The Crane Pool Forum

From the AP in Yahoo (couldn't find the original on the AP website)

Capt. John J Sax, son of ex-Major Leaguer Steve Sax was among the 5 GIs killed in the crash of an Army Osprey plane this week.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/son-former-l ... 58200.html

RIP

Later

Wow

Philip Baker Hall, character actor supreme (Bookman the library cop on Seinfeld most notably), 90.

https://apnews.com/article/entertainmen ... 8756ce7be6

During the scene where Bookman is giving Jerry a verbal barrage, Jerry (the actor) is clearly on the verge of cracking up at several points. Hall, on the other hand, never breaks character nor misses a beat the whole time.

I just saw Hall starring in "Hard Eight" on cable just two or three days ago. Never saw this movie before. It was the movie Paul Thomas Anderson directed just a year after and immediately following his breakout hit - "Boogie Nights". Many of the "Boogie" actors also appeared in "Hard Eight", including John C. Reilly, who I''m beginning to notice, is like in every single movie I might be interested in watching. What does he -- make like a feature movie every other month?

Anyways, Hall was a really solid character actor.

Also bid farewell to Julee Cruise, the eerie songstress who gave eerie tv program Twin Peaks much of it's eeriness. She later joined B-52's on the road while Cindy Wilson took time off to start a family.

Hall brought real emotion to his role as Walt, the crotchety neighbor who young Luke befriends on Modern Family, a show that avoided real emotion, all while being funny as hell.

Joel Whitburn, who knew Billboard better than anyone ever, 82.

After founding the Record Research Inc. company in 1970, Whitburn became one of the leading authors of reference books on the Billboard charts, releasing over 100 total entries of series like Top Pop Singles, Top 40 Hits, Top 40 Albums and Top 40 Country Hits. Particularly in the time before the internet made archival chart information widely available, his books proved invaluable in providing the whole industry with reliable chart stats and records, becoming fixtures on the bookshelves for DJs, execs, writers and artists alike. (His accurate reporting also made it more difficult for publicists and labels to credibly fudge the chart achievements of their artists, a notoriously common practice in the early ’70s.)

https://www.billboard.com/music/chart-b ... 235087319/

Mark Shields, solid-as-hell political show staple from the center-left before those sorts of programs became unwatchable, 85.

Yeah, he and David Brooks did great tag-team work in later years, wondering out loud if their gig opened the door for all the worst things.

Len Rosenbluth - 89 basketball player
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=43 ... &ref=notif

Won the MVP of the NCAA tournament over Wilt Chamberlain.
Went to James Monroe High School, the same as our Ed Kranepool.

Later

Tony Siragusa, Baltimore Raven and sideline reporter, 55.

https://www.profootballrumors.com/2022/ ... agusa-dies

The Ravens also lost a 26-year-old linebacker — Jaylon Ferguson. No cause of death yet reported.

Football is not a safe place to be or a safe thing to do.

Was Ray Lewis there?
Later

Marlin Briscoe - First African-American to start an AFL game at quarterback. 76

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlin_Br ... dTzotZ32ng
RIP
Later

James Caan, 82.

https://nypost.com/2022/07/07/james-caa ... ead-at-82/

He wasn't at a toll booth when it happened, was he?

My favorite Caan line, from Eraser:

“You know, some people take things for granted, like the ability to chew solid food.”

Olavai Shalom.

Later

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, assassinated.

Longest serving pm in the country's history

Hey, listen, I want somebody good - and I mean very good - to plant
that gun. I don't want my brother coming out of that toilet with just his
dick in his hands, alright?

Or, as the dubbed for TV version had it, "with just a stick in his hand".

Moving that movie to TV caused a minor kerfuffle at the time as the movie rating code was only a few years old then [1966 I believe, whereas the movie came
out in '72] so the idea that an 'R' rated movie would become an almost instant classic was new. So what to do? Unlike GOODFELLOWS 20-some years later,
THE GODFATHER had very little language issues to deal with (but apparently "dick" was deemed enough of one), so the debate was about cutting the sex
(wedding scene) or the violence (tame-ish by today's standards but more novel then). And then there was the whole Italian thing. Italian-American groups
raised enough of a protest, arguing that putting it on TV would roil up anti-Italian sentiment*, that the network (ABC I think) ran a lawyerly-worded disclaimer
at the beginning claiming no disrespect to anyone while going out of their way to not mention who might possibly be offended by its running. Sort of reminiscent
of when Jeremy Giambi apologized during his steroids controversy while never actually saying what he was apologizing for, just that he was sorry for ... something.

So "his dick" got changed into "a stick", the Sonny & bridesmaid scene was shortened (just the panting at the end IIRC), and ABC asked some non-specific
group of people who had made great contributions to the United States not to stay mad at them for running the recent Oscar winner.
And within a few years cable TV had taken over so this sort of controversy wound up existing only in that narrow window of time.






* Mario Cuomo famously refused to even watch the movie (at theaters or on TV) for many years, finally relenting decades later and declaring it "maybe a classic".

Larry Storch, Corporal Agarn on F Troop[/], 99, per his Facebook page.

Some '60's shows didn't age well. F Troop was one of them.

They don't get much sillier, and there were a lot of silly shows back then.