Obit watch: May 27, 2023.

May 27th, 2023

Ed Ames. THR.

People of a certain age may remember him from the “Daniel Boone” TV show, or as a singer with the Ames Brothers, or for theater work (including “Chief Bromden” in the 1963 Broadway “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”).

People of my age remember him from a single clip from the Johnny Carson show, which I haven’t seen anyone actually reproduce anywhere, so here it is:

Gary Kent, knock-around guy. He was a stunt man (and stunt coordinator), acted some, and even directed a bit. Acting credits include “The Incredible 2-Headed Transplant”, “The New Adam-12”, and “Sex Terrorists on Wheels”.

Marlene Clark. Other credits include “The Rookies”, “McCloud”, and “Mod Squad”.

Posted in Movies, Music, Obits, Theatre, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 25, 2023.

May 25th, 2023

Tina Turner. THR. Pitchfork.

I’m not badmouthing the dead, but I do think there’s something worth pointing out here:

“After suffering a stroke in 2009 because of my poorly controlled hypertension I struggled to get back up on my feet,” she penned. “This is when I first learned that my kidneys didn’t work that well anymore. They had already lost thirty-five percent of their function.”
Turner eventually “developed a fatal dislike” of her prescription pills and even “convinced” herself that they made her feel “worse.”
So without consulting with her doctors, she “replaced” her “conventional medication” with “homeopathic” remedies.
“Indeed, I started feeling better after a while,” the 12-time Grammy winner noted. However, she was in for a rude awakening when she went for her “next routine check-up.”
“Rarely in my life had I been so wrong. I had not known that uncontrolled hypertension would worsen my renal disease and that I would kill my kidneys by giving up on controlling my blood pressure,” she confessed.

Homeopathic “remedies”.

“Are the “dangers of mass popular delusion” not “so menacing”?“

Nicholas Gray, founder of Gray’s Papaya.

For the record: NYT obit for Rolf Harris.

Posted in Food, Music, Obits | 1 Comment »

Yes, I know…

May 24th, 2023

Tina Turner tomorrow, after the dust has had a chance to settle.

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 24, 2023.

May 24th, 2023

Brian Shul, SR-71 pilot and author, passed away over the weekend.

I’ve had this obit on hold for a few days because I couldn’t find a good source to link to. FotB RoadRich forwarded the Flying obit, so much credit to him.

Bill Lee, musician.

Over six decades, in thousands of live performances and on more than 250 record albums, Mr. Lee’s mellow and ebullient string bass accompanied a pantheon of music stars, including as well Duke Ellington, Arlo Guthrie, Odetta, Simon and Garfunkel, Harry Belafonte, Ian & Sylvia, Judy Collins, Tom Paxton and Peter, Paul and Mary.

He also wrote film scores for the first four feature films directed by Spike Lee, his son.

Chas Newby.

Newby was a member of John Lennon’s first band The Quarrymen, and news of his death was announced by The Cavern Club Liverpool — a music venue where The Beatles performed before finding global stardom.
“It’s with great sadness to hear about the passing of Chas Newby,” the venue wrote in a Facebook post. “Chas stepped in for The Beatles for a few dates when Stuart Sutcliffe stayed in Hamburg and latterly he played for The Quarrymen.”

Gerald Castillo, actor. Other credits include “FBI: The Unheard Music The Untold Stories”, “Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects”, the 1990 “Dragnet”, and the 1990-1991 “The New Adam-12”.

Kenneth Anger, the Hollywood Babylon guy. He also did some “experimental” films. (Edited to add: NYT obit archived.)

I’ve heard more than once that HB is notoriously inaccurate. I know, I know, but: Wikipedia.

And here’s a direct link to the “You Must Remember This” episodes (which I have not listened to yet, not being a regular listener of YMRT).

Posted in Books, Movies, Music, Obits, Planes, TV | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 23, 2023.

May 23rd, 2023

Lawrence emailed an obit for C. Boyden Gray, White House counsel for George Bush and long-time advisor to other presidents. NYT (archived).

Rick Wolff. Interesting guy. He was a radio host on WFAN. Before that, he was the “psychological coach” for the Cleveland Indians: one of the first sports psychologists hired by a major league team.

