so that the gases from the combusting gunpowder still make the bang and the muzzle flash. That’s how Brandon Lee died during the Crow filming.
Actually, there was a live bullet in front of the blank, and that’s what killed Brandon Lee. This one wasn’t a blank either. While blanks can kill, they have to be pretty close, and in this case, two people were hit.
Yup. That’s what killed Jon-Erik Hexum on the set of Cover Up in 1984. He was joking around about a filming delay, put a prop gun to his head and pulled the trigger. Even though the gun was “only” loaded with blanks, the blast fractured his skull and drove a piece of bone into his brain. (Putting the spoiler blur in case people don’t want to see the graphic description of the injury.)
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Most likely what you meant, but in this case there was just the actual lead part of a live round wedged in the gun, the blank pushed it through. Apparently this has happened with debris and other things shoved in there as well.
I read somewhere that the union safety staff had walked because they were ignoring safety protocols and they had hired nonunion workers to fill those slots. Everyone is keeping their mouth shut on it for now and I’m sure it will all come out in the next few months.
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It’s a bit worse than that. The article on The Hollywood Reporter says that the armorer for the film brought out three prop guns on a cart. The assistant director handed it to Alex Baldwin and announced it was a “cold gun”, which means it should have no live ammo.
My question is where did the armorer go after bringing out the guns? The article doesn’t say that they left, so they should still be on set to supervise the use of the props they’re responsible for. Maybe they were far enough away that they didn’t hear the director say “cold gun” and step in to correct it? Did they make a major mistake and mix up live ammo for blanks? Undoubtedly this will be investigated.
I’ve seen the John Wick movies on TV a few times. Whenever a gun is fired either directly against another actor’s head or body, or very close to them, I invariably start wondering what they used on set to ensure the actors’ safety. It’s probably just blanks instead of expensive CGI since a lot of scenes in movies and TV shows also use squibs to simulate a gunshot wound, and that’s a controlled miniature explosion taped directly onto the actor or their clothing.
Sig can attest to or update this, but here’s the firearm rules from munitions expert Bryan W. Carpenter, who has been working in Hollywood for 30 years:
“Number one, always treat all weapons as if they are loaded — don’t treat them as props. Number two, never have your finger on the trigger or pull the trigger until you’re ready to discharge the weapon. Number three, never point the weapon at anything that can be harmed or injured. And number four, always be aware of what’s in front, behind and on all sides of what you’re aiming for.”
“You never aim a weapon directly at anyone, period. If you need to point a weapon at the camera, the area must be locked off so that there is no one behind it. You never fire at or near the camera. Sometimes the shot may require it, in which case, the entire area must be cleared for safety precautions.”
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