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="Benjamin Grimm":3brlex6r]When my kids were born I wanted to name them after unknown New Zealand beekeepers, but I didn't know of any.[/quote:3brlex6r]
Which only goes to show that the Rodhams were much smarter than you. They not only knew the names of obscure New Zealand beekeepers but knew which one was destined to become world renown in a few years.
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Willets Point
Jan 11 2008 08:36 AM
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Isn't the dead thread just another case of excessive all-purposing?
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AG/DC
Jan 11 2008 08:40 AM
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"It's not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves." --- Edmund Hillary
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themetfairy
Jan 11 2008 08:40 AM
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Some all purpose threads are worth maintaining. IMO, this is one of them.
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Farmer Ted
Jan 14 2008 04:26 AM
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Johnny Podres, dead at 75.
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Fman99
Jan 16 2008 05:08 AM
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LOS ANGELES (AP) -- Actor Brad Renfro, whose career began promisingly with a childhood role in "The Client" but rapidly faded as he struggled with drugs and alcohol, was found dead Tuesday in his home. He was 25.
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Rockin' Doc
Jan 16 2008 07:39 AM
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Frayed Knot -<i>"He also showed some class by not calling out Hillary R. Clinton on her claim upon meeting him that she was named for him (right down to the less-common double-l spelling) even though at the time of her birth he was an unknown New Zealand beekeeper."</i>
Next thing you know, she'll be claiming that she invented the internet.
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soupcan
Jan 16 2008 07:42 AM
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Whenever I see someone that age dying I think of this guy I knew in college who died at about 30 years old.
Never was told the cause of death, but knowing that it wasn't a car accident or anything like that and knowing what the guy was like in school. I knew it was drugs.
I didn't particularly care for him but we were friendly and would talk when we'd see each other. Wen he died though, wow. It really bothered me. Just so sad to see someone that young and troubled and fucked up. Makes me sad.
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AG/DC
Jan 16 2008 07:55 AM
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="Rockin' Doc":1je0cmh1]Frayed Knot -<i>"He also showed some class by not calling out Hillary R. Clinton on her claim upon meeting him that she was named for him (right down to the less-common double-l spelling) even though at the time of her birth he was an unknown New Zealand beekeeper."</i>[/quote:1je0cmh1]
Christopher HItchens revists the Hillary-Hillary flap-that-never-was in <i>Slate</i>. You'd think she was Mother Theresa, the way he can't stand her.
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Willets Point
Jan 16 2008 09:39 AM
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Hitchens is a schmuck.
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Frayed Knot
Jan 18 2008 07:36 AM
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[url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22724870/:645zjx91]Checkmate[/url:645zjx91]
Former chess champ and all-around nut-case Bobby Fischer dead at 64.
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AG/DC
Jan 18 2008 10:16 AM
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Someday, somebody might figure out what made Fischer tick.
Big question: was the tactical brilliance and the misanthropy and paranoia connected?
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Jan 18 2008 11:00 AM
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PLAY CATCH -- INVENT GAMES
To Fly, Flip Away Backhanded
Flat Flip Flies Straight
Tilted Flip Curves
Experiment!
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AG/DC
Jan 18 2008 11:18 AM
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My life was once divided into Fisbee sizes.
97g
110g
128g
135g
141g
165g
All had a different purpose. One was best for Maximum Time Aloft. One was best for Ultimate. One was best for Frolf, one for freestyle, and another for Guts.
If you had the wrong size for the wrong game, you were hopeless. It would be a bad day when a good 141 got too chewed up on the edges to play with for any length of time without tearing open the skin between your thumb and index finger. More than one fight broke out over somebody skipping a nice white 141 without first gaining permission from the owner.
I was going to be a professional.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Jan 18 2008 11:33 AM
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I was a big 141g guy all through high school. I thought the diameter was perfect for catching one-handed and it was just weighty enough to fling hard.
I thought it vastly superior to the 150g "Master" disc with the raised inner ridges and a flimsy body, even though that was a top-seller.
When I got to kollege I learned that Wham-O was an insignificant player in the world of disc golf and ultimate jocks. They were serving the the indiscriminate mass market who bought their frisbees in toy stores and Kmart.
The Stingray by Innova-Champion, available only in the back of connected distributors cars and with weight in grams written in pen on the back, was my golf disc of choice.
The Ultimate Association in the meantime standardized the Discraft Ultrastar (165g) as the "official" disc of ultimate, sort of like MLB balls are only made by a single manufacturer so as to ensure consistent play.
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metsguyinmichigan
Jan 18 2008 01:39 PM
Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jan 18 2008 02:38 PM
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="Willets Point":1y2nn10u]Hitchens is a schmuck.[/quote:1y2nn10u]
I interviewed Hitchens last year when he came to speak at the Gerald Ford Musuem.
Hitchens came off as compative and as kind of pompous. We were supposed to marvel that he can quote 100 lines of Yates in the cab from the airport to the car. Then he started talking about his new book, "God is not Great." This is a pretty religious area, and he was very in-your-face with his athiest views -- which he is certainly entitled to.
But he didn't make his case as much as put down people who believe. He was pretty condescending.
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metirish
Jan 18 2008 01:44 PM
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Wasn't Hitchens at one point just about the opposite of what he is now in terms of his view on life and the world and so on?
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sharpie
Jan 18 2008 01:55 PM
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He was a liberal who became a backer of the Iraq War.
I prefer Richard Dawkins as an atheist spokesman.
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AG/DC
Jan 18 2008 02:24 PM
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I'm not going to argue that Hitchens isn't a schmuck, only that (a) the article outlining the subject Frayed Knot's post was there, and (b) critics in the media who are willing to turn their criticism against both sides gain credibility.
Not that he doesn't lose it on other terms, like being a schmuck.
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TheOldMole
Jan 18 2008 06:12 PM
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Bobby Fischer.
This makes me unaccountably sad. A sad, tortured genius. He had his demons, and he had his greatness. Now the demons are laid to rest.
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DocTee
Jan 18 2008 06:19 PM
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Georgia Frontiere.
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Nymr83
Jan 18 2008 06:29 PM
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="TheOldMole":2l4tne9k]Bobby Fischer.
This makes me unaccountably sad. A sad, tortured genius. He had his demons, and he had his greatness. Now the demons are laid to rest.
[/quote:2l4tne9k]
I am VERY HAPPY to hear of the death of anyone who praised the 9/11 attacks. rot in hell traitor.
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MFS62
Jan 19 2008 04:22 PM
Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jan 20 2008 06:01 AM
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="DocTee":15qdy34o]Georgia Frontiere.[/quote:15qdy34o]
When she owned the LA Rams, someone wrote (or was it said?) that if hairspray was football brains, she would have been another Vince Lombardi.
Later
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AG/DC
Jan 19 2008 07:06 PM
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I'm like Sam the butcher, bringing Alice the meat:
<img src="http://www.timemachinetoys.com/toypics/sam.JPG">
Allan Melvin, dead at 84.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Jan 19 2008 08:55 PM
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Another guy I'd have sworn had been dead for a decade or two.
Adios, Sam. You were always my Select Choice in Prime time.
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AG/DC
Jan 19 2008 10:42 PM
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Sam the Butcher, Barney Hefner, and Magilla Gorilla.
That, my friends, is range.
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AG/DC
Jan 20 2008 06:10 AM
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Actress and catfighter Suzanne Pleshette passes at 70.
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Benjamin Grimm
Jan 20 2008 06:33 AM
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Allen Melvin AND Suzanne Pleshette? That's a double dose of bad news this morning for 1970's TV fans.
We discussed Allen Melvin here a while back, around the time I jinxed that Odd Couple troop member into dying.
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Frayed Knot
Jan 20 2008 09:04 AM
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| ="AG/DC"]Actress and catfighter Suzanne Pleshette passes at 70. |
That means that the supermarket tabloid I was reading the other day was actually correct -- as opposed to their stories on, say Liz Taylor, who's been on the verge of death in those same mags for at least 15 years now.
Also John Stewart, 68, one-time member of the 'Kingston Trio' and also songwriter of 'Daydream Believer'
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AG/DC
Jan 20 2008 11:42 AM
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Willets Point
Jan 20 2008 11:08 PM
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="AG/DC":10cxeqsm]Actress and catfighter Suzanne Pleshette passes at 70.[/quote:10cxeqsm]
Who would have thunk that Bob Newhart would outlive her. I think we need a retelling of the catfight story.
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AG/DC
Jan 21 2008 07:36 AM
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<a href="http://p094.ezboard.com/fthecranepoolforumfrm34.showMessage?topicID=326.topic" target="blank">Meow</a>!
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MFS62
Jan 21 2008 08:12 AM
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It was fun to see some of the old screen names in that link.
Later
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Benjamin Grimm
Jan 21 2008 08:26 AM
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Wow, I was completely unaware of that thread. Looking at the dates, I see I was out of the country at the time.
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AG/DC
Jan 21 2008 08:27 AM
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I could never get away from the thought that "Daydream Believer" was a Carol King song. I realize now it's because Carol King reclaimed so many of the sixties songs she wrote for to other artists with her own versions in the seventies. And I subconciously think of Anne Murray's hit version as another Carol King reclamation.
Anyhow, good song, Mr. Stewart.
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Edgy DC
Jan 21 2008 08:42 AM
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While I've got my admin clothes on, I'm thinking strongly about building a sub-forum for passings, so's'n this thread isn't full of cross-postings and stuff.
Waddaya think?
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Benjamin Grimm
Jan 21 2008 09:02 AM
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A little morbid, but probably warranted. We do seem to like talking about dead people.
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Rockin' Doc
Jan 21 2008 07:48 PM
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MFS62 - <i>-"It was fun to see some of the old screen names in that link."</i>
The years just seem to blend together. It is sometimes hard for me to fathom that this little "family" of Mets fans has been hanging out and conversing with one another for so many years now.
Ben Grimm -<i>"...We do seem to like talking about dead people."</i>
As long as no one starts talking with them, everything will be fine.
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sharpie
Jan 22 2008 08:20 AM
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I'm against a subforum for passings. The re-emergence of this (or previous) threads works as kind of a newsflash about the newly dead. I don't think we need a whole thread about many of these minor celebrities and just because there might be a post or two about them doesn't justify them leaving a general board. Alternatively, leave this thread as a newsflash and encourage others to write more about the just-departed in the subforum.
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AG/DC
Jan 22 2008 08:42 AM
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OK, we'll just leave it as --- anybody who gets three or more responses gets split out.
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Willets Point
Jan 22 2008 09:17 AM
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I would really dislike having a forum for obituatries. As noted earlier, the existence of this thread pretty much self-propagates posting about deaths of notable persons that would otherwise not be noted on the CPF. I still favor writing about the people we care about and getting information about celebrity deaths in general from another source, say news shows/newspapers/news websites.
This of course is my .02 and not a proscription of what should be done.
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Valadius
Jan 22 2008 09:40 AM
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A subforum for obituaries is just depressing. A no-go for me.
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themetfairy
Jan 22 2008 12:39 PM
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I vote to keep the status quo. This ain't broke, so there's no need for fixing.
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DocTee
Jan 26 2008 07:06 PM
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Christian Brando, 49.
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Frayed Knot
Jan 29 2008 11:51 AM
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More offspring of fame as Margaret (daughter of Harry) Truman dies at 83.
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sharpie
Jan 29 2008 11:56 AM
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She was credited with writing a number of bestselling mysteries with titles like "Murder In the White House" but it was pretty well known that they were entirely ghostwritten.
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Willets Point
Jan 29 2008 02:13 PM
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="sharpie":1mmxuryp]She was credited with writing a number of bestselling mysteries with titles like "Murder In the White House" but it was pretty well known that they were entirely ghostwritten.[/quote:1mmxuryp]
Wow, I didn't know that.
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HahnSolo
Jan 29 2008 02:48 PM
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I believe that the same ghostwriter did the Elliott Roosevelt mysteries as well. I could be wrong.
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metirish
Jan 30 2008 07:42 AM
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Keith Ryan an American Diplomat based in Pakistan is dead, conflicting reports have him taking his own life or he was murdered.
His father is Bob Ryan a sports columnist for the Globe, seen frequently on ESPN.
Ryan leaves behind a wife of 12 years and 8 year old triplets.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Feb 06 2008 07:36 AM
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Maharishi Yogi, 91.
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AG/DC
Feb 10 2008 08:16 PM
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Aren't "Maharishi" and "Yogi" both titles? There's a proper name in there somewhere.
Roy Scheider didn't meditate like the maharishi, and so only made it to 75. Here's hoping they bury him at sea.
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9OnaZ8r3p8g&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9OnaZ8r3p8g&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
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Nymr83
Feb 11 2008 01:50 PM
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I just saw that as well, the cancer got to him fast, a real shame.
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metirish
Feb 11 2008 02:00 PM
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I hope I don't sound silly here but is there any way of knowing or does someone keep track of how many Holocaust Survivor's are still alive.
RIP Mr. Lantos.
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Nymr83
Feb 11 2008 03:04 PM
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none of which i am aware, though life expectancy charts along with a reasonable guestimate as to the original numbers will of course give you an estimate. i don't think it will be like the (now 2) remaining U.S. veterans of WW1 where we will know the exact date of the last one's passing.
The youngest person to have been in the camps would have to be 63-64 and born there. The youngest to actually remember anything would probably have to be 68-70. thats not really as old as it sounds though of course to have been an adult (lets even use 15 in 1945) you'd now have to be 78.
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Kong76
Feb 11 2008 03:07 PM
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I don't think it's silly. There's a ton of stuff on the internet, there has to be
an estimate somewhere.
Early in my office-work life I worked with someone who had serial number
on his arm. I don't mean to interupt the thread, but we were talking about
him today and wondering if he was still alive so it's fresh in my head.
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themetfairy
Feb 11 2008 03:30 PM
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| ="metirish"]I hope I don't sound silly here but is there any way of knowing or does someone keep track of how many Holocaust Survivor's are still alive.
RIP Mr. Lantos. |
From the [url=http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/registry/faq/#10]United States Holocaust Musdum[/url] -
| ]Estimates of the number of remaining survivors vary greatly and depend in part on how one defines a survivor. The Museum honors as survivors any persons, Jewish or non-Jewish, who were displaced, persecuted, or discriminated against due to the racial, religious, ethnic, and political policies of the Nazis and their allies between 1933 and 1945. In addition to former inmates of concentration camps, ghettos, and prisons, this definition includes, among others, people who were refugees or were in hiding.
The Registry of Holocaust Survivors currently contains the names of over 195,000 survivors and family members and we are adding more every day. A growing number of these individuals, who registered their names and historical information over the last 15 years, are now deceased. |
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smg58
Feb 11 2008 06:38 PM
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Plenty of people who would qualify as survivors were children at the time, and some of them would still be in their sixties. So I imagine there are plenty still alive, as opposed to WWI vets whose numbers are dwindling very fast. I'm friendly with one who has a very remarkable story. She was put on a bus with a bunch of other children and told they were going off to camp; the bus didn't stop until it reached Israel. She never saw her parents again.
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SteveJRogers
Feb 11 2008 06:42 PM
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The teacher working in the classroom that the VT nut shot up was actually a survivor as well.
