lou rawls

On 2006-01-06 08:49, alohabros wrote:
lou rawls

sux :(

I saw Lou Rawls in the mid-90s at the Solano County Fair. He was the consummate entertainer and a super classy act. And what a voice! I always wanted to see him at the Nugget in Sparks (he sells out every year there) but I never got around to it. Damn!

January 06,2006 | LOS ANGELES -- Grammy Award-winning singer Lou Rawls has died of lung cancer in Los Angeles. He was 72.

The velvet-voiced singer started as a church choir boy and went on to sell more than 40 million albums. He won three Grammy Awards in a career that spanned nearly five decades and a range of genres.

Rawls died this morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was hospitalized last month.

... saw lou rawls at lax baggage claim years ago... there were also a bunch of hot disco chicks with poofie hair getting into a limo... boobs and stuff fully hangin' out and totally mackin' on each other... sidetracked would be an understatement...

... chicks rule...

Wilson Picket R.I.P.

http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1521238/20060119/index.jhtml?headlines=true

Dr. Stanley Biber, 82; World Renowned Sex-Change Surgeon
By Dennis McLellan
Times Staff Writer

January 22, 2006

As a physician and general surgeon in the remote southern Colorado town of Trinidad, Dr. Stanley Biber treated the usual sore throats and broken arms and did his share of delivering babies, removing appendixes and replacing hips and knees.

But that's not what made Biber the most famous resident of Trinidad and put the former coal-mining town in the eastern foothills of the Rocky Mountains on the map.

Biber, who died of complications of pneumonia in a Pueblo hospital Monday at age 82, was known for turning tiny Trinidad into the "Sex-Change Capital of the World."

By Biber's count, he performed sex changes on 5,000 men and 800 women over the last three decades. At one point, he could boast of doing 60% of the world's sex-change operations.

"He did it for 35 years, so it's pretty hard to imagine eclipsing" his record, Dr. Marci Bowers, who took over Biber's sex-reassignment surgery practice in 2003, told The Times this week.

"He was a very huge presence for the local community here," Bowers said, "but he was an even larger presence for the transgender community."

Biber had said his sex-change patients included politicians, actors, models, police officers, judges, clergymen, teachers, a 245-pound linebacker, three Georgia brothers and an 84-year-old man "who wanted to die as a female."

Biber referred to them all as "my transsexuals."

A short, balding man given to wearing a Stetson hat, blue jeans and cowboy boots, Biber was proud of his reputation as "America's dean of sex-change surgeons."

But as he told the weekly newspaper Denver Westword in 1998, "I didn't just decide to do this. They came to me."

An Iowa native who moved to Trinidad in 1954 after serving as chief surgeon of a mobile army surgical hospital unit in Korea, Biber ran a general medical practice while serving as the town's only surgeon.

But Biber's professional life took a new direction in 1969 after a social-worker acquaintance dropped by his office. She had referred young clients with cleft palates to Biber and was impressed with his skill as a surgeon. The conversation, as Biber recounted in numerous interviews, went like this:

"Can you do my surgery?" the social worker asked.

"What kind of surgery?" Biber said.

"I'm a transsexual."

"What's that?" Biber said.

It turned out that the social worker was really a man who had been undergoing hormone treatments that soften skin, redistribute fat and cause breasts to develop in preparation for a sex-change operation.

"I wasn't very humble in those days," Biber told the Rocky Mountain News in 2004. "I was young. I told this girl, 'You know, I haven't done any, but there's no reason why I can't do this.' "

After seeking advice from Dr. Harry Benjamin, a pioneer in transsexual research, and examining hand-drawn diagrams sent to him from Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore that detailed the procedure for transforming a man's genitals into a woman's, Biber performed his first sex-change operation.

Although he later described the results as aesthetically unsatisfactory, he said his patient was pleased.

Over the years he refined the procedure and boasted in a 1995 Times interview that his work was so good that one former patient was married to a gynecologist who didn't suspect a thing.

Biber performed his sex-change operations at Trinidad's only hospital, Mount San Rafael, which was initially run by Catholic nuns.

"I hid the files from the first two or three cases in the administrator's office in the safe so nobody would know about it," he said in his Rocky Mountain News interview.

Aware that word would eventually get out, Biber gave the local Ministerial Alliance a series of three lectures about sex-change surgery and the psychological needs of the patients.

"That was the smartest thing I've ever done," he told Denver Westword. "Much to my amazement, there was no opposition. They were very understanding and accepting. All of a sudden, townspeople became very sophisticated and knew everything about transsexuals."

Not that everyone was supportive.

Biber said in the interview with The Times that he initially was ostracized by some doctors, who believed transsexuals were suffering from psychiatric problems best treated nonsurgically. It is now believed that gender dysphoria — discomfort with one's natal gender — has a biological basis, Bowers said.

Soon, patients from around the world were showing up at Biber's office in an old stone bank building in downtown Trinidad, a onetime stop on the old Santa Fe Trail with a population that's now about 9,000.

"He was pretty much the only place to go for quite some time," Bowers said. "In the early '70s, what happened is that while university gender dysphoria treatment programs were restricting access or getting out of the business altogether, Dr. Biber welcomed these patients.

"Dr. Biber looked at patients without judgment. He performed a safe and reliable surgery and, moreover, he believed in them. He understood what they were all about. He made it OK."

Over the years, Biber's reputation as a leading sex-change surgeon led to appearances on the Oprah Winfrey, Sally Jessy Raphael and Geraldo Rivera shows, as well as the Learning, Discovery and Playboy channels.

The prolific sex-change surgeon also was featured on the "Guinness World Records: Primetime" TV show.

Biber performed his last sex-change surgery in 2003, giving up his sex-change practice after his insurance carrier left the state and other prospective insurers placed him in a high-risk category that carried premiums of up to $300,000 a year, which he could not afford.

He figured the high premiums were because of his age.

"It's a shame," he told the Rocky Mountain News. "Intellectually, I'm sound. My hand is steady. This has been my life."

"It is indeed the end of an era with Dr. Biber retiring," Angela Gardner, executive director of the Pennsylvania-based Renaissance Transgender Assn., told Denver Westword at the time.

Trinidad officials marked the occasion by declaring Oct. 10 Stanley Biber Day.

Born in Des Moines, Biber attended a rabbinical seminary in Chicago after graduating from high school and worked as a civilian in Alaska for the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA, during World War II.

During the war, he decided to become a doctor instead of a rabbi and earned his medical degree from the University of Iowa in 1948. He ended his military service after the Korean War as head of the orthopedics department in what is now Ft. Carson in Colorado Springs. When he moved to Trinidad in 1954, he thought he'd work as a surgeon there for a year or so and move on. He never left.

Biber, who owned a large cattle ranch in the area, served as a Las Animas County commissioner from 1990 to 1996.

After finding an insurance company that would insure him as a general practitioner, he resumed practicing medicine in early 2004.

"He couldn't stay away," Bowers said.

Biber is survived by his wife, Mary Lee; seven children; seven stepchildren; and 22 grandchildren.

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Actor Chris Penn, brother of Sean Penn, was found dead Tuesday at a condominium near the beach in Santa Monica, police said.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/24/chris.penn.obit.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

R.I.P. Nice Guy Eddie

Anyone else catch this??

First:

Shelley Winters starred in 120 films

Shelley Winters, a brassy actress and raconteur who appeared in more than 120 films and twice won the Academy Award for supporting performances, died Saturday at a rehabilitation center in Beverly Hills, Calif. She had been hospitalized in October after suffering a heart attack. She was 85.

