Whipped Cream Difficulties

There were a lot of deaths over the weekend, but I was away from a computer with an Internet connection for most of it. Getting caught up:

Arnold Palmer, drink innovator, sometime golfer, and good Pittsburgh boy. NYT. LAT. Golf Digest. The prose is a little purple:

He was loamy meadows and smoky skies, river valleys and steel mills, like the plant where his father, Milfred, worked (“Steel, Michaeleen, steel in pig-iron furnaces so hot a man forgets his fear of hell”) until just in front of the Depression, Milfred took a job as greenkeeper and pro (mostly greenkeeper) at Latrobe Country Club. Nobody addressed him as Milfred, except Doris when she was of a fanciful mind. To most, he was Deacon. A few said Deke. Arnold called him Pap.

José Fernández. Miami Herald. NYT.

It may just be me, but the tone of these obits rubs me kind of the wrong way. It seems like they’re saying “José Fernández, noted pitcher, is dead. Also two other guys, but they weren’t famous baseball pitchers, so who cares?” (And, yes, I understand that they’re withholding names until families are identified. But it still kind of reads like the other two guys just don’t matter.)

(Also: strict boat control.)

Buckwheat Zydeco.

In 1978, though, he fell into the orbit of Clifton Chenier, “The King Of Zydeco,” who invited the young musician to play organ in his Red Hot Louisiana Band. “I had so much fun playing that first night with Clifton,” Dural later said. “We played for four hours and I wasn’t ready to quit.”

Bill Nunn, actor. NYT. A/V Club. He was Robbie Roberston in the Raimi “Spider-Man” movies (none of which I’ve seen) but was perhaps most famous as Radio Raheem in Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing”.