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sharpie
Feb 27 2008 09:29 AM
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William F. Buckley.
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soupcan
Feb 27 2008 09:31 AM
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Is his obituary impossible to understand as well?
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themetfairy
Feb 27 2008 10:04 AM
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soupcan
Mar 03 2008 08:35 AM
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="AG/DC":t8jvv1my]I understood William F. Buckley.[/quote:t8jvv1my]
Not surprised.
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AG/DC
Mar 03 2008 08:40 AM
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Not nice.
We could use more opinion makers in the public sphere of any idological stripee that bring Buckley's civility to national debates.
We're becoming a nation of blowhards.
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Benjamin Grimm
Mar 03 2008 08:53 AM
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Didn't I recently read that Buckley once call Gore Vidal a "queer" during a televised debate?
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AG/DC
Mar 03 2008 08:57 AM
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Well, <i>that</i> won't do.
They seem to be having a good time, though. And, well, Vidal started it.
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nYymnxoQnf8"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nYymnxoQnf8" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
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AG/DC
Mar 03 2008 09:09 AM
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In a quick review of the history of the situation, they both come off as rather disappointing.
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soupcan
Mar 03 2008 09:37 AM
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="AG/DC":w28zxqab]Not nice.[/quote:w28zxqab]
Oh, c'mon.
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metirish
Mar 03 2008 10:50 AM
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Wow that's sad, i remember when he broke in the late 80's and then in Road House.
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Valadius
Mar 12 2008 03:42 PM
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[url=http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/03/12/wwonevet.france.ap/index.html:g31esj4w]Lazare Ponticelli[/url:g31esj4w], France's last surviving World War I veteran, 110.
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AG/DC
Mar 13 2008 10:52 AM
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Senator Howard Metzenbaum, who caught the Mets bandwagon in the eighties by calling his supporters Metz Fanz.
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AG/DC
Mar 18 2008 08:37 AM
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I liked him more as a screenwriter.
Only 54? I've got to start living.
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sharpie
Mar 18 2008 04:01 PM
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Science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke died at 90.
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AG/DC
Mar 18 2008 05:47 PM
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Now that's a life.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Mar 24 2008 11:11 AM
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This guy could make some greasy, delicious food, but led a flamboyant life apart from that I didn't know till just now.
| ]Popeyes founder and local icon dies
Al Copeland, 64, treated for rare form of cancer
Monday, March 24, 2008
By John Pope
Staff writer
Al Copeland, a hard-charging, high-living entrepreneur who built an empire on spicy fried chicken and fluffy white biscuits, died Sunday in Munich, Germany, of complications from cancer treatment. He was 64.
He had gone to Munich for treatment of his illness, which had been diagnosed in November, said Kit Wohl, his spokeswoman.
Born in poverty, Mr. Copeland burst onto the scene in 1972, when he opened his first Popeyes fried-chicken stand. The Arabi restaurant was the start of a franchise that, under his leadership, had 700 outlets, in the United States, Puerto Rico, Panama and Kuwait.
The money he earned led to public displays of opulence such as speedboats kept in a glass-walled showroom along Interstate 10 when he wasn't racing them, a Lamborghini sports car parked outside his corporate headquarters and, of course, the massive Christmas displays that required sheriff's deputies to direct the traffic outside his Metairie home.
There also were over-the-top weddings with such touches as fireworks and a model of Cinderella's pumpkin coach. These weddings ended in equally spectacular divorces; the divorce proceedings from his third wife wound up bringing down the original judge hearing the case as part of a massive federal investigation of courthouse corruption.
During Carnival, Mr. Copeland not only sponsored parade floats in Jefferson Parish but also rode, said Peter Ricchiuti, a Tulane University finance professor who saw Mr. Copeland in one such procession.
Ricchiuti said he overheard this exchange between two other spectators: One man dismissed the spectacle as an indication of new money, but the other man replied, "If I had money, that's what I'd do."
Not even bankruptcy, the result of buying Church's Fried Chicken Inc., stopped him. Although Mr. Copeland lost ownership of his chicken outlets, he retained control of the company making the distinctive spice mixture, and he went on to open restaurants bearing his surname, as well as establishments featuring California cuisine, wrap sandwiches, cheesecake and Asian fare.
Very public feuds
One such restaurant, Straya on St. Charles Avenue, triggered a noisy public feud in 1997 with novelist Anne Rice. She used her voice-mail message and a series of full-page advertisements in The Times-Picayune to attack the restaurant's decor, which included tasseled black curtains and a pair of sleek black-leopard sculptures flanking the entrance to the rest-room area.
"The humblest flop house on this strip of St. Charles Avenue has more dignity than Mr. Copeland's structure," she said in her opening salvo.
One reason she felt so passionately about the building at 2001 St. Charles Avenue was that she said that the Vampire Lestat, her dominant character, left her there, before Straya opened, after seeing his reflection in the window of what had been a Mercedes-Benz dealership. Rice also said she had planned to open a restaurant, Café Lestat, in a Magazine Street building she owned, but that never materialized.
Mr. Copeland's response, also in a full-page ad in The Times-Picayune, was good-humored, offering to treat her to dinner and to help her find Lestat. He even spoke of launching a monthlong "Find Lestat" promotion and dressing his staff like vampires.
But he also filed suit, claiming that she had defamed him and that she violated fair-trade laws because "her comments were made in the context of her being a business competitor," Mr. Copeland's lawyer said.
Civil District Judge Robin Giarrusso threw out the suit. Mr. Copeland, accepting defeat, invited Rice to dinner. Rice, who did not accept his offer, moved to California in 2004, settling in Rancho Mirage after brief stints in San Diego and La Jolla. Straya, a phonetic spelling of "strella," the Spanish word for star, has become a Cheesecake Bistro.
This wasn't Mr. Copeland's only high-profile skirmish. In December 2001, he got into a fist fight with Robert Guidry, a former casino owner, and his sons in Morton's The Steakhouse, an upscale restaurant.
The two multimillionaires had been rivals for a riverboat-casino license in 1993. Mr. Copeland lost, and he blamed Guidry. Guidry, who had built much of his fortune on tugboats, contended Mr. Copeland had relied on connections to delay his hearing for the license.
Guidry eventually won the license with the help of then-Gov. Edwin Edwards, but only after paying an Edwards aide $100,000 a month, amounting to more than $1 million. Guidry, who pleaded guilty to an extortion conspiracy and was a key prosecution witness against Edwards, was sentenced in January 2001 to three years' probation and ordered to pay $3.5 million in a fine and restitution.
Each man accused the other of starting the brawl, in which Mr. Copeland suffered a blow to his left cheek. Guidry and two of his sons spent the night in jail. No charges were filed, and customers requested the Copeland and Guidry tables for months after the fight.
'A classic entrepreneur'
With Mr. Copeland that night was Jennifer Devall Copeland, his fourth wife. They had gone to the restaurant to celebrate their first anniversary.
According to papers filed last year, when she and Mr. Copeland were divorced, his net worth in 2004 was about $319 million and his annual income was about $13 million.
The weekend before Thanksgiving, Mr. Copeland learned he had cancer of the salivary glands, a rare form of the disease that strikes no more than three people per 100,000 annually in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society.
Despite his illness and subsequent hospitalization, the Christmas display outside his house in an upscale Metairie neighborhood went on as scheduled, featuring thousands of lights, animated figures and house-size representations of a teddy bear and Raggedy Ann.
Mr. Copeland was "a classic entrepreneur," Ricchiuti said. "He had disappointments, things that didn't work out, but that didn't stop him. You can't teach that in a business school. It's something inside you. Maybe it comes from a tremendous desire to succeed against all odds."
Copeland, whose family lived for a while in the St. Thomas housing complex, never finished high school.
He told friends that the competitive spark hit him when he was working the beverage counter at a Schwegmann's Super Market in Gentilly. A co-worker never stopped drumming up business. When Mr. Copeland asked why, the young man replied, "I'm out to prove I'm better than everybody," said Wohl, also a local author and artist.
Birth of Popeyes
When he was 18, Mr. Copeland sold his car to get capital to buy a doughnut shop from his brother Gilbert, and he turned the shop into a moneymaker.
Then he watched what happened when a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet opened nearby. Inspired by the amount of business the store did, Mr. Copeland decided to start frying chicken.
After two years of testing recipes on friends and family, he opened Chicken on the Run in Arabi in 1971. Its slogan was "So fast you get your chicken before you get your change," and Mr. Copeland stood on the neutral ground handing out fliers.
But the fledgling business struggled -- perhaps, Wohl said, because Mr. Copeland was flavoring it with a mild recipe after friends had told him that the spicy version he had prepared just wouldn't sell.
Realizing that bland fried chicken was going nowhere, Mr. Copeland started using the spicy recipe. To show that he was operating a new enterprise, he decided to change its name. According to corporate lore, he was stumped until he saw "The French Connection," in which Gene Hackman won an Oscar for his portrayal of Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle, a brusque, no-nonsense New York City police officer.
At that point, Mr. Copeland knew the business had a name: Popeyes Mighty Good Fried Chicken. There is no apostrophe in the name, Mr. Copeland often joked, because he was too poor to afford one.
In an industry known for its high mortality rate, the restaurant started turning a profit in three weeks. Because business was so brisk, he added "Famous" to the title, Wohl said. The biscuits came later to the outlets, and the corporate name, after Mr. Copeland worked with the chefs Warren LeRuth and Gary Darling to devise a recipe.
The Popeyes craze was on, fueled by a popular jingle, "Love That Chicken From Popeyes," -- that Dr. John sang. In 1977, franchising began, and within a decade Popeyes was the third-largest fast-food chicken chain in the country, behind KFC and Church's.
Flashy persona
Along the way, Mr. Copeland was married twice -- the first time to Mary Alice LeCompte, his childhood sweetheart, and the second time to Patty White. Both marriages ended in divorce, and the first Mrs. Copeland died in 1995.
As he built his business, Mr. Copeland developed his public persona, and he was elevated to the status of a local icon. He was a man who could be counted on to show up in a flashy car wearing flashy, usually black, clothes and looking perpetually tanned and youthful, generally sporting an earring or two. His 50-foot powerboats roared around Lake Pontchartrain, and when he raced in the United States and abroad, he met such luminaries as the deposed King Constantine of Greece, Princess Caroline of Monaco, Donald Trump and actors Chuck Norris, Kurt Russell and Don Johnson.
Besides winning a shelf full of trophies, Mr. Copeland set up the Offshore Professional Tour, a charitable fundraiser that became a star-studded event.
Mr. Copeland became what he called a "secret Santa," underwriting gifts for 1,000 needy children that Santa Claus delivered after dark on Christmas Eve.
And the man who never finished high school established the Alvin C. Copeland Endowed Chair of Franchising at Louisiana State University. Mr. Copeland's money also supported the National Food Service Institute and Delgado Community College's apprentice program for aspiring chefs.
Some of his wealth went to set up a Christmas display in his front yard that grew bigger each year -- and generated so much traffic that his neighbors sued in 1983 to have it removed. They also groused about his annual party for hundreds of guests featuring a vast menu and a dance floor over the indoor swimming pool.
The outdoor spectacle was staged elsewhere around East Jefferson until 1991, when a scaled-down version returned to Mr. Copeland's home on Folse Drive.
The spice trade
Coincidentally, 1991 was the year in which Mr. Copeland's business audacity seemed to catch up with him. In 1988, he made a $296 million bid to buy Church's.
The next year, the firm agreed to be bought out for $392 million. But to finance it, Mr. Copeland had to borrow about $450 million from a group of lending institutions.
In November 1990, Al Copeland Enterprises, the umbrella organization for Mr. Copeland's activities, said that it was in default on $391 million in debts and that it would be bankrupt if a lender demanded payment. In September that year, it had failed to make payments totaling $7.5 million.
The banks that had lent money for the Church's deal filed an involuntary Chapter 11 petition, putting Copeland Enterprises into bankruptcy. But while Mr. Copeland relinquished control of his fried-chicken enterprise, he kept control of the spice supply, a move Ricchiuti regarded as brilliant.
"He was dealing with some of the smartest bankers in the world, and he knew what to keep," Ricchiuti said. "It might look like an insignificant component, but he outfoxed some pretty smart people."
Marriages, divorces
The bankruptcy filing came two months after his blockbuster nighttime wedding to Luan Hunter on Valentine's Day in the New Orleans Museum of Art. Fireworks, including the display "Al I'll love you forever Luan" lit up the sky, and the Popeyes helicopter, known as the chicken chopper, hovered low enough to scatter rose petals -- and blow up a mini-dust storm.
That marriage, which actually had begun with a Las Vegas ceremony nearly four months before the museum extravaganza, lasted nine years and ended in a bitter custody fight over their son, Alex. Overshadowing that, though, was the guilty plea of Ronald Bodenheimer, the original judge presiding over the case, to charges that he promised a custody deal favorable to Mr. Copeland in return for a possible seafood contract and other benefits.
As a result of a federal inquiry called Operation Wrinkled Robe, Bodenheimer and two of Mr. Copeland's associates went to jail for participating in the conspiracy. Bodenheimer served slightly more than three years at a low-security prison camp in Alabama. After serving time in a halfway house and home confinement at his Metairie house, he was put on three years' probation in September. Mr. Copeland was never charged.
Even though that union ended messily, Mr. Copeland headed down the aisle one more time, in December 2000, to marry Jennifer Devall. The aisle was in St. Louis Cathedral, a fact that set tongues wagging about the propriety of such an event for the repeatedly divorced Mr. Copeland. However, an archdiocesan spokesman pointed out that the ceremony respected canonical rule because only one of Mr. Copeland's weddings -- his first -- occurred in a church, and his wife from that wedding had died, thereby dissolving what the Catholic Church regards as a lifelong marriage bond.
The wedding had a fairy-tale beginning, with the newlyweds arriving for the reception at Mr. Copeland's house in a horse-drawn pumpkin coach and walking beneath a line of crossed sabers held aloft by people dressed like wooden soldiers.
Despite that sparkling launch, this marriage, too, dissolved into acrimony. Mr. Copeland was arrested on a domestic violence charge, and, in court papers filed in the divorce, his wife admitted to an extramarital affair.
The divorce was granted last year.
Mr. Copeland stayed busy. In addition to restaurants, he had invested in three comedy clubs and three hotels. At his death, Wohl said, a menu for a Brazilian-style restaurant was being tested in two Midwestern cities.
That relentless activity was typical of him, Ricchiuti said.
"Once he made it, it was never enough," he said. "Most people get top a certain comfort level, but that didn't appeal to him at all."
Survivors include five sons, Alvin C. Jr. and Christopher Copeland, both of Metairie; Alex Cody Copeland of Folsom; and Chandler and Chaz Copeland, both of Madisonville; four daughters, Bonnie Copeland, Alisha Catherine Copeland and Charlotte Copeland Womac, all of Metairie, and Cassidy Copeland of Madisonville; a brother, Gilbert Copeland of Covington; and 13 grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements are pending. |
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metirish
Mar 24 2008 02:02 PM
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Neil Aspinall - the 'real Fifth Beatle' dies
By Jack Doyle, PA
Monday, 24 March 2008
Neil Aspinall, a close friend of the Beatles and the man who ran the Apple music empire, has died, his family said today.