Even though sports psychology was rare in baseball, Mr. Wolff said on his show last year, Cleveland’s players “took the mental side of the game seriously” and within a few years were a “powerhouse in the American League.”
The idea caught on, he added, and “these days it’s the rare, rare sports team or professional or college organization that doesn’t have at least one sports psychologist on their staff.”

…

As an author, he wrote, among other books, “Secrets of Sports Psychology Revealed: Proven Techniques to Elevate Your Performance” (2018) and “Harvard Boys: A Father and Son’s Adventure Playing Minor League Baseball” (2007), which he wrote with John Wolff.

…

The Detroit Tigers picked Mr. Wolff late in the 1972 amateur draft, and he played in their minor league system in 1973 and 1974 while completing his Harvard bachelor’s degree in psychology.

Rick Hoyt, marathon runner with his father Dick Hoyt. I wrote about the Hoyts when Dick Hoyt passed away in 2021, so I’ll point you back to that obit and to the Rick Reilly essay.

The pair competed nearly every year in the Boston Marathon from 1980 through 2014. In 2013, Dick and Rick Hoyt were honored with a bronze statue near the race’s starting line.
They completed more than 1,100 races together, including marathons, triathlons and duathlons, a combination of biking and running.

Ray Stevenson, actor. IMDB.

“Kill the Irishman” is an interesting movie that I have a sentimental fondness for (because Cleveland) and he was good as Danny Greene. But the movie could have been a lot better than it actually was.

Rolf Harris, “Australian-born, UK-resident presenter, actor and convicted sex offender” (stealing Lawrence‘s blurb). IMDB.

Helmut Berger, actor noted for his work with Luchino Visconti. IMDB. (He was also in “Victory at Entebbe” and “The Godfather Part III”.)

Posted in Movies, Obits, Politics, Radio, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: May 20, 2023.

May 20th, 2023

Jim Brown.

Playing for the Browns from 1957 to 1965 after earning all-American honors at Syracuse University in football and lacrosse, Brown helped take Cleveland to the 1964 National Football League championship.
In any game, he dragged defenders when he wasn’t running over them or flattening them with a stiff arm. He eluded them with his footwork when he wasn’t sweeping around ends and outrunning them. He never missed a game, piercing defensive lines in 118 consecutive regular-season games, though he played one year with a broken toe and another with a sprained wrist.
“All you can do is grab, hold, hang on and wait for help,” Sam Huff, the Hall of Fame middle linebacker for the Giants and the Washington team now known as the Commanders, once told Time magazine.
Brown was voted football’s greatest player of the 20th century by a six-member panel of experts assembled by The Associated Press in 1999. A panel of 85 experts selected by NFL Films in 2010 placed him No. 2 all time behind the wide receiver Jerry Rice of the San Francisco 49ers.
He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971, the Lacrosse Hall of Fame in 1984 and the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995.

He retired in 1966…

He had appeared in the 1964 western “Rio Conchos” and was involved in the shooting of the World War II film “The Dirty Dozen” in England, with plans to attend the Browns’ training camp afterward. But wet weather delayed completion of the filming. When he notified Art Modell, the Browns’ owner, that he would be reporting late, Modell said he would fine him for every day he missed camp. Affronted by the threat, Brown called a news conference to announce that he was done with pro football.

…

Handsome with a magnificent physique — he was a chiseled 6 feet 2 inches and 230 pounds — Brown appeared in many movies and was sometimes cited as a Black Superman for his cinematic adventures.
“Although the range of emotion Brown displayed onscreen was no wider than a mail slot, he never embarrassed himself, never played to a demeaning stereotype of the comic patsy,” James Wolcott wrote in The New York Review of Books in his review of Dave Zirin’s 2018 biography, “Jim Brown: Last Man Standing.” He called Brown “a rugged chassis for a more self-assertive figure, the Black uberman.”
One of Brown’s best-remembered roles was in “The Dirty Dozen” (1967), in which he played one of 12 convicts assembled by the Army for a near-suicide mission to kill high-ranking German officers at a French chateau in advance of the D-Day invasion of Normandy. He next played a Marine captain in the Cold War thriller “Ice Station Zebra” (1968).