Winters won her Oscars for The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), as the sloppy and nervous Mrs. Van Daan, and for A Patch of Blue (1965), in which she was one of the true screen vultures, mercilessly abusing her blind daughter (played by Elizabeth Hartman).

Her last Oscar nomination was for The Poseidon Adventure (1972), the much-lampooned all-star drama about an overturned luxury liner. She played a former swimming champion who, despite her girth, tries to take others to safety.

Then a few days later...

Actor Anthony Franciosa, Shelley Winters' ex-husband, dies

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - Brooding American method actor Anthony Franciosa, who was once married to Oscar-winning screen star
Shelley Winters, has died, just five days after his famous ex-wife, his publicist said.

Franciosa, who was 77, died Thursday in a hospital in Los Angeles, where the double Academy Award winner Winters -- his wife from 1957 to 1960 -- passed away at the age of 85 last Saturday.

News reports said Franciosa, who starred in a string of television and big screen movies in a career spanning four decades, died of a massive stroke, but his publicist declined to confirm the cause of death.

"I can say only that you that Mr. Franciosa died yesterday (Thursday) just before 1:00pm (2100 GMT) at the UCLA Medical Center," publicist Dick Guttman told AFP.

"His funeral service is going to be held in a private ceremony, but it has not been determined yet," he added.

...Freaky, huh?

On 2006-01-24 21:31, johntiki wrote:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Actor Chris Penn, brother of Sean Penn, was found dead Tuesday at a condominium near the beach in Santa Monica, police said.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/24/chris.penn.obit.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

OK- get ready for the CREEPY part of the story! I haven't even told Mike this yet:

As you may have heard, he died a day before his new film was set to premiere at Sundance. That film is called The Darwin Awards, based on the popular website that tracks the fates of people who make stupid decisions.

There is a scene in that film with Chris Penn, and fellow stars Winona Ryder and Joseph Fiennes.

The scene is filmed in a bar.

That bar is located at... 1304 Lincoln Ave. Alameda, CA. This may ring a bell to some readers of this website....

That's right: Chris Penn filmed his last scene at the future home of FORBIDDEN ISLAND!!!!!!

NO SHIT!

Is this a bad omen? I'm not sure. But Metallica is also in this film, and they do like their tiki. I think we need a set of those bobbleheads...

Isn't that weird?

Coretta Scott King died last night at age 78. She was known as the wife of Dr Martin Luther King Jr. but was a very important woman in her own right.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/31/national/31cnd-coretta.html

On 2006-01-30 22:48, martiki wrote:

On 2006-01-24 21:31, johntiki wrote:
LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Actor Chris Penn, brother of Sean Penn, was found dead Tuesday at a condominium near the beach in Santa Monica, police said.

http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/01/24/chris.penn.obit.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

OK- get ready for the CREEPY part of the story! I haven't even told Mike this yet:

As you may have heard, he died a day before his new film was set to premiere at Sundance. That film is called The Darwin Awards, based on the popular website that tracks the fates of people who make stupid decisions.

There is a scene in that film with Chris Penn, and fellow stars Winona Ryder and Joseph Fiennes.

The scene is filmed in a bar.

That bar is located at... 1304 Lincoln Ave. Alameda, CA. This may ring a bell to some readers of this website....

That's right: Chris Penn filmed his last scene at the future home of FORBIDDEN ISLAND!!!!!!

NO SHIT!

Is this a bad omen? I'm not sure. But Metallica is also in this film, and they do like their tiki. I think we need a set of those bobbleheads...

Isn't that weird?

Really weird!

Furthermore, several TC members saw Sean Penn interviewed onstage at the SF Film Noir Festival the Saturday before Chris' death. The interviewer was Eddie Muller, who lives in ..... Alameda! Weird? I guess not.

Wendy Wasserstein -- prizewinning playwright

• Steven Winn, Chronicle Arts and Culture Critic
  Tuesday, January 31, 2006

Wendy Wasserstein, the celebrated playwright who limned the humanity, humor, societal pressures, surface details and vexing inner conflicts of women in America for nearly three decades, died of lymphoma Monday in New York City. She was 55.

Her widely produced plays, beginning with "Uncommon Women and Others" in 1977 and including "The Heidi Chronicles" (1989), "The Sisters Rosensweig" (1993) and "An American Daughter" (1997), sprang from keen observation of contemporary behavior, mores, sensibilities and current events. Collectively, they form an unrivaled theatrical portrait of American life transformed by the feminist movement and its exhilarating, complicated aftermath. Her most heralded work, "The Heidi Chronicles," won the Pulitzer Prize and a Tony Award for best play on Broadway.

Ms. Wasserstein wrote about sex and career, money and children, ambition and ambivalence among college-educated, predominantly middle-class characters who aged along with the playwright over the course of her career. Her accessible, deftly structured comedies played on Broadway, off Broadway and in regional theaters around the country.

She was also a screenwriter, novelist, essayist, opera librettist and children's book author. Locally, the Peninsula company TheatreWorks produced her plays over the years.

"She was America's leading female playwright for over two decades," said Robert Kelley, artistic director of TheatreWorks. "Her dramatic comedies are a history of the changes that women have experienced in contemporary America. She also had a brilliant instinct for capturing American society in both its foibles and its potential."

Sensitively produced, as many of her plays were by TheatreWorks and as "The Sisters Rosensweig" was by the San Jose Repertory Theatre in 1996, a Wasserstein work revealed the writer's flair for simultaneously entertaining an audience, engaging its sympathies, and provoking thought about social conventions. The semi-autobiographical "Sisters" will be revived in April by TheatreWorks, which is dedicating the production to the playwright's memory.

Gregarious, gently self-mocking and big-hearted, Ms. Wasserstein was a fixture in the New York theatrical community.

"Wendy is an ebullient, sly, extravagantly gifted and wise woman," the actress Meryl Streep said in a 1997 "LIVE!" interview. "She is comforting and endlessly available to her friends, who are therefore endlessly needy as the space allows."

Andre Bishop, the Lincoln Center Theater director who was also a close friend, told the Associated Press yesterday that Ms. Wasserstein was "an extraordinary human being whose work and life were extremely intertwined. She was not unlike the heroines of most of her plays -- a strong-minded, independent, serious good person."

She was born in 1950, and raised in a well-to-do middle-class Jewish family in Brooklyn and Manhattan. "It's hard when you're funny to be taken seriously," she told The Chronicle in a 2001 interview. "Since I was the youngest in a large family, the way I got by was being funny. Not ha-ha funny, like Nathan Lane, but by using humor to stand back a little."

Ms. Wasserstein attended Mount Holyoke College, the source and setting of "Uncommon Women and Others," her first major play. Written as Ms. Wasserstein's graduate thesis at the Yale School of Drama, it aired on PBS in 1978.

With "Isn't It Romantic?" in 1983 and "The Heidi Chronicles" six years later, the playwright charted the course of her heroines through the thickets of love, career and premonitions of motherhood. "An American Daughter," set in the Clinton era, deals with a woman's nomination as U.S. Surgeon General and a subsequent media scandal. "Old Money" (2000) satirizes the old and newly rich.

Ms. Wasserstein's many other writing credits include the forthcoming novel "Elements of Style," the screenplay for "The Object of My Affection," the children's book "Pamela's First Musical" and a 2001 adaptation of "The Merry Widow" for San Francisco Opera. Last year, she published a short book in praise of "Sloth."