The 66-year-old worked as a roadie and accountant for the band before becoming chief executive of Apple Corps, and was known by some in the industry as the real "Fifth Beatle".
In a statement released on behalf of Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the company described him as a "great man" who would be missed.
In the statement, also on behalf of Beatle widows Yoko Ono and Olivia Harrison, Apple Corps said: "As a loyal friend, confidant and chief executive, Neil's trusting stewardship and guidance has left a far-reaching legacy for generations to come.
"All his friends and loved ones will greatly miss him but will always retain the fondest memories of a great man." |
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AG/DC
Mar 24 2008 02:21 PM
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I once went to a costume party as a psychedelic flunky named, "Brendan, the Ninth Beatle." It bombed, as I spent the evening explainging to everyone who Neil Aspinall was.
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themetfairy
Mar 26 2008 12:56 PM
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RIP [url=http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i7xuJhRq_izdBdpziQeWKU9iyaLAD8VL8IQ80:12q0t0qq]Richard Widmark[/url:12q0t0qq].
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soupcan
Mar 26 2008 01:04 PM
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| ="themetfairy"]RIP [url=http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5i7xuJhRq_izdBdpziQeWKU9iyaLAD8VL8IQ80]Richard Widmark[/url]. |
"It was a big shock, but he was 93..."
I'm tellin' ya - quotes are just falling from the sky today.
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AG/DC
Mar 26 2008 01:18 PM
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I was just thinking about <i>Wild in the Streets</i> this morning. That, of all things, may be the only film I've seen the guy in.
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Frayed Knot
Apr 30 2008 01:19 PM
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While the music played you worked by candlelight
Those San Francisco nights
You were the best in town
Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
You turned it on the world
That's when you turned the world around
Did you feel like Jesus
Did you realize
That you were a champion in their eyes
On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene
But yours was kitchen clean
Everyone stopped to stare at your technicolor motor home
Every A-Frame had your number on the wall
You must have had it all
You'd go to L.A. on a dare
And you'd go it alone
Could you live forever
Could you see the day
Could you feel your whole world fall apart and fade away
Get along, get along Kid Charlemagne
Get along Kid Charlemagne
Now your patrons have all left you in the red
Your low rent friends are dead
This life can be very strange
All those dayglow freaks who used to paint the face
They've joined the human race
Some things will never change
Son you were mistaken
You are obsolete
Look at all the white men on the street
Get along, get along Kid Charlemagne
Get along Kid Charlemagne
Clean this mess up else we'll all end up in jail
Those test tubes and the scale
Just get them all out of here
Is there gas in the car
Yes, there's gas in the car
I think the people down the hall
Know who you are
Careful what you carry
'Cause the man is wise
You are still an outlaw in their eyes
Get along, get along Kid Charlemagne
Get along Kid Charlemagne
-- Kid Charlemagne, Steely Dan
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Fman99
May 02 2008 07:44 AM
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Dodgers executive Bavasi dies at 93; built four Series winners
LOS ANGELES -- Buzzie Bavasi, who built Dodgers teams that won four World Series titles in Brooklyn and Los Angeles, died Thursday at his home in La Jolla, outside San Diego. He was 93.
With Buzzie Bavasi as GM, the Dodgers won the World Series in 1955, '59, '63 and '65.
His death was announced by the Seattle Mariners, whose general manager is Bill Bavasi, a son of the former Dodgers GM.
"Buzzie was one of the game's greatest front office executives during a period that spanned parts of six different decades," baseball commissioner Bud Selig said. "He loved the game, and he loved talking about it."
Emil Joseph Bavasi -- nicknamed Buzzie by his family for the way he buzzed around as a kid -- helped put together Dodgers teams that included future Hall of Famers Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.
As an executive in the Dodgers' minor league system, he helped Robinson, Campanella and Don Newcombe through their often difficult integration into professional baseball. Robinson went on to break the major league color barrier.
"I don't know where Roy Campanella and I would have been if Buzzie didn't give us a chance at Nashua [N.H.] in 1946," said Newcombe, now the Dodgers' community relations director. "I didn't always do the right thing as a player, but Buzzie always gave me a chance to straighten myself out and get back on track."
Bavasi was later part owner and president of the San Diego Padres before becoming executive vice president of the California Angels.
He spent 44 years working in baseball, including 34 in the major leagues. He began as a traveling secretary and publicity director for the Dodgers in Brooklyn in 1939.
After serving in various posts for the team, he was promoted to GM -- replacing the famed Branch Rickey -- before the 1951 season.
During his tenure as GM from 1951-68, first in Brooklyn and then Los Angeles, the Dodgers won eight National League pennants. They won their only World Series in Brooklyn in 1955. After the move west, the Dodgers won the World Series in 1959, 1963 and 1965 with Bavasi as GM.
Former manager and coach Don Zimmer said Bavasi "was like a father to me, from the time I was 19 years old. All my life, really. I can't describe how much he meant to me."
Bavasi was selected major-league executive of the year in 1959. He was with the expansion Padres from 1969-77 and the Angels from 1978-84.
After serving three years as an infantry machine gunner and earning a bronze star during World War II, he ran the Dodgers' farm club in Nashua starting in 1946.
Though tucked away in a small town in the New England League, Bavasi immediately found himself at the center of the Dodgers' effort to integrate the major leagues.
Former Negro Leagues players Newcombe and Campanella were signed and sent to the team in 1946, and Bavasi was assigned to handle their potentially tough arrival and development.
There were some ugly incidents -- Campanella said a catcher for the Lynn Red Sox threw dirt in his face and that the team used racial slurs with him and Newcombe.
But Bavasi and the two players handled the circumstances so well that all three joined the big-league team in a few years.
Bavasi's prime years with the Dodgers were before free agency, when GMs had far more power in dealing with players, who often didn't even have agents.
"We operated by the Golden Rule," Bavasi reportedly once said. "He who has the gold rules."
After an MVP season in 1962 when he stole a then-league-record 104 bases, Maury Wills came to Bavasi seeking a special contract incentive.
"Maury asked if there was any way he could get $5,000 more and suggested if he made the All-Star team, I would give him a $5,000 bonus," Bavasi told MLB.com last year. "I thought about it for a second and said, 'That's a good idea, Maury. But if you don't make the All-Star team, I'll take $5,000 back.' Maury signed for $80,000."
Wills well remembers that meeting.
"I thought I was going to get a big raise, but after 10 minutes in Buzzie's office, I was still happy I was on the team," Wills said.
In his most famous standoff as an executive, Koufax and Drysdale began a joint holdout on Feb. 28, 1966, seeking an unprecedented $1.05 million contract to be divided equally. They escalated their threat of retirement March 17, signing moving contracts, but Bavasi waited them out and they ended their holdout March 30, with Koufax signing for $130,000 and Drysdale for $105,000.
After a remarkable run with the Dodgers, Bavasi became the first president of the Padres in 1969 for owner C. Arnholt Smith.
"We had the four things necessary to a successful bid for a franchise," Bavasi said in the early 1970s. "We had a responsible [owner], population, climate and a new stadium."
Predictably the expansion Padres were no Dodgers, finishing in last place in their first three seasons. He stayed with the team until 1977.
Bavasi then headed to the Angels, where he was hired as GM in 1978 and sent a pair of teams to the playoffs before he retired in 1984.
He faced criticism in Anaheim for not re-signing free agent Nolan Ryan after the 1979 season when the pitcher had gone 16-14.
"We'll just have to find a couple of 8-7 pitchers to replace him," Bavasi said at the time.
Years later, after the ageless Ryan had thrown his sixth no-hitter in 1990, Bavasi sent him a message that read: "Nolan, some time ago I made it public that I made a mistake. You don't have to rub it in."
Former Angels GM Mike Port said Bavasi had a remarkable baseball mind.
"Eight National League pennants, four World Series titles, two American League Championship Series titles, more than two dozen of his former players who managed at the major-league level -- that just scratches the surface of Buzzie's accomplishments in the game," Port said.
"He could be your best friend or your best motivator. It was a privilege to have been mentored by him and worked for him," Port said.
Bavasi's survivors include his wife of 68 years, Evit; sons Peter, a former GM for the Padres and Toronto Blue Jays, Chris, Bob and Bill; nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.
Funeral arrangements will be private. The family asked that, in lieu of flowers, donations be made to the Baseball Assistance Team or Professional Baseball Scouts Foundation.
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AG/DC
May 02 2008 07:53 AM
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Thanks Fman. It's OK put baseball death notices in the baseball forum.
There's little enough to talk about after an off day
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Vic Sage
May 02 2008 12:49 PM
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On a baseball-related note, Richard Widmark was Sandy Koufax's father-in-law.
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MFS62
May 02 2008 03:56 PM
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="Vic Sage":10ay8enu]On a baseball-related note, Richard Widmark was Sandy Koufax's father-in-law.[/quote:10ay8enu]
I typed "tee-hee-hee".
But then I realized there is no way to truly capture that famous Widmark cross between an evil laugh and a snicker.
Later
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Valadius
May 02 2008 06:10 PM
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Deborah Jeane Palfrey, DC Madam, suicide.
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seawolf17
May 05 2008 09:00 AM
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Stephen Stakey, Stony Brook student. Honors College member, computer science major, drummer in the marching band, valedictorian of his class at Mattituck High School.
Passed out at the Roth Regatta on Friday, and died at the hospital. No official word on the cause of death yet, but the campus is pretty despondent today.
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AG/DC
May 05 2008 09:08 AM
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Was he a rower?
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Vic Sage
May 05 2008 09:13 AM
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I don't know if he was a rower, but my recollection is that "Roth Regatta" was an annual party in the dorm area known as Roth Quad, which surrounds a little pond, known as Roth Pond. People usually ended up drunk and jumping in the pond.
but that was 25 years ago, when i was there. i don't know if its become something else since.
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seawolf17
May 05 2008 09:21 AM
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Bigger than that now... it's the big cardboard boat race every spring. Always the biggest event of the year.
[url]http://www.rothregatta.org/[/url]
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Vic Sage
May 05 2008 09:31 AM
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That's the way these things work, i guess.
Some guys get together to figure out a fun way to get drunk and get girls in t-shirts soaking wet.
25 years later, there is a website, with registration, and rules, and silly costumes.
oy.
whatever, dudes.
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Nymr83
May 05 2008 02:48 PM
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wtf is that??
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SteveJRogers
May 05 2008 08:27 PM
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That part is incredible to me. Why would some 43 year old woman care THAT MUCH about what some late 20s, early 30s people say about her sports team?
Yes I know alcohol dulls the senses, but I guess some people just never mature as they age.
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AG/DC
May 06 2008 08:03 AM
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I don't tihnk it's clear that she was driving after them explictly because of anti-Yankee statements. Still, baseball fans neeed to cool it with goading each other.
More importantly, I invite you all to love outside the lines, and celebrate the legacy of Mildred Loving.
<blockquote>Quiet Va. Wife Ended Interracial Marriage Ban
By Patricia Sullivan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, May 6, 2008; Page A01
Mildred Jeter Loving, 68, a black woman whose refusal to accept Virginia's ban on interracial marriage led to a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1967 that struck down similar laws across the country, died of pneumonia Friday at her home in Milford, Va.
<table align="right"><tr><td width="228"><img src="http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2008/05/05/PH2008050502673.jpg"><br><font size="1">Mildred Loving and her husband, Richard, took their case to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in 1967 struck down bans on interracial marriage. (1965 Photo By Associated Press)</td></tr></table>The Loving v. Virginia decision overturned long-standing legal and social prohibitions against miscegenation in the United States. Celebrated at the time, the landmark case sunk to obscurity until a 1996 made-for-television movie and a 2004 book revived interest in how the young, small-town black and white couple changed history.
A modest homemaker, Loving never thought she had done anything extraordinary. "It wasn't my doing," Loving told the Associated Press in a rare interview a year ago. "It was God's work."
Today, according to the Census Bureau, there are 4.3 million interracial couples in the nation.
That wasn't true in 1958, when then-17-year-old Mildred Jeter and her childhood sweetheart, Richard Loving, a 23-year-old white construction worker, drove 90 miles north to marry in the District. Pretty and slender, she was known by her nickname, "Bean," and she was already pregnant with the first of their three children.
Loving later said she didn't realize that it was illegal for a black woman and a white man to wed, although her husband might have. "I think he thought [if] we were married, they couldn't bother us," she said.
Nevertheless, when they returned to Central Point, Va., between Richmond and Spotsylvania, to set up their home, someone called the law.
Caroline County Sheriff R. Garnett Brooks rousted them from their bed at 2 a.m. in July 1958 and told them the District's marriage certificate was no good in Virginia. He took them to jail and charged them with unlawful cohabitation. They pleaded guilty, and Caroline County Circuit Court Judge Leon M. Bazile sentenced them to a year's imprisonment, to be suspended if they left the state for the next 25 years.
"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix," Bazile ruled.
The Lovings moved to Washington in 1959 and lived with one of her cousins on Neale Street NE. They didn't like urban life and yearned to return to their rural roots.
Five years later, while visiting her mother, they were arrested again for traveling together. Loving, who had been following the 1964 civil rights legislation, wrote a letter to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy to find out if the new law would allow the couple to travel freely. The couple was referred to the American Civil Liberties Union and assigned an attorney, Bernard S. Cohen. "It was a terrible time in America," said Cohen, who was at Loving's home when she died. "Racism was ripe and this was the last de jure vestige of racism -- there was a lot of de facto racism, but this law was . . . the last on-the-books manifestation of slavery in America."
With fellow attorney Philip J. Hirschkop, Cohen took the case to the high court. Cohen said the couple didn't understand the importance of the case to anyone other than themselves. "When I told them I thought the case was going all the way to the Supreme Court, [Richard Loving's] jaw dropped. He didn't understand why I didn't go to Judge Bazile and tell him they loved each other and they should be allowed to live where they wished," said Cohen, now a retired state delegate from Alexandria.
On June 12, 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously declared: "There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. . . . There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause."
At a news conference at their attorneys' offices, the Lovings seemed stunned.
"I feel free now. . . . It was a great burden," Mildred Loving quietly said, according to news articles.
She and her husband returned to Caroline County, where they both were born. He built their house, and the couple settled there. Richard Loving was killed in 1975 when a drunk driver struck their car. Mildred Loving, who was also in the car, lost her right eye in the collision.
A 1996 Showtime movie about the case, "Mr. and Mrs. Loving," told their story. "None of it was very true," she said in 2007. "The only part of it right was I had three children."
Phyl Newbeck, a Vermont lawyer, saw the movie and wanted to read more about it. No one had written a book, so she sought out Loving for interviews but ran into the same shyness others had encountered. "She was very quiet. She really didn't like to talk about herself," Newbeck said yesterday. Newbeck's book, "Virginia Hasn't Always Been for Lovers," was published in 2004. "To her death, she never felt she had done anything noteworthy. She never considered herself a pioneer."
Others did. Loving's church, St. Stephens Baptist Church in Bowling Green, Va., gave her a certificate recognizing the trailblazing lawsuit.