IMDB. He was also a prominent civil rights activist.

Brown led the N.F.L. in rushing in eight of his nine seasons. He also set N.F.L. records for career yardage (12,312), total touchdowns (126), touchdowns by running (106), and average yards rushing per game (104) and per carry (5.22). He ran for more than 1,000 yards seven times when teams played only 12 and then 14 games a season (they now play 17), and at a time when the rule book favored the passing game over running plays. He caught 20 touchdown passes, and he returned kickoffs.

Martin Amis, British novelist.

He is best known for his so-called London trilogy of novels — “Money: A Suicide Note” (1985), “London Fields” (1990) and “The Information” (1995) — which remain, along with his memoir, his most representative and admired work.

…

Mr. Amis’s misanthropic wit made his voice at times reminiscent of that of his father, Kingsley Amis. Kingsley, who died in 1995, was one of the British working- and middle-class novelists of the 1950s known as the Angry Young Men and became famous with the success of his comic masterpiece “Lucky Jim” (1954).
Father and son were close, but they disagreed about much. Kingsley Amis drifted to the right with the rise of Margaret Thatcher; he once publicly referred to his son’s left-leaning political opinions as “howling nonsense.”

…

Mr. Amis’s talent was undeniable: He was the most dazzling stylist in postwar British fiction. So were his swagger and Byronic good looks. He had well-chronicled involvements with some of the most watched young women of his era. He wore, according to media reports, velvet jackets, Cuban-heel boots, bespoke shirts. He stared balefully into paparazzi lenses.
His raucous lunches with friends and fellow writers like Ian McEwan, Julian Barnes, Salman Rushdie, Clive James, James Fenton and Mr. Hitchens were written up in the press and made other writers feel that they were on the outside looking in. He seemed to be having more fun than other people. His detractors considered him less a bad boy than a spoiled brat.

…

In 2002, Mr. Amis published “Koba the Dread: Laughter and the Twenty Million,” a study of the Stalin regime’s atrocities in the Soviet Union. The title alludes to Stalin’s nickname, Koba. The word “laughter” in the subtitle refers to Mr. Amis’s morally perplexed realization that, while Hitler and the Holocaust are off limits, many consider it appropriate to joke about Stalin and the Soviet Union.

Posted in Books, Movies, NFL, Obits, Sports, TV | 1 Comment »

Headline of the day.

May 19th, 2023

Violent taco rampage caught on camera at D.C. Chipotle

In other news, “Violent Taco Rampage” is the name of my new Smiths cover band.

Posted in Bagatelle, Media | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 19, 2023.

May 19th, 2023

Andy Rourke, of the Smiths. THR. Pancreatic cancer got him at 59.

The Disney Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser hotel.

Get this: A windowless, theme-park hotel with a mandatory 48-hour stay that costs a family of four $6,000 per visit didn’t work out.

Which, you know, is one way of looking at it. On the other hand:

“If you are into Star Wars, and you enjoy role playing, this is absolutely worth it,” wrote one reviewer. “In addition to the lodging, food (it’s a LOT of food), park admission (including lightning lane access to the rides), what you are really paying for is the experience that is put on by the characters and crew members.”

On the gripping hand:

Also notable, however, is the fact that there were only 43 reviews. Among the guests who didn’t enjoy their stays at the hotel was one who described the experience as “like being in a jail,” and another who dubbed it “the most expensive rip-off of my life,” saying they had to spend most of their time staring at their phone in order to participate in the role-playing game. “The hotel is surprisingly small, with few themed spaces to explore. Even the garden ‘climate simulator’ which is supposed to help with claustrophobia is small. I really don’t know why it’s so tiny, there is plenty of land to work with. It doesn’t feel immersive, it feels cramped.”

Posted in Music, Obits | Comments Closed

Obit watch: May 18, 2023.

May 18th, 2023

Superstar” Billy Graham, noted wrestler.