In 1999, at age 48, Ms. Wasserstein gave birth as a single mother to a daughter, Lucy Jane. In addition to her daughter, she is survived by her mother, Lola Wasserstein; a sister, Georgette Levis; and two brothers, Abner and Bruce Wasserstein.

Chronicle wire services contributed to this story.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/31/BAGMIH02N31.DTL

Video Artist Nam June Paik Dies at 74

• By LAURA WIDES-MUNOZ, Associated Press Writer
  Monday, January 30, 2006

(01-30) 11:42 PST MIAMI, (AP) --

Nam June Paik, the avant-garde artist credited with inventing video art in the 1960s by combining multiple TV screens with sculpture, music and live performers, has died. He was 74.

The Korean-born Paik, who also coined the term "Electronic Super Highway" years before the information superhighway was invented, died Sunday night of natural causes at his Miami apartment, according to his Web site.

Song Tae-ho, head of a South Korean cultural foundation working on a project to build a museum for the artist, said he learned of Paik's death from Paik's nephew, Ken Paik Hakuta, in New York.

Paik's work gained international praise from the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the Museum of Broadcast Communications in Chicago, among others, and much of it is on display at the Nam June Paik Museum in Kyonggi, South Korea.

"He really led the development of a new art form, bringing the moving image into the modern art world," said John Hanhardt, senior curator of film and media arts at the Guggenheim.

Hanhardt called Paik a true friend and a prophet.

"He foresaw that video would be an artist's medium, that it would be in museums," he said. "It's a heroic achievement."

In a 1974 report commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation, Paik wrote of a telecommunications network of the future he called the "Electronic Super Highway," predicting it "will become our springboard for new and surprising human endeavors." Two decades later, when "information superhighway" had become the phrase of the moment, he commented, "Bill Clinton stole my idea."

He also was often credited with coining the phrase, "The future is now."

Trained in music, aesthetics and philosophy, he was a member of the 1960s art movement Fluxus, which was in part inspired by composer John Cage's use of everyday sounds in his music. Another Fluxus adherent was the young Yoko Ono.

Paik made his artistic debut in Wiesbaden, West Germany, in 1963 with a solo art exhibition titled "Exposition of Music-Electronic Television." He scattered 12 television sets throughout the exhibit space and used them to create unexpected effects in the images being received. Later exhibits included the use of magnets to manipulate or alter the image on TV sets and create patterns of light.

He moved to New York in 1964 and started working with classical cellist Charlotte Moorman to combine video, music and performance.

In "TV Cello" they stacked television sets that formed the shape of a cello. When she drew the bow across the television sets, there were images of her playing, video collages of other cellists and live images of the performance.

In one highly publicized incident, Moorman was arrested in 1967 in New York for going topless in performing Paik's "Opera Sextronique." Said one headline: "Cops Top a Topless `Happening.'" In a 1969 performance titled "TV Bra for Living Sculpture," she wore a bra with tiny TV screens over her breasts.

Another of Paik's pieces, "TV Buddha," is a statue of a sitting Buddha facing its own image on a closed-circuit television screen, while "Positive Egg," has a video camera aimed at a white egg on a black cloth. In a series of larger and larger monitors, the image is magnified until the actual egg becomes an abstract shape on the screen.

Paik also incorporated television sets into a series of robots. The early robots were constructed largely of bits and pieces of wire and metal; later ones were built from vintage radio and television sets.

Famous worldwide, Paik never forgot his native Korea. In 1986, public television showed Paik's "Bye Bye Kipling," a mix of taped and live events, mostly from Paik's native Seoul; Tokyo; and New York. Two years later, Paik erected a media tower, called "The more the better," from 1,003 monitors for the Olympic Games at Seoul.

Paik was left partially paralyzed by a stroke in 1996.

Funeral services will be held this week in New York, Hakuta told South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

Paik's Web site:
http://www.paikstudios.com/

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/01/30/entertainment/e114253S26.DTL

I was very sad to learn about Wendy Wasserstein's death. Wendy's first play, "Uncommon Women and Others" was the second play I directed. It's an excellent show, and it was a profound experience for me, directing an all-female cast. I learned a lot from that time. Wasserstein was a really gifted playwright. :(

Grandpa Munster, 95:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5189733

On 2006-02-04 15:55, c10 wrote:
Grandpa Munster, 95:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5189733

I just read that he ran against Pataki for gov. of NY on the Green Party ticket! and he petitioned to get his name on the ballot as Granpa Al Lewis! That's cool!

Oh yeah, Betty Friedan died today also, not such a good week for pioneering women...

Don Knotts dead at 81... we'll miss you Barney Fife - the shining example of what all small town cops aspire to!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060226/ap_en_tv/obit_knotts_14

Don Knotts was a patient of my boss, and came to our office fairly often. Even towards the end when he was in frail health, he was always very sweet and friendly. I'll miss him.

Darrin Mcgavin of Night Stalker fame just passed on.
(But he'll come back.)
Oh yeah, and my 17 year old cat Sylvester, (everybody remember him? Of course you do.)
He's Pau too.

[ Edited by: HelloTiki 2006-02-26 08:03 ]

[ Edited by: hellotiki 2006-02-26 08:13 ]

Darrin Mcgavin also played the Dad in the holiday classic, "A Christmas Story".

Oh God this is really hitting close to home now... Dennis Weaver is dead at 81! Online accounts of his passing mention his role in Gunsmoke - I'll always remember him as David Mann in one of the best bad movies ever made - Duel!

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060227/ap_on_en_mo/obit_weaver

Obit for Darren McGavin

Darren McGavin, 83; Prolific Actor in 'Night Stalker,' 'Christmas Story'

By Valerie J. Nelson, Times Staff Writer
February 27 2006

Darren McGavin, an Emmy-winning actor who worked almost constantly in television for almost 50 years and made an enduring mark on popular culture as the grizzled has-been crime reporter in the 1970s series "Kolchak: The Night Stalker," has died. He was 83.

McGavin, who also is remembered for portraying the curmudgeonly father in the 1983 film "A Christmas Story," died of natural causes Saturday at a Los Angeles-area hospital, his family said.

Although he had roots on stage and in film, long-term success came on the small screen, often in the form of gruff-voiced authority figures. One such role — the opinionated father of Candice Bergen on "Murphy Brown" (CBS, 1988 to 1998) — earned him an Emmy Award in 1990.

McGavin starred in several TV series, including the syndicated "Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer" (1957 to 1959), "Riverboat" (NBC, 1959 to 1961), "The Outsider" (NBC, 1968 to 1969) and the short-lived CBS comedy "Small & Frye" (1983).
He first played fast-talking Carl Kolchak in "The Night Stalker," a TV movie about a reporter covering a vampire's killing spree in Las Vegas. When it first aired in 1972, the movie set a ratings record.

"That marvelous hunk of creepy camp of a TV movie," as The Times called it in 1974, was followed by a 1973 sequel, "The Night Strangler." The ABC series that seemed to captivate a generation of future sci-fi scriptwriters aired for a single season beginning in 1974.

The "Night Stalker" movies and series have been credited with inspiring contemporary entertainment, including the WB series "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and the 1997 film "Men in Black." Writer-producer Chris Carter has often cited Kolchak as the primary inspiration for the long-running fantasy-drama "The X-Files" that first aired on Fox in 1993.

