I posted about the Mossy Oak Hi-Powers last month. They are now in the wild, here and here. Note that the gun pictured in the second link sports the rubber Mark III grips, rather than the wood panels shown in the promo photo. It also seems to have a wide trigger; I’m rather curious about that.

I may have to pick one up when the inevitable CDNN fire sale happens; a discount of $200 would offset the cost of the necessary refinishing work.

Fun fact: You can slightly reduce the suckitude of the redesigned gunsamerica website by using a bit of URL-fu to view full-size pics without being logged in. Go ahead and experiment; it’s a pretty simple trick.

… But thanks for reminding me.

Remington’s 798 is the latest incarnation of the Mark X Mauser, formerly made in Yugoslavia and imported by Interarms. Neither Yugoslavia nor Interarms exists anymore, as far as I know. The guns were most recently imported by Charles Daly. After Daly’s tenure as importer ended, their inventory was blown out to my favorite wholesaler, CDNN.

Remington’s now bringing in the guns, and prices look to be in the $575 range. While I’d take a Mauser 98-actioned rifle over a 700 any day, I get the impression that the kind folks in Ilion don’t really understand what they’re selling. To wit:

• The Mauser 98 will appeal primarily to traditionalists, yet Remington has decided to ditch the walnut stocks found on the Daly guns and instead use laminated stocks. Uh-huh. They’ve also installed the front sling swivel about an inch too far to the rear. I do give them a few bonus points for installing what looks like a decent recoil pad.
• The gun is being advertised as a square-bridge action. If it is, everyone else who’s ever made a square-bridge Mauser was doing it wrong. This is a square-bridge action. This is what Remington’s selling. “One of these things is not like the others, one of these things just doesn’t belong.” (Maybe the guys at Remington need to review their Sesame Street.)
• Remington has made “exceptionally fast lock time” a talking point. The 98 Mauser has many terrific features, but quick lock time is not among them. You have time to run out for a sandwich between the sear slipping and the firing pin hitting the primer, but when it finally gets there, that primer gets HIT.

Still, we will have commercial Mauser 98s available again, so even I can’t bitch too loudly.

The Armalite AR-24 pistols have started to show up on Gunbroker. The two currently listed are priced at $520 with no reserve and $525 with a Buy Now of $550.

Hmm.

So we have Turkish CZ-75 knockoffs being sold for about 30% MORE than a genuine CZ-75, just because they happen to bear the Armalite name?

The marketeers triumph again.

Here’s the video of Iggy singing on the Teddybears’ “Punkrocker.”

“The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” - Hunter S. Thompson

I don’t write much about music, largely because most new stuff leaves me unimpressed. I also don’t buy many CDs, since I hate giving money to such a filthy, corrupt industry. There is, though, a very short list of artists who always command my attention, and Iggy Pop is at the top of that list.

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a new Iggy & the Stooges album coming out on March 6th, a month before Iggy’s 60th birthday and 34 years after their last album. Early reviews are good, and I am hopeful. To me, the Stooges ARE rock ‘n’ roll. Their original three albums are my personal Holy Trinity, and the tattered fragments of their never-recorded follow-up to Raw Power (as heard on Metallic K.O. and other live recordings) show that they still had unfinished business when they broke up.

The new album doesn’t include any of those earlier songs, which is a little unfortunate. I didn’t expect them to pick up right where they left off in 1974, but “Open Up & Bleed,” in particular, deserved a proper studio recording. Instead, they have a full album of brand-new material. And I know damned well that they can still play; I saw them here in Detroit in ‘03 and was thoroughly impressed. Iggy’s still a maniac showman, the Brothers Asheton are in top form, and new bassist Mike Watt isn’t filling in for anybody; he IS a Stooge.

So for the first time in years, I’m genuinely excited about a new album. Long live the Stooges!

So we have David E. Petzal reporting on the possible introduction of Miroku-made, Browning-branded Model 70s on his blog…

… While Matt Williams of Williams Firearms Company says that FN will be making Model 70s in South Carolina, and follows up with some speculation…

… And at the same time we have rumors of Portuguese Model 70s.

All three are plausible. Winchester, Browning, and FNHUSA are all sister companies under FN Herstal. Some Brownings are made in Belgium and assembled in Portugal, while others come from Miroku in Japan. Miroku also makes Winchester-branded High Walls and has produced other Winchesters. And FNHUSA has a facility in South Carolina. FNHUSA needs Model 70 actions for their lines of patrol and sniper rifles.

Apparently, no announcements were made at SHOT or SCI, so I’m guessing we’re in for a bit of a wait.

My prediction: We will see a reintroduction of the “Classic” controlled-feed action. I’m betting Miroku will get the contract, and will produce both complete rifles and bare actions, the latter for use by FNHUSA. And if we’re really lucky, the complete rifles will be finished in the style of the Pre-’64s: original-style stocks of red-stained wood, brushed metalwork and “vapor-blasted” receivers.

Of course, I could very easily be completely wrong…

Click here to see the trailer for “Aqua Teen Hunger Force colon Movie Film for Theaters”.

I tracked down the source of this picture:

You can buy the bumper stickers here.

If you don’t know what it’s all about, go read this.

If I ever fly again, I hope it can be on AirTran.

Little kids do not belong on airplanes, period. In an ongoing case of life mirroring the routine of a bad stand-up comedian, I truly do get stuck one row away from a screaming baby almost every time I fly (though last time the screaming baby was a drunken 25-year-old stripper). And every damn time, I spend the whole flight trying to do Darth Vader’s telekinetic choking trick to the asshat parents who see nothing wrong with making everyone around them, including their beloved crotch-dropping, miserable.

Because the kids are suffering just as much as everyone else. Small children are physiologically incompatible with air travel, because their narrow Eustachian tubes make it very difficult for them to equalize the pressure in their ears. So they spend the entire flight in very real pain, and they communicate that pain to everyone around them, LOUDLY. They can’t help it, and it’s not their fault, though it can be amazingly difficult to remind yourself of that during the flight.

In this case, though, the plane didn’t even get in the air, and the kid was just a brat in dire need of a refresher course in the most important lesson of childhood, “Sit Down and Shut Up.” Her parents likewise seem to be in dire need of a refresher course in the most important lesson of parenthood, “Hit Them Where the Bruises Won’t Show.”

So I see absolutely nothing wrong with AirTran hauling the Kulesza (a Hungarian word meaning “douchebag”) family off of that plane. The only thing they did wrong was offering the family a set of roundtrip tickets in a lame attempt to make nice and avoid bad press. Instead, they should’ve jumped on the incident as a PR goldmine: “AirTran: We Don’t Take Any Shit.” Tell me that wouldn’t make an awesome corporate slogan. They could run it under a picture of a small child sitting inside one of those travel kennels that dogs fly in.

And please, if you’re reading this and you have little brats children, don’t take ‘em on a plane unless it’s absolutely necessary. Because one day I just might master that Darth Vader trick.