Michael Herr, author of Dispatches. This is supposed to be one of the great Vietnam War books: I personally haven’t gotten around to reading it.
Things I did not know:
Bernie Worrell, legendary keyboard player.
Later on, of course, he played with the Talking Heads. I think this clip has some good shots of Mr. Worrell in action with the Heads:
For the historical record: noted musician Dr. Ralph Stanley. A/V Club.
Apropos of nothing in particular, a musical interlude to start your day:
Apropos of nothing in particular:
Robert “Simply Irresistible” Palmer’s favorite author was Jack Vance, at least if Wikipedia is to be believed.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that: I just have a little bit of trouble reconciling a fondness for Jack Vance with Mister “Addicted to Love”. But people are a funny old lot; they’ll surprise you sometimes…
The WP has a nice tribute to Nick Menza, former drummer of Megadeth, who died Saturday.
You know, I bet we could get DNA off of that saw blade…
Also among the dead: Bill Herz, the last surviving crew member of Orson Welles’s “War of the Worlds” broadcast.
Well, baseball season’s finally gotten underway with the ceremonial throwing out of the first manager.
Fredi Gonzalez out as manager of the Braves. The team was 9-28 so far this year; he was 434-413 overall while with the Braves.
The grand jury has decided not to indict former APD officer Geoffrey Freeman, who you may remember better as the officer who shot and killed a naked 17-year-old male. (Previously.)
Obit watch: Guy Clark, noted Texas musician.
Edited to add 5/18: More Guy Clark. NYT. South Texas Pistolero. A/V Club.
Katherine Dunn followups: A/V Club. NYT.
Harlan Ellison, the science fiction author and screenwriter, hailed it as “transformative.”
Julius La Rosa, who was a noted singer of the 1950s, but is perhaps most famous for being fired on the air by Arthur Godfrey.
On Oct. 19, 1953 — 23 months after Mr. La Rosa’s debut — Mr. Godfrey retaliated in a morning segment heard only on the radio. Mr. La Rosa had just finished singing “Manhattan” when Mr. Godfrey delivered the sentence in his solemn foghorn voice.
“That was Julie’s swan song,” he said.
…
The dismissal stunned Mr. La Rosa and the Godfrey audiences, whose reaction was largely negative. Most media critics also chastised Mr. Godfrey, whose avuncular image began to crumble.
Liberace is back!
Well, more specifically, his cars are back. The Liberace Garage at the Hollywood Cars Museum is displaying a group of them.
You may remember that at least some of these cars were on display at the now tragically closed Liberace Museum.
Your Prince obit round-up: NYT. Star-Tribune. LAT coverage. WP.
“Poor Lonely Computer: Prince’s Misunderstood Relationship With The Internet” from NPR.
I feel much the same way about Prince as I did about Bowie. I wouldn’t call myself a fan, I never saw him live, but thinking back on it, he turned out a lot of music I like. “1999”. “Little Red Corvette”. “When Doves Cry”. “Let’s Go Crazy”. And every now and then, I’ve been known to spontaneously start singing “She wore a raspberry beret, the kind you find in a second-hand store…” much to the annoyance of my cow-orkers.
And I didn’t realize it until yesterday, but he actually wrote “Manic Monday”.
Also among the dead, according to the A/V Club: Richard Lyons, co-founder of Negativland.
The A/V Club is on this like flies over a cow’s head in a Damien Hirst installation.
Full obit roundup tomorrow for two reasons: I want to wait for the dust to settle, and I need that long to figure out how to put this:
into a blog post.
Statesman writer subscribes to LootCrate so he can get a box of pop-culture crap delivered to him every month.
Statesman writer discovers that he really doesn’t like getting a box of pop-culture crap delivered to him every month.
Stateman writer decides, not just to quietly cancel his LootCrate subscription and move on with his life, but to publish a “breakup letter” in his newspaper.
Editors. Where are the editors?
Obit watch: Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, chief medical examiner of New York City from 1989 to 2013.
In 2001, when two jetliners commandeered by terrorists struck the World Trade Center, Dr. Hirsch and six aides rushed downtown to establish a temporary morgue.
When the North Tower collapsed, two aides were severely injured. Dr. Hirsch, thrown to the ground, broke all of his ribs. His cuts sutured by a medical team, he returned to the examiner’s squat brick headquarters at First Avenue and 30th Street, coated in a ghostlike gray soot.
Begun, the “Hamilton” backlash has.
Quote of the day:
“I can recognize a nipple from 600 yards in the background behind a leaf at this point.”