"The Night Stalker's" combination of fear and fun worked in large part because of the "jauntiness in the face of doom" that McGavin brought to what he called "the role of a lifetime," Frank Spotnitz, a producer of a short-lived revival of the series that aired on ABC last fall, wrote in Entertainment Weekly in 2005. By the time the 20th episode of the original series had aired, ABC had granted McGavin's pleas to put him — and the low-rated series — out of their misery. Despite treasuring the part, McGavin knew that the high-concept idea of chasing after supernatural monsters of the week as a way of breaking into the big leagues of journalism wouldn't work over the long haul.

Ever outspoken, McGavin criticized television for creating "cardboard characters," he told The Times in 1968, and he pointed the finger at his private-eye detective series "Mike Hammer," so violent that TV Guide once called it "easily the worst show on TV."
"Hammer was a dummy. I made 72 of those shows and thought it was a comedy," McGavin recalled. "In fact, I played it camp. He was the kind of guy who'd have waved the flag for George Wallace."

After leaving behind the character who was known for either kissing or killing the women, McGavin co-starred with Burt Reynolds as a skipper in "Riverboat," set in the 1840s. That was another series, McGavin said, that could use a reality check. "We'd dock in New Orleans … and there'd never be a Negro in sight. That's when the series started to crumble," he said in 1968.

On the big screen, McGavin first received notice in two 1955 films for portraying a young artist in Venice in David Lean's "Summertime" and Frank Sinatra's drug supplier in Otto Preminger's "The Man With The Golden Arm." He also was Jerry Lewis' parole officer in "The Delicate Delinquent" (1957) and a gambler in 1984's "The Natural." He starred alongside Don Knotts, who died Friday, in the 1976 family comedy "No Deposit, No Return."

In "A Christmas Story," McGavin played the narrator's father who grumbles his fair share of profanity. Years later, he demonstrated the art of garbled cussing on "Larry King Live" on CNN.

Other memorable roles included playing Gen. George Patton in the 1979 miniseries "Ike," and appearing alongside Rock Hudson in the sci-fi miniseries "The Martian Chronicles."

He was born May 7, 1922, to Reid Delano Richardson and Grace Bogart McGavin in Spokane, Wash., although some sources give his birthplace as San Joaquin, Calif.

McGavin never revealed much about his childhood, but he told TV Guide in 1973 that he was a constant runaway by 10, and as a teen he lived in warehouses in Tacoma, Wash. His parents vanished, he said. After attending College of the Pacific in Stockton for a year, McGavin dropped out and moved to New York. He studied acting at the Neighborhood Playhouse under the legendary Sanford Meisner and at the Actors Studio.

In New York and on the road, he portrayed Happy, the second son of Willy Loman in "Death of a Salesman." He spent more than a dozen years performing on Broadway, beginning in 1953, including appearing in "The Rainmaker."
McGavin liked to portray his early film career as something he pulled over on Hollywood. While painting a set for "A Song to Remember" at Columbia, he learned about a small role in the 1945 film that still needed to be cast.
After cleaning up, he walked back in the front gate with his agent and the director, Charles Vidor, hired him.
Only the paint foreman recognized him and said, "You're fired."

Survivors include his four children — Bogart, Bridget, Megan and York — from his first marriage, which ended in divorce. His second wife, the actress Kathie Browne McGavin, died in 2003.

Dammit! I'm never going to win this year's celebrity dead pool at this rate!! (Last year I came in second.)

Oliver! star Jack Wild dies at 53

Actor Jack Wild, who played The Artful Dodger in 1968 film Oliver!, has died at the age of 53.
Wild was nominated for an Oscar when he was just 16 for the role. He also starred in late-1960s US children's fantasy TV series HR Pufnstuf.
He suffered from mouth cancer after years of heavy drinking and smoking and had his voice box and tongue removed.
Wild's agent Alex Jay said the actor "died peacefully at midnight last night after a long battle with oral cancer".
Wild was diagnosed with the disease in 2000 and was unable to speak, drink or eat after having surgery, chemotherapy and radiotherapy.
He had to communicate through his wife and his meals were delivered in liquid form via a tube that went straight into his stomach.
Wild recently said: "Until I was diagnosed with mouth cancer, I'd never heard of it.

"What I learned very quickly was that my lifestyle had made me a walking time bomb. "I was a heavy smoker and an even heavier drinker and apparently together they are a deadly mixture."
The former child star from Royton, near Oldham, made his TV debut aged 13. He had a string of screen credits when he was chosen to star as the pickpocketing urchin in the musical adaptation of Charles Dickens' Oliver!

The role saw him appear alongside Oliver Reed and Harry Secombe in one of the final films to be directed by British movie legend Carol Reed.
The film's success helped Wild land the starring role in popular children's series HR Pufnstuf, in which he played a boy with a magic flute on a psychedelic island.

The vivid and outlandish stories and imagery led to a spin-off film, Pufnstuf, in 1970. But his acting career failed to take off and his TV and film roles became patchy in quality and frequency as the years progressed.
He said he spent the "70s and 80s in a drunken haze" but had been sober since 1990 and returned to screens with a small role in 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. He was reunited with Ron Moody - who played Fagin in Oliver! - in independent film Moussaka & Chips last year.
The actor's agent Alex Jay said: "He said he wanted The Entertainer played at his funeral, because he always saw himself as an entertainer. "We had lots of work lined up for him this year, it's very sad.

"He was working really hard on his autobiography, which was almost finished, and he had great plans for that.
"He always looked at the positive side of things. He always looked at the sunny side, despite all the things that he had been through.
"There was always a next day. He always got on with it. He wasn't one to sit back. "Even in his drinking days, he was always very careful about being photographed with a drink or cigarette in his hand because he didn't want to encourage young people."

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/4765996.stm
Published: 2006/03/02 12:16:24 GMT

Actress Maureen Stapleton Dies at 80 By ADAM GORLICK, Associated Press

SPRINGFIELD, Mass. - Maureen Stapleton, an Oscar-winning character actress whose subtle vulnerability and down-to-earth toughness earned her dramatic and comedic roles on stage, screen, and television, died Monday. She was 80.

The longtime smoker died from chronic pulmonary disease in the Berkshire hills town of Lenox, where she had been living, said her son, Daniel Allentuck.

Stapleton, whose unremarkable, matronly appearance belied her star personality and talent, won an Academy Award in 1981 for her supporting role as anarchist-writer Emma Goldman in Warren Beatty's "Reds," about a left-wing American journalist who journeys to Russia to cover the Bolshevik Revolution.

To prepare for the role, Stapleton said she tried reading Goldman's autobiography, but soon chucked it out of boredom.

"There are many roads to good acting," Stapleton, known for her straightforwardness, said in her 1995 autobiography, "Hell of a Life." "I've been asked repeatedly what the 'key' to acting is, and as far as I'm concerned, the main thing is to keep the audience awake."

Stapleton was nominated several times for a supporting actress Oscar, including for her first film role in 1958's "Lonelyhearts";"Airport" in 1970; and Woody Allen's "Interiors" in 1978.

Her other film credits include the 1963 musical "Bye Bye Birdie" opposite Ann-Margret and Dick Van Dyke, "Johnny Dangerously," "Cocoon,""The Money Pit" and "Addicted to Love."

In television, she earned an Emmy for "Among the Paths to Eden" in 1967. She was nominated for "Queen of the Stardust Ballroom" in 1975; "The Gathering" in 1977; and "Miss Rose White" in 1992.

Brought up in a strict Irish Catholic family with an alcoholic father, Stapleton left home in Troy, N.Y., right after high school. With $100 to her name, she came to New York and began studying at the Herbert Berghof Acting School and later at the Actor's Studio, which turned out the likes of Marlon Brando, Paul Newman and Julia Roberts.