"The preacher at my church classified me with Rosa Parks," she told The Washington Post in 1992. "I don't feel like that. Not at all. What happened, we really didn't intend for it to happen. What we wanted, we wanted to come home."
A son, Donald Loving, died in 2000.
Survivors include two children, Peggy Fortune of Central Point and Sidney Loving of Tappahannock, Va.; eight grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren.</blockquote>
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Benjamin Grimm
May 06 2008 08:15 AM
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| ]"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix," Bazile ruled. |
This kind of thinking just pisses me off.
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AG/DC
May 06 2008 08:21 AM
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Happens. Take comfort in knowing that he died in 1967, the same year his foolish bigoted logic died in the Supreme Court.
I too was born that great year, two weeks before Judge Bazile's passing, so it's a good bet that his soul didn't pass into my body.
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metsmarathon
May 06 2008 08:57 AM
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="Benjamin Grimm"]| ]"Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix," Bazile ruled. |
This kind of thinking just pisses me off. |
that's just about the dumbest thing ever - whites, blacks, yellows, and malays are all mostly on the same interconnected landmass - something that they knew of even way back in the fifties. if you wanna use that whole continental argument then maybe you can apply it to anyone else marrying red. but white and black? that's all connected! look at a map, you idiot!
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AG/DC
May 06 2008 09:05 AM
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Yee, yes, we all stand united against the ignorance of a guy who died 40 years ago. Let us dig him up and kick his rotten bones.
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Benjamin Grimm
May 06 2008 09:07 AM
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The problem is, his way of thinking didn't die out in 1967.
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metsmarathon
May 06 2008 09:09 AM
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ok, but you go get the shovel.
i guess its only recently that virginia is for lovers, then?
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AG/DC
May 06 2008 09:17 AM
Edited 1 time(s), most recently on May 06 2008 09:41 AM
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="Benjamin Grimm":b52x6tcl]The problem is, his way of thinking didn't die out in 1967.[/quote:b52x6tcl]
It lost big time. If there's real ignorance still living, let's attack it. But somebody getting emotionally distraught because Dixie Walker stood in the door in 1946 would seem like pontless grandstanding.
Folks are still fuming for racially diosapponting attitudes they find in Elvis' biography or Stephen Forster's. Fight living racism.
I posted the story to celebrate the victors.
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Benjamin Grimm
May 06 2008 09:21 AM
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It's still going strong, but now it's against gay marriage instead of interracial marriage.
It's the kind of thinking that assumes that, because the world is however it's been for the last few hundred years, that it's because God ordained that it be so.
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AG/DC
May 06 2008 09:41 AM
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Fair enough. I'm engaged, but I"m against marriage.
At least state-sanctioned marriage. Vic and I agree on that one.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
May 06 2008 09:55 AM
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What do you say we get a nup-date by the way.
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AG/DC
May 06 2008 09:58 AM
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Late November (29th, I think) is nearly a go. If, you know, we don't kill each other first.
We look, more or less, the same color, so everything should be cool on that front.
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AG/DC
May 06 2008 10:03 AM
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We have a tentative booking with a watered down version of <a href="http://www.junkyardsaints.com/" target="blank">Junkyard Saints</a>.
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Fman99
May 06 2008 10:05 AM
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="AG/DC":20k849tl]Late November (29th, I think) is nearly a go. If, you know, we don't kill each other first.
We look, more or less, the same color, so everything should be cool on that front.[/quote:20k849tl]
We're all pink on the inside.
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soupcan
May 06 2008 10:06 AM
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'Cept me. I'm well done.
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Willets Point
May 06 2008 10:28 AM
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="AG/DC":2kzc05p4]Late November (29th, I think) is nearly a go. If, you know, we don't kill each other first.
We look, more or less, the same color, so everything should be cool on that front.[/quote:2kzc05p4]
But the plumbing doesn't match.
="Fman99":2kzc05p4]We're all pink on the inside.[/quote:2kzc05p4]
I'm pink on the outside too.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
May 06 2008 02:11 PM
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I'm melting! I'm melting!!
]
Irvine Robbins, co-founder of Baskin-Robbins whose penchant for creating unusual ice-cream flavors helped push post-World War II America far beyond its chocolate-vanilla-strawberry tastes, has died. He was 90.
Robbins, who opened his first ice-cream shop in 1945 in Glendale, died Monday of complications related to old age at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, said his daughter, Marsha Veit.
With his brother-in-law and partner, Burton Baskin, Robbins displayed a keen sense of fun and a flair for marketing that helped turn some of their frozen treats into cultural touchstones.
When the Dodgers came to Los Angeles in 1958, they were greeted with Baseball Nut, complete with raspberries for the umpires. Lunar Cheesecake was launched the day after man landed on the moon in 1969. At the height of Beatlemania in 1964, a reporter asked Robbins what flavor would salute the Fab Four; Baskin-Robbins had yet to invent one, but Robbins replied, "Uh, Beatle Nut, of course" and had it in stores in five days.
He delighted in inventing new flavors and naming them, including Plum Nuts (plums, vanilla and walnuts), ChaChaCha (cherry chocolate chip), or his personal favorite, Jamoca Almond Fudge. By the time he retired in 1978, the company was selling some 20 million gallons of ice cream a year in more than 2,000 stores around the world.
The son of a dairyman, Robbins grew up scooping cones in his family's Tacoma, Wash., ice cream store for customers who always seemed to be having a good time. He recalled that he often "finished a day's work happy" and wanted that same feeling when he started his own business.
After getting out of the Army in 1945, he soon opened the Snowbird Ice Cream store in Glendale. Cashing in an insurance policy that his father had given him for his bar mitzvah, he came up with $6,000 to start the business.
"There was really no such thing anyplace as a pure ice cream store," Robbins told The Times in 1985. "I just had the crazy idea that somebody ought to open a store that sold . . . nothing but ice cream, and could do it in an outstanding way."
Baskin, who was married to Robbins' sister Shirley, also had recently returned from serving in the military in World War II. In early 1946, he opened Burton's Ice Cream in Pasadena.
Following the advice of Robbins' father, the pair purposely avoided starting out in business together. He had warned that partnering right away would cause them to squelch too many of their own ideas as they compromised in an effort to get along.
By 1948, the five Snowbird and three Burton's shops had been combined into a single enterprise, and they had devised their 31st flavor -- Chocolate Mint. But the new partners realized they were too busy to give the stores the attention they needed to succeed.
"That's when we hit on selling our stores to our managers," Robbins said in the 1985 Times story. "Without realizing it at the time, we were in the franchise business before the word 'franchise' was fashionable. We opened another store and another and another. . . ."
In 1953, they renamed the company Baskin-Robbins, deciding the order of their names with a coin toss. The "31 flavors" concept was introduced that same year to bring attention to a deep menu that featured a flavor for every day of the month.
At a factory in Burbank, they made hundreds of new ice creams a year but only eight or nine of those would make it to market. Among the flavors that never left the laboratory: Ketchup, Lox and Bagels, and Grape Britain. Exotic flavors were rotated into stores to change the mix each month.
Baskin-Robbins had 43 stores by the end of 1949, more than 100 by 1960 and about 500 when the ice-cream empire was sold to United Fruit Co. for an estimated $12 million in 1967. Six months later, Baskin died of a heart attack at 54.
Robbins stayed involved with the company for 11 more years and marveled at how often customers pitched him ideas for new flavors.
"I've even had people stop me in my car, which has the license plate '31 BR,' on the freeway," Robbins told Investor's Business Daily in 1999. "I guess some people think it's legal to stop on a California freeway if you're doing it for ice cream."
He was born Dec. 6, 1917, in Winnipeg, Canada, to Aaron and Goldie Robbins. His father emigrated from Poland and his mother from Russia.
As a young boy, Robbins moved with his family to Tacoma. In 1939, he earned a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Washington.
With his wife, Irma, whom he married in 1942, he raised three children. As an adult, his son John rejected the family business and wrote "Diet for a New America," a 1987 book critical of the meat and dairy industries.
His family often filled the role of ice-cream taste-testers around the dinner table at their Encino home with its backyard pool shaped like an ice cream cone. He named his boat the 32nd Flavor.
The gregarious Robbins lectured on entrepreneurship at USC and UCLA.
After retiring, he moved to a Rancho Mirage home equipped with a six-flavor ice-cream counter and was known to start the day with a bowl of cereal topped with a scoop of banana ice cream.
In addition to his wife and daughter Marsha Veit of Mount Kisco, N.Y., Robbins is survived by two other children, John Robbins of Soquel, Calif., and Erin Robbins of Grass Valley, Calif.; sisters Shirley Familian and Elka Weiner of Los Angeles; five grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren. |
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SteveJRogers
May 16 2008 09:37 PM
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..
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TheOldMole
May 19 2008 05:50 PM
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Robert Vesco
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TheOldMole
May 20 2008 05:21 PM
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Will Elder
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soupcan
May 20 2008 07:11 PM
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Is he the guy that drew 'Little Annie Fanny'?
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TheOldMole
May 21 2008 08:09 AM
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Yes -- and before that, one of the brilliant innovators of the original Mad Comics -- and the creator of one of the great moles of all time.
http://www.willelder.net/melvine_mole.html
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Benjamin Grimm
May 25 2008 11:44 AM
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Wow, I just mentioned him nine days ago in my introduction to <a href="http://cranepoolforum.qwknetllc.com/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?t=9001" target="_new">this thread</a>
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TheOldMole
May 26 2008 08:26 AM
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Folksinger, Storyteller, Railroad Tramp [url=http://utahphillips.org/:3ljifb9c]Utah Phillips[/url:3ljifb9c]Dead at 73
Not a household name, but a wonderful songwriter and storyteller.
Here's a sample, but his sentimental Americana is great too:
[url=http://utahphillips.org/stuff/mooseturdpie.mp3:3ljifb9c]Moose Turd Pie[/url:3ljifb9c]
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Benjamin Grimm
May 26 2008 09:12 AM
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<a href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jrvfCIM3cadbpT03gMygt3vK3ttQD90T07481" target="_new">Thelma Keane, dead at 82</a>
<img src="http://roughdraft.typepad.com/dotmoms/images/2007/09/17/familycircus_2.gif" width="225" height="246">
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themetfairy
May 26 2008 07:52 PM
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[url=http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b139253_sydney_pollock_dies_73.html?sid=rss_topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories:3vhhr0ls]RIP Sidney Pollack[/url:3vhhr0ls].
This is how I will always remember him best, with Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie -
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/BnHqiipcw6g&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/BnHqiipcw6g&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
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Frayed Knot
May 27 2008 02:09 PM
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="Benjamin Grimm":1knsnbi8]<a href="http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jrvfCIM3cadbpT03gMygt3vK3ttQD90T07481" target="_new">Thelma Keane, dead at 82</a>
<img src="http://roughdraft.typepad.com/dotmoms/images/2007/09/17/familycircus_2.gif" width="225" height="246">[/quote:1knsnbi8]
I met a handful of the Keane's a bunch of years ago (like 10) - don't remember if mama Keane was among them.
Weird to be talking to a couple of 40-some year-old guys who are, in fact, "Jeffy" and "PJ"
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DocTee
May 29 2008 05:19 PM
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Harvey Korman, 81.
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Nymr83
May 29 2008 06:02 PM
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Alexander Courage, creator of the theme music from the original Star Trek series, dead at 88.
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Willets Point
May 29 2008 06:11 PM
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Great theme. Must be included here:
<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/hdjL8WXjlGI&hl=en"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/hdjL8WXjlGI&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>
I've always liked the rhythm on that tune. Does anyone know if that's a bossanova or a rhumba or is it just something else?
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AG/DC
May 29 2008 06:54 PM
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Harvey Korman deserves a pause.
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Benjamin Grimm
May 29 2008 07:04 PM
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="AG/DC":8nk8r7je]Harvey Korman deserves a pause.[/quote:8nk8r7je]
He certainly does. A very funny man. Some memorable stuff on <i>The Carol Burnett Show</i>.
AND the voice of the Great Gazoo!
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AG/DC
May 29 2008 07:18 PM
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I went to find some of my favorite sketches on youtube. They had all been removed.
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Fman99
May 29 2008 07:46 PM
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="AG/DC":13xln48x]I went to find some of my favorite sketches on youtube. They had all been removed.[/quote:13xln48x]
Weak.
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Frayed Knot
Jun 01 2008 07:40 PM
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Yves St. Laurent - 71
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TheOldMole
Jun 02 2008 07:16 PM
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The great Bo Diddley.
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Willets Point
Jun 02 2008 07:18 PM
Tunnel from Brooklyn to London
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<a href="http://drupal02.nypl.org/blogs/2008/06/02/tunnel-brooklyn-london%E2%80%A6"> This looks cool</a>!
You New York folks should check it out.
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MFS62
Jun 03 2008 05:59 AM
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="TheOldMole":l4qsuwh2]The great Bo Diddley.[/quote:l4qsuwh2]
Most folks who grew up with rock and roll remember Bo Diddley.
But, as Craig Carten noted on WFAN this morning,how many can remember the names of any of his songs?
Later
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AG/DC
Jun 03 2008 07:28 AM
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I don't get it. Bo Diddley songs are easy to remember because he references ihimself in a lot of them.
"Bo Diddley "
"Hey! Boy Diddley"
"Diddley Daddy"
Then you have songs that have been covered to death like "I'm a Man" and "Pretty Thing" and "Who Do You Love?" and "Before You Accuse Me."
We have a Bo Diddley thread below.
I have never listened to Carton. But second-hand reports suggest I'm not missing anything but embarrassment.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Jun 03 2008 07:32 AM
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You know, Carton isn't that awful. I actually admire the way he toes that line between abrasive and obnoxious.
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Vic Sage
Jun 03 2008 09:40 AM
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toe the line?
He zipped past it at a speed that rendered it a blur.
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DocTee
Jun 07 2008 09:48 AM
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Sportscaster Jim McKay, 86.
Hard to imagine the Olympics without him-- he called 12 of them.
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themetfairy
Jun 07 2008 10:05 AM
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He didn't merely call the Olympics. In 1972, when Munich suddenly became a story of terrorism, he handled it with more skill and humanity than any news anchor that you'll ever find today.
RIP Jim - you were one of the best.
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Rockin' Doc
Jun 07 2008 10:23 AM
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Jim McKay was a classy announcer. He could report the story without trying to become the story. That is a talent that is becoming increasingly rare these days. R.I.P. Jim.
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themetfairy
Jun 07 2008 01:09 PM
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Mike Lupica's [url=http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/2008/06/07/2008-06-07_saying_goodbye_to_jim_mckay_a_giant_amon.html:o8ajj3fr]Shooting From The Lip column[/url:o8ajj3fr] that's running in tomorrow's Daily News pays tribute to McKay.
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Frayed Knot
Jun 07 2008 03:50 PM
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="Rockin' Doc":4z0zhfp0]Jim McKay ... could report the story without trying to become the story. That is a talent that is becoming increasingly rare these days.[/quote:4z0zhfp0]
Heard a radio interview this morning with NBC-TV/Sports honcho Dick Ebersol who was a young-ish producer in those days to Roone Arledge and the ABC crew.