A bodybuilding friend of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Graham got into pro wrestling in the late 1960s with Stew Hart’s Stampede Wrestling in Calgary and wrestled until 1987 until injuries and health issues pushed him out of the ring.
Graham, who moved into a commentary role, wrestled for AWA, WWWF, NWA and WWF during his career.
He was dubbed “Superstar” during his time in the AWA.
Graham won the WWWF championship from Bruno Samartino in April 1977 and held the belt for nine and a half months — losing the title to Bob Backlund in February 1978.

Ralph Lee, founder of the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade and puppeteer.

His menagerie ranged from hand puppets to fantastic figures that towered over the audience and were controlled by multiple puppeteers. One of his most famous puppets ate Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin and others — it was the “land shark” that turned up at unsuspecting women’s doors in a 1975 “Saturday Night Live” sketch and returned several times over the years.

Amy Silverstein, author. When she was 24, she was diagnosed with congestive hear failure and had a transplant. She published a book, Sick Girl, in 2007.

The first heart eventually failed, and she went through a second transplant in 2014. In 2017, she published My Glory Was I Had Such Friends.

She was 59, and died of cancer, which is believed to have been caused by the medications she was taking to prevent organ rejection.

Posted in Books, Sports | Comments Closed

Quick random gun crankery, no filler.

May 17th, 2023

From YouTube: a factory tour of the Smith and Wesson plant in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Why, yes, as a matter of fact, I have been on that tour…

Posted in Bagatelle, Guns, Smith and Wesson | 1 Comment »

Norts spews.

May 17th, 2023

I’m tagging this under “firings”, even though it isn’t a firing in the normal sense of the word.

There were elections yesterday in various parts of the country.

Voters in Tempe, Arizona had three propositions to vote on. All three were related to a plan to build a brand-new arena (and a related large “entertainment complex”) for the Arizona Coyotes NHL team, which is a complete disaster.

In order for the arena to be built, all three propositions had to pass by a simple majority vote.

All three failed by a pretty large margin.

The Arizona Coyotes submitted their proposal to Tempe in late 2021, which involved building nearly 2,000 apartments, an NHL arena and an entertainment district on 46 acres of land west of Tempe Town Lake. It became one of the biggest and most controversial developments in the city’s history.

The estimated cost of this plan was $2.1 billion. It isn’t clear to me how much of this would have been funded with public money, though Field of Schemes cites “$500 million in tax breaks“.

Right now, the team is playing in a 5,000 seat college arena.

“We are very disappointed Tempe voters did not approve Propositions 301, 302, and 303. As Tempe Mayor Corey Woods said, it was the best sports deal in Arizona history,” said Coyotes President Xavier Gutierrez. “What is next for the franchise will be evaluated by our owners and the National Hockey League over the coming weeks.”

There are persistent rumors that the team is going to move out of Arizona completely: one potential location I’ve seen is, believe it or not, Houston.

(I think I went to a Houston Aeros game in the Summit back in the day, possibly as a Boy Scout thing. Never went to see the other Houston Aeros, though, or the Ice Bats.)

More from the Entertainment and Sports Programming Network.

Edited to add: coverage from Reason, which wasn’t up when I posted earlier.

Posted in Firings, Politics, Sports | 2 Comments »

Firing watch.

May 16th, 2023

Doc Rivers, who as far as I can tell is neither a doctor or a river (discuss) out as coach of the Philadelphia 76ers.

He went 154-82 in three regular seasons with the organization but, like predecessor Brett Brown, failed to get the team past the playoffs’ second round.

…

Rivers has been one of the NBA’s most recognizable and successful coaches for more than two decades, being honored as one of the top 15 coaches in league history during its 75th anniversary celebration. He won a championship with the Boston Celtics in 2008, before guiding a once-embarrassing Los Angeles Clippers franchise to six playoff appearances in seven seasons. The former All-Star point guard began his coaching career with the Orlando Magic in 1999-2000, where he was named coach of the year in his first season and took that team to three playoff berths in five seasons.
Yet Rivers has also become known for playoff failures, particularly in close-out games. He is now 17-33 in such situations, and 6-10 in Game 7s, after the Sixers surrendered their 3-2 series lead to Boston.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

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