Stapleton soon made her Broadway debut in Burgess Meredith's 1946 production of "The Playboy of the Western World."

At age 24, she became a success as Serafina Delle Rose in Tennessee Williams' Broadway hit "The Rose Tattoo," and won a Tony Award. She appeared in numerous other stage productions, including Lillian Hellman's "Toys in the Attic" and Neil Simon's "The Gingerbread Lady," for which she won her second Tony in 1971.

She starred opposite Laurence Olivier in Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Stapleton's friendship with Williams was well-known and he wrote three plays for her, but she never appeared in any of them.

Along the way, she led a chaotic personal life, which her autobiography candidly described as including two failed marriages, numerous affairs, years of alcohol abuse and erratic parenting for her two children.

She often said auditioning was hard for her, but that it was just a part of acting, a job "that pays."

"When I was first in New York there was a girl who wanted to play 'St. Joan' to the point where it was scary. ... I thought 'Don't ever want anything that bad," she recalled. "Just take what you get and like it while you do it, and forget it."

Cast throughout her career in supporting roles, Stapleton was content not playing a lead character, Allentuck said.

"I don't think she ever had unrealistic aspirations about her career," he said.

Beside Allentuck, Stapleton is survived by a daughter, Katharine Bambery, of Lenox and a brother, Jack Stapleton, of Troy, N.Y.

She was in one of my top 20 movies of all time: Johnny Dangerously. Very sad.

NO WHAMMYS!!!!!

Ex-Game Show Host, Wife Die in Plane Crash

By DAISY NGUYEN, Associated Press Writer
52 minutes ago

SANTA MONICA, Calif. - A former TV game show host and his wife were killed Monday morning when their small plane crashed into Santa Monica Bay, authorities said. Rescue crews were searching for a third person also aboard the plane.

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The bodies of Peter Tomarken, 63, host of the hit 1980s game show "Press Your Luck," and his wife, Kathleen Abigail Tomarken, 41, were identified by the Los Angeles County coroner's office.

The plane was on its way to San Diego to ferry a medical patient to the UCLA Medical Center, said Doug Griffith, a spokesman for Angel Flight West, a nonprofit which provides free air transportation for needy patients.

Griffith said the pilot was a volunteer for the group. According to the FAA, the plane was registered to Tomarken and he was the pilot.

The plane apparently had engine trouble and was headed back to Santa Monica Airport, located about two miles inland, but went down about 9:35 a.m. just off shore, said Federal Aviation Administration spokesman Allen Kenitzer.

Rescue boats and divers searching for the third person believed to be aboard the plane were clustered about a half-mile southwest of the Santa Monica Pier where the plane went down in about 19 feet of water.

Luis Garr said he didn't hear the engine but heard the splash as the plane "kind of landed into the water."

"It's a big splash, a huge splash. ... Then it started going down," Garr said. "The wings were still floating so I was, `Get out! Get out!' because the door was still available to get out and nobody came out. So the plane kept going down, down, down."

Tomarken's death was first reported by "Entertainment Tonight."

"Press Your Luck" was known for contestants shouting the slogan "Big bucks! No whammies!"

Tomarken's agent, Fred Wostbrock, said his client's first game show was "Hit Man!," which ran 13 weeks on NBC, followed by the four-year hit "Press Your Luck" on CBS. He also was on "Bargain Hunters," "Wipe-Out" and "Paranoia.""He was always a fun guy to be around, and he just loved the genre of game shows," Wostbrock said.

Ante 'Tony' Rodin -- longtime Original Joe's owner

• Marianne Costantinou, Chronicle Staff Writer
  Sunday, March 12, 2006

Forget the boardroom and the golf course. Deals and friendships were just as likely forged at Original Joe's restaurant in the Tenderloin.

Mayors and judges, athletes and actors, hookers and homeless, the chic and the old fogies -- they all came to the landmark San Francisco restaurant at 144 Taylor St. for some good old-fashioned Italian cooking, gigantic portions at low prices, and the casual, friendly atmosphere.

For 62 years, Ante "Tony" Rodin presided as folks from every walk of life jostled for a counter seat in front of the open charcoal grill or plopped down in horseshoe-shaped Naugahyde booths or ponied up to the long wooden bar. To Mr. Rodin, it didn't matter what they did for a living or how much money they made -- as long as they made enough to pay the tab. To him, they were all his customers, and he treated them all the same, with courtly manners and a warm gentleness.

Mr. Rodin came to the restaurant virtually every day, from the moment he founded it in 1937 with a couple of friends to the last few years when his health started to fail. Old age finally caught up with him last Tuesday. He was 93 and lived for nearly 60 years in the same stucco house in Cow Hollow he had built for his family soon after his restaurant business had taken off.

As word spread of his passing, many regulars dropped in Friday night to give condolences to his daughter, Marie Duggan, who has been running the restaurant for the past two decades.

They all had a story to tell about Mr. Rodin and how much Original Joe's has meant to them.

"Everyone knew he was the soul of this place," said Warren Hinckle, the veteran editor and newspaperman, recalling many a night spent at the bar as Mr. Rodin poured drinks, his Optimo cigar and a glass of Cutty Sark Scotch nearby to keep his customers company. "There's no other joint like this."

"Every drink was an honest drink," said Burt McGovern, an attorney who has been coming nearly every week for 30 years, on Wednesdays for the osso bucco or on Thursdays for the corned beef and cabbage. "He thought first and foremost of his customers."

"He was always kind and generous with everything he did," said Patricia Carson Major, an attorney who came with friends for lunch every Friday for 15 years when she worked nearby, and has been driving down from her home on Telegraph Hill for the past decade.

Upon learning that "Miss Patricia," as he called her, liked fresh vegetables, Mr. Rodin would often bring her a bag of Italian green beans he had grown in his garden. And often when she came with her friends, he'd treat them to a plate of fresh calamari as an appetizer.

"He was a very classy guy," said Major.

Mr. Rodin's generosity with others -- including his insistence on giving his customers giant portions, from three-quarter-pound burgers on a fat French roll to steaks and halibuts that tipped the scale past a pound -- stemmed from his own poor upbringing, said his daughter.

He was born in 1913 on a tiny island off the coast of Croatia. His mother died when he was 6 months old, and his father soon left him in the care of his grandparents to go off to fight in World War I. As soon as his father came back, he went off to join the merchant marine. And so, Mr. Rodin didn't really know his parents, a loss that later made him devoted to his wife and their two children, Duggan said.

Life on the island was impoverished, and Mr. Rodin felt hungry most of his childhood, she said. At age 13, he took off across the Adriatic Sea to Trieste, Italy, and got a job at an Italian family restaurant. The owners took a shine to Mr. Rodin, gave him a small place to live out back and put him in charge of their two young sons.

About a year later, Mr. Rodin decided to follow his father's footsteps, and he joined the merchant marine on an Italian ship. Once again, he was given kitchen duty. Though living conditions were crude, his six years on the ship were happy, said his daughter. He loved the sea.

"And he got to eat as much as he wanted," she said.

In 1930, the ship docked at San Francisco. He had heard it was a beautiful city. He had a childhood friend who lived there and an uncle in the fishing business in Monterey. He decided to get off and start a new life. He had $5 in his pocket and a shaving kit, said his daughter.

At first Mr. Rodin worked as a fisherman with his uncle, but soon tired of a life spent with sardines. So he moved in with his friend, who lived in San Francisco's Excelsior neighborhood. Since he had cooking experience, he would walk to North Beach each day and work at the Italian restaurants there.