He says that Arledge specifically chose McKay as the point-man when that story broke because he thought his news sensabilities would work best. In picking McKay Arledge by-passed both ABC's main Olympic anchor Chris Schenkel, thinking of him strictly as a sports guy, as well as the bigger name in Cosell who, although he would desperately want to do it and had the journalistic chops, Arledge was afraid he'd get too emotional with the story.
He added that when the story broke they found McKay in the hotel pool where he threw on some clothes over his wet bathing suit on the way to the desk. He anchored the story that way for the next 16 hours forgetting, until it was all over, that he was dressed that way.
These days, of course, the coverage is so smothering and goes so much beyond sports that the network sends virtually every employee they have to the site, to the point where if something similar happened this year in Beijing they wouldn't need to rely on sports guys seeing as how Brian Willimas, Tim Russert, Tom Brokaw, Keith Olberman, plus the entire 'Today Show' crew would already be on hand.
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MFS62
Jun 07 2008 04:28 PM
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When I heard of Jim's passing, memories of that Olympics came back to me. Jim was all that has been said to him and more.
RIP Jim, you will be missed.
But how many remember that sharing the booth with Jim was a little known announcer from Canada.?His name was Peter Jennings. And I still remember that throughout the ordeal, Jennings kept parrying Jim's comments about the Israeli team to talk in support of the terrorists' goals.
Later, it came out that Jennings was "romantically involved" with a woman who was a PLO spokesperson for many years.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Jennings
I'll never forget that, either.
(I didn't mean to hijack this thread. Sorry if it did.)
Later
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Frayed Knot
Jun 08 2008 05:58 AM
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The charges of Jennings and a pro-Palestinian bias have always seemed a bit shaky to me.
But even if true, a couple of things here;
| ="MFS62"]But how many remember that sharing the booth with Jim was a little known announcer from Canada.?His name was Peter Jennings. |
Not sure if he was ever in the booth with McKay as he spent much of the time outside hiding in a spot that made him the closet reporter to the occupied building.
| ]And I still remember that throughout the ordeal, Jennings kept parrying Jim's comments about the Israeli team to talk in support of the terrorists' goals. |
Thw worst thing I can find (several sources) is references to him calling the attackers 'commandos' or 'guerrillas' rather than 'terrorists'. I'm not sure the first two qualify much as compliments or the lack of the third as a sign of support.
| ]Later, it came out that Jennings was "romantically involved" with a woman who was a PLO spokesperson for many years. |
Don't know if that was much of a secret at the time - at least beyond the extent that Jennings was much less famous than he'd later become.
Jennings was stationed in the Beruit bureau at the time while Hanan Alhrawi - a West Bank-born Christian - was an English Lit student at American Univ in Beruit. She later went on become active in pro-Palestinian causes and eventually an office holder in the Palestinian Legislative Council following one of the peace accords but was never a spokeman for Arafat's PLO.
Jennings later married a Lebanese woman, although he married a lot of women.
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Fman99
Jun 08 2008 07:42 PM
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The Mets 2008 playoff hopes. RIP hope.
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AG/DC
Jun 08 2008 07:52 PM
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Thanks for hammering out the Jennings facts. I had started and given up.
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seawolf17
Jun 13 2008 01:41 PM
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NBC's Tim Russert, of an apparent heart attack. It just came up as a flash on the news here at the airport, but I can't find it online yet.
Election night will never be the same.
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metirish
Jun 13 2008 01:49 PM
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Shocking news , it's on CNN ....
I always liked how he used the scrub board to explain the numbers.
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G-Fafif
Jun 13 2008 02:12 PM
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I came to admire him watching him primary night after primary night this year. Really sorry to hear it.
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themetfairy
Jun 13 2008 02:27 PM
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[url=http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b142771_tim_russert_signs_off.html?sid=rss_topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories:2euyhmb1]Here's the story[/url:2euyhmb1]
RIP Tim
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AG/DC
Jun 13 2008 04:47 PM
Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Jun 13 2008 05:08 PM
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<img src="http://images.barnesandnoble.com/images/13910000/13914340.JPG" align="left">Russert showed the world his soft side by using his book deal to write a tribute to his elderly dad, so the world could know who his hero was while he still lived.
That dad now survives him.
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AG/DC
Jun 13 2008 05:09 PM
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He partnered with Len Dawson, right?
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Frayed Knot
Jun 13 2008 05:26 PM
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I don't remember (all football announcers sound alike to me) but he may have been old enough to have called some Len Dawson games.
I remember him more for track and field work.
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AG/DC
Jun 13 2008 06:12 PM
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Yup. Here's Charlie and Len calling a big 'un you may recall:
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfLxsAtlfnI&hl=en"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/zfLxsAtlfnI&hl=en" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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G-Fafif
Jun 13 2008 08:57 PM
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Charlie Jones was the original Rockies PBP man on TV. His first game, like theirs, was at Shea in '93.
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MFS62
Jun 16 2008 06:13 AM
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Went out to dinner with the kids yesterday for Fathers' Day.
I ordered Buffalo Wings, in memory of Tim Russert.
Later
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themetfairy
Jun 17 2008 07:42 PM
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[url=http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b143128_cyd_charisse_dies_danced_with_astaire.html?sid=rss_topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories:3ui56020]RIP Cyd Charisse[/url:3ui56020]
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SteveJRogers
Jul 01 2008 09:21 PM
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[url=http://page2rss.com/920f34cbf5854c902f78c4da1fbd0ff8/3947660_3949024/updated-july-madam-marie-telling-fortunes-since-the-s-dies-at:2vpdzkxw]Asbury Park fortune teller Madam Marie[/url:2vpdzkxw]
Known for being part of Springsteen's "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" lyrics
Well the cops finally busted Madame Marie for tellin' fortunes better than they do
This boardwalk life for me is through
You know you ought to quit this scene too...
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Jul 01 2008 09:40 PM
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Rogers Rogers Rogers
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Mendoza Line
Jul 04 2008 11:05 AM
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[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/05/us/politics/00helms.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&adxnnlx=1215190849-DJNuOs//GkL2zQ63o3U4DQ:w5nywiwy]Jesse Helms[/url:w5nywiwy]
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batmagadanleadoff
Jul 05 2008 12:22 PM
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Bozo.
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themetfairy
Jul 12 2008 06:26 AM
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[url=http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/07/12/obit.snow/:wu2tskqf]Tony Snow[/url:wu2tskqf]
Age 53, from colon cancer.
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batmagadanleadoff
Jul 15 2008 12:27 PM
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Better late than never.
Ex-major league pitcher Joe Niekro dies at age 61
ESPN.com news services
Updated: October 28, 2006, 6:47 PM ET
Joe Niekro Dead at 61
TAMPA, Fla. -- Former major league pitcher Joe Niekro, Houston's career victory leader, died Friday, Astros president Tal Smith said. He was 61.
The two-time 20-game winner suffered a brain aneurysm Thursday and was taken to South Florida Baptist Hospital in nearby Plant City, where he lived. He later was transferred to St. Joseph's Hospital, where he died.
"It came as a real shock to us," Smith said. "He was a great guy. He had a real spark and a great sense of humor."
Smith said Niekro did not have an active role with the Astros but kept in contact with many of his former Houston teammates.
Niekro, father of San Francisco Giants first baseman Lance Niekro, won 221 games in his career but never became as well known as his Hall of Fame brother, Phil, both in life and death. Niekro's death would be neglected by WFAN baseball fan Joe Benigno and Paris Hilton.
Like his older brother, who won 318 games, Joe Niekro found success after developing the knuckleball and pitched into his 40s. They had a combined 539 major league victories, a record for brothers.
Smith said he was told of Niekro's death by Enos Cabell, one of the Niekro's Astros teammates.
"Enos said he just visited with him a few weeks ago in Cooperstown," Smith said. "Enos said he seemed healthy and full of life. This just came as a sudden shock."
Niekro won a franchise-best 144 games in 11 seasons with the Astros from 1975 to 1985, when he was traded to the New York Yankees. He was an All-Star in 1979, when he went 21-11 with a 3.00 ERA and followed up with a 20-12 record in 1980.
He beat the Dodgers in a one-game playoff that clinched Houston's first postseason berth in 1980. Seven years later, in his 21st season, he finally appeared in the World Series with the Minnesota Twins.
"You are always in shock when you hear something like that, mainly when it hits close to home, a teammate who you have spent a lot of years with," Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan, a former teammate of Niekro's, told Houston's KRIV-TV.
"It certainly surprises you when it happens to somebody who has kept themselves in shape and lives a very active life. The last time I saw Joe he looked like he was a picture of health," Ryan said.
Niekro was born Nov. 7, 1944 in Martins Ferry, Ohio. A third-round draft pick of the Cubs in 1966, he broke into the majors in 1967 and appeared in 702 games, including 500 starts, in 22 years with the Cubs, Padres, Tigers, Braves, Astros, Yankees and Twins.
Niekro, who once was suspended for getting caught on the mound with a nail file in his back pocket, pitched his final game in April 1988 -- at age 43. He finished 221-204 with a 3.59 ERA, including 144-116 with a 3.22 ERA for the Astros.
Smith said the team was waiting on funeral arrangements before deciding how to honor Niekro.
"He played a very prominent role in our first trip to the playoffs [in 1980]," Smith said. "He was very popular with our fans, and he was truly one of our all-time greats."
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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AG/DC
Jul 15 2008 12:32 PM
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Smoly pit. Simulatneous posts of the same content in two different threads in two differnt fora.
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batmagadanleadoff
Jul 15 2008 03:46 PM
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Jinx!
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metirish
Jul 15 2008 04:49 PM
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| ]
Red Foley, the cigar-chomping fixture at New York ballparks who spent decades meticulously recording hits and errors when he wasn't chit-chatting with managers in their dugouts and clubhouses, died yesterday in a Flushing hospital. He was 79.
For 36 years, beginning in 1966, Foley worked as an official scorer for Mets and Yankees games - and even a few Ducks games. He scored more than 3,000 major-league games, including 10 World Series, more than any other person in modern baseball history.
Though players often perceive scoring decisions that hurt their statistics to be slights and betrayals of their talents, Foley earned widespread respect with his measured accuracy and knowledge of the rule book.
Two potentially troublesome Foley calls for the Mets, one that turned Robin Ventura's 1999 playoff grand slam into a single and one that denied Glendon Rusch a no-hitter in 2001, were readily accepted by players as correct. (Ventura was swamped by teammates after the winning hit and never reached second base; Rusch failed to cover first on what turned out to be the opposing team's only hit, a first-inning bunt.)
"He just called 'em as he saw 'em," said Daily News colleague Bill Gallo, the longtime columnist and cartoonist. "He was like Popeye; he said, 'I yam what I yam.' But he was very well liked by players, managers and newspapermen alike."
Foley's scoring assignments grew out of his baseball beat with the Daily News and continued after retirement from the News in 1981. In 2003, a Manhattan sports bar, Foley's NY, was named for him on 33rd Street as a hangout for baseball writers. (Foley himself was a teetotaler.)
Stout but with a smooth left-handed swing, Foley was the star of a mid-1960s writers/players game in Cleveland, lashing a triple against former Indians lefthander Herb Score, then a broadcaster. Former Newsday baseball beat writer Joe Donnelly recalled that on the flight back to New York, Yankees manager Ralph Houk and Foley sat side by side smoking cigars. Houk, known to have been a light hitter during his playing days, teased Foley about his chugging run with, "I could've been around the bases twice myself." Foley answered, "Yeah, but who would've hit the ball for you?"
Arthur Foley was born Dec. 26, 1928, in Queens and lived most of his life in the borough until a recent move to an assisted living center in Hempstead. The archetypal redheaded lad, he was able to gain free admission to the 1939 World's Fair by virtue of a contest admitting the kid with the most freckles, according to Kevin Brosnahan, his family lawyer.
Foley attended the same Elmhurst high school, Newtown, as current Mets general manager Omar Minaya and started in the newspaper business as a Daily News copyboy. His father had worked in the sports department at the old New York Journal-American.
As a Daily News reporter, Foley "wrote in the old News style, using 'ribbies' [for RBIs] and other non-words," retired Newsday columnist Joe Gergen said. "And he loved to get double entendres into the paper."
"A lot of people thought he was angry because he had a frown," Gallo said. "He wasn't. He was busy."
With a sly, ballpark-trained humor. At the January 2007 funeral of contemporary Jack Lang, Foley noted several empty pews and offered, "Plenty of good seats available." |
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MFS62
Jul 16 2008 04:10 PM
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I always read Red's columns.
RIP
Later
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themetfairy
Jul 21 2008 06:53 PM
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My condolences Mole :(
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AG/DC
Jul 22 2008 07:47 AM
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Sorry, Mole.
Once again, it seems you're blessed to call the most interesting people friends. I know that's little comfort, but it must speak well of you.
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Mendoza Line
Jul 22 2008 10:25 AM
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I saw Artie Traum in concert at Bucknell University in 1985ish in a small auditorium with maybe 100 other people.
Enduring memories are that (a) he put on a great show, and (b) a friend of mine - normally a quiet, level-headed philosophy major - decided to get really drunk that evening and made a point of screaming "ARTIE!" at the end of pretty nearly every song. Artie heckled him back, and did it with good-natured class and style.
My condolences.
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metsguyinmichigan
Jul 22 2008 11:50 AM
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Estelle Getty, once golden.
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Benjamin Grimm
Jul 28 2008 02:34 PM
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Hiram Bullock, one of the original members of Paul Shaffer's World's Most Dangerous Band on Late Night with David Letterman.
| ="Late Show with David Letterman newsletter"]A sad note: Hiram Bullock passed away this weekend of throat cancer. He
was Paul's original guitarist in the World's Most Dangerous Band on LN,
perhaps best known on the show for performing barefoot, and was one of
bassist Will Lee's closest friends and musical partners. Our condolences
go to Hiram's family and his countless friends in the music industry.
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AG/DC
Jul 28 2008 02:46 PM
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Hiram Bullock is one of those names that gets tatooed on your brain the day you start reading liner notes, along with Mitchell Froom, Danny Kortchmar, and Nicky Hopkins. I associate him with Stingk, but for good reasons, like his work on the Stingk's cover of "LIttle Wing," which didn't stingk, despite itself.
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/OrWoEjo-SIE&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/OrWoEjo-SIE&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Jul 29 2008 02:33 PM
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Bennigan's, along with Steak & Ale, file Chapter 7 (that's like, Super Bankruptcy, no hope of reorganization, all your potato skins are belong to us).
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metirish
Jul 29 2008 02:39 PM
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I was in a Bennigan's one time when I had to go to Minnesota for job training , I had the mis-fortune of having "Come On Eileen" blast from the juke box as I was loading money into the damn thing. The people from the company were certain I had played it. That's about all I remember form the place.
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AG/DC
Jul 29 2008 02:41 PM
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Aren't Bennigan's the jerkmes who tried to popularlize Slainte! as an American toast for people who drink at soulsucking chains?
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Jul 29 2008 02:47 PM
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I associate Bennigan's with "things from the mid-1980s" such as the 86 Mets. They are kind of dated in that way for me.