One of the places Mr. Rodin worked was a restaurant on Broadway called New Joe's. One of the guys who worked there had run the restaurant for years, back when it was just a lunch counter, and he was eager to start a business of his own. Alas, he had no money to start a business. But Mr. Rodin had been saving his money. They took a look around, and spotted a restaurant in downtown San Francisco called Golden Pines that was for sale. It had sawdust on the floors and was far from the restaurants in North Beach. But the theaters were down the block, and office buildings from the Financial District were nearby.

They brought in another friend, and the three men decided to make a go of it. They named it Original Joe's because one of Mr. Rodin's partners wanted to take credit for making New Joe's such a success.

About a year later, Mr. Rodin's two partners decided to sell their share. And so, Louis Rocca joined Mr. Rodin and the two men remained partners till 1983, when Rocca retired and Duggan bought his share.

Though prices have gone up a teensy bit over the years, the menu has barely changed and the decor has been the same since a big renovation in the 1950s, Duggan said.

Otherwise, Original Joe's is as it was when Mr. Rodin opened it, she said. And that is how it will remain.

In addition to his daughter, Mr. Rodin is survived by a son, Anthony of Modesto, five grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

A wake will be held tonight at 7 p.m. at Duggan-Serra Mortuary in Daly City. A Mass of Christian burial will be Monday at 11 a.m. at St. Paul's at 29th and Church streets in San Francisco. Burial will follow at Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/03/12/BAG73HMSEP1.DTL

Robert C. Baker, Inventor of the Chicken Nugget, Dies

All Things Considered, March 16, 2006 ·

Robert C. Baker, who founded Cornell University's Institute of Food Science and Marketing, died Monday. Baker was responsible for many innovations including chicken nuggets, chicken hot dogs and chicken steak.

More at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5284818

Buck Owens R.I.P.

(03-25) 09:10 PST Los Angeles (AP) --

Buck Owens, the flashy "rhinestone cowboy" who shaped the sound of country
music with hits like "Act Naturally," and helped introduce the genre to
mainstream America on the long-running TV show "Hee Haw," has died. He was
76.

Owens died early Saturday at his home in Bakersfield, said family
spokesman Jim Shaw. The cause of death was not immediately known.

Owens underwent throat cancer surgery in 1993 and was hospitalized with
pneumonia in January 1997.

His career was one of the most phenomenal in country music, with a string
of more than 20 No. 1 records, most released from the mid-1960s to the
mid-1970s.

They were recorded with a honky-tonk twang that came to be known
throughout California as the "Bakersfield Sound," named for the town 100
miles north of Los Angeles that Owens called home. Outside the state, his
music was known as country's "California Sound."

"I think the reason he was so well known and respected by a younger
generation of country musicians was because he was an innovator and
rebel," said Shaw, who played keyboards in Owens' band, the Buckaroos. "He
did it out of the Nashville establishment. He had a raw edge."

Owens' aspirations, however, were less than that afforded by such lofty
titles.

"I'd like to be remembered as a guy that came along and did his music, did
his best and showed up on time, clean and ready to do the job, wrote a few
songs and had a hell of a time," he said in 1992.

An indefatigable performer, Owens played a red, white and blue guitar with
fireball fervor. He and the members of the Buckaroos wore flashy
rhinestone suits in an era when flash was as important to country music as
fiddles.

Among his biggest hits were "Together Again" (also recorded by Emmylous
Harris), "I've Got a Tiger by the Tail,""Love's Gonna Live Here,""My Heart
Skips a Beat" and "Waitin' in Your Welfare Line."

And he was the answer to this music trivia question: What country star had
a hit record that was later done by the Beatles?

"Those guys were phenomenal," Owens once said of rock music's most famous
band.

Ringo Starr recorded "Act Naturally" twice, singing lead on the Beatles'
1965 version and recording it as a duet with Owens in 1989.

In addition to music, Owens had a highly visible TV career as co-host of
"Hee Haw" from 1969 to 1986. With guitarist Roy Clark, he led viewers
through a potpourri of country music and hayseed humor.

"It's an honest show," Owens told The Associated Press in 1995. "There's
no social message — no crusade. It's fun and simple."

Owens himself could be rebellious, choosing among other things to label
what he did "American music" rather than country.

"I took a little heat," he once said. "People asked me, `Isn't country
music good enough for you?'"

He also criticized the syrupy arrangements of some country singers, saying
"assembly-line, robot music turns me off."

After his string of hits, Owens stayed away from the recording scene for a
decade, returning in 1988 to record another No. 1 record, "Streets of
Bakersfield," with Dwight Yoakam.

He spent much of his time away concentrating on his business interests,
which included a Bakersfield TV station and radio stations in Bakersfield
and Phoenix.

"I never wanted to hang around like the punch-drunk fighter," he told The
Associated Press in 1992.

He had moved to Bakersfield in 1951, hoping to find work in the thriving
juke joints of what in the years before suburban sprawl was a truck-stop
town on Highway 99, between Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay area.

"We played rhumbas and tangos and sambas, and we played Bob Wills music,
lots of Bob Wills music," he said, referring to the bandleader who was the
king of Western swing.

"And lots of rock 'n' roll," he added.

Owens started recording in the mid-1950s, but gained little success until
1963 with "Act Naturally," his first No. 1 single.

Alvis Edgar Owens Jr. was born in 1929 outside Sherman, Texas, the son of
a sharecropper. With opportunities scarce during the Depression, the
family moved to Arizona when he was 8.

He dropped out of school at age 13 to haul produce and harvest crops, and
by 16 he was playing music in taverns.

He once told an audience, "When I was a little bitty kid, I used to dream
about playing the guitar and singing like some of those great people that
we had the old, thick records of."

Owens' first wife, Bonnie Owens, sometimes performed with him and went on
to become a leading backup singer after their divorce in 1955. She had
occasional solo hits in the '60s, as well as successful duets with her
second husband, Merle Haggard.

One of her two sons with Owens also became a singer, using the name Buddy
Alan. He had a Top 10 hit in 1968, "Let the World Keep on a-Turnin'," and
recorded a number of duets with his father.

In addition to Buddy, he is survived by two other sons, Michael and John.

On the Net:

http://www.buckowens.com --------------------------

It saddens me to report Buddy Blue died last Sunday at his home here in La Mesa of an apparent heart attack. He was 48. Buddy was a founding member of The Beat Farmers, The Jacks, The Buddy Blue Band and his latest venture (with fellow Farmers Jerry Raney & Rolle Love) The Flying Putos. A Memorial will be held for Buddy this Friday. For more info, check out this site: http://www.buddyblue.com

[ Edited by: rodeotiki 2006-04-05 11:58 ]

Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Gene Pitney Found Dead in Hotel

Wrote 'He's a Rebel,' sang 'Town Without Pity'

LONDON, England (CNN) -- Gene Pitney, the singer and songwriter known for 1960s hits such as "Town Without Pity" and "24 Hours from Tulsa," has died while on a UK concert tour, his agent said.

Pitney, 65, was found dead just after 10 a.m. Wednesday (0500 ET) at the Hilton Hotel in Cardiff, Wales.

His agent, Jene Levy, told Reuters Pitney died on Wednesday morning after given a concert in the Welsh capital the previous day.

There was no immediate word on the cause of death. Friends said he was in apparent good health and his death came as a shock.

"We don't have a cause of death at the moment but looks like it was a very peaceful passing," said Pitney's tour manager, James Kelly, according to The Associated Press.

"He was found fully clothed, on his back, as if he had gone for a lie down. It looks as if there was no pain whatsoever."

South Wales police said they had been called to a hotel at 9:50 a.m. on Wednesday morning and that the death was not being treated as suspicious.

Pitney was born in Hartford, Connecticut, on February 17, 1941.

His 40-year career included hits such as "It Hurts to Be in Love," "(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance," "Every Breath I Take," "Town Without Pity," "Only Love Can Break a Heart" and the operatic "I'm Gonna Be Strong." His last U.S. hit was "She's a Heartbreaker" in 1968.

Pitney was also a highly regarded songwriter -- he wrote the Crystals' No. 1 hit, "He's a Rebel," Rick Nelson's smash "Hello Mary Lou" and Bobby Vee's "Rubber Ball." Some of his own hits, though -- "Only Love," "Liberty Valance" and "Tulsa" -- were written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David.

He was an early subject of Phil Spector's Wall of Sound -- Spector produced Pitney's version of Carole King and Gerry Goffin's "Every Breath I Take" as well as the Crystals' "He's a Rebel" -- and an early supporter of British bands such as the Rolling Stones.

Pitney recorded Mick Jagger and Keith Richards' "That Girl Belongs to Yesterday" and attended the session at which the Stones recorded "Not Fade Away," according to Allmusic.com.

Pitney was introduced to a new generation of fans in 1989 when he recorded "Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart" as a duet with Marc Almond, the UK's Press Association reported.

The single gave Pitney his first UK No. 1 -- 22 years after its first release, PA added.

In 2002 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Pitney's agent told Reuters that his wife, Lynne, had been told of his death. Pitney also leaves three sons, David, Todd and Chris.

Eugene Landy, Brian Wilson therapist, dead

Wednesday, March 29, 2006; Posted: 11:30 a.m. EST (16:30 GMT)

LOS ANGELES, Californai (AP) -- Eugene Landy, the psychologist who gained notoriety for his controversial treatment of and control over Beach Boys legend Brian Wilson, died March 22 of respiratory complications from lung cancer in Honolulu, said his longtime colleague, William Flaxman. He was 71.

Landy pioneered what he called "24-hour therapy," in which he worked with patients for long, uninterrupted periods. His show business clientele included rock musician Alice Cooper and actors Richard Harris and Rod Steiger.

He was best known, however, for his treatment of Wilson, the troubled founding member of the iconic California surf band.

Wilson's wife hired Landy in 1975 at a time when the musician had withdrawn socially to an alarming degree. Landy took control of Wilson's life, constantly monitoring him to keep him away from drugs and junk food.

Under Landy's care, Wilson's physical and mental health improved enough that he performed at the Beach Boys' 15th anniversary concert on New Year's Eve 1976. Despite his success, Landy was fired around that time by the band's manager, largely over a fee dispute.

Six years later, after Wilson had regressed to drugs and obesity, Landy was rehired. The psychologist said he was paid $35,000 a month for conducting 24-hour therapy from 1983 to 1986.

The California Board of Medical Quality Assurance later accused Landy of "grossly negligent conduct," alleging that his business dealings with Wilson had caused the singer "severe emotional damage, psychological dependence and financial exploitation."

Landy denied the charges and Wilson defended him, attributing his new solo career to Landy's therapy. "Dr. Landy saved my life," Wilson said in a statement at the time.

In 1989, Landy admitted to a single charge of unlawfully prescribing drugs and surrendered his license to practice psychology in California for at least two years.

I attended Buddy Blue's memorial service last Friday afternoon. I didn't know Buddy that well but I'm glad I went. A great sendoff for a helluva guy and a very talented and passionate musician. I think everyone should own at least one Buddy Blue CD. I've been listening to "Greasy Jass" for the last three days.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060409/news_mz1j9buddy.html

On 2006-04-10 19:55, Shipwreckjoey wrote:
I attended Buddy Blue's memorial service last Friday afternoon. I didn't know Buddy that well but I'm glad I went. A great sendoff for a helluva guy and a very talented and passionate musician. I think everyone should own at least one Buddy Blue CD. I've been listening to "Greasy Jass" for the last three days.

http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20060409/news_mz1j9buddy.html

WTF?!?!? When did this happen? Why did this happen? :( Dammit, he wasn't much older than me.

Allan Kaprow, who pioneered theatrical "happenings," dies at 78

Thursday, April 6, 2006

(04-06) 18:44 PDT SAN DIEGO, (AP) --

Allan Kaprow, an artist who in the 1950s pioneered an unrehearsed, nonverbal form of theater called a "happening" that was intended to shatter the boundary between art and life, has died. He was 78.

Kaprow, who taught for years at the University of California, San Diego, died Wednesday at his home in the San Diego suburb of Encinitas. He had been ill for some time and died of natural causes, said Tamara Bloomberg, a friend and associate.

Kaprow's happenings took place in real-life settings and involved unrelated or bizarre scenes acted out by any willing participant. The audience were people who just happened to be there.

A typical Kaprow happening involved people standing around Times Square in New York, waiting for a signal from a window. When the signal arrives, the are directed to fall down on a spot on the sidewalk. Then they are loaded into a truck and driven away.

"Contemporary artists are not out to supplant recent modern art with a better kind," Kaprow said in 1966. "They wonder what art might be. Art and life are not simply commingled; the identity of each is uncertain."

Born August 23, 1927, in Atlantic City, N.J., Kaprow called himself an "un-artist." He was primarily a painter and sculptor working with found objects.

After studying with composer John Cage, he decided to stage events he called happenings, beginning in 1958. He later filled a courtyard with tires, and, in Berlin, constructed a cinderblock wall with bread and jam as mortar and then knocked it down.

He is survived by his wife, Coryl, their son, Bram, and three children from a previous marriage.

URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2006/04/06/state/n184436D95.DTL

June Pointer, youngest Pointer Sisters, dies at 52

Family said singer had cancer

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- June Pointer, the youngest of the Pointer Sisters -- known for the '70s and '80s hits "I'm So Excited," "Fire" and "Slow Hand" -- has died of cancer, her family said Wednesday. She was 52.

Pointer died Tuesday at Santa Monica University of California, Los Angeles, Medical Center, the family said in a statement. She had been hospitalized since late February. The type of cancer wasn't disclosed.

She died "in the arms of her sisters, Ruth and Anita and her brothers, Aaron and Fritz, by her side," the statement said. "Although her sister, Bonnie, was unable to be present, she was with her in spirit."

The four sisters grew up singing in the choir of an Oakland church where their parents were ministers. Bonnie and June formed a singing duo and began performing in clubs around the San Francisco Bay area. Anita and Ruth later joined the group, which sang backup for artists such as Taj Mahal, Boz Scaggs and Elvin Bishop.

Their self-titled debut album was released in 1973, and the song "Yes We Can Can" became their first hit. They followed up with "That's A Plenty," which featured an eclectic mix of musical styles ranging from jazz to country and pop. They won a Grammy Award in 1974 for best country vocal performance by a group for the song "Fairytale."

Bonnie Pointer left the group in 1977 for a solo career.

The Pointer Sisters recorded several more albums, including 1984's "Break Out," which won two Grammys for "Automatic" and "Jump (for My Love)." The album's other hit song, "Neutron Dance," was prominently featured in the movie "Beverly Hills Cop."

June recorded two solo albums, and later left the trio.

Anita and Ruth still perform under the group's name. Ruth's daughter, Issa Pointer, is the trio's newest member.