Mervyn's department stores out west also went under today though not for good... at least not yet.
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The Hot Corner
Jul 29 2008 08:41 PM
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Randy Pausch, computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University and author of the best seller, <i>The Last Lecture</i> died of complications associated with his pancreatic cancer on Friday, July 25th.
The Carnegie Mellon news release is available <a href="http://www.cmu.edu/homepage/beyond/2008/summer/an-enduring-legacy.shtml">here.</a>
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TheOldMole
Aug 03 2008 03:27 PM
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Erik Darling lost his battle with cancer last night.
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Nymr83
Aug 03 2008 03:44 PM
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i used to eat at bennigans as a kid, they has a chest full of those cheap plastic toys!
havent been there in years
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themetfairy
Aug 03 2008 04:18 PM
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="TheOldMole":3dwbhd2j]Erik Darling lost his battle with cancer last night.[/quote:3dwbhd2j]
My condolences Mole.
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AG/DC
Aug 07 2008 09:14 AM
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Condolences as well.
Robert Hazard also moves on to the hereafter, after unexpected complications from surgery.
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/WE8D4tHOg7k&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/WE8D4tHOg7k&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
Hazard is also the composer of "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Aug 07 2008 09:22 AM
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Robert Hazard was one of those guys who it seemed you had to decide to be fer or against. since he seemed extremely modern and of the moment. It was like, Jethro Tull fans this way; Hazard fans exit here.
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AG/DC
Aug 07 2008 09:35 AM
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Funny thing is that was like his third iteration, before going electropop, he led a country act and a reggae band.
Eventually he became a troubadour, pulling out his old hit to front the kids at Rock Camp:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUCEGxM1vUA
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Aug 07 2008 09:50 AM
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Go Blondie on the keys
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metsguyinmichigan
Aug 07 2008 10:04 AM
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I like "Escalator of Life."
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HahnSolo
Aug 09 2008 11:16 AM
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Bernie Mac, age 50. Way too young.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Aug 09 2008 11:22 AM
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Pneumonia at 50?
Did he have the AIDS or something?
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AG/DC
Aug 09 2008 12:34 PM
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Pneumonia can surprise you. Not to speculate on Mac, but it gets a lot of drinkers.
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Frayed Knot
Aug 09 2008 01:48 PM
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The little bit I heard on Bernie Mac mentioned Sarcoydosis - an auto-immune (body's defenses gone wild) condition which I never would have heard of except that it comes up at least once in every 'House' episode as a possible, but ultimately rejected, diagnosis.
Somehow I (and apparently everyone else) missed Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, 89, last week. Had been living back in Moscow.
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AG/DC
Aug 09 2008 04:23 PM
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Starring in a FOX sitcom > Exploding the notion in the West of the moral leadership of the Soviets.
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AG/DC
Aug 10 2008 02:24 PM
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Hayes. Isaac Hayes.
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Fman99
Aug 10 2008 02:48 PM
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="AG/DC":v9p9gb6h]Hayes. Isaac Hayes.[/quote:v9p9gb6h]
RIP Chef.
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sharpie
Aug 10 2008 03:17 PM
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Wow. Saw him about 2 months ago.
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Gwreck
Aug 10 2008 03:49 PM
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Not only a performer, also an accomplished songwriter. Wrote many of the Stax hits (ie. Hold On I'm Comin, Soul Man, I Thank You, etc) for Sam and Dave.
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metsguyinmichigan
Aug 10 2008 07:04 PM
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"That Shaft is a bad motherf--
Shut your mouth!
"But I'm just talkin' 'bout Shaft!
And we can dig it!
Brilliant!
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OlerudOwned
Aug 10 2008 07:04 PM
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From the Department of Creepy Shit:
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A Boy Named Seo
Aug 11 2008 02:58 AM
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Don't bode well for Jackson.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Aug 11 2008 07:09 AM
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There's a motherfucking hood on a motherfucking ghost!
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metirish
Aug 11 2008 07:19 AM
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In the lab where I work we have quite a few patients with Sarcoidosis , some live with it and really have no problems but a few constantly end up in the hospital with pneumonia , not a good thing to get obviously.
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metirish
Aug 16 2008 03:07 PM
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Dubliners singer Ronnie Drew dies at 73
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/9T7OaDDR7i8&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/9T7OaDDR7i8&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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smg58
Aug 16 2008 11:34 PM
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I saw Ronnie Drew perform in town four years ago. He had quite a distinctive voice, and a great sense of storytelling too.
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TheOldMole
Aug 17 2008 06:44 AM
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 Jerry Wexler, cofounder of Atlantic Records and one of the most important guiding forces behind the creation of rock and roll.
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SteveJRogers
Aug 17 2008 08:46 AM
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Portrayed by Richard Schiff in the movie Ray.
Rock & Roll Class of 1987 as a non-performer, along with fellow co-founder of Atlantic, Ahmet Ertegun.
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AG/DC
Aug 17 2008 03:08 PM
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Not Ronnie Drew.
It's hard to appreciate what an original he is, or the Dubs were, decades after their brand of Irish folk has become a mawkish cliche.
Simply, without them, there'd have been no Pogues, or the Pogues would have been something far different.
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/au30c9ZMIPg&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/au30c9ZMIPg&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
Apart from that, when their imitators were touring the world singing about lost Ireland, in the seventies and eighties, they were way ahead, dealing with contemporary issues of what still could be lost --- recording songs about the cold war, famine, and conservation. Doing a nobler job of it then younger folksingers could hope to.
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smg58
Aug 17 2008 04:15 PM
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[url:2b11xcz9]http://www.greenmanreview.com/live/live_drew_0304.html[/url:2b11xcz9]
I was able to dig up the review I wrote of the Ronnie Drew show I saw in 2004.
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metirish
Aug 17 2008 08:10 PM
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Well put Edgy and that was a wonderful read smg.
Growing up " down the country" Ronnie Drew to us would be many things but certainly he was a "real Dub" , in the best sense I mean that.
Talking to my Mom today she remarked how as a young girl living in London during the sixties going to see The Dubliners , and how those nights out were the few times you could be Irish living there.
I remember Ronnie Drew from the many nights he was on " The Late Late Show" , here he is singing McAlpine's Fusiliers.
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RIP Ronnie.
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G-Fafif
Aug 18 2008 10:03 PM
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Pervis Jackson, 70, deepest voice of the Spinners, of brain and liver cancer. Details [url=http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080818/ENT04/80818027/-1/videos01:xh3k7o7r]here[/url:xh3k7o7r]. FAFIF tribute [url=http://faithandfear.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2008/8/18/3844775.html:xh3k7o7r]here[/url:xh3k7o7r].
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AG/DC
Aug 19 2008 06:06 AM
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I'm giong to pay tribute to Pervis by having a one-of a kind love affair.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Aug 19 2008 08:18 AM
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Genuine Risk, one of only 3 fillies ever to win the Kentucky Derby, and at 31, the oldest living Derby winner:
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themetfairy
Aug 19 2008 09:15 PM
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[url=http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b24635_dave_matthews_band_saxophonist_dies.html?sid=rss_topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories:mt5akonm]LeRoi Moore[/url:mt5akonm]
I know that most of you guys aren't DMB fans, but LeRoi was magnificent in concert.
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Gwreck
Aug 19 2008 09:25 PM
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I've seen them several times. Moore was indeed fantastic. RIP.
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metsguyinmichigan
Aug 20 2008 08:40 AM
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I like DMB. It was cool to see Moore in concert. It's as if he had an array of instruments out there, and would pick one randomly and join in where he wanted to. Good stuff!
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sharpie
Aug 21 2008 07:39 AM
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Gene Upshaw at 63. Pancratic cancer.
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DocTee
Aug 21 2008 07:45 AM
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Upshaw, the NFLPA President, succumbed to pancreatic cancer. Pan Can is a tough one-- I know several people (men, women, young, old, black, white) who have fallen to it-- it is mercifully quick but inevitably fatal.
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AG/DC
Aug 26 2008 08:27 AM
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Dave Freeman, co-author of "100 Things to Do Before You Die," a travel guide and ode to odd adventures that inspired readers and imitators, died after hitting his head in a fall at his home. He was 47.
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soupcan
Aug 26 2008 08:38 AM
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How many things did he do before he died?
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batmagadanleadoff
Aug 26 2008 09:05 AM
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="soupcan":1lpyrbg3]How many things did he do before he died?[/quote:1lpyrbg3]
I bet he did all of them. The last thing to do according to his list is to bang your head right after falling down.
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cooby
Aug 26 2008 04:03 PM
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not funny
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batmagadanleadoff
Aug 26 2008 10:21 PM
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="cooby":3cbxzwj4]not funny[/quote:3cbxzwj4]
You're probably right. I'm a sucker for black humor, though.
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AG/DC
Aug 31 2008 06:15 AM
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Puttting to shame all the latter day wrestlers who are challenged to survive into middle age, Walter "Killer" Kowalkski passes at 81. I think there's a Met link here, as he might have wrestled at Shea. He was also a favorite punchline for fictional Met-lovin' big shot sportwriter Oscar Madison.
Kowalski was born in 1926, the <a href="http://vault.sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1113404/index.htm" target="blank">same year as the sweatshirt</a>, which is another Oscar Madison favorite. In fact, I think Oscar's sweatshirt was a 1926 original.
Anyhow, I digress. Salute Walter today by pinning your personal Bruno Sammartino (we all have one) to the mat in an epic struggle of mansweat.
<blockquote><a href="http://www.miamiherald.com/sports/other/story/666070.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://media.miamiherald.com/images/logos/site_logo_340x60.gif"></a>
Wrestling pioneer Kowalski dead at 81
Posted on Sat, Aug. 30, 2008
<img src="http://www.mediaman.com.au/interviews/kowalski1.jpg" align="right">EVERETT, Mass. -- (AP) -- Pro wrestling legend Walter Killer Kowalski died early Saturday, Aug. 30 from the effects of a massive heart attack. He was 81.
Kowalski died at Whidden Hospital in Everett, 12 days after his family decided to take him off life support. He had been in critical condition in the hospital since his heart attack on Aug. 8, wife Theresa Kowalski said.
''I was right beside him,'' she said. ``I put my hand on his chest. I felt his breathing slow down and his heart beat stop. The doctor said he was brain dead . . . I was waiting, hoping somebody could do something.
"We've been together over 10 years, but we've been married for two years. He was a bachelor all his life. He was a wonderful man, never drank, never smoked, and he was a vegetarian for almost 60 years.''
An obituary posted at Weir-MacCuish Family Funeral Home's website said Kowalski began his pro career in 1947 as Tarzan Kowalski. His hulking 6-7, 275-pound frame and a brutal wrestling style soon earned him the nickname Killer.
Kowalski, a Canadian, turned villain after hurting Yukon Eric during a match in Montreal in 1952. Kowalski accidentally ripped off a part of Yukon Eric's ear while performing a knee drop. Eric's ears were already badly cauliflowered from years of ring abuse.
Kowalski visited his opponent in the hospital after the match to check on him, and ''the two men began laughing at how silly Eric's bandages looked. The reporter incorrectly printed Killer was laughing at his victim, and soon after, Killer quickly became wrestling's most renowned heel or villain,'' according to the website.
He later became famous for various moves, including a stomach vise clawhold called the Killer Clutch. He had a legendary feud with World Wide Wrestling Federation (now known as WWE) champ Bruno Sammartino, his longtime friend.
Kowalski retired in 1977, a year after Big John Studd and he captured the WWWF tag team titles as masked men called The Executioners, managed by Captain Lou Albano.
He opened a wrestling school in Malden, Mass. His students included WWE star Triple H, Perry Saturn, John Kronus, Chyna, Chris Nowinski, A-Train, Frankie Kazarian, Kenny Dykstra and Studd. He sold the business in 2003.
Kowalski was inducted into several wrestling halls of fame, including the WWF Hall of Fame and the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame and Museum. He also made the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame in 2007.
A funeral is scheduled at Weir-MacCuish Golden Rule Funeral Home, and burial service is set in St. Joseph's Church on Thursday morning, Sept. 4.
• Jim Varsallone of The Miami Herald contributed to this report.</blockquote>
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MFS62
Aug 31 2008 06:41 AM
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I remember watching him, and Georgeous George, Bruno, Antonino Rocca, Verne Gagne, Haystacks Calhoon, et. at.
Sigh
RIP
Later
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SteveJRogers
Sep 01 2008 02:01 PM
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="MFS62":yiotxqam]I remember watching him, and Georgeous George, Bruno, Antonino Rocca, Verne Gagne, Haystacks Calhoon, et. at.
Sigh
RIP
Later[/quote:yiotxqam]
I believe Bruno, Rocca and Gagne are still kicking.
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Fman99
Sep 02 2008 10:29 AM
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'King Of Voiceovers' Don LaFontaine Dies
Don LaFontaine, a voiceover artist known to many as "King of Voiceovers," died Monday in Los Angeles. He was 68.
A 25-year veteran of the industry, LaFontaine was the preeminent voice of movie trailers, and also voiced popular shows like Entertainment Tonight, the Insider and hundreds of spots for radio and television. His other work included commercials for McDonalds, Budweiser and voiceover work for all the major television networks. According to reports, he worked on nearly 5,000 films – and was the in-show announcer for the Screen Actors Guild and Academy Awards.
LaFontaine's agent confirms to Entertainment Tonight that he passed away from Pneumothorax, the presence of air or gas in the pleural cavity which house the lungs. The official cause of death has not been released.
Most recently, LaFontaine stepped into the spotlight, parodying himself in a series of television commercials for Geico.
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AG/DC
Sep 02 2008 05:24 PM
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Jerry Reed: had the strangest of disco country hits.
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/04RJyFCg7ks&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/04RJyFCg7ks&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
Actually, all country/disco crossover is pretty strange. Off the top of my noggin, there's that 'un, "Southern Nights," "Convoy," what else?
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SteveJRogers
Sep 02 2008 05:44 PM
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Anything by Conway Twitty in that late 1970s-early 1980s era pretty much.
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seawolf17
Sep 02 2008 07:02 PM
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Jerry Reed's oeuvre isn't complete without this:
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/yWG_R6SjUNY&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/yWG_R6SjUNY&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>
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themetfairy
Sep 03 2008 07:57 PM
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[url=http://www.eonline.com/uberblog/b27216_animator_of_peanuts_pinocchio_porky.html?sid=rss_topstories&utm_source=eonline&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=rss_topstories:1itjsevw]RIP Bill Melendez[/url:1itjsevw]
Animator of Disney and Peanuts classics, and the voice of Snoopy's howls.
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AG/DC
Sep 04 2008 07:17 AM
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POOR PERVIS! NOT AGAIN!
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MFS62
Sep 05 2008 04:07 PM
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="AG/DC":2tqiql9f]POOR PERVIS! NOT AGAIN![/quote:2tqiql9f]
Yeah, I know, RMPL.
Oops.
Later
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AG/DC
Sep 05 2008 04:42 PM
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Actually, I think this thread needs more commentary and less body-counting, if you know what I mean. Then we won't double post. It's become too passive. I don't doubt that my posts are no exception.
Eulogize. Tell me what the deceased means to you. How did reading of the passing make you feel? As always, tell me how I should mark the passing in a meaningful and memorable way.
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OlerudOwned
Sep 14 2008 10:46 AM
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David Foster Wallace. Hanged himself.
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AG/DC
Sep 14 2008 04:33 PM
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That's absolutely awful. He has a kid and wife (who apparently discovered him).
What tears me apart is that Charlene saw it coming. Reading his last book, you could sense how lost he'd gotten in his bitterness. She had to shut it (and she almost never leaves a book unfinished) and return it, in order to get it out of the house.
It's like with John Kennedy O'Toole and Kurt Cobain, it's jut an injustice because they were celebrated for exhibiting the psychic pain that was killing him, which I felt made their fans complicit in a small way.
At least, I feel that way about me, as a fan of Wallace. Six and a half years ago, I told you that.
http://p094.ezboard.com/Book-Recommenda ... =767.topic
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OlerudOwned
Sep 14 2008 11:41 PM
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http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jqMg ... gD936RU480
| ]Wallace was far better known to his peers than to the general public, but news of his death led to a quick jump in sales for his books. As of Sunday night, "Infinite Jest" was in the top 20 on Amazon.com and "Consider the Lobster" was in the top 75. Several of his books were out of stock. |
Mostly in the same boat as myself, I'd assume. Read bits an pieces, but never one of his full works. Oh, I'll get to it later. I've got no reason to rush.
It's a morbid sort of impetus, isn't it?
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metirish
Sep 15 2008 10:05 AM
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Pink Floyd founder member Richard Wright dies, aged 65
Richard Wright, a founder member of Pink Floyd, died today at the age of 65 after battling cancer, his spokesman said.
Wright played the keyboard with the legendary band and wrote music in classic albums like the Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here.
His spokesman said: “The family of Richard Wright, founder member of Pink Floyd, announce with great sadness, that Richard died today after a short struggle with cancer.
“The family have asked that their privacy is respected at this difficult time.”
© 2008 irishtimes.com
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sharpie
Sep 15 2008 12:39 PM
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Sorry to hear about Rick Wright. His influence faded as the band went on but was important in the early days of the group. Played some nice piano. If I remember correctly he and Nick Mason (the drummer) were put on salary at one point as the clashing egos of David Gilmour and Roger Waters demanded that the "lesser" members no longer merited equal shares of the increasingly larger pie. Wright later made up with Gilmour and Mason made up with Waters.
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Gwreck
Sep 15 2008 12:59 PM
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My recollection of the story was that Wright was actually fired from the band after they finished "The Wall" but then was re-hired to perform on the road.
Wright was touring on Gilmour's latest solo tour, within the past year or two, I believe.
I never got the chance to see them when the last toured in '94 but always figured that they'd get back together for a reunion sometime in the future.
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Valadius
Sep 15 2008 01:39 PM
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From what I've read, he was fired as a member of the actual band and made simply a session musician.
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sharpie
Sep 15 2008 01:58 PM
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Yes, he and Mason were fired and made session musicians so that they wouldn't share in the overall pool. It was all about the Benjamins.
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HahnSolo
Sep 24 2008 08:05 AM
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Dick Lynch, longtime Giants broadcaster and one-time defensive back for the team. He was 72.
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TheOldMole
Sep 26 2008 08:32 AM
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Nappy Brown, a vastly underappreciated R&B great who brought his own brand of scat singing to rhythm and blues (he once said he developed it from listening to foreign language radio stations).
[url]<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/N2Z6YNLqKpk&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/N2Z6YNLqKpk&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>[/url]
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OlerudOwned
Oct 13 2008 06:29 PM
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The Rangers top prospect, 19-year old Alexei Cherepanov, collapsed during a game in Russia. He went into cardiac arrest and passed away.
Because it was near the end of the game, it appears that the ambulance stationed at the rink had already left, and had to come back and get him. On top of that, the defibrillator wasn't working, and the arena didn't have one of its own.
It's a blindsiding tragedy, and one that may have been preventable if the Russian league had better safety requirements for situations like this. Last season, a Detroit Red Wings player had a heart attack on the bench and was saved by the defibrillator they kept nearby.
One of the saddest parts of this very sad story is that right with Cherry when all this went down was his mentor and friend Jaromir Jagr, pleading for him to wake up. Ugh.
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batmagadanleadoff
Oct 16 2008 01:22 PM
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[url=http://splashpage.mtv.com/2008/10/15/tvs-batman-theme-song-composer-neal-hefti-rip/]TV's Batman Theme Song Composer, R.I.P.[/url]
Sad news out of Hollywood today, as acclaimed composer, arranger and jazz trumpeter, Neal Hefti, passed away on Saturday from “undetermined causes.” He was 85-years-old.
While Hefti’s work could be heard on such classic television shows as “The Odd Couple” and films including “Barefoot in the Park,” comic fans know him best as the composer behind the iconic theme to the ’60s “Batman” TV series, for which he won a Grammy Award.
The New York Times has an extensive story up, chronicling Hefti’s career, which notes that, in addition to his film and television work, Hefti also worked with such notable talent as Frank Sinatra, Doris Day, Mel Tormé and Tony Bennett.
In a telephone interview with his son, Paul, he recalls the evolution of the classic theme song to “Batman.”
“He told me he tore up more paper on ‘Batman’ than on any other work he ever did,” Paul Hefti said in the Times piece. “He had to find something that worked with the lowest common denominator, so it would appeal to kids, yet wouldn’t sound stupid. What he came up with was a 12-bar blues with a guitar hook and one word.”
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AG/DC
Oct 17 2008 03:02 PM
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And the wonderful voice of Levi Stubbs passes on.
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Cool fact I learned while reading fiction: As other soul groups got older and changed lineups until they were unrecognizeable, The Four Tops stayed active and intact with the same dudes. Why? They all went to the same temple and saw each other every Saturday.
Here's Billy Bragg singing about Levi.
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Frayed Knot
Oct 17 2008 03:18 PM
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The Four Tops definitely didn't produce as much internal drama as their Motown contemporaries The Temptations
Levi was also the voice of Audrey the plant in the Vincent Gardenia/Rick Moranis movie version of 'Little Shop of Horrors'.
FEED ME SEYMOUR
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G-Fafif
Oct 18 2008 08:39 PM
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Saw the Four Tops shortly after they had become simply the Tops after the death of Lawrence Payton. Stubbs was loaded with charisma and the voice had lost nothing. Their Motown run gets the attention it deserves but I really loved what they did on the Dunhill/ABC label in the '70s. I'll throw in "When She Was My Girl" on Casablanca from 1981 as one of the last great soul records of its time.
"Ain't No Woman (Like The One I've Got)" came in at No. 427 on the [url=http://faithandfear.blogharbor.com/blog/_archives/2006/12/31/2608790.html:1ft9svvg]Top 500[/url:1ft9svvg], while "Keeper Of The Castle," an incredible "message" song landed all the way up at No. 107. "Are You Man Enough?" from Shaft was also a favorite. If so moved, check out a cover they did of Stephen Bishop's "Save It For A Rainy Day" to hear a late example of how AC could become R&B. Not that many groups had two distinct phases to their careers that were both so prolific and so profound.
Mr. Stubbs will be missed.
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MFS62
Oct 19 2008 08:11 AM
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It seems like a lot of the members of those groups we loved have been passing away recently. When I notice that something has been added to this thread, it seems to be the same old song.
Later
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Frayed Knot
Oct 19 2008 08:04 PM
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Was listening to a DJ this morning do about a 10-song tribute to Levi and the Tops.
Included in the set were 4T cover versions of the Neil Diamond/Monkees 'And I Saw Her Face' (great!) and Jimmy Webb's infamous 'McArthur Park' (horribly overproduced - even by M.P. standards).
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G-Fafif
Oct 20 2008 05:49 AM
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Four Tops' covers of "Last Train to Clarksville" and "Walk Away Renee" are indeed sublime.
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AG/DC
Oct 20 2008 06:25 AM
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When I was a kid and liked a song, I made it a point to know all the lyrics. Sort of like I did with Mets batting averages.
I have no idea what the verses are to "Walk Away, Renee," though. The refrain is just that sublime. The instrumental bridge also. Who cares what the verses say? It's like it's just a vehicle for soaring voices in cool chord arrangements.
Geekiest record guy on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZ2c-h2rOS4
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Frayed Knot
Oct 20 2008 07:08 AM
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| ="G-Fafif"]Four Tops' covers of "Last Train to Clarksville" and "Walk Away Renee" are indeed sublime. |
I knew a 4T cover of 'Walk Away Renee' existed though have never heard it. I was even tempted to give the DJ a call to see if he had it but thought about it too late.
I have no idea who the orignial 'Left Banke' were although I once learned that the street references in the first verse were about a specific neighborhood in Brooklyn. And while the lyrics are nothing special (repeat the chorus often enough?) it's a great song for real crooners. Southside Johnny had a terrific cover version.
And when I see the sign that
points one way
The light we used to pass by every day
(Chorus):
Just walk away Renee,
You won't see me follow you back home
The empty sidewalks on my block are not the same
You're not to blame
From deep inside the tears that
I'm forced to cry
From deep inside the pain I chose to hide
(Chorus)
Now as the rain beats down
upon my weary eyes
For me it cries
(Chorus)
Your name and mine inside
a heart upon a wall
Still finds a way to haunt me,
though they're so small
(Chorus)
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AG/DC
Oct 20 2008 07:24 AM
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="Frayed Knot":1mdqicbr]I have no idea who the orignial 'Left Banke' were... .[/quote:1mdqicbr]
Wow, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Left_Banke" target="_blank">soap opera</a>.
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Fman99
Oct 20 2008 08:26 AM
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Smarmy he-bitch and fashion critic [url=http://www.cnn.com/2008/SHOWBIZ/10/20/blackwell.death.ap/index.html]Richard "Mr." Blackwell[/url] dead at age 86.
Hopefully someone dresses him in taffeta and offensive mismatched colors on his way to the everafter, forever condemning him to the "worst dressed corpses" list along with the skeletons from the swimming pool in Poltergeist and the star of Weekend at Bernie's.
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AG/DC
Oct 20 2008 08:28 AM
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Ouch, somebody peed in her latte this morning.
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Frayed Knot
Oct 20 2008 10:54 AM
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Johnny Carson used to claim that Blackwell's worst dressed list was unfair since it was the only day of the year he looked at women.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Oct 22 2008 10:10 AM
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Dezceazed.
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A Boy Named Seo
Oct 22 2008 10:33 AM
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My college roommate used to drink the shit out of that. And he was a dude.
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Rockin' Doc
Oct 22 2008 10:35 AM
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Zima had a far longer life than it deserved by my taste. That stuff was wretched.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Oct 31 2008 10:37 AM
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WWWF jobber "Special Delivery" Jones, 63.
I always wondered about that depression in his back, whether it was a gunshot wound or what.
| ]WRESTLING: S.D. Jones made most of losing
By Alex Marvez, Scripps Howard News Service
He was "special" for more than his nickname.
S.D. "Special Delivery" Jones, one of the more memorable World Wrestling Entertainment performers during the 1970s and 1980s, died Sunday following complications from a stroke. Jones, whose real name was Conrad Efrain, was 63.
During a 22-year grappling career, Jones enjoyed only three title reigns for regional promotions. Even though he never wore gold in WWE, Jones will be remembered as a champion at making others look good.
Jones was the quintessential loser, a role referred to within the industry as a "jobber," "jabroni" or the more politically correct "enhancement talent."
To place his gig in perspective, Jones wrestled during an era in which a promoter's main focus was drawing fans to live events. Feuding wrestlers barely met on television, with the medium used primarily to hype upcoming arena bouts.
That's where grapplers like Jones worked their magic. A heel wrestler would be given a run for his money before ultimately defeating Jones, who remained a fan favorite despite loss after loss.
Jones was so good at being bad that he was part of two story lines at WWE's inaugural Wrestlemania show in 1985. Jones was Andre the Giant's tag-team partner in a televised bout when the latter had his hair cut by "Big" John Studd. That led to an Andre vs. Studd 'Mania grudge match.
Jones was then squashed in nine seconds at 'Mania by King Kong Bundy, another behemoth the WWE was pushing for headline matches against Andre and Hulk Hogan.
During a 2004 interview, Jones told the Slam! Wrestling Web site that he originally balked at being dispatched so easily in such a high-profile match but WWE owner Vince McMahon changed his mind with a "big, big, big, big payday."
"I knew there was no way I was going to get to that main championship," Jones said. "I was comfortable because I knew what (the promoters) wanted. . . . You're making a living, and you just keep on going."
As WWE and World Championship Wrestling battled for viewers and pay-per-view orders during the mid-1990s, more competitive matches with big-name talent were presented on television. That helped eliminate the kind of slots Jones filled before his retirement in the late 1980s.
Here's a quick look back at some other notable "jobbers":
* Sean Waltman: Long before finding stardom as X-Pac, Waltman was a scrawny television loser on WWE telecasts. Waltman's big break came when he scored a stunning upset over Scott "Razor Ramon" Hall on an early episode of Monday Night Raw in 1993.
* Steve Lombardi: No WWE performer has ever lost as many matches under so many different monikers. In the 1980s and 1990s, Lombardi worked under such names as the Brooklyn Brawler, Abe "Knuckleball" Schwartz and MVP (Most Violent Player, a precursor to the MVP gimmick currently used by Hassan Hamin Assad).
* Barry Horowitz: Known for patting himself on the back in exaggerated fashion before his matches, Horowitz forged a lengthy career. Wrestling in the mid-1980s as "Winless" Jack Hart, he dropped 131 consecutive matches before scoring his first victory. |
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A Boy Named Seo
Oct 31 2008 12:11 PM
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I remember SD Jones, Steve Lombardi, and Barry Horowitz, too, I think. Horowitz isn't the same as Barry O., is he? I used to call those guys beat-upees when I was a kid.
I want Piazzafan411's take on the career of SD Jones NOW!!!!
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seawolf17
Oct 31 2008 12:38 PM
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Barry Horowitz! I saw him live at Nassau Coliseum many, many years ago. Excellent.
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Oct 31 2008 12:57 PM
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I think he also went as Barry Hart.
The ultimate jobber was Frankie Williams who got insulted, then beaten up, by Rowdy Roddy Piper.
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Edgy DC
Oct 31 2008 01:02 PM
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Yeah, but, you're still wearing a skirt, you dork.
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metsguyinmichigan
Oct 31 2008 03:21 PM
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Studs Terkel died this afternoon, AP reports.
I enjoyed his apppearances in the Ken Burns Baseball specials.
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sharpie
Oct 31 2008 03:48 PM
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Long time Chicago liberal, I'm sure he would have been looking forward to Tuesday.
Played a sportscaster in "8 Men Out." Was a funny, folksy writer. Dies at 96, had a good long life.
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Benjamin Grimm
Nov 05 2008 07:40 AM
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="Mendoza Line":g8dh0684]
If Obama wins tomorrow and if she had survived one more day, he would have become the first president-elect with a living grandparent.[/quote:g8dh0684]
I was thinking the same thing, but last night I believe I heard that his paternal grandmother is still alive and living in Kenya.