Funeral arrangements were incomplete.

June Pointer, youngest Pointer Sisters, dies at 52

I saw her in Atlantic City back in the 80's...walking through the mall I used to work in with her entourage. With her hair, I'd swear she was 7 feet tall.

Anthony James Ryan, who met the director Russ Meyer in a World War II training camp and was his right-hand man for some 60 years.

http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060424/PEOPLE/60424008

Ryan did a little of everything for the “King of the Nudies.” He was an actor, producer, writer, production manager and cameraman.

Ryan played the handyman in “Eve and the Handyman” (1961), which followed Meyer’s huge hit “The Immoral Mr. Teas” and starred Meyer’s wife Eve Meyer, one of the first dozen Playboy Playmates. He also acted in “Wild Gals of the Naked West” (1962) and “Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers!” (1968).

He was a producer, writer and camera operator on “Vixen” (1968), the producer and production manager of “Cherry, Harry & Raquel!” (1970), a writer on “Up!” (1976), an associate producer and writer on “Black Snake” (1973) and “Vixen,” and the executive producer of “Supervixens” (1975).

Clarabell just died!
Honk. Honk......

[ Edited by: HelloTiki 2006-05-17 08:55 ]

[ Edited by: HelloTiki 2006-05-17 08:56 ]

Freddie is Deaddie. Freddie Garrity of Freddie & the Dreamers passed away at age 69.

The woman artist who designed the Coppertone "Tan Don't Burn" ad (with the little girl & the dog), a true "sign of summer", also passed on . Anyone got her name?

RIP Naked Guy

'Naked Guy' ex-student dies in jail
Berkeley nudist was in custody on assault, battery charges

Saturday, May 20, 2006; Posted: 3:39 p.m. EDT (19:39 GMT)

SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- The former college student known as the "Naked Guy," who gained notoriety in the early 1990s for attending class in the buff, has died in jail, authorities said.

Andrew Martinez, 33, whose stripped-down strolls at the University of California, Berkeley, got him expelled and prompted the city to adopt a strict anti-nudity ordinance, was found unconscious Thursday in a Santa Clara County jail, said jail spokesman Mark Cursi.

Officials are investigating the death as an apparent suicide.

He had been in custody since January 10 on charges of battery and assault with a deadly weapon, authorities said.

In 1992, Martinez organized a "Nude-In" protest at the university. He said he was trying to make a point about free expression.

The message caught on, and nude spottings spiked on campus. Martinez, who landed on national talk shows, was expelled the next year after the university banned nudity.

Sad news from the Reggae/ ska world. Well miss your unique voice and uplifting tunes.

Info from the Steady ups and Tiki Tena at myspace.

Desmond Dekker - the man who rose to fame on Jamaica's airwaves with popular songs such as "The Israelites","Intensified" and 007 - is dead.
The man who was christened Desmond Adolphus Dacres was born in July 16, 1941 died Thursday morning.

With his backing group, The Aces, Desmond Decker had the first international hit with The Israelites".

There are very few artistes left today who truly represented the best moments of the first decade of popular Jamaican music.

As a young man Desmond worked in a Jamaican welding shop. And his singing while working there served notice that he had quite a voice.

He had one thing in common with other Jamaican artistes such as Jimmy Cliff and Derrick Morgan, Desmond Dekker was produced by Leslie Kong of Beverly records.

He formed his group the Aces, which at times included Wilson James and various siblings from the Howard family, including Barry, Carl, Clive, and Patrick.

After changing his professional name to Dekker, in 1967 he and the group recorded 007 (Shanty Town), which made it to ..14 on the UK chart.

In 1963 his first break came with the single "Honour your father.

In 1968 the group won the festival song competition with the single - Intensified. His second album was also titled Intensified.

Another hit followed with the Israelites, this reached number one on the English pop charts in 1969.

The death of his guide and mentor Leslie Kong in 1971 was a tragic blow.

Desmond eventually migrated to England where he later modified his music for the English market.

His many hits and concerts made him a star among the English youths, who were then discovering the rhythmic patterns of reggae and who would ultimately imitate his Jamaican "rude boy" style.

Desmond became one of the leading lights of the music scene in Jamaica until the end of the 1960s and was particularly inspired and productive between 1966 and 1970.

He continued to perform and record into the 90's. With his death - he has gone down in history as one of those who paved the way around the world with the infectious beat - serving notice that reggae music had arrived.

Alex Toth
June 25, 1928 - May 27, 2006
Comic artist for Hanna Barbera
Designed characters for "Johnny Quest","Super Friends" and the original "Space Ghost"

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002613059

http://www.tothfans.com

Robert Donner, 75; Character Actor Played Oddballs on TV, in FilmsBy Valerie J. Nelson
Times Staff Writer

June 14, 2006

Robert Donner, a character actor who specialized in playing eccentrics, including the crazed prophet Exidor on the popular sitcom "Mork & Mindy," has died. He was 75.

Donner, who appeared in more than 100 films and television shows, died Thursday of a heart attack at his Sherman Oaks home, said Michael Belson, his former agent.

On "Mork & Mindy," which aired from 1978 to 1982, Donner led an invisible cult called the Friends of Venus. Whenever the friends whom only Exidor could see got in the way, he uttered his signature phrase — "Mork! Is that you?" — to series star Robin Williams.

"Bobby was very, very skilled at comedy. He worked all the time in an era when they were phasing out character actors," said Michael Lembeck, whose father, Harvey, a comedic actor best known for his role on "The Phil Silvers Show," taught Donner at comedy-improv workshops. "And he had a very droll, very dry sense of humor."

That was evident in Donner's official biography, which mentions that he joined the Navy after high school, "serving three years, 11 months, 29 days, and six and one-half hours."

Born April 27, 1931, in New York City, Donner grew up in New Jersey, Michigan and Texas. After discovering the West Coast while in the service, he decided to stay and attended what is now Cal State Northridge.

While living in a Studio City apartment, he became friends with a neighbor who was also an actor. Clint Eastwood thought Donner was funny and urged him to study acting, according to Donner's biography.

With uncredited roles in two John Wayne westerns — "Rio Bravo" (1959) and "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) — Donner started building a career.

He seemed to revel in "spooky, oddball roles of the street evangelist/undertaker/obsessive lawman variety," according to the online database All Movie Guide.

Among Donner's film credits are "Cool Hand Luke" (1967), "Vanishing Point" (1971), "High Plains Drifter" (1973) and "The Man Who Loved Cat Dancing" (1973). His final film, the family comedy "Hoot," was released last month.

"I guess I'm like the rest of my fellow character actors," Donner told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in 1988. "I keep my guns loaded and go where the action is."

On television, he also had a long-running role as Yancy Tucker on "The Waltons" in the 1970s. He appeared in dozens of television series, including "Columbo,""The Incredible Hulk," "MacGyver,""The Fall Guy," "Matlock" and "Falcon Crest."

He was a founding member of Harvey Lembeck's comedy-improv group, the Crazy Quilt Comedy Company, which counted John Ritter, Penny Marshall and Williams among its alums.

An avid golfer, Donner frequently played in celebrity tournaments and performed stand-up comedy at various fundraisers.

He is survived by his wife, Jill, and two brothers.

Rip Harriot The Tortoise

So who wins the dead pool?

http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/asiapcf/06/24/tortoise.die.ap/index.html

Aaron Spelling died Friday.

Damn, I loved 90210. Granted, not as much as either Love Boat or Fantasy Island, and not so much after Shannon left...