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Gwreck
Nov 05 2008 12:02 PM
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In addition to the books and movies made from books, Crichton wrote the pilot for the TV show "ER."
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metirish
Nov 05 2008 12:09 PM
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How do you pronounce his name......Crikton or CryTon...
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sharpie
Nov 05 2008 12:28 PM
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CryTon
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metirish
Nov 05 2008 12:41 PM
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="sharpie":fuv5dm9x]CryTon[/quote:fuv5dm9x]
Thank you , that's the way I say it. I just heard Crikton on an Irish radio station and I went WTF .
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Vic Sage
Nov 05 2008 02:05 PM
Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Nov 05 2008 02:07 PM
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Michael Chrichton: scientist, artist, businessman... a true renaissance man, and a 1-man industry.
Movies:
The Andromeda Strain (1971) - based on his novel
Dealing: Or the Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues (1972) - based on his novel (as Michael Douglas")
The Carey Treatment (1972) - based on his novel "A Case of Need" (as "Jeffery Hudson")
Extreme Close-Up (1973) - writer
Westworld (1973) - writer/ director
The Terminal Man (1974) - based on his novel
Coma (1978) - screenwriter / director
The First Great Train Robbery (1979) - writer/director / based on his novel
Looker (1981) - writer/ director
Runaway (1984) - writer/ director
Physical Evidence (1989) - director
Jurassic Park (1993) - writer / based on his novel
Rising Sun (1993) - writer / based on his novel
Disclosure (1994) - producer / based on his novel
Congo (1995) - writer / based on his novel
Twister (1996) -writer/producer
The Lost World: Jurassic Park II (1997) - based on his novel
Sphere (1998) - producer / based on his novel
The 13th Warrior (1999) - producer / based on his novel "Eaters of the Dead"
Jurassic Park III (2001) - based on his characters
Timeline (2003) - based on his novel
announced:
Westworld (2009) - remake based on his screenplay
Jurassic Park IV (2010) - sequel based on his characters
TV:
"Insight" (1 TV episode, 1972) - writer
"Pursuit" (1972) (TV) - director / based on his novel "Binary" (as John Lange)
"Beyond Westworld" (5 TV episodes, 1980) - writer
"ER" (307 TV episodes, 1994-2008) - creator / executive producer
"The Andromeda Strain" (2008) (TV) - remake based on his novel
other novels:
Next - 2006
State of Fear - 2004
Prey - 2003
Airframe - 1996
The Last Tomb - 1974 (as John Lange)
Grave Descend - 1970 (as John Lange)
Drug of Choice - 1970 (as John Lange)
Zero Cool - 1969 (as John Lange)
The Venom Business - 1969 (as John Lange)
Scratch One - 1967 (as John Lange)
Odds On - 1966 (as John Lange)
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seawolf17
Nov 05 2008 02:06 PM
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Wow! Stunning. One of the first authors I ever really became obsessed with.
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Willets Point
Nov 10 2008 05:28 PM
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<a href="http://gizmodo.com/5082385/this-is-my-farewell-transmission-from-mars">Mars Phoenix</a>.
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metirish
Nov 13 2008 06:58 AM
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Hendrix drummer Mitch Mitchell found dead in New York
Drummer Mitch Mitchell, the last surviving member of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, has died.
The 61-year-old former member of the influential rock trio was found dead in a US hotel room yesterday.
Authorities said he died from natural causes.
John 'Mitch' Mitchell, from Ealing in west London, secured his place in rock and rock history after joining legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix and bass player Noel Redding in 1966.
The Jimi Hendrix Experience, which was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in 1992, recorded several classic albums including Are You Experienced?, Electric Ladyland and Axis: Bold As Love .
Hendrix dissolved the Experience in 1969, but Mitchell continued to play with him before his death aged 27 in 1970. They performed together at the Woodstock festival in the US.
Redding, who lived for much of his life in west Cork, died in 2003 aged 57.
Mitchell was known for his explosive drumming technique. Just before his death he had been drumming for the Experience Hendrix Tour. It performed last Friday in Portland, Oregon, on the last stop on the West Coast part of the tour.
Mitchell also played with a host of other rock legends including Eric Clapton, John Lennon, the Rolling Stones, Jack Bruce, Jeff Beck and Muddy Waters.
Hendrix’s stepsister Janie Hendrix said of Mitchell: “He was a wonderful man, a brilliant musician and a true friend.
“His role in shaping the sound of the Jimi Hendrix Experience cannot be underestimated.”
© 2008 irishtimes.com
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Benjamin Grimm
Nov 13 2008 07:05 AM
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And yet Mitch Miller, 97, is a person who is still alive.
From Wikipedia:
| ]Miller, now 97, currently resides in New York City and continues to be a guest-conductor for many renowned orchestras. |
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Edgy DC
Nov 13 2008 07:11 AM
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Mitch was the fourth member of the Dirty Mac, John Lennon's supergroup from the ill-fated TV special, <i>The Rolling Stones Rock 'n' Roll Circus</i>:
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Opens with a tedious inteview in which Lennon's abusdist humor is delivered with a lame sloppiness, likely because he's as high as a kite, and ends with the band backing a Yoko performance that is what it is. It's a museum piece in between though.
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sharpie
Nov 13 2008 07:12 AM
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So now the entire Jimi Hendrix Experience is dead. I can't think of another group from the rock era of their fame who are completely outta here. The Ramones' drummers have managed to hang on.
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Edgy DC
Nov 13 2008 07:17 AM
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Oops, the clip I included cut out the Yoko bit. Pity that.
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Edgy DC
Nov 13 2008 07:29 AM
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Otis Williams is the only living original Temptation, I think, but no, I can't think of any other rock-era group fully re-united in the hereafter.
I guess Lynrd Skynrd is pretty close to re-united, but it's hard to tell because the band had picked up so much kharma by the time of the plane crash, it's hard to tell who was in the actual band, and who were just in the peripheral lineup.
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metirish
Nov 14 2008 07:03 PM
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Margaret Mary Ward RIP
| ]A GALWAY-BORN grandmother has been buried in England - and all 172 of her grandchildren were there to pay their respects.
Margaret Mary Ward (87), known as Maggie, emigrated from Ireland to Salford in 1963.
She became, with her late husband Charles, the head of what has been described as one of the largest families to live in Britain.
The couple had 15 children, 172 grandchildren, 36 great grandchildren and 18 great-great grandchildren. All 12 surviving children - Joan, Patrick, Martin, Margaret, Mary, Catherine, Charlie, Bernard, Bridget, Helen, Anne and Lawrence - were at the service on Wednesday.
Her funeral was the first time that all 172 grandchildren had got together. They each released a balloon at the ceremony.
Ms Ward's daughter Anne Hudson told how her mother never forgot a birthday.
She said: "Mum was fantastic in every way. She was so devoted - she was there for everyone. Whenever you were in trouble you knew you could go to Mum. She would never forget a birthday and got everyone a present at Christmas. She bought presents all year round - she would go to markets to get gifts so she could afford something for everyone."
More than 400 people attended St Sebastian's Church in Salford for the service, with many travelling from Manchester, Birmingham and Ireland. Among the mourners was pop star Shayne Ward, a distant relative.
Ms Ward's hearse, draped in the Tricolour, was pulled by two grey horses. Funeral readings were given by eldest grandchild, Margaret Furey (51), and youngest, Laura Ward (11).
© 2008 The Irish Times
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MFS62
Nov 15 2008 07:53 AM
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Was she the model for the huge family in Monty Python's The Meaning of Life?
Wow! What a blessing.
But iIts one thing to remember what the names are, and even to remember birthdays. But how do you remember everyone's size when buying presents?
Later
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HahnSolo
Nov 15 2008 11:38 AM
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So she had 15 kids and 172 grandkids. Talk about chips off the old block. The 15 kids averaged more than 11 of their own kids amongst them.
What was her Christmas budget like?
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John Cougar Lunchbucket
Dec 02 2008 09:14 AM
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Ted Rogers, Canadian media mogul whose eponynmous company owns the Blue Jays.
Last time I was in Toronto I noticed my hotel cable was provided by Rogers Cable, my cellphone signal was Rogers Wireless and I watched Rogers' baseball team at the Rogers Centre.
I think he left his fortune to Steve J. Rogers, which he will use to buy the Yankees.
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Valadius
Dec 02 2008 12:13 PM
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="John Cougar Lunchbucket":2fd83ub5]I think he left his fortune to Steve J. Rogers, which he will use to buy the Yankees.[/quote:2fd83ub5]
Comment of the year.
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Frayed Knot
Dec 04 2008 02:51 PM
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[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odetta:u0zjcv1p]Odetta - 77[/url:u0zjcv1p]
Saw her very up close and personal do a song or two a bunch of years ago at the old (downtown) Lone Star Cafe as part of a larger all-pupose folkie type show. Very dynamic performer both in voice and on guitar (I remember her busting a guitar string or two mid-song.
Would have been a natural fit for part of the entertainment surrounding Obama's inaugaration.
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TransMonk
Dec 04 2008 03:17 PM
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RIP - A truly unique American voice.
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smg58
Dec 04 2008 03:32 PM
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[url:1t4whrqv]http://video.aol.com/video-detail/oand39donoghueand39s-opera/2686881369[/url:1t4whrqv]
Rewinding this thread a couple of months, fans of Ronnie Drew and The Dubliners might get a kick out of this short, unfinished film from the mid 60's called O'Donohues Opera.
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themetfairy
Dec 06 2008 03:02 PM
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[url=http://www.miamiherald.com/news/weird-news/story/802124.html:fptd5n2g]Sunny Von Bulow[/url:fptd5n2g].
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Valadius
Dec 06 2008 09:24 PM
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I had no clue who she was until my mother filled me in.
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Valadius
Dec 07 2008 02:44 PM
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[url=http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/obituaries/articles/2008/12/04/paul_benedict_70_actor_at_home_in_tv_sitcoms_modern_and_classical_dramas/:381h4svj]Paul Benedict, Mr. Bentley on "The Jeffersons", 70.[/url:381h4svj]
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cooby
Dec 07 2008 06:56 PM
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I could have sworn he....oh never mind.
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TheOldMole
Dec 12 2008 07:03 AM
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Edgy DC
Dec 12 2008 07:08 AM
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And so the pretty thread and the dead thread merge.
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TheOldMole
Dec 12 2008 07:43 AM
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She's pretty dead.
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Edgy DC
Dec 12 2008 07:51 AM
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But dead pretty.
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metsguyinmichigan
Dec 12 2008 12:11 PM
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As is Van Johnson, a 1940s hearthtrob, and a believe one of the lamer guest villians on Batman.
Archer, I think?
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Edgy DC
Dec 12 2008 12:17 PM
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No, the Archer was Art Carney, and I thought he was pretty cool, speaking mock Shakespearean English with a Brooklyn accent.
"I'll deal with youse anon!"
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metsguyinmichigan
Dec 12 2008 12:29 PM
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| ="Edgy DC"]No, the Archer was Art Carney, and I thought he was pretty cool, speaking mock Shakespearean English with a Brooklyn accent.
"I'll deal with youse anon!" |
You're right. Johnson was "Minstrel"
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Vic Sage
Dec 12 2008 02:11 PM
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[The Minstrel, singing to the tune of "Rock-a-bye Baby"]:
Batman and Robin rotate and revolve
As the heat grows, your bodies dissolve
When it's still hotter, then you will melt
Nothing left but your utility belt.
I have a vivid childhood memoryn of watching Van Johnson in an old tv movie adaptation of THE PIED PIPER, with music by Grieg (mostly from "Peer Gynt", i think). The music haunted me for years.
Johnson was usually the best friend of the protagonist, generally a good-natured horn dog. I always liked him. He was a genial presence.
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Frayed Knot
Dec 13 2008 06:24 AM
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Most notably as Steven Merrick in 'The Caine Mutiny'
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dgwphotography
Dec 13 2008 06:44 AM
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The Caine Mutiny, of course, and I remember him in this:
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Valadius
Dec 17 2008 08:10 PM
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[url=http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081218/ap_on_sp_fo_ne/fbn_obit_baugh:3i0muo72]Sammy Baugh[/url:3i0muo72], 94.
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Valadius
Dec 19 2008 12:03 AM
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[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/19/AR2008121900056.html?hpid=topnews:1ri57qcz]W. Mark Felt, "Deep Throat", 95.[/url:1ri57qcz]
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metirish
Dec 19 2008 08:01 AM
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[url=http://www.independent.ie/national-news/passionate-politician-never-far-from-controversy-1580523.html:j27wkonh]Conor Cruise O'Brien[/url:j27wkonh]
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Edgy DC
Dec 19 2008 08:12 AM
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At times, referred to as the most hated man in Ireland.
Never did anybody any real harm, just was the sort of uncompromising politican and journalist that doesn't keep a lot of friends.
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metirish
Dec 19 2008 08:19 AM
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certainly he was a complicated man, joined the Unionists in the 90's and after that I stopped reading his columns. To me he came across as a propaganda piece for them.
But of course he was much more than that in his life.
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Willets Point
Dec 19 2008 08:19 AM
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Read a book by O'Brien about 10 years ago. Didn't realize he was involved in so many other things.
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Willets Point
Dec 19 2008 08:23 AM
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<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5je7I8T2di7PvaK8GamP14iZzuqhgD955BPH81">Majel Barret</a>, 76. Star of all things <i>Star Trek</i>.
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Fman99
Dec 19 2008 08:05 PM
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="Willets Point":3mh5ntj6]<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5je7I8T2di7PvaK8GamP14iZzuqhgD955BPH81">Majel Barret</a>, 76. Star of all things <i>Star Trek</i>.
[/quote:3mh5ntj6]
I enjoyed her work as the voice of the computer. Sad.
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Farmer Ted
Dec 25 2008 03:29 PM
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Ertha Kitt
NEW YORK (AP) - A family friend says Eartha Kitt, a sultry singer, dancer and actress who rose from South Carolina cotton fields to become an international symbol of elegance and sensuality, has died. She was 81.
Andrew Freedman says Kitt died Thursday of colon cancer and was recently treated at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York.
Kitt, a self-proclaimed "sex kitten" famous for her catlike purr, was one of America's most versatile performers, winning two Emmys and getting a third nomination. She also was nominated for two Tony Awards and a Grammy.
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Edgy DC
Dec 25 2008 06:16 PM
Edited 1 time(s), most recently on Dec 25 2008 06:21 PM
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They were afraid to put Elvis on TV in the fifties?
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metsguyinmichigan
Dec 25 2008 06:19 PM
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Bad month for Batman villains!
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Frayed Knot
Dec 31 2008 08:15 AM
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Delaney Bramlett - 69.
Noted session guitarist who paired with singer/wife Bonnie to form 'Delaney & Bonnie & Friends'. They put out a few albums on their own but were mainly known as a backup outfit - most notably on Clapton's 'Layla' album.
"For a couple year span", I remember a DJ saying, "having Delaney & Bonnie play on your album was the coolest thing going".
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TheOldMole
Jan 02 2009 03:59 